Public Order — 12 Jun 2023 at 18:21

That the draft Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 27 April, be approved.

“once a protest is deemed to have caused serious disruption or may do so, we are taking swift action to stop it.”

“asylum initial…backlog is down by 17,000”.-[Official Report, 5 June 2023; Vol. 733, c. 557.]

“the prevention of, or a hindrance that is more than minor to, the carrying out of day-to-day activities (including…the making of a journey)”.

“coalition of chaos, the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”-[Official Report, 18 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 628.]

“the police are…using section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986… Following recent disruptions in the past 10 to 14 days, the roads have typically been cleared within 10 minutes”.-[Official Report, 9 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 210.]

“putting in conditions from Section 12 of the Public Order Act has encouraged protesters to exit the highway within minutes; from the 156 slow marches that have taken place, 125 Section 12…conditions have been imposed”,

“We have the powers to act and we should do so very quickly.”

“an audacious and unprecedented defiance of the will of Parliament.”

“The Government set about drafting regulations that would reverse the defeat in the House, relying on Henry VIII powers to amend the Public Order Act 1986 conferred by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. These draft regulations were laid before the Public Order Bill had even completed its Parliamentary stages. In this way, the Government sought to obtain through the back door that which it could not obtain through the front.”

“effectively an attempt to divorce words from their ordinary meaning in ways that will have significant implications for our civil liberties.”

“the prevention of, or a hindrance that is more than minor to, the carrying out of day-to-day activities (including in particular the making of a journey)”,

“in relation to a public procession in England and Wales, means any group of persons that may be affected by the procession, whether or not all or any of those persons live or work in the vicinity of the procession.”

“Police in the Netherlands arrested 1,500 climate-change protesters and deployed water cannon when they refused to leave a motorway they had blocked in The Hague. Forty are to be prosecuted.”

“the measures go beyond what is reasonably necessary to police protest activities.”

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

“as a local resident, if I could file a complaint against the actions of the police today, I would.”

“For example, serious disruption may be caused if a procession or assembly causes a traffic jam in an area where traffic jams are common.”

Debate in Parliament |