Police get powers to end Just Stop Oil slow marching: ‘The public are sick of disruption’
Police are set to get controversial new powers to stop groups like Just Stop Oil holding ‘slow walking’ protests.
Government measures to make it easier to tackle disruptive protests have been approved, after a bid by Greens in the House of Lords to kill off the law was defeated by 154 to 68.
Cops will have their ability to intervene when eco-protestors, such as Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain, block roads beefed up.
Policing minister Chris Philp wrote on Twitter: “The public are sick of Just Stop Oil’s planned programme of deliberate disruptions to daily lives.
“I’ve just signed a statutory instrument (SI) to change the law, giving police power to stop protests causing more than a “minor hindrance” to a journey.”
Just Stop Oil said the government wanted to “ignore the people” by banning protest.
The SI – which comes into effect at midnight tonight (June 14) – is part of a bid by ministers to bring in the new rules via so-called secondary legislation, after a previous attempt to introduce the same changes under the Public Order Bill failed.
Government insists the changes are needed to give the police more clarity and lower the threshold for demonstrations being deemed “serious disruption”.
Home secretary Suella Braverman said “the police must be able to stop this happening” but critics branded the legal changes an attack on protest rights.
Labour frontbench peer Lord Coaker said: “It is an absolute fundamental constitutional outrage what has actually taken place.”
He accused the government of trying to “sneak through, in an underhand way, secondary legislation without proper public consultation”.
Green Party peer Baroness Jenny Jones said: “This is an authoritarian law that hands power to decide what is a good protest or a bad protest over to the police and the Home Office.
“And it’s being enacted in an authoritarian manner by ministerial decree.”
And lawyer and independent crossbencher Lord Pannick called it “a constitutional outrage”.
Home office minister Lord Sharpe of Epsom said: “I am obviously going to refute the allegation that this is in some way unconstitutional or indeed an outrage.”
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said: “These laws now make protest illegal if police deem it causes anything other than ‘minor inconvenience’.
“Ask yourself, what protest has ever fitted neatly into a working day? This government, with Labour’s help, has banned all protests aside from the ones they can ignore.
“Because that’s what they intend to do: ignore the people. A country without the right to protest is sliding from democracy to dictatorship.”