Coronation: Policing of Protests

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The Minister just said that the right to peaceful protest is sacrosanct and no one would seek to undermine it, but I put it to him that that is exactly what his Government have just done: Ministers are criminalising protest. Just because some people were allowed to protest, that does not mitigate against the fact that a number were not. Let me just correct him: those who were arrested and kept in were not causing an obstruction, which is presumably why the police went to apologise to them afterwards. Does this not show that the powers the Government have handed to the police are dangerously broad and liable to gross misuse, as many of us have pointed out? I urge him again to review this legislation urgently.

[Chris Philp]

I do not accept that analysis. The powers are designed to prevent disruption where it might occur or where it is occurring. That includes things such as locking on, which we have seen cause huge disruption on the streets of London. The law allows peaceful protest where it is not disruptive and where people do not plan to cause disruption, which is why hundreds and hundreds of people, albeit a tiny minority of the total there, were able to protest peacefully. Where someone is preparing to commit or is committing a criminal offence, such as disrupting a procession, it is reasonable for the police to act.