Public Order Bill

Public Order Bill

“Legislation will be introduced to ensure the police have the powers to make the streets safer.”

The purpose of the Bill is to:

● Make the streets safer by preventing a minority of protestors from using guerrilla tactics that cause misery to the hard-working public, disrupt businesses, interfere with emergency services, cost millions in taxpayers’ money and put lives at risk.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

● Ensuring the police have the tools they need to better manage and tackle the dangerous and highly disruptive tactics, used by a small minority of selfish protestors, to wreak havoc on people going about their daily lives.

● Preventing our major transport projects and infrastructure from being targeted by protestors who seek to disrupt thousands of journeys and cause costly delays in construction and operation that are paid for by taxpayers.

The main elements of the Bill are:

● Introducing new criminal offences of locking-on and going equipped to lock-on, thereby criminalising the protest tactic of individuals intentionally attaching themselves to others, objects, or buildings to cause serious disruption.

● Making it illegal to obstruct major transport works, including disrupting the construction or maintenance of projects, such as HS2.

● Creating a new criminal offence for interfering with key national infrastructure, which covers any behaviour which obstructs or delays the operation of key infrastructure, such as airports, railways, and printing presses.

● Extending stop and search powers for police to search for and seize articles related to protest-related offences.

● Introducing Serious Disruption Prevention Orders, a new preventative court order targeting protestors who are determined to repeatedly inflict disruption on the public; breach of the order will be a criminal offence.

Territorial extent and application

● The Bill will extend and apply to England and Wales.

Key facts

● Disruptive protests have become increasingly common in recent years. Between 13 September and 20 November 2021 alone, the police made almost 1,000 arrests relating to the Insulate Britain protests. In addition to the valuable police time spent on these protests, police forces have spent in excess of £4 million.

● During Extinction Rebellion’s protests of April and October 2019 some of

London’s busiest areas were brought to a standstill for several days. This had a disproportionate impact on commuters and small businesses, with the policing operation for the two extended protests costing £37 million, more than twice the annual budget of London’s Violent Crime Taskforce in 2018-19.

● Additionally, managing the October 2019 protest alone required over 418,000 police officer hours. These officers were pulled away from their regular duties protecting the public, fighting crime, and responding to calls for help from the public.

● HS2 Ltd estimated in October 2021 that sustained protester activity at some sites had cost the project up to £80 million.