Is the New United Kingdom Policing Law a Threat to Free Speech?

By Carson Jones

The Parliament of the United Kingdom is preparing to make a major change to how police are allowed to restrict public protests. Parliament is currently debating and preparing to pass the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.[1] The purpose of the bill is to “make provision about collaboration between authorities to prevent and reduce serious violence” and to “make provision about the powers of the police and other authorities for the purposes of preventing, detecting, investigating or prosecuting crime or investigating other matters.”[2] However, the bill features a clause that would seriously restrict the current ability of people to protest the actions of the government.[3]

The desire of the government of the United Kingdom to increase the amount of regulation of protests by citizens of the United Kingdom began in 2019 with the formation of Insulate Britain, an environmental activist group.[4] The group became infamous to the British Public for blocking motorways and disrupting public transport while protesting the inaction of the British government for its inaction on climate change.[5] While it may relieve the British public to know that the police would now have the ability to limit the actions of a group that had disturbed so many, the proposed bill goes too far and greatly restricts the ability of the citizens to protest actions by the UK Government.[6]

Specifically, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill proposes the following change to the current Public Order Act of 1986: “in the case of an assembly in England and Wales, the noise generated by persons taking part in the assembly may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity of the assembly.”[7] The ability for police officers to take action on a protest solely on the basis that there is a serious disruption greatly departs from the previous language of the law, which allowed the police to act only when the protest may result in “serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community.”[8] Further, the new law only defines the relevant impact of the noise as being when “it may result in the intimidation or harassment of persons of reasonable firmness with the characteristics of persons likely to be in the vicinity, or it may cause such persons to suffer serious unease, alarm or distress.”[9] The law is extremely broad because it makes it so easy for any noise from a protest to be considered a disruptive impact, which the police will now have the authority to shut down. The punishment for violating the noise requirement is also extremely strict, as the new law would require people who are found guilty of violating the act “in the case of a public assembly in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks or a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale or both.”[10]

The extremely broad standards for determining when the noise of a protest has an impact on the public combined with the possibility of being sentenced to a period of incarceration for almost a year creates a chilling effect on the ability of the citizens to protest the government. Since the U.K. Government announced the new bill in the spring of 2021, several influential non-government organizations have come forward to condemn the bill, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and SumOfUs.[11] The bill would force those who wish to protest any form of injustice or abuse to stay home or risk having the police called on them solely based on the pretext of creating too much noise.[12] More recently, as the bill has been debated by the House of Lords, citizens of the United Kingdom have taken to the streets to protest the bill that would deny them the right to protest.[13] Many expressed concerns about the potential for abuse by the government and how the bill is a direct threat to democracy in the United Kingdom.[14] A member of parliament even went on to accuse the United Kingdom government of being hypocritical for attacking “cancel culture” but cracking down on the freedom to protest, saying that “[t]he ultimate cancel culture, it doesn’t come with a tweet – it comes with a police baton and a prison sentence for nonviolent dissent.”[15]

Should the House of Lords approve the bill without significant amendment to the sections governing the right to public protest, citizens of the United Kingdom could be soon forced to give up their right to protest against the government. Enforcement of the new law could lead to a significant detriment in the number and strength of protests against decisions made both by the UK Government and those made by private corporations. This leads to a pretty stark reduction of the freedom of speech for the citizens of the United Kingdom, who are now substantially limited by the government should the police deem their protest’s noise to be too excessive.

[1] Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021-22, HL Bill 72, https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2839.

[2] Id.

[3] See Matthew Taylor, How will the police and crime bill limit the right to protest?, Guardian (Jan. 13, 2022) https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/jan/13/how-will-the-police-and-bill-limit-the-right-to-protest.

[4] Claudio Gallo, To save its democracy, the UK should kill its new police bill, Al Jazeera (Jan. 13, 2022) https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/1/13/the-save-its-democracy-the-uk-should-kill-its-new-police-bill.

[5] See id.

[6] See id.

[7] Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021-22, Cl. 57(1)(b)(aa).

[8] Taylor, supra note 3.

[9] Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021-22, Cl. 57(5)(2A)(a-b).

[10] Id. at Cl. 58(11)(8)(a).

[11] Helen Lock, A New Bill Threatens the Right to Protest in the UK. Here's What to Know and How You Can Help., Global Citizen (Jan. 12, 2022) https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/police-crime-bill-uk-what-to-know-protesting.

[12] See id.

[13] Clea Skopeliti, Protesters rally across UK against police and crime bill, Guardian (Jan. 15, 2022) https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/15/protesters-rally-across-uk-against-police-and-bill.

[14] See id.

[15] Id.