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