Downing Street has criticised the BBC presenter Chris Packham after he defended Just Stop Oil’s right to protest outside the homes of MPs.
Rishi Sunak’s official spokesperson said the police would consider such demonstrations “intimidatory” and use their powers to move on protesters under a policing protocol agreed last week.
The prime minister last week claimed that “mob rule” was a threat to the country – but his remarks were rounded on by critics, who said he was deliberately exaggerating the threat, while failing to condemn the inflammatory rhetoric of his own MPs.
“A country that only allows you to demonstrate on issues it agrees with is the very definition of authoritarian,” said Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch. “For a government that prides itself as a defender of free speech, it seems this defence is conditional on you agreeing with the government.”
Ruth Ehrlich, head of policy and campaigns at Liberty, said Sunak’s messaging was “riddled with hypocrisy and inconsistencies”.
Several MPs across the Commons have spoken out about the increase in abuse and threats since the start of the latest conflict in October, with three female MPs understood to have been given taxpayer-funded bodyguards and cars.
Packham, 62, defended the right of environmental activists to target the homes of MPs, as long as their action was “peaceful and non-violent”.
“I think that we need a portfolio of protests, basically, because we need a radical flank and Just Stop Oil are seen by many as that radical flank,” he told Times Radio on Monday.
“They are the people who in some people’s minds go a step too far. And that might be, you know, standing outside an MP’s house. But the fact is that they are motivated, as I am, by a manifest fear for the health of our future.
“The science tells us we have to act. These people are frightened for my future, for your future, for the future of any children they might have. They need to draw attention to this issue.”
He added: “If this is a peaceful, non-violent demonstration then we in the UK – for all the laws that have been radically changed in very recent times – have to preserve that right to protest. We’ve got a law out there, it needs to be applied equally to everyone.”
Packham added that Just Stop Oil “want a rapid just energy transition away from fossil fuels to a healthy, renewable energy system and they need to get that message across, and they’re desperate to do so. So I would support a breadth of protest.
“That doesn’t mean that you and I need to go and stand outside MPs houses. I’m taking a legal approach, a perfectly democratic one, which is available to me as a citizen of the UK. But yes, we’re on the same sheet.”
Just Stop Oil has already protested outside the homes of Sunak and the Labour leader, Keir Starmer. Last summer, Greenpeace activists climbed on to the roof of the prime minister’s constituency home in Yorkshire in protest at his backing for a big expansion of North Sea drilling.
Ministers are considering proposals to limit MPs and councillors from engaging with protest groups and to set up an anti-extremism team within the levelling up department.
“It is clearly irresponsible to encourage people to protest at the home addresses of MPs,” Sunak’s official spokesperson said on Monday. “Which is exactly why the democratic policing protocol agreed last week that any protests at the home addresses of MPs would be considered intimidatory and the police will use their powers to direct protesters away from them.
“We’ve seen examples, whether it is Tobias Ellwood’s home surrounded by protesters, whether it is other MPs’ constituency offices … about the intimidation their families have suffered. We’ve seen examples that are clearly unacceptable, and it’s right that the public expect the police to tackle this sort of behaviour.”
Packham also said on Monday that he had received the green light for a high court legal challenge over the government’s decision to weaken key climate policies.
The environmental campaigner has been granted a judicial review of Sunak’s plans to ditch the timetable for phasing out petrol and diesel-powered cars and vans, gas boilers, off-grid fossil fuel domestic heating and minimum energy ratings for homes.
