The proceedings of a Commons Home Affairs Committee looking into the police handling of protesters were briefly interrupted by Just Stop Oil protesters.
The live feed of the proceedings was abruptly cut as someone in the room was heard to interrupt MPs as they questioned Metropolitan Police Temporary Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist about arrests made during the coronation.
Once the video footage was restored, MP Tim Loughton said: “To be clear, they were Just Stop Oil protesters who tried to undermine the activities of this committee with our witnesses today.”
There can be a “fine line” between lawful protest and a demonstration “straying into illegal activity”, a senior police officer told MPs.
Giving evidence on efforts to police the coronation, Metropolitan Police Temporary Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist told the Commons Home Affairs Committee: “We are continually balancing the rights of those who seek to protest with those who are impacted by it.
“And what we have seen latterly is there is a sort of fine line between what is peaceful protest and what is straying into illegal activity, as we’ve seen in the latter part of last year and start of this year, and the shifting of those scales taking place.
“Where crime is being committed, we need to intervene much more quickly.”
Chief Constable Chris Noble, the protest lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told MPs that “policing is not anti-protest”.
He said: “There is no presumption against protest, it is actually quite the opposite.”
A senior Metropolitan police officer has denied the force was put under political pressure to protect “the look” of the coronation by cracking down on protesters.
The i newspaper quoted an anonymous source saying that there had been “a very firm instruction not to damage the reputation of the UK” amid criticism of arrests made during the event.
But on Wednesday Metropolitan Police Temporary Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist told MPs: “I felt under no pressure politically, I felt pressure to deliver a safe and secure operation, but that was because of the fact that it was a once in a lifetime event for so many people and there would be hundreds of thousands of people in London to celebrate it and also and importantly, this was the biggest protection operation we have ever run.
“There were 312 protected people that we managed to get in and out of the Abbey and across the footprint in about 90 minutes. So the stakes were enormously high, so I absolutely felt pressure to deliver a safe and secure operation. but that wasn’t political pressure.”
Mr Twist told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that officers had faced “the most challenging, fast moving and complex policing picture we’ve ever encountered for national celebration”.
