A senior Met police officer has denied he was put under political pressure to arrest protesters during the coronation of King Charles III, as a human rights barrister claimed the use of new protest laws would harm democracy.
The Metropolitan police have been under scrutiny for arrests made around the time of the event, including those of volunteers who handed out rape alarms and eight members of the anti-monarchist group Republic who had liaised with officers for months to organise their protest.
Alice Chambers, a supporter of the royal family who was held in custody for 13 hours after being mistaken for a protester on the Mall, has also lodged a complaint.
During a session of the home affairs select committee, which was briefly interrupted by Just Stop Oil protesters, MPs were scrutinising the use of laws including the new Public Order Act to arrest people before they had committed an offence.
The session heard that 52 protest-related arrests were made as part of the coronation operation, which was codenamed Golden Orb.
Asked if he had been under political pressure to arrest protesters, the Met’s 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.”
Suzie Melvin, a Night Stars volunteer at Westminster city council who hands out rape alarms to vulnerable women, said she and colleagues had been arrested in Soho despite her organisation working in partnership with the Met.
Explaining how officers approached her team members wanting to stop and search them, she told MPs: “We did the best that we could to try and explain who we were to the officers. Then they also searched the church we base ourselves out of.
“We were told we were going to be arrested. We were then taken in police vans to Walworth police station where we were held. I was interviewed at approximately 1pm the following day and were released a little bit after 4pm on Saturday 6 May.”
The committee chair, Diana Johnson, said it was “such a long time for you to be detained” and that she was “a bit speechless having heard that account”.
Members of Republic were detained under the Public Order Act before a rally organised in consultation with the Met after officers found straps that protesters said were to secure placards in a van.
They were held in custody for almost 16 hours before being released with no further action taken.
The group’s chief executive, Graham Smith, said he and his colleagues had been surrounded by large numbers of officers before they had seen inside their van or knew the straps were there. “I had the impression that they had turned up with the intention of detaining us,” he said.
Smith told the committee he had been prevented from calling a senior officer who may have been able to confirm that he had liaised closely with the police.
“We gave every piece of information we possibly could … they made clear there were no concerns. We never had any intention of doing anything unlawful or disruptive.”
The human rights lawyer Adam Wagner told MPs the arrest of peaceful protesters under the Public Order Act would damage democracy by discouraging ordinary citizens from exercising their rights.
He said he could entirely understand why the public would be worried: “These are really oppressive potential powers that are necessary to prevent crime, but they turn peaceful protest, a really important part of democracy, into something which is a real personal risk.”
