Early evening summary
Boris Johnson has formally stepped down as an MP, parliamentary authorities have announced, bringing down the curtain on a tumultuous second stint in the Commons. The news came towards the end of a day during which Johnson and Rishi Sunak engaged in an extraordinary war of words over the former prime minister’s failed attempts to elevate several close allies to the House of Lords.
The SNP has claimed that new regulations giving the police new powers to stop protesters (see 5.44pm) are a move in the direction of fascism. Opening the debate, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, said the police did need more powers to deal with disruptive protests. She said:
People have a right to get to work on time free from obstruction, a right to enjoy sporting events without interruption and a right to get to hospital. The roads belong to the British people, not a selfish minority who treat them like their personal property.
The impact of these disruptors is huge. Over the last six weeks alone, Just Stop Oil (JSO) carried out 156 slow marches around London. This has required over 13,770 police officer shifts, that’s over 13,000 police shifts that could have been stopping robbery, violent crime or anti-social behaviour, and the cost to the taxpayer is an outrage – £4.5 million in just six weeks on top of the £14 million spent last year.
But Alison Thewliss, the SNP’s home affairs spokesperson, said the new law took the government in the direction of fascism. My colleague Ben Quinn has the quote.
The F word gets a mention in parliament as MPs debate the Public Order Act.
— Ben Quinn (@BenQuinn75) June 12, 2023
"The only slow walking that we should be concerned about in this place is the slow walking this government is taking .. towards a state of lack of democracy and of fascism" - SNP MP Alison Thewliss
Braverman defends regulations extending definition of what protests police can treat as serious disruption
In the Commons MPs are debating the Public Order Act 1986 (serious disruption to the life of the community) regulations 2023. These are new rules that lower the threshold for what counts as serious disruption when the police have to judge whether they have the powers to intervene to stop a protest.
They also allow the police to consider the cumulative effect of a protest when deciding whether campaigners are causing serious disruption. This measure is particular designed to stop slow-walking protests organised by groups like Just Stop Oil.
These measures are particularly controversial because they were originally meant to be primary legislation – part of the text of the Public Order Act – but they were voted down by peers. Because the amendments were introduced when the bill was in the Lords, not the Commons, they could not be reintroduced when the bill went back to MPs.
The Lords secondary legislation scrutiny committee raised concerns about this in a report published last month. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, a member of the committee, said: “As far as we can ascertain, this is the first time a government has sought to make changes to the law by making those changes through secondary legislation even though those same changes had been rejected by parliament when introduced a short while before in primary legislation.”
Secondary legislation receives less scrutiny than primary legislation, it cannot be amended, and it is almost impossible to block.
Opening the debate in the Commons, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, said the government supported the right to protest, but that she was responding to police requests for greater powers.
