Mere months ago, the Government suffered one of its worst parliamentary defeats in recent years when some of the most draconian measures in its anti-protest Policing Act were roundly rejected. Parliamentarians, civil society and the public came together to ensure that hard-line measures to crack down on protest were thrown out of the Act for good.
But now, with the ink barely dry on that piece of legislation, the Government is attempting to push through those very measures again in a new Public Order Bill.
This new Bill is a truly staggering attack on our right to protest. It contains new banning orders, gives the police new protest-specific stop and search powers, and creates a whole host of new offences that will have a chilling effect on anyone standing up for a cause they believe in. So let me run you through it.
