Following a series of prominent and controversial protests across the United Kingdom in 2020, the Home Office has proposed a new policing bill, the ‘Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill’ (PCSC), which they assert will “allow the police to take a more proactive approach in managing highly disruptive protests causing serious disruption to the public”. However, with provisions such as widening the stop and search powers of the country’s police forces and reducing the right to protest by lowering the threshold for forceful police intervention, many human rights charities are worried that this act violates the fundamental right to protest, worsening already tense community-police relations, ultimately threatening the security of democracy.

WHY THE PCSC BILL HAS BEEN PROPOSED

The Home Office has published a number of alarming statistics, suggesting the current law surrounding protests in the UK is not sufficient to protect both protesters and police. Between April and October 2019, the Extinction Rebellion climate protests in London significantly disrupted business and transport across the city, costing £37 million in additional policing. However, climate protesters argue that this is a result of ill placed and ‘forceful’ police tactics towards the protesters, rather than the disruption of the protest itself. The government could draw on article 1 of the First Protocol of the Human Rights Act, the right to the protection of your property, to assert that violent protests such as those in the summer pose their very own human rights violation, and that prohibiting such damage is a promotion of democratic principles. Further, in 2020, the Metropolitan police reported that 172 officers had been assaulted during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, a reason they used to support the imposition of restrictions.

However, in the wake of the BLM protests, it is difficult to see how a bill that extends the power of police over civilians will improve the liberties and human rights of the British people, as suggested by the government. 85% of Black Britons have declared that they do not believe the police treat them in the same way as white people. Strikingly, this figure is supported by the UK’s stop-and-search statistics, which found that Black people were more than nine times more likely to be stopped by police than their white counterparts. Police were also 40% more likely to use force against them. Stifling the ability to protect the fundamental right to protest injustice, such as against police brutality, outwardly appears to hinder the civil liberties guaranteed to us under the Human Rights Act.

SUPPORTERS OF THE PCSC BILL

The Bill has primarily been endorsed by Conservative MPs, including Justice Secretary Dominic Rabb and Home Secretary Priti Patel. Considering Raab’s previous disregard for human rights in the UK, declaring in 2009 “I do not support the Human Rights Act” and branding the act “nonsense,” it is unsurprising that existing individual rights have been neglected. Similarly, Patel has consistently shown that human rights are a secondary consideration in her plans to eradicate “disruption and public nuisance”. Her attempts to prevent activists travelling abroad, disallow asylum seekers to safely reach British shores, and failure to enable proper investigation into deaths in custody, have all been brought in front of the courts as clear violations of the Human Rights Act or international law. With these neglectful attitudes towards the importance of individual liberties, does the endorsement of the PCSC Bill by these ministers do more to discourage the notion of a peaceful and democratic society?

A THREAT TO HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE UK

The Human Rights Act (1998) is an essential piece of legislation that ensures the democratic rights and liberties of individuals in the UK. There are a number of articles in the Act that are directly threatened by the PCSC bill. Firstly, article 10: The Right To Expression. This guarantees the individual the ability to freely speak their opinions without fear or persecution. Used in combination with article 11, the freedom of assembly and association, these rights equip the British people with the capacity to protest. The PCSC, if successful, would stifle these freedoms. Extensions of police powers would enable the organisation to break up protests more forcefully, with less answerable reasons in the name of reducing “disturbance”. This Bill would enable police to limit the means of protestors to express their grievances through protests due to fear of police force or prosecution - seemingly directly contradicting the above articles of the Human Rights Act. Looking at articles 17 & 18 of the Human Rights Act, these rule that any prohibition or abuse of any freedoms under the act is unlawful, and it is clear that such an attempt to suppress peaceful demonstrations violates human rights law in the UK.

Significantly, clause 16 of the PCSC bill is inarguably a contradiction of article 14: Prohibition Of Discrimination. This section of the bill mandates that agencies involved in supporting vulnerable and minority individuals in cases such as youth crime prevention (for example, charities tackling gang activities), immigration, and domestic abuse will be required to disclose information about the individuals‘ religious and political opinions, as well as their health and education, under the assumption that they are more likely to be attracted to violent forms of protest. The decision to prioritise policing objectives over data rights of the individual leaves them exposed to discriminatory profiling by police. This form of profiling seeks to undermine the very relationship between communities and police that this Bill is supposed to support, by encouraging distrust towards the police as a result of the systemic racial bias, prevalent throughout police forces in the UK. This can be seen in the disproportionate numbers of Black or minority ethnic people being stopped, searched or arrested by officers, perhaps in itself encouraging more dissent against the organisation.

It is also important to note how the bill may destroy cultural practices, particularly in traveller communities. If passed, the bill would grant greater powers to police to implement force to remove unauthorised encampments, effectively evicting thousands of homes and exacerbating the already dire homelessness situation in the UK.

Given the decades of institutional racism and police brutality towards travelling communities, such as that of Dale Farm in 2011, it is clear that this Bill, with its aim of “reducing disruption,” could again suppress the voice of yet another minority community in the UK - a clear abrogation of democracy.

Whilst there are valid intentions behind the bill, including to protect property rights and to defend emergency workers from harm, there are already laws in place to prevent these crimes, such as the Assault On Emergency Workers Act (2018) and the Criminal Damage Act (1971). The Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill is simply not necessary. This Bill would not address the issue of violent protests, but rather curtail important, non-violent democratic protests and cultural practices that are particularly discriminatory to minority groups in the UK. Therefore, this represents the government's attempts to implement a severe policy of hard-line, non-dissent against their authority and seeks to criminalise the essential actions of those who challenge them, showing that the bill not only conflicts with our fundamental human rights, but is a clear confiscation of democracy.

Martha is an incoming undergraduate law student at the University of Leeds with an interest in human rights issues in the UK and abroad.

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