Friends urged to ‘keep up pressure’ on policing bill
'We ask the government to compromise to prevent unjust and unworkable measures from becoming law.’
Friends are being urged to continue lobbying against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which has been going back and forth between the House of Commons and House of Lords in a process known as ‘ping pong’.
Grace Da Costa, public affairs and media manager for BYM, told the Friend: ‘The Commons didn’t approve the three amendments that we helped persuade the Lords to make to the protest section of the bill. These amendments removed the provisions on noise, public assemblies and one-person protests. The Lords then insisted on putting these amendments back in. The Commons rejected them again.’
In the latest debate, the Lords voted for what Grace Da Costa describes as ‘a bit of a compromise’: ‘They’ve still insisted on removing the noise trigger for restrictions on public processions (moving protests). For assemblies (static protests), they’ve voted to remove the blanket police powers to impose conditions, but voted to give the police the power to set the start and end time of an assembly (but not the date). They’ve agreed to the government’s offer to define “serious disruption” in the bill.’
These changes will now go back to the Commons, probably in late April. According to Grace Da Costa ‘the government will be under pressure to compromise, because parliament will be suspended (“prorogued”) ahead of the Queen’s Speech on 10 May, so they won’t have much time to get the bill finished before the end of this parliament. If they don’t, the bill will fall’.
Grace Da Costa thanked Friends who have campaigned on the bill and asked them to keep up the pressure during these final stages by tweeting, protesting, and writing to MPs and local papers. ‘We’re really grateful to members of the House of Lords for standing their ground on these amendments in order to protect our democratic right to protest. We ask the government to compromise to prevent unjust and unworkable measures from becoming law.’
Quakers in Britain are coordinating a letter to the government this week to ask them to compromise.
