‘One last push’ against Policing Bill
'We’ve now got a short window to persuade MPs to support the Lords amendments.'
Quakers have outlined the next steps needed to oppose the Policing Bill. The bill met with several defeats last month when members of the House of Lords defeated almost all of the government’s last-minute attempts to change the legislation. Opposition peers also introduced some of their own improvements.
Grace Da Costa, public affairs and media manager for Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), told the Friend: ‘The wins in the House of Lords on 17 January were the result of a lot of hard work by a huge range of people. I’m really grateful to all the Quakers and others who have written to their MPs already. We’ve now got a short window to persuade MPs to support the Lords amendments. If they do, it will lessen some of the worst effects of the bill, including removing the power to put noise limits on protests. Please use our template letter to write to your MP one last time on this bill. We need to do everything we can to protect the right to protest for ourselves and future generations.’
Writing on the Quakers in Britain website, she said that the bill ‘will still be terrible’, entrenching racial inequality and making more people go to prison for longer, so what is needed is ‘one last push’.
Last month peers removed the police’s ability to impose noise-based restrictions on protests, as well as two whole clauses from the bill. These are Clause 57, which would have allowed police to impose restrictions on public assemblies, and Clause 62, which would have criminalised one-person protests. They also weakened the new offence of blocking roads by changing it to include only the Strategic Road Network; and removed provisions for a ‘buffer zone’ around parliament if authorisation were given.
Grace Da Costa said: ‘Conservative MPs need to be convinced to rebel against the government. And opposition MPs need to be more vocal in their criticism of the bill, so that more people understand the awful impact it could have on all of our lives.’
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