UK court rules antiprotest laws are unlawful

A court of appeal has ruled that legislation that granted British police sweeping powers to crack down on protests was created unlawfully.

The court dismissed an appeal by the government against a high court ruling in May last year which found that former home secretary Suella Braverman did not have the power to pass the measures. 

The legislation redefined what constitutes a ‘“serious disruption” to the public from “significant” and “prolonged” to “more than minor”, significantly lowering the threshold of when the police can curtail protests.

After parliament rejected the measures, which were introduced as part of the Public Order Act in January 2023, Braverman used secondary legislation that requires far less parliamentary scrutiny to bring the laws into effect. 

A cross-parliamentary committee said that it marked the first time that the government had used so-called "Henry VIII powers" to make changes to a law already voted down by parliament. One peer condemned the move as a “constitutional outrage”.

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Legal group Liberty challenged the measures in 2023, with the high court agreeing with its arguments that the legislation had been “sneaked in by the back door” and that the redefinition of “serious disruption” handed police “almost unlimited powers to impose conditions on protests”.

But the judges suspended the reversal of the measures after James Cleverly, who was then home secretary, launched an appeal, which was continued by his Labour party successor Yvette Cooper.

The court ruled on Friday to uphold the previous ruling, with Lord Justice Underhill, Lord Justice Dingemans and Lord Justice Edis saying: “The term ‘serious’ inherently connotes a high threshold … [and] cannot reasonably encompass anything that is merely ‘more than minor’.”

Since the measures were introduced, hundreds of protesters, many of them pro-Palestine campaigners, have been arrested under the powers granted to the police.

“This verdict sums up this dismal and genocidal Labour government’s betrayal of the left. First, it chose to defend the Tories’ deeply undemocratic undermining of Parliament and the right to protest. Second, it lost," Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer, told Middle East Eye.

"Many principled people have been prosecuted and convicted under these appalling and unlawful provisions. Let’s hope there’s now some proper redress.”

Liberty hailed the judgement as victory, and called for all arrests and prosecutions under the legislation to be reviewed.

The organisation's director Akiko Hart said: “Today’s judgment is clear, just as it was last year, that these laws should never have been made. They were a flagrant abuse of power from a Government determined to shut down protesters they did not personally agree with.”

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