Striking the Balance: Protest Rights and Public Order
JUSTICE’s new report finds that, as the Government seeks to enact new laws to hand police additional powers to suppress public assembly, the right to protest within the UK is facing its most serious assault in decades.
Key Context:
in just four years, successive governments have introduced a cascade of offences and police powers that dramatically lower the threshold for criminalising peaceful protest, erode vital human rights protections and create widespread confusion for the public, police and courts.
The report documents wide-ranging reforms introduced under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (PCSCA) and the Public Order Act 2023 (POA), highlighting their repressive impact.
Police can now curb protests on the basis of noise – an essential feature of any mass gathering – putting anyone who attends a large protest at risk of arrest and prosecution.
Members of the public can also now be arrested for carrying items as innocuous as cable ties, bike locks or glue, on suspicion that they may be used for “locking‑on”[1].
The Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords, is set to go further, giving police even greater powers to limit repeat protests and ban the wearing of face coverings.
JUSTICE argues that these changes herald a fundamental constitutional shift in the law – away from a framework for facilitating peaceful protest towards a system for expanding state control and pre-empting dissent.
Key recommendations:
To restore clarity, safeguard public confidence, and ensure compliance with the rule of law, JUSTICE is calling for:
- a pause on all new protest‑related legislation;
- repeal of the most draconian and unworkable powers introduced since 2022;
- the creation of an independent Public Order Monitoring Authority to review policing and legislation annually;
- removal of protest from civil order regimes and stronger oversight of local authority powers;
- a statutory requirement for visible police identification at all protests;
- a national database to bring transparency to protest policing.
Civil Measures:
The report also raises alarm over the expanding use of civil measures, including Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs), Anti‑Social Behaviour Injunctions (ASBIs) and Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPOs), to restrict protest, warning that these powers can be imposed on the basis of minimal evidence, hearsay or anticipated conduct, often without meaningful judicial oversight.
The report emphasises that such orders can even apply to “persons unknown” and carry criminal penalties for breach despite being imposed without the safeguards of the criminal justice system. Together, these mechanisms enable public authorities and even private companies to create “bespoke protest bans” enforced through contempt proceedings, effectively bypassing the protections and due‑process standards that ordinarily apply in the courts.