Amnesty International UK Briefing - Public Order Bill
The Public Order Bill (PO Bill) introduces further excessive restrictions on the rights to protest, following those already introduced in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (the PCSC Act).
The PO Bill contains provisions that the Government attempted to include in the PCSC Act but were rejected by the House of Lords in February 2022. Amnesty’s analysis of those provisions at the time was that they were so vague, undefined and open to subjective interpretation that they were likely to be unlawful from the outset, would seriously curtail human rights in this country and damage the UK’s international standing, potentially irreparably.
Changes to the PO Bill agreed by the Lords in February 2023 mitigate some of the Bill’s worst impacts and should be retained. However, these changes in no way render the Bill compliant with the UK’s international human rights obligations.