Amnesty International UK - Public Order Bill Briefing (Lords Second Reading)

The government is proposing a Public Order Bill (PB Bill) that would introduce further excessive restrictions on the rights to protest, following those already introduced in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (the PCSC Act). The Public Order 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.

The Bill itself fails the three-part test of legality, necessity and proportionality and therefore: Amnesty urges Parliamentarians to oppose the PB Bill in its entirety.