A new bill will allow ministers who have failed to address violence against women and girls to curb their right to protest about it
In Britain, executive government has often, and with good reason, been seen as the main source of tyranny. Parliament and the courts developed to restrain it, usually in response to public outrage. Boris Johnson’s administration legitimately gained sweeping powers to run the country during the pandemic. But this seems, unfortunately, to have given ministers a taste of ruling by decree. The government appears all too often unwilling to compromise, to shape laws as inoffensively as possible to the opposition, or to abide by parliamentary norms like truth-telling. Instead, Mr Johnson seems encouraged to get rid of checks and balances by polls that give the Tories a growing lead thanks to a successful vaccine rollout.
The purpose of government legislation seems frequently designed to polarise debate and create social divisions. The government’s own analysis of the key measures in the new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill says there is little evidence they will reduce crime. By Whitehall’s own reckoning, the proposals will entrench racial inequalities. In the Commons, the message from Priti Patel, the home secretary, was that her bill would see sexual offenders face longer sentences and new crimes. What she skipped over was that the legislation would give police powers to tackle non-violent protests that have a “significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to parliament” – including setting conditions on the duration of protests, maximum noise levels and locations. These would have a chilling effect on peaceful protest.
