aAutocratic, reactionary, oppressive: British police employed in the House of Lords Criticism of possible restrictions on freedom to demonstrate through legislation could hardly have been more scathing. Members of the House of Lords defeated Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government by one vote on Tuesday night.
The Lords with a large majority rejected several clauses of the proposed new Police Act draft. For example, it provides for significant restrictions on protests if the police consider them to be noisy nuisances or blocking traffic routes.
“Serious challenge to human rights”
With the “Police, Crime, Punishment and Courts Bill,” the Johnson government seeks to replace the climate and anti-racism protests that have hit the headlines in recent years. The bill went through the final stages in the upper house on Tuesday night – and should then return to the lower house. The government is expected to largely reverse the changes to the Commons of the Lords. Usually the House of Lords gives way in this matter.
weekdays at 6:30 am
sign in
Critics fear that vague rules and powers to police could make any demo illegal to breach. If one cannot express their disapproval of the government’s actions with street noise, “human rights are seriously at stake,” John Gummer, a member of the Conservative House of Lords, said during a debate on Monday evening. The Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, who also sits in the House of Lords, referred to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who were honored with statues installed in the square in front of the British Parliament: their opposition, Baines said, would not can be done under the circumstances.
But the planned police law is by no means the only means that critics say the Johnson administration is trying to undermine the foundations of the separation of powers and democracy.
The control of norms in the country is to be severely restricted, as the Tory wishes, among other things. Justice Minister Dominic Raab wants to sabotage the power of the judiciary to scrutinize government decisions for their legitimacy with judicial reform. Its Judicial Review and Courts Bill reportedly allows the government to ignore unwanted court decisions. The judicial inquiry has been a thorn in the side of the Johnson administration since the Supreme Court declared Johnson’s parliamentary holiday illegal in 2019.
Another Raab project envisages pulling Great Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights and thus avoiding the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. With the Nationality and Boundary Bill, Home Secretary Priti Patel wants to make it nearly impossible for asylum seekers to gain the right to live in Great Britain who have entered the country illegally.