Last week the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill returned to the Commons for the final time for consideration of the Lords Amendments to the Bill.

The Bill is comprised of some very good parts as well as some that have proven hugely controversial and some of which I could not support.

The Bill starts with crucial provisions around the protection of the lives of emergency workers including the poignant addition commonly known as 'Harpers Law' in the name of the late PC Harper. This will introduce mandatory life sentences for anyone convicted of killing an emergency worker whilst committing a crime.

The Bill also has a welcome focus on fostering collaboration between services to combat serious violence through a Serious Violence Duty. This reflects the breadth of society that is impacted by violent crime.

The right to protest

Unfortunately, there are some areas of significant concern in the Bill which I know many constituents are worried about. These are based around rights to peaceful protest - a fundamental principle in any democratic society.

This is even more relevant to us now as we see Ukrainian people fighting to defend democratic values. The Bill seeks to grant legal powers to curb protests that are excessively noisy or disruptive.

This is concerning as free protest in the UK traditionally involves significant noise and inevitably some disruption – these have for many years been an intrinsic and legitimate feature of peaceful protest.

There will of course be a point when protests genuinely are excessively disruptive, for instance when major infrastructure is blocked, and the public are prevented from going about their daily lives.

This must be stopped. Gluing yourself to the road to stop traffic is not only dangerous but unreasonable. That is not peaceful protest in most people's eyes.

'A lack of definition of key terms'

However, there is a lack of definition of key terms in the Bill which creates ambiguity around what constitutes 'appropriate' behaviour in a protest. Therefore, protestors may find themselves criminalised for taking part in what they believed to be legitimate demonstrations. Where is the line?

The Bill will also require police officers to make subjective decisions regarding if and when a protest has become sufficiently 'disruptive' to cross the line and fallen foul of the new legislation.

Decisions will need to be made quickly in the heat of the moment, and this will drag the police into making very difficult decisions based on terms that are not clearly defined.

Police officers need complete legal certainty to effectively police protests and the Bill as written doesn't offer that. The Bill puts the judiciary in the same difficult position, requiring them to make a series of new decisions about what is and isn't legitimate protest.

These decisions risk being subjective with only poorly defined broad terms to guide them.

'We must be extremely careful to safeguard our fundamental political freedoms'

The minister for crime and policing himself acknowledged the rarity of such seriously disruptive protests. For me this begs a question over the necessity of putting these controversial and unpopular measures on the statute book.

The police already have significant powers in relation to protests. Not only does increasing these powers create further barriers to peaceful protest, but it may unnecessarily inflame mistrust of the police amongst some groups. I cannot see that any 'wins' that would come from these measures would outweigh the harm that they could do.

In addition to expressing my disapproval for these measures in the chamber of the House of Commons, I have written to the Home Secretary to voice my concerns and to ask several questions of her about how these concerns will be addressed.

Of course, we should prevent protests from stopping us going about our business for prolonged periods, but we must be extremely careful to safeguard our fundamental political freedoms.

If you would like to book a surgery appointment or raise a specific issue, please call my office on 01626 368277 or email [email protected].