One of the trickiest challenges of being in politics is defending the rights of those we disagree with vehemently. That dilemma has never been truer than in deciding how to approach the Public Order Bill, now making its way through the House of Lords. How can I defend the right to protest when I have little sympathy for those protestors targeted by the Bill?

Take Just Stop Oil. These catastrophising eco-warriors – whose nihilistic stunts are aimed at causing maximum chaos to the public – are a real menace. Their disdain for democratic change is evident in how little they care about hindering ordinary working people going about their daily lives. Alienating the public is the only thing they have achieved with their stunts. Their tactics in blocking traffic and throwing soup at paintings are aimed at grinding us down until we give in to their demands. These misanthropic objectives include essentially forcing society to produce less energy in the middle of an energy crisis, regardless of the consequences for millions who are worried that they will not be able to afford to keep the heating on this winter.

As much as I dislike Just Stop Oil, there’s a risk that we go too far in response

But as much as I dislike Just Stop Oil, there’s a risk that we go too far in response. Understandable popular revulsion at this anti-democratic movement might lead to anti-democratic laws that affect us all. The public have looked on aghast as the police fail to stop the country’s busiest and most economically vital motorway being blocked for days in a row. But we shouldn’t fall for the government’s claim that we need myriad new offences to resolve such situations. All the complained-about tactics could be dealt with by criminal offences already on the statute book. So if the police will not use the laws they already have, why will arming them with new, more draconian laws improve things?

Whatever it is that explains the police’s reticence to deal decisively with activists who superglue themselves to roads, it’s clear the Home Office wants to resort to making new laws to paper over the cracks of the policing failures it oversees. Instead of action, we get performative legislation that is just as attention-seeking as those dousing London’s finest architecture in orange paint. Both sides are saying, ‘Look at me, I’m doing something’.

It is a con to tell the public these laws will be narrowly targeted at Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion protesters. In fact, they are so broad and all-encompassing that anyone’s right to dissent on any issue is being put in jeopardy. Perhaps one might take at face value very specific new offences such as criminalising locking-on or tunnelling. But consider the possible uses of Serious Disruption Protection Orders (dubbed protest-banning orders): these can be doled out to anyone who has been on more than one protest over the last five years. This includes any type of protest, not just XR-related activities. If issued with an SDPO, you can be banned from going to a particular place, associating with particular people, encouraging someone else to go on a demo or using the internet in a particular way. You can be punished by the state for retweeting an advert for a protest. You can also be issued with an electronic tag for up to 12 months, using GPS data technology that allows the police to monitor your whereabouts 24 hours a day. This extreme level of surveillance risks being used against innocent individuals who have not committed a crime.

Even the most strident voices who usually oppose government plans are silent or even celebrating the government’s acceptance of amendments effectively banning and criminalising a range of protest-related behaviours around abortion clinics. Labour MP Stella Creasy said buffer zones protected ‘women accessing a very specific type of health care’.

Creasy, who proposed the new rules, said: ‘It does not stop free speech on abortion. It does not stop people protesting.’ But what happened to broad principles, fears of unintended consequences or warnings about slippery slopes?

Buffer zones are, of course, a tricky issue. As a long-standing supporter of a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion, it is vital that women can safely access reproductive healthcare services. If women are being obstructed, threatened or intimidated, we have public order laws to deal with that. We should sanction such criminal behaviour harshly. That said, I am wary of overstating the problem. A 2018 Home Office review into the issue found ‘predominantly, anti-abortion activities are more passive in nature. The main activities reported to us that take place during protests include praying, displaying banners and handing out leaflets. There were relatively few reports of the more aggressive activities described.’

It’s true that we might find it difficult to feel sympathy with anti-abortion activists’ tactics or aims, despite their defence that they merely want to speak to women or hand out flyers advertising alternatives to abortion. Insensitively hanging around outside clinics in which women are to receive private medical interventions, rosaries in hand or distastefully waving gory pictures of aborted foetuses, hardly seems like an example of Christian charity. But despite such qualms, the wording in Clause 9 of the Public Order Bill is extraordinarily all-encompassing. It seeks to criminalise and ban seeking to influence, advising or persuading, attempting to advise or persuade, or otherwise expressing an opinion. How can authorities even begin to accurately determine when someone ‘seeks to influence’? More fundamentally, how can we justify targeting an individual who ‘expresses opinion’ within a designated area, at risk of being thrown in prison for six months for a first offence? As Big Brother Watch put it, this is ‘an intolerably broad threshold at which to incur criminality’.

For many feminists and pro-choice campaigners, opposing Clause 9 might seem a hill they’d rather not die on. However, they might consider that it could set a precedent that leads to attempts to prevent speech, expression or information-sharing and assembly in relation to other controversial and unpopular causes. In practice, the Bill’s whole approach seeks to establish in law that the state can regulate how people behave on streets and public footpaths close to medical centres. This shrinking of free, public space troubles me; where will this go next? Will bereaved families – for example, those victims of the recent maternity care scandal – be allowed to peacefully protest near hospitals that have presided over gross negligence? Could gatherings of activists who oppose puberty blockers being issued to teenagers be banned from outside gender-reassignment clinics?

I’ve introduced an amendment to the Public Order Bill which seeks to bring some sanity to this debate and hopes to limit some of the most egregious harms from its original plans. It’s important that parliamentarians accept the principle that no matter how much we might dislike certain types of protest, there must be consistency in law-making. If existing legislation is not being used by police effectively – as much in the case of those who vandalise great works of art in the National Gallery as with those who might harass women near abortion clinics – the government should focus on that problem. The police should do their job, rather than adding new criminal offences which create all manner of unintended consequences and certainly undermine important civil liberties. We must support the right to protest for all – not just the protesters we admire, but those we despise as well.

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