Subscribe on YouTube: [ Ссылка ]
Its critics include figures as disparate as Theresa May, David Blunkett and Friends of the Earth – but what will the crime and policing bill, which aims to class certain types of protest and trespass criminal offences, mean for our way of life?
Officially titled the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing bill, its 300 pages cover violent crime, criminal sentencing, sexual offences, road traffic and public order. An open letter signed by over 350 organisations and peers and presented to the Lords, suggested it will harm the rights of protesters and those wanting to access the countryside alike, with a particular threat to the gypsy and traveller communities. The letter also indicated the bill was being “rushed through parliament during a pandemic and before civil society and the public have been able to fully understand its profound implications”.
In this documentary, we investigate the implications of sections 3 and 4 of the bill, which its critics say will give the police “powers to decide where, when and how citizens are allowed to protest” and “create a new trespass offence that criminalises the way of life of nomadic gypsy and traveller communities”.
“It doesn’t matter how big or how small your protest is, these new measures such as noise, inconvenience or serious annoyance, [which] any protest can fall under,” Emmanuelle Andrews, Policy and Campaigns Officer at Liberty Human Rights, warns.
The Home Office sent us a statement that said: “The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in no way changes the fundamental place that protest has in our democracy. But we cannot allow highly disruptive demonstrations which often trample over the rights of others, to go unchallenged.”
Watch more video from the New Statesman at www.newstatesman.com/video
