Quote Originally Posted by WanChaiMiller View Post
I think this Bill lowers the threshold for police intervention.

Kerr highlights it* "where there was a reasonable belief that the proposed demonstration would be noisy enough to cause intimidation or harassment or serious unease, alarm or distress”

Reasonable belief will be based on the opinion of a Senior Police Officer. The officer could be open to Government pressure. And thereby lies my concern with the bill.

We were repeatedly lectured that Brexit was about returning our sovereignty.* Yet, within a few months of leaving, the Brexiteer in Chief has handed over a basic right of a western democracy, the right to protest, to the subjective judgement of an unelected body.

And Brexiteers dont even bat an eyelid.* GM is more concerned with an ECHR ruling, when his human rights are being stripped back home. Quite staggering.

It makes me think it wasnt about sovereignty after all.
Well done. Yes the bill would lower the threshold for the police to be able to impose conditions upon demonstrations, just as I explained in my opening post on the subject.

They currently have powers to impose conditions that are exercisable upon the resonable belief of a senior police officer. Do you have examples of goverement pressure being exercised in relation to them? Are you concernd with the current law, whch has been around since 1986?

The idea of government pressure is, I think, rather far fetched. If the organisers of a demonstration disagree with a 'reasonable belief' decision then they can go to the High Court to challenge it (just as Reclaim the Streets did a few weeks ago, albeit in relation to a decision made under different legislation). If that happens, it will be the senior police officer who has to justify his decision, not a politician. Do you think a senior police officer is going to put himself in that firing line for a decsion her is she disagrees with? I don't. And what form of pressure do you have in mind?

How is a British government seeking to put a bill through a democratically elected British parliament anything other than an exercise of sovereignty?