Amnesty International UK Briefing - Revised Protest Regulations

Amnesty International strongly urges Peers to support the fatal motion rejecting these regulations.

Amnesty International has very serious concerns about both the content of these draft regulations and how they have arisen.

The regulations lower the threshold for police interference with the right to protest to an extremely low level, to the point where in practice they empower police to pick and choose which protests are and aren’t allowed to continue. Moreover, they are the same proposals that were very recently considered and rejected by the House of Lords when they were tabled as government amendments to the Public Order Bill (now Act). While we understand and respect the general reluctance of the House of Lords to vote down secondary legislation, in these highly unusual circumstances, we strongly urge Peers to support the fatal motion rejecting these regulations.