Government protest bill suffers significant defeats in House of Lords

Controversial government legislation designed to clamp down on protests has met with strong opposition in the House of Lords.

Early this morning, Peers voted down proposals to give the police new powers to stop protests if they are deemed too noisy or disruptive.

Peers also voted to strip out a clause that would impose conditions on protests on noise grounds.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is a huge piece of legislation that proposes various changes on crime and justice.

It will now go back and forth between the Commons and the Lords. Ministers are likely to keep up attempts to pass controversial clauses.

The targeting of protests follows long-running and highly disruptive demonstrations by environmental activists.

In the last two years, activists have blocked roads, glued themselves to trains, and even blocked ambulances from getting to hospital.

Civil liberties groups stress that a knee-jerk reaction to recent, disruptive protests could damage democratic rights for years to come.

At the weekend, Gurkha activists launched a scathing attack on the protest bill, describing it as “highly dangerous”..

Premila van Ommen of Gurkha Equal Rights said: “The bill [is] dangerous because it’s so ambiguous and arbitrary.

"We’re concerned about not being able to protest in particular places, certain areas around parliament. Our protests have been effective because they have been in front of Downing Street and opposite parliament."

"During our protests over the summer, we had loads of banners and flags, it was very colourful and visible. Could that have been deemed too loud, too annoying or disruptive?”, he added.

Emmanuelle Andrews, policy and campaigns manager of human rights group Liberty, added:

“The Gurkha campaigners are one among many groups fighting tirelessly to defend their rights and demand justice. But under the government’s proposed new laws, they would be silenced."

She added: “This bill is a serious threat to everyone’s ability to make their voices heard, but particularly the most marginalised, for whom protest is often the only way to stand up to power."