By Jamie Onslow
Human rights lawyers have warned that recommendations in the report released last week by Lord Walney, the government’s independent advisor on political violence and disruption, could undermine basic freedoms and the independence of the courts.
Francesca Cociani, a senior associate at Hodge Jones and Allen, a firm regularly representing protestors, said that if enacted the recommendations contained in the report would be a “serious escalation of the Government’s clear desire to disproportionately curtail the right to protest.”
The report was commissioned by the Government at the beginning of 2021, following what it described as “an increase in activity and prominence amongst far-right, far-left and other political groups.”
Lord Walney, a crossbench peer, makes 41 recommendations in the report, many of which would give authorities greater powers to stop protests by groups such as Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action.
The proposals include allowing police to pre-emptively shut down marches where there is a “demonstrable cumulative impact of serious disruption.”
Cociani says this would mean that individuals who may never have engaged in disruptive behaviour could be “prevented altogether from exercising their right to freedom of assembly because of the previous actions of others, however few, and the police’s perceived association to them.”
The report also recommends that the Government should “develop a transparent mechanism to review police and Crown Prosecution Service charging decisions” in cases involving public order and terrorism legislation. Cociani says that if implemented this would “blur the line between government and the judiciary,” which she describes as “one of the basic pillars of our democracy.”
One senior human rights lawyer described details of the recommendations that had been reported in the press ahead of the official release as being, “full of freedom stripping proposals and thunderous stupidity,” adding he would, “not therefore be reading it unless I am obliged to, for instance in taking the government to court for implementing its more draconian recommendations.”
Just Stop Oil, one of the groups frequently referred to in the report, has said that it “does not recognise the legitimacy of this report”, given that Lord Walney is a paid lobbyist for fossil fuel firms.
Tags: Just Stop Oil, Lord Walney, UK