Suella Braverman’s proposals are the last thing the police need

Laws which make the public see the police as oppressors are a serious danger to our society. Disruptive protests are not

The Baroness Casey Review suggests that Britain’s largest police force, the Metropolitan Police, needs an overhaul to ensure it is fit for purpose.

And if that’s not enough to be getting on with, this week, the new home secretary, Suella Braverman, will attempt to convince MPs that our country needs even more new anti-protest laws. The government is, for the second time this year, targeting “disruptive” protests with a collection of new criminal offences.

The proposals – including giving the police sweeping new powers to stop and search peaceful protesters like they currently do in areas at risk from serious violence, and prevent obstruction to infrastructure – will place more limits on freedom of speech. The new laws will also further draw the police into controlling, and in some cases prohibiting, peaceful protests. That is the last thing they need.

The police are not calling for this, which is no surprise after what has happened over the last two years. In my new book, Emergency State: How We Lost Our Freedoms in the Pandemic and Why It Matters, I tell the story of the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of over 100 extraordinary criminal laws which locked us down, stopped us going to work, even told us who we could hug.

A critical part of that story is how the police handled their unexpected new role. They were transformed, overnight, from enforcers of public order – dealing with violence, theft and the like – to policing public health. All of a sudden, instead of catching thieves, the police were told to prevent the spread of a deadly new coronavirus.

The Covid regulations made it a criminal offence to do anything which contravened them, such as leaving the home without a reasonable excuse. Police were given extensive powers of enforcement: they could use reasonable force to remove people to their homes if they were outside without a valid reason; they could disperse gatherings; they could give fixed penalty notices – in some cases as much as £10,000 – and prosecute offences.

Meanwhile, the rules themselves became increasingly difficult to follow. On average, in the first two years of the pandemic, the law changed every week. The extreme but relatively simple lockdown law which was imposed on 26 March 2020 was replaced with increasingly bloated rules, eventually running to over 100 pages. Few could keep up, not least overstretched police forces.

Unsurprisingly, some floundered. There were regular stories of police overreach, such as the use of drones to monitor dog walkers, roadblocks to prevent illegal journeys and monitoring the aisles of supermarkets for “non-essential” products. Despite a helpful policy of “engaging and explaining” before moving to enforcement, over 100,000 fixed penalty notices were given out in England and Wales alone, and thousands of people prosecuted, many using the “Single Justice Procedure”, a truly Kafkaesque process by which a magistrate and legal adviser read the details of the case and deliver a verdict, in private, without hearing from the individual charged.

I sometimes spoke to police who were out enforcing the coronavirus regulations. Often, they did not have a good understanding of the laws they were meant to be applying. In my book, I relate conversations with a number of serving officers who were distressed by the strain of policing the pandemic. They despaired at the “overzealous” approach of some officers, appreciating that the police “need public support, now and in the future”.

One told me that the law was “not clear on key areas (protests for example) and the onus is on the police forces to decide what is permissible”. This was leading to low morale. Another said that “we’re people too… we’re tired, we’re angry and we’re scared, and it feels like everyone hates us”.

The low point for policing during the pandemic was the vigil for Sarah Everard. A group of women – #ReclaimTheseStreets (whom I acted for) – tried to organise a Covid-safe vigil to stand up for women’s safety in the face of a murder of a young woman. A serving Metropolitan Police officer had been arrested for the crime, and was later convicted.

The police had been given a strong steer from the home secretary that protest was outlawed, even though this was contrary to the Human Rights Act, which contains a right to freedom of assembly.

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The police threatened the organisers with huge fixed penalty notices and prosecution, causing them to pull out. The vigil went ahead anyway, but without the Covid safety measures. The police intervened to break up the gathering, at times using physical force. The images of police violence were on the front page of every newspaper, with headlines such as “Shaming of the Met”.

Most police officers will not want to revisit that period of our history. But there are important lessons for our post-pandemic society. An important one is that there is a major risk in further embroiling the police in parts of our lives – such as the ancient right to peaceful assembly – where they simply should not be.

If these oppressive new laws make it through parliament, each new protest movement which disrupts everyday life – as mass protests inevitably do – will be met with increasingly loud calls for the police to intervene. Not only will this divert police from preventing violent crime, and chill people from exercising their democratic rights in the first place, it will drive a wedge between police and the public.

One officer told me during the pandemic that coronavirus laws had made it “feel like everyone hates us”. Laws which make the public see the police as oppressors are a serious danger to our society. Disruptive protests are not.

Adam Wagner is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. His debut book, ‘Emergency State: How We Lost Our Liberties in the Pandemic and Why it Matters’, is available to buy now