MPs Debate Policing Bill Aimed at Curtailing Palestine Protests

MPs are set to debate the crime and policing bill today, after the government tabled several new amendments to limit the scope of protests.

Since the bill was last heard in 2025, new clauses to ban protests in particular areas on the basis of “cumulative disruption” have been added.

Anyone who breaks conditions imposed on the protest would face arrest and – if a court decides they ought to have known the rules – imprisonment for up to 6 months.

The Home Office has made it clear that the new rules have been drafted with the aim of curtailing the national marches for Palestine held across the UK since October 2023.

Labour MP Andy McDonald has now tabled a motion to oppose the amendment with cross-party support from 30 other parliamentarians.

More than 45 organisations have condemned the proposals as an attack on freedom of expression, including Greenpeace, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Liberty.

In recent years, successive governments have already limited the scope of protest in the UK.

The current Labour government has unlawfully proscribed direct action group Palestine Action, prosecuted peaceful protesters and arrested hundreds of people for holding up signs.

Bills made law under the previous Conservative administration also made it a criminal offence to disrupt national infrastructure and introduced new measures to ban individual protesters from specific places.

Former Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman also tried to tighten protest law on the basis of “disruption”, but the high court quashed the changes she made after a successful Liberty campaign argued it was unlawful.

Gina Romero, the UN special rapporteur on rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, says that Britain is now setting examples of worst practice on protest law.

Ryvka Barnard, deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: “This proposal should alarm everyone who believes that democratic freedoms must be defended.

“It represents the government’s latest draconian attempt to erode our civil liberties in order for it to maintain its complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Sophia Sheera is a journalist in Novara Media’s social media team.