Police will be given new powers to shut down pro-Palestinian protests under plans considered by the Home Office.
The news comes ahead of an official review to be published this week by Lord Walney, the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption.
A number of amendments are being considered to sections of the Public Order Act, which allows processions to be banned and public assemblies to be restricted.
It comes after months of weekly disruption in London and other UK cities by pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations, which have been criticised for displays of public antisemitism, leading the Home Office’s independent adviser on extremism to say parts of London are turning into “no-go zone for Jews”.
Concerns have also been raised over the cost of policing regular large-scale protests, with hundreds of officers diverted from their duties in other parts of London.
Home Secretary James Cleverly and Chris Philp, the police minister, are looking at amending the Public Order Act to empower officers’ ability to refuse permission for such marches to go ahead and to clamp down on offences.
Section 12 of the Act, which enables police to take into account the “relative cumulative disruption” of a protest when deciding whether it can go ahead, is now under “active consideration” according to the Sunday Telegraph.
They are said to be taking into account the disruption faced by members of the Jewish community who feel unsafe to walk freely through London while marches are taking place, as well as the cost to the Met and the reduced public safety in the parts of London from which officers have been redeployed.
The Public Order Act was amended in 2022 by then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman to curb the activities of the Just Stop Oil group.
Those changes, which came into force last year, allowed for injunctions to be made in the public interest “where protests are causing or threatening serious disruptive or a serious adverse impact on public safety.”
Gideon Falter, CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, who made headlines last month for being threatened with arrest for being “openly Jewish”, has held a series of meetings with the Home Office and Downing Street officials in recent weeks to discuss the issue of policing the protests.
Gideon Falter of CAA[Missing Credit]
Falter claimed the policing of the weekly protests is in “shambles”.
He said: “To break the deadlock, we have turned to the Government to issue clarifications to the Public Order Act that give the Met nowhere to hide. These weekly takeovers of central London must be brought to an end and this move will make it completely undeniable that the Met has both the power and the duty to act.”
Falter also called on the Home Secretary to proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Iran-backed Houthis to give officers the ability to tackle the “dangerous glorification of terrorism that we have repeatedly seen on these marches”.
