The new (again) Home Secretary Suella Braverman has returned to the subject of policing protest at length in a speech to the the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Partnership Summit 2022.
She urged ‘common-sense policing’, speaking just after an Essex Police officer was injured on the M25 while responding to what Ms Barverman called ‘the guerrilla tactics of Just Stop Oil protesters’. She said: “Although most police officers do an excellent job, sadly, in recent months and years we have seen an erosion of confidence in the police to take action against the radicals, the road-blockers, the vandals, the militants and the extremists. But we have also seen the police appear to lose confidence in themselves; in yourselves. In your authority, in your power. An institutional reluctance. This has to change.
“Criminal damage, obstructing the highway, public nuisance – none of it should be humoured. It is not a human right to vandalise a work of art. It is not a civil liberty to stop ambulances getting to the sick and injured. Such disruption is a threat to our way of life. It does not ‘further a cause’. It is not ‘freedom of expression’ and I want to reassure you that you have my – and this government’s – full backing in taking a firmer line to safeguard public order. Indeed, that is your duty.
“Scenes of members of the public taking the law into their own hands are a sign of a loss of confidence and I urge you all to step up to your public duties in policing protests. The law-abiding patriotic majority is on your side.”
On fraud (the UK’s number one volume crime, although previously Ms Braverman has appeared to discount it, stating that crime was falling, except for fraud) she said that the Government would ‘replace the current Action Fraud system with a new and improved service’. As featured in the August print edition of Professional Security Magazine, the annual conference of the Midlands Fraud Forum heard that due to following procurement a replacement for Action Fraud (mentioned in passing in a Boris Johnson era strategy document) will not come in before 2024. Action Fraud has been widely reviled as not actually providing any help or outcome to nearly all those who report crimes to it; Scotland has pulled out of the service.
Also promised by her was ‘new public order legislation will improve your ability to pre-emptively tackle unlawful protests and tackle repeat offenders’, although a previous Home Secretary, Priti Patel, brought in the similar Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, that was supposed to provide police ‘with the necessary powers’ to ‘stop disruptive protests’.
Protesters were not mentioned in APCC chair Marc Jones’ opening speech to the event.
In his opening speech, NPCC chair Martin Hewitt said that police continued ‘to demonstrate professionalism, tenacity and resilience when responding to increasingly challenging protest activity’. As for recent protests on main roads, he said: “A combination of proactivity and preparedness meant we have been able to reopen the busy motorways quickly. Working with government and other agencies we continue to use civil injunctions as well as our criminal powers to minimise disruption. Policing is not anti-protest, but it is pro-responsibility and for having due regard for the rights of others. We will continue to take all appropriate action against anyone who deliberately chooses to protest outside of the law.”
Photo by Mark Rowe; Just Stop Oil posters, Bloomsbury, central London.
