New powers to stop and search protesters and make ‘locking on’ a crime added to controversial policing bill

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Addressing the House of Lords on Wednesday night, she added: “We stand by the right to protest, but that does not afford a right to cause unlimited disruption to others irrespective of the cost to business, the dangers caused to road users and the police, the risk to life by blocking ambulances and the hardship caused to the public seeking to get to work or going about their daily lives.” These are outrageous proposals with serious consequences in terms of police powers, infringement of civil liberties and the creation of new offences, introduced in a wholly unacceptable way at the last minute Liberal Democrat peer Lord Paddick However, opposition peers strongly criticised the controversial measures and the way they have been introduced at such a late stage of the passage of the bill, which has already gone through the Commons. Liberal Democrat peer Lord Paddick, who was a deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, said: “These are outrageous proposals with serious consequences in terms of police powers, infringement of civil liberties and the creation of new offences, introduced in a wholly unacceptable way at the last minute at the committee stage in the House of Lords, where the other place will have very little, if any, time to properly consider them.” Insulate Britain protesters block insulation truck after gluing themselves to road Lord Paddick asked why the government was proposing new stop and search powers targeting protesters, saying that black people were already eight times more likely to be searched and trust in police was currently low. “This is yet another example of ‘what wizard ideas can we think up in line with the home secretary telling the Tory party conference she was going to get tough on protesters?’ This is a power that the police have not asked for and where the evidence shows that harsher penalties do not deter offenders.” The former shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti said the bill’s protest provisions were “some of the most contentious” ever seen. Green Party peer Baroness Jones said: “This is nothing more than a naked attack on civil liberties and a crackdown on protest, and we must oppose it for both what it is and how it is being done.” Labour frontbencher Lord Kennedy of Southwark said: “Crucial to remember is that although we are responding to one particularly crass protest, the law being debated would not just apply to that one crass protest but all peaceful protests and that is the issue.” Baroness Trafford said the government would table the amendments for a vote at a later stage The Liberty human rights group called the amendments a “power grab” by the government and an attack on the right to protest.