The Court of Appeal has dismissed a government appeal, ruling that anti-protests regulations were made unlawfully.
In 2023 the then Home Secretary Braverman changed the law on when police can place restrictions on protests, changing the definition of ‘serious’ disruptions to mean ‘more than minor’ disruptions, granting the police ‘almost unlimited powers’ to restrict protests.
The powers had initially been democratically voted down, a few months prior, Braverman instead used secondary legislation or ‘Henry VIII Powers’ which requires far less parliamentary scrutiny to bring laws into effect. A cross-party committee said at the time that this was the first time a government had sought to make changes to the law through the powers, which has already been rejected by Parliament.
Human Rights organisation, Liberty, has challenged the regulations and won. In May 2024, the High Court said ‘serious’ can’t mean ‘more than minor’ and that Braverman had ignored the will of Parliament. The government appealed that decision resulting in the Court of Appeal decision. The Court of Appeal agreed with the earlier ruling, that the Home Secretary did not have the power to create a new law that lowered the threshold of when police can impose conditions on protests from anything that caused serious disruptions to anything that was deemed as causing more than minor disruption.
Liberty has called on the government to accept the judgement and review every arrest that has been made under the laws since.
Akiko Hart, Liberty’s director, said:
“Today’s judgment is clear, just as it was last year, that these laws should never have been made. They were a flagrant abuse of power from a Government determined to shut down protesters they did not personally agree with.
Shameem Ahmad, CEO of Public Law Project, who intervened in the case, said:
“The former Home Secretary used statutory instruments to significantly restrict protest rights without scrutiny, despite these amendments being previously voted down by Parliament. The High Court agreed with us that this was an excessive and unlawful use of executive power.
“We trust that this decisive victory for the rule of law and Parliamentary sovereignty will serve as a watershed moment for the Government. These restrictive protest laws should now be permanently abandoned and Henry VIII powers relegated to the annals of history where they belong.”