British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has prepared new measures to manage protests, expanding the range of situations in which the police in England and Wales can intervene to prevent serious disruptions, Reuters reports, Agerpres reads.

In recent years, a series of protests, generally related to environmental issues, have blocked large areas of central London and brought traffic to a standstill on key roads, prompting calls for police to be given extra powers to end some such disturbances of order.

The UK government has passed a number of measures to tackle these issues over the past year, but plans to push ahead with a new set of laws, known as the Public Order Act. Already presented last year, it is in the final stage of debate in parliament, but has been heavily criticized by civil rights organizations, who say it is anti-democratic and gives the police too much power.

The government wants to amend the bill before its approval, in order to expand the legal definition of „serious disturbance” of public order, to provide the police with greater flexibility and to clarify when exactly the new prerogatives can be used.

„The right to protest is a fundamental principle of our democracy, but it is not absolute,” Prime Minister Sunak pointed out in a statement published late Sunday evening. „We cannot accept that protests organized by a small minority disrupt the life of the ordinary public and we will put an end to this,” the prime minister pledged.

According to the British government, the new provisions, if adopted, will allow the police to „preemptively” stop disruptive protests.

„The police already have the powers to make arrests and disperse people. I fear that (the bill) would make any peaceful protest treated as terrorism,” Labor MP Shami Chakrabarti, who will examine the proposals, told the BBC.

These are based on the police law adopted in April 2022 and which has already generated a series of large-scale protests.

Agerpres