By Handling of Sarah Everard vigil by police breached ‘fundamental rights’ an inquiry has found.
The policing of the vigil for Sarah Everard and the Kill the Bill protests breached ‘fundamental rights’, an inquiry has found.
The actions of Metropolitan Police and Avon and Somerset Police earlier this year were described as being riddled with ‘multiple failings’.
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and the Constitution (APPGDC), a group of MPs and peers which wrote the report, has now proposed amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, due to be debated on Monday.
Their report claims that both forces wrongly applied coronavirus lockdown laws and “failed to understand their legal duties in respect of protest”.
PA
Labour MP and inquiry chairman, Geraint Davies, said the right to peaceful protest ‘must be supported not suppressed by the law’.
Mr Davies continued: ‘The police must not become the enforcement agency of the state against those who choose to publicly and collectively call for change – political, economic, social or environmental.
‘Parliament must protect our freedoms and reject attempts to increase police power and restrict our right to peaceful protest.
‘The police should help to facilitate the expression of peaceful protest and not drive opposition underground.’
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