Braverman ‘outraged’ by £4.5m Met Police prices for Just Stop Oil protests
Home Secretary Suella Braverman has blasted protest group Just Stop Oil after police claimed local weather protests have price £4.5 million in simply six weeks.
The Metropolitan Police says every day protests from activists have taken up “13,770 officer shifts”. It comes as MPs backed adjustments that make it simpler for police to crack down on “disruptive” protests.
This is regardless of claims the Government is “slow walking” in the direction of “fascism”. The House of Commons voted 277 to 217, a majority of 60, in favour of measures to decrease the brink for what is taken into account “serious disruption” to neighborhood life from “significant” and “prolonged” to “more than minor”.
Campaigners Just Stop Oil have been protesting by strolling slowly in streets all through London, holding up site visitors. It has brought about disruption at excessive profile sporting and cultural occasions.
Read extra: Just Stop Oil zealots cost police £4.5m in six weeks
Ms Braverman informed MPs: “People have a right to get to work on time free from obstruction, a right to enjoy sporting events without interruption and a right to get to hospital.
“The roads belong to the British people, not a selfish minority who treat them like their personal property. The impact of these disruptors is huge. Over the last six weeks alone Just Stop Oil carried out 156 slow marches around London.”
Labour’s Yvette Cooper said there are already laws to deal with protesting involving slow walking in the road. She said: “This is not about the seriously disruptive Just Stop Oil protests, which are rightly already against the law.
“Instead, what it is doing is giving the police the power to prevent any and every campaign group protesting outside a local library or swimming pool that is about to be closed because it may be a little more than minor.
“This makes it harder for law-abiding, peaceful campaigners who want to work with the police to organise a limited protest – something we should all want people to do.”
The Home Secretary took to social media after the vote to criticise the opposition’s stance. On Twitter she wrote: “The price to the taxpayer of policing egocentric protesters is an outrage. More than 13,000 police shifts have been wasted & might have been spent stopping theft & critical violence.”
Labour’s Richard Burgon (Leeds East) branded the Government’s actions an “authoritarian clampdown” whereas Green Party MP Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion) described the laws as “oppressive, anti-democratic and downright wrong”.
But DUP MP Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) stated it was “exaggerated” to explain the adjustments as fascism.
He stated: “This is not fascism. This is about the Government having to make a decision as to what do we do to allow in a democracy people to make their point – maybe you don’t like the point they’re making – and on the other hand stop those who are impacted by it being impacted, where the protesters have made it quite clear that’s what their main aim is anyway.”
The Met Police stated there have been 156 gradual marches because the finish of April. Just Stop Oil stated considered one of these was stopped inside 5 minutes underneath part 12 of the general public order act, whereas the remainder have been halted by 8.46am.
A spokesperson for Just Stop Oil stated: “This is what happens when a criminal government pursues ever more repressive laws to silence dissent. The Government has the power to stop this huge waste of police time and resources immediately, by ending new oil and gas. The money would be far better spent on protecting the British public by leading a rapid transition away from deadly fossil fuels.”