THE Prime Minister’s official adviser is set to recommend a protest exclusion zone outside MPs’ offices and the UK Parliament amid calls for stricter safety measures for members.
Baron Walney, the UK Government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, said the “aggressive intimidation of MPs” by “mobs” was being “mistaken” for an “expression of democracy”.
The comments by Lord Walney come as the issue of MP safety has once again reared its head this week following a debate in Westminster.
Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker who is facing calls to resign after going against convention during the SNP’s Opposition Day debate on a Gaza ceasefire, explained that his motivation for widening the debate was fuelled by concern about MPs’ security due to the intimidation suffered by some parliamentarians.
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Lord Walney, who in December submitted a UK Government-commissioned review into how actions by political groups can “cross into criminality and disruption to people’s lives,” told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was calling for police forces to act “uniformly in stopping” protests outside MPs’ homes.
The crossbench peer — known as John Woodcock when formerly an MP, first representing Labour before becoming an independent — added: “And I think we ought to be looking at those sites that are crucial to the functioning of democracy on a national or local level, like MPs’ offices, like local council chambers, like Parliament itself.
“(There should be) an easier and a faster process that, where those areas are being encircled by the kind of angry aggressive protests that have that implied sense of threat, as we are seeing, to give the police the ability to disperse them more quickly, which is clearly not happening at the moment.”
Authorities are also investigating after a pro-Palestinian message was projected onto the Houses of Parliament.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said he had not read Lord Walney’s report “in detail” but that the headline recommendations were “important”.
He told Sky News politicians should be able to make decisions “based on their judgment” and “not based on fear of reprisals”.
“They absolutely must and will be protected from that,” the Cabinet minister said.
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