Natalie Bennett moves to block protest crackdown with rare House of Lords intervention

Protect the Wild has welcomed an intervention in the House of Lords by Green Party peer Natalie Bennett. She has tabled a fatal motion seeking to stop the government amendment that would criminalise and restrict peaceful protest around animal testing facilities.

The motion targets the government’s recent amendment to the Public Order Act, approved in the House of Commons on 14 January by 301 votes to 110, which reclassifies life sciences infrastructure, including animal testing facilities, as “key national infrastructure”.

Fatal motions can stop secondary legislation becoming law if they are agreed to, although their success is by no means guaranteed. The date of the debate for this fatal motion has yet to be announced.

As Protect the Wild has warned, redefining research laboratories as critical national assets alongside airports, power stations, and transport networks dramatically expands the state’s power to restrict protest. Peaceful demonstrations near any site linked to animal testing, including universities and research campuses, could face restrictions, bans, or even prison sentences of up to a year.

Bennett’s motion

Bennett’s motion states that the regulations represent legislative overreach, extend the definition of “critical national infrastructure” beyond its appropriate meaning, and further restrict the democratic right to peaceful protest. It also highlights the government’s failure to justify adequately the practical need for such an expansion or to take sufficient steps towards ending animal testing.

Protect the Wild founder Rob Pownall said:

This is a crucial and principled intervention. Labelling animal testing facilities as ‘key national infrastructure’ is a fiction designed to shield a controversial industry from scrutiny and silence ethical opposition.

The House of Lords now has an opportunity to stop a dangerous precedent being set, one that treats peaceful protest as a threat and empties the concept of national infrastructure of all meaning.

Featured image via the Canary