The Government has announced new plans to outlaw behaviour that is likely to cause “nuisance” and “annoyance”, raising concerns that the move will lead to serious state interference with basic freedoms.
New civil orders
The proposals, introduced by Home Secretary Theresa May, seek to replace Anti-Social Behavioural Orders (ASBOs) with new civil orders known as Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance.
Currently, an ASBO can be imposed where a person has caused or threatens to cause “harassment, alarm or distress” to another person, and where the order is “necessary” to protect the victim.
But the new plans will do away with ASBOs and criminalise behaviour that is “capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person”, permitting an order to be imposed where it is deemed “just and convenient” to do so.
Preachers
But former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord MacDonald warned that the new plans would amount to “gross state interference” with basic freedoms, noting in particular the threat posed by the proposals to street preachers.
He said: “Of course political demonstrations, street performers and corner preachers may be ‘annoying’ to some – they may even, from time to time be a ‘nuisance’.
“The danger in this Bill is that it potentially empowers State interference against such activities in the face of shockingly low safeguards and little apparent acknowledgement of the potential effect of its provisions on the ability of citizens to exercise core rights without undue interference.”
“Broad legislative intervention”
He added: “A lone individual standing outside the entrance to a bank holding a sign objecting to its role in the financial crisis, a busker outside a shopping centre, or a street preacher proclaiming the end of days to passers-by may all be capable of causing nuisance and annoyance to some person, but the question is whether they should be subject to such broad legislative intervention as is proposed in this bill.”
“Indeed, the pressing question is whether state interference in the context of behaviour that is merely potentially annoying could ever be justifiable or amount to a proportionate interference in those critical rights to freedom of speech, assembly and religion, or indeed to private life.”
Absurd
Andrea Minichiello Williams commented:
“This legislation is a threat to free speech and could easily end up penalising people simply for expressing unpopular opinions.
“We all have to deal with annoyances. This is part of day to day life. But to use annoyance as a ground for an injunction verges on the absurd.
“At a time when we’re seeing street preachers more frequently arrested for no good reason, this legislation threatens to make the situation even worse.
“Using annoyance and nuisance as grounds for issuing injunctions will create a situation ripe for an imposition of the tyranny of the majority. Britain used to be a bastion of free speech. That these laws are even being suggested shows how far we have fallen.”
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