The Conservative party used to be the party of individual liberty. No longer, it seems – at least if the Criminal Justice Bill just introduced in the House of Commons is anything to go by.
It’s not simply the worrying powers it promises that will interfere with people at home (for example, it contains police powers to enter homes without a warrant to search for items of stolen property, or to seize the knives you keep at home, potentially without compensation, on the mere suspicion that they might be used criminally). Discreetly lurking in the Bill (in schedule 6, since you ask) is something much more serious: something which comes very close to a power in the police to legislate permanently for what you and I are allowed to do in public.
For a party supposedly devoted to localism and devolving as much power as possible this is simply disgraceful
Nine years ago, local authorities got the power to issue so-called Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs).
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