Have a good festive break and stay safe from whichever Covid variant is near you. Recharge those batteries because we are going to need your help defeating the 18 pages of draconian laws that the government submitted as late amendments to the Police and Crime Bill.

Your Green Party peers spotted that the government’s attempt to evade democratic scrutiny by MPs by tabling the late amendments has actually given the Lords the power to reject the new amendments outright. They would give the police the power to restrain people from attending protests if they have taken part in previous protests,  they target “locking-on” and other forms of nonviolent protest with prison sentences, as well as giving police officers the ability to stop and search without suspicion.

The Lords have a rare opportunity to defend civil liberties by voting down these amendments, but we need the Labour Party to act like an opposition. Please lobby @UKLabour, the national Labour Party, and Keir Starmer, to reject all of the attacks on freedom contained in the Police Bill. Please also lobby your *Labour* MPs to vote with us against these government amendments so the Labour leadership will rally their members of the House of Lords against these measures. 

Please help lobby a Labour MP, or a Labour peer, about the Police Bill.

The key thing is to differentiate between the 18 pages of new government amendments that we need them to oppose and defeat outright – which would then require the government to put fresh legislation via the commons to reinstate – and the rest of the draconian legislation about protests (protestors making too much noise, or a Minister defining what is disruption etc..) contained in the Bill where we need the Lords to amend and improve in the normal way.