Tucked away in the government’s 300-page police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, are various clauses which will have serious implications for the right to protest. The bill seeks to quietly criminalise “serious annoyance”, increase police powers to restrict protests, and give the home secretary discretion over what types of protests are allowed. It is striking that such an enormous bill had its second reading less than a week after it was published and was only allocated two days of debate. It appears that the government had hoped to pass it quickly and without fanfare, but instead the introduction of the bill coincided with the fallout from the police response to the Sarah Everard vigil and ultimately sparked in Bristol the very thing it sought to limit: protests. Clauses 55 and 56 of the bill will make it easier for the police to impose conditions on marches and static protests, removing the distinction between the two. Where before, protests would have to threaten serious public disorder to warrant certain restrictions, under this bill police could intervene merely if the protest was noisy enough to cause a person in the vicinity “serious unease”. Further, the range of conditions that may be imposed would be increased. Where before police could only rule on the place, duration and number of persons attending a protest, under this bill, the police would be able to impose any condition they thought necessary. As Liberty, the civil liberties organisation, points out, this would give the police the power to ban static protests altogether. This is significant because breaching one of these conditions is a criminal offence, and the bill also lowers the threshold for committing such an offence and increases the maximum penalty. Whereas before, someone would have to actually know that the condition had been imposed by the police, under this bill organisers can be prosecuted if they merely ought to have known, and could end up facing nearly a year in prison. This bill would make it a crime to cause “serious annoyance” to the public, with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. However, one of the most worrying powers created by the bill gives the home secretary control over the definition of “serious disruption to the life of the community” and “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation”, both of which can determine when police powers to limit protest are engaged. This power effectively grants a minister the ability to suppress the kinds of protests that he or she does not like or agree with. In the debate on the bill, even former Conservative prime minister Theresa May, herself an ex-home secretary, pointedly commented: “It is tempting when home secretary to think that giving powers to the home secretary is very reasonable – because we all think we’re reasonable. But actually future home secretaries may not be so reasonable.” The government refers to the 2019 Extinction Rebellion protests and the recent “Kill the Bill” protests in Bristol as justifying these new powers. After all, given the images of a seemingly beleaguered police force struggling to defend itself against a mob who have set fire to vans, with officers suffering broken bones and a collapsed lung, ought we not to give the police the tools to fight back? Except that it turns out that the media coverage of the Bristol protests has been misleading, the Avon and Somerset police admitted there had not been any broken bones or punctured lungs and the locals in Bristol tell a very different story of heavy-handed police tactics. In addition, it has been reported that far more protesters than police were injured. The reality is that the police do not need more powers to limit protests, as much as they might like them. Even if all of the protesters in Bristol were being as violent as the initial reports claimed, there are already laws in place to deal with that behaviour. The clauses in this bill about noise, inconvenience and annoyance betray what it is really trying to do: keep those pesky protesters away from the places they will have the most impact. That way, the government will not have to worry about protests the next time they do such things as authorise police informants to commit torture or excuse soldiers for historic war crimes. Make no mistake, this bill is not about law and order, it is about state control and the subtle erosion of freedom of expression. Protests are supposed to be loud and inconvenient; they would not be particularly effective otherwise. As Theresa May put it: “There will be people who will have seen scenes of protests and asked, ‘Why aren’t the government doing something?’ The answer, in many cases, may simply be that we live in a democratic, free society.” Joshua Clements has just completed his final exams on the ICCA bar course. This article won first prize at the inaugural ICCA Essay Competition, sponsored by the Guardian and Keating Chambers