Peaceful Protest Has Been Criminalised

The Public Order Act 2023 already restricted protest in England and Wales. Section 7 made it an offence to interfere with “key national infrastructure” (KNI) — a fixed list of categories such as road, rail, air transport, harbours, oil and gas, electricity generation and newspaper printing — and gave the Home Secretary power to add to the list by regulations.

The draft regulations were debated in a Commons committee on 17 December 2025, approved by the House of Commons on 14 January 2026 (301 votes to 110) and by the House of Lords on 4 February 2026, where an amendment opposing them was defeated by 295 votes to 62. They were made on 5 February 2026 as S.I. 2026/112 and extended KNI to a new category: life sciences infrastructure, defined as infrastructure whose primary purpose is pharmaceutical research, development or manufacture, or which is “used for or in connection with activities authorised by a licence under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986”. In practice that reaches the whole animal testing supply chain, including:

• Commercial breeding facilities such as MBR Acres
• Contract research organisations (Charles River, Labcorp, Sequani)
• University laboratories using regulated procedures
• Medical research centres with Home Office project licences

The instrument came into force on 12 February 2026. From that date, protest activity that “interferes with the use or operation” of any of these sites, done intentionally or recklessly, became a criminal offence punishable by up to 12 months in prison, a fine, or both.

Section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023 creates the offence. The statutory wording is unusually broad. Read it carefully:

The definition of “interferes” is the part most worth studying:

Read it again. “To any extent” for “any of its intended purposes”. The threshold is not blockade. Delay counts where it is “significant” — a word the Act does not define, and which a court will have to test. A delivery van held at a gate could, on the face of the wording, be enough.

The defences in section 7(2) are narrow:

Section 7(3) sets the penalty: on summary conviction, imprisonment up to the general limit in a magistrates’ court, a fine or both; on conviction on indictment, up to 12 months’ imprisonment, a fine or both.

“Reasonable excuse” is a defence the defendant has to prove. The burden of proof is reversed.

You cannot credibly claim to be ending an industry while simultaneously hardening the legal shield around its sites. One of those positions is real. The other is for the press release.

The KNI extension was made by Statutory Instrument — secondary legislation. Parliament cannot amend an SI line by line. Under section 7(9) a draft is laid before both Houses and must be approved by each, or not. Once made, it changes the wording of the Act itself.

Section 7(7) lets the Secretary of State amend the list in section 7(6) and the definitions in section 8 by regulations. Powers like this are called Henry VIII powers, because they let ministers amend primary legislation without going through the full bill process. Their use is meant to be exceptional. The use of one to redefine the right to protest at sites where animals are bred and killed is, by any reasonable measure, not exceptional. It is a substantive policy change on a contested issue, made through a shortcut.

On 2 March 2026, judicial review proceedings were filed in the High Court against the Home Secretary. They are brought by Lawyers for Animals and Maria Iriart, the Camp Beagle campaigner who started petition 736578. The legal team is led by Bates Wells.

The claim argues that the Home Secretary acted ultra vires — beyond the powers Parliament granted — and irrationally, when treating life sciences infrastructure as KNI under the 2023 Act. The campaign also frames the regulations as a restriction of the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Permission has been granted. Mr Justice Sheldon found the claim “arguable, and in any event, a matter of public interest”, so it proceeds to a full hearing and the government must file evidence of its reasons. A separate challenge by the charity Animal Aid (Advocates for Animals, with counsel from Landmark Chambers) was also granted permission on the papers, reported on 29 July 2026. It argues that “life sciences infrastructure” goes beyond the natural meaning of “infrastructure” and that there was no lawful consultation. As of October 2026, neither claim has been decided.

If the court agrees, the regulations can be quashed. The relevant sites would lose their KNI status and the criminal offences attached to peaceful protest at them would fall away.

On 24 February 2026, less than two weeks after the regulations came into force, two campaigners were arrested at MBR Acres in Wyton. Camp Beagle described them as the first arrests under the new amendment. Both were bailed until May.

For the previous five years, peaceful vigils, banners and documentation at the gates were policed under existing public order powers. The new offence creates a separate, specific charge. It is designed to chill participation by raising the cost of being seen.

Cambridgeshire Police have spent over £2.1 million policing peaceful activity at MBR Acres since 2021. The new law does not reduce that bill. It widens the net of who can be charged.

The 2026 changes did not appear from nowhere. They are the latest in a deliberate, multi-year tightening of UK protest law.

The right to peaceful protest in the United Kingdom is not yet extinguished. It is being narrowed, site by site, offence by offence. A vigil at a hospital is lawful. The same vigil at key national infrastructure, if it holds up the site, is now potentially criminal.

What this campaign does and continues to do:

• Operate openly and lawfully. We do not glamorise risk or pressure anyone to take it.
• Document everything. Two juries have already acquitted rescuers on broadly the same facts -- the public conscience is moving.
• Use legal process. The judicial reviews are the most powerful single lever currently available. Permission has been granted, so the regulations will be contested in open court.
• Build political pressure. Petition 736578 was debated in Westminster Hall on 27 April 2026 and closed on 30 April 2026 with 121,854 signatures. The more this becomes a parliamentary issue, the harder secondary legislation is to defend.

British police do not deploy tear gas or rubber bullets at peaceful protests. The escalation in the United Kingdom is legal, not physical. Which is exactly why the legal pushback matters.

Direct, lawful action against the law itself.