Peaceful Protest Has Been Criminalised

The Public Order Act 2023 already restricted protest in the UK. It created a power for the Home Secretary to designate sites as “Key National Infrastructure” (KNI). Originally that was used for places like airports, railway lines and oil terminals.

On 14 January 2026, the House of Lords approved a Statutory Instrument that extended KNI status to a new category: life sciences infrastructure. That is the policy term for the entire animal testing supply chain. It includes:

• 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 took effect on 11 February 2026. From that date, peaceful protest activity that “interferes with the use or operation” of any of these sites became a criminal offence punishable by up to 12 months in prison and an unlimited fine.

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 does not debate or amend an SI line by line. It is laid before both Houses and either approved or not. Once approved, it has the force of an Act.

Powers like this are sometimes called Henry VIII powers, because they let ministers change the meaning of 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. The claimants are Lawyers for Animals and Sole Iriart, a campaigner with Camp Beagle. The legal team is led by Bates Wells.

The claim argues that the Home Secretary acted ultra vires -- beyond the powers Parliament intended to grant -- when designating life sciences infrastructure as KNI under the 2023 Act. It also argues that the regulations unlawfully restrict the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

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, barely two weeks after the Statutory Instrument took effect, two campaigners were arrested at MBR Acres in Wyton. They were the first people to be detained under the new KNI offence. 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 a designated 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 review is the most powerful single lever currently available. Whatever else happens, the regulations are now contested in open court.
• Build political pressure. Petition #736578 has gathered over 230,000 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.