A Guardian columnist says a law which is interfering with free speech should be changed for the sake of freedom and British values.
Timothy Garton Ash criticised the Public Order Act as he laid out numerous cases of people falling foul of the Section 5 of the Act.
He warned: “A law that aspires to prevent harassment has become a licence for the harassment of ordinary citizens by the police.”
Arrested
Writing in the Guardian last week, Mr Garton Ash highlighted the case of a teenager who got into trouble under Section 5 of the Public Order Act for holding a placard declaring Scientology was a cult.
The columnist also pointed to the case of a student who was arrested under the same law for saying to a mounted policeman: “Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?”.
Such examples, he said, are “real cases of British police abuse of a law so loosely worded that it invites such abuse”.
Freedom
Mr Garton Ash said fixing the problem is “not a party-political issue”, but rather: “It is about freedom. And it is about what it means to be British.”
His comments come in the weeks following the launch of a campaign to amend Section 5 which is backed by The Christian Institute, the National Secular Society and the Peter Tatchell Foundation.
Reform Section 5 is campaigning for the word “insulting” to be stripped out of Section 5. Currently, the Section outlaws “insulting words or behaviour”, but what exactly constitutes “insulting” is unclear.
Consistency
Last month, former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald QC, also threw his weight behind the campaign.
Speaking on BBC Radio Lord Macdonald said: “I think if we got rid of the word insulting it would simply provide a better balance between public order and free speech.”
He added: “One of the things we need in the law is consistency and I think it’s precisely because the term insulting is so imprecise that you’re going to get rogue decisions if legislation contains those sorts of terms.”