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THE “oppressive” policing Bill will deepen racial and gender disparities, put young people at risk and damage their trust in public-service providers such as schools and the health service, hundreds of experts warned today as they demanded it be scrapped.
About 665 GPs, nurses, teachers and social, youth and outreach workers have penned a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel warning that the legislation will cause further harm.
It follows large Kill the Bill protests and a petition signed by almost 600,000 people opposing the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will hand greater powers to police forces.
More than 30,000 people have written directly to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
If the Bill becomes law, public agencies such as healthcare and education providers will have the duty to “reduce and prevent serious violence” by disclosing information on service users.
The legislation would also bring in serious violence reduction orders to make it easier for police to carry out checks on people with previous convictions.
In the letter to Ms Patel, the signatories said: “We believe that this Bill will hinder our ability as front-line workers to effectively support the people with whom we work by eroding relationships of trust and duties of confidentiality.
“It will expand the criminalisation, surveillance and punishment of already overpoliced communities.”
They expressed fears that the Bill will force them to become complicit in surveillance and hand over personal data even if it conflicts with their professional duties.
The experts warned that this would prevent young people, particularly from non-white communities, from accessing vital services and make them feel less safe.
They added that serious violence reduction orders would give police an “individualised, suspicionless” stop-and-search power with minimal safeguards, so people would be likely to face “intrusive monitoring.”
Liberty policy and campaigns officer Jun Pang said the Bill would put more people at risk.
She added: “The new police powers it creates will lead to harassment and oppressive monitoring of young people, working-class people and people of colour, especially black people, in particular and expand existing measures that will funnel more people into the criminal punishment system.”
Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk, and the Alliance for Youth Justice warned that the proposals threatened to sweep more young women into the criminal justice system and called for more investment in specialist support services.
The Bill is to be debated in the House of Lords this week.