Human Rights (Joint Committee)
15 April 2026
No chapters available yet
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
Committee House of Lords
00:02 - 02:05
Speaker 1
Order. Order. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We're made up of six members of the House of Commons, six members of the House of Lords, and as the name implies, implies, we have a passion collectively, even though we come from diverse political backgrounds.
We have a passion for the human rights of British citizens, and that is the mandate of this committee. We run a number of concurrent and previous inquiries, which can be found on our website. But today is our first oral session in our inquiry into protest rights, scrutinizing how the government and legal system strikes the balance between the duty to protect the public and the duty to respect individual rights to protest. This inquiry is gonna be framed by established human rights standards, in particular, free speech and assembly, as well as the right to respect private life. The sessions, we're gonna have two panels today.
We'll give and gather evidence for us as to whether the government's claim that protest activity has become faster, more decentralized, and more disruptive, whether that accurately depicts the current nature of protest. And if so, what has changed. It'll also consider how protesters and those who campaign for the right to protest see the current state of protest in The UK. So in this first panel, we have Paul Parker, who's the recording clerk for Quakers Britain. We have Akiko Hart, who's the director of Liberty.
We have Raj Chadda, who is the partner and head of crime at Financial and Regulatory Department of Hodge Jones and Allen's solicitors. And we have sir Andy Cook, formerly, until very recently, his majesty's chief inspector of constabulary, and fire and rescue services, and chief constable before that of Merseyside, of the Merseyside Police. All four of you are extremely welcome. Let me kick off, if I may, by simply asking you a sort of curtain raising question where you can set out your store before we delve deeper into more granular detail. But what is the the nature of protest?
The rest of the transcript is for Pro customers
Unlock the full transcript, chat, and every analysis feature with Polyfact Pro.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.