The UK government’s controversial ‘authoritarian’ and ‘undemocratic’ Public Order Act underlines the pressing need for justice to be devolved, the Welsh government’s chief legal adviser has said.
Counsel general Mick Antoniw MS told the Senedd yesterday that the act, which received Royal Assent days before the coronation, was authoritarian, undemocratic and dangerous – and it needed to be repealed.
Antoniw was worried the legislation, which widens stop and search powers, could negatively affect minority ethnic communities, who are already disproportionately stopped and searched.
While no one was arrested in Wales under the new powers over the coronation weekend, Wales has ‘a different vision for justice’, he said.
‘We seek a trauma-informed, anti-racist criminal justice system, which addresses the drivers of crime and helps vulnerable people in Wales live healthy, crime-free lives. The regressive provisions of the Public Order Act imposed on the people of Wales by the UK government underline why devolution of policing and criminal justice is so pressing.’
In an interview with the Gazette earlier this year, Antoniw said the Welsh government was starting work no longer in terms of the argument for devolution but how it will be administered when it happens.
Asked if the act furthered the argument for full devolution of powers over justice and policing, Antoniw said yesterday: ‘Bad legislation must be removed. Legislation that oppresses people, wherever it comes from, is legislation that should not be on the statute books… I will support, and I’m sure Welsh government will support, that this bad legislation should be removed at the earliest opportunity.’
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