New Asbo law may hit charities

Charity fundraisers – and so-called chuggers – could effectively be driven off the streets under draconian new powers designed to replace Asbos, by clamping down on anyone deemed “annoying”.
Lord Macdonald QC said Government plans for a new civil injunctions to replace Asbos amount to gross state interference with people’s private lives and basic freedoms.
In a formal legal opinion being circulated to peers, Lord Macdonald launches a broadside against the plans as opening the way for the outright suppression of anything deemed “potentially annoying” with only “vague” justification.
Under proposals currently before Parliament, Asbos are to be scrapped and replaced with wide-ranging new orders known as Ipnas (Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance & Annoyance). They are designed to be easier to obtain, require a lower evidential threshold and yet cover a wider range of behaviour.
The new system will allow courts to impose sweeping curbs on people’s liberty if they think they are “capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person”. They will be able to impose them if they think it is “just and convenient” to do so.
In practice, Lord Macdonald said they could be used against virtually anyone leading to “serious and unforeseeable interferences in individual rights, to the greater public detriment”.
Simon Calvert, director of the Reform Clause 1 campaign alliance, said: “This is a crazy law. It will not deter thugs and hooligans who are normally already breaking lots of other laws anyway. But it will give massive power to the authorities to seek court orders to silence people guilty of nothing more than breaching political correctness or social etiquette.
“What this means in practice is that people going about their ordinary business, such as charity collectors, protestors, carol singers, street pastors – even people simply expressing strong opinions in public – could be classed as annoying and hauled before the courts.”