A report by a conservative think tank has warned that decay and violent crime have risen sharply in Westminster’s Parliament Square, with historical monuments now added to a list of “contentious statues” prone to attack due to historical links to slavery.

A report by the conservative think tank Policy Exchange called “Tarnished Jewel” has claimed that “laws are often ignored” around the very building where the laws are made, home to the Palace of Westminster, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey.

The report’s author, Andrew Gilligan, a former political aide to Boris Johnson, said that “Westminster is the physical heart of the British state, a centre of the Christian faith, and the symbol of Britain to the world.”

“Nowhere else in Europe, with the possible exception of the Eiffel Tower, is more famous, or more emblematic of its nation. Nowhere else combines those supreme symbolic qualities with being the place where actual power resides and the highest work of government is done,” he said.

However, he argued that the area has become declined into a “degree of squalor and disorder” due to crime, illegal vendors, confidence tricksters,  broken windows, graffiti not fully cleaned for months, and also because protesters on both sides of the political divide that have “privatised the pavement.”

“The thought occurs: if the authorities cannot maintain order in SW1, where can they maintain it?” said Gilligan.

The report said that the area, which includes the whole of Parliament Square, the Palace of Westminster, and Whitehall, between 2013/14 and 2021/22, has seen a 168 percent rise in violent crime compared to a 67 percent rise in London and a 47 percent rise in the Westminster borough.

He noted that crowds of people around the entrances to Parliament regularly bang on the sides of MPs’ cars as they drive in, who are verbally abused, and chased, leaving some parliamentarians saying that they “feel physically afraid” to leave the building.

The report said that the rise in offenses coincided with “relaxed rules” on Westminster protests and that the “controlled area” for protests should be restored to what it was until 2011, within broadly one kilometre of Parliament, covering all the main departments and Downing Street.

Control of public spaces around parliament is currently split between eight different official agencies which he says shows ownership and lines of responsibility “are deeply confused.”

As part of the investigation via a Freedom of Information request, the report noted that the historical monuments of Winston Churchill, Horatio Nelson, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and Oliver Cromwell in Parliament Square had been put on a police list of “contentious” statues that were prone to attack because of historical links to war, colonialism or slavery.

Police said that there had been online calls to attack the statues in the build-up to “high-risk days” during protests.

This also included the Cenotaph, the UK’s official national war memorial, which symbolises the lives lost during the First World War.

Winston Churchill’s entry on the Met police list states that he “referred to Indians as a ‘beastly people with a beastly religion’ … his handling of the 1943-44 Bengal famine is particularly contentious, with Churchill having been accused of murdering over 3 million Indians.”

The Met Police noted that Statue of Horatio Nelson that the 19th-century naval captain spent a “large part of his career in the Caribbean and developed an affinity with the slave owners there, using his influence to argue against the abolitionist movement in Britain.”

Gilligan supported the right to protest, but he questioned the way in which much smaller numbers of people are “regularly, repeatedly and illegally” allowed to cause “disproportionate disruption, sometimes risk, and sometimes fear to others.”

Currently, outside of Whitehall,  eco-activists have been living for almost a week in dozens of small tents pitched in the middle of the street. One well-known anti-Brexit protestor called Steve Bray follows politicians around, shouting “Tory scum” at them. The remain-supporting Tory MP Anna Soubry was verbally harassed by a pro-Brexit activist outside Parliament in 2019, who was subsequently given a suspended sentence and a ban from the area. 

The report said that there should be a statutory duty on police to protect the UK’s democratic institutions and to protect the right of access to the parliamentary estate for those with business there. It added that authorities should take out a wider Public Space Protection Order, covering anti-social behaviour in the whole area around Parliament.

The Epoch Times contacted the Mayor of London/Greater London Authority for comment.