The Prime Minister’s spokesman said that he would be seeking further reassurances at a meeting with Sir Mark that police would take a “robust” approach to safeguard the public and protect Armistice and Remembrance events.
“First and foremost we want to seek further reassurances that the approach will be robust and sufficient to ensure remembrance events are unaffected and that the public are being kept safe,” said the spokesman.
He said the Prime Minister also expected Sir Mark to “keep testing” intelligence on whether the threshold for banning the march had been reached and “use all existing powers available to them as appropriate”.
He said that No 10 felt there was a risk of violence, and that the Prime Minister believed the protests were “provocative, disrespectful and inappropriate” and urged the organisers to reconsider their plans for the march.
“We fully respect people’s right to protest and express their views peacefully. What is not acceptable in our view is to take action that is deliberately provocative and disrespectful. We believe these planned protests coming as they do on Armistice Day … are disrespectful and not appropriate,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, said that there would be “ongoing discussions” after Sir Mark said that the threshold for an outright ban had not been met.
Mr Barclay refused to use the words of Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, and brand the pro-Palestinian protests “hate marches”.
However, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that there were people on those marches “expressing some extremely inappropriate and some very hurtful views”.
He said: “I think we have to be very conscious of the huge concern, particularly within the Jewish community, the real distress there has been. But that is not the behaviour of everyone on the march.”
He told Times Radio that he would call the march “provocative”.
‘No absolute power to ban protests’
The Met can apply for a public procession to be banned under Section 13 of the Public Order Act 1986 if there is a risk of serious public disorder.
Sir Mark said that the Met would place strict conditions on marches, if necessary, to make sure that events around the Cenotaph were “completely protected”.
He also made clear that even if the threshold was met, he was powerless to ban the protests altogether as legislation addressed marching only and did not prevent static assemblies of thousands of people.
“The laws created by Parliament are clear. There is no absolute power to ban protests, therefore there will be a protest this weekend,” said Sir Mark.
“The law provides no mechanism to ban a static gathering of people. It contains legislation which allows us to impose conditions to reduce disruption and the risk of violence, and in the most extreme cases, when no other tactics can work, for marches or moving protests to be banned.
“Many have called for us to use this power to ban a planned march by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign on Saturday.
“But the use of this power is incredibly rare and must be based on intelligence which suggests there will be a real threat of serious disorder and no other way for police to manage the event. The last time it was used was over a decade ago.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism has urged Mrs Braverman to overrule the Met and enforce a ban, which could only be triggered if the police are judged to be failing to discharge their duties.
Such a decision would also require Mrs Braverman to overrule Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London.
