TORY laws criminalising peaceful protests must be overturned, human rights groups and environment campaigners told the government today.

An open letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, signed by 92 organisations, has urged the new Labour government to reverse a “deliberate strategy by previous governments to criminalise and shrink the space for peaceful protest in our democracy.”

The letter said the government faces “a clear choice between allowing its dire consequences to play out under its watch or do something to prevent it.”

Signatories to the letter include Amnesty International UK, Greenpeace UK, Liberty and Christian Aid.

The letter comes after five Just Stop Oil protesters were handed four and five-year prison sentences for taking part in a protest that disrupted the M25 in London in 2022.

UN human rights commissioner Volker Turk has condemned the sentences as “deeply troubling.”

The Tories enacted the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023, which the groups said were “gagging laws” and “pillars of the Tory government’s strategy.”

Legal defences available to peaceful protesters have also been removed, such as claiming their actions were intended to prevent a bigger crime.

The groups said this created “the absurd situation of juries being prevented from hearing crucial evidence from defendants about the reasons for their actions.”

They said 630 peaceful protesters were arrested in just one month last year, and 11 people were arrested for holding signs outside court defending the right of jurors to exercise their consciences.

Areeba Hamid, Greenpeace UK co-executive director, said: “Protest can be annoying and inconvenient, but it’s annoying and inconvenient protest that has led to the end of slavery, votes for women, basic workers’ rights and the bans on nuclear testing and commercial whaling.”

Liberty’s director of advocacy Sam Grant said: “The trend of increasingly severe prison sentences for non-violent protesting is incredibly concerning for our democracy, and is a stark reminder of the dire state of our right to protest in the UK.

“We need a government that listens to, rather than punishes, protesters and for the dangerous legislation of recent years to be immediately overturned.”

The Home Office was invited to comment.