I'm amazed that this petition got 65,000 signatures so quickly and a big thank you for helping to make that happen. We didn't win the vote last night, but it was clear that, with the support of the Lib Dems and many experienced law Lords, we would have stopped this draconian law if Labour had got behind it. I can only hope that this response will encourage them to repeal these restrictions on the freedom to protest if they lead a coalition government after the next general election.

The excuse used by Labour is that they didn’t want to break parliamentary convention by having the Lords vote down a government bill, but the reality is that they allowed the government to break convention by using a Ministerial decree to overturn a parliamentary vote. A few months ago, the Lords voted to reject the draconian proposal that the police and Home Office would decide which protests are causing “more than minor” disruption. For the first time ever, secondary legislation was used to reverse that vote. Far from breaking convention, Jenny's Fatal Motion was a defence of the status quo.

In many ways, this was not a one off, but part of a trend of legislation that undermines parliamentary democracy by giving Ministers increasing powers to make, delete or change laws. In the last four years we have seen a series of skeleton bills pass through parliament that hand over powers and discretion to Ministers to make decisions with minimal parliamentary scrutiny. The Retained EU Law Bill is the boldest example of this authoritarian approach to law making that side-lines our parliamentary democracy and transfers power to Ministers and civil servants in Whitehall.

By allowing the government to do this, Labour have opened the door to Ministers overturning previous parliamentary decisions with minimal debate, no chance of amendments and no meaningful votes. It will happen again and parliamentary democracy will seep away. 

Finally, a big thank you to all of you on social media who helped to spread a message that the mainstream media seem determined not to report. Perhaps Labour thought they could sit this one out and no one would notice. What Labour underestimated is the power of independent on-line media and influential commentators like Carol Vorderman and Marina Purkiss. The Vlogger, Peter Stefanovic reached over a million people with his first video outlining what was going on. He explained the constitutional issues in a very clear way that the BBC's one attempt at coverage failed completely to understand. Information is power. Many thanks to you all.