AN MP has hit back after the government passed a bill to introduce new restrictions on protest rights.

On Tuesday, MPs voted to reinstate the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which contains measures aimed at overhauling the criminal justice system.

These include plans to give police in England and Wales more powers to impose conditions on non-violent protests judged to be too noisy and causing “intimidation or harassment” or “serious unease, alarm or distress” to the public.

However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced criticism after MPs from all parties made clear their frustration at the proposals.

The Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion Caroline Lucas said: “Government succeeds in overturning attempt to stop them imposing ban on noisy protests, 288 to 238.

“But noise is how citizens make their voices heard - literally. That’s the point of protest. Giving police such exhaustive and unspecified powers undermines both democracy and protest.”

Jesse Norman, a Conservative former minister, said it was “unfortunate” the government was bringing forward noise-based restrictions on protests when people in Kyiv, Ukraine, are “dying for their beliefs and for the rights of freedom of speech and of association”.

He said: “No case has been made, no serious case have been made, that this is a real and genuine problem. The minister has conceded I think, and one understands why that it is not like abuse except in the tiniest minority of cases and therefore one has to ask the question, whether the justification is adequate for the measure.”

The Bill previously suffered a string of defeats in the Lords as peers rejected the moves to clampdown on noisy protests.

They also ripped out a series of controversial measures designed to combat the tactics adopted by groups including Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.

Policing minister Kit Malthouse said protest is a qualified right and there have been in recent years “examples of wholly unacceptable forms of protest”.

He said: “The role of this house, and indeed the role of the police, is to strike a balance between competing rights.

“That is what we do, and that is what we are trying to do with these, in my view, modest measures that we’ve brought in.”