The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has voiced his support for the Metropolitan Police's handling of the arrests of Republic, an anti-monarchy group, before the Coronation.

Despite the Metropolitan Police acknowledging that they found no proof of intent to disrupt the Coronation and regretting the arrests, Sunak stated that people have the right to protest peacefully but that the government has given police the powers they need to tackle serious disruption to people's day-to-day lives.

Sunak cited the Public Order Act, a law passed just days before the Coronation, which allows officers to stop and search anyone they suspect is planning to cause disruption. The Conservative government has defended the act, as people have been complaining about apparent inaction in the face of other protests that have caused disruption to people's daily lives.

Opposition parties have accused the government of undermining the basic tenets of a free and democratic society and called for the act to be scrapped. Sunak responded that police will make decisions on when to use the powers given to them by the Public Order Act, as the police are operationally independent of the government. Photo by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street, Wikimedia commons.