North West Hampshire MP Kit Malthouse slams Insulate Britain motorway protesters

Kit Malthouse MP has spoken out against climate activists' recent blockades of motorways, threatening a crackdown on the protests.

The North West Hampshire MP – who also serves as Minister of State for Crime and Policing – made the comments in an interview on Sky News today (Tuesday).

Citing the wide-scale disruption caused by demonstrators, he said the Government was planning to introduce new legal measures to halt the blockades.

Members of Insulate Britain, which campaigns for better insulation facilities in UK homes, have been staging sit-ins on motorways since September.

They began by blockading the M25, although an injunction has banned them from staging actions along this stretch of road for the past fortnight.

Breaching this order could result in fines or even a prison sentence, but Mr Malthouse told Sky News that the Government was seeking further powers to curb the protests.

He said: "We believe that these protesters and some of the others that we’ve seen in the last couple of years have crossed the line between exercising their right but also their responsibility towards the rest of us, and something needs to be done.

"So today we’re going to be announcing a raft of new measures alongside those that are already in the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill that’s going through the House of Lords at the moment that we think will help deal with this problem, specifically recognising the disruption of infrastructure and disruption of the strategic road network is of a different scale of damage than you would otherwise find with a normal protest."