This month, we launched our first quarterly survey to our community of CrowdJustice Backers. Almost 2,000 of you responded and had a lot to say!
We asked: what are the top three issues that CrowdJustice Backers are most concerned about in the UK today?
The top three issues were: the situation with the NHS, the right to protest, and the environment.
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NHS in crisis?
73% of respondents are concerned about the situation with the NHS.
This is perhaps not a surprising number given that Sky News reported on NHS waiting times just last week, stating that “the number of people waiting more than a year is more than 200 times higher than it was before the pandemic.”
Over the years, CrowdJustice has seen thousands of Backers coming together around legal issues that affect the NHS. Our community had helped to fund cases protecting whistleblowing doctors, fighting the privatisation of GP surgeries, and ensuring that NHS staff had adequate PPE during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Case spotlight: Just Treatment, Doctors’ Association UK and the National Pensioners Convention have launched legal action over the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), “the largest centralisation of our health data in the history of the health service”. The campaigners are concerned about the sharing of sensitive patient data without consent.
The coalition of health organisations say on their case page: "We believe that with appropriate public engagement and patient consent, most people would support and encourage improved use of health data. Done right, the FDP could drive improvements to health care and present huge opportunities for the NHS and for patients. But done wrong, we risk another expensive failed IT project that damages the sacred relationship of trust that must exist between patients and doctors."
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Defending our right to protest
48% of respondents were concerned about the right to protest.
In January, Amnesty International reported that “the right to protest is under threat” in the UK. They’re referring to the increase in legislative initiatives relating to protest that the Government has implemented in recent years. According to The Guardian, these initiatives are “in large part in response to the ballooning levels of activism over the climate emergency.”
The number of legal cases relating to protest on CrowdJustice has also been increasing. For example, a drummer who was arrested on suspicion of being a protestor raised £15,000 for his case. Communities have also used legal action to fight injunctions stopping them from protesting e.g. at HS2 construction sites and sites of gas and oil exploration.
Case spotlight: Last month, the High Court heard a challenge from human rights charity, Liberty, over the implementation of anti-protest legislation. The case is challenging secondary legislation made by former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, which changed the legal definition of ‘serious disruption’ in the Public Order Act 1986 to mean simply ‘more than minor’. Liberty argue that “this gives police almost unlimited power to shut down protests and criminalise those taking part.”
Liberty say on their case page: “This change was already rejected by Parliament when the Government tried to insert it into the Public Order Act 2023. Now the Home Secretary has changed the law by the back door, using a ‘statutory instrument’ – a form of secondary legislation that is created by ministers – to override Parliament’s decision. This is so dangerous. No government minister should be able to override an explicit decision of Parliament like this.”
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Using the law to protect the environment
59% of our respondents are concerned about the environment.
Year after year, legal matters involving the environment—from net zero targets to wildlife conservation to planning applications—have been the most popular topic on CrowdJustice. In fact, environmental cases are so frequent that we’ll be tackling this in another blog post!