The Public Order Act 2023 is working as intended and I'm terrified

[discovolante]

To argue it the other way though, if it just said 'national infrastructure' that could be literally anything. And then if they narrowed the definition as they have in the legislation, it would suggest that anything else that wasn't listed wasn't national infrastructure, which wouldn't make much sense. I don't think it would be legally significant but it could seem odd. The definitions clearly aren't well known to the general public but they aren't exactly hidden away.

What's potentially something to be worried about is that sections 7(7) and 7(8) give the executive pretty broad powers to change what counts as key national infrastructure via statutory instruments. I mean look at s7(8)(a). I'm more than happy to be corrected on this one but aside from the general issues with primary legislation giving the executive broad powers (which do, to be fair, have a practical use if there is a need to respond fairly swiftly to changing circumstances), at least usually there is a decent chance that if the executive takes things too far the secondary legislation could be challenged on the basis that it's ultra vires. I'm not sure how that could be done with this one given the inclusion of s7(8)(a). There will be limits I'm sure but they will probably be fairly broad.

Also probably worth looking at what's currently deemed to be key national infrastructure. It is nearly all related to transport and power generation and supply, and newspaper printing infrastructure. Obviously, transport and power are important, but what about say, centres of distribution of key goods, for example? The choices are pretty clearly targeted at environmental activists, imo. It does include onshore electricity generation infrastructure (s7(6)(h)), which could include wind turbines. Although I'm wondering about s8(12)(b), which specifies that it only applies to onshore electricity generation infrastructure with a total installed capacity equal or greater than 100 megawatts. I assume 'total installed capacity' is likely to mean e.g. an entire wind farm, rather than a single turbine. I'm not sure how many wind farms generate over 100 megawatts? I assume there are several but happy for someone to let me know about this. Anyway, this is a bit of a dig too far and I'm not sure it's quite some grand conspiracy to allow interference with wind farms while say, gas is a no-go, I just wondered when I saw that.

[IvanV]

....Although I'm wondering about s8(12)(b), which specifies that it only applies to onshore electricity generation infrastructure with a total installed capacity equal or greater than 100 megawatts. I assume 'total installed capacity' is likely to mean e.g. an entire wind farm, rather than a single turbine. I'm not sure how many wind farms generate over 100 megawatts? I assume there are several but happy for someone to let me know about this.

According to Wikipedia there are 4 on-shore wind farms in Britain with a capacity of at least 100MW, and they are all in Scotland. Whitelee at 539MW is exceptional, the other three largest are in the range of 120-140MW. So you can see that 100MW is large for an on-shore windfarm. The highest capacity windfarm in England is Scout Moor at 65MW, comprising 26 x 2.5MW turbines. Off-shore, larger turbines are used, arrays are larger, and 100MW is on the small size for an off-shore farm.

To put this in context, there is currently about 28,000 MW of installed wind capacity, so blockading a 100MW wind-farm doesn't make a big difference to anything. It is less than 0.4% of it.

[discovolante]

....Although I'm wondering about s8(12)(b), which specifies that it only applies to onshore electricity generation infrastructure with a total installed capacity equal or greater than 100 megawatts. I assume 'total installed capacity' is likely to mean e.g. an entire wind farm, rather than a single turbine. I'm not sure how many wind farms generate over 100 megawatts? I assume there are several but happy for someone to let me know about this.

According to Wikipedia there are 4 on-shore wind farms in Britain with a capacity of at least 100MW, and they are all in Scotland. Whitelee at 539MW is exceptional, the other three largest are in the range of 120-140MW. So you can see that 100MW is large for an on-shore windfarm. The highest capacity windfarm in England is Scout Moor at 65MW, comprising 26 x 2.5MW turbines. Off-shore, larger turbines are used, arrays are larger, and 100MW is on the small size for an off-shore farm.

To put this in context, there is currently about 28,000 MW of installed wind capacity, so blockading a 100MW wind-farm doesn't make a big difference to anything. It is less than 0.4% of it.

So, the answer to my question was really 'JFGI', apologies.

Anyway, what that means then is that the Act probably doesn't apply to any wind farms, because it doesn't apply in Scotland. I'll stop there because I'd be veering into fairly paranoid baseless speculation which I'm not really keen on tbh. Unless anyone fancies a dig through Hansard to find out if there were any heated (no pun intended) debates about wind farms while this was going through Parliament.