Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton) We now move to the
third set of amendments. When I call the Minister to move the
motion, it would be useful if those who are trying to catch my eye
indicate they wish to speak. After Clause 54 Accountability of
public authorities: duties on police workforce Kit Malthouse I beg
to move that this House disagrees with Lords amendment 71. Madam
Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton) With this it will be...Request free trial
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
We now move to the third set of amendments. When I call the
Minister to move the motion, it would be useful if those who are
trying to catch my eye indicate they wish to speak.
After Clause 54
Accountability of public authorities: duties on police
workforce
I beg to move that this House disagrees with Lords amendment
71.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Lords amendment 74, and Government amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendment 88, and Government amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendment 73, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 80, Government motion to disagree, and Government
amendments (a) to (f) to the words so restored to the Bill.
Lords amendment 81, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 82, and Government motion to disagree.
Lords amendment 87, Government motion to disagree, and Government
amendments (a) to (f) to the words so restored to the Bill.
Lords amendments 89 and 146, Government motions to disagree, and
Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.
Lords amendment 143, Government motion to disagree, and
Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu.
Lords amendments 75 to 79, 83 to 86, 90 to 93, 118 to 120 and
148.
Lords amendment 71 would introduce a duty of candour for the
police workforce. I am sure that hon. Members know that the
Government take police integrity and accountability extremely
seriously. So much so that, in February 2020, we introduced a
statutory duty of co-operation for serving police officers as
part of wider integrity reforms.
A failure to co-operate in that way constitutes a breach of the
statutory standards of professional behaviour by which all
officers must abide and could therefore result in a formal
disciplinary sanction. It is our view that the duty to co-operate
puts a greater onus on officers than the duty of candour provided
for in the Lords amendment, as they could ultimately be dismissed
for a breach. In essence, the Lords is proposing a dilution.
Hon. Members will also be aware of the Government’s forthcoming
response to the Daniel Morgan independent panel and to Bishop
James Jones’ report concerning the bereaved Hillsborough
families’ experiences, and we will set out our view on a wider
duty of candour for all public authorities. Before the Government
respond to those reports, however, it is clearly imperative that
the Hillsborough families are given the opportunity to share
their views.
None the less, we are closely monitoring the impact of the new
legislation on police co-operation with inquiries and
investigations. As we consider the case for a wider duty of
candour for other public servants and bodies, we will determine
whether there are gaps in the existing framework that need to be
filled to ensure public confidence. I assure the House that we
will set out our conclusions later this year.
Before I turn to the Lords amendments to part 3 of the Bill, I
point out to hon. Members that over the last couple of years,
with regard to public order, we have all seen that the police
have struggled with some of the demonstrations that we have seen
on our streets. Last autumn, Insulate Britain’s new tactics put a
lot of police officers in danger, caused a significant amount of
misery to many thousands of people who simply wanted to get to
work or to otherwise go about their daily lives, and were
difficult to address. Since, we have seen further examples of
wholly unacceptable forms of protest. I am afraid that their
lordships may regret the day that they voted down the significant
number of measures that we had inserted in the Bill.
The House of Lords did, however, recognise that freedom of speech
and assembly are qualified rights under the European convention
on human rights, and there are times when it is appropriate to
restrict those rights to protect the rights of non-protesters.
For that reason, we are sympathetic to Lords amendment 143, which
would introduce fast-track public space protection orders. The
Government have listened to the concerns raised in the other
place about the harm caused by disruptive protests outside
schools and vaccination centres. We agree in principle with the
amendment, and our amendments (a) to (c) in lieu of Lords
amendment 143 will have a similar effect but will ensure that
provision for expedited PSPOs works with the grain of the
existing legislative framework.
I very much look forward to the tightening of the laws, but I am
also conscious that I look for balance. As one who has protested
on the streets of Northern Ireland on many occasions—legally—with
an important desire to do so, I ask whether the Minister feels
that the balance is right in this legislation. In our words, the
right to protest should be done in a peaceful manner, not to
obstruct anybody.
I do indeed believe that the balance is right, but the hon.
Gentleman does not have to take my word for it. Her Majesty’s
inspectorate of constabulary and fire & rescue services was
specifically tasked with looking at the balance of legislation
and protest. After some examination, it decided that the balance
had swung too far in favour of protest and too much away from the
rights of others to go about their daily lives.
(Hereford and South
Herefordshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend knows that I have real concerns about the
noisy protest legislation. How often does he expect it to be
applied and how many past protests have been subject to something
like that kind of police discretion?
Obviously, it is hard for me to predict how often these things
will be used. I will come on to talk about the noise provision
more specifically, but it is worth pointing out that it is not
common for conditions to be placed on protest generally. The
National Police Chiefs’ Council tells us that in the three months
to April ’21, there were 2,500 protests, and conditions were put
on them no more than a dozen times. The Metropolitan police has
confirmed that in 2019—hon. Members have to remember that in
London, a protest takes place pretty much every day, and
sometimes several in one day—it put conditions on only 15 times
and, in 2020, only six times. Admittedly, 2020 saw a suppressed
number of protests because of the pandemic, but this is
nevertheless rare, and the police take care in placing such
conditions.
Will the Minister give way?
I will make a little bit of progress.
On my previous point about the Lords accepting the need for
protection outside schools and vaccination centres, we believe it
should not just be people working in those two types of facility
who are protected from highly disruptive protests. The Government
continue to believe it is essential that the police are able in
some circumstances to place conditions on protests to prevent
noise causing serious harm or impinging on the rights of others.
The vast majority of protests in England and Wales will be
unaffected by this legislation. The power may be used only in the
most exceptional circumstances where police assess the noise from
protests to be unjustifiable and damaging to others. I can assure
the House that conditions will, by law, be imposed only where
necessary and proportionate, with due consideration to all our
freedoms of expression and assembly. The police are already
legally bound to assess this balance with the powers they
currently have.
Several hon. Members rose—
I will come to the hon. Members in a moment.
I am sure that all hon. Members will recall vividly how
proceedings in St Margaret’s church were intruded on by
protesters’ noise when we were paying our respects to our
colleague . I am not sure we could call
that intrusion damaging; if anything, it made us sing all the
loudly and filled the church with an air of defiance as we
mourned. However, we have to reflect on the fact that
developments in amplification mean that noise can be used as a
weapon and can cause significant psychological damage. This is
why most local authorities have a noise enforcement team with
powers to act. We need to recognise that, in a protest situation,
noise could be used to make worship, business or residence
impossible in particular premises, and our fellow citizens would
expect protection from the police in those circumstances.
To assure the House that there will be an objective standard
rather than a subjective one, can the Minister explain either
what decibel level there would have to be or for how long such a
noise nuisance would have to continue for enforcing the powers to
be reasonable and objective?
As the House would expect, we are not prescribing limits in the
way the hon. Gentleman is asking for, not least because the
varying circumstances with which the police are presented mean
that hard and fast rules do not necessary obtain. For example, it
could be that one person with an amplifier attempting to drown
out—I do not know—pursuit of worship in a particular church,
temple or synagogue could be deemed over time to be a nuisance,
and therefore be damaging and impinging on the rights of worship
of others, whereas a crowd of individuals outside making a
similar noise for a shorter time may not. As I have just laid
out, I did not regard the noise that intruded on our grief in St
Margaret’s as damaging—I would not have thought that that hit the
bar—but if someone was outside the hon. Gentleman’s constituency
office protesting day in, day out with a large and powerful
amplifier, he might quite rightly in those circumstances seek
protection from the police or indeed from the local authority.
There is a series of these situations that the police are now
presented with because of developments in amplification.
Would the Minister acknowledge that our public order laws already
make it harder to protest than in practically any other
democracy, and that the kind of legislation he is bringing in
now, as we have just seen, is completely subjective and puts the
police in an impossible position? Laws already exist to deal with
the so-called problems that he is raising. This is about throwing
red meat to his Back Benchers so that he can try to get a bit
more popularity, and it stinks.
I do not know who is throwing the red meat here, but it is
certainly not me. Obviously the hon. Lady has a constituency that
will lap up her remarks, no doubt released on social media. In
truth, the police have been asking for some time for improvements
to the elderly public order legislation. We put the measures
through consideration by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of
Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, which felt they were
proportionate and sensible for us to pursue.
The Minister is implying that the police and Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services in some
way wanted this new noise trigger. Will he accept that I am
correct when I say that neither the police, nor Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services,
requested the noise trigger at all?
The inspectorate obviously would not request that because that is
not its job, but we certainly asked it to look at the balance
that we are trying to present with what I think are relatively
modest improvements to public order legislation. Indeed, from
memory of the report, it felt we should go further, which we are
unable to do because of the structure of the Bill. That means
that on the rare occasion where noise is causing other people’s
rights to be impinged on, and where worship or business or
residence is impossible, we would seek protection.
10.15pm
I understand that hon. Members are concerned about this issue.
There have been all sorts of wild claims about the Government
stopping singing in the street and that sort of rubbish, but I
ask hon. Members to think of situations where they might seek
protection of their own rights from the police, in circumstances
where noise is being used as a weapon. Because of developments in
amplification over the past 10 or 15 years, amplifiers are
smaller, easier to move around, and much louder than they were,
and we have seen occasions where they have been used offensively
to stop other people going about their business.
I think it would help me, and it might help others in the
Chamber, if the Minister would consider putting in place a
review, perhaps a year or two years into the use of this power,
if the House chooses to grant it.
I am happy to commit to reviewing the offence. I would love to
put a time limit on it but, as I said when I outlined the number
of times conditions would be met, this measure may be used on
only a very small number of occasions. We will have to consider
the range of situations in which it is used, and obviously review
it as we do with all public order legislation. We take very
seriously the fact that protest is a fundamental building block
of any liberal democracy, and now more than ever that is writ
large. This is an important freedom for us in this country, and I
am sure that lots of Members from all side of the House have been
on protests of all kinds over the years. We must ensure that
legislation moves with the times and reflects changes in
technology, and that we give the police the powers they need,
albeit in rare and often exceptional circumstances.
(Newton Abbot) (Ind)
The Minister is being generous in accepting interventions. Does
he think that, while well intended, the Bill may have the
unintended consequence that individuals who think they are within
the law in the way they demonstrate, because of the Bill’s
subjectivity find themselves unexpectedly criminalised? That for
them would be devastating.
No, not necessarily—[Laughter.] No, no. As a former Westminster
councillor and London Assembly member for central London, who was
subjected to dozens of protests of all sizes, shapes and forms, I
would encourage all people who are protesting, wherever they are,
to engage with the police first and discuss their own safety and
the safety of others. In any democracy it is responsible to
ensure that people give forewarning of what they are about to
do.
(Islington North) (Ind)
Does the Minister appreciate that many people listening to this
debate will be very suspicious of his words? They will see in the
proposed regulations and discussions with the police a
fundamental desire by him and his Government to shut down,
control, and eliminate protest within our society. People have a
right to protest, a right to make their voices heard, and a right
to dissent. Surely that is fundamental to a democratic society.
It is no good praising people in Russia if we close down protest
here.
Of course we are not closing down protest. The right hon.
Gentleman is right that people have a fundamental right to
dissent, to protest and to make their views known in the public
sphere as they do in the private sphere, but, as the House of
Lords and the European Court of Human Rights have said, the right
to protest is not unqualified, and I am afraid that, in the last
couple of years, we have seen protestors using tactics that are
massively disruptive to other people’s lives. People just wanting
to go about their business have been so frustrated that they have
been leaping out of their cars and taking things into their own
hands. We have seen protestors running on to the fast lane of
motorways, causing danger to themselves and motorists, and
distracting police officers from stopping people from being
stabbed or burgled in all our neighbourhoods. We have a duty to
address that, and the role of the House and that 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 modest
measures.
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister give way?
No. I have given way lots of times. There will be many speakers,
and I do not want to use up all the time. We have only got until
midnight to get through all of this stuff. I will move on from
the noise powers, which, as I say, we think will be used only in
exceptional circumstances but must be available given changes in
amplification.
Lords amendment 80 would prevent the alignment of the police’s
ability to place conditions on public assembly with their
existing powers to place conditions on public processions.
HMICFRS found that a distinction between processions and
assemblies was no longer appropriate. In the light of the
practical challenges of safely policing protests, there is an
unjustifiable inconsistency in the current law. When does a
procession become an assembly and vice versa?
Lords amendments 74 to 79 implement a recommendation to the
Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee to the effect
that the term “serious disruption” should be defined in the Bill
rather than in regulations. I trust that the amendments have
allayed the concerns raised by my right hon. Friend the Member
for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who is not in her place, in our
previous debates on the matter.
I am afraid that Lords amendments 81 and 82 arise from a
misunderstanding of the effect of the provisions in clause 58,
which are designed, in the words of the Joint Committee on Human
Rights, to protect the rights of access to the parliamentary
estate for those with business there. The changes to the Police
Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, which governs
prohibited activities in the vicinity of Parliament, will not
prevent protests outside Parliament, nor will they prevent the
Greater London Authority from authorising assemblies outside
Parliament. Clause 58 will simply enable a police officer to
direct an individual to cease or not to begin obstructing the
passage of a vehicle into or out of the parliamentary estate.
That is extremely important for those who are disabled or
otherwise need a vehicle to access the estate, either to work
here or to exercise their democratic rights. We expect police
officers to use their sound judgements to determine when it is
appropriate to make use of the power, and I do not see how it can
lead to a prohibition of any kind on protests outside Parliament.
Lords amendments 81 and 82 are therefore unnecessary.
Lords amendment 88 is a stripped-out version of the Government’s
proposal to increase the maximum penalty for those who obstruct
the highway. It would limit the increase in the maximum penalties
to the obstruction of the strategic road network. Many major
roads lie outside the SRN; indeed, some 98% of all roads in
England do not form part of it. Were we to limit the increase in
the maximum penalty in that way, protestors could continue to
cause extensive and wholly disproportionate disruption to
commuters and parents dropping their children off at school
without facing sentences proportionate to the harm they have
caused. Amendment (a) to Lords amendment 88 will ensure that the
full extent of our road network is protected with the increase in
maximum penalties.
(Gower) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
I thought I was going to get away with it. Yes, go on.
The Minister talks about the cost of demonstrations—those on the
road networks in particular—to people’s lives, and he has made
statements about the costs of those protests. I tabled a written
question asking him what assessment has been made of the cost to
the public purse of the prison sentences being given out to
Insulate Britain activists. That is a problem, because those
sentences are not proportionate to what is happening. Surely
there are better ways that are more cost-effective.
At the moment, those incarcerations are at the behest of a judge
in a civil matter relating to the injunctions, and there is
nothing that the Government can necessarily do about that.
However, I point out that deterring people from such action may
result in cost savings further down the line for the wider
population. I urge Opposition Members, and anybody looking at
this issue, to ask themselves whether they believe that protests
should not be restrained in any way, shape or form, or that there
is a balance to be struck. If they believe, as the ECHR does, and
as the House of Lords has accepted in some of its amendments to
the Bill, that a balance should be struck, the only question is
where.
Our view, which is backed up by evidence from HMI and elsewhere,
is that the balance has swung too far away from the general
public, who want to go about their lives, recognising the very
many important issues that are raised by protest. While they
acknowledge those problems, they want to get on with their lives,
and they want protection from the state of their right to get to
school, to hospital and to work. That is not a right to be taken
lightly. One of the most frustrating things about some of these
protests has been their self-defeating result. Notwithstanding
the cause, important or otherwise, the protestors have turned off
millions of their fellow citizens and caused a level of
intolerance towards issues such as climate change, which is
regrettable. We have a job to balance those rights, and that is
what we are attempting to do.
(Leeds North West)
(Lab/Co-op)
The Minister seeks to take public opinion as a whole, but people
have had to take these matters into their own hands because air
quality is killing their children, and because of the
Government’s inaction on the very simple act of insulating
housing. The proportionality is in the wrong place, and he is
seeking to take on public opinion where it does not exist. If the
Government took the right actions, surely there would be no need
for the protests in the first place. People should be allowed to
protest proportionately.
We cannot operate a democracy on the basis that, unless the
Government agree with everything that someone wants, they will
protest. It is a crazy thing to say, I am afraid. Much progress
in this country has been brought about by protest, but much more
has been brought about by political campaigning and winning
elections. Frankly, if someone wants to make a change in the
country, as all Opposition Members are proving, that is the way
to go about it. I hope that the House will appreciate that we are
trying hard to strike a balance between competing rights.
Will the Minister give way?
No, I have given away enough; I have to move on. We acknowledge
the fundamental importance of the right to protest in this
country. We live in a liberal democracy. The right of someone to
dissent and to go out on the street and make their views known is
critical, but so is my right to get to hospital, to work or to
church, and to do so without somebody blasting me out with noise.
We have been balancing competing rights for decades, if not
centuries, in this country. We are a mature democracy that can
cope with that kind of responsibility—have no fear. We are ringed
around by independent courts, a bicameral Parliament, all sorts
of checks and balances on the power of Government to strike this
balance, legislation, and our participation in supranational
treaties. There are lots of ways that we protect ourselves and
our human rights, but in the end, fundamentally, all democratic
Governments have to strike that balance, and that is what we are
attempting to do.
Lords amendments 118 to 120 give effect to a commitment made by
the Prime Minister following the final of Euro 2020, in response
to disgraceful online racist abuse directed at certain England
players. The amendments would enable a court to impose a football
banning order against persons convicted of online hate offences
connected to football. That will prevent such offenders from
spreading their criminal, hateful views at football matches, and
I very much hope that the measure will also deter others from
engaging in similar behaviours that are so harmful to victims and
to our national game.
Lords amendments 89 and 146 would repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824.
The Government are committed to ending rough sleeping, and as a
result of our actions we have seen an historic reduction in rough
sleeping in recent years. We agree that no one should be
criminalised simply for sleeping rough, and that the time has
indeed come to repeal the antiquated Vagrancy Act 1824. I know
that that sentiment is keenly shared by a number of hon. Members.
I pay tribute to the campaign that has been run by my hon. Friend
the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (), my right hon. Friend the
Member for Newark (), my hon. Friend the Member
for Harrow East () and my predecessor in my constituency of North West
Hampshire, Lord Young, in the other place.
However, we must balance our role in providing essential support
for the vulnerable with ensuring that we do not weaken the
ability of the police to intervene where needed. Therefore, while
our amendments in lieu will provide for the Vagrancy Act to be
repealed in full in England and Wales, we intend to enact
replacement legislation in the coming Session before bringing the
repeal of the 1824 Act into force. To allow for that, and
ultimately to ensure that the police have the tools they need, we
will delay commencement of the repeal for up to 18 months. In the
meantime, we will publish a bold new strategy to end rough
sleeping. The strategy will set up how we will ensure that rough
sleeping is prevented in the first instance and is effectively
responded to in the rare cases where it does occur, and that our
police have the ability to intervene where needed and keep
everybody safe, including the person at issue.
10.30pm
As with the previous group of amendments, it is again the case
that the House of Lords has made some helpful improvements to the
Bill, but we reject their watering down of the public order
provisions in part 3 and their dilution of the existing duty on
police officers to co-operate with public inquiries and other
investigations.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. We have very limited time, so after the next speaker from
the Opposition Front Bench there will be a time limit of five
minutes. I suspect that that may have to come down during the
course of the debate. Priority will be given to people who have
not spoken previously.
I want to begin by making a comment in this House on the
Government’s procedure in the other place. The Government tried
to sideline the Commons from its role in the democratic process
by bringing into the Lords substantial but last-minute amendments
on protests that would have had a fundamental impact on our
rights. The Lords had very little time to scrutinise them and
that is generally considered to be very poor form. Instead of
chasing headlines and rushing in last-minute sweeping amendments
clearly not thought through, they should be focusing on driving
up prosecution rates, improving their woeful record on crime and
dealing with the problems that really matter to the British
people.
Labour voted against the Bill in its entirety on Second Reading
and Third Reading because of parts 3 and 4, which represent a
power grab that effectively bans peaceful protests and will
compound the inequalities experienced by Gypsies and Travellers.
I want to pay particular thanks to colleagues in the other place
who have stood up for democracy and prevented the draconian
provisions on protests that the Government tried to get through
at the last minute.
Before I come to the protest amendments, I want briefly to touch
on the other amendments in this grouping. First, we are grateful
that the Government have listened to reason on so many of our
amendments. I want to mention two in this grouping in particular.
I pay tribute to the hard work of Lord Bassam in pressuring the
Government to extend football banning orders to online racist
abuse in Lords amendments 148, 118, 119 and 120. Racists who
abuse football players do not deserve to be anywhere near a game
of football. The amendments send a strong message that
disgraceful racist behaviour has no place in the world of
football, online or in person.
We are also glad that Lords amendment 89, which will repeal the
Vagrancy Act 1824, has been accepted by the Government and that
they have finally decided to act. No one should be criminalised
simply for sleeping rough. But I hope the Minister can provide
some reassurance to the House that this crucial change will not
be kicked into the long grass and that the new legislation will
be brought in at the earliest opportunity.
I want to touch on Lords amendment 71. The Government are
refusing to introduce a duty of candour on police officers at
this stage to co-operate with inquiries. The Minister claimed
that the existing schedule on standards of professional behaviour
is sufficient, but we do not believe that it is. It states that
police officers must act with honesty and integrity, which of
course they should, but the amendment passed in the Lords goes
significantly further to ensure that where the police are
required to provide information to inquiries or other such
proceedings, they must have regard to the pleadings allegations
terms of reference and parameters of the relevant proceedings,
but not be limited by them, in particular where they hold
information that might change the ambit of the proceedings
inquiry or investigation. That is a really important distinction.
The Lords amendment goes significantly further than the statutory
duty of co-operation.
In June 2021, the Daniel Morgan independent panel, which took
eight years to report, recommended the creation of a statutory
duty of candour to be owed by all law enforcement agencies to
those whom they serve. It is time for decisions to be made and
for actions to be taken to restore public confidence in the
police service.
Part 4 of the Bill represents an attack on the Gypsy, Traveller
and Roma communities, even though the police have made it clear
that they neither want nor need these powers. The Government have
rejected our calls to remove part 4, and that is one of the major
reasons why we voted against the Bill in its entirety. Although
Lords amendments 91 to 93 are very small technical amendments,
they confirm the principles around the powers of seizure of
property that we Opposition Members believe are unfair.
The problem that many Government Members seem to articulate
whenever we debate this issue is actually one of antisocial
behaviour. The solution to antisocial behaviour, wherever it
comes, is tougher antisocial behaviour action. Under this
Government, we saw 1.7 million incidents in the year to September
2021 and nothing has been done. Marginalising an entire minority
is not the answer to antisocial behaviour. We need to distinguish
between the two and not criminalise a minority.
I turn to the Lords amendments on protest. Over the past five
days, thousands of people have been arrested and detained at
anti-war protests across Russia. We would all defend their right
to protest and yet here we are, in the mother of all democracies,
debating an amendment to a Bill that would criminalise singing at
a peaceful protest in this country. Britain has a long-standing
and important democratic freedom to gather and to speak or to
protest. The Minister quoted an HMICFRS report, but he
misunderstood its conclusions. The report said that we need a
“modest reset of the scales”
because police forces are usually good at planning protests but
the “balance may tip”. The report’s recommendations were not
legislative; they were to update and improve guidance to senior
police officers, to improve the way in which the police assess
the impact of protests, to improve police intelligence and to
improve debrief processes, all of which are very sensible.
The Government asked the HMICFRS to look at some legislative
options, which it did, and it gave some qualified support to some
of them, but at no point was noise any part of that conversation.
I have spoken to many senior police officers and at no point have
any of them asked for any changes to the law on noise. The Bill
goes way beyond the right balance between the right to protest
and the right for others, which we agree with, to go about their
daily lives.
(Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend concur that those who protested in Peterloo
were probably a little bit noisy, as were those who protested for
women’s suffrage and those who protested against the poll tax?
Indeed, she mentioned the international situation in Russia. This
is about freedom and democracy. I am sure that she would concur
with that.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who put it so well.
Protests occur so that people can be heard, and if people need to
be heard, they need to make a noise. I was particularly struck
over the weekend not only by the masses who have stood up against
an authoritarian state, but by the actions that the police have
had to take against those people. If we are to criminalise people
for exercising their rights, is that not just going down the same
path?
My hon. Friend is right: this is about getting the right balance.
We believe that the measures in part 3 of the Bill already
threaten that careful balance by putting too much power into the
hands of the Home Secretary, undermining rights, and hindering,
rather than helping, the police to do their job. Labour’s Lords
amendment 73 therefore focuses on the imposition of conditions
related to noise on public processions. It would omit subsections
(2) and (3) from clause 55, which broadens the circumstances in
which conditions can be imposed by a senior police officer based
on the noise generated by the people taking part and the impact
that that has on the people in the area. Essentially, part 3
provides a trigger for imposing conditions on public assemblies,
public processions and one-person protests if a protest is too
noisy. The Opposition want those provisions removed from the
Bill.
We also support Lords amendment 80, which was tabled by and removes clause 56 from the
Bill altogether, and we urge hon. Members to vote for Lords
amendment 81 to ensure that permission can be granted for major
protests in Parliament Square despite new rules on obstructing
vehicle access.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the level of nuisance caused by
any noise or vocalisation at a protest may be a matter not just
of decibels, but of content? Because somebody might perceive one
kind of content to be more of a nuisance than another, the level
of nuisance, in and of itself, is subjective.
That is an important point. The way the police interpret the laws
we give them will always be subjective to some degree. We have to
be very careful to define in law exactly what we mean, because
the police implement the laws we give them and their job needs to
be as clear as possible.
(Orkney and Shetland)
(LD)
If we consider what the future will hold if the House follows the
route that the Government suggest, there are two options: either
the police will be left constantly at odds with those who wish to
protest, or we will be left with legislation on the statute book
that the police do not want and will never use. In either
instance, what is the point?
That is a very valid point. On the noise issue, I cannot see that
the police will find a way to use the legislation. It would be a
waste of legislation: it would not be implemented.
The Government motion to disagree and amendments in lieu of Lords
amendment 80 would restore the original wording of clause 56 and
add a vague definition of “serious disruption” that would apply
to the noise provisions in the Bill. The Opposition do not
believe that it is adequate; it could apply to singing in the
street outside a place of worship or a transport facility. It
does not work, and we do not support it. Additionally, although
the provision would be in the Bill, the amendments in lieu would
allow the Home Secretary to change it at any point, so it is
slightly pointless.
On public spaces protection orders, the Opposition believe that
rather than introducing sweeping powers that could catch people
protesting against the closure of their local library or singing
songs in the street, the Government should focus on genuine
problems such as those considered in the clauses that Labour
introduced to stop intimidatory protests outside schools or
vaccine clinics. That is why we tabled a targeted amendment,
Lords amendment 143, so that schools, local councils and the NHS
could fast-track local buffer zones to prevent intimidatory
anti-vax protests outside schools and vaccine clinics. We won
that vote in the Lords and are pleased that, after a period of
inaction, the Government have accepted Labour’s proposals to
crack down on those dangerous protests and give schoolchildren
and NHS staff the protection that they need.
We also supported giving the courts the ability to increase
sentences if protesters put lives at risk by blocking motorways.
Labour’s Lords amendment 88 limits the Government’s original
amendment so that it applies only to motorways and A-roads rather
than to any highway, which could include a path. It is not
proportionate to apply a maximum six-month sentence to the
blocking of a grass verge or a public footpath. We need a
common-sense and balanced approach instead. The Government should
look at the HMICFRS report and focus on improving training,
guidance, co-ordination and resources to manage public order
policing as the inspectorate has recommended, rather than new
powers that either are too wide-ranging or replicate powers that
the police already have.
The point of protest is to capture attention. Protests are noisy
and sometimes annoying—I find them annoying; we all find it
annoying to have to listen to some of the ongoing singing that we
hear in this place—but they are fundamental to our democracy. If
the public order provisions on noise in the Bill had been in
place earlier, they would have stopped the suffragettes who
marched for the right to vote, the children shouting loudly for
action on climate change, or the Whitehall protesters against the
Russian invasion. That is why Labour will keep pushing to limit
the harmful provisions in this Bill.
There are elements of the Bill that we welcome, and it has been
improved thanks to the hard work of Labour colleagues and,
indeed, colleagues in all parts of the House. However, the
Government have included disproportionate and draconian
provisions that risk undermining our human rights and dividing
communities. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) is
not present, but if she were, she might say that there is a fine
line between being “popular” and being “populist”. We on these
Benches want to see the Government stop chasing headlines and get
back to the core duties of the Home Office: to keep people safe,
bring criminals to justice, and uphold the rights and
responsibilities of the rule of law.
10.45pm
I want to speak in particular about the issue of noisy protest,
but I should begin by saying that, as the Minister outlined very
well, there is a great deal of good in the Bill, covering many
different areas.
There are facts on which I think everyone in the House would
agree from the off. No one can doubt that in recent years the
capacity for effective protest has been dramatically enhanced by
technology, and enhanced a second time through the use of social
media. No one can doubt, I think, that there are irresponsible
and aggressive individuals and organisations who seek to inflict
the maximum interruption and difficulty on the lives of others in
the causes that they promote. And no one can doubt that the
public have a right to go about their business without undue
impediment. I do not think that any Member would contest those
points.
I thank the Minister for engaging with me on this issue and for
his clarifications this evening, both on the number of protests
that this measure would be likely to affect and on the
possibility of a review over a suitable but, I hope, not too long
period, but—in my view at least—the measure should not be on the
statute book. No serious case has been made that noise is a
genuine problem. The Minister has conceded, and one understands
why, that the measure is not likely to be used except in the
tiniest minority of cases. We therefore have to ask whether the
justification for it is adequate and proportionate. The offence
is still vague and poorly defined, which is never a good thing in
law. The police, as has been conceded, already have significant
legal powers in relation to protests, and I regret to say that,
worse, in some quarters they are the subject of a degree of
public mistrust, which may be increased by our adding to their
discretionary powers. Furthermore, I suspect that the measure
will be extremely difficult for the courts to handle and
adjudicate, even it proves to be compliant with article 11 of the
Human Rights Act. All those are conservative—with a small and a
large “c”—concerns that people might have about the operation of
the rule of law in this country.
When people in Kyiv are dying for their beliefs and for the
rights of freedom of speech and of association, the timing is
unfortunate. I understand the motivations, and I understand that
this has been lightly and sparingly applied, but an increase in
discretion to qualify rights of protest that have been
fundamental to our society and democratic traditions for hundreds
of years is, I think, highly regrettable.
Let me begin by speaking about Lords amendments 73 to 89, which
broadly cover the provisions in part 3, on public order. Part 3
does not technically extend to Scotland, but we are still very
keen to lend our voice of complete opposition. As I mentioned on
Second Reading, we support amendments that seek to mitigate the
worst elements of part 3 because they will have an impact on
everyone in these islands. We all have the right to speak up and
hold power to account, including anyone travelling from Scotland
to protest here, at the seat of power. While decisions are made
on behalf of the people of Scotland by this place—and we hope
that that may not be the case for much longer—the people of
Scotland must retain the right to protest outside it.
In the past, I have made the journey from Scotland to this place
to protest against many things, including the Iraq war, and I
genuinely look forward every week to seeing who will be outside
and what they will be bringing to the demonstration, whether I
agree with what they are demonstrating about or not. Who can
forget the wonderful WASPI women and the numerous noisy protests
they held in the streets around Parliament? Rosie Dickson from
WASPI Glasgow has told me how concerned she is that Scottish
women born in the 1950s who have been unfairly denied their
pensions by a Westminster Government now face
“having their human right to protest against it removed”.
They are being unfairly denied their right to their pensions, and
now unfairly denied their right to object to that.
We support Lords amendments 73, 80 to 82 and 87, which I will
speak to. I have concerns about Lords amendment 88, although on
balance it is probably better than what was there before. Lords
amendment 73 would remove subsections (2) and (3) from clause 55,
which, unamended, would allow the police to impose conditions on
a protest if they had a reasonable belief that the noise
generated by the participants in the protest may result in
“serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which
are carried on in the vicinity of the procession”,
or may have a significant and
“relevant impact on persons in the vicinity”.
The attention these noise restrictions have received from the
wider public and the media is telling. Everybody knows that
protests are noisy—that is how people get their point across. The
louder they shout, the more we listen. Every day we are
witnessing people protesting against the atrocities in Ukraine.
Why on earth would we usher in legislation to curtail that?
Mr Carmichael
The hon. Lady will have heard the noisy protests in this Chamber
every Wednesday between 12 and 12.30. We are okay, because we are
protected by parliamentary privilege, but surely if Conservative
Members want to end noisy protests, they should be prepared to
practise what they preach.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Some of us do try to keep that under control. We try our very
best amid a lack of co-operation.
I was trying to find a way to work that into what I was saying,
so I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that.
We know that without demos and protests, a lot of things would
not change. The Minister said that things changed through
political campaigning and getting elected, but actually things
change because people in local communities rise up and tell us
what they want us to do. That is how democracy should
function.
(Glasgow Central)
(SNP)
My hon. Friend is making some very good points on the importance
of protests. One of the most significant protests in my
constituency of late was when the people of Kenmure Street came
together to try to stop their neighbours being removed from their
homes by the Home Office. Does she agree that the Government
should be trying to protect that kind of protest—the community
involved and standing up for what is right for their
neighbours—not trying to remove it?
I absolutely do, because if people feel empowered by being part
of that democracy, other than getting to vote every four years,
that can only be a good thing.
The notion that the police can intervene on any kind of noise
threshold—as we have heard, we do not know what the threshold
is—puts the fundamental right to protest at risk. This Bill will
create a situation where people who are simply trying to have
their voices heard will be dragged into the criminal justice
system. We are going to need extremely large prisons by the time
this Government have finished with all this legislation. The
reduced knowledge threshold, where a person ought to have known
that restrictions were in force, is an Orwellian nightmare. A
protester will have to second-guess how the authorities will
judge their behaviour.
The language used in clause 55 is vague at best: “serious
unease”, “alarm” and “distress”. A protest may seem more alarming
or distressing to one police officer than to another. This hands
far too much discretion to the police, and there is a point when
too much discretion becomes a burden. That was echoed by former
police chiefs and senior officers, who have warned against the
political pressure that this Bill will place on frontline
officers. If the police do not think these powers are necessary,
why do the Government? As we have heard from a number of
speakers, the powers already exist for them to deal sufficiently
with a protest that could result in serious public disorder,
serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of
the community. I just do not think the Government have made a
good enough argument that the powers are insufficient. For those
reasons, we support Lords amendment 73.
We also support Lords amendment 80, which would remove the
police’s ability to impose greater conditions on static
demonstrations. The Public Order Act 1986 was careful to
delineate and differentiate the conditions that can be imposed on
static demonstrations and those that can be imposed on a march or
moving protest, which is sensible as it reflects the relative
ease with which a static demonstration can be policed. Clause 56,
which the amendment seeks to remove, will see the distinction
removed.
In the words of Big Brother Watch, clause 56 could potentially
hand the police
“unfettered discretion to impose any condition they see fit
including, for example, restrictions on the words or slogans that
can be expressed on placards.”
That is a democratic outrage. This is an attempt by the
Government to level the distinction between static and moving
protests. As they tend to do, they are levelling down, not
levelling up. For that reason, we support Lords amendment 80.
We also lend support to Lords amendment 87, which removes the
police’s ability to impose conditions on a one-person protest.
What a situation. The might of the Government and their
legislative power is bearing down on single protesters, which is
ridiculous and disproportionate in equal measure. Worryingly, it
has the potential to snare anyone who even stops to engage with
that protester as committing a criminal offence. As I said, we
are going to need much larger prisons.
Lords amendment 88 would narrow the scope of the offence of
wilful obstruction of the highway to include only highways that
are part of the strategic road network. We are caught in a trap
where, on the one hand, I am glad to see this offence is
restricted to the strategic road network but, on the other hand,
I am alarmed to see the associated sentence increased from a fine
to 51 weeks’ imprisonment—much larger prisons. This amendment is
targeted at some very specific protesters whom we have all
witnessed taking their protests to the streets and roads, but I
feel this severe penalty has the potential to create a chilling
effect—I have used that term all too often in the past six months
during our consideration of the Judicial Review and Courts Bill
and the Nationality and Borders Bill, although, from what I am
hearing from the other place tonight, there is now not much left
of the latter.
Turning to Government amendments 90 to 93, I am disappointed that
the only amendments to part 4, on unauthorised encampments,
appear to be technical clarifying amendments that do nothing to
row back on the measures expanding the criminalisation of
trespass and the accompanying police powers. Again, this is an
area where existing powers are available to the police. This is
more to do with targeting a minority than targeting trespass.
We know this Bill will disproportionately interfere with the
right of respect for the private and family life of Gypsy, Roma
and Traveller groups. The new seizure powers in respect of
vehicles—vehicles often being the home of Gypsies and Travellers,
in particular—are very likely to mean that people will end up
facing homelessness. I can only hope that, in mitigation, the
Government will focus on providing further support and funding to
local authorities across these islands for authorised sites and
implementing a national sites strategy. They might want to speak
to the Scottish Government about some of their work on this. The
Court of Appeal has set out that this community has an enshrined
freedom to move from one place to another, and that the state has
a positive obligation to protect Gypsy, Roma and Traveller
communities’ traditional way of life.
What are the Government so afraid of? From the man outside
Parliament today adorned in plastic bottles to make a point about
the overuse of plastics, to the many who finally found their
voice in the last two years through the Black Lives Matter
movement, and who are using that voice to make a very simple
point that black lives matter every bit as much as white lives.
From our Ukrainian brothers and sisters here on these islands who
feel so helpless right now and who need to come together to
protest against what is happening in their country, to people who
simply wish to save the planet. What are the Government so afraid
of? Well, I thank and applaud those protesters. This Government
want to stop and criminalise them.
(Newark) (Con)
I will be brief and speak to two issues: first, in praise and
thanks; and secondly, by way of caution.
In praise and thanks, I am delighted that the Government have
accepted the amendment moved in the other place by the noble
and the noble Lord Young
repealing the Vagrancy Act 1824.
Almost 200 years ago, as the cities were filling with the
dispossessed at the end of the Napoleonic wars, our forebears in
this place came together and passed a piece of legislation that
today seems anachronistic and wrong. As a result of the votes
later tonight, we will consign that legislation to history. Our
understanding of rough sleeping and homelessness has transformed
unrecognisably over the course of those two centuries. Today, we
see it as a crisis of housing, of health, of social justice and
of the criminal justice system. We do not see it as a criminal
offence for someone to find themselves sleeping rough on the
streets, and we should not live in a country where it is a
criminal offence.
11.00pm
I am grateful to the Minister for his remarks earlier. He has
been exceptionally helpful to me, to my hon. Friends the Members
for Harrow East () and for Cities of London and Westminster () and to others across the
House who have taken this issue seriously. I urge him to make
sure that this legislation is repealed as swiftly as possible, as
there is no good argument for further delay. When I was Secretary
of State I heard it argued that there may be some powers in the
Vagrancy Act that need to be retained and modernised, but I have
not seen any convincing arguments to back that up, so whatever
review or consultation takes place, I hope that it is done
quickly. I suspect that it will conclude that no further powers
are required. I hope then that this part of the Bill will be
commenced as quickly as possible, because we as a House will have
done a good thing, and our society will have moved forward.
By way of caution, I will just speak briefly to the point about
noisy protest. To me, the right to protest is fundamental to a
free society. None of us enjoys being the subject of protests. In
my time as a Minister, I was the subject of protests. They can be
awkward and difficult and they can be noisy—the protests outside
the Russian embassy were noisy this weekend—but we do have to
exercise great caution when we start to limit those freedoms.
In the past week or two, I have been thinking about Canada,
another great liberal society, and the way in which the protests
in Ottawa were handled, or rather mishandled, by the Canadian
Government. Even in a society that we might respect, admire and
see ourselves akin to, Governments, police forces and law
authorities can make mistakes. I echo the comments of my right
hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire
(), but wonder whether the
Government are going too far in this respect. I accept his
comments that this measure is very unlikely to be used often; it
may never be used at all. For that reason, I wonder whether it is
the right step to put it onto the statute book. I will not be
voting against the Government and opposing the measure tonight,
but I do hope that the Minister or his successors will carry
forward their commitment to review this in the years ahead,
because I suspect that this measure is a step too far and that we
are pushing up against the limits of what we as a free society
should be doing, particularly in the context of what we see
around the world, where we want to be a shining light for liberty
and freedom.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I shall have to reduce the time limit to three minutes if there
is a chance for most people to make a short contribution.
(Bradford East) (Lab)
I rise to speak in favour of Lords amendments 73 and 80.
Like many of my hon. Friends, I marched and protested in
opposition to the Iraq war. They were some of the largest and
most important protests that we have ever seen. Anyone who
attended or saw them would agree they were big, they were noisy
and, by their very nature, they caused some disruption. None the
less, it was absolutely right that the people were allowed to
protest against one of the biggest injustices of our time, even
if it was in direct opposition to the policy of the Government.
Let us be clear: if protests of this kind, or protests such as
those against the poll tax, were to take place today under the
measures in the Bill, there would be a real fear that they could
be stopped by this Government.
As has been reiterated time and again in this Chamber, the right
to peaceful protest, however disruptive it may be to Ministers
and Members of Parliament, is one of the fundamental tenets of
our democracy. Yet the restrictions that the Government want to
impose in the Bill would allow the police to render protests
inert, amounting to what is an effective ban. Of course, we have
yet to be given any clarity about why the Government are giving
themselves such draconian powers, especially when the Government
and the police already have ample powers to prevent protests that
threaten public order and to take action against those protests
they deem disruptive.
It could not be clearer that the powers that the Government want
to hand themselves are an extreme overreach, which should leave
us all worried about their ability to stifle popular protests
against their policies. The reality is that these measures are
nothing more than a petty vengeance against protesters by
Ministers who are too thin-skinned to accept any criticism.
Frankly, they are measures that put the protection of ministerial
egos and business interests before the protection of human
rights, as part of an intentional journey towards the creation of
a Big Brother state that stifles protest and dissent.
Let there be no doubt: this is an extraordinary ideological
attack on our civil liberties, with draconian laws, from the
undermining of our trade unions to the taking away of our British
citizenship without notice, all passed by this Government to curb
our freedoms and restrict our rights. That is why this Government
must be challenged on every occasion to stop the further erosion
of our civil liberties.
(Cities of London and
Westminster) (Con)
In the time given, I wish to speak on Government amendments (a)
and (b) to the Bill in lieu of Lords amendments 189 and 146. Of
course, I am speaking about the amendment to repeal the Vagrancy
Act 1824, which brings us a massive step closer to ending rough
sleeping and would drastically change how we view and help those
on the streets.
For almost 200 years, the criminalisation of the homeless has
shamed our country, but at long last the Vagrancy Act’s days are
numbered. I thank the Minister for his constructive discussions
with me, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark () for being beside me, both
when he was on the Front Bench and now on the Back Benches,
fighting for the repeal of the Vagrancy Act.
I know there has been some concern in our discussions about the
Vagrancy Act’s disappearing and our inability to deal with
aggressive begging. I want to make the point that there are
powers in place today in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and
Policing Act 2014 which are now used by the police in the
majority of cases against aggressive begging. It should be no
surprise, therefore, that arrests and prosecutions under the
Vagrancy Act have plummeted since 2014. From the conversations I
have had with the Met and the City of London Police, I believe
alternative powers to deal with aggressive begging are already
available.
I am a pragmatist, so I accept the Government’s position of
seeking a thorough and comprehensive review, but I ask the
Minister to ensure that that is done quickly and concisely; up to
18 months is a very long time, so I ask him to please bring it
forward. I hope that during the review he and the Home Secretary
might consider revising the specific guidance on aggressive
begging under the 2014 Act. I would welcome his response on
that.
Finally, in my constituency of the Cities of London and
Westminster we have the largest number of rough sleepers in the
United Kingdom. I hope that the repeal of the Vagrancy Act will
send a clear message to those sleeping on the street, tonight and
every night that we will help and support them to turn their
lives around and we will no longer criminalise them.
(Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
I am really proud to represent Sheffield Hallam for so many
reasons, but one that is particularly relevant to today’s debate
is the city’s long and proud tradition of protest. In the 1800s,
Sheffield’s Chartists took part in mass demonstrations, holding
nightly meetings in Sheffield’s Paradise Square to protest
against the then royal ban on open-air meetings. Sheffield played
a pivotal role in the struggle for women’s suffrage, and our
city’s suffragettes took to the streets time and again to fight
for the right to vote. My point is that protests have formed the
world around us. They are the reason that I stand here today.
They have made our world a better place. Protest is often the
start of change. Yes, it is often loud and often messy, because
people have been ignored for too long and we need to listen.
Without protests, our country would be unrecognisable. Women
would not have won the vote. There would be no NHS. Parliament
would be less democratic. The right to protest is a person’s
right to shape the world around them—to stand up for what they
believe is right and to oppose what they believe is wrong. It is
a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy. As such, the Police,
Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is a flagrant attack on the
core principles of that democracy. When this Bill was first
proposed, we rightly saw people come together and spread out into
the streets because what was being proposed was utterly
draconian. I am proud to have worked with the Bishop of Sheffield
and many others to talk about how this will impact on Sheffield’s
history but also our future.
Having heard what has happened in the other place, I am glad that
several amendments have been proposed that would mitigate the
worst impacts of the Bill—particularly amendment 73 removing the
ability of the police to impose noise-based restrictions on
public processions, amendment 80 on giving police the power to
impose greater conditions on static demonstrations, and amendment
87 removing their ability to impose conditions on one-person
protests. The idea that one person cannot protest or should not
be allowed to express themselves is completely at odds with what
our democracy should stand for.
We live in a climate and ecological emergency where the future is
not only for our country but for the whole planet, and it will be
determined by the actions that are taken over the next few years.
It is absolutely right that people should be able to hold us to
account by raising their voices on our inaction. We have seen a
brilliant wave of young people standing up for our
environment—for a liveable planet for future generations. We
should hold on to those thoughts as we protect protest.
(Harrow East) (Con)
I rise to consider Lords amendments 89 and 146 and the
Government’s amendments in lieu. I congratulate my right hon.
Friend the Member for Newark () and my hon. Friend the
Member for Cities of London and Westminster () on their speeches on this
subject. I declare my interest as the co-chairman of the
all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness.
There are two aspects to the Vagrancy Act. The first, of course,
is being homeless. I have always taken the view that someone
should be assisted and not arrested if they have nowhere to live.
That is one of the reasons it is desperately important that we
end the Vagrancy Act as fast as we possibly can. One of the
considerations is that when we go and speak to people who are
homeless, rough sleeping on the street, they will say that they
fear authority—they fear the police. They should not fear the
police; the police should be able to assist in trying to direct
them to charities or other bodies that can help them to find a
secure place to live instead of their being threatened with
either being moved on or literally being arrested. That is one of
the most important reasons why we want this off the statute book
as fast as possible.
The other aspect is begging. Antisocial behaviour, begging under
false pretence of need, forcing others to beg and trespassing are
all outlawed under our much more modern legal actions. The police
have the powers to deal with this without using the Vagrancy Act,
but they will use it because it is a catch-all. In 2014, 2,219
people were prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act, but in 2019 this
dropped to 742, demonstrating that we do not need it any more and
we must get rid of it.
During the pandemic, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark
led the way on ensuring that everyone was taken off the streets,
for which I commend him and the whole Department. However, the
rough sleeper count is now back to 4,500—half what it was in 2019
but still far too high.
I am glad that the Government have given way, finally, on
abolishing the Vagrancy Act, but I am worried, because we cannot
afford to wait 18 months. We will then reach the 200th
anniversary of that Act being brought in, which was way before
any of us were thought of, let alone born. The reality is,
Minister, that you are considering the introduction of a new Bill
that will delay things yet further. Can you give us—
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
“Can he give us”.
11.15pm
Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will the Minister make sure that the
consultation is very short? I see no reason to extend it beyond
four weeks, and then the measure can be introduced and we can get
rid of that Act once and for all.
(Oxford West and Abingdon)
(LD)
Much of what the Liberal Democrats have issue with in the Bill
has been covered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney
and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) in previous consideration. We are
making a dangerous and draconian move today. We are told that it
will be small steps, and I hope that is true, but in the light of
what is happening in Ukraine, it is not a good look.
I will focus today on a chink of light in the Bill—a piece of
positivity to take home with us tonight—which is the Vagrancy Act
and Government amendment 146. I am delighted, genuinely, that the
Government have tabled the amendment. It is four years and 21
days since I asked the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member
for Maidenhead (Mrs May), a question about the Vagrancy Act. I
laid the first repeal Bill on that day, and there have been three
since then and countless homelessness Ministers—we have lost
count. I know that the Government want to claim credit for all
these things like they were all their idea, and that is fine, but
I end with a genuine thank you to all those Members on the
Government Benches and the Opposition Benches, because this has
been a cross-party proposal from the moment it was conceived.
Above all, I give credit to the students who brought me this idea
in the first place. I have had many emails from them in the past
couple of days saying they were in their third year at
university, they had been kicked out of the clubs and they had
talked to the homeless people on the streets of Oxford. They had
asked them what scared them, and the homeless people told them
about the Vagrancy Act. That started a petition, and that is how
this began. It was the citizen creating change—that is democracy.
It is extraordinary for them to start a petition and for it to
end here, and I genuinely thank the Government for listening to
their voices.
I echo the words and sentiments of the hon. Member for Harrow
East () and others when they say there is no need to delay
and that lawyers have looked at this. There are parts of the
country where the police do not use the Vagrancy Act at all. We
have tried and tested ways of dealing with this issue. We have
already got the legislation. Every day that Act continues is
another day that a homeless person is sleeping rough on our
streets, scared that one single person—this Act is old, so no
witness is needed—can come up to them and prosecute them under
this Dickensian, outdated law. We do not need it one day more;
this is a better country than that. We should not be saying to
homeless people, “You are a criminal.” Instead, we should be
acting with compassion and care, and I hope that is what we have
started today.
(Ruislip, Northwood and
Pinner) (Con)
Like many colleagues, I welcome enormously the steps that the
Government are taking in respect of the Vagrancy Act. I will say
no more about that and seek to concentrate on two of the most
important aspects of the Bill for my constituents. They are two
of the most important aspects where we need to be steadfast in
not accepting some of the amendments that would weaken some of
those key provisions.
The first is a point that has been aired a great deal in a lot of
public correspondence: noise nuisance. The Environmental
Protection Act 1990 set the legal framework and definitions that
local authority noise teams need to use when seeking to address
the disturbance being caused to the peaceful enjoyment of one’s
home or property and the peaceful enjoyment and ability of people
to go about their duties in their place of work. The Minister,
like me, is an emanation of local government, so he will be aware
of the frustrations that so many people express time and again,
when they are unable to gain that peaceful enjoyment. The powers
are weak, and the ability to ensure that action is taken to
address disturbance is found to fall short. Many of my
constituents will welcome the fact that the Government are taking
steps not just to make protests, which sit outside the
definitions of that Act, actionable under law and by the police,
but to address the persistent disruption that can be created by
noises that are not exceptionally loud, but designed to make it
difficult for people to go about their duties or to enjoy their
home or place of work in peace. Given the age of that
legislation, the Bill takes a reasonable step.
The Bill mentions that the Minister is of the view that nothing
is incompatible with the rights under the European convention. I
am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights—I know that
other members are present in the Chamber—which has taken evidence
on a point that the hon. Member for Croydon Central () highlighted. I simply say how
much I welcome the unamended powers in part 4 of the Bill, which
seek to strengthen the position in respect of unauthorised
encampments.
Again, as an emanation of local government, I am aware that my
local authority and my neighbouring local authority spend
hundreds of thousands of pounds of council tax payers’ money
every year to clean up the consequences of unauthorised
encampments in public parks and places that are normally enjoyed
by our constituents going about their business, but who are
prevented from enjoying those spaces by their unauthorised and
unlawful use. The strengthening of those powers will make a
material difference to our ability to maintain our constituents’
quality of life. For those reasons, I strongly support the
Government in taking forward those powers unamended.
When people complain to me about the noise at Prime Minister’s
questions, I always tell them that they can tune into any of the
two-hour hearings of the Select Committees that I sit on and
listen to some calm forensic questioning, but they do not,
because shouting—the impassioned barrage of noise—is a
fundamental of PMQs and of democracy. Democracy is noisy.
Democracy is irritating, but that is democracy.
It will come as no surprise to hon. Members that I have attended
a good number of protests and never once—never once—have I
attended a protest without the intention to disrupt or to make a
noise. Quite frankly, what would be the point? When our
constituents feel that they cannot be heard through other means,
they stand outside and they shout. Even if they are fox hunting
supporters or Brexiteers, I smile when I walk past them as they
are performing that basic level of democracy—from the agora to
Parliament Square. The idea that we would criminalise those
people is frankly disgusting.
(Norwich South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Does he see the
irony that as we watch Putin’s tanks roll into Ukraine and
protesters having their peaceful protests broken up by the
police, we in this place are debating a Bill that would take away
the right to protest?
I do. The expansion of police powers is highly disproportionate.
In the words of a former police chief and senior officers who
have written to the Government, it will place an “onerous burden”
on and apply “greater political pressure” to frontline police.
Ultimately, it will be up to the police to determine whether the
low threshold has been met.
Ruth Walshe, a volunteer from Green and Black Cross, detailed her
experiences of the police during the Black Lives Matter protests
in 2020. She heard the police say to her:
“‘who does that b**** think she is’, ‘can’t we lock them and put
them in a cell’, ‘what do those f****** want’”.
Reports of that type of behaviour are corroborated by the Charing
Cross report, which found that officers present at those protests
had made horrific homophobic, sexist and racist remarks. There
are very many good police officers, but collectively, there is a
problem in the police. Rather than trying to deal with those
systemic problems, the Government are saying, “Make racist,
sexist or homophobic abuses and you get more powers to control
woman, people of colour and queer people.” It is outrageous.
I also rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 87, which
would remove clause 61, which should really be called the “Get
Steve Bray” clause. I have found Steve bloody irritating at
times, but creating an unprecedented and disproportionate law to
go after a man who interrupts the Minister’s Sky News interviews
is quite frankly pathetic. Some hon. Members may remember Brian
Haw, the peace campaigner who lived opposite. It was wrong then
for the Labour Government to try to get rid of him from
Parliament Square and it was right that Conservative Members
stood up for him to stop the law being changed. They should be
doing it now.
I will end with this observation. The Government did not like the
Black Lives Matter protests when tens of thousands of young
people went on to the streets for racial equality, they were
embarrassed by the anti-Trump demonstrations during his state
visit and they despised the 1 million people who marched to try
to stop Brexit, so we are here with a Bill that tries to make the
snowflakes opposite feel better. That, frankly, is what they are:
the Secretary of State is a snowflake, and the Minister’s Back
Benchers are snowflakes. They cannot cope with a bit of robust
debate. They cry into their port in the evening when people say
things they do not like or they are too noisy. Rather than debate
them back or viscerally argue back, what they do is shut them
down and make them illegal. It is nasty, it is wrong and it
should go.
(Blyth Valley) (Con)
I will be brief, as I realise that time is pressing.
My father, sadly, passed away in September last year. Some years
earlier, on his way home from work, he was involved in road
traffic accident that left him almost dead and crippled, lying in
a field. He never walked again. He was crippled by a hit-and-run
driver, but because he received treatment in hospital very
quickly, he survived, and because protesters were not blocking
the road to the hospital he attended, he survived. My father went
on to see marriages, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My
parents enjoyed years of marriage and had their 63rd wedding
anniversary. I strongly believe that if protesters had blocked
that road to the hospital A&E where I saw my father with his
leg just about hanging off—it was absolutely
horrific—[Interruption.] Thank you very much. In that case, I
would not have had that time with my father, so I will be
supporting this Bill tonight in memory of my father.
I rise to support Lords amendments 73, 80 and 87, and to remind
the House that they are very much in line with the
recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, when
we looked at part 3 of the Bill and reached the conclusion that
the restrictions on non-violent protest in the Bill were
inconsistent with our rights.
Given the short amount of time, I am going to focus on the noise
trigger, because I think that that is the most egregious part of
this. A restriction on the right to protest that targets noise
strikes at the very heart of why people gather together to
protest—to have their voices heard about an issue that is
important to them and which they want other people to treat with
importance. We noted in the Committee that the larger and better
supported a demonstration is, the louder it is likely to be, so
restrictions on noise could disproportionately impact on the
demonstrations that have the greatest public backing.
Much of the written and oral evidence we received emphasised the
centrality of noise to effective protest. For example, Liberty
and Big Brother Watch highlighted:
“Protests, by their very nature, are noisy. Noise is also a
crucial means of expressing collective solidarity or grief and,
quite literally, making voices heard by those in power.”
This was echoed in oral evidence by Zehrah Hasan, the director of
Black Protest Legal Support, who said:
“Creating noise at a protest is quite literally a part of people
making their voices heard.”
Another witness told us that
“this new trigger, which is noise, is an absolute affront to the
right to protest. This noise trigger should not exist for the
purposes of imposing any conditions on assemblies and
processions. It is essentially an existential threat to the right
to protest.”
That is just a flavour of the evidence we heard.
The Minister has referred to the European convention on human
rights, but that is intended to provide rights that are
“practical and effective”, not “theoretical and illusory”. If the
police have discretion to shut down protests because they are
noisy, the right to protest will become theoretical and illusory
in England and Wales. Thankfully, these laws are not going to
apply in Scotland, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow
North East () said, many Scots come to
London to protest and they will be affected by these laws. I
emphasise that, because it was made clear to the Joint Committee
on Human Rights that neither the police, nor Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services,
requested this noise trigger. They may have requested other
changes, but they did not request that. As even Conservative
Members have said, this measure is a fundamental threat to the
right of freedom of speech and assembly in this country, and as
the JCHR said in our report, it should not be in the Bill and it
should go.
11.30pm
(Wycombe) (Con)
I rise to speak to the amendments about noise, including Lords
amendment 73 on processions, Lords amendment 80 on assemblies,
and Lords amendment 87 on one-person protests. I am pleased that
the Stop Brexit man, Mr Steve Bray, has come up, because I
completely agree: he is profoundly annoying. He is very
persistent, and he seems to have singled me out personally on a
great many occasions—[Interruption.] I can’t think why. No
indeed, I am grateful to Members for raising that. I cannot
imagine why. The thing about Steve Bray is that he has become a
great British institution. He is an oddball, he is a novelty, he
is entertaining and, yes, he is annoying. Indeed, he could often
be quietened down just by being offered an interview, and I would
recommend that course of action to anyone.
The crucial point about Mr Bray is that he did not make one blind
bit of difference to the course of events in this country—an
entire waste of money for whoever has been paying for him to be
there. Indeed, on his birthday one year he ran into me and my
right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr
Francois), and posed for a beautiful selfie so that together we
could, cheekily, enjoy his birthday. He is a great British
institution, entirely pointless, and willing to celebrate with
his opponents on his birthday. I do not think we should accept
any amendments in order to target hard cases, because hard cases
make for bad law.
I also wish to mention an article written jointly by me and the
former right hon. Member for Beaconsfield, QC. In the aftermath of the
protests over the Sarah Everard vigil, he and I wrote an article
contextualising this Bill. I had then, and I have now,
considerable concerns about what we are doing on protest, but I
decided to hold my nose and vote with the Government. I have
often said to people that I cannot be fighting on every front;
nor should I be since I was elected as a Conservative. However,
one person alone has persuaded me that I should agree with their
lordships on the Bill. That person is the ostensibly Liberal
Prime Minister of Canada, Mr Trudeau, and his treatment,
ostensibly from a left liberal perspective, of protesters with
whom he disagreed.
I note that the hon. Member for Croydon Central () condemned anti-vax protesters,
and yes, they may well have a dangerous point of view. I have
been pro-vaccine throughout this crisis, but we cannot condemn
protesters because we happen to disagree with them politically.
Goodness knows, right now I am the victim of a defamatory
campaign in my constituency by people who evidently have not
bothered to trouble themselves to look at my views.
Just to be clear, I am not against people having a position; our
amendment seeks to make sure that clinics ensure that people get
their vaccines, that NHS workers can get to work, and that we do
not have anti-vax protesters stopping people going to work and
doing their business.
Mr Baker
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that clarification. Like her,
I would like people to have the freedom to get vaccinated, and I
have said that throughout the crisis.
With apologies to my right hon. Friend the Minister—and he is a
friend—I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford
and South Herefordshire () and others. I commend to my
right hon. Friend the Member for Newark () just flirting with it—just
get in that rebel Lobby with us. Let us say to the Government
that actually this is going too far on noise. It is time to say,
as the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown () vividly demonstrated,
that yes protests are inherently noisy and annoying. If noise is
ever used as a weapon, I am sure other instruments of law could
be used.
(Slough) (Lab)
As the dogs of war are unleashed in Ukraine, and women and men
are dying defending their independence and freedom, it is timely
to reflect on our own freedoms as citizens. We are debating one
of the most egregious attempts to stifle our most fundamental
rights, with ill thought through reforms without evidence-based
justification. I am not alone in that assessment: more than
800,000 petitioners, ex-police chiefs and senior advisers as well
as three UN special rapporteurs and Members of the House of Lords
from across the political spectrum all have deep-rooted concerns
about the Bill and its lasting implications in limiting our
freedoms and dividing our communities.
Surely the freedom to protest is one of the most important
freedoms. Protest has been the engine of reform throughout
Britain’s history from the peasants’ poll tax protest of 1381 to
the recent Black Lives Matter movement. The rights to challenge
authority, to speak up, to chant and to march are freedoms that
are part of who we are; we relinquish them at our peril.
Conservative Members will complain that the Bill does not remove
the freedom to protest. Not in so many words, but the right to
protest must include the right to be noisy. A quiet, supine
protest or a protest denied because the shouting was too loud is
no protest at all. The point of protest is to give a collective
voice to those who feel that they have not been listened to,
particularly for marginalised and oppressed communities who have
been told too many times to keep quiet. The Public Order Act 1986
was introduced by the Thatcher Government in the wake of the
miners’ strike. Are Ministers really saying that Thatcher did not
go far enough and that she was a soft touch on protestors? That
is not how I remember it. I beseech the Home Secretary and
Ministers to think again, even at this late stage.
The hon. Member is giving a good speech. Does he agree that the
Bill is part of a wider pattern that makes it even more
dangerous? When we consider it alongside voter suppression
measures, attacks on the Electoral Commission and judicial
review, the extension of the Official Secrets Act and threats to
the Human Rights Act, it is part of an attack on the very heart
of our democracy.
Mr Dhesi
I completely agree with the hon. Lady. As she says, the damage
from the many things being combined by the Government will have a
devastating impact on our democracy.
The measures proposed by the Government to tackle crime are also
deeply worrying. They are failing to tackle the roots of crime
and antisocial behaviour, and yet I am hardly surprised. Their
record is of taking more than 20,000 police officers off our
streets and ceding ground to criminals, and even now they have
not made up for the numbers of police, civilian staff and police
community and support officers that they cut. When people do not
see police in their communities, as has been the case in my
constituency, they feel less safe and secure, and crime goes up.
In actual fact it is up 14%, according to the Office for National
Statistics—not to mention the huge reduction in convictions for
rape and domestic abuse. Why are the Government, through the
Bill, making such an appalling attack against the Gypsy, Roma and
Traveller communities even though the police do not want the
extra powers?
There is chaos in the criminal justice system with a backlog of
years for cases. Victims and witnesses are simply giving up and
criminals are laughing up their sleeves. The Government’s
response is to close courts, with 300 closed since 2010. They
simply do not get it. We must defend the right to protest, to
picket and to make a racket when we feel that we are not being
listened to.
(North East Bedfordshire)
(Con)
I rise to speak to the amendments on noise and protest. Frankly,
I should not have to. At the beginning of the Bill process, I was
discussing the Bill with a friend of mine who said, “This is a
ridiculous thing to put in the Bill.” I said, “Don’t worry—the
Government will accept amendments in Committee.” They did not.
Then I said, “Don’t worry—if they do not do it in Committee, they
will surely accept their lordships’ amendments.” I have certainly
yet to see the Government make enough concessions on that. That
has led me to worry.
I worry that at a time when Conservatives should be promoting
freedom of speech, we have created a weapon for our opponents to
say that we oppose it. We should not be doing that. I worry that
Government Members give the impression that we think that
demonstrations are okay as long as they are nicely decorous,
barely audible and easy to miss, and we forget that anger and
frustration are natural human emotions that find their expression
in a democratic society through the ability to protest and, yes,
make a noise. I worry that, while Opposition Members have talked
about the concern regarding large protests, the measures will
actually have more effect on more marginal issues and smaller
groups. I think back to the 1980s and the group AIDS Coalition to
Unleash Power, which was protesting to provide AIDS treatment to
people. There was never a noisier, more active, disruptive group
than ACT UP in my memory. They were representing a group that was
marginalised, so they could only make a noise to make their voice
heard. I worry that the Bill will have an undue impact on
marginal groups.
I worry that, at a time when we need clarity so much in the way
in which the law affects people’s lives, the Bill is so vague
that people will say, “Why are we ‘noisy’ and not them?” How on
earth does that help us to create a calmer discourse between
those who have different opinions? I worry that we are asking the
police to make too many judgments at a time when the police
themselves want clarity, and not to be put into the mix. I love
the fact that the British police do not care what people are
protesting about, so why are we creating something where, in the
moment, they have to make a judgment? I worry ultimately that, at
a time when in our society we need trust between people with
profoundly different opinions, the provisions in the Bill do
nothing at all to help in that regard.
(Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
(PC)
Recent days have indeed underlined the importance of peaceful
protest and freedom of expression. Only this weekend I helped to
organise, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (), a rally for solidarity in
Caernarfon for the people of Ukraine against the illegal invasion
of their country. We joined, of course, a wave of demonstrations
that have been sweeping across Europe. Meanwhile, the whole world
is witnessing the bravery of protestors in Russia, who are
defying Putin’s authoritarian regime to take to the streets
against the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Thousands of Russians
have been arrested, some simply for holding up anti-war signs—a
clear violation of people’s right to peacefully protest. Yet what
do we find ourselves discussing here?
While the UK Government are quick to denounce the
authoritarianism of Putin’s Russia, they are set on implementing
part 3 of the Bill, which is a direct threat to people’s right to
protest in Wales—a right that is integral to the history of Wales
as a nation. From protests against the enclosure of land in
Gwynedd in the 1810s, the Chartist uprising in Newport in the
1830s, the Rebecca riots by tenant farmers against the payment of
tolls in the 1840s, language rights—the very essence of
noise—protests in the 1960s, and the miners’ strikes in the
1980s, to recent protests on racial injustice and the
cost-of-living crisis, it is clear that the act of protest is
woven through the past and present of Wales.
I welcome the changes to part 3 in the other place to remove the
limits on our protest rights, such as Lords amendment 30, which
removes new restrictions from public assemblies, but the
Government have made it clear that they have no intention
whatsoever of listening to the overwhelming cross-party
opposition on these issues. Not content with clamping down on our
right to protest, the UK Government have launched a new attack on
Welsh Gypsies, Romas and Travellers through part 4 of the Bill.
Despite already being marginalised by society, it will
criminalise their way of life and allow for the confiscation of
their homes. Importantly, it will directly undermine existing
devolved Welsh legislation.
The criminalisation of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller adults will have
a knock-on effect for their children, who are at greater risk of
being taken into care, directly undermining the Rights of
Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, which places a
duty on Welsh Ministers to have due regard for the rights of
children as set out under the United Nations convention on the
rights of the child. Criminalisation contravenes part 3 of the
Housing (Wales) Act 2014, which places a legal obligation on
local authorities in Wales to both assess and provide for
residential and transit provision for Gypsies and Travellers. Our
Senedd rightly refused to grant consent for the changes to part
4. It would therefore be wrong to apply it in Wales. That is just
one example of the creeping effect of this place on devolved
legislation. We must stand firm against it; otherwise, our Senedd
in Wales will be being ignored.
(Bassetlaw) (Con)
I will always defend the right to protest. Members could say that
it is part of the glue that binds us together, which I will come
on to a little later. Recently, Unite the union decided to picket
a jobs fair that I organised in Worksop, which I thought was
quite a bizarre thing to protest against. It was well attended by
people from outside the constituency. We had people from Broxtowe
Labour and Socialist Worker, and people bussed in from Nottingham
and Chesterfield, but nevertheless I defend their right to do
that, not least because it helps to support my pledge to increase
footfall in Worksop town centre. While it was unpleasant for some
of the more vulnerable job seekers, it did not put people off.
Hundreds attended and many secured jobs there and then.
What I will certainly not defend is mindless hooliganism,
breaching the rights of others, putting livelihoods at risk and
indeed putting lives at risk. Some of the worst episodes I have
witnessed involved so-called protesters gluing themselves to
trains and buses. Aside from the mindless damage caused by those
protesters—be they from groups such as Extinction Rebellion or
others—we witnessed first-hand these people preventing ambulances
getting to hospitals, which happened right here on Westminster
Bridge. We also saw them blocking motorways such as the M25 and
preventing people from getting to work. And this coming at a time
when people were desperate to protect their livelihoods in the
face of the huge challenges of the covid-19 pandemic. Our
children have been prevented from getting to school at a time
when their education has already been affected by disruption on
numerous occasions. I asked those people, “How are you helping to
protect the environment when you are stopping people from using
public transport?”
I have sadly succumbed to the parliamentary stone since entering
this place. I have been told many times that I look nothing like
my official photograph on the website or my roller banner and a
little more worse for wear. Yet as bad as it is getting, I still
do not quite feel the need to glue my face to the floor as an
Insulate Britain protester decided would be a good idea, although
I gather that was to disrupt traffic rather than for aesthetic
reasons.
It is not just about roads. We have also seen disruption around
schools and vaccination centres, but it would be a mistake to
limit legislation to those areas. We must make sure we protect
our critical national infrastructure and we need to make sure
that happens all over the country and in constituencies like
mine. Whether it is dealing with harmful acts by legislating to
stop them being reprobates in Retford, hoodlums in Harworth or—I
am going to stop with the alliteration before I get back to
Worksop—the Bill will make action that is tough but fair a
reality. That is why we should not accept amendments that water
down this excellent Bill.
(Islington North) (Ind)
I want to refer to two parts of the Bill: on protests and on
Travelling communities.
I was one of the organisers of the huge 2003 demonstration
against the war in Iraq. It was obvious that whatever
restrictions the police or the Government wanted to put on that
demonstration, they could not because the numbers—1 million in
Hyde Park and hundreds of thousands more in the streets—were so
huge. That demonstration was historic for its size and effect.
What we have before us now is far too much discretion being given
to the police to decide whether a demonstration should go ahead
or not, or whether it is appropriately noisy or not. I do not
think that many police even want that discretion. The Minister
was very vague on when there would be any review of the
legislation, should it go through tonight. He conceded that it
should be reviewed, but did not say when that would happen.
If a demonstration is to mean anything, it must be effective, it
must be loud and it must cause some degree of disruption. What I
see coming ahead is the police trying to arrest samba bands and
taking away PA equipment and so on. That will send a message all
around the world that this country is closing down on
demonstrations at the very time we are saying we support
demonstrations in other parts of the world. Every single one of
the rights we have was won by people being brave enough to
protest. The Chartists and many others put themselves at enormous
risk to get a message across and bring about a change in society.
Protest is an essential part of a decent, free and democratic
society. We should not be voting for restrictions and we should
not be giving the police the powers to prevent protests in our
society. That is a very bad move.
The other side of the Bill that I will refer to in the little
time that I have left is the attitude towards Travelling
communities. They are abused and discriminated against all over
this continent of Europe, and they are treated abominably. They
get a very bad press and are treated like pariahs by much of the
media, yet we claim to support the European convention on human
rights and, through our Human Rights Act 1998, we claim to
support the right to lead that nomadic life, the right to be
Travellers and the right to access appropriate sites.
What we are doing is bowing down before some unpleasant
anti-Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community pressures to restrict
that right. We should not be doing it, because if we restrict
that right and go against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities,
we go after many, many other communities as well. In my view, it
is discrimination, pure and simple, against an historic tradition
of the right to roam in our society.
(Liverpool, Wavertree)
(Lab)
Ever since I entered this place, not one Bill has occupied as
much space in my inbox as this one, and I am sure that many
Government Members have been similarly inundated with messages
from their constituents. Many of my constituents are horrified,
disturbed and frankly suspicious of this Government’s attempt to
severely suppress the right to protest. Some of those who are
getting in contact with me have never attended a protest, but
like me, they are absolutely committed to preserving and
protecting our fundamental rights. These constituents are
currently watching the autocratic President Putin on their TV
screens arresting hundreds of his own people for peacefully
protesting and demonstrating against his country’s barbaric
assault on Ukraine.
The Conservative party of the 21st century has shed all illusions
of being a party that is committed to conserving, protecting and
defending our liberal democracy and, indeed, of being a party
that is committed to the liberalism that I had assumed was a key
tenet of its ideology. Thankfully, the other place has rejected a
string of proposals that would have given the police in England
and Wales increased powers, including the power to stop and
search anyone at a protest without suspicion. Even many
Conservative peers did not support the Government’s
proposals.
Sadly, however, the likes of clause 55 still exist in the Bill.
Make no mistake, the noise clause is a crack-down on dissent. It
provides more tools in the establishment’s armoury. It is
authoritarian and draconian. The clause effectively ends the
right to protest as we know it and provides yet another example
of this virtue-signalling Government—
(Dudley South) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
I am sorry; I will not, because the hon. Member has just come in,
and lots of Opposition Members wish to speak and have been here
since the start of the debate.
The clause is yet another example of this Government giving extra
powers to the police that they have neither asked for nor do they
need. I have long given up appealing to Government Members to do
the right thing. Rather, it is best that we just tell them that
they are doing the wrong thing, and they will be doing the wrong
thing if the Bill passes. Hundreds of solidarity protesters
gathered on Downing Street at the weekend to express support and
solidarity to Ukraine and her people. Those sentiments have been
expressed right across the House. The protesters were noisy, and
they were loud. Are this Government telling me and everyone else
in the Chamber today that they would shut them up next time? What
a sorry state of affairs.
(Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
(SNP)
I wish to speak in support of Lords amendments 73 and 80, which
would remove the ability of the police to impose noise-based
restrictions on processions and greater conditions on static
demonstrations. Peaceful protest is a legitimate and integral
part of our unwritten constitution and for the Government to
interfere with those rights and to try to impose restrictions and
unnecessary conditions that affect and violate basic human rights
is nothing less than appalling.
If Lords amendments 73 and 80 are not accepted, there are great
concerns that police officers will be placed in the unenviable
position of having to adjudicate between different stakeholders
on the basis of broad and ambiguous criteria about whether to
allow a “noisy” or “disruptive” protest to take place or
continue. Far from enabling the police to maintain public order,
these provisions will place an onerous burden on police officers
in the exercise of their professional discretion, subjecting the
police to even greater political pressure.
The police already have sufficient powers under the Public Order
Act 1986. The additional powers in clauses 55 and 56 of the Bill
are neither necessary nor welcomed by many senior police
officers. As a uniformed police inspector in the Metropolitan
police, I had extensive experience of dealing with public order
and with processions and demonstrations of all sizes, and I can
say honestly that none of them needed any further legislation;
they could all be effectively dealt with by the current
legislation.
There are serious concerns that the police, who serve a vital
function in enforcing the law, are being instrumentalised for
political purposes. That will erode the trust of the public,
seriously damage the relationship between the police and the
public, and adversely affect the cherished tradition of policing
by consent that is at the heart of policing and our society.
Despite the disparaging remarks made by the hon. Member for
Brighton, Kemptown (), I pay tribute to the
police officers out there policing our streets, who are
overwhelmingly honest, trustworthy and hardworking. I commend
them for putting themselves at risk and in danger to keep us all
safe.
I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken in what at
times has been an impassioned debate. I have to say that it has
been quite a rich experience to hear a defence of democracy from
an Opposition whom I watched for month after month using every
technical device at their disposal to try to overturn the
democratic decision that the British people took in the 2016
referendum. Those months, happily, are long behind us, and the
British people gave their verdict on that attempt to circumvent
democracy in the 2019 general election, from which I am happy to
say we all benefited.
Much of tonight’s debate has been about the difficult job for any
democratic Government of balancing the rights of competing
groups: the rights of people who own land, and of those who use
land; the rights of public authorities that have parks, and of
the Travelling community; the rights of those who want to go
about their business and access hospitals, schools or businesses,
and of those who wish to protest. These are difficult balances
that democratic Governments have to strike from time to time. The
Labour party has had to do it in the past; I well remember it
banning any protest within 1 km of Parliament. The first arrest
was of a woman reading the names of the Iraq war dead at the
Cenotaph, if I remember rightly. That, I will admit, was a step
too far.
We believe that the package of measures that we have put forward
on protest represents a modest rebalancing.
Several hon. Members rose—
I am not giving way. It is a modest rebalancing of the rights of
the majority of British people who want to go about their
business and the rights of those who quite legitimately want to
protest. We yield to no man or woman in our desire to protect
those inalienable rights of protest and dissent in this country.
Our party has been in the position of protesting and dissenting
in the past, as have many parties represented in this House. We
do not take it for granted; we wish to protect it, and we believe
that we are doing so while striking a balance.
On the undertaking that I was asked to give about the Vagrancy
Act, let me say that 18 months is a maximum. If we can act
faster, we will, but intensive work will obviously be required to
get us there.
I believe that the Bill in its entirety represents a solid step
forward, both for the safety of the country and for the difficult
job of balancing our competing rights in what is now and will
always be a liberal democracy.
Lords amendment 71 disagreed to.
Government amendment (a) made to Lords amendment 74.
Lords amendment 74, as amended, agreed to.
Government amendment (a) made to Lords amendment 88.
Lords amendment 88, as amended, agreed to.
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