The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman) I
beg to move, That the draft Public Order Act 1986 (Serious
Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations 2023, which
were laid before this House on 27 April, be approved. The
regulations propose amendments to sections 12 and 14 of the Public
Order Act 1986. These sections provide the police with the powers
to impose conditions on harmful protests that cause or risk causing
serious disruption to...Request free
trial
The Secretary of State for the Home Department ()
I beg to move,
That the draft Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the
Life of the Community) Regulations 2023, which were laid before
this House on 27 April, be approved.
The regulations propose amendments to sections 12 and 14 of the
Public Order Act 1986. These sections provide the police with the
powers to impose conditions on harmful protests that cause or
risk causing serious disruption to the life of the community.
These regulations have been brought forward to provide further
clarity. I want to place on record my thanks to the Minister for
Crime, Policing and Fire, my right hon. Friend the Member for
Croydon South (), and to policing colleagues
and officials for their hard work on this issue.
People have a right to get to work on time free from obstruction,
a right to enjoy sporting events without interruption and a right
to get to hospital. The roads belong to the British people, not
to a selfish minority who treat them like their personal
property. The impact of these disruptors is huge. Over the past
six weeks alone, Just Stop Oil has carried out 156 slow marches
around London. That has required more than 13,770 police officer
shifts. That is more than 13,000 police shifts that could have
been spent stopping robbery, violent crime or antisocial
behaviour, and the cost to the taxpayer is an outrage, with £4.5
million spent in just six weeks, on top of the £14 million spent
last year. In some cases the protests have aggravated the public
so much that they have taken matters into their own hands. They
have lost their patience. The police must be able to stop this
happening and it is our job in government to give them the powers
to do so.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I have noticed over the last few weeks, and others will have
noticed this as well, that some of those who are protesting and
stopping people getting to work, getting to hospital and going
about their normal lives habitually and regularly protest. It
seems to me that the law of the land is not hard enough the first
time round to ensure they do not do it again. If they continually
do it, we need a law to reflect that. Is the Secretary of State
able to assure the House that the law will come down hard on
protesters who wish to stop normal life?
The hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise the impact of
repetitive, disruptive protesters. That they are behaving
disruptively again and again is evidence that we now need to
ensure the police have robust and sufficient powers to prevent
this from happening.
(Gainsborough) (Con)
I fully support what my right hon. and learned Friend is doing.
She can relax, as I have not come with a pot of glue in my pocket
to glue myself to the Bench next to her in protest at what is
happening with RAF Scampton. Does she accept that if people with
good arguments put them politely and relentlessly, this
Government will listen and they will eventually win?
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to the
noble and honourable way in which he advocates for his
constituents in relation to RAF Scampton. We live in a democracy
in which freedom of speech must prevail. That means advocating
and campaigning through lawful methods and lawful means, not
breaking the law and causing misery and disruption to the
law-abiding majority.
(Leeds East) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary come clean and admit that this
authoritarian clampdown on our society’s hard-won democratic
freedoms is being intensified by this Government because their
policies are becoming ever more unpopular? Their heavy-handed,
antidemocratic response shames us all.
The Chamber will not be surprised that I disagree with the hon.
Gentleman. The right to protest is an important and fundamental
right that I will ferociously defend, but serious disruption,
nuisance and criminality are unjustified, which is why the police
need the right powers to police protesters.
(Wokingham) (Con)
I am grateful for what my right hon. and learned Friend is
seeking to do. Can she confirm that there could, indeed, be cases
in which protesters stop one getting to hospital for an emergency
operation or procedure, or stop a woman who is about to give
birth from getting to hospital in a hurry, and that they are
risking people’s lives?
Their tactics are dangerous. They are putting people’s lives at
risk by stopping ambulances getting to emergencies and stopping
people getting to hospital appointments. They are stopping people
getting to work, school and funerals. The instances are infinite,
and the disruption must stop.
(East Antrim) (DUP)
I was a serial protester in Northern Ireland, so I understand the
importance of people being able to express their peaceful
opposition to whatever it happens to be. Regardless of the
regulations that the right hon. and learned Lady puts in place,
some police officers seem to have a sympathetic attitude towards
some of these causes. Is she not concerned that some courts are
prepared to allow people to walk out of court, having committed
acts of criminal damage, without imposing any sanction? How does
she believe these regulations will change that mindset?
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. The
Government’s job is to provide sufficient, lawful and
proportionate powers for the police to exercise. They have
operational independence, and they need to make decisions and
judgments based on the particular circumstances. Our job is to
give them the powers to enable them to take the fullest and most
lawful approach.
(Kingston upon Hull North)
(Lab)
Have the police specifically requested these new powers? The
deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Ade
Adelekan, has said about recent slow-march protests
“once a protest is deemed to have caused serious disruption or
may do so, we are taking swift action to stop it.”
Does the Home Secretary disagree with what he is saying, that the
police already have the powers they need?
One of the first things I did when I became Home Secretary, along
with the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire and the Prime
Minister, was to meet policing leads, in the Metropolitan police
and nationwide, to hear about the challenges they have been and
are facing in policing protests. They have requested extra powers
and extra clarity in the law.
I find it surprising and disappointing that Labour MPs are not
supporting the measures before us today, given how important they
are to the public and how damaging serious disruption can be to
everyday life. I have been trying to think about why that would
be. Has it got anything to do with the fact that the Labour
party—the Leader of the Opposition and his deputy—has taken £1.5
million of donations from a businessman who bankrolls Just Stop
Oil? Is it because Labour’s botched environmental policies now
seem to be directed by the eco-zealots? The right hon. Member for
Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford () should be embarrassed that
Labour is more interested in supporting Just Stop Oil than
standing up for the law-abiding majority. This Government and the
police have always maintained that the powers are necessary to
respond effectively to guerrilla protests.
(Normanton, Pontefract and
Castleford) (Lab)
Clearly, it is important that the Home Secretary gives accurate
information to Parliament, so will she clarify her answer to my
right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North ( ), the Home Affairs Committee
Chair, as to whether the police and the National Police Chiefs’
Council have requested the precise wording that she has put
forward in these regulations? She said to the Chamber a week ago
that the
“asylum initial…backlog is down by 17,000”.—[Official Report, 5
June 2023; Vol. 733, c. 557.]
She knows that that is not true and that the asylum initial
backlog, which includes legacy and flow, has gone up. Will she
now correct the record, as she is before the House and she knows
the importance of the ministerial code and correcting any errors
at the first opportunity?
Sadly, we see unsurprising tactics from the Labour party. Again,
Labour Members seek to distract from their woeful failure to
stand up for the law-abiding majority, who want us to take these
measures on protesters, and to cover up the fact that they have
absolutely no policy to stop the boats. It is disappointing but
unsurprising.
These regulations will ensure clarity and consistency in public
order legislation in the following ways. First, they clarify that
the police may take into account the cumulative impact of
simultaneous and repeated protests in a specific area when
considering whether there is a risk. Secondly, they permit the
police to consider the absolute disruption caused by a protest—in
other words, their evaluation may be irrespective of the
disruption that is typical in that area. Thirdly, the regulations
define the term “community” to include “any group” impacted by a
protest, extending beyond those in the immediate area. That
definition better reflects the cross-section of the public
affected by disruptive protests in cities today. Finally, the
regulations align the threshold of “serious disruption” with that
in the Public Order Act 2023. This definition, proposed by , the former deputy president of
the Supreme Court, is rooted in protest case law. It was debated
at length by Parliament and deemed appropriate for use in the
Public Order Act 2023. It should now be incorporated into the
Public Order Act 1986 to ensure consistency across the statute
book.
(Orkney and Shetland)
(LD)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
I will not give way, as I have taken a lot of interventions.
The regulations will make it clear that serious disruption to the
life of the community includes
“the prevention of, or a hindrance that is more than minor to,
the carrying out of day-to-day activities (including…the making
of a journey)”.
These regulations do not create new powers but instead clarify
powers that already exist. In support of that, we held targeted
engagement with operational leads. The NPCC, the Metropolitan
Police Service and the chief constables of the affected forces
all welcome further clarity in law. To summarise, these measures
ensure that public order legislation is clear, consistent and
current.
In conclusion, I will always defend the rights of Just Stop Oil
or anyone else to express their views, even to protest—that is
free speech, that is the foundation of our democracy. However,
its methods are deplorable. That is what millions of people, the
law-abiding majority, and this Government believe to be true.
These measures are for them—for the people trying to get to work,
the people trying to get to a family funeral, the people trying
to get to hospital. This Conservative Government are on their
side.
5.19pm
(Normanton, Pontefract and
Castleford) (Lab)
This is, at least, the Government’s fifth set of proposals on
public order in the space of two years. They make the same claims
about the latest set of proposals that they did about all the
previous ones, and they keep coming back again and again, making
all the same promises about what this piece of legislation will
achieve as they did about the last one and the one before that.
This is groundhog day, and we have to wonder how chaotic and
incompetent this Home Secretary is that she has to keep
legislating for the same things again and again.
We can see why Conservative Ministers might be worried about an
organised minority of people causing disruption—people who want
to protest against decisions made by the Prime Minister, who
ignore all normal rules and have no respect for everyone else,
causing serious disruption to the nation and the Government,
lighting skip fires from Uxbridge to Selby and causing chaos in
our public services, our transport system, our economy and our
financial markets. Yes, to quote the Home Secretary, those
disruptors are selfish; yes, the public are sick of them and yes,
we have had enough of them. That is why we want to get rid of
them all, not just through by-elections but through a general
election.
We can also see why the Conservatives are so sensitive about
extinction and rebellion. As a party, they are now so addicted to
rebellion that it is taking them to the point of extinction. They
should stop inflicting this chaos on everyone else. They have
brought forward two new Bills on public order in the last two
years, two further sets of entirely new proposals that were
brought forward in the House of Lords halfway through those
Bills’ passage, and now this statutory instrument. If only they
had found similar time in Parliament for legislation on violence
against women and girls, we might not have such disgracefully low
charge rates for rape and sexual assault or such appallingly high
and persistent levels of domestic abuse.
Instead, we have the chaotic repetition of the same debates and
the same promises about legislation. It is total chaos—a
coalition of chaos, as the Home Secretary might say herself.
Indeed, she did say it when we debated the Third Reading of the
Public Order Bill, which she claimed would sort everything
out—and that was just eight months ago. In that debate, she
accused Labour of being a
“coalition of chaos, the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating
wokerati”—[Official Report, 18 October 2022; Vol. 720, c.
628.]
That is from the party that has crashed the economy and given us
record inflation, the highest tax burden for 70 years, the worst
train cancellations, NHS cancellations and public sector strikes
in decades, and total chaos in the criminal justice system.
That party has given us three Prime Ministers, four Home
Secretaries and four Chancellors in the space of 12 months, and
since then three more Cabinet Ministers have been sacked,
including the Deputy Prime Minister. There have been public
hissy-fits today between the Prime Minister and his predecessor
on the honours system, and now there are three upcoming
by-elections. The Conservatives are definitely not a coalition of
chaos, not least because any internal party coalition they ever
had has clearly collapsed—oh, and on that bit about the wokerati,
I have since discovered the Home Secretary is a vegetarian. She
eats more tofu than I do!
The police need to take action against serious disruption and
damaging protest tactics that cause harm and problems for others.
Here in Britain, we have historic freedoms to speak out against
things we disagree with, but we also have rights to be protected
against serious disruption and dangerous protests by others. We
have historic freedoms to object and to peacefully protest—that
is part of our democracy—but blocking our roads so ambulances
cannot get through is not legitimate protest. It is dangerous,
irresponsible and against the law. Climbing up motorway gantries
is not legitimate protest either. It is wholly unlawful and it
puts lives at risk. That is why Labour supported increasing the
penalties for blocking roads, and it is why we put forward
measures to make it easier to get injunctions to prevent damaging
protests, and measures to prevent intimidation and protest
outside contraception and abortion clinics and vaccine clinics.
It is why we have criticised groups such as Just Stop Oil and
Extinction Rebellion for damaging protests that even put lives at
risk.
The police have a serious and important job to do in a
democracy—ensuring that people can go about their business, and
protecting our historic freedoms—but they already have the powers
to do exactly that. The Home Secretary claims that this latest
measure is about slow walking, but that is already a breach of
the law. Since 1986, the police have had the power to impose
conditions on public processions—that is what slow walking is—and
since 1980 it has been against the law to obstruct a public
highway.
Indeed, the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, the right hon.
Member for Croydon South (), said himself last month
that
“the police are…using section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986…
Following recent disruptions in the past 10 to 14 days, the roads
have typically been cleared within 10 minutes”.—[Official Report,
9 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 210.]
The Met said just this week that
“putting in conditions from Section 12 of the Public Order Act
has encouraged protesters to exit the highway within minutes;
from the 156 slow marches that have taken place, 125 Section
12…conditions have been imposed”,
including 86 arrests where people were not complying. The chief
constable of Greater Manchester police said:
“We have the powers to act and we should do so very quickly.”
However, instead of working with the police so that they have the
training, resources and support to appropriately enforce the law,
the Home Secretary just keeps coming back to Parliament waving
another bit of legislation to chase a few more headlines and
distract people from the fact that the Government are hellbent on
causing chaos and disruption for the British people. The
Government bring this statutory instrument before the House
claiming that it is to clarify the law, but instead it makes it
even more confusing. They failed to bring it in through the
normal parliamentary legislative processes so that it could be
scrutinised and amended. Heaven knows, we have had enough primary
legislation when the Government have had the opportunity to
introduce it.
The regulations refer, for example, to “normal traffic
congestion” now being a significant factor. What does that mean?
Does it mean that if roadworks are causing a local traffic jam
and some protesters happen to cross the road, they can be
arrested for the traffic jam? The regulations redefine “serious
disruption” to mean everything that “may” be “more than
minor”—may. Does the Home Secretary really think that the police
should be able to ban anything that may—only may—create more than
minor noise, for example?
Once again, the regulations are not about the seriously
disruptive Just Stop Oil protests, which are rightly already
against the law. Instead, they give the police the power to
prevent any and every campaign group from protesting outside a
local library or swimming pool that is about to be closed because
it “may” be a little “more than minor”. That makes it harder for
law-abiding, peaceful campaigners who want to work with the
police to organise a limited protest—something that we should all
want people to do—all for the sake of the Home Secretary getting
a few more headlines. She says that she wants to defend free
speech and our pluralist free society very robustly indeed—but
only if it is speech that she agrees with, and only if it is not
too noisy. Once again, instead of focusing on the damaging
disruption, which we all believe should be stopped and on which
we want the Government to work with the police to sort things
out, the Government are simply making it possible to go after
peaceful protesters and passers-by, even though that is not the
British tradition.
The Home Secretary is now so obsessed with serious disruption
because she and her party are busy creating it. That party has
become addicted to causing serious disruption in politics, our
economy, financial markets, workplaces, our transport system, our
NHS, our public life and our communities, and has no idea what
stability and security looks like because it is too busy
seriously disrupting itself. So yes, the country is sick of the
serious disruption that the Conservative party is causing. Yes,
we do want to put an end to the serious disruption and chaos that
is letting everyone down, by kicking the Conservatives out of
office. This is not about Just Stop Oil; it is about a
Conservative party that has just stopped governing. That is why
we need a general election now.
5.29pm
(Crewe and Nantwich)
(Con)
The main point I want to emphasise today is that these issues are
of course to do with balance. Opposition Members want to make it
black and white, but we know that these things are not black and
white. I am also interested in the fact that some of the same
Members who have been so opposed to these regulations made
complete counter-arguments when they proposed legislation, which
I supported, to say that people should not be able to protest
within a certain distance of an abortion clinic. These are common
arguments and it is about the individual interpretation of
them.
In a free society, we have responsibilities as well as rights.
Our right to protest does not offer absolute relief from our
responsibility to allow other citizens to go about their lives
freely. Of course they have a right to do that. Much attention is
paid to the rights of the protesters, but what about the rights
of everyone else? We must view the impact in the context of the
cost of resources to taxpayers, because they have a right to see
their resources used sensibly. If we are going to say that
something is acceptable—disruptive protest, disrupting sporting
events, going on the road—let us imagine what would happen if we
were not spending millions of pounds to minimise that behaviour.
That behaviour would run rife. We would not be able to have a
public event in this country without one or two people running
into it and disrupting it. We would be unable to have any kind of
major event without spending millions of pounds to stop people
from protesting en masse, so it is quite right that we should
look at making sure that we can do that more efficiently.
I would encourage the Home Secretary to consider going further.
We are talking today about serious disruption and people perhaps
not being able to go to hospital, but what about just being able
to go to work, to catch up with a friend that they have not seen
for a few months or to go out for dinner in a restaurant? Why do
we say that one individual person can block a road and prevent
all sorts of people going about their daily lives because they
care deeply about an issue?
(North West Hampshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very strong point. Does he agree that
part of the disconnect on this between the Labour party and the
rest of the country is that with these protests, the disruption
is the objective, not the message? That is what makes the British
people feel so aggrieved. Here in Westminster, more than
anywhere, we understand that disruption can be a by-product of
protest, but that is a by-product, not the primary objective.
Dr Mullan
Indeed, and the protesters brazenly admit it. It is not about
protesting with a by-product of disruption; they brazenly admit
that they want to do ever-escalating things to get into the news.
They should go on a hunger protest and disrupt their own lives.
Do not eat—that will get in the news. Why do they think they can
go around disrupting everybody else’s lives just to make their
point? Importantly, they can still protest. I was flabbergasted
by the reporting of the apparent crackdown on protest at the
coronation. I was on the parliamentary estate, and I saw loads of
people holding up signs saying, “Not my King”. It was all over
the news and I saw lots of people who were not arrested and who
were not moved on. They were within feet of the procession and
were perfectly able to go about their protesting.
I urge the Home Secretary to think about this. In my view, people
should not be able to disrupt a road. They should not be able to
stop traffic because they care particularly about an issue.
Does the hon. Gentleman not find it even more amazing that the
Labour party opposes this legislation when many of the protests
impact on the poorest in society? I remember being in Canning
Town tube station when two idiots jumped on top of the roof of
the tube, and the guy beside me said, “If I don’t get to work
today, I get my wages docked. I am not earning a great deal of
money but I will lose money because of those two guys.”
Thankfully, they pulled them off, which was a good idea, but this
is the impact. Ordinary people who cannot afford the disruption
are the victims of it.
Dr Mullan
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. We have all seen
the footage online of people saying that they are just trying to
get to work. Opposition Members say that that is not serious
disruption, but they should tell that to the individual who is
trying to go about their daily life. It is disruption, it is not
acceptable and people have other ways to make their point. I
would also say to Opposition Members and members of the other
place that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that
this is unnecessary and a waste of time and then block it in the
Lords. If it does not make any difference and will not impact on
anything, why are they blocking it? They should just let it
pass.
Are there not double standards on the left? They believe that in
their cause they can disrupt people’s daily lives, but when some
old lady is praying outside an abortion clinic, that is
absolutely outrageous and must be banned by law.
Dr Mullan
Indeed. As I said earlier I supported the proposals for
protection zones for abortion clinics, but that makes the exact
point. When it suits them, they are perfectly happy to sign up to
these arguments, but they take a different view when it does not
suit them. As the Home Secretary mentioned, they are very happy
to get into bed financially with the people supporting these
protests, so I think we all know where their loyalties lie.
(Weaver Vale) (Lab)
If the laws are already there, what difference are these
regulations going to make? How are they going to strengthen
things?
Dr Mullan
The other point that I think the shadow Home Secretary, the right
hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (), completely ignores is that
we have a common law legal system in this country. It is
perfectly normal for Parliament to pass legislation and attempt
to apply that law via the police. That is another reason why I
think the hysterical reaction to the police beginning a process
of using new law and not getting it right every single time
totally betrays the normal way in which law is developed in this
country. We legislate, we use certain terminology and we try to
be clear, but it is for the courts and the police to
operationalise it and feed back if they think we need to go
further. It is all very normal, and again, this is just
histrionics from the other side, because it suits them to put
their clips on social media standing up against us over these
“draconian” protest laws that are not in the least bit
draconian.
(Beckenham) (Con)
My hon. Friend made a point about social media. One of the main
intentions of this disruption is to get publicity for the
protesters’ cause, so they make maximum effort to try to get
maximum publicity, which is cheap.
Dr Mullan
Indeed. I am going to finish by making a point to the protesters.
If they want to change opinions, they should do what we all have
to do most weekends, on both sides of the Chamber: put leaflets
through doors, knock on doors, persuade people and run for
election. If they do not believe in that, they do not believe in
democracy, and whether it is for Extinction Rebellion or any
other cause, that is not how we get things done in this
country.
When people hark back to the suffragettes, let us remember that
they did not have the vote. They were campaigning for the vote in
order to be participants in the process. We have a universal
franchise: everyone has a say. Everyone can run for election and
can campaign, so why do these protesters not put their energies
into that? I am sorry that the British public are not open to
their arguments, but that is not my fault. I agree with the
public, because those arguments are so extreme. The answer is not
to stop the public going about their daily business, and I
suggest to Opposition Members that they should be in keeping with
what the British public want, not with what the people who are
funding them millions of pounds want.
5.36pm
(Glasgow Central)
(SNP)
I want to start where the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr
Mullan) left off: with the suffragettes. The suffragettes
protested their cause for decades because this place did not
listen to them, and many people feel that way about this
Parliament and this Government—that they are not listened to.
That is why people make the protests that they do. I recommend
that the hon. Gentleman goes along to the Admission Order Office
off Central Lobby and reads some of the experiences of those
suffragettes, and what they had to do to get their cause heard.
They got the vote after many decades because this place ignored
them.
That is the crucial point, because what the Home Secretary is
saying today is that people can protest, but only in the way that
she wants them to. It is the latest response to the evolving
nature of protest across these islands. It is as if the Home
Secretary is playing some game of whack-a-mole, but whack-a-mole
is not a mole eradication strategy: it just means that you keep
going, squeezing down on the bubbles in the wallpaper forever. It
will not actually change the attitudes of people who are so
despondent at the way in which this Government are behaving that
they feel that they have to go out and cause this disruption.
They do it not for social media clicks, but because they think
their cause is important and worthy of attention.
For many of these people who are out protesting—Just Stop Oil,
for example—it is not that they are appalled at the fact that we
use fossil fuels, since they sometimes fly halfway around the
world to join those protests. It is simply because of their
sanctimonious attitude that their views are more important than
others’, and that they are entitled to disrupt the lives of
ordinary people.
The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I would take
a lot more from him if he actually believed climate change was
real in the first place, before he starts lecturing other
people.
The UK Constitutional Law Association has described this
statutory instrument as
“an audacious and unprecedented defiance of the will of
Parliament.”
This Government are bringing in things through this SI that they
could not get through in legislation. The UKCLA says that
“The Government set about drafting regulations that would reverse
the defeat in the House, relying on Henry VIII powers to amend
the Public Order Act 1986 conferred by the Police, Crime,
Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. These draft regulations were laid
before the Public Order Bill had even completed its Parliamentary
stages. In this way, the Government sought to obtain through the
back door that which it could not obtain through the front.”
That goes to the heart of this shoddy process this afternoon.
While this regulation is an England and Wales regulation, it does
have implications for my constituents and other people from
Scotland who wish to come and protest. If the WASPI women
campaigners in my constituency wanted to come down here to
complain about the injustice of having their state pension robbed
from them by consecutive Westminster Governments; if they wanted
to protest outside Parliament, as they have done on many
occasions; and if they wanted to invoke the spirit of Mary
Barbour, to bang pots and pans and stand in the road outside of
this building, they would not be protected just because they are
Scottish. They would be at risk of causing serious disruption
under these regulations and would be lifted by the police
forthwith. They would be at risk of causing serious disruption
under these regulations and would be lifted by the police
forthwith. That goes to the heart of these proposals. Those
actions are just and important, and they want to draw attention
to that injustice.
Will the hon. Lady give way?
No, the right hon. Member has been extremely obnoxious to me many
times in the past, so I will not take his intervention.
Groups, including Liberty, have pointed out that these are not
insignificant changes. Liberty says that the Government’s attempt
to redefine serious disruption from “significant and prolonged”
to “more than minor” is
“effectively an attempt to divorce words from their ordinary
meaning in ways that will have significant implications for our
civil liberties.”
The statutory instrument refers to
“the prevention of, or a hindrance that is more than minor to,
the carrying out of day-to-day activities (including in
particular the making of a journey)”,
but what is “minor”? We do not know. Is a couple of minutes late
“minor”? What is “more than minor”? Is that 10 minutes late
rather than five minutes late? There is nothing in these
regulations to say. They will give significant discretion to the
police to figure out exactly what is “minor” and what is “more
than minor”, because nobody can really tell us.
Dr Mullan
There is an offence called “drunk and disorderly”. Disorderly can
have any number of meanings. The common law legal system over
time has sought to define it more narrowly and the police
operationalise that. Why does the hon. Lady not think that that
could be done in exactly the same way with this offence?
Because the regulations are extremely unclear and extremely
discretionary. [Interruption.] It is not clear at all in the
regulations what is “minor” and what is “more than minor”, and
neither of those things seem to me to be serious disruption.
“More than minor” is not the same as serious disruption.
The regulations also refer to a “community”, which
“in relation to a public procession in England and Wales, means
any group of persons that may be affected by the procession,
whether or not all or any of those persons live or work in the
vicinity of the procession.”
What does “affected” mean? Does that mean people saw it on the TV
and they were upset by it? How are they “affected”? Again, that
is unclear in the regulations, which will give police officers a
huge amount of discretion to carry out the enforcement of this
pretty lousy legislation.
Mr Carmichael
The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) says that we
have a common law system whereby common law offences are defined
by precedent over many years—sometimes centuries. We are dealing
here with a statutory instrument, and statutory instruments are
different. That is why in the normal course of things,
well-drafted legislation coming before this House has an
interpretation section that defines such terms. Can the hon. Lady
think of any good reason why we would not have a definitions
section in this SI?
The right hon. Gentleman’s point is correct, and it seems clear
to me that not having a definitions section suits the Government
perfectly. It will make it incredibly difficult for any police
officer to do their job in these circumstances, which is why the
police are perhaps a bit nervous about it.
Liberty points out that the police could consider, for example,
that a static assembly outside of a train station by a trade
union could result in a more than minor delay to access to public
transportation. The police could subsequently impose a condition
that the trade union cannot protest outside the train station,
even though they are trying to protest against that particular
employer. People therefore might be sent a way off somewhere else
and have to say, “Instead of standing at Central station, we will
go and protest at Glasgow Green.” That is just not logical and
would make no sense in Glasgow, just as it makes no sense in this
legislation here in Westminster. It is why the House should have
nothing to do with this legislation.
I do not want to detain the House unduly, because I know that
other Members want to speak, but this legislation is flawed and
wrong. The Home Secretary mentioned people taking things into
their own hands, but people are doing that because they are egged
on by a lot of the rhetoric coming from those on the Government
Benches and from the press. I have seen people being hauled out
of the way and hit in some of the footage that has been shown,
and that is disturbing. This Government suggest that people can
protest only in a way that suits them, not in the way that people
want to make their voice heard in this democracy.
The only slow walking we should be concerned about in this place
is the slow walk on which the Government are taking this House
towards a lack of democracy and fascism. Independence is now the
only way that Scotland can be assured that our right to protest
will be retained.
5.44pm
(Blackpool North and
Cleveleys) (Con)
May I congratulate the shadow Home Secretary on spending more
time scrolling through her phone while sitting on the Front Bench
than she did standing at the Dispatch Box making her speech? I
regard that as a discourtesy to the House and to Members of the
House.
I merely wish to remark on a paragraph in The Economist last
week. It reads:
“Police in the Netherlands arrested 1,500 climate-change
protesters and deployed water cannon when they refused to leave a
motorway they had blocked in The Hague. Forty are to be
prosecuted.”
I read today in the newspapers that there has been concern that
these changes will mean that the police will decide what protests
will be able to take place and that they will be able to choose.
There is always choice on the issue of a protest. Protesters can
choose to protest in such a way that the sick can still get to
hospital, and people can still get to work and earn a living.
Equally—[Interruption.] I am glad that I now have the attention
of the shadow Home Secretary; it is quite an achievement that she
can lift her head up from her phone. Equally, the Metropolitan
police also have a choice as to how they police these protests
and the decisions they can take.
rose—
No, I am not giving way, because the shadow Home Secretary has
not paid attention to anything anyone else has said in this
Chamber. On that note, I am resuming my seat.
5.46pm
(Orkney and Shetland)
(LD)
Can I first say something about the process this afternoon? The
hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) highlighted in his
speech the many significant issues that this legislation brings
to the House, and there are serious debates to be had about the
balance between public protest and individual rights. I am not
entirely sure that I buy his thesis that the need for protest
ended when we achieved universal suffrage, but taking that as we
may for the moment, these are significant and serious issues.
That is why this House has evolved, over the centuries, a series
of measures by which we are able to scrutinise legislation.
The Home Secretary spoke for only 12 minutes to persuade the
House why this legislation was necessary. I cannot decide whether
or not I am displeased. I generally like her speeches best when
they are finished, so 12 minutes was not mercifully short.
However, I think that for issues such as this, we deserve
something more.
Some of the interventions we have heard from the Government side
of the Chamber have also been quite telling. The right hon.
Member for Gainsborough ( ), who has just left his place,
said that this was to do with the understanding of the left about
protest, as if those who protested were always from the left. I
remember that in the early years after I was first elected to
this House there were significant protests, causing massive
disruption, by those opposed to the Bill to abolish hunting with
hounds. I do not think that many of them would welcome being
labelled as left-wing, and the view taken by the Conservatives in
Parliament at that time was very different from the one we hear
from them in government.
Sir (New Forest East) (Con)
I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, but I think
his memory is playing him false. I also remember the Countryside
Alliance protest marches, and I believe they were organised in
full co-operation with the police. It was similar with most of
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protests on the other side
of the political spectrum. We are talking here about people who
act unilaterally to obstruct others from going about their lawful
business. The Countryside Alliance did not do that, so far as I
recall.
Mr Carmichael
The right hon. Gentleman is actually correct in his recollection
but also incomplete, because not all those protests were
organised by the Countryside Alliance. I can remember the night
when this House debated the Second Reading, and it was impossible
for Members of this House to get on to the parliamentary estate
because of the violence going on in Parliament Square. So if we
are to take a view on the right to protest, that view must apply
equally across the board to everybody, of whatever political
persuasion, instead of simply, as we seem to be doing today,
focusing on one aspect.
(Hayes and Harlington)
(Lab)
The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir ) forgets that, when he was a
member of the Labour party, he used to blast out very loud music
at CND marches down Whitehall—he most probably would have been
arrested by now.
Mr Carmichael
I doubt that the constable who would arrest the right hon.
Gentleman has yet been commissioned, but the right hon. Member
for Hayes and Harlington () makes a good and fair
point.
My concern is about not just the process but the weakness in the
way in which this legislation has been drafted and brought to the
House. On the lack of any proper definition of what constitutes
“minor”, for example, we should not be leaving these things to
the courts. The courts are not there to fill in the gaps that
Parliament leaves behind. There may well be a serious body of
case law that will define “minor”, but we know now that it is the
job of this House to insert that definition and we are not doing
it.
I confess that I have been somewhat surprised to hear the
enthusiasm of the Democratic Unionists in relation to this
legislation. I can only presume that that is because the
territorial extent of this legislation is England and Wales only.
However, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central () said, it could of course
affect anybody who comes from there. We define community not just
as people who live or work in a place but also those who would be
affected by the process, and I wonder how the right hon. Member
for East Antrim () would feel if hundreds of
people, or perhaps several thousand, deciding to walk slowly down
a road playing flutes and banging a Lambeg drum were to be
covered by such legislation.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Carmichael
Of course; I will give way in a few seconds.
Frequency is at the heart of the offence being created here, and
as many people resident in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern
Ireland would tell us, in the month of July such incidences are
frequently to be found. I give way with pleasure to the right
hon. Gentleman.
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that this House legislated
a long time ago to ensure that people who engage in those
activities are fully regulated by the law, and the Parades
Commission has been set up for some time now, and causes great
anxiety at home with some of its rulings. So there is that
legislation and Members across this House, including members of
his party and the Labour party who are protesting about this
legislation now, were quite happy to legislate for the Parades
Commission to regulate the Lambeg drummers, the fluters and those
who celebrate the glorious 12th in Northern Ireland every
year.
Mr Carmichael
I think the glorious 12th comes in August actually, but I bow to
the expertise of those on the Conservative Benches on such
matters.
In fairness, however, the right hon. Gentleman has a reasonable
point, and I understand that the legislation to which he refers
pertains only to Northern Ireland and that is perhaps why it is
not part of this legislation. Essentially, however, as the shadow
Home Secretary said in her remarks, this is an area of law that
is already well regulated. Very few areas of lacuna remain within
the law and this legislation is not in any practical, meaningful
way going to fill any difficulties. What would fill difficulties
is a better resourced police force that is better able to engage
with people and take on board their wish to protest.
Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the fact that it is not
just Northern Ireland that has regulation of protest? He will be
aware that in Scotland it is a criminal offence not to notify the
police within 28 days of an organised moving protest, and that
people may face criminal sanctions if they do not do so. What is
the difference between the legislation we are currently
discussing and the law under which his constituents operate,
where they may go to prison if they do not tell the police about
a protest that is coming?
Mr Carmichael
I could be wrong because I am hopelessly out of date on so much
of this stuff, but I think from memory that the right hon.
Gentleman refers to the provisions of the Civic Government
(Scotland) Act 1982, which was brought into force under a
previous Government—a Government for whom I had very little time,
but in terms of the way in which they went about their business
were a model of parliamentary propriety compared with the mince
that has been brought to the Chamber this afternoon. This comes
back to the point I made about the hon. Member for Crewe and
Nantwich: there are serious issues here to be decided—serious
issues about the balance between the rights of the individual to
protest and the rights of the community to go about their
business—but this is not the way to deal with them.
The shadow Home Secretary made the point that this is an area
where there is already extensive legislation. Problems arise not
from the lack of legislation but from the lack of the ability to
implement properly and with consent the laws we currently
have.
5.55pm
(Brighton, Pavilion)
(Green)
This statutory instrument is oppressive, anti-democratic and
downright wrong. It is anti-rights legislation by Executive
diktat, and it is a profound insult to people and to Parliament,
of which this Government should be ashamed. In short, it is
authoritarian in both style and substance.
On the substance, the police do not need yet more power to
restrict protest. We need only look at what happened at the
recent coronation: Ministers had to be summoned to this House to
explain why police gravely overstepped the mark. As other hon.
Members have set out, these regulations hand new, unprecedented
powers and discretion to the police. They seek to redefine
“serious disruption” from “prolonged” and “significant” to “more
than minor”. This will gift the police greater powers to impose
conditions on public assemblies and processions, as well as
powers to consider the legally vague concepts of “relevant” and
“cumulative” disruption. Requiring the police to consider all
“relevant” disruption is dangerously vague and places far too
much discretion in the hands of the police as well as placing an
unfair burden on frontline officers. It could mean peaceful
protest activities are restricted because of other forms of
disruption not linked to the protest, such as traffic congestion
in the area.
The so-called “cumulative” disruption that the SI allows lets
police add up disruption from other protests when considering
whether to impose conditions on a particular protest. That runs
the serious risk of the police facing pressure from the
Government of the day to restrict particular protest movements
based on their content.
(Islington North) (Ind)
The hon. Member is making an important point about the right of
protest. On the idea of giving long-term notice to the police,
if, for example, an eviction is due to take place and fellow
tenants arrive at the scene to support and defend the tenant due
to be evicted, the urgency of that means they could not possibly
gain permission in advance for their demonstration, yet that is a
wholly legitimate right of protest that a neighbourhood would be
performing to protect somebody.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I
agree.
This SI comes in the wake of our official police watchdog warning
that public trust in police is “hanging by a thread”. This is no
time to risk increased politicisation of the policing of public
order.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has made it clear that
it has grave concerns about this measure, advising that
“the measures go beyond what is reasonably necessary to police
protest activities.”
Its briefing warns of its concern about incompatibility with the
European convention on human rights and of a “chilling effect” on
the right to freedom of expression.
Moving on to the style—the way in which this is being done—the
Government are trying to do something which has never been done
before: they are trying an abuse of process that we must not
permit, whatever we think of the content of the SI and the
intentions behind it. The restrictions on protest rights that
this SI seeks to impose were explicitly rejected by Parliament
during the passage of the Public Order Bill—now the Public Order
Act 2023—in February 2023. This is the very opposite of the
integrity that the current Prime Minister promised when he took
over. It is a blatant continuation of the casual disregard for
Parliament’s democratic standards that he promised to
discontinue.
My Green party colleague in the other place, Baroness , has tabled a fatal motion to
kill off this affront to our rights and our democracy, and it
will be before that House tomorrow. Rightly, for primary
legislation the unelected House of Lords is a revising Chamber.
As Members will know, this is secondary legislation and it needs
the approval of both Houses. Presumably, that is to avoid the
type of situation we face now, where an SI could be used by the
Executive to reverse a Lords revision to primary legislation that
they do not like.
Mr Carmichael
I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way, because that
gets to the heart of the matter as far as the other place is
concerned. The Government, in bringing the regulations to the
House in this way, are riding roughshod over the conventions of
this House. We have a system that relies on checks, balances and
conventions, so when our noble Friends in the other place come to
consider this legislation, might they also be entitled to say
that, with a check having been removed, they are entitled to
adjust the balance and pay the same regard to the conventions of
their House that the Government have done to the conventions of
this House?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for that contribution.
He makes a valid and legitimate point, which I had not
considered.
The regulations represent a gross Executive overreach. I
sincerely hope that the motion is defeated. If it passes because
hon. Members choose to allow this twin attack on our right to
protest and on parliamentary democracy, I encourage every Member
of the other place, whatever they think of the content of the
statutory instrument, to vote for Baroness Jones’s fatal motion
tomorrow, because to ride roughshod over primary legislation in
such a way is a truly dangerous path to tread.
Finally, I want to distance myself entirely from the comments
made by Conservative Members about the right to protest. I remind
them that when people take peaceful direct action, they are doing
so because they have generally been driven to feel that they have
no alternative. They feel that the Government are careering over
a climate cliff edge and they are trying to get a hold of the
wheel. As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres reminded
us:
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals.
But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are
increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new
fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”
I could not agree with him more.
6.01pm
(Poplar and Limehouse)
(Lab)
It is appallingly apt that this widely recognised repressive and
authoritarian Government are using a widely recognised repressive
and authoritarian power to implement a widely recognised
repressive and authoritarian measure to give the police almost
complete discretion over which protests they want to ban. It is
not as though the police are not already equipped with excessive
and unaccountable powers.
Indeed, such powers were on display in my constituency recently
when up to 100 police officers evicted 29 homeless people,
including some thought to be subject to no recourse to public
funds, from 88 Hardinge Street—a building understood locally to
be an unofficial homeless shelter. The operation included a large
number of territorial support level 2 public order officers with
riot shields to deal with residents who had gathered in shock to
protest against the action. A dispersal order was issued that
stretched almost a full kilometre around my constituency. A
constituent said:
“as a local resident, if I could file a complaint against the
actions of the police today, I would.”
Dr Mullan
Will the hon. Member give way?
I will not—the hon. Member has had his say.
It is chilling that these measures are being forced through when
trust in the Metropolitan police is at an all-time low, not least
following the killing of Chris Kaba, who was fatally shot by a
Metropolitan police firearms officer in September last year; the
treatment of Child Q; the kidnap and killing of Sarah Everard by
a serving police officer; the evidence of institutional racism
and misogyny, and so on. Even more unaccountable power is being
handed to the police when so many are concerned about
long-standing failures on the part of the police to be
accountable for their actions.
The truth is that the Government’s actions today would never be
right. This attack on democracy and civil liberties is akin to
that of many repressive regimes that the UK has been right to
criticise, but now it seems to be seeking to emulate or perhaps
compete with them. Does the Home Secretary agree that Dr Martin
Luther King, with his non-violent civil disobedience, is one of
the most widely celebrated activists worldwide? Does she
acknowledge that many recognise, and some even celebrate, the
suffragettes and the role they played in advancing the democratic
rights of women? She referred to harmful protests and repeated
protests that will be outlawed through the powers to be given to
the police. So harmful were the protests that the suffragettes
engaged in that they won women the right to vote. She and I both
enjoy the privileges of that today as parliamentarians in this
House.
We cannot allow the Government to get away with this repressive
change to the laws of protest. I will vote against the
regulations, and I urge colleagues across the House to consider
doing the same. This is so much more important than all of us
individually and more important than political parties; it is
about the future of democracy itself.
6.04pm
(Hayes and Harlington)
(Lab)
I concur with everything said by my hon. Friend the Member for
Poplar and Limehouse (), the hon. Member for
Brighton, Pavilion () and others.
I want to bring this down to a parochial level for my
constituents. When we sit here and see legislation going through,
we can sometimes spot the legislation that we realise will never
work, and we know that we will be back here shortly to try to put
it right. I think that is the case now, so I want to take up the
point made by the right hon. Member for Gainsborough ( ) —he is not in his place at
the moment—and followed up by the hon. Member for Crewe and
Nantwich (Dr Mullan).
I fully agree that, in a democracy, what should happen is that
constituents and members of our communities should be able to
raise issues and argue a case, put their views to their relevant
elected representatives and vote as constituents in elections for
Governments who will fulfil their wishes. That is what happened
with my constituents in west London on the third runway issue,
which we have been campaigning on since the late-1970s. assured people that there
would be no third runway, “no ifs, no buts”. Some of my
constituents—I forgive them now—even voted for the Conservative
party on that basis. However, what happens if the governing
party, after its election, puts in a caveat saying, “Actually,
that commitment was only for the life of this Parliament and no
further”? All the insecurities come out about the continuation of
blight on communities.
People felt, “Where do we go from here?” They had tried to use
the democratic process—all that they could—and secured a
political commitment, but that was reneged upon. People felt
betrayed, so naturally they came out in the streets. They were
joined by Conservative MPs, including . In fact, one Conservative
MP got so excited that he said he would lie down in front of the
bulldozers. Is this an anti-Boris Johnson piece of legislation as
well?
Dr Mullan
The right hon. Member is postulating an argument that if a
particular group of people are not successful in their protests
because the Government do not follow through, that means that the
system is not working. We have had people protesting against
vaccines. They could say, “The fact that we protested
vociferously against vaccines being rolled out and did not get
our way means that it is perfectly legitimate for us to go on and
disrupt everyone,” but that is not an argument for protest.
I think that the hon. Gentleman was not listening. What my
constituents and the constituents of Uxbridge did was follow the
process, exactly as he advised them.
Dr Mullan
They lost.
No. He was not listening, was he? What happened was that they
campaigned and they were given a commitment by the leader of a
political party, but that was reneged upon as soon as he got
elected. Where do they go? They had used the democratic process
and they were betrayed—they were so angry. They went on to the
streets, and they were joined by Conservative MPs. What do they
do? They block roads, they sit down in the street and they
threaten to sit down in front of bulldozers. That was my
invitation to when he was first elected,
and he said, “Yes, I’ll be with you in front of that bulldozer.”
Why? Because , the Conservative MP before
him—by the way, he was an excellent constituency MP—said exactly
that. In fact, he had raised the issue himself.
People felt completely frustrated. What I am arguing, on behalf
of my constituents, is that this measure puts the local police
and local protesters in an almost impossible position.
My right hon. Friend is making a very good point about the third
runway. History will show that the demonstrations absolutely
worked: the third runway has not yet been built. Personally, I
hope it never is. There are those who say protest does not work,
but the right to roam our countryside happened only because of
the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in the 1930s. People took brave
action to win rights for all of us. Those are the rights we all
enjoy. We should not just legislate them away, which is what this
law is doing.
I welcome that intervention.
The regulations put the local police in my area, as well as local
protesters and the local communities in both the Hayes and
Harlington constituency and the Uxbridge and South Ruislip
constituency, in an impossible position. They seem to apply
almost perfectly to our local situation. If I go through the
various criteria, the first is “cumulative” impact. I am not sure
how we judge cumulative. Is that over a limited period of time or
a short period of time? We have been protesting there since 1978.
Is that cumulative? Does the police officer have to take that
into account at the local level, or should he or she set a
limited timescale on that?
Mr Carmichael
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because
this again comes to the heart of the process in the legislation
we are passing. The proposition from the Government Benches is
that it is all right, because the courts will fix out these
things. Long before it gets anywhere near a court, it will be a
decision for police officers on the street, the borough commander
or whomever it will be. Is that fair on police officers?
The history of protest around Heathrow is actually an example of
a model relationship between protesters and local police. It has
worked very well up to now. We have had some issues. One
protester who was with me in the negotiations between the police
and the climate camp was, I now discover, a police officer—part
of the spycops situation. But what I am saying is that it puts
people in an impossible position. What is cumulative?
On absolute disruption, the explanatory memorandum states:
“For example, serious disruption may be caused if a procession or
assembly causes a traffic jam in an area where traffic jams are
common.”
At certain times of the day in my constituency, I cannot find
many streets where there isn’t a traffic jam on the main roads,
to be frank. It goes on to talk about the meaning of “community”.
Define the term community. Is that just the Heathrow villages, or
is it Hayes and Harlington? The protesters came in from Uxbridge
as well. It goes on to list the types of facilities where
protests will be banned, and it includes “a transport
facility”—so, Heathrow airport. The regulations have almost been
designed to prevent any form of protest against the third runway.
In fact, they are almost perfectly designed to arrest the former
right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip—perhaps that is
what the Conservative party is up to.
I just think that this is one of those pieces of legislation,
like the old Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, that is unworkable. It will
be back here next year or the year after, but after having put
police officers and protesters in a virtually impossible
position. The Government need to think again. This is not the way
to legislate anyway, without proper due consideration.
6.13pm
(East Antrim) (DUP)
I am a Protestant. I have sought to live up to that title
throughout my political involvement. I have taken part in many
protests, as Protestants should. That is why we got our name:
protesting about various things. I have been involved in noisy
protests, disruptive protests, protests about the closure of
schools, about traffic running through streets and about the
Housing Executive knocking down houses, and protests about major
political decisions made in this place that were going to
disadvantage Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom.
Sometimes we did not need megaphones, because we had our previous
party leader. I suspect that some of the protests we engaged in
may well have fallen foul of this legislation.
The one thing I do know, however, is that when we engage in
protest, we have to recognise that if we step beyond the bounds
of what is allowed, we have to take the consequences. It is as
simple as that. There have to be consequences, because protests
cannot be unlimited. They have to be balanced against the impact
they have on the lives of people who are not interested in the
protest or maybe even oppose it, but who are nevertheless
affected by it. That is why this legislation is necessary.
Over the last number of years, we have increasingly seen protest
methods used by people who are entirely selfish. Sometimes they
represent a very small minority—usually protesters are minorities
anyway—but are determined to have their cause listened to. They
do not even make any bones about it. They go out of their way to
have a detrimental impact on other people in order to, as I have
heard some of them say, make them listen, to make them wake up
and to make them pay attention to their cause, even though, as I
pointed out in an intervention, sometimes that cause is totally
hypocritical. For example, they protest against taking oil and
gas out of the ground, yet are quite happy to drive miles to
their protest. Some even fly on private jets to join protests,
yet seem to have no idea or awareness of the hypocrisy of their
actions.
Who?
Well, let us take the Extinction Rebellion protests we had here.
Stars were flying in from America to join them. They did not feel
any qualms about it. They did not even see the hypocrisy of it.
For some protesters, the important thing is that other people
should be affected by their concerns—that they should be able to
live a lifestyle and engage in actions that have no impact on
them but that do have an impact on others. People go out of their
way consciously to cause disruption to others and cause anger,
frustration and sometimes a detrimental impact. They protest
about the quality of air in London and the burning of fuels, and
what do they do? They cause traffic jams where people are
belching out smoke from the back of their cars and burning
petrol. Yet it seems that we should tolerate that. Unfortunately,
it has been tolerated. I saw the frustration it caused many
commuters. We see it on our television screens time and time
again. The Government are, I believe, obliged to do something
about it.
There is a certain hypocrisy and inconsistency about some of the
arguments we have heard tonight. It has already been referred to
that there are those on the Labour Benches who are quite happy to
say that someone who glues themselves to a road or causes
physical destruction to paintings in an art gallery should be
tolerated, but someone who stands outside an abortion clinic and
prays should not be tolerated. That kind of inconsistency shows
that this is not so much about the methods that the Home
Secretary is introducing today, but about who they are targeted
at. I think that is the important thing. I was challenged by the
right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) about
parades in Northern Ireland. This House supported the parades
legislation for Northern Ireland, which is quite draconian. In
fact, it can ban a parade that may take three minutes to pass a
flashpoint, because sometimes people have come from 50 miles away
to be offended by it. If they protest, the Parades Commission can
make a ruling against the parade. So, we can see an inconsistency
in attitudes across the House.
Mr Carmichael
The good news, I suppose, for the right hon. Gentleman is that
those seeking to stop his walks or marches would not have to
travel 50 miles. They would just have to say that they were
affected by it, because that is the definition of community.
A number of Members have made the point that that leaves
interpretation for the police. Has the community been affected?
What has been the cumulative effect? Is the protest too noisy?
But that is true in every situation where a policeman or
policewomen on the ground has to make an operational decision. Do
I take this drunk out of the pub, or do I allow him to stay
there? Do I talk to him and let him walk away, or do I stick him
in the police van? Of course those operational decisions will
always be with the police. However, having seen some of the
attitudes not just of police officers on the ground, but of some
of those in command and in the courts, my worry is that
regardless of what legislation we introduce here tonight, the
interpretation of what is happening will come down to what the
officers or the judges think of the protesters’ case. That is
where the real difficulty lies.
As a protester, I do not want to see us living in what one Member
has rather exaggeratedly described as a fascist regime. This is
not fascism. This is about a Government having to make a decision
as to what we do in a democracy to allow people to make their
point even if we do not like the point that they are making, and
to stop people being impacted by the protest even though the
protester has made it quite clear that that is their main aim
anyway. Although I am always more sympathetic to protesters than
I am to the legislation against them, I think that this measure
is necessary tonight and we shall be giving it our support.
6.21pm
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions
in what has been a fruitful and lively debate. I will not spend
too much time responding to Labour’s position. The response of
the shadow Secretary of State was almost totally devoid of
anything serious on the issue of public order. She would rather
spend her time in the Chamber glued to her phone, as my hon.
Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys () remarked.
Can the Home Secretary confirm that slow walking is already
against the law and that that is how the Metropolitan police and
other police forces have already managed to stop a whole series
of slow-walking incidences that have caused significant
disruption for communities?
The fact that the right hon. Lady has to ask that question
reflects her total misunderstanding of what we are debating here
today. Of course the police have powers enshrined in legislation
already, but we are trying to clarify the thresholds and
boundaries of where the legal limit lies, so that they can take
more robust action and respond more effectively. Perhaps if she
had not looked at her phone so much she would know what we were
talking about. She would also rather spend her time at the
Dispatch Box playing pantomime politics than engaging with the
serious issue of public safety and the right to protest.
People cannot get to work. They cannot get to school. Ambulances
cannot get to patients. People cannot get to funerals.
Hard-working people are paying well-earned cash to attend live
sporting events, public galleries and public shows not for them
to be ruined by a selfish minority.
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for allowing me to
intervene. I endorse entirely what the right hon. Member for East
Antrim () said. The reason for these
measures is that the nature of protests on our roads—the blocking
of our roads—has changed over the past few years. No one wants to
impose more restrictions on anyone in our country, but what is
happening now is making it impossible for normal people to have
decent lives.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that the evolving
tactics—the guerrilla tactics—that we are now seeing being
deployed by these campaigners are unacceptable and the police
need more clarity as to how to use their powers. The sad fact is
that Labour Members would rather look after their Just Stop Oil
friends and obstruct this Government from giving the police more
powers. Frankly, they are on another planet if they think that
they speak for the British people. They are on the wrong side of
this debate and they are on the wrong side of the public.
I thank hon. Members who made powerful speeches. In particular, I
thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr
Mullan) who spoke very powerfully, and with the benefit of his
own experience from the frontline of policing as well, about the
careful balance that is involved in tackling this issue. As he
said, we need to balance rights with responsibilities. This is
about protecting the public and enabling the law-abiding majority
to go about their business. It is about stopping them from being
impeded, obstructed, delayed, inconvenienced and frustrated.
These measures are designed to support them.
I thank the right hon. Member for East Antrim () for his potent words, As he
said, this is about crossing a boundary. This is about making it
clear that when protesters use disruptive means and deliberately
seek to cause misery and disturbance through physical disruption,
a line has been crossed. These measures clarify the law, so that
the police can take more robust action.
There has been some mention of the coronation this afternoon. I
want to put on record my thanks to the police for delivering what
was the largest operation that the Metropolitan Police Service
has ever led, with more than 11,000 officers, staff and
volunteers. They ensured that the coronation operations were
delivered successfully, safely and securely in a challenging
environment. I was proud of their work and proud of the fact that
they enabled millions of people to enjoy such an historic event
peacefully. At the same time, they struck the right balance. When
they received intelligence that indicated that groups were
seeking to disrupt the coronation, including by using rape alarms
to disrupt the procession, they took the requisite action that
they deemed fit within the bounds of operational independence.
Hundreds of individuals participated in peaceful protests in and
around the coronation footprint on 6 May, including a large group
of Not My King supporters in Trafalgar Square. I thank the police
for their incredible effort in policing the coronation and
enabling millions of people to enjoy such an important event.
The hon. Member for Glasgow Central () and the right hon. Member
for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) have, with respect,
missed the point when it comes to these measures. This is not
about banning protest. This is not about prohibiting freedom of
assembly. No one in this House is suggesting that at all. Those
are human rights, and they are protected by law. I will fiercely
defend the right of anyone to exercise those rights lawfully, but
they are not absolute rights; they are qualified rights, as set
out in the European convention on human rights. These measures
are about the balance to be struck, and they turn on the need for
clarity, so that law enforcement knows where the boundary is and
how to exercise their powers.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion () spoke with characteristic
alarmism, if I may say so. We have become accustomed to her
doom-mongering over the years, and I will actually miss it when
she leaves this House. Let me take this opportunity to thank her
for her years of hard work for her constituents and for the
causes about which she is so evidently passionate.
Members in this House now have a choice before them: do they
support the disrupters, or are they on the side of the
law-abiding majority. Are they here to help the grafters and the
strivers, or to facilitate the obstructors and the fanatics? We
know that Labour is here to support the militant few rather than
the law-abiding majority. It is this Conservative Government who
are on the side of all reasonable people across the country and
on the side of common-sense policing. These measures will ensure
that public order laws are clear, consistent and current, and I
commend this statutory instrument to the House.
Question put.
[Division 251
The House divided:
Ayes
277
Noes
217
Question accordingly agreed to.
Held on 12 June 2023 at
6.29pm](/Commons/2023-06-12/division/AAB6C522-BE69-4E34-8AAE-FC3B925D6654/CommonsChamber?outputType=Names)
Resolved,
That the draft Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the
Life of the Community) Regulations 2023, which were laid before
this House on 27 April, be approved.
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