Political Violence and Disruption: Walney Report

With permission, I will make a statement on Lord Walney’s report entitled “Protecting our Democracy from Coercion”. Lord Walney was appointed in 2019 to advise the Government on political violence and extremism. Throughout the course of his review, laid before Parliament yesterday and available on gov.uk, he has consulted an extensive evidence base and engaged Government, public bodies, international partners, academia, civil society and those personally affected by violent disruption and extremism.

Lord Walney’s timely and compelling report identifies a rising tide of extremism in this country. Its central finding is that political intimidation and the incitement of hatred by extremist groups and individuals are infringing on the essential rights and freedoms of the British people and those they choose to represent them in politics. In recent months, we have too often seen intimidatory and aggressive protest activity, with frequent disruption to our democratic processes, be that protests outside MPs’ homes and council meetings or shutting down events where people from both sides of this House have been speaking.

Lord Walney eloquently describes the threat posed by the extreme right as well as the extreme left, whose activists, in his words,

“systematically seek to undermine faith in our parliamentary democracy and the rule of law.”

This has a very real impact on the elected representatives who choose to dedicate themselves in service to the public. Lord Walney highlights the 2023 Local Government Association survey’s finding that 70% of local councillors felt

“at risk at least some of the time”

while fulfilling their role. It also has an effect on the public servants working to make their communities a better place up and down the country.

I was particularly struck by the section on protests at schools. The purpose of schools, as I am sure we can all agree, is to educate our children and to teach students how to think, not what to think. Our teachers must be free to do this without fear or favour. While it is right that schools consult parents on sensitive issues, it is not their job to appease pressure groups, self-appointed community activists or religious institutions. That is why I was deeply concerned by the aggressive protests targeting schools detailed in Lord Walney’s report. It is unacceptable that, in Birmingham, one assistant head had to be escorted in and out of their school for their own safety. It is unacceptable that, in Batley, a teacher and his family are reportedly still in hiding after being accused of blasphemy.

There is no right not to be offended in this country. No religion or belief system is immune from criticism or exempted from our liberal democratic tradition. Blasphemy laws are incompatible with British values and principles. The effect that these incidents have had is utterly unacceptable. Every politician and public servant, at all levels and across all parties, must be able to perform their duties without fear. This transcends party dividing lines. We must all stand up for our shared democratic values and freedoms.

This Government will take every possible step to safeguard the people and institutions upon which our democracy depends. We recently committed an additional £31 million to bolstering the protection of elected representatives and our democratic processes, an investment that will be used to enhance police capabilities, increase private security support for those facing a higher risk, and expand cyber-security advice. This investment is underpinned by the defending democracy policing protocol, agreed with police chiefs, to ensure a robust policing response to disruptive activity, including the provision of dedicated, named police contacts for all elected representatives and candidates to liaise with on security matters.

As Lord Walney sets out, it is vital that we take action to manage and limit the impact of protests that descend into violence and disruption. These have not just resulted in vile displays of antisemitism on our streets and aggressive, disruptive tactics deployed by some protestors; they have also drained police resources, as officers are redeployed away from their frontline duties to protect the British public from criminals who target them with fraud, theft and violence.

We must not forget that it is the British people who pay for this. We must not permit the selfishness of an extremist minority to deprive them of the services they are owed and should rightly expect. That is why, over the coming weeks, the Government will look carefully at Lord Walney’s recommendations on public order, and will look at changing the thresholds for imposing conditions on protests and the way in which they are applied. This includes amending the threshold to prevent protests from going ahead on account of the cumulative impact of serious disruption, or where there is the threat of intimidating and abusive conduct based on the persistence of previous arrests.

In addition, we will consider Lord Walney’s recommendation for putting greater responsibilities on protest organisers to limit disruption, and to allow the police to account for demands on their resources in setting conditions, to ensure wider public safety in their jurisdictions beyond protests. The Home Secretary, the Policing Minister and I will be considering the merits of these suggestions over the coming weeks.

The Government are already introducing measures through the Criminal Justice Bill to crack down on dangerous disorder, many of which were inspired by working closely with Lord Walney over recent months. The Government have also introduced serious disruption prevention orders to allow courts to place requirements or prohibitions on an individual aged 18 or over that they consider necessary and proportionate to prevent that individual from causing serious disruption.

We must go further in tackling the root causes. In this vein, the Government have updated the definition of extremism to be used by Government Departments and officials, alongside a set of engagement principles. This is to ensure that they do not, inadvertently or otherwise, provide a platform, funding or legitimacy to groups or individuals who attempt to advance extremist ideologies that would deny our fundamental rights and freedoms.

I thank Lord Walney for his tireless effort in bringing the report together, and we will continue to work closely with him to ensure that his findings inform ongoing policy development. We will, of course, update Parliament on our progress at the appropriate time.

There is no doubt that extremism poses a threat to our democracy. Left unchecked, it would eat away at the very foundations of our society and the liberties of our people. This Government will not allow that to happen. We will hold ever faster to the values of freedom and tolerance that make our country great. We will use every available tool to combat those who seek to divide us and the poisonous ideologies they espouse. And, in the end, we will defeat extremism in all its ugly forms.

I commend this statement to the House.

I call the shadow Minister.

I thank the Minister for his statement and for providing advance sight of it. I join him in thanking Lord Walney for his work on this report.

It is important to say from the outset that the Opposition absolutely respect the fundamental freedom to make legitimate, peaceful protest but, when that freedom is abused to intimidate, harass and harm others, safeguards must be put in place to protect the public and our democratic system as a whole. We have seen in recent months that people have been intimidated and have felt threatened due to protest activity.

I therefore agree with the Minister that this is totally unacceptable, and there must be no no-go areas in our country. That is why we have been crystal clear that where there are public order offences, hate crime offences or terrorist offences on marches and demonstrations, they must face the full force of the law. The police have our full support in taking swift and robust action. Furthermore, we have been crystal clear that our police forces need the utmost clarity and support to carry out sometimes complex policing operations around protests.

The Walney report on political violence and disruption deals with some of the most fundamental and sensitive cornerstones of our democratic society. The Opposition will therefore go through and consider the report’s 41 recommendations very carefully, with an approach that our long and proud tradition of the right to peaceful protest must never be undermined by criminal or threatening activity on Britain’s streets.

In the first instance, I will touch on two points discussed in the report before asking the Minister a couple of questions.

The first point relates to whether the police should have more powers to ban protests that are intimidating or disruptive. It is important to note that the police already have powers under the Public Order Act 1986 to place conditions on protests, including amending routes and timings. They also have the power, in cases where there may be serious public disorder, to apply to the Home Secretary to prohibit a particular protest from taking place.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments and the way he has approached this matter. He has always been extremely pragmatic in areas of national security, and has certainly been a very capable partner with whom I have been able to work. I am grateful for his approach today.

I am particularly grateful that the hon. Gentleman is open to looking at certain areas of this report seriously, such as the question of where costs should lie. Football clubs have to contribute to the cost of policing matches, and Wimbledon has to contribute to the cost of policing tennis, and yet here are organisations costing tens of millions of pounds in policing costs each year, and doing so as though this was their own private fiefdom. It strikes me as a very odd way of behaving. I also welcome the hon. Gentleman’s approach to the Defending Democracy Taskforce and the support he has offered for it today.

Let me just answer the hon. Gentleman’s questions briefly. We will be discussing with DLUHC—as he knows, it is an important participant in this discussion—and other relevant departments, including the Ministry of Justice, how to take these recommendations forward and which to adopt. I am sure he understands that I will update the House in the usual way at the appropriate time. I am also grateful for his support on that.

I call the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

I personally find it reassuring that this matter is being debated by two gallant hon. and right hon. Members—my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis)—who first met, I believe, fighting extremism in a foreign country.

I wish to draw particular attention to Lord Walney’s recommendation 20 on requiring the organisers of repeated protest marches to contribute to the cost of policing. Last Sunday, the relatives of the wartime Telegraphist Air Gunners held their commemoration service in a nearby church, rather than at the Fleet Air Arm memorial on the seafront at Lee-on-the-Solent, because to do the latter would have involved a road closure and policing for which their little association would have had to pay. Even if one says there should be a wider regime where political protest is concerned, after one large protest on a particular cause, the repetition of the same protest week in, week out—possibly for intimidatory purposes—should certainly not be cost-free to the organisers.

The challenges we are seeing with different churches and communities across the land are where individuals organise protests surrounding areas that are used for different purposes, and that is exactly why this report is so important. When people assemble at sites that should otherwise be free for groups to associate in, whether that is churches or village halls, the important thing is that our democracy is able to be performed there. What my right hon. Friend spoke about may not sound like part of the democratic process, in the sense that it is not party political—it is not a ballot box or an election—but it is part of that process because it is about people getting together, with people able to associate together, feel a place in our community and know that they are part of a rich tradition, all the way from those Fleet Air Arm Telegraphists to those serving today. That is why this report is so important, and why we will be putting so much effort into it.

I call the SNP spokesperson.

On the SNP Benches, we stand firmly against intimidation, violence and extremism anywhere. We stand against antisemitism, Islamophobia and hate in all its pernicious forms. But this report goes nowhere near tackling the causes of hate and violence. To recommend—as it does in many different ways—clamping down further on people’s right to protest is entirely inappropriate.

Just yesterday, Liberty won a notable victory at the High Court. The Tory anti-protest laws have led to substantially increased exposure to criminal sanctions on the part of protesters exercising their civil rights, and the court found that the Home Secretary had failed to consult groups who may be affected. Last year, when we debated the statutory instrument on which that court case was founded, I criticised the wide and vague definitions within that SI, which led the Government to that challenge. We certainly do not need more illiberal legislation—that goes against our democratic principles, does it not?

It is in that context that we have Lord Walney’s doorstop of anti-democratic measures in front of us today. I note that Lord Walney has a serious conflict of interest in this matter, as a paid adviser to defence and oil and gas interests—a matter of public record. To say that there should be further restrictions on groups such as Just Stop Oil or anti-war demonstrators smacks of a conflict of interest. It certainly strikes me, as somebody who has been on many protests over the years, that the author of this report must have been on very few, based on his lack of understanding of such protests, how they are organised and the types of people who attend them.

I also ask the Minister if he will take this opportunity to clarify what the Prime Minister said the other week when he put people who support the democratic self-determination of their country in the same bracket as those who support extremist regimes around the world. Scottish nationalists are not extremists. We have been asking for our independence for a very long time and in democratic ways.

The hon. Lady and I have a slightly different perception on many things—that is true—but certainly on liberty. Over the past few weeks and months, I have seen members of our communities terrified to walk the streets of our country. I have seen people, particularly from the Jewish community, but from many others as well, fearful that the radicalisation and violence threatened by some of the protests is threatening them. I have also spoken to friends in the Muslim community who are terrified that their children will be radicalised into groups that advocate violence. I think it is the job of this Government—of any British Government—to defend the interests of all our citizens. I make absolutely no apology for standing up against extremism; whether it seeks to target Jews, young Muslims or anybody else, it is simply unacceptable.

The suggestions that Lord Walney has set out are just that—suggestions. They are suggestions that the Government will look at, consider and come back to, and I will update the House as soon as we have been able to do that. However, if liberty means anything, it means the ability to travel freely to the synagogue on Saturday, to the mosque on Friday, and to the church on Sunday. It means being free from intimidation. It means the ability to enjoy life in the United Kingdom free of those pressures and terrors. This Government will always stand up for those freedoms.

Having organised a number of demonstrations myself, I am nervous at the prospect of being invited to contribute financially to their policing. Nevertheless, clearly there are public order issues and issues of great public nuisance, not least to retailers, commercial businesses and ordinary people going about their business. When there are a repeated series of demonstrations, may I suggest that the Government explore the possibility of confining them to a static demonstration, be it at Speakers’ Corner or elsewhere?

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, touching on some of the issues covered by Lord Walney’s report. He highlights the important aspect that, time and again, we have seen protests stretching and spreading, and being allowed to effectively close down large areas of a city or town, when in reality the point is made long before the march.

The Minister knows that I have fought extremism since I have been in this place, and I will continue to do so. I fought against it in Birmingham, over the Trojan horse schools matter, and I continue to do so. I deplore right-wing extremism. Having had death threats made against me, I have gone to the police, to the House and to the Independent Office for Police Conduct. The latest report from the West Midlands Police says that they are not prepared to take any action, so I will proceed further with the IOPC. The report raises the issue of the protection of Members. When Members do not get protection, as we saw outside schools in Birmingham, Hall Green, or when candidates were intimidated in Batley and Spen, it is not appropriate. I hope that the report will lead to some conclusions on that.

I pay a huge tribute to the hon. Gentleman. He has been a voice of sanity and courage for many years, on many of these issues. His leadership on the Trojan horse scandal was inspirational, and his voice of clarity, standing up for members of the British public who do not wish to see their children or themselves pushed into supporting extremist ideology, has been an example to many of us. I am enormously grateful for his support and I would be delighted to work with him on the appalling issues he has faced himself.

Lord Walney has come up with a marvellous report. I am not surprised: I knew him when he was a Member of Parliament and he was an excellent Member of Parliament too. His report talks about preventing protests from going ahead on account of the “cumulative impact” of serious disruption. He is right to identify that; it is intimidatory and, as my right hon. Friend the Minister has already said, many Jewish people, Muslims and others are frightened of going on the streets because of it. If the report now leads to more legislation by this Government, how certain is the Minister that individual police forces, in particular the Metropolitan police, will implement those new laws?

My hon. Friend will be delighted to know that the noble Lord Walney is still a Member of Parliament, but he has the misfortune to sit in red, not green. The truth is that many police forces are taking effective action already. It is sad that some of those who hold the office of police and crime commissioner do not always feel that it is their role to insist that that leadership is offered; in that case, we are, of course, speaking of London. We may need legislation, but not necessarily. At the moment, we need decisions.