My Lords, the duty of any Government is to protect the safety and interests of the law-abiding majority. This means working to prevent and reduce crime, giving the police the tools they need and ensuring that those who break the law face proportionate consequences of their actions. Fighting crime and keeping communities safe is at the forefront of the Government’s agenda. That is why we have invested £17 billion in policing. It is why we are running a police uplift programme that is well on the way to recruiting 20,000 additional officers, and why we introduced the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which received Royal Assent in April.
While that Act has given the police some of the tools they need better to manage disruptive protests, we were frustrated in our attempts to implement the full suite of measures needed to ensure that the public can go about their daily lives free from serious disruption or harm. The Public Order Bill therefore builds on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act to bolster our ability to crack down on disruptive and dangerous tactics of the kind we are seeing deployed all too frequently.
Specifically, the Bill targets acts by a minority of people that cause serious disruption to the hard-working majority, such as those we have seen in recent months that have brought roads to a standstill, blocked emergency services and forced thousands of police officers away from the critical work of protecting their communities. In October alone, the Metropolitan Police made more than 650 arrests in relation to Just Stop Oil activity in London.
When speaking about some of this disruption, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley noted that his force’s response over 11 days of protests had been the equivalent of more than 2,150 officer days. That, I am sure noble Lords agree, is a striking number. It encapsulates why it is so crucial that we act. The police perform a unique role in our society; theirs is undoubtedly a job with many different strands. These include public order, but it cannot be right that so much of their time and resources are taken up by tiresome and disruptive stunts that, far from advancing the protesters’ cause, serve only to infuriate everyone else.
I absolutely agree with what the Minister says about the police being given these new powers, which are long overdue, but does he agree that once they have them, it is incredibly important that they use them? There have been examples of the police—not the Met but other forces—adopting a “softly, softly” approach that has encouraged the people who have been locking on and causing disruption.
I agree, of course, with my noble friend and I am sure we will come on to that subject in some detail later.
In its report on the policing of protests, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services concluded that stop and search powers will improve the police’s ability to prevent serious disruption, and we agree. I want to be clear to noble Lords that existing safeguards around the use of stop and search powers, including statutory codes of practice, use of body-worn video to increase accountability and extensive data collection will continue to apply.
Next, the Bill lowers the rank of officer to whom the commissioners of the City of London and Metropolitan police forces can delegate powers to prohibit or set conditions on protests. The rank is being lowered from assistant commissioner to commander. This retains senior level involvement but will allow the most senior officers more time to focus on the challenges that the Metropolitan Police Service faces. It will bring London forces into line with forces across England, Wales and Scotland, whose chief officers can already delegate their powers to the commander-equivalent rank of assistant chief constable. The Bill also extends to the British Transport Police and Ministry of Defence Police existing powers to manage public assemblies in Part II of the Public Order Act 1986.
The Bill contains two other measures, as well as an addition from the other place. First, it establishes a new preventive court order, the serious disruption prevention order, which may be sought either on conviction or following an application by a chief police officer. This is targeted at protesters who are determined to repeatedly inflict disruption. The courts will be able to place conditions on individuals to prevent them engaging in criminal acts of protest and causing serious disruption time and time again. These conditions could include curfews or electronic monitoring but, most importantly, they will be for the courts to decide, not the Government. The threshold for the imposition of these orders is appropriately high and I trust our police and courts to impose them only where necessary.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this Second Reading. There is no difference between us, it seems to me, on the right to peaceful protest being a fundamental part of our democracy. Many of us in this Chamber, including me, have been part of protests, campaigns and demonstrations. Throughout history, in generation after generation, people have made their voices heard and taken action against the decisions and policies of the powerful. Indeed, we have stood and applauded those taking action and protesting in countries around the world, most recently in Iran and Russia.
We are not an authoritarian country, and I do not believe that the Government wish to ban all protests. But the Bill contains a number of provisions that undermine our historic and democratic rights. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:
“While the stated intention behind the Bill is to strengthen police powers to tackle dangerous and highly disruptive protest tactics, its measures go beyond this, to the extent that we believe they pose an unacceptable threat to the fundamental right to engage in peaceful protest. The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of democracy, which should be championed and protected rather than stifled.”
The Government’s response is to dismiss these fears and say that they are the outpourings of middle-class liberals who are out of touch—or, worse, “tofu-eating wokerati”. I had to look up what tofu was.
More seriously, why are the Government doing this? Much of it is in response to the recent protests. Let there be no doubt: we also strongly criticise the serious disruption caused by Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion. We have seen behaviour that is unacceptable to us all. Of course vital infrastructure and services on which we all depend need protecting so that others are not put at risk, as we recently saw with an ambulance struggling to get through. That was unacceptable and wrong, as was the dangerous blocking of the M25 or wasting milk, leaving it to low- income cleaners to mop up.
My Lords, I remind the House of my experience in public order policing: I was an advanced trained public order senior officer attending specialist pass-fail week-long initial training, table-top exercises over numerous weekends, and two-day practical exercises every six months involving more than 100 officers and petrol-bombing and operating under a hail of missiles. I was also the gold commander for numerous real-life public order events.
Let me say up front, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has said, that our view is that protesters unreasonably blocking ambulances taking patients to hospital, for example, should be arrested and, in particularly serious cases, they can, they should and they have been sent to prison by the courts. This can be done now, and it has been done recently, under existing legislation. As the noble Lord said, damaging artwork is also a criminal offence under existing legislation, for which someone could be sent to prison.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services, which I will shorten to HMIC, as fire and rescue are not relevant to this Bill, conducted an inspection of public order policing at the request of a former Home Secretary—whichever one it was—who wanted evidence to prove that new legislation was necessary to deal with modern-day protests. There were five proposals on which HMIC, the Home Office and some police officers agreed that the law could be changed, four of which have already been enacted through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. The fifth and only outstanding proposal agreed to, with reservations, by HMIC, which the Home Office initially thought was too controversial to include in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill introduced to this House, was increased stop and search powers for the police in relation to protest. I say that HMIC had reservations, but let me quote from its report, which said:
“Throughout the ten forces we inspected, we found that police views on proposed additional powers relating to protest were strikingly different. At one end of the spectrum, an officer we interviewed described the current legislation as providing ‘an arsenal’ of weapons for the police to use, including many appropriate for use in the context of disruptive protests. Consequently, that interviewee, and many others, saw no need for change. Arguing against the proposal for a new stop and search power … another officer stated that ‘a little inconvenience is more acceptable than a police state’. We agree with this sentiment.”
4:38 pm
Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. However, my personal interest in the policing of public order long predates my need to be in the register. The first demonstration I helped to police was a march protesting against the Shah of Iran, which shows both the circularity and the differences of history. As the noble Lord has just said, my last major foray into the policing of protest was as the commander of the long policing operation concerning the construction of the Newbury bypass in the 1990s. It was there, of course, where the figure of Swampy came to public notice, together with the tactic of tunnelling as a form of protest.
I am grateful to the Minister for a briefing on the Bill last week. This will not be a long speech because, as I told the Minister, in contrast to the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Paddick, I am very much in favour of the Bill’s provisions. There are three reasons for that. First and foremost, the current tactics of locking on and tunnelling are extremely hard to prevent and time-consuming to overcome. The current law is inadequate. Secondly, it is now apparent that many members of the public are becoming extremely irate and beginning to take the law into their own hands, which is almost never a good idea and puts the police in both an invidious position and a very bad light. Thirdly, as a citizen rather than an ex-police officer, I am concerned that this form of protest is so irritating that it will damage the fast-growing consensus over the need for action to tackle climate change.
I will follow the passage of the Bill carefully through your Lordships’ House, but I expect to be most interested in the provisions governing injunctions sought by Secretaries of State, over which I have some concern. I return to the building of the Newbury bypass to underline my concern about the need to protect the operational independence of the police. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, is not in his place; I have told him what I am about to say, as some of it is about him.
The site of the Newbury bypass was eight miles long. From Whitehall, the almost complete disruption caused by protesters at the start of the building operations, which lasted quite a few days, obviously looked like an ideal moment for the use of the newly legislated and excellently drafted offence of criminal trespass, which the noble Lord, then Home Secretary, had recently placed on the statute book. On day two, I was very clearly informed of the noble Lord’s dismay, no doubt expressed with his customary courtesy, that I was refusing to use his legislation. No less august a figure than an assistant inspector of constabulary was sent to convey the message in person. He was a bit less than courteous.
My Lords, I think many of us in this debate will have a feeling of déjà vu. No matter how many pieces of legislation come through here granting the police additional powers, it seems that they are never enough. It seems we are always one more public order provision away from solving the problem.
Along with other noble Lords, I want to support the police and the rule of law. We are grateful for all the police do; they stand in our place and, very often, have to take very difficult decisions. But we already have the Public Order Act 1986, which grants the police powers to place restrictions on protests and to prohibit those which threaten to cause serious disruption to public order. We already have the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which introduced the offence of aggravated trespass. We have the offence of obstruction of a highway and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which allows for civil injunctions to prevent protesters demonstrating in a way which causes harm or harassment. As recently as last year, remarkably extensive powers, including on noisy and disruptive protests, were granted in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
Surely history indicates two things: first, that many protest groups are highly sophisticated and very knowledgeable about their rights and the law around protest, and are better and faster able to adapt than it seems the Home Office is able to legislate; and, secondly, that in attempting to outflank that speed of adaptation, Governments have thrown increasingly and worryingly broadly drawn powers to the police. It is clear, by the very fact that the Government deem this new Bill a necessity, that this is unlikely to succeed. It is hard to see how one more piece of legislation will be any more effective at reducing disruptive protests than the previous many pieces of legislation. It would be very instructive if the Minister could go through those previous powers in some detail to explain to your Lordships’ House how often they are used and what their impact has been.
My Lords, I declare my registered interest as a council member of Justice, the all-party UK section of the International Commission of Jurists.
Noble Lords know that we are not here today to examine the tactical blend of persuasion and nuisance that constitutes peaceful dissent for those who do not own media or energy empires or walk red or green carpets. Sadly perhaps, still less are we here to debate the substance of so many burning issues—the future of our planet being the most obvious.
No, we are here to protect the constitutional climate and to scrutinise yet another public order Bill proposed for an overcrowded statute book. Is it effective, transparent, proportionate and even-handed? Is it respectful of the rule of law principles articulated by the late, great, noble and learned Lord, Lord Bingham of Cornhill? We might also reflect on why the Government promote blank-cheque police powers before even beginning to deal with police discipline, found so wanting after Sarah Everard’s murder and in the interim report from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey.
The Bill bears closer resemblance to anti-terror law than measures aimed at addressing moments when peaceful dissent crosses a line into significant public nuisance. I commend to noble Lords Sir Charles Walker’s speech in the other place against the “machismo laws” he described as “unconservative” and designed for a good headline in the Daily Telegraph.
I refer noble Lords first to the concept of thought crime, where otherwise innocent activity is impugned on the basis of imputed intention alone, as in being “equipped for locking on” by carrying a bicycle chain or first aid kit in one’s rucksack. Secondly, I refer to suspicionless stop and search, notoriously ripe for racialised abuses of police power and found in breach of the convention on human rights in Gillan and Quinton v UK, brought by Liberty during my time as its director. Thirdly, I refer to using quasi-civil orders such as the infamous anti-terror control orders, once opposed by noble Lords opposite, and the now proposed protest banning orders—that is what they are—issued on a civil standard of proof including, as we have head, against people never convicted of a crime, creating a personal criminal code with harsh restrictions on the liberty of the individual subject.
My Lords, this legislation is unnecessary, dangerous, largely unwanted, and futile. It is unnecessary because existing powers are so wide- spread—we have been told that so many times by the Home Secretaries who introduced them. It is dangerous because it contains, for example, search powers without reasonable grounds for suspicion which will be used discriminately and will create tension with innocent members of the community. My noble friend argued earlier how widely unwanted this legislation is among those who actually have to carry it out: serving police officers. It is futile because protesters will always look for new ways to get into the media, to get their head- line and to insist to society that something has to be done about what it is that they care about. Today it will be locking on but it will not be tomorrow; something else will be devised and we will be here again, trying to devise inappropriately specific legislation to try to stop protest, which is a natural part of society.
This legislation will be used by authoritarian regimes to validate their own oppressive legislation. From Belarus to North Korea, I can imagine the statements that will emerge. So why do we have it? It is a political gesture designed for headlines, not for effective policing in a free society.
I will look at some specific concerns about it, and here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blair, that there is reason to question the advisability of giving the Home Secretary the power and the responsibility to seek injunctions against specific protests, which risks turning a local protest into a national issue and undermining the ability of those on the spot to deal with the situation effectively.
I question the provision of Clause 7(7) which allows the Secretary of State to add to the list of key national infrastructure by statutory instruments. This could create an enormously wide area of scope for the powers in the Bill. I question the powers given to the British Transport Police, a force that is not locally accountable. Clause 16 would allow the transport police to ban a demonstration or even a one-person protest in the station entrance. Even if it was a protest against the closure of the station, the power would be granted to them to do that.
5:03 pm
20 of 79 shown
Peaceful protest is a fundamental part of our democracy. We will never agree on everything, which is why vigorous but sensible debate is something we hold so dear. What we cannot and should not accept is a situation in which the lives and livelihoods of decent, law-abiding citizens are impeded by the actions of a selfish and reckless few. The public are fed up with what they see happening day after day, and who can blame them? It is now up to us, as parliamentarians, to act in their best interests and get this crucial Bill on the statute book.
I will now speak to the measures set out in the Bill. First, the Bill introduces a new criminal offence of locking on, accompanied by a further criminal offence of going equipped to lock on, criminalising the tactic of intentionally causing disruption by locking on to busy roads, buildings or scaffolding. Locking on is as risky as it is disruptive, endangering not only the protesters but the police removal teams. I was therefore pleased to hear the leader of the Opposition confirm last week that his party would press ahead with tougher prison sentences for protesters who glue themselves to roads.
Secondly, the Bill introduces a new criminal offence of tunnelling, being present in a tunnel and going equipped to tunnel, making it clear that the protest tactic of building and occupying tunnels in order to disrupt legitimate activity will not be tolerated. HS2 has been targeted on multiple occasions with tunnels that have caused enormous cost to the project, with three removal operations alone costing in excess of £10 million. But it is not just about the costs. Tunnelling is dangerous and reckless, endangering not just those who occupy the tunnels but the responding emergency workers. We cannot wait to act until someone is seriously injured or worse.
Thirdly, the Bill establishes new offences for obstructing major transport works and interfering with key national infrastructure, reflecting the serious impact of such acts and our determination to tackle them. I have already touched on some of the disruption to projects such as HS2. HS2 estimates that sustained protester action has led to additional costs to the project of more than £146 million, an amount projected to rise to £200 million by the end of next year. The offence of obstruction of major transport works therefore ensures that all stages of construction and maintenance will be protected from disruptive action, while the key national infrastructure offence will ensure that our major transport networks, energy and fuel supplies are protected.
The new offences in the Bill are accompanied by an extension of stop and search powers for police to search for and seize articles connected to protest-related offences such as locking on and tunnelling.
The second measure provides a Secretary of State with a specific mechanism to apply for an injunction in relation to protest activity that causes, or threatens to cause, serious disruption to key national infrastructure, or to access to essential goods or services. An injunction could also be sought where the protest activity has, or is likely to have, a serious adverse impact on public safety. This does not affect the right of local authorities or private landowners to apply for an injunction but gives a Secretary of State an additional route to act in the public interest where the potential impact is serious and widespread. For example, a Secretary of State could have applied for an injunction on behalf of the various local authorities affected by the recent Just Stop Oil protests that obstructed roads across London.
Finally, on a free vote with cross-party support, an amendment was inserted into the Bill by the other place on Tuesday 18 October. Clause 9 establishes buffer zones around abortion clinics where interference with people accessing or providing abortion services would be an offence. The Government will consider how to implement and deliver this amendment. Noble Lords may have seen a Written Ministerial Statement which I issued last week, in which I indicated that I was presently unable—before introduction—to sign a statement of compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. I would particularly welcome your Lordships’ engagement on this clause.
I conclude my opening remarks by saying that there are inevitably differences of opinion, which we will come to consider throughout the course of this debate. But I hope all noble Lords recognise that blocking ambulances, preventing cars carrying sick children from passing, or damaging artworks is completely unacceptable, whatever the cause. That sort of behaviour is not only breathtakingly selfish; it pulls the police away from the people and places that need them the most. This cannot continue. I beg to move.
But our contention and belief are that we need to look at the existing laws and powers that the police have to deal with serious disruption and intimidation. Blocking a road or defacing a work of art are already crimes, and we support the continued strict enforcement of these laws and giving the police the confidence to pursue them. The Government should highlight, as the Minister did, the hundreds of arrests of protesters over the last few months. The fear of arrest and actual arrest deter most people, and one wonders what laws would prevent people as determined as those who are protesting at the present time. The Government’s Bill will potentially inadvertently criminalise many from a huge law-abiding majority.
Under existing laws, five Insulate Britain members were jailed for breaching M25 restrictions, Just Stop Oil protesters who threw tomato soup were charged with criminal damage, 11 people were arrested for criminal damage at a dairy in the West Midlands, 80 people were arrested at an oil facility near Heathrow for aggravated trespass and 25 people were arrested in central London for obstructing the highway. There is example after example of arrests by our police service using existing laws. Perhaps there should be tougher sentences, as the Minister said, but that should be done under existing legislation, not simply reacting to what is happening and seeing whether any more laws are needed.
The Bill contains a number of new measures, many of which were not supported by the police inspectorate, including the creation of protest banning orders, as we call them, and locking on. The so-called new threat of locking on, including the use of superglue, is not new: if the Minister looks to the Home Office, he will see that it is referenced in the 2006-07 ACPO Manual of Guidance on Dealing with the Removal of Protestors. This contains action that the Government suggest should be taken with those who use superglue, as well as pictures reminiscent of those we see today. The Government of the day did not respond to those protesters with new draconian laws.
One of the most worrying new powers in the Bill is to do with stop and search, which is always contentious and controversial, particularly because of its adverse impact on ethnic minorities and other marginalised groups. There is stop and search on suspicion if it is believed that, for example, someone will commit a protest-related offence. But suspicionless stop and search, which is usually reserved for protection against terrorism and the most serious violence, would allow the police to stop and search people without suspicion in a specific place, if an inspector or an officer of higher rank “reasonably believes” that a protest offence may be committed in that area. This would allow the police to stop and search not only completely peaceful protesters but also anyone in the vicinity of a protest, including unknowing passers-by. If Parliament Square were so designated, anyone—people going to work, shoppers, school students, parliamentary staff or tourists—could be stopped without reason. Is that where we want to go? Unacceptable.
Part 2 of the Bill deals with serious disruption prevention orders—or, as we and many others call them, protest banning orders. These can be applied both on conviction and without conviction; people can be banned from a particular place and banned from being with certain other people; and they even include, as the Minister told us, electronic tagging. Such an order can be applied when someone has been convicted of a protest-related offence, but also otherwise than on conviction where a person has on two separate occasions carried out activities causing serious disruption to two or more people or has contributed to others doing so. A chief police officer can apply for a protest banning order.
Measures such as suspicionless stop and search mirror laws that, as I have said, exist for terrorism or serious violence. Is this really where we want to go in this Parliament with our laws on protest? I suggest that this undermines the traditions this country has had. Of course, we do not want to see the disruption that we see. However, I must say—although this may be unpopular—that sometimes there is a price for democracy, a price for freedom and a price for campaigning, which the authorities may not find acceptable. Of course, that means that protesters should not get in the way of people going to hospital or be overly disruptive, but the price of democracy allows people to protest—and we play with that at our peril.
Indeed, when this proposal on protest banning orders was first suggested, the Home Office itself rejected it on the grounds that it essentially takes away a person’s right to protest and would likely lead to legal challenge. It was not the “tofu-eating wokerati”—I cannot resist quoting that phrase again—but the police inspectorate which said,
“however many safeguards might be put in place, a banning order would completely remove an individual’s right to attend a protest. It is difficult to envisage a case where less intrusive measures could not be taken to address the risk that an individual poses, and where a court would therefore accept that it was proportionate to impose a banning order.”
There are many other areas beyond the two I have highlighted which we will need to debate in Committee, around tunnelling, various restrictions on protests around major infrastructure projects, and so on. I remind this Chamber that it was the last Prime Minister but one—I cannot keep count—Boris Johnson who himself said, about a major infrastructure project, that he would lie down in front of the bulldozer that sought to build the third runway at Heathrow.
These are broad, sweeping and vaguely defined powers with low thresholds that we will need to debate in Committee. We have seen totally unacceptable actions by protesters: defacing buildings and works of art, pouring out milk and causing serious disruption to the everyday lives of so many. However, many of these protesters have been charged under existing laws, and some will remain undeterred whatever the law. The answer to such protests cannot be the introduction of ever more draconian laws undermining the legitimate right to protest. That is why we oppose so much of this Bill: it cannot be right that laws reserved for terrorists and the most serious violence are to be applied to protesters. As the JCHR said:
“The right to peaceful protest plays a crucial role in any healthy democracy. We are concerned that the Government are proposing further sweeping restrictions on peaceful protest … This latest raft of measures is likely to have a chilling effect on the right to protest in England and Wales. They threaten the overall balance struck between respect for the right to protest and protecting other parts of the public from disruption. The Bill also risks damaging the UK’s reputation and encouraging other nations who wish to crack down on peaceful protest.”
I could not have put it better myself. The Bill goes too far in rebalancing the interests of protests and legitimate ways of action: it rebalances that in the interests of the authorities far too much. It deserves real criticism in Committee, and it is going to get it.
That is HMIC agreeing with that sentiment, although we on these Benches also agree with that sentiment, and I personally, based on my experience, agree with that sentiment.
The other proposed legislative changes in this Bill were not asked for by the police, not considered by HMIC and, together with the new stop and search powers, not initially included in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. So where did they come from, and what gave the Home Office the courage to introduce the stop and search powers and the other measures as amendments to the PCSC Bill in Committee in your Lordships’ House?
Insulate Britain had engaged in a short but reckless campaign of blocking roads, including motorways, around the time of the 2021 Conservative Party conference. The then Home Secretary made a speech saying she would introduce even more draconian laws in response to the Insulate Britain protests. That is why these measures were added to the already questionable erosion of people’s right to protest in the original Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill after it had passed through the Commons.
Apart from making those who dangerously blocked roads liable to a sentence of imprisonment, which this House eventually agreed to, the remaining measures, which deliberately target climate protesters, and the new stop and search powers were rejected by this House. Now here they are again, in the Bill before us. We on these Benches, who the current Home Secretary described, along with our Labour colleagues, as
“Guardian reading, tofu-eating wokerati”
believe, following that comment, that this is a culture wars Bill that further erodes people’s right to assembly, free speech and peaceful protest.
The Explanatory Notes for the Bill produced by the Home Office offer an alternative explanation for the measures in it, saying:
“Recent changes in tactics employed by certain protesters have highlighted some gaps in current legislation”—
recent changes in tactics, such as locking-on as practised by the suffragettes, who chained themselves to railings, or tunnelling, as practised by those protesting against the Newbury bypass in 1996. If memory serves me, the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, was in charge of the policing for that situation, so no doubt we will hear about it in a moment. Then there is obstructing major transport works—like those who protested against the second runway at Birmingham Airport in 1997. To say that this Bill is necessary to fill gaps in legislation because of these so-called recent changes is not only factually inaccurate but laughable.
On the new stop and search powers, HMIC’s inspection report talked about
“the potential ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of assembly and expression in terms of discouraging people from attending protests where they may be stopped and searched”.
Black people, in particular, many of whom feel that those in Parliament do not represent them, and for whom peaceful protest is even more important, are the most likely to be impacted. As HMIC says:
“Such powers could have a disproportionate impact on people from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups.”
Why does it say that? Because you are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police using “with suspicion” powers, and 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police using “without suspicion” powers, if you are black than if you are white, and both “suspicion-led” and “suspicionless” powers are included in the Bill.
If that is not bad enough, the Bill proposes serious disruption prevention orders, something considered by HMIC and the Home Office and rejected. The HMIC inspection report states that other police officers
“regarded such banning orders as a disproportionate infringement of the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. One senior police officer believed that banning orders would ‘unnecessarily curtail people’s right to protest’. Another commented that a protest banning order is ‘a massive civil liberty infringement’. We also heard a view that ‘the proposal is a severe restriction on a person’s right to protest and in reality, is unworkable’”.
Those are the views of police officers.
The Home Office initially discounted the proposal, saying that it would take away a person’s right to protest and that banning people attending peaceful protests would very likely lead to a legal challenge. It added that it appeared unlikely the measure would work as hoped because a court was unlikely to impose a high penalty on someone who breached such an order if the person was peacefully protesting. HMIC concluded:
“We agree with this view and that shared by many senior police officers”.
We on these Benches also agree with this view. Even if I were sitting on the Cross Benches as a completely independent expert with a wealth of experience in public order policing, instead of, as I do, sitting on the Liberal Democrat Benches as an expert with a wealth of experience in public order policing, I would still oppose the provisions in the Bill—and in almost every case I would be supported by the majority of serving police officers, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and many in the Home Office. We should oppose the provisions in the Bill.
I was glad to find that, on the inspector’s arrival, he changed his mind and agreed with me—otherwise, it would have been an inglorious end to my nascent career. I was forcing the contractors—the builders—much against their will to fence and put security personnel around whatever part of the eight miles they were going to start work on first, instead of selecting different sites simultaneously, and thereby leaving my officers to chase protesters all over many miles of Berkshire and Hampshire countryside. They very reluctantly did so. We then used the legislation and very useful it proved, much to the chagrin of one Swampy.
Policing protest is difficult; policing a banned protest is far more difficult, which is why police so rarely seek to have to do so. I think the provision on injunctions by Secretaries of State needs most careful consideration during Committee, because the distance from Whitehall to the ground where the action is happening can be very far.
Certainly, the case for new extensive police powers needs to be carefully constructed given the previous history. It is not a small thing to place such significant powers in the hands of the police. Some of what we are discussing today could see someone who has not been convicted of any protest-related offence—despite all the offences and laws which already exist—nevertheless being subject to electronic monitoring and prevented from attending protests, or even encouraging or enabling protests. What seems to be proposed in these serious disruption prevention orders is an incredible set of restrictions which could be imposed on nothing more than a civil standard of proof. It is our duty to look very closely at each of these proposals as the Bill passes through your Lordships’ House.
I am not here in any way to make the police’s job more difficult. As I have said, I think we all deplore unacceptable demonstrations and the huge amount of money that they have cost the public purse. However, in a democracy—as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said—sometimes that is the cost of freedom of speech and expression. It is a huge responsibility to maintain public safety and order and to balance that with the freedoms of expression and association. Not one of us here is under any illusion of the difficulties that we face.
I am sure the Minister will tell us that the powers created here will be rarely used and only in the most limited and exceptional circumstances, but I note what other noble Lords have already said: that many of these powers have not been sought by the police. I am not convinced that a “trust us” approach is sufficiently robust to protect against a possible future Government, or police force, who might on occasion, for other reasons, be tempted to overreach their powers. It is very easy to be complacent over rights and the inherent goodness and propriety of our institutions, and we are fortunate in this country to have been more blessed than almost anywhere else in the world in this regard. But we do not need to look very hard around the world to see rights undermined, slowly at first and then dramatically. Surely it is our responsibility to guard against that possibility. We have concerns about the scope of SDPOs, and I will certainly listen carefully to what others with experience in this area have to say on these provisions.
I briefly mention Clause 9, introduced by amendment NC11 in the other place, on abortion clinic buffer zones. I have serious concerns about this clause as it stands. The term “interferes with” is so broadly defined that it includes seeking to influence, merely expressing an opinion, or attempting
“to inform about abortion services”.
I cannot believe that this is proportionate given the existing powers possessed by the police and local authorities, and I am sure that we on this Bench will wish to look again at this clause.
I will listen with interest to the Minister’s response, but at this stage I express grave reservations on a number of aspects of what is being proposed. I hope that the Minister will provide rather more robust evidence of why the Bill will be effective where all the previous ones have apparently not been.
This is controversial enough when applied to suspected terrorists. But how even more dangerous is it to play cat and mouse with non-violent dissenters, whether historic suffragettes or contemporary pro-democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, Russia or the United Kingdom? Some noble Lords may find the comparisons uncomfortable—as well we all should. But they should look at the analysis of Justice, Amnesty International and Big Brother Watch, which describe these provisions, rightly previously rejected by your Lordships’ House, as going further than the law in Russia and Belarus. A Hong Kong lawyer now based in the UK described to me the aptness of comparison with her former home in no uncertain terms just last week. The Bill undermines us as champions of the rule of law internationally, but it also sends a terrible signal to our young people here at home.
Yesterday in the Moses Room, Ministers lamented cancel culture in universities. Today, via unfortunate proxies, perhaps on the Benches opposite, the resurrected Home Secretary wages culture war: not no-platforming and hurt feelings but police batons and prison terms. She further proposes a new and unprecedented power for herself: directly to intervene operationally in public order, in a manner previously reserved for the police and criminal courts on the one hand and those directly affected and civil courts on the other. Thus this sensitive area of policing will be more politicised than ever, with tub-thumping Ministers playing to the populist gallery, not just with conference and Commons speeches but in court. The Home Secretary pleads redemption for herself but incarceration for those who plead for the planet, against poverty, and even for free speech itself.
Hypocrisy is not mere tactical error. When it invades our statutes, it threatens the legitimacy layer: that which protects law-based order in which civilised society endures. An unelected House that does not stand for rights and freedoms becomes even and ever harder to defend.
It gets particularly serious when we look at the stop and search powers, which are truly alarming. If you live or work near a site where a protest might take place—note that it does not have to be taking place or to have taken place—do not, whatever you do, carry anything with you, because you may be the subject of a random search which could cover anything the officer believes might be used in pursuit of the process. If you are with a friend to whom this happens, do not, whatever you do, question the police officer about what he is doing, because then you will fall foul of Clause 14 and be regarded as obstructing the police officer. This clause appears to criminalise even the kind of questioning which was encouraged after the dreadful Sarah Everard case, when people were told in such situations to question whether the police officer had the authority to approach the person at all.
Other speakers have referred to the serious disruption orders or protest banning orders reversing the burden of proof. We should not be contemplating that. The legislation contains limited exemptions for actions taken
“in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute”,
and there are good reasons for that. The right to strike and regulated picketing are fundamental rights, but if the law is capable of recognising that, why are the same principles not being applied to other equally legitimate protests? We rightly protect the right not to lose one’s job or be paid inadequately, but what about the right to warn that we are destroying the life chances of our descendants by our neglect of climate change and what is happening to the planet? These are major issues which have a similar justification and validity.
I turn to Clause 9, inserted in the Commons. I speak as someone who has always wanted the law to afford a degree of protection to the unborn child—I say that to explain where I am coming from—but I am not a supporter of some of the protest tactics which have taken place around clinics, particularly in the United States, but to some extent in this country. When I look at Clause 9, I see understandable references to intimidation, harassment and threatening behaviour, and I am prepared to consider whether the law needs to be strengthened to prevent those things.
However, I cannot support a clause which criminalises a person who “seeks to influence”, provides information or “expresses opinion.” This is the most profound restriction on free speech I have ever seen in any UK legislation, and I cannot support it if it remains in its present form. Indeed, I think it will be grasped as a precedent by the free-speech deniers, and the words and language will be applied in other areas when other legislation is brought forward. It is clearly incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Government cannot certify the Bill in its present form for that reason. A lot else in the Bill appears to be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and I believe it will give rise to more litigation than improvement in effective policing. Most police officers will tell you that their problem in dealing with these situations is not the state of the law, it is whether there are enough of them on the spot able to deal with it, properly commanded, advised and controlled. It is that which the Government should address, not this futile legislation.