Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Chakrabarti and Lord Hain

Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made her point so ably that I was not tempted to speak, until I heard the counter-speech from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. It is simply ahistoric to suggest that the suffragettes—those protesters who everybody loves now but who were once incarcerated and tortured by the British state—

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

They went on hunger strike.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Indeed, they went on hunger strike. It is simply ahistoric to suggest there was not a significant clandestine element to their operations. I am sure that, if one were to examine other examples the noble Lord gave, one would find greater complexity than he offered us in his very glib comments about protest.

Just minutes ago in this Chamber, noble Lords from across the House expressed their horror at what has been happening in Iran. On any given day in your Lordships’ House, similar comments will be made about Hong Kong or protests anywhere else in the world. It is of concern that organisations that many of us respect, such as JUSTICE, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and so on, are now writing very concerning reports about silencing the streets of the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, the Committee is in the business of precision and proportionality. Those two concepts have rightly been raised by a number of noble Lords and my noble friends. It is because of reasons of proportionality and precision that I agree that the concept of “the vicinity” is too vague and too broad. I say that while completely acknowledging that places of worship are sensitive places and that it is completely proportionate within the European Convention on Human Rights to give them some extra protection.

There is precedent in Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for the concepts of “area” and “vicinity” being too flabby and too broad. Noble Lords may remember that this allowed an area not defined to be designated for the purpose of suspicionless stop and search. In 2003, in response to the anti-arms demonstrations at the ExCeL centre in the Docklands, a number of protesters were stopped and searched and issued notices. Only through the parliamentary debates and litigation that followed did the public become aware that all of England and Wales had been designated during the Iraq war. That was the breadth of the area for suspicionless stop and search—a power that was used as an anti-protest power.

That does not mean that there cannot be limitations, but they need some definition. After many years of litigation in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the UK Government were found wanting because of that breadth and the blanket nature of the power, because there was no definition. I am trying to help my noble friends in government by suggesting that concepts such as areas and vicinities will be better for definition, so I support my noble friend Lady Blower and commend her remarks in speaking to her amendment.

I also commend my noble friend Lord Hain and remind the Committee that he was not just an anti-apartheid activist in his day, digging up sports fields and whatever else he was digging up—

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I was sitting on them, not digging them up.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry. He was sitting on them. I do not mean to defame him.

My noble friend of course went on to be Northern Ireland Secretary and therefore has some understanding of the need to balance rights—the rights of peaceful dissent but also the rights of people to go about their business, particularly in their homes and places of worship and so on. That is proportionality and precision.

This vice of vagueness with the concept of “vicinity” is mirrored in the concept of “area” for the purposes of cumulative disruption. As with the Section 44 provision that ended up being impugned in the Strasbourg court, “area” for the purposes of cumulative disruption is not defined, so we are looking at a very broad power here. I say to noble Lords, with all solidarity with their concerns about, for example, synagogues and places of faith and worship, that provisions such as these can be applied as much to a counterprotest as to a protest, and to one group or another group at different times. When we legislate, we need to have a mind to how these powers might be used in the future.

To those noble Lords who spoke of a new quasi-terrorist proscription but for groups that do not quite meet the threshold—