Public Order Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Marlesford

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 36 and 37 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I could also have backed a number of other amendments. The noble Lord clearly explained lots of problems with the clauses discussed in this group. The only thing that I did not agree with—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, also said this—was when he compared present-day protesters with the suffragettes. The suffragettes were democrats without the vote; Just Stop Oil are anti-democrats with the vote. There is a real distinction there.

Although I have very serious reservations about this Bill and think it is unnecessary, we need to approach the discussion and debate going on outside this House with a little more humility. On the first group, a number of noble Lords raised the point that the country was up in arms about the Bill. I do not recognise that description; actually, many people in the country are up in arms about the Just Stop Oil protesters. They are so frustrated that we have people ruining their daily lives and getting in the way and that not enough is being done about it. My argument with the Government is that this is a crisis of policing, which they will not tackle and instead have introduced a whole new set of laws that we do not need.

As legislators, I understand the need for a definition of “serious disruption”, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, explained the difficulties around defining it. But the people we are talking about who are locking themselves on, tunnelling and so on, boast that they are seriously disrupting things. They say, “What choice have we got? We’re involved in serious disruption.” They do not have a definitional problem; they say, “We’re trying to seriously disrupt the ways of life of everyone until we get our way and until you agree with us”.

So in some ways it is important that the Government do not exploit the fact that we have protesters who say “Our job is to seriously disrupt the lives of ordinary people” and ordinary people who are completed frustrated that nothing is being done about these people seriously disrupting their lives, and say that we need all these laws—because this is not the solution to that problem. It is a con, as I said in my Second Reading speech. An answer should be given to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that, if the Government’s argument is that we do not have laws on the statute book that can deal with very specific issues, they have to be very clear about exactly why the laws do not work at present. If it is the Supreme Court, then say that—but at the moment there is a muddle on that question.

On the specific amendments dealing with “serious disruption”, given that we have protesters—I think they are more people who indulge in stunts, rather than protesters—who admit that they intend to cause serious disruption, I am concerned that there should be some intent to cause serious disruption, which is why Amendment 37 is important. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, made a hugely important point about the way that the term “reckless” will be used to clamp down on this; the idea that your intention is read into it as being reckless indifference is one of the great ways that censorship is happening in this country. I am very nervous about having in law a situation where, whatever you intend, the law can decide that you intended something. That is why I support Amendment 37.

Amendment 36 would limit the offence to an act that actually causes serious disruption, rather than one that is capable of causing serious disruption. It seems to me that if something does not cause serious disruption, it is not serious disruption. It seems blatantly ridiculous for a Bill to criminalise something that is not seriously disruptive because it could be seriously disruptive at a different time and a different place.

I rather liked the example of what happened recently in Germany, where people locked on in the Volkswagen museum. They did not cause any serious disruption because the curators turned the lights out, turned the heating off and went home, leaving them there. As it happens, the protestors response to this was to complain that they had been left in the cold and that they could not order in food. Instead of draconian and criminalising bills, perhaps what we need is a bit more of that kind of attitude, both from the police and from institutions, which seem to stand by and do nothing as disruption occurs. However, I do not want the law to compensate for that spinelessness either.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, having not spoken at Second Reading, but having listened to the debate, I want to contribute one thought which I think follows rather well from what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. This debate on the definition of the word “serious” is really pretty sterile. Talking about the word “serious” is rather like talking about whether a work of art is good or not good. What we are really talking about is judgment, and the judgment of many different groups: of the demonstrators, of the police, and of the courts and within the courts—juries, magistrates and all the rest of it. All we are striving to do is to get what the people as a whole—who are demanding something better than what is happening at the moment—want: better solutions when things happen. I do not believe that we can be precise in laying down in law what is serious or not serious, but that does not mean that we cannot use the word “serious” as shorthand for the collective judgment of all those interests involved.