Public Order Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hendy has added his name to Amendment 60. In his unavoidable absence, I will speak to that amendment in words which are largely his, although I support and endorse all the amendments in this group.

The purpose of Amendment 60 is simple: to make more effective the protection the Government intend to provide for those with a reasonable excuse or those engaged in a trade dispute in the current version of Clause 7. I will focus specifically on trade disputes, with which I have some affinity.

By way of preliminary, it should be noted that the phrase

“in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute”

originated in the Trade Disputes Act 1906. It is now found in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, where is also found the definition of a trade dispute. For the purposes of today’s debate, it is sufficient to say that trade disputes encompass disputes over terms and conditions of employment and certain other industrial relations matters.

As drafted, Clause 6 recognises that obstruction or interference, which constitute the offence in subsection (1), may well be applicable to those picketing in the course of a trade dispute. Clause 6(2) seeks to exclude pickets from being found guilty of the subsection (1) offence. However, the way the subsection is drafted means that a person in such a situation, as we have heard, may be arrested, charged and brought before the court. It is only when presenting their defence that the trade dispute defence will achieve the protection afforded by the Bill.

Those who have signed this amendment and the rest of us who support it hope that, if someone is acting in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, they will not be liable, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to be arrested, charged or brought to court for a subsection (1) offence. The defence should kick in before that point.

It is important to bear in mind three points. First, the right to picket in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute is a statutory right, now set out in Section 220 of the consolidation Act of 1992 but with its origins in the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875. The price of the right to picket was that no protection was given for the offences created by the 1875 Act, such as “watching and besetting”, fascinatingly; nor has it been given for the array of other potential offences such as obstructing a public highway or an officer in the exercise of his duty, or more serious offences.

Since 1875, the right to picket has been regulated and restricted by many amendments to the relevant law, the latest being several requirements imposed by the Trade Union Act 2016, now found in Section 220A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. This leads to the second point: the amendment seeks only to strengthen the protection against this specific offence; all other potential offences which might occur in the course of a trade dispute remain open to charge. The amendment does not seek to enlarge the right to picket.

The final point is this: a picket in the course of a dispute is not a secret activity; it is not one of which local police will be unaware. The very purpose of a picket—and I can attest to this from having stood on many of them myself—in the words of Section 220 of the 1992 Act is that of

“peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working.”

To this end, pickets draw attention to themselves, to their union, and to the dispute they seek to further in the hope of persuading others not to cross the picket line. Your Lordships will be familiar with images of picket lines, and over the last few months, perhaps even familiar with actual pickets. The police will have no difficulty in recognising those acting in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute long before they, no doubt vociferously, proclaim it.

More than that, under Section 220A, a picket supervisor must be appointed by the union. She or he must be familiar with the very extensive Code of Practice on Picketing, and, most importantly for our purposes, she or he must take reasonable steps to tell the police his or her name, where the picketing will take place, and how he or she may be contacted. The section also requires that the picket supervisor must be in attendance on the picket or able to attend at short notice. She or he must be in possession of a letter of authority from the union which must be produced on demand; significantly hedged about, therefore.

It is right that in the creation of this new offence the Government have not sought to encroach on the protection of the right to picket in industrial disputes, a right which is also protected by Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and hence the Human Rights Act 1998. This amendment is exceedingly modest: it asks that the protection be made effective by preventing a picket from being charged with a new offence.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and even more of a pleasure to reflect on the words of our good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. Before he came into this House, I do not think that we had quite the same level of wisdom and knowledge about the details of trade union legislation.

I too rise to ask that the Minister gives serious consideration to accepting Amendment 60; all it does is make it quite clear that a person, picket or trade union does not commit an offence under the clause by removing the words:

“It is a defence for a person charged with”—


they should not ever be “charged with”. This is a perfectly legitimate action undertaken by people in pursuance of a trade dispute, and quite reasonable. So I ask the Minister to look very carefully at Amendment 60, and when it comes back, to see whether this amendment cannot be accepted, because it is a very sensible amendment.

One could make virtually the same speech on many of the clauses in the Bill. I do wonder: what are we trying to achieve? Most of the things in the Bill are already offences. If we have a problem, it is that the police do not seem to think that it is worth prosecuting them—of course, we saw in the last few days that glorious picture of 11 rather bewildered policemen standing in the middle of the M25, gazing at a gantry.

This is not a sensible way to make laws; I am not sure that it appeals even to the Daily Mail. A lot of the Bill is reflex action stuff. It is man-in-the-pub stuff: “Oh, we don’t like this”—of course we do not want people to stick themselves to the pavement, but the law already exists. Between now and Report, I ask the Minister to have a very careful look at what we are trying to achieve, whether the Bill achieves it and, in particular, Amendment 60 and the Bill’s effect on the trade union movement—I probably should have declared that I am the president of a TUC-affiliated trade union —and its many voluntary workers who spend their leisure time trying to improve the lives of their colleagues. Please can the Minister have another look?

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. I absolutely agree with his fundamental point that here we are trying to create offences which are not necessary because there are already adequate offences to deal with these situations. I do not understand why the police have not used those existing offences in entirely appropriate situations.

I apologise for not having been able to speak at Second Reading, and I will try to be very brief now as a result. We have a situation here in which we are responding to someone else saying to us, “Something has to be done.” There are often situations in which, when we hear those words, the answer should be, “No, it doesn’t; we just need to do the things we have rather better”, and not produce a load of speciality legislation that will barely be used.

Sitting just behind me is a former Director of Public Prosecutions, my noble friend Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. I have heard him, very recently in fact, talk in another setting of the discretion not to prosecute that is vested in prosecutors. I apprehend that in many of the cases we are thinking of here, the police will NFA—no further action—a lot of them. If they do get to the Crown Prosecution Service because the police have not NFAd them, Crown prosecutors will NFA them using the second part of the CPS code test; namely, the public interest. It is very important, is it not, for us and the authorities which we invest with these powers to be proportionate in their use of them?

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and others who have said that it is much better in principle for the whole burden and standard of proof to fall on the prosecution. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Anderson that there is a bit of dancing on pins about that; it does not really make much difference in the end.

We should not be creating offences where, if they are summary offences, lay magistrates are going to find it very difficult to square their consciences with convicting people charged with them, and where—this is the worst possible scenario—if they are triable by jury, the jury may refuse to convict when there is overwhelming evidence that the offence was committed. Juries have done that recently, not least in relation to the Colston statue case in Bristol.

If your Lordships will allow me one quotation, I return in the end to some of the very wise words of Dr Martin Luther King, who said:

“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”


That does not mean that a member of Just Stop Oil has the right to block the M25; the just or unjust law they would be dealing with is not the Government’s policies on oil but whether it should be a crime to obstruct the highway, so it will not actually help them very much in those cases. What I really want to say is that I think we will spend many hours today talking about issues that we really should not be troubling ourselves with at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I suggest to my noble friend that it also leads to juries being less and less likely to convict because they see these offences as being very spurious.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. Again, it echoes something that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, said. He will forgive me if I summarise his excellent contributions: let us not bring the law into disrepute—not in this place. We are not an elected House, but we are a scrutinising Chamber; we have the time and expertise to make sure that we do not bring our statute book into disrepute. That is where we agree, across the Benches and across this Committee.

I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, that having proportionality in our law is not a problem; it is a benefit. Ministers should not work so hard to squeeze out the judgment and proportionality that must be employed by decision-makers, including police officers and courts.

I will stop there, save to say once more to the Minister that he has not been well served in some of his briefing. Respectfully, it is perfectly legitimate for Members in this Committee to begin by asking the Government to justify why they are legislating and where there is a gap in the existing law, because that central point has not been addressed in this hour of debate. If we do not address it, there will be more cases like that of Charlotte Lynch, and others who are not journalists—in some cases they are bystanders and in some cases they are peaceful dissenters. There is plenty of police power on the statute book and some of it has been abused. There are plenty of criminal offences and some of them have not been used when perhaps they might. It really is for the Government to justify interfering further with the spirit of British liberty. With that, I will—for now only—beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Public Order Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I always agree with some things she says, but generally not with that much. Tonight, I think we edge towards more agreement. This Bill leaves me feeling very worried. First, I would ask whether it is really needed. What problem are we trying to solve with this Bill that is not already able to be solved with the powers that currently exist? The second thing that concerns me is what I see as a reflex action towards authoritarianism whenever a problem arises. That does not leave me very happy at all.

Of course, the public are fed up with what they see as anarchism. There are ways of changing the law in this country. Mention has been made of Swampy—but if you go back in history, even at the end of the Second World War there were movements to occupy unoccupied properties in London. There has always been an undercurrent of people who think that the best way of changing the law is to do it their own way—in other words, without the law necessarily agreeing with them. To go back to the 1940s and the housing movement, undoubtedly what they did drew attention in a very strong way to the failings of post-war society properly to address the need for accommodation. I go back that far because I do not want to get mixed up in today’s debate, beyond saying that, clearly, there are always people who want to solve problems in their own way and somehow, in a democratic society, we need to make enough space for them to do so without bringing down the whole House.

I am speaking tonight because the convention is that you must speak on Second Reading to intervene in the later stages of the debate. I hope that we will have some very careful debate. One of the strengths of this House is that we do not have a guillotine—we look at the clauses and argue them through, and I hope that the Minister will have enough strength in his department to get some concessions. If he does not, I think there will be a few defeats around for the Government.

Someone asked what I would do in this situation. The only thing that I can think of is that, in my youth, which is a long time ago, we used to have a man called Mr Justice Melford Stevenson. He was well known; he was a stipendiary magistrate, and his basic starting point was “Fourteen days in the cells—oh, and what’s the charge?” One of the problems that we have seen, which we saw in Bristol, is that if you have an argument in front of a jury, the jury on occasions listens to the argument and refuses to do what society and the police want. I predict that that will be one of the dangers of the Bill—that, if you eventually get things to court, you may well find that they fall there because of a combination of magistrates who do not really want to go quite that far and juries that most certainly do not want to go quite that far. So we have to look at these things.

I want to mention the Clause 9 controversy. I was thrown out of the Labour Party, I am very pleased to say, but I have not yet been thrown out the Roman Catholic Church; maybe it is a little more dilatory than the Labour Party. I must say that I have always been a supporter of women’s rights and of Catholics for a Free Choice, the Catholic organisation that supports abortion. I have had letters and emails over the last few days, from people signing themselves “The Reverend Father so-and-so”, asking me to vote against “preventing prayer vigils standing outside or near abortion providers”. I have seen some of these prayer vigils—not because I have been on them, but because I was looking at them—and they are not friendly, you know. We have to be very careful. I can see that there is a need to look carefully at this clause, how it is drafted and what it does in the wider sense of civil liberties, but if I were in the House of Commons and I had a free vote, I would be voting for the clause, because something needs to be done.

One thing that needs to be done and it will, eventually, is that the Catholic Church should depart from its principle of always being exactly 50 years behind the times. Abortion is here to stay. It is not a pleasant thing. I have known a number of ladies who have had abortions. I have never known anyone trot happily down and think, “Oh, this is a solution”. It is a very stressful and often sad time. We should realise that that we should respect the rights of women to choose—frankly, it is for women to choose, not elderly priests.

I have a couple of final points as we are getting towards the deadline. I am concerned about injunctions by the Secretary of State. What does that mean? Does it mean an injunction by the Daily Mail? I recall a Labour Minister—I shall leave him nameless for the moment—who turned down a very reasonable policy that I brought over when I was a Member of the European Parliament. He said, “I’m sorry, Richard, we can’t do that, the Daily Mail won’t accept it”. That was a Labour Minister. I am always chary about putting powers in the hands of politicians, because there is a tendency for them to be leaned on and to make a more authoritarian decision. One thing we are still unravelling, of course, is the indeterminate sentence business, which is a blot on our landscape.

Let me say finally that we have to be very careful in the United Kingdom to preserve freedoms. I see in a lot of the proposed trade union legislation a reflex action—“Don’t let’s understand, don’t let’s talk, don’t let’s get things together, let’s just pass a law and make it illegal”, whatever “it” happens to be. This is not the way to run a consensual society. The strength of Britain has always been that it is a consensual society, so I ask the Minister to go away after tonight and think very carefully about the clauses in the Bill. Many of them go much further, I would say, then we should go in a civilised and democratic society.

50th Anniversary of the Expulsion of Asians from Uganda

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I join the many congratulations to my noble friend Lord Popat on initiating this debate. He was a distinguished Minister when I joined this House and I have always admired the way in which he has conducted his ministerial and other jobs. I thank him very much.

I remember the beginning of 1972 as a very low point in British relations. The Labour Government had passed the 1968 immigration Act, which was a real stain on our community. In the very early 1970s, racism was almost becoming respectable. We tend to forget that. I join all noble Lords in my congratulations for and fond memories of Edward Heath. Had it not been for his determination and single-mindedness, we would probably not have done as well by the Ugandan Asians. Also, he started to turn things around; after this episode, racism was no longer respectable. That was a great tribute to Heath.

At that time, I was working in the Department of Health and Social Security. Our Minister was one Sir Keith Joseph, who later went mad but at the time was a very compassionate Secretary of State. The instructions that came down from him were to do everything we could to help carry the Prime Minister’s policy into action. I remember one aside in a meeting at which the Secretary of State was present—it was not a very large meeting, and I was very junior—where he remarked, “You know, you’re lucky we’re in government. I hate to think what we might have said if we hadn’t been.” I have always remembered that. I pay tribute to Edward Heath.

The other person who has done a lot for the Conservative Party and the country, who has not really been mentioned today, is David Cameron. When I started working for him as his trade union envoy, he was not only trying to broaden the base in trade unionism but was absolutely determined to get more representation of British society on to the Conservative Benches. I was the chairman of a Conservative association at that time, in a very safe seat. We had a by-election, caused by the retirement of a Member. We went to CCO, where I was working, but the sift committee in the Conservative Party which takes the names to it took up six white names. The noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who was then the chair, said, “I am sorry, but this is against party policy. You’ve got to have an ethnic-minority person—it doesn’t matter if they are a man or a woman—on your shortlist. Otherwise, we won’t approve it.” The determined actions of David Cameron and the way in which he basically gripped the Conservative Party by the throat and got it to modernise—getting more women and a more representative party into Parliament—have been a great contribution to this country. We would probably not have the present Prime Minister were it not for his activities.

I will finish on one more thing. After 1972, racism disappeared in the trade union movement. I noticed, because I have spent my life active in it, that it was suddenly no longer respectable to echo the words of the dockers who had supported Enoch Powell. Suddenly, the thing to do was to embrace all of society. It took some doing—there was some stuttering at the beginning—but overall it was successful, and the trade union movement has also made its contribution to a more equal and pleasant Britain.

Ukraine: Refugees

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, for introducing this debate and for her thorough and moving speech. I have watched this from afar and one of the few rays of sunshine has been the appointment of the Minister to his present role. I am only sorry that his maiden speech is at the end of the debate rather than earlier on, because I am sure that we are going to be pleased to hear whatever he says. We welcome him knowing his record and how hard he is currently working and will be working.

The point we are at at the moment takes me back to almost the beginning of my political life, which was Hungary in 1956, when I recall that our community welcomed Hungarian refugees who had come to Britain and were settled. Unlike today, those refugees had no option to go back. They were in Britain and integrated and, of course, they were far fewer in number. When I look at the situation that we are in today, I reflect that we let down former Yugoslavia. What happened there was butchery at the same level as is happening today, a butchery that we thought we would never see in Europe again. I think that we have risen to the challenge this time.

I am astonished at the Russians and their sheer stupidity. The way in which they have acted shows a massive failure of intelligence, humanity and understanding of the international community. We used to have a saying that British military intelligence was a contradiction in terms, but Russian military intelligence does not appear to exist at all. They have got themselves into something that will last certainly for the rest of my life and probably the life of many people in this Room. We are never going to be able to go back.

At a time like this, I am constantly reminded—I will say it, although it is not popular—of the sheer stupidity of leaving the European Union. When we look at the gatherings of European statesmen—we saw one with Boris Johnson when he went to the European Council—we are well outside the room. Whatever we say about NATO—I notice that we are suddenly on about the G7—this is a problem that requires a European dimension to virtually every part. Our act of self-harm is coming home to roost now.

That is because not only do we have the problems with the refugees and getting the refugees in—I am not going to repeat them—but we have to look to the future. There will be a future when we have to rebuild Ukraine and when some of those 4 million people will want to go back home. They will be doing so to a land that has been devastated. In part—I am not saying that we should not have done it—it will have been devastated by British weaponry used by Ukrainian troops in the fighting. None the less, we will have paid a lot of money to give weapons to Ukraine to win. We have an equal obligation to look to rebuilding Ukraine and to a generous running budget for some years from this country towards doing just that. There will be a European effort that we must also contribute to. We must make it part of our job to make Ukraine worth living in again.

When—as it inevitably will—refugee fatigue starts setting in, we are going to have to resist it. It is already setting in around the Afghan refugees. We have a huge job on our hands, as does the Minister, not just in getting people here but in settling them in and then moving forward. I wish him the best of luck and godspeed from this side of the House, and the other side, because this is one area in which the whole House is totally united behind the Minister’s efforts. We wish him well.

School Trips: Passport and Visa Requirements

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

As I explained to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I think that collective, group passports are still in existence, although we expect them to be phased out at some point. The EU is now in the same situation as the rest of the world.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, in an answer last June, the Minister suggested that collective passports under the 1961 Council of Europe treaty could be used. It turns out that these can be used only for nationals of the country sending the visit; in other words, a Spanish student in a French school could not benefit from this. Will the Minister undertake to talk to the group of tourism blue badge holders in London to try to devise a scheme—for the whole world, not just for Europe—that encourages young people to come to Britain? It is first impressions that often bring a lifelong admiration for a country.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Earl will know that we continue to accept collective passports from countries that have ratified the relevant Council of Europe treaty. Nineteen countries have done so but, in practice, only the UK, Malta and Slovenia actively issue them. As I said earlier, I think they will probably be phased out.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai. I have been listening to him since 1967 and have never failed to be amused, entertained and even educated by what he has to say.

In common with probably all noble Lords, I have had a huge number of emails about this debate and Bill. Much has been made of the problems and there has been much analysis, but no solutions. That is because the Bill looks at a very small area, but it is a very big, worldwide problem. I have received very good briefings from the TUC and from UNISON. The UNISON briefing makes the very good point that many of its members are dealing with the refugees and migrants as they land in Britain, many of whom then go on to work in the basic industries in this country.

One of the things we have to come to terms with is that we have a long-term labour need. Part of the question we have to answer is, how are we going to deal with it? How are we going to get the people into the country we need to be here to do the jobs that are necessary in the economy? In short, there is a need for migrant labour.

We also have to get over this “trafficked” business. Most of the migrants who come not only to Britain but to all the countries of Europe are looking for a better life. If we stop them on the beach, put them in a nice little private area and say, “We are sorry you have been trafficked. There is a plane and we will fly you back home club class. Is that what you would like?”, most of them would say no, because they have spent a lot of their money to get here. We have to start with that very realistic thing.

I will not deal with the Bill in detail—that will come later. However, one of my worries about Clause 9 and the ability of the Home Secretary to revoke citizenship is that it becomes rather like the right of the Attorney-General to appeal against sentences. The papers will come up with campaigns against particular migrants who do particular things, and we will have a politicisation of the removal of citizenship. That would be totally wrong and it is one reason why we need to look very carefully at the proposals in the Bill which give the Home Secretary powers. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who is not in his place, was an excellent Home Secretary, but I would not like to give any single individual the power or responsibility of being on the end of that sort of campaign.

This is the difficulty that Home Secretaries 70 years ago had with the death penalty. They were personally involved and were personally lobbied. I do not know of any Home Secretary who said on record that they really enjoyed their role as the arbiter of life and death. Please be careful of what power we give to any Home Secretary.

My noble friend Lord Wolfson made a very good point in asking, “What do we want to do?” As I said, there were few solutions in the emails I got. First, we should raise within the United Nations the fact that these conventions are dreadfully out of date. I have been in international European politics for 25 years, and it is almost impossible to get agreement on a particular set of proposals. I remember the law of the sea and how difficult that was. It is absolutely impossible to get them amended, but we have to try it.

Secondly, I suggest that we try to get together a conference of like-minded Governments in Europe who wish to look at how we can solve this problem and come up with some constructive solutions, instead of every single country looking around for different solutions and getting nowhere because they have no support. Those are my two suggestions.

Migration

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I find it interesting that migration is a “difficult subject” given that, it is true to say, we are nation of immigrants. On the funding of specific museums and organisations, I was lucky to be able to speak to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, yesterday. I will have to go back to my colleagues in DCMS and ask them about the noble Baroness’s question.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, while I am pleased that this museum exists in the constituency that I used to represent, I point out that the Question is about knowledge and understanding of the contribution of migrants. I hope that the Department for Education and other areas of government that promote information will continue at all times to stress the positive contribution that migrants have made to this country, including both the Minister and me, who hail from outside the UK—or our families do, to be more exact.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. As he was talking, I was just thinking how one of the awful moments for the Home Office was the Windrush scandal. One of the huge contributions that was made to this country after the war was by the Windrush generation. It has come to the forefront of people’s minds in the last few years, more than ever before, how people such as those in the Windrush generation helped this country, as did the Irish.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by joining the welcome to my noble friend Lord Sandhurst. We are delighted to have him among our colleagues on these Benches.

I thank the various people who have briefed me for tonight, in particular the union UNISON, the Trades Union Congress and the Quakers—a trio of very socially responsible bodies. One of the things they have drawn to my attention is a recent Court of Appeal judgment, where it was held that:

“In a free society all must be able to hold and articulate views, especially views with which many disagree. Free speech is a hollow concept if one is only able to express ‘approved’ or majoritarian views. It is the intolerant, the instinctively authoritarian, who shout down or worse suppress views with which they disagree.”


I think that is a very useful start for where we are going.

To an extent, the Minister will have a huge amount of work clarifying matters in this legislation, because what is not clarified will of course end up in the Court of Appeal. If we do not make it clear, it will be clarified by judges, and fortunately—I hope—they will bear in mind such documents as the European Convention on Human Rights and others which have guided judicial findings to interpret this Bill.

One of the difficulties we have—which the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, alluded to—is that there are some people at the moment who deliberately exploit an anarchic way of conducting protest, not because they believe in the protest but because they believe in trying to get the consequences of the anarchy to panic society into taking decisions which could well turn out to not be very wise.

Having said that, the trade union movement welcomes the protection for emergency workers and looks forward to finalising and refining this legislation, so that it deals comprehensively with a body of workers who have had enormous amounts of problems.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, has left us, but he mentioned Orgreave. If we are actually interested in looking at the consequences of protest, there is a protest that could well do with some official looking at.

The definition of nuisance is a very movable feast, and we have to look very carefully at the borderline between what I would call peaceful protest and noisy and deliberate protest. As has been said, the whole nature of protest is often noisy. I have been on demonstrations in my time, and it is a very common thing—it is a sort of crowd coalescer—that you will have a slogan and you shout it out and it has a meaning for the people there. Most people who go on a demonstration in the classical sense are there because they have a reason for being there. They do not think, “What shall I do today? I know, I will go and demonstrate.” They are there because they are either in favour of something or against something, but they feel strongly about it.

If you bring in a penalty, as has been mentioned, of 10 years for disturbing flowers on a war memorial, it will never be imposed. It is as simple as that. It would be foolish legislation because no magistrate would ever impose that sort of punishment. I suspect we will spend considerable time looking at the Bill and dealing with its detail, but I hope, at the end, we will have a better Bill, because there are good parts of it, but there are also parts that need very careful examination.

EU Bilateral Agreements for Asylum Seekers

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I say to the most reverend Primate that I thank the Church of England in particular for everything it has done to support asylum seekers; the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has been the first person to take part in community sponsorship. The work of the Church has been incredibly important. Clearly, we will be trying to expedite asylum claims as quickly as possible. We have suspended returns to Afghanistan—understandably so—and I hope that the claims of all those who are waiting in the queue will be seen to as quickly as possible.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that asylum seekers, who are not required to take any PCR test when they land in the United Kingdom—unlike double-vaccinated Members of this House—are put at a great disadvantage? Does she envisage that they will be required to take a PCR test before they can be sent back anywhere?

Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The panel is clear that it did not find any evidence that freemasonry had any effect on the investigations. The Code of Ethics, published by the College of Policing, makes it clear that the police must remain impartial and that membership of groups or societies must not cause a conflict of interest or impact an officer’s duty to discharge their duties effectively.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, at Chapter 10, Paragraph 470, there is a quote that

“‘the corruption of freemasonry influenced every attempt at seeking the truth in the initial Morgan criminal investigation and subsequent enquiries’.”

Later, there are some figures on the voluntary database, where 96% of judges, 88% of magistrates, but

“only 37% of police … declared whether or not they were Freemasons”.

The recommendation actually says:

“All police officers and police staff should be obliged to register in confidence”.


They are not asked, but are obliged to do so. Later on, it says:

“The ‘rotten apple approach’ to dealing with corruption does not meet the needs of a police service seeking to minimise, and even prevent corruption”.


Is it not time at least to accept the recommendation that police officers should be obliged to register whether they are Freemasons?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, on the definition of freemasonry, the Code of Ethics published by the College of Policing makes it clear that the police must remain impartial and that membership of groups or societies must not cause a conflict of interest or impact an officer’s ability to discharge their duties effectively. As I said earlier, the panel is clear that it found no evidence that freemasonry had any effect on the investigations.