Public Order Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Manchester and Lord Paddick

Report stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 19 and 31 in this group. As I explained in Committee, the offence of causing serious disruption by being present in a tunnel, as drafted in the Bill, could criminalise those in London Underground tunnels, for example. Amendment 19 is designed to restrict the offence to tunnels constructed in contravention of Clause 3: that is, a tunnel created to cause, or that is capable of causing, serious disruption. I am pleased to say that the Government agree, albeit that their alternative, Amendment 29, restricts the tunnels an offence can be committed in to

“a tunnel that was created for the purposes of, or in connection with, a protest”,

whether the tunnel was created in contravention of Clause 3 or not. They are not adopting my amendment, which covers any tunnel built in contravention of Clause 3.

I know one should not look a gift horse in the mouth, but can the Minister explain how being present in a tunnel that does not cause, and is not capable of causing, serious disruption—that is, a tunnel that was not created in contravention of Clause 3—can result in serious disruption being caused by a person being present in it? Why is it necessary to extend the definition of a relevant tunnel beyond tunnels created in contravention of Clause 3? Why should the House agree to government Amendments 21, 29 and 30 rather than my Amendment 19? I am sure the Minister will have been prepared to respond to that question. Maybe not, looking at him at the moment.

My Amendment 31 concerns the offence of being equipped for tunnelling in Clause 5. We believe that the offence of having an object

“with the intention that it may be used in the course of or in connection with the commission”

of an offence of tunnelling is unnecessarily complicated. Can the Minister explain why the proposed alternative wording—having an object

“for use in the course or in connection with”

the offence—is not sufficient? For example, Section 25 of the Theft Act 1968 states:

“A person shall be guilty of an offence if, when not at his place of abode, he has with him any article for use in the course of or in connection with any burglary, theft or cheat.”


What does

“with the intention that it may be used”

mean? Either the person intends to use the object or they do not, even if they may end up not using it—for example, because it might prove to be unnecessary. “I’ve got this pickaxe in case the protest tunnel we’re building encounters rocks, but if there are no rocks I may not have to use it,” is still having the pickaxe for use in the course of or in connection with tunnelling.

The other amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, seek to leave out Clauses 1 and 2. Locking on has been used for centuries as a form of protest, most notably by the suffragettes. This new offence is widely and vaguely drawn—for example, to include people attaching themselves to other people without defining what “attach” means. Not only is there a right to protest, there is also a long-standing acceptance that people should be able to protest in the way they see fit. The creation of a locking-on offence is not even supported by the majority of rank and file police officers, according to His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services:

“Most interviewees did not wish to criminalise protest actions through the creation of a specific offence concerning locking on.”


As with the whole of the Bill, there is sufficient existing legislation to cover locking-on activity, whether it is highway obstruction, for which the penalty now includes a term of imprisonment, or public nuisance, where the maximum penalty is a prison sentence of 10 years. Can the Minister explain the circumstances in which locking-on activity would not be covered by any existing legislation?

As for Clause 2 and the offence of being equipped for locking on, as currently drafted, the offence of having something

“with the intention that it may be used in the course of or in connection with the commission”

of a locking-on offence by any person, not just the person in possession of the object, could cover a whole range of everyday objects that someone is innocently in possession of. While the offence presumably requires the prosecution to prove

“the intention that it may be used in the course of or in connection with”

an offence of locking on, the power of the police to arrest is merely based on a reasonable cause to suspect that an offence may have been committed—a very low bar. As I said in the debate on a similar clause in what was then the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, you could buy a tube of superglue to repair a broken chair at home, get caught up in a protest and be accused of going equipped for locking on.

From my own extensive knowledge of policing, I say that if you have a tube of superglue in your pocket while innocently trying to negotiate your way around a protest and are stopped and searched by the police, as this Bill will allow, and if you then believe you can convince a police officer that they do not have sufficient cause to suspect you are going equipped to lock on and, as a result, that you should not be arrested, that would represent a triumph of hope over experience. We support Amendments 9 and 10.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly in support of the amendment to remove Clauses 1 and 2 that my right reverend friend the Bishop of Bristol signed. She regrets that she cannot be in her place today. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, establishing new offences of locking on and being equipped for locking on have very significant consequences for the right to protest. A few days ago I got an email from a retired vicar in my diocese. He wrote to tell me he is awaiting sentencing: he has just been convicted of obstruction by gluing himself to a road during a protest by an environmental group. The judge has warned him and his co-defendants that they may go to prison. I cite his case not to approve of his actions—which I fear may serve to reduce public support for his cause rather than increase it—but because it clearly indicates to me that the police already have sufficient powers to intervene against those who are taking an active part in such protests. Anything extra, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has just so eloquently illustrated, is superfluous.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Manchester and Lord Paddick

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendments in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests in policing ethics and my work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, as set out in the register. I trust that those interests assure your Lordships that I am a strong supporter of effective policing, not its adversary.

As an occasional statistician, I am also well aware of the power and utility of data. Good data, including on the risks of serious violence, can provide the evidence that allows the limited resources of our police forces to be directed to the particular challenges faced in different contexts and localities. Perhaps it is because I trained not as a lawyer but as a mathematician that I hold firmly to the maxim that, before one can begin to find the right solution, one has to have clearly defined the problem. I am not sure that these clauses, as presently drafted, fully pass that test.

If the problem is that there are occasions when the sharing of personal data will be necessary in order to detect or prevent serious violence, such powers already exist. Indeed, they go further than simply applying to certain public bodies. Like all of my right reverend and most reverend friends on these Benches, I am a data controller—a fancy title—handling often very sensitive personal information regarding clergy, church officers and children who are in the care of churches. I know my general duties regarding when I ought to disclose such data to police or others. When I need specific advice, I have access to my legal secretary, my diocesan safeguarding adviser and others. It is difficult to see what a new duty on some public bodies to share identifiable personal information will add to this.

Alternatively, if the problem is the need to collect and process data sets that allow the setting of more general policing priorities and interventions, it is difficult to see why that cannot be done in ways that remove all identifiable personal details and hence are entirely compliant with the GDPR and other data protection law. I struggle to see why there is a need to create an opt-out for the anonymised data that can drive better policing.

The amendments that I and others have put our names to would, I believe, strengthen the Bill, making it clear that it is seeking not to set aside data protection law but to allow anonymised data to be shared where this will produce better policing outcomes. They would reassure children, vulnerable people, victims of crime and others that their personal data will not be shared, beyond that which is already shared under existing legislation. They would allow youth workers, whether they are employed by the Church, local authorities or whomever, to continue to be trusted by those who come to them.

As has been alluded to, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams—who, were it not for the particular protocols of this place, I would be proud to refer to as my noble friend—has already accepted the principle that health bodies should not be compelled to share patient data. It is not a huge leap to extend that to other authorities.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 24 and 32 to 35 in this group, and I have signed Amendments 11, 22, 25 and 30, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester.

I start with the government amendments that effectively protect patient confidentiality on the basis that, if patients do not trust their doctors to keep sensitive personal information confidential, they will not seek healthcare when they need to. There are already protocols to deal with situations where there is a serious risk of harm to the patient or others which allow the sharing of information. In moving these amendments, the Government have accepted the principle that professionals need to keep sensitive personal information confidential in order to maintain the trust of those whom they are working with. I will return to this shortly.

Amendments 11, 22 and 30 do the bare minimum in maintaining the protection provided by data protection legislation. This is putting down a marker that specified authorities should not simply allow the duty to share information under the serious violence duty to override everything else. We will support these amendments if the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, divides the House.

But we do not believe these amendments go far enough, in that they do not address the Secretary of State’s enforcement powers. Despite government protestations to the contrary, the almost unanimous view among NGOs is that the new serious violence duty is actually a duty on specified authorities to give information to the police, so that the police can try to arrest our way out of the problem of serious violence—an enforcement-led approach, which even the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police says is not the solution. What we really need is a truly multiagency public health approach, which has worked so well in Scotland, where enforcement is only one part of the solution .