Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 31st March 2022 Lords Chamber

We have compromised by allowing this additional condition to be imposed, but short of allowing the police to ban assemblies outright, including removing the power, proposed by the Government, to impose conditions on the grounds that a static protest might be too noisy. Motion D1 is necessary to protect the fundamental rights of assembly and free speech, and we will seek the opinion of the House when the time comes.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly, partly because the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was kind enough to refer to an earlier speech that I had made. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Russell, who have been able to move things forward in an acceptable way, but I think there comes a point where this House has to have very real regard for its constitutional position vis-à-vis the other place. We were justified in asking the other place to think again and, I believe, justified in asking it to think yet again.

I was approached last week by two Conservative Back-Benchers—I will not name them—and they were keen that we should give them another opportunity to think again, which we did. But the fact is that they have not thought again, not by a majority. Some may have changed their votes, but they did not change the position of the other place. It is my reluctant view, particularly on the noise issue, which I think is rather preposterous, that we should now yield to the other place, but if ever a Bill called for post-legislative scrutiny to examine closely how it plays out on the streets and in the public squares, this is it. I hope there will be a proper opportunity to keep these matters under review, but we should have a mind for our constitutional position, and have regard for the fact that we are not the elected House and there is a point beyond which we should not go.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right to raise the important point about our constitutional obligations. I am tentative about what I am going to say because I am anxious not to act in defiance of an elected Chamber, not just for constitutional reasons but because democracy is very valuable, and we should have modesty in relation to our role in this place. However, I do feel that, at the very least, the Government are obliged to untangle some serious confusion about why the legislation in relation to protest is even necessary.

When it was originally introduced, there were grandiose claims that this was the Government responding to public concerns—a real clamour from the public—about dealing with new forms of protest. It is true that there has been a lot of anger in the public realm about new forms of protest. Anybody who objected to the amendments tabled by the Government was dismissed as “ignoring voters’ concerns”—just by objecting, in effect, they were being anti-democratic. Yet now the Minister comes back here and suggests that, in relation to the noise trigger, for example, it is a just a modest update of the law and it will not be used very often. It seems to me that the original motivation for these clauses has been lost, and we have ended up with a disproportionate and unnecessary commitment by the Government to deal with a non-problem.

There is perhaps some confusion because earlier this week, as people will have read in the newspaper, a mum was banned from driving for what was described as “nudging” some Insulate Britain protesters. She was trying to get her 11 year-old to school and was exasperated that the protesters would not move, and that the police were not acting to remove them. There was some popular backlash to the fact that this driver was the person who was prosecuted, and at a meeting I talked to people who said, “Well, the mum is not guilty of dangerous driving. The problem here was the failure of the police to police the protest.” They went on to say, “At least the Government are acting and bringing in a new law that will deal with this sort of thing.” When I explained the nature of the new laws that were being brought in, in relation to noise and static assemblies, they said, “What’s the good of that? That won’t deal with the problem of the mum and the motorway and the protester”, and they are right.

Despite reservations, I support the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Paddick, in the amended amendments that they have brought back, taking on board the modest comments that have been made. I think that these anti-protest clauses are being mis-sold to the public, who, when it is explained to them, do not see any connection between their clamour and these clauses being brought in by the Government.

If there is an issue with protest, it is possibly that the police have not consistently policed protests that have happened over the last few years with the powers that they have, and there is public concern about that. It seems to me that both these clauses, as illustrated by the points made from the Front Bench, will make the police’s job even more complicated and will compromise them politically because they will be accused of subjective interpretations of what is “too noisy” and what is the threat of a static demonstration. I think the Government will inadvertently help to politicise the police, and make the situation of protests more confusing, and they are not doing what I think they originally wanted to do, which was to assure the public that their concerns about new forms of protest would be honoured in legislation. These parts of the Bill do nothing useful for anyone.

--- Later in debate ---

I end on this: the police are under the biggest pressure they have been under in my lifetime. More of us are concerned about the way the police behave than was ever true when I was a child. That is serious. How on earth can we allow the police to say that a particular protest, although widely supported, will not go ahead because it might be too noisy and is outside a building which does not have double-glazing? I am sorry; I say to my noble friend that I cannot support that, and I do not think this House should support it, because it is precisely for that kind of discussion that we are here. I say to my noble friend that if he maintains his position, the House of Lords may as well say, “Okay, we’ll vote twice against it and never do it again, so you may as well get on with it”. I am sorry; I am not here for that purpose. I would prefer not to be here at all if I am not able to—

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I am most grateful. My noble friend makes a very powerful speech and makes it very sensibly. However, I would just point out that, at the time he was giving instructions and saying, “There are five things I want, but others I’ll give way on”, the House of Lords was a very different place. It had a massive, built-in hereditary Tory majority.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I do not think that helps the issue. All that says is that we are a different place because Parliament has decided that we should be. I am not sure that we are necessarily a better place; I would not like to draw attention to that. I am merely saying that we are a place and that we are here to make certain kinds of decisions. I have more sympathy for my noble friend the Minister than I do for almost any other Minister and I admire her enormously—which is why I really find this difficult. I really wanted to be able to say today that I support the Government, but I cannot, as somebody who came into this House saying that I would concentrate on Europe—that has been difficult—the environment and human rights. One of the first human rights is that I can walk with lots of other people to say that something is wrong. For the police to have the powers to say that we cannot, because it might be too noisy, is wrong.