Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, I do not think that the Government are trying to destroy democracy or steal all our freeborn rights from us, but I do think they are being extremely foolish. The wording of these amendments will create an absolute nightmare for the courts. Sitting here a moment ago I was trying to imagine how a judge would sum up one of these offences to a jury, and what the jury would make of it. It would be a chaotic scenario.

I will say one further thing, on a personal note. I attended both the great demonstrations against the Iraq war in 2002. One of them comprised over a million people, the second around 600,000 people. Those demonstrations would have been in breach of several of these amendments—not just the noise amendment but the various inconvenience amendments on making it difficult for people to get to their bank machines, hospitals and places of work. Under these amendments, those demonstrations would have been illegal. Is that really what Ministers seek to achieve with these amendments? If they do not, this is an extraordinarily foolish piece of drafting.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, no one likes pickets. Even pickets do not like picketing. However, these clauses impinge on the right to picket, the right to picket is a fundamental aspect of the right to strike, and the right to strike is a fundamental aspect of the right to bargain collectively, which is a fundamental aspect of democracy at work.

Picketing is a highly regulated area of the law in a very sensitive political area. It has been regulated by legislation since 1875 and the last statutory amendment was in the Trade Union Act 2016. There is also a code of practice regulating picketing. There are no exemptions for pickets from either the criminal or the civil law, but these clauses will restrict even further the limited right to picket.

On the issue of noise, other noble Lords have pointed out the vagueness of the concepts involved here, which will impose a great burden on the discretion of the police in deciding what is noisy and what is not. It is notable that legislation has—and workers are very familiar with this—imposed limits on noise by way of decibels and duration in many industries. Those scientific techniques are not used here.

The very purpose of a picket in a trade dispute is to cause

“disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity”—

namely, the employer. So pickets will be caught. I note that the amendment states that

“serious disruption to the life of the community”

may include two situations: first, the supply of

“a time-sensitive product to consumers”

and, secondly,

“prolonged disruption of access to … essential goods or any … service, including, in particular, access to … the supply of money, food, water, energy or fuel … a system of communication … a transport facility … an educational institution, or … a service related to health.”

It does not take an expert to know that picketing is put at risk in almost every sector of the economy by these clauses, and it is for that reason that I have added my name to those of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, my noble friend Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, in asking for these clauses to no longer stand part.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I also believe in freedom and in common sense. There are a number of provisions in this group, including the list we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. Now as I understand it, the Government are responding to the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s concerns. The council feels that, in the new world that has been described by others, public order legislation is not any longer appropriate and does not allow them to respond to the sort of disruptive protest tactics being used by some groups today that perhaps would not have been used in the past. I look forward to the Minister’s response, particularly on the issue of noise, which people have highlighted.

I have two questions to add. First, how will these provisions help against Insulate Britain and what its members have been doing? How will the new arrangements work, particularly the developments as regards juries that others have mentioned? Secondly, I know that there have been concerns about the overuse of delegated powers in this part of the Bill. Indeed, there was an excellent debate in the House last week on that very issue, which some noble Lords were present for. What were the recommendations from the DPRRC and Constitution Committee in this area, and can my noble friend explain how they have been met? My understanding is that definitions of “serious disruption” have now been added to the face of the Bill, which was a concern. But does that meet the concern expressed by our committees?