Public Order Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Paddick

Report stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

I would like to speak next because my amendments have been mentioned and it is probably best that I explain what they are. I stress that the amendments under discussion are not my amendments: they are Amendments 5, 14 and 24 in this group, which substantially repeat amendments I tabled in Committee. There is a certain amount of revision of the words but essentially, I am making the same point as I did in Committee. They seek to give effect to a recommendation by the Constitution Committee, of which I am a member. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who, as I speak, is still a member of that committee, for adding his name to the amendments.

The committee noted that the three clauses concerning locking on, tunnelling and being present in a tunnel—the offences that are the target of my amendments—use the term “serious disruption” to describe the nature of the conduct that the Bill seeks to criminalise. The committee noted that this could result in severe penalties, such as providing the basis for a serious disruption prevention order, and took the view that a definition should be provided. On that issue, I think there is a wide measure of agreement across the House—perhaps with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick—that a definition is needed because of the nature of these offences and the consequences that follow from them.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I would like to clarify that I wholeheartedly support Amendment 1, which is a definition of “serious disruption”.

Public Order Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Paddick

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 2 in my name I will speak to the other 12 amendments in this group. Amendment 2, supported by the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Skidelsky, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is related to the offence of locking on. I remind noble Lords that the Government’s Explanatory Notes suggest that

“Recent changes in the tactics employed by … protesters have highlighted some gaps in … legislation”,


of which this is one. Suffragettes chained themselves to railings, so to suggest that this is a gap in legislation as a result of recent changes in tactics employed by protesters is nonsense. I expect the Minister will challenge such an assertion, but we can debate that when he responds.

This amendment would narrow the offence of locking on where such actions—attaching themselves or someone else to another person, an object or the road, for example, to cause serious disruption—by removing the wider offence of an act that

“is capable of causing, serious disruption”.

Can the Minister explain what “capable of causing” actually means? If someone locks on in a minor side road or at the entrance to a cul-de-sac, causing little or no disruption, but had similar action been taken on a busy major road it would have been capable of causing serious disruption, would they commit an offence in such circumstances? If they block a busy major road at 3 am when there is no traffic, whereas had it been 10 am they would have caused major disruption, does that amount to it being capable of causing serious disruption in another place and time? Amendment 2 seeks to restrict the offence of locking on to incidents where serious disruption is actually caused to probe what “capable of causing” means and how widely the offence would be applied.

Amendment 25 in my name would again remove “is capable of causing” in relation to the offence of tunnelling, for similar reasons. Can the Minister explain what sort of tunnel might be capable of causing serious disruption but does not actually do so? Why, in that case, does it need to be criminalised? Similarly, Amendment 36 in my name, supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Fox of Buckley, seeks to remove “is capable of causing” in relation to the offence of being present in a tunnel. Again, can the Minister explain how someone’s presence in a tunnel might be capable of causing serious disruption without actually doing so?

Amendment 3, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, which we support and is signed by my noble friend Lady Ludford, similarly seeks to limit the scope of the offence by removing the reference to causing serious disruption to two or more people and replacing it with

“serious disruption to the life of the community”,

as suggested by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We support this amendment.

Amendment 4, in my name and supported by the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Skidelsky, seeks to restrict the offence to cases where there is an intent to cause serious disruption—not merely, as currently drafted in Clause 1(1)(c), being

“reckless as to whether it will have such a consequence”.

Can the Minister give an example of when someone who does not intend to cause serious disruption should be guilty of the offence—in this case, of locking on —when they are simply exercising their right to protest?

Amendment 26, in my name, similarly seeks to narrow the tunnelling offence to cases where there is an intent to cause serious disruption, rather than where someone is merely “reckless” as to whether their tunnel might cause serious disruption. Can the Minister give an example of reckless tunnelling that might fall within the scope of the offence as drafted?

Similarly, Amendment 37, in my name and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, seeks to narrow the definition of the offence of being present in a tunnel to cases where there is an intention to cause serious disruption. Would a journalist who goes to interview protestors in a tunnel be guilty of an offence of being reckless as to whether her presence in the tunnel might cause serious disruption, for example? Can the Minister provide any reassurance?

Amendment 6, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and Amendment 23, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, quite rightly attempt to place a definition of serious disruption on the face of the Bill, rather than asking us to sign a blank cheque where such a definition is decided by the Secretary of State subsequently by statutory instrument.

Similarly, in relation to the tunnelling offence and the being present in a tunnel offence, Amendments 27 and 38 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, seek to provide a definition on the face of the Bill of serious disruption in relation to tunnelling.

Amendment 17, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and supported by my noble friend Lady Ludford and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, seeks to define

“serious disruption to the life of the community”

in Amendment 3.

Finally in this group, Amendment 54, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and my noble friend Lady Ludford, to which we give qualified support—subject to what the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, will say in explaining the amendment—seeks to provide a definition of serious disruption to major transport works, as suggested by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. However, we have concerns over the inclusion of “reckless” in this definition, for reasons I have previously explained.

I think noble Lords will see the complexity of this Bill and the problem we have in trying to cram so many amendments into one group. If the Minister is able to respond to each and every remark I have made, I will be astonished. I beg to move.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, my name is to Amendments 6, 27 and 38, which have been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. They answer a question which was posed by the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, who asked if there is a definition of “serious disruption” in the Bill. There is not, and my amendments seek to provide a definition. I am concerned about the meaning of words, which is always crucial in Bills of this kind.

I am a member of the Constitution Committee and in our scrutiny of the Bill we noted that the clauses which use the phrase “serious disruption” create offences which could result in severe penalties. Most of them may be taken summarily before a magistrate, but then they lead on to other things. They could, in due course, lead to a serious disruption prevention order and all that that involves. The committee took the view that a definition should be provided.

We looked at Section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, to which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, referred, but, in our view, if one has to go down the line of designing a new offence, that definition was not tailored to the offences that we are talking about in the Bill. Therefore, the committee’s recommendation was that the meaning of “serious disruption” should be clarified proportionately in relation to each of the offences where the phrase arises.

In regard to locking on, I seek to say that “serious disruption” means

“a prolonged disruption of access to places where the individuals or the organisation live or carry on business or to which for urgent reasons they wish to travel”—

a hospital appointment, for example—

“or a significant delay in the delivery of time sensitive products or essential goods and services.”

So I have tried to design something that is very specific to the locking-on offence described in Clause 1.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Paddick

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, there is a lot of force in what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said about reasonable excuse. There is a problem, however, in that one would not know that one had a reasonable excuse until one had been charged with the offence. The advantage of the amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and others is that it achieves certainty and intercepts the risk of being brought to court to have one’s reasonable excuse determined. Although I tend to agree with what the noble Lord said, it comes too late in the process, and the safest and most secure way of dealing with it is to intercept the process at the beginning, which is exactly what the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, seeks to do.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, there are two problems here. Because of the behaviour of the lawless few, all Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are being stereotyped as troublemakers. The new law creates offences when people trespass on land with vehicles where, among other things,

“it is likely that significant damage or significant disruption would be caused”,

and, again, where

“significant distress … is likely to be caused”.

All GRT people are likely to be criminalised by these new offences because people’s prejudices will result in them anticipating damage, disruption or distress, despite no previous experience of the GRT people concerned, or any other evidence—just their own prejudice. The second problem is that there is no option for many GRT people other than to trespass on land because local authorities do not, and do not want to, provide authorised pitches. Imagine the reaction of motorists if there were no local car parks and double-yellow lines on every road? That is the equivalent of what GRT people face.

That is the reason for these amendments. In the absence of removing the whole of Part 4 from the Bill, we will vote with the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, should she divide the House. At the very least, the police should not be allowed to seize caravans when they are peoples’ homes and the statutory duty on local authorities to provide authorised sites should be reinstated. That is the purpose of my Amendments 55ZC and 55AA. These may be planning issues, but the clerks have ruled that these amendments are within scope.