EU: Police and Criminal Justice Measures
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey
My Lords, today’s version of the Government’s Motion asks your Lordships to approve the block opt-out of 133 JHA measures. It also asks us to approve the rejoining of measures that are in the national interest and now suggests, without quite saying so in the Motion, that these are the 35 measures set out in the Command Paper. The Motion also invites your Lordships’ EU Select Committee to report on the matter before the end of October, when negotiations with the EU institutions will start—which is, perhaps, an unusual way for the Government to communicate with a Select Committee.
The Government, or some parts of it, seem to have got themselves into rather a tangle over all this. This tangle seems to have led them into, at the very least, discourtesies to Select Committees here and in the Commons and, by extension, perhaps to both Houses as a whole. The very long delay in providing the promised Explanatory Memoranda is a case in point, as is the failure to respond to the report of your Lordships’ EU Committee in the agreed timeframe.
Perhaps the most important and straightforward interpretation of the events of the past few months is the following. The Prime Minister seems to have decided, on or before the date on which he made his now famous Rio speech, that he would exercise the block opt-out. That was on 28 September last year, 10 months ago. There followed a series of not wholly convincing denials that the Government had in fact made up their mind to exercise the block opt-out, and not wholly convincing assertions that they had an open mind on the issue. It seemed pretty clear that the Prime Minister and, perhaps just a bit later, his Conservative colleagues in the coalition had in fact decided to opt out. The moment this became clear—and it was pretty immediately clear—the real political task was not to try to prevent the block opt-out but to agree a sensible, comprehensive and coherent package of rejoin measures. I doubt that, despite the overwhelming evidence against opting out, it was ever going to be possible to persuade the Prime Minister not to do exactly that. The Prime Minister had committed himself and his colleagues far too early and much too clearly.
It is easy to see that the Government were almost certainly not going to be moved. They were going to exercise the block opt-out, come what may, as it were. That meant that the real political debate would be over which measures to apply to rejoin. I know that there has been very extensive debate within the Government over exactly this. The Government’s original Motion appeared to be coy about exactly what these measures might be, but today’s version of the Motion is pretty unambiguous. The rejoin measures for negotiation are the 35 set out in the Command Paper. These rejoin measures proposed in the Command Paper represent the outcome of negotiations within the coalition. On any objective reading, this list of proposed rejoins seems to be entirely satisfactory. In fact, the Lib Dem negotiators, and Danny Alexander in particular, should be congratulated on what they have persuaded their Tory colleagues to accept. It may be, of course, that to pass the Commission’s legal requirements for coherence we will have to add to this list one or two other minor and technical measures. However, this would not be difficult and would certainly not be harmful to the national interest.
One of the oddest things about this whole imbroglio is that the Government have not been able to demonstrate that any of the measures they do not want to rejoin is harmful to the national interest or damaging at all. I repeat that the list of proposed rejoins set out in Command Paper 8671 seems to be entirely satisfactory. We must acknowledge that we are where we are but we must also acknowledge the time pressure. It is critical that we get on with this so that we absolutely reduce the chances of any interregnum where we are out of 133 measures and not yet back in to 35, or however many it turns out to be.
I hope that the House will agree with this and will agree to the Government’s Motion. I look forward, as a member of your Lordships’ EU Sub-Committee F, to examining and reporting on matters as they will then stand.
Europol Regulation: European Union Opt-In
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper in my capacity as chairman of the European Union Committee’s Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, Health and Education, which prepared the report now before your Lordships for endorsement. As the House will know, when we consider reports of the EU Committee, this is normally on a Motion that the House simply takes note of the report. In the case of this report, the Motion invites the House to agree with the committee’s recommendation that the Government should opt in to the negotiations on the Commission’s recently proposed Europol regulation. The reason is that the report deals with a draft measure falling within the area of justice and home affairs, which will apply to the United Kingdom only if the Government exercise their right under a protocol to the EU treaties to participate in its negotiation, adoption and implementation—in other words, to opt into it. They have to do this within three months of the proposal being presented to the Council, which in this case means before 30 July. The committee believes that the Government should opt in, and the Motion invites the House to endorse that view.
In 2011, the Government repeated an undertaking given by the previous Government that time would be found to debate opt-in reports well before the expiry of the three-month period. I am most grateful that they have honoured the undertaking on this occasion by making time available for the debate early enough for them to be able to take into account the views of the House when reaching a decision on whether to opt in.
As many of your Lordships will know from earlier EU committee reports, most recently from the joint report of Sub-Committees E and F on the block opt-out under Protocol 36 to the Lisbon treaty, Europol—the European Police Office—is a vital weapon for co-ordinating the European fight against serious organised crime, drug trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime and terrorism. It was originally established in 1995 as an intergovernmental body, and became an EU agency in 2009, following the adoption of a Council decision to that effect. Europol has no executive or coercive powers to conduct investigations or make arrests in the member states, and the Commission’s proposal before your Lordships does not seek to change this. Europol supports the work of member states’ law-enforcement authorities by gathering, analysing and sharing information and by co-ordinating operations.
CEPOL, the European Police College, aims to encourage cross-border police co-operation by bringing together senior police officers from across the EU in training and exchange programmes, among other things. It was established as an EU agency in 2005, following the adoption of a separate Council decision. It is currently based at Bramshill in the United Kingdom, alongside the English and Welsh College of Policing.
The draft regulation we are debating would supersede both the pre-Lisbon Council decisions: the one dealing with Europol and the one dealing with CEPOL. It proposes to merge CEPOL with Europol in the latter’s existing headquarters in The Hague. The new regulation would also enhance some of Europol’s existing powers, in particular regarding the collection of data from member states and its ability to analyse the data more effectively. The Government have expressed concerns in their Explanatory Memorandum about the introduction of a stricter obligation on member states to provide data to Europol. I understand that in fact—this is a point of some interest—law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom already share, voluntarily, a greater volume of information with Europol than do the agencies of other member states.
Doubts could also arise about Europol’s ability to cope with large volumes of information if it were to be copied in to all bilateral exchanges, as the regulation seeks to make mandatory. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on how the Government would address these concerns during the negotiations if they were to opt in to the proposal. The committee’s view, which we expressed in our report, was that the Government would be most effective in pursuing these concerns by participating in the negotiations. In doing so, I would hope that they would bear in mind, in dealing with our own concerns, our clear interest in other member states providing more information to Europol than they do at present. As always, there are two sides to the coin.
With regard to the proposed merger of Europol and CEPOL, your Lordships are probably aware that it has generated a degree of opposition, not least from both the agencies concerned. While the committee accepts, in general terms, the desirability of merging EU agencies if this will produce cost savings without a loss of effectiveness, it did not believe that the Commission had yet made a sufficiently convincing case for the merger in terms of reducing duplication, achieving efficiency savings and increasing effectiveness.
While the Government also appear to have concerns about the proposed merger, they somewhat counterintuitively appear to be unconcerned about the possible relocation of CEPOL to The Hague, following their announcement that the agency’s lease at Bramshill will come to an end in March 2014. I will ask the Minister for further information about the possible relocation of CEPOL, including whether any efforts have been made to retain the location of this agency in the United Kingdom. It now looks more likely that the two agencies will be kept apart, because there is strong opposition not only from the agencies but from quite a number of member states, as expressed in the recent Justice and Home Affairs Council and also in the European Parliament, where the LIBE Committee, which is a kind of opposite number to my sub-committee, is strongly opposed to the merger. Therefore, the likelihood is that CEPOL will be looking for a new home.
Concerns have been raised in the past about the limited parliamentary oversight of Europol. This has been addressed to a degree by the increased scrutiny of the non-operational functions of this agency, as well as of CEPOL, by the European Parliament since the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty in December 2009. In 2010, the Commission instigated discussions about how national Parliaments could be involved in the process of scrutiny and oversight in order at the same time to increase accountability at member state level, thus recognising the shared competences in the justice and home affairs field. I will explain that point. I think that everyone understands that this will be an area of mixed competence as far as the eye can see. It is not even conceivable that member states will hand all that over to the European Union. It is certainly not desirable that they should do so—and it is not going to happen. That means that in an area like this, where there is mixed competence and the issue of parliamentary scrutiny and oversight arises, the only sensible way to proceed is to try to avoid a food fight between the European Parliament and national Parliaments, and to see whether we can get some sort of system in which they operate together on the basis of equality.
My committee and I have played an active role in those discussions from the outset, and have pushed for the development of existing structures to this end, rather than for the establishment of new ones. There are regular meetings of the European Parliament LIBE Committee and the national Parliament Home Affairs Committee. If we build on them, we will avoid the potential costs and duplication that a more freestanding structure could entail. Other national Parliaments have tended to follow our lead in taking this view, and I will continue to state the case in Brussels and elsewhere. In that respect, we find the provisions in the draft regulation extremely welcome. They would increase parliamentary scrutiny of Europol, and its accountability both to the European Parliament and to national Parliaments, and would do so with a light touch, as we have recommended.
Our position on a number of other provisions in the regulation is set out in the report. Some are technical, and I will not weary the House with them. However, there is one to which I should draw attention. It arises in the context of the committee’s recent consideration of the Government’s 2014 block opt-out decision under Protocol 36 to the Lisbon treaty—about which I fear your Lordships will hear a lot in the coming months when we come to debate the committee’s report on this matter, which came out at the end of the previous Session, and when we receive the Government’s response to that report, which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, stated was coming “shortly”. “How short is a piece of string?” is perhaps the same question as, “How long is a piece of string?”. We will find out in due course.
Our witnesses for the Protocol 36 inquiry, the Home Secretary included, were almost unanimously positive about Europol’s role, including the significant benefits it provided for the United Kingdom’s law-enforcement agencies in terms of access to information, analysis, intelligence, co-ordination and support, as well as the efficient and cost-effective arrangement of having access to 40 countries in one place rather than co-operating through a network of bilateral arrangements.
The potential value of Europol has recently been enhanced by the establishment of a Cybercrime Centre within it, in response to the real challenges that cybercrime presents to all of us. If the Government choose to opt in to the regulation that we are debating today, the two Council decisions establishing Europol and CEPOL will simply drop off the list of measures that will be caught if the Government decide to trigger the block opt-out decision. However, four other measures on that list, which Europol informed the committee were “directly connected” with the Council’s Europol decision, will remain on the list. Do not ask me why this has happened or whether it is sensible that it has happened—but it has happened. Can the Minister clarify which of the existing measures are subject to repeal by the new regulation and how would handling any other relevant decision affect handling the block opt-out decision? Are the Government mindful of the need to opt back in to any Europol measures not so repealed, so that no question of lack of coherence arises? Of course, that will occur only if the Government agree to opt in to the Europol regulation, but it is worth going over that ground because there is a potential trap there, which it would be unwise for us to fall into.
My sub-committee plans to keep the present draft regulation under scrutiny. At this stage, only one matter is for decision by the House—whether or not the Government are recommended to exercise the United Kingdom’s opt-in by the end of July. For the reasons I have given, the committee is firmly of the opinion that the Government should do so, in part so that they can play a full and effective role in addressing the concerns that they have expressed, some of which we share, during the negotiations. It would be good to hear from the Minister at the conclusion of the debate whether it is the Government’s intention to opt in to the new Europol regulation. I understand that a parallel debate on this issue in another place has been postponed from the scheduled date of 3 July. Can the Minister say why that has happened and when the debate will be reinstated, presumably before the other place rises on 18 July? Can he assure the House that when a decision is taken on the opt-in, it will be communicated to this House? I beg to move.
Lord Sharkey
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the way in which he chaired the committee in the production of the report which forms the basis of this evening’s debate. I also thank the committee’s clerk, Michael Torrance, for his invaluable input into the report.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has set out forcefully the case for agreeing to our committee’s recommendation that the Government should opt in to the new Europol regulation. They have four weeks to do that. I shall not repeat the noble Lord’s arguments in detail, but I want to re-enforce the argument about Europol’s importance to this country’s national security and crime-fighting efforts and to speak about where the clear balance of advantage lies in this debate.
Europol, with its outstanding British director, is a success story for the United Kingdom. In 2010, Operation Golf, a joint operation between Europol and the Met, led to the arrest of seven individuals in the UK and 126 individuals in total for trafficking children; 28 children in the UK were released as a result and 181 children in total. Operation Rescue, a three-year operation launched by the Met and co-ordinated by Europol across 30 countries, led to the discovery of the world’s largest online paedophile network; 670 suspects were identified, 184 arrests were made and 230 sexually exploited children were protected. Operation Veto, an investigation led by Europol across 13 European countries, uncovered an extensive criminal football match-fixing network. A total of 425 match officials, club officials, players and serious criminals from 15 countries are suspected of involvement.
There are other successful case histories. However, Europol’s critical role in helping the UK can be summed up in the words of ACPO, which said:
“Much of our international crime and transient criminals come from Europe and membership of these organisations”—
Europol and CEPOL—
“makes it easier to target them. Removing ourselves from these measures and putting ourselves in the position of having to re-negotiate 26”—
it will now, presumably, be 28—
“treaties on each and every topic, would be a massive step back for UK policing that would benefit no one”.
Global Migration and Mobility (EUC Report)
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey
My Lords, I would like to begin by expressing my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the way that he guided our committee through our inquiry into the EU’s global approach to migration and mobility, and to the clerks who so ably assisted us all.
I would also like, in a general way, to thank the Government for their response to our report, which contained 43 conclusions and recommendations. The Government agreed with most of these. It was disappointing, however, that they did not agree with our recommendation to opt in to the family reunification directive, simply asserting that it is not in the UK’s interest to do so. It would be very helpful if, in the Minister’s response today, he were able to enlarge on this and deal with the moral as well as the practical issues that will inevitably arise from the differences in family admissions policies across the member states.
It was the committee’s view that when it came to the integration of migrants, language learning had an important role to play. The Government agreed with this and went on to say that,
“the Government believes that communities, businesses and voluntary bodies should be enabled to lead integration in their local area. The Localism Act introduces new rights for communities to take greater control in their local areas, for example by challenging local authorities to contract out services where they feel they could do a better job of running them”.
This suggests three questions: what services do the Government have in mind; do they know what local authorities are actually doing; and what plans have they got to assess the use of the Localism Act in promoting migrant integration? I hope that the Minister can address some of these questions now or later.
Our report also recommended that member states and the EU consider a more balanced and comprehensive approach to those who overstay their visas, including by the selective encouragement of legal migration channels, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned. The Government simply did not respond to this recommendation, although I know from the Home Secretary’s comments yesterday that the Government are very much aware of the problem of overstaying. Can the Minister give his views on the approach to handling this problem, both in terms of those migrants here now and those who will arrive in the future? I was sorry that the Government did not agree with our recommendation that they participate in all EU readmission agreements, but I was glad that they agree that there should be continued evaluation of existing agreements.
In any discussion of mobility and migration and the opportunities and problems that they may present, it and is vital to have accurate and reliable data and robust evaluations of programs and tools. The committee considered that the current iteration of the GAMM has not effectively evaluated the EU’s progress to date in achieving its objectives, and we called for more rigour and for full and detailed evaluations. The Government agreed with this and agreed, I think, that there is much work to be done.
The mobility partnerships, again mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, illustrate the point. These partnerships are set to become the main tools for the EU’s external migration policies. Yet, so far, only one of these partnerships has been evaluated and that evaluation was close to worthless. In my long experience of evaluation reports, I have rarely seen one that was so inadequate, so amateur and so directly misleading. The evaluation’s conclusion that the Moldova mobility partnership had been “a clear success” was not supported by the evidence adduced and was directly contradicted by the evaluation’s account of its own shortcomings. The general sloppiness, lack of rigour and misleading conclusions regarding the Moldova mobility partnership evaluation matter. The EU proposes these partnerships as the key mobility and migration tools. If they are to be the key tools, they should not be progressed without a grown-up evaluation framework being built in to them from the very start. The Government surely have a role to play here, if only to prevent a further waste of taxpayers’ money.
However, none of the Government’s disagreements or qualifications in their response to the committee’s report is as disappointing as their response to the recommendations on international students and net migration targets. Noble Lords have already spoken eloquently and forcefully on this matter and I am sure we will hear more from other speakers. The Government rejected the recommendation that international students be removed from the public policy implications of the Government’s policy of reducing net migration. The reason given in their response is that the UK will continue to comply with the international definition of net migration. That is not in itself an obviously compelling reason for anything at all. It is also a very odd response.
The Government say that there is no cap on qualified student numbers. Their response states that,
“any student with the right qualifications, sufficient funds and a good level of English can come with no annual limit on numbers”.
Unless there is some implication that I have not spotted in the phrase “no annual limit”, this is a liberal and sensible approach. After all, the Government acknowledge that they are committed to the sustainable growth of a sector in which the UK excels and which is worth huge sums to the UK economy. In other words, we want this sector to grow. That means attracting more suitably qualified students. It also means maintaining—or, even better, growing—our market share.
The Government are not trying to cut the numbers of qualified students coming here, so why on earth include their numbers in the gross number of migrants presented for policy purposes? What possible harm could it do to exclude them? The answer is surely that it would do no harm at all. However, it is easy to see that leaving the situation as it is may well be causing us current and future damage, and that is because, as the committee’s report says, it helps to create the perception that overseas students are not welcome in the UK.
Noble Lords have already referred to the briefing produced yesterday by Universities UK. The Higher Education Statistics Agency data in this briefing show a decline in non-EU postgraduate entry to our universities and only a small increase in undergraduate entry. The data also show that demand from India has absolutely plummeted. Universities UK concludes that,
“in the context of a rapidly growing and highly competitive international market, the low overall growth over recent years is likely to equate to a loss of market share”,
which means, of course, a loss of revenue for the UK, but it also means a loss of future cultural influence and soft power. Much of this is caused by problems of perception: the perception that the UK does not welcome foreign students and that the UK is making itself deliberately difficult for students to get into. Unless we change that perception, things will get worse.
With the very dramatic fall in Indian students coming to the UK, the numbers are increasingly propped up by the Chinese. However, there are signs that the Chinese numbers may themselves soon decline. A recent survey of Chinese high school students revealed that over the past 12 months only 60% of those high school students who had previously preferred the UK as a destination for university still did so. I repeat: only 60%.
We need to reverse the perception of the UK as unwelcoming to students. We need to reflect the truth of “no cap”. We need to make entry easier and for it to be seen to be easier. We can make a good start in doing this and send out a powerful signal by removing students from the public policy implications of the Government’s policy of reducing net migration. The Government’s refusal so far to do this looks much more like stubbornness than it looks like principle or even electoral calculation, and I hope that the Minister may feel able to ask his colleagues to reconsider.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, perhaps I may raise two small points. They seem almost trivial in the context but they are important and, as the noble Baroness said earlier, the opportunities for this sort of discussion are limited to Committee. I appreciate that this is existing legislation in Scotland. My first point relates to proposed new subsection (4) in the amendment, which states,
“where A knows, or ought in all the circumstances to have known”.
The existing Section 4(2) brings in the notion of a reasonable person. I read the existing law as objective and this proposal as being subjective, and I am not sure whether it is strong enough.
My second point relates to new subsection (2) of the proposal, where it would be necessary for the course of conduct to cause “fear or alarm”. Again, I wonder whether that is strong enough. What if the victim is a particularly resilient person? Should the person engaging in the conduct be able to do so because of the toughness of the victim?
Lord Sharkey
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for tabling this amendment, whose objectives I strongly support. As noble Lords have already noted, the situation relating to stalking in England and Wales is entirely unsatisfactory. It is clear that the offence of harassment is not an effective way of dealing with the problem of stalking. It is not effective for the protection of possible victims; it is not effective for the successful prosecution of offenders; and it is not effective in the delivery of appropriate punishment for those who are found guilty.
A recent survey conducted by the members of the National Association of Probation Officers showed that the overwhelming majority of victims were in constant fear and many were physically injured. Most victims claim that there are a number of incidents before they feel they can go to the police. Often their complaints are not properly investigated, and the perpetrator’s behaviour escalates over time if there is no criminal justice intervention or treatment.
It appears that stalking behaviour is simply not recognised by the majority of professionals who have to deal with the cases. Probation staff are concerned that when sentences are handed down they are often too short for rehabilitation or treatment to occur, or even to match the gravity of the offence and its effect on the lives of victims. We should not allow things to continue as they are. The suffering caused to victims is often harrowing and sometimes life-destroying.
The current methods for dealing with the problem are clearly inadequate. However, as noble Lords have pointed out, there is an obvious way forward, which is to learn from the experience in Scotland. As noble Lords have indicated, Scotland chose not to introduce a version of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997—currently the law in England and Wales—on the grounds that the Act did not transfer powers into practice. Instead, a new law, on which this amendment is based, was passed in December 2010 creating a specific offence of stalking and offences of threatening and abusive behaviour. This legislation has the support of the police, who have themselves adopted new operational guidelines to ensure proper awareness of stalking and harassment. There are clear signs of the success of this Act, even at this very early stage.
I acknowledge that the Government take this matter extremely seriously, and I know that the consultation on the issue runs until 5 February. It is important that we learn from it. Nevertheless, I urge the Minister to take account of the strong views expressed today and the terrible plight of the victims of stalking and not to delay legislation on this issue one moment longer than is absolutely necessary.
Lord Henley
My Lords, I note what my noble friend Lord Sharkey and all other noble Lords said. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Dear, who said that we should take away all the comments. My noble friend said we should look at this and not delay legislation. As he reminded us, we have a consultation that runs to 5 February. Obviously, we want to see the result of that consultation before we move much further, but I am grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining how her clause works and allowing us the opportunity to debate these matters.
As the noble Baroness will know, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary’s ambition, and the Government’s ambition, is nothing less than ending all forms of violence against women, including stalking. I am again grateful to my noble friend Lady Brinton for reminding us that stalking is not committed just against women and that some 20 per cent is against men. It is an offence that affects and can be devastating to many lives, and that is why we included stalking as a priority in our Call to End Violence against Women and Girls strategy published last November and why we followed it up with specific actions to tackle stalking in our action plan published this spring. It is why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in response to a Question said:
“It is important that we take forward the work that the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice have done in looking at a proper, separate offence for stalking and recognising that there is a gap in the current law that we should fill, because there are people who are not getting the protection and help from the police that they need”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/11/11; col. 292.]
The noble Baroness is seeking to strengthen the law on stalking and, as I said, there may be a case for that, but we should remember that we have that consultation and we want to look at it in some detail. There might be a degree of unanimity about what we can do and that at a later stage of the Bill—I do not know—something might be possible. That is a matter for the future, but before I go into some of the detail about what we have at the moment and what the noble Baroness’s amendment does, I think it is important to get that on the record.
I would like to make one comment that I think is relevant and to deal with the question of police training and training for others that was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and my noble friend Lady Brinton. It is important that the right attitude exists within the police and those who have to deal with these things. We recognise that in the past that was not always the case. The Home Office has been working very hard with ACPO, the Crown Prosecution Service—which is important in this—the Ministry of Justice and, equally importantly, various stalking charities to ensure that best practice guidance has been disseminated. We are trying to do that through a series of regional events to make sure that how they must deal with these matters gets down to the police at the grass roots. ACPO now thinks that 65 per cent of forces currently have officers trained in risk assessment in this area, and it hopes to get that up to all forces by the end of the year, so awareness is improving and training will go on, but I recognise that there are concerns in this field.
I shall go back to some detail because I would like to get this on the record so that the noble Baroness can understand where we are with the existing Act—it was possibly the first Act that the previous Government passed, with the exception of that rather pernicious Act, which I was involved with, that abolished grant-maintained schools, but we will not deal with that at the moment. Probably one of the earliest Acts they passed was the Protection from Harassment Act. That was brought into force primarily to tackle stalking, but extends to any other persistent conduct that causes another person alarm or distress.
Parliament Square (Management) Bill [HL]
Lord Sharkey Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Sharkey
My Lords, perhaps one of the most striking aspects of the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Marlesford is its distinguished ancestry. This House has debated the issues which the Bill addresses many times and at some length. It has even frequently debated these issues since the beginning of the year. Reading those debates from this and previous years leaves me with two strong impressions. The first is of the careful thought and the quality of the advocacy that has gone into these discussions, and here I have particularly in mind the contributions of my noble friends Lord Tyler, Lord Cormack, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and the noble Lord, Lord Desai—who spoke again a moment ago in his usual eloquent fashion. His speech reminded me that I also demonstrated in Grosvenor Square, without staying overnight.
The second strong impression I have is of Groundhog Day. We seem to have found it terribly difficult to put in place satisfactory measures for the proper management of the square, despite a fairly large measure of agreement about what that management should be. It is in this context that I very much welcome the clarity and simplicity of my noble friend’s Bill. It seems that the proper tests for any scheme of management for the square should be, first, that the management scheme makes proportionate and reasonable provision for visitors and workers, including parliamentarians, and for peaceful demonstrations; secondly, that the management regime recognises that the reasonable requirements of these groups should be assessed alongside the requirement to protect and even promote the historic nature of the square and its environs and its architectural and other visual appeals; and, thirdly, that the rules should be simple, unambiguous, short and easy to apply.
It seems obvious that the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 did not meet these tests, above all in one critical respect. It instituted a management regime that was unreasonable and disproportionate in its treatment of certain peaceful demonstrations. Your Lordships will remember the case of Maya Evans and Milan Rai, who were arrested in 2005 for reading out the names of war dead at the Cenotaph. My noble friend Lord Tyler has rightly described this response as wholly disproportionate. In his Demonstrations in the Vicinity of Parliament (Removal of Authorisation Requirements) Bill, my noble friend proposed a simple repeal of the sections of the 2005 Act that dealt with Parliament Square.
Since then, however, we have had the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill presented to us, which contains provisions that would replace the SOCPA provisions for Parliament Square. These new government provisions run to five pages and go into considerable detail. The Government’s Bill starts by proposing, as my noble friend Lord Tyler did, the repeal of the relevant provisions of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. On the whole, the Government’s proposed new provisions seem to pass the first test—they seem to make adequate provision for peaceful demonstration and would restore free access to the square to visitors and workers. By ending both the overnight and enduring occupation of the square and its pavements and the erection of temporary shelters, these provisions most definitely take account of the need to protect the historic nature of the square. They most definitely would also restore the visual appeal of the square, after such a long and occasionally rather squalid interlude.
I am doubtful whether the new government provisions altogether pass the third test and whether even the drafter of that Bill could call the text relating to Parliament Square simple, unambiguous and short. More importantly, it seems that these proposed new provisions have another, more general defect—namely, that they have missed the opportunity to be positive about the square and its environs. These new provisions are wholly negative; they all say what cannot be done. Given the importance and historical resonance of the square and the undeniable grandeur and beauty of its immediate environs, I should have liked to see a duty written in to promote the square and its environs and to encourage its general, uncontentious and peaceful use.
As for the Bill before us, it is immediately clear that its provisions are indeed simple, unambiguous, short and easy to apply. Yet I wonder whether in this case the present Bill may be a little too simple, a little too short and, simultaneously, in one sense, a little too complex. The Bill before us does not, as I understand it, repeal the provisions of SOCPA, but it would be highly desirable and easy to add that. Nor does it create a responsibility to promote the use of the square, which is a pity. However, it does seem to add yet another layer of management and yet another committee to an already rich mix of interested and responsible parties. I wonder whether that is really necessary. Finally, the Bill seems to be silent on music. I invite my noble friend to give consideration to these points.
My noble friend Lord Marlesford has done us all a significant service today with this Bill. He has shown us that simplicity and clarity can be achieved and has focused our minds on the need for action to resolve this astonishingly long-running problem. I very much welcome this initiative and encourage the Minister to think carefully about the merits of the construction of the Bill when it comes to consideration of the Government’s own proposals for the management of Parliament Square.