Care Worker Visa Regime

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I very much agree with the noble Lord that the care workers themselves need all our support and, indeed, our praise for the very important and necessary work they all do. Of course, care workers are not subject to the same salary cap as other workers, so applicants to the health and care visa are exempted from the new £38,700 salary threshold. They must be paid at least £23,200 per annum, so the system, as constructed, takes into account the relatively low-paid nature of this work.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, following on from the very good question from the noble Lord, Lord Laming, do we not have a moral duty and a responsibility in terms of public policy not just to import the best people from abroad but, given that we have record numbers of people on out-of-work benefits, to give opportunities, training and skills to our own young people, who would benefit very much from that and enhance that industry, rather than continually looking to foreign nationals to come in and do the jobs that British people could be trained to do?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend on that. We remain committed to developing the domestic workforce. We are doing that by investing in retention—there is a high churn rate in this sector, as is well understood—through better workforce training, recognition and career progression. A new career structure is being launched for care workers so that all staff can build their careers and more experienced care workers are recognised for their skills. We are creating new qualifications and a digital skills record to reduce the need for retraining costs. We are increasing funding for learning and development. The Government have made available up to £8.6 billion in additional funding over the financial years 2023-24 and 2024-25 to support adult social care and discharge. I trust that all noble Lords will support the PM’s valiant efforts to mobilise those who are not currently engaged with the domestic workforce.

UK-Rwanda Partnership

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

In answer to the first part of the noble Lord’s question, Section 19 of the treaty indeed says that the UK will resettle refugees from Rwanda to the UK. This is not new; it was also set out in the MoU. As I have mentioned before from this Dispatch Box, Rwanda currently hosts and provides for around 130,000 refugees from across the region, and as part of our joint commitment to the principles of the refugee convention, and through the partnership, we have offered to settle particularly vulnerable refugees hosted in Rwanda, whom we could better support. Rwanda is leading in supporting the UNHCR and neighbouring regions with those in need of resettlement, and the UK will support these best efforts as its partner. We expect the number to be small. However, the UK resettles many refugees each year, through safe and legal paths from those first safe countries which accommodate many people who seek their sanctuary. As the MEDP has not yet been operationalised, there have not yet been any refugees from Rwanda resettled in the UK as part of it.

The second part of the noble Lord’s question was on the State Department. We have also just published a new treaty, which contains many legally binding elements. In the light of that, I imagine the State Department will reconsider.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm for the House that this country has a dualist regime? We do not just cut and paste international treaties but pass legislation in our domestic legislature. Does he further agree with me that the Prime Minister is right that we do not subjugate that to a foreign legal entity—the European Court of Human Rights? My concern, which the Minister might want to address, is that we have had four general election manifestos by our party that committed to reducing immigration, including the last one, on which we won a strong mandate. Is it not a concern that our horizons for how we shape our legislation are shifting from that—the mandate of the people—to the ECHR and now, potentially, the political vagaries of politicians in Rwanda?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

In response to the first part of my noble friend’s question, I again repeat the Prime Minister’s words. He said this morning, and I agree, that:

“If the Strasbourg court chooses to intervene against the express wishes of our sovereign parliament … today’s new law … makes clear that the decision on whether to comply with interim measures issued by the European court is a decision for British government Ministers and British government Ministers alone”.


The good news is that it is the Government, and not criminal gangs or foreign courts, who decide who should come and who should stay in our country. It is very unreasonable to disagree with the Prime Minister’s remarks. In response to the second part of my noble friend’s question, I say that this is clearly a subject of considerable importance, which has been politically dominant in recent years. I therefore commend the Government’s efforts to try to solve it.

Metropolitan Police: Operational Independence

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I commend the noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Paddick, for their comments last night in the humble Address debate, when they outlined the challenges of operational policing in these contexts. I agree that, in a perfect world, these conversations should be held in private. However, this is a very difficult international situation, and passions are running high.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my own policing interests. Would the Minister recapitulate his comments earlier that operational independence is not an absolute, either in legislation or in practice, and that the Home Secretary is quite entitled, under Section 40 of the Police Act 1996, to direct senior police officers in the public interest, and that that will always be subject to judicial oversight?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I would say to my noble friend that the powers conferred on the Home Secretary by Section 40 of the Police Act 1996 are quite specific and rarely used. The Home Secretary has statutory powers to give directions to local policing bodies, but they are limited to circumstances where she would consider that remediation is required because the force, or part of it, is failing to fulfil its functions effectively, and the police force and HMICFRS have been given the opportunity to make informed representations and proposals. As far as I am aware, that power has been used only on a couple of occasions, which were very specific. In 2012, the then Home Secretary required all forces to collaborate on the provision of air support and, in 2019, those powers were used to require Warwickshire and West Mercia police to take a little longer to unentangle themselves from their previous collaboration.

Illegal Migration Update

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I will deal first with the question about lawyers. I can confirm to the noble Baroness that the purpose of the Professional Enablers Taskforce is to bring together regulatory bodies, law enforcement teams and government departments to exchange information thus to investigate, disrupt and increase enforcement action against those lawyers who help illegal migrants exploit the immigration system. I am sure that I do not need to remind the House that such prosecutions against corrupt immigration lawyers could result in them facing sentences up to life imprisonment for assisting illegal migrants to remain in the country by deception.

Turning to the noble Baroness’s question about value for money from our agreement with the French, plainly, it is very hard to put a price on the lives of those saved who may have drowned while attempting to cross the channel. However, I venture to suggest to the noble Baroness that the answer is yes.

I turn to the noble Baroness’s third question, which related to the 2,500 additional asylum case workers. They are all fully trained. The Home Office also has a detailed programme of ongoing refresher training to ensure that each case worker is up to date. As to their source, I am afraid that I do not have the precise breakdown, but my understanding is that they have been recruited to that role. I can certainly look into how many of them are entirely new to the Home Office and how many have moved from other parts of the Home Office, and I will write to the noble Baroness in respect of that.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s initiatives in this policy area, in particular the 10-point plan, the 20% reduction in arrivals and the deal that was secured with Albania. However, can I gently press the Minister on the possibility, or the suspicion, that we might be moving towards a de facto amnesty situation in our haste to reduce the waiting list of asylum claimants? I pray in aid evidence by way of comparison with France, which accepts and grants the claims of only 25% of its asylum claimants whereas we grant 73%. Retaining robust standards is an important issue that people are concerned about, particularly in terms of the people we are training to adjudicate these claims in order to reassure the public that real action is being taken in this vital area.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I can assure my noble friend that we are certainly not engaging in an amnesty. Of course, that is what the previous Labour Government did in relation to bringing down the backlog, and it would be incredibly damaging to deterring false asylum claims if one were to go down that line. Every asylum claim is considered properly and fully against the acceptable standards. I can put my noble friend’s mind at rest on that question.

I realise that I omitted to answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord German, in relation to asylum support, and I ask for the indulgence of the House to provide those answers. There appears to be some confusion around the moving on process. The provision of asylum support is heavily regulated. I assure the noble Lord that the prescribed period for someone given notice that their asylum claim has been granted or that their appeal has been allowed or that their asylum claim has been refused and they have been given another type of leave is 28 days. In all other cases, it is 21 days. As per Regulation 22 of the Asylum Support Regulations, individuals will receive a notice-to-quit support letter, which will be issued in writing at least seven days before the individual’s support payments are due to end. Where an individual’s 21-day or 28-day period has passed but they have not received their seven days’ notice, they will still receive the seven-day notice period.

I should add that there is no legislative power to provide such support beyond the 21-day or 28-day prescribed periods and that there are no plans to change the periods. I hope that that provides a sufficiently detailed answer for the noble Lord.

Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations 2023

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I fear I may be ploughing a lonely furrow tonight in supporting the draft regulations, speaking to the regret amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and against the fatal amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Green.

[Noble Lords]

Lady Jones.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I beg her pardon —the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I have in fact read her round robin email and the accompanying legal opinion, and we have discussed these regulations, and of course I have read the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

I will not dwell on the process or the constitutional issues as such; the latter were well encapsulated by the noble Lords, Lord Reid and Lord Rooker, respectively. However, I do not agree with the catastrophist rhetoric of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on this being somehow a constitutional crisis.

The statutory instrument is quite simple and straightforward, seeking to strike a balance between freedom of speech, freedom of protest and assembly and the rights of the public to go about their daily business unhindered and unmolested. It is also about legal clarity for both the front-line police and the courts. The upsurge of large-scale disruption is not something any Government can ignore, especially as the effectiveness of the police and the public perception of them will be impacted by operational and legal uncertainty. As of last Thursday, as the Minister said, £4.5 million has been spent on diverting local policing priorities—equivalent to over 13,000 shifts—away from theft, burglary, violence against women and girls, knife crime, et cetera, and there have been 86 arrests and the bureaucracy that that involves, mostly for breaching Section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986.

Any Government—every Government—have a responsibility and a duty to protect its citizenry. Let us also remember that the police are currently in a very difficult and unenviable position. Slow walking has an impact not just in a confined geographical area but in a wider community and economic sense, and it has an effect on working people, businesses and public services, emergency services, hospital appointments, funerals, et cetera. At present the police have to balance the rights of protesters to exercise their rights under the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights, and the impact of taking time to consider these competing interests. That leaves the police open to charges of partiality, bias, weakness and incompetence. Such a situation obviously gives rise to anger from those most affected by protestors’ selfish exhibitionism, which is often enacted to garner social media coverage, as well as to vigilantism, which of course causes further public order incidents. It is unrealistic not to imagine that such a situation arises not from a single event but from cumulative and repeated events and actions, perhaps over several days, which are more than minor.

I posit that giving the police different, not enhanced, powers to close down demonstrations more expeditiously is in the wider public interest. The regulations do not create more powers but make existing powers clearer and policing more consistent. It is important to remember, as the Minister said earlier, that they also align the threshold of serious disruption with that in the Public Order Act 2023, a definition arising from recent case law, and as such, the Government are right to use the delegated powers in Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986.

Like policing, governance is best undertaken not just by democratic accountability and authority but by consent. Quite evidently, the wider public are demanding that Ministers tackle the problem of deliberate and wilful disruption—actions that do nothing materially to change policy but which also do not persuade sceptical citizens and are in fact punitive and pointless in equal measure.

I do not believe that this statutory instrument is a radical departure that sets a dangerous constitutional precedent. It is certainly not, for instance, a draconian assault on freedom of speech and civil liberties. Comparisons with the Suffragettes, which I think have been used by some members of the Green Party, are of course specious: we have had universal suffrage elections since 1928.

It might be appropriate to turn now to some of the criticisms and observations in the committee’s report—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

—as I wind up.

[A noble Lord]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

On consultation, I think it is unreasonable to expect the Government to undertake a comprehensive consultation process when the imperative is to correct quickly a legal loophole. I do have sympathy with the late tabling of the amendments on Report; I think that is a very fair point to make.

I shall finish with the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffman. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, talked about the importance of conventions. With that in mind, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffman, said in 2006 that

“civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country … But there are conventions which are generally accepted by the law-breakers on one side and the law-enforcers on the other. The protesters behave with a sense of proportion and do not cause excessive damage or inconvenience. And they vouch the sincerity of their beliefs by accepting the penalties imposed by the law. The police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint”.

That is what this regulation is about.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I make no comment on the merits of the policy that this proposal would introduce; it is the manner in which the Government have proceeded that has caused me, as it has my noble friend Lord Pannick, great concern. The Home Office has behaved in a way for which I can find no kinder word to use than “disreputable”.

For a start, the Explanatory Memorandum—whichever edition we are in now—did not mention the fact that the proposal had been rejected by your Lordships. When the committee quite rightly inquired why that was not mentioned, the reply could have won an Oscar for weasel wording:

“The details that have been included … are those which we … considered relevant to the document”.


When you are caught bang to rights, the proper response is an apology, not an obfuscation. Yet more astonishing —my noble friend Lord Pannick has already referred to this—is that in the section of the Explanatory Notes outlining anything that might be of interest to Parliament or the JCSI, the single word “None” appears.

Then there is the question of consultation. The Home Office ignored the Government’s own consultation principles and consulted on a selective and skewed basis. It brought to mind the Sellar and Yeatman description of the passage in Magna Carta which they alleged said:

“No baron should be tried, except by a special jury of other barons who would understand”.


In this case the Home Office set out to consult a selection of people it knew would support it, not those who might have a different view. A kind description would be that that was “not straightforward”.

Tom Hickman KC, the professor of public law at UCL, who has already been mentioned, pointed out:

“Where a public authority chooses to conduct a consultation process, that consultation must be conducted properly and fairly”.


He pointed to a ruling by the Court of Appeal that a consultation conducted before certain Covid-19 regulations had been unlawful because it had been conducted on an entirely one-sided basis. I do not see how the consultation carried out by the Home Office in this case could be described as proper and fair.

This instrument and the Explanatory Memorandum —again, whichever edition you care to quote—must have been signed off by a Minister. I think we might be told which Minister it was, and which Minister took the view that this was an appropriate way to treat Parliament. I hope the Minister here will be able to tell us. I do not want to see, and I am sure your Lordships do not want to hear, any pabulum about collective responsibility.

As I suggested earlier, I do not take a view about the merits of what this instrument would achieve. My concern is for the way in which Parliament is being treated and for the apparently resentful and sullen way in which the committee’s questions have been answered.

I am sorry—and I do understand what the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, was saying earlier on—that His Majesty’s Opposition do not wish to go further than regretting what is in front of us. Governments shrug off regrets; they make no difference. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said in the Queen’s Speech debate last year, if we make no difference, why do we not just go on talking? Incidentally, I should tell your Lordships that, in my recent email conversations with the noble and learned Lord, we have focused on England’s chances in The Ashes, and I know that we all send him our warmest good wishes in his convalescence.

This brings me to the fatal amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. At this point, it is very important to recall that it is a very easy thing for a Government to withdraw an SI, redraft it, relay it and start the process again. It is also—and, of course, the business managers will balk at this—not that difficult to achieve a change by primary legislation in a relatively short time. As some noble Lords have said, that is actually the right way to proceed. It is not just what you want to achieve: it is the propriety of the means that you use to get there. If noble Lords do not want this sort of thing to happen again, we should vote it down, so if the noble Baroness presses her amendment to a Division, I shall support her.

Net Migration Figures

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The whole point of the Illegal Migration Bill is to prevent dangerous and illegal journeys across the channel and by other routes. It is addressing a different, specific issue, obviously with the added benefit that eliminating illegal migration would go towards the reduction of the net migration figure. But it is not suggested that the Bill is the sole answer to the problems arising from excessive net migration.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I do not blame my noble friend or the Home Secretary: since the 2004 free movement directive, no Government have been honest about immigration with the British people, including my own party when in government. “Take back control” does not mean that, among other things, we should have spent £1.3 billion so far this year on asylum seekers, their accommodation and other illegal migration funding, which is more than we have spent from the levelling-up funds on the north-east, the north-west, and Yorkshire and the Humber.

Amazingly, I find myself in agreement with the Liberal Democrats and Labour Front Bench. I respectfully say to the Minister that the idea put forward about wage differentials by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is absolutely right. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, for too long, business has been addicted to cheap, foreign labour and has failed to properly train and pay our own indigenous workforce. If we are to have an honest debate, he has to concede that.

Finally, I say to the Minister that these figures are a potential existential threat not just to my own party’s electoral prospects but to people’s trust in moderate, mainstream politics. The alternative looks a lot worse unless we solve this problem.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I agree with some of what my noble friend has said. There is a measure of agreement across the House that the issue of salary discounts is very much in need of consideration. Of course, as the House will be aware, the Migration Advisory Committee is undertaking its review into the shortage occupation list, which I referred to a few answers ago. The Government asked the MAC to consider the 20% salary discount as part of the review when it commissioned it last year. We expect a report in the autumn, after which the Government will respond to any recommendations that it makes.

Code of Practice on the Recording and Retention of Personal Data in relation to Non-Crime Hate Incidents

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I too commend the draft code of practice. The Home Office team has done an excellent job on it. My concern, like that of my noble friend Lord Strathcarron, is to do with the interpretation of the code of practice by the College of Policing.

To add further to what my noble friend was saying, seven of the eight scenarios in the College of Policing’s new guidance, its authorised professional practice, were found in the old guidance, which the Court of Appeal, in the Miller case, subsequently found to be unconstitutional because it had a chilling effect on freedom of speech. The police will not be schooled in the Home Office guidance once the college’s APP comes out; they will be schooled in the guidance given by the College of Policing. This means that we will be exactly where we were before.

The Home Secretary’s intention could not have been clearer—she wants officers to stop policing our tweets and start policing the streets—but the College of Policing now seems determined to thwart her. I ask the Minister whether the College of Policing is allowed to do this and, if so, what he and the Home Office can do to make it follow the guidance. Will they review the college’s own APP now that it is out and make sure that the college redoes it? Paragraph 11.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum sets this out very clearly:

“As set out in paragraph 6.2, operational guidance (known as APP) relating to the recording and retention of NCHIs is published by the College of Policing. An updated version will be produced when the code is approved by Parliament”.


I assume we are doing that today. It continues:

“This operational guidance will ensure that the principles provided by the NCHI Code are operationalised, thus creating consistency across all polices forces in England and Wales”.


I hope that the College of Policing will be required to do that.

I have a point to add on training. Following a freedom of information request to police forces in England and Wales on how many had conducted training on free speech, 78% of the police forces that responded said that they had done no training on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights or on the free speech protections in our own common law. Conversely, 56% of the responding police forces said that equality, diversity and inclusion training was inextricably embedded in their training.

I absolutely commend this Government’s recruitment of 20,000 new police officers, which was a pledge made by Prime Minister Johnson a number of years ago, but it adds to the training issue. I understand that 38% of police officers have had less than five years of service. Training in freedom of speech is a real issue for the Home Office to address because it is really important that police officers understand how important it is to uphold the foundational values of freedom of expression in the democratic and liberal society in which we live.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, at the outset, I declare my interests as in the register. I am a member of the British Transport Police Authority but, for the avoidance of doubt, none of my comments is aimed at the British Transport Police, its officers or the authority.

I welcome this draft code of practice which, as we know, was legislated for in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. I too pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Moylan for his single-mindedness and persistence in pursuing this issue.

I was brought up in south-east London. I can absolutely understand the horror as a result of the tragic murder of Stephen Lawrence. The Macpherson inquiry was needed at the time. I sincerely believe that we have made huge progress in the way we treat all our citizens. Although the Metropolitan Police has had its issues recently, we have come a long way since that tragedy in 1993.

Public Order Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1 I will speak briefly to the other amendments in my name, all of which are clarifying amendments.

Amendments 1 to 4 make it clear that for an offence to be committed under Clause 10(1), the person mentioned in subsection (1)(a) to (1)(c) must be in the safe access zone for abortion clinics. Amendment 5 is a change in wording though not in intent, to follow current Ministry of Justice practice to refer only to a fine, as is done elsewhere in this Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 1, tabled by my noble friend Lady Sugg. I will not repeat the comments made on Report. However, given that these are helpful tidying-up, administrative amendments, it is appropriate to put on record my very serious concerns about Clause 10.

I still have reservations about the sui generis nature of the proposal, particularly the use of “influence” in Clause 10(1)(a). Including this subsection in the legislation is an extremely slippery slope. This will come back to haunt the House and the Government in due course, not least because the clause is unnecessary. It is legislation by anecdote and a knee-jerk reaction to lived experience, rather than empirical evidence, not least because there is existing legislation in place and, as I mentioned before, there are PSPOs—which, incidentally, do not work. The two notable cases raised in the debate earlier this month have resulted in no criminal action and their dismissal, because the threshold for criminality and prosecution was not being met in those unique cases, involving a minister of religion and a Christian activist.

The clause will result in stigmatisation, hostility towards and, eventually, the criminalisation of, one group of people: Christians. I do not think that is what the vast bulk of your Lordships would wish to happen. The clause is pernicious and a fundamental assault on freedom of speech and thought. Although it cannot be stopped and this Bill will get Royal Assent, it is timely and appropriate for some of us to make the case that this is bad law. It is stigmatising a small group of people who are not fashionable, and it will come back to haunt in due course all of us who care very deeply about freedom of speech.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support what my noble friend has just said. I am grateful, as we all are, to my noble friend Lady Sugg, who has made a genuine effort to improve things since the first time she moved her amendment. That should be, and I think is, acknowledged throughout the House.

As my noble friend Lord Jackson said, we are potentially on a slippery slope here, because the stigmatising of someone who privately prays and does not necessarily say anything at all is very dangerous. We sometimes debate what happens in other countries, and although this is a long way off Chinese practice, it is going in that direction. We should be very careful. The law as it stands, without Clause 10, is adequate to deal with any problems that might arise. I can see that they might from time to time, but I do not believe that the “sledgehammer to crack a nut” approach is the right one. As my noble friend said, the Bill will go on the statute book. It will accompany many other imperfect pieces of legislation that we really should not have allowed through your Lordships’ House.

Public Order Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

Well, it is good to see, in relation to that, the idea that we need to defend opinions and the rights to protest and free speech, even if we fundamentally disagree with the opinion that is put within that.

As has been indicated already, and as we have seen with PSPOs, the problem is that, in terms of interpreting the law, there is a level of mission creep that goes well beyond simply the issue of threatening or intimidation. For example, with PSPOs, we have seen people prosecuted for simply taking part in prayer.

As I said, if we are going to defend the right of people to freedom of speech and freedom to protest—and, yes, that always has to be done in a peaceful manner—let us do that not simply for things we agree with, or even things we disagree with, but even things that we find repugnant. As such, I believe that what is in Clause 9 is totally unacceptable. As I said, it mixes in things that all of us would find perfectly reasonable with things that go well beyond that. Seeking to criminalise an interpretation simply of influencing someone similarly takes this beyond what the bounds should be.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 45, tabled by my noble friend Lady Sugg, and to strongly and emphatically support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer. I am unconvinced as to whether, at the present time, Amendment 45 actually ameliorates the concern about incompatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s specific answer to my noble friend Lady Sugg’s question. I do believe, however, that this amendment is still disproportionate and is a significant attack on freedom of speech and thought.

First, the amendment seeks to criminalise those who are

“influencing any person’s decision to access, provide or facilitate the provision of abortion services”.

When compared with Clause 9, this is still extraordinarily broad and could potentially cover a whole range of innocuous activities. I know that there is a value judgment to be made about handing a leaflet to a vulnerable woman offering financial or housing support, but what about silent prayer, as we have seen examples of more recently?

This amendment does not actually exclude the outside of private property, so anyone who is in their private garden or their own car expressing their conscience could be criminalised. For a law which specifically proposes to limit fundamental freedoms of speech, expression and even thought, should we not be very specific about which behaviours are being disapproved of and where?

Yet, this amendment is indiscriminately applied to every clinic in the nation. As noted, the prohibited behaviours are far too broad. For example, in Clause 9 the 150-metre arbitrary curtilage limit refers to the abortion clinic at Mattock Lane, Ealing, west London. Behaviours, such as standing silently as if praying, which are found to have influenced someone, are included. Quite how this applies is a moot point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I very much welcome HMIC’s work in inspecting the police response to domestic abuse and violence. It is making excellent progress, as we saw in the police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy programme—PEEL—reports last week. However, the right hon. Lady is right to point out that some force areas have more work to do. That is why we are helping the College of Policing to ensure that training is available, and why we are investing record amounts in the police transformation fund, which is enabling more organisations to provide the services that women and girls all over the country deserve.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Coercion and controlling behaviour take different forms. Will the Minister undertake to extend the legislation to the postal voting regime? At every election, the votes of thousands of women are stolen through abuse of the postal voting system during so-called community voting, largely in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. That is not acceptable, and the Government need to act now.

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend has raised an incredibly important issue. What could be more important than people’s fundamental right to express their opinions at the ballot box, and to elect representatives to town councils and the House of Commons? We shall be taking a very close look at what more we can do to use those powers, and any others, to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to vote.