Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Ninth sitting)

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

Clauses 54 to 60 make up one of the most controversial parts of the Bill. We have seen fierce debates in Parliament and in the media, and protests up and down the country. Beneath the hyped-up culture wars is the very real issue that we will debate again today: what is the balance between our democratic right to protest and the rights of those around us? That is a legitimate question for the Government to ask.

How do we ensure that protests are peaceful? How do we balance the rights of others to go about their daily business? How do we, as parliamentarians, set the framework within which the police can do their jobs? The Opposition believe that the Government’s plans do not answer those questions and we reject the attempts to amend the Public Order Act 1986 with this loosely drafted legislation that would restrict democratic rights to peaceful protest.

Clause 54 imposes conditions on public processions, including powers for the Secretary of State to define serious disruption to the life of a community or the activities of an organisation carried out “in the vicinity” of a public procession, as well as powers for the police to impose conditions when they believe that noise might have

“a significant impact on persons in the vicinity”

or may result in

“serious disruption to the activities of an organisation”.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

We probably all have our favourite demonstration from our past. Mine was in the 1970s, when I was a student at Darlington College of Technology. It is lamentable that nowadays students do not spend more time on the streets demonstrating. I remember that day well, because we were going down the streets, shouting, “Heath out! Heath out!” That was the day that Heath resigned. We were very pleased with ourselves—a tremendous result from that demonstration. Does my hon. Friend agree that these restrictions could mean that students will feel even more inhibited about demonstrating in future?

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I remember going on the “grants not loans” demonstrations in the late ’80s. He clearly had incredible persuasion in the demonstration he went on, resulting in the desired outcome, and I congratulate him on bringing about that change.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. These are operational matters for the police. The police currently have the powers, and they have to be mindful of the impact of their powers on a demonstration and whether they will inflame the situation. Good policing will err on the side of caution on some occasions, but sometimes the police need to deal with a situation that they think will get out of hand. Trying to legislate for what is in the discretion of police officers is wrong, and we should actually trust the police in using their powers of discretion.

The clauses would also widen the types of conditions that the police could place on static protests. The clauses would significantly lower the legal test that must be met for the police to issue conditions on protests. The police would be able to issue conditions on protests where they are noisy enough to cause “intimidation or harassment” or

“serious unease, alarm or distress”

to bystanders. Before using their amended section 12 powers to issue conditions on a protest, the police would have to consider the “likely number of persons” affected by the protest, the “likely duration” of the impact, and the “likely intensity” of the impact. The clauses would also widen the types of conditions that police can issue on static protests to match their powers relating to protest marches. The police would also be able to issue any condition on static protests that they think is necessary

“to prevent…disorder, damage, disruption, impact or intimidation”.

[Alex Cunningham]

Has my hon. Friend had a chance to see the written evidence submitted by Zoe Everett? She describes herself as

“a member and supporter of ACORN for several years.”

In her written evidence, she said:

“Any peaceful assembly of members of the public, be they large-scale political demonstrations and marches, one-person protests, or local campaign actions by community organisations, are likely to be considered disruptive by those who are the intended object of the protest, be they state actors, private businesses and other organisations, or private individuals.”

The point that she makes in her submission is that these increased powers could drive more and more people directly into the criminal justice system. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be lamentable if people who simply want to protest about something very close to their heart could find themselves criminalised as a result of this new legislation?

[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The people who want to impose these conditions are the very people who the protesters are trying to change; they do not like that, which is why they want to impose these conditions upon them. It is a suppression of people’s rights.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, I cannot comment on that individual protest, but the issue of climate change is a very important one; it affects us all, irrespective of where we live. The issue of a third runway may have also been about a wider issue that would have affected everybody, irrespective of where they live. As I say, I cannot comment on that individual protest, but we have to appreciate that certain protests have a wider significance than just the locality where they happen.

[Alex Cunningham]

The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby makes a really interesting point, because people were demonstrating in his constituency and it came to the notice of the local MP, so he has been directly influenced because of the demonstration that took place in his constituency, and he is the decision maker in relation to this particular issue.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and that demonstration is now going to be in the parliamentary record, so I think the person making the demonstration will have achieved her objective.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I will come to later. The Bill includes many ambiguous clauses that will no doubt cause lots of legal argument in the effort to define what they mean. That puts the police in an impossible situation.

A good starting point for this debate are the Peelian principles expressed by Sir Robert Peel when he set out ethical policing in the early 19th century:

“To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.”

[Alex Cunningham]

I do not know what my hon. Friend’s postbag or email account has been like over recent weeks, but I have been inundated by emails from individuals and organisations asking me to oppose these measures proposed by the Government. Not one person or organisation has contacted me in favour of these measures. He talked of the importance of the police having the approval of the public for what they are doing, but the public do not want this change. Surely the Government do not have the approval of the people for this piece of legislation.

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes a good point: policing is done primarily by consent. If the consent is not there and the police do not have the approval of the people, it is a recipe for more disorder. That tips the balance—

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[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Good policing is done with discretion. What the Bill tries to do is to look at different ways of making the police do certain things that they may not want to do. I think that discretion is a great tool that the police have at their disposal, and they use it very well in what are often very difficult situations.

The Peelian principles are also:

“To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.”

Every word of the Peelian principles holds true today.

It is our belief that the powers in this Bill threaten the fundamental balance between the police and the people. The most draconian clauses are not actually what the police asked for. We believe that these new broad and vague powers will impede the ability of the police rather than helping them to do their job, that these clauses put way too much power into the hands of the Home Secretary and that the powers threaten our fundamental right to peaceful protest. We know that hundreds of thousands of people are very concerned that their democratic right to protest is threatened by these new provisions on public order.

[Alex Cunningham]

Has my hon. Friend seen the written evidence submitted by Leeds for Europe? It addresses some of the points that he has just outlined. It says:

“The proposals risk making protests ineffective and…curtail fundamental rights of citizens in a democracy, which allow people to express their concerns about the government of the day or other issues that they feel passionately about.”

I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that for the Home Secretary to have these new extensive powers proves that this objection is well founded.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This measure puts more power in the hands of the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary may have different views in the future and use the powers in an authoritarian way, which may have a further impact on people’s rights.

[Bambos Charalambous]

That is one way to protest, but elections only come every three or four years. In the intervening period, people have no way to exercise their right to protest via the ballot box and so have other means. The ballot box is also a vote on a whole range of things, while a protest might be for an individual issue not covered by an election.

A few weeks ago, we debated a petition signed by more than 250,000 people. The right to protest is a fundamental freedom and a hard-won democratic tradition that we are deeply proud of. Throughout our history, protests have led to significant changes for the better in this country. Suffragette protests put an end to the discrimination against women in our democracy. Historic trade union protests led to outlawing exploitative employment practices in factories, lifting health and safety standards for workers. Such protests have forced Governments to make the significant changes that we now recognise as fundamental parts of a civilised society.

If the public order provisions in the Bill had been in place when the suffragettes marched for the right to vote, would the women who shouted and screamed noisily for their future have been arrested? Does the Minister think that the marchers for the right to work or those on the anti-apartheid protests should have been stopped for causing annoyance or being too noisy? Do the Government want to stop the children who are shouting loudly for action on climate change or to prevent people across the country from marching to remind people in the establishment that black lives matter?

I support the police 100%; we in the Opposition listen every day to what they tell us. This is a most serious issue, but it is not quite as cut and dried as the Government would have us believe. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services reported on public order measures in its inspection report, “Getting the balance right?” On public order legislation, the inspectorate called for

“a modest reset of the scales”.

By any measure, this is not a modest reset.

The support for new powers on public order was qualified support for the five Government proposals the inspectorate was asked to respond to. What Matt Parr’s report actually said was that the vast majority of police forces were happy with the existing legislation. It was mainly the Met that wanted new powers to deal with very specific events—mainly large-scale, peaceful, Extinction Rebellion protests. What the police have asked for, they have not been given.

In the evidence session, Matt Parr said:

“We were very clear in what we said that any reset should be modest. We also said that, because of article 10 and article 11 rights, some degree of disruption is not just an inevitable by-product, it is sometimes the whole point of the exercise of protest, and on that basis, it has to be encouraged.”

He went on to say that the proposal—these clauses—

“clearly aims to set a lower bar. Personally, when I reviewed it, I did not think the bar was necessarily the problem. There is just as much of a problem with educating and training the police officers and making sure they understand how article 10 and 11 rights can be properly tempered. It was a question of training and understanding as much as it was of where the bar was for disruption.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 52-53, Q77.]

[Alex Cunningham]

I know this makes me a very old person, but I go back to the 1970s again and police and the exercise of their powers. I was a reporter at a sister paper of The Northern Echo, which had a strike that lasted for some 12 months. Eventually, the company managed to start producing a paper. We demonstrated outside every night and attempted to stop them getting the paper out of the building. It was very successful. The police were using existing powers to arrest many people, but there were very few, if any, convictions. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the new powers here, which we do not really know how the police are going to interpret, could lead to more people being arrested and ending up in the criminal justice system?

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend again makes a very good point. The Government clearly have a desire to imprison more people, because they are embarking on a prison-building programme—I do not know whether that is part of the reason why they are introducing these powers. Good policing is using discretion, dealing with each occasion as it arises and policing in a sensitive way. Arresting people should be a last resort, albeit one that the police should use when appropriate.

To quote Matt Parr further:

“I think there are dangers and, as ever, the bar for measuring what was significant or what was serious should be a high one. We all recognise that. It should not be done on the flimsiest of pretexts. Again, it would then be open to challenge, and I think police officers would only wish to use it when they were confident.”—(Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 53, Q77.]

Matt Parr made some important points that should serve as a reminder to Ministers of the problems with clauses 54 to 60. He did not want a lower threshold; he wanted more training for police officers so that they can better understand how articles 10 and 11 might be adhered to. However, the clauses widen the legislation significantly. Does that not make the job of the police in enforcing the legislation more complex?

Lochlinn Parker, the head of civil liberties at ITN Solicitors, said:

“It is going to be down to police officers to try and determine a highly nebulous idea: what is annoying? Everybody is annoyed when a protest takes over the street, but lowering that [threshold] significantly is creating a situation where, if minded to, there will be very little protest that would be lawfully allowed.”

He continued:

“Police will be asked, as they frequently are by the government and the press, why wasn’t more done to stop this protest which caused disruption and problems”.

He also said:

“The political pressure on the police, and potentially their own inclinations in terms of keeping control and order, is going to come to the fore.”

Bob Broadhurst was gold command for the policing of the 2009 G20 protests and now lectures at the London Policing College. Apparently, he choked on his coffee when reading the explanatory notes for the Bill. He said:

“They’re saying protestors are now using new tactics—they’re locking themselves in, they’re gluing themselves down, they’re blocking roads. They were doing that 30 years ago.”

He went on to say:

“None of these tactics are new.”

Clifford Stott, a professor of social psychology at Keele University and expert in protest and police behaviour, argues that, although he vehemently disagrees with the proposals,

“under the Human Rights Act, the police will not be able to enforce any elements of the legislation which interfere with Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights—freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association.”

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[Bambos Charalambous]

I acknowledge the huge contribution that the suffragists made, but the suffragettes brought the campaign to prominence. The words displayed by the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square are the words that she delivered in a speech about Emily Davison, who threw herself under the King’s horse in 1913, which was another act of protest.

Let me conclude what I was saying about the comments of Clifford Stott, professor of social psychology at Keele University. Professor Stott said:

“If then subsequently this government or a subsequent government scraps the Human Rights Act, then those protections”—

that is articles 10 and 11—

“would no longer exist, and the government and police could interfere with those protected rights.”

Furthermore, Matt Parr was clear in his recommendations. They are about training and resources, which he asked the Government to ensure were in place for policing.

[Alex Cunningham]

I want to quote again the evidence of Leeds for Europe because there is a real reputational issue here for our country and our Government:

“Such draconian laws seem to align E&W to regimes such as those in Turkey, Hungary and Belarus, rather than those that we were aligned with when part of the EU. The police will have scope to expand their powers against the citizens and to use more active intervention, which might result in more draconian measures… There is a significant risk that the police would be regarded as a hostile agency and individuals seen as enemies of the state rather than people with genuine concerns and causes that they want to promote.”

Surely my hon. Friend agrees that we do not want to be seen as a country that oppresses its people in such a way.

[Bambos Charalambous]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. Absolutely, we do not want to be a country that is seen to be oppressing its people. Those rights to protest are at first lost gradually, then quickly, so the transition from what is seen to be a democracy to authoritarian state happens very quickly and we need to be wary of that. We cannot go down that path.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We cannot be seen to be criticising other Governments for the way they suppress the right to protest when we are doing the same here. That weakens our global standing and we should not go down that path.

The College of Policing has authorised professional practice, or APP, that contains 30 tactical options to deal with public disorder and protest. It is out of date. It does not include recent relevant case law or information on certain new and emerging tactical options. The college is planning a review. The inspectorate states:

“By 30 June 2022, the College of Policing, through its planned review, should bring the public order authorised professional practice (APP) up to date and make arrangements to keep it current, with more regular revisions as they become necessary. It would also be beneficial to consolidate the APP, protest operational advice and aide memoire into a single source (or a linked series of documents).”

The inspectorate notes:

“We found that forces do not do enough to share legal opinion or case law on protest policing. And officers and staff rarely use Knowledge Hub’s ‘Specialist Operational Support—Public Order Public Safety’ group… By 31 December 2021, chief constables should make sure that their legal services teams subscribe to the College of Policing Knowledge Hub’s Association of Police Lawyers group.

By 31 December 2021, the College of Policing should ensure that all Public Order Public Safety commander and adviser students attending its licensed training are enrolled in the College of Policing Knowledge Hub’s Specialist Operational Support—Public Order Public Safety group, before they leave the training event…

In making decisions about how to respond to a protest, public order commanders need to consider domestic human rights legislation. And they must also consider a patchwork of European case law. These have established precedents on issues such as how long protests can reasonably go on for, and the level of disruption that protests can reasonably cause.”

The inspectorate stated:

“Examining the gold strategies and silver plans submitted as part of our document review, we found that commanders generally showed a grasp of human rights legislation. However, we did not see evidence that they consistently considered the wider legal picture.”

The inspectorate also recommended:

“By 30 June 2022, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, working with the College of Policing, should provide additional support to gold commanders to improve the quality of gold strategies for protest policing. This support should include the creation and operation of a quality assurance process; and/or the provision of more focused continuous professional development. The additional support should ensure that gold commanders for protest operations include an appropriate level of detail within their gold strategies. This may include the levels of disruption or disorder above which enforcement action will be considered…

By 30 June 2022, the National Police Coordination Centre should revise the national post-event learning review form so that it contains a section to report on the policing operation’s impact on the community…

Forces usually have good protest-related briefing processes and commanders’ decisions generally reach the front line effectively. However, gold strategies often do not set out the limits of acceptable behaviour from the protesters. Better explanations of these limits would help officers to understand what is expected of them and empower them to take appropriate action.

Non-specialist officers receive limited training in protest policing. As a result, they often lack confidence in using police powers. Some officers are anxious about attracting complaints and being filmed in protest situations. It is important that forces provide good-quality training and briefing before deploying officers into these situations.

Forces should make better use of community impact assessments to evaluate the impact of protests on those who live in, work in or visit an area. The process should include regular reviews and updates, so the police can respond to changing circumstances. Only seven of the ten forces we inspected submitted any community impact assessments for examination, and some of those we examined were of a poor standard”.

With the covid legislation, we have seen the difficulty that rushing through new police powers can bring for the police. They have managed to do a brilliant job of enforcing the new laws, but they have faced a number of difficult decisions owing to the loose drafting of the law, and they have received criticism where they have got it wrong. The new protest powers will force the police to make political decisions about which protests they deem unlawful. That is extremely concerning and will put the police and the public in a difficult position.

Why do the Government want to make the police the gatekeepers for public protests? The Government are choosing to ignore the many peaceful protests that go ahead and are attended by police. The public order measures in the Bill risk putting the police in a trying position more often, and they risk creating more disorder and disruption. The Government should be putting the police in a position whereby the rules are not too confusing or too broad. If they do not do so, that will only create more flashpoints.

It is clear that police support for the Bill is not what the Government are saying it is. The Metropolitan police want more clarity on ways to manage very disruptive protests that go on and on, and to make sure that emergency services can get through roads. That is understandable, but the police want more clarity and certainty, which is what they said in the evidence sessions. These provisions bring the opposite. Instead of a modest reset, we have in front of us clauses that significantly widen police powers on public order.

Clauses 54 to 60 mark a substantial change in the approach to policing protest, which has the potential to be applied disproportionately and could curtail article 10 and article 11 rights that the inspectorate of constabulary is keen to protect. The police already have the powers to break up protests that cause harm, serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of a community. Many of the country’s best lawyers are telling us that the Public Order Act 1986 and the many other powers on the statute book to police protests are enough.

[Alex Cunningham]

One of the things that troubles me most about the Bill is the stuff in relation to this place—this Parliament of ours, and this democracy—and the fact that people could be prevented from protesting on our doorstep and disrupting our lives. People should have a right to disrupt the lives of MPs and those who work in this place, in order to get their point across. Does my hon. Friend agree that, for all the things that the Government want to do with the Bill, one thing they should not deny the people is the right to protest at the seat of our democracy?

[Bambos Charalambous]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We are the decision makers in this Parliament. We are the ones who make decisions that impact on people’s lives, so if we do not hear and are not aware of the protests, how will that change be brought about?

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[Bambos Charalambous]

My understanding is that the clauses will not affect people’s right to picket, but will the Minister provide reassurance that people’s right to picket or attend demonstrations will not be affected? There is also a penalty for someone who breaches a police-imposed condition on a protest when they ought to have known the condition existed. If someone attends a protest and the police have placed conditions on the number of people allowed to attend, how will the attendee know whether they are the 101st person to join a demonstration that has a limit of 100?

[Alex Cunningham]

I want to take my hon. Friend back to the issue of noise. Paragraph 546 of the explanatory notes to the Bill states:

“Where a senior police officer reasonably believes, having had regard to various factors, that the noise generated by a one-person protest may have a relevant impact on persons in its vicinity or may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity of the one-person protest, the senior police officer may give directions imposing on the person organising or carrying on the protest such conditions as appear to them necessary to prevent such disruption or impact.”

The Government give us that explanation, but they still do not define what a disruptive noise is. It would be helpful if the Minister told us.

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It would be helpful if we had an idea of the definition of “disruptive noise”. If we are to pass the Bill, we should know what we are passing.

There have been problems when the police have not satisfactorily communicated conditions to protesters. Will the Minister provide the Committee with evidence to justify the proposed widening of criminal responsibility in clause 56? The HMICFRS report talked about a slight shift in the legal test on that, but what the Government propose goes way too far. Sir Peter Fahy, former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said that the legislation includes “some really dodgy definitions” that the police are supposed to make sense of. The point of protest is to capture people’s and the Government’s attention. Sometimes protests are noisy and sometimes annoying, but they are as fundamental to our democracy as Parliament is and as the courts are.

On 6 October last year, I had the pleasure of witnessing an impressive and effective protest outside Parliament, which was organised by the Let Music Live campaign to highlight the plight of freelance musicians who received very little support from the Government during the coronavirus pandemic. The protest involved 400 socially-distanced musicians, all dressed in black, playing 90 seconds, or 20%, of Gustav Holst’s “Mars”. Not only was the demonstration eye-catching, but it used the sound and the loudness of Holst’s piece to convey the message.

The demonstration consisted of 90 seconds of sound building until it came to an abrupt stop. Would such a protest fall foul of clause 54? I fear it might, but who would be qualified to assess whether a 90-second blast of Holst’s “Mars” constituted noise that might have a “significant” or “relevant” impact on “persons in the vicinity”? The phraseology is so vague and devoid of precise meaning that it will be a legal nightmare for the police to determine what the terms “significant”, “relevant” and “impact” mean for the purposes of the Bill.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is going to be subjective. What one person considers noise might not be the same for another person. There may be a different view from different officers in the same force, which will lead to confusion.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. There is the potential for the Bill to have unintended consequences. In my Stockton-on-Tees constituency, all the churches come together once a year in the parish gardens, although they have not been able to do that in recent times. They have loud music, guitars, drums and all manner of things going on. Backing on to the parish gardens is the Royal Oak pub. Under this legislation, people in the Royal Oak may think that the people demonstrating their faith in the parish gardens are a public nuisance and are getting on their nerves as they enjoy a pint, and they could complain to the police.

[Bambos Charalambous]

I do not know whether that would be captured by the legislation, but if it would be captured, that would be wrong. I mentioned the Let Music Live protest. Even if such a protest were deemed permissible, it would still cause many problems of interpretation for the police, who would have to use the Bill to define whether the protest had “significant” or “relevant impact.”

Aside from music, what about singing? Singing songs and chanting have been a feature of every protest or demonstration that I have ever been on. Would singing be captured by the clause? The hymn “We Shall Overcome” was adopted as an anthem and sung as a protest song. In 1963, the folk singer Joan Baez led 300,000 protestors in song as they sang “We Shall Overcome” at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the civil rights movement march on Washington. Some 300,000 people singing “We Shall Overcome” must have made a fair bit of noise. Imagine a crowd of 300,000 outside the Houses of Parliament singing “We Shall Overcome.” Who would determine whether that constituted noise having a “significant” or “relevant” impact on “persons in the vicinity”?

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[Sarah Champion]

It is very obvious that this is a contentious topic, and the one that has gained the most media attention for this Bill. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate for making a very persuasive case. I must challenge my friend the hon. Member for Ashfield because I think his criticism was unjust, but it does highlight that what one person thinks is nonsense can be a very passionate thing for another, and we all deserve the right to protest.

I would like to start by making the argument, again, that the police already have wide powers to impose conditions on both static assemblies and marches, as well as broad discretion in how those powers are applied. Let me quote from the Liberty briefing:

“The cumulative effect of these measures—which target the tools that make protest rights meaningful – constitute an attack on a fundamental building block of our democracy.”

Liberty say that the clauses are fundamental block on our democracy. They say that these are draconian measures that impose disproportionate controls on free expression and the right to protest; measures that will have an unfair impact on black, Asian and ethnic minority people.

It is unfortunate that the amendments tabled by Labour have not been selected. I would like to state that Labour is very supportive of the measures that allow access for emergency services, but overall I personally think that the clauses go far too far, and I support my honourable colleagues in wanting to vote against this clause. It should not be in this Bill.

I am interested to hear from the Minister whether she agrees with the witnesses we heard from that the police already have sufficient powers to deal with protests. In the evidence session, Matt Parr said,

“there is quite a stark difference between London, which obviously gets a disproportionately large number of protests, and elsewhere.”

He said that senior police officers outside London

“tended to think they had sufficient powers”—[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 53, Q77.]

Again, I would be very interested to hear from the Minister if she thinks that these measures are actually London-centric, and not needed in places like Rotherham—I see the Minister grimace, and I share that—or if they are needed across the country. Furthermore, how will she make sure that police forces across the country handle them at the same level, and will there be training and support to enable them to understand exactly where to apply them?

I ask that because in Rotherham, after the scale of the child abuse in the town became known, the far right would come and basically put the town into lockdown every month. It was incredibly intimidating. It stopped businesses being able to trade and basically drove people off the streets and out of the town centre because they were too scared to go in. We then had a change in the police officer in control of the protests. He swiftly applied different measures on the route they could take—they could not meet in the centre of town—the level of planning and the level of security that the protestors had to put in place, and quickly the protests started to diminish to the point at which they stopped. It was clear to me at that point that the police do have the powers; it is about whether they know about them and have the ability and indeed the resources to enforce them.

Rotherham has a long and proud but also bloody history of protest. I think in particular of the battle of Orgreave, which was a pivotal event in the UK miners’ strike and has been described as a brutal example of legalised state violence. That was just one event of many in the mid-1980s that led to the Public Order Act 1986. Why has it taken from 1986 until now for Ministers to feel that we need new legislation? I also raise that because the brutal way in which the police dealt with those protestors has led to mistrust and suspicion towards our police forces and I really do not want to see this legislation, if it goes forward, building on that level of mistrust not just in Rotherham but across the country, because once trust is lost it is almost impossible to bring it back.

I turn to some of the key organisations that submitted written evidence or were witnesses and spoke against these measures. Liberty has said that

“the Bill drastically limits the right to protest.”

The Good Law Project said:

“The provisions threaten to neuter protests in ways that would render them ineffective—effectively taking away one of the only ways in which people can express their dissatisfaction in a democratic society.”

It went on to say:

“The Bill renders the UK an outlier when it comes to international human rights norms around the right to peaceful assembly.”

I find it really disturbing—not least as Chair of the International Development Committee—that we are stepping away from our international obligations and doing so on the right to protest, which I know the Foreign Secretary is really keen to uphold internationally. The movement we see in the Bill is disturbing.

Rights of Women said:

“The Bill is a further dangerous extension to police powers that exemplifies the rolling back of our human rights and ignores a history of violence against women at the hands of the police.”

A petition entitled “Do not restrict our rights to peaceful protest” in response to the Bill has more than 250,000 signatures. Two hundred and forty-five organisations signed a letter co-ordinated by Liberty and Friends of the Earth to the Government on 15 March, which said that the Government’s proposals were cause for “profound concern”. The organisations highlighted “draconian…police powers” to restrict protest. Organisations who signed the letter include Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Unite, Rights of Women, Inquest and the Northern Police Monitoring Project.

The Bar Council said:

“There are clear tensions between this section and the freedom of protest and expression (both protected under the European Convention on Human Rights). It gives expansive powers to the police, which encompass the arrest of one individual who is independently protesting. There are legitimate concerns that it would allow the Government to prevent protests with which it does not agree.”

That is one of my biggest concerns. Let us look at former and current Government Ministers who are against the proposals.

[Alex Cunningham]

The written evidence from Leeds for Europe quotes Mr Justice Laws saying that a margin must be given to protests. He also said:

“Rights worth having are unruly things. Demonstrations and protests are liable to be a nuisance. They are liable to be inconvenient and tiresome, or at least perceived as such by others who are out of sympathy with them.”

However, under the new powers in the Bill, if the Home Secretary is out of sympathy with a particular protest or protest group, she could ban them from protesting. Surely that is an affront to our democracy.

[Sarah Champion]

It absolutely is. My hon. Friend lays a very startling future before us. It might not even get to the Home Secretary—it might be an individual police officer who makes the call, or a chief constable or a police and crime commissioner. That is what concerns me.

By their very nature, protests are designed to be annoying, to be loud, to raise their views. When we look back at our history, where would we be without protest? It is inconceivable. This country has a proud history of protest—however annoying, however much of a nuisance protests are. That is what moves us forward as a democracy. To lose that, or to have it chipped away, is a very disturbing position.

That view is echoed by former and current Government Ministers. On 7 September 2020, the Minister for Crime and Policing, the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), affirmed:

“The right to peaceful protest is a fundamental tool of civic expression”

and promised that protest

“will never be curtailed by the Government.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 384.]

What has changed in the intervening nine months?

The former Attorney General, Dominic Grieve QC, said that

“no new laws were required if the police used the substantial powers they already have”.

On Second Reading, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead said:

“I do have some concerns about some of the aspects of the public order provisions in the Bill. I absolutely accept that the police have certain challenges...but freedom of speech is an important right in our democracy, however annoying or uncomfortable that might sometimes be…Protests have to be under the rule of law, but the law has to be proportionate.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 78.]

We would all agree that protests have to be under the rule of law, but I think we would disagree on the proportionality.

Also on Second Reading, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said:

“Is the Bill perfect? No, it is by no means perfect. I hope that it will be corrected as it goes through. Will that happen? Certainly. I accept that there are issues around freedom of speech and the right to assemble, and I think that these will be dealt with during the course of the debate.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 90.]

I hope that that is true.

Let us turn to the ambiguities in the proposed legislation. Evidence given by witnesses in the Joint Committee on Human Rights session on the proposed police powers showed that the terms

“serious unease, alarm and distress”

are not sufficiently clear for protesters to predict when conditions might be imposed on demonstrations. I reiterate the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate: the Minister needs to set out exactly what serious unease, alarm and distress is, as well as what serious noise is. Jules Carey from Bindmans LLP said the terms are

“too vague in law to have any meaningful impact or sensible interpretation. They also create a threshold that is too low.”

The Good Law Project says of the clauses that,

“the cumulative effect is likely to be deeply damaging”

because of their ambiguity, and because the police

“will have considerable scope to test the limits of their own powers.”

The Bar Council said:

“The present drafting is also vague and will require interpretation by the senior courts before the precise meaning of the law becomes settled. We consider this to be undesirable in legislation which limits fundamental civic rights.”

The Good Law Project, the Bar Council and witnesses from evidence sessions for the Bill Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights say the wording is too vague for protesters to interpret. How will the Minister ensure protesters will not get arrested at peaceful protests due to their understanding of current legislation?

In our evidence sessions, Matt Parr, Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary, said:

“We were very clear in what we said that any reset should be modest.”

We seem to have drifted a long way from modest—most organisations who have given evidence have argued that the changes in this part of the Bill are not modest. He continued:

“We also said that, because of article 10 and article 11 rights, some degree of disruption is not just an inevitable by-product, it is sometimes the whole point of the exercise of protest, and on that basis, it has to be encouraged.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 52, Q77.]

Councillor Caliskan, from the Local Government Association, said:

“In my experience, from having spoken to council leaders from across the country, the best way that peaceful protest is facilitated is planning in advance. That means the community and organisers having a good relationship with the police, and local forces working closely with local authorities”.––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 60, Q92.]

That is another concern—that these parts of the Bill will undermine the good working relationships and trust, and that will go on to make it even more difficult to organise peaceful protests.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Eagle]

I do agree with that point. One might then have an argument with the organisers about whether the nature of those protests is appropriate. I still do not think that it is a reason to remove people’s fundamental right to protest just because some protests are inconvenient, annoying and noisy.

[Alex Cunningham]

I do not think that the provisions were covered by the European convention on human rights. We have a proud history of demonstrations being effective in this country. May I refer my hon. Friend to the Tolpuddle martyrs? In the 1830s, seven men were arrested for secretly signing up to a trade union, and were eventually transported to Australia. Thousands of people took to the streets across the country, and marched through London demanding that that unlawful conviction be overturned. The seven men who were transported to Australia were eventually pardoned and brought home. Demonstrations bring about change, and we must not interfere with them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham]

But the Minister will accept that the provisions in the Bill will criminalise more people who participate in protests.

[Victoria Atkins]

Again—forgive me; I am tackling this as if I were prosecuting. The hon. Gentleman is making several leaps of assumptions before he arrives at that destination. I will go through the clause in great detail and lead him through it so that he understands the checks and balances in the legislation. There is an extraordinary leap in his assertion, which I hope to answer in due course.

Peaceful protest is absolutely fundamental to a free society. The right to peaceful protest will not be, and will never be, in question by this Government. The measures in part 3 of the Bill will not suppress the right to protest. To refer again to the European convention on human rights, the Lord Chancellor—as any Secretary of State must—has signed a statement to the effect that, in his view, all the provisions in the Bill are compatible with the rights under the convention. The Bill is about updating the Public Order Act 1986, which is some 35 years old, by enabling the police to impose conditions in careful sets of circumstances as set out in the Bill, which we are scrutinising.

We all stand up and share the value of free speech and freedom of assembly. However, under articles 10 and 11 of the convention, those are not absolute rights, as the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood fairly agreed. There is a balancing act between the rights and freedoms of protestors and of those who are not joining in the protest. We know, sadly, that in recent years some of the tactics used in the course of protests have chipped away at that balance. For example, some protestors delayed an ambulance reaching an A&E ward, putting lives at risk. Some protestors disrupted the transport system during rush hour, delaying hundreds of hard-working people.

Interestingly—this is where we see the real tension between competing rights—some protestors have blockaded printing presses, thereby disrupting the freedom of the press, which I am sure we all acknowledge is a fundamental right. We have been talking about protests with which we may not agree, and I am sure we are all familiar with newspaper articles or depictions in the media with which we may not agree, but it is the right of the free media in our country to report in accordance with that freedom and independence. In fairness to the Opposition, I know that they agree with that, because in the wake of the blockade of printing presses last year, the Leader of the Opposition said:

“The tactics and action of Extinction Rebellion, particularly blockading newspapers, was just wrong in my view and counterproductive.”

As the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood eloquently described, there is this grey, messy area in which we try to address that balance of competing rights between protestors and people who are not joining in the protests but may be affected by them. We know, however, sadly, that not every protest is peaceful. I would like to take a moment to reflect on the danger in which police officers can find themselves when they are policing a protest that goes wrong.

In recent months, we have seen protests outside London. The hon. Member for Rotherham rightly challenged me about this being London-centric, and a smile came to my lips because I was thinking, “We can never assume that the sorts of protests we see in central London will not happen elsewhere in the country.” Indeed, the great city of Bristol has in recent months seen for itself, through the so-called “Kill the Bill” protests, which apparently aim to bring this piece of legislation to a halt, the impact that protest can have on police officers, who are trying to do their job in balancing the rights of protestors and safeguarding the social contract to which I have referred.