Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Alex Sobel Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 2
Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I join others in expressing my condolences. This Bill continues the authoritarian drift of this Government. First, we had the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which basically gives immunity to people abroad serving our country who committed torture. Then we had immunity given to state agents breaking the law in our country, including the crime of rape. Now we have clause 59 of the Bill, which proposes a 10-year jail sentence for causing the risk of “serious annoyance”—those are the words in the Bill. Note that is not even for causing “annoyance”, but for causing the risk that there may be annoyance. There are many things with which we might risk causing annoyance every day, but it is only in dictatorships or repressive regimes that such actions are subject to drastic sentencing.

This Government claim to have their roots in libertarianism and, of course, they are champions of liberty, but it is liberty only for the powerful and the wealthy, the “get rich quick” merchants and the spivs, those whose freedoms allow them to cause all kinds of annoyance—firing decent, hard-working employees and then rehiring them on worse conditions and paying poverty wages. Now we have a new freedom—the freedom to bung multimillion-pound taxpayer contracts to mates in the private sector. They have set their sights on our tradition of dissent, because their legislation is designed to crack down on our rights to take action against injustice. Black Lives Matter activists, workers who take industrial action, environmentalists and the women’s movement are all in their sights.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend and I have organised and been on many peaceful protests together. The measures in this Bill are so regressive that, under them, surely some of those protests that we have been on would have ended up in scenes like those we saw on Clapham common, with us and others being arrested. This shows that peaceful protest is not safe under the remit of the Bill.

[Jon Trickett]

I have indeed worked many times with my hon. Friend on all kinds of activities. What the Government have in their sights are the ancient rights of assembly and freedom of association, which are now threatened by clause 59. The fundamental right to free speech means nothing if these other freedoms come under attack. We may end up with a situation in which we are free to shout at the telly in the privacy of our own homes but not free to organise ourselves collectively in public.

It is not as if our country has done away with all forms of injustice and inequality, is it? Yet instead of standing against injustice alongside, for example, the women on Clapham common the other night, the Government appear to be more interested in empowering the police force to arrest people who the state judges to have risked causing annoyance. It is interesting that many police officers have said that they do not wish that power to be bestowed upon them.

This House of Commons should be a beacon of liberty—a protector of our rights to speak, associate freely and assemble in public to express our reservations about how the country is going. Repressive legislation will never eliminate the thirst and hunger for justice that remains so powerful in our country today. It is the duty of the Commons to stand up this evening and reject this Bill.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

At the moment, those incarcerations are at the behest of a judge in a civil matter relating to the injunctions, and there is nothing that the Government can necessarily do about that. However, I point out that deterring people from such action may result in cost savings further down the line for the wider population. I urge Opposition Members, and anybody looking at this issue, to ask themselves whether they believe that protests should not be restrained in any way, shape or form, or that there is a balance to be struck. If they believe, as the ECHR does, and as the House of Lords has accepted in some of its amendments to the Bill, that a balance should be struck, the only question is where.

Our view, which is backed up by evidence from HMI and elsewhere, is that the balance has swung too far away from the general public, who want to go about their lives, recognising the very many important issues that are raised by protest. While they acknowledge those problems, they want to get on with their lives, and they want protection from the state of their right to get to school, to hospital and to work. That is not a right to be taken lightly. One of the most frustrating things about some of these protests has been their self-defeating result. Notwithstanding the cause, important or otherwise, the protestors have turned off millions of their fellow citizens and caused a level of intolerance towards issues such as climate change, which is regrettable. We have a job to balance those rights, and that is what we are attempting to do.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister seeks to take public opinion as a whole, but people have had to take these matters into their own hands because air quality is killing their children, and because of the Government’s inaction on the very simple act of insulating housing. The proportionality is in the wrong place, and he is seeking to take on public opinion where it does not exist. If the Government took the right actions, surely there would be no need for the protests in the first place. People should be allowed to protest proportionately.

[Kit Malthouse]

We cannot operate a democracy on the basis that, unless the Government agree with everything that someone wants, they will protest. It is a crazy thing to say, I am afraid. Much progress in this country has been brought about by protest, but much more has been brought about by political campaigning and winning elections. Frankly, if someone wants to make a change in the country, as all Opposition Members are proving, that is the way to go about it. I hope that the House will appreciate that we are trying hard to strike a balance between competing rights.