Public Order

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Caroline Lucas

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I agree.

This SI comes in the wake of our official police watchdog warning that public trust in police is “hanging by a thread”. This is no time to risk increased politicisation of the policing of public order.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has made it clear that it has grave concerns about this measure, advising that

“the measures go beyond what is reasonably necessary to police protest activities.”

Its briefing warns of its concern about incompatibility with the European convention on human rights and of a “chilling effect” on the right to freedom of expression.

Moving on to the style—the way in which this is being done—the Government are trying to do something which has never been done before: they are trying an abuse of process that we must not permit, whatever we think of the content of the SI and the intentions behind it. The restrictions on protest rights that this SI seeks to impose were explicitly rejected by Parliament during the passage of the Public Order Bill—now the Public Order Act 2023—in February 2023. This is the very opposite of the integrity that the current Prime Minister promised when he took over. It is a blatant continuation of the casual disregard for Parliament’s democratic standards that he promised to discontinue.

My Green party colleague in the other place, Baroness Jenny Jones, has tabled a fatal motion to kill off this affront to our rights and our democracy, and it will be before that House tomorrow. Rightly, for primary legislation the unelected House of Lords is a revising Chamber. As Members will know, this is secondary legislation and it needs the approval of both Houses. Presumably, that is to avoid the type of situation we face now, where an SI could be used by the Executive to reverse a Lords revision to primary legislation that they do not like.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way, because that gets to the heart of the matter as far as the other place is concerned. The Government, in bringing the regulations to the House in this way, are riding roughshod over the conventions of this House. We have a system that relies on checks, balances and conventions, so when our noble Friends in the other place come to consider this legislation, might they also be entitled to say that, with a check having been removed, they are entitled to adjust the balance and pay the same regard to the conventions of their House that the Government have done to the conventions of this House?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for that contribution. He makes a valid and legitimate point, which I had not considered.

The regulations represent a gross Executive overreach. I sincerely hope that the motion is defeated. If it passes because hon. Members choose to allow this twin attack on our right to protest and on parliamentary democracy, I encourage every Member of the other place, whatever they think of the content of the statutory instrument, to vote for Baroness Jones’s fatal motion tomorrow, because to ride roughshod over primary legislation in such a way is a truly dangerous path to tread.

Finally, I want to distance myself entirely from the comments made by Conservative Members about the right to protest. I remind them that when people take peaceful direct action, they are doing so because they have generally been driven to feel that they have no alternative. They feel that the Government are careering over a climate cliff edge and they are trying to get a hold of the wheel. As the UN Secretary-General António Guterres reminded us:

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

I could not agree with him more.