Anne McLaughlin
Main Page: Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North East)(2 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesThank you. Steve, is there anything from you?
Steve Griffiths: No, nothing to add from me, thank you.
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Steve, you have said, and I would agree, that we absolutely support the right to peaceful protest. We absolutely support the right to free speech. That is really important to us as a trade association. Free speech—debate—is very important for you as well. However, what we are looking at here is the impact on people’s safety. That is also very important.
I understand that, but I am asking about—
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes, I promise I will try to answer that. Our industry is vital to achieving net zero, and there is lots the oil industry is already doing, and is wanting to invest in, to be part of the solution. We are producing more low-carbon biofuels. We are delivering and manufacturing sustainable aviation fuels. We are running some of the biggest hydrogen and carbon capture projects in the country. We are delivering the electric vehicle charging network; we are producing lubricants for electric vehicles as well. Personally, we think dialogue is very important. That is the essence of our democracy. But we also support peaceful protests and free speech in all ways. But if we are focused on dealing with protests and spending money on protests, that money arguably could instead help continue the work that we are doing to achieve net zero.
Steve Griffiths: I would echo everything that Elizabeth has said. It is obviously important, from the perspective of the aviation industry, that the Government have set out a plan to achieve net zero carbon by 2050. That is a plan that all of the industry has signed up to. As the largest airport group in the UK, MAG has a plan to achieve that by 2038, which is 12 years ahead of the Government target. Again, contributions to further advancing that would only help our industry, and that is what we will be looking for. As we have said, we have no objections about the right to protest, but it should be done peacefully.
Q
I think we are straying into the debate around net zero rather than the issue in hand.
What I am really trying to say is that they disagree with the answers that you have given me; if they have a different view, they must have the right to protest. How can they do that and make an impact, while dealing with the safety and disruption concerns we have talked about?
Steve Griffiths: I can only comment in a limited way on this. Advancing this subject is really about innovation, technology and research and development. Obviously, we have to be realistic about the step changes that we can make, which is why in the industry that I work in the Government have set out a very clear plan. I know that all parts of the industry are looking at ways to achieve that a lot earlier. At the heart will be design, research, innovation and technology—that will drive it. Those elements have to be at the top of the industry’s and the Government’s agenda if we are to achieve that.
Elizabeth de Jong: And creating the right investment environment for the investments and the innovation as well. It is that type of dialogue that can speed this along. Some 96% of energy used in the transport sector currently comes from oil, so to just stop oil would have quite catastrophic impacts on society and the economy, but there are plenty of ways to debate this and to look at the policies that are needed.
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: I am afraid I am going to have to leave that for the police and those who work in that area who have studied what the best incentives are for people. We are definitely focused on how to make things safe in our industry and how our society can work more efficiently and effectively.
Steve Griffiths: I cannot really comment on that. It is really for the police to determine, but we obviously support their having the right tools because, at the heart of this, as Elizabeth has said, is the safety of the protesters, the general public and customers, as well as our colleagues. That is really important.
Q
David Dinsmore: Indeed.
Q
We cannot go into the detail. The concept of how a protest can be taken forward is, however, a legitimate question.
Q
David Dinsmore: News brands are a very good channel for campaigning. We would see ourselves as giving a voice to the voiceless. One of the ironies of this particular protest was that on page 10 of The Sun that day, there was a piece from David Attenborough about exactly what Extinction Rebellion were campaigning on. They were going after one of the vessels that would probably be a good way of disseminating protest and counter-voices. Newspapers have campaigned legally and peacefully for centuries on many issues successfully and got law changes. If we want to go into the details of the great Sunday Times investigation campaign on thalidomide, I think there are many routes through which you can get outcomes that do not require the law to be broken.
Q
David Dinsmore: On the Black Lives Matter issue, we have, as an organisation, carried a huge amount of coverage. We have done things explicitly and internally on diversity. It is something that we do take very seriously. The Sun has recently run a series on Black History Month, et cetera, et cetera. I will not go into the detail, but I can give you much more on what we do as an organisation on those kinds of issues.
There are many, many routes to protest in this country. I am just giving you the specifics around our particular route. There are petitions and social media. There are many ways in which you can get a story, a campaign or a point of view across without disruption and breaking the law.
Q
David Dinsmore: I think the best example we have got is the pandemic we have just lived through and the requirement for quality, trustworthy information. That showed how vital and valuable that is. We, as professional journalists, provide that information on what used to be a daily basis and is now a minute-by-minute basis, and the public need that more than ever.
Q
Martha Spurrier: There can be little doubt that a Government should spend time looking at the root causes of a protest, whether that is the climate crisis rather than climate protesters, or racism rather than Black Lives Matter protesters. Of course, it is not news to say that protest is a foundational right, and that it is an article of faith in any democratic country that if there is something you disagree with, you can take to the streets to make your voice heard. It is of great concern to Liberty and those of us who work in this area—I am a lawyer, and I have been working in this area for the best part of 15 years—to see provisions in a Bill that not only have been rejected by Parliament once, but significantly expand police powers, often doing so in a very over-broad and imprecise way, such that it is difficult to see how they will be effectively implemented.
We would expect a disproportionate impact on marginalised communities from the exercise of those powers. We would also expect that they will fundamentally undermine the right to protest, and will not do what they are purported to do—deal with a hard core of some supposedly extremely disruptive protesters—but will in fact have a dragnet effect of chilling people’s right to protest and free expression, and deter ordinary people from exercising their fundamental rights. There is a whole range of examples in the Bill that we could talk about where it is very difficult to see why those measures are proportionate and justified ways of dealing with the perceived problem, let alone whether there is a problem as articulated.
Olly Sprague: I echo what Martha said. For an organisation such as Amnesty, it is not a case of either/or: we do not want to balance the harm that might be caused by climate change versus the positive duty that all states have to uphold the right to freedom of assembly and association and the right to protest. You have to manage all things.
One of the things that we bring here is that we are an international human rights monitoring organisation: we look at human rights internationally, and we look at where the UK is on the standards, obligations and legal frameworks that exist. It is worrying to say that for most of the provisions in the Bill, we see a clear gap between what the international standards require of the UK and what the UK proposes here, and it is the wrong gap. The UK is on the wrong side of where it should be. I am sure we will have the opportunity to go into why we think that and the areas where we think that is the case, but that is a very worrying direction of travel, especially when in terms of its foreign, defence and security policy aspirations, the UK sees itself very much as a champion of civil society space. It sees and acknowledges the fact that the world is becoming increasingly authoritarian, and wants to do things to stop that.
As a quick example, in April this year, Lord Ahmad—a Government Minister from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—was giving his closing remarks to the 49th session of the Human Rights Council. In that, he made specific reference to a very important resolution about the need to promote and respect the rights of human rights defenders around the world. It was a resolution that was welcomed and strongly supported by the UK Government; it was a very important resolution. That resolution essentially requires that all states refrain from measures that excessively criminalise human rights defenders and their rights to freedom of expression, so you have a bit of a disconnect here between the statements that the UK puts out internationally and the role we see ourselves playing in the world community, and the kinds of measures we are putting in place on our own domestic legislative front. They are out of step with each other, and it is not joined up.
Stephanie Needleman: I completely agree with what Martha and Olly have said. Picking up on something that Olly said about the disconnect between what the UK is doing internationally and what we are doing domestically, there is also an internal disconnect in what we are doing domestically in the UK. The right to protest is an element of the right to freedom of expression and assembly. On the one hand, that is being championed under the Bill of Rights consultation and the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, but on the other hand, it is being severely restricted in this Bill, so there is an internal inconsistency there as well.
Q
“Disruption” is such a vague term. What would a person have to have done for the police to be able to go down this route? I should probably ask the Minister, because I think the answer at the moment is that we do not really know, but how do you see this panning out?
Stephanie Needleman: I cannot see if Martha and Ollie are indicating that they will answer, but I can kick off, if that is helpful.
I think you have hit the nail on the head in raising the vagueness of when these serious disruption prevention orders can be imposed. They can be imposed not necessarily on conviction, as you said. The orders can cover an incredibly broad range of circumstances. Under clause 13(2)(a)(v), all you need to prove is that on two separate occasions somebody
“caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person”—
they do not even have to have done the act even themselves; it could be done by someone else—
“activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption”.
You do not need to have carried out the
“activities related to a protest”;
you just have to have “caused or contributed” to them. Those are incredibly vague and broad terms; they could cover almost anything done to assist someone doing anything related to a protest. For example, it could be driving somebody to a protest, or to shops selling paint or glue, if the person the glue is sold to subsequently glues themselves to something.
Linked to that, there does not seem to be any requirement for the person to have had knowledge that the protest activities were going to cause serious disruption when they “caused or contributed” to the carrying out of those activities. That could capture a vast range of behaviour.