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

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

Q What impact has social media had on public order and protests over the last 10 or so years? Historically, with large protests, you would have had a set of organisers that you could go and engage with, but perhaps you do not have that same group of people now. What impact does that have on conditions? Historically, you might have been able to put conditions on protests, because you had people to engage with, but now, if a protest is organised organically on an online platform, you cannot do that. What impact have you seen from that?

Chief Constable Harrington: Social media has been a game changer in many ways. We still get organisers who come forward and people who say they want to march from A to B. They will organise around that; they are what I call a traditional protest march.

But, as you rightly say, we can have protests or assemblies that are organised in a matter of hours—sometimes minutes—and the use of social media can change those protests and make them more dynamic. Hence, the currency around that, because something was advertised as an assembly at a particular point, but, very quickly, through social media, everyone is off to another point, and it becomes a march. We think that is really important, and the powers help us because we can be really clear about imposing proportionate, lawful and necessary conditions, if the threshold is met, on the whole of that protest, whether it walks or stands still. Then everybody can be clear about what they do.

In terms of social media, we have adapted very quickly, I think. You will regularly see police officers in our police liaison team trying to engage with organisers. We will see approaches through a whole range of social media platforms. Sometimes, as it is people’s right not to engage with us, you will see senior officers making very clear appeals and clearly setting out through social media what, in the policing judgment, is acceptable or not acceptable, in order to make sure people are clear about where they may or may not be breaking the law if we impose conditions.

So we have adapted to that and we continue to do that. Through events, you will see that we continue to do that for those events. We also use social media to understand the impact on those affected, so that we can either protect property or protect the rights and freedoms of those who may be affected.

[Antony Higginbotham]

Q That is very helpful. Thank you. Are there situations where you might get notice of, say, an assembly in one place, but then because of the impact of social media—WhatsApp and Facebook groups and things like that—that quickly becomes a procession? Is that the kind of thing we are talking about? Linked to that, can you envisage the conditions that you currently impose changing materially as a result of this Bill, or is this just about trying to marry the two things up because of the more fluid environment that you are policing?

Chief Constable Harrington: It is the ability to communicate quickly, to change their focus of protest very quickly and to divide and split up—it is just that it is dynamic. We see that in a social context—“I’ll meet you here” or “I’ll meet you there.” That is the same thing in protests.

I think you hit the nail on the head about what we are asking for around consistency and currency, allowing the powers that we use—again, proportionately and with all the balance and the constraints of the Human Rights Act—to be really clear, so we can say, “What is the impact of what this group propose to do? How do we best balance that?”

Then, if we think the threshold is met, we can impose conditions that allow us to be really clear about what we are trying to achieve. To the point you made earlier, we then need to communicate that very clearly to those involved so that they have every opportunity to express their rights, understanding what the rules and thresholds are for when the police would intervene.

[Antony Higginbotham]

Q One final question: Do you get the right level of engagement you need from the social media platforms themselves, thinking about closed online groups where you may not be able to get advance notice? Do you get that engagement when you need it?

Chief Constable Harrington: We are very careful with the use of closed online groups. The open-source platforms we use are exactly that: open source. Our communication with protest groups is open, as is their conversation with us. I think we are very careful; our access to those would be about criminality, and that is not what we are talking about here in terms of our use of those powers. This is not to limit or criminalise protests; it is to balance those rights of disruption with competing rights.

Seeking access to closed groups would always be at a very high threshold we would consider only with criminality. We do that in other arenas, and we have good powers and good co-operation in order to do that. We would not seek that routinely as part of policing protests or public order. As we have seen over the last year—even this last weekend—there have been largely peaceful protests. My view as the national lead is that we would only seek those powers where protests end and criminality begins, but I think they are well catered for elsewhere.

[Antony Higginbotham]

That is very helpful, thank you.

[The Chair]

Allan Dorans.