Public Order Bill

Baroness Barker Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I speak on this Bill solely on the issue of Clause 9 and, in the course of my speech, I will rebut many of the arguments made by the noble Lords, Lord McAvoy and Lord Farmer, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan—this will come as no surprise to her because we have, over the years, exchanged completely opposing views on the subject of abortion.

This is not actually about the subject of abortion; it is about the right of women to access a service to which they are legally entitled and the extent to which other people can frustrate them in doing that. Let us be very clear. Clause 9 is very simple. It would introduce a buffer zone 150 metres around abortion clinics where activities such as harassment, intimidation, the use of loudspeakers, the display of graphic images and handing out leaflets of false medical education when for use for the purpose of influencing a decision to access or provide abortion care are banned. That is it—none of the wild extrapolations that other speakers have made.

I disagree entirely with the Minister’s interpretation. He says that this contravenes the human rights of protesters. No, Articles 9, 10 and 11 are qualified rights: they can be limited to protect the rights of others. Let us be clear, the clause does not ban protest. You can hold the views which the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan and the noble Lords, Lord McAvoy and Lord Farmer, do, and you can pursue them in any manner you like—just not within 150 metres of where people are trying to access a service. You can carry on with your campaigns, as you always do, your disinformation and all of that. You are entitled to do that, just not there. Similar laws are already in place in Canada, Australia and Spain, and they have been upheld as being lawful in superior courts around the world.

The second argument is that the police or councils already have the powers to do this. Well, no they do not. Not even in places where the council and the local policing authorities have sought to implement the law as it stands in England have they been able to do that. What we have ended up with is a patchwork of protection for some people but not for others, with lots of challenges, including local authorities being resistant in times of economic hardship in their budgets to find themselves up in court. All we have got is a point where women have undergone and experienced harm in order for protections to be brought in, and I think that is wrong.

The third false claim is that we are seeking to punish people for something as benignly innocent as silent prayer. Well, no—this clause talks quite clearly about seeking to influence or inform people, of persistently occupying places, and of people trying to prevent people accessing legal services. So let us see what has actually been happening outside the clinics under those headings. We have had people handing out leaflets saying, “The abortion was harder to get over than the rape”. We have had people leaving baby clothes in hedges outside clinics, filming women, holding posters saying, “Babies are murdered in here”. In one instance, a monk went into a clinic with a camera under his cassock, accompanied by a lady. He was screaming at the clinic staff, using words that I—and most certainly the bishop—would never use, using a loudspeaker to proclaim that a girl who ran past with her hoodie down over her face because she was so frightened was a “baby killer”—leaving her mother to take her to another facility 60 miles away.

That is all the stuff that goes on day in and day out, and the experience that has led the staff to draft this in the way it has been drafted; it is a world away from benign prayer, it really is. I have no problem at all with people who have deeply religious conviction who wish to pursue what they believe to be right and do so in ways that I may disagree with—but I draw a line at them doing it at that point in time, with one specific intention: to frustrate women from accessing a legal service.

We have had absolute years of this, and it has been getting worse. People have been watching all that American stuff, and all those right-wing American foundations that are always going on about culture wars and being silenced. We know that they are funding activity like this across Europe. The time has come to say “Stop”, and for us to agree with the House of Commons that we need to take a very specific measure to protect women in a very specific space and circumstance. Let us do that. Let us leave those who disagree to pursue their views elsewhere—but let us give those women the protection they deserve.