Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Democracy is not just the ballot box; it is also about making space so that the marginalised, the minorities and the vulnerable are heard. Protests and processions are necessary, an essential aspect to democracy. I am unconvinced that the Government have made a strong enough case that the existing powers of the police are insufficient in limiting legitimate protests. I shall listen with interest to the Minister’s response, but I am minded to support several of the amendments tabled here by noble Lords.

[Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice (CB)]

Let us be honest here about some of the underlying drivers of the Government’s policy. People in this country generally did not like the fact that Insulate Britain was obstructing ambulances on major roads, or that Extinction Rebellion was in one case—which affected me directly—stopping people from getting on the Tube. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, remarked, in both those cases, the protesters were pretty self-defeating. There is one part of the Government’s provisions that we will debate later that deals with major infrastructure, which I think would deal with both those issues.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, I think suggested that he feels there is a bit too much protest in this country, but he rightly drew attention to the word “unease”, and the difficulty of defining it. It is just as difficult to define the word “inconvenience” or the word “noise”, and several of the other words still present in the Bill. That is why we absolutely cannot support it, because it is completely wrong to put forward powers of this magnitude with language that is fundamentally not just unclear but not possible to resolve—as the government amendments show that it is not possible to resolve.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, I fear that I am not going to make myself hugely popular by putting a note of dissent into this debate. I know that, given what has been said, noble Lords will do me the courtesy of listening for a moment or two.

Many good arguments have been made in the course of this debate and previously against some provisions in the Bill. Where I think that this House can do itself a disservice is in invoking the legacy of the suffragettes, Nelson Mandela and pro-democracy campaigners in repressive regimes. Is there not a fundamental difference between our liberal democracy—there have been some heinous attacks on individuals and institutions, and we speak of its strength when it is attacked—and those protestors who felt that they had to take disruptive means because they did not have the agency that we have the privilege to be able to have in this country: the right to decide our fate in the ballot and through peaceful process?

I am going to listen carefully to what the Minister says. Certainly, if the characterisation of these measures that have been put forward just now, and in previous iterations of this debate, were true, in that it is effectively sweeping away the right to peaceful protest and to make your voice heard through demonstrating, as a child of protesters myself and someone who has been on many protests—as have many noble Lords in this Chamber—I would, of course, oppose it too. But I have not yet heard a sufficient case that the measures that have been put forward would do that level of damage to the right to protest; rather, they are designed to protect the primacy of our democracy. We can agree or disagree that some of them go too far, but I have real problems with the way much of this has been framed through the discussion of the Bill.