Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by adding my fulsome welcome and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst. His expertise and lengthy public service speak for themselves. I hope he will forgive me for saying that he is one of the kindest lawyers I have met, at a time when kindness is perhaps in short supply in public discourse. I am sure that he will be a huge asset, not just to the Benches opposite but to your Lordships’ House.

This Christmas tree Bill, with significant ambitions and implications for the rule of law, was railroaded through the other place with unseemly speed. So I hope that, with the breadth of expertise in your Lordships’ House, we will give each of its clauses an extremely anxious scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead. I am completely with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, and my noble friend Lord Blunkett on the need to deal with indefinite detention, and with so many other persuasive arguments that have been made around the Chamber. However, I shall use my too-short time today to touch briefly, perhaps predictably, on Parts 3 and 4, which, in my view and that of so many others, violate fundamental rights and freedoms, and threaten our democracy itself.

A hallmark of many authoritarian Governments is the perverse contrast between a light and cosy touch in relation to the activities of the super-wealthy and powerful in society on the one hand and a clampdown on non-violent—I repeat, non-violent—dissent and cultural difference on the other. As the right honourable Member of Parliament for Maidenhead said at Second Reading in the other place:

“It is tempting when Home Secretary to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable, because we all think we are reasonable, but future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”


She went on to say she would

“urge the Government to consider carefully the need to walk a fine line between being popular and populist. Our freedoms depend on it.”—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/21; col. 78.]

Goodness me—if only we could vaccinate Home Secretaries before they took office rather than waiting for an immunity from authoritarian instincts that may come afterwards.

The parts of the Bill to which the former Prime Minister was referring have not been significantly amended since those comments. I suggest, along with others from whom we have already heard, that Parts 3 and 4 do not walk her suggested fine line against authoritarian populism; they scrub that line virtually out of existence. Non-violent—I repeat, non-violent, which is what Part 3 is about—on-street assembly and dissent is as much a fundamental freedom, including under the convention on human rights, as voting in fair and regular elections. Indeed, the franchise was not won for most ordinary people in this country, less than a hundred years ago, without a great deal of just the kind of protest that would be criminalised by this Bill, which will be added to an already crowded statute book of broad public order powers ripe for use and misuse by accident or design against noisy, impactful or disruptive protest—as defined by the Home Secretary, for many years to come. Goodness me, will the Home Secretary not become, perhaps not Henry VIII but Henrietta I?

While some noble Lords have expressed their concerns about counterproductive protest tactics, I have concerns about our counterproductive responses, at a time when the BBC has just this afternoon broken the story of a report that demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of young people are hugely concerned about climate catastrophe, to the point where it is affecting their mental health.

While Part 3 jeopardises the freedoms of everyone, Part 4 deliberately and maliciously targets one of the smallest, most vulnerable and even demonised minorities in our nations. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Whitaker for her tour de force today, but also for so many years of advocacy in defence of that community. To be clear, Part 4 is reminiscent to me of the infamous treatment of the east African Asians, who were rendered second-class citizens by euphemistic legislation—in that case, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962— which was none the less obviously focused on them. It criminalises the Travelling way of life and creates a crime of “intending to reside” on land without consent when, as we have heard, there is inadequate land provision for these communities and already plenty of—and too much—civil and criminal law used against them.

I hope noble Lords will forgive me but, in my humble opinion, it is just as racist to target the nomadic lifestyle as it would be to single out the special food, dress, language or prayers or any other group. These illiberal provisions, in particular, violate fundamental rights and freedoms and pour lighter fuel on the so-called culture wars. I look to my noble friends, noble and learned friends, other friends, and noble Lords across the House to demonstrate the principle and courage required to defeat them—otherwise, I do not know what we are for.