Violent Disorder

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s welcome to me coming to this position. The Member for Clacton, if that was the Member he was referring to, is responsible for his own comments, in his own way and in his own time. He should be held to account by people in Clacton and by the wider community for any comments he makes. It is not for me to comment on that; it is for him to make those comments. What I will say is that, whenever things happen—as they do—we need to look at, and take action on, that criminal behaviour and close it down. Sometimes, it happens with summer activity, with people having too much to drink over long nights; sometimes, it is fuelled by right-wing violence and, other times, it is fuelled by other activity. If, underneath that, there are long-term trends of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, right-wing ideology or, indeed, extreme left-wing ideology, we need to look, in a cold, calm way, at what has caused that, how we deal with it, how—following the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe—we intelligently police it and, ultimately, how we bring people to court if they have committed criminal offences. What Ministers can do is put the architecture together for that. The Prime Minister has been trying to look at the lessons learned from the initial response, which surprised many of us in that week after Southport, to see how we can improve that response and listen to what the police say about their own lessons. If that involves action by the Home Office in support of policing, that is what we will do.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I know that the Government are very conscious of the UK’s international reputation. I want to know whether there is any ministerial concern about the many free speech and civil liberties organisations around the world expressing shock about the degree of state- backed censorship being greenlighted in the wake of the riots. There is a worry that there is too easy a slippage and conflation between physical violence, which we can all condemn, and speech offences. The majority of people have not been incarcerated for incitement. They may have put out bigoted memes that we can deplore; none the less, people in the UK are being imprisoned not for what they do but for what they say. As there seem to be threats of more censorship, I want the Minister to reassure me that we will not end up in a situation where these riots, which were tragic enough, will chill legitimate debate and lead to a censorious, authoritarian atmosphere where people are frightened to speak freely.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There is freedom of speech, and I made it very clear in the wake of the riots that people are entitled to criticise the UK Government’s asylum policy, immigration policy or any aspect of UK government policy. What they are not entitled to do is to incite racial hatred, to incite criminal activity, to incite attacks on mosques or to incite burnings or other criminal, riotous behaviour. That is the threshold. The threshold is not me saying, “I do not like what they have said”—there are lots of things that I do not like that people have said; the threshold is determined by criminal law, is examined by the police and is referred to the CPS. The CPS examines whether there is a criminal charge to account for, which is then either made through a guilty plea and a sentence, which happened with the majority of people who now face time in prison, or put in front of a court for a jury of 12 peers to determine whether an offence has been committed. There is no moratorium on criticism of political policy in the United Kingdom. There is free speech in this United Kingdom, but free speech also has responsibilities, and one responsibility is not to incite people to burn down their neighbour’s property.