UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate for encouraging us to consider the question of asylum from a moral position, but I warn those who made such interesting maiden speeches—I warmly welcome them—that debates in this House are not always so erudite or ethical.

One concern when we discuss this topic is how we are regularly urged to deploy our moral sentiments in feeling compassion for refugees. Is it emotionally manipulative to suggest that policy should be decided by such one-sided emotional concerns? There are millions of people who could have their lives enhanced by living in the UK. When I watch the news and see the plight and suffering of those around the world, I am tearful and want to do something desperately, but, as the most reverend Primate admits, we cannot take all the world’s suffering as refugees here. We have to prioritise, and that does not make us immoral. I therefore feel uncomfortable when some accuse those who raise concerns about the numbers arriving in small boats of lacking a disposition of generosity or not caring. Is not that demonising and dehumanising language too?

Let us not pretend that this is an easy moral question. For all the moral righteousness expressed here, I ask what the moral difference is between a man fleeing a war-torn country, which is considered legal, and a man fleeing grinding poverty, which is not. This highlights a moral problem thrown up by the asylum system: it treats the cause of someone fleeing a country as the basis for creating deserving and undeserving migrants. It implies somehow that a refugee is a victim worthy of our generosity, unlike economic migrants.

I am not sure the fashion for emphasising that Jesus was a refugee helps, if I am honest. It feels like a bit of a cheap shot. Did not Christ allegedly die for us all? This sanctifying narrative and the present system definitely incentivise anyone arriving to follow the script and claim they are refugees, but, as explained so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, people arrive without papers or with letters from tyrants as evidence. There is a problem: the system is open to abuse.

If the host authorities say they will give asylum to Syrians, those from the Middle East will inevitably claim to be Syrians. If the rules say asylum will be given to under-18s, young-looking 20-somethings will understandably claim to be younger. In 2016, the Church of England clerics warned about fake conversions from Islam to Christianity. In Nick Timothy’s major report published this week, he notes that modern slavery laws are being “abused”. It is now standard advice, especially for those coming from Albania, to claim they are victims of trafficking.

Noting those truths is not about blame. I do not blame people for trying their luck—they want a better life—so there are no accusations of “scroungers” or “invaders” from me. But it is simply disingenuous to suggest that the objectivity of the law is not being strained when determining asylum status is so difficult. I am especially worried when we gaslight the British public, who feel that some are gaming the system—and they are right to think that. They also believe that, no matter how many times they vote for control of our borders, they are being ignored at the expense of asylum seekers.

When people considered the original 1951 convention on refugees, the spectre of those fleeing the Holocaust death camps informed the spirit of “never again”. Many Jewish refugees were, shamefully, turned away. British citizens understand that, and they understand those fleeing the bombs and terror of Putin’s barbaric war in Ukraine and our obligation to those escaping the Taliban in Afghanistan, and so on. They are more than welcoming, but they are also understandably upset about the 40,000 currently crossing the channel, who they know are not fleeing from the terror of the Nazis or the Taliban, but who are leaving peaceful France.

They are right as well to ask British politicians about their priorities. Did your Lordships see the film of the recent public meeting in Skegness, called by the mayor in response to the local seaside hotels? There was a lot of hostility in that meeting, but it was aimed not at refugees but at the local MP. It was frustration at a system where, without consultation, asylum seekers in their midst were being given free accommodation, utilities and three meals a day, while local people face desperate times and the brutal reality of austerity. Homelessness is on the rise in the town, and the veterans sleeping rough in Skegness also deserves our compassion; the interviews with them were heart-breaking. Of course refugees are not living in five-star hotels, and I am not suggesting that, but can we also empathise with citizens who cannot get to see a GP, get into A&E or get medical treatment for chronic pain when they are told that medical services are being made available to refugees in local hotels?

Dismissing the plight and aspirations of our own citizens, so well-articulated by the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell and Lady Stroud, is just as divisive and mean-spirited as using the language of invasion. This issue requires that we deploy a full range of moral principles. Our duties stretch beyond compassion for migrants. If we flaunt the democratic duty to uphold the integrity of national borders and treat the social cohesion of settled communities as a distasteful, inconvenient obstacle, we indeed risk a backlash against all refugees and migration schemes, which would be terrible. In my view, we need a complete overhaul of the laws on the issue. At present, who is in control?

In his foreword to the recent pamphlet From the Channel to Rwanda: Three Essays on the Morality of Asylum, Doctor Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, wrote:

“if people smugglers can simply nullify carefully thought-through and debated legislation and policy by landing people in small craft on the beaches in Kent, this cannot indefinitely be acceptable in a democratic and law respecting nation.”

I think Nick Timothy is right that, if human rights laws or the 1951 refugee convention prevent us democratically deciding our priorities, we must be prepared to leave both if necessary. Those who disagree, who think there should be more refugees, should argue for that democratically and push that up the next election’s list of things to be debated.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The noble Baroness has run out of time.

Public Order Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Fox of Buckley]

80: Clause 9, page 10, line 28, after first “who” insert “, without reasonable excuse,”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides for a defence where the person has a reasonable excuse for being within a buffer zone and has access to that defence prior to charge.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I shall speak to a range of amendments associated with Clause 9: Amendments 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 89, 92 and 94. I have also put my name to Amendments 88 and 90 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and have some sympathy with Amendments 98 and 99 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans.

Clause 9 creates a new criminal offence of interfering with

“any person’s decision to access, provide or facilitate the provision of abortion services”

in a designated buffer zone. The most contentious aspects of the clause centre on the definition of “interfering with”, which criminalises a wide range of activities usually associated with free speech and the right to assemble.

However, Clause 9 also makes any gathering outside an abortion clinic or a hospital providing abortions the subject of criminal law. Currently, where there have been problems outside a building facilitating abortion services, the mechanism for dealing with them has been locally decided and designed through public space protection orders—PSPOs. Police and local authorities have the ability to set up zones in response to complaints over gatherings around specific abortion providing facilities. Clause 9, in contrast, introduces a catch-all blanket ban across all service providers, regardless of whether there are problem protest activities taking place. This seems to me to be totally disproportionate.

Although I am no fan of PSPOs per se—councils carving ever more public space away from public use is not a positive trend—none the less, the aim of my Amendments 88, 89 and 90 is to repose the solution in relation to abortion protests as localised PSPOs based on consultation and reviewed annually, so as not to normalise prohibitions.

Because Clause 9 focuses on the issue of abortion, which we know is an emotional and morally challenging issue, it is worth taking a step back. The Government’s reason for bringing forward the Bill overall is to deal with the new protest tactics of Extinction Rebellion and its offshoots. Many of us have noted in previous debates that we do not support these anti-social tactics and some of us have even been clear that we have no sympathy with the nihilistic, catastrophising philosophy behind the eco-guerrilla warfare that activists have been waging against the British public.

Despite that, there have been widespread concerns across the House querying whether these new laws are necessary or proportionate, and noting that we already have laws on the statute book to deal with aggravated disruption, even if these laws are not being used effectively by the police, which is a different problem. There has also been widespread unease, which your Lordships have illustrated in myriad ways, about how various clauses in the Bill might have unintended draconian consequences for the general right to protest, far beyond Just Stop Oil activists or our attitudes to them.

For me, the same concerns are absolutely true of Clause 9. However, the difference is that many opposing the Government on the rest of the Bill are supportive of this clause. Seemingly, this is because noble Lords want to be unconditionally supportive of every woman’s right to access abortion facilities without hassle or hostility. As a passionate advocate of women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, I am very sympathetic to this view. However, this is not the key prism that should inform our approach to Clause 9. I urge your Lordships to scrutinise Clause 9 with similar dispassionate and impartial eyes as have assessed the rest of the Bill in relation to Just Stop Oil—that is, beyond our attitudes to abortion.

Stella Creasy, the MP who effectively authored this clause, was quite right when she said in the other place that this new clause is not about the abortion debate. However, she argues that it is about ensuring safe access to abortion healthcare, and this is where the dispute starts. All the evidence indicates that the activity happening outside clinics, while undoubtedly unsavoury, does not threaten safe access. What is more, if there are any instances of women’s safe access being obstructed, which is totally unacceptable, many pieces of legislation already exist to protect women if they face intimidation or harassment, as Home Office Minister Kit Malthouse pointed out in the Public Bill Committee debate in June. For example, the Public Order Act 1986 prohibits causing harassment, alarm or distress, and includes a specific power to impose conditions on assemblies that seek to intimidate others not to do an act they have a right to do.

As with other parts of the Bill, the police have the powers to target specific instances of behaviour or activity if they constitute blocking safe access to abortion facilities. In 2018, the then Home Secretary, after concluding an in-depth review of the abortion clinic buffer zones, stated that he was

“adamant that where a crime is committed, the police have the powers to act so that people feel protected.”—[Official Report, Commons, 13/9/18; cols. 37-38WS.]

Given the importance of the rights at stake here, it seems particularly important that the police use their resources and their existing powers appropriately, to protect staff at abortion facilities and service users alike —but for that to happen, none of this requires Clause 9.

Do not get me wrong; I have very little sympathy for those who think that it is appropriate to gather outside abortion clinics. It is wholly unpleasant to target any individual woman going into hospital to access a legal termination. Waving gruesome images of dismembered foetuses, following women and medical staff doing their jobs, calling out, “your baby loves you” or “murderers”, hanging clothes around clinic entrances—this is crass insensitivity rather than compassion.

However, to be balanced, pro-life activists who attend these vigils will dispute these anecdotes and claim to be simply offering crisis pregnancy support, giving women choices by offering help financially, in raising a child, et cetera. There are, I concede, two competing narratives. I am conscious of the 2018 Home Office review, which found that those gatherings largely comprise passive activities such as prayers, leafleting, placards, singing hymns and so on. Regardless of which narrative you buy, it is wholly insensitive and intrusive to try to engage individual women at such a time, effectively demanding that they account for their personal moral decisions to strangers at a rally. I have no doubt that this would upset most women. It would upset me.

But whether it is upsetting is not what we should be talking about. The key question is whether it should be illegal and whether it constitutes a threat to safe access. My problem with Clause 9 is that it does not distinguish between activities causing actual objective harm and harassment, which threaten safe access, and activities with which we may disagree or which we might find disagreeable. Therefore, we must resist the temptation to create a law that criminalises otherwise legal activities based on a distaste for those activities. How the Bill defines “interferes with” will make an extraordinary range of activities in a particular area punishable by lengthy stints in prison or unlimited fines.

Some of the most egregious and censorious parts that my Amendments 88 to 90 seek to strike out are,

“seeks to influence … advises or persuades, attempts to advise or persuade or otherwise expresses opinion … informs or attempts to inform about abortion services by any means, including, without limitation, graphic, physical, verbal or written means”.

In other words, Clause 9 outlaws leafleting, holding placards, expressing opinions, persuading and informing. Some will say, “Don’t worry; this is only to be used in very specific instances of access to abortion, and it is only confined to designated areas”. But as Big Brother Watch points out, creating prohibitions on protest on an issue-by-issue basis is not an appropriate way to make law. It sets a precedent that will inevitably lead to attempts to prevent speech, expression, information sharing, assembly or the holding of protected beliefs around other sites or in relation to other controversial or unpopular causes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

Parliament is in a position to make a judgment about these matters. I was in the House of Commons for nearly 30 years—not as long as my noble friend Lord Cormack—and I was well aware of, in many circumstances, from evidence which came from many quarters, the kind of abuse to which women seeking an abortion were subjected by those who demonstrated outside abortion clinics. I strongly suspect that is why the House of Commons voted for Clause 9 in such substantial numbers, because it knew it was happening and that it was wrong. We do not need a further review to establish those basic judgments.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, my difficulty is this. In interpreting things in the way he is, the noble Viscount is suggesting that he knows why people did something. I have no idea why people in the Commons voted in the numbers they did. The noble Viscount has a view on what might have driven that; others might have another view. Generally speaking, since I have been in this place, the House of Commons has voted in huge numbers for things I have disagreed with, and unless the Opposition is going to go home, what am I supposed to do? I cannot keep saying, “I think they really did it because they were really motivated —we do not know, do we? Will the noble Viscount clarify why he keeps stressing that? Is it relevant to us?

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

It is, because we are being asking what the evidence is. I was telling the noble Baroness that, when I was a Member of the Parliament, for a very long time, I was conscious of some of the abuse that was going on from speaking to people coming to my surgery. In the House of Commons, we get a reflection of the views of Members of Parliament who are encountering the same response from their own constituents.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The query about “reasonable excuse” has come up before. It has been suggested that free speech would be used as a “reasonable excuse”. I will try to clarify what I was trying to explain, and perhaps the noble Lord will come back at me. There are many ways in which you could be found to be breaching the criminal law—it is so broad. The noble Lord, Lord Beith, illustrated the variety of things you might be doing that might mean you inadvertently broke the law. I wanted there to be some excuse, such as “I am accompanying someone and having an argument with them”. There are problems with the wording of the clause, and I would be more than happy to be advised how to tighten up my amendment so as to not use this phrase or look as if I am giving the police too much power.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

The noble Baroness is wrestling with the same problem I had in dealing with “reasonable excuse” in relation to locking on. There seemed to be cases where people might have had a genuine reason for locking on because it is so widely defined.

One might say that the “reasonable excuse” defence would be suitable if it were sufficiently qualified so that it did not provide the police and the courts with the problem of having to decide whether or not the pro-life argument was a reasonable excuse. If one looked at the offences, one would say that this kind of argument would not stand up to what this legislation is all about. There are other instances where one might find that there was an excuse for what was done which was quite detached from what this clause is really driving at. If the noble Baroness could find a way of expressing this, I should be delighted. That is what I was trying to do in the earlier debate.

I hope I have made my position clear. As it stands, this would not be acceptable. I think that paragraph (b) raises a very interesting point of definition.

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[Baroness Barker (LD)]

I suggest that the noble Lord goes back and reads the clause and the terms of interference. I do not think that what he describes comes under that, which is why the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and I are trying to make sure that this law is as explicit and clear as possible. We do not want to do what the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, does and create loopholes whereby those who are currently harassing people can move around the country and continue to do so in different ways.

The fact is that we need this law because the current patchwork system does not work. It does not protect staff or women at all. It is a proportionate measure which, I accept, can be refined further through the amendments put forward by myself and the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and those that may be put forward in a similar spirit.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I have an inquiry about PSPOs which has been raised. When PSPOs were originally advocated by pro-choice people, I was unsure about their use. My colleagues in BPAS, for example, were keen on PSPOs as a good, targeted way of stopping problems outside specific clinics, and they assured me that it was at specific clinics where problems were occurring. Is the argument of Clause 9 that things have got so out of hand that the original arguments in defence of PSPOs are redundant? The noble Baroness would not be against one who was not against PSPOs as a remedy in the past.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

The answer is that the situation has moved on, so what was an answer before the existence of PSPOs is no longer relevant.

I have said enough. I think we all know where we are on this and the positions we came from. I would like to work with those Members who want to, and with the Minister, to make sure that we get to where the vast majority of us, and of the public, want to be: women being able access a service legally and safely, and 150 metres down the road you can be as extreme in your opposition as you like.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I say again to my noble friend—I have said it before, and I am happy to say it again—that the Government respect the will of the House of Commons.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank all Members of the Committee for a wide range of speeches, ensuring that we have covered a lot of ground on this important issue. Contributions have been thoughtful, sometimes tetchy but largely civil; it is important to have these arguments out. I listened to what everybody said, and one thing I noted was that all speakers on all sides have condemned the harassment and intimidation of any woman going into a clinic or a hospital for an abortion. It is important that we note that we have that in common, because sometimes it can be presented as though people who are against Clause 9 are indifferent to the intimidation or harassment of women. Everybody has said that it is wrong; this is a question of how you deal with it.

The dispute is also about exactly what happens outside clinics. We have heard the clash of narratives in the contributions that I referred to, which makes the call for a new review from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, all the more appealing. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, herself suggested—backed up by the reply to me from the noble Baroness, Lady Barker—that the situation has got a lot worse since 2018, and particularly very recently. That is disputed by people so, for the clause to have legitimacy, maybe we need a public discussion to get the evidence—that would be important.

Public Order Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

What I fear about this Bill, and particularly the detail of the serious disruption clause, is that it is on the wrong side of history. I applaud the forensic critiques that have already been made by many noble Lords in this debate, but I say to the Minister that he and the Government are on the wrong side of history and I urge them to think again.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 36 and 37 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I could also have backed a number of other amendments. The noble Lord clearly explained lots of problems with the clauses discussed in this group. The only thing that I did not agree with—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, also said this—was when he compared present-day protesters with the suffragettes. The suffragettes were democrats without the vote; Just Stop Oil are anti-democrats with the vote. There is a real distinction there.

Although I have very serious reservations about this Bill and think it is unnecessary, we need to approach the discussion and debate going on outside this House with a little more humility. On the first group, a number of noble Lords raised the point that the country was up in arms about the Bill. I do not recognise that description; actually, many people in the country are up in arms about the Just Stop Oil protesters. They are so frustrated that we have people ruining their daily lives and getting in the way and that not enough is being done about it. My argument with the Government is that this is a crisis of policing, which they will not tackle and instead have introduced a whole new set of laws that we do not need.

As legislators, I understand the need for a definition of “serious disruption”, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, explained the difficulties around defining it. But the people we are talking about who are locking themselves on, tunnelling and so on, boast that they are seriously disrupting things. They say, “What choice have we got? We’re involved in serious disruption.” They do not have a definitional problem; they say, “We’re trying to seriously disrupt the ways of life of everyone until we get our way and until you agree with us”.

So in some ways it is important that the Government do not exploit the fact that we have protesters who say “Our job is to seriously disrupt the lives of ordinary people” and ordinary people who are completed frustrated that nothing is being done about these people seriously disrupting their lives, and say that we need all these laws—because this is not the solution to that problem. It is a con, as I said in my Second Reading speech. An answer should be given to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that, if the Government’s argument is that we do not have laws on the statute book that can deal with very specific issues, they have to be very clear about exactly why the laws do not work at present. If it is the Supreme Court, then say that—but at the moment there is a muddle on that question.

On the specific amendments dealing with “serious disruption”, given that we have protesters—I think they are more people who indulge in stunts, rather than protesters—who admit that they intend to cause serious disruption, I am concerned that there should be some intent to cause serious disruption, which is why Amendment 37 is important. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, made a hugely important point about the way that the term “reckless” will be used to clamp down on this; the idea that your intention is read into it as being reckless indifference is one of the great ways that censorship is happening in this country. I am very nervous about having in law a situation where, whatever you intend, the law can decide that you intended something. That is why I support Amendment 37.

Amendment 36 would limit the offence to an act that actually causes serious disruption, rather than one that is capable of causing serious disruption. It seems to me that if something does not cause serious disruption, it is not serious disruption. It seems blatantly ridiculous for a Bill to criminalise something that is not seriously disruptive because it could be seriously disruptive at a different time and a different place.

I rather liked the example of what happened recently in Germany, where people locked on in the Volkswagen museum. They did not cause any serious disruption because the curators turned the lights out, turned the heating off and went home, leaving them there. As it happens, the protestors response to this was to complain that they had been left in the cold and that they could not order in food. Instead of draconian and criminalising bills, perhaps what we need is a bit more of that kind of attitude, both from the police and from institutions, which seem to stand by and do nothing as disruption occurs. However, I do not want the law to compensate for that spinelessness either.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, having not spoken at Second Reading, but having listened to the debate, I want to contribute one thought which I think follows rather well from what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. This debate on the definition of the word “serious” is really pretty sterile. Talking about the word “serious” is rather like talking about whether a work of art is good or not good. What we are really talking about is judgment, and the judgment of many different groups: of the demonstrators, of the police, and of the courts and within the courts—juries, magistrates and all the rest of it. All we are striving to do is to get what the people as a whole—who are demanding something better than what is happening at the moment—want: better solutions when things happen. I do not believe that we can be precise in laying down in law what is serious or not serious, but that does not mean that we cannot use the word “serious” as shorthand for the collective judgment of all those interests involved.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I put my name to a number of amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, read out. He has largely explained my reservations and why I put my name to, in this instance, Amendments 19 to 21. This is the focus on what equipment is “intended” to be used for.

I think it extraordinary that the Bill would criminalise somebody holding equipment that “may be used” for something. Completely innocent objects can be interpreted in the most malign way, and it seems far too speculative. Everyone should remember that, while we have in our minds locking on and Just Stop Oil, this piece of legislation does not mention Just Stop Oil. Therefore, anything that speculates about what people might be about to do with an object could be used to criminalise any range of behaviours. That is one of my concerns. It feels as though, rather than being proactive policing, as the Minister discussed earlier, it allows people to be scooped up just in case they use any object in a particular way.

Amendments 48 and 49 focus on the offence of “being equipped for tunnelling” and the requirement for the object to be used not specifically by the person with the item but by “any person”. My concern is that this puts into law a kind of guilt by association. Somebody has not committed a crime and there is no indication that they have, but somebody else has used an item that they had and then committed a crime. It reminds me of the worst of the joint enterprise laws that led to so many injustices for all involved. I would really like to see that go. In fact, I would like the whole thing to go—but if we are going to have it, et cetera.

Finally on Amendment 65, which focuses on key national infrastructure, this is one of the things that the public most worry about—that key national infrastructure will be targeted by these kinds of stunt protesters. Somebody described it as guerrilla warfare, and it sometimes feels like that. We all know how important key national infrastructure projects are to any country. That is why Russia targets them in Ukraine. You know that the maximum number of people will suffer if you attack the things that keep any country going at any given time. So I am very keen that we protect them, but it is about the wording on the extent to which they are attacked and the illustrations that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, gave. Again, it is not only Just Stop Oil. We have to keep getting that out of our minds, because this affects anyone who does anything to possibly disrupt a key infrastructure project.

Perhaps I might echo, in a glib way, the comments made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, in relation to the NHS. I thought she had a point there. In this instance, when I read about “key national infrastructure”—

“road transport infrastructure … rail infrastructure … air transport infrastructure … oil infrastructure … gas infrastructure”,

et cetera—I thought, “Who needs Just Stop Oil?”. Most of that infrastructure does not work. I spend most of my time not being able to get trains, and the energy system is in total crisis. If noble Lords want to know what is likely to create the greatest threat to most of the national infrastructure projects in the forthcoming months, I can tell them: it is not Just Stop Oil but austerity cuts coming from the Government. Although that is a slightly glib point, it indicates why using these things in the law, if you are not precise about exactly what you describe as “disruption”, can get you into hot water.

[Lord Skidelsky (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 21 from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to which I put my name. The principle it seeks to uphold is that the offending person must be the one committing the offence or intending to commit the offence, rather than somebody else connected with that person. That is a very important point, because “in connection with” is another of these vague phrases that have crept into this kind of legislation. It is also there in counterterrorist legislation. How connected? Friend, lover, colleague, co-religionist? What is the nature of the connection? All these things are undefined. What counts as a malicious connection? That is why we want this amendment.

Public Order Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will be opposing the Bill but I want to make some broader observations first.

Recently, one commentator wrote that it feels like a class war has broken out on the streets of London. Working people, fighting for their right to do their jobs and attend to their daily business, are being hindered in doing so by catastrophising eco-warriors. Each of their nihilistic stunts seems aimed at causing maximum chaos to the public. Hugely infuriating delays and total inconvenience are indeed their tactics.

Then there are their aims, which seem misanthropic, to say the least. They include that society should cease all production of fossil fuel energy in the middle of an energy crisis. While millions are worried that they will not be able to afford to keep the heat on this winter, here is a minority movement demanding that the Government produce less energy. When allies of the protesters warn that they may alienate the public, they miss the point because the whole movement is not interested in the public. The protesters do not care whether they alienate or inconvenience ordinary people. That is the point: to grind us down until we give in to their demands.

I recently engaged with some superglued activists. When I pointed out how desperate the locals were in just wanting to get to work, and pleaded with the activists to let them through, I was told by one activist that it was shocking that so many were driving to work as a single person in an empty car. Another, more generously but patronisingly, explained, “We’re doing this for their good”, but then added, “We tried persuading people. It doesn’t work. They just won’t listen.” That is the problem: these activists are explicitly anti-democratic. Some compare their tactics to those of the suffragettes; they have a bit of a nerve because those heroines did not have the vote. However, these Extinction Rebellion types do but, because they are not winning at the ballot box, they bully instead.

Noble Lords may gather that I have little sympathy for these protesters, but I do not want popular revulsion at their tactic to lead to anti-democratic laws either. When I witness the desecrating vandalism of great works of art—saving the planet by trashing the best of human civilisation—it is tempting to say, “Lock them up and throw away the key”. I certainly find myself cheering when I see London’s citizens dragging protesters off the roads and screaming abuse at the selfish road hoggers, but it is dilemma. I am keen on direct action but, obviously, vigilantism is a result of a collapse in public order, which is a problem.

One clip shows an exasperated workman shouting, “Where’s the police? What are we paying our taxes for—to have our lives inconvenienced by these idiots? This is wrong.” That man is right to be exasperated, and to ask where the police were and what we pay our taxes for. The question we face here is: what has gone wrong that means the authorities are not sorting this problem out? The Minister claims that these protests are taking excessive hours and resources from the police. Well, you could have fooled me. The police seem slow and reticent; as someone said earlier, it is “softly, softly”. As someone pointed out to me, if you want swift, hard-line police intervention, post a gender-critical tweet and they will clamp down on you as a hate criminal before you can draw breath.

The Government said that we need the Bill and these new offences to solve things, but why would it make any difference when the police will not use the laws they already have to solve things? All the complained -about tactics could be dealt with by criminal offences already on the statute book, but they are not being dealt with. Why are those laws not being used effectively? I think we have a broader policing crisis. The Bill is not a “culture wars” Bill, as some have claimed; it is a weak, defensive invasion of the political authority by the Government in tackling this policing crisis.

Instead of action, we get performative legislation that is just as attention-seeking as those dousing London’s finest architecture in orange paint. Both sides are saying, “Look at me, I’m doing something”. It is also a con to tell the public that these laws will be narrowly targeted at nuisance protesters. In fact, they are so broad and all-encompassing that anyone’s right to protest or dissent on any issue is being put in jeopardy. Perhaps you might take at face value those very specific new offences such as locking on or tunnelling, although three years in prison for

“being present in a tunnel”

seems a tad disproportionate.

However, consider the possible uses of Clauses 19 and 20, with their serious disruption orders or protest banning orders. These can be doled out to anyone who has been on more than one protest over the last five-year period—that certainly counts me in. If you are issued with one of these orders, you can be banned from going to a particular place, associating with particular people, encouraging someone else to go on a demo, using the internet in a particular way— that is to say, you can be punished by the state for retweeting an advert for a protest. You can also be issued with an electronic tag for up to 12 months using GPS data technology, allowing the police to monitor your whereabouts for 24 hours a day. That extreme level of surveillance for individuals is aimed at explicitly innocent people who have not committed a crime.

We should not allow these anti-democratic laws to be passed just to allow the Home Office to paper over the cracks of policing failures. This was the point made by Conservative MP Sir Charles Walker, already quoted, in a scorching speech in the other place in Committee. He said that

“the Government’s attraction to SDPOs”—

serious disruption prevention orders—

“demonstrates our own impotence as legislators and the impotence of the police as law enforcers to get to grips with the laws already in place and to enforce them.”—[Official Report, Commons, 18/10/22; col. 581.]

This impotence is now being covered up by creating unnecessary laws, and it seriously threatens reputational damage to the rule of law, which is already fragile.

Finally, no matter how much we despise protesters, we must have consistency in lawmaking. So why have so many on the Opposition Benches been celebrating the Government’s acceptance of amendments banning protests around abortion clinics? As a long-standing pro-choice campaigner, I believe that it is totally vital that women are able to safely access reproductive healthcare services. If they are being obstructed or harassed, we have public order laws to deal with this, and we should deal with them harshly. However, as we have already heard, Clause 9 criminalises and bans seeking to influence, advising or persuading, attempting to advise or persuade, or otherwise expressing an opinion.

Many of us may feel little sympathy with people who are viewed as anti-abortion cranks. However, as Big Brother Watch notes, this sets a precedent that will inevitably lead to attempts to prevent speech, expression, information sharing and assembly in relation to other controversial and unpopular causes. It is also worth noting that at least five councils with PSPO buffer zones around abortion clinics have banned silent prayers. This institutes a law of genuine thought crime and betrays any commitment to religious freedom, and we should totally oppose it.

In conclusion, I support the right to protest for all, not just the protesters I admire but those I despise as well.

Public Spaces Protection Orders

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that different perspective, and I absolutely commit to looking into it. I think it is worth reminding people what public spaces protection orders are intended to deal with. It is a particular nuisance or problem in a specific area that is detrimental to the local community’s quality of life. I do not think these conditions are unreasonable.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Sorry, my Lords, but this fining for profit really is a scandal. In north Wales, there is a massive social cost and the North Wales Against Kingdom Security Facebook group has described the effect of local private enforcement on this region. Never mind this idea of people who do not care about the neighbourhood; the group says:

“These operatives terrorised the elderly and vulnerable in my area. One 94-year-old lady was fined when a tissue blew out of the bottom of her wheelchair. Some elderly people stopped taking their dogs out because they were so afraid of being fined”.


Will the Minister at least agree to read the Manifesto Club report that details this? Defra—unless you think it does not understand it—has made a decision, so why does the Home Office not do the same?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Well, I have read the Manifesto report to which the noble Baroness refers—all 48 pages of it. I am afraid that I did not necessarily agree with all the conclusions, some of which required—shall we say?—a bout of syllogistic gymnastics to arrive at. I did look at some of the named councils’ websites and found limited public outrage—maybe I was looking in the wrong place. However, I do think that no one should be terrorised in the way described by the noble Baroness.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, 38 Bills—surely this raises the question about whether legislation is being overused, a technocratic substitute for moral authority. I was struck by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury, when he wittily moved the Motion for the humble Address, quoting the then Lord Mancroft from 70 years ago:

“we have been … over-legislated … glutted, filled … and stifled with legislation.”—[Official Report, 4/11/1952; cols. 4-9.]

I have to say, I empathise. Is the only way for society to show disapproval to resort to banning or criminalising, or the only way to endorse certain behaviours or social norms to set them in legal stone, avoiding the harder job of winning hearts and minds? For example, I have always been a critic of the boycott and divestment movement. I think we should vigorously argue against academic arts organisations and councils boycotting specifically Israel, and I will point out how discriminatory and censorious such policies are. However, do we need a Bill to ban boycotts? It just seems such an illiberal way of confronting anti-Semitism in public bodies.

Similarly, as someone who for years has been raising the alarm about the increasing cancel culture on campuses, I have often faced gaslighting denials, even in the face of, for example, gender-critical academics being driven out of their jobs and increasing numbers of speakers at universities being no-platformed. Yet I still feel queasy about the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill; a law to ban campus censorship just sits uneasily and could easily be used to avoid tackling deeper cultural trends, such as the bullying of many students to conform to the orthodoxies of identity politics such as being told that they have to repeat the mandated mantras of language codes such as the use of pronouns, the eradication of the word “woman”, and so on.

In the context of this concern about overlegislation, the Brexit freedoms Bill is to be heartily welcomed: at last a chance to roll back unnecessary laws retained from the UK’s EU membership. However, an email I received yesterday from the European Movement alarmingly declared that this Bill epitomises “the calamity of Brexit” and strips back all our rights. Surely this confuses political rights with laws. I should like to see the spirit of the Brexit freedom Bill expanded: that we look at scrapping all those stifling laws that we do not need here at home, not only those drawn up in Brussels. That rights become a matter for civil society, not the law courts, would be my aim.

The legalistic mindset also seems to inform much of the response to the replacement of the Human Rights Act by an updated and slimmed down Bill of Rights, but I welcome the move, which recognises the dangers of a dependence on lawyers as the main guarantors of rights and welcome an antidote to judicial overreach. The incremental increase in litigiousness as a political tool can be and is used as a barrier to enacting decisions made democratically by the elected Government of the day, even when it is not a Government that the majority in this unelected House voted for or that the majority in the legal profession voted for.

I have heard this new Bill of Rights sneeringly dismissed as bowing to populism, as though being popular with the voting public should be a badge of shame, but there is something chilling about human rights lawyers suggesting that the only defence of rights is an Act that was brought in only in 1998 by Tony Blair. It is as though all those hard-won rights achieved by rank-and-file activists, trade unionists and all those who have fought for racial and sexual equality for decades before the HRA existed are irrelevant. These rights were not gifts handed down from on high and will not disappear without the HRA.

I urge that we burst the myth that we need to rely on the law to defend freedom, a point viscerally illustrated recently. Where was the HRA or its advocates when we saw the widespread suspension of all civil liberties during the lockdown period: people dragged before the law courts for social gatherings and inhumanely denied rights to visit loved ones locked away in care homes or dying in hospital? Indeed, under the HRA, we have seen increasing criminalisation of speech.

So I welcome Dominic Raab’s emphasis on using the Bill of Rights to guarantee free speech. How refreshing to hear a government Minister of any party prioritise codifying the importance of free speech in enhancing public debate. As a director of the Academy of Ideas, which organises such public debates, I say “Hear, hear.” But as we have already heard so well-articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, another piece of legislation might well cancel out any free-speech gains of the Bill of Rights.

The Online Safety Bill should really be renamed the online censorship Bill. The ministerial boast that the Bill will make the UK the safest country in the world online uses “safety” as it is used by safe space warriors at universities, as a synonym for censorship and silencing. Of course it is proportionate for the law to tackle protecting children from pornography, those vile suicide sites, online grooming and harassment, but the bulk of the Online Safety Bill targets adults’ freedom to say and read lawful but harmful speech, as explained by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar. Surely it is legislative overkill when the law is used to curtail lawful expression and a non-legal term such as “harmful” is expanded into the subjective category of psychological. To note, in today’s free-speech wars, that equals offensive speech some deem traumatic.

We are told the Bill will empower users, but instead it will empower—indeed, incite—big tech to remove what it decides is misinformation. But what is misinformation? The Wuhan lab leak? The biological fact of sex? Passages of the Bible? Who decides? The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is, we are told, designed to ensure that academic staff feel safe to question and test received wisdom and put forward controversial and unpopular opinions. Good, but is that open-ended approach to ideas allowed only for academics? Surely all citizens should be equally free to question received opinion and have access to controversial views, yet the Online Safety Bill will deny them that equal right under the law.

To conclude, the law cannot guarantee free speech or freedom, but it can be used to curb and criminalise these liberties. We in this House must be wary of this when scrutinising the contradictory legislative priorities contained in the Queen’s Speech.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly—although I did think my noble friend Lord Horam, having been an MP, had a common-sense perspective.

I do not agree with Motion D1. The proposed right to work after six months here would be a significant pull factor, in addition to those already outlined by my noble friend Lady Stroud. It could even undermine the points-based system that is already leading to the UK welcoming many more people and more students now that Covid is largely behind us.

As noble Lords will recall, my main concern during the passage of the Bill has been the constantly expanding numbers of people arriving across the channel in small boats, sometimes with tragic consequences. The Rwanda proposal is a brave attempt to discourage the large number of young men, resident in France—which is a free country—who wish to come to the UK, mainly for economic reasons. Sadly, the vociferous critics of this proposal, some of whom we have heard from today, have no alternatives to propose. So I shall be supporting the Government today. I thank the Minister for all she has done to engage and for doing her best to progress this obviously difficult Bill.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise with some hesitancy because I feel I am likely to be chastised for rambling, saying the wrong thing and going on too long. But let me see if I can entertain you.

I think that this is a very important and serious moment in a discussion on a very important and serious matter. I do not feel that this Bill will resolve it. I have been critical throughout on a range of issues and I feel that the Government have wasted opportunities —but I am not going to remind noble Lords of that.

At this point in the passage of the Bill, having listened to the considerations in the other place, we should recognise with a certain humility that the failure of the Government or Parliament to deal with the arrival by irregular routes of so many people is seen by so many citizens of this country as making a mockery of border control. This has led people to welcome the Rwanda solution as “At least somebody is trying to do something”. People will ask, “What would you do about the boats crossing the channel?” It is fair enough for people to say that, if something appears to be a deterrent, maybe we should try it.

As it happens, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that there are not enough legal routes. I would like to open up a debate about more economic migration for unskilled workers. This might not go down well with my fellow citizens, but I should like to try to win that argument. I am fed up with having to describe people who want to come into this country as asylum seekers, when I know that many of them want a better standard of living—and why should they not have it? I defend them.

But we are not even having this debate. In this House, all the emphasis is on international obligations and the rule of law. There is little discussion about our obligations to the sovereignty of this country or the rights of British citizens of all ethnicities who worry about the fact that borders are not controlled. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords who are sighing that in a different context people are perfectly happy to grandstand about nation states, national sovereignty and the importance of border control—but that is only when you are talking about Ukraine. This is a different question.

On the Rwanda scheme, while I do not think that subcontracting our responsibilities to refugees to another country is against the nature of God, I actually do not like it. It is largely a cowardly decision. Despite what I have said, I would not choose this method. Over many years I have argued against such an approach, because I have always thought that any organisation that outsources or subcontracts its obligations on migration—particularly to heavily beleaguered countries—to police its borders on their behalf is washing their hands of a problem that they should tackle.

When I was criticising other places for doing this, I was criticising the EU—fortress Europe—which, for decades, has had a history of dumping asylum seekers on its non-EU neighbours. In 2016, the EU signed a deal with Turkey in exchange for £6 billion. President Erdoğan—that democrat—promised to stop Syrian refugees crossing the Turkish border into Greece and Bulgaria, and anyone found to have entered Greece was illegally deported to Turkey. The EU’s outsourcing of its migrant policy to, first, Colonel Gaddafi and, when he died, to warlords and militias or EU-funded Libyan detention centres has been a humanitarian disaster with torture and slavery at its heart. As it happens, Rwanda is not in that category, but I am always nervous about outsourcing to poor African countries that need the money; it seems unsavoury and cowardly. The reason these policies, which I feel avoid difficult problems, are greeted as they are by people is that they want something to be done. It equally avoids the problem and washes our hands of it to describe everyone in small boats as genuine refugees, and anyone who does not say that is seen as unkind. It also avoids the problem when you do not have an honest conversation about economic migration. It is equally cowardly and indulging in moral grandstanding to imply that “evil Tories” have turned into Nazis because they are actually putting forward a policy when no one knows what other policy to put forward. This does not help improve the level of debate about a very difficult situation.

Finally, and briefly, I support Motion D1, on the right to work, because it is ridiculous that we do not encourage people to have the right to work. In this instance, when the Government say that all claims should be settled within six months, I say to them: if they could get all the claims of the tens of thousands of people settled in a matter of months, we might not have a crisis where people say, “Bring in the Rwanda situation”. The claims go on and on for years and no one really trusts the processes to be done efficiently by Home Office civil servants in the background—no disrespect intended—so people sit around unproductively for years. For those who think that this would mean that they might undermine the wages and salaries of British citizens and workers, which is always a concern, let me tell noble Lords that, when they are sitting around for months and years, most are working but they are just working on the black market. That is perfectly legitimate because we will not let them work responsibly. Alternatively, if they are not working, they are sitting around doing nothing for years and years. That is not a very positive contribution to the UK, even if you are going to ask them to leave after their asylum status has been assessed eventually. I urge the Government, in this instance, to reconsider.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I feel it necessary to say a few words because I was the Member responsible for bringing the amendments on offshoring to the House’s attention. I do not intend to make another Second Reading speech, because this not Second Reading. I do not intend to repeat the speech I gave when I introduced amendments in Committee. I am still opposed to the whole question of offshoring, particularly to Rwanda, for the reasons I have already given. I believe that it is inappropriate, legally dubious and very expensive, and I do not believe that it will have the effect, as is argued, of deterring the traffickers who should be dealt with in a harsh manner.

The other end of this place has twice now made it very clear that it does not support the wisdom that has come from this House. There is a constitutional issue here. Ping-pong is what it is; I believe that the will of the other place will prevail. As we have argued so forcefully, the responsibility for these actions must be laid squarely now on the shoulders of our friends in the other place—the Conservative MPs in particular and the Government—and, on that basis, I rest my position.

Mr Mike Veale

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 7th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I note my noble friend’s comments. There is a process ongoing, and it would be wrong for me to opine on that process other than to say that it is ongoing. The Home Secretary has herself initiated a review into the IOPC, which will be commencing shortly, but I must stress that the police are operationally independent of the Home Office.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, if I may say so to the Minister, the sense of urgency from the House, in preference to what is happening in real life, is partly due to the police having created a mood of taking false allegations seriously and the undoing of that mood not being taken seriously. Does she recognise that those false allegations make it harder for real allegations to have credibility? That is why it is so important that this is not shoved down the road. In all seriousness, why are PCCs bringing in outside consultants and strategic advisers at any level? Would she at least tell us that this is a waste of time, part of a bureaucratic state and lack of responsibility and accountability?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I think the noble Baroness makes a very good point about false allegations. On the other hand, we must be mindful that allegations that are brought forward to the police must be thoroughly investigated. Clearly, there have been many convictions for non-recent child sex abuse. She asked me another question, which I cannot remember—

Live Facial Recognition: Police Guidance

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The Bridges case tested this; it went to the courts. As the noble Lord says, it is absolutely important that the police comply with the public sector equality duty to maintain that public confidence. There have been various tests for evidence of bias; SWP and the Met have found no evidence of bias in their algorithms.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we should remember that the reassurances from the Minister fall after we had a very lively debate in this House about the College of Policing’s guidance on non-crime hate incidents. Due to the campaigns of groups like Fair Cop, Free Speech Union and Big Brother Watch, the powers have now been rolled back; they were being abused and that was recognised. Is the Minister in any way worried about enabling guidance that gives the police huge powers to survey and criminalise non-crime harms of any sort, hate or otherwise? Secondly, the number of live facial recognition watchlists has gone up from 42 in 2017 to 5,000 now. Is that overreach, success or abuse? Who decides, when on those watchlists will be victims or witnesses?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I reassure the noble Baroness that the people who can be on watchlists include those wanted by the courts or subject to bail conditions or other restrictions that would be breached if they were at that location, as well as other suspects; and they may indeed include vulnerable people. If my relative was missing and I could avail of this technology, I would be very grateful for its use.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 31st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly, partly because the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was kind enough to refer to an earlier speech that I had made. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Russell, who have been able to move things forward in an acceptable way, but I think there comes a point where this House has to have very real regard for its constitutional position vis-à-vis the other place. We were justified in asking the other place to think again and, I believe, justified in asking it to think yet again.

I was approached last week by two Conservative Back-Benchers—I will not name them—and they were keen that we should give them another opportunity to think again, which we did. But the fact is that they have not thought again, not by a majority. Some may have changed their votes, but they did not change the position of the other place. It is my reluctant view, particularly on the noise issue, which I think is rather preposterous, that we should now yield to the other place, but if ever a Bill called for post-legislative scrutiny to examine closely how it plays out on the streets and in the public squares, this is it. I hope there will be a proper opportunity to keep these matters under review, but we should have a mind for our constitutional position, and have regard for the fact that we are not the elected House and there is a point beyond which we should not go.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right to raise the important point about our constitutional obligations. I am tentative about what I am going to say because I am anxious not to act in defiance of an elected Chamber, not just for constitutional reasons but because democracy is very valuable, and we should have modesty in relation to our role in this place. However, I do feel that, at the very least, the Government are obliged to untangle some serious confusion about why the legislation in relation to protest is even necessary.

When it was originally introduced, there were grandiose claims that this was the Government responding to public concerns—a real clamour from the public—about dealing with new forms of protest. It is true that there has been a lot of anger in the public realm about new forms of protest. Anybody who objected to the amendments tabled by the Government was dismissed as “ignoring voters’ concerns”—just by objecting, in effect, they were being anti-democratic. Yet now the Minister comes back here and suggests that, in relation to the noise trigger, for example, it is a just a modest update of the law and it will not be used very often. It seems to me that the original motivation for these clauses has been lost, and we have ended up with a disproportionate and unnecessary commitment by the Government to deal with a non-problem.

There is perhaps some confusion because earlier this week, as people will have read in the newspaper, a mum was banned from driving for what was described as “nudging” some Insulate Britain protesters. She was trying to get her 11 year-old to school and was exasperated that the protesters would not move, and that the police were not acting to remove them. There was some popular backlash to the fact that this driver was the person who was prosecuted, and at a meeting I talked to people who said, “Well, the mum is not guilty of dangerous driving. The problem here was the failure of the police to police the protest.” They went on to say, “At least the Government are acting and bringing in a new law that will deal with this sort of thing.” When I explained the nature of the new laws that were being brought in, in relation to noise and static assemblies, they said, “What’s the good of that? That won’t deal with the problem of the mum and the motorway and the protester”, and they are right.

Despite reservations, I support the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Paddick, in the amended amendments that they have brought back, taking on board the modest comments that have been made. I think that these anti-protest clauses are being mis-sold to the public, who, when it is explained to them, do not see any connection between their clamour and these clauses being brought in by the Government.

If there is an issue with protest, it is possibly that the police have not consistently policed protests that have happened over the last few years with the powers that they have, and there is public concern about that. It seems to me that both these clauses, as illustrated by the points made from the Front Bench, will make the police’s job even more complicated and will compromise them politically because they will be accused of subjective interpretations of what is “too noisy” and what is the threat of a static demonstration. I think the Government will inadvertently help to politicise the police, and make the situation of protests more confusing, and they are not doing what I think they originally wanted to do, which was to assure the public that their concerns about new forms of protest would be honoured in legislation. These parts of the Bill do nothing useful for anyone.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I do think that we ought to consider carefully what my noble friend Lord Cormack said, but it might lead one to a different conclusion. This House is increasingly treated as if it does not really matter at all. The Government are not taking seriously very simple suggestions, when making them is our job—suggestions to make Acts work properly. Today we have had an example of what the Government can do. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Russell, put that extremely well. The Government have recognised that the sensible, continuous pressure of the House of Lords has brought them to make alterations—not exactly as the noble Lord would like, but a good way in that direction. It is notable that it has taken us all this time to do it.

What worries me—I say to my noble friend Lord Cormack that this is a serious constitutional matter—is that the deal works only if the House of Lords believes that its debates and discussions are useful and taken into account by government. What I have seen here is wholly different. This is nothing to do with my noble friend Lady Williams; it is to do with the Government as a whole. When I was Secretary of State, I would say to my Lords Minister, “These are the five things I need. Those are the 10 things I’d like to have, but if their Lordships produce good arguments for other things, then you must give way to them, because that is the purpose”. What Lords Minister today is able to do that? Yet that was the deal; that was why we were here. This is a really serious issue. It is no good the Government saying in the end, “Well, we’ll just use the majority in the House of Commons to shut you up”, when the arguments we have been bringing forward are not great arguments of state or great arguments which clash; they are about making the law work.

The other change that has taken place in the House of Commons is that Members there do not debate these Bills any longer. They do not have the hours that we used to have. When I was a Member of that House, we used to have to have 100 hours of debate before you could get a guillotine. Now we do not have to have anything like that; guillotines are automatic. So if this House does not do its job and discuss these things in detail, they will not be discussed at all. That is the constitutional issue we face today.

I will address only the one thing which I think is very clear. It is incomprehensible to have a law which gives the police the right to stop a protest because it might be too noisy. The Notes of course make it ludicrous. I am very worried about the domestic arrangements of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, if the only thing he can discuss with his wife is the laws as presented by this Government. If I started to discuss those with my wife, I think my domestic arrangements would be very unsuitable. I merely say that the reason you go on a protest is to draw attention to something. The noble Lord rightly said, and I think I said it myself when I intervened previously, that the more popular the cause, the more likely it is that there will be noise. If I had a protest about the unfair treatment of chihuahuas, I might not get many people with me and I probably would not be stopped—but a protest on, for example, the unsatisfactory dealings with Ukrainians coming to this country might raise huge numbers. Do the chihuahuas get a campaign but the Ukrainians do not—and who makes that decision?