Public Order Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, who is this Bill addressed to? I know how I would answer that question, and my noble friend Lord Paddick has already referred to culture wars. I have no doubt that the Government have identified the audience to which they want to appeal, but that audience is not the potential offenders. If the Government are seeking to deter offenders, is this really the way to go about it? Is it not obvious that many lockers-on and serious disruptors seek publicity? Well, they will get it. Portraying oneself as a victim, even as a martyr, is a well-known tactic. Increased media coverage consolidates this; it is a big bonus.

Will these measures be divisive? Will they confirm some people’s views that the measures are an unnecessary sledgehammer; in other words, will the measures mean increased support for the protests and provoke more extreme forms of action? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, mentioned unintended consequences.

Some tactics used by some protesters do not appeal to me. I have been inconvenienced and had an immediate reaction—“This is simply not on”—but I have to remember that we are in a country where views can be made known, by the protesters in question and by me, by an accident of history. On one side of my family, I am only three generations away from being geographically in a country where my family would have experienced great brutality—I probably would not have been born—and, on the other, only two generations away from a regime that still exists now. These are extreme examples, but noble Lords will be well aware of contemporary examples too. It is an accident of history for us all that we are in the UK, and how precious—a word that has been used but deserves repetition—it is to be able to make our views known. That was not something I appreciated when growing up, although I went to the same school as the Pankhurst sisters. Suffragettes have been mentioned, and I thought about them because there is such a whiff of cat and mouse in the circularity of some of the measures in the Bill.

I support what has been said and will be said about these precious freedoms, and oppose the Bill on the grounds that have been well described—including that the statute book is hardly silent on the actions the Bill covers—but also because I just do not think it will achieve the objective of deterrence.

Public Order Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I will come back to the noble Lord on that.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

If the Minister is going to come back to my noble friend, could he do so in this Chamber? That question is absolutely fundamental to the discussion on the Bill. To have the answer in writing, available in the Library if one goes to look for it, is in our view not adequate.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

This is Committee, so we are allowed this sort of debate. I want to reinforce what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said about Section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. It says:

“A person commits an offence if … the person … does an act, or … omits to do an act that they are required to do by any enactment or rule of law … the person’s act or omission … obstructs the public or a section of the public in the exercise or enjoyment of a right that may be exercised or enjoyed by the public at large, and … the person intends that their act or omission will have a consequence mentioned in paragraph (b)”.


That covers, completely and perfectly, the people on the gantry of the QEII Bridge. The maximum sentence for that activity is up to 10 years in prison. None of the provisions in this Bill goes anywhere near 10 years in prison. Why do the Government not rely on existing legislation rather than creating all these other offences?

Public Order Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, and completely agree with him that the Government have not made the case for any of the provisions in the Bill.

I agree with many of the points that other noble Lords have already made in this debate on all sides of the House. The Government should take note of the strength of feeling, particularly among the influential Members of the Cross Benches, who are opposing the provisions in the Bill and are likely to persuade their colleagues to vote with them against it on Report if we do not have sufficient clarity and answers to the proper questions that many Members of the House have put to the Ministers but to which they have not received answers today.

I will not repeat what I have already said, particularly in relation to the first group. I am grateful to Liberty for its briefing on the Bill. Based on that briefing, I say that case law confirms that we have a right to choose how we protest, and the diversity of protest tactics throughout history demonstrates the deeply interconnected nature of free expression, creativity and dissent. The offence of locking on under Clause 1 not only defies those principles but criminalises an innumerable list of activities—not only what we would typically understand as lock-on protest, where people lock themselves to one another via a lock-on device or chain themselves to Parliament, but any activities involving people attaching themselves to other people or to an object or land, or attaching objects to other objects and land.

The Government claim that the wording of this offence is sufficiently precise to be foreseeable and that the provisions are in accordance with the law. As noble Lords will have noted from discussions on previous groups, I disagree. I am concerned that the offence under Clause 1 risks disproportionately interfering with individuals’ rights under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said on a previous group, the broad and vague nature of “attach”, which is not defined in the Bill, means that this offence could catch people engaged in activities such as linking arms with one another, or locking their wheelchairs to traffic lights. The recurring themes throughout our debates today have been the risk of disproportionality and the risk of uncertainty.

As I have stated before, this proposal is not supported by the police. When consulted on a similar proposal by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, police respondents said:

“most interviewees [junior police officers] did not wish to criminalise protest actions through the creation of a specific offence concerning locking-on.”

Even the police are against it.

Turning to the new offence of being equipped for locking on, I reiterate my concerns that the vague and potentially unlimited list of activities covered by this offence are exacerbated by the ambiguity of the drafting of Clause 2. I note that the object in the offence of locking on does not have to be related to protest at all. It must simply be established that a person intended it to be used in a certain way. Nor does the object have to be used by the person who had it in their possession. The offence refers to

“the commission by any person of an offence”.

The phrase

“in the course of or in connection with”

casts an extremely wide net as to what activities might be criminalised under the offence. So wide is the net cast by this clause that effectively any person walking around with a bike lock, a packet of glue, a roll of tape or any number of other everyday objects could be at risk of being found to have committed this offence. As we have heard, the possibilities are endless. It is also significant that, unlike the substantive offence of locking on, there is no reasonable excuse defence in the wording of this offence, which means that individuals will find it even more difficult to challenge.

The Just Stop Oil movement has called off its protests because too many of its members are behind bars under existing legislation—particularly the favourite of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, Section 79 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. If current legislation has effectively put a stop to the disruptive Just Stop Oil protests, why on earth do we need this Bill?

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, as we now have both Ministers on the Front Bench, I will repeat the point I made earlier about explanations being made in the Chamber. I will add a sentence to what I said before about explanations being given in writing, by letters to individual Members of the House, generally copied to other interested Members: they kind of float though and one loses a grip on how much has been answered. Explanations that are part of the justification for a piece of legislation are not easily available to those who need to know them. We have a parliamentary website with a webpage for each piece of legislation. That is where people will go to see what the debate has been on particular amendments and how amendments have changed as a Bill has progressed. That is where they should be able to see the answers that Ministers were not able to give at the time when a matter was raised. Either through Hansard or some other mechanism, these answers should be lodged on the public record, and they have to be given in the Chamber in order to progress. This is immensely important, and I am making the point here because it is on the point of principle that other noble Lords have spoken about on this group.

Public Order Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend and to be educated by him.

I speak in support of the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Farmer and those listed on the Marshalled List. I should reiterate at the outset, lest anyone be in any doubt, that I do not take a position on abortion per se. However, as a disabled person I take a position on equality and, I am afraid to say, absolutely object to human beings diagnosed with my condition—brittle bones—being denied their equal right to grow up to be strong women and men on account of their diagnosis. That those who supposedly champion equality can reconcile such a claim with such lethal disability discrimination is something I will never understand.

My reason for speaking in support of Amendment 98 is not dissimilar. For me, as a disabled person in particular, Clause 9 simply does not make any sense. It is perhaps worth remembering that Christians were prepared to be torn limb from limb by lions in defence of their faith, so the idea that some will not see this as an opportunity to take a stand and go to prison for their beliefs, and to bear witness to freedom of conscience, as other noble Lords have mentioned, strikes me as completely unreal. For me to pretend that this is not an inevitable outcome of Clause 9 would be the height of naivety; of course they will do so.

For me, the question is twofold. First, as other noble Lords have touched on, is this really what we want? Do we really want to put the state in the wholly invidious position of locking people up for exercising their freedom of conscience when their only crime would be to bear witness to the serious belief that two hearts beating equates to two lives, interdependent and interconnected but no less individual for that? Since when has that been a crime? I thought it was a medical fact that a beating heart was a giveaway sign of a live human being, and the absence of a human heartbeat, conversely, a clear indication of death. I suggest that the state does not want to go anywhere near Clause 9 and would be much better off conducting a review, as set out in Amendment 98.

Secondly, there is another party in this debate which I suggest has no interest in this clause becoming law: those who support abortion. After all, why risk making martyrs of one’s opponents? We should be in no doubt that, if passed into law, this clause will deserve to be known as the “own goal clause”, because that is precisely what would result: a spectacular own goal. I spent all my career before I came to your Lordships’ House campaigning, much of it in the charity sector, and I would never in a million years have advised any of the organisations for which I worked to pursue such a counterintuitive, counterproductive strategy as Clause 9 encapsulates. No matter how passionately one believes in the clause, giving your opponents both the moral high ground and the oxygen of publicity—because the media will inevitably cover the story of people going to prison for their beliefs—simply does not make sense. It is surely what is known as a lose-lose situation. I wholeheartedly support this pragmatic, common-sense amendment as a way out of the minefield created by Clause 9.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 93A in this group. In the spirit of scrutiny, I wondered what “an abortion clinic” and “abortion services” actually meant. To me they include professional counselling which puts both sides of an issue and all the options. I say that because it seems as if we have got into a rather binary state where this is just about the abortion procedure.

I am convinced that there is a serious problem for women attending some clinics who are seeking an abortion. I am also aware of how activities can move around geographically. I understand that there is not a problem now with the activities that we have been talking about outside places where abortions do not take place but counselling does. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, said, activities have moved to new sites; she mentioned one that has been affected for the first time in many years. My amendment is to raise that issue, bothered that what is a problem now could be displaced and become a problem elsewhere. Obviously it is probing the position, but as we are seeking to tackle this, we should do so comprehensively.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I am in general opposed to those of the amendments which are designed to reduce the impact of Clause 9. As I said at Second Reading, I support the concept of buffer zones around abortion clinics. Of course I accept the two propositions eloquently expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox: first, that the right to demonstrate and freely express views is of great importance in a democratic society; and secondly, that the provisions of Clause 9, as many of your Lordships have articulated, impose serious restrictions on such abilities. But again, as I said at Second Reading, these rights are not absolute. They have to be balanced with the rights of others, and the correct balance is often not easy to identify and can be the subject of legitimate disagreement—it usually is. However, in the context of abortion clinics, Clause 9 gets the balance about right.

I will identify occasions where the balance falls the other way: in favour of the demonstrator. Some of your Lordships will think that the examples are trivial. I have often hosted meets for our local hunts, both before the ban and after it; after the ban, our local hunt acts fully within the law. The saboteurs come and demonstrate, and they are often very tiresome. However, provided they operate within the law, I would not for one moment seek to ban them. There is another example. Pacifists sometimes demonstrate outside military recruitment offices. I disagree with that and think it is wrong in principle, but again it would never occur to me to seek to prohibit that activity.

The motives of those demonstrators and those who demonstrate outside abortion clinics have something in common. It is not that they are just expressing their own opinions, which of course they are absolutely entitled to do, but they are trying to induce a change of attitude on the part of others. It is when I come to those who protest outside abortion clinics that I am conscious of why the balance tips. Those who attend abortion clinics have come to a very painful and serious decision, and often an anguished one. I think it is very wrong to subject them to what is often intemperate bullying of an extremely nasty kind.