Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 31st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments C1 and D1. As usual, I really enjoyed the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, because he drew attention to the fact that the Bill is badly written. We knew that when it arrived, which is why it has had so many amendments here in your Lordships’ House. It is still badly written, and it is our duty not to let badly written Bills through. They lay themselves open to court cases and all sorts of potential miscarriages of justice. I personally think that the Government are holding this House in contempt, and that is why they produce so many badly written Bills. Because they have a huge majority in the other place, they can afford not to care about how the Bills are written or about their content.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, also said that he did not think the Government were trying to suppress protest. I do not agree with him there, because I think they are. Protests are expensive in terms of police time and clearing up afterwards. They are very disruptive and are almost always anti-Government, so why would the Government not try to suppress them? But they are necessary for free speech and a necessary part of our democratic process. I love demonstrations because they are a chance to meet people who agree with me, which is sometimes a rarity.

Not only is this Bill an assault on freedom of speech and democracy, it clearly should not be passed. It is badly written, and it has bad content. You cannot have a vague and wide-ranging definition of which protests are likely to be too noisy or disruptive. It will be a subjective judgment made by police officers with their own biases. Do not forget that: police officers are human beings as well, and they will have innate biases. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the police do not even want these powers anyway. Those of us who believe in clear laws that can be challenged in court do not want them either.

I have been elected five times—once to Southwark Council under first past the post and four times to the London Assembly under proportional representation—so I understand what it is to have a democratic mandate. I understand to some extent the Government’s point of view, who feel they have a big mandate and the right to push things through, but I also understand that this unelected Chamber has a mandate of another kind. Although I love being here, I am not happy about being part of an unelected Chamber; it offends me deeply and I would like it to be abolished so we have an elected Chamber. However, we have a mandate to look at legislation and improve it where we can. As other noble Lords have said, the Government are not listening to us; they do not take into account the expertise—I do not count myself among the experts—that we have here. They do not listen to us.

To protect civil liberties, we have to send this Bill back. I have been assured by a few who have been in this House for decades that ping-pong used to last much longer and that Bills got sent back again and again until this House was happy that legislation was expressed properly and clearly. We really should ask MPs to look at this again and think about whether this is good for democracy in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said we should stop and look at it later. No: let us get it right now.