Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, my objection to the noise provisions, in addition to the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Paddick, is the complete uncertainty of the concepts the Government wish to introduce into legislation. What level of noise is unacceptable, what level of disruption is unacceptable, and how will the organisers of a protest control the noise generated by the people demonstrating? What are they supposed to do in these circumstances? Enacting legislation of this sort will inevitably cause problems for the police, raise expectations that cannot be met and—I declare my interest as a practising barrister—undoubtedly lead to prolonged and expensive litigation that will result in the conditions being overturned.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, on the first Sunday after the invasion of Ukraine, I joined the protestors in Trafalgar Square. They were peaceful but noisy. It may well be that there were some minor oligarchs—maybe even friends of the Prime Minister—living in those new and very expensive penthouses overlooking the square, and I would like to think that they were annoyed. Unfortunately, I suspect that they have double glazing. However, the right to protest and to cause a degree of annoyance to a few people is surely something that Ukrainians would be amazed we were even thinking of curtailing.

I absolutely believe the Minister when she says that the Government have no intention of curbing that right, but this will be on the statute book if we allow it to go through, and not every Government might be quite as benevolent as the one we are currently living with. For that reason alone, we should absolutely support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. It is extraordinary that we are even contemplating this. It is like the Elections Bill. These are clauses which we are promised will be used in only the most innocuous of fashions. However, they give power to future Administrations to do things that none of us in this Chamber, or indeed at the other end, would like to see happen. For that reason alone, we should just say no—and what is more, we should say no time after time.