All 1 Christine Jardine contributions to the Public Order Act 2023

Read Bill Ministerial Extracts

Tue 7th Mar 2023
Public Order Bill
Commons Chamber

Consideration of Lords amendments

Public Order Bill Debate

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Department: Home Office

Public Order Bill

Christine Jardine Excerpts
Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th March 2023

(1 year, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 7 March 2023 - (7 Mar 2023)
Rupa Huq Portrait Dr Huq
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I want to carry on for a minute, actually.

Some of the tactics that such people employ include live-streaming, filming and uploading to Facebook, despite there sometimes being a violent ex-partner in the background. I do not disagree with praying or informing, as I think people call it, but there is a time and a place for everything. That informing should take place at the GP surgery down the line.

The hon. Member for Northampton South said that the police are being made into a laughing stock, but our police in Ealing welcome the measure because it frees them from patrolling two different groups outside the clinic, so they can fight real crime. There is real crime out there.

Anyone should be able to use medical services without navigating an obstacle course of people trying to impose their view of what is right on the process to dissuade and deter. Even the reviled Iranian regime got rid of its morality police, so why do we allow them here?

Christine Jardine Portrait Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
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The hon. Member is making a good and powerful point. Several people have written to me about the Bill with varying views. Does she agree that there is a huge contradiction in people saying, “We have a right to protest in buffer zones,” yet denying women the freedom of choice for themselves? At that point, it is not protesting but bullying and harassment. That is the difference.

Rupa Huq Portrait Dr Huq
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I completely agree. These things are always subjective, so someone might say, “I’m just praying. I’ve just got some rosary beads,” but the woman seeking the treatment is traumatised for life. It is often a traumatic experience in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---
John Hayes Portrait Sir John Hayes
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I do not know how often my hon. Friend prays—maybe more often than I do, although my need to do so is probably greater—but he must understand that prayer does two things: it sends a message, one hopes, to the Almighty; and it provides solace for the person praying. So the person praying outside the clinic may well be sending a message, but that message is just as likely to be transcendental as to be intended for any individual in proximity.

The idea that we should interrupt the relationship between an individual and their God seems to me to be pretty monstrous, particularly as amendment (a) states specifically that any activity, communication or prayer shall not influence any person’s decision or, more especially, instruct or impede any person. This is not about interfering with another. Rather, it is about expressing a view to oneself, to the Lord and perhaps to others; but that could surely be said of any prayer at any time. Are we going to arrest people in other public places? Once this is allowed and the police are permitted to apprehend people for what they think and what they are praying about, why not arrest them in other public places? Why does this have to apply only to abortion clinics? Once we open this door, why would the police not arrest people outside mosques or temples, or in any other public space where they are praying to illustrate an opinion—or indeed, as I have said, to express it not horizontally but vertically, to a greater power above us?

Christine Jardine Portrait Christine Jardine
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This is an extremely important point. I do not think anyone in this House wants to restrict anyone’s right to pray, but we are trying to differentiate here and consider the impact of that action on the women who are going in for a very traumatic experience. Many of them will be grieving and many will have been through a traumatic experience to get them to this point, only to then be presented with someone telling them that what they are doing is wrong, increasing that trauma. Regardless of the intention of the person praying, which I would defend forever, the impact on the women is the problem.

John Hayes Portrait Sir John Hayes
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But in a free society the impact we make on others by our sentiments, by what we do, say and, indeed, by what we pray about, is the inevitable consequence of the openness that I would have thought all of us in this place would celebrate. In this case, the amendment states specifically that we should not influence or obstruct, but the more general context in which we are having this debate is a world in which the ability to express a view that others might find offensive or unreasonable is being curbed every single day as our freedom is being eroded, and all the things we hold dear put at risk.