Public Order Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). I rise to support a range of amendments—amendments 1, 2, 11 and 12, new clauses 9, 11 and 13 to 16, and most of those that stand in the names of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin). I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for her continuing campaign on this issue, and the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for the eloquence with which she spoke on it.

I believe that we should consider carefully the implications of any piece of legislation for our constituents. We must ask ourselves who will be affected, and how? I will discuss specifically how the Bill will have a dramatic effect on my constituents. In my constituency there has been a 40-year campaign against Heathrow expansion, particularly against the third runway. According to the airport itself, 4,000 homes will be either demolished or rendered unliveable as a result of air and noise pollution. Ten thousand people will lose their homes. There is a history of peaceful protest against this by my constituents. Their protests have involved demonstrating noisily, linking arms, marching, sitting down to block the roads into Heathrow and blocking the tunnel into Heathrow. They have involved camping in the local field with Climate Camp, and yes, they have involved training in locking on, to ensure that if someone’s home is threatened with demolition, they can lock themselves to the home.

Yes, the existing law has been used against my constituents, and people have taken it on the chin. The existing law has proved to be effective in many ways in ensuring that people understand the law and know when they cross the limit of the law. I remind the House that there are also specific laws relating to airports.

This campaign demonstrated to me how the democratic process, both inside and outside Parliament, works effectively, because it was successful. It persuaded the Conservative party to change its policy, and the party’s then leader, Mr Cameron, to say:

“No ifs, no buts, no third runway.”

We were disappointed when he later caveated that, saying that the commitment would last for only one Parliament. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that peaceful demonstration in support of the campaign actually did change Government policy, and I believe that it reinforced people’s appreciation of our democratic system.

The threat of a third runway has not gone away. The new discussions taking place on various Benches mean that people are now planning a new wave of protests to protect their homes. In fact, it has gone beyond a nimby campaign, because it is now also about tackling the climate change emergency that is happening now.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I entirely share the right hon. Gentleman’s commitment and his opposition to a third runway at Heathrow, but does he acknowledge that the reason the campaign has succeeded is the intelligent and appropriate use of the legal process, through a series of injunctions and challenges brought by the London Borough of Hillingdon, rather than the protests around Heathrow airport itself?

[John McDonnell]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman to a certain extent. I congratulate Hillingdon Council, which has worked on a cross-party basis, and commend it for the work it has done with other local authorities of all political parties. I do not think, however, that the legal process was sufficient. What changed the minds of politicians— of David Cameron and the Conservative party—was the mobilisation of mass demonstrations and mass public support. I had been campaigning on the issue for 30 years before we saw that shift in policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Olivia Blake]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention, and I absolutely agree. We know that women sometimes have to travel very far to get access to this sort of healthcare, so of course this will impact more women at certain clinics.

Before getting into the subject of the Bill, I wish to highlight the economic context in which this is being played out, because it is directly related to why the Bill is being proposed in the first place. For more than a decade, the austerity agenda has led to stagnating wages and declining conditions at work, and it has weakened the fundamentals of our economy. Researchers at the University of Glasgow recently found that the Government’s scorched earth economic policy contributed to 330,000 excess deaths between 2010 and 2019. After the massive transfer of incomes, resources and wealth from the poorest to the richest in our society, we were left in no condition to weather a pandemic and the subsequent soaring cost of living.

In September’s financial statement, although it has been massively U-turned on, the Government succeeded in turning the cost of living crisis into a run on the pound. Now it is as though we have turned the clock back to 2010, with the new Chancellor telling us that he will have to make eye-watering decisions about spending. The cycle continues: we are facing austerity all over again. The services our communities rely on will be hit hard.

The problems at the core of the stagnation and crises are underinvestment, profiteering and the chasms of inequality and divide in our society. But rather than fixing those, Government Front Benchers seem intent on making them worse, which is exactly why they need this Bill. If wages keep being cut and the services that people rely on are dismantled, they will express their opposition to that through protests, strikes and direct action.

The recent spy cops Act, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and now this Bill are all about reducing the rights of people to come together to give a collective voice to their dissent—and that is without mentioning the attacks on the right to organise in our workplaces and to take industrial action to defend pay and conditions. Like any paranoid authoritarian measure to curb dissent, some of the proposals in the Bill are completely ridiculous. I have a staff member who rides a bike to work and carries a bike lock. Is she “equipped to lock-on”? How will police gauge whether she intends to use it to commit an offence? Some of the wording in the Bill is so loose it could apply to everything and anything. What does “locking-on” actually mean? Could linking arms be locking-on? What does it mean to cause “serious disruption”?

I am concerned that the real reason for the loose wording is to create a chilling effect on any kind of dissent at all. That is reflected in the serious disruption prevention orders. The right to protest is a human right. The idea of banning individuals from attending a demonstration regardless of whether they have committed a crime is draconian. Just think about who that would have applied to in our history. Think of Millicent Fawcett, whose statue stands in that square outside, looking up at this building. Would I be standing here today if women such as her had not had the right to protest? The Government do not seem particularly keen on elections right now. Perhaps the Home Secretary would be dishing out these SDPOs to the Chartists or the Pankhursts, or other uppity troublemakers.

I think this Bill is rotten to the core, but I will be supporting all the amendments that seek to curb its excesses and to prevent it from cracking down on our right to voice opposition. I will be opposing the proposals to extend stop-and-search powers—powers that have already done so much damage to communities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) mentioned. We do not need this legislation. What we need is a Government who address the real causes of peoples’ concerns: the cost of living crisis, the climate crisis and the lack of trust in our democratic institutions. The draconian proposals we are debating today are about equipping this Government to do the exact opposite.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I wish to start by expressing my strong support for the provisions that the Bill brings forward. In my life before Parliament, as a local councillor and as a magistrate, I had cause to engage with many of the issues the Bill seeks to address. It seems to me that on the whole it is a sensible and proportionate way of bringing forward new police powers and new laws to ensure that our constituents lives’ are not unduly and unfairly disrupted.

In particular, I wish to place on the record my thanks to constituents, such as the late Roy Parsons, who over the years have contributed a huge amount to law and order in the community. Their efforts have helped to illuminate my thinking as a Member of Parliament about how some of these challenges need to be addressed.

My constituency is very much a place of commuters, with people travelling to work by road, rail and bus. I am conscious that especially for those who are part of the lifeblood of the economy of our capital the disruption that has been caused to their lives by protests that seek to test existing laws to the very limits is considerable. There is a cost to people’s businesses and people’s jobs, and it creates a great deal of nuisance for those seeking to attend hospital appointments and, in some cases, to respond to emergencies. It is therefore absolutely right that the Government listen to the voice of the law-abiding people who are part of the lifeblood of our capital city and seek to address the changing tactics that we have seen from protesters over the years.

I was struck by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), who was absolutely right to refer to the plethora—the patchwork—of existing laws. The challenge I have heard about—not least from those responsible for leading policing in the capital and in my local area—is that there is often not the required specific power available as protest groups seek to change and update their tactics. I listened to the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and I am sure that he recalls the moves by a particular organisation to sell single square feet of space in a field adjacent to Heathrow airport, with a view to using the due process of law to frustrate the legal processes that were being gone through at the time in the context of Heathrow expansion. Although I agree entirely with the purpose, it is absolutely right that that should have been frustrated. We have seen those tactics beginning to create disruption in what should be a legal and democratic decision-making process, so introducing proposals that update the law in the light of those changes, in my view, is absolutely spot on.

Let me address new clause 11, which I intend to support in the House today. My experience has been of issues relating to the existing legislation, particularly the ability of local authorities to obtain public space protection orders or to use other provisions that are out there. It is extremely costly and often very complex and fraught with legal difficulty to follow those processes. That is why, following occasions in the House when we debate creating provisions that we expect to be used, for example, by local authorities, they are often little used in practice. We need to ensure, if we are taking seriously the issue of an unacceptable degree of harassment, that we put in place provisions that will deal with that properly and effectively.

I am very sympathetic to many of the points that have been made on the pro-life side of the argument, but I take the view that, whatever we think about the detail of the abortion debate, it is absolutely right that we ensure that all our citizens are properly protected from the harassment that may take place. There are some issues with the drafting of what has been proposed, in that we want to ensure that appropriate, lawful interventions that are helpful to people can take place. I will support the new clause, however, and I hope that the Government will perhaps in due course consider the weight of opinion that appears to be being expressed in the House and ensure that that finds its ultimate expression in a way that works to provide appropriate, lawful and proportionate protection to women in that context.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

Following on from my hon. Friend’s argument, for which I have some sympathy, does he agree that perhaps there should be a buffer zone around this place? Many of us in this place are often—on a daily basis—harassed by people out there.

[David Simmonds]

My hon. Friend knows of what he speaks. There are many Members who have been subject to the very strong expression of political opinions, but what differentiates this point is that we are talking about people who go to undertake a legal, lawful medical procedure. They go to access a form of healthcare that the laws of this land, established by this Parliament, determine that they should be able to access. Although it is absolutely right that people should be able to engage in peaceful protest to make points to those of us who are engaged in the democratic process of the land—sometimes including noisy, disruptive protests—that should clearly never cross the line that existing laws establish, which would cover such things as assault and appropriate protection. However, it is absolutely clear, in my view, that we need to ensure that those who are accessing healthcare can do so without having that lawful access unduly interfered with.

Let me finish by referring to the amendments and points that have been raised on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am a member of that Committee, which spent time looking at not just this Bill, but a wide range of legislation, setting that against expectations that might be found in relation to the UK’s membership of the European convention on human rights. There is always debate in the legal profession about how provisions apply, but the points that have been raised seem legitimate. I hope that in his reply the Minister will address how due process and the right to lawful protest will be appropriately balanced under the Bill.

My view as a Back-Bench Member in the governing party, having considered the Government’s arguments, is that they are proportionate and balanced. However, it is clear that many people are asking questions and want them answered. It would be helpful if some of the legal thinking behind the drafting were illuminated, particularly with respect to balancing the need to prevent undue disruption to people’s normal working and private lives with the rights of others to enjoy free speech and lawful protest.