Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Indeed the Minister can heckle me from a seated position, but it does not make him right. Under the provisions in this Bill, protesters could be criminalised if the police determine that they are too noisy. We have suggested amendments, and the Lords have done the same. Conservative Members have expressed significant disquiet at the timing of such a draconian intervention. Why on earth is the Home Secretary pushing ahead with plans to stop protests that make noise? The police have never asked for these provisions, and I doubt they would ever use them. The public did not ask for them, and Members from the Home Secretary’s own party did not call for them.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the measures give legitimacy to the secret police—or the open police—who are basically bundling up those in Moscow who protest against Putin’s brutal war? This is playing into the hands of Putin. Does she also agree that the proposals will effectively stop picketing as a legal and legitimate means of protest in trade disputes? It is despicable.

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. At this significant historical moment when millions of people across the world are protesting against what is happening in Ukraine, we need, as mother of all Parliaments, to protect our right to protest.

The Minister said that we need to get the balance right, and of course that is true. There are laws already in place to manage protests to make sure they legitimately allow people to go about their business. We are talking tonight about protests being too noisy. [Interruption.] The Minister is heckling about the Labour amendments on harassment and intimidation outside schools and vaccination centres. That was about harassment and intimidation; it is not about noise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Geraint, you will have to sit down at 7.50.

[Geraint Davies]

I have just come back from Lithuania. Hundreds of women have escaped to there, having lost their democracy as a result of Putin’s bombing and his oppressing his people at home. At the same time, we have a situation in Hong Kong where democracy is being taken away. Yet here we are taking away the right to peaceful protest, which has given us the suffragettes, climate change activists, peace campaigners and trade unions. This horrific bit of legislation will completely undermine the right of trade unionists to picket, at a difficult time in our economic evolution; it is purely terrible and it should not be brought forward. It is completely unnecessary, it will be very damaging to trade union relationships and it will drive protests underground, which, taken alongside the right for covert intelligence agents to act above the law, may lead to unintended consequences and will put the public at risk. Democracy and our public are at risk from this dreadful Bill, and it should be reversed as quickly as possible.

[Kit Malthouse]

It is traditional to express gratitude to Members for contributing to a debate, but after that nonsense, I am afraid that I cannot unequivocally offer that.

I welcome the support across the House for the amendments in lieu on food crime. I am afraid that amendment (c)—which was tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy)—in lieu of Lords amendment 72B is unnecessary and misdirected, despite her attempts to patronise me. It is unnecessary because, as I said, the Government have already committed to collecting the data that is described and they have additionally committed to consulting on a new public sexual harassment offence before the summer recess. It is misdirected because the Government’s original amendment responds directly to a specific recommendation of the Law Commission. Furthermore, our commitment to consult on a public sexual harassment offence speaks to another Law Commission recommendation that we explore the merits of such an offence, as well as the significant attention to that issue in our previous debates. I take into account the entreaties from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) to go faster and harder on this matter.

By contrast, the idea of contemplating that any additional new offence addresses

“intimidatory offences aggravated by sex or gender”

is untethered to any particular rationale or proper discussion to date. In fact, I would go further in saying that we need to move away from the preoccupation with hate crime laws. I was struck by the words of Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws in the other place:

“Most men do not hate women, but somehow from boyhood they breathe in this sense of entitlement”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 March 2022; Vol. 820, c. 797.]

However, Lords amendment 58B focuses not on addressing that entitlement, but on hostility—the legal test for hate crimes. The broader point by the Law Commission is that the concept is naturally unsuited to confronting the widespread and abhorrent behaviour most often directed against women and girls. Hate crime laws instead turn on those visceral occasions that befit the word “hatred”, such as a racial slur uttered during a crime.

The fact that hate crime legal models are poorly attuned to the sorts of behaviour that we want to tackle was put very well by Rape Crisis in the Law Commission’s report, which said of crimes against women and girls that

“these crimes are rooted in power and control, not hatred, making the gender/sex an ill-fitting protected characteristic in the hate crime framework.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) made the same point in the last debate on this matter.

The point is that we need to think carefully about the right model for the particular problem that we want to address. An entirely bespoke solution, which addresses the root drivers of this behaviour, is more likely to succeed. The alternative, as proposed in Lords amendment 58B, is an offence that is poorly targeted and consequently never used, so let us now do the proper groundwork—I give an undertaking that we will do that—in identifying the right legal solution to the particular nature of these crimes. I hope that all Opposition Members will contribute to the consultation that we have committed to introducing before the recess. We are already exploring whether a public sexual harassment offence is that solution, and that is what the Law Commission also spoke about.

On the Lords amendments relating to public order, we have heard yet again the ridiculously misconceived claims that are peddled about these amendments. The Public Order Act has always sought to balance the right to peaceful protest with the rights of others to go about their daily lives. All we are doing is a modest updating of a legal framework that is more than 35 years old—I thought that would have been supported by the party who banned any protest within a kilometre and a half of Parliament—and does not reflect the realities of policing protests in the third decade of the 21st century.

To suggest that any amount of noise and disruption is acceptable is saying to the British public, adversely affected by a protest, that their rights do not matter and that they should just put up with it. Their rights do matter. Of course, we must accept that protests can be disruptive and cause inconvenience, but a line must be drawn somewhere, and the provisions in the Bill simply enable the police to draw that line where it becomes necessary and proportionate to place restrictions on a protest to protect the rights of others.

It is more than a year since the Bill was introduced. It has been thoroughly debated and scrutinised by both Houses. The unelected and, as I said, partially hereditary House has exercised its right to ask us to consider certain matters again. We have done so once already. We should again send these amendments back to the Lords, and that House should now accept the will of this democratically elected House and let the Bill pass.

Question put, That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment 58 and proposes amendments (a) to (c) in lieu.

A Division was called.