Public Order Act 2023

James Daly Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree with the point that the right hon. Lady is making on behalf of the people of Wales who are affected by this Act.

The point about innocent bystanders—

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

I want to finish this point, if that is okay with the hon. Member.

Ms Chambers, an Australian national, says that she has lived in the UK for seven years and was told she would face no further action by the police, but she does not yet know exactly what impact this will have on her right to live in the UK, because her arrest on suspicion of a criminal offence will remain on her record on the police national computer, and she is required to make an application supported by evidence to have the record removed. I ask the Minister, what happens to people in these circumstances? This could affect many people under question who would have the right to remain in the UK. I know of people who have gone through a red light or committed some other minor offence and have not been not allowed to stay, so somebody arrested under this Act could well find that that has a negative impact on their ability to stay in the UK.

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[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The people who were on PCS demonstrations in my constituency a few weeks ago were certainly making their voices loud and clear, and it is important that they do so. They were also having people honking their horns when they were going past—I do not know whether that falls within the ambit of the Act, but they were certainly getting support for their point.

[James Daly]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

I will come to the hon. Gentleman, but I have a train of thought going on.

[James Daly]

Will she give way on that particular point?

[Alison Thewliss]

I would like to just finish the point I am making to the Minister, and then I will let the hon. Gentleman come in on this point. I have laid out my past history of protest for a very good reason: I have previous on this. I have not been arrested at any of those demonstrations, but I am sure that my name is in a file somewhere—perhaps the Security Minister might tell me—for having protested outside Faslane, for example.

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[Alison Thewliss]

I am very interested in what the Minister said about intention, because the Republic protesters who found themselves getting arrested had no intention—in fact, they had been negotiating in advance with the police on this issue. It was suggested that the string that they had to tie up their placards with was a locking-on device, despite the organisation having no history of using locking-on devices as part of their protest. If those people, who had no intention and no history of doing such things, ended up getting lifted by the police, I suggest that the Act has no reassurance to offer to anybody in any circumstance where they might be considered a risk.

[James Daly]

I like the hon. Lady very much—we sit on the same Select Committee—but I am unsure of the point that she is making. When we talk about peaceful protest, we are talking about non-violent protest. If she can point to any wording in the Public Order Act that restricts the right to non-violent protest, I would welcome that, but I can tell her the answer: there is nothing. This debate is not about whether there are restrictions on peaceful protest, but about whether we agree on the specific restrictions that are in the Public Order Act, and also in other pieces of legislation. There are different pieces of legislation that address different types of behaviour—that is what criminal statute is about.

[Alison Thewliss]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we will be taking evidence on this issue in the Home Affairs Committee tomorrow from people who were arrested under this very legislation, who had no intention of being violent or anything of that kind. It will be interesting to hear from them what they say about the operation of the Act in practice.

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[Chris Philp]

There are statutory definitions of what serious disruption constitutes. Slow walking is actually covered by section 12 of Public Order Act 1986 and is nothing to do with the Public Order Act 2023. In answer to the question, unless serious disruption is being caused, no, that would not be a matter for the police.

[James Daly]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this comes down to a very straightforward choice: those who believe people should be able to glue themselves to the middle of the M25, potentially causing fatalities, stopping people getting to hospital appointments or taking their exams and causing the utmost disruption to their lives, support the SNP position, while those who stand up for people being allowed to carry on with their everyday lives without interference support what the Government and my right hon. Friend are saying?

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[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. and learned Lady, for whom I have a great deal of respect. I am constantly astonished by Members in this House who make claims based on no evidence whatsoever. This idea of political pressure is a very good left-wing slogan, but there is no evidence whatsoever behind it. If the best witness for that is Sir Peter Fahy, I need to spend some time with the hon. and learned Lady telling her what a disastrous chief constable he was for Greater Manchester and for my area. That would be a lengthy conversation. If he is the advocate for political pressure and that is it, then, clearly, there is no evidence.

The other thing that Members in this House seem constantly able to do, even though they were not witness to anything that happened on coronation day, is to speak with absolute authority, as alleged witnesses to what was going on. Not one person in this House saw the circumstances that led to the arrest of those six people. Yet hon. Members, especially on the Opposition Benches, seem to be imagining that they were there.

The reason the police exist and they enforce legislation is that it is for the police to investigate and the courts to judge. It is not for politicians to involve themselves and to make statements on the basis of information and evidence that they do not have. Not one Opposition Member was witness to what happened on coronation day.

[Sarah Jones]

rose—

[James Daly]

Well, if the hon. Lady was a witness to those six arrests, I look forward to hearing from her.

[Sarah Jones]

Obviously I was not a witness to those six arrests; I was in the abbey—with the Commissioner, as it happens. I just wanted to point out that we make laws in this place that affect what our police do. That is our fundamental job, and our argument all along has been that the laws passed here have put the police in a very difficult situation, as we saw, which led to the Met’s having to apologise for what happened in that very small number of cases—the vast majority of cases were absolutely fine, but in that small number of cases there was a problem, and the police have admitted that.

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[James Daly]

I think it is ludicrous that the police apologised. Apologised for what? As the Minister said, the police set out a statement on the circumstances of what they said had occurred on the day. It was perfectly lawful—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady raises her arm, but the one thing we know from the police perspective is that the police’s position was that the arrests were lawful. The matters were then investigated and, like many other applications or incidents, the people arrested were released without charge, because a decision was taken—with the Crown Prosecution Service, I am sure—that intent could not be proven.

There is literally nothing unlawful about that. The police should not have apologised. It was a ridiculous thing to do, because it plays into exactly what we are seeing here: the left-wing media hysteria that can be whipped up in circumstances that are completely legal.

[Bob Stewart]

I do not think it was political pressure that led to the arrests; it was following an Act of Parliament that we had just passed. The police were acting on that Act of Parliament, and they were doing so to the best of their ability.

[James Daly]

That is absolutely correct. In terms of how statute is drafted, I do not know what the Opposition want. If, for each criminal offence on the statute book, they want an absolute definition to cover every single circumstance that the police ever face, we will have the longest Acts ever to appear in this place.

The Conservatives have confidence in our police and our prosecuting authorities to use the discretion that this Parliament gives them to make correct decisions. If they do not make the correct decisions, those matters are tested in court and, as has been said, if there is an unlawful arrest, there is a legal process to deal with that. The fact that we are arguing about that here is utterly bizarre to me.

[Tom Hunt]

Does my hon. Friend find it curious that the Labour contribution to this debate seems to be for shadow Ministers to heckle speeches from Conservatives and not to offer any speeches of their own? Can he think why that may be the case?

[James Daly]

I enjoy being heckled by those on the Front Bench, so I will take that.

I think we have got to the heart of the SNP argument. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said she believed people should be able to protest in any way they want. Now if we take that argument to its end, it means that if someone glues themselves to the middle of the M62 or the M6 in my area, causing untold disruption and having a huge impact on people’s lives, there is no problem in respect of that.

There always has to be a restriction on the right to protest, compared with its impact on others. Why should Republic turn up to a coronation, where hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens are celebrating, and find it strange the police are there and may well have concerns about behaviours that are going on, on the basis of intelligence that they have received? That is the job of the police. That is what happens in those circumstances.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Surely it is a matter of context, even within the parameters of a single event such as the coronation. For example, a certain measure of vocal protest might be permissible out in the open air, but if someone had somehow got into the abbey itself while the coronation was in progress, and stood up and started shouting loudly that they disagreed with it, I would be very surprised if anyone on the Opposition Benches said that that person should be allowed to continue ad nauseam, irrespective of the offence and the disruption caused to everyone else.

[James Daly]

My right hon. Friend makes the point. Sometimes I think I am listening to a fantasy world in here. Effectively, what the Opposition are saying is that they would allow anybody to play music at any level for any length of time as long as they had the morality of the argument on their side. The fact that it would cause disruption and drive our fellow citizens demented does not matter. Anything that is done, as long as it is morally acceptable to the left, is justifiable. If protesters were arrested in respect of a Brexit demonstration, or a demonstration by someone on the right, none of them would stand up for that. It is the left-wing playlist.

We heard from the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). She went through the alphabet of the greatest hits of left-wing protests—all of them. That is what it is about. It is about undermining the police’s ability to control protest on the left because the left discovered, through middle-class, self-indulgent narcissists in organisations such as Just Stop Oil, what they could do. They saw a way around things: “We will find the part of the law where we can get away with things. And what will we do? We will start gluing ourselves to motorways. We will start indulging in behaviour that is incredibly difficult for the police to police with the powers that they have.”

They saw that gap in the market for left-wing protests: “We can do this. We can cause as much disruption to people as possible. We don’t care, because we’re on the left; we’re on the side of the angels. We don’t care about whether people can get to school; we don’t care about whether people can get to their exams; we don’t care about whether people can get to hospital, because it doesn’t matter. Because our self-appointed morality means everything. That is it. It means everything.”

[Sarah Jones]

I think perhaps the hon. Gentleman has gone in the wrong direction. He means to be at the National Conservatism conference rather than in this debate.

[James Daly]

I know that you want to hear more of this speech, Mr Deputy Speaker, so let us get back to the proposal before this Parliament from a party that the legislation essentially does not affect. It seems odd that a party that has ruined the education system in Scotland and done various other such things does not want to talk about some of those fundamental issues for their constituents, but wants to talk about things that affect English constituents. I am glad in one sense, because it is at least an acceptance from SNP Members that we are one country—one United Kingdom—and that these matters should be important to us all. The Unionist is coming out in them all.

We are talking here about repeal. We are using up time in this place to debate the repeal of an Act that has been in place for, what, two or three weeks? By any measure of ludicrous debates, that is stretching it to the limit. What are we talking about within the Act that is so appalling, Mr Gale?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. It is a matter of relatively small consequence to me, but although Mr Gale is the name I was born with, for the purposes of this debate I am Mr Deputy Speaker.

[James Daly]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I wonder whether our constituents think that going equipped to lock on—with apparatus to lock oneself to a motorway or something else to cause untold disruption —is an outrageous act. Well, of course they do. They think that that should be on the statute book, and that the police should have powers to enforce and take action against people who behave in that way.

Section 6 of the Act covers offences regarding the obstruction of major transport infrastructure. Well, let us go out and punt for anybody, anywhere who thinks that it is wrong to put in place and give police extra powers to ensure that people are not causing obstructions and putting themselves and other members of the public in harm’s way. Who on earth could object to that? Section 7 of the Act is on interference with national infrastructure. What does the right to peaceful protest have to do with someone sticking themselves to the middle of a motorway or any other transport infrastructure? It is not about that.

The Government should be immensely proud of this legislation, because not only does it respond to public concern, but it is a common-sense measure to address behaviours that were causing grave concern to people in my constituency and throughout the country. We can never be in a position where we allow the outrage of the left to overcome the rights of our fellow citizens in this country to get on with their lives in a peaceful and appropriate way. This is a good piece of legislation. There is not one shred of evidence to back up what those on the Opposition Benches are saying. Most importantly, the Act preserves the right to peaceful protest, and anybody who says anything to the contrary is clearly incorrect.