Public Order Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

The people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke warmly welcome this important legislation, because it is doing exactly what they want to see: holding those criminals accountable for their criminality. No one is standing here seriously suggesting that, when the people of Stoke-on-Trent go to Hanley town centre to stand together to protest for the rights of the Kashmiri people—I have attended in person—the police will come in heavy-handed while we stand peacefully and speak through a microphone to constituents and residents from across the area to raise concerns about the human rights abuses happening to the people of Kashmir.

No one is saying that, when certain trade unions want to stand peacefully outside my office in protest, to demonstrate against some cause, I am expecting the police to come in and round those people up. I am not. I welcome them comng outside my office. I am more than happy to hear their cause, and engage with them in conversation and debate. Even if we end up agreeing to disagree, no one in their right mind is saying that the police are going to prevent that action from happening. No one in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke believes for a second that that would be appropriate. If that were the case with this legislation, I would stand up to oppose the Bill. But I am supporting it because it is doing something: tackling criminal behaviour.

People gluing themselves to the M25, where people are traveling at 70 miles an hour—women and children in cars that could easily crash, ending up with loss of life —are apparently willing to sacrifice their own safety and their own lives for a cause. However, they are not even able to stand up for their beliefs and values. The hypocritical nature of those campaigns is what drives people berserk in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke.

For example, Liam Norton from Insulate Britain says he “doesn’t care” about insulating homes—his words. He does not even insulate his own home. He has no insulation in the walls and has single pane glass. People simply do not like hypocrites. He even called himself a hypocrite. We are talking about individuals who are running campaigns—some crusty eco-woke warrior wanting to make some sort of point on Twitter, so they can get lots of likes from the far left that make that particular social media platform vile and abusive. Thank God I am not on it; great for my mental health. Then we see their actions. Gail Bradbrook from Extinction Rebellion drives a diesel car and takes an 11,000-mile round trip to Costa Rica, contributing 2.6 tonnes of carbon footprint, which is a quarter of a Brit’s yearly average.

Practice what you preach. Do not stand up and virtue-signal for the sake of it or try to pontificate—as the Labour party regularly does—in order to make a point that will get a few more likes in woke London or on Twitter. Instead, stand up for people of this country who want to see an end to criminal behaviour by those jumping on top of tube trains or blocking lorries, for example, some of which are carrying cooking oil or carrying oil at a time when we have a global fuel crisis. Those are the type of mad things that people are sick of seeing.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right that these are largely deranged members of the bourgeoise making working people’s lives difficult, but, actually, the situation is more serious still. In the case of the demonstrations and protests that he describes, the action meant holding up an ambulance on its way to an emergency and stopping a woman getting to the home of her 95-year-old mother who had had a fall. It meant that the people protesting were wholly and completely disregarding the horror and pain that they were causing. That shows the sort of people they are. This is about not hypocrisy, but carelessness and heartlessness.

[Jonathan Gullis]

My right hon. Friend makes a fantastic point. Let us think about the people who were not able to get to their cancer screening appointment; the children who were not able to be in school because of lockdown and who are having their education in the classroom—with their expert classroom teacher—further delayed; the emergency services trying to go about their jobs, having to deal with protesters; and the police from as far away as Scotland coming down to London, meaning that they are not on the streets of the local areas that they should be serving, allowing criminals potentially to run wild there because of some selfish individuals.

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[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

Given all the crises that we are facing in our country, it speaks volumes that the first Bill of a new Parliament is yet another piece of authoritarian anti-protest legislation. The message from this Government is clear: their top priority is making it harder to protest against the cost of living crisis, rather than helping people through it.

The Government have already introduced some of the most serious and sweeping restrictions on the right to protest with their Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and this Bill takes the assault on our rights one step further by reviving many of the failed measures that were rightly thrown out in the other place. Restricting protest, expanding discriminatory stop and search, introducing jail sentences and unlimited fines for demonstrating close to national infrastructure, and introducing new offences of locking on will not help my constituents to pay their bills, or, indeed, address many of the issues about which they will tend to protest.

This is yet another Bill that seeks to stop people making their voices heard, and it disadvantages our poorest and most marginalised communities. Laws are not reasonable or fair if rights are protected only for those who agree with the Government, and curtailed for those who wish to challenge the Government. I agree with the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black), who said last week that we were sleepwalking into fascism. This country’s tradition of dissent has paved the way to our rights and freedoms, and those protests are the reason why someone of my class, race and gender has the rights that I have; but this Bill contains measures that would have outlawed the protests that won votes for women and trade unions.

Given the Government’s trajectory, there is no doubt in my mind, at least, that these measures will be used against pickets in industrial disputes. According to the Bill, there will be a defence when it comes to trade disputes, but that defence will not be available to stop the new serious disruption prevention orders applying to individuals who take part in more than one protest within a five-year period, even if they have not been convicted. That obviously targets union officials who regularly attend and organise pickets. The Trade Union Act 2016, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and everything in between, and now this Bill, have all but eradicated what was already a severely restricted right to picket. Our unions are part of the last line of defence against this Government’s attack on working-class people, and I cannot believe that the Government would stoop so low.

It is wrong that the Bill extends stop and search powers and introduces serious disruption orders when existing stop-and-search powers are already a key component of the racially unjust criminal justice system. Marginalised communities are already disproportionately likely to face criminalisation and harassment. Just last month there was a national outcry when it emerged that a black teenager had been strip-searched by police at school, having been falsely accused of possessing cannabis. There has been a string of revelations about the racism and misogyny that still blight UK policing, clearly exemplified by the vile racism and misogyny uncovered at Charing Cross police station and the already record low confidence in policing.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady speaks about stop and search. She will know that during a two-year period up to 2021, 150,000 arrests were made as a direct result of stop and search. She will also know that in 2019, 50,000 knives were found and removed. Those were arrests that prevented crimes, and those were knives that might have been used to take life or at least to injure. Surely the hon. Lady recognises that stop and search is just part of the means by which we can crack down on crime.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

I have no issue with evidence-based stop and search. If there is a reason to stop somebody, that is absolutely fine. Unfortunately the police continue, again and again, to stop and search people from certain communities. All that that does is go further down the route of making confidence in policing extremely low, which does not do anything to solve crime.

When it comes to misogyny, I think about the horrifying treatment of those who attended the vigil in my constituency last year to commemorate Sarah Everard and other women who had lost their lives to violence. That made it clear that women opposing violence against women were not safe from male violence, even from those who were tasked with protecting us from it.

The Bill targets, in particular, the activism of groups who have already been mentioned many times: groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, Kill the Bill and the Black Lives Matter movement. All those groups have used disruption to draw attention to major injustices such as the climate crisis, attacks on our civil liberties and institutional racism. Rather than taking action to address those injustices, the Government want to stop people speaking out about them. We must remember that today’s protests are signposts for tomorrow’s progress.

How does it make sense for the Government to support protests around the world while cracking down on the right to protest here? As Amnesty International has pointed out,

“these authoritarian provisions…are similar to repressive policies in countries the UK regularly criticises—including”

—yes—

“Russia, Hong Kong, and Belarus”.

The message to the public is very clear: we must put up with it, or shut up. This continuous attempt to criminalise dissent is a threat to everyone who wants to stand up for what they believe in, and to anyone who believes in building a better society. The way in which the Government continue to push this agenda makes it clearer than ever that we must oppose this Bill today, and oppose all further attempts by them to proceed with this authoritarian way of running the country.

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[Paul Bristow]

The right hon. Lady is a long-standing Member of this House, and she is enormously respected by me and by many people here, but I would respectfully point out that that is not what I said. What I said was that I was not convinced that many protests achieved anything much. There are notable examples where protests have achieved a great deal, but I am not convinced that many of the protests that we see each and every day now are achieving anything at all. That was my point.

Freedom of speech in our media should be matched by the freedom to express those views. I agree with the right hon. Lady that protest is important. That was exactly the point I was trying to make. Whether it achieves anything or not is beside the point. The fact that so much of it comes from political perspectives that are opposed to mine is also beside the point. Anyone tempted down that route just needs to look around the world. The scenes of protesters in Russia with blank signs being arrested are a reminder that what we could stand to lose is nothing less than freedom itself. I will always defend legitimate protest by those with whom I disagree. However, there are also illegitimate ways of protesting that go beyond the expression of a view to impositions on the freedom of others, to violations of our laws and to acts that can even pose a risk to people’s lives. Direct action is not a legitimate form of protest. Locking on, which is defined in clause 1 of the Bill, is not a legitimate form of protest. Obstruction of major transport works, which is defined in clause 3, is not a legitimate form of protest.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend seems to be distinguishing between peaceful protest, of which there is a long tradition, as he rightly says, and violent protest. These acts are violent acts. The destruction of property, the attacks on individuals and the real nuisance and life-threatening damage caused when roads are blocked are acts of violence. They are militant and extreme, and they can be distinguished from peaceful, legitimate protest.

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[Matt Vickers]

I could not agree more. I am delighted to see 13,000 more police officers on our streets, and I want them to spend their time tackling the issues in Stockton South, rather than policing this jamboree.

Law-abiding citizens have been stunned by these scenes and want to see our police forces empowered to protect the rights of everyday people who are trying to go about their daily lives. Why should someone be able to prevent them from getting to work? Why should someone be able to prevent their children from getting to school? Why should someone be able to prevent their dying relative from getting to hospital in an ambulance?

Sixty-three per cent. of people support the creation of a criminal offence of locking on, and it is clear why. We must protect the freedom of our citizens against a minority who would seek to impede them. Moreover, I can see how genuine protesters would be frustrated. They turn up to a protest to stand up for a noble cause, and then some of these serial protesters turn up en masse like some sort of traveling circus. Full of clowns, these groups hijack protests for a superglue soiree. They bring individual campaigns into disrepute and damage the public support and sympathy that genuine protesters have worked hard to gain.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for the Bill. We have heard from the Bill’s critics that the end justifies the means—that because the end is noble, in their judgment, any means, however violent or disruptive, are legitimate. Is that not the argument used by every extremist, indeed every tyrant, throughout history?

[Matt Vickers]

My right hon. Friend is entirely right. These actions undermine public support and sympathy for genuine causes, and they create division and misery in the name of genuine causes.

For everyday people right across the country who should have the right to go about their daily life without interference, for those who wish to undertake peaceful and legitimate protests, and for police officers frustrated by having to waste their time when they could be making our communities safer, this is the right way forward. Thanks to this Government, there are now 13,000 more police officers on our streets; I want to see them tackling crime, not distracted and diverted by these jamborees of disruption, division and criminality.

Finally, I disagree with the assumption that police forces will use the powers in this Bill disproportionately and improperly. Of course, there have been horrendous exceptions—cases of misuse of police powers—but we should differentiate these from the brave men and women who sign up as police officers and put themselves in harm’s way to protect us. They should be backed and given the powers that they need to get on with the job.