Public Order Bill (Third sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones]

I have not read about that.

As I said, Opposition Members have been horrified by the disruption that we heard about in the evidence sessions. However, everybody who gave evidence was clear that it is a very small proportion of protests that cause disruption; the vast majority pass by with no problems at all.

The final issue that I want to cover is the chilling effect that Matt Parr writes about in his report. If we look closely at the drafting of clause 1—the hon. Member for North East Fife has referenced this—we see that it is so broadly drawn that it criminalises an innumerable list of activities and not just what we typically consider to be lock-on protests, which would be dangerous and require intervention. The term “attach” is very broad and goes undefined in the Bill. Does it perhaps include the linking of arms? Yes, technically it does. Liberty, in its recent briefing, notes that the wording might interfere with articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR, as laid out in the Human Rights Act 1998. We have already debated what is a reasonable excuse and how that is defined. We note that someone does not even need to actually cause any disruption in order to commit an offence. They have only to be “capable” of causing serious disruption. That provides a practical difficulty and perhaps a headache for the police when determining the crucial context of a protest that might well cause serious disruption if it were to take place at a different time, but actually happens on empty roads in the middle of the night.

I will sum up by saying that clause 1 is unnecessary for the proper policing of protests. Most of the extremely irritating and disruptive events that were described by our witnesses were criminal acts, and they were already covered by a raft of existing legislation that allows the police to deal with protests. The police have the power; they need more support and more training, but this broad and ill-defined clause does not provide that support. Instead, it tips a crucial balance and risks criminalising, at a very low threshold, legitimate and peaceful protest, one of our core human rights.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I echo what my colleague on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, was saying about how we approach the policing of protests in this country. Obviously, Bristol has had quite a reputation for protests, particularly around the time of the events involving the Colston statue. We know that the people involved in that protest were eventually acquitted of criminal damage.

I have been out with the police to see how they approach things. There were a number of weekends in a row when there were protests against the Bill that has become the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. People were, quite rightly, very unhappy about what the Government were trying to do. I went out with the police and also went to the operations centre to see their approach; what they wanted to do was to facilitate protest. They wanted to facilitate peaceful protest and were very good at trying to ensure that it did not turn into something that put people at risk. For the most part, they were successful. Can the Minister say where the parameters of the clause come in?

There are historical examples. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central mentioned Greenham Common, but if we look back at the suffragettes, part of their tactics was to tie themselves with belts or chains to Buckingham Palace or Parliament. In January 1908, Edith New and Olivia Smith chained themselves to the railings at No. 10, which would not happen now, while one of their colleagues, Flora Drummond, went inside to disrupt the Cabinet meeting. I dread to think what the response would be now; they would not get anywhere near it. They chained themselves because that they wanted to make their voices heard. If they were immediately arrested, they would not have the chance to make their speeches, so it was a tactic to stay in place and at least get a few sentences out before they were removed.

[Kit Malthouse]

We might as well address that point straight away. As I said to the hon. Member for Croydon Central earlier, there are two tests that the police or, indeed, the courts will have to apply. The first is that serious disruption is caused. I am not sure necessarily that somebody chaining themselves to the railings outside this place would cause serious disruption. Secondly, there would be a defence of reasonable excuse. In the case of the suffragette who chained herself in St Stephen’s Hall, we would imagine that there may well be other offences but I doubt that this provision would apply. Indeed, if someone were able to chain themselves to the railings serious disruption would not necessarily be caused. We are trying to address some of the events we have seen over the last couple of summers, not least the fuel protests, which have been dangerous and caused massive and serious disruption to the community.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Minister has rather pre-empted what I was going to say. The suffragettes knew that they would be arrested but took the decision because they felt their cause warranted it and they knew, roughly speaking, what the response would be and the sort of punishment available. If people are going to engage in this sort of activity and knowingly do things that would break the law, when we have an offence that treats something so seriously, my concern is at what point people can make that calculation on whether they are going to be arrested and taken to court under lesser legislation or whether the clause will be invoked. Its vagueness means that it is not clear where those parameters are.

This silly example is more for the Committee’s amusement: we had the case of an Extinction Rebellion protestor in Bristol who tried to glue himself to the doors of City Hall. However, they were automatic sliding doors, so the moment someone approached them, they opened. I think it was caught on camera, but every time he tried to glue his arms to the door, they opened. He could not manage to do it. I do not suppose the protestor would be dealt with under an offence of this kind and he probably deserves a prize for entertaining everybody.

That was an aside, but to give an idea of the sort of calculations people make, in my constituency I have a good activist on disability issues who has disabilities himself. He has a personal assistant who went on a protest with him, and he insisted that his personal assistant chain handcuff him to the pole by the door of a London bus. There was a big protest of disability activists blocking the streets—I think it was around Piccadilly Circus—to protest about accessibility and public transport. When the police came along, they did arrested not the guy who was chained up but the personal assistant for locking him to the pole. It was the personal assistant’s birthday and he spent the night in the cells, while somebody else managed to get my friend, the activist, home.

There is a clause in the Bill about locking somebody else to something and that raises interesting issues about the situation for a personal assistant. They are there to act at the will of the person they are assisting and to do anything they ask. If somebody were asking a personal assistant to commit a criminal offence, such as assaulting someone or something that is generally regarded as beyond the pale, the assistant would not do that. If disability activists want to exercise their right to protest, are they allowed to exercise their right to break the law as well? Personal assistants are not meant to have their own opinions on such matters; they are meant to do as they are asked.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

If I may just finish this point. They are entitled to make the decision to break the law and suffer the consequences. That is something that we accept in this country. People can choose to do that, provided they are willing to accept the consequences. To make that decision and exercise their democratic rights in that way, they need some certainty about how they will be treated by the law. It is a basic concept of operating in society that we ought to know how the criminal justice system will treat us.

What is likely to happen if the provision on excuses is invoked? If the clause is invoked when people do not feel it should be, the courts will acquit because it is unfair. I do not get a sense of clarity and I am looking for one from the Minister. We know that the clause will apply to the most serious cases, of people chaining themselves to planes. We know that it will not apply to a guy trying to superglue a hand to a sliding door at Bristol City Hall.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Why would it not?

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Parliamentary Private Secretary asks why not. That is quite worrying. Would that cause serious disruption, if he had one hand attached to the door and was wiggling backwards and forwards as everyone went in and out? That is exactly my point. If that is deemed to cause serious disruption, that is very worrying. I cannot think of many locking-on offences that would not be deemed serious disruption. It proves my point if the PPS thinks that the provision would cover a case as ludicrous and minor as that. That proves my point, so I will sit down and ask the Minister to explain where the middle ground and that clarity is.

[Kit Malthouse]

Clause 1 is a key part of the Government’s plans to protect the public from the dangerous and disruptive tactic of locking on. Recent protests have seen a minority of selfish individuals seek to cause maximum disruption by locking themselves to roads, buildings, objects and other people. That has seen traffic disrupted, public transport impacted and the transport of fuel from terminals ground to a halt, to name just a few examples.

Such tactics cause misery to the public, with people unable to access their place of work or schools, or to attend vital hospital appointments. It is impacting people’s ability to go about their daily lives and is causing considerable anger. The Committee will remember the frustration and anger expressed by members of the working public at Canning Town station in 2019, when protesters from Extinction Rebellion glued themselves to a Docklands Light Railway train during the morning rush hour, risking their own safety and that of the travelling public.

I welcome the condemnation of some of those protests by the hon. Member for Croydon Central, and her possibly belated support for the increase in sentencing in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has just received Royal Assent. As she said, there is now a suite of offences that may or may not be committed. To address the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol East, we want people thinking about using this tactic to make a calculation about whether and how they break the law. It is not a human right to break the law. If people calculate that they want to do that, they must, as she said, face the consequences. In employing dangerous tactics and causing disruption, those who call themselves protesters, but are in many cases trying to effect a mass blackmail on the British public, should make a calculation about whether they are causing an offence, and there should be an air of jeopardy to what they do.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend makes a very strong point. Certainly a lot of the most disruptive protests that we have seen will have taken meticulous planning and preparation and the acquisition of materials, not least the adhesive chemicals required, scaffolding poles and vehicles. We have seen all sorts of tactics employed, which, as he rightly says, take serious preparation to put into effect.

[Kerry McCarthy]

To clarify, when I was talking about protests in general and people breaking the law during a protest, I was not talking about locking on.

[Kit Malthouse]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Croydon Central.