Public Order Bill (Sixth sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones]

Clause 17 covers the general issue that we have debated already in considering earlier clauses, and although we object to it, I do not have anything further to add.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I seek a couple of quick clarifications. Subsection (3) states that there is a duty to notify the police about

“the address of any other premises at which…P regularly resides or stays.”

However, subsection (4) then refers to P deciding

“to live for a period of one month or more”

somewhere else. Obviously, there is a difference there, so I wondered what counted as regularly residing or staying. What happens if P was in a relationship with somebody and stayed over somewhere? Quite a lot of people have a permanent home address but they stay over at somebody else’s for a few days or weeks, and they might notify that. But let us suppose they were not in a relationship at the time the order was granted and so have not given notice of a second address. I understand the provision to mean that if they were then in a relationship, they would not have to give notice of it if it was the sort of set-up in which they were staying somewhere else for part of the week, and that they would have to provide notification only if they were doing it for a month at a time. Is that right?

[Kit Malthouse]

No, that is not my interpretation. In that example, when the order is granted and the individual is not in a relationship, they would give their home address. If during course of the order they enter a relationship and start spending time at somebody else’s address on a regular basis—they might be there a couple of nights a week—they should also notify as to that address. If they then move from either of those addresses for one month or more and reside elsewhere, they should provide notification of those changes as well.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I do not think that is actually what the Bill says, although it is a fairly technical point.

I have one other query on notifications. Subsection (6) says that the notification can be given by

“attending at a police station”,

which is fair enough, or by

“giving an oral notification to a police officer, or to any person authorised for the purpose by the officer in charge of the station.”

I am a little concerned about this “oral notification”. Will there be a process for recording it and making sure there is a record of it happening? I am surprised that a notification in writing would not be accepted. Is there a particular reason why that would not be allowed?

[Kit Malthouse]

The notification requirements and the notification change requirements broadly mirror other notification requirements that are given to the police. However, although I am keen to keep the clause in the legislation, I am happy to discuss matters and provide clarity to the hon. Lady before we get to Report, so that she can see that, as I say, it is not unusual in these kinds of circumstances for people to have to notify their whereabouts or their likely whereabouts overnight to the police.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

I have slightly lost track as to whether we are still at an intervention or not, but I think I am continuing my speech.

I have had immigration cases in which people have had a duty to report to the police station and their attending has somehow not made it on to the record, and people have fallen foul of the law as a result. It can be quite difficult for someone to prove that they did something if the police did not keep accurate records of their doing it. I just want to avoid that situation.

[Kit Malthouse]

Understood.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is the end of my speech.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 18

Duration of serious disruption prevention order

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Kit Malthouse]

Clause 18 provides that an SDPO may last for a minimum of one week or a maximum of two years. This provides flexibility to courts in deciding for how long any prohibitions or requirements of an SDPO are necessary to prevent the subject from causing serious disruption at a protest—we should never forget that high bar of serious protest. In particular, a court can specify that certain requirements or prohibitions of an SDPO may apply for a more limited period than the order itself, thereby allowing courts maximum flexibility when the determine individual cases for an SDPO.

In the case of an SDPO that imposes electronic monitoring requirements, the requirements may last for no longer than 12 months at a time. As I said earlier, this is to prevent a disproportionate encroachment on the subject’s right to a private life. That is in line with existing legislation on electronic monitoring.

Normally, an SDPO will take effect on the day the court imposes it. However, when someone is subject to an SDPO and is remanded in custody, serving a custodial sentence or on licence, the clause provides that their SDPO may not take effect until they are released from custody or cease to be on licence. This reflects the fact that, due to the restrictions imposed by a custodial sentence, they are unlikely to attend a protest.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

As we have discussed, clause 20 creates various offences relating to a serious disruption prevention order. It will be an offence for an individual to, without reasonable excuse, fail to comply with any requirement of their order, or do anything that the terms of their order prohibit them from doing. For example, an individual subject to an SDPO could commit an offence if they attend a protest at a designated time and place that is prohibited under the terms of their order. In line with the notification requirements established in clause 17, an individual subject to an order will also commit an offence if they knowingly provide false information to the police as part of their notification requirements.

If found guilty of one of these offences, upon summary conviction, the court will be able to impose a maximum sentence of 6 months’ imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. Subsection (3) provides that the maximum term of imprisonment will increase to 51 weeks if section 281(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 comes into force. This sentence reflects how seriously the Government take anyone breaching the terms of an SDPO, and also acts as a deterrent to anyone considering breaching this judicially imposed and supervised order. As I outlined while discussing clause 19, courts will be required to make clear the possible penalties for a breach of an order to each individual subject to an SDPO, so there will be clarity about what happens if they do not do as the order requires.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Can I ask the Minister to clarify a bit more? He said that someone would be in breach of the order if they attended a protest that the order covered. In Bristol, we tend to have quite a lot of political activity. We have marches that wind their way through the city centre and parks. We also had the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill protests, which lasted for several days in certain pockets. I am concerned about how “attending a protest” would be interpreted; if someone was just walking through the city centre alongside a march, would they be deemed to have attended the protest? I am concerned about how the courts would interpret “without reasonable excuse”. It might be difficult to prove that someone was just on their way through town, as opposed to being part of a march.

[Kit Malthouse]

Obviously, those questions would be matters for judicial judgment. When an individual is presented to the judge for breach of the order, it is for the judge to decide what penalty is required. The police, in presenting that individual, will have to provide evidence. These are not novel matters. An individual has already been barred by a judge from attending a protest outside Parliament. If that individual were to walk down Whitehall and the police were to apprehend them and present them to court for breach of that order, evidence would have to be produced. That is a standard practice; we have courts in which police and others can offer evidence and the accused can offer a defence. A judge can then decide. The same would be true in these circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

I am pretty sure that Sir Peter did not mean, as it was suggested the shadow Minister meant earlier, that police officers are not capable of interpreting legislation. It absolutely does not mean that, but the job of a police officer is a little bit like the job we do as MPs, in that we are generalists. We have to know lots about everything. If we are very lucky, we get to specialise in a particular area, but we know a lot about a number of things so that we can respond appropriately to our constituents and to legislation.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. As I said, the police in Bristol will be used to dealing with these sorts of situations on the streets, but we will have to bring in police from other forces who will not be accustomed to dealing with them. Does she agree that that is of particular concern? They will not have the knowledge that comes from just being on the job, dealing with cases and talking to colleagues.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I agree with the hon. Member. The COP26 policing effort of last year involved mutual aid. That involved, for example, training in Scots law for officers coming from England and Wales, so that created an additional training requirement as well. We have to think about those things. As for my own police experience, my specialism was in sexual offences; I was a sexual offences-trained officer, but from a general perspective, I policed football matches, marches and local demonstrations, and interpreted the law accordingly.

Returning to the evidence given by Chief Constable Noble, the chief constable for Staffordshire, if his numbers are reflective of England and Wales as a whole and assuming that no more officers need to be trained—although I have illustrated why I do not think that is the case—over 3,000 officers across England and Wales will have to be removed from duties and trained in these new laws. That is equivalent to about 125 lost days of frontline policing in local communities, and once those people are fully trained, they will need to be diverted from their duties to police the offences set out in the Bill.

It is logical to think that if it takes 25 officers, currently, to police a protest—I am not putting a number on how many people might be there—through the additional offence of being equipped to lock on, and opening the door to extensive stop and search, many more officers may be required. As I said on Tuesday, if we start arresting protesters, we will run out of police officers before we run out of protesters. I also remember Chief Superintendent Dolby talking about the fact that part of their safety techniques in dealing with protesters involves five police officers to arrest a single protester, so the Minister can quickly see how the odds shift.

Nearly 47,000 incidents of knife crime were reported to the police in England and Wales in 2021. That is 128 every day. There were nearly 185,000 sexual offences —more than 500 each day. Given the choice between having police officers responding to those calls, filling in paperwork for SDPOs or stopping and searching protesters, I think I know what I and the public would choose. In a recent YouGov poll, more than half of respondents stated that they do not have any confidence in the police to deal with crime. Traffic offences were the only crime that more people than not thought the police were handling with enough rigour.

I also know what the police would choose. That is because our witnesses told us, and because it is set out in the HMICFRS report. Accepting that protests do need policing, all the evidence tells us that best practice requires strong, pre-existing community relations, which simply cannot be established by constantly lifting police officers in and out of the day job and abstracting them to other duties.

I would hope that these amendments would just require the Government to properly look at how the police are resourced. Government Members want this legislation to be successful, but it will not be if the police are under-resourced. Again, Sir Peter Fahy referenced the fact that, in relation to the response to protest, the police could be viewed as incompetent. I am sure that those on the Government Benches would not like that to be the outcome of this legislation.

The Minister heard the same evidence that I did, and he will have heard the same significant concerns about resourcing. Will we get to a position where, in all areas, police officers have been called to deal with protests, and where a demonstration is more strongly policed than crime? The police cannot be given more work and left to struggle. I would argue that all our communities deserve more. I am potentially looking to withdraw my amendment, but I would be happy to discuss, constructively, with the Minister, how we ensure that capability is there.