Public Order Bill

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, the duty of any Government is to protect the safety and interests of the law-abiding majority. This means working to prevent and reduce crime, giving the police the tools they need and ensuring that those who break the law face proportionate consequences of their actions. Fighting crime and keeping communities safe is at the forefront of the Government’s agenda. That is why we have invested £17 billion in policing. It is why we are running a police uplift programme that is well on the way to recruiting 20,000 additional officers, and why we introduced the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which received Royal Assent in April.

While that Act has given the police some of the tools they need better to manage disruptive protests, we were frustrated in our attempts to implement the full suite of measures needed to ensure that the public can go about their daily lives free from serious disruption or harm. The Public Order Bill therefore builds on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act to bolster our ability to crack down on disruptive and dangerous tactics of the kind we are seeing deployed all too frequently.

Specifically, the Bill targets acts by a minority of people that cause serious disruption to the hard-working majority, such as those we have seen in recent months that have brought roads to a standstill, blocked emergency services and forced thousands of police officers away from the critical work of protecting their communities. In October alone, the Metropolitan Police made more than 650 arrests in relation to Just Stop Oil activity in London.

When speaking about some of this disruption, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley noted that his force’s response over 11 days of protests had been the equivalent of more than 2,150 officer days. That, I am sure noble Lords agree, is a striking number. It encapsulates why it is so crucial that we act. The police perform a unique role in our society; theirs is undoubtedly a job with many different strands. These include public order, but it cannot be right that so much of their time and resources are taken up by tiresome and disruptive stunts that, far from advancing the protesters’ cause, serve only to infuriate everyone else.

Peaceful protest is a fundamental part of our democracy. We will never agree on everything, which is why vigorous but sensible debate is something we hold so dear. What we cannot and should not accept is a situation in which the lives and livelihoods of decent, law-abiding citizens are impeded by the actions of a selfish and reckless few. The public are fed up with what they see happening day after day, and who can blame them? It is now up to us, as parliamentarians, to act in their best interests and get this crucial Bill on the statute book.

I will now speak to the measures set out in the Bill. First, the Bill introduces a new criminal offence of locking on, accompanied by a further criminal offence of going equipped to lock on, criminalising the tactic of intentionally causing disruption by locking on to busy roads, buildings or scaffolding. Locking on is as risky as it is disruptive, endangering not only the protesters but the police removal teams. I was therefore pleased to hear the leader of the Opposition confirm last week that his party would press ahead with tougher prison sentences for protesters who glue themselves to roads.

Secondly, the Bill introduces a new criminal offence of tunnelling, being present in a tunnel and going equipped to tunnel, making it clear that the protest tactic of building and occupying tunnels in order to disrupt legitimate activity will not be tolerated. HS2 has been targeted on multiple occasions with tunnels that have caused enormous cost to the project, with three removal operations alone costing in excess of £10 million. But it is not just about the costs. Tunnelling is dangerous and reckless, endangering not just those who occupy the tunnels but the responding emergency workers. We cannot wait to act until someone is seriously injured or worse.

Thirdly, the Bill establishes new offences for obstructing major transport works and interfering with key national infrastructure, reflecting the serious impact of such acts and our determination to tackle them. I have already touched on some of the disruption to projects such as HS2. HS2 estimates that sustained protester action has led to additional costs to the project of more than £146 million, an amount projected to rise to £200 million by the end of next year. The offence of obstruction of major transport works therefore ensures that all stages of construction and maintenance will be protected from disruptive action, while the key national infrastructure offence will ensure that our major transport networks, energy and fuel supplies are protected.

The new offences in the Bill are accompanied by an extension of stop and search powers for police to search for and seize articles connected to protest-related offences such as locking on and tunnelling.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

I absolutely agree with what the Minister says about the police being given these new powers, which are long overdue, but does he agree that once they have them, it is incredibly important that they use them? There have been examples of the police—not the Met but other forces—adopting a “softly, softly” approach that has encouraged the people who have been locking on and causing disruption.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree, of course, with my noble friend and I am sure we will come on to that subject in some detail later.

In its report on the policing of protests, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services concluded that stop and search powers will improve the police’s ability to prevent serious disruption, and we agree. I want to be clear to noble Lords that existing safeguards around the use of stop and search powers, including statutory codes of practice, use of body-worn video to increase accountability and extensive data collection will continue to apply.

Next, the Bill lowers the rank of officer to whom the commissioners of the City of London and Metropolitan police forces can delegate powers to prohibit or set conditions on protests. The rank is being lowered from assistant commissioner to commander. This retains senior level involvement but will allow the most senior officers more time to focus on the challenges that the Metropolitan Police Service faces. It will bring London forces into line with forces across England, Wales and Scotland, whose chief officers can already delegate their powers to the commander-equivalent rank of assistant chief constable. The Bill also extends to the British Transport Police and Ministry of Defence Police existing powers to manage public assemblies in Part II of the Public Order Act 1986.

The Bill contains two other measures, as well as an addition from the other place. First, it establishes a new preventive court order, the serious disruption prevention order, which may be sought either on conviction or following an application by a chief police officer. This is targeted at protesters who are determined to repeatedly inflict disruption. The courts will be able to place conditions on individuals to prevent them engaging in criminal acts of protest and causing serious disruption time and time again. These conditions could include curfews or electronic monitoring but, most importantly, they will be for the courts to decide, not the Government. The threshold for the imposition of these orders is appropriately high and I trust our police and courts to impose them only where necessary.

The second measure provides a Secretary of State with a specific mechanism to apply for an injunction in relation to protest activity that causes, or threatens to cause, serious disruption to key national infrastructure, or to access to essential goods or services. An injunction could also be sought where the protest activity has, or is likely to have, a serious adverse impact on public safety. This does not affect the right of local authorities or private landowners to apply for an injunction but gives a Secretary of State an additional route to act in the public interest where the potential impact is serious and widespread. For example, a Secretary of State could have applied for an injunction on behalf of the various local authorities affected by the recent Just Stop Oil protests that obstructed roads across London.

Finally, on a free vote with cross-party support, an amendment was inserted into the Bill by the other place on Tuesday 18 October. Clause 9 establishes buffer zones around abortion clinics where interference with people accessing or providing abortion services would be an offence. The Government will consider how to implement and deliver this amendment. Noble Lords may have seen a Written Ministerial Statement which I issued last week, in which I indicated that I was presently unable—before introduction—to sign a statement of compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. I would particularly welcome your Lordships’ engagement on this clause.

I conclude my opening remarks by saying that there are inevitably differences of opinion, which we will come to consider throughout the course of this debate. But I hope all noble Lords recognise that blocking ambulances, preventing cars carrying sick children from passing, or damaging artworks is completely unacceptable, whatever the cause. That sort of behaviour is not only breathtakingly selfish; it pulls the police away from the people and places that need them the most. This cannot continue. I beg to move.