Violent Disorder

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There is freedom of speech, and I made it very clear in the wake of the riots that people are entitled to criticise the UK Government’s asylum policy, immigration policy or any aspect of UK government policy. What they are not entitled to do is to incite racial hatred, to incite criminal activity, to incite attacks on mosques or to incite burnings or other criminal, riotous behaviour. That is the threshold. The threshold is not me saying, “I do not like what they have said”—there are lots of things that I do not like that people have said; the threshold is determined by criminal law, is examined by the police and is referred to the CPS. The CPS examines whether there is a criminal charge to account for, which is then either made through a guilty plea and a sentence, which happened with the majority of people who now face time in prison, or put in front of a court for a jury of 12 peers to determine whether an offence has been committed. There is no moratorium on criticism of political policy in the United Kingdom. There is free speech in this United Kingdom, but free speech also has responsibilities, and one responsibility is not to incite people to burn down their neighbour’s property.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will be aware of the analysis by the European Consortium for Political Research, which was published only two weeks ago and substantially reinforces the question that my noble friend Lord Reid asked. The correlation between the location of violence and the incidence of child poverty in any area was significantly greater than the correlation between rioting and the presence of any of the other, many factors that people have attributed the violence to. Does my noble friend agree that any response to the riots must go beyond punishment and look to restore the essentials of economic equity, viable public services and greater equality, the absence of which appears to make violent disorder significantly more likely?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend makes extremely valid points about the examination of the causes. As I have said to this noble House, the Home Office, via the Deputy Prime Minister and her department, wishes to look at some of the wider issues of social deprivation that may or may not have contributed to these riots. However—if I can again draw both Front Benches opposite back in—we still have to focus on the points that were made in this debate: irrespective of social conditions in a particular area, scapegoating and attacking citizens or individuals who have in many cases no relationship to those causes is simply not acceptable, so they have to face the law. However, those are certainly important issues that need to be examined as part of the long-term mix on preventing further activity such as happened over this summer.