Public Order Bill

Lord Faulks Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, really was excellent, and I hope it gets a wide hearing beyond this place and the numbers here.

When I have discussed this, I always hear the argument from people who are opposed to Just Stop Oil that the people we are talking about are not real journalists. There is something about the concentration on Charlotte Lynch from LBC that somehow says that the other people who were arrested on the same day did not really count, and I want to address that briefly.

There is no doubt that, when the protests that we are seeing at the moment are so performative, activists may well film what is going on, often because they want records of what they are doing to put out on social media. It is tempting, therefore, to treat them differently from journalists. However, I would urge against that and have argued against that. In the end, who decides who is the journalist and who is not? As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, the whole act of bearing witness and truth has nothing to do with views on the protest. Whether you are enthusiastic about the protest or hostile about it is irrelevant to those of us who want to know what has happened on the protest. Sometimes, even activists with a film camera are valuable for truth. The argument that it will incite more protest is misguided, because it treats those who are viewing these films as though they are just automatons who will see them and immediately rush out and protest. You might well see the film intended to illicit your support and think what idiots they are. That is not the point. The truth is what we should be concerned with.

I just say to the Government that I am concerned in particular about the serious disruption prevention orders. I have said throughout the discussions on the Bill that there are so many unintended consequences. I have no doubt that the Government are not intending to use serious disruption prevention orders to stop journalism in its tracks. I think the orders are a terrible blight, by the way, and should be removed from the Bill, but that is not the point I am making. The consequences of them could well be that they thwart journalism. That is the point. I urge the Government to consider that they can support their own Bill and accept these amendments in good faith—I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, explained this well—because they are trying to ensure that what they do not intend to happen, which is that journalistic freedom is compromised, will not happen and that journalists will not get caught up in this. We know that they will. That is the reality. It is a danger and a threat that the Government should get rid of.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have been following this Bill carefully but have not been able to take an active part in it so far. It is difficult not to agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said about the importance of journalism, and I am sure the whole House agrees. I declare an interest as the chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation.

Of course, a good and accurate record or recording of what takes place at a demonstration is important for all parties, whether they be demonstrators, the police or the public. What concerns me a bit about the amendment is what it actually does, apart from sending a very important message. That may be enough; I do not know. It seems to me that in fact it would not be lawful for a constable to arrest anybody anyway for observing, recording or reporting a protest, and nor would the exercise of police powers in relation to those matters or indeed any other matter, but I will listen carefully to what the Minister says.

I would also be grateful for some clarification of how this might interrelate to the reasonable excuse defence that exists in various parts of the Bill. I know that there is some uncertainty at the moment about its scope, where it features in terms of the definition of the offence and whether simply saying—understandably, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said—that this an incredibly serious cause, ie, climate change, and therefore justifies all the potential offences here. This is a fascinating and important amendment, and I seek clarification in due course from the Minister as to its scope.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, we wholeheartedly support Amendment 117 in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and signed by me for the reason so effectively introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

We have seen some very worrying developments. I remember that when I was serving, the police, following criticism, made strenuous efforts to work with journalists, in particular photographers, to ensure that their work was facilitated during protests. A colleague of mine who became chief constable of British Transport Police, Andy Trotter, made great strides in building a good rapport between journalists and the police. Recently, however, there is evidence of disregard for press cards—for example in a briefing from the National Union of Journalists on the arrests of journalists by Hertfordshire Police and other police forces. This seems to be going completely in the opposite direction to the progress made when I was serving.

As others have said, if journalists and photographers are afraid to do their jobs of being at protests and reporting on them, that is very dangerous for our democracy and the right to protest, having a chilling effect, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, put it, on journalism in relation to protests.

As other noble Lords, such as the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, said, it points to the overly wide offences in the other parts of the Bill, for example,

“being present in a tunnel”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, journalists have reported from inside these tunnels and could be guilty of those offences. It points not only to the importance of these amendments in protecting journalists but to the overreach of the offences in other parts of the Bill.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said, Amendment 127A is an important extension of the original Amendment 117, extending the protections beyond journalists to legal observers, academics and even innocent members of the public watching what is happening and recording it on their smartphones.

However, other noble Lords have not mentioned that it is also damaging to the police. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, talked about a dispute where the police asked journalists to turn off their lights and, under cover of the darkness that ensued, engaged in violence towards the protesters. In the situation the police service now faces of ever-diminishing public trust and confidence in it, stories of the police arresting journalists at protests could easily be hijacked and used by anti-police activists further to undermine public trust and confidence in the police.