Public Health (Coronavirus) (Protection from Eviction) (England) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, Nye Bevan’s home village, for his cogent, clear summary of this extension of the ban on bailiff-enforced evictions in England during the Covid-19 pandemic. I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton.

The regulations are welcome, but I am afraid that other Covid-19 regulations have morphed to create police state-type restrictions on legitimate, peaceful protests. The police’s dreadful handling of Saturday night’s Sarah Everard Clapham Common vigil was because of the Government’s coronavirus regulations, argued Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball. Of course, social distancing must be maintained, including in public protests, though it is worth noting that last year’s Black Lives Matter protests in some 300 US cities did not cause a spike in cases, according to the US’s National Bureau of Economic Research, partly because the outdoor air helped dispel any threat of the virus.

Protest is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. Everyone should have the right to stand up to those in power and make their voices heard. Coronavirus-safe, socially distanced, peaceful demonstrations, with participants wearing masks, are perfectly feasible, and the police should have a duty to facilitate, not to block, them. It is a real indictment of the Government’s harsh curbs on protest in other regulations that the organisers of the Sarah Everard vigil last Saturday, who engaged openly in negotiations with the police, were unable to proceed with the peaceful, socially distanced vigil they intended. Tragically, coronavirus has precipitated a fundamental erosion of the right to protest in Britain, and I hope the Minister will respond to that point.