Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I say to my noble friends behind me that I will resist the temptation to make political comments on the Bill. After all the days we have had in Committee and on Report, I am sure they will understand why I do not wish to go down that road.

I thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, and the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for all the work that they have so obviously done on this Bill. I also thank them for the meetings we have held and the changes that have been secured through government amendments or government support for amendments.

I also thank my noble friends Lord Coaker, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and Lady Chapman of Darlington. As the Minister reminded us, my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark has also been involved, as has been my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer of Thoroton. We seem to have had a fairly large Front Bench on this side of the House, and I am extremely grateful to all of them for the work that they have done.

I too thank the Bill team. Everything that the Minister said about them we would certainly endorse and wish to be associated with. They have been extremely helpful, and we have appreciated that. I also thank the many outside organisations with an interest in the terms of this Bill for the briefings that they have given us, both written and verbal. That has been extremely helpful too.

Talking of help, I would like to thank for the vital and invaluable work they do colleagues in our office here in the Lords, particularly Grace Wright, who has been a key figure and has certainly kept me on the straight and narrow. I am quite sure that any mistakes I have made have been nothing to do with her; she has prevented me making an awful lot as it is.

The Bill has been improved by amendments that this House has made and, in some cases, by resisting amendments to which this House has not agreed. As the Minister said, it now goes back to the Commons. Like her, I too wait to see what the Commons will now make of this Bill as amended by your Lordships.

I again thank everybody whom I have mentioned, and I am quite sure that there are others whom I should have mentioned but have not done so. For that, I apologise.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I remember looking at this 307-page Bill—or at least it was 307 pages to begin with—in August and wondering how on earth to tackle it. I was reminded that the way to eat an elephant is one piece at a time, which is the approach we took. This was about five Bills stapled together, except the PPO could not staple them together because it was too big. The Bill returns to the other place considerably improved, although you cannot make a silk purse out a sow’s ear—these are separate metaphors; I am not mixing them—or should I say a boar’s ear in these days?

I shall not resist what the Minister has said about the Bill. As far as we on these Benches are concerned, the existing legislation to control protest was adequate, and the measures that we have removed from the Bill were not necessary in the first place. The majority of the police consider that a lack of police officers is the limiting factor when it comes to policing of protests rather than a lack of legislation.

I would normally thank the Minister and the Bill team for their engagement, but, certainly, I am not alone on these Benches, at least as far as the home affairs side of things is concerned, in feeling that the Government have not reached out to us as much as they could or should have done. None the less, we have all been in this together over a considerable period, and I am grateful for the time that the Government have given in allowing us to debate these issues.

I thank the Official Opposition, both the leadership and Back-Benchers, the Cross- Benchers, non-affiliated Peers and the Greens for their support and co-operation. In particular, I thank Elizabeth Plummer and Grace Wright for their invaluable help on the Bill, as well as all the outside organisations which helpfully provided us with briefings. We would not have done any of this without that help, and we hope that the Government will see the improvements that we have made to the Bill as improvements when it is considered by the other place.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, the Bill has been much improved. I pay particular thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for working over six years with me and my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, in widening the pardons and the disregards for historical homosexual offences, including in the Armed Forces. It is truly historic when a state apologises for what it has done and reaches back over 500 years. It is the end of a six-year campaign that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has been an active part of. I cannot thank her and the Bill team enough, and indeed colleagues and the team in the Armed Forces. I also put on record our thanks to Professor Paul Johnson, the country’s leading expert on this. Finally, it might have been a six-year campaign, but some of us have campaigned for more than 33 years, not for ourselves but so that injustices can at last be put right.