Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Walney Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, it has indeed been a mammoth grouping. I am grateful to all noble Lords for the eloquence, passion and knowledge that they have brought to the many amendments that have been discussed. I will be happy to withdraw my amendment, pending Report, but I urge the Government to keep an open mind on this. I shall make a couple of points on why I think that this is really important.

My Amendment 380, on Section 13 of the Public Order Act and cumulative disruption, is important for this issue specifically but also on a wider issue. I do not need to tell my noble friend the Minister about the difficult position that much of the Jewish community in this country feel they are in, given the challenges that they face—but also in not necessarily always knowing that this Government have their back. There is real peril for the Government in saying to the Jewish community, “Yes, we hear you on cumulative disruption, and finally we are moving”, after years, but then not doing sufficient to make a genuine difference on protests. The proposals in Section 13 are absolutely in tune with what the Government have already put down; they do not prejudge the Macdonald review, any more than their own amendments do. I urge them to keep an open mind on that issue.

On a final, wider point, there have been eloquent speeches on both sides. Given the particular eloquence of those who have argued against the kind of changes that I have proposed and that the Government are bringing forward, I think that it is really important to acknowledge the situation that we are in. I took the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that it could be dangerous, if wrongly applied, to overly restrict protests around buildings that are important to democracy, such as Parliament, but let us just remember that two Members of Parliament have been assassinated for their political beliefs in recent years—our friend Jo Cox and Sir David Amess. We have a public risk register that suggests that the assassination of a political figure is one of the highest threats that we have. We had a situation in recent years when Parliament was surrounded by an angry mob, and the Speaker of the House of Commons was so concerned for the safety of MPs that he changed the regulations.

This is not an idle thing about MPs being able to take a bit of rough and tumble, and because someone had glory days in the 1970s in the anti-apartheid movement then, frankly, anything goes. We are in a really serious situation as a country, and it deserves to be taken seriously by this Parliament and this Government.

Amendment 370A withdrawn.