Louie French
Main Page: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)Department Debates - View all Louie French's debates with the Home Office
Coronation: Policing of Protests
Louie French Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Chris Philp
No, that is not the purpose of the Public Order Act, which is designed to prevent people from deliberately disrupting the daily lives of their fellow citizens, as we have seen with the locking-on on public highways, which causes enormous traffic jams that stop people getting to hospital, getting their children to school and getting to work—we have seen 10-mile tailbacks on the M25. We had specific intelligence that people planned to disrupt the coronation by creating a stampede of horses and by covering the ceremonial procession in paint. The Public Order Act is designed to stop such disruption while, of course, allowing peaceful protest. That is its purpose.
Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)
Given the heat of this debate, I must add, as a Greater London MP, that it is complete and utter nonsense to say that people can no longer peacefully protest in London. I attended my first protest a couple of weeks ago, against the Mayor of London’s disgraceful ultra low emission zone, and we were left to protest peacefully. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, over the weekend, the 11,500 police officers and armed forces personnel did an excellent job of policing and keeping the public safe during the fantastic coronation celebrations?
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend puts it very well, and I join him in opposing Sadiq Khan’s appalling ULEZ idea.
The police and armed forces did a great job of policing the coronation. Between the Metropolitan police and Thames Valley police, who policed the Windsor concert the following day, almost 30,000 officers were deployed at one time or another during the relevant period. I think 11,500 officers were deployed on the day of the coronation itself, in addition to 6,500 armed forces personnel. There were 312 protected people who came to this country from around the world, and we deployed almost 1,000 close protection officers. All those officers did a fantastic job in a moment of national pride for all of us.