Public Order Bill (Fifth sitting)

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. I urge colleagues to read the powers in clause 6. They are very clear and broad.

When Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services consulted police on the Home Office’s proposal for a new stop-and-search power, one officer said that

“a little inconvenience is more acceptable than a police state.”

That was a police officer speaking. HMICFRS went on to state that it agreed with that sentiment.

As I have said already, stop and search is a useful tool. It is important in preventing crime. But it is an invasive power and can be counterproductive and undermine the legitimacy of and trust in policing if it is not used correctly. Rightly, it is designed to be used to prevent the most serious crime—knife crime, or drug dealing—and the police themselves have recognised serious concerns about disproportionality and that those who are black are much more likely to be stopped and searched than those who are white.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

A lot of the suggestions coming from the shadow Minister seem to be predicated on the basis that the police do not know what they are doing and that they are completely devoid of any sort of common sense. We all have to acknowledge that no one is perfect. The police will not be perfect, the law cannot be perfect and we are certainly not perfect. We are trying to give the police the widest possible tools that they can have to prevent the public from being disrupted to the extent we have seen so far. It is about the application of common sense and it seems to me that everything that is coming from the Opposition is about trying to stop that happening and effectively sending out a message that they are not on the side of ordinary citizens.

[Sarah Jones]

I completely disagree. I am absolutely on the side of ordinary citizens, and the evidence I am referring to comes from the police, not direct from me. I am quoting police officers who took part in the consultation back when Matt Parr did his report, and I am raising organisations’ concerns. The police have talked about the disproportionate nature of stop and search; this is not me speaking, but them. Let me quote the recent Independent Office for Police Conduct report on the matter:

“Stop and search is a legitimate policing tactic…The powers have been described as an important tool in dealing with knife crime and drugs, in particular. However, its disproportionate use against people from a Black, Asian, or other minority ethnic background, particularly young Black men, has been a concern for many years and it remains one of the most contentious policing powers.”

Unlike when the Minister was in the Mayor’s office—stop and search went down in every year for which the Prime Minister was Mayor of London—we are debating this against the backdrop of a significant increase in the use of stop and search. In the year ending March 2021, the use of stop and search increased by 24%.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

I will spend a bit of time of clauses 6 and 7 as they are the two important chunks that address suspicion-led and suspicion-less stop and search. The further stop-and-search clauses contain additional but less significant provisions.

Clause 7 addresses peaceful protest as if it were a social ill akin to knife crime, terrorism, serious organised crime or other situations in which people are stopped and searched. Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act already allows officers to stop and search those whom they have reasonable grounds to suspect possess stolen or prohibited articles. For the purposes of section 1, prohibited articles include any item that has been made or adapted to be used to cause criminal damage. That would cover most of the scenarios that the Government are worried about.

The issue is that lock-ons, which we have debated and agreed have caused significant problems, are infrequent compared with protests as a whole. There might be a very large protest of 100,000 people, with 10 people or fewer trying to do something disruptive or illegal. That does not make the entire protest illegal; it makes those protestors unlawful. Our concern about the even broader extension of the powers, and the Bill more widely, is that we are not criminalising the criminals; we risk criminalising the vast majority of the people who want to protest and have their say on the issues of the day.

I am sure Matt Parr must be pleased, because we talk about him so much in Committee. The Minister is absolutely right that he agreed that the power could be a useful tool, but he listed a lot of concern in his report about how it would be implemented:

“Current suspicion-less stop and search powers for weapons…are intended to be used by the police to combat serious violence and the carriage of ‘dangerous instruments or offensive weapons’. Using a similar suspicion-less power to target peaceful protesters, who may cause serious (but non-violent) disruption, is a significantly different proposition. Given the potential ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of assembly and expression in terms of discouraging people from attending protests where they may be stopped and searched, we would expect any new suspicion-less powers to be subject to very careful scrutiny by the courts.

Such powers could have a disproportionate impact on people from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups. We have repeatedly raised concerns about the police’s disproportionate use of stop and search in previous inspection reports…If and when contemplating the use of such powers in future, forces will need to carefully consider the demographic composition of the protest groups concerned. The importance of this issue should not be underestimated.

We would wish to see appropriate legal thresholds and authority levels set for authorising the use of the power, and the use of such powers monitored in a similar way to existing stop and search powers…When a person is stopped and searched, they may make an application for a written statement that they were searched. We would also wish to see high standards of training, vigilance and caution in the use of such a power”.

It is a well-used expression, but this is using a hammer to crack a nut. We do not want all the peaceful protesters to be hammered by the legislation when they are not doing anything unlawful.

[Marco Longhi]

The hon. Lady made a point moments ago that she has the unfortunate situation of BAME members of her community being killed because of knife crime. We are ignoring an important statistic, which is the fact that very often, people who come to harm or die because of knife crime do so as a result of the knife they have brought themselves. I hear what she is saying, but the measure is about saving lives and saving people from harm. I come back to the point that we are trying to have a common-sense approach that will save lives. If that has such a chilling effect on people attending so-called protests, then I wonder whether there is a balance that we need to consider. Which is more important, the saving of lives or the potential disruption to people’s willingness or want to participate in demonstrations or protests?

[Sarah Jones]

I do not think that anyone is arguing that we should not have stop-and-search powers for knife crime. Absolutely, in a lot of knife crime cases, who the victim or the perpetrator is depends on whoever happens to win the fight at the time. That is very difficult to deal with, but it is not relevant to this argument, which is about giving the police disproportionate powers to deal with a situation that they already have powers to deal with, in the meantime potentially criminalising people who would not have been, and should not be, criminalised.

The concerns about disproportionality exist for suspicion-less stop and search far more than for suspicion-led stop and search. The more ambiguity and the greater lack of evidence there is for who should be stopped, the more the disproportionality increases. This is something that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), was very interested in when she was Home Secretary. She insisted that stop and search be intelligence-led, and there was an improvement on her watch in the proportion of people who were found to be carrying something illegal. I think the figure at the moment is that one in 100 stop and searches for knives under section 60 leads to the discovery of a knife. We absolutely want to find that knife, but 99 stop and searches is a lot of police time and resources, and there are other ways to gather intelligence and solve crime.

I want to stress how many organisations are concerned about the powers. We have been very lucky to have people give evidence and write to us about their concerns. Organisations believe that the powers are incompatible with article 11 of the ECHR and article 21 of the international covenant on civil and political rights, as they relate to freedom of peaceful assembly. During the debate on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in the Lords, Lord Carlile compared the powers with the use of stop-and-search powers under the Terrorism Act. He noted that:

“The Terrorism Act stop and search power is there for the prevention of actual acts of actual terrorism which kill actual people.

The dilution of without-suspicion stop and search powers is a menacing and dangerous measure.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 2022; Vol. 817, c. 1435.]

In a similar way, Liberty has noted that stop and search without suspicion has normally been used

“in the context of crimes that will potentially kill many, many people.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 75, Q145.]

Lord Carlile concluded that the power

“is disproportionate, and the Government should think twice about it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 2022; Vol. 817, c. 1435.]

In its oral evidence, Amnesty noted that

“the proposal fails the test of lawfulness…the confiscation powers that go behind the stop-and-search powers around the locking-on offence capture an enormously broad range of items that an officer could argue might be capable of causing an offence. You have so many caveats that you will get into a situation where an ordinary person could have no idea why they were stopped, or why somebody might be taking an item off them that was completely lawful—everything from string to a bit of glue. It fails on that basic principle of lawfulness, which I think is incredibly problematic.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 75-76, Q145.]

The list of bodies and individuals—including HMICFRS, the College of Policing, former police chiefs and the right hon. Member for Maidenhead—have highlighted issues and broad concerns about suspicion-less stop and search. I say to the Minister that a whole raft of work is being done by the NSPCC and the College of Policing, and that should be done before we try to extend such extreme powers to the police without putting in place any measures to stop the disproportionality.

I will leave it there. We have the same view on clause 7 as we did on clause 6: we do not think it is necessary or proportionate. We think that it will criminalise potentially innocent protesters and that the Government should think again.

Question put, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.