Public Order Bill (Second sitting)

Matt Vickers Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Anne McLaughlin]

What I am really trying to say is that they disagree with the answers that you have given me; if they have a different view, they must have the right to protest. How can they do that and make an impact, while dealing with the safety and disruption concerns we have talked about?

Steve Griffiths: I can only comment in a limited way on this. Advancing this subject is really about innovation, technology and research and development. Obviously, we have to be realistic about the step changes that we can make, which is why in the industry that I work in the Government have set out a very clear plan. I know that all parts of the industry are looking at ways to achieve that a lot earlier. At the heart will be design, research, innovation and technology—that will drive it. Those elements have to be at the top of the industry’s and the Government’s agenda if we are to achieve that.

Elizabeth de Jong: And creating the right investment environment for the investments and the innovation as well. It is that type of dialogue that can speed this along. Some 96% of energy used in the transport sector currently comes from oil, so to just stop oil would have quite catastrophic impacts on society and the economy, but there are plenty of ways to debate this and to look at the policies that are needed.

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

Q All the measures in the Bill aim to end the behaviour as quickly as possible when there is an incident and to deter people from coming back and having another go. When you think about the hardened, seasoned protesters in this field, who have plenty time on their hands to go gluing themselves to things on a regular basis, do you think they are sensitive to fines or do you think it is important that we look more towards custodial sentences for those hardened repeat offenders as part of the mix?

Elizabeth de Jong: I am afraid I am going to have to leave that for the police and those who work in that area who have studied what the best incentives are for people. We are definitely focused on how to make things safe in our industry and how our society can work more efficiently and effectively.

Steve Griffiths: I cannot really comment on that. It is really for the police to determine, but we obviously support their having the right tools because, at the heart of this, as Elizabeth has said, is the safety of the protesters, the general public and customers, as well as our colleagues. That is really important.

[Matt Vickers]

Q When you look at what is proposed in this Bill, are we going far enough? Is there anything that you would like to see added to the mix?

Steve Griffiths: I am here to talk about the disruptions; I cannot really talk about the policy itself.

Elizabeth de Jong: The areas we have focused on are the definitions of key national infrastructure. Locking on is important, and it is important that petrol stations are included. We do not have views on the other areas of the Bill, around stop and search for example. That is for people who have studied and are expert in what deters people or does not deter people.

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Q I have a couple of questions. In response to Ms McLaughlin’s point about protest, presumably the most direct thing these protesters could do is not buy your products—not drive a car, not use gas in their cookers, not fly on holiday. That consumer behaviour would have an impact on the way you run your businesses.

Steve Griffiths: That is clearly one obvious option, yes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hunt]

Q Sir Peter, I think you mentioned the point about police forces being aware of views within communities when it comes to policing protests. I am somebody who thinks it is very important that all protests are policed in the same way, and my slight concern is that it opens a Pandora’s box if you perhaps have a force that thinks, “Well, we think this cause is quite popular in the community, so we’re going to police it in a certain way”. Actually, that might not be the case. It might be that there is a vocal section of opinion that makes you think it is quite uncontroversial in its support when actually that is not the case. I just wondered how that is balanced.

Also, I just want a point of clarification—I think this discussion was again with Sir Peter—in terms of how we can improve things and how we can get to a point where perhaps there is a more dedicated team of people who are very trained and specialist. If we believe that these protests are becoming more frequent and more of an issue, although we do not want to go down the route of France, there have been occasions when I think that has been a temptation—when we have seen some of these out-of-control protests. I want to know what this new team that could help us get to a better place looks like.

Sir Peter Martin Fahy: Point No. 1 is that absolutely the police must never be swayed by a popularity contest. It is exactly what the chief superintendent says. Sometimes you have to stand above all that, and you are never going to win. Also, you might lose the battle, but you win the war. But the fact and the reality of policing is that you have to judge that. You have to talk to community leaders. You have to try to balance that. You have to make a decision. You have to try to involve people. One of the frustrations I had with that particular protest in Manchester is that I could not persuade anybody like the local council, the university or anybody to take this issue away from the street. It was an issue about what was going on in Palestine, and Israeli action. “Take this away”—but they would not do it. Sometimes, you need a mediation mechanism that takes that away from the street and that sort of public protest. It will not work on every occasion.

It is also about who makes that decision. Interestingly, the chief superintendent talked about using community panels to help you in your decision making. That was used with COP26 in Glasgow. Clearly, in Northern Ireland, they have the Parades Commission to make decisions on contentious protests and where they should and should not go. I find it interesting that we never mention police and crime commissioners, who are locally elected and, in some ways, should be representing local people. PCCs could possibly have a role in this, or it could be that more goes to the judiciary, so it is not so dependent on the police, with all the consequences for public confidence.

If you are looking at capability, there is a much wider debate, which the policing Minister will be aware of, about the structure of policing in 51 police forces and whether that is appropriate for the current situation. It is very difficult in our policing system, where we do not have paramilitary operation, policing is by consent and, rightly, the public have a particular attitude towards the use of force, to come up with something that would have the capability to deal with the sort of situations we are talking about. There would need to be a huge shift in the public mood and I think British policing is not really set up and does not have the mentality to use the degree of force that you see in other countries.

People do not realise that we are pretty unique. When you hear about the sophistication and negotiation the chief superintendent talked about, that is the British style. In all the protests it is escalation, which looks in the early stages like the police are being weak, but in the background they are talking to people and they are escalating. They are saying, “If you keep on coming back, we will use this power and that power. Have you heard about that?” That is the British style of policing. You do not start with the heaviest. You work up to it, and that then maintains the confidence in your legality and proportionality.

[Matt Vickers]

Q We talked about the financial cost of policing these sorts of protests. Actually, as part of the pile that is spent, if the volume of resources spent increases on protest, it reduces on knife crime and on everything else. How bad does that get? When you look at something like Insulate Britain when they took to London’s streets, what happened to policing in our communities that was tackling things such as knife crime? How low does the bar get in communities when you have to prioritise something like that?

Sir Peter Martin Fahy: It can get very low. Unfortunately, that is not part of the public discourse. I think the public think that there are lots of police officers sitting around in police stations doing nothing, whereas the reality is—somehow the police service needs to find a better way of articulating this—that no, even the Metropolitan police does not have loads of spare officers. So absolutely, that is part of the huge frustration for policing and where it sometimes feels it does not get the support of local politicians and the media—and, crucially, the courts—to deal with this.

Matt Parr: One of the things we criticise a lot, not just in London but across the country, is abstraction and the disruptive effect it has on building up long-term relationships. It is not necessarily detectives being taken off their work and therefore serious investigations not getting followed through. It is more likely to be neighbourhood policing that gets depleted, or response that gets depleted, and therefore you get longer response times or neighbourhood cops just not doing their job. It is rather difficult to quantify what the long-term effects of that are, but we definitely see in the inspectorate the negative effects of abstraction for a whole range of things, and this is one of the more serious ones.

Phil Dolby: At the same time that there are more protests—and more complexity around them—the service is also facing increased demand. There is a national shortage of the word “unprecedented” now because we have used it so much, but the demand that we are currently seeing as a service across the country is unprecedented. It is not only the amount of calls we are receiving—so volume—but, because hopefully we are doing better with our partners around vulnerability, more people are telling us about things that are really quite complex. The theft of a Mars bar is one call and “Twenty years ago, myself and my entire scout group were unfortunately the victims of something” is one call, but the complexity and the resource the latter needs is massive, and those are both going up at the same time.

There is not a standing army waiting to deal with protest. They come out of normal policing when they are required to do so, and the amount of neighbourhood policing that is affected by just keeping up with that demand is already quite acute. I just wonder whether, when we define organisations in the Bill, there is something about the organisations having some kind of responsibility to do what they can do to prevent— through their design, their target hardening and whatever staff they might put on—and to contribute to this as well and reduce it. Actually, we are talking about the cost of policing and the financial cost, but communities—with the reduction in policing that they are receiving—are the ultimate people bearing the cost. Perhaps we could do something with this, as we have with the Protect duty coming in under the terrorism Bill, putting responsibilities on local authorities and other people to do those kind of things.

We have had a very expensive protest recently around Amazon warehouses. Those drew in different forces and specialist policing. Some of the protesters were so long there in the cold that it became a medical emergency, and officers had to do some life-saving stuff around the protesters. With all those normal cops who have come away from other work, Amazon could have done more.

[The Chair]

I have to draw you to a close, Chief Superintendent. That is the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Olly Sprague, Stephanie Needleman and Martha Spurrier gave evidence.