Public Order Act 2023

Mhairi Black Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My right hon. Friend is, as usual, absolutely right. The concept that the right to protest does not extend to disrupting other people is one that other countries accept, and indeed article 11.2 of the ECHR, a text Opposition Members hold in very high regard, expressly concedes on the rights to protest that

“the exercise of these rights”

cannot exceed levels that are

“prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime”.

So the ECHR itself recognises that the law may impose constraints and restrictions on the right to freedom of assembly and association, or indeed the article 10 right to freedom of expression, in order for the prevention of crime,

“for the protection of health or morals”

and so on and so forth. It is recognised that these are limited rights in the way my right hon. Friend has eloquently described.

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

I want to check that I heard the Minister correctly a few minutes ago when he talked about people walking slowly down streets being covered by this Act. This building is filled with long and narrow corridors, so if I am stuck behind somebody should I phone the police?

[Chris Philp]

There are statutory definitions of what serious disruption constitutes. Slow walking is actually covered by section 12 of Public Order Act 1986 and is nothing to do with the Public Order Act 2023. In answer to the question, unless serious disruption is being caused, no, that would not be a matter for the police.

Manchester Arena Inquiry: Volume 3 Report

Mhairi Black Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

The awful events on 22 May 2017 led to the deaths of 22 innocent people and to hundreds more being injured and affected for the rest of their lives. Of course, the ultimate responsibility lies with the bomber who detonated his homemade device in the foyer of Manchester Arena as the crowds left an Ariana Grande concert. I welcome the fact that MI5 has reflected and apologised for its role in failing to prevent this heinous attack. For example, the report finds that intelligence could have led to the bomber being followed to a car where he stored his explosives. The inquiry also found that two pieces of information about the bomber were assessed by the Security Service as not being terrorism-related. An officer also admitted that they considered a possible national security concern on one of those pieces of information, but did not immediately discuss it with colleagues and did not write up a report on the same day.

May I first ask the Home Secretary what steps she is taking to ensure that the security services improve in their communications and information sharing, guaranteeing that professional standards do not fall short, as they have done in this case? Secondly, the inquiry has found that the bomber was probably assisted by someone in Libya, but because of gaps in available evidence, that line of inquiry has not been addressed sufficiently. Can the Home Secretary provide further information on whether the investigation will continue to search for those who assisted the bomber? Given how much frustration the victims’ families are experiencing, understandably, as a result of information being withheld due to national security implications, will the Home Secretary at least provide reassurance to those families that the UK Government will leave no stone unturned in finding justice for their relatives?

Draft Data Protection Act 2018 (Amendment of Schedule 2 Exemptions) Regulations 2022

Mhairi Black Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 General Committees

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

As everyone knows, we are here because the Court of Appeal found that schedule 2 was inadequate and does not provide enough safeguards. I welcome the fact that the Government have not sought to appeal that decision in the hope that they can remedy the situation via legislation, but the proposed regulations do not address the unlawful conduct identified by the court. GDPR recital (41) makes clear

“a legislative measure should be clear and precise, and its applications must be foreseeable to persons subject to it”.

The draft statutory instrument does not meet that requirement. The basic problem is that the Court of Appeal decided that article 23(2) of UKGDPR required additional safeguards. The SI does not provide that, and it does nothing to provide any clarity about or expansion of the existing safeguards.

Lord Justice Warby expressed his provisional view that such safeguards should be “part and parcel” of the legislation, but instead the draft SI refers to guidance that is removed from the legislation. First, the SI cannot be considered “part and parcel”, and secondly, such guidance has no force in law and can be changed with ease and without scrutiny. Thirdly, the guidance has not been approved by Parliament. It does not have the status of a code of practice that is approved by Parliament. I raise those pertinent points because my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) raised those very issues with exemptions back in 2018. If we fast forward four years, here we are with the same problem.

Given the court case arose after it was revealed that the UK Government were using the exemption to deny 60% of applicants access to their data, is it any surprise that the legislation is still wholly inadequate? The very wording is inadequate because the exemption policy document can be changed by the Secretary of State if they consider it appropriate. With the added backdrop of the broken nature of the Government’s hostile immigration system, and the need for overall reform in multiple areas, and although I welcome the fact that the Government are at least trying to do something, ultimately the draft SI does not solve the problems identified. If anything, it actually gives the appearance that its purpose is to serve and protect the Home Office and to give the Secretary of State the power to do as they see fit. With that in mind, I have to say that the SNP will oppose the regulations.

Antisocial Behaviour

Mhairi Black Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

I apologise for being held up at the beginning of the debate.

I thank the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for securing a debate on such a substantial issue. As we have heard, Scotland has a separate legal system, but the Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004 remains in force and covers police and agency powers regarding antisocial behaviour. The Scottish Government have always been clear in their belief that there must be a partnership approach if we ever hope effectively to tackle antisocial behaviour, and that includes the police, local authorities and court services.

One thing we can all agree on here is that everyone has the right to be and feel safe in their own home—that should be the benchmark for the kind of society we are aiming for. But that also includes an element of compassion, because that right also applies to those individuals who sometimes find themselves participating in antisocial behaviour. I applaud the comments by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield), who spoke very eloquently about the need to see individuals as people who need help, rather than simply to chastise them as a problem. That is important because if we want to move forward as a society, we have an obligation to understand why people do the things they do, and why they behave as they do at certain times.

This is about stopping and asking whether a young person is roaming the streets because they are trying to escape something horrible in their own home. Or are they lashing out as a cry for help? If we find someone who is intoxicated or aggressive, someone should assess their mental health at some point, and if their health is not okay we should find out why and figure out how these factors affect their decision making. Only then can we begin to develop meaningful preventive measures, which includes looking holistically at our judicial system, our social security set-up and our health structures, because all these things play into people’s lives.

That is what the Scottish Government have tried to do whenever they have had the power. For example, since 2008 they have committed £92 million to CashBack for Communities, which funds a wide range of projects and facilities throughout Scottish communities. In my constituency, I have had the pleasure of seeing the essential support that so many local organisations provide, including—to name a few—RAMH, the Kibble, Spark of Genius, and the council’s team to combat antisocial behaviour. I have played football with Street Stuff, which is brilliant because people take the time to sit with an individual and treat them as a human being who matters, as opposed to simply a problem that needs to be solved. They take the time to do that, seeing past all the bravado and any aggressiveness, and finding out what is actually going on in that person’s head and life at that moment in time. Making that effort and taking the time to sit with someone, treating them as a human being who matters even if they are off the wall, is about finding out where their mind has taken them and finding ways that we can help to bring them back into the real world and support them.

On the whole I am pleased that those measures seem to be having a positive impact in Scotland. Experiences and perceptions of antisocial behaviour have been reduced over the past 10 years under the SNP. The percentage of adults who felt that people behaving in an antisocial manner was a common issue in their area has fallen from 46% in 2008-09 to 29% in 2016-17. The Scottish Household Survey 2017 also reflects that trend. The estimated percentage of adults who experienced vandalism has almost halved between 2008-09 and 2016-17. Fewer adults now think that violence between groups of individuals or gangs is common in their area, falling from 26% to 10%. We seem to be heading in the right direction, even if we are not fully there yet.

Ultimately, we have to recognise that it benefits society as a whole when we do our best to ensure the welfare of absolutely everyone. I think that is exactly the point made by the hon. Member for East Lothian, when he said that we have to find a place for everyone. No matter how challenging or difficult that person is—I have no doubt that everyone here has had dysfunctional and difficult constituents come to them—we have to offer some kind of assistance and a way of legislating better on these issues in the future. We need to treat people as though they matter and understand where they are coming from. I hope that this Scottish perspective has offered some sort of substantial help to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North. I thank her again for bringing this debate forward.

Misogyny as a Hate Crime

Mhairi Black Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who made a cracking speech. I agree with most of what she said, so I will not go over the same points.

I want to talk a wee bit about my own perspective and experience, so forgive me if my speech appears a little self-indulgent. To me, there are two main strands to this issue: the structural side and the cultural side. Let me deal first with the structural side, which brings me back to my first tutorial at university, when we were asked why women were still unequal. I said that the problem begins with how and when our society created the structures that we still use today. There was a time when we kidded ourselves that everything was as simple as a man marrying a woman, him going to work and her staying at home to look after anything domestic. It was on that foundation that we built and viewed everything as we know it today: the economy, our legal systems, our work environments and our Governments. Everything was owned and created by men, with the false assumption that the nuclear heterosexual family was normal.

Rightly, we slowly began to realise that there is no such thing as normal—that women can be different and yet just as capable as men, and that what they do with their lives should not be assumed for them. We have begun to address some of those barriers, but, fundamentally, we are trying to find ways almost to stuff women into that structure without fully reflecting on the fact that it was created at a very misogynistic time and from a very patriarchal perspective. There has been no recognition that our economy and our work life completely fail to address or even acknowledge the existence of things such as period poverty and cripplingly painful menstrual cycles, which are more common than most people think. Until we accept and change the fact that everything comes from a patriarchal perspective, we will always struggle.

That brings me to the cultural side of this issue. It feels like we are at a turning point with things such as the “Time’s Up” movement. Frankly, the bravery of the women who have come forward to talk about their experience of abuse, sexism and misogyny, no matter how small it may seem, is incredible. I cannot say it has been positive in terms of moving us forward, but if we have learned anything from all that, it is that these are not small occurrences. The downside to all this progress is being faced with the reality that the women in my life, whom I know and love, have been raped, beaten, assaulted, called sluts and whores, and groped throughout their lives, and they have been led to believe that that is normal and is just a given—that it is just something that happens and, like the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, something that women should somehow deal with or solve themselves.

Misogyny is absolutely everywhere in our society, to the point that we often miss it because it has been so normalised by being continually unchallenged. Some folk will be uncomfortable with the graphic language that I am about to use, but I am not going to dilute the reality of such an important issue. I am used to online abuse in particular. I am regularly called a wee boy, and told that I wear my dad’s suits and stuff. Me and my pals actually laugh about it. That is how I cope with it. We find the best insults, and that is how we have a laugh, but I struggle to see any joke in systematically being called a dyke, a rug muncher, a slut, a whore and a scruffy bint. I have been told, “You can’t put lipstick on a pig,” and:

“Let the dirty bitch eat shit and die”.

I could soften some of this by talking about “the C-word”, but the reality is that there is no softening when I am targeted by these words: I am left reading them on my screen day in, day out. Someone said:

“She needs a kick in the cunt”.

I have been called “guttural cunt”, “ugly cunt” and “wee animal cunt”. There is no softening just how sexualised and misogynistic the abuse is. Some guy called William Hannah—I have never heard of him in my life—commented:

“I’ve pumped some ugly burds in my time but I jist wouldn’t”.

I have been assured multiple times that I do not have to worry because I am so ugly that no one would want to rape me.

All those insults were tailored to me because I am a woman. We can kid ourselves that those are comments by a few bad, anonymous people on Twitter, but they are not: this is everyday language. I am aware that everyone here was uncomfortable hearing those insults—I felt uncomfortable reading them out—yet there are people who feel comfortable flinging those words around every day. When that language goes unchallenged, it becomes normalised, and that creates an environment that allows women to be subjected to a whole spectrum of abuse. I regularly see guys on Facebook talking about “getting pussy” and using other horrible words for women, but should we really expect any better given that the man sitting in the Oval Office thinks that it is okay to grab a woman by the pussy and faces no consequences?

Even in this place we need a bit of self-reflection. We are only starting to appreciate the full extent of the abuse and danger that women face on a daily basis, yet only a few weeks ago in the voting Lobby I was physically pressed up against a Member who has been accused of sexual misconduct, because there is so little room. That is not normal, and it is fair to say we should be looking at and talking about that. I am blessed in that I have the same right and influence as any elected man in this place, but what about all the female staff here who do not? Is that really the best example we can set for society? Surely it is something that we should at least be talking about.

As another personal example, I have been open in saying that I have been very unwell recently and was unable to travel and, therefore, vote. Like most people, I have no desire to disclose to the world the private, intimate and often embarrassing details that regularly come with illness. That is the business of my doctor, my Chief Whip and me—no one else—just as it would be in any other workplace with a line manager.

A fortnight ago, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), alongside the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), suggested that I turn up for work more often, as I had a poor voting record. I responded to let them know I had been ill. I also pointed out the level of abuse and misinformation they were causing for me, but they stood by their comments. My Chief Whip wrote a letter to theirs, asking for an apology, retraction and correction, but there has been nothing, and still the abuse still comes my way daily. For two men to feel it is appropriate to chastise a female colleague publicly for a medical absence is bad enough, but knowingly to continue to misrepresent and cause abuse is frankly out of order. Judging by the House of Commons code of conduct, it qualifies as bullying, as it would in any other workplace.

Believe it or not, I have never lost sleep over the opinions of either of those hon. Gentlemen, and I have no intention of starting now. However, I am in a position to say something about it. What about the woman out there who has had a hysterectomy and is getting the same rubbish at her work? Or what about the woman with post-natal depression who has extra stress added on by having to put up with this kind of nonsense in her work?

Last year, the Fawcett Society launched a sex discrimination law review. It said:

“The long-term aim is to nudge people towards a culture shift and to reframe misogynist behaviour as socially undesirable.”

Perhaps it is time we assessed the example that we set, because if we cannot get our own House in order, how can we expect anyone out there to?

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I would not describe myself as feeling forced to leave Twitter; I just took the decision. That is the point I am trying to get across. We are all trying, on a cross-party basis, to attract more women into politics. There is a great campaign called 50:50 Parliament, which is encouraging more women to stand, not just in national Parliament but in local councils and so on. I am just saying that there are many ways of doing this job, and it is one’s own choice.

[Mhairi Black]

I completely appreciate the point the Minister is making, and I have done the same thing; I have been on Twitter and said, “Oh, I can’t be bothered with that,” and I have put my phone away and not looked at it for a couple of weeks. That is fine, but the reality is that all the views are still there, whether or not I am online and looking at them. Whether or not we use Twitter, the vast majority of the public do. As long as they are in a sphere where that kind of stuff is acceptable and completely without consequences, our coming off Twitter does not solve anything.

[Victoria Atkins]

Of course. Social media and the tech companies are coming under a lot of attention at the moment for the way in which they are reacting not just to abuse online, but to the fact that criminals are using social media networks for horrific crimes such as child sexual exploitation and terrorist offences. As I see it, if we are not on the cusp of revolution, it feels as though we are perhaps beginning the beginning of the cusp of a revolution, in that we have got to a stage where we expect more from the people who run those great big companies and have such a sway over our day-to-day lives.

[Mhairi Black]

Is that not where Government step in and we lead by example? If we are able to say to the tech companies that we think they should be doing more to clamp down on such views, and if we, as the leaders of society, are looking at this cultural and structural problem and seeing that our society is poisoned with this stuff just now, it is on us to do something about it. It is not just for the Twitter and Facebook giants; it is on us.

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady will know that the Government are taking the issue seriously, particularly in the areas of counter-terrorism and the sexual exploitation not just of children, but of women. We are taking it very seriously. Indeed, I was at a conference of the global partnership to end violence against children last month in Sweden. I was there to explain what the United Kingdom is doing to support the WePROTECT global alliance. That is an extraordinary, groundbreaking global alliance of Governments to tackle online child sexual exploitation; as we know, there are no geographical boundaries to it. I think I am right in saying that we are the highest contributor to the scheme, with £50 million, and we are doing some groundbreaking stuff on programmes that are creeping through the net and getting to the sites that are sharing the most appalling images.