Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Mike Penning Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I will not detain the House for long, because that is what the other Chamber is doing. The House has voted with huge majorities to put the legislation through, and actually the need for it is found in most of our constituency surgeries. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) listens for five minutes, she might hear my argument. It is fine to disagree with me, but chuntering is probably not the answer.

One of the biggest things that upsets my constituents is noisy neighbours, whether the noise comes from music or hard floors upstairs. At my surgeries, people often ask, “How can we control this? Can the council make recordings?” The council works hard to try to address these disputes, which are small in scale but mean a lot to the individuals who are having their lives blighted by noise.

As a trade unionist, I am more than happy to have legal demonstrations. They are part and parcel of the process—[Interruption.] I was in the Fire Brigades Union when we were thrown out of the Labour party, so I have a bit of a track record here. However, we are talking about people having their lives blighted continually because of a right being exercised near their homes or offices day in, day out. To be fair, we are talking not about a demonstration on a beach but about one right outside where people live.

[Sarah Jones]

The right hon. Member brings a lot of experience to the House, and I listen to him carefully. I agree with him about noisy neighbours, which are a distressing part of my case load because we often struggle hard to do something about it. However, the Bill does not do anything on that; it is about protests. We need to be clear that those are two completely different things. There are rules on antisocial behaviour and neighbours, and local authorities and the police have powers to deal with that—sadly, often those cases do not get dealt with—but that is not what we are arguing about.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. May I give a little reminder that interventions should be quite brief?

[Sir Mike Penning]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, you made my point exactly. With respect to the shadow Minister, they are different, and I agree that the Bill has nothing to do with noisy neighbours, but noisy demonstrations blight people’s lives in exactly the same way, and that is why the legislation is trying to do something about them.

We may disagree, and that is probably right and proper—this place is about debating and not just agreeing with each other all the time—but the principle must be that this House, with huge majorities, has voted for these measures. I respect many of the people on both sides of the other House—they bring huge amounts of experience—but they are not elected. They should listen to this House and consider the size of the majority. If it had been tiny, we could argue about the principle, but it was not, and the measures have been voted through. On that, I completely agree with the Minister, who is in the position where I used to be.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson, Anne McLaughlin.