Public Order Bill (First sitting)

Natalie Elphicke Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Anne McLaughlin]

Do you want to respond, Nicola? You do not have to.

Nicola Bell: No, it is the same as what I was talking about before. It is about the fact that the police recognised that there was nothing that would stop somebody just keeping on doing this. They could arrest them, but it was a low-level criminal offence and ultimately that was not going to deter what we were seeing, which was pretty unprecedented, really—that level of protest in the south-east of England over the tail end of last year.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Q My question is to Nicola Bell. The Bill intends to make deliberate interference with key national infrastructure a criminal offence. As we have just touched on, Dover has several pieces of key infrastructure, such as the national strategic road network, the M2/A2 and the M20/A20, and the port of Dover itself, which transits about a fifth of all our goods. In recent years, the port and the strategic road network have been targeted by extremists on several occasions. We have mentioned the 2021 incident, which saw people gluing themselves to tankers and closed down the port and the M2 and M20. Going right back to September 2019, we had a similar incident with extreme protestors that saw the port completely shut down and disruption to and closure of the A20 and M20.

I was hoping you could expand on your earlier answer to give the Committee more of a feel for the impact of this kind of traffic disruption on the Kent and Dover economy and its importance to the strategic network for the nation, and for some of the safety and other challenges in dealing with these incidents that are different from the ordinary traffic disruption that your team deal with on a more regular basis.

Nicola Bell: The bounds of my responsibility would be, for example, the traffic officers that you see as they patrol the network. On the day of a protest, our role would be to try and create a safe space for the police to then get in and do their job. For example, on the day that they protested down in Dover, that was about protecting the area to allow the police to get specialist people in to get protestors off the top of the tanker and to therefore get the port open again and get things running.

On your point about the economy, as I mentioned earlier, 80% of domestic freight still uses road, so that is a pretty big impact on the economy. We know that most of our goods come in and out of the port of Dover, so therefore the roads they take—the M20, the A20 and the A2—are very significant indeed. Ultimately, the cost also relates to people not getting to where they need to be on time—whether that is missed appointments or freight not getting to where it needs to get to on time. I do not have an exact figure for the impact on the economy. I know that some of that has been worked on, and we can perhaps provide that to the Committee in writing afterwards.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Q My first question is primarily for Nicola. Of the protesters who have been blocking key roads, such as the M25, roughly what proportion have been locking on or gluing themselves to a road, as opposed to just sitting on a road?

Nicola Bell: What we saw was that, first, they got themselves on to the road and sat down, then they waited until the police arrived, and then they started to lock on so that they were causing maximum delay. I would say that, on average, if you had 10 of them sat down, at least three quarters of them were glued.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

Q Presumably it is more of a deterrent if it is a six-month prison sentence.

Nicola Bell: Yes.

[Mrs Elphicke]

Q I just want to draw on that a bit more, Mr Groves. I think most people recognise that there is a difference between making a political protest and just causing trouble—deliberately blocking national infrastructure and affecting other people and how they go about their lives. Tunnelling is obviously far less visible than the sort of thing that we have seen on the highway. What do you feel is the intent behind some of the activity you see? Is it just to stop what you are trying to do?

John Groves: Absolutely. The protestors state that in their social media posts and in the things they say directly to us when we are talking to them. They are intent on stopping the project. They want to stop the railway. They believe it is the wrong thing to do.

We have had to shift how we approach the removal operation by taking land earlier, to build in sufficient time for removal, so that it does not have a direct impact on the programme. We have learned as we have gone along and, as the protestor strategy has changed, our reaction to that has changed. Again, it is expensive work, having to have a High Court enforcement team, paramedics and mine rescue there 24/7, since 10 May, until they come out. Then we hand that over to the police and also probably the ambulance service.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

Q I thank you both for your time. What has come through strongly in your evidence is about very committed groups of individuals who have no regard for the law as it currently stands and are continuing to break it. What you have both said is that you hope this additional legislation will be a deterrence. Why do you think this legislation will be a deterrence, given what we have just described and what you have illustrated about very committed groups who pay no attention to the law?

John Groves: I would expect that, if the legislation is enacted and the police pursue charges against individuals who are breaking these laws, it will have a direct effect. At the moment, when you compare the number of incidents we are seeing against the number of prosecutions and convictions, there is a disparity. I would hope this legislation would initially have a significant effect, and hopefully the deterrent effect will tail off after that and we would see a reduction in it. That is how I see it.

Nicola Bell: Similar to what I said earlier, for me it is about that repeat offence, where people keep going back out. That is one of the biggest impacts for us—what could be used under the serious disruption prevention order. I guess it is about them having more powers. All I can say is that, with the system as it is working at the moment, the police are telling us they do not have anything to deter and so they continue this repeated behaviour—hence why the injunctions were sought.