Public Order Bill

Nick Fletcher Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification, but the point I made while he was not in his place still stands: this is confusing. We are presenting confusing legislation to police officers to apply and potentially to take away people’s liberty accordingly.

Policing needs to be done with consent. This is knee-jerk legislation, as I have said throughout, to replace powers that already exist and that the police say they can utilise now. It also prevents the important discussions that take place between protest groups and police officers; we are going to create a chilling effect not only on the right to protest, but on the relationships that help us to enable legitimate protest. I think that is why the Lords rejected these clauses outright in their previous guise in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. The Lords have attempted to ameliorate the worst excesses of this Bill, and I will certainly vote in support of keeping the Lords amendments in place.

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

I rise to speak to Lords amendment 5 and the amendments to it put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer).

Buffer zones are basically public spaces protection orders, extending a distance of 150 m. PSPOs, as they are called, are generally used for antisocial behaviour. We have three in Doncaster, apparently, and I have personally applied for one in Conisbrough in my constituency. We have a set of seating in the middle of town where we have people under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and beggars, and they make a nuisance of themselves with antisocial behaviour. They are killing the town centre. I have been refused a PSPO there, but I will continue, because I think it is the right thing to do.

Lords amendment 5 will put a mandatory buffer zone, a PSPO, around every single clinic in the country. Regardless of what we think about that, I want to tell people in this House and in my constituency what that will look like. The drunks and the people under the influence of drugs in Conisbrough are going to continue to be able to make a nuisance of themselves, damage the local economy and scare old and young people who want to go to the shops; yet a lady or a gentleman who has a real strong faith and believes they can help the people coming in to a clinic is not going to be able to do that.

The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) talked about people praying and standing in front of people, and my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) asked why they have to do it there. Well, if that is the worst day of a woman’s life, and I accept that it probably is one of the worst days of a woman’s life, if she saw somebody there who was praying respectfully, who was there to help, and she knew they were there, she could ignore that lady or gentleman who was praying and just walk in—but, if it was the worst day of her life, she might want somebody just to turn to for that second. Also, if somebody is being coerced into going into one of those places to have a forced abortion, that lady or gentleman could be somebody who is there to help.

I agree with everybody else in this House that shouting, screaming and holding up placards is an awful thing to do and should not happen, but silent prayer and consensual conversations should not be banned. The papers will get hold of this in a year’s time: we are the party of law and order, but we will be arresting people for prayer and for conversations, while letting the people who are harassing the public in our towns and our shops continue to do so.

I ask all Conservative Members in this House to think about amendment (a) to Lords amendment 5, which my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South has put forward. It simply asks for people to be allowed to pray and to have those consensual conversations. Amendment (b) provides that, before we put this law in place, we carry out a review on it. That is what I am asking for.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have immense respect for many people who have spoken in the debate. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) is no longer in his place. He and I might be in different political parties, but on issues of civil liberties, we often find common cause. I am not sure that my 15-year-old self would have thought that possible, but it is certainly true—for example, we are working, as Back-Bench Members of Parliament, to raise concerns about the restrictions on parliamentary sovereignty in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

I have been very struck by the debate, which I believe crosses party political lines. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who I knew as the hon. Member for Colchester back when I was that 15-year-old who could not conceive of points on which I might find common ground with Government Members. But there are such points, and this—speaking up for freedoms—is one.

I am very struck that the concept of freedom that has been articulated in the Chamber so far is a myopic one. That myopic freedom comes from a blind spot that I believe most of the Members in this Chamber must recognise when talking about access to abortion, which is exactly what we are talking about. By definition of who they are, they will never have been in the position of the women for whom those buffer zones make a difference, so their experience of the human rights at stake in the legislation, and of the issues that we face, is inevitably tempered by their own understanding, in which they focus on the idea that this is purely an issue of freedom of speech and fail to recognise that other, much-cherished right in this country: the right to privacy. My remarks will be very much about that and about how we cannot be a free society if women, just as much as men, are not able to exercise those rights equally.

I am very taken by the fact that it is International Women’s Day tomorrow. I have to say that I have become increasingly cynical about that day. It deflates me. We spend a year talking about how we are going to celebrate women, but precious little time working on advancing their rights. Well, I see Lords amendment 5 and opposition to amendment (a) as being about advancing women’s rights and doing what the suffragettes told us to do: “Deeds, not words”. Why do I see that? I see that because I think we must start by clarifying some of the myths that have been presented to the Chamber.

I listened respectfully to the hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) because this is the time and place for him to exercise that most important democratic right of freedom of speech. I have listened to many speakers talk about how we are somehow criminalising prayer. Let us be very clear for the avoidance of doubt: no prayer is being criminalised. Nothing in the Bill will do that, except, perhaps, for a gardener who is carrying a spade because they are praying that their carrots or green-sprouting broccoli will grow but who is stopped by the police—as clause 2 will allow—who argue that the gardener’s intent in carrying the spade is to dig a tunnel. The gardener’s prayer for the vegetables is secondary when they explain to the police why they were carrying a spade.

Let us be very clear: nothing in Lords amendment 5 criminalises prayer. It says what most people would recognise: that there is a time and a place for everything and a balance in those rights—in the freedom of speech to tell a woman that you do not think she has a right to make a choice over her own body, and her right to privacy. When she has made her choice, she should not be impeded.

Let us be honest about this: the people praying outside abortion clinics are not finding the right time and place for it. That is not just what I think; it is what the vast majority of the British public think because they recognise that when a woman has made that choice, she should not face someone trying to change her mind right up to the wire. She should be respected for her choice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Member is completely right. The amendment also risks driving a coach and horses through all the protests legislation. If I am standing outside Parliament protesting and being annoying and loud, the police may want to intervene, but I might say, “Actually, I’m silently praying. Are you going to tell me I’m not?” How far does the amendment ride roughshod over all our definitions of protest? That is a question that the hon. Members who support it have not considered.

[Nick Fletcher]

What the hon. Lady just said is completely and utterly wrong—the chuntering on the Government Benches proves that. We are banning people from praying—silently—in a Christian country. Can we let that sink in? This is ridiculous. I want all colleagues on the Government Benches to think about this: within a 150-metre zone of a clinic, people will not be allowed to silently pray. Regardless of the reasons behind that, we need to think carefully about what we are doing.

[Sarah Jones]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that we have voted in this House and the other place for the safe access zones. As someone who prays, I understand why we need to introduce that legislation. However, the amendment mentions not just silent prayer but “consensual communication”. How on earth do we define consensual communication? There is no definition.