Public Order

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

May I congratulate the shadow Home Secretary on spending more time scrolling through her phone while sitting on the Front Bench than she did standing at the Dispatch Box making her speech? I regard that as a discourtesy to the House and to Members of the House.

I merely wish to remark on a paragraph in The Economist last week. It reads:

“Police in the Netherlands arrested 1,500 climate-change protesters and deployed water cannon when they refused to leave a motorway they had blocked in The Hague. Forty are to be prosecuted.”

I read today in the newspapers that there has been concern that these changes will mean that the police will decide what protests will be able to take place and that they will be able to choose. There is always choice on the issue of a protest. Protesters can choose to protest in such a way that the sick can still get to hospital, and people can still get to work and earn a living. Equally—[Interruption.] I am glad that I now have the attention of the shadow Home Secretary; it is quite an achievement that she can lift her head up from her phone. Equally, the Metropolitan police also have a choice as to how they police these protests and the decisions they can take.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Paul Maynard]

No, I am not giving way, because the shadow Home Secretary has not paid attention to anything anyone else has said in this Chamber. On that note, I am resuming my seat.