Public Order Act 2023

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady makes the most important point: although the Bill’s territorial extent is England and Wales, anybody who comes to this city to protest—it could be any of our constituents, or any of us—falls under the remit of the Act. It does not discriminate by where someone is from. An Australian could end up getting arrested by accident. Any person who happens to be in the city and in the wrong place at the wrong time, or in the right place at the right time—exercising their right to protest—could end up in a jail cell because of the Act.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Is not the most important point that a lot of the things that our constituents in Scotland want to protest about are bad decisions taken in this place by the Government here? Quite rightly, they want to come to this Parliament to protest against the actions of this Parliament. To do so now, they have to put themselves at risk of being arrested simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree. That is the dangerous nature of the Act.

Freedom of assembly in the UK now exists on the Government’s terms—when the Conservative party deigns to give that right. That right is now so conditional as to be meaningless. In my life, I have—like many of my colleagues—joined many protests, including the Make Poverty History march through the streets of Edinburgh, and protests and marches against the Iraq war. As a member of Scottish CND, I have protested outside Faslane. For migrant rights, I have protested on Brand Street and Kenmure Street. I protested against Labour’s school and nursery closures some years ago in Glasgow, for self-determination in Kashmir, and in support of Pride.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

As others have said, it is a question of balance. I think it was a Conservative Back Bencher who, during one of our many debates over the past year on the right to protest, listed all the laws that already applied in England and Wales and the huge amount of powers the police already had to deal with disruptive protests prior to the passage of the Public Order Act and part 3 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. On one level, we could say this legislation is quite performative, because the police could already use existing laws, but on another level it is much more than performative because, as we saw at the coronation, it could have a chilling effect on the right to protest.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the generous things he said about me, and I am happy to tell him that I have been uncancelled as a result of taking legal advice. For women like me who are being cancelled because we do not agree with self-identification of sex without any safeguards, it is not just a question of our right to freedom of speech; it is also a question of our right under the Equality Act 2010 not to be discriminated against because of the philosophical beliefs we hold, which an appeal court has said are worthy of respect in a democratic society.

I digress, because the point I want to make is that the right to protest is an aspect of freedom of expression. Conservative Members say they care about freedom of expression when it comes to freedom of speech in the now defunct Bill of Rights and in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, but they seem to care about it rather less when it comes to their crackdown on the right to protest.

Both those Acts and the Public Order Act, which we want to see repealed, apply only in England and Wales, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) ably explained, in her usual way, many Scots come to London because, unfortunately, the seat of power is still at Westminster and a lot of legislation is passed in Westminster on matters about which Scots feel very strongly, such as nuclear weapons, so we often come here to protest. It also matters what happens to foreigners who come to London. What happened to that Australian lady who was lifted by the police and kept in jail all day on the day of the coronation was a disgrace. I hope she has taken legal advice, because she ought to be able to get hefty damages for wrongful arrest. I can just about understand why the police might have made a mistake, but I do not understand why they did not realise their mistake sooner and why that poor woman was kept in the cells for hours on end. There is a suspicion that political pressure was on the police to crack down, and I will come to that in a moment.

At the time of the death of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, there were some protests when the new King was proclaimed. Many of us were concerned about heavy-handed arrests of people, both north and south of the border, who were protesting in the name of republicanism, anti-imperialism or disapproval of the behaviour of a certain member of the royal family. Some might question whether it was the appropriate time to do that, after the death of the Queen, but the right to protest is fundamental and should be facilitated. The fact that it might upset some people does not mean it should not be allowed to happen. After what happened in the aftermath of the Queen’s death, many of us warned that in future greater care would need to be taken by the police to facilitate the right to protest, particularly during the coronation. What is so awful about what happened to those six republican protesters lifted because of their luggage straps, under the locking-on provisions of the 2023 Act, is that they had gone to incredible lengths to discuss in advance with the police the nature and extent of the protests they wanted to make. They were then lifted at the start of the day and, again, held until after 11 o’clock at night. I do not understand why they had to be held for so long when a mistake had been made.

Instead of looking at the necessity of facilitating protest, what happened prior to the coronation was that parts of this Act were rushed into force with incredible haste and they appear to have been used to crack down on protesters who had gone to considerable lengths to try to clear their actions in advance with the police. As I said, there is a suspicion that political pressure was brought to bear on the police. If that was to have happened in a democracy, it would be scandalous. It is not me making this accusation, because a senior source in the Metropolitan police said that “pressure” had come from above and Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said on Radio 4’s “Today” programme that what happened with the wrongful arrests at the coronation has to be seen in the “context” of media, political and public pressure on the police. He referred to what he called

“some pretty direct and personal feedback”

brought to bear on Sir Mark Rowley before the Home Affairs Committee on 26 April. Sir Peter, a senior retired police officer, also said, as the Opposition and the SNP have said in this House and are saying again today, that the 2023 Act is poorly defined and far too broad. That is what Opposition MPs said about the offence of locking-on and it was proved to be right by the arrest of those six innocent protesters at the coronation.

[Peter Grant]

I have no doubt that the Government will deny until they are blue in the face that any political pressure was ever put on the Met, but does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the deliberate timing of the rushed passage of the Bill through its final stages could not have done other than send a clear message to the Met that it was expected that that legislation was to be vigorously enforced on coronation day, the first major day of protests after it was put in place? Is it not the case that the Met commissioner’s statement could only have been intended to make every police officer on duty that day feel that they were under pressure to deliver the goods?

[Joanna Cherry]

That very much seems to be the case.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said, the Home Affairs Committee will be conducting an inquiry on this tomorrow and hearing evidence. I am pleased that both the Chair of the Justice Committee and myself, as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, have been asked to join in that inquiry. I am very much looking forward to getting to the bottom of the question of whether political pressure was brought to bear, because I want to be clear: it would be absolutely unacceptable if political pressure had been brought to bear on the police. That sort of thing should not be happening in a democracy.

I will wind up in a minute. I have been speaking so far in a personal capacity, but, as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I wish to point to our legislative scrutiny of the Public Order Act and of part 3 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The Joint Committee is a cross-party Committee of six MPs and six peers—Tory, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP and Cross-Benchers. We produced two unanimous reports saying that both Bills, as they were then, went too far in cracking down on the right to protest and did not get the balance right under articles 10 and 11 of the European Court of Human Rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I want the Act to be repealed because it is a dangerous Act and, in spite of the protests we have heard, it very much affects the people of my constituency. It is not my choice that their laws are too often made here, but that is the way we have it for now. If they want to protest against the laws that have been made against them and pushed on to them, this is the place that they should come to protest. Scotland’s citizens are not yet in the same position relative to this place as the French citizens the Minister mentioned earlier. One day soon we will be, but for now, if my constituents want to protest against the obscenity of nuclear weapons, against the theft of the WASPI women’s pensions, against the daylight robbery that is inflation in food prices and electricity prices, against the billions of their pounds that are being thrown away through incompetence on HS2 and against the further billions being gobbled up by Tory party donors and friends through dodgy covid contracts, the place to protest against all those things is here—either outside this place or in the vicinity of this place—and anything that impedes the right of citizens to protest outside this place does affect my constituents. I notice, by the way, that even though the Tories and Labour think this is nothing to do with Scotland, they were quite happy to whip their Scottish MPs to vote on the Bill’s passage through this House.

It used to be a matter of television satire in a “Not the Nine O’Clock News” sketch that a police officer could arrest a completely innocent man on a whole series of trumped-up charges—because, we were led to believe, of the colour of his skin—such as possession of an offensive mother-in-law, or wearing a loud tie in a residential area during the hours of darkness. We now have it confirmed that, among the reasons that people—possibly my constituents—can be arrested and charged on the whim of a police officer on suspicion of having intent to cause serious disruption, are that they are protesting outside this place while walking too slow, running too fast, shouting too loud, having shoelaces that are long enough to tie themselves up to a lamppost with, carrying a megaphone or simply being close to a police officer who thinks they might have the intent to do any of those things. It could even be, as was the case with one unfortunate ultra-royalist last week, that they are standing in a crowd close to somebody who a police officer thinks might be thinking about doing one of those things. That can get them huckled, locked up and, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) said, made to spend the whole day in the cells, when they had clearly neither done anything wrong nor ever had any intent to do anything wrong. It strikes me that, in the same way as “Not the Nine O’Clock News” had all those ludicrous offences, the Minister, who is no longer in his place, appears to have accepted that if he is not quite the Minister for silly walks, he probably is the Minister for walking too slowly.

The Minister has said today what he said in answer to the urgent question last week, and it is an important point. He referred to clear evidence of multiple plots to deliberately cause a stampede to endanger the public. That would be a serious and reckless way to behave. Very interestingly, in the detailed statement the commissioner has issued—the statement is still on the Metropolitan police website—he does not say that that was the intent. The police were concerned about loud, noisy conduct that might have upset the military horses—military horses that are scared of noise, really? But very pointedly, they have not made a public statement that the intention was to cause danger to the public. That is important, because I cannot believe that the commissioner would not have said that if they thought they had the evidence to say it. I hope the Minister will clarify that point when summing up, or at least by responding in another way.

Where there is a genuine threat to public safety, we expect the police to intervene. The police thinking that somebody might have in their possession something that could potentially be used to cause disruption is not a legitimate cause for arrest; at least one Scottish Conservative MP could be arrested for carrying a whistle on his way home from one of his many jobs. Almost every significant advance in the rights of citizens, not only here but across the world, has relied on people doing things that would now be unlawful, criminal offences in the United Kingdom, with its mother of Parliaments; I notice no one seems to know who the father was.

This is a bad law, it is a dangerous law and it cannot be allowed to stand. This law would never be acceptable in Scotland. We heard earlier that when the people of Wales get a proper chance to decide their own future, they will get rid of this law as well. This debate offers Parliament a chance to accept that it has made a mistake and to put its mistake right now, not wait 10 years for the mistake to bed in.