Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin]

I absolutely do, because if people feel empowered by being part of that democracy, other than getting to vote every four years, that can only be a good thing.

The notion that the police can intervene on any kind of noise threshold—as we have heard, we do not know what the threshold is—puts the fundamental right to protest at risk. This Bill will create a situation where people who are simply trying to have their voices heard will be dragged into the criminal justice system. We are going to need extremely large prisons by the time this Government have finished with all this legislation. The reduced knowledge threshold, where a person ought to have known that restrictions were in force, is an Orwellian nightmare. A protester will have to second-guess how the authorities will judge their behaviour.

The language used in clause 55 is vague at best: “serious unease”, “alarm” and “distress”. A protest may seem more alarming or distressing to one police officer than to another. This hands far too much discretion to the police, and there is a point when too much discretion becomes a burden. That was echoed by former police chiefs and senior officers, who have warned against the political pressure that this Bill will place on frontline officers. If the police do not think these powers are necessary, why do the Government? As we have heard from a number of speakers, the powers already exist for them to deal sufficiently with a protest that could result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community. I just do not think the Government have made a good enough argument that the powers are insufficient. For those reasons, we support Lords amendment 73.

We also support Lords amendment 80, which would remove the police’s ability to impose greater conditions on static demonstrations. The Public Order Act 1986 was careful to delineate and differentiate the conditions that can be imposed on static demonstrations and those that can be imposed on a march or moving protest, which is sensible as it reflects the relative ease with which a static demonstration can be policed. Clause 56, which the amendment seeks to remove, will see the distinction removed.

In the words of Big Brother Watch, clause 56 could potentially hand the police

“unfettered discretion to impose any condition they see fit including, for example, restrictions on the words or slogans that can be expressed on placards.”

That is a democratic outrage. This is an attempt by the Government to level the distinction between static and moving protests. As they tend to do, they are levelling down, not levelling up. For that reason, we support Lords amendment 80.

We also lend support to Lords amendment 87, which removes the police’s ability to impose conditions on a one-person protest. What a situation. The might of the Government and their legislative power is bearing down on single protesters, which is ridiculous and disproportionate in equal measure. Worryingly, it has the potential to snare anyone who even stops to engage with that protester as committing a criminal offence. As I said, we are going to need much larger prisons.

Lords amendment 88 would narrow the scope of the offence of wilful obstruction of the highway to include only highways that are part of the strategic road network. We are caught in a trap where, on the one hand, I am glad to see this offence is restricted to the strategic road network but, on the other hand, I am alarmed to see the associated sentence increased from a fine to 51 weeks’ imprisonment—much larger prisons. This amendment is targeted at some very specific protesters whom we have all witnessed taking their protests to the streets and roads, but I feel this severe penalty has the potential to create a chilling effect—I have used that term all too often in the past six months during our consideration of the Judicial Review and Courts Bill and the Nationality and Borders Bill, although, from what I am hearing from the other place tonight, there is now not much left of the latter.

Turning to Government amendments 90 to 93, I am disappointed that the only amendments to part 4, on unauthorised encampments, appear to be technical clarifying amendments that do nothing to row back on the measures expanding the criminalisation of trespass and the accompanying police powers. Again, this is an area where existing powers are available to the police. This is more to do with targeting a minority than targeting trespass.

We know this Bill will disproportionately interfere with the right of respect for the private and family life of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups. The new seizure powers in respect of vehicles—vehicles often being the home of Gypsies and Travellers, in particular—are very likely to mean that people will end up facing homelessness. I can only hope that, in mitigation, the Government will focus on providing further support and funding to local authorities across these islands for authorised sites and implementing a national sites strategy. They might want to speak to the Scottish Government about some of their work on this. The Court of Appeal has set out that this community has an enshrined freedom to move from one place to another, and that the state has a positive obligation to protect Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities’ traditional way of life.

What are the Government so afraid of? From the man outside Parliament today adorned in plastic bottles to make a point about the overuse of plastics, to the many who finally found their voice in the last two years through the Black Lives Matter movement, and who are using that voice to make a very simple point that black lives matter every bit as much as white lives. From our Ukrainian brothers and sisters here on these islands who feel so helpless right now and who need to come together to protest against what is happening in their country, to people who simply wish to save the planet. What are the Government so afraid of? Well, I thank and applaud those protesters. This Government want to stop and criminalise them.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

I will be brief and speak to two issues: first, in praise and thanks; and secondly, by way of caution.

In praise and thanks, I am delighted that the Government have accepted the amendment moved in the other place by the noble Lord Best and the noble Lord Young repealing the Vagrancy Act 1824.

Almost 200 years ago, as the cities were filling with the dispossessed at the end of the Napoleonic wars, our forebears in this place came together and passed a piece of legislation that today seems anachronistic and wrong. As a result of the votes later tonight, we will consign that legislation to history. Our understanding of rough sleeping and homelessness has transformed unrecognisably over the course of those two centuries. Today, we see it as a crisis of housing, of health, of social justice and of the criminal justice system. We do not see it as a criminal offence for someone to find themselves sleeping rough on the streets, and we should not live in a country where it is a criminal offence.