Protest Measures

Debate between Robin Millar and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 8th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

There will be amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill, which can be scrutinised on Report. I understand the hon. Member’s comments. These are limited and minor amendments, as he knows. They are measures that the police have been asking for, and they enjoy the support of the House for exactly the reason he gave.

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is expected—and even reasonable—that those who lose the democratic debate in this place will take their protest on to the streets. However, we have seen a recent disturbing trend that the tactics of a minority now undermine and jeopardise the tradition of effective peaceful protest that we enjoy in this democracy. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the measures the Government have taken, and the measures he proposes today, are a reasonable response to such tactics, and that the tactics of the minority that have been employed, and that these measures address, are distorting and abusing the hard-won freedoms of this country to gather, to speak, and to protest peacefully?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point and if I may, I will build on it in combination with an earlier point. There are many people who served our country in various different ways over two world wars and in conflicts since then, whose memorials are either lost and known only unto God or are many thousands of miles away from their families. Families who have come to share our lives in the United Kingdom may have left behind them the graves of family members who served in those conflicts. I am thinking in particular of the 140,000 or so Muslim servicemen who served and lost their lives in the last two wars, of the many Jewish ex-servicemen who march as well, and of many others from around the world—from Africa, South America and Asia—who served in the pursuit of liberty and the defence of freedom in our country. This is their home now; those memorials remember their relatives and loved ones, and it is absolutely right that, for all communities in this country, we defend those moments of national memorial and the altars to liberty that they represent.