Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill
Sarah Jones ExcerptsMonday 23rd May 2022
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow all the contributions that have been made today.
As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, and as many of my hon. Friends have said, we were disappointed with this Queen’s Speech. It was a missed opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis, to tackle climate change and to attack the very real problems of crime. The long-awaited victims Bill has yet to make its way to the Chamber but, if the Government were serious about governing in the interests of the people, that Bill might have been at the top of their agenda. There was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to turn around the collapse in prosecutions or the rise in crime, nothing to tackle violence against women and girls, and nothing to prevent neighbourhood crime.
This is a Government with no guiding principle, searching for anything to show a sense of purpose where there is none. What are this Government for? What good have the last 12 years brought us? That is a question for another time, but the hotch-potch of Bills in this Queen’s Speech tells its own story.
The Public Order Bill largely rehashes what we saw in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which—as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) and others have pointed out—was rejected by the other place. Moreover, it arrives before the protest clauses in that Act have come into effect, which in itself seems slightly peculiar. Perhaps introducing the statutory instruments to put those clauses into law would have made more sense, but I am not sure that sense is a guiding principle of this Government.
The problem that the Bill seeks to solve is the need to ensure that vital public infrastructure is not seriously disrupted to the detriment of the community and our national life, while also ensuring that the rights of free speech and public protest are protected. The Opposition believe that it manages to deliver neither of those things. A starting point must be to ask: what are the basics that the police need to equip them with the tools that they need to manage protests in the minority of cases that lead to lawlessness or violence? Let me tell the House about the basic pillars.
Sarah Jones
I hear heckling. I will keep going for a minute. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will listen to my pillars, and then see if he still wants to intervene.
First, we need the police numbers to be able to deal with protests. The policy of the Conservative party, which was to cut more than 20,000 officers, thousands more police community support officers and thousands of police staff, did precisely the opposite. Specifically, there are not enough protester removal teams across the country, as the inspectorate pointed out in its report on policing protests. Why not do something about that? Secondly—this too was highlighted in the report—the police across the board need effective training in the law and in policing protests so that they can use existing legislative processes. The inspectorate said:
“Non-specialist officers receive limited training in protest policing.”
According to the Police Foundation, over the seven years up to 2017-18, 33 forces reduced their budgeted spending on training in real terms by a greater percentage than their overall reduction in spending. Forty per cent. of police officers say that they did not receive the necessary training to do their job. Why not do something about that?
Thirdly, we need to give the specialist teams the tools that they need to be effective at prevention and de-escalation. I recently visited the brilliant mounted police branch team in the Met. The mounted police are an important part of the policing of protests and other events such as football matches, but they too have been cut across the country, not just in the Met. Why not do something about that?
Finally, when the police do press charges, they want to be sure that those charges will be followed through. There is no deterrent in a system that never sees cases go to court, but we are told by the police and by the inspectorate that the Crown Prosecution Service often has to drop cases because of huge court delays. Why not do something about that?
The Government have taken away the tools that the police need to manage protest. How can they claim to take this issue seriously?
Paul Bristow
I have been listening carefully to the hon. Member, and she is making an interesting speech, but would she agree with some of her own Back Benchers on this? For example, the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) said that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill would marginalise Roma and Traveller communities out of existence, and the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) said that this Public Order Bill was a threat to religious gatherings. Does the hon. Member agree with those two points?
Sarah Jones
The hon. Gentleman is talking about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which we on this side of the House opposed, in part because of its punitive measures against the Traveller community—so absolutely, yes.
We think that this Bill does not strike the right balance on protests and that it is not the most effective way to stop significant disruption of our national infrastructure. The right to protest is a fundamental right and a hard-won democratic freedom that we are deeply proud of. We will always defend the right to speak, to protest and to gather, but there is a careful balance to be struck between those rights of protest and the rights of others to go about their daily lives. Much of the debate today has been about that balance.
We heard from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) about the disruption caused in her constituency. We heard from the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) about attending the miners’ strike. We heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about the expansion of Heathrow and the desperate plight of people in his constituency. We heard from the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) about how we can ensure that protest is not used as a cover for criminal activity. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) about the importance of protests in the context of rights for people with disabilities. This is a genuine debate, and it is the right one to have. We know that the Prime Minister values the right to protest, as he said that he would lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop a third runway at Heathrow airport.
But some protests tip the balance in the wrong direction. Protest is not an unqualified right. Campaigners who block people from reaching relatives in hospital, marches that close down entire towns and oil protests that prevent people from crucial travel raise a valid concern, which is why we have tabled a reasoned amendment to the Bill. Our approach, rather than seeking to restrict people’s rights beyond the point of reasonableness, is to establish a swifter process for seeking an injunction to prevent disruption to vital national infrastructure. That would be a more effective prevention tool and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said earlier, it would have the advantage of giving judicial oversight, which would safeguard rights.
If protesters are causing a huge amount of disruption to the supply of essential goods and services such as oil or medical supplies, an injunction is more likely to prevent further disruption than more offences to criminalise the conduct after the event. Injunctions are more straightforward for the police. They have more safeguards, as they are court-granted, and they are future-proofed for when protesters change tactics. We would include emergency health services in vital national infrastructure, and we would also ensure proper training, guidance and monitoring on the response to disruptive protests, in line with the inspectorate’s recommendations, so that we could use the existing legislation effectively.
Lee Anderson
The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech and some good points. She talks passionately about protesters, and sometimes there is a case and sometimes there is not. Will she cast her mind back to the Black Lives Matter riots on Whitehall over a year ago, during lockdown when those gatherings were illegal? At least two of her own MPs were there, encouraging those yobbos who were burning flags and attacking the police. Does she agree that that behaviour by her own MPs was wrong?
Sarah Jones
I am not sure that today is the right day to be talking about people who have broken lockdown rules. Perhaps the hon. Member has not seen some of the pictures that the rest of us have been looking at this afternoon.
We believe that some of the provisions in this Bill effectively replicate laws already in place that the police can and already do use. There is already an offence of wilfully obstructing the highway. There is already an offence of criminal damage or conspiracy to cause criminal damage. There is already an offence of aggravated trespass. There is already an offence of public nuisance. More than 20 people were arrested for criminal damage and aggravated trespass at Just Stop Oil protests in Surrey. Injunctions were granted at Kingsbury oil terminal following more than 100 arrests, and there were arrests for breaching those injunctions, which are punishable by up to two years in prison—nine people were charged. When Extinction Rebellion dumped tonnes of fertiliser outside newspaper offices, five people were arrested. Earlier this year, six Extinction Rebellion activists were charged with criminal damage in Cambridge. In February this year, five Insulate Britain campaigners were jailed for breaching their injunctions. In November, we saw nine Insulate Britain activists jailed for breaching injunctions to prevent road blockades.
Removing people who are locking on can take a long time and require specialist teams, but a new offence of locking on will not make the process of removing protesters any faster. The Government should look at the HMICFRS report and focus on improving training and guidance, and they should look to injunctions.
I cannot but attack the issue of stop and search and SDPOs. This Bill gives the police wide-ranging powers to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, such as shoppers passing a protest against a library closure. The Home Secretary said the inspectorate supports these new powers, but the inspectorate’s comments were very qualified and talked of, for example, the powers’ potential “chilling effect”.
Many of my hon. and right hon. Friends talked of the serious problem of disproportionality, as did the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire, and talked of how these powers were initially rejected by the Home Office because of their impact. Members who have spent many years campaigning on these issues, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), pointed to the risk of these deeply concerning provisions increasing disproportionality, bringing peaceful protesters unnecessarily into the criminal justice system and undermining public trust in the police who are trying to do their job.
Our national infrastructure needs protecting. We hear the anger, irritation and upset when critical appointments are missed, when children cannot get to school and when laws are broken. As our reasoned amendment makes clear, we would support some amended aspects of the Bill, but we cannot accept the Bill as it currently stands. The proposals on suspicion-less stop and search, and applying similar orders to protesters as we do to terrorists and violent criminals, are unhelpful and will not work. The police already have an array of powers to deal with such protests, and injunctions would be a better tool to use. We will not and cannot stand by as the Government try to ram through yet another unthought-through Bill in search of a purpose.
I urge all reasonable Members to support Labour’s reasoned amendment, and I urge the Government to focus instead on their woeful record on crime.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the Minister, I remind colleagues that it is extremely discourteous to both Front Benchers not to get back in good time for the wind-ups. It is also extremely discourteous to spend long periods of a debate out of the Chamber. It is important to hear what other people have to say; those who give speeches and then disappear for hours ought to listen to others. That would be the courteous thing to do.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill (First sitting)
Sarah Jones ExcerptsThursday 9th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 9 June - (9 Jun 2022)
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Chris Noble: Sadly, I am no longer a practising operational commander, so I will talk vicariously. You also have Phil Dolby coming to speak to you. He will be able to give you a flavour of the west midlands region. There is a range of powers, but the policing operation begins with communication and engagement. As soon as we are aware of a protest, the first thing we will do is link in with the organisers and understand how we can do our very best to minimise any intrusion on their rights and safeguard the right to protest. Our most powerful tactic is engagement and communication.
Very, very rarely will we ever ban a protest. We hear the lazy soundbite at times that police are looking to ban protests. It has not happened in many years. Even when we apply conditions under sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, which were the subject of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, their usage is limited. We will record those. They are tested, and they are very often subject to court testing as well.
Then we have a range of other powers, depending on the level of criminality or risk that we identify in the protest. We are able to seize items and search properties, but that would be under a plethora of legislation and would be very specific to what we know in advance. In current protests, we often know little until something presents, or until very close to the event time. We have a range of powers, but they are not particularly coherent in the light of what is often a very poor line of sight around protest activity.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Yes. I will take the example of obstructing the highway; those powers have recently been adjusted. With Insulate Britain and some of the obstruction of the M25 motorway, we were dealing with legislation that was drafted without those tactics or activities in mind. The powers are relatively low level, in terms of consequences; individuals who were arrested could be back on the scene the next day. The capability of some of those powers to deal with repeat protest or reckless protest is very limited, and I think a significant number of the protesters were very aware of that.
On criminal damage, there are opportunities, through those powers, for us to intervene where people are carrying specified items and going equipped to commit criminal damage. Aggravated trespass, which you alluded to, is particularly relevant. In the private space, there is no right to protest in anything like the way that there is in the public space. That is just a flavour of a number of the offences that most commonly come into play in protest. There are others that are perhaps a little more rare, including conspiracy to commit various offences.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: We have tried to make an assessment about the impact of injunctions, especially around Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil. The feedback we have had is that when they are appropriately framed and developed at an appropriate pace, they can be very useful in terms of what we are trying to control and how we are trying to shape people’s behaviour. I think, in general though, while they are a key tool, they are not the only one we need.
We have worked hard with private industry to give them information and knowledge about injunctions. I have worked closely with an industry on my own patch that is very up for taking on the responsibility along-side the police service for trying to target harder and prevent protest. On occasions, they will then look to obtain injunctions in terms of trying to prevent harm from being caused to their business, property and employees. Injunctions have been used increasingly frequently, but the challenge is framing them appropriately and securing them within a reasonable timescale so they can have maximum impact.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Yes.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: Again, this is slightly outside my corporate memory, but there have been very lengthy conversations as far back as 2019 with policing, in terms of the public order and public safety portfolios, about the adequacy of some of the powers. That refined itself down into some further conversations around some bespoke powers, many of which appear in the Act you have just referred to.
There is an ongoing conversation around policy in terms of public order and public safety. For example, in some of the Just Stop Oil protests we have seen a cross-departmental approach. The police were clear in identifying where they see some inadequacies and in the effects that they want to achieve. In many ways, there is a rolling conversation around public policy, some of which will translate into legislation at one point or another.
Sarah Jones
Q
You also had some concerns about things in the Bill that he talks about—for example, the potential chilling effect on freedom of assembly that the stop-and-search powers, in particular, could have. Could you give us your view on the non-legislative suggestions that he had and how important they are? What is your view on his concerns about some of the things we are talking about, in particular the suspicionless stop and search and the scope of police power that that provides to you?
Chris Noble: For clarity, when you talk about non-legislative suggestions, what are thinking about?
Sarah Jones
Not changes in the law; most of the recommendations in his report are not about changing the law. They are about
“equipping police commanders with up to date, accessible guidance…ensuring that they consider the levels of disruption or disorder above which enforcement action will be considered; improving the way that police assess the impact of protests…improving the quality of police intelligence on protests…addressing a wide variation in the number of specialist officers available for protest policing throughout England and Wales”.
It goes on. They are all non-legislative recommendations. They are about how you train and support, gather intelligence and have the right people in the right place.
Chris Noble: Absolutely. Thank you. For me, having the right powers is clearly going to be very important. I think the policing ask about the powers is very current, in terms of being up to date with the challenges we face and clear about where the policing remit sits, and the powers being coherent and capable of being implemented. While the approach around legislation is important, there are some qualifiers on it.
Equally, you are right because, in some ways, irrespective of the legislation we are debating today, the overwhelming police commitment, around policing in a human rights-compliant way—policing by consent—fundamentally cuts across all the relevant legislation. That would probably be my key point.
I absolutely agree in terms of training, leadership and learning as we go what we do and do not do well. Having scrutiny around public order operations, whether they be protests or other things, is fundamental in terms of public confidence. This is also about making sure there is no unhelpful orthodoxy of approach within policing; constantly checking and evaluating our training; sharing information within policing; and listening to, and perhaps on occasion challenging, critical voices to make sure we pick up the wide perspective of views around how the police protest policing.
It is also about ensuring that we are accountable. I have a local police, fire and crime commissioner who has a real interest around protest policing and how it is delivered and relevant scrutiny panels, which will look at other matters, such as use of force or disproportionality. One part of the jigsaw is undoubtedly the powers we have. They are important, but as important, and in many ways more important, is how this is done and how policing maintains and secures public confidence.
On that note, I can talk about stop and search as the second element. Again, we recognise this is contentious. Whether this is within protest policing or tackling violent crime, the checks and balances are exactly the same, but there is a gap for us at the minute in terms of, as we alluded to earlier, being able to intervene earlier to try and prevent the more significant harm and disruption that takes place.
This is not about stopping someone protesting. I have no doubt there will be circumstances where we will stop and search and maybe even seize an item from someone, but they will still be facilitated in taking part in a protest. It is very much about recognising that particular articles and equipment are now being used to maximise disruption. Whether it is a suspicion-led or suspicionless power, we see real value in being able to intervene and ensure that the rights of everyone impacted by protest, as well as the rights of those expressing their views through protest, are protected.
Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, code A will very much apply in terms of how it is done and how records are kept. If we move to a section 60 type power, which is similar to the one in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, again, it would be a senior officer check and balance, and there will be appropriate scrutiny of how it is done. Of course, that can step into the realms of the inspection bodies reviewing it, and indeed of it ultimately being tested in court. We see it as a necessary power. There is a gap, but these things absolutely have to be done proportionately and transparently.
Sarah Jones
Q
Chris Noble: If we are talking about the serious disruption prevention orders, although the critical decisions will be made by members of the judiciary, obviously the police have a role to play in terms of potentially initiating these. Again, we would anticipate a high threshold. They will be for the most persistent and most reckless offenders, but we have seen a number of individuals who on occasions are making a mockery of not just the law, and less importantly the police service, but communities of interest in terms of their behaviours. I would not anticipate their being used on a common basis, but having the capability around some of the most persistent and reckless offenders would be helpful. There are significant checks and balances built in around capability and assurance in terms of who would grant those.
You are right that the powers exist in other parts of the criminal justice environment, with the supposed mantra being about controlling behaviour and not criminalising it, but we have heard quite a bit of noise from various parties about these things, so I think the rules and the protocols that exist, and the judicial test that would be applied, would be very important to ensure that orders are focused on the most potentially harmful individuals.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Q
Chris Noble: It probably comes back a little bit to the challenge we talked about earlier about thresholds. Quite appropriately, whenever we look at protests, it is baked into part of a democratic society. In terms of articles 9, 10 and 11, from a police point of view, we of course respect those and want to give them appropriate regard. Social media, on the one hand, can be a help to us, in terms of getting a flavour of public sentiment, what is going to happen and where, and where the issues are. It can maybe give us a line of inquiry to follow, in terms of who we might want to engage with and maybe try to support and, where appropriate, in terms of shaping some of the protest’s behaviour and activities.
On other occasions, there may well be offences committed on social media, which clearly we would need to look at, consider and progress with. Very often, most of the conversations taking place around protest are behind closed doors in social media, in various protected groups. Again, the thresholds that we currently work to would not allow us, as a general rule, to penetrate those and find out more information. So social media can be of use, but in terms of the most useful information about understanding the impact on the life of a community, some of that most significant information is not taking place in any sort of public forum at all.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: As you say, we are under constant attack from illegal protest. We work closely with the police and seek their support in dealing with that, but in the past we have had to use three High Court injunctions on different parts of the route because we felt we were not getting where we needed to through using the police.
We have applied for a route-wide injunction, there has been a hearing and we are waiting for the outcome. Rather than going back every time to each parcel of land, we have asked the court to give us a full route-wide injunction, which we hope will have some effect on the behaviour of the illegal protestors. The decision by HS2 to seek that High Court injunction was taken in between the failure of the previous legislation and the introduction of this legislation. We hope the High Court injunction will have a positive effect, but it is still limited and we still look to the police to support us.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: It can vary. We can secure a High Court injunction pretty quickly, depending on the circumstance, but it can take a long time—two to three months. Our application for the current injunction went in in March and there was a hearing at the end of May. We are still waiting for the outcome of that decision, and as soon as we hear, we will want to get moving on it.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: As you said at the beginning, they are very expensive, and they do not always have the effect that we are seeking. Fundamentally, what we are seeking to do is deter illegal protester behaviour and stop it happening. What we have seen, as the chief constable alluded to, is that HS2 is running an operation right now in Staffordshire with people who have been subject to court action in the past, and just continue to come back and repeat the same behaviour against us. It is useful, but it is not having the full effect that we need.
Sarah Jones
Q
Nicola Bell: Absolutely. Just to put it in context, we look after something like 4,500 miles of motorway and A roads, and the difference we saw this time around was that they are not just related to a site, like HS2 for example. We had protesters literally popping up everywhere; you did not know where they were going next. The police were arresting them using their existing powers—obstruction of the highway, maybe—but they were telling us that that was not a deterrent to them coming back out literally the next day, which was why we then sought to get injunctions ourselves.
We ended up applying for four injunctions in total. We were granted all of them, and if those people then went back out again, ultimately we had to follow that through with committal proceedings, which take a lot of time and effort. That alone—those people breaching that injunction order—was the thing that meant they would be sent to prison or ordered to pay costs. In total, we ended up with 34 defendants. Some were sent immediately to prison, which I think ranged from 24 days to six months, and then you had 18 people who ended up with two-year suspended sentences, but it was for National Highways to pursue that, not the police, because the injunctions that we were granted did not come with a power of arrest. If you are a local authority, for example, you can get a power of arrest with an injunction. We are a private limited company, so we cannot, and therefore it is up to us to keep on going with the injunction process.
It is important to point out that you then have two processes running in parallel. The civil proceedings have now happened, and the police are only now starting the criminal proceedings, which will probably run until December this year. Remember, that is for protests that happened on our network at the tail end of last year. The first protest by Insulate Britain was on 13 September, and the last one was on 2 November, so we had over 30 protests in 15 locations in less than two months.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: We have recorded 1,600 incidents against HS2 since the end of 2017. All of that is unlawful activity—trespass, violence against staff, criminal damage. Not all of those offences will lead to an arrest or any legal action. So, for us, this legislation is about the deterrent effect—absolutely. The extent to which it will cause a behavioural change in those who are participating is, I guess, the open question, but I would certainly see that tougher sentences and more police action would help—absolutely.
Kit Malthouse
Q
John Groves: Absolutely. It is probably everything and anything. We have seen violence against both staff and against those who are building the railway—so it is not just security staff who engage with them. These are protests that are taking place not just on the ground, but in tunnels. I am sure that you will all remember what happened at Euston; there was a 25-tunnel network under Euston. When we went in there to remove the protesters, the protesters were using lock-on devices sub-surface. There was violence against staff in there.
We have seen large-scale trespass. In Buckinghamshire, we did an operation to remove protesters from a site. We secured the venue, but they came back with about 100 people. They shone lasers in the eyes of staff members, they threw human waste around—I mean, it is the full panoply. What is different between what you see against HS2 as compared with other locations is that it is probably quite invisible to most of the public. Again, we have got an operation live at the moment. I have four protesters in a tunnel at the moment and they have been there since 10 May, and that is costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money. The safety risk to them, not just to the people who are working on the surface to support them, is significant. As you say, up until the end of March, £126 million of taxpayers’ money has had to go into protester removal or the cost to HS2 of the delay that these illegal protesters are causing us.
Sarah Jones
Q
I have a couple of follow-up questions. In the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which has not yet come into force, there are lots of changes to protesting. They are not yet law, but they will become law as soon as the Government get around to doing that. One change is that obstruction of a highway will carry a prison sentence of up to six months. The Minister was talking about it being a fine—it will now be a prison sentence of up to six months. There is also a raft of stuff about imposing conditions on static protests, so, if you are organisers of static protests, there are conditions on those, and, again, you can be imprisoned for that.
What is your assessment of the impact that that legislation will have when it comes into force? There is a question as to whether we should implement that legislation to see whether it has an impact before we move on to other things. What is your assessment? Will it have an impact?
John Groves: From HS2’s perspective, it will be limited. Protest on the public highway is limited in terms of the impact it has on us.
Sarah Jones
Q
John Groves: It may have some positive effect, but—I am sorry to repeat myself—tunnelling is the biggest issue for us, and I do not believe the Bill deals with that. Lock-on, as well, has a serious impact on us.
Nicola Bell: From my perspective, it is about seeing what impact that has and what the outcome will be. Obviously, it will be for the police to decide whether or not they are going to then use that new power to do exactly as you said. It is really about the impact that it has and whether it will be enough to act as a deterrent against people coming back. If it does, that is positive as far as running the strategic road network on a daily basis is concerned.
Sarah Jones
Q
Nicola Bell: Yes.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
John Groves: Absolutely. The protestors state that in their social media posts and in the things they say directly to us when we are talking to them. They are intent on stopping the project. They want to stop the railway. They believe it is the wrong thing to do.
We have had to shift how we approach the removal operation by taking land earlier, to build in sufficient time for removal, so that it does not have a direct impact on the programme. We have learned as we have gone along and, as the protestor strategy has changed, our reaction to that has changed. Again, it is expensive work, having to have a High Court enforcement team, paramedics and mine rescue there 24/7, since 10 May, until they come out. Then we hand that over to the police and also probably the ambulance service.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill (Second sitting)
Sarah Jones ExcerptsThursday 9th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 9 June - (9 Jun 2022)
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Our experience of protests until April this year was that they were mainly peaceful and occasional. However, their nature changed considerably in April; they have become more widespread, longer and more confrontational. Our main concerns include the safety of staff and protestors. There are significant safety risks, an impact on fuel supply, and increased costs.
In April 2020, 11 terminals were targeted for a number of days, and two forecourts suffered damage and were blocked. A significant number of arrests were made during that period. We followed the tweeting of Essex police, and halfway through April, they were talking about almost 500 arrests; some 12% of those arrested were arrested multiple times.
On the types of activities and the safety risks, there has been locking on, which is dealt with in the Bill. We have seen people lock themselves on, or attach themselves, to the top of stationary tankers, even when they are full, and when asked, they have not moved to empty ones, which would be safer. We have also seen locking on at height, which is when people attach themselves to machinery, pipes or vehicles high up, which means a risk of falls. People have even made their own stretchers to attach themselves to, which can be difficult to deconstruct safely. We have seen smoking on terminal storage tanks, with the safety risks that go with that. Cables have been cut on road tankers, which affects braking, and roads have been undermined—networks of tunnels have been dug under roads, affecting main and emergency access roads.
That causes great concern about safety. Refineries and terminals, as I am sure you can imagine, store potentially dangerous substances such as oil, other flammable substances, and substances that can cause chemical burns and can generate extreme heat. There can be a real danger of explosion and of falls from buildings. The activities on such sites are strictly regulated under COMAH—the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 2015—and of course protestors are not following those regulations; they are putting themselves and staff in danger. There have also been impacts on fuel deliveries and costs to companies.
On what the police can do and what the response has been, the industry has increased security staffing at some sites. There is already fencing and closed circuit television, and there are inspections by operational staff. Some sites have increased security around the clock. However, security staff have limited powers; they can only ask people to leave. Companies have also taken out civil injunctions, which is an option open to them; a number of our members have done so. That is of limited effect, because they do not come with powers of arrest and they take time to put in place, which allows people to come back and target the locations while the injunctions are being put in place. We have encouraged local authorities to take out injunctions, which are a more powerful tool, but, again, they take time to put in place and are costly. During the protests in April, two were put in place, in Essex and Warwickshire.
Steve Griffiths: From my experience as an operator of Stansted airport, which is clearly very much a live operational environment where there are complex, high-risk operations, any protests pose a serious risk to human life—the lives of our staff, our customers, the travelling public, and the protesters—and cause major disruption to the operation.
Our last major significant event was back in 2017, and it related to a deportation flight to Africa. The protesters cut through the security fence around the airport, which ensures its safety and security, using bolt cutters, and breached the airfield. Fourteen protesters then locked themselves around a Boeing 767 jet, which was due to fly the deportation flight to Africa. The impact of that was that the runway was closed for approximately one hour. This was at night time, so there was no daytime visibility, and incoming and departing flights were grounded during that period. Approximately 25 flights registered delays during that hour, and 11 were cancelled, including the flight in question, which was due to fly to Nigeria. We estimated that about 1,700 to 1,800 passengers were impacted by that disruption.
The protesters were arrested by the police, but were ultimately acquitted. We understand from media reporting of the case that they were charged with intentional disruption of services at an aerodrome under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990, but the court acquitted them because the offence requires some element of terrorist activity, which was not deemed to be present in this event. We understand that the Crown Prosecution Service charged the protesters with that offence because other offences that the perpetrators may have been charged with did not carry sentences that adequately reflected the seriousness of the circumstances that we experienced on that night—of forcibly gaining access to a security restricted live airport operation. That is the direct impact of the last major event.
Clearly, we support the right to protest at the airport, and we have designated areas, but this is about cases that infringe on parts of the airport outside those designated areas. I can talk only on behalf of London Stansted, but events have happened across UK airports.
Sarah Jones
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Yes. I can see a direct reference to locking on. There are a number of elements in the Bill that will be helpful. These are new challenges for us, and the Bill makes a number of enhancements to mechanisms that will be available to the police. The police will, of course, give their view about whether they will help or not.
From what I have read, the Bill will give the police a power to arrest in a timelier and more straightforward way. The current way of giving powers through injunctions could lead to a patchwork of different injunctions in different places, and be confusing, which would mean that police felt less confident in making decisions. The Bill specifically refers to two things: locking on—that looks as though it will be potentially useful—and the definition of key national infrastructure; again, that would enhance the powers and make their use more practicable.
Sarah Jones
Q
I guess my question is whether an offence of locking on—I think that it has its own problems because of the very broad way it is drafted—will be any more helpful than those 500 arrests that the police made; you are talking about people who just come back afterwards.
Elizabeth de Jong: My understanding is that the legislation will reduce the time and cost spent getting the injunctions that allow the arrests. It clearly says, “This is an offence. We don’t need to go through the injunction process.” The issue is the time it takes to get the injunctions; that allows people to reoffend. There might be an opportunity for faster processing as well, but clearly local authority injunctions will allow court appearances to take place sooner.
Steve Griffiths: There is nothing I could add to that. I am really here to talk about the impact of disruption, and I am probably not qualified to comment intensely on the Bill; I leave that to the police.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: The particular areas are Kingsbury and Esso Purfleet; it has been around Essex and Warwickshire. It has also been nationwide, but those are the current ones that have been focused on.
Kit Malthouse
Q
Elizabeth de Jong: Indeed.
Sarah Jones
Q
Also, there seem to be slightly different issues. The issue with the flight was a slight one-off, in that people were objecting to that particular flight going away. There is a particular problem, it seems, with people trying to block entire infrastructure programmes across the country. They are two quite different things and I think they need a slightly different response.
I want to confirm with you, Mr Griffiths, that the police arrested the people but that the issue was that the charge was not right. It was not that they were not arrested and taken away; it was just that the charge did not stick because the right charge was not there, if you see what I mean.
Steve Griffiths: Yes, you have the fact that the incident occurred in the first place and then, as you say, the perpetrators were arrested, but then the subsequent charge fell apart because of, presumably, a gap in legislation, in that the route taken for prosecution did not stand up. On your first question, I do not have that answer with me today.
Elizabeth de Jong: I have some information on the first one. We received police intelligence about the attacks and that intelligence was broadly correct.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank our witnesses for the evidence. We will move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Adam Wagner gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Adam Wagner, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. We have until 3.5 pm for this session. Will Mr Wagner introduce himself for the record?
Adam Wagner: Good afternoon. My name is Adam Wagner and I am a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. I practice in human rights law and public inquiries, and I do a lot of work on protest law.
Sarah Jones
Q
Adam Wagner: Okay. I will start with the general question about what I think of the legislation. It is important to frame this debate properly. In this country, our tradition is that protest is something that is permitted. It is not seen as a social evil; it is seen as a social good. A certain level of disruption is inevitable in any successful protest. That is how you get people’s attention: you disrupt, and you put yourself in front of them. That is not a new thing; it is very old. It goes back to the suffragettes, who I am sure many people giving evidence will mention.
Every social movement in history that has a protest element has always used an element of disruption, and there will of course be times when disruption steps over the line into violence and such serious disruption that society will not tolerate it. At that point, the criminal law will intervene, and there is always an uneasy balance between where you put the line, because you accept that conscientious protest about important issues is something that democracy needs for the public to communicate directly to the rest of society and to you—the people who are in charge. That is always the context.
All the court authorities on these kinds of issues recognise that protest is disruptive, unruly and something that annoys people, particularly if they do not agree with the views. If somebody does not agree with a view, that is a very good reason to not allow them to be in charge of whether the person can be express it. That is why it is very dangerous to start tinkering with a law because of views you do not approve of, because the next lot will come along and do the same for the views you do approve of. So we keep a level of tolerance towards protest—that is the way I would frame it.
For the most part, the mechanisms that the Bill puts in place essentially criminalise peaceful protest. That is what the Bill does: it criminalises peaceful protest in a way that has not been done before. It treats peaceful protest like knife crime, drug dealing or terrorism. I do not mean that metaphorically; I mean it directly. Serious crime disruption orders and terrorism disruption orders stop people doing something in future—those are the kinds of methods we have used to disrupt terrorism, knife crime, drug dealing and gang violence. I have been involved in lots of cases involving those kinds of orders. If the Bill is used by police—they will be under pressure to use it in particular instances—the end result will be lots more protesters in the criminal courts, in very long and complicated trials that involve looking at the proportionality of the protest in question, as we saw with the Colston statue case. But it will be 100 times more, because all these offences have a reasonable excuse—I can come to that. I think that is one thing you will see.
The other thing you will see is a lot more protesters in prison—and a lot more peaceful protesters in prison. I do not have any issue with, and I do not think human rights law has any issue with, violent protesters being treated as criminals—the European convention on human rights entirely accepts that violent protest does not fall under the protection of the right to protest—but all these provisions are about peaceful protest, and it will end up with hundreds and hundreds of protesters in the prison system. I see that from my own work. An increasing amount of protesters are going to end up in prison because of the injunctions. That is my general view, but I can talk about specifics.
Sarah Jones
Q
Also, we heard from previous witnesses about cases in which people have glued themselves to motorways in a dangerous way, and about people locking themselves on and tunnelling under things—doing things that are criminal and dangerous. That is the problem that the Bill is seeking to tackle: the small number of people who are repeatedly doing things that are dangerous for themselves and others. It would be helpful for you to explain how that marries with your view that the Bill will affect loads of peaceful protesters.
Adam Wagner: Hard cases make bad law, is the aphorism. I think that is true. I listened to a previous witness say that locking on is a new phenomenon; the suffragettes were locking on and Gandhi was locking on—these are very old protest methods. Anybody that breaks into an airport or an oil refinery, or blocks a motorway, can be arrested and charged under existing criminal law. That is absolutely uncomplicated.
One of the misapprehensions about the Insulate Britain protests—I read it in the newspapers—was that the police could not arrest people until there was an injunction in place. That is completely the wrong way round. Injunctions do not give powers of arrest to the police; court enforcement officers gain powers of arrest from injunctions, but the police can arrest people for obstruction of the highway in the same way that they have been able to for a long time. There are all sorts of other criminal offences that can be used—aggravated trespass is the other catch-all one. When someone is on the road they can still be trespassing if they are not using it for a permitted purpose. Aggravated trespass applies to any private land, including airports, oil refineries and petrol stations.
In terms of dealing with the issue at the time and on the ground, the Bill is not going to make any difference at all. The police can go in and arrest people—there is nothing stopping them. They can use reasonable force to unlock people who are locked on. The police will have exactly the same powers to do that under all these new offences. The difference—to use a term that has come up—is the downstream. Instead of those people potentially going to prison for a bit, or not going to prison at all, they will end up going to prison for a long time. The clauses of the Bill create a culminative effect—it is like being a petty criminal: once you start and are in the criminal justice system, you get longer and longer sentences and everything stacks up, one after the other. The courts have more and more draconian powers that they can use against you. The Bill creates that culminative effect for peaceful protesters.
Sarah Jones
Q
Adam Wagner: A serious disruption prevention order follows the model of lots of other such orders in our laws, such as serious crime prevention orders, gang orders and drug dealing prevention orders. It is the same exact model. As drafted, a serious disruption prevention order allows a court a power if someone is convicted of any offence under the new offences.
For example, having superglue in their pocket would be an offence under the regulations, because it could be used for a lock-on. Arguably, too, a bicycle lock on their bicycle could be used for a lock-on. Once that is triggered and they get convicted of an offence, the court can then look at their background and, if they have been involved in a protest that even potentially might cause serious disruption, that is all that is needed—
“capable of causing serious disruption to two or more”—
and could trigger the power for the judge to impose an order of up to two years that prevents them from doing all sorts of things. They might not be allowed into a town centre for two years, or to associate with particular people, or they could be given electronic tagging requirements. Once that is in place, they could be dragged back in if they breach a requirement and be given a prison sentence as a result. It is a protest banning order, effectively.
In fact, there are two different kinds of order: clause 13, which is the serious disruption prevention order, and then another one, whereby a police officer—even if the person has not been convicted of an offence, but just so long as they have participated in a protest and the judge thinks they might participate in another or maybe take some superglue along with them—can prevent them from going into a town centre or associating with particular people. The orders can even be applied to organisations, so it is not just individuals; it could be a charity or a campaigning organisation. It is a really huge expansion of court powers against protesters.
Let me talk a bit about the psychology of some of the people I represent, who are some of the more hardcore protesters who are at the centre of a lot of these movements. They will not be deterred by this legislation. If we look at Insulate Britain, which I guess is on the extreme end of disruption versus expressing the right to protest—it is not directed; the people they were disrupting were not the people they were protesting against, which makes the courts the least sympathetic to those actions—a lot of them said, “Well, I will go to prison for the cause.” A lot of environmental and Black Lives Matter protesters—whichever cause you think of—will say, “It’s going to be a badge of honour to go to prison.”
The prison system will start to be full of those people. It will not deter them; the people it will deter are the people who are not willing to go to prison, but who will also not be doing anything illegal at protests. They will just not want to go along, “Because I don’t want to be caught with a bicycle lock. I have a bicycle outside; I don’t want to be caught with a bicycle lock. What happens if I get arrested because I have a bicycle lock? I didn’t know one of these orders allowed police to do suspicionless search.” It will deter those people; it won’t deter the people you are worried about or the previous witnesses were worried about. It will deter lots of other people who you are not worried about, but you should be worried about.
The Chair
Q
David Dinsmore: I am David Dinsmore, chief operating officer at News UK. For the purposes of this, News UK is the owner of Newsprinters Ltd, which prints a lot of the newspapers in this country.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: This started on the evening of 4 September 2020 and continued to midday on the 5th. We have three print sites across the UK: one at Broxbourne to the north of London, one in Knowsley in Merseyside, and one at Eurocentral, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. At the Eurocentral site, there was a small, peaceful protest that broke up very quickly and did not get in the way of any of our business. However, at both Broxbourne and Knowsley, starting at about 9.45 pm, a collection of vans, boats on trailers and a bamboo superstructure were put in place at the exits to the plants. In the Broxbourne case, 50-plus people got on to those structures, many of them locking themselves on. At Knowsley, I think the number was about 30. Certainly, there were 51 arrests at Broxbourne, and 30 arrests and 28 charges at Knowsley.
The police were called immediately and were on the scene within half an hour, but they did not start removing people properly until 4 am at Broxbourne and 11 am at Knowsley. Both sites were finally cleared at midday on the 5th. This was a Friday, into Saturday. Saturday is the biggest newspaper sale of the week. Between The Sun and The Times, we would normally expect to sell about 2 million papers that day. We also print for The Daily Telegraph. We print some of the Daily Mail and some of the Financial Times, and we also deliver a direct-to-consumer service, although we do not print them, for The Guardian out of the Broxbourne site, so you will see that we are at the heart of the news industry in the country, whatever your flavour may be.
All the exits were blocked, which meant that all our trucks and drivers were blocked inside. Although we printed the run of about 2.5 million papers, they all had to be pulped. We had to use other print sites around the country to print those newspapers, and we delivered from them. The net result was that we lost a significant sale, as we did not get to many newsagents until past midday. The cost to us as a company was about £1.2 million. I would say we had 155 staff who were trapped on site until midday the following day, and we still have senior staff attending court hearings. They have had to block out of their diaries about 150 man/woman days—they are not having to attend court, but there is definitely serious disruption.
The final point I would make is that those 51 people at Broxbourne were all charged under obstructing highways, and those at Knowsley were charged under the aggravated trespass legislation. Some of the people at Knowsley have been found not guilty because it was not clear whose land they were trespassing on, and at Broxbourne, most people who have been found guilty have been given conditional discharges—costs of £150. One of them even glued himself on to the court table and still got a conditional discharge.
It feels to us to be a major, serious and co-ordinated attack. It caused considerable material disruption and continues to do so. The legislation is not in place to provide a deterrent to this. There is not even a catch-all law that people can be charged under, even if they do commit the crime. It felt like we were powerless to do anything other than work around this huge disruption, which had a massive impact. There is another impact worth mentioning. We go to wholesalers, who were hugely disrupted, and then we go to 44,000 retailers, who were similarly disrupted. That ends up with 2 million or 3 million customers who cannot get their paper when they turn up to buy it in the morning. The disruption to freedom of speech and our democracy in this instance was huge.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: My understanding is that you need specialist teams to remove protesters who are locked on at a height.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: It was chains. At Broxbourne, they brought a purpose-made bamboo super structure, which they were able to erect at speed and put themselves on to.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: We call it the nightly miracle that we get from literally a blank sheet of paper at 9 o’clock at night to 44,000 retailers at 6 o’clock the following morning around the country. While I like the aspiration, the idea that we could get specialist teams there and remove blockages and get all that cleared without having significant disruption to the network and that delivery is, I think, pretty ambitious.
Sarah Jones
Q
David Dinsmore: Indeed.
Anne McLaughlin
Q
Wendy Chamberlain
We shall find out from the Minister why he has changed his mind.
Sarah Jones
Q
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: You mention the level of resources. Certainly, when you look at the number of officers per head of population in the UK roughly compared with France, Italy and Spain, you see that we have about half the number that they have. Why is that? Because they have national police forces and paramilitary police forces that essentially are part of the military, live in barracks and are able to respond in that militaristic way. That is not our history whatsoever and I would absolutely not want it to be, but it possibly gives you some indication of the level of resource.
Even if the chief superintendent had double the number of officers, I am not sure that he would necessarily want to put them into this form of policing, because he is absolutely right that when officers had to be on motorway bridges at the time of Insulate Britain to try to be available to clear the protests, they were officers who would have been investigating rapes, burglaries or whatever. There is a practical issue here: could we ever have the level of resources to be able to effectively—? The fact is that the protesters will always be fleeter of foot than the police, because they have the element of surprise.
In terms of what can be done to help people like Newsquest, Morrisons and other people I have dealt with who were absolutely very concerned about the future of their businesses, for me it is about being prepared to look at issues like bail. In the more immediate sphere, it is for the courts to be able to keep people in custody, rather than having to wait for a court case a few months down the line, or for one of these particular orders.
I would still doubt whether the appetite would be there—the judicial appetite. Police officers are very wary, and you heard the exact reason for that from Newsquest: when cases get to court, the judiciary or the magistrates often give out very minor sentences—whatever might be allowed in the legislation. They find, as happened with the Sarah Everard case, that higher courts then disagree and bring in human rights legislation, or bring in a different interpretation that is in the legislation, which then completely takes the legs of the police from underneath them.
That can only really be covered partly by legislation but essentially by judicial practice, because you can bring in all the laws you like—it will not actually solve those practical issues that the police face. There is also a real difficulty with definitions. This Bill talks about “protests”. Previous legislation, such as the Public Order Act 1986, talks about “gatherings”. We seem to have brought in this word “protests”, and I am not sure there is a legal definition of what is a protest.
The 1986 Act uses the phrase,
“serious disruption to the life of the community”.
I dealt with a really difficult protest in the centre of Manchester, which essentially put the Jewish community and the Muslim community at odds. I actually contacted the Home Office and said, “Please can you tell me the definition of serious disruption to community life?” They said, “The legislation’s never been used. We can’t tell you.” I was left wondering whether I should go around the shops of Manchester and try to work out whether their takings were up or down as a result of the protest.
With words such as “serious disruption”, on the face of it, yes, they are common sense and everybody knows what it looks like. In reality, however, when it gets into the courts that is exactly where the lawyers make their money from, but it absolutely undermines the police action and seriously means that police forces may be sued for unlawful arrest, and officers may be more liable to receive complaints because the conviction was not secured. It is a really complex issue, as Matt has said, and it needs a range of things, but just having more legislation without dealing with those other issues—you would certainly need an absolutely huge investment in training.
That would be my concern about this legislation. It is quite complex legislation. How, for instance, are West Midlands police supposed to train that, with all the day-to-day of policing? There is no time in policing for training. Again, those officers who are going to be on training courses have to be taken away from other duties. In my time, in my early stage there was very little change to the law. It is now changing almost month by month, and trying to keep police officers—who, with due respect to them, do not have the sort of professional background on how to interpret legislation—up to date with that is really difficult, because we are putting them into a totally different scenario, in terms of their level of accountability and the level of transparency that has now come from mobile phones and social media.
Sarah Jones
Q
The third question is just about any thoughts you might have on things in the Bill that you have not looked at. You might not have had thoughts because the Government have not asked you to do a report on it—I think I am right that they have not asked you. Do you have any thoughts on things that you have not looked at before?
Matt Parr: I will deal with the easiest one of those questions first. The policing response to our report has been possibly the most professional and thorough response that I have seen in any report I have done in six years as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors. The then National Police Chiefs’ Council lead picked it up, gathered a group together, and it has been a model of how policing as a whole should respond to a report. That has been really good. We have not been back to inspect, but I am pretty confident that progress has been made against every recommendation we made. I think they have almost all been ticked off. That is very encouraging. That is not standard fare with reports from us, sadly.
On your point about what bits of the legislation we looked at, we were asked to look at five changes. The history of this is that in 2019 the Home Secretary wrote to the commissioner of the Met, and the commissioner then wrote back with a series of 19 potential changes to the law. There was a big roundtable involving the Home Office and lots of people in policing in mid-2020. After that it was decided that they would take forward five. We supported all five of those—with a little bit of teeth-sucking about a couple. Generally, we thought that they all had the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the policing of protests, and would help achieve the “modest reset” I referred to in the report.
The Bill contains one of those changes, and that is the one about extending stop and search to look for lock-ons. It contains other changes that were not in there: obstructing major transport works; interference with key national infrastructure; serious disruption prevention orders, which we have already mentioned; and, lastly, lowering the rank in the Met for authorisations.
On extending stop and search, we said that because of its preventive nature it has the clear potential to enhance police effectiveness. It would also act as a deterrent. We recognised it was controversial, and we registered concerns about modelling it on current section 60 legislation—we thought that was potentially problematic. It is trying to achieve two very different things. We were nervous about a potential effect on minorities, and therefore we would like to see strong safeguards around that.
Finally, we said there must be appropriate thresholds and correct authority levels. I think the Bill says inspector, which is probably as low a rank as I would want to go. However, in general we remain supportive. There was broad support for the stop and search proposal from across the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and policing generally. Some people raised some difficulties, but we concluded:
“our view is that, with appropriate guidance and robust and effective safeguards, the proposed stop and search powers would have the potential to improve police efficiency”.
I have mentioned that we were not supportive of SDPOs. We did not really look at the others. I will touch on changing the minimum rank of assistant commissioner to commander in the Met. That strikes me as entirely pragmatic. If you look at the Met, the real expertise in public order tends to be at commander rank, rather than above, where people get a bit more generalist. The deep professional experts in London, in my experience, are the commanders. That strikes me as perfectly sensible. The other two changes we simply have not looked at. I would say that they strike me as consistent with the aim I was in support of. Currently, the balance is not being got right on a regular basis; the level of disruption between those who have a right to protest, and those who are bystanders and affected by protest, is not in the right place. Those changes strike me as consistent with resetting that balance.
Everybody I talked to in the course of this inspection or since—every police officer and everybody involved in this—absolutely recognises the right to protest. There is no question about that. Frankly, I think some of the criticism of the Bill, and some of the interpretation of it, goes too far. It is not a police state.
Sarah Jones
Q
Matt Parr: Both. Any changing of where the pendulum sits does not automatically mean the introduction of a police state. To me, they look like sensible measures to redress the balance. I note that the Government’s note accompanying the Bill links to a YouGov survey that shows where the public are on this issue, and those findings were entirely consistent with the survey we did as part of the Bill. To be honest, I was quite surprised at the time, but the YouGov poll is in exactly the same place.
Sarah Jones
Q
Phil Dolby: No one protest is the same as any other, even if it might be about the same cause. Some of the most challenging ones we have had have not necessarily been Extinction Rebellion or High Speed 2. The issues in Gaza led to some go-slow protests that were going to churn up the city, which I had to deal with.
Another protest was in the paper a few years ago. A school was hoping to do a teaching element about same-sex relationships, and some of the local Muslim community were upset about that. We have also had Sikh tensions at the Indian consulate general, the Kisan protests and so forth. Sometimes you can start your tour of duty and something appears on Al Jazeera—suddenly, you can feel the tension rising during that same tour of duty.
The first thing is very much: what relationships do we have with communities before there is a protest? What kind of neighbourhood local policing service do we have? What is our community engagement across the spectrum of age, ethnicity, communities and so on? That is the most important. One of the most important briefings I give to everyone—including protesters—at the beginning of any operation, be it pre-planned or spontaneous, is always about the style and tone of what we are about to do. That is about being a fair service that is not afraid to make decisions when it needs to.
I will give you a couple of quick examples, starting with when we had the go-slow. Like most cities, Birmingham has a ring road, and it does not take much for that artery to suddenly be blocked, which means that nobody is going anywhere. We had a protest about Gaza whereby they were going to do a go-slow with their vehicles and do a circuit around the city. Because it kept moving, we tolerated that. We did some traffic management around it, kept the city moving and made sure that really important things, such as hospitals and so forth, were not affected. They then went for a second lap, and that was where I had a threshold with a gold commander who had given me a strategy that said, “That’s enough now, because everyone else in the city has the right to peaceful enjoyment of the transport system and to get around.”
We currently have a power under section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986—this goes to Sir Peter’s point—that already has the term “serious” within it. There is a test called 3DI—serious damage, disorder, disruption or injury —but the definition of “serious” is still quite open to interpretation. You also need to have an organiser. During the pandemic, people did not want to show that they were organisers, because they would then be potentially prosecuted under the coronavirus regulations. That has kind of stayed. Before then, people were quite happy to say, “I was the organiser,” but that is less so now.
The go-slow had no clear organiser, but through the CCTV around the city, I was able to see who the organiser was. There were probably about 200 vehicles involved in it, and I just gave a warning about the police’s power to who I was evidentially satisfied was the organiser. I negotiated and said, “Look, I’ve got this power. It’s ready, and here it is. Do you want to carry on, or can I encourage you to stop? You have had your opportunity, and you need to move on.” There was a negotiated approach that I thought tried to keep the balance for everyone.
Similarly, Extinction Rebellion recently blocked a fairly minor road. We were a little confused about the road they chose. If we had been doing it, we would have chosen a different one. They had a tactic whereby instead of staying in the middle of the road all the time, they would use the pelican crossing but let the traffic stop by the traffic furniture. They would then occupy the road for about five minutes and when the traffic built up, they would move away. That was an interesting application of the law but, again, what we did was start negotiations with them.
We have our protest liaison teams, and there is a five-step appeal that officers go through, which we document and fill, giving every opportunity for the protesters to reach the decision themselves. Eventually, I said, “Okay. There is a power here to stop you. This is an unlawful assembly because it is now causing serious disruption. There’s a children’s hospital that is starting to be affected, so now that’s enough.”
I brought forward the van that is a mobile prison cell—kind of a show of strength, really—and said, “That is what I am prepared to use”. They said, “Okay”, and that was enough. Again, both the powers were available to us. They were being prepared to be used. We were not just tolerating it; there was a negotiated approach, and both of those are examples of where that has been successful. On the serious disruption element in the Bill, I would encourage as much precision for that definition as possible.
Mrs Elphicke
Q
Matt Parr: We made that point in the report. There are certain things that probably would have a deterrent effect—the £37 million is something that we referred to. I think it is relevant. It is difficult to say that you cannot put a price on articles 10 and 11 and, of course, you are right. However, just for context, the two operations we looked at in London cost £37 million. That is twice the annual budget of the violent crime taskforce, so it does have a significant effect.
The other general observation I would make is that protest has been increasing and the complexity and demand on policing has increased. It does not seem likely to us that it will go in a different direction in the years to come, so something has to be done to prevent it becoming too much of a drain. Yes, I think that some of these act as a deterrent, of course. It rather depends on how they end up progressing through the courts—if, indeed, they are brought to court—and if it turns out that they are not meaningfully prosecuted and there are not meaningful convictions, any deterrent effect will pretty soon dissipate after that, I would have thought.
Sir Peter Martin Fahy: I would make the same point. Anything that could be put in the legislation to clarify the issue about “serious”, which absolutely could be some financial calculation, would be extremely useful. You have to remember that it was quite clear that the vast majority of people thought the Insulate Britain protests were extremely disruptive and pointless.
There are certainly some protests where you have two sides. Therefore, you will get pressure from one side to use this legislation, and we should not be naive about the pressure that police leaders come under from local politicians to do that. I will be honest: they were some of the most uncomfortable times in my police career when that happened. Therefore, having clarity about the legislation is really important, as is anything that can be put in to help that.
I do not know whether there is actually any evidence that people are deterred. Common sense says that some people will be deterred by harsher sentences and the threat of a conviction in court, but clearly some people are so determined, and have a certain lifestyle where it does not really have any consequence for them, that—if anything—it makes them martyrs. Certainly, as Matt said, if they are not convicted or get found not guilty, if anything that gives them a greater status as a martyr and leads to further criticism of the police.
Phil Dolby: I want to make a point on the precision of the legislation. When looking to consider stop and search without suspicion, I think no matter how hard you try, there will be a complete, solid line in the public discourse between that and section 60, which is the existing power to have targeted stop and search around violence principally. That is a tool that is being used increasingly with the challenges we are all facing around youth violence and knife crime. It is also something around which communities have not always necessarily experienced fair treatment.
With all that we are trying to do now, it is still a key point of discussion and, sometimes, contention. We have the community coming in and scrutinising how we have used it. They watch our body-worn video of what we tried to do. We have even got youth versions of that for young people. I do not know how you would do the same kind of thing with protest. I think there is something that needs to be done there. There is best practice advice on how to conduct stop and search, and I think there is potentially some real thinking if those go ahead to start with that position as opposed to learning those lessons as we go along.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill (Third sitting)
Sarah Jones ExcerptsTuesday 14th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 14 June 2022 - (14 Jun 2022)
Kit Malthouse
The notion of reasonable excuse is well defined in our common law and is adjudged by courts daily, particularly in protest situations. We have seen that over the last few months. Although I assume that the hon. Gentleman seeks some precision in definition, “reasonable excuse” is for the courts to define, and they do so regularly.
Amendment 30 would raise the threshold for the offence of locking on by requiring individuals to have intended their lock-on to cause disruption, rather than having been reckless about that. Recklessness is, however, also a very well understood term in criminal law, and it applies to numerous criminal offences. I do not see the value in removing it from this clause, not least because, as I am sure the hon. Member for North East Fife knows, it is a well-known term in Scottish law and is often used in Scottish courts to adjudge an offence. For the reasons I have set out, I ask hon. Members not to press the amendments.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife for tabling her amendments, which we are happy to support. She spoke clearly and eloquently about them, and I echo some of her arguments. We agree with the narrowing of scope proposed in amendment 29, which would mean that locking on must cause disruption, rather than just being capable of doing so. The Minister has already spoken, but I think there is an issue with the wording, and with defining an act as being capable of causing disruption. The definition is so broad and imprecise that it could include almost anything.
Kit Malthouse
On Cromwell Road in west London, a lorry pulled up and scaffolding was quickly brought out and semi-erected, but as Territorial Support Group 5 happened to be on the scene, the scaffolding was quickly removed. That offence was capable of causing significant disruption, but because of swift police action, it did not. Does the hon. Lady believe that an offence was committed in that case, and that the sentence should deter those people from trying again?
Sarah Jones
It was jolly good that the police were there and able to deal with that case. We do not need new legislation to enable them to do their job, which they did swiftly and well.
We will come on in more detail to the fundamental flaws in the Bill, but our underlying argument is that it will not deal with the small number of repeat offenders who come back time and again. It may, however, criminalise people who protest peacefully. Whatever the Government intended, that is not necessarily how the provision will be interpreted. That is why laws need to be drafted very clearly. As the former Prime Minister has said on several occasions, she might have thought that she would interpret her powers very sensibly when she was Home Secretary, but who knows who will come next? If we do not have sensible people making decisions, we do not necessarily want them to be able to interpret these very broad powers, so the law needs to be precise.
The hon. Member for North East Fife referenced Lord Paddick, who made the point that if the locking on
“were on a different road or at a different time, it would be capable of causing serious disruption. But if it is 3 am on a Sunday, is that still capable of causing serious disruption?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, insert date in form 1 January 2057; Vol. 816, c. 980.]
That is a good and interesting point. We are happy to support the amendments put forward by the hon. Member for North East Fife.
Amendment 46 addresses another of our concerns. All those who gave evidence last week discussed the scale of the disruption caused by protest. We were all horrified by the astronomical costs involved, such as the £126 million that High Speed 2 spent on protester removal, which might rise to £200 million next year. However, under clause 1, the offence is triggered where a lock-on causes disruption to just two people. There is clearly a huge difference between the enormous scale of disruption caused to HS2, or by lock-ons on the motorway, and disruption caused to two people. They are simply not the same thing, and it is problematic that the clause appears to conflate them.
Wendy Chamberlain
The hon. Lady has referred to the astronomical costs. The Minister said that it is for the courts to make some of the decisions around the wideness of the scope. The reality is that if we arrest more people for these offences and they go through the criminal justice system, those costs will increase. By having such a wide scope, we are making the situation more expensive in the longer term.
Sarah Jones
Sadly, the Government are good at wasting taxpayer money. We have seen lots of cases of the profligate use of funds; let us hope this will not be a similar case.
Kit Malthouse
To be clear, all the people who currently lock on are arrested and charged with other offences, including in Scotland. It is not necessarily the case that more people would be arrested. In fact, given the specificity of the offence, and as we hope that the sentence that we attach to it will prove a deterrent, in time fewer people will commit this offence and cause serious disruption; there will therefore be fewer arrests. Is that not the point of the laws we pass in this place?
Sarah Jones
The point is that the offence would not be a deterrent, given that there are plenty of other things that people are charged with, and imprisoned and fined for. It would not be a deterrent to those difficult people who come back time and again, as they can already be arrested, charged and sent to prison for a multitude of existing offences.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend is correct. I was surprised to hear the Minister say, “It’s okay: we can already charge these people. There are plenty of offences that they can be charged with and fined for.” Why the new legislation, then? I do not quite understand the Minister.
Sarah Jones
I absolutely agree. In addition—this is most peculiar—a whole raft of legislation on protest has been passed by this House but not yet implemented. We are layering legislation on top of a whole raft of legislation that has passed but not yet implemented, before we even know whether the previous legislation has worked.
Amendment 46 aims to amend clause 1 so that it actually deals with the scale of the disruption that our witnesses were concerned with. In doing so, it will also address the concerns of the public. I do not think that the public are much interested in protests that cause disruption to just two people. That is not so egregious, and certainly not egregious enough to risk seriously harming the right to protest. The National Police Chiefs’ Council agrees; it states in its written evidence that:
“we believe using the definition of ‘serious disruption to the community’ may be preferable to ‘two or more people, or an organisation’, as the former is more widely understood and will allow more effective application consistent with human rights legislation.”
Amendment 30, tabled by the hon. Member for North East Fife, would
“limit the new offence to ensure that there must be intent to cause serious disruption.”
As I have mentioned, one of our key concerns with this clause is how widely drawn it is. With such broad wording, it is fair to ask the police to determine whether there is genuine intent to cause serious disruption. As has been pointed out by Liberty and other organisations, the Bill already carries the danger of criminalising peaceful protest, and has the potential to sweep up many peaceful protesters. Recklessness is not a good measure in the law. How should the police try to prove that an individual has been particularly reckless? Recklessness is not a good measure in the law. Can the Minister say what “recklessness” is? Is it defined by a lack or an abundance of action? What would his definition be?
Sarah Jones
I know it is early in the morning to test the will of the Committee, but I wish to move the amendment formally, in part because the NPCC has concerns about the wording, as do many other organisations.
Amendment proposed: 46, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out from “disruption” to the end of line 12.—(Sarah Jones.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Wendy Chamberlain
I beg to move amendment 31, clause 1, page 1, line 21, after “fine” insert
“not exceeding level 2 on the standard scale”.
A person convicted of an offence of “locking on” may be subjected to a fine. Under this clause there is no limit on the fine that may be imposed. This amendment would place a maximum limit on the fine.
The Bill allows for unlimited fines but the amendment would limit the fine for the offence to level 2, £500. The amendment belongs with my amendments 34 and 37, because as currently drafted the offences of locking on, being equipped to lock on or obstructing major transport works can carry an unlimited fine.
To divert slightly, reference was twice made during last week’s evidence sessions—and this morning— to Scots law, although I appreciate that the Bill relates to England and Wales. Last week, the Minister referred to the crime of malicious mischief in Scotland, which carries an unlimited fine or prison sentence. That took me right back to my basic training days at the Scottish Police College—is it vandalism or malicious mischief? It is a crime at common law, and that is why it carries unlimited fines or imprisonment. The Scots Advocate, Andrew Crosbie, a member of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, describes common law offences on his crime.scot blog as follows:
“I tend to summarise common law cases…they’re crimes because they just are.”
You know us Scots, we are blunt and to the point. But common law crimes such as assault, theft, murder, fraud and breach of the peace were not created by Parliament, and as such are not defined in legislation. In fact, David Hume, whose statue stands outside the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, pooled all the High Court decisions to produce the authoritative account of the state of Scots criminal law in the 1840s. All of those offences could result in unlimited fines or prison time, and I have lost count of the number of times that I charged someone with the breach of the peace, because it is a catch-all piece of legislation. The reality is that those offences do not carry those sanctions because sentencing decisions are usually made within a scale and scope, dependent on the seriousness of the offence and previous case law. I would argue therefore that, contrary to the Minister’s argument last week, it is not as straightforward as it first looks that Scots law is more draconian; it is about the scope of previous stated cases and decisions.
Malicious mischief consists of the wilful, wanton and malicious destruction of, or damage to, the property of other persons. There must be malice, either actual or inferred, on the part of the perpetrator, as destruction or damage caused by accident or under a reasonable belief of right, is not criminal. One main difference between that offence and vandalism is that the latter must result in damage to actual property, whereas under malicious mischief financial damage brought about by a criminal act would suffice. I hope Members will note why malicious mischief might be an appropriate offence in Scotland for some of matters that we are considering in the Bill.
From a police officer’s perspective, if property is damaged and the value of the damage is high, it may be more relevant to label the act as a common law crime other than vandalism. That is certainly how I recall it from my police college days—if it was high value, or involved cruelty to animals, it was malicious mischief, otherwise we preferred statutory vandalism.
I wanted to touch on that because in a democracy punishments are made to be proportionate to the crimes. Is it proportionate to fine someone potentially tens of thousands of pounds for a single act of protest? My simple proposal is that the fine should be limited to level 2 on the standard scale at £500. I am happy to hear from the Government should they have other proposals for a limit, but I argue that it cannot and should not be limitless.
Sarah Jones
The intent behind the amendment—to prove whether an unlimited fine is proportionate or not—is sensible. It is difficult to find examples of offences that have resulted in huge fines, and I wonder whether the Minister could provide some examples of the scale of fines for the offence set down in clause 1. I know that the coalition Government introduced an unlimited fine in 2015 under the terms of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. The explanatory notes to those regulations state:
“For the most serious offences tried by magistrates that maximum is generally £5,000 although for certain offences where the financial gain from offending is substantial—for example in some environmental offences—the maximum fine can be as high as £50,000.”
How will the offences we are considering compare? I understand that when a similar amendment was considered during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Minister in the other place said,
“We think that an unlimited fine is appropriate in the case of these new offences; a level 1 or level 2 fine…would not…in our view…reflect the seriousness of the conduct in question. An unlimited maximum fine allows courts to determine the level of any fine on a case-by-case basis, having regard to the gravity of the offence and the ability of the offender to pay.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 November 2021; Vol. 816, c. 994.]
It would be helpful if the Minister could shed some light on an estimated fine that he believes could reflect the seriousness of the conduct in question, which, as we have just debated, is so broad in scope.
Kit Malthouse
I have already spoken about the harm that locking on can cause and we feel strongly that those who commit locking on should face a sentence proportionate to the harm they cause. The maximum fine of £500, which the amendment provides, is simply not proportionate to some of the offences we have seen and the courts should have the discretion to impose an unlimited fine on a case-by-case basis. Judges do this on a regular basis within the framework set for them, dependent on the individual’s circumstances, their relative wealth and the likely deterrent effect the fine will have.
Although I understand and hear what the hon. Member for North East Fife says about what happens north of the border with malicious mischief, it is the case that in theory that offence carries an unlimited fine and, indeed, an unlimited prison sentence, notwithstanding the guidance judges operate under. I am conscious that the fuel protestors recently arrested outside Glasgow have all been charged, as I understand it, with malicious mischief. We will wait to see what the result may be, but I have no doubt that Scottish judges will look to the circumstances of those individuals and the damage and disruption they caused while they decide what the fines should be. Although she might say that that is not more draconian, we are simply seeking to mirror what would be experienced north of the border, and I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.
Wendy Chamberlain
We ask the Minister to accept that because malicious mischief is a crime of common law there are unlimited fines and imprisonment attached to it. We have no legislation that does not have a fine scale within it, which is why I think we should ensure that we have something on this. My amendment is very much intended to probe what the Government would consider reasonable, so I have no intention of pressing it to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
Clause 1, as we know, establishes a new criminal offence targeting people who engage in the act of locking on. It criminalises those who attach themselves to another person, an object or land, those who attach a person to another person, object or land and those who attach an object to another object in the same scenario, as long as such activities cause or are capable of causing serious disruption to two or more people or to an organisation in a public place. Those involved must intend the act to cause and be capable of causing serious disruption to two or more individuals or an organisation or be reckless as to whether it will have that consequence. A reasonable excuse is the defence, and breach of this offence means a maximum of 51 weeks imprisonment, a fine or both. That is how the clause is laid out in the Bill.
I should make one thing clear at the start. During the evidence sessions last week we heard examples of really egregious breaches of law—smoking on oil tankers, gluing oneself to motorways and tunnelling under High Speed 2. There should be no doubt that those are examples of criminal behaviour. They are also highly dangerous to the protestors, to the police and to the public. Many of the examples of what is called protest, as several witnesses explained last week, involve people who have gone way across the line and are committing criminal acts. We do not think that those are examples of legitimate protest; they are criminal acts.
We heard about the deportation flight in 2017, scheduled to take off from Stansted. Protestors cut through the safety fencing around the airport perimeter and locked themselves on to a Boeing 767 jet. Flights were disrupted, delayed and cancelled and the runway was closed for an hour. For oil refineries or oil tankers, as Elizabeth de Jong mentioned, people lock themselves on or attach themselves to the top of stationary tankers, often full tankers. They have locked on at height, often with machinery. Once again, that is illegal behaviour. We also heard evidence of protestors blocking motorways. Insulate Britain blocked junction 25 of the M25, which is the Enfield junction to the north-east of London. Four protesters sat on the road, on both sides of the carriageway. There can be no doubt that that is dangerous to road users and the police as well as the protesters.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady comment on there being an offence for every crime she has described? We heard in evidence, and I commented on it, that the Court of Appeal said of the Stansted incident that there was not an offence that reflected the gravity of the situation there. Does she agree that it is important to ensure that that gap is filled?
Sarah Jones
I thank the hon. Member for her remarks. I hope she will forgive me, as I do not have the evidence in front of me, but as I recall it, clearly the charge made there did not lead to the outcome that those people had intended. Perhaps there were other offences, of aggravated trespass, for example, which is imprisonable and could have led to a charge.
Trespass laws can apply even on public roads, when someone is not using them for a permitted purpose. Other legislation is also available. In the evidence session, the Minister suggested that some existing legislation does not allow prison sentences, but it does. Wilful obstruction of the highway comes with a fine but in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022—
Sarah Jones
Well, it does not, because it has not been implemented. When it is, there will be six-month sentences attached to that. Criminal damage can lead to up to 10 years in prison, depending on the value of the damage. Aggravated trespass can lead up to three months in prison, a fine, or both. Breaching an injunction, as we have heard, can lead to two years, a fine, or both. Public nuisance can lead to 12 months on summary conviction, or 10 years on conviction on indictment.
Failure to comply with a condition can lead to a fine, but one year in prison if someone incites someone else to breach a condition. Organising a prohibited trespassory assembly can lead to three months in prison, a fine, or both. Participating in a trespassory assembly can lead to a fine. It is clear there is a broad list of offences of which criminal protesters can be found guilty. On fines, as we discussed, the law changed in 2015, to allow magistrates courts to issue unlimited fines for serious offences. Prior to that, there was only an unlimited fine in the Crown court.
Conditions on protests only need to be applied to public land. That was again an issue that the Minister raised in the evidence session. The de facto position on private land is that permission for protest is not granted, unless an invitation has been extended by the landowner. If people protest on private land, they could be found guilty of either aggravated trespass or trespassory assembly. Even if the threshold for those offences is not met, they would still be committing an offence, merely by their incursion on to private property and, whether they were aware of doing so or not, of the more basic offence of trespass, which is a civil wrong, not a criminal one.
Two things are required to commit aggravated trespass: trespassing and intentionally disrupting, obstructing or intimidating others from carrying out lawful activities. Further, a senior police officer has the power to order any person believed to be involved in aggravated trespass to leave the land. If they refuse to do so, that is an additional offence. The maximum penalty is three months’ imprisonment or a fine of £2,500, or both. First-time offenders would likely get a fine of between £200 and £300. I could go on, but I will not.
There are several examples in recent history of the police responding to lock-on protests. In September 2020, 80 Extinction Rebellion protesters were arrested and charged with obstruction of the highway after blocking printer works at Broxbourne and Knowsley. In October 2021, Kent police arrested 32 people for obstructing a highway and conspiring to commit public nuisance on the A40 and M25. In early 2021, the police used trespass offences to clear anti-High Speed 2 protestors from Euston Square. The police are entirely able to use reasonable force—indeed, they should be encouraged to do so—to, where necessary, unlock people who are locked on.
In the case of Insulate Britain, people have been jailed for defying a court order preventing them from protesting on the M25. Five Insulate Britain campaigners who had held a demonstration on the motorway in September were jailed and all charged with contempt of court. Ben Taylor, Ellie Litten, Theresa Norton, Stephen Pritchard and Diana Warner were given jail terms, each lasting between 24 and 42 days. Eleven others from that group received suspended prison sentences. A number of High Court injunctions were put in place after Insulate Britain’s road blockades last year. Nine other Insulate Britain campaigners were given jail time or suspended sentences. Two protestors were handed prison sentences of two months and 30 days, while seven others received two-month suspended jail terms for breaching injunctions.
As Liberty has pointed out, people have not gone to prison in some cases, but have in others. The courts look at the location and the manner of the protest. They are very unsympathetic to protesters who block the M25, because they have a damaging effect on people who have nothing to do with their cause, but more sympathetic to those who demonstrate against the actual object of their protest, because they do not affect the public in general.
Sometimes the police do not use the powers at their disposal. There is a number of reasons for that, including lack of training. We heard from John Groves from HS2, who said:
“Certainly, there is frustration from my team on the ground that the police are not more direct with some of the protesters”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 23, Q43.]
Part of that is about resources. We do not have the French system, nor do we want it, but in some cases we do not have enough people. As Peter Fahy said:
“There is not a standing army waiting to deal with protest. They come out of normal policing when they are required to do so, and the amount of neighbourhood policing that is affected by just keeping up with that demand is…quite acute.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 63, Q123.]
The other reason why the police do not always act on a raft of existing legislation—as HS2 found, to its frustration—is lack of training. We have debated several times the report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services. Written by Matt Parr, it looked at protest, the nature of protest and what should be done. Most of its recommendations had nothing to do with changing the law, focusing instead on training for officers. Its findings included that,
“protester removal teams…are trained to remove protesters from lock-on devices. But we found that forces do not have a consistent way of determining the number of trained officers they need. As a result, the number of specialists available varies widely throughout England and Wales.”
Matt Parr also highlighted that
“the police should develop a stronger rationale for determining the number of commanders, specialist officers and staff needed to police protests.”
He looked at whether chief constables were making good use of their legal services teams, and at a raft of different systems for gathering intelligence on protests and for dealing with them when they happen. In the evidence that Matt Parr gave us, he was really clear and enthusiastic that his changes are beginning to be implemented in the way in which he wants them to be. Before seeking to change things again, we need to wait for the implementation of all of those recommendations—which he has said will significantly improve the police response to protests—and of the Bill that has recently been passed.
The police seem to be in possession of some very useful powers to help deal with lock-on protests when they go beyond the scope of a legitimate protest. Even if we look further back into history, we find really good examples of peaceful lock-on protests and of the police making good use of the powers available to them when they need to.
For example, people look back on the Greenham Common women’s peace camp as a protest by a group of women who made good points and achieved some success. It involved a series of protest camps against nuclear weapons at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire. Women began arriving in 1981 after cruise missiles were stored there, and they employed lock-on tactics by chaining themselves to the base fence. The camps became well known in 1983—I was 11 at the time—when, at the height of the protests, about 70,000 people formed a 14-mile human chain around the base. It is interesting that we are talking about the methods used by Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil as if they are a new phenomenon. I do not remember it, as I was too young, but it must have been quite something to have 70,000 people form a 14-mile human chain—a lock-on—around the base.
Another encircling of the base occurred in December of that year, with 50,000 women attending. Sections of the fence were cut, but the police acted and arrested hundreds. Protest activity continued to occur at Greenham, and the last missiles left the base in 1991, following the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty. The Greenham women clearly left their mark on history. They used peaceful lock-on tactics, and when they entered the RAF site, they were arrested by the police. As today, the women were apparently subjected to abuse and hatred. Vigilante groups attacked them with slogans such as “Peace Women: You Disgust Us”.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
The hon. Lady says she was 11 years old at the time. I was about 16 or 17, and I remember the Greenham Common women coming up to Ashfield during the miners’ strike. I can remember the scenes at Greenham Common—they were disgusting scenes—although they made it a legitimate protest. Does the hon. Lady recall the time when they were hanging certain feminine products around the perimeter fence? That was disgusting.
Sarah Jones
Gosh. I do not know what feminine products the hon. Gentleman means, but perhaps I will not ask further. [Interruption.]
Sarah Jones
My point is that where the police needed to intervene at Greenham Common, they intervened. Where they needed to arrest and charge people, they arrested and charged people.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I am not quite sure what the previous intervention had to do with it. Is it not the point that, after the passage of time, people who were criminalised for what they did are now seen as valiant? Not far from here, there is a statute of Viscount Falkland in St Stephen’s Hall. The statue’s foot spur was broken off by suffragettes in, I think, 1912. At the time, that was a locking-on offence, because they attached themselves to the statue and the police took them away. The foot spur has never been replaced because it is part of our history, and we now see the suffragettes, the women at Greenham and the anti-apartheid protesters as valiant people who were on the right side of history. This clumsy offence gets it all wrong by getting heavy-handed at an early stage.
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not all lockons are a criminal offence and nor should they be, but where people are locking on in a way that is dangerous and disruptive, that should be an offence.
Kit Malthouse
Does the hon. Lady accept that, in the Bill as drafted, the reasonable excuse defence and the serious disruption requirement mean that not all lock-ons will necessarily be a criminal offence? If something similar to the St Stephen’s Hall example given by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton were to occur, that would not necessarily cause serious disruption to the life of the community, and would therefore not necessarily constitute an offence under the Bill.
Sarah Jones
Well, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton could get a 10-year prison sentence for damaging a statue. Clause 2, which we have not got to, is even more vague, but a person does not have to cause serious disruption; they can intend to have a consequence that will cause serious disruption. I know several very respectable elderly ladies in my constituency—I am sure the Minister has the same—who attend environmental protests. Given that the Bill is so vague, I am absolutely sure that they will be scared of being arrested just for turning up to or taking part in protests. That is the point that we are trying to make.
Wendy Chamberlain
The hon. Lady has given a very good example. We on the Opposition Benches accept that there are forms of protest that are illegal, which we heard evidence about last week from witnesses. However, we also heard that there is a hard core of illegal protesters who will not be deterred by this Bill. The people who will be deterred are those who wish to engage in peaceful and legal protest, as is their democratic right, but will be prevented from doing so.
Sarah Jones
The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and it is also the case that we have seen protests of this scale and nature for many years. The problems we see now are not unique, and they are able to be dealt with through existing legislation.
Our fundamental argument is not that people who are gluing themselves to motorways are not committing an offence or causing a major problem. It is not that the people who were digging tunnels at HS2 sites were doing nothing wrong, and nor is it that the representatives of HS2 and the others who gave evidence to us are wrong to ask that something be done. Our argument is that, first, the Bill will not act as a deterrent to the small number of people we are talking about—those who repeatedly offend and, indeed, want to get arrested. Secondly, it will not speed up the practical business of removing those who lock on. As we heard about the protest at the newspaper, it took several hours for specialist police to arrive. That was the cause of the delay, but once those police arrived and removed those who were locking on, the problem was dealt with. The delay was the problem, and the Bill will not do anything about that.
Thirdly, there are plenty of existing powers that can be, and are, used by the police. Fourthly, lots can be done, and is being done, to improve the way in which the police manage protests, as a result of Matt Parr’s report and other things. Finally, the Bill is drawn so widely that it risks criminalising non-criminal contact, which will have a huge, chilling impact on people who want to peacefully protest. In short, it seems that the Minister wants us to move towards the French, Spanish and Italian systems that we heard about from Peter Fahy. I will read a paragraph from his evidence, because I thought it was incredibly powerful:
“People do not realise that we are pretty unique. When you hear about the sophistication and negotiation the chief superintendent talked about”—
that was the West Midlands chief super—
“that is the British style. In all the protests it is escalation, which looks in the early stages like the police are being weak, but in the background they are talking to people and they are escalating. They are saying, ‘If you keep on coming back, we will use this power and that power. Have you heard about that?’ That is the British style of policing. You do not start with the heaviest. You work up to it, and that then maintains the confidence in your legality and proportionality.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 62, Q122.]
Peter Fahy also said:
“We are not like France, Spain and Italy, which have paramilitary police forces. If this had happened in France, they would have turned out the CRS very rapidly...they would use water cannon, they would probably use rubber bullets, and essentially the French population would accept that level of force. Thankfully, we do not live in a country like that”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 50, Q110.]
The reason why we are here in this House is to make the best law we can, but as it stands I do not think that the breadth and scope of clause 1 is proportionate to what we are trying to deal with. The right to protest is not an unconditional one; nobody says that it is. It will always be about mediation and compromise, and action where there needs to be action. I and other Opposition Members are horrified by some of the disruption that we heard about in the evidence sessions.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
On that topic, I am interested to know whether the hon. Lady would condemn the protest that took place at the weekend in Peckham, where immigration officers and police officers were actually prevented from carrying out their role in upholding the law of the land. I understand that a Labour councillor may have been involved in the organisation of that; and many Labour Members of this House have actually applauded those protesters in the media.
Sarah Jones
I did not see that protest. I am sure the police did the job that they needed to do, but—
Sarah Jones
I have not read about that.
As I said, Opposition Members have been horrified by the disruption that we heard about in the evidence sessions. However, everybody who gave evidence was clear that it is a very small proportion of protests that cause disruption; the vast majority pass by with no problems at all.
The final issue that I want to cover is the chilling effect that Matt Parr writes about in his report. If we look closely at the drafting of clause 1—the hon. Member for North East Fife has referenced this—we see that it is so broadly drawn that it criminalises an innumerable list of activities and not just what we typically consider to be lock-on protests, which would be dangerous and require intervention. The term “attach” is very broad and goes undefined in the Bill. Does it perhaps include the linking of arms? Yes, technically it does. Liberty, in its recent briefing, notes that the wording might interfere with articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR, as laid out in the Human Rights Act 1998. We have already debated what is a reasonable excuse and how that is defined. We note that someone does not even need to actually cause any disruption in order to commit an offence. They have only to be “capable” of causing serious disruption. That provides a practical difficulty and perhaps a headache for the police when determining the crucial context of a protest that might well cause serious disruption if it were to take place at a different time, but actually happens on empty roads in the middle of the night.
I will sum up by saying that clause 1 is unnecessary for the proper policing of protests. Most of the extremely irritating and disruptive events that were described by our witnesses were criminal acts, and they were already covered by a raft of existing legislation that allows the police to deal with protests. The police have the power; they need more support and more training, but this broad and ill-defined clause does not provide that support. Instead, it tips a crucial balance and risks criminalising, at a very low threshold, legitimate and peaceful protest, one of our core human rights.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I echo what my colleague on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, was saying about how we approach the policing of protests in this country. Obviously, Bristol has had quite a reputation for protests, particularly around the time of the events involving the Colston statue. We know that the people involved in that protest were eventually acquitted of criminal damage.
I have been out with the police to see how they approach things. There were a number of weekends in a row when there were protests against the Bill that has become the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. People were, quite rightly, very unhappy about what the Government were trying to do. I went out with the police and also went to the operations centre to see their approach; what they wanted to do was to facilitate protest. They wanted to facilitate peaceful protest and were very good at trying to ensure that it did not turn into something that put people at risk. For the most part, they were successful. Can the Minister say where the parameters of the clause come in?
There are historical examples. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central mentioned Greenham Common, but if we look back at the suffragettes, part of their tactics was to tie themselves with belts or chains to Buckingham Palace or Parliament. In January 1908, Edith New and Olivia Smith chained themselves to the railings at No. 10, which would not happen now, while one of their colleagues, Flora Drummond, went inside to disrupt the Cabinet meeting. I dread to think what the response would be now; they would not get anywhere near it. They chained themselves because that they wanted to make their voices heard. If they were immediately arrested, they would not have the chance to make their speeches, so it was a tactic to stay in place and at least get a few sentences out before they were removed.
Sarah Jones
To be clear, the clause makes it an offence to attach oneself in any way to any person, which means that any form of linking arms is a criminal offence. Does the Minister genuinely believe that a group of women standing outside Parliament locking arms would be committing a criminal offence as soon as they do that?
Kit Malthouse
That is just nonsense. The hon. Lady will not address the issue of disruption or reasonable excuse. I am sure the police are able to determine and the courts will interpret what is designed in this legislation. She has said rightly that the people we are talking about should go to prison. She said they are committing crimes. The only dispute between the two sides of the Committee is what offence they should be charged with, which is what we seek to provide.
Opposition Members have sought clarity and precision. We have seen that those who are arrested and charged in these circumstances are charged with a range of offences—obstruction of the highway, aggravated trespass, which the hon. Lady referred to, and criminal damage and public nuisance, depending on where the offence occurred and the circumstances. Unfortunately, we have seen situations where, on technicalities, a lack of precision in our ability to deal with the offence has meant that people have got off. For example—
Kit Malthouse
As the hon. Gentleman will know, there were protesters who locked on to a printing press in Knowsley in Liverpool. They were charged with aggravated trespass, but avoided conviction because the prosecution was unable to prove where the boundary was between the private and the public land. We are trying to provide precision in that offence area, and that is what this part of the legislation does. Aside from the disruption and anger that they cause, lock ons also waste considerable amounts of police resource and time, with specialist teams often required to attend protest sites to safely remove those who have locked on.
The hon. Member for Croydon Central seems to imply that we should have at-height removal teams on stand-by in all parts of the country 24 hours a day, but it is not realistic for British policing to do that. Some lock ons, particularly those that occur at height, place both the police and protesters at serious risk of injury and even death. For example, protesters at HS2 sites have deployed bamboo structures, necessitating the deployment of specialist teams who are trained to remove them at height at considerable risk to themselves and the protesters they are removing. That is why the Metropolitan Police have asked us to provide them with more powers to tackle that kind of reckless behaviour, and the Government have now responded.
Sarah Jones
I just want to clarify what the Minister says because he misrepresented my point, which was not that we should have thousands of officers ready in a kind of French-style tool. My point related to the points that Matt Parr made about how forces do not have a consistent way of determining the number of trained officers they need. There are not enough specialist roles in the right places at the right time. That was his recommendation, and there is a programme of work to fix that. I am arguing that we should wait for that fix so that the police can do the best job that they can.
Kit Malthouse
As the hon. Lady rightly says, Mr Parr said, I think, that the responses had been exemplary. Work is ongoing. She referred to the printing press incident in Hertfordshire, and she put the problems experienced down to the delay in the police getting there—in the middle of the night, in some numbers—to remove protesters who had managed to erect scaffolding very quickly and glue themselves effectively to the top of it. It is just not realistic for the police to be there in seconds to deal with such an incident. I believe that the hon. Lady said that the main problem was the delay.
Kit Malthouse
No, but the point is that the clause will make such protesters think twice about their actions, because the offence that they are committing when charged is not necessarily vague.
Kit Malthouse
We are trying to provide some precision in the offences that the police are able to charge offenders with in certain protest situations that have evolved in the past couple of years. Lock ons have caused significant distress, alarm and disruption to the community. The police, particularly the Metropolitan police, have asked us to introduce the offence and we are pleased to be able to help them. We heard in evidence to the Committee from the operational police chief that he thought that the legislation would help with the situation. We also heard from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services, notwithstanding the fact that he thought there was an exemplary response to his original report, that what we were doing seemed sensible. The clause will ensure that those who resort to inflicting misery on the public by locking on will face the maximum sentences, proportionate to the serious harm that their actions cause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Offence of being equipped for locking on
Sarah Jones
I beg to move amendment 47, in clause 2, page 2, line 13, leave out “may” and insert “will”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 32, in clause 2, page 2, line 14, leave out “or in connection with”.
This is to probe what actions may also be criminalised "in connection with" an offence.
Amendment 48, in clause 2, page 2, line 14, leave out—
“in connection with the commission by any person of”.
Amendment 33, in clause 2, page 2, line 14, leave out “any person” and insert “them”.
Currently the offence of “being equipped for locking on” does not require the object to be used by the person with the item specifically, but by “any person”. This amendment is intended to limit the offending behaviour to a person who commits the offence of locking on.
Sarah Jones
Amendments 47 and 48 are in my name, and I will speak to amendments 32 and 33 in the name of the hon. Member for North East Fife.
Amendments 47 and 48 are similar and intended to deal with a similar problem. Amendment 47 narrows the clause and puts the onus on the police to be sure that a particular object was absolutely intended to be used in a lock-on, not just that it “may” have been. We should be clear—again, we will talk about this when debating clause stand part—that, if the police are to criminalise someone for being equipped to lock on, which we disagree with, then they must be entirely clear that the object in question is absolutely there for a lock-on.
Liberty, for example, expressed concerns about a vast range of possibilities of things that “may” be used in the course of locking-on. I hope that the Minister will help us with his ideas of what “may” means. Speaking to amendment 48 as well as this amendment, would bottled water or food for other people who are locked on come under that definition? They may be used in a lock-on, although also most likely would not be.
Amendment 48 also contains important wording changes to protect those good people who attend protests with entirely the best intentions, but who risk being criminalised by drafting that is too broad. The amendment removes the possibility that an individual could be criminalised due to the possibility that an object in their possession may—“may” is the important word here—be used by someone else in the course of a lock-on. Let us imagine that my son is on his way to a protest. He cycles there, much as my staffer cycles to work. He is already at risk of criminalisation by having a lock in his bag. As it turns out, however, he is doubly at risk, as that lock could be used by any person for a lock-on and he would be liable for it. It should be noted that the clause also does not contain any reasonable excuse defence.
Such issues, because bad and careless drafting gives clauses such breadth and scope, cut to the core of what we are grappling with in the Bill. As I said earlier, the Opposition do not stand with those who cause serious disruption and break the law, but we absolutely stand with those who protest peacefully, not causing disruption, and who wish to be loud, annoying and proud in a peaceful manner about the issues that they deeply care about.
Wendy Chamberlain
My party and I are happy to support Labour’s amendments 47 and 48. The scope of my amendments 32 and 33 is similar.
The intention of our amendment 32 is to probe what might be criminalised in connection with an offence. The theme this morning has been the broadness of the legislation as drafted, and the Opposition are looking to get some definition of what that might look like. Amendment 33 intends to ensure that the person who is prosecuted for the offence of being equipped also did the locking on themselves.
My concerns are linked to those set out by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon Central. As she asked, will the provision of food and drink to someone engaged in protest activity be included? What about medical supplies, if a protester is injured in the course of the protests? What about a parent, simply worried about the safety of a young adult, who makes sure before they go to a protest that they are wearing sturdy clothing? What about the community group that lends its loudspeakers to an event?
The scope is so broad that such people, arguably, could get caught. This morning, we have discussed how the law will be interpreted. Those interpretations, given the Bill’s existing scope, are valid. What about people who happen to be caught passing a protest while carrying material used for locking on? For example, lots of MPs cycle in to Westminster, and demonstrations happen in Westminster all the time. Are MPs to be caught by this legislation simply because they are carrying their bike locks as they make their way into the estate? Under the Bill, that could theoretically happen.
While the police may not prosecute MPs, we know from the evidence we heard last week and from other evidence that sections of the population are overly policed. We will discuss the stop-and-search powers later—I am sure that Members will have much to say then—but if the evidence currently says that black people are eight times more likely to be stopped and searched, it follows that black people will also be disproportionately criminalised for carrying innocent items in the wrong place at the wrong time. As such, I am keen to hear from the Minister what this clause includes, and for amendments to be tabled that will limit its scope appropriately.
Amendment 33 addresses some of those problems. As drafted, the Bill allows for someone to be prosecuted for carrying an item that someone else uses to lock on. This has the potential to criminalise people who are peacefully protesting, or indeed those who are not protesting at all. We need to be clear: it is not a crime to attend a protest, nor is it a crime to carry the sorts of household items that are used for locking on—if that were the case, how would anyone purchase those items? Doing so without then breaking the law, simply put, cannot be a crime.
Kit Malthouse
I will speak to the amendments now, and then speak more substantively on stand part.
The amendments seek to raise the threshold for the offence of going equipped to lock on. Amendment 47 would raise the threshold for that offence, requiring that individuals “will” intend that the equipment be used in the course of locking on, rather than “may” intend. It is important that the police can protect the public from the possibility of someone locking on. Raising the threshold of the offence to “will” rather than “may” would restrict its effectiveness and the ability of the police to take proactive action against lock-ons, which we heard from the operational police chief during our evidence session was critical to minimising disruption.
Amendments 32 and 48 would remove from the scope of the offence of being equipped to lock on, someone who carries equipment intended to be used in connection with the locking-on offence, rather than in the course of that offence. Amendment 33 would also narrow that offence by applying it only to the individual who commits a lock-on. These amendments would mean that during disruptive protests, those who deliberately brought lock-on equipment to hand over to fellow protesters for them to use would not be criminalised for doing so, effectively allowing protesters to continue to legally provide lock-on equipment to others and removing a key deterrent aspect of the offence. Doing so would severely limit the effectiveness of the offence in stopping the use of lock-ons from spreading during a fast-moving protest situation, and I am afraid that we cannot support it. We ask that the amendment be withdrawn.
Sarah Jones
Given the vote that we have had on a similar measure, I see little point in pressing amendment 47 to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Wendy Chamberlain
I beg to move amendment 34, in clause 2, page 2, line 17, after “fine” insert
“not exceeding level 1 on the standard scale”.
A person convicted of an offence of “being equipped for locking on” may be subjected to a fine. In the Bill there is currently no limit on the fine that may be imposed. This amendment would place a maximum limit on the fine.
The amendment is very similar to the amendment to clause 1 that I tabled previously. It ensures that any fines levied for the offence of being equipped for locking on are quantified, rather than left as an unlimited fine. I have very little to add beyond the remarks that I made regarding my previous amendment.
Wendy Chamberlain
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
The clause creates a new criminal offence targeting people who have an object with them in a public place with the intention that it will be used in the course of or in connection with the commission of the new offence of locking on, as we have been debating. The punishment for the offence is an unlimited fine.
Our concerns about the clause should be read and understood in conjunction with our concerns about clause 1. This very short clause is too vague and ambiguous to be useful. Line 12 talks of an “object”, but that object need not be related to protesting at all. All that is required to be criminalised under this offence is that a person might have intended to use the object—potentially, any object—in a certain way. Perhaps more pressingly—I will come back to this later—the object does not have to be used by the person who has it in their possession. It needs to be used only
“in the course of or in connection with”
a lock-on.
It is so important that we consider the limits of the legislation that we create in this place. None of us who works here in Parliament is a stranger to protests. We see them outside our offices almost every day. The example of the bike lock is real and I do not think it has been meaningfully disputed by the Minister. Perhaps it is in someone’s bag or attached to the bike, but that makes no difference.
Someone could wheel their bike through Parliament Square—multiple protests might be going on at once, which is not uncommon—and be in potential breach of this legislation. No proof that the bike lock is to be used in a lock-on is needed, only that it “may” be. Hard-working, law-abiding people simply trying to get in to their place of work are at risk of being found to have committed this offence. The original drafting of the clause is deeply ambiguous.
It was notable that so many of our witnesses last week spoke of the deterrent effect that they hoped the Bill would provide—a desire for something to be done to act as a deterrent. John Groves from High Speed 2 Ltd hoped that
“this legislation is about the deterrent effect”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 18, Q28.]
Nicola Bell noted:
“what is included in the Bill, I hope, offers that deterrent.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 20, Q37.]
We have real doubts, however, as to whether the Bill will provide anything close to a deterrent to hardcore repeat offenders. Instead of providing a deterrent to the hardcore of the protest movement, who are intent on causing disruption, such people might be delighted that their lock-on protests would be criminalised. We were told last week that those protesters
“will not be deterred by this legislation.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 44, Q91.]
For them, going to prison for the cause is a badge of honour.
Sir Peter Fahy said:
“I do not know whether there is actually any evidence that people are deterred...but clearly some people are so determined, and have a certain lifestyle where it does not really have any consequence for them, that—if anything—it makes them martyrs.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 58, Q120.]
However, we must absolutely not ignore the people who will be deterred, those who are not willing to go to prison, but who might not do anything illegal at a protest—those who just want to express their democratic right.
The title of Matt Parr’s report was “Getting the balance right?”, and it seems abundantly clear that the Government have not got the balance right with this legislation. I note that, with regard to lock-on, he was
“impressed by forces for the work they have done to make sure that PRTs”—
protester removal teams—
“are able to deal safely with lock-ons.”
He noted:
“It is vital that PRTs remain up to date with the rapidly evolving problems presented by lock-on devices.”
I agree, and much of the evidence from last week suggests that improved sharing of best practice, more resources and better training would help the police to deal with nuisance protests much better—without the need for this specific legislation.
Lord Rosser noted in the other place:
“The reality is that powers already exist for dealing with lock-ons. What we should be looking at is proper guidance, training and…improving our use of existing resources and specialist officers.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 2022; Vol. 817, c. 1433.]
Matt Parr’s report also notes that most interviewees, who were junior police officers, did not wish to criminalise protest actions through the creation of a specific offence concerning locking on. With regard to his fifth proposal, Matt Parr noted explicitly that the purpose was not to create an offence of lock on during a protest. He did not call for that in his report.
The Government have brought back these overreaching clauses without any real evidence that they will work. Our witnesses were unable, quite rightly, to comment on the new clauses with any specificity. Elizabeth de Jong was unable to be specific about how the clauses would help. She noted:
“I can see a direct reference to locking on.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 33, Q59.]
Steve Griffiths stated:
“I am really here to talk about the impact of disruption, and I am probably not qualified to comment intensely on the Bill.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 34, Q60.]
He later noted:
“I cannot really talk about the policy itself”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 39, Q81.]
Those witnesses were right: they were present to define the problem as they saw it, and not to tell us that the legislation will work: that is our job. In the Opposition’s view it will not work. It is fair and understandable that the witnesses instinctively feel hopeful about something being done, but they did not claim that they had the expertise to know that.
The clauses, which make provision for the offences of locking on and going equipped to do so, are ill thought through and represent a knee-jerk reaction to events that have caused real disruption and annoyance—no one disputes that. There were criminal acts that were infinitely more disruptive to people and the police acted. There is no evidence that the clauses will act as a deterrent and it seems likely that they will be welcomed by the hard core of protestors who are willing to go to prison for their cause. The clauses will, however, deter those who come to protest peacefully, and that is our concern.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 2 supports the new offence of locking on created by clause 1, and specifically it creates a new criminal offence of going equipped to lock on and cause, or risk causing, serious disruption. During fast-moving protest situations, the police need the power to proactively prevent individuals from locking on to roads, buildings and objects, as we heard powerfully from the operational police commander during our evidence sessions. Therefore, along with the associated stop-and-search powers, which the Committee will scrutinise later, the new offence will allow the police to prevent lock ons before they occur, taking punitive action against those who attempt to lock on and deterring others from considering doing so.
Much has been made of criminalising people who happen to be carrying everyday items such as bike locks—the hon. Member for Croydon Central raised that—near a protest. To be clear, that will not be the case; the offence will be committed only when someone is carrying an object with the intention that it may be used by themselves or someone else in the course of, or in connection with, committing a lock-on offence as defined in clause 1. The police will need reasonable grounds for suspicion to arrest someone for that offence. There is a clear difference between a person pushing a bicycle past a protest and a person walking purposefully towards a gate with a lock in hand.
As the hon. Member for North East Fife knows from her policing experience, the offence of going equipped is well used by the police in England and Wales, and indeed in Scotland, in the prevention of burglary. I have had individuals arrested in my constituency who were going equipped to commit a burglary, and I am not aware of a plethora of plumbers, carpenters or builders with vans full of tools being arrested in my constituency on the basis of their going equipped, or having the capability to break into my home. The police are well able to adduce intention—and often that is tested in court—in charging someone with going equipped.
As we heard most powerfully from the operational police commander in our evidence session, the ability to stop and search, which we will consider later, and the ability to charge with going equipped would allow the police to operate in a situation where there would be less infringement on people’s right to protest, rather than more. He was strongly supportive.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill (Fourth sitting)
Sarah Jones ExcerptsTuesday 14th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 14 June 2022 - (14 Jun 2022)
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 35, in clause 3, page 2, line 26, leave out sub-paragraph (iii).
This amendment seeks to limit the range of acts potentially criminalised by this provision.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 36, in clause 3, page 2, line 29, leave out paragraph (b).
This amendment seeks to limit the range of acts potentially criminalised by this provision.
Sarah Jones
I am speaking to the amendments, which we have some sympathy with, on behalf of the hon. Member for North East Fife, who is not in her place at the moment. We are moving on from the lock-on offences we debated this morning to a new offence of obstruction of major transport works. Amendments 35 and 36 would remove some of the language that perhaps makes the scope of the clause too broad. We have already covered the principle behind the objections to the present clauses, which are similar to those on locking on and being equipped to lock on. These clauses are broad, and indeed potentially infinite, but as was said this morning, restrictions on people’s fundamental rights must be limited to what is absolutely necessary.
I repeat that no one is denying that people who commit criminal acts should be arrested and charged—in many cases, we know that that is why protesters do what they do—but there are already laws to deal with these behaviours. The Public Order Act 1986 contains offences of organising or taking part in a prohibited trespassory assembly. Where a chief of police reasonably believes there will be a trespassory assembly that may result in serious disruption to the life of the community, they can place a pre-emptive ban on it, and breaching that ban is a crime.
The key point we seek to make in thew amendment is that there must be a balance. The Government should not go too far down the road of criminalising protest; that is not what happens in our democracy, and that is why the hon. Member for North East Fife tabled amendments 35 and 36.
Amendment 35 would limit the offence of obstruction to blocking the core activities of major transport works, removing clause 3(1)(a)(iii), which appears to be a catch-all for any protest near or relating to major works. Would that provision also catch construction workers who are on strike at their own places of work or a protest at the entrance to the land where works are being done?
Amendment 36 would remove reference to interfering with or moving apparatus, because the provision in the clause is broad and goes too far. The disruption from apparatus being moved is not such that the Government should seek to introduce legislation to stop peaceful protest.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
Amendments 35 and 36 take issue with the scope of the offence of obstructing major transport works. I understand that the hon. Lady is concerned about the wide scope of the offence, but it is clear from the evidence that the Government need to protect vital transport construction sites across the country. I think the whole Committee was shocked to hear evidence from HS2 that the cost of protest to the scheme was £122 million and likely to rise to £200 million.
Amendments 35 and 36 attempt to limit the potential acts that fall within the offence by removing references to any acts that obstruct steps “in connection with”, or “reasonably necessary” to facilitate, construction or maintenance of a particular project. They would also remove references to acts that interfere with, move or remove any apparatus that relates to the construction or maintenance of major transport projects.
As I said, I understand that there are concerns about the wide scope of this offence, but a balance needs to be struck. Protest against transport sites comes in many different forms and is constantly evolving, as a small minority seeks new ways to inflict further disruption. It is entirely proportionate for this offence to capture behaviour that obstructs any stage of these projects. Furthermore, it is right that this offence should protect from interference key machinery, materials and other necessary apparatus, without which construction or maintenance of projects cannot occur.
It is worth remembering that we are talking about projects that have been decided through a democratic process. In many ways, individuals seeking to impede such projects are latter-day King Canutes. seeking to stop something that has been decided by the House of Commons or other democratic process and should therefore be allowed to take its course.
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which we have seen throughout some of the protest tactics that we aim to deal by means of the Bill. They include a complete disregard for the safety not just of the protesters but of the workers on the sites affected and indeed the police, who have to go and remove the individuals.
Sarah Jones
What is the Minister’s view on the Prime Minister’s intention to lie in front of bulldozers at the start of the construction of the third runway at Heathrow?
Kit Malthouse
The Prime Minister was then Mayor of London and made his views known in a light-hearted way to indicate his opposition. If he had lain down in front of the bulldozers on a project democratically decided by the House, he would have committed an offence. Having said that, it is fair to say that the leaders of all major parties at the time went and planted trees at Sipson in the hope that a forest would flourish there. We will see whether those trees last. In any event, for the reasons I have outlined, I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment, with which the Government cannot agree.
Sarah Jones
Given that the amendment is not mine and I have only supported it in principle, I will not press it to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move amendment 37, in clause 3, page 3, line 3, after “fine” insert
“not exceeding level 2 on the standard scale”.
A person convicted of an offence of obstructing major transport works may be subjected to a fine. Under this clause there is currently no limit on the fine that may be imposed. This amendment would place a maximum limit on the fine.
I think that if the hon. Member for North East Fife were here, she would say that this amendment makes the same point that she has made in previous amendments and that she has nothing to add.
Kit Malthouse
We oppose this amendment for the same reason I have given in consideration of previous amendments in a similar vein. Lowering the maximum fine for the offence to £500 is simply not proportionate. The penalties available under the Bill must be proportionate, otherwise they will not be a sufficient deterrent. I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.
Sarah Jones
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
Clause 3 introduces a new offence of obstructing the construction or maintenance of any major transport works. That would include if a person obstructs a construction worker
“in setting out the lines of any major transport works”,
or
“taking any steps that are reasonably necessary for…facilitating, or in connection with, the construction or maintenance of any major transport works”.
It will also be an offence to interfere with, move or remove
“any apparatus which…relates to the construction…of any major transport works”.
There is a reasonable excuse defence, and the maximum penalty is 51 weeks imprisonment, or a fine, or both.
There is an interesting two-part definition of what constitutes major transport works for this offence. First it is transport infrastructure covered by Acts of Parliament which provide legislative authority, HS2 being the obvious example. The second is nationally significant infrastructure projects that have been granted development consent orders under section 114 of the Planning Act 2008. For example, that could be new airports or airport extensions, major road projects, or railway works.
Like other clauses, the clause is drawn far too broadly and risks having a chilling effect on protest. This clause seems particularly targeted at climate protesters. Megan Randles, Greenpeace UK’s political campaigner, said:
“Time and again, it’s activism that has dragged a reluctant UK government into confronting vital issues, whether it’s the climate crisis or women’s rights. Ministers who…talk about freedoms at every turn should rethink this attack on one of the most fundamental freedoms we have.”
Furthermore, this Bill arrives before the protest clauses in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 have come into effect, and that seems illogical. Would it not make more sense to introduce into law the statutory instruments for those clauses before bringing in a new raft of proposals?
People across the country want to be able to protest against major transport projects or changes in their local area, such as a library closure, or changing woodland into a car park. That fundamental right must be protected, but so must our vital infrastructure and major transport works. There is a balance to be struck. When the measure was debated in the House of Lords, many Members of that House said that the offence of obstructing transport works in clause 3 was “overreaching” and “unnecessary”. Liberty has pointed out that such a low threshold risks disproportionately interfering with people’s rights under articles 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights felt that there could be issues with the proportionality and necessity of the measures, and that their potential to stifle peaceful and legitimate protest could mean that they were in breach of articles 10 and 11. The Home Office says that the clause is proportionate because the court would take into account the specific facts, but Liberty points out that the Home Office’s human rights analysis says nothing about whether the offence is necessary or how, and the extent to which, it adequately weighs individuals’ fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly in the balance of rights.
In evidence, Sir Peter Fahy, who was the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, and before that the chief constable of Cheshire constabulary, said:
“I would still doubt whether the appetite would be there—the judicial appetite. Police officers are very wary…when cases get to court, the judiciary or the magistrates often give out very minor sentences—whatever might be allowed in the legislation. They find, as happened with the Sarah Everard case, that higher courts then disagree and bring in human rights legislation, or bring in a different interpretation that is in the legislation, which then completely takes the legs of the police from underneath them.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 53-54, Q116.]
Will the Minister respond to the idea that if the courts take into account human rights legislation, they may not see as proportionate the punishments introduced by these new provisions? Surely, he does not want to give the police the difficult job of interpreting and applying to peaceful protesters such complex and broadly drawn powers, only to have the courts disagree with them.
During the Lords Report stage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, when these offences were first proposed, the JCHR raised a concern about their excessive breadth. For example, the proposed new offence of obstructing major transport works would potentially cover a wide range of minor acts, including moving any apparatus that relates to the construction or maintenance of major transport works, and even moving any apparatus that belongs to a person acting under the authority of the person in charge of the works. The Bill contains no requirement that these acts are committed with any disruption or disruptive intention. Will the Minister explain how he understands the term “apparatus”? I think it would be helpful to the Committee to understand how far this goes. The terms “interfere”, “move” and “remove” are also very broad. Perhaps he can shed some light on the kinds of actions that would be covered by those terms.
Amnesty says:
“This provision fails the three-part test of legality, necessity and proportionality. The language is again vague and so broad that even coincidental obstruction of construction work by a big march that just happens to pass through a street where such works are ongoing could be covered in its scope.”
The problem, as articulated by those who gave evidence, is that our vital public infrastructure, such as HS2, should not be seriously disrupted to the detriment of the community and our national life, but we must also protect the rights to free speech and public protest. We believe that the Bill does not manage to deliver either of those objectives. During the evidence sessions, Steve Griffiths, managing director of London Stansted airport, said a couple of times that he was not the expert on legislation. He said:
“I am probably not qualified to comment intensely on the Bill”.–– [Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 34, Q60.]
Another thing we do not understand about the legislation—we covered this briefly this morning—is that using the term “serious disruption to two or more people” is not a sensible way to draft legislation. We need a better definition of serious disruption to start with and to make sure that any legislation we pass is targeted only on the kinds of cases we heard about in the evidence session.
Sarah Jones
We will talk properly about injunctions under the new clauses, because we have a new clause on that. To clarify, we are not calling for big thing called a national injunction; we are calling for a national approach to dealing with all the complications that arise when there is a large infrastructure issue, and when we might need local authorities and the private sector, working with Government, to do what is needed as quickly as possible. We did not suggest a national injunction that is one chunk of a thing.
Kit Malthouse
Maybe I misheard the Leader of the Opposition on the television when he called for exactly that: a national injunction. The hon. Lady has neatly pointed out the complexity—for example, in HS2, there are different landowners, geographies, areas and phases of development—of obtaining an injunction that covers the whole of the works. The point still stands that, as far as I can see, she is content for people to be punished and to go to prison under an injunction, but strangely not under a criminal charge. I do not understand that asymmetry. As far as I can see, a criminal court has greater protections for our fellow citizens who are accused of such crimes—not least a higher burden of proof—than the civil courts, where injunctions are heard.
Sarah Jones
The Minister made that point to several of the people who gave evidence to us, but they did not accept it. Our point is that the Bill automatically criminalises things that are not criminal offences. An injunction is time-limited, specific, and pertains to an area where serious disruption is being caused; that is not the same as a lock-on offence, which might just be some women locking arms and therefore automatically committing a criminal offence. Those are very different things.
Kit Malthouse
Part of the hon. Lady’s repeated case is that there are already plenty of criminal offences with which we could charge all these people. There is no one yet who she thinks should not have been charged with an offence. Some of them, I am afraid, seem to get off on technicalities and through loopholes; I outlined a couple of examples. High Speed 2 in particular expressed frustration at the police’s inability to get some charges to stick. We are trying to satisfy the hon. Lady’s requirement for more specificity in charging decisions, as well as creating a sentencing regime that we hope will act as a deterrent. It is unacceptable that a handful of individuals repeatedly delay and add costs to important works that have been through the democratic process. They are vital to the levelling-up agenda, and the measures in the clause will support them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Interference with use or operation of key national infrastructure
Sarah Jones
I beg to move amendment 49, in clause 4, page 4, line 30, leave out “interferes with” and insert “prevents”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 50, in clause 4, page 4, line 32, leave out “interfere with” and insert “prevent”.
Amendment 51, in clause 4, page 5, line 3, leave out subsection (4).
Kit Malthouse
I have a speech. The amendments are concerned with the scope of the new offence of interfering with the use of key national infrastructure. Amendments 49 and 50 replace the words “interferes with” with “prevents”. We assume that the intention is to raise the threshold of this offence to actions that completely stop a piece of key national infrastructure from being used for its intended purposes, although in fact subsection (4) already defines “interferes with” as preventing use or operation. Amendment 51 supports the change by removing that definition.
I understand what I presume are the hon. Lady’s concerns about the scope of the offence, but I do not see a need for the amendments. Subsection (4) already defines interference with key infrastructure as an act that
“prevents the infrastructure from being used or operated to any extent for any of its intended purposes.”
Removing that subsection and replacing “interferes with” with “prevents” would leave the threshold of the offence undefined, leading to ambiguity over what sort of acts it would apply to.
Furthermore, I reiterate that it is vital that this offence applies to a range of disruptive actions against infra-structure, rather than ones that halt operations completely. As we have seen during protests by groups such as Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, even acts that delay the use of infrastructure—for example, acts that stop roads being used by the public—can cause severe disruption. Ambulances cannot get through, key deliveries are delayed, contracts cannot be fulfilled—the list goes on.
Fundamentally, the Government consider acts by a small number of determined, disruptive protesters who significantly delay the use of key infrastructure to be just as damaging as those that prevent its use entirely. I therefore encourage the hon. Member for Croydon Central to withdraw the amendment.
Sarah Jones
I think I might have handed my speaking notes to Hansard in my previous handover of information. We have tabled three simple amendments to clause 4, which is on interference with use or operation of key national infrastructure. It is similar in some ways to the previous clause, which looked at major transport works.
A person commits an offence if
“they do an act which interferes with the use or operation of any key national infrastructure in England and Wales”
and
“they intend that act to interfere with the use or operation of such infrastructure or are reckless as to whether it will do so.”
In amendments 49 and 50, we seek to replace “interferes with” with “prevents”. We believe that it is a stronger word and has the clarity that the law requires. The term “interferes with” is broad and difficult to interpret; “prevents” is much stronger.
In amendment 51, we seek to remove a passage that says:
“For the purposes of subsection (1)”,
which is the offence itself,
“a person’s act interferes with the use or operation of key national infrastructure if it prevents the infrastructure from being used or operated to any extent for any of its intended purposes.”
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady concede that if the wording is changed from “interferes with” to “prevents”, it will leave a loophole for the protesters? They will say that they did not prevent; they merely delayed.
Sarah Jones
I think that the psyche of the protesters we are talking about, as we have said many times, means that they will not be deterred by legislation generally. The argument we keep making is that we do not want to over-criminalise people who are going about their business, making a protest that nobody would have a problem with. Our amendments are designed to tighten the clause and improve its scope.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Is there a timescale on preventing something? It strikes me that “prevents” could be more destructive than “interferes with”.
Sarah Jones
We are talking about key national infrastructure and whether the use or operation of any key national infrastructure is interfered with or prevented. If an oil refinery is being blocked—we would argue that there is already plenty of legislation in place to deal with those protesters—that would clearly prevent the operation of key national infrastructure. That is the point of our three amendments. On this occasion, I will not test the will of the Committee. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move amendment 52, in clause 4, page 5, line 18, after “newspaper printing infrastructure.” insert—
“(j) emergency services.”
The amendment adds emergency services to the list of key national infrastructure in clause 4(6), on page 5. This is really a probing amendment. As we have already discussed, we have issues with the entire clause. However, there is something interesting in how one defines national infrastructure.
Labour is the traditional party of work and workers, and over the last several years, we have spent much time clapping, thanking and cheering key workers in the emergency services, particularly through the covid pandemic. As shadow Minister for police and the fire service, I spend much time in and around the blue-light services, as I am sure the Minister does in his role. We see at first hand the incredibly important work that they do, night or day, come rain or shine. I therefore find it strange that the Government have not added emergency services to the list of key infrastructure. I actually think that the fire service, the ambulance service and police forces are just as important, in terms of infrastructure, to the continued smooth running of our country as all the other things on the list. They keep people safe and secure and save lives in a multitude of ways.
Let me explain our amendment a little further. We do not think that protests should be able to stop the emergency services from doing their jobs. An ambulance should not be stopped when rushing a patient to hospital. A fire engine should not be halted when people are trapped in burning buildings, and the police must be able to reach the scene of a crime as quickly as possible. We know that time is often of the essence in those things. However, I should also make it clear that we do believe that there is scope for protest, in some instances, around such sites, for instance with protests against the closure of a GP surgery, a police station—the Minister may well remember several of those from his time at City Hall—or an accident and emergency facility.
In April of this year, for instance, protesters staged a protest in Shropshire, in a little town called St Martin’s, at the closure of a GP surgery. The surgery in St Martin’s, Shropshire, has been closed since March 2020 and made an application to the health board to close permanently. Hundreds of people have signed a petition calling for the practice to remain in the village. In recent years, there have also been protests in Lincolnshire at the closure of A&E services in Grantham.
Those are very legitimate protests; they are examples of local people taking a stand at closures that will really affect their local area and the health of their families and neighbours. The key point is that they were done in proportionate ways. It is important that we make that distinction; they did not and do not stop the emergency services. Our amendment to this clause provides protection for emergency services but does allow for legitimate protests around sites that may come under the aegis of the emergency services, such as a police station or an A&E site.
I think that we can all agree that the emergency services do an exceptionally important job, and the Minister might therefore like to comment on their inclusion on this list of key national infrastructure. Would he not agree that blocking a police car as it races towards a crime, such as domestic violence, ought to be considered interfering with key national infrastructure?
I hope that I have given Members on both sides some food for thought about what should come under the definition in the clause. Emergency services are an essential service, and if an oil refinery is going to have such offences applied to it, the logic stands that emergency services infrastructure should too.
Kit Malthouse
I must say that I have some sympathy with what the hon. Lady is trying to achieve. However, her Government, she will be please to know, got there before us by creating the Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006, which has already created an offence of intentionally obstructing an emergency worker from exercising their functions, punishable on summary conviction by an unlimited fine.
Sarah Jones
There are lots of other bits of legislation that can stop protests and stop people from interfering in all kinds of different ways. The key point that we were trying to make is that if we define national infrastructure, it is peculiar not to include emergency services in that definition.
Kit Malthouse
I understand the hon. Lady’s point, although it was only a breath ago that she was telling me that the clause was broad, and, now, she is attempting to broaden it. As I said, we already have significant legislation that will assist us. We should not forget that some of the offences that we have already considered will assist. The police use the roads and therefore our ability to deal with people glued on to the roads will be critical. The police need fuel and ambulances need fuel, so locking on to fuel depots will similarly be covered.
Sarah Jones
I am glad the Minister accepts that this is an issue that deserves to be thought about. As this was a probing amendment, we will leave it at that. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
Clause 4, as we have been talking about in the debate on the amendments, introduces a new offence of interference with the use or operation of key national infrastructure. Subsection (1) makes it an offence for a person to
“do an act which interferes with the use or operation of any key national infrastructure”
where the person intends the act to have that effect or is
“reckless as to whether it will do so.”
Subsection (2) provides a defence of “reasonable excuse” and a defence applying to industrial action, which the Minister referred to. The clause sets out the maximum penalty for the offence—namely,
“on summary conviction, to imprisonment for term not exceeding the general limit in a magistrates’ court”,
rising to 12 months, or an unlimited fine, or both—imprisonment, a fine or both.
Subsections (4) and (5) define interference as an act that “prevents” or “significantly delays” the infrastructure from being used or operated to any extent of its intended purpose. The clause then lists the key national infrastructure, which we have been debating, and that includes, apart from emergency workers, transport sectors including air transport and harbours; oil, gas and electricity infrastructure; and newspaper printing infrastructure, which we will talk about later.
We think clause 4 defines interference incredibly broadly, as any act that
“prevents the infrastructure from being used or operated to any extent for any of its intended purposes.”
Liberty has pointed out that the low threshold appears to contradict the Supreme Court’s finding that deliberately obstructive protest can come under the protection of articles 10 and 11, and risks criminalising an extremely wide range of activities, including where the use or operation of infrastructure is “significantly delayed”. That term is not defined in the offence.
We have tried to remove clause 4. We hear the concerns that some protests can tip the balance of rights in the wrong direction. I repeat that protest is not an unqualified right—campaigners who block people from reaching relatives in hospital and oil protests that prevent people from crucial travel are breaking the law—but there are a raft of measures already in place. This is a fundamental point that the Minister has not acknowledged: a panoply of existing powers on public order is available to the police.
In the debates we have had over the past year on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, the way some Members have talked about the policing of protest has sometimes implied that the police are not doing anything and that there are currently no powers they can use. We are not starting from a position of nothing; we are starting from multiple pieces of legislation. There is wilfully obstructing the highway, the offence of criminal damage or conspiracy to cause criminal damage, the offence of aggravated trespass, the offence of public nuisance and the offence of breach of the peace, which we have not yet talked about much.
More than 20 people were arrested for criminal damage and aggravated trespass at Just Stop Oil protests in Surrey. Injunctions were granted at Kingsbury oil terminal following more than 100 arrests, and there were further arrests for breaching those injunctions, which are punishable by up to two years in prison: nine people were charged. When Extinction Rebellion dumped tons of fertiliser outside newspaper offices, five people were arrested. Earlier this year, six Extinction Rebellion activists were charged with criminal damage in Cambridge. In February this year, five Insulate Britain campaigners were jailed for breaching their injunctions, and in November, nine Insulate Britain activists were jailed for breaching injunctions to prevent road blockades. It is important to point out that for the kinds of protesters we are talking about, breaking the law and being arrested is often the aim.
During our evidence sessions, we heard from police officers about how well the police can use the existing laws. Chief Superintendent Phil Dolby from West Midlands police spoke to us about a large, disruptive protest in Birmingham, where he negotiated conditions using the Public Order Act 1986:
“I just gave a warning about the police’s power to who I was evidentially satisfied was the organiser. I negotiated and said, ‘Look, I’ve got this power. It’s ready, and here it is. Do you want to carry on, or can I encourage you to stop? You have had your opportunity, and you need to move on.’ There was a negotiated approach that I thought tried to keep the balance for everyone.
Similarly, Extinction Rebellion recently blocked a fairly minor road…They had a tactic whereby instead of staying in the middle of the road all the time, they would use the pelican crossing but let the traffic stop by the traffic furniture. They would then occupy the road for about five minutes and when the traffic built up, they would move away…
We have our protest liaison teams, and there is a five-step appeal that officers go through, which we document and fill, giving every opportunity for the protesters to reach the decision themselves. Eventually, I said, ‘Okay. There is a power here to stop you. This is an unlawful assembly because it is now causing serious disruption. There’s a children’s hospital that is starting to be affected, so now that’s enough.’
I brought forward the van that is a mobile prison cell—kind of a show of strength, really—and said, ‘That is what I am prepared to use’. They said, ‘Okay’, and that was enough. Again, both the powers were available to us. They were being prepared to be used. We were not just tolerating it; there was a negotiated approach, and both of those are examples of where that has been successful. On the serious disruption element in the Bill, I would encourage as much precision for that definition as possible.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 57-58, Q119.]
As Peter Fahy aptly said,
“In all the protests it is escalation, which looks in the early stages like the police are being weak, but in the background they are talking to people and they are escalating…You work up to it”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 62, Q122.]
The concern about the definition of serious disruption is shared by many people across policing. In the written evidence submitted by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Chief Constable BJ Harrington—the national lead for public order—wrote that,
“the term ‘serious disruption’ has been subject to much discussion and debate. Within any new legislation we would welcome clarity or guidance about the threshold and interpretation of this to allow operational commanders to best apply their operational responses.”
I urge the Minister to bear in mind the consequences of these provisions for the police officers trying to put them into practice.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
For me, that is the issue: one of the impacts of this legislation will be that we give the police nowhere to go, other than straight to arrest. In my policing experience and that of Lord Paddick, once the police start arresting people, they very quickly run out of cops before they run out of protesters. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Sarah Jones
I absolutely agree; the struggle within policing to have enough people to do the day job is already bad enough. I have been to Berwick, and very often in the summer months, when there are vast numbers of holidaymakers at the caravan parks, the police will only have one or two officers on. If there is a fight and they choose to arrest somebody, they then have to take that person into custody, which means there is no one left, so they have to make very difficult decisions. In the case of a protest, the police can have a negotiation and allow people to make their point, which is what protesters want to do and what we all want to facilitate. Then, the police can get to the stage where they say, “You are now causing serious disruption, so now we need to begin to use some of our powers.” That is a much preferable way of policing.
The police did not ask for most of these powers, and there has not been a proper consultation process with them on this piece of legislation. The big piece of work that was done by Matt Parr took place before the then Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and, as we heard in evidence, some aspects of this Bill were considered by him, but some were not, including the infrastructure and transport sections. There has been no proper consultation with the police on these clauses.
The police should not have to make decisions about definitions of vague terms in legislation. They will look like political decisions and put even more pressure on the police. During progress of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, many Members from different sides of the Chamber made that point in the House.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council wrote:
“It is essential that any powers or legislation are straightforward and capable of use by officers and staff at all levels. Experience has shown that unless legislation is clear and simple for use in complex and fast-moving public order situations that it can fail to have the positive impact intended and sometimes create an expectation that cannot be met or lead to unintended issues.”
I also note the points in the NPCC’s excellent evidence about police responsibilities on private land. It wrote:
“We want to ensure that any new legislation does not inadvertently transfer or encourage reliance on policing for security or reduce the ability or necessity of organisations to obtain injunctions. This would not only be a fundamental change in the role of policing but would create a significant capacity issue that would detract from force’s wider duties to prevent and detect crime.”
The NPCC argues that,
“police powers that are practical for use on the front line…Police responsibilities on private land—The funding and resourcing of Home Office police forces is applied primarily to ensure effective policing of public spaces.”
There is an interesting section on this issue that I will not read out, but I am sure the Minister has seen it and will be thinking it through.
The NPCC goes on to say,
“we believe that the question of the responsibility for policing of private land is key. There is a question about the definition of ‘key national infrastructure’, and we would have concern about an explicit duty being placed on policing to deal with activity on private land.
We would be concerned about the impact to our operational response were the responsibility, risks, and costs for securing these sites to be moved from private sector organisations to the police. The impact on police resources, especially for the forces where much of this key infrastructure resides, could be substantial. We believe there is potential for other agencies and organisations to have the powers which would go some way to prevent this.
We believe that there needs to be a strong rationale behind what is considered key national infrastructure, taking into consideration the potential impact of any disruption taking place, so that there is no risk to confidence in policing in being seen to protect private business interests or placing an unreasonable burden on policing that will detract from our core mission.”
We argue that it is not fair to keep piling on new offences. In his evidence, Sir Peter Fahy talked very well about expecting the police to make sense of the new offences, then interpret them and then do all the work.
The Government could do more to work with the police, those who run public and private infrastructure and local authorities to support the right to peaceful protest, to work together to safeguard essential infrastructure, to review the measures that they have just introduced before coming back for more, to work on training, guidance and the resources that public order teams need, and to work on streamlined plans for injunctions that could protect the smooth running of essential infrastructure, if needed.
I again make it clear that we do not support those hardline protesters who keep returning to make people’s lives a misery. We do not believe that clause 4 will fix the problems that our evidence sessions highlighted. It will not speed up the removal of protesters who are causing serious disruption or be a deterrent for those who want to break the law. It risks creating more flashpoints for the police.
Our national infrastructure needs protecting. We hear the anger, irritation and upset when critical appointments are missed, when children cannot get to school and when laws are broken. Of course, the police must act but, unamended, the legislation is too broad to be workable.
Kit Malthouse
As the hon. Lady said, clause 4 introduces a new criminal offence of interfering with the operation of “key national infrastructure”. As we heard in our evidence, recent actions by protestors, including activity blocking or obstructing our printing presses, roads and fuel supply, have inflicted misery on the hard-working public.
As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said on Second Reading, the Government cannot stand idly by and let small groups of disruptive individuals prevent people from getting to their places of work by blocking trains and roads, or stop vital supplies of fuel reaching the public by preventing oil tankers from leaving terminals across the country. Such actions cause enormous damage and have a serious economic cost. For example, policing Insulate Britain’s sit-down protests on our major highways cost £4 million, while the policing cost alone of responding to Just Stop Oil’s campaign against terminals and fuel stations is over £6 million in total so far. It is clear that we have to act.
Individuals commit this offence if they intentionally or recklessly engage in an act that prevents the use or operation of key national infrastructure to any extent, including through acts that significantly delay the operation or use of such infrastructure. The range of infrastructure covered by this offence will ensure that our major transport networks, and our energy and fuel supplies, are protected. I will say more on this issue when the Committee scrutinises clause 5.
Sarah Jones
We have seen some new tactics, but the tactics are mainly old. I understand that Swampy, who we will remember from decades ago, is in a tunnel somewhere under HS2¸ so these things do come around again.
As for the Minister’s point about the police, it is important to note that there has not been a proper consultation on the clauses on infrastructure and transport. I have spoken to lots of police officers about the Bill, and there is not as much knowledge about it as there might be, because there has not been a proper consultation process, whereas there was with the previous piece of legislation. The police quite rightly do not take a political position, but there are plenty of people who have concerns about the breadth of this legislation, not necessarily because they do not want new powers—some of them are saying, “We need new powers”—but because they worry that interpretation of the Bill, which is so broad, will put them in a very difficult position.
Kit Malthouse
I am glad that the hon. Lady accepts that the police are asking for more powers; indeed they are.
Kit Malthouse
And they have specifically requested a number of the powers in the Bill. The person who, as I hope she will agree, was the most credible witness was the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for public order and protest, who said positive things about the legislation.
The hon. Lady is perhaps struggling with the notion that while we can define offences and human behaviour in this place, there is an entire industry of lawyers out there who then go on to interpret what we say. There are common terms that might appear that have particular meaning in colloquial English that have developed meaning over time in the courts. “Serious disruption” is the one that the hon. Lady is speaking to, and I will give some thought as to whether we need to think more about that, but “serious disruption” to the life of the community has been an established part of public order policing and indeed general policing for some time—at least, I think, since 1986 and the Public Order Act of that year. That Act has been interpreted through the courts in a number of ways, which means that it is well understood by police, lawyers and indeed protesters.
Kit Malthouse
I am grateful to my hon. Friend; she makes a very strong point and she is quite right; that is my experience of talking to the police officers dealing with those protests. She points to the importance of particular locations in our fuel supply network. A number of key, large, strategic fuel depots take the bulk of the load, and even a small interference with their ability to get fuel out could have a significant ripple effect that would be felt by the public.
The hon. Member for Croydon Central seems to be under the impression, or possibly trying to create the impression, that the police will change their practice and thousands of protesters will be locked up. I am confused; she seems to imply that those who are disrupting High Speed 2, for example, deserve to be arrested. She said that the cost was “horrifying”—I think that is the word she used. She accepts that HS2 has been approved by a democratically elected Parliament, and was voted for unanimously across the House. It was supported by all parties, and those protesters are seeking to frustrate that democratic decision.
All we are talking about is what offence those individuals should be charged with. We are seeking to give the police more of the options that they have asked for, and more tools to use. That reflects the fact that a number of individuals have avoided charges on technicalities, because of the complexity of the operations and the landownerships involved.
Sarah Jones
At the risk of more repetition, the point is if there is a new offence of locking on, the police might see people linking arms at a protest and think, understandably, “That is an offence! I need to arrest them.” I did not make the point earlier, but there is also an issue around resources. I wanted to ensure that I mentioned to the Minister the issue around resources for protests. For example, the number of police horses has been cut significantly in recent years. They are a very useful tool in managing protests. I am sure that the Minister understands that, and has seen how successfully police horses can manage a crowd. In this cost of living crisis, the cost of horses has gone up by £2,000 or £3,000, so the police are finding it difficult to replace horses. That is slightly niche, but it is a very important part of our ability to protest. I ask the Minister to support our police horses as much as he can.
Kit Malthouse
I am always keen to support all forms of non-human participants in crime fighting, from dogs to horses. I am not sure what relevance that has to the legislation. The hon. Member is right that in certain crowd-control situations, police horses can prove enormously calming to a crowd, which is important. However, that is a crowd situation. Horses are often used in the control of football crowds, as she will know. In a protest situation, particularly a violent protest situation, they are often used more as a dispersal tool. That is where I have seen them used. We have to be careful about straying into police tactics, rather than the legislation, which is our responsibility.
The hon. Lady seems conflicted: she is happy for protesters to be arrested and charged under current offences, or for them to go to prison under an injunction that may have been obtained by HS2, News International or any other site owner, but she seems strangely reluctant to achieve the same effect through the criminal charge that we are putting in place through this legislation. I find that asymmetry difficult to explain.
I explained earlier how seriously the Government take the offence in clause 4, and the maximum penalties available reflect that. Individuals can face a maximum penalty of 12 months’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both. It is completely unacceptable that small numbers of protestors can attack the vital infrastructure that keeps this country running. This Government stand on the side of the public, who want to go about their lives free from the disruption and misery that these protesters can cause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Key national infrastructure
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
The clause defines the different types of key national infrastructure for the purposes of clause 4. I was critical of the breadth of clause 4 earlier. It defines “interference” incredibly broadly as any act that
“prevents the infrastructure from being used or operated to any extent for any of its intended purposes.”
Given that low threshold, we should be wary of the risk to the protections afforded to protest under articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act 1998.
As we heard from legal experts in the evidence sessions last week, the courts have a tendency to look more kindly on disruptive protests when they are directed towards the perceived social, environmental, political or ethical ill identified by the protesters and take place at the site of that perceived ill. It is worth exploring that in a little more detail, as it is important to keep that in mind when looking at the raft of infrastructure that the Government have deemed worthy of the title “key national”.
Let us start with the Greenham Common protests, which were motivated by a desire for nuclear disarmament and carried out in opposition to the Government’s placing of missiles on its Berkshire base, RAF Greenham Common. Crucially, the protests were carried out on that site. Hands were held, arms interlocked and songs sung around the base. There were shows of solidarity, kindness and compassion at Greenham Common, as well as criminal behaviour, which was dealt with. Whatever our views, those protests hold a special place in our national history and consciousness.
Kit Malthouse
Greenham is on the edge of my constituency, as I am sure the hon. Lady knows. I hope that she will accept that defence installations are not defined as key national infrastructure in this legislation.
Sarah Jones
Why not, when nuclear energy is? My point is broader: it is not about the definition but the way that courts define whether a protest is significant. The kind of punishment they give often depends on whether the protest is near the thing being protested about. I will explain what I mean. If we look at more recent protests, such as the Insulate Britain protests on motorways, there is no clear relation between the issue being protested about and the site of the protest. In other words, there is no direct link between insulation and the M25. The M25 has nothing to do with poorly insulated homes. It is not the Government Department responsible for insulating homes. I can see why Insulate Britain might choose to protest outside a Government Department.
I am sure that Insulate Britain would argue that there is a link between the M25 and insulation, but when the courts passed their judgment on Insulate Britain, they came down much more harshly because there was no connection between the place and the people whom the protesters were interfering with and the issue that they were arguing about. Members of Insulate Britain have gone to prison for the M25 protests because the courts take such a dim view of that lack of connection.
The point about clause 5 is that often these key national infrastructure sites are key to the point of the protest. As Liberty notes,
“one of the key ways that people seek to make their protests effective is to draw attention to sites of power”.
The manner and location of protests are key to their power. Had the suffragettes not protested in Downing Street or Parliament, but outside a building a few hundred metres away, their protest would not have had the same impact. Had the Greenham Common women not been allowed to protest around the site of the missiles, and had they instead protested in Basingstoke, they would not have had the same impact.
Kit Malthouse
I understand the parallel that the hon. Lady is trying to draw with the Greenham Common women. I do not think that they were necessarily responsible for winning the cold war, although I do believe a woman—the then leader of our country—was. Does the hon. Lady understand that although the Greenham Common protest has passed into lore, it did not actually interfere with the operation of the base? Missiles came and went, the Americans flew in and out, and the base was supplied; there was no interference. Strictly in terms of the offence that we are talking about, the protesters did not commit an offence.
Sarah Jones
I think there was interference, in that they broke through the perimeter on several occasions.
Sarah Jones
Subsection (2) concerns road transport infrastructure. As I have mentioned, we already have laws to protect roads. Wilful obstruction of a highway comes with a fine, and the Government’s recent Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 increased the maximum penalty for that offence from £1,000 to an unlimited fine and/or six months’ imprisonment. Earlier, the Minister made a remark about the Labour party’s position. To clarify, we tried to limit the scope of that piece of legislation so that it applied only to motorways and A roads, and not to very small roads, and we would have supported the provisions had the Government accepted our amendment. Given the changes made by the 2022 Act, we do not understand why clause 5 on transport infrastructure is necessary. As the Labour party has said all along, there are already laws to protect roads.
I turn to rail. Let us imagine that there is a Starbucks on a train station platform, and a group of children have chosen that platform on which to protest about the lack of corporation tax that Starbucks pays in the UK. It could be platform 4 in Taunton, which I imagine would be delightful today. It could be at London Marylebone—perhaps after the protest—or at platform 1 at Coventry; there are Starbucks franchises on all those platforms. Such protests would be legitimate, I believe. This speaks to the importance of the place and manner of protests.
It is busy at Taunton, and the protestors delay the driver in getting to his train by half an hour. Does that count as infrastructure being significantly delayed? They do not mean to block the driver; that was not their intention. Under the Bill, would the Minister consider those children, or the adult who is with them, to have committed a criminal offence? Such broad-brush legislation opens up all kinds of possibilities.
Kit Malthouse
I am sure that the hon. Lady will accept that protesting on a crowded railway platform, particularly if fast trains pass through it—she mentioned Tiverton Parkway—is quite dangerous, for other passengers and for the protesters. Does she not agree that there should be some way for us to control that kind of behaviour? Byelaws on the railway need to be obeyed.
Sarah Jones
There are byelaws, and there are others laws that could be used in that situation. My point is that two children protesting outside Starbucks might be considered to have committed an offence under clause 5.
On airports, we know from evidence that all the people who cut through the fencing surrounding Stansted airport and made their way to the Boeing jet were arrested. The police had the powers to deal with them and did. Once again, the right to protest is not absolute, but the Bill will prevent potentially peaceful protests.
There was an interesting debate about newspapers in one of the evidence sessions. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire challenged David Dinsmore on whether his newspapers counted as national infra-structure. David Dinsmore argued that they did because of the importance of providing facts to a wide audience, especially during the pandemic. When challenged about the importance of social media—I get much of my news online, as I am sure many people do—David Dinsmore pointed to the elderly section of the population, who are less likely to get their news online or via Twitter. Their daily newspapers—whether tabloid or broadsheet, printed on pink or white paper, and ranging from the Daily Mail to The Guardian—are still important. That might well be the case, but let me quote from the clause:
“‘Newspaper printing infrastructure’ means infrastructure the primary purpose of which is the printing of one or more national or local newspapers.”
The definition of a “local newspaper”, however, is relatively broad: it must be
“published at least fortnightly and…in circulation in a part of England and Wales”.
A newspaper may include “a periodical or magazine”.
Let us explore that a little more. My purpose, again, is to test the limit cases of legislation. It is important to tease out the consequences and show up the broader inferences. To take the newspaper with the widest circulation in the country, just under 1 million people read the Daily Mail, and it is sold across the country. It is a national newspaper—of that there is no doubt. David Dinsmore said:
“Between The Sun and The Times, we would normally expect to sell about 2 million papers”
on a Saturday. He went on:
“We also print for The Daily Telegraph. We print some of the Daily Mail and some of the Financial Times, and we also deliver a direct-to-consumer service, although we do not print them, for The Guardian out of the Broxbourne site”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 46, Q96.]
He makes a fair argument for that printing press providing a national service of sorts.
What other publications are included, however? There are all manner of small newspapers, including the Leicester Mercury, the Bristol Post, the Oldham Advertiser and The Rochdale Observer. Does the Minister think that those fall under the definition of “key national infrastructure”?
What about slightly more esoteric publications? I have a staffer who reads the London Review of Books, which is published every two weeks; its printing is therefore protected under the clause. I do not believe that even my staffer would argue that its printing was of key national importance, however much they enjoy it. Does the printing of the Angling Times—circulation 25,878—come under the legislation, or the Horse & Hound or Cycling Weekly? The Minister is keen on shooting. Is he among the 21,303 subscribers to the Shooting Times, and would he defend its printing as being of key national importance? I produce those examples only to highlight what we see as the flaws in the clause.
The clause is an extension of clause 4, in that it provides the definitions of key infrastructure. As I said, we have issues with clause 4, and have already debated it. We believe that infrastructure needs protecting, and we hear the anger, irritation and upset when critical appointments are missed and delays felt, but we have problems with the scope of the clause, especially given that, as we have debated, it does not include other definitions, such as one for emergency workers. Much of the infrastructure listed in the clause is already protected in law under existing police powers, and there are loopholes and inconsistencies.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill (Fifth sitting)
Sarah Jones ExcerptsThursday 16th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 June 2022 - (16 Jun 2022)
Kit Malthouse
It is a great pleasure to serve under your wise guidance, Mr Mundell, for our contemplation of this legislation today. The amendments make it clear that the protest tactic of building tunnels in order to disrupt legitimate activity while endangering the protesters themselves and the police and emergency services who respond will not be tolerated. The Committee heard last week how HS2 had been targeted on multiple occasions by people building tunnels that have caused enormous cost to the project, with three removal operations alone costing in excess of £10 million.
Even more recently, we have seen protesters from Just Stop Oil engaging in this dangerous and reckless activity at sites in Essex and Warwickshire. Aside from the costs, however, it is the risk of a fatality at one of the sites that concerns us most. Whatever hon. Members think about the merits of a particular cause and the right to protest, we can all agree that such an utterly reckless practice must not be allowed to continue.
Although the individuals may be willing to put themselves at risk, it is not acceptable that they endanger those who are called upon to remove them and repair the damage inflicted. The tunnels are often structurally unsound and poorly ventilated. In addition, the protesters resist removal, increasing the risks for those we ask to enforce the law. While removing protesters from the Euston Square tunnel, for example, HS2 reported that a protester removed part of the shoring, causing a tunnel to collapse on a contractor.
New clause 5 therefore creates a new offence of creating a tunnel, which will be committed when an individual causes serious disruption by creating a tunnel. Their action must cause, or be capable of causing, serious disruption to an organisation or two or more individuals—as we have seen in earlier clauses in the Bill—and the person must intend the tunnel to have a consequence or be reckless as to the consequence. To deter a committed cohort of protest tunnellers, the clause enables a maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment and/or a fine. The clause also includes a reasonable excuse exemption, as have previous clauses.
New clause 6 is designed to cover those who occupy a tunnel as well as those who constructed it in the first place. They will be liable to a similar penalty of up to three years’ imprisonment and/or a fine. The threshold of serious disruption for this offence will be the same as in new clause 5. For both clauses, the tunnel has been defined as any excavation, whether it leads to a destination or is enough to permit the passage of an individual. We have also included in scope any extension or enlargement of existing natural or artificial excavations. The breadth of the definition will ensure that all stages of this dangerous tactic will be captured.
Government amendments 25 and 26 extend the Bill’s suspicion-based and suspicion-less stop and search powers to include equipment that may be used for creating or being present in a tunnel. It is clear that the police need powers to tackle tunnels proactively before they occur. Those two amendments, alongside new clause 7, which we will debate later, will allow the police to take the necessary preventive action against those they believe may be intending to tunnel, protecting the public from serious disruption.
Finally, the level of sentences for these new offences reflects the level of harm that tunnelling can cause. Not only do they cause significant disruption and cost millions of pounds to clean up, as we heard, but they place protesters and, critically, emergency workers at extraordinary risk of serious injury or death. We therefore think it is completely proportionate that the maximum sentences for these offences are as high as I have set out, for the reasons that I have set out.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again today, Mr Mundell.
We move on this morning to powers on stop and search. In this group, the Government are making changes, including to clause 6, through two amendments and two new clauses that deal with tunnelling, which follows the evidence we heard from HS2 about problems that were seen at its sites. It is interesting to note in the news today that an absolutely stunning Anglo-Saxon burial site has just been discovered on the HS2 route—140 people were buried with an amazing array of items. That is tangential, but interesting.
Sarah Jones
No, we cannot, as the Minister says. Government amendments 25 and 26 apply the stop-and-search powers of clauses 6 and 7 to the new offences related to tunnelling that are included in Government new clauses 5 and 6. These amendments will make it a criminal offence to cause serious disruption by creating and occupying tunnels; going equipped to create tunnels will also be criminalised. The changes include the proposed new maximum sentence, as the Minister said, of three years’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine.
I think we can all agree again today that the digging of these tunnels is incredibly disruptive and dangerous, and obviously hugely costly. As the Government’s note says, they are filled with lethal levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide and the tunnels can become death traps, not just for those inside them and members of the public but for those who are required to undertake rescue operations.
HS2’s written evidence gives a clear picture of the danger and disruption, including:
“delay costs, policing, local authority costs, or the additional security costs to maintain a safe and secure compound once protestors have been removed. For a typical tunnel removal operation, HS2 Ltd employs specialists in soil composition, mine rescue, drone operation, health and safety, and paramedics. Protestors are either unaware of the danger of the situation they put themselves in, or have absolute faith in HS2 Ltd’s ability to extract them safely. The risk of a fatality occurring during a tunnelling protest is significant.
Protestors rely on HS2 Ltd’s contractors to monitor air quality, supply air and to remove human waste from the tunnels…During the Euston eviction operation, a protestor removed shoring that caused a tunnel to collapse on a rescue contractor. Whilst the latter incident caused only minor injury, the ongoing threat to the lives of HS2’s staff and protestors is clearly in evidence.
Air quality is often poor inside make-shift tunnels and sometimes…deadly. Deadly levels of carbon monoxide and dioxide were found in tunnels at Small Dean, for example, and the removal team had to provide an air supply to avoid the occupants being overcome and experiencing breathing difficulties. The provision of a constant air supply is not always possible as some ground conditions mean that there is a risk of further instability and risk of collapse being created if the soil is dried out by the provision of air. Tunnels can be extremely deep and are often inadequately shored creating a very real risk of collapse”.
Nobody has the right to put other people’s lives in danger with this kind of dangerous act. As we heard, the removal operation following tunnelling by protesters at Small Dean in Buckinghamshire in 2021 added more than £4 million to the cost of HS2.
The act of digging a tunnel by a group such as Just Stop Oil or those at HS2 in Euston is already a criminal act—we have had this conversation already. Like most of the offences introduced in this Bill, tunnelling is already covered by existing offences. Aggravated trespass with a prison sentence of three months and criminal damage with a prison sentence of up to 10 years could both apply here.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady has raised the issue of the aggravated trespass offence on a number of occasions as a charge that can be used, so I asked my team to look at why aggravated trespass is not necessarily ideal. What we have found is that in a number of situations, not least with HS2, defendants against aggravated trespass in court claim that they are disrupting unlawful activity. That shifts the burden of proof on to, in this case, HS2 to prove that what it was doing was lawful. For example, at the Euston Square Gardens tunnel aggravated trespass was used, and HS2 was required to present to the court what work was being carried out on the land at the time the protesters were in the tunnel and show it was lawful. The case was dismissed by the judge on the grounds that no construction was being carried out on the land at the time. This failed to recognise that HS2 could not start substantive work on the land because protesters were in the tunnel. This specific offence will cover that.
I am sure the hon. Lady also recognises that a tunnel may cross between different ownerships of land and between public and private land. That legal complexity causes a problem. While I understand that she is cleaving to aggravated trespass in many of her oppositions to these clauses, actually, this issue of the protesters being able to reverse the burden of proof is hugely problematic. That is what we are seeking to address.
Sarah Jones
I thank the Minister for that substantial intervention. I would answer with the words of the police themselves on that very point. The National Police Chiefs’ Council lead in this area said of the Government’s plans to make it an offence to cause serious disruption by tunnelling—or be present in a tunnel or equipped for tunnelling—that:
“Whilst forces have experienced tunnelling in recent operations, we do not believe that a specific offence around tunnelling will add anything above and beyond our current available powers.”
I think that is really significant. The police have not asked for this offence, and they do not believe it is necessary at all. They believe the existing powers they have are enough to deal with these protests. This is a point we keep coming back to. We have talked through this. I will not read it out again, but I was looking for my list of all the other offences people can be charged with in different circumstances. The police have a raft of powers and say themselves that in this case they do not need these powers. They have broad catch-all ones such as breach of the peace and very specific ones with options for long custodial sentences to deal with and manage protests that are disruptive. Two key issues come up time and again with these new offences. They are either going to be difficult for the police to put in practice or they will make no different to the time it takes to deal with the disruption.
Kit Malthouse
Sorry, I should have been clear in what I said earlier. I heard the evidence by the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead. The problem is not necessarily the police’s ability to remove and charge those individuals. The problems, as I outlined in the example I used, come in the courts. The current suite of offences that are being incurred gives wriggle room for protesters to make this claim and reverse the burden of proof. I am sure the hon. Lady will agree that what happened at Euston Square was very dangerous, and I hope she agrees that an offence was committed, but at Euston Square they were able to avoid punishment for what they did by using this technicality.
Sarah Jones
I will say two things. First, there is a raft of powers, not least injunctions. HS2 has used injunctions successfully and is currently applying for this whole-route injunction. We will see what comes of that. The second point is an interesting one that we can debate further another time. It is that the courts take different views according to what people are protesting and where. They are more sympathetic to people who are protesting the thing they are against than they are when people are disrupting the public more widely. That is why they have sent people to prison for blocking motorways and have taken a different view on things like the Colston statue.
There is an interesting point about how the courts interpret these things, but I think all these issues come into play when looking at this. We do not believe it is going to make any difference to the time it takes to deal with the disruption, which is important, because that is a core part of the problem itself. Sadly, we do not think it will make the protest removal teams safer when trying to get protesters out. We do not think it will be a deterrent to those repeat offenders we have talked a lot about or that it will speed up the complex and time-consuming removal process.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
I speak with some experience on the matter because I was a tunneller; I worked underground in coalmines in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire for many years. It is a dangerous, dirty and horrible life-risking job, so I would welcome any measure that acts as a deterrent—it is a drastic measure. Does the hon. Member not agree that we should be doing everything in our power to stop these people doing this?
Sarah Jones
I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s frustration, but I listen to the police when we look at what they need. They are saying that this will not help them. I would listen to them, and I would look at the existing powers. I want to read some more of the written evidence from the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on public order and public safety, who states:
“A specific offence would likely not change how these are operationally handled as whatever the offence the practical safety considerations of dealing with people in tunnels would remain. There is current legislation, such as that contained in the Criminal Damage Act 1971, that creates offences of damaging property and having articles to damage property. With the associated powers of search these allow the Police to find articles or equipment intended to cause damage. An additional significant concern is that any specific offence relating to tunnelling would apply to private land. This again could place a significant responsibility on policing. We ask that if considered that this offence is restricted to public places.”
That was the NPCC highlighting a few concerns it has with the plans.
Clause 6 and new clause 5 seem to apply to tunnelling everywhere except
“to the extent that it is in or under a dwelling”,
so any offence to do with tunnelling applies to private land, even if it is under a dwelling—essentially, a place where people live. Take the example of protests taking place against a particular farmer for growing a crop in a private field that protesters oppose or for another matter. If the protesters tunnel under the private field, which could cause disruption and is annoying for the farmer, but it does not destroy the crops, what should happen? There are some complications in terms of the police concerns, which we need to bring to light here.
Chris Noble said in his oral evidence:
“this probably goes to the core of one of the key issues that police are keen to discuss within the Committee—the vast majority of that work is done by the landowners and private companies that are skilled and experienced within this work. While I have some dedicated resources allocated to that at present, if that responsibility was to significantly shift to policing, it would cost me… in the region of £80,000 a day to resource that. It would need significant officer resources, which clearly would need to come from elsewhere”.
That is crucial.
He said:
“The key… is not so much even, necessarily, an offence around tunnelling, because we may well have powers that, broadly speaking, exist to deal with it—we are keen to develop that conversation. The challenge is in preventing it in the first place, and then in how we can work with industry and landowners”
so we can
“potentially remove individuals more quickly.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 12, Q14.]
The challenge is how to prevent tunnelling. The new powers replicate powers the police already have, and we agree with the NPCC on a lot of their concerns.
The NPCC also raised concerns about the responsibility that the new offences will place on police. The Bill has drawn out a bit of conflict between the police and private companies, which is interesting. John Groves from HS2 said:
“Certainly, there is frustration from my team on the ground that the police are not more direct with some of the protesters”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 23, Q43.]
Then we have the police asking the Government to consider that this offence is restricted to public places. Surely the intention of Government legislation like this is to make the lives of the police and private companies building infrastructure easier. It is perhaps problematic when complications are raised on both sides. We need to be mindful of the position that this may put the police in, blurring the lines of public and private that we understand. Policing of protests is called public order policing for a reason: it is usually about protests happening on public land.
Kit Malthouse
I understand the argument that the hon. Lady is making, but I think we have accepted the principle that what these people are doing is not protesting. They are effectively committing a crime, and it is a well-established principle that regardless of whether a crime—for example, a burglary—is committed on public or private land, the police will apprehend, prosecute and investigate. Unless the hon. Lady is saying that tunnelling is a legitimate protest—notwithstanding the dangerous things that we have all talked about, and the cost—I do not understand her argument. Secondly, it is worth bearing in mind that regardless of whether the cost falls on HS2 or the police, it is falling on the taxpayer.
Sarah Jones
The point I was trying to make was to echo the concerns that the police have expressed about the expectation on them to go and do things on private land, the cost associated with that, and the need to deal with that issue. To reiterate, they have said that they think there are already suitable powers for them to stop people when they are committing a criminal act, which we agree tunnelling is. They have said they do not need this extra power. There is also criminal damage, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, so there are different forms of offences that we can look to.
With regard to the new powers, there is also the issue of training. According to the Police Foundation, over the seven years up to 2017-18, 33 forces reduced their budgeted spending on training in real terms by a greater percentage than their overall reduction in spending. Some 40% of police officers say they did not receive the necessary training to do their job, so I am concerned that many things in the Bill, particularly the new clauses, need to go along with properly resourced training to make sure that people understand and know what the new powers are. We have talked about the complexities of introducing new laws and expecting the police to understand them all many times before, not least with all the covid legislation.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning that, because it is something that has been bothering me. As I have said before, I was with the police in the operation centre when they were looking at protests in Bristol. Part of the briefing before protests involves telling the police what offences might be committed, what to look for and so on. We have a plethora of offences, and they have to make judgments on whether something is a serious disruption. The more complex it is, the more difficult it will be for the police to know what they are supposed to do when they are out on the streets in a very difficult situation.
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for that perfect point. This is the challenge that policing has, and we have seen it with the recruitment of new officers as well. We need to make sure that everybody has the right training and understands the legal routes that they can use, and piling new and complex legislation on top of what we think is satisfactory legislation is problematic.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Having listened carefully to the hon. Lady, I have become more concerned about the complexity of the current situation that the police find themselves in. Is tunnelling okay if it is under a field because someone does not like genetically modified crops? What if the tunnelling is to do with something that will happen in the future, such as HS2? It seems to me that the Bill is a very clear piece of legislation that will address the public order issues that exist today. We will know that tunnelling is criminal, and it will be stopped under the Bill. I, too, have been in control rooms dealing with public order issues down in Dover, and it will make the police’s job easier to have the kind of clarity that the Bill will bring.
Sarah Jones
I refer back to the fact that the police themselves do not share the hon. Lady’s view. In this case, what they are saying is perfectly sensible. I do not think anybody is saying that we want people to be tunnelling in dangerous situations and putting people’s lives at risk; nobody wants that. Everybody agrees that there should be criminal sanctions. That is not the point.
Moving to deterrents and whether this measure would act as one, companies like HS2 hope that it will. It said many times in evidence that it was not an expert on the legal side, but that it hoped the measures would be a deterrent. HS2’s written evidence refers to how it is pursuing the route-wide civil injunction. It reads:
“Whilst, if granted, it is hoped that the route-wide injunction will significantly reduce disruption to the project caused by trespass and obstruction of access, it is unlikely to eliminate the problem.”
HS2 also writes that civil injunctions
“serve as a relatively effective deterrent to unlawful (in the civil legal sense) activity by some groups of protestors”.
We will talk about injunctions later, but as HS2 says, it is a relatively effective deterrent—if not also expensive.
The Government will take ages to implement more offences. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North made a speech on Tuesday about the court backlog. If we are adding new and complex criminal offences, maybe we need to sort the court backlog and the record 708 days it takes on average from offence to completion of a case. That is an extraordinarily long period of time. The longest delay from offence to completion was in Bournemouth, which recorded waits of 23 months in 2021.
I will conclude my remarks at this point by reiterating that we think tunnelling is very dangerous and that it is a difficult issue. There are existing laws in place, and we do not think that these measures are the answer. Therefore, we are not entirely convinced by the Government’s arguments today.
Amendment 25 agreed to.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
It is clear that police need the powers to proactively prevent criminal protest activity before it occurs. The hon. Lady has put great store by the evidence of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. She will recall it specifically saying that the ability to stop and search people in and around protests would be helpful, and in its report on the policing of protests, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services argued that stop-and-search powers would improve the police’s ability to prevent serious disruption.
Clause 6 extends existing suspicion-led stop-and-search powers to a range of protest-related offences. Police officers will have the power to stop and search anyone they reasonably suspect is carrying items that could be used for locking on, obstruction of major transport works, interference with key infrastructure, public nuisance, obstruction of the highway or the new offences of tunnelling and being present in a tunnel, which have been tabled as Government amendments to the Bill. Existing safeguards, including statutory codes of practice, body-worn video to increase accountability and extensive data collection will continue to apply to ensure that the police use stop and search in an effective and proportionate manner.
While I understand the concerns that have been shared about the expansion of stop and search widely in society, it is clear that these powers are required to allow the police to take the necessary action to prevent the small minority of determined protesters causing serious disruption. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Sarah Jones
Clause 6 amends section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—PACE, as we call it—to allow a constable to stop and search a person or vehicle if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that they will find an article made, adapted or intended for use in the course of or in connection with a range of offences listed in the Bill. The exercise of stop-and-search powers under section 1 of PACE is subject to PACE code of practice A, which will be updated to reflect the extension of the section 1 powers. This gives the police wide-ranging powers to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, such as shoppers passing a protest against a library closure. In the words of Liberty:
“This amendment constitutes a mass expansion of police powers through the creation of protest-specific stop and search. This is in spite of the fact that there is no consensus among the police that protest-specific stop and search is necessary or desirable.”
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will recollect that when she and I worked on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, many issues were raised about the disproportionate effect that that legislation would have on young black people. The same applies here. What comments would she make about how, yet again, we will see a disproportionate effect on people of ethnic minorities?
Sarah Jones
As always, my hon. Friend makes a good point. I will come on to talk about that in my later remarks.
Lord Kennedy, in the Lords, said:
“the Government are mirroring laws that currently exist for serious violence and knife crime.”
He went on to say that
“these measures apply to peaceful protesters, not people carrying knives or causing violence.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 November 2021; Vol. 816, c. 992-993.]
Matt Parr, Her Majesty’s inspector, said that current suspicionless stop and search powers
“are intended to be used by the police to combat serious violence and the carriage of ‘dangerous instruments or offensive weapons’. Using a similar suspicion-less power to target peaceful protesters, who may cause serious (but non-violent) disruption, is a significantly different proposition. Given the potential ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of assembly and expression in terms of discouraging people from attending protests where they may be stopped and searched, we would expect any new suspicion-less powers to be subject to very careful scrutiny by the courts.”
In the same document, it was said that
“police officers highlighted operational difficulties in the targeted use of the power. Others were also concerned over the proportionality of any search as well as the potentially intrusive nature when looking for small items.
One officer reflected that the proposal had ‘complications’ – for instance, whether an otherwise innocuous items was really intended to be used to lock-on. He said that having a tube of superglue in your pocket, or chain and padlock that you intend to use to lock your bike, ‘doesn’t prove intent and presents difficulties’.”
Kerry McCarthy
Concern about that has been expressed in Bristol. There are a lot of cyclists in Bristol and many who would be carrying bike locks around with them. College Green is the area where people tend to congregate if there is going to be a march or a protest. However, there would be an awful lot of people in that area who might well be carrying things that, if the police wanted to be difficult, might put them under suspicion. Does my hon. Friend share my concern? [Interruption.] I do not quite know how it works if I am intervening. I am intervening on my shadow Minister, not the Minister.
The Chair
The Minister will have the opportunity to have his say at the end of this discussion.
Sarah Jones
That is absolutely right, and it is one of our issues with the Bill in general and this clause in particular. The powers are being made so broad that it makes it difficult for the police to interpret them in a meaningful way. If somebody is searching for a knife, drugs or a gun, they know if they have found it. It is a criminal offence there and then. It gets more complicated when stop and search is extended to somebody who may or may not be peacefully attending a protest but who still could be stopped under the new powers.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Surely if someone were using their bicycle to travel to a protest, when they got to the protest they would have already got off their bicycle and used the chain to secure it in place. They would therefore arrive at the protest without the cycle lock.
Sarah Jones
They might be pushing their bicycle through the centre of the protest and their bicycle lock would be on their bicycle. That would be covered under the Bill. The lunacy of that is in the legislation, not our interpretation of it. It is a fact.
Lee Anderson
Does the hon. Lady really believe that our police are that daft that they would arrest somebody for carrying a lock when they are on their push bike going to a protest or wherever else? Does she really believe that?
Sarah Jones
I do not believe that our police are daft at all. I am a big champion of our police and a supporter of everything that they are trying to do. The point is that if someone goes to a protest and is carrying an item such as a bike lock, they could be stopped by the police and that that will have a chilling effect on protesters—not on the protesters we have been talking about who are about to lock on, who glue their hands to things and do need to be arrested and charged for the disruption that they cause, but on anybody else who wants to attend a peaceful protest. We are slipping from a society in which peaceful protest is a right and something that we encourage to one in which we want everybody to think twice before they go on a protest. I do not think we want to be that kind of country.
Kerry McCarthy
To give one example, a few years ago there was a protest in Bristol that involved people blocking the road by sitting and laying their bicycles down in it. That would potentially mean that they would have bike locks on them and could be subject to stop and search, would it not?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is right. I urge colleagues to read the powers in clause 6. They are very clear and broad.
When Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services consulted police on the Home Office’s proposal for a new stop-and-search power, one officer said that
“a little inconvenience is more acceptable than a police state.”
That was a police officer speaking. HMICFRS went on to state that it agreed with that sentiment.
As I have said already, stop and search is a useful tool. It is important in preventing crime. But it is an invasive power and can be counterproductive and undermine the legitimacy of and trust in policing if it is not used correctly. Rightly, it is designed to be used to prevent the most serious crime—knife crime, or drug dealing—and the police themselves have recognised serious concerns about disproportionality and that those who are black are much more likely to be stopped and searched than those who are white.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
A lot of the suggestions coming from the shadow Minister seem to be predicated on the basis that the police do not know what they are doing and that they are completely devoid of any sort of common sense. We all have to acknowledge that no one is perfect. The police will not be perfect, the law cannot be perfect and we are certainly not perfect. We are trying to give the police the widest possible tools that they can have to prevent the public from being disrupted to the extent we have seen so far. It is about the application of common sense and it seems to me that everything that is coming from the Opposition is about trying to stop that happening and effectively sending out a message that they are not on the side of ordinary citizens.
Sarah Jones
I completely disagree. I am absolutely on the side of ordinary citizens, and the evidence I am referring to comes from the police, not direct from me. I am quoting police officers who took part in the consultation back when Matt Parr did his report, and I am raising organisations’ concerns. The police have talked about the disproportionate nature of stop and search; this is not me speaking, but them. Let me quote the recent Independent Office for Police Conduct report on the matter:
“Stop and search is a legitimate policing tactic…The powers have been described as an important tool in dealing with knife crime and drugs, in particular. However, its disproportionate use against people from a Black, Asian, or other minority ethnic background, particularly young Black men, has been a concern for many years and it remains one of the most contentious policing powers.”
Unlike when the Minister was in the Mayor’s office—stop and search went down in every year for which the Prime Minister was Mayor of London—we are debating this against the backdrop of a significant increase in the use of stop and search. In the year ending March 2021, the use of stop and search increased by 24%.
Sarah Jones
I would be worried if the Minister were not considering these issues. Disproportionality means that if somebody is from a different race—in this case, particularly if they are black—they are more likely to be stopped and searched than they would be if they were white. It has nothing to do with the make-up of criminals; it is to do with disproportionality. The report by the NPCC and the College of Policing—I am sure the Minister has read it—talks at great length about the problem of disproportionality and how it needs to be tackled. In previous conversations in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill Committee, the Opposition have said that we need to get those things right before we expand powers. The police would agree that there is a big problem to be fixed.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I would characterise Opposition parties’ arguments in this Committee as seeking clarity to help the police and the legal system. Our role as legislators is to provide that clarity. The hon. Member for Bristol East highlighted in the evidence session last week that people arrested in relation to the destruction of the Colston statue were acquitted. We are asking for clarity in legislation, to enable the police to make the right decisions and be supported on that, and to encourage the courts to follow through on.
Sarah Jones
I agree. This is about clarity in law to enable the police to do their job. The Government are introducing sweeping and increasingly wide-ranging powers to cover things that stop and search has not historically been used for, and the Opposition think that is wrong.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 7 builds on the Government’s plans to give the police the powers they need to prevent serious disruption at protests by introducing suspicion-less stop and search powers. The hon. Member for Croydon Central referred in her previous speech to both suspicion-led and suspicion-less stop and search.
Although the extension of suspicion-based stop and search powers, provided for by clause 6, will help the police to manage disruptive protests more effectively, it is not always possible in high-pressure, fast-paced protest environments for officers to form reasonable suspicion that individuals may be about to commit an offence. Clause 7 therefore introduces a suspicion-less stop and search power for the offences covered under clause 6.
If an officer of the rank of inspector or above believes that any of the specified offences may be committed in their police area and that individuals are carrying prohibited objects for the commission of those offences, officers may stop and search individuals and vehicles within the area specified by the senior officer, whether or not they suspect those individuals are carrying prohibited objects. If such items are found, the police may seize them.
These powers are modelled on existing suspicion-less stop and search powers available under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The powers are well understood by the police, and emulating them prevents confusion between the powers and the complication of officers’ training. As with section 60, powers under clause 7 may not last longer than 24 hours unless an officer of superintendent rank or higher deems it necessary to extend them by a further 24 hours. Such an extension may happen only if senior police officers deem it necessary to prevent the offences in scope from being carried out or to prevent prohibited objects from being carried.
The hon. Lady criticised both suspicion-led and suspicion-less stop and search, and I hope I can allay some of her concerns. As with all stop and search powers, we believe, as she does, that no one should be stopped based on a protected characteristic, and there are safeguards to ensure these powers are used proportionately. This point was emphasised by Her Majesty’s inspector in the recent report on the policing of protests, in which he recognised that
“the proposed new power has the clear potential to improve police efficiency and effectiveness”
in managing protests, so long as they are
“subject to strong and effective safeguards”.
As the hon. Lady knows, we intend to amend PACE code A. We regularly review safeguards, and we now collect more data on stop and search than ever before. That data is posted online, enabling police and crime commissioners and others to hold forces to account. It is also important that communities hold PCCs to account through the electoral process, as I am sure she would agree.
We have responded to the “Inclusive Britain” report by saying that we intend to enhance the safeguards through the development of a national framework for scrutiny of stop and search by local communities, and through the consideration of any unnecessary barriers to the increased use of body-worn video. We also asked the College of Policing to update its stop and search guidance to ensure fair and proportionate use. The updated guidance, which is available to all forces, was published in July 2020 and provides best practice examples of community engagement and security. HMICFRS continues to inspect regularly on stop and search.
Sarah Jones
It is slightly worrying how the Minister talks about this differently from his own police. The NPCC and the College of Policing talk about it in a very different way. They say that stop and search is an important tool—on which we all agree—but that its implementation is disproportionate and lots of work needs to be done to fix that. The Minister seems to be saying that it does not need to be fixed. Perhaps he should talk to the NPCC, the College of Policing and those who put that report together to ensure that they are on the same page as him.
Kit Malthouse
Notwithstanding the hon. Lady’s patronising tone, I speak to the National Police Chiefs’ Council and senior police officers all the time. In fact, I have lived the stop and search journey for the last 14 years. I have probably spent more time than most talking to people in communities that are affected by violence and where stop and search is regularly utilised about its challenges and its efficacy in protecting people.
I repeat what I have said in the House: I have often been challenged during those 14 years on the disproportionality in the use of stop and search, but I have never been challenged on the disproportionality in the people who are killed with knives. No one has ever said to me that it is a total disgrace that the vast majority of those people are young black men. I would welcome that challenge and a proper set of solutions to that problem.
Sarah Jones
That is a completely unreasonable distinction to make. I have challenged the number of young black men who have been murdered in my constituency many, many times. Indeed, that is why I set up the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime and why I have worked on that exact issue ever since I entered Parliament. The two things are not comparable. Just because most victims of knife crime murders happen to be young black men in London, that does not mean that the majority of black people are criminals.
Sarah Jones
No, but I am saying that the two are not connected, and we cannot connect them. The victims are often young black people—I find that as awful as anybody else would, and I have campaigned to do something about it—but that is not the point. The point is that stop and search is disproportionate not because of the nature of crimes, and not because of the victims of crimes, but because it is disproportionate.
Kit Malthouse
I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, but there are complicated reasons why stop and search is disproportionate. Some of them are to do with geography, some with offence types, and some with the way that section 60 is used. I do not think that it is entirely cultural within the police.
There are other disproportionalities of concern. On cannabis possession in London, for example, which the hon. Lady mentioned, there is a strange disproportionality that does not, in my experience, reflect the pattern of cannabis use in London. We need to pay some attention to that. Having said that, I do not necessarily think that that problem and the solutions to it should be a barrier to using the stop-and-search power.
We heard clearly from the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for public order that the use of stop and search—both suspicion-led and, in a fast-moving protest situation, suspicion-less—would be useful and enable police to get ahead of and prevent some of those offences. Indeed, I think I remember him saying that if police had those powers, it would result in less of an infringement on the rights of protestors. We therefore believe that the case has been made.
Sarah Jones
I will spend a bit of time of clauses 6 and 7 as they are the two important chunks that address suspicion-led and suspicion-less stop and search. The further stop-and-search clauses contain additional but less significant provisions.
Clause 7 addresses peaceful protest as if it were a social ill akin to knife crime, terrorism, serious organised crime or other situations in which people are stopped and searched. Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act already allows officers to stop and search those whom they have reasonable grounds to suspect possess stolen or prohibited articles. For the purposes of section 1, prohibited articles include any item that has been made or adapted to be used to cause criminal damage. That would cover most of the scenarios that the Government are worried about.
The issue is that lock-ons, which we have debated and agreed have caused significant problems, are infrequent compared with protests as a whole. There might be a very large protest of 100,000 people, with 10 people or fewer trying to do something disruptive or illegal. That does not make the entire protest illegal; it makes those protestors unlawful. Our concern about the even broader extension of the powers, and the Bill more widely, is that we are not criminalising the criminals; we risk criminalising the vast majority of the people who want to protest and have their say on the issues of the day.
I am sure Matt Parr must be pleased, because we talk about him so much in Committee. The Minister is absolutely right that he agreed that the power could be a useful tool, but he listed a lot of concern in his report about how it would be implemented:
“Current suspicion-less stop and search powers for weapons…are intended to be used by the police to combat serious violence and the carriage of ‘dangerous instruments or offensive weapons’. Using a similar suspicion-less power to target peaceful protesters, who may cause serious (but non-violent) disruption, is a significantly different proposition. Given the potential ‘chilling effect’ on freedom of assembly and expression in terms of discouraging people from attending protests where they may be stopped and searched, we would expect any new suspicion-less powers to be subject to very careful scrutiny by the courts.
Such powers could have a disproportionate impact on people from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups. We have repeatedly raised concerns about the police’s disproportionate use of stop and search in previous inspection reports…If and when contemplating the use of such powers in future, forces will need to carefully consider the demographic composition of the protest groups concerned. The importance of this issue should not be underestimated.
We would wish to see appropriate legal thresholds and authority levels set for authorising the use of the power, and the use of such powers monitored in a similar way to existing stop and search powers…When a person is stopped and searched, they may make an application for a written statement that they were searched. We would also wish to see high standards of training, vigilance and caution in the use of such a power”.
It is a well-used expression, but this is using a hammer to crack a nut. We do not want all the peaceful protesters to be hammered by the legislation when they are not doing anything unlawful.
Marco Longhi
The hon. Lady made a point moments ago that she has the unfortunate situation of BAME members of her community being killed because of knife crime. We are ignoring an important statistic, which is the fact that very often, people who come to harm or die because of knife crime do so as a result of the knife they have brought themselves. I hear what she is saying, but the measure is about saving lives and saving people from harm. I come back to the point that we are trying to have a common-sense approach that will save lives. If that has such a chilling effect on people attending so-called protests, then I wonder whether there is a balance that we need to consider. Which is more important, the saving of lives or the potential disruption to people’s willingness or want to participate in demonstrations or protests?
Sarah Jones
I do not think that anyone is arguing that we should not have stop-and-search powers for knife crime. Absolutely, in a lot of knife crime cases, who the victim or the perpetrator is depends on whoever happens to win the fight at the time. That is very difficult to deal with, but it is not relevant to this argument, which is about giving the police disproportionate powers to deal with a situation that they already have powers to deal with, in the meantime potentially criminalising people who would not have been, and should not be, criminalised.
The concerns about disproportionality exist for suspicion-less stop and search far more than for suspicion-led stop and search. The more ambiguity and the greater lack of evidence there is for who should be stopped, the more the disproportionality increases. This is something that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), was very interested in when she was Home Secretary. She insisted that stop and search be intelligence-led, and there was an improvement on her watch in the proportion of people who were found to be carrying something illegal. I think the figure at the moment is that one in 100 stop and searches for knives under section 60 leads to the discovery of a knife. We absolutely want to find that knife, but 99 stop and searches is a lot of police time and resources, and there are other ways to gather intelligence and solve crime.
I want to stress how many organisations are concerned about the powers. We have been very lucky to have people give evidence and write to us about their concerns. Organisations believe that the powers are incompatible with article 11 of the ECHR and article 21 of the international covenant on civil and political rights, as they relate to freedom of peaceful assembly. During the debate on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in the Lords, Lord Carlile compared the powers with the use of stop-and-search powers under the Terrorism Act. He noted that:
“The Terrorism Act stop and search power is there for the prevention of actual acts of actual terrorism which kill actual people.
The dilution of without-suspicion stop and search powers is a menacing and dangerous measure.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 2022; Vol. 817, c. 1435.]
In a similar way, Liberty has noted that stop and search without suspicion has normally been used
“in the context of crimes that will potentially kill many, many people.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 75, Q145.]
Lord Carlile concluded that the power
“is disproportionate, and the Government should think twice about it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 2022; Vol. 817, c. 1435.]
In its oral evidence, Amnesty noted that
“the proposal fails the test of lawfulness…the confiscation powers that go behind the stop-and-search powers around the locking-on offence capture an enormously broad range of items that an officer could argue might be capable of causing an offence. You have so many caveats that you will get into a situation where an ordinary person could have no idea why they were stopped, or why somebody might be taking an item off them that was completely lawful—everything from string to a bit of glue. It fails on that basic principle of lawfulness, which I think is incredibly problematic.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 75-76, Q145.]
The list of bodies and individuals—including HMICFRS, the College of Policing, former police chiefs and the right hon. Member for Maidenhead—have highlighted issues and broad concerns about suspicion-less stop and search. I say to the Minister that a whole raft of work is being done by the NSPCC and the College of Policing, and that should be done before we try to extend such extreme powers to the police without putting in place any measures to stop the disproportionality.
I will leave it there. We have the same view on clause 7 as we did on clause 6: we do not think it is necessary or proportionate. We think that it will criminalise potentially innocent protesters and that the Government should think again.
Question put, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
The clause makes further provision as to how police officers should authorise the aforementioned stop and search. It extends to the British Transport Police. It is self-explanatory.
Sarah Jones
Amendment 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East, is supported by me and the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and we believe the clause should be struck from the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Further provisions about searches under section 7
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
The clause provides that anyone searched or who has their vehicle searched under the new suspicion-less stop-and-search powers is entitled to apply for a written statement from the police confirming that they have been searched. That is in line with the existing stop-and-search powers, and a number of forces will allow a person to do that electronically. It also allows the Home Secretary to make regulations, subject to the negative resolution procedure, governing the retention, keeping and disposal of prohibited objects seized by the police under these powers.
Sarah Jones
We agree with amendment 9, tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East, and we would leave out the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 9 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Offence relating to section 7
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Anyone who intentionally obstructs a constable exercising suspicion-less stop-and-search powers under clause 7 commits an offence, with a maximum penalty of one month’s imprisonment or a level 3 fine. That is in line with other stop-and-search powers.
Sarah Jones
We support amendment 10, tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East, and we would leave out the clause. We do not support the measure. Liberty has suggested that a consequence of the offence is that it could be used to target legal observers who may be stopped and searched on their way to a protest for carrying items such as bus cards or for wearing an identifiable yellow bib. There are legitimate concerns that should be considered, so we do not support the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11
Processions, assemblies and one-person protests: delegation of functions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
The clause reflects a request from the Metropolitan Police to reflect the differential rank structure with regard to the delegation of powers of authorisation such that an assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police can delegate the authorisation powers to a commander, which would be different from other forces in the rest of the UK, but it seems a sensible and proportionate measure, given the differential rank structure.
Sarah Jones
We have no issues with the clause. To quote Matt Parr in the evidence session:
“That strikes me as entirely pragmatic. If you look at the Met, the real expertise in public order tends to be at commander rank, rather than above, where people get a bit more generalist. The deep professional experts in London, in my experience, are the commanders. That strikes me as perfectly sensible.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 13 June 2022; c. 56-57, Q117.]
We agree.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Serious disruption prevention order made on conviction
Wendy Chamberlain
I beg to move amendment 38, in clause 12, page 12, line 16, leave out
“on the balance of probabilities”
and insert “beyond reasonable doubt”.
This amendment would raise the burden of proof for imposing a serious disruption prevention order to the criminal standard.
Wendy Chamberlain
The purpose of these amendments is to raise the burden of proof in relation to SDPOs to the criminal standard, rather than the balance of probabilities. Simply put, there is a reason why we use a higher bar for crimes that result in people being fined or losing their liberty, and the risks are the same here. One condition of an SDPO could be that someone has to wear an electronic monitor and have their every movement tracked. Given the impact on day-to-life, it is not acceptable that that could be imposed just because the evidence suggests that the offence is more likely than not to have been committed. Justice requires that people are given due process, and it is vastly inappropriate for a low standard of proof to be used when we are, effectively, taking away someone’s rights and restricting their movements. I think this measure shows that we are slipping into a concerning state of affairs, and that is why my amendments suggest that the situation should be rectified.
I also want to talk about keeping trust with the public, and I am thinking of Peter Fahy’s comments last week about the challenges of dealing with protests. Our concern with the legislation is that when the police fail to deal with things effectively, they are seen as incompetent, and that risks public trust. For the public to have trust, they must feel that punishments are fairly applied. We heard a lot in the evidence sessions last week about the importance of policing by consent. That is something that I am passionate about as a former police officer, and it is what makes British policing unique. It is a fundamental principle enshrined in our justice system, and to maintain this consent and to further trust, people must know that sanctions are applied fairly.
Sarah Jones
I do not wish to add to what the hon. Lady has said, other than to say that we agree with the amendments.
Kit Malthouse
The amendments, I am afraid, are a deliberate attempt to water down the courts’ ability to place an SDPO on those who are intent on repeatedly disrupting the lives of others, as we have talked about a lot during our consideration of the Bill. Amendments 38 and 39 attempt to raise the burden of proof required for SDPOs from
“on the balance of probabilities”
to “beyond reasonable doubt”, in effect requiring the criminal rather than the civil standard of proof. Amendment 38 raises the burden of proof required when considering whether an offence constitutes a protest-related offence for the purpose of making a serious disruption prevention order. Amendment 39 does the same when a court considers whether a person has engaged, in the last five years, in previous behaviour that would qualify them for an SDPO.
The amendments would make it more challenging for a court to place an SDPO on prolific activists who engage in criminal or unjustifiable behaviour. As this is a court order, I see no issue with requiring the civil burden of proof. The Opposition have shown much enthusiasm for injunctions, which operate to a civil burden of proof, and the same burden would be required here. For the avoidance of doubt, for someone to be convicted for breaching an SDPO, the criminal burden of proof would apply.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Public Order Bill (Sixth sitting)
Sarah Jones ExcerptsThursday 16th June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 16 June 2022 - (16 Jun 2022)
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
Clause 12 will protect the British public from the small minority of protesters who are determined to repeatedly inflict disruption on those who simply wish to go about their daily lives. In 2021, approximately 170 Insulate Britain protesters were arrested about 980 times for obstructing motorways. That means that each protester was arrested on average nearly six times, on separate occasions. It is clear that something needs to be done to prevent these people from returning time and time again to ruin the daily life of the wider public, and to stop them cocking a snook at our justice system.
We have heard, and no doubt will hear more, criticism of serious disruption prevention orders, but there is one big misconception that I want to address: the claim that SDPOs ban protests. Critics have referred to the report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services about the policing of protest, which found protest banning orders to be incompatible with human rights legislation, and we heard that during our evidence day. But the clue is in the name: HMICFRS considered orders that sought to outright ban people from protesting. SDPOs only enable the independent judiciary to place necessary and proportionate conditions on people to prevent them from engaging in criminal acts of protest and causing serious disruption time and time again. Those conditions could include curfews or electronic monitoring. Most importantly, they will be for the courts, not Government, to decide.
Under this clause, an SDPO can be imposed on a person convicted of a protest-related offence where, in the past five years, that person has been convicted of another offence or has committed other specified protest-related behaviour. A breach of an order will be a criminal offence, punishable by an unlimited fine, six months’ imprisonment, or both. An SDPO can be made if the court is satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the person has, on two or more occasions, been convicted of a protest-related offence; has been found in contempt of court for a protest-related breach of an injunction; has caused or contributed to a protest-related criminal offence or breach of an injunction; or has carried out, or caused or contributed to the carrying out by another person of, protest-related activities that resulted, or were likely to result, in serious disruption.
Along with the stop-and-search measures, these measures provide pre-emptive powers for the police. Officers will be able to interrupt and arrest those who breach the conditions of their SDPO before they have the opportunity to commit another disruptive act. SDPOs mirror many characteristics of injunctions, which the Opposition parties have been so keen for us and others to use. I urge that clause 12 stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
A raft of clauses relate to serious disruption prevention orders, but clauses 12 and 13 are the most significant, so I will direct focus my attention on them. The shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and I put our names to amendment 12, which would have left out the entirety of clause 12.
The clause, as we know, creates a new civil order—the serious disruption prevention order. These orders can be imposed on individuals who have a previous conviction for a protest-related offence and who have participated in another protest within a five-year period. There is a very broad list of conditions that may be met, including that the offender has been convicted of another protest-related offence; has been found in contempt of court for a protest-related breach of an injunction; has carried out activities related to a protest that resulted, or were likely to result, in serious disruption to two or more individuals or to an organisation; has caused or contributed to any other person committing a protest-related offence or protest-related breach of an injunction; or has caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person of activities related to a protest that resulted, or were likely to result, in serious disruption to two or more individuals or to an organisation. That means that someone can be given an order if they have one previous protest-related offence and just contribute to another person’s activities, which were likely to result in serious disruption to only two people. As in so much of the Bill, that is a low threshold for such a restriction on someone’s rights.
Serious disruption prevention orders can last anywhere from a week to two years, with the potential to be renewed indefinitely. They can ban individuals from protesting, associating with certain people at certain times, and using the internet in certain ways. Those subject to the orders might have to report to certain places at certain times, and even be electronically monitored. If they fail to fulfil one of the requirements without a reasonable excuse, provide the police with false information, or violate a prohibition in the SDPO, they will have committed a crime. The consequence is a maximum of 51 weeks’ imprisonment, a fine, or both.
When we debated these clauses previously, we had, as the Minister referred to, a conversation about protest banning orders and the work that has gone into looking at them. In the evidence session, the Minister said of SDPOs that
“this measure is a conditional order, which may place restrictions or conditions on somebody’s ability to operate in a protest environment.”
However, the restrictions are significantly broader than just being prevented from attending protests. Martha Spurrier from Liberty pointed out that
“the serious disruption prevention orders have the capacity to be absolute bans in the same way as the protest banning orders...under judicial supervision—but... to a low standard of proof.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 69, Q131.]
Again, the Government are extending to peaceful protest powers that we would normally make available just for serious violence and terrorism.
Kit Malthouse
Perhaps I can reiterate the point that I made, because I am interested in the hon. Lady’s view, although I know we want to get through a lot this afternoon. Other than, for example, the condition of electronic monitoring, which we will come to, what would be the difference between an injunction, on which she is so keen and which could be used as a complete ban on attending any protest, and an SPDO, which has many more safety measures around it?
Sarah Jones
I do not think that an SPDO has much more safety around it. The conditions under which someone can get an order—which I have just read out—include that they have caused, or contributed to, the carrying out by any other person of activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals. Conditions could be put on people and, if those people were deemed to have not adhered to them, new conditions could continue indefinitely, or people could go to prison or be fined. There is a specific condition that is put on an individual, with a very broad and legally difficult to identify range of conditions that would then be possible. It is different.
Police officers themselves, whom we turn to so often, said that an SPDO is
“a severe restriction on a person’s rights to protest and in reality, is unworkable”.
It is worth reflecting on what the inspectorate said about protest banning orders:
“We agree with the police and Home Office that such orders would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent. All things considered, legislation creating protest banning orders would be legally very problematic because, however many safeguards might be put in place, a banning order would completely remove an individual’s right to attend a protest. It is difficult to envisage a case where less intrusive measures could not be taken to address the risk that an individual poses, and where a court would therefore accept that it was proportionate to impose a banning order.”
The inspectorate’s report also said:
“This proposal essentially takes away a person’s right to protest and…we believe it unlikely the measure would work as hoped.”
In the evidence sessions, the National Police Chiefs’ Council protest lead said:
“unless we knew the exact circumstances of the individual it would be hard to say how exactly the orders could be justified.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 15, Q23.]
Senior officers noted that protest banning orders would
“unnecessarily curtail people’s democratic right to protest”
and be
“a massive civil rights infringement”.
In the words of Liberty, the orders are
“an unprecedented and highly draconian measure that stand to extinguish named individuals’ fundamental right to protest as well as their ability to participate in a political community. They will also have the effect of subjecting individuals and wider communities to intrusive surveillance.”
It is worth digging down a little into the detail of these prevention orders. For example, would buying a lock, paint or superglue, observing a protest from afar or holding a banner be enough to contribute to a protest-related offence? As the noble Lord Paddick noted at Report stage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, when these measures were first introduced,
“you do not even have to have been to a protest to be banned from future ones.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 January 2022; Vol. 817, c. 1439.]
That is where we are.
Restrictions imposed via a serious disruption prevention order are not necessarily directed at preventing anything criminal, but at preventing the facilitation of non-criminal protest-related activities, which could include sharing songs or chants, flag designs or just some information about where protests are being held. Underpinning our concerns is the wide and diffuse definition of serious disruption, and the power of the Secretary of State to redefine it.
For those given an SDPO, there are a wide set of requirements and prohibitions, which, again, might interfere with rights to respect for private and family life and to freedom of thought, belief and religion, expression, and assembly. Individuals might be prevented from associating with particular people or community members. They might not be able to possess locks, paint or glue. Crucially, they would not be allowed to participate in protests. They might also not be allowed to worship—the Quakers see direct action as a crucial part of their faith. Although there is a safeguard in the Bill, it does not match up to the overreach that the clauses represent.
The enforcement of an SDPO is also potentially problematic. Let us take electronic monitoring. There is the potential for 24/7 GPS tracking under the Bill. We are unclear whether that is proportionate for the undefined prevention of serious disruption.
Failing to comply with an SDPO could result in a maximum of 51 weeks in prison, a fine, or both, but none of the breaches is criminal without an SDPO. The clause criminalises potentially normal activities. When we consider that there is no limit to the number of times that an SDPO can be renewed by the court, we risk people being pushed into a cycle of criminalisation and indefinite periods of not being able to protest or associate with people, look on the internet or take part in other normal parts of life.
For something that places really serious restrictions on a person’s liberty, the court can make an SDPO if it is satisfied
“on the balance of probabilities that the current offence is a protest-related offence”,
rather than that being beyond reasonable doubt. That is the civil standard of proof. SDPOs on conviction can be made on the basis of lower-quality evidence.
Kit Malthouse
I am conscious of the point the hon. Lady is making about the infringement of people’s liberties. Will she accept that this is not a novel concept and in fact happens already? For example, she will remember the incident where anti-lockdown protesters chased and harassed a journalist outside Downing Street. When that happened, those protesters got a fine and unpaid work, but the judge also banned them from attending near Parliament and in Whitehall for 18 months as part of the condition of their punishment. This concept is not a novel one. In many ways, codifying this seems a sensible thing to do, rather than leaving it entirely to judicial discretion.
Sarah Jones
I will come in a moment to similar orders that I think the police are struggling with in terms of how they are implemented. I hope to make a point about some of the problems with these measures as they stand.
Amnesty’s written evidence states:
“Even where based on previous convictions, these provisions are wholly disproportionate—they restrict the exercise of a fundamental right of peaceful assembly based on past conduct and there is no requirement that the past conduct be of a serious nature. Given the extremely broad and vaguely defined list of potential convictions that could be used to impose an SDPO, this provision…will risk depriving a large number of people for up to five 5 years of a fundamental universal human right.”
We heard from Amnesty in the evidence sessions about how there is
“a disconnect…between the statements that the UK puts out internationally and the role we see ourselves playing in the world community, and the kinds of measures we are putting in place on our own domestic legislative front.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 65, Q124.]
Amnesty noted Lord Ahmad’s closing remarks at the 49th session of the Human Rights Council. He made reference to the resolution about the need to promote and respect the rights of human rights defenders around the world. He said that the resolution essentially requires that all states refrain from measures that excessively criminalise human rights defenders and their rights to freedom of expression.
Amnesty’s written evidence states that it is
“striking to note that many of the provisions in the”
Public Order Bill
“mirror similar public order provisions in countries considered by the UK to be overly repressive, including through placing undue restrictions on the rights to freedom of assembly.”
When the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill comes into force, the Government could stop protesters singing the Ukrainian national anthem too loudly in the street, while the SDPOs in clause 12 mirror the restrictions in countries where laws prohibit certain categories of people from organising protests. The UK’s reputation on the world stage as a beacon of democracy, freedom of expression and a style of policing that works through a social contract with the public based on consent is at risk of being undermined by the provisions in this Bill. As Amnesty wrote,
“The UK often uses its voice on the international stage to condemn repressive policies in a number of countries.” —
quite right. We should not have such policies in this country.
Serious disruption prevention orders, as we know and as the Minister has just said, mirror the kinds of orders that the Government have brought in to deal with other things, such as serious violence. Serious violence reduction orders were in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and are yet to be implemented. They will be piloted first.
Knife crime prevention orders were in a previous Bill, and I was a member of that Bill Committee. It would be useful to look at how knife crime prevention orders are working in practice, because it does not look at the moment as though they are working. An article from last September said that the pilot had failed to result in a single court action during the first six weeks of the 14-month trial that started last July. The PA news agency’s freedom of information request showed that only two orders were applied for by the Met during the first six weeks of the trial, and both were turned down by magistrates.
Knife crime prevention orders have challenges in themselves. We debated at the time how we would enforce them if we put a condition on somebody that they have to attend a certain place. For example, in the knife crime situation, they have to attend a meeting with a youth worker every week. If they do not attend, is it really the job of the youth worker to intervene in the criminal situation and report to the police that the individual has not turned up? The point of the youth worker is to build relationships with that individual. We know that there are significant problems. Does the Minister have any more information on how knife crime prevention orders are working? There could be similar issues.
As the Minister has acknowledged and as we have said many times, it is a very small proportion of hard-line protesters who are causing disruption and who we are trying to deal with. Our concern is that the Government are introducing wide-ranging laws on protest that will potentially bring a large number of peaceful protesters into the criminal justice system, as well as applying disproportionate penalties when there are already significant laws in place.
One point about the existing laws that I have not made yet, which is brought out in places such as the Matt Parr report, is that there are some offences for which we do not gather data. We do not know, for example, how many times the police have made applications to prohibit trespassory assemblies, so in some cases, we know that there are offences but do not have the numbers on how often they are used.
I will conclude by saying, as I have said many times, that there is a British way to deal with these things—and clause 12 does not sit happily alongside it.
Kit Malthouse
The fount of these orders is the antisocial behaviour order, which as you will remember, Mr Mundell, was introduced by the then Labour Government in 1998. Alarmingly, I do not think that the hon. Lady has paid enough attention to the high bar that all this conduct must cause serious disruption. She also seems to have little faith in the ability of our independent judiciary to form a judgment about when the orders should be applied.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 13 provides that the police may make applications to the magistrates court for an SDPO to be imposed on an individual. The conditions that the court must be satisfied of before making an SDPO, and the purposes of any SDPO made on application, are the same as for SDPOs made on conviction. I will not repeat them here, but instead refer the Committee back to my comments on clause 12. It will be the responsibility of chief constables to apply for an SDPO; however, as with SDPOs on conviction, it will ultimately be for the independent judiciary to decide whether to impose an SDPO, and ensure that the conditions included are necessary and proportionate.
Sarah Jones
I will start, as I did with clause 12, by noting that I and the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, have put our names to amendment 13, which would leave out the entirety of clause 13.
This clause creates the new civil order, the serious disruption prevention order, which can be imposed on individuals who have never been convicted of a crime. Subsection (2) sets out the conditions that must be met for an order to be made, namely that the person in question must have done two of the following during different protests, or during the same protest but on different days: been convicted of a protest-related offence; been found in contempt of court for a protest-related breach of an injunction;
“carried out activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation”;
caused or contributed to any other person’s committing
“a protest-related offence or a protest-related breach of an injunction”;
or
“caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person of activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals, or to an organisation”.
The two trigger protest-related events must have occurred no earlier than the period starting five years before the order is made, but each event must have taken place after clause 13 comes into force, and the person concerned must be aged 16 or over at the time. The fact that an SDPO could be imposed on a person who has not committed a criminal offence at all, but only contributed to the carrying out by someone else of activities related to a person, goes way further than we believe makes sense in law. The vagueness of how and when the serious disruption prevention orders can be imposed is astonishing.
Under subsection (2)(a)(v), the courts must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that on two different occasions someone
“caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person of activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption”.
The person does not even need to have done the act themselves. Someone else could have caused—or not even caused, but just been likely to cause—the disruption of two people, and the person in question only needs to have caused or contributed to someone else’s action. Just to be clear, that other person does not need to have caused serious disruption to two or more people.
The wording is so broad. Rather than trying to work out what activity needs to be done to assist someone doing anything related to a protest, perhaps thinking about what would not need to be done would have been a shorter exercise. I am concerned that there does not seem to be any requirement for the person to have had knowledge that the protest activities were going to cause serious disruption when they caused or contributed to the carrying out of those activities.
The clause could also capture a wide range of behaviour. Let us say that the person being considered for an SDPO attends a peaceful protest, they shout something about the issue that they are angry about, and the person next to them becomes violent, but that act of violence was not within the control of the person who was shouting. Could that person who was shouting be held responsible under clause 13?
As I laid out when detailing our concerns about clause 12, the police are concerned that the use of serious disruption prevention orders is unworkable and potentially unethical. This proposal essentially takes away a person’s right to protest, and we believe it unlikely that the measure would work as hoped. In the evidence sessions, the National Police Chiefs Council protest lead said:
“From a policing point of view, unless we knew the exact circumstances of the individual it would be hard to say how exactly the orders could be justified.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 15, Q23.]
Senior officers noted that protest banning orders would necessarily curtail people’s democratic right to protest and be a massive civil rights infringement, and in the evidence sessions Matt Parr could not have been any clearer in what he said:
“I have mentioned that we were not supportive of SDPOs.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 55, Q117.]
I suggest to the Committee that these views are not just held by Liberty or Amnesty International—the pressure groups founded on the basis of protecting human rights—but are concerns from senior, experienced police officers and the Home Office.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
It strikes me that my hon. Friend is talking about the need for training. The Minister has talked about guidance and all manner of other measures being put in place, but if the police do not understand what they are doing in relation to this particular set of orders, how on earth are we supposed to train them to recognise the extent of their powers and how they can apply them?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a really good point, and we have seen exactly that with the pilots of the knife crime prevention orders. In the first six weeks only two police officers made the request to the courts, and both were turned down. Probably because of the lack of clarity about how the orders should be imposed, there were not vast numbers of police officers coming forward. Equally, there must have been confusion between what the police thought the conditions were and what the courts thought the conditions were, because the courts turned those two cases down.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again.
I was chastised on Tuesday by the Chair for talking about the courts at some length. My hon. Friend has already talked about the need to go to court for this particular order, which seems a waste of time to me. More and more time is being placed on the courts, which of course are in crisis as it is, so perhaps this is one that the Government could let go.
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is exactly right. In the HMICFRS report on protests, many interviewees expressed intense frustration with the system, and the many reasons they gave for protest cases being stopped included “substantial backlogs in court” and
“so much time passing since the alleged offence that the CPS deemed prosecution to be no longer in the public interest”,
which is really important and has probably stopped quite a lot of people going to court who should have done. Those issues cannot be ignored when we are looking at this subject.
As I was saying, it is not just the likes of Liberty or Amnesty that have issues with the Bill; it is experienced senior officers and many organisations involved in criminal justice. We do not believe that SDPOs are workable in practice, and the language of the clause reflects the concerns that we have had throughout. A serious disruption prevention order could be applied to someone who has never committed a criminal offence before, but who is deemed—on the civil standard, not the criminal one—to have contributed to someone else’s action that is “likely to result” in serious disruption to two or more people.
It is worth picking that apart. Any one of us in the room could be given an order—one with really intrusive measures attached—on the mere probability that we have contributed to, not caused, another person’s action that has possibly, but not definitely, caused disruption to two or more people. I do not have to have attended a protest and no disruption needs to have been caused, and all this is on the balance of probability. Surely basing the orders on hard cases and a minority of hardliners could have wide-ranging implications for peaceful protesters.
The Bill was the Government’s flagship legislation in the Queen’s Speech. Despite the fact that crime has increased significantly in the last two years, prosecutions are down significantly. There is a cost of living crisis, a climate crisis and many other things with which the Government could concern themselves. There was no victims Bill in the Queen’s Speech, and nothing to tackle violence against women and girls. The Government have focused on this Bill, which is full of broadly drafted and unworkable clauses that would apply the same kinds of restrictions to peaceful protesters who have been convicted of no crime as could be applied to violent criminals and terrorists.
Alex Cunningham
These orders will apply to women, as they will to men. Has my hon. Friend seen the statement from Hannah Couchman, the senior legal officer for Rights of Women? She says:
“Rights of Women has joined together with 17 other women’s rights and VAWG organisations to resist the measures outlined in this Bill. Protest is a feminist issue, firmly embedded in the struggle for women’s rights—and particularly the rights of Black and minoritised women. Our fight to end violence against women relies heavily upon our ability to gather together and collectively demand change.”
These types of order could prevent people from organising effective protests with Rights of Women and other groups.
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I have not yet quoted from the evidence we had from the coalition of about 20 very reputable women’s organisations that have come together to form a view, which is worth listening to.
Similar conditions that exist in law are imposed on terrorists and violent criminals, but we do not think these conditions should be imposed on protesters. These provisions will increase disproportionality, bring peaceful protestors unnecessarily into the criminal justice system and undermine public trust in the police trying to do their job. We have seen worrying figures about public confidence. We deeply support the police and want them to do the best job they can, but public confidence in policing has gone down in recent times because of a series of events that have taken place.
It is our job in this place to do everything we can to ensure that the public can and do have confidence in the police, but passing this broad, difficult to implement legislation, which may never even be implemented because it is too complex, is not helpful. We should be giving the police the resources they need, being much clearer about what we expect them to do, and ensuring they can spend the right resources in the right places in order to reduce crime and support victims.
Although potentially open to interpretation, in his report Matt Parr called for only a “modest reset” of the scales. Throughout the debates on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, we argued that that Bill was not introducing a modest reset of the scales, but this is a whole raft of legislation on top of what is in Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 that has yet to be implemented.
On clause 13, does the Minister genuinely believe that the creation of the serious disruption prevention orders, which can be given to people who have not committed any criminal act, is a modest reset? We think it is not and that the orders will contribute to the chilling effect on peaceful, legitimate protest that we have talked about, and we are not convinced that they would stand up in court. The requirements and prohibitions in this clause, as in clause 12 and as laid out in clause 15, are too harsh and too intrusive, and we cannot support it.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady asked me if I genuinely believe these orders are a modest reset; I genuinely do. I take from her speech that she has no answer to the statistic I put to her that some of these protesters have now been arrested six times and are still not responding to the suite of charges brought against them.
I remain dismayed at the hon. Lady’s lack of faith in our independent judiciary to make sensible judgments within this framework, as they do in—
Kit Malthouse
In a moment. I am also dismayed at her implication that there are not enough police officers who are members of Mensa and that they cannot cope with what, in my view, is a relatively simple concept that the hon. Lady seems to think is complex. I assure her that police officers deal with much more complex situations than this.
This clause is about giving the police the ability to apply for an order to an independent judiciary to deal with somebody who is persistently offending or assisting offending that causes serious disruption to the public. We have seen the current legislative arsenal that the police are able to deploy in action over the last two years, and it simply has not been enough, so that is why we support the introduction of these orders.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 14 provides detail on the kind of prohibitions or requirements that a court may include in an SDPO. It is important to note that the clause provides a non-exhaustive list. The court will still—as it does now, as I outlined—have the discretion to impose whatever prohibitions or requirements it considers are necessary. The prohibitions and requirements are in the Bill. I do not propose to repeat them and I am sure the hon. Member for Croydon Central will not want to either, but they include curfews and a requirement to check in at a local police station at certain times.
Furthermore, courts must, so far as is possible, ensure that the requirements and prohibitions imposed are such that those subject to an SDPO can continue to practise their religious beliefs and access their place of work and education. I said to the hon. Lady earlier that this is not a novel concept. We already have an individual who has been banned from protesting outside the mother of democracies for 18 months, and we have a number of protesters who are subject to similar conditions through injunctions. I hope she will see the sense in codifying the measure, and I commend the clause to the Committee.
Sarah Jones
I think I have made my criticisms about SDPOs clear. We disagree with clause 14 and the premise of serious disruption prevention orders. There is a non-exhaustive list, which includes a person not being allowed in a particular place or their being subject to electronic monitoring. We believe the conditions are harsh given the fact that, as I said earlier, someone could be given an SDPO without having ever attended a protest.
Kit Malthouse
As with clause 14, clause 15 details part of the framework for SDPOs. It sets out that when requirements are placed on a person, the court must specify who is responsible for supervising their compliance with the requirements or prohibitions that have been set. The clause is relatively self-explanatory and I commend it to the Committee.
Sarah Jones
The shadow Home Secretary—my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford—and I have put our names to amendment 15 tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East, who is not present today. The amendment would leave clause 15 out of the Bill. We have made our criticisms clear, and we think clause 15 should be struck from the Bill.
I note that the clause requires a named individual or organisation to supervise compliance with an SDPO. We know from the knife crime prevention orders that that has been problematic. If an organisation is to supervise, there must be a specific individual named within that organisation. Implementation could be problematic, but our opposition to this general topic stands on clause 15.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 15 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 16 allows courts to consider using electronic monitoring as a requirement of an SDPO. Electronic monitoring—or tagging—has been an extremely useful tool to ensure compliance with the terms of existing preventive court orders, such as domestic abuse protection orders. The clause makes it clear to the courts that they may consider making tagging a requirement in an SDPO.
Given that an SDPO may prohibit individuals from being in certain places at certain times of day, electronic monitoring offers the courts and authorities a useful tool with which to ensure compliance. The clause is modelled on the electronic monitoring requirement in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. Courts will be able to impose electronic monitoring only in cases in which the person subject to an SDPO, and if necessary, a person whose co-operation with the monitoring is required, are present at the hearing. The courts must also be satisfied that the necessary provisions for monitoring exist in their local justice area.
In practice, any notification about electronic monitoring arrangements available to the courts will come from the Ministry of Justice. An SDPO that includes electronic monitoring must also specify the person or authority responsible for the provision of any necessary apparatus and the monitoring of the subject. The clause provides a delegated power for the Home Secretary to identify that responsible person via regulations. Those regulations will not be subject to any parliamentary procedure.
Individuals who are subject to an electronic monitoring requirement must allow the authorised person to install, inspect and repair any of the monitoring apparatus, and take all necessary steps to keep it in working order, including by not interfering with or damaging their tag. Anyone who does so will be in breach of a requirement of their SDPO, which, as clause 20 establishes, is an offence.
We recognise that electronic monitoring is a large intrusion on people’s lives and freedoms, particularly their article 8 right to a private life under the European convention on human rights. To ensure that any electronic monitoring requirement is proportionate, clause 18 provides that any such requirement may last only a maximum of 12 months at a time. However, as I have said, electronic monitoring has already proven a useful tool to ensure compliance with the terms of a range of preventive court orders. The Committee will be aware of our recent expansion of alcohol monitoring, which has been enormously successful. I see no reason why electronic monitoring should not be used in respect of SDPOs.
Sarah Jones
As we have for other amendments, the shadow Home Secretary and I have put our names to amendment 16, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East and would leave out clause 16.
The clause deals with electronic monitoring. I do not have personal experience of tagging, but I have talked to people who have been tagged and monitored, and there is, for sure, a place for it in the justice system. I have even met a gentleman who was involved in crime and gang activity and actually wanted to be tagged so that he could say to the people he was engaging with that he could not participate in anything anymore because he had been tagged and had to stay at home. Tagging meant he had an excuse to get out of the crime he was involved in without having to say to those potentially dangerous people that that was what he wanted.
Although its intrusiveness is an issue, electronic monitoring it does have its place. Labour does not think, however, that its place is in this Bill, and Liberty wrote a comprehensive briefing laying out its concerns about electronic monitoring. We do not believe that electronic monitoring is proportionate for a serious disruption prevention order or that it should be needed after someone has attended a protest. The Minister said there is a 12-month limit on electronic monitoring, but 12 months is a long time.
The original protest banning orders, which were considered by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services, were based on football banning orders in Scotland. Research showed that the methods used in policing them were disproportionate, unfair and selective. In 2018, the Ministry of Justice moved from radio frequency tags, which work by detecting when someone has moved out of a particular area past a certain time, such as a curfew, to GPS tags, which provide 24/7 monitoring. That is more intrusive than tagging was previously. Given the breadth and vagueness of the ways in which an SDPO can be imposed, we do not think it is at all appropriate to use such monitoring in this instance.
Sarah Jones
Clause 17 covers the general issue that we have debated already in considering earlier clauses, and although we object to it, I do not have anything further to add.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I seek a couple of quick clarifications. Subsection (3) states that there is a duty to notify the police about
“the address of any other premises at which…P regularly resides or stays.”
However, subsection (4) then refers to P deciding
“to live for a period of one month or more”
somewhere else. Obviously, there is a difference there, so I wondered what counted as regularly residing or staying. What happens if P was in a relationship with somebody and stayed over somewhere? Quite a lot of people have a permanent home address but they stay over at somebody else’s for a few days or weeks, and they might notify that. But let us suppose they were not in a relationship at the time the order was granted and so have not given notice of a second address. I understand the provision to mean that if they were then in a relationship, they would not have to give notice of it if it was the sort of set-up in which they were staying somewhere else for part of the week, and that they would have to provide notification only if they were doing it for a month at a time. Is that right?
Kit Malthouse
Clause 18 provides that an SDPO may last for a minimum of one week or a maximum of two years. This provides flexibility to courts in deciding for how long any prohibitions or requirements of an SDPO are necessary to prevent the subject from causing serious disruption at a protest—we should never forget that high bar of serious protest. In particular, a court can specify that certain requirements or prohibitions of an SDPO may apply for a more limited period than the order itself, thereby allowing courts maximum flexibility when the determine individual cases for an SDPO.
In the case of an SDPO that imposes electronic monitoring requirements, the requirements may last for no longer than 12 months at a time. As I said earlier, this is to prevent a disproportionate encroachment on the subject’s right to a private life. That is in line with existing legislation on electronic monitoring.
Normally, an SDPO will take effect on the day the court imposes it. However, when someone is subject to an SDPO and is remanded in custody, serving a custodial sentence or on licence, the clause provides that their SDPO may not take effect until they are released from custody or cease to be on licence. This reflects the fact that, due to the restrictions imposed by a custodial sentence, they are unlikely to attend a protest.
Sarah Jones
Our issues with this clause are similar to those we have with all the others. We support the amendment to pull the clause from the Bill in its entirety, as it supports the general principle that we have debated at some length and with which we continue to disagree.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19
Other information to be included in serious disruption prevention order
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 19 simply states that when imposing an SDPO the court must set out the reasons why it has made the order and the possible penalties available if the individual breaches the terms of their order. This is to provide clarity all round.
Sarah Jones
My comments are similar to those I have made about previous clauses.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Offences relating to a serious disruption prevention order
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I beg to move amendment 40, in clause 20, page 21, line 19, after “fine” insert
“not exceeding level 2 on the standard scale”.
A person convicted of an offence related to a serious disruption prevention order may be subjected to a fine. Under this clause there is currently no limit on the fine that may be imposed. This amendment would place a maximum limit on the fine.
This amendment is similar to the amendments I tabled to previous clauses that we discussed on Tuesday. It is a probing amendment to test the Government’s justification and explanation for why they are proffering unlimited fines in the Bill. I do not intend to move the motion today and look to withdraw it.
Kit Malthouse
Obviously, those questions would be matters for judicial judgment. When an individual is presented to the judge for breach of the order, it is for the judge to decide what penalty is required. The police, in presenting that individual, will have to provide evidence. These are not novel matters. An individual has already been barred by a judge from attending a protest outside Parliament. If that individual were to walk down Whitehall and the police were to apprehend them and present them to court for breach of that order, evidence would have to be produced. That is a standard practice; we have courts in which police and others can offer evidence and the accused can offer a defence. A judge can then decide. The same would be true in these circumstances.
Sarah Jones
First, I should respond to the comment that Labour Members are in some way sympathetic to extreme protesters who are breaking the law. We absolutely are not. I want to be very clear about that, as I have been all the way through our conversations.
There are already offences that can be used by the police in such cases. Whether it is wilful obstruction of the highway, criminal damage, aggravated trespass, breaching an injunction, public nuisance, failure to comply with a condition, organising a prohibited trespassory assembly or participating in a trespassory assembly, there are many avenues that the police can and do use for repeat offenders, who put people’s lives at risk; that is not in question.
Clause 20 sets out certain conditions with which failure to comply is an offence. It highlights the fact that we have not sufficiently teased and played out how these orders will work in practice. When this Government introduced knife crime prevention orders, they introduced pilots before their implementation. When serious violence reduction orders were introduced in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the Government introduced pilots for them. Colleagues may remember, as I do, the debate during the passage of that Bill on what those pilots should be, how they should work and where they should be applied. These things are difficult to interpret.
Clause 20(1)(a) says that someone commits an offence if they fail
“without reasonable excuse to do anything”
that they are
“required to do by the order”.
We have already talked about those conditions, which relate to where someone lives, their addresses and their use of the internet. We are talking about very broad, difficult to understand, complicated things that it is easy to fail to do. Someone could break the conditions without knowing it.
We remain deeply concerned about the serious disruption prevention orders. I encourage the Government to do a bit more thinking, provide a bit more guidance and, perhaps, pilot the orders before bringing them in.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Variation, renewal or discharge of serious disruption prevention order
Wendy Chamberlain
I beg to move amendment 41, in clause 21, page 21, line 29, leave out “, renewing”.
This amendment would prevent an existing serious disruption prevention order from being renewed.
Wendy Chamberlain
These amendments take out all the provisions that allow an SDPO to be renewed once its original period has expired. We need sanctions in the justice system to be applied consistently and fairly, and to provide a degree of certainty. The Bill allows the police to apply for an SDPO and, effectively, renew it indefinitely, if they think not only that there is a risk that someone will commit a further offence, but—particularly in relation to clause 13—that renewing the order will prevent offences from being committed generally.
We do not stop people going to the shops because they once got caught stealing. We do not punish people into perpetuity just to control the actions of others, which would be a consequence of an SDPO in relation to clause 13. It would be like the Standards Committee deciding that suspensions from the House could be renewed indefinitely because there was a risk that someone might fail to comply with the standards expected of Members of this House. It is unacceptable for the Government to limit the right to protest, free speech and freedom of assembly when we apply different standards to ourselves.
Sarah Jones
As we do not support this entire section of the Bill, I will not talk at length about the hon. Lady’s comments. We support the amendments, and I thank her for her tabling them.
Kit Malthouse
As the hon. Member for North East Fife said, amendments 41 to 45 would prevent the courts from being able to renew serious disruption prevention orders. That would mean that where there was evidence that a person subject to an SDPO would go on to commit a protest-related offence or cause serious disruption soon after its expiration, nothing could be done to ensure that they were still bound by the conditions of their order. As a result, these amendments would undermine the purpose of the orders. I therefore encourage the hon. Lady to withdraw amendment 41.
Kit Malthouse
I am happy to address the hon. Lady’s earlier point in the sidebar if she wishes, but in effect it would be for a judge to make a judgment about renewal; it would not necessarily just be for the police to impose a renewal.
Clause 21 enables a person—an individual subject to an SDPO or a relevant police officer—to apply to the appropriate court for the variation, renewal or discharge of an SDPO. Either of those individuals may apply at any point during the duration of the SDPO, and subsection (12) provides that the normal six-month time limit on magistrates hearing complaint cases does not apply. That is to ensure that applications for SDPOs with a duration of six months or longer can still be made to these courts.
When deciding whether to vary, renew or discharge an order, the court must hear from both sides—for example, the relevant police officer applying for a renewal of the order and the person subject to that order—before making its decision. That is to ensure that the court has the opportunity to consider arguments both in favour and against any changes to the terms of the order. When making its decision, the court can decide to vary, renew or discharge either the whole of an SDPO or certain prohibitions or requirements in an order, depending on the evidence presented to it. In deciding whether to vary or renew an order, the court must satisfy itself on the same grounds as are required when imposing an order—namely, that the order will prevent the person subject to an SDPO from committing, or contributing to others committing, a protest-related offence, a protest-related breach of an injunction or activities that result or are likely to result in serious disruption at a protest. It must also consider whether varying or renewing the terms of an order will protect organisations or two or more individuals from the risk of serious disruption arising from any of these activities.
Any changes to an SDPO will be subject to the requirements set out in clauses 14 to 19, apart from subsections (2) and (3) of clause 17, which deal with notification requirements when an order is first made. In practical terms, this means that any changes to an SDPO will be subject to the same duration limits as apply when an SDPO is first imposed—namely, they may last a minimum of one week and a maximum of two years. If a court decides to vary or renew an electronic monitoring requirement, that will again be limited to a 12-month duration. Nothing in this clause prohibits further variances or renewals of an SDPO if a court and a judge consider them necessary. I urge that clause 21 stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
I do not have a significant contribution to make on this clause, given that we have already debated the principle. I will just ask this. The Minister has twice said that there will be a duration limit of 12 months on an electronic monitoring requirement. That is true; it is in subsection (9). However, the explanatory notes to the Bill say that
“this does not preclude a further extension…if the SDPO is renewed.”
Therefore in reality that requirement can be extended—if the SDPO is renewed—in the same way as other conditions.
Kit Malthouse
That is certainly the case, if evidence is presented to the judge that the person is likely to persist in the disruptive activity for which the original order was originally imposed, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill
Clause 22
Appeal against serious disruption prevention order
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
The many and various ways in which someone can appeal to the courts depend on the court system working. As we know, it does not at the moment. The delays are many, and tens of thousands of cases are clogging up our courts. As we heard, the Crown Prosecution Service has had to drop cases because of the amount of time that has passed. Although I do not have a particular objection to the clause, I would say that people will be lucky if they find their slot in court.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 22 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Guidance
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 23 provides that the Home Secretary may issue guidance to chief officers of police relating to SDPOs. While the guidance may cover any aspect of SDPOs, we envision that it will guide police on the exercise of their functions, particularly for orders made following application to a court. The guidance will include advice on identifying persons for whom it might be appropriate for the police to make an application for an SDPO and on how police can assist prosecutors for SDPOs made on conviction. Any guidance issued under the clause must be published and may be revised by the Home Secretary. Chief officers of police will be required to consider any guidance issued when exercising their functions in relation to SDPOs. Our intention is to provide as much assistance as possible to the police, so that the orders are used in a proportionate and effective manner.
Sarah Jones
Given that the SDPOs have no pilots, unlike serious violence prevention orders and knife crime prevention orders before them, will the Minister consider producing some of the guidance in time for Report, as happened with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, so that Members can look at it and get more clarity on the intention behind the orders?
Kit Malthouse
I will certainly consider the hon. Lady’s request, although we are obviously keen for this legislation to hit the statute book as quickly as possible, given the serious disruption that has been caused by a small number of protesters. I will give consideration to whether it is practical to do that before Report in this House, but I shall have to consult with officials.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24
Guidance: Parliamentary procedure
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 24 establishes the procedure by which Parliament may have a say on any guidance the Home Secretary issues to police regarding these orders. It provides that guidance will be laid before both Houses of Parliament under the draft negative resolution procedure. Members of either House will have 40 days to adopt a resolution against such guidance. If neither House chooses to adopt such a resolution within 40 days, the guidance may be issued.
Sarah Jones
I would add only that if the Government, in this clause, are keen to ensure that the Houses of Parliament, both the Commons and the Lords, have as much information and as much opportunity to look at the draft guidance as possible, that strengthens my request that some of this guidance be provided in time for either the Commons or the Lords Committee consideration.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25
Data from electronic monitoring: code of practice
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
Clause 25 requires that the Home Secretary publish a code of practice for the processing of data collected from individuals subject to an electronic monitoring requirement in one of these SDPOs. While in line with existing codes of practice on data from electronic monitoring, the code will not be binding. It will offer clear guidance to controllers and authorities on the retention of data, sharing and transmission of data and other associated issues, while ensuring that all data gathered is held in accordance with the data protection requirements.
Sarah Jones
We have talked about the intrusive nature of electronic monitoring and the fact that new types of monitoring mean that it does not just register whether someone has gone beyond a certain boundary at a certain time of day, but tracks them every moment of every day. That data, as we know, is worth a lot of money and is very intrusive, and there are organisations, and indeed hon. Members on both sides of this House, concerned about the gathering of data and what is done with it. In this case, the guidance is not binding, so I add our concern that we need to be very clear what happens to that data and how it is used.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 25 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 26
Interpretation of Part
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
I will just continue in the same vein: we disagree with SDPOs in the main.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 28
Extent, commencement and short title
Kit Malthouse
I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 28, page 26, line 32, at end insert—
“(3A) Section (Assemblies and one-person protests: British Transport Police and MoD Police) comes into force at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.”
This amendment provides for the new clause inserted by NC4 to come into force two months after Royal Assent.
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend is exactly right. It applies where they are part of a territorial police force. I know she has a particular interest in Dover port police, and we will seek clarity for her on that before Report.
I think the British public would be surprised to know, given how much protest is targeted at the transport network, that the British Transport police does not have these powers. The new clause will deal with that anomaly. The existing legal tests and safeguards for the use of these powers will continue to apply. Making these changes will help to promote a consistent and effective response to public order protests. I commend the amendments to the Committee.
Sarah Jones
When we debated the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Government brought in a police covenant, for which many people had campaigned for years. We had a debate at that time because British Transport police and Ministry of Defence police were not included in that covenant. The Government said it was too difficult to include them in any Bill that introduced new powers. After a lot of pressure from other organisations, they were able to do it. It is good to see them doing it again.
The various parts of our policing system have different funding pots, ways of existing and remits, but they are just as important as our main police force. British Transport police does crucial work on all kinds of issues, particularly county lines over recent years. The provisions on protests we are debating here cover everything BTP does as well as potentially what the Ministry of Defence police does. We do not agree with the premise of the Bill, but I have spoken to people in some parts of the policing system who say they feel slightly neglected by the wider policing family. It is absolutely right that they should be on the face of the Bill and play a part of wider policing.
Amendment 22 agreed to.
Wendy Chamberlain
I beg to move amendment 27, in clause 28, page 26, line 32, at end insert—
“(3A) Except as provided by subsection (3), sections 1 to 5 and 11 to 22 of this Act may not come into force before the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament and published a report containing—
(a) an assessment of the current capability of police services in England and Wales in relation to the provisions of this Act,
(b) an assessment of the numbers of police officers who will need to be trained in relation to the provisions of this Act, the number of officers who will be needed to deliver the training and the amount of time that that training will take for each officer,
(c) details of how police units will be deployed in relation to the provisions of this Act, including the number of police officers who may be redeployed from other duties, and
(d) an assessment by the Home Office of the likely impact of the provisions of this Act on the number of police officers who will be moved from their usual duties to public order operations in other places.”
This amendment would mean that sections 1 to 5 and 11 to 22 of this Act could not come into force until the Government has laid before Parliament a report assessing the current capability of police services to operate the provisions in those sections and the impact on police deployment.
Wendy Chamberlain
I agree with the hon. Member. The COP26 policing effort of last year involved mutual aid. That involved, for example, training in Scots law for officers coming from England and Wales, so that created an additional training requirement as well. We have to think about those things. As for my own police experience, my specialism was in sexual offences; I was a sexual offences-trained officer, but from a general perspective, I policed football matches, marches and local demonstrations, and interpreted the law accordingly.
Returning to the evidence given by Chief Constable Noble, the chief constable for Staffordshire, if his numbers are reflective of England and Wales as a whole and assuming that no more officers need to be trained—although I have illustrated why I do not think that is the case—over 3,000 officers across England and Wales will have to be removed from duties and trained in these new laws. That is equivalent to about 125 lost days of frontline policing in local communities, and once those people are fully trained, they will need to be diverted from their duties to police the offences set out in the Bill.
It is logical to think that if it takes 25 officers, currently, to police a protest—I am not putting a number on how many people might be there—through the additional offence of being equipped to lock on, and opening the door to extensive stop and search, many more officers may be required. As I said on Tuesday, if we start arresting protesters, we will run out of police officers before we run out of protesters. I also remember Chief Superintendent Dolby talking about the fact that part of their safety techniques in dealing with protesters involves five police officers to arrest a single protester, so the Minister can quickly see how the odds shift.
Nearly 47,000 incidents of knife crime were reported to the police in England and Wales in 2021. That is 128 every day. There were nearly 185,000 sexual offences —more than 500 each day. Given the choice between having police officers responding to those calls, filling in paperwork for SDPOs or stopping and searching protesters, I think I know what I and the public would choose. In a recent YouGov poll, more than half of respondents stated that they do not have any confidence in the police to deal with crime. Traffic offences were the only crime that more people than not thought the police were handling with enough rigour.
I also know what the police would choose. That is because our witnesses told us, and because it is set out in the HMICFRS report. Accepting that protests do need policing, all the evidence tells us that best practice requires strong, pre-existing community relations, which simply cannot be established by constantly lifting police officers in and out of the day job and abstracting them to other duties.
I would hope that these amendments would just require the Government to properly look at how the police are resourced. Government Members want this legislation to be successful, but it will not be if the police are under-resourced. Again, Sir Peter Fahy referenced the fact that, in relation to the response to protest, the police could be viewed as incompetent. I am sure that those on the Government Benches would not like that to be the outcome of this legislation.
The Minister heard the same evidence that I did, and he will have heard the same significant concerns about resourcing. Will we get to a position where, in all areas, police officers have been called to deal with protests, and where a demonstration is more strongly policed than crime? The police cannot be given more work and left to struggle. I would argue that all our communities deserve more. I am potentially looking to withdraw my amendment, but I would be happy to discuss, constructively, with the Minister, how we ensure that capability is there.
Sarah Jones
I thank the hon. Lady for her speech. She covered a wide range of challenges the police have before them. It is not unreasonable to expect the Government to ensure that there is capacity within policing to implement legislation if we are making them do so. I also think that she is probably the only person in this room who has policed protests, so, unless anyone else has, we should probably listen to what she says.
On funding, there is a raft of information out there on the lack of and need for training. I would add a couple of other points, made by the inspectorate and others, on what we must do to ensure that we do these things better. The first is on intelligence gathering—finding out, upstream, what is being planned—to ensure that we have enough resources in that area, because that is one of the most effective ways to prevent those repeat offenders.
There is also an interesting chapter in Matt Parr’s report on collaboration between agencies, because to effectively police a protest, we need all of the other agencies, such as the local authority and emergency services, alongside the police as well. There were many examples where that collaboration was not working properly, perhaps because people do not have the time to put that in place. In his report, Matt Parr recommended a joint review of that process. I understand that there will be one, but, of course, that has not happened yet, and so those challenges are still there.
I know that the hon. Member for North East Fife is intending this as a probing amendment. However, I think it is a reasonable challenge to the Minister that we should have enough resources to implement this when crime has risen, prosecutions have fallen, and we have seen huge cuts to policing across the board—the numbers have not yet gone back to previous levels. We would support the hon. Lady’s amendments.
Kit Malthouse
I have great respect for the experience of the hon. Member for North East Fife, and I salute her service as a police officer. It is a noble calling and she has my admiration for her career, but I am genuinely perplexed by the amendments. They are unnecessary, not least because much of what we have discussed so far and the amendments that we are putting through are about giving the police more prosecutorial powers and allowing them to get ahead of certain protest tactics and to prevent them, therefore reducing the resources required.
For example, we have discussed stop and search. We have had episodes where police officers have seen the lorries going past with the scaffolding poles sticking out of them, but are unable to stop the vehicles and search them for the equipment and have to wait until the individuals erect them. Then the height team has to be called and the unlocking team has to be called. The ability to intervene earlier would mean that we need fewer specialist teams; that we are able to deal with things much more quickly and on a preventative basis, and therefore there is likely to be less call upon resources.
Notwithstanding what the hon. Lady says, we have significant police resources at our disposal now. The last published police officer numbers figure was 142,000. The peak in 2010 was 144,000. We still have 6,000 or 7,000 to go in our recruitment, so we will be well above the previous peak when we get there. There are lots of resources there.
Obviously, police officers need to be trained properly and there need to be adequate resources to deal with public order issues, but we are acting in this debate as if the police are not already heavily engaged in public order, and as if there is not already an enormous absorption of resources. With the Just Stop Oil protests, for example, officers were drafted from Scotland to come down and assist Essex police and Warwickshire police with the policing of the protests.
We are acting as if it is the legislation that we are going to pass—I hope—that will put a demand on the police, rather than the protesters themselves, who are dragging the police officers away from their important work dealing with knife crime and burglary and robbery in our neighbourhoods. The hon. Member for Croydon Central makes much of overall crime being up; she never mentions that kinetic crime—crime in our neighbourhoods—is actually well down. As she says, fraud is up, and that adds to crime and is something that we need to address but, overall, the crimes that impact on us physically are significantly down and that is a tribute to the work that the police have been doing over the last couple of years.
The other thing I find perplexing is the unwillingness to address the urgency of the situation. I understand that on a hot afternoon, on a Thursday with a one-line Whip, it is easy to be relaxed about this, but we should be in no doubt that in recent months we have seen some extremely dangerous protest tactics: people lighting cigarettes on top of petrol tankers; strapping themselves to fuel gantries, through which millions of gallons of fuel are flowing; or digging tunnels that have been caused to collapse on contractors, bringing people’s lives into danger.
There is an urgency to what we need to put in place. I understand the desire of the hon. Member for North East Fife to have a training audit before we do anything, but I do not think the situation gives us the time to do that at our leisure. We have to act as swiftly as possibly. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with what we understand the impact is likely to be, but I ask her to withdraw the amendments on the basis that we must act urgently.
We cannot wait, given the danger that is being presented to the protesters and certainly to the police, and the disruption that the public are seeing. At this time of a cost of living crisis, with people struggling and with rail strikes and whatever we may see over the summer to come, we really cannot have these protest tactics taking place. That is why I would be keen for her to withdraw her amendments.
Kit Malthouse
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I will be brief, because we have already had a substantive debate on the new tunnelling offence. As with the overall offence, the offence of going equipped to tunnel makes it clear that protesters’ tactic of building tunnels in order to disrupt legitimate activity—while endangering themselves, the police and the emergency services that respond—will not be tolerated. New clause 7 makes it an offence to go equipped for tunnelling, which will be punishable by six months’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine or both.
As we heard from the NPCC, it is clear that the police need powers to proactively tackle tunnels before they occur. New clause 7, combined with amendments 25 and 26, will allow the police to take the necessary preventive action against those who they believe may be intending to tunnel, protecting the public from serious disruption. We have already debated the principle of the offence of going equipped, and the police’s ability to decide between those who are going equipped to commit an offence and those who are going equipped for legitimate purposes.
Sarah Jones
This new clause creates a new offence committed by a person who has an object with them in a place, other than a dwelling, with the intention that it might be used in the course of, or in connection to, the commission by any person of any offence relating to tunnelling—under new clauses 5 and 6, which we have just agreed to.
The concerns that I raised earlier apply to new clause 7, so I do not intend to detain the Committee for long. Our key point, as I said earlier, is that the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead in this area, Chris Noble, said of the Government’s plans to make it an offence to cause serious disruption by tunnelling, or be present in a tunnel or equipped for tunnelling:
“Whilst forces have experienced tunnelling in recent operations, we do not believe that a specific offence around tunnelling will add anything above and beyond our current available powers.”
We know the Criminal Damage Act 1971 creates those offences of damaging property and having articles to damage property. The Minister talked about the police’s inability to stop people who might be on their way to commit some of these offences, but the police already have the power to search in order to allow them to find articles or equipment intended to cause damage. In the case he cited—I do not know which case that was—that power is there, so a new offence of being equipped for tunnelling will only add to the police’s existing powers to address the problem of tunnelling.
We do not believe the new offence would be a deterrent for repeat offenders who may have the means to withstand fines or may see convictions as a badge of honour. We heard about people using crowdfunding to pay fines, which is another example of repeat offenders who want to be in the criminal justice system.
Commenting on the new provisions, the Home Secretary said that the tunnelling protests
“divert precious police resources away from where they are needed most”.
That is true, but then she said:
“These measures will give our police the powers they need to crack down on this lawlessness and continue to make our streets safer.”
We do not believe that is the case.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council, the national co-ordination body for law enforcement in the United Kingdom and a representative body for police chief officers, is telling the Government that the police do not need these powers on tunnelling. We all appreciate how irritating hard-line protestors are, how much they put people in danger and how much taxpayers’ money is spent on policing what they have done, but I repeat that we believe the police could use existing powers to deal with these issues, and therefore we do not support new clause 7.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 7 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Public Order Bill (Seventh sitting)
Sarah Jones ExcerptsTuesday 21st June 2022
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 21 June 2022 - (21 Jun 2022)
Anne McLaughlin
Yes, but it does not have a number outside. I was unable to be here last week due to a diary clash, and I apologise for that, although I advised the Committee.
I recall that the previous week the Minister and others in the debate and here today suggested that there is some hypocrisy going on. That is my reason for saying a few words today. I want to explain why they are wrong in their assessment. That said, the measure applies to England and Wales only, so I will abstain in any vote because, as most colleagues know, the SNP does not vote on matters that do not directly impact on their constituents. However, I will put my name to a motion similar to this at the SNP conference later this year.
The position is not hypocritical, because there is a world of difference between somebody being harassed, as the Minister puts it, by protesters, and being told an airport is not doing enough for climate change. There is a world of difference between that and somebody being told with words, verbally, on a poster, or implied by presence, “You are killing your child. You individually are responsible for the death of your child.” That is what those protesters are saying.
I know women who have had abortions, and even those certain from the outset that it is absolutely the only and right choice for them, wrestle with their conscience, and they live with that decision forever. The guilt is there already; they do not need somebody else to make them feel even more guilty, yet that is what the protesters do. Even the ones who silently stand and pray quite often have posters with pictures of foetuses and the message that abortion is murder. It is cruel in the extreme.
Nobody changes their mind once they have got to the clinic. Nobody who turns up at the clinic and who is attacked by someone verbally, on posters or by their presence, stops and says, “Wait a minute—you are right. I am killing my child. I am going to cross the road to you and ask for your help.” That does not happen. It is fine for people to have those views and want to offer assistance, but not at that stage and in that way. That is why it is completely different from any other type of protest talked of in the Bill. I am sorry that I cannot vote for it. That is not much good for the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton, though others are not going to vote for it anyway. However, I do want to voice solidarity, because I support the gist of what she is trying to do.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Given the contributions so far, I will be brief. I want to add to what the hon. Lady has just said and to try to explain that this different, because it stops people getting the medical support that they need.
I have had cause to walk into the abortion clinic in Streatham. On that occasion, I was not getting an abortion but, I promise, if I had been what I saw would have made me feel very scared, guilty and inclined not to go in. Although the protesters were not shouting and yelling, they were judging. For many women—people—that judgment means they want to run away. It was worse when we came out than when we went in. The protesters do not know what has gone on inside, so the judgment when you come out is 10 times worse than when you go in, because the protesters think that you have committed murder. This is a very different matter; it is about getting medical attention that you are entitled to. It is about your legal duty to—
The Chair
May I stop the hon. Lady? I remind hon. Members not to use the second person singular and use “you”. The occasional use of “you” is okay but we are now in the territory of multiple uses. Will people please stick to the protocol?
Sarah Jones
Forgive me, Mr Dowd. That was wrong of me. I am going off script, which is why I did that.
We heard in evidence from Liberty that it is supportive of this new clause, because these behaviours are harassment. Even if it is not verbal, it is definitely harassment. I have felt it myself, so I think that this is a very different order of thing. It is in the same category as the kind of debates we have had about people being prevented from getting their vaccines.
I will leave it there. I am very happy to support my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton, as many Members from across the House have done. There is a genuine debate to be had. My hon. Friend is doing an excellent job of keeping this conversation going; it is important that we continue to have it.
Mrs Elphicke
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I move the new clause on behalf of my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock and for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). Right hon. and hon. Members will be more than aware of the disruption and danger caused by offences involving locking on and obstructing major roads, which have caused gridlock and stopped emergency services getting through during recent severe protests.
New clause 3 seeks to ensure that the particular and additional harm of preventing emergency services—police, ambulances and the fire service—is included as an aggravating factor in the primary offences considered for conviction under clauses 1 and 3 of the Bill, rather than relying on a separate offence. The new clause would provide a more effective and appropriate reflection of the total harm caused by the additional seriousness of blocking emergency workers getting to people in need. I am grateful to the Committee for its consideration of the new clause.
Sarah Jones
I will keep my comments very brief. As the hon. Lady has said, the new clause would create an aggravated offence when someone in the course of locking on or obstructing major transport works impedes an emergency worker in exercising their function.
We did not support the clauses that new clause 3 relates to—those being clause 1, “Offence of locking on” and clause 3, “Obstruction etc of major transport works”. We will not be supporting the new clause today, but we believe very strongly in the principle of emergency workers being able to exercise their functions. In other parts of the Bill, we have talked about adding emergency workers to the list of critical national infrastructure necessary for the country to function as we want it to. Although we are sympathetic to the principle that emergency workers are crucial and need to be exercising their functions in any way they need to, we will not support it today because it is attached to parts of the Bill that we do not support.
Kit Malthouse
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover. We all sympathise with the intentions of the new clause, initially tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys. It is completely unacceptable that a small minority of individuals cause significant disruption, and it is even more unacceptable when that disruption strays beyond delaying or inconveniencing the public and into interfering with the emergency services. We all remember well the scenes of ambulances stuck in traffic on the M25, and thank God that there was no major fire that the fire service needed to get to, or a worse incident. Such behaviour is unacceptable and the new clause seeks to ask the courts to account for this behaviour when convicting individuals for obstructing major transport works and for locking on in particular. I applaud my hon. Friend’s support for the new clause.
As I have said previously, however, acts that obstruct emergency workers from exercising their functions are sadly not new and are—happily, perhaps—already illegal under existing law. The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 already makes it an offence to obstruct without reasonable excuse an emergency worker such as a police officer or paramedic from responding to an emergency. It also provides an offence of hindering someone assisting an emergency worker in responding to an emergency. Anyone found guilty of those offences faces an unlimited fine.
Given that there are existing legal remedies, we do not believe it necessary to legislate to direct courts to consider using the maximum penalties available to them when sentencing individuals convicted of locking on or obstructing transport works in those scenarios. Courts can already consider a whole range of aggravating and mitigating circumstances presented to them by the prosecution and defence when deciding whether to convict a defendant and impose a sentence proportionate to their crime. When assessing cases relating to the two offences mentioned in new clause 3, courts may wish to consider impeding emergency workers as an aggravating factor, but that is a decision for them. While we understand the intention behind the new clause, we hope that my hon. Friend will withdraw it at this stage.
Sarah Jones
I rise to support my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing Central and Acton and for Battersea on the sensibleness of the new clauses.
Requiring the Secretary of State to publish data, and requiring the establishment of an independent reviewer to assess and report annually, seems to me to be the very least that the Government should be doing when they are bringing in such a broad range of powers. We know that there is significant concern—we have debated it at length—about the extension to protests of stop and search in both its forms, including suspicionless stop and search. There are organisations and representatives of the police who are worried about the potential disproportionality of those parts of the Bill. The College of Policing and the inspectorate have all looked at stop and search and said that it can erode trust between the police and local communities and that it is disproportionate. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton listed the stats on that.
Publishing the data is an easy thing to do, and I hope the Home Office would do it anyway. Establishing an independent reviewer is easy to do—Lord Geidt may be free. There will be other good people who could do the job. With such a significant expansion of police powers, it really would be alarming if we did not do those things. I hope the Government will consider new clauses 8 and 9.
Kit Malthouse
I will speak first to new clause 8. The Home Office continues to publish extensive data on the use of stop and search to drive transparency, as the hon. Lady for Ealing Central and Acton requested. In 2021, for the first time, we collected and published data on the age and gender of all individuals stopped and searched, alongside our long-standing collection of data on ethnicity. That allows us to create a clearer picture on how stop and search is used and how best to build on the existing trust and confidence held between the police and the community they serve.
I want to make it clear that, as with all stop and search, nobody should be stopped and searched under the new powers because of their ethnicity or on the basis of any other protected characteristic. I know that the hon. Lady did not mean to imply that the police operation of stop and search is, as she said, “racist” at the moment. There are complicated reasons that sit behind the disproportionality in stop and search, which undoubtedly exists in some parts of the country, that we need to be conscious of and address. However, she will also be aware that there are safeguards in place, including the use of body-worn video and statutory guidance in code A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and those safeguards will also apply to the new powers in the Bill. Data on their use will be collected and published, broken down by age, gender and ethnicity—including the outcome of the search—as it is for existing stop-and-search powers.
Sarah Jones
I want to make the point that we do not actually know what causes the disproportionality. That is why the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing are going to do a lot of work in that space. We do not have the answers, so we do not definitively know what is causing it. A lot of people suspect it is racism in the police force; a lot of people think it might be other things. We do not actually know.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady is making exactly my point. I am afraid that the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton did use the word “racist” regarding the operation of stop and search. I was refuting that as a conclusion that may be drawn. There are complicated reasons behind the disproportionality in stop and search, and we all have a duty to try to understand what they may be.
Sometimes, there are statistical anomalies. There is a well-known anomaly in Dorset from a couple of years ago where a couple of drug dealers travelled down to deal drugs and they were stopped and searched. They happened to be from a BME background. Even though they were the only two people who were stopped and searched during that period, that stop and search and their apprehension as drug dealers meant that someone was 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched in that part of Dorset if they were from a BME background.
There are lots of complicated reasons that we need to understand about the disproportionality, and I am not downplaying the significance of it. As somebody who has fought crime in London during my political lifetime, I am very conscious of the impact it can have. I have sat and worked with all communities across London, particularly those affected by very serious violence, to understand the impact of stop and search. I have to say that body-worn video, in particular, is making a huge difference.
On new clause 9, I agree with the hon. Lady that independent oversight of the use of intrusive powers is essential. We all expect the police to use their stop-and-search powers as they see fit and to scrutinise their use of powers to ensure they remain focused, legitimate, proportionate and necessary. However, it is also true that having an independent body increases accountability and enhances the service officers are giving to the public.
I am pleased, therefore, to remind the Committee that we are fortunate to have two independent bodies that already perform that vital task. First, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services inspects forces on their use of stop and search as part of their annual inspections, and makes recommendations for improvement where needed. That allows the public to see whether their local force is meeting the high standards we expect. Forces should be able to explain their use of stop and search, including any disparities, to HMIC and the public, and we expect forces to respond to the inspectorate’s recommendations with alacrity.
Secondly, the Independent Office for Police Conduct provides a function through which complaints about police use of stop and search can be investigated. It is also able to issue recommendations to which forces are legally obliged to respond. As the “Inclusive Britain” report set out, the Government also recognise the importance of scrutiny by local communities. We are already enhancing these safeguards through the development of a national framework for community scrutiny of stop and search.
I know the hon. Lady will join me in praising the hard work of those two independent bodies in scrutinising police powers, and indeed the hard work of the police in using stop and search over the past couple of years to remove about 50,000 knives from the streets. I hope I have offered her some reassurance that we are conscious of our duty to deal with disproportionality, and that the existing safeguards and structures, as well as the new powers in the Bill, will be aligned with respect to that responsibility. On that basis, I hope she will withdraw the new clause.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clauses 10, 11 and 12 are in similar vein, and are about checks and balances to go alongside the legislation about which we have significant concerns. New clause 10 would mandate the Secretary of State to issue guidance to police forces on the protest technique of locking on, including the sharing of best practice and detailed guidance on addressing and developing forms of locking on.
Kit Malthouse
The new clause introduces a requirement on the Home Secretary to issue statutory guidance to the police on responding to lock-ons. While we agree that the Government should guide the police in the exercise of their powers, the police already have specialist teams trained to remove protesters from lock-ons. These teams continually develop their knowledge and training to keep pace with innovations in locking on, and I believe that the police themselves are best placed to develop guidance on the matter. Given that, I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the new clause.
Sarah Jones
I thank the Minister for his comments. We suggest that the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council would develop the detail—we do not suggest that us legislators would do that—but I am happy to withdraw the new clause because he has said that there will be significant guidance. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 11
Consolidated protest guidance
“(1) Within three months of Royal Assent to this Act, the Secretary of State must by regulations issue guidance which consolidates into a single source—
(a) the College of Policing’s authorised professional practice for public order guidance,
(b) the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s operational advice for protest policing, and
(c) the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s protest aide memoire.
(2) The Secretary of State must regularly review the guidance and, if appropriate, must by regulations issue revised consolidated guidance.
(3) The consolidated guidance must include specific updated guidance about the protest technique of locking on.”—(Sarah Jones.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause makes provision for consolidated protest guidance, bringing together the College of Policing’s public order authorised professional practice, the NPCC’s operational advice for protest policing and the NPCC’s protest aide-mémoire. The guidance must also include specific updated guidance about the protest technique of locking on. Similarly to the previous new clause, new clause 11 would help the police—in what we think is a broadly-defined piece of legislation—gather the guidance and equip themselves with the statistics necessary to do their job to the best of their ability. If the evidence sessions pointed to anything, it was that at the top of the police, there are good practices of introspection. They talk about and share good practice and want to scrutinise what is done well and what is done badly. The new clause merely puts that in law.
On training, Matt Parr believed that more could be done—although he was complimentary in some areas. The Minister talked about the specialist forces. He highlighted that that was patchy. When it comes to provisions on the policing of protests in this legislation, the NPCC remains concerned about some aspects of the document’s commentary, which it felt were open to misinterpretation. For that reason, we think it would be better to have that clarity in the law, which the new clause seeks to do.
Kit Malthouse
Although I recognise the hon. Lady’s intent on the issue, I struggle to see the benefit of the new clause. Protest guidance is the responsibility of the police and the College of Policing. She referred to a recommendation from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services on the policing of protests. The College of Policing is responsible for setting standards, providing training and sharing good practice for police forces. It is best placed to implement the recommendation. In fact, the college has already acted on it, and an updated public order authorised professional practice can be found on its website. The APP has consolidated guidance and links to other relevant guidance. I understand that it will be continually reviewed and updated.
Given that the effect of the new clause is already in place, we will not be supporting it. The inspectorate has sensibly recommended that the updating and management of national protest guidance is done by the College of Policing. It is the body with the knowledge and expertise to provide guidance to police forces. We do not see what benefit placing that obligation on the Government would bring, so I ask her to withdraw the new clause.
Sarah Jones
Although we will not press the new clause to a vote, I hope that I have put on the record the Labour party’s concern and our expectation that the Minister will come back to discuss with us the guidance that will be issued to ensure that the Bill is implemented as effectively as possible. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 12
National monitoring tool
“(1) The Secretary of State must develop a consistent national monitoring tool, accessible by all police forces, to monitor the use of or requests for specialist protest officers across England and Wales.
(2) Data collected under this section may be used to evaluate capacity and demand for specialist protest officers across England and Wales.
(3) The monitoring tool must be accessible on a national, regional and local basis.
(4) The monitoring tool must include—
(a) examples of best practice from policing protests across the United Kingdom, and
(b) data on how many trained officers have been required for any protests during the period in which monitoring took place.”—(Sarah Jones.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require the Secretary of State to develop a consistent monitoring tool that is accessible by all police forces to monitor the use of, or requests for, specialist protest officers across England and Wales. Data that is collected may be used to evaluate capacity and demand for specialist officers. The tool, which must be accessible nationally, regionally and locally, could include examples of best practice from policing protests and data on how many trained officers have been required for any protest during the monitoring period.
I will not go into more detail than that, as the new clause speaks to arguments that we have already made for new clauses 10 and 11.
Kit Malthouse
In effect, the new clause brings back a clause that was initially tabled to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in January 2022 on Report. As the hon. Lady said, it would require the creation of a monitoring tool.
As the Government stated in the House of Lords in January, such a tool is not necessary. The National Police Co-ordination Centre, which is known as NPoCC and is part of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, already co-ordinates and monitors the use of and requests for protest removal-trained officers across the UK. Furthermore, following recommendations by the inspectorate, the police’s national public order and public safety lead is already working on an evaluation of the requirement for specialist protest officers.
On the sharing of best practice, the College of Policing has, as I have said, updated the existing authorised professional practice on public order and public safety policing. That resource is easily accessible to all forces and will help them to understand best practice when policing protests. On the basis that this House should legislate only when it is strictly necessary, and that such work is already under way, I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the motion.
Sarah Jones
It is slightly alarming that the Minister fails to understand the concept of checks and balances to ensure that such a serious and significant piece of legislation is properly implemented, but I will not divide the Committee. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 13
Injunction to prevent serious disruption to effective movement of essential goods or services
“(1) Upon an application by a person under subsection (4), an injunction may be ordered by a Judge of the High Court against ‘persons unknown’ in order to prevent a serious disruption to the effective movement of any essential goods or any essential services occasioned by a public procession or public assembly.
(2) The ‘persons unknown’ may be—
(a) anonymous persons taking part in a public procession or public assembly who are identifiable at the time of the proceedings; and/or
(b) persons not presently taking part in a public procession or public assembly protest but who will in future join such a public procession or public assembly.
(3) The conditions under which such an injunction may be granted are as follows—
(a) there must be a real and imminent risk of a tort being committed which would result in a serious disruption to the effective movement of any essential goods or any essential services;
(b) a method of service must be set out in the order which may reasonably be expected to bring the proceedings to the attention of the ‘persons unknown’;
(c) the ‘persons unknown’ must be defined in the order by reference to their conduct which is alleged to be unlawful;
(d) the acts prohibited by the order must correspond with the threatened tort;
(e) the order may only prohibit lawful conduct if there is no other proportionate means of protecting the effective movement of essential goods or essential services;
(f) the terms of the order must set out what act or acts the persons potentially affected by the order must not do;
(g) the terms of the order must set out a defined geographical area to which the order relates; and
(h) the terms of the order must set out a temporal period to which the order relates, following which the order will lapse unless a further order is made upon a further application by the applicant.
(4) An applicant for an injunction to prevent serious disruption to effective movement of essential goods or services may be—
(a) a local authority with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates;
(b) a chief constable with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates; or
(c) a person resident in, or carrying on a business within, the geographical area to which the proposed order relates.
(5) ‘Serious disruption to effective movement of essential goods or services’ includes a prolonged disruption to—
(a) the effective movement of the supply of money, food, water, energy or fuel;
(b) a system of communication;
(c) access to a place of worship;
(d) access to a transport facility;
(e) access to an educational institution; or
(f) access to a service relating to health.”—(Sarah Jones.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Sarah Jones
I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The clause makes specific provision for an injunction to prevent serious disruption to the effective movement of essential goods or services, and sets out the circumstances in which an injunction may be granted against “persons unknown”. Those circumstances are based on the principles set out in paragraph 82 of the Court of Appeal’s 2020 decision in Canada Goose UK v. Persons Unknown. The clause also sets out the parties that may apply for such an injunction. They are:
“a local authority with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates; a chief constable with responsibility for all or part of the geographical area to which the proposed order relates; or a person resident in, or carrying on a business within, the geographical area to which the proposed order relates.”
The new clause uses the definition of “serious disruption” that was introduced in the House of Lords during the later stages of the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. I put on the record again my disagreement with the definitions of serious disruption— which include “noise”—in subsections 12(2C) and (2E) of the Public Order Act 1986, which section 73 of the 2022 Act inserted. We have had significant debates on that issue, and I will not rehearse them again, but I will quote the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who said in a letter to the Prime Minister:
“No genuinely Conservative government should have supported the recent ban on noisy protest—least of all when basic human freedoms are facing the threat of extinction in Ukraine.”
Although the definition of “serious disruption” is not perfect, the Opposition welcome the fact that a definition has been put in the Bill to replace the original provision, which would have left the Secretary of State to decide what serious disruption means. It is right that this definition remains subject to a power to amend these provisions. As the right hon. Member for Maidenhead said:
“It is tempting when Home Secretary to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable, because we all think we are reasonable, but future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 78.]
New clause 13 focuses on the definition in proposed new subsection (2A)(b) to section 12 of the 1986 Act, as inserted by the 2022 Act. It puts into statute the case law principles from the Canada Goose case, which allowed injunctions to be taken out against “persons unknown”, so these ideas are not new. The new clause puts into statute what already exists in case law, so if the Government oppose it, they are opposing existing case law decided by the judiciary.
The new clause allows local authorities, affected residents or business owners and chief constables to work together to prevent the kinds of serious disruption we have seen in the Just Stop Oil protests, protests against HS2 and in actions by Insulate Britain. The definition of “persons unknown” includes
“persons…who will in future join such a public procession or public assembly”,
So this new clause is putting into statute a law that already exists.
It is not necessary, as we have argued throughout the Bill Committee debates, to bring in unnecessary and complex new offences when there is a raft of existing laws that the police, local authorities and businesses can use to deal with protest that disrupts essential goods and services.
Subsection (3) sets out
“the conditions under which such an injunction may be granted”,
and it is clear that
“the acts prohibited by the order must correspond with the threatened tort”.
That word was new to me but I now understand what it means, although I will not go into it now. Also, there
“must be a real and imminent risk of a tort being committed which would result in a serious disruption to the effective movement of any essential goods or any essential services”.
Police officers have told us that some of the most effective measures they use in the face of potentially serious disruption are injunctions. The NPCC protest lead, Chris Noble, said:
“The feedback we have had is that when they are appropriately framed and developed at an appropriate pace, they can be very useful in terms of what we are trying to control and how we are trying to shape people’s behaviour... Injunctions have been used increasingly frequently, but the challenge is framing them appropriately and securing them within a reasonable timescale so they can have maximum impact.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 8, Q7.]
How long it can take public and private authorities to get injunctions in place is a problem, and we acknowledge that they are costly, but the cost of responding to seriously disruptive protest must fall somewhere and there is a conversation to be had about that balance.
Nicola Bell, regional director of Highways England, said that
“once people saw that injunctions were being followed through, committal proceedings were happening and people were going to prison, that did have a deterrent effect”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 28, Q57.]
HS2 said that
“injunctions do serve as a relatively effective deterrent to unlawful…activity by some groups of protestors”.
The courts take them seriously, the judicial oversight ensures that the powers are not misused and they can have faster enforcement processes than for individual offences.
HS2’s written evidence, talking about its route-wide civil injunction, said:
“Whilst, if granted, it is hoped that the route-wide injunction will significantly reduce disruption to the project caused by trespass and obstruction of access, it is unlikely to eliminate the problem.”
The police tell us they are frustrated by private companies and public authorities not acting fast enough to seek injunctions, and therefore leaving the responsibility to tackle disruption to the police, instead of taking on the responsibility themselves.
If people are in trouble, it is fairer that they have their eyes open to that possibility beforehand. For similar reasons, a clear injunction about what specific actions a person may not take is likely to be a better deterrent than criminal offences which are vaguer than a specific injunction.
I want to leave sufficient time for the Minister to make his points, but an injunction warns a person beforehand what they must not do. If they breach the injunction, they do so in the knowledge that it could lead to proceedings against them, so it is fairer. For similar reasons, a clear injunction about what specific actions a person may not take is likely to be a better deterrent than criminal offences, which are vaguer than a specific injunction.
It may also be easier to prove a breach of an injunction than to make good a criminal charge, so it may also be a more efficient way to enforce protection of vital infrastructure. We think this is a route that exists already and is there in case law, and so we have put it on the face of the Bill.
Kit Malthouse
As the hon. Lady said, new clause 13 looks to create a framework that allows local authorities, chief constables, residents, and business owners in an area to apply for an injunction to prevent serious disruption to the effective movement of essential goods or services. She quite neatly illustrates the problem with prescriptive definitions, but has created a new one with the notion of “prolonged”. I am not sure how long she thinks prolonged should be. Nevertheless, these are naturally definitions that we have in the past left to the courts.
We agree with the hon. Lady that injunctions have an important part to play in the response to the criminal protests, as we have seen this past year. However, we are not clear what she is trying to achieve with the amendment. As we have seen with Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil protests, injunctions can already be taken out by businesses and local authorities to prevent protesters from causing serious disruption to the effective movement of essential goods or services. Unlike the proposed new clause, the wider measures already in the Bill change the status quo, providing greater protection against the guerrilla activism that we have seen from recent protest groups.
We recognise the need to ensure better co-ordination of injunctions. However, the new clause does not address this challenge. We have heard the calls from the Opposition on this, and the Government are exploring what more can be done at a national level to protect key infrastructure and prevent disruption to the flow of essential goods and services. The clause as it stands does not deliver meaningful change. It creates a definitional problem of its own. Given that, I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendment.
Sarah Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he is exploring what more can be done and for accepting that injunctions have a role to play. I suspect that members of the other place may want to return to this at another stage, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Title
Amendment made: 24, in title, line 2, leave out “delegation” and insert “exercise”. —(Kit Malthouse.)
This amendment is consequential on NC4.
Bill, as amended, to be reported.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill
Sarah Jones ExcerptsTuesday 18th October 2022
(2 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 18 October 2022 - large print - (18 Oct 2022)
Fiona Bruce
I am just about to conclude.
One of the main reasons freedom of speech and thought are treasured and rightly protected in law is so that they can be used precisely for the purposes of influence. The free and frank exchange of viewpoints is the lifeblood of a genuinely democratic society. Rather than seeking to erode this most precious principle, we should be seeking instead to strengthen the law, to put it beyond doubt that freedom of speech—and, indeed, of belief—when peaceably expressed should never be a criminal offence. We must stand against this here today. Our cherished freedoms of thought, conscience, belief, speech and assembly have been hard fought for, and our democracy depends on their robust protection.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), although I respectfully disagree with her position on this, and I will come to that shortly. I also welcome the Minister to his post.
I do not think anybody in this House was not deeply irritated by the sight of an ambulance having to turn around and go a different route because of protesters glued to the road, and I do not think there are many people in this House, when they saw protesters throwing soup at a van Gogh painting, who did not at least question whether that action had helped or hindered the cause of climate change. We all passionately believe in the right to protest, do we not? But we all understand that our fundamental freedoms are always balanced with the need to ensure business can carry on in its usual way.
That is why I thank the police for their response to the protesters who blocked the ambulance. They arrested 26 people for wilful obstruction of a highway and removed people glued to the road. Wilful obstruction is an offence that can carry a prison sentence. I also thank the police for the way in which they dealt with the incident in the National Gallery. Two people have been charged with criminal damage, which is an offence that can carry prison sentence.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you may ask yourself why, if the police were quick to respond, quick to arrest and quick to charge, we are debating a Public Order Bill to create a raft of new powers to tackle protest, after we have only just finished debating another Bill—the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022—which has introduced another raft of new provisions against protest.
Jeremy Quin
Is the hon. Lady therefore fully satisfied that the powers that exist are fully complete and fully perfect in all respects? Is she satisfied that police officers will be taken from her constituency to police central London to guard the public from protests? Should we not be taking stronger action?
Sarah Jones
I thank the Minister for his intervention, and I will shortly come on to speak about the powers that already exist and what I think we need to do to make sure that we have the best system we can have.
I think the reason we are here debating this legislation is that we are not currently governed by grown-ups who understand the serious and delicate balance between policing and protest. We are governed by people who seek to win through division, by pitting one group against another and by wilfully threatening the delicate balance of policing by consent that marks out our form of policing from French, Spanish or Italian paramilitary-style police forces.
Sarah Jones
I will come to new clause 11 shortly, and express my support and our support for that new clause. We have supported it many times in many different forms through many different debates.
The Labour party, last April, called for greater injunction powers following the disruption by Just Stop Oil, when millions of people could not access fuel. We argued that the raft of existing powers could be used more effectively. We suggested injunctions because they are more likely to prevent further disruption to, say, an oil terminal than more offences to criminalise conduct after it has taken place, with all the added costs and logistics of removal. Injunctions are more straightforward for the police, they have more safeguards as they are granted by a court, and they are future-proof when protesters change tactics.
Police officers have told us that some of the most effective measures they use in the face of potential serious disruption are injunctions. The National Police Chiefs’ Council protests lead, Chris Noble, said that
“they can be very useful in terms of what we are trying to control and how we are trying to shape…behaviour.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 8, Q7.]
In Kingsbury with Just Stop Oil and on the M25 with insulate Britain, people were arrested, removed and charged for breaching injunctions.
We introduced a new clause in Committee to bring what is known as the Canada Goose case into law. The Canada Goose case allowed injunctions to be taken out against persons unknown. This means that when groups of protesters form outside, the applicant does not have to know all their names or the names of people who may come in the future. Sadly, in Committee, the Government voted against our injunctions new clause. They said it would not create meaningful change.
The Government have since had a change of heart, however—another U-turn from the Government—but our suggestions for injunctions are still not being supported; they have introduced their own in new clauses 7 and 8. We believe these new clauses are flawed in several ways. First, there are some drafting problems, and lawyers we have spoken to are unclear on what the legal basis of an injunction would be. Secondly, we have concerns about placing the responsibility and power in the hands of the Home Secretary. Thirdly, we have concerns about where the burden of cost will fall; at a very difficult economic time, the Government can through this Bill shift financial responsibility from the private sector to the public sector, and that needs to be looked at.
In Committee, we heard evidence from HS2, who were in the process of applying for a route-wide injunction to protect their sites from serious disruption. This has now been granted by the High Court. The documents detailing the High Court decision show that the judge granted it partly on the basis that it satisfied the requirements of the Canada Goose case, the guidelines set by the Court of Appeal. Our new clause 4 puts on to the statue books the Canada Goose case law principles. Surely the Minister does not oppose principles set by the Court of Appeal; why does he not look again at Labour’s sensible amendment to tackle serious disruption?
Our new clause 5 seeks to make a simple but important change. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 contains a definition of serious disruption—after we called on the Government to define it as they had not done so originally. That definition includes “noise generated by people”. We want that definition removed, so that when the police are deciding what constitutes serious disruption, they cannot do this on noise alone. We have all debated this many times in the House and I will not repeat the arguments we have made. Instead, I will quote the current Foreign Office Minister, the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who said in a letter to the previous Prime Minister:
“No genuinely Conservative government should have supported the recent ban on noisy protest—least of all when basic human freedoms are facing the threat of extinction in Ukraine.”
We agree with him and tonight the Government have the chance to do so too and to right that wrong. Surely, the Prime Minister, fixated supposedly on freedom, would want to defend the right to chant and sing at a protest, just like she did as a child against the party she now leads.
Since we now have a new Home Secretary, perhaps these words from the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) are worth her also bearing in mind:
“It is tempting when Home Secretary to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable, because we all think we are reasonable, but future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 78.]
That has never been more the case than now.
This Bill gives the police wide-ranging powers to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest: for example, shoppers passing a protest against a library closure, tourists walking through Parliament Square, or civil servants walking to their desks in the Cabinet Office. But these far-reaching powers to stop and search without suspicion go too far. We know the police will not feel comfortable using them—we have spoken to several who have said the same—and in an area of policing already prone to disproportionality, they represent a disproportionate way of preventing what is in the vast majority of cases a minor public order offence at most.
In the same way, a serious disruption prevention order, also introduced in this Bill, treats a peaceful protestor, who in some instances will have committed no crime, as if they were a terrorist. Is that what the Home Secretary really thinks? Does she really want her Government to be responsible for treating peaceful, if admittedly annoying, protestors like serious criminals? The SDPO is draconian, preventing people from going to places and seeing people when they have not even committed a crime. And we must remember that to be eligible for an SDPO, serious disruption does not even need to have occurred; as the Bill states, I could be given an SDPO if I helped someone else do something which was
“likely to result in, serious disruption to two or more individuals”.
The phrase “likely to result in” amounts in real world terms to absolutely nothing, and just two people being required to experience, or being likely to experience but not actually experiencing, serious disruption is too low a bar.
On new clause 11, everyone has a right to access healthcare without fear of intimidation. The same principles applied when we had debates in this place about buffer zones—public space protection orders—outside vaccine centres when there were protests against people having their vaccine. Access to healthcare is a fundamental right and we must safeguard it. Many Members have been making this argument for many years in many different ways. The shadow Home Secretary has been calling for it since 2014. I have only been in Parliament since 2017 and we debated it in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and we do it again now. The Minister has the opportunity to do some good here; I think there is agreement on that on both sides of the House.
We all agree that the disruption we have seen from the small groups of hard-line protesters is unacceptable, whether blocking ambulances or stopping people getting to work for long periods of time, but our job as legislators is to come up with proposals that will actually help. It is our jobs to be grown-ups. This Government have created a piece of legislation that is disproportionate and threatens our unique model of policing by consent. In the evidence sessions, Sir Peter Fahy, a very well-respected former chief constable, spoke to us about the British style of policing. He said that we do not live in France or any other country with a paramilitary aspect to their policing and that
“in our policing system…policing is by consent… There would need to be a huge shift in the public mood and I think British policing is not really set up and does not have the mentality to use the degree of force that you see in other countries.
People do not realise that we are pretty unique...that is the British style”.––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 9 June 2022; c. 62, Q122.]
The Government would do well to listen to Sir Peter’s warnings. They are undermining that style of policing and upsetting that careful balance between the police and the people, and the fine line between being popular and populist. We are not the French. At a time when the economy is crashing and inflation is soaring, Ministers are choosing to spend precious parliamentary time trying to create political and cultural dividing lines, to chase headlines instead of actually finding sensible and workable solutions. The Government should rethink this flawed legislation.
Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
Over the past few days I have been accused of being tired, emotional, erratic, and, just to put the record straight, I am all of those things and more. I want to be clear: unlike some Members in this Chamber, I have no time for those people who block roads, throw soup, and make a general nuisance of themselves. They are agents against their own interests, as they repel normal ordinary people. Having said that, serious disruption prevention orders are not the answer. They leave me absolutely cold; in fact I would go so far as to say that they are absolutely appalling because there are plenty of existing laws that can be utilised to deal with people who specialise in making other people’s lives miserable.
I know there is a convention here that we do not read lists, but I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I will be allowed to read a very short list just to set out the laws that already exist and have been covered by colleagues: obstructing a police officer, Police Act 1996; obstructing a highway, Highways Act 1980; obstruction of an engine, Malicious Damage Act 1861—we all remember that one —endangering road users, Road Traffic Act 1988; aggravated trespass, Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994; criminal damage, Criminal Damage Act 1971; and public nuisance, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. There are also other laws. There is the Public Order Act 1986 that allows police officers to ban or place conditions on protest.
So the Government’s attraction to SDPOs demonstrates our own impotence as legislators and the impotence of the police as law enforcers to get to grips with the laws already in place and to enforce them. This is what we do now in politics: we have these machismo laws where something must be done, so we go out and do it, and that makes a good headline in The Daily Telegraph and The Times, but we do it and then very little happens, or if it does happen it is way over the top.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill
Sarah Jones ExcerptsTuesday 7th March 2023
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 7 March 2023 - (7 Mar 2023)
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I rise to speak on Lords amendments 1, 5, 6 and 20, beginning with the definition of “serious disruption”.
Before I go into the detail, let me mention the publication in 2021 of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary’s now widely debated report looking at protests and how the police response was working. Matt Parr, Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary, called for a “modest reset” of the balance between police powers and the right to protest in order to respond to the changing nature of the protests we were seeing, which were sometimes dangerous; people were taking more risks. The suggestions included far more measures that were non-legislative than legislative, such as better training for police, better understanding of the law and a more sophisticated response to protests. What has followed has been a series of escalations of more and more unnecessary legislation that the police have not asked for and that will not have an impact on the actual challenge.
We have gathered to debate public order legislation many times in this House, and while there have been numerous Ministers, I have been here every single time. For our part, we suggested a modest reset of the laws, as suggested by Her Majesty’s inspectorate, with amendments making injunctions easier for local organisations to apply for and with stronger punishment for obstructing the highway. Our sensible amendments were rejected by the Government in favour of this raft of legislation, which now finds itself in ping-pong, because the House of Lords is quite rightly saying that these proposals are not necessary.
What do the Government think their amendments to the Lords amendments will actually deliver? Their impact assessment is quite clear. Let us look, for example, at the new offence of locking on, which is going to change everything, we are told. Let me quote:
“the number of additional full custody years”—
the number of prison years that will result from this new offence—
“lies within the range of zero to one”.
That is the impact this Bill will have: zero to one years of custodial sentences.
What about the serious disruption prevention orders we are debating today? How many custodial cases will they amount to? The answer is three to five. Well, that is all worth it then! The rights to be taken away, as Conservative and Opposition Members have so eloquently described, will be for three to five cases with custodial convictions a year.
The impact assessment is extraordinary.
Matt Parr of Her Majesty’s inspectorate clearly said that there was
“a wide variation in the number of specialist officers available for protest policing throughout England and Wales”,
and that
“Non-specialist officers receive limited training in protest policing.”
He made several recommendations about increased and better training. Have the Government listened to these sensible concerns? Not a bit. Their impact assessment states that the police will need seven minutes to understand this entire new Bill and to implement it fairly—seven minutes. The truth is that they do not listen to the police and they do not listen to what is actually needed; they just want a headline.
To pause for a minute, today we have all been appalled by the offences David Carrick was guilty of in the run-up to the murder of Sarah Everard, and these appalling sexual crimes and this epidemic of violence against women and girls needs a proper response, yet the Government are prioritising this legislation over a victims Bill.
Laws already exist to tackle protest that the police use every day. Criminal damage is an offence, as are conspiracy to cause damage, trespass, aggravated trespass, public nuisance, breach of the peace and obstruction of a highway—I could go on. In April 2019, 1,148 Extinction Rebellion activists were arrested and more than 900 were charged. In October 2019, 1,800 protesters were arrested. Many have been fined, and many have gone to prison. The impact assessment for this Bill suggests a few hundred arrests; the police are already making thousands. The powers are there for the police to use.
Turning to the definition of “serious disruption”, we must be clear about the history. The Opposition asked for a definition of “serious disruption” long ago in debates on what is now the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. The Government said no, but then agreed to a definition in the Lords. It was not a very good one, and we tried to amend it. The police have asked us for greater clarity on the definition of “serious disruption” because the Government have drafted such poor legislation that it is important for them to interpret how and when they should and should not intervene. But the new definition appears to include as serious disruption situations such as if I have to step aside on a pavement to avoid a protestor. The police do not want to diminish people’s rights through this definition—they have said that time and again, and privately they think the Government are getting this wrong.
Sir Charles Walker
Does the shadow Minister agree that this provision is extraordinary, because there is often disruption around the Houses of Parliament when there is a protest and people march around Parliament Square and up to Trafalgar Square? That is a disruption, and is more than a minor disruption, but it is the type of disruption that most people in a free and democratic society can live with.
Sarah Jones
The hon. Gentleman has made many good points already this afternoon, and I entirely agree;
“more than a minor degree”
is way too low a bar to allow these interventions. Many Members and many watching the debate would have fallen foul of this law.
The amendment is drawn so widely that it is almost meaningless. As the hon. Gentleman said, when there are protests on Whitehall, near Parliament Square, there can be large crowds, and banners and speeches, so they are noisy. In 1 Parliament Street, where my office is, we have to shut the windows, which is irritating, but we are not hindered to the extent that we expect police interference. There are so many scenarios that could come under the scope of this definition that would render it ludicrous.
If I chain myself to a tree to protest at a new road and a couple of people are unable to cross a road to go to the supermarket, is that more than a minor disruption, or not? We have to remember that serious disruption, however it is defined—and I argue that here it is defined without any legal certainty—does not have to happen for offences under the Bill to be committed. This sloppiness and breadth of drafting is unacceptable, and the police do not want it. They just want clarity, and this will not bring clarity.
Turning to suspicionless stop and search, the Government have tabled a motion to disagree with Lords amendment 6. The motion would reinsert wide-ranging powers for the police to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, for example shoppers passing a protest against a library closure, tourists walking through Parliament Square, or civil servants walking to their office. If there is a large crowd in Parliament Square and a tourist gets caught up in it, they could be stopped; they could have no idea what is going on, and would be an offence to resist.
Stop and search is disproportionately used against black people in this country. Do Members on the Government Benches really want to pass legislation for powers that risk further damaging the relationship between the police and our communities? Instead of actually targeting serious gun crime, serious knife crime or terrorism, the Government are choosing to focus on stopping and searching people who may or may not be taking part in a protest. That is not proportionate.
Former police officers have warned that these powers risk further diminishing trust in public institutions. That will put the police in a difficult position, and it risks undermining the notion of policing by consent. Members of the other place were right to remove the powers to stop and search without suspicion, and the Government are wrong to put them back in.
We agree with what the Government have done with regard to the journalists clause and amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 17. The right to protest is a hard-won democratic freedom that many have fought for in our history, and many are fighting for it in other parts of the world. A free press is another hallmark of our democratic society. The amendment will not prevent the police from responding to someone who is causing trouble and happens to be a journalist, but, crucially, it will allow reporters to observe and report to the wider public about the happenings of a protest. Considering the scope, breadth and low bar of most of the powers in the Bill, reporting on their potential misuse or wrong application is even more important. That is a power that must be protected, so we welcome the Government’s amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 17.
We are fundamentally against the principle of serious disruption prevention orders. We do not agree with them on conviction and we certainly do not agree with them not on conviction. The Government have tabled a motion to disagree with Lords amendment 20 and tabled their own amendment in lieu. That reinstates but limits the ability to apply an SDPO to someone without a protest-related conviction. We welcome the fact that the Government have accepted that their initial draft was overreaching and unnecessary. However, we do not support the five-year conviction compromise that they suggest. Problems remain, in that police could still apply for a SDPO to prevent a person from carrying out activities that are merely likely to result in serious disruption to two or more individuals or an organisation. The Met police commissioner said that
“policing is not asking for new powers to constrain protests”,
but SDPOs on conviction unfortunately remain in the Bill. An SDPO treats a peaceful protestor like the Government treat terrorists. Does the Minister really want to treat peaceful protestors, however annoying they may be, as serious criminals?
On buffer zones, the Opposition do not agree with amendment (a) to Lords amendment 5. It is important to remember that we have already voted on this issue in this place. We voted to introduce buffer zones and in the other place the Conservative peer Baroness Sugg did a very good job of tidying up the Bill. We have already voted in both Houses to introduce what we now call safe access zones. Lords amendment 5 is really important, creating a 150-metre safe access zone around abortion clinics to stop the intimidation and harassment of women and healthcare professionals. The proposed changes to the amendment would risk preventing people from getting the medical support they need.
Robin Millar
Does the hon. Lady accept that the evidence from the abortion buffer zones that exist at present is that people are being arrested for silent prayer? That is a fact. If she does, does she then accept that amendment (a) to Lords amendment 5 is necessary to provide a provision for silent prayer?
Sarah Jones
I do not agree with that interpretation at all. We have public space protection orders around some abortion clinics now, and we are broadening that out. That has been voted for twice, in this House and in the other place. I believe very firmly that the changes proposed in amendment (a) would risk preventing people from getting the medical support they need. Let me explain why.
I am a person of faith. I have also walked into an abortion clinic. I pray, but I also know how intimidating it is to walk past people silently standing there with signs trying to communicate, trying to pray, trying to persuade women to change their mind. It is a balance that we strike in this place between a woman’s right to privacy and healthcare and everybody’s right to go about their business and do what they choose. This place has already struck that balance.
I will explain why I also believe the proposal would not work. It goes way beyond silent prayer. Amendment (a) states:
“No offence is committed under subsection (1) by a person engaged in consensual communication”.
What is “consensual communication”? How on earth can we define it? Members have said women should not be harassed. Everybody agrees with that, but one person’s consensual communication is another person’s harassment. We have taken some legal advice on the amendment. The Government, when considering whether to support it, should look at the wider implications it might have.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
Just to make the obvious point, the whole purpose of the buffer zones legislation is to create an exclusion zone around abortion clinics so that people with views they want to express about the subject of abortion clinics will not be in contact with people going to use those services. Amendment (a) would drive a coach and horses through that whole process. The way it is worded would mean that people would be protected from accusations of harassment, because their actions
“shall not…be taken to be…harassment”
whatever they may actually be doing, so long as they can call it silent prayer. That drives a coach and horses through what the House of Lords compromised on and what the House of Commons originally agreed to vote for and approve.
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.
Stella Creasy
We must be clear that nobody is banning praying. We are saying that there is a time and a place to do it appropriately, which balances with people’s human rights. There has been some concern that, somehow, the buffer zones will take up police resources. Does my hon. Friend agree that, actually, amending the buffer zone legislation—as the amendment intends—would mean that more police resource would be needed, because it would become so unclear what was and what was not harassment, even when women repeatedly say that praying in their face is not acceptable?
Sarah Jones
I completely agree. Having talked to the police for nearly three years in this role, I know that they want clarity. The amendment provides not clarity but unbelievable confusion, whereas a 150-metre zone provides clarity, and that is what the police want.
The Bill remains an affront to our rights. The Government’s own impact assessment shows that it will not have much effect. It is our job as parliamentarians to come up with laws that solve problems and really work. The Bill does not do that, so the Opposition will vote against the Government tonight. We agree with the Lords, and I urge every Member to look to their conscience and do the same.
Chris Philp
As always, it is a great pleasure to follow my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones). She has faced a number of Policing Ministers in her time, and I hope she faces many more during what I hope will be a very long tenure as shadow Minister.
We have heard some extremely thoughtful and well-considered contributions from both sides of the House on quite profound issues, touching as they do on conscience, free speech and a woman’s right to choose in relation to an abortion, as well as slightly more prosaic questions on policing protests. The objective of the Bill is to better balance the rights of individuals to protest—which this Government respect—with the rights of individuals to go about their daily lives without suffering from disruption. Those include the rights of parents to get their children to school, of people to get to hospital for vital treatment and of people to go to work without having their way impeded.
We have seen so many protests impeding the rights of the law-abiding majority, particularly in the latter half of 2022. There were 10-mile tailbacks on the M25. People glued themselves to roads in London and it took a long time to remove them. In December, we saw protesters walking slowly down streets, deliberately trying to cause as much disruption as possible—not so much exercising the right to protest as seeking to make a point by deliberately inconveniencing their fellow citizens. That is not something that this Government support, which is one reason why we are now legislating. The Metropolitan police have confirmed that between October and December last year they spent 13,600 officer shifts policing such protests, at a cost of nearly £10 million. That is time and money that would be much better spent elsewhere.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill
Sarah Jones ExcerptsWednesday 22nd March 2023
(1 year, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Message as at 22 March 2023 - (22 Mar 2023)
Chris Philp
I am not sure I entirely agree. The offence of intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance is set out in section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and I do not accept the characterisation of that offence as simply a minor one. Causing huge inconvenience to other members of the public is not something that this House should treat lightly, particularly as we have seen examples in recent protests of ambulances not getting through, and of people unable to get their children to school or to attend medical appointments. I am not sure I accept that characterisation.
A number of changes have been proposed in Lords amendments 6B to 6F. They first propose a higher level of authorisation for suspicionless searches. By the way, the other place is not disputing the principle; it is simply seeking to change some of the thresholds, one of which would involve changing the authority level in a way that would be inconsistent with the use of searches under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 in other contexts.
Another change relates to the time periods. As Lord Hogan-Howe, a former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, pointed out, the use of the power has to be practical and reducing the time threshold to just 12 hours would limit the ability of police forces to use these powers in a meaningful way. We should take seriously the opinion of the noble Lord who used to be the Met commissioner.
The changes proposed in the other place would also require a chief superintendent to provide authorisation for this matter, when an inspector is acceptable under the existing section 60. I think that overlooks the urgency and speed with which these protests can unfold, and the speed at which decisions need to be made. It also has potential to cause confusion if there is a different level of seniority here, compared with the well-established section 60.
Finally, the amendments proposed in the other place would set out in statute a requirement for the forces to communicate the geographical extent of an order. The Government recognise that communication of any power is important for understanding and transparency. I am aware that most forces already communicate their section 60 authorisations—I have seen that happen frequently in Croydon and it is gratefully received when it happens. But, for consistency, it is important to keep these new powers as close as we can to existing legislation, although the Government encourage forces to communicate any use of this power, in the way they already do for a section 60 order, where it is operationally beneficial to do so. There is a lot to be said for consistency, which is why I respectfully encourage Members of this House to gently and politely disagree with the other place in their amendments 6B to 6F.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Stop and search is a crucial tool, as we all agree. Its normal usage is based on intelligence around a crime or a potential crime, based on proper suspicion, and applied for the right reasons. In our country, we use stop and search with suspicion to look for weapons, drugs and stolen property. Under particular circumstances, we use suspicionless stop and search—a section 60, as we call it—to search people without suspicion when a weapon has been used, or where there is good reason to believe there will be a serious violence incident. The Government are introducing suspicionless stop and search for potential protests, an overreach of the law that the police have not asked for and which pushes the balance of rights and responsibilities away from the British public.
Yesterday, we debated Baroness Casey’s report into the Metropolitan police. It is an excoriating report that, among much else, calls for a fundamental reset in how stop and search is used in London. I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister today accept all the findings and recommendations in the report. The report states:
“Racial disparity continues in stop and search in London. This has been repeatedly confirmed in reports and research. Our Review corroborates these findings.”
It is ironic that the day after the report was published the Government are trying to pass laws that risk further damaging the relationship between the police and the public by significantly expanding stop and search powers way beyond sensible limits.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady says these measures may damage relations with the public. The vast majority of the public feel very strongly that their lives have been severely impacted by these protests, so giving the police the tools to get ahead of them may in fact command widespread public support, notwithstanding the issues of protest. I wonder what her solution might be to the problem of people who persistently come to protests and glue themselves to all sorts of surfaces, thereby causing enormous disruption to other people’s lives, disproportionate to the issue they are protesting about.
Sarah Jones
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. We do not disagree on some of the struggles here—we never have. We have never said that it is not a problem in terms of major infrastructure, getting around the country and so on. Our argument has always been, first, a series of existing laws is in place that enables the police to do their job. Secondly, the use of injunctions could have been made easier—we put that case forward in earlier stages of the Bill—so that we could get ahead of some of these problems. But fundamentally, we disagree with the premise that extending these powers, which are used at the moment for serious violence, to this loose definition of potential protest is helpful, or anything the police will necessarily want or use.
Clause 11 will introduce wide-ranging powers for the police to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, including any of us who happen to walk through the area. The Government’s knee-jerk reaction to introduce sweeping powers that will risk further damaging policing by consent is not the way forward. Members in the other place passed very sensible changes to raise the threshold for the powers in clause 11 to be used. To the Minister’s point that they are not disputing the principle, they have already disputed the principle—we have had that argument and they have, rightly, as is their role, moved on. So they are trying to contain what they think are the problems with these measures. All we ask is that the Government accept these sensible minor tweaks to clause 11.
Lords amendments 6B to 6F would raise the rank of the officer able to authorise the power to stop and search without suspicion for a 12-hour period to a chief superintendent. The Minister argued that we need consistency. I do not accept that argument. There are all kinds of different levels of all kinds of different things across the law that we can all understand. Because this is a more significant intervention for potentially a lesser crime, the amendment is relatively reasonable.
Lords amendment 6C removes “subsection (ii)”, which means the power could be used for the anticipation of “causing public nuisance” such as merely making noise. Without this change, every time music is played outside Parliament anyone could be stopped and searched without suspicion. Baroness Casey suggests that
“as a minimum, Met officers should be required to give their name, their shoulder number, the grounds for the stop and a receipt confirming the details of that stop.”
Lords amendment 6F would insert:
“The chief superintendent must take reasonable steps to inform the public when the powers conferred by this section are in active use.”
That is important because communication failures are a common factor in problematic stop and searches.
A recent report from Crest Advisory, examining the experience of black communities nationally on stop and search, found that 77% of black adults support the use of stop and search in relation to suspicion of carrying a weapon. So, in the poll, the black community absolutely agrees that we need the power to stop and search. But less than half of those who had been stopped and searched felt that the police had communicated well with them or explained what would happen. That less than half of those who had been stopped and searched felt that the police had communicated well to them or explained what would happen shows how important it is to make sure people are communicated with when these strong and impactful powers are used by the police. If we imagine that in the context of clause 11, where anyone can be stopped, including tourists who might have got caught up in a crowd and not know what is going on, there is a risk of a chaotic invasion of people’s rights to go about their business.
We have discussed previously and at length the definition of “serious disruption”. The Minister considers it
“more than a minor degree”.
Would being stopped and searched for simply walking through Parliament Square when a protest is taking place disrupt his day more than a minor degree? The suspicionless stop and search powers being applied to protests are extreme and disproportionate. We have raised many times in this House the warnings from former police officers that they risk further diminishing trust in public institutions.
After the devastating Casey report, it is hard to see how public trust in the Metropolitan police could suffer more. Ministers were unable to offer any solutions to bring the reforms we desperately need in policing, but they could at least try not to pass laws that would risk making trust and confidence in the police even worse. Clause 11 will create powers that risk undermining our Peelian principles even further. When Ministers say that it would only be in very unusual circumstances that the powers would be used, I want to stress, why bother? Why bother, when to deal with disruptive protests the police could already use criminal damage, conspiracy to cause criminal damage, trespass, aggravated trespass, public nuisance, breach of the peace and obstruction of the highway? The Minister knows I could keep going. Many protestors have been fined and many have gone to prison using those powers. Thousands of arrests are already made using existing powers, but the Bill is apparently justified by an impact assessment that says it will lead to a few hundred arrests only. The powers are there for the police to use.
Disruptive protests have a serious impact on infrastructure and on people’s ability to go about their daily lives. Over the course of the passage of the Bill, we have spent many hours on new ways to ensure the police have all the levers they need. We tried to introduce sensible amendments on injunctions. The Government’s response to the problem is a totally disproportionate headline-chasing response that is, depressingly, what we have come to expect. Gone are the days when the Government were interested in passing laws that could fix problems or make things better. The truth is that the Government’s disagreement with the sensible narrowing amendments from the other place will create more problems than it will solve. I urge the Government to think again and to back these common-sense amendments from the other place.
Sarah Jones
On that point, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that every year that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), was Mayor of London, the number of stop and searches went down.
Sarah Jones
Main Page: Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon West)Department Debates - View all Sarah Jones's debates with the Home Office
Public Order Bill
Sarah Jones ExcerptsMonday 24th April 2023
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Public Order Act 2023 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Message as at 24 April 2023 - (24 Apr 2023)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
I beg to move,
That this House disagrees with Lords amendments 6H and 6J.
The Public Order Bill is about giving the police the tools they need to tackle the highly disruptive protest tactics we have seen in recent months, and indeed today, which have blocked ambulances, delayed passengers making important journeys, prevented children from getting to school and patients from getting to hospital, and at times held the capital city to ransom. I do not wish to detain the House for any longer than necessary, because we have debated this Bill numerous times in recent months and it has undoubtedly been given the scrutiny the British people want and expect. It is time for that delay to end and for this Bill to become law.
The other place has once more voted to amend clause 11, the power to stop and search without suspicion—although it is worth saying that that power can only be used if a police officer reasonably believes that certain protest-related offences will happen in the very near future, so it is not a power that can be used wholly arbitrarily. It is most disappointing to see that vote after this elected Chamber disagreed with their Lordships in their last amendments.
As my noble colleague explained in the other place, it is our view that the changes are unnecessary. First, a legal framework already exists for all stop-and-search powers. Under section 3.8 of Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 code A, the code of practice for powers to stop and search, police officers have to give their name or identification number, the police station to which they are attached and grounds for every single stop and search, essentially replicating the proposal in their Lordships’ motion 6H. Those criteria are covered in the GOWISELY mnemonic drilled into every police officer.
Secondly, it is our view that the requirement for police forces to establish a charter on the use of powers would cause unnecessary burdens on police forces and officers, something the Opposition have been concerned about throughout this Bill’s passage. Plenty of long-established safeguards already exist for stop-and-search powers. Additionally, we have supported the National Police Chiefs’ Council in its publication of national guidance on the use of body-worn video, which includes encouraging forces to share footage with external scrutiny groups to support transparency and reflective practice and learning.
On reporting on the use of stop-and-search powers, I would like to reassure the House that the Home Office already publishes an annual statistical bulletin, which outlines in detail the information gathered during each stop-and-search incident. That reporting will be conducted for the use of the new stop-and-search powers, both suspicion-led and suspicionless.
Finally, on publishing a statement giving reasons for the use of powers, as the Government reiterated in the other place, we recognise that communication on the use of these powers is a fundamental element of building trust and confidence between a force and the community it serves. The majority of forces, including the Metropolitan Police Service, already communicate their section 60 authorisations, and I know that communities appreciate knowing the details of the geographical area, time limits and justification for the authorisation. Those forces will continue that practice for these new powers.
Nevertheless, as the noble Lord Sharpe of Epsom committed to in the other place, the Government will amend PACE code A to require that, where it is operationally practical to do so, forces must communicate the extent of the area authorised for the suspicionless stop and search, the duration of an order and the reasons for that order. This Government commit to the spirit of what their Lordships are asking for, in their proposed new subsection (9D) of clause 11, through amendments to PACE code A. We will also amend PACE code A to place data collection within the legislative framework. It will include a breakdown of both suspicion-led and suspicionless searches cross referenced with protected characteristics such as age, sex and ethnicity.
I hope that those clear commitments—made in this House and in the other place, and reiterated here today—will satisfy hon. Members. Making changes to PACE code A is the right way to address those issues. The amendments to PACE code A will ensure consistency across all stop-and-search powers and allow for a full and robust consultation with external stakeholders, providing the right balance between tackling disruptive protesters and protecting the rights of each citizen where the powers are used. For those reasons, I hope that the House will agree with the Home Secretary in respectfully disagreeing with their Lordships’ amendments 6H and 6J.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I rise to speak against the Government’s motion to disagree with Lords amendments 6H and 6J, which we support.
The amendments seek to do two things: first, to instruct officers to give their name, badge number and reason for stopping anyone they search under the new suspicionless stop-and-search powers, and secondly, to compel all police forces to set up a charter—which they would have to consult on, publish and independently evaluate—on the use of their suspicionless stop-and-search powers. To be clear, the amendments have nothing to do with patients not getting to hospital; nothing to do with blocking roads; nothing to do with whether stop and search without suspicion actually takes place. They are to do with the manner in which suspicionless stop and search is conducted.
The amendments are direct recommendations from Louise Casey’s report—although she would go further and apply them to all stop and searches. Baroness Casey’s review of the standards of behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police Service is a 300-page tour de force. The Home secretary welcomed the review and said:
“Accepting Baroness Casey’s findings is not incompatible with supporting the institution of policing and the vast majority of brave men and women who uphold the highest professional standards.”—[Official Report, 21 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 165.]
The Prime Minister said:
“There needs to be a change in culture and leadership, and I know that the new Metropolitan commissioner will no doubt reflect on the findings of Louise’s report, but is already making changes and that's right, because what was happening before is simply shocking and unacceptable.”
He is right. Officers right across the Met are desperate to see those improvements put in place and action taken to rebuild the confidence of Londoners.
Labour tabled Lords amendments 6H and 6J to clause 11 to help put into legislation some of the improvements recommended by Baroness Casey, and it is very disappointing and surprising that the Government have tabled a motion to disagree. Clause 11 brings wide-ranging powers for the police to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, including anyone who happens to be walking through the area. The Government’s proposals risk further damaging the delicate relationship between the police and the public by significantly expanding stop-and-search powers to a protest context.
We agree that stop and search is a really important tool. The Minister has said on many occasions that stop and search is important for looking for weapons, and of course, we absolutely support that. We support suspicionless stop and searches—or section 60s—when serious violence, or terrorism, has occurred. But it is important to reflect that we are talking about using the suspicionless stop-and-search power not for terrorism or serious violence, but for protests—it is about searching for glue, a padlock, a microphone or a speaker. That will not have been agreed by the chief superintendent but by an inspector, because the Government rejected our amendment to make that change. Really, clause 11 should have been removed from the Bill, but we are not here to debate whether we should have suspicionless stop and search because that debate has concluded. Today, we are debating sensible, important changes to the Government’s clause to insert some safeguards into a wide-ranging power and mitigate some of its potential adverse impacts.
Chris Philp
Why do the Opposition object to implementing some of the key elements of the Lords amendments in PACE code A, where most regulations relating to this issue already sit? They can be updated relatively easily if necessary, so is not PACE code A the right place to do this? In relation to Louise Casey’s recommendation, she did not specify that these changes should happen in primary legislation. We are doing these things, just in PACE code A.
Sarah Jones
My understanding is that the agreement to include some aspects of the amendments in PACE code A does not go the whole way towards what we are suggesting in this legislation. The attitude from the Government—that plenty of long-established safeguards already exist, as the Minister said at the start of his contribution—is wrong. We have lots of regulations in PACE code A and other places that are clearly not always adhered to. Louise Casey has identified this as a problem, she has made a suggestion and we suggest putting it in the Bill, which I think is a reasonable response.
We know that stop and searches can go wrong when there is a communication failure from the officers carrying out the search. We welcome the changes announced in the Lords, although we do not know exactly what the changes to PACE code A will be, or how or when they will happen. Our colleagues in the other place tried to add points about communication into the Bill and suggested increasing the seniority of the officer allowing a suspicionless stop and search, but both amendments were rejected. Baroness Casey suggests as a minimum that Met officers should be required to give their name, their shoulder number, the grounds for the stop and a receipt confirming the details of the stop. Lords motion A1 built on Louise Casey’s recommendations and attempted to add them to the legislation.
It is worth remembering that a recent report by Crest Advisory examining the experience of black communities nationally of stop and search found that 77% of black adults support the use of stop and search in relation to suspicion of carrying a weapon, but that less than half of those who have been stopped and searched felt that the police had communicated well with them or explained what would happen.
It would be helpful to understand whether the Minister agrees with Baroness Casey’s recommendations in full and, if he does not, whether he thinks she is wrong or believes that something else should be done instead. The Casey report was devastating, and Ministers have so far been unable to offer any solutions to make the reforms we need in policing. Here is an opportunity for the Minister to signal the Government’s intent to make those reforms. We have heard the warnings from former police officers that some of the powers in the Bill risk diminishing trust in public institutions. The Peel principles on policing by consent said that
“the police are the public and the public are the police”.
The Home Secretary said in her statement to the House on the Casey review:
“When it comes to changing the law or introducing any frameworks that are necessary, we in the Home Office will do that”.—[Official Report, 21 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 167.]
Here is a chance for the Home Secretary to keep her word. It will not change anything in terms of who can be stopped; it will just make the process more transparent and better for everyone. On the 30th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, wouldn’t that be a good thing to do? I urge Members across the House to back the Lords amendments and reject the Government’s motion tonight.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I find myself, I am afraid, in agreement with the Opposition spokesperson. I also support the Casey recommendations, based as they were on a horrifying report about the behaviour of the Met over the years. Let us be clear: no Government of any persuasion have managed to get the Met to behave—and not just the Met; other police forces, too—in a manner that is acceptable to the public, bearing in mind that there have been Governments of both orientations since Stephen Lawrence.
The second point I would make very quickly is that when the Home Secretary in 2010—my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), for those who do not remember—limited stop and search, she did not do so out of an excess of liberal sympathy. She did so because, at that point in time, stop and search was being used in such a way that it caused serious race relations problems in several parts of the country. That was because stop and search was largely targeted at stopping violence, and at that point—it may well still be true today—the perpetrators of knife crime and the victims of knife crime mostly came from minority communities. Although minority communities themselves were not happy about the operation of the system, they understood why it was there. That was a different order of magnitude from using suspicionless stop and search to control demonstrations.
Don’t get me wrong: I think that we should have some fairly fierce legislation—which we do have now—for dealing with people who deliberately destroy the lives of the public, or uproot and disrupt the lives of the public. I am a great believer in the right of demonstration, but I do not think it should go beyond a certain level. That is why I support the Lords amendment to put this provision on the face of the Bill.
To respond to the Minister’s question to the Opposition spokeswoman, we should turn the question on its head: why should it not be on the face of the Bill? After all, that would broadcast in clear terms what we want to happen. We want the police to behave in a respectful and careful manner when they use this power. Indeed, I am slightly surprised that the Lords amendments did not also include making sure that video footage from the body cameras was available, including to the lawyers of the people who were stopped and searched after the event, if need be.
I think this is a worthwhile amendment. As has been said, I think it is very much in line with the Casey report, and we as a Government have to set our minds to ensuring that every recommendation of the Casey report is put in place and to returning the Metropolitan police and other police forces to the level of public respect that we wish they had now.