Public Order Act 2023

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Here we are again. I have made more than 20 speeches on public order legislation over the last two years, through the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and the recently passed Public Order Bill. No MP has debated public order more times than me. Ministers are here one day and gone the next, as always with this ever-revolving door of weak government, but I have been here and I am weary of a Government who have refused to listen to hon. Members on their own side, to hon. Members on the Opposition Benches, to the public and to many current and former police officers. Instead, they have chosen headlines over common sense, party interest over freedom, and strict limitations over liberty.

Then again, perhaps none of that is surprising given the extraordinary rhetoric coming out of the National Conservatism conference over the last couple of days. Even the readers of “ConservativeHome” have described it as utter nonsense. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), astonishingly, admitted to his party’s own gerrymandering through voter ID at elections. The Government appear to be fighting democracy, whether on voter ID or unnecessary restrictions on the right to protest. We are all watching on as the Conservative party loses its way in real time.

Our essential case on public order has always been this: in his review of protest powers, the inspector, Matt Parr, called for a minor reset in the balance between police powers and protester powers. That followed protests that involved people attaching themselves to infrastructure and gluing themselves to roads. Of course, protesters must not grind our infrastructure to a halt or put themselves or others in danger by gluing themselves to motorways. The police must take swift and robust action when people break the law. The legal system must respond and ensure there is appropriate punishment.

We did not disagree that a minor reset might be required. To that end, we suggested new powers to make it easier to take out injunctions, which the Government rejected. We tabled amendments that aimed to give the police better training, as the inspector recommended, better understanding of the law and a more sophisticated response to long protests. We worked to minimise the negative impact of serious disruption prevention orders after our efforts to remove them entirely did not pass.

We won important votes in this place, such as to amend the Public Order Bill so that buffer zones of 150 metres around abortion clinics are now law. That is a vital step forward that protects those going through a potentially traumatic experience from harassment, unlike in Scotland where the SNP is failing to make that a priority, and recently disbanded its own Government working group on the issue. Perhaps women in Scotland might benefit if it focused less on political stunts and more on using its actual powers.

We put forward measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill on vaccine clinics to ensure that people could not be targeted by harassment and intimidation. We supported new protections introduced into the Public Order Bill in the House of Lords for journalists reporting on protests, because a free press is a hallmark of a democratic society, as is the right to protest.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I support a lot of the items on the list of measures the hon. Lady has read out. Would she be prepared to add one more? Although protesters have a right to have their voice heard, that does not involve a right to make a huge amount of noise at enormously high volume, incessantly over substantial periods in the public space, any more than I would have a right to shout her down in this House if she had not given way to me.

[Sarah Jones]

We have debated at great length the right balance—when protest becomes too much and against the law, and when it does not. When people are shouting, as they do all the time in Parliament Square, we find it annoying, but it is their right to make noise, so long as they are not infringing people’s rights. We debated that endlessly during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

Considering the scope and low bar of most of the powers in the Public Order Act, reporting on their potential misuse or wrong application is even more important. We set out again and again the many laws that already exist to ensure that the police can act: obstruction of a highway, criminal damage, conspiracy to cause criminal damage, trespass, aggravated trespass, public nuisance, conspiracy to cause public nuisance, breach of the peace, and intention to prevent another person from going about his lawful business.

We looked carefully at all the measures the Government suggested. Would they solve the problem that they were introduced to fix? In the majority of cases, the answer was no. It was not the minor reset called for by His Majesty’s inspectorate, but a root and branch upheaval—a serious disruption to our protest laws. We voted against the Public Order Bill again and again. We suggested many amendments, we supported Lords amendments and we agreed with hon. Members on all sides of the House, but still the Government forced their measures through.

Yesterday, a former Cabinet Minister told the Tory fringe that

“the surrender to the blob risks exposing the Government to ridicule.”

He was perhaps missing the point. The Government have not succumbed to a blob; the Government are the blob. It is the Government who are taking away our freedom, circumventing democracy by passing laws through secondary legislation—as they did just before the coronation—and threatening to lock people up for having string in their bags.

We expect poor behaviour from the Government, but I am disappointed with the SNP. During the passage of the Bill, SNP Members made some principled arguments and engaged seriously with its content, but today is nothing more than a political stunt. SNP Members know full well that the Public Order Act does not apply in large part to Scotland. As the Minister said, the SNP and the Scottish Parliament passed a legislative consent motion on the Public Order Bill agreeing to the small number of parts that affect Scotland.

SNP Members know that they do not have the numbers to repeal or amend this legislation next week. It is just a stunt. Understandably, SNP Members are on a mission to distract from the spectacle of police digging up the former First Minister’s lawn, the talk of burner phones and clandestine camper vans, and the outrage of senior party figures being arrested. But we will not dignify this stunt with our support.

What would Labour do with this mess? We will not introduce legislation for the sake of it and ignore the real problems, like this Government have done. We would do three things. Our first priority would be to make our streets safe again: cut knife crime, halve violence against women and girls, and put 13,000 police back on our streets. That will be the golden thread running through everything we do.

Secondly, we will have to untangle the mess the Government have made, look at the raft of unnecessary legislation this Government have brought in, and work with the police to make sure that that delicate balance between people and the police is maintained. We will want to change suspicionless stop and search, where anyone can be stopped for any reason just because a protest could be happening nearby, and intention to lock on, where anyone with a bicycle lock, a ball of string or luggage straps can be arrested just because a protest could be happening nearby, as happened at the coronation. We will look at serious disruption prevention orders, where someone can have seriously restricted conditions imposed on them before they commit any offence at all, which is the same way the Government treat violent criminals and terrorists. We will want to keep buffer zones around abortion clinics, which the Government resisted for years, and the new measures to protect journalists.

Thirdly and finally, our approach to the police will not be the hands-off, push-blame-out and take-no-leadership approach we see under the Tories, who cut 20,000 police and were surprised when the arrest rate plummeted. We will have an active Home Office that enables our police to do their jobs to the highest standards, with no more excuses.

There is a careful balance between the right for people to protest and gather, and the right of others to go about their daily business. It is paramount that we protect public infrastructure, our national life and our communities from serious disruption, just as it is paramount that we protect the freedom to protest.

The coronation of King Charles III, which I was privileged to attend, involved the largest police effort ever undertaken, and I pay tribute to the police officers who ensured that so many people were able to safely enjoy such a historic occasion. However, there were problems with a handful of people being arrested under the new law and held for hours, who had been trying to protest or even trying to attend the coronation. We had warned the Government again and again that their measures were too broad, and it would seem we were right.

Some protests go too far—I make no apologies for saying that. To see a painting splattered with paint: too far. To see ambulances blocked on roads: too far. The Labour party has always stood with the people of this country in saying that such disruptive activities are unacceptable. It is our job as legislators to come up with proposals that solve problems, not create them.

It is also our job to be serious about governing and not to throw political stunts. We refuse to be drawn into the political games of two parties that are paralysed by crises of their own making. On every single one of the 20 or more occasions that I have stood in the Chamber to debate these Bills, Labour has demonstrated our serious approach to legislation. We do not take our responsibilities as the Opposition lightly, and we will not take our responsibilities lightly in government.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. and learned Lady, for whom I have a great deal of respect. I am constantly astonished by Members in this House who make claims based on no evidence whatsoever. This idea of political pressure is a very good left-wing slogan, but there is no evidence whatsoever behind it. If the best witness for that is Sir Peter Fahy, I need to spend some time with the hon. and learned Lady telling her what a disastrous chief constable he was for Greater Manchester and for my area. That would be a lengthy conversation. If he is the advocate for political pressure and that is it, then, clearly, there is no evidence.

The other thing that Members in this House seem constantly able to do, even though they were not witness to anything that happened on coronation day, is to speak with absolute authority, as alleged witnesses to what was going on. Not one person in this House saw the circumstances that led to the arrest of those six people. Yet hon. Members, especially on the Opposition Benches, seem to be imagining that they were there.

The reason the police exist and they enforce legislation is that it is for the police to investigate and the courts to judge. It is not for politicians to involve themselves and to make statements on the basis of information and evidence that they do not have. Not one Opposition Member was witness to what happened on coronation day.

[Sarah Jones]

rose—

[James Daly]

Well, if the hon. Lady was a witness to those six arrests, I look forward to hearing from her.

[Sarah Jones]

Obviously I was not a witness to those six arrests; I was in the abbey—with the Commissioner, as it happens. I just wanted to point out that we make laws in this place that affect what our police do. That is our fundamental job, and our argument all along has been that the laws passed here have put the police in a very difficult situation, as we saw, which led to the Met’s having to apologise for what happened in that very small number of cases—the vast majority of cases were absolutely fine, but in that small number of cases there was a problem, and the police have admitted that.

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[James Daly]

My right hon. Friend makes the point. Sometimes I think I am listening to a fantasy world in here. Effectively, what the Opposition are saying is that they would allow anybody to play music at any level for any length of time as long as they had the morality of the argument on their side. The fact that it would cause disruption and drive our fellow citizens demented does not matter. Anything that is done, as long as it is morally acceptable to the left, is justifiable. If protesters were arrested in respect of a Brexit demonstration, or a demonstration by someone on the right, none of them would stand up for that. It is the left-wing playlist.

We heard from the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). She went through the alphabet of the greatest hits of left-wing protests—all of them. That is what it is about. It is about undermining the police’s ability to control protest on the left because the left discovered, through middle-class, self-indulgent narcissists in organisations such as Just Stop Oil, what they could do. They saw a way around things: “We will find the part of the law where we can get away with things. And what will we do? We will start gluing ourselves to motorways. We will start indulging in behaviour that is incredibly difficult for the police to police with the powers that they have.”

They saw that gap in the market for left-wing protests: “We can do this. We can cause as much disruption to people as possible. We don’t care, because we’re on the left; we’re on the side of the angels. We don’t care about whether people can get to school; we don’t care about whether people can get to their exams; we don’t care about whether people can get to hospital, because it doesn’t matter. Because our self-appointed morality means everything. That is it. It means everything.”

[Sarah Jones]

I think perhaps the hon. Gentleman has gone in the wrong direction. He means to be at the National Conservatism conference rather than in this debate.

[James Daly]

I know that you want to hear more of this speech, Mr Deputy Speaker, so let us get back to the proposal before this Parliament from a party that the legislation essentially does not affect. It seems odd that a party that has ruined the education system in Scotland and done various other such things does not want to talk about some of those fundamental issues for their constituents, but wants to talk about things that affect English constituents. I am glad in one sense, because it is at least an acceptance from SNP Members that we are one country—one United Kingdom—and that these matters should be important to us all. The Unionist is coming out in them all.

We are talking here about repeal. We are using up time in this place to debate the repeal of an Act that has been in place for, what, two or three weeks? By any measure of ludicrous debates, that is stretching it to the limit. What are we talking about within the Act that is so appalling, Mr Gale?

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[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I thank all Members who have spoken in this SNP debate on the repeal of the Public Order Act 2023. I particularly want to mention the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and my hon. Friends the Members for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) and for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), but where on earth were the Back Benchers from the Labour party? They are supposed to be the official Opposition, but perhaps we should not be surprised that the party that claimed to be opposed to this clampdown on the right of people to speak out and then U-turned when the polls said that we might actually be able to do something about it seems to have clamped down on its own MPs. No doubt those Labour MPs who have been—

[Sarah Jones]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

No, as the hon. Lady refused to take my interventions.

No doubt those Labour MPs who have been consistent and committed in their principled opposition to this Act have been reminded that they are up for reselection soon. What about the rights of their constituents to be represented? What on earth has happened to the Labour party?

These are turbulent and troubling times. I doubt anyone in this place expected much of what we have witnessed in the last five years. From the global pandemic to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, from the mammoth surge in our constituents’ energy bills to the unprecedented rise in inflation, or from the erosion of our shorelines to the erosion of our human rights and liberties under Conservative rule, nobody could have predicted the extent of even that, but we can decide how we respond to it.

As a republican, perhaps the only positive to come from the King’s coronation for me is that the police’s use of this Act and other recent policing legislation has shone a light on exactly what these pieces of legislation really mean for people. The world watched on as members of Republic were shamefully arrested for holding pre-arranged, peaceful and lawful protests. The world must have been aghast, too, when three volunteers from Westminster Council’s Night Stars team were arrested while handing out rape alarms to women the night before the coronation. The police could do both of those things because this legislation hands them almost a free rein. This Conservative Government were hoping that might have gone unnoticed by the masses, but the coronation has ensured that the world now knows just how oppressive the UK has become.

The Public Order Bill was cobbled together when the Government did not get their way with their long list of 11th-hour amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The House of Lords defeated those amendments. I am no fan of that institution, because I believe in elected representation and I do not believe in gifting power to friends, but the Government do, and they should have accepted that the system they support does not always go in their favour.

Anyway, the Government could not accept that, so they simply repackaged those amendments and within months moulded them into this badly drafted mess. It is not the only example: this is the Conservative Government’s new way of circumventing their version of democracy when they do not get their way. When the legislation is so bad it cannot get through, it is temporarily shelved and brought back in the hope that we have forgotten about it or do not have the energy to fight it. I can see why they might think that about the Labour party, as it has ably demonstrated for us today, but the SNP will always have the energy to fight for our constituents, because this pattern of behaviour is making an absolute mockery of the legislative process, and, worse still, a mockery of this place and our time here. It is also evading parliamentary scrutiny and procedure. For months, we argued that a definition of serious disruption must be written into the legislation and we were told that the Home Secretary would define it for us. The House can imagine how much reassurance that gave me. A day after Royal Assent, the Home Secretary introduced legislation by statutory instrument. Those regulations lowered the threshold for serious disruption from “significant” to simply “more than minor”, which does not fit with the descriptions we have heard from Tory Members today. Those regulations covered proposals that had already been rejected by peers across all parties during the Bill’s passage.

The haste by which the Acts were given assent and enacted meant that, when they hit the streets, the police were given zero time to train frontline officers. That is not fair on those officers. I remember seeing incredible footage last year. Officers arrested a well-known-to-us and pretty noisy protester outside this place under the policing Act just days after its enactment. It was ludicrous: when the protester rightly questioned why he was being arrested, those officers were forced to take out a laptop to look up the relevant legislation. Liberty, which is probably the most foremost civil liberties organisation in the UK, called the combination of the policing Act on public protest and the use of facial recognition technology a “toxic cocktail of measures”. It is not wrong.

For the majority of people, the right to protest is one of the few tools left at their disposal to push for change. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central, in an excellent speech, listed numerous peaceful protests that she has joined here. The Minister listed all the deliberate planned disruptions that he said people are sick of. Equally, I could list all the deliberate planned Tory policies that they are sick of and should have the right to protest against. We will all face serious disruption when the ice cap melts—a point not lost on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk. How embarrassing to be called out by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights when apparently Britain used to be this bastion of human rights. How the mighty have fallen.

I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for her support for this today. In answer to her question, the legislative consent motion that the Scottish Parliament supported was for one small clause, and she knows that the Scottish Government are not asked for legislative consent unless the measure is specific to Scotland. I can be clear that the SNP utterly opposes the Public Order Act.

One of the most egregious parts of the Act is suspicionless stop and search, which the Labour Party was vehemently opposed to, and rightly so. The right for the police to stop one of our constituents and search them without any suspicion of wrongdoing is better suited to Putin’s Russia than it is here. Yes, the blame for it lies fairly and squarely with the Conservative Government, but people expect to be able to rely on the main Opposition to oppose, and sometimes stop the governing party when that is called for. They expect to be able to rely on the Labour party to fight for their human rights and fight against racism—make no mistake, the huge disparity in the number of black people being stopped and searched is racist—but where was the Labour party when it came to the final hurdle? It caved, and it de-prioritised suspicionless stop and search.

We all know in here that Opposition parties often work much more closely together than the public realise. I want to try to explain what happened to people who might not know much about the internal machinations of Parliament. The SNP had an understanding with the Labour party that we did not need to call a vote on suspicionless stop and search because it would do it. Unlike in the Scottish Parliament, here, every party can only call votes on one or two parts of a Bill—I am saying this for members of the public. Because Labour told us that it would call the vote on it, we did not. Guess what? Labour did not either, so we lost the chance to remove suspicionless stop and search from the legislation at that stage.

Labour colleagues later said that it had been a mix-up at their end, so I said nothing publicly, despite being bitterly disappointed at the wasted opportunity, because I thought that we were on the same side. I thought that we could fight this dreadful piece of legislation together. The Labour MP in question assured me that there would be opportunities to tackle it in the Lords and Labour did duly table amendments, but again it fell at the final hurdle and caved in.

Now that the polls are finally turning and there is a chance Labour will get into power next year, we are told that it will not repeal the Act because it cannot unpick legislation and its party leader says he does not care if their policies sound like Conservative policies. How can Labour Members look their constituents in the eye and say that, yes, they will allow police forces under a Labour Government to carry out intrusive searches on anyone even near a public protest for no good reason? This is not a debating society and they are not supposed to be simply a change of management. This is Parliament. This is where we can and should make radical changes. If they are not interested, why are they even here?

I will end with a warning for both main parties in here. We are here to get independence for Scotland and, mark my words, we will get it. They are both utterly opposed to the people of Scotland making their own decisions, but if they keep stifling the right of the people of Scotland to protest against the decisions they make on their behalf, they will find more and more of them turn to us and they will make it a whole lot easier for people to vote for independence, whenever the next opportunity arises.

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[Tom Tugendhat]

I won’t, thank you. As the hon. Gentleman spoke for as much time as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), I am sure he will give me the few moments I have to close.

This is about whether a few people can use disruption, instead of allowing many to associate, to express their views and to just go about their business as they have every right to do. It is absolutely essential that we stick to that point because that is exactly why the then Scottish Justice Secretary Keith Brown—I am still rather a fan of his, actually, but I know I am probably unique in that in this Chamber—supported it. He welcomed it and agreed it. As a former royal marine, he knows about order and discipline, so I am delighted that he did so. He welcomed it because he knows that protest is absolutely legitimate, but disruption and the use of disruption to silence others, to stop people going about their business and to dissuade others from expressing their views is not.

That is really quite something, but I suppose the main point of the debate is not really about protest at all, is it? Here, I am slightly drawn to the hon. Member for Croydon—the one opposite me, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), rather than the one who sits next to me, the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp). She pointed out correctly that this is really—

[Sarah Jones]

There are three of us!

[Tom Tugendhat]

Three of you. Well, there we go, aren’t I lucky?

The hon. Lady pointed out correctly that this debate is not about protest at all; it is actually about distraction. It is about distracting people in Scotland and across these islands from what we are really seeing here, which is a Scottish Nationalist party that has lost its way. It is talking about protest because it does not want to talk about policing. When I go to Gartcosh, I see the extraordinary efforts of the British security services in all their different ways, whether Police Scotland, MI5, the different elements of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or the National Crime Agency working together. I see an extraordinary panoply of officers who are doing their best for the country in ways that inspire huge respect for anybody who has the pride and security of our nation at heart.

However, every time I go, one thing comes up from the Police Scotland officers—fine individuals led by a very impressive chief constable. Every time, they point out that, despite Barnett formulas and equal availability of cash—in fact, despite higher taxes—the number of police officers in Scotland is going down. In England and Wales, it is going up. Crime in England and Wales is going down but, sadly, in Scotland crime is going up. It is not just about criminal justice or the ability of our fellow citizens across these islands to live and enjoy their lives freely without fear of persecution or being attacked by fellow citizens or others—it is across the board.

Despite well over a decade of absolute rule in Holyrood, the SNP has let down people in Scotland time and again. Education results are down, avoidable deaths are up, poorest student numbers are down and taxes are up. Again and again, a catalogue of failure and a pattern of wasted opportunity, wasted money and wasted lives are ruining opportunities for people across our islands.

I have been told several times today that this debate is relevant to the SNP because there is a small element of possibility, through the British Transport police, that connects it to Scotland. I have also been told that it is relevant because Scottish people can come down and protest in Westminster. It is also true that people across the whole of the United Kingdom have had the great benefit over hundreds of years of Scotland’s huge successes: the Scottish enlightenment, the great universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the huge opportunities of the industrial and economic revolution that came out of Scotland. They have enriched and empowered us all.

It is right that we as British citizens hold the SNP to account for its failure in letting down all the British people across these islands, because it is not just in Scotland that the failure is felt. As a Unionist, I can say passionately that I feel that failure across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is absolutely unacceptable to be silent when we see Scottish people being so ill served by such a failed Administration.

Let me come back to the Public Order Act—[Interruption.] To great cheers from the SNP Benches. The Act was passed and then saw one of the greatest moments of assembly in London that we have seen in many years. Many people protested peacefully. Many people said “Not my King”, although constitutionally that is an odd statement in a monarchy. Many people were able to express their views peacefully and freely. That does not really parallel to any of the countries that the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) cited, but it points to the extraordinary liberty that our officers of the law have managed to secure our great nation. It points to the absurdity of this debate.