Public Order Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Sarah Jones and Rupa Huq

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sarah Jones and Rupa Huq

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

10. What steps he is taking to promote human rights in discussions with his counterparts in other countries.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

11. What steps he is taking to promote human rights in discussions with his counterparts in other countries.