Public Order Bill

Debate between Stella Creasy and Fiona Bruce

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I have spoken against that principle on a number of occasions in this place and I will come on to explain why.

The wording of new clause 11 could even catch those who are quietly praying, but when did it become against the law in this country to pray? Unfortunately, five councils have now defined protest as including the word “prayer”. During court proceedings, that has even been confirmed to include silent prayer. That is a grave development that we in this House, more than anyone, must stand against. Staggeringly, it would effectively mean criminalising the affairs going on within the privacy of an individual’s mind. Yet freedom of thought is an absolute, unqualified right. As the Minister for the Americas and the Overseas Territories said earlier today in response to the urgent question, peaceful protest is a “fundamental part” of UK society.

Whatever our individual views on abortion, we must stand against new clause 11. Otherwise, we risk opening the door to discrimination even more widely. Why not have buffer zones around political conferences? A young Hongkonger told me yesterday that when she attended the recent Conservative party conference, she was “scared” of accessing the conference centre because of the aggressive behaviour of political opponents around it, yet there is no suggestion of having buffer zones there, and nor should there be. As MPs, we would be aghast if we risked a fine and imprisonment simply for handing out a campaign leaflet containing our political views on the street and seeking to influence others at election time. No: new clause 11 is specifically targeted at those with faith-based views and we should be equally aghast at it.

Of course, harassment or intimidation around abortion clinics—or anywhere—has to be addressed, although in more than a quarter of a century of people quietly gathering around abortion clinics, there have been relatively few, if any, reports of that and there are already several pieces of legislation that could tackle it if needed. The Offences against the Person Act 1861, the Public Order Act 1986, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which was passed only this year, all provide sufficient powers to tackle harassment and intimidation. This addresses the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin): rather than creating new and unnecessary laws, the police’s and our efforts should be on ensuring that they and the prosecution use the powers that they already have.

This new clause goes further and potentially criminalises peaceable gatherings. Indeed, looking at the wording of the new clause, it is perfectly possible to see an argument being made that just one person standing alone quietly near a clinic could be guilty of the criminal offence proposed in it. Widely or poorly drafted legislation, as here, can have serious unintended consequences, as we have seen in recent years. During the pandemic, Rosa Lalor, a 76-year-old grandmother, was arrested, prosecuted and charged for nothing less than praying and walking outside an abortion centre. It took over a year before Merseyside police force dropped the charges, noting that her actions were completely within the law. For her, however, the punishment was the process, despite being completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

Too often, in recent years, the mere expression of unpopular viewpoints has been interpreted, or rather misinterpreted, as automatically being abusive or harassing under the Public Order Act 1986, due to the broad discretionary powers the police have. We must stand against this. We have seen numerous examples of street preachers and others arrested for nothing more than peacefully expressing traditional views in public. When arrested and prosecuted, it is very rare for this to lead to conviction, but by the time they are vindicated the damage is done to the individual subjected to a prolonged criminal process, to the public’s confidence in policing and, indeed, to freedom of speech. Such miscarriages of justice have an abiding chilling effect, leading many—indeed, many thousands of people—across our country today to self-censor deeply-held views, which is a problem far more widespread than is currently recognised and that will no doubt be exacerbated by new clause 11.

[Stella Creasy]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[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.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Stella Creasy and Fiona Bruce

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

Forgive me, but I have given way. I am conscious that other people want to speak in this debate. I understand the concerns of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, who is no longer here, but I genuinely believe that if we do not address the international obligations that we have—and that this legislation leaves us unable to address at the moment—we will continue to see these cases. We will continue to see the distress of women in Northern Ireland, and that will be a human rights issue.

There is a more fundamental point here, which the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs talked about: if we are prepared to jettison some human rights and say that they are not as important as others, that is the thin end of the wedge. Are we going to say that in Northern Ireland people will not have the same rights of freedom of expression, of protection from slavery and of protection from torture, and the same rights to life? Specific human rights, and specific international reports and obligations that we have been part of, are at the heart of this amendment. We will not be able to stand up and champion human rights in other parts of the world, because other countries will rightly turn to us and say, “Hang about, what about your own backyard? What are you doing there?”

I understand that, if it was not for the fact that we do not have an Assembly, this would absolutely not be the right way forward, but we do not have an Assembly and we will not have one any time soon. This is about a power of a statutory instrument; it is not about specifying what should be in that statutory instrument, so there is plenty of scope to address these issues. Medical guidelines have been prepared by campaigners in Northern Ireland, be they Alliance for Choice, the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, Together for Yes or those medical agencies.

There is a simple point here: each of us should want, in the work that we do at a national and international level, the same rights that we want for our own constituents. I would like every woman in Walthamstow to be able to have the choice to have a safe, legal and local abortion if she wants it. We all know that stopping people accessing abortion legally does not stop abortion. The cases where there have been prosecutions, where people have been killed and where we see online the stories of these women tell us that abortion is still happening for Northern Irish women, but right now that issue is being exported, rather than dealt with as an equalities issue. So I ask the Committee: how much longer are the women of Northern Ireland expected to wait? How much more are they expected to suffer before we speak up—the best of what this place does—as human rights defenders, not human rights deniers?

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I find myself in agreement with the concerns expressed by the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee about the far-reaching implications of new clause 10, which relates to abortion law changes in Northern Ireland but has implications for England and Wales, too. So I am against that proposal, and new clauses 11 and 12. This is not the time, nor the place, to be making such changes, which are of course completely unconstitutional, bearing in mind that devolution has ensured that abortion is an issue that Northern Ireland and its own Assembly have had authority to make decisions on for almost 100 years.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Stella Creasy and Fiona Bruce

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I understand that the hon. Lady’s concern is about a centralised curriculum. What does she make of her Government’s proposal to put gardening and composting on the national curriculum, as well as financial education and compound interest? Surely along with those two Cs we should also put consent.

[Fiona Bruce]

I am vice-chair of the all-party group on financial education for young people and I hugely welcome that proposal. I think it is an essential ingredient of enabling our young people to mature and face society when they leave school.

At present we do not have a centralised curriculum, and I cannot support proposals for the centralisation of the curriculum as suggested by the champions of the new clause. Research demonstrates that children and young people want to receive their initial sex and relationships education from their parents and families, with school and other adults building on that later. I am not naive and I fully appreciate that many parents do not fulfil their parental duties in that respect. That is why it is essential that we have sex education in senior schools, and I do not deny the importance of that for one minute, for many of the reasons mentioned by the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) when she introduced the new clause.