Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

If I could make some progress, I was going to come to that matter. There has been some concern about the definitions of particular phrases in the Bill, and we recognise that some of the terminology has caused concern. Many of the terms used, such as “alarm” and “distress”, are precedented and well understood by the police and courts, but we accept that the term “serious unease” is novel in legislation. To address those concerns, the Government amendments in lieu remove that as a trigger for the power to attach noise-related conditions to protests.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the Minister for taking so many interventions. By taking out the word “serious” as well as “unease”, there is a danger that we also take out “serious alarm” or “serious distress” and replace it with just “alarm” or “distress”. On one hand the Home Secretary is making a welcome concession on “serious unease” but she also appears to be watering down the trigger so that “alarm” and “distress” is enough.

[Kit Malthouse]

As I said, those terms are well understood by the police and courts. They are interpreted, and have been over many years in other circumstances, and we do not believe there is room for misinterpretation. This is about placing conditions and balancing rights. We hope and believe that in the small number of circumstances where it is appropriate for the police to apply conditions, just as for the tiny number of protests that currently attract conditions in this country, this is a proportionate, modest power for the Lords to put in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Front-Bench spokesperson for the Scottish National party, Stuart C. McDonald.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

The SNP remains totally opposed to the dreadfully drafted and totally excessive restrictions on protest contained in part 3 of the Bill, and we do so for all the many reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) has set out in previous stages, so I can be relatively brief.

The truth is that the Government know they have comprehensively lost the arguments on this, so they are left reassuring us that the powers will not actually be used and that noisy protest will not be banned altogether, and providing a hotchpotch of examples, many of which would already be caught by existing public order provisions. The Minister even made reference to discos. While I would love there to be a fundamental right to disco, or whatever the modern terminology is, that is not remotely comparable to a protest and the fundamental right to protest.

We just cannot legislate in this way. We cannot hand over draconian powers on the basis that Home Office Ministers reassure us that they or the police will use these powers exceptionally, rather than ubiquitously. Any restriction on fundamental rights must be carefully justified, carefully set out and carefully circumscribed, but the protest provisions in the Bill are as far from careful as could be imagined. They remain vague, confusing, opaque and incredibly subjective, and they trigger police powers to intervene in protest at an unbelievably inappropriate and low level. They make it hard for people to understand what they might or might not be able to do.

For the reasons that the shadow Minister set out, the powers are verging on the absurd. We have seen Ministers being drawn into debates about whether the presence of double-glazing might impact on whether a protest could be subject to restrictions. Even this evening, we have been drawn into debate about next-door neighbours and whether a protest at the Russian embassy would be okay if the next-door neighbour was a bunch of officers, but might not be okay if it was an old folks’ home. That is the level of absurdity.

All of these powers are dreadful from the point of view of the rule of law, of human rights and of democracy itself. On the other hand, the powers might also prove to be a poisoned chalice for police forces, which will struggle to justify any of their decision making on objective grounds or to defend themselves against charges that they are being political in their decision making, and that will be true whether or not they actually use the powers.

As the shadow Minister said, it is welcome that the concept of serious unease is being removed, but the point I made to the Minister was not properly addressed. The expression in the Bill as it stands is

“serious unease, alarm or distress”.

The Government are not just taking out the word “unease”; they are taking out the word “serious” alongside it. That means that the threshold is not “serious” alarm or “serious” distress, but just “alarm or distress”. As I said in my intervention, the Home Secretary has made a concession on the one hand, but she is taking much more away with the other, and that point has not been answered in any way, shape or form.

Frankly, these provisions are beyond saving. They are a botched, rushed job, just so that the Home Secretary could say that she was doing something about certain protests that she did not like—no matter to her, it seems, that her legislation significantly impacts on the fundamental right to protest more generally. There is nothing left for it but to continue to insist that the whole lot comes out. The Government’s arguments have fallen to pieces, and I regard it as dreadful that they continue to try to bulldoze these provisions through Parliament. We will vote against the relevant Government motion to disagree, and I hope that the other place will continue to resist these utterly unjustifiable restrictions on the right to protest.

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

I welcome the journey that the Minister is on, because a week ago he told us that he was not convinced and needed to see more evidence. A week later, he has obviously been doing some reading, because now he wants to have more conversations and go further, faster. This evening, we want to help him keep up with the rest of us who have been looking at how we can tackle violence against women and to see what can be done. I welcome the words of the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) on that.

When toxic masculinity is on show at the Oscars, in our streets and in our homes, all of us want to tackle it and none of us wants to condone it. The challenge with the Minister’s argument is that it is still inconsistent. As he admitted last week, misogyny drives crimes against women, but he is also saying that he does not know what he can do to help it. He just cannot make up his mind. It is almost like he is gaslighting himself. He needs to clarify whether he thinks things can change, as the sentencing guidelines already say. In this country, we can already recognise where hostility towards someone’s sex drives crimes. Does he think that is a good or a bad thing, as the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon said? The amendments before him from the Lords, and the amendment in lieu that I have tabled to try to help him find that compromise across both Houses, would tackle it.

Does the Minister think that the 17 police forces that are already doing this practice and that recognise—including the chief constables who have this said publicly—that it helps improve victim confidence and the data they have to tackle crimes, are doing the right thing? If he does not, surely he wants to stop them doing it, because it is wasting police time. Which is it? There are inconsistencies in his arguments.

The Minister talks about the Law Commission, and I am sure it is delighted to hear what he said, because this Government’s track record on the Law Commission is not very good. Since 2010, 17 Law Commission reviews have been accepted, but not implemented, and a further 16 have had no response at all. Of the 62 that have been done, only half of them have been implemented.

There is no argument here about making misogyny a hate crime, like it is some lump of plastic. This is about recognising, as the Minister did last week, where crimes are driven and what we can do about it, just as we have recognised where hatred of someone’s religion or racial background is driving crimes, and we have sent that message. His argument is about why that does not need to be statutory, but he is making an argument that it does need to be statutory, because a year ago this place was promised that that would happen. Pledges were made at the Dispatch Box.

Indeed, Ministers in the other place wrote to me to confirm those pledges. On 17 March 2021, the first commitment was made. On 8 July, we were told that the Home Office had met stakeholders to make it happen, and on 15 November, we were told there was a consultation. In the Minister’s letter to me, he said:

“You noted my commitment that the Home Office will ask the police to collect crimes of violence against the person”

in this way, and he confirmed that the police data requirements group would be taking that forward and that the details would be rolled out in May to meet the timetable of autumn last year, yet it has not happened. That is clearly an argument for making sure that where this good policing practice is already happening, it is extended across the country so that women are not facing a policing lottery as to whether their police forces are doing it.

The argument the Minister is making is precisely why we need to put this matter on the statute book and back those chief constables and 17 police forces that are already doing it. It is why we need to say to the 673,000 women who, according to House of Commons Library figures, reported being a victim of a personal crime in the past year, but did not come forward to the police, that we will learn what we can do to make them feel safe. It is why we should learn from the other place and Baroness Newlove, Baroness Bertin and Lord Russell, and Baroness Kennedy and the Scottish report, that deeds, not words matter.

The Minister says he recognises that the other place is frustrated by the slow pace of change. He says he is looking for the evidence. I encourage him to look at the independent evaluation that shows very clearly that including misogyny in hate crime helps policing and helps women come forward. We have to stop blaming women for not coming forward for crimes or saying that somehow we understand why they are cautious, and we have to start looking at what works.

We also have to stop hiding behind the Law Commission, because yet another review is not the commitment to deeds that women in this country want. Finding that only certain crimes can be motivated by misogyny does not recognise disabled women being targeted for fraud or Muslim women being targeted for both Islamophobic and misogynistic attacks. The Minister knows that the other place will not wear this any longer, and neither will women in this country. I urge him to do the right thing and accept the amendment in lieu. Let us get on with making sure that every woman is protected from misogyny in this country.