Public Order Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Charles Walker

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). Our view remains that, despite the best efforts of the other place, the Bill continues to represent a draconian and utterly unjustified attack on protest rights. It is fair to acknowledge that the Government have given some ground, but it is far from enough, so we will vote against a number of the Government’s motions to disagree.

Let me deal first with no-suspicion stop and search, in clause 11. It is horribly ironic that as part of a Bill which the Home Office claims—unconvincingly—is designed to tackle “dangerous and highly disruptive” tactics, the Home Office itself is turning to one of the most dangerous and highly disruptive police tactics: suspicionless stop and search. It is a tactic that achieves next to nothing, yet causes considerable harm, including shocking racial disparities—a fact which I do not think the Government have properly acknowledged during the course of the Bill’s passage.

The profoundly negative impact of stop and search on individuals and on community faith in the police came across loud and clear to me as a member of the Home Affairs Committee when we heard evidence as part of our “The Macpherson Report: Twenty Years On” inquiry. Nobody with reasonable knowledge of the Macpherson report, numerous subsequent inspection reports, or the Home Affairs Committee report could responsibly think that expanding no-suspicion stop and search is a sensible way to go, or the answer to any of our problems. Our Committee report warned of the dangers of such search powers resulting in injustice and undermining the legitimacy that is fundamental to the model of policing by consent. In doing so, we echoed earlier inspectorate reports and the words of the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who in 2014 spoke about the huge damage done to the relationship between the police and the public when innocent people are stopped and searched for no good reason.

Similarly, when looking at the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights—we will hear from its Chair, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), shortly—objected to these powers. We fully support the Joint Committee’s conclusions on the inherent risk of arbitrary and discriminatory use, and the point that post-exercise accountability is simply not enough. The Committee rightly highlighted that such powers have been used only for really significant and serious offences, such as terrorism or serious violence. Now, the Government want to use them for non-violent activities that are only just now being made criminal offences. The question is: what comes next? It is a very, very slippery slope and a totally inappropriate use of such powers.

The trigger for the powers is also ridiculously low: it could be the possibility that someone somewhere is seriously annoying or inconveniencing somebody else—the public nuisance offence—or that somebody somewhere could lock on to a fence or a gate in a way that is capable of causing more than minor disruption to two people. Suddenly, the whole neighbourhood can be searched in the name of stopping that serious annoyance or the more than minor disruption for two people. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden quoted the police officer who told His Majesty’s inspectorate that

“a little inconvenience is more acceptable than a police state”.

That is absolutely spot-on. In short, it is a totally ludicrous proposal of dubious consistency with human rights law. It is similarly ludicrous and disproportionate that the penalty will put at risk of imprisonment completely innocent people who simply challenge an officer over an asserted use of a blanket power. That is a dangerous road to go down.

Turning to serious disruption prevention orders, we acknowledge again that the Government have come some way in diluting these highly objectional orders made otherwise than on conviction, but we remain of the view that the whole idea of SDPOs is utterly Kafkaesque and threatens an unjustified infringement on the right to protest of huge numbers of people each and every year. We support the critique provided by Lord Anderson in the other place. It is not long since terrorism prevention and investigation measures were reluctantly introduced, which see significant infringements of a person’s liberty without the use of a criminal court to protect the public from a risk of terrorism. Recently, this House gave cautious support for state threat prevention and investigation measures, but the application of similar ideas, not for the purposes of countering terrorism or espionage, but in the field of protest, is utterly disproportionate and unnecessary. The nature of the SDPO is less defined and lacks similar oversight, limitations or protections compared even with TPIMs or STPIMS, and that is extraordinary. The possibility of a prison sentence for a breach is ridiculous, and the trigger for the imposition of an SDPO is many times lower. Again, the question is: where next? It is a slippery slope indeed. The police do not ask for these powers, and the whole notion should be removed from the Bill.

Finally, we support new clause 1, which seeks to clearly define the meaning of serious disruption and put an appropriate threshold on it. That definition is crucial for a number of other offences and powers. The Government amendment in lieu puts in place so low a threshold that we would prefer no definition at all. If this Government want serious harm simply to be “more than minor”, that triggers all sorts of crazy and unacceptable consequences. Crimes could be committed simply because two people or an organisation had to face moderate or even moderate to minor disruption. Frankly, it is such a wishy-washy low bar that the Bill would be better off with no definition at all. Our view remains that this whole Bill is rotten, overblown, unwelcome and a dangerous threat to human rights, perhaps a bit like the Government themselves. It is a dreadful attack on rights, and it is also dreadful that the constitution allows it to happen. Anything that waters it down is welcome, but in reality the whole Bill should go altogether.

[Sir Charles Walker]

I rise in support of Lords amendments 6 and 20 and to urge the Government not to strike them out. I received some excellent briefings, as many hon. and right hon. Members did, from Big Brother Watch and Liberty, supporting the arguments that will be made this afternoon as to why Lords amendments 6 and 20 should be retained, but actually I found an even better briefing in support of those amendments, and it was provided by the Whips Office.

In “Chamber Brief: Public Order Bill”, the Whips make the best argument possible for retaining these two amendments. If I may, I will just quickly read it out. The brief states:

“Lords amendment 6 removes clause 11: power to stop and search without suspicion from the Bill.”

That sounds an outstanding thing to do. It continues:

“This would mean senior police officers would not be able to give an authorisation allowing a constable in uniform to conduct a suspicion-less stop and search of a person or vehicle”.

That sounds excellent. I do not want suspicion-less stop and searches. It sounds extraordinary that anyone in this House would support suspicion-less stop and searches. In fact, I am surprised that the Whips in my party are requesting colleagues to strike out Lords amendment 6 in relation to suspicion-less stop and searches. When I am going about my business, I do not want to be stopped by a police officer and asked about my business. When I say to the police officer, “Why are you stopping me?”, it seems pretty odd that they can say, “I have not really got a reason to stop you, it is just that I can.”

The Whips’ brief, or the Government’s brief passed through the Whips Office, has a wonderful bit of doublespeak at the end of the paragraph. It states:

“Removal of this clause from the Bill reduces the tools available for the police to use when responding to serious disruption and the Government cannot support it”.

The police do not have these tools yet, so how can the amendment reduce the tools available? That does not make any sense at all.

In promoting their position that Lords amendment 20 should be struck out, the Government say:

“Lords amendment 20 removes clause 20: serious disruption prevention orders made otherwise than on conviction entirely from the Bill. This would mean that an order could not be made by a magistrates court on application by a relevant chief officer of police. It is important that the police have the power to seek an order on application, rather than solely at the point of conviction.”

I understand that, when someone is convicted, the police might have a point of view, but to begin placing restrictions on people before they have been convicted of any crime strikes me as somewhat unBritish.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Charles Walker

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh).

I should like to focus on knife crime prevention orders. If we are to reduce knife crime, we need to address the issue of drug usage. So many of the young people dying in our communities are dying as a result of the drugs trade—particularly cocaine. We need to consider increasing the costs attached to the usage of drugs, because drugs are historically extremely cheap at the moment; and if we want to attack usage, we have to increase the costs attached to recreational possession. The Minister said that she had looked at dealing with gangs—she had looked at knife crime prevention orders—but I think we need to look at drug prevention orders.

I think it is appalling that the chattering classes, wherever we may find them, whatever their politics, are wringing their hands about the deaths of mostly young men and children on our streets and then, moments later, too many of them are shoving a line of cocaine up their noses. That is not a line of white powder; that is a line of blood, and users of cocaine have blood on their hands—the lives of many, many young people and children.

So I say this to the Minister. Let us not build more prisons. Let us not lock more recreational users up—but let us hit them in the pocket. If they are caught in possession of cocaine, if they are responsible for the deaths on our streets, they should be fined accordingly. Let us say that you are a City trader on £300,000 a year, Minister: you should be fined a third of your income—a third of your income—if you are caught in recreational possession. Then users might start to think. If they do not care about the young lives being lost on the streets, they might start thinking about the consequences to themselves and their finances.

It may be a City trader. It may be a Member of Parliament. It may be a doctor. It may be a teacher. But if they are using cocaine, they are responsible for the tragedies that are happening daily, and I think they should pay—pay for recreational usage. They should pay by being fined a significant amount of their income the first time they are caught in possession, 50% the second time and 100% the third time. When we introduce laws like that, Minister, people may start taking this matter seriously, and we may actually start to address the mayhem, destruction and tragedy that is afflicting so many of our communities.

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

I start by confirming that the SNP has supported the Bill from the outset. As I previously acknowledged, the Government here have worked closely with the Scottish Government on many of its provisions, given that the Bill’s subject matter covers a range of both devolved and reserved competences. We remain of the view that the Bill will help tackle crimes involving corrosive substances, knives and certain firearms, so it continues to enjoy our support. However, we took—and continue to take—the view that more important tools include police funding, police numbers, cross-government working and a genuine switch to a public health approach to knife crime.

For today, though, the 95 amendments passed in the Lords focus on three specific areas. One set of changes proposed in the Lords does not convince us at all. One set of changes appears absolutely reasonable to us. Another group of amendments is welcome but still falls short of what was in the Bill at the outset. We are far from convinced on the knife crime prevention orders. As we have heard, things have moved very quickly, essentially closing down time for proper consideration, scrutiny and consultation. It is fair to recall, however, that this morning the Metropolitan Police Commissioner defended the proposals robustly before the Home Affairs Committee. I absolutely respect the fact that they are well-intentioned. I question, however, whether the reasoning behind them and the form they now take are well-founded. The all-party group on knife crime, excellently chaired by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), heard evidence from a series of groups who have significant concerns about the impact they will have. As we have heard, concerns have been raised by magistrates, local government, the Children’s Society, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, the Prison Reform Trust and the Police Federation.

Immigration

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Charles Walker

Monday 19th October 2015 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker.

Unlike just about every other speaker so far in the debate, I do not have an interest to declare in the sense that I am not a migrant and have no immigrant parents or grandparents, but I love and respect the opportunities and possibilities that migration can bring both to the migrants going in and out of the United Kingdom and to the United Kingdom and other countries benefiting from migrant flows.

I agreed with the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) when he said that we need a measured immigration debate, and we have had a pretty measured debate today. A lot of important points have been made by hon. Members, which I have noted down, although I might struggle to read my handwriting. I am also not convinced that the petition offers the best platform on which to conduct a debate. In that regard, I share the views of the hon. Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for St Albans (Mrs Main).

Last week we saw a measured debate in Westminster Hall on a topic that everyone would agree was appropriate and that arose from a petition on cannabis. Regardless of Members’ personal views, the petition was set out rationally, could in no way be described as offensive—never mind prejudiced or discriminatory—and dealt with a subject that had not, as far as I am aware, featured heavily in House of Commons business since the election. Taking all those factors into account and the number of signatories to the petition, few people would be critical of the fact that such a debate was held. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) said, however, I cannot say the same about the petition referred to in today’s motion.

I fully appreciate that the e-petition system is designed to ensure that MPs give consideration to topics that they might otherwise be reluctant to discuss, but, as it happens, immigration is not one such. As the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) pointed out, we had an immigration debate in Westminster Hall as recently as July and we debated the Immigration Bill extensively last week. A more important point is that we ought to apply some minimum standards to e-petitions. For reference, Scottish Parliament guidance on them includes requirements that petitions should not

“Contain any false statements...Include language that is offensive or inappropriate, for example swear words, insults, sarcasm or other language that could reasonably be considered offensive by a reader.”

Those are reasonable requirements, which the petition we are debating would borderline fail on accuracy and on whether a reasonable person would find the content offensive or inappropriate. The Petitions Committee might want to look again at how best to respond to such petitions—whether we can accept the subject matter that has attracted such high numbers, pick another petition on the same subject or simply hold a debate on immigration.

In any event, we are here, so I will respond briefly to each of the points in the e-petition. It states:

“Foreign citizens are taking all our benefits, costing…millions!”

As the hon. Members for St Albans and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) said, that is not true. The Department for Work and Pensions has set out a lot of data showing that 92.8% of all those receiving benefits were UK nationals when they first registered for a national insurance number, compared with only 2.2% who were EU nationals.

The petition also states that many immigrants

“are trying to change UK into a Muslim country!”

The hon. Member for St Albans spoke eloquently about why it is wrong to conflate the issues of migration and religion. My party would associate ourselves entirely with her comments about the contribution of Muslim citizens to this country. That aside, suffice it to say that among the estimated 8.5 million people living in Great Britain in 2015 who were born abroad, about 4.2 million were Christian, compared with 1.5 million who were Muslim and 1.5 million who had no religion. However, as I said, religion is not an issue that should be conflated with that of migration.

The petition also argues:

“If the Government does not do anything, then Britain may take in 12 million more immigrants by 2060.”

In fairness, one piece of EU modelling showed that to be a possible trend, but it is important to point out that the modelling was of one possible scenario and certainly not a prediction. The speech of, again, the hon. Member for St Albans reminded us that predictions on migration trends can go badly wrong very quickly. In any event, that is clearly not an argument for no immigration; it is one for managed migration, and the true debate is about how we go about achieving that.

Finally, the statement about

“footage of foreigners destroying British soldiers graves, which is a huge disrespect to us”

is absolutely irrelevant to what the petition seeks. As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out, that is a reference to the destruction of a cemetery near Benghazi in Libya by an armed militia group. It was hugely disrespectful, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes said, but as the House of Commons Library briefing note puts it:

“There is no suggestion in media reports that any of the militia involved were planning on migrating to the UK.”

There is really nothing to do with anything there.

I wonder whether, on reflection, many of the signatories to the petition will understand that the idea of no immigration is not a helpful one for a whole host of reasons. What if the petitioners themselves or members of their family fall in love and marry foreign nationals? Is the petition really saying that they should not be allowed to live in this country? Should the incredibly talented nurses, doctors and teachers mentioned by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, the ones who support our public services, be turned away? What about the international students who enhance the learning experience of those they study beside and who contribute to our universities intellectually and financially? What about the workers who are keen to take up jobs that we struggle to fill, or those with the skills that we lack and would take years to train? If we lose them, we lose jobs.

None of that is to ignore the challenges that migration can bring. Various hon. Members have referred to them. The answer is to deal with the challenges, such as in housing or public services, with careful strategies. Zero immigration is not a careful strategy, because of the harm rather than any help that it would do to our economy and our public services. Nor, however, is the existing net migration target a careful strategy, and it is not one that many people believe will ever be achieved.

A number of other hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, complained about the target including refugees in its total. I agree that having refugees as part of a net migration target is completely inappropriate. Equally, however, it is a mistake to include students, skilled workers or husbands and wives in the net migration target. What sort of Government policy can be thought to be a positive thing if it keeps my wife or partner from coming to this country?

Nothing from the Government so far has addressed how we deal with the challenges that migration brings. It is all about how we stop further levels of migration; it is not about how we deal with the challenges that have already arrived. The only suggestion that we have had so far in fact came from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, which was the migration fund.

As I understand it, a migration fund was set up under the previous Labour Government and lasted for a brief time—a charge on visa applications was redistributed to and used in parts of the country where, perhaps, public services were beginning to struggle and not to cope. Why was that fund abolished within months of the coalition Government taking office? Where are the strategies to deal with the issues raised by Government Members today?

I said in the immigration debate last week that my party acknowledges and is proud of, and prefers to emphasise, the tremendous contribution made by people who chose to make this country their new home. They make contributions to our public services, our economy, our culture and, most importantly to many of our citizens, our family lives.

Healthy population growth is important to Scotland’s economy. Some hon. Members have already mentioned the role that migration can play in tackling demographic challenges, so the Scottish Government’s economic strategy sets out to match average European population growth during 2007 to 2017 with the support of both increased healthy life expectancy and migration.

Migration can be part of the solution to the challenges we face. We will campaign for Government policy that reflects the needs and circumstances of Scotland’s economy and, indeed, those of the whole of the United Kingdom. We want a Government that recognise and are up front about the fact that migration is an important part of our future.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

We have about an hour left. In the event that the two remaining Front-Bench Members feel that they need to take all that time, can I ask them to divide it between them? I also remind the Minister that Mr Scully will need two minutes at the end to wrap up.