Public Order Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Tom Hunt and Natalie Elphicke

Committee stage
Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hunt]

Thank you.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Q To follow up on fuel distribution, there was certainly an impact in Dover and Deal. We had petrol stations running dry during that period. That really brings home the impact: people were unable to get the fuel that they needed to go to work and to school, and to get about. It has an impact on hauliers as well.

I want to explore the Stansted situation a bit more. You have your highly secure zone—that goes without saying for national infrastructure—and people break in through a security fence and close a runway. I think you said that 25 flights were grounded as a result.

Steve Griffiths: Yes.

Public Order Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Tom Hunt and Natalie Elphicke

Committee stage
Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Q My question is to Nicola Bell. The Bill intends to make deliberate interference with key national infrastructure a criminal offence. As we have just touched on, Dover has several pieces of key infrastructure, such as the national strategic road network, the M2/A2 and the M20/A20, and the port of Dover itself, which transits about a fifth of all our goods. In recent years, the port and the strategic road network have been targeted by extremists on several occasions. We have mentioned the 2021 incident, which saw people gluing themselves to tankers and closed down the port and the M2 and M20. Going right back to September 2019, we had a similar incident with extreme protestors that saw the port completely shut down and disruption to and closure of the A20 and M20.

I was hoping you could expand on your earlier answer to give the Committee more of a feel for the impact of this kind of traffic disruption on the Kent and Dover economy and its importance to the strategic network for the nation, and for some of the safety and other challenges in dealing with these incidents that are different from the ordinary traffic disruption that your team deal with on a more regular basis.

Nicola Bell: The bounds of my responsibility would be, for example, the traffic officers that you see as they patrol the network. On the day of a protest, our role would be to try and create a safe space for the police to then get in and do their job. For example, on the day that they protested down in Dover, that was about protecting the area to allow the police to get specialist people in to get protestors off the top of the tanker and to therefore get the port open again and get things running.

On your point about the economy, as I mentioned earlier, 80% of domestic freight still uses road, so that is a pretty big impact on the economy. We know that most of our goods come in and out of the port of Dover, so therefore the roads they take—the M20, the A20 and the A2—are very significant indeed. Ultimately, the cost also relates to people not getting to where they need to be on time—whether that is missed appointments or freight not getting to where it needs to get to on time. I do not have an exact figure for the impact on the economy. I know that some of that has been worked on, and we can perhaps provide that to the Committee in writing afterwards.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Q My first question is primarily for Nicola. Of the protesters who have been blocking key roads, such as the M25, roughly what proportion have been locking on or gluing themselves to a road, as opposed to just sitting on a road?

Nicola Bell: What we saw was that, first, they got themselves on to the road and sat down, then they waited until the police arrived, and then they started to lock on so that they were causing maximum delay. I would say that, on average, if you had 10 of them sat down, at least three quarters of them were glued.

Public Order Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Tom Hunt and Natalie Elphicke

Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Q My question is to Nicola Bell. The Bill intends to make deliberate interference with key national infrastructure a criminal offence. As we have just touched on, Dover has several pieces of key infrastructure, such as the national strategic road network, the M2/A2 and the M20/A20, and the port of Dover itself, which transits about a fifth of all our goods. In recent years, the port and the strategic road network have been targeted by extremists on several occasions. We have mentioned the 2021 incident, which saw people gluing themselves to tankers and closed down the port and the M2 and M20. Going right back to September 2019, we had a similar incident with extreme protestors that saw the port completely shut down and disruption to and closure of the A20 and M20.

I was hoping you could expand on your earlier answer to give the Committee more of a feel for the impact of this kind of traffic disruption on the Kent and Dover economy and its importance to the strategic network for the nation, and for some of the safety and other challenges in dealing with these incidents that are different from the ordinary traffic disruption that your team deal with on a more regular basis.

Nicola Bell: The bounds of my responsibility would be, for example, the traffic officers that you see as they patrol the network. On the day of a protest, our role would be to try and create a safe space for the police to then get in and do their job. For example, on the day that they protested down in Dover, that was about protecting the area to allow the police to get specialist people in to get protestors off the top of the tanker and to therefore get the port open again and get things running.

On your point about the economy, as I mentioned earlier, 80% of domestic freight still uses road, so that is a pretty big impact on the economy. We know that most of our goods come in and out of the port of Dover, so therefore the roads they take—the M20, the A20 and the A2—are very significant indeed. Ultimately, the cost also relates to people not getting to where they need to be on time—whether that is missed appointments or freight not getting to where it needs to get to on time. I do not have an exact figure for the impact on the economy. I know that some of that has been worked on, and we can perhaps provide that to the Committee in writing afterwards.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Q My first question is primarily for Nicola. Of the protesters who have been blocking key roads, such as the M25, roughly what proportion have been locking on or gluing themselves to a road, as opposed to just sitting on a road?

Nicola Bell: What we saw was that, first, they got themselves on to the road and sat down, then they waited until the police arrived, and then they started to lock on so that they were causing maximum delay. I would say that, on average, if you had 10 of them sat down, at least three quarters of them were glued.

Public Order Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Tom Hunt and Natalie Elphicke

Thursday 9th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hunt]

Thank you.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Q To follow up on fuel distribution, there was certainly an impact in Dover and Deal. We had petrol stations running dry during that period. That really brings home the impact: people were unable to get the fuel that they needed to go to work and to school, and to get about. It has an impact on hauliers as well.

I want to explore the Stansted situation a bit more. You have your highly secure zone—that goes without saying for national infrastructure—and people break in through a security fence and close a runway. I think you said that 25 flights were grounded as a result.

Steve Griffiths: Yes.