Public Order Bill

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

I suspect the Minister will still hear our views after we become independent, so I would not get too upset about that.

During the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Joint Committee looked very carefully at a large volume of responses and heard from two panels of witnesses about the issue of the public order provisions. The Minister has said the stated intention of the Bill is to strengthen police powers to tackle dangerous and highly disruptive protest, but we think the measures go beyond that, to the extent that we believe they pose an unacceptable threat to the fundamental right to engage in peaceful protest. That was the conclusion of the Committee’s report dated 17 June, in which we proposed the amendments that I am speaking to today.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I wanted to reflect on the point that it is not just about our constituents in Scotland being concerned about the provisions in the Bill. One of the fundamental parts of policing in the UK is mutual aid, so there will be considerations for Police Scotland in relation to the Bill, if it is passed, when we have police officers from Scotland attending protests in other parts of the UK.

[Joanna Cherry]

That is a very good point and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making it.

It is a matter of regret that when the Government responded to our cross-party report they said:

“Any chilling effect on the right to protest, damage to the UK’s reputation, or encouragement of other nations seeking to crack down on peaceful protest is more likely to arise from the misleading commentary on the PCSC Act and this Bill”

than anything else. No, Minister. That is not the case. The Committee’s conclusions are not misleading commentary. They are the conclusions of a cross-party Committee of this House, informed by evidence from many different sources and advice from our own legal experts on the European convention on human rights, to which, thank God, the UK is still a signatory and which is still enforceable under the Human Rights Act 1998, which seems, thankfully, safe for the time being.

Before I turn to the amendments, I want to quickly make the point that the criminal law and the powers of the police already allow for action to be taken against violent protest and disruptive non-violent protest. That is addressed in detail in paragraph 18 of our report, where we list all the existing provisions under the criminal law of England and Wales that cover the situations about which the Minister says he is concerned. So not only do we think that the Bill is an attack on the fundamental rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, but we believe that it is unnecessary and simply replicating existing law.

Our first tranche of amendments deal with the new offences set out in clauses 1 and 2—the proposed offences of “locking on” and

“being equipped to lock on”.

The purpose of those amendments is to try to water down what we consider to be far too stringent positions. We are particularly concerned about the reversal of the burden proof, putting it on the accused. The purpose of our amendments is to reverse that and put that burden on the prosecution, as is consistent with the presumption of innocence and therefore with article 6 of the ECHR. So amendments 28 to 33 would narrow the scope of clauses 1 and 2 and improve safeguards against violation of convention rights.

We believe that the offence of obstructing major transport works in clause 6 is so widely drafted that it could easily criminalise the peaceful exercise of rights under articles 10 and 11, so our amendments 34 to 36 would narrow its scope, including by introducing a requirement of intent and removing the unnecessary reversal of the burden of proof.

We think the proposed offence of interfering with “key national infrastructure” is too widely drawn and thus risks criminalising, without justification, behaviour that would fall within the provisions of articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR. Amendments 37 to 49 would narrow its scope and remove the unnecessary reversal of the burden of proof.

The proposal to extend stop-and-search powers to cover searches for articles connected with protest-related offences risks exposing peaceful protesters and other members of the public to intrusive encounters with the police without sufficient justification. We would like the utilisation of these new powers to be carefully monitored. In that respect, I note with approval the terms of new clauses 9 and 10 in the name of the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova).

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I rise to speak in support of several amendments, including new clauses 1 to 5, tabled by the official Opposition, and new clauses 9 to 14. I agree that there should be a free vote on new clause 11, to which I am sympathetic and which I will support. The speeches on it so far have been very powerful. I also wish to speak to new clauses 15 to 17—the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who is no longer in her place, spoke powerfully about them—and to the amendments tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) on behalf of the SNP, and by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker).

I speak on behalf of my constituents who are concerned about what the Bill means for the right to protest. It might be argued that the Bill will not affect them directly, but like the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West, I have constituents who will travel to England and Wales to protest. As I highlighted in my intervention about mutual aid policing arrangements, the Bill is likely to mean additional training requirements for Scottish officers deployed elsewhere, as at last year’s G7 meeting.

We have heard from many Members of this House with a legal background and training, but I believe I am the only former police officer in this debate; I do not see the other two hon. Members who I know were police officers. I am also the wife and daughter of former police officers—indeed, my husband was a senior public order commander—and I am the stepmother of serving police officers. I have policed demonstrations. It might have been some time ago, but I speak with some knowledge and direct experience.

Laws should be necessary, but as we heard in our Bill Committee evidence, the police already have the power to respond to protests; I am grateful to the hon. Member for Broxbourne for raising that point. Ideally, laws should not break our already stretched systems—that was an area of focus for me in Committee—but this law risks our police’s very ability to tackle day-to-day crime, which the Home Secretary says is a priority for the Government.

Regardless of rank, length of service or extent of training, the first officer to attend any incident—protest or otherwise—is the officer in charge until they are relieved of that duty. I say that not to denigrate, but to illustrate. That officer will have to determine whether there is a risk of serious disruption and, if so, whether an offence under the Bill or any other law is being committed. I am concerned that there is a risk of inconsistent application of the criminal law and a breach of the rule of law. I therefore support the official Opposition’s new clauses 1 to 5, which would ensure that the Bill’s provisions are applied appropriately.

It is not just me. The National Police Chiefs’ Council’s evidence to the Bill Committee suggested similar concerns, which would be at least partially addressed by some of the amendments, particularly those tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West to implement the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I remain concerned that the police, particularly those in junior roles, may end up ill-equipped to make the judgment calls that the Bill requires.

Let us be clear: the police do not need this Bill to respond when protests cross the line. Where there is criminal damage or trespass, they already have the power to respond. However, if the Bill is passed with no amendments but the Government’s, all protest will effectively be frozen for fear of being caught by the legislation. Importantly, the Bill is also likely—I refer to the comments that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), made about policing in France and elsewhere—to freeze the police’s relationships with a wide range of activist groups, which involve constant dialogue to balance the facilitation of protests with the rights of others to go about their daily business. That dialogue happens all the time in all our communities and is something to be celebrated.

[Jeremy Quin]

I deeply respect the hon. Lady’s policing experience and that of her family, but she has implied that the Bill will allow the freezing of protests and an inability to protest, which is not the case. I think that, as a former police officer, she would recognise serious disruption. We are absolutely clear about this: a protest constitutes something that is really interfering with people’s way of life, preventing them from getting to work and engaging in their normal business.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

What I am trying to say is that the existing legislation already deals with those circumstances, and that, given that some of the Bill’s provisions mean that people need not even have done anything to be subject to them, there is a fear that it will prevent them from doing anything at all. I believe that the fact that our police service is grounded in policing by consent—unlike those in other countries whose police forces have evolved from more militaristic origins—is something to be celebrated.

If the police do not need the powers, if all that the Bill does is make it harder for legitimate protest to take place and if it restricts the right of citizens, I would argue that we do not need it at all. We should reflect on the fact that the Minister, in his opening remarks, claimed that the existing legislation was a reason for rejecting new clause 11.

Let me now raise another point, which I have touched on already. It is not about protecting the democratic rights of our citizens, but in many ways it is just as important, because it concerns the real impact on the capacity of the police service. In Committee I tabled a number of amendments, and although I have not tabled them again on Report, this is a key consideration.

When we pass poor legislation, we sometimes see the results in our constituency surgeries, but when it comes to legislation such as this, we will not be dealing with the outcomes directly. I believe that if the Government are confident that the Bill, in its current form, will do what it is intended to do, they should be comfortable with receiving reports from the College of Policing and from police forces about the capability and capacity of those forces to deliver the legislation—and that is before we even think about the huge backlogs in the criminal justice system. It will take some time for people to come before the courts in the context of this Bill.

The proposed new powers will require additional officer training. Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, gave evidence to the Bill Committee. The simple fact is this:

“If there are not enough police officers trained to properly respond to protests and apply these new laws, that means that more people must be trained—training that costs thousands of pounds and means that officers are potentially in classrooms, not out on the street.”––[Official Report, Public Order Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2022; c. 191]

Chris Noble, the chief constable of Staffordshire Police, estimated that, under the current legislation, it takes an officer two or three weeks per year to keep up with necessary additional public order skills. The offences specified in the Bill will require significantly more training at the outset, at the least, and will mean even more days of actual policing lost at significant cost, with simply abstracts from core policing duties. Once the officers are trained, it is likely that deployment to protests will increase as a result of the Bill’s restrictions. Simply put, people cannot be in two places at once, and resources are limited. According to evidence given to the Committee, the arrest of a protester usually involves six officers. We will run out of police officers before we run out of protesters.

I know where I would rather the police were. I would rather see an officer making sure that the streets were safe for women and girls walking home at night, going after gangs and those working across county lines, stopping the scammers who target our elderly and vulnerable, working on counter-terrorism, and preventing organised crime. I ask colleagues to reflect on what they and their constituents really want when faced with the reality of these choices, which were made even more stark by the Chancellor when he stood at the Dispatch Box yesterday.

Policing by consent is one of the greatest attributes of our country, and it is something that I am passionate about. The Bill undermines that. Although we will support amendments that curb its worst excesses, I will continue to argue that the decision in the other place to remove these clauses when they were part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 was correct. I cannot support the Bill in its current form.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I rise to speak in favour of new clause 11.

In a perfect world, no woman or girl would be raped; no foetus would have life-shortening, agonising conditions or endanger the life of the mother; and every baby born would be yearned for and cherished. But we do not live in a perfect world, and that is why Parliament has settled laws for the regulation of the provision of abortion services. This is what new clause 11 concerns. It is not about the form of those laws, or their details; it is about the provision of those services in day-to-day life.

I had the responsibility for looking after abortion clinic buffer zones from 2017 until I was promoted from the Home Office last year. It was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) says, an issue with which I grappled, because there is a real balancing skill involved in weighing up not only the concerns of those women seeking medical services and those who support them, but the sincerely held beliefs of those who do not agree with abortion. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who is no longer in his place, has set out some of the history of this, and I was an active part of it, so I really am trying to help the Minister when I try to explain some of the shifting of that balancing operation.

In 2017 Amber Rudd was Home Secretary, and in response to concerns voiced by parliamentarians she commissioned a review into demonstrations and protests outside abortion clinics. We announced the results of that review in, I think, 2018, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) was Home Secretary. At that point I stood at the Dispatch Box and I signed letters to say that we had looked at the number of clinics and weighed up the power of PSPOs. At that point, from memory, one council—maybe two—had applied for a PSPO, and we felt that the balance was in favour of PSPOs being using on a targeted basis for those clinics affected.

The review continued—I genuinely kept this under constant review—thanks to the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex and my right hon. Friends the Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), among many others on this side, as well as the hon. Members for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). It is a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Walthamstow in her place today. Indeed, only last summer we looked at this again in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. At that point, although the number of clinics affected by demonstrations had increased since the initial review, we felt that in the interest of balancing both sets of interests, PSPOs were the right way to go.

Today, however, five councils have applied for these orders, and happily the imposition of those orders has been upheld by the Court of Appeal as being lawful. We have heard in the course of this debate the concern that the five PSPOs cover five clinics out of some 50 that have been the subject of protests and demonstrations. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke made the important point that this is not just about the number of clinics; it is about the number of women who go to the clinics for these services. I think I am right in remembering that she cited the statistic that around half of women who seek these services had attended clinics where there had been protests and demonstrations.

So I find myself in the position of agreeing with new clause 11, not because I like banning things or because I am against the legitimate and sincerely held beliefs of those who cannot support the provision of abortion services, but because I come back to the point about the provision of services to women who need them and the circumstances in which they find themselves as they walk that long and lonely path to the doors of the clinic, hospital or surgery providing those services. I know from speaking to women who have been through these protests that they have made a difficult decision. There may be many factors surrounding the decision, involving their home lives, the circumstances in which the pregnancy came about and the concerns for what might happen if their friends, families or the wider society found out that they had had these operations. These are fundamental healthcare services that we provide, rightly and lawfully, in the 21st century. We must surely enable women to access these services as and when they need them so that they get the right help and advice.