Crime and Policing Bill

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Committee (9th Day) (Continued)

20:40

Debate on Amendment 370A resumed.

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this group, in particular to Amendment 372 from the Government, and Amendment 380, to which I have added my name. Before I speak to those, on Amendment 371B from the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, I have listened very carefully to the differences between “may intimidate” and “the intention to intimidate”. If I may, I think there may be a middle way through this and I hope we can use the time between Committee and Report to look at that and perhaps talk about how a reasonable person—or, for lawyers, the man on the Clapham omnibus—would see such acts. I accept that “may intimidate” may be slightly wide in terms of the purpose piece; I think it is very difficult to prove intention to intimidate, and we have seen that many times in Northern Ireland. So I make that suggestion in respect of that.

I also listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Hain—of course, a respected Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—had to say when he referred to the inalienable British right to protest. But of course he knows that, when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Parades Commission for Northern Ireland was given powers by the Government to deal with parades and protests there. That was in the wake of difficulties surrounding parades and the rights of freedom of assembly, and those in nationalist areas did not want those parades to happen in their areas.

It is no secret that many unionists, including myself, were not supportive of the Parades Commission receiving those powers: we saw it as an unaccountable body taking decisions on parades, many of which have taken place not just for decades but for hundreds of years. The situation since that legislation went through is that everybody who organises a parade or protest in Northern Ireland has to put in an 11/1 form, which has become a very famous form in Northern Ireland, to the Police Service. We have to notify the police that a parade or a protest is taking place, and we have to tell them the route, the date, the time and the organiser of the parade or the protest, so that people can be held accountable.

I do not want, in the context of this group, to speak to the merits of the existence or, indeed, the decision-making of the Parades Commission, because I probably would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hain, on that—the noble Lord today, not when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Rather, I want to look at what the commission can consider when making its decisions on whether to place conditions or limit a parade or a protest.

I think it is instructive that, in my part of the United Kingdom, the body taking decisions on contentious parades or protests can take into account the cumulative impact that such a parade or protest would have on the community. The legislation states:

“The Commission may issue a determination in respect of a proposed protest”


or parade. The conditions

“may include conditions as to the place at which the meeting may be held, its maximum duration, or the maximum number of persons who may constitute it … In considering in any particular case”

whether a determination should happen,

“the Commission shall have regard to the guidelines”

and indeed the code of conduct. In its guidelines, which I have here, it takes into consideration

“any disruption to the life of the community which the meeting may cause”

or

“any impact which the meeting may have on relationships within the community”.

Indeed, the guidelines for the Parades Commission take into account the

“frequency of such public processions or related protests along the route”.

20:45

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, who, like the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has served in Northern Ireland and knows the Parades Commission and its powers, that surely there is some precedent there in terms of how contentious parades should be considered. I am not suggesting that the Government set up a Parades Commission in England and Wales, because I would probably object to it in the same way as I object to the one in Northern Ireland, but I am talking about the principles that it acts on, which I think should be looked at. I make my comments to be helpful to the Ministers in this regard, who are very aware of the Parades Commission.

Whatever my misgivings on the accountability of the Parades Commission, those principles could be applied by a senior police officer or, indeed, the Secretary of State. If we are looking at principles to think about between Committee and Report, we might think about this. I think the impact on communities is already operating in Northern Ireland. As I say, I make no mention of my support for the Parades Commission, but I think it is important to look at the legislation that set it up and the principles that are there, because I think the Government amendment and Amendment 380 continue the piece of work that has happened in Northern Ireland, which is instructive about how this can work. I hope that is helpful in terms of the amendments that have been put forward. I very much support the Government’s amendment and Amendment 380 in my name.

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

I shall speak to Amendments 372 and 380 and various other amendments in this group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, for his kind remarks at the end of the previous group, but I fear that, after this speech, normal service might be resumed. There are many issues to cover in this group, and I will try to be as brief as possible.

Government Amendment 372 amends the Public Order Act 1986 to impose a duty on the police to consider so-called “cumulative disruption” caused by repeated protests in a given area. The amendment gives the police unprecedented powers to restrict or prohibit protests that are expected to be too disruptive. This amendment represents a grievous attack on the right to protest, which is vital to our democracy, and has many unintended consequences, as I shall outline. The overly broad framework would empower the police routinely to curb freedom of expression and assembly as exercised through peaceful protest. It would significantly expand the definition of serious disruption to include so-called cumulative disruption caused by repeated protests in an area. This would allow the police pre-emptively to prohibit peaceful demonstrations if, in their opinion, an area has been the site of too many protests, which is an extremely broad discretion.

Until this debate started, I had no idea that this provision is aimed at frequent protests outside synagogues. The amendment says nothing to that effect, and it has very broad application to all protests, so I shall carry on on that basis.

Presumably it would apply if the protests in question were organised by different groups who advocate for different causes. This could create a first-come, first-served version of free speech, where areas are given what could be described as a protest allowance at the whim of the local constabulary. The police would be within their rights to prohibit peaceful assemblies once that allowance had been used up. This opens up the concerning opportunity for groups of citizens to censor their political opponents by using up an area’s protest allowance before their opponents have had a chance to protest themselves.

Furthermore, as has already been said this evening, the amendment is silent on what constitutes an area. We do not know whether this power would permit the police to move a demonstration to a different part of a square, to another part of town or even to a difficult-to-reach rural area, resulting in decreased attendance and visibility. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten the Committee on that.

Similarly, Amendment 372 does not specify within what timeframe disruption would have to be repeated to be considered cumulative. This is another question for the Minister. The suggestion that so-called cumulative disruption should be taken into account in considering conditions for restrictions or prohibitions of protests is also disproportionate. Will the Minister please explain why one person’s right to protest should be extinguished simply because somebody else has already protested in the same location about the same cause, or about a different cause?

What about causes that evolve or develop over time, legitimately calling for further protests to coincide with the next stage of public debate? The courts have also repeatedly concluded that a relevant consideration regarding the proportionality of Article 10 and Article 11 rights is whether the views giving rise to the protest relate to “very important issues”. That would de facto be more likely to apply to causes that have led to repeated protests than it would to causes that have given rise to a single protest. This provision, if enacted, would give the police an additional power to ban or curtail protests on the most important causes: the ones most worthy of protest and the ones most protected by the courts. Will the Minister please explain if that is the intention?

Amendment 372 is poorly drafted. It is far too broad to prevent the problems that I have described, and it gives the police far too much power to curtail or prevent peaceful protest on the most important matters. Government Amendments 372 and 380 should both be withdrawn or, if necessary, voted down.

Government Amendment 381 would create a new offence about protesting outside the homes of public officeholders. This may be sensible but should it not have a reasonable conduct defence, as appears in other harassment-type offences, to cover, for example, situations where a neighbour speaks amicably to a politician about a local issue as they are leaving home? Would it be proportionate to criminalise that perfectly normal interaction? That is another question for the Minister.

On Clause 124, which caused so much heat rather than light earlier, it goes without saying that worshipers must be free to access their places of worship, be they synagogues, mosques, churches, or whatever, and worshippers must be able to do so without intimidation or threats or fear of the same. But those rights are already fully protected by the Public Order Act 1986. Under the Act, conditions may be imposed on protests by senior police officers if they believe that the procession may result in serious public disorder or where the purpose of the organisers is the intimidation of others. Section 12(2)(a) of the Act specifically includes places of worship, so Clause 124 may be completely unnecessary.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, seek to clarify what is meant by “in the vicinity”. They are all well and good, but just about every place where people demonstrate is close to a church or another place of worship. For example, Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square would fail the test. Clause 124 could enable the police to ban or restrict just about any protest on that basis. That is probably not the intention, but it would be the result.

Amendment 378A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, would allow restrictions to be placed on protest or assembly if they take place in the vicinity of places used for “democratic decision-making”. Given the high standing of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, in this House, I find this idea rather strange. It would restrict protest close to Parliament, which is where the people who make the decisions, the people the protesters most want to influence, are to be found. The whole point of protest is to engage in a democratic process and seek to persuade decision-makers to a particular point of view. If anything, protest is more proportionate where it takes place in the vicinity of decision-makers. There is no sensible argument for Amendment 378A; it should be rejected.

Turning briefly to Amendment 370A, I understand that the idea of designating as an “extreme criminal protest group” is something that the noble Lord, Lord Walney, has been advocating for a long time. I oppose it because it is an oppressive and draconian restriction on the right to protest, in essence banning specific protest organisations. It is, of course, right that the law steps in to criminalise unlawful protest activity, but this is already done frequently on an individual basis. Criminalising association with others who share the same cause is wholly disproportionate; not everyone associated with a group shares any criminal intent. Designation or restriction of ECPGs will serve only to criminalise other law-abiding citizens because of their shared, but reasonably held, political views about a particular cause.

Taken as a whole, this group of amendments extends the regressive and anti-democratic tendencies of the previous Government—and now this one—to suppress or ban legitimate and peaceful protests in whatever way they can. Substantial pruning is required to get the Bill into a state where it no longer threatens our cherished democratic processes. Peaceful protest educates the public. It sparks debate. It creates the pressure needed for reform. In a healthy democracy, disagreement is not a threat but a sign that citizens care deeply about their society.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I support what I understand to be probing amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, but first I want to seek clarification from my noble friend the Minister on government Amendment 372. I do so from the perspective of someone who had direct responsibility for organising mass demonstrations when I was at the TUC, which now could be caught in this net.

First, can the Minister clarify the definition of disruption and whether that applies to conduct or location, and the safeguards that will be applied under “cumulative impact” to ensure that any restrictions and conditions imposed by the police are proportionate? As cumulative impact, as we have heard, will be applied collectively to demonstration organisers, this could lead to a rationing of protests in a particular area, presumably even when they are entirely peaceful. In practical terms, can the Minister explain how such a ration would be distributed between, as we have heard, potentially very different organisations with very different aims? Who will decide and on what basis or are organisations supposed to figure it out for themselves?

In central London, there are really only one or two routes, which have viable assembly points at the start and finish, available for very large demonstrations. How realistic is it for the Home Office to suggest, as it did in a press release, that the police could instruct organisers of national demonstrations to divert their demonstrations to alternative routes when in central London there may be none? Crucially, can the Minister tell us whether consideration of the cumulative impact of demonstrations will be weighed against the public’s right to protest in response to the cumulative impact of real-world events? For example, hundreds of thousands of people turned out for successive TUC marches through the 2010s—I recognise that not everybody here may have joined them, but plenty did—in response to the mounting harm that austerity and public service cuts were inflicting on workers, families and communities.

More recently, hundreds of thousands have joined demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Again, the frequency of these very large protests is not happening in a vacuum, nor is it divorced from the strength of public feeling. While the International Court of Justice may not reach its verdict on genocide in Gaza for some years, much of the UK population, according to a YouGov poll published in June last year, has already made its mind up. Have the Government really considered the societal impact of making expression through peaceful protest much more difficult?

21:00

I turn briefly to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. In my practical experience, it is vital that the law supports constructive negotiations between the police and demonstration organisers about the route of and arrangements for a march. I absolutely agree that they must be sensitive to and take proper account of community concerns, but, again, that would become much harder if vague terms such as “in the vicinity” are enshrined in law. As we know, there are literally thousands of places of worship in our capital city. A broad interpretation of that term would make it nigh impossible to hold a march through central London.

There is a fear, as we saw in the civil society statement supported by the TUC, that such imprecise language could become a licence to ban protest by the backdoor—if not under this Government then under a future one. Any incidents of violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia or any other form of racism are, of course, intolerable, but the law already provides the police and courts with powers to deal with harassment, threats and incitement. It would be quite wrong to use the imperative of tackling that behaviour by some as justification for curtailing everyone’s freedom of assembly.

The sensible amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, seek to provide much-needed clarity and certainty, for demonstration organisers and the police. Historically, the right to peaceful protest was hard-won. Each of us may support or vehemently oppose the aims of a particular demonstration, but we should all agree that the right to peaceful protest must be meaningful and it must be protected, as an essential hallmark of a free and democratic society.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I have just one large amendment in this group but I thought I would wait until the end—or what might be close to the end, with a bit of luck—before speaking to it, because it is different from others in the group. I had considered degrouping it, and now wish that I had, to deal with it at lunchtime on Thursday.

Before dealing with that, what a privilege it was to sit here and listen to the very powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, who is not currently in his place, the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and those of my noble friend Lord Polak. What struck me was something that my noble friend said: when we hear the chants of “Support the intifada” and “From the river to the sea”, those are not just catchy phrases for protest marches. What they mean is kill the Jews, destroy the State of Israel and wipe out 8 million people. You cannot get more evil a hate crime than that.

However, my amendment is different and it is a terribly important one, if I may say so, because it would impose a duty on the Metropolitan Police to ensure access to Parliament. There have been disturbing incidents in recent years where the Met has failed to do so, and MPs and Peers could not access our home of democracy or had to run the gauntlet of a mob.

I need to take noble Lords through the recent history of this problem to let the Committee see how we have got to the current state and what I think we can do about it. The minutes of our State Opening on 17 July of the 2024-2026 Session state, under the heading “Stoppages in the Streets”:

“It was ordered that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis do take care that the passages through the streets leading to this House be kept free and open and that no obstruction be permitted to hinder the passage of Lords to and from this House during the sitting of Parliament; or to hinder Lords in the pursuit of their parliamentary duties on the Parliamentary Estate; and that the Lady Usher of the Black Rod attending this House do communicate this Order to the Commissioner”.


That is our sessional order, which the Metropolitan Police Commissioner enforces, primarily through Section 52 of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839. It allows the police to issue directions to prevent street obstruction near Parliament during sittings.

The Commons used to pass the same Motion until 2005, but in 2003 the House of Commons Procedure Committee concluded that passing the sessional order did

“not confer any extra legal powers on the police”,

and the only way to ensure the police had the adequate powers to achieve the result intended by the sessional order was through legislation. The committee recommended that, until such legislation came into force, the House should continue with the sessional order in a modified form

“to reflect the House’s concerns and to act as a marker that it expects Members’ access to Parliament to be maintained as far as the existing law allows”.

The Government implemented that and included provisions in the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 intended to meet the requirement identified by the committee. The House of Commons then dropped the sessional order in 2005.

In 2013, the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege recommended that the practice of passing sessional orders in the House of Commons be restored. In response, the Government said that they were

“not convinced that their revival would serve any legal or practical purpose”.

The Government are legally right. The sessional orders are not statute law and have no legal effect, but they had a massive symbolic effect, and the Met used to keep access free for all Members of both Houses.

Restrictions on protests around Parliament were introduced under Sections 132 to 138 of SOCPA 2005. In those sections, it says:

“The Commissioner must give authorisation for the demonstration to which the notice relates”,


and that in giving that authorisation, the commissioner should try to ensure, as far as possible, that people were free to enter Parliament. We moved from an instruction that no hindrance must be permitted, to one where the commissioner can decide on a case by case basis to grant protest.

Sections 132 to 138 were abolished by Section 141 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and replaced with restrictions that applied only to the controlled area of Parliament Square, which was delineated for the first time. That was, and is, very sensible. Under Section 143 of the 2011 Act, it is no longer an offence for demonstrations to be held without the authorisation of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. However, a constable or authorised officer who has reasonable grounds for believing that a person is doing, or is about to do, a prohibited activity may direct the person to cease doing that activity or not to start doing it. Noble Lords should note the term prohibited activity.

Much of the emphasis of the sections in that Act is on tents and equipment in Parliament Square, the controlled use of Whitehall and loudspeakers. Why was that? Older Members of the Committee will recall that, for 10 years, a Mr Brian Haw had an anti-war tent on the grass opposite the MPs’ entrance at Carriage Gates, and the Government and MPs were very vexed that there seemed to be nothing they could do about it and no law to remove him. That is the thrust of the parliamentary provisions in the 2011 Act, to deal with that one man and his tent. I believe he died just as the Act come into force. By accident, the need to secure access to Parliament became downgraded once again. The emphasis was on prohibiting tents, accoutrements and loudspeakers outside the Commons.

Technically, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and his officers have full legal powers to ensure that MPs, Peers, officers and staff have free and unfettered access at all times, but the reality is that the duty to do so has been subliminally watered down over the years. We have moved from a position that protests outside Parliament had to have permission to one where they did not need permission but the Met could stop them if they thought it necessary. There is no duty for free and unfettered access. That is why my amendment is necessary, without disturbing 99% of the current controls, powers and responsibilities.

Why is it necessary? In November 2021, Insulate Britain, with more than 60 activists, blocked two main roads leading to the Parliamentary Estate, including Bridge Street and Peers’ Entrance. In April 2019, Extinction Rebellion blocked access in Parliament Square, and the police had to take action to maintain a clear route for access for MPs and Peers reaching the estate. In October 2022, Just Stop Oil activists, as part of a month-long occupation of Westminster, sat in the road surrounding Parliament Square, specifically aiming to disrupt access to the seat of government.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 added an offence of blocking vehicular access to the Parliamentary Estate, but it said nothing about pedestrians. The current laws are therefore slightly inadequate.

The first thing in my proposed new clause that the Metropolitan Police commissioner would see are the words:

“Duty of the Metropolitan Police to ensure access to Parliament”.


It begins:

“It is the duty of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to secure that members of either House of Parliament, all parliamentary officers and staff have free and unfettered access to the Palace of Westminster controlled area on any day on which either House is sitting”.


That puts access to Parliament front and centre of the legislation, sending a very strong signal that democracy trumps protest—you can still protest if you want to, but do not block access to Parliament.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hain, that, under ECHR laws, there is no right to protest. The Human Rights Act 1998 does not refer to a right to protest. The relevant rights are the right to freedom of expression in Article 10 and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Article 11. Moreover, Articles 10 and 11 are qualified rights, in that they can be restricted where it is necessary and proportionate to protect public safety, prevent crime and protect the rights and freedoms of others. I submit that the rights and freedoms of others include Members and staff of both Houses. We should also be protected to do our job, because we are the “others”. We have allowed a myth to grow that there is a right to block access to Parliament as part of a non-existent right to protest.

I have a few other small amendments. The 2011 Act designates the controlled area around Parliament but does not stretch as far as 1 Millbank, which did not open until after the 2011 Act passed. I have included it, as well as the road from Downing Street to Parliament, since, although the current law states that Parliament Street is part of the controlled area, Downing Street may be on that no man’s land between Whitehall and Parliament.

The 2022 Act added an offence of blocking vehicular access. I have added that pedestrian access for Members and staff must be maintained, and a requirement that any protesters must be kept back at least 10 metres from pavements used by Members to access Parliament. That would not stop protests; it would just let Peers and Members get in.

Apart from these small changes, I have retained the whole structure of the existing legislation, but with a new duty requirement on the Met. Putting at the beginning of the legislation a sentence that it is the duty of the Metropolitan Police to secure access to Parliament is more than just tokenistic or symbolic. We have allowed our freedoms to access and egress Parliament without hindrance to be eroded over the past 20 years. We have permitted a belief that people protesting outside our gates have more rights and are more important than the legislators working inside.

It cannot be acceptable that the very people entrusted with the responsibility to ensure our legal rights and freedoms under the law cannot get into the building to do it. My proposed new clause would restore that balance. It would make it clear to the commissioner where his primary duty lies, and it should make it safer for all of us, as parliamentarians and staff, to carry out all our duties. I commend my proposed new clause to the Committee.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this huge group was always going be pivotal for us to discuss, and it is full of moral dilemmas. I am genuinely torn on many of the amendments; I do not know where I stand on some of them. I therefore appreciate the debates that we have had so far. It has been very worth while to hear the different sides of the argument.

When the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, spoke earlier, he stirred me up. Every time I say “stirred up” I think of stirring up hatred; it was not that, but his contribution was very important. He emphasised that a lot is at stake, which it is. On the first day in Committee, I said that I knew that simply reiterating the formal importance of the right to protest is not sufficient for the period that we are living in, because we face new types of protest. We face some vicious and abusive gatherings that call themselves protests. That leaves somebody like me in a difficult dilemma. I am a free-speecher, but I have witnessed the visceral rise of Jew hatred in public and on our streets, so I am torn.

I have a lot of sympathy with the intentions of the noble Lords, Lord Walney, Lord Polak, Lord Leigh of Hurley and Lord Pannick, and of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, to name just some noble Lords, and I understand where they are coming from. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, himself admitted, there are a lot of existing powers that are not used. That strikes me as the problem.

We have a policing crisis and powers that are not being used, for cultural or deeper political reasons, so we try to compensate by making more laws. That will not solve the problem of the culture of normalisation of antisemitism—if anything, those new laws, which might also not be enforced, could be a distraction. Despite my reservations, my fear is that the deeper problem will lead to bad lawmaking and abandoning key principles that stand up for western civilisation, democracy and so on, because we are so desperate to do something.

21:15

Laws driven by reaction to specific issues can go very wrong. I have noticed that the law they have come up with in Australia, in the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre and all that happened, is that Islamophobia is a hate crime for which you can get five years in prison. Sometimes lawmaking is not the right answer.

This is a huge and disparate group. I tentatively support some of the amendments in it and will ask questions about others. I tentatively support the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, in their attempt at specificity, tightening up the wording of Clause 124 and the restriction on protests at places of worship. That seems sensible, because so much of the Bill suffers from language that is too broad. Leaving out “in the vicinity” and inserting

“within 50 metres from the outer perimeter”,

or deciding on a specific space, seem sensible.

I was worried about the vagueness and elasticity of the phrase “may intimidate” and preferred

“the purpose of intimidating individuals accessing”

a place of worship, because I do not like the notion of a lack of intention in the law; it worries me. However, I am aware that context is important. Even if a protest is not intended to intimidate, it is pretty clear that it is intimidating if people are walking past a synagogue shouting, “Baby killers! Genocide apologists! Blood on your hands!” et cetera, and aiming those chants at Zionists. I do not know who these protestors think go to synagogues, but I can assure them that a few of them are likely to be Zionists. As a consequence, it will be intimidating. So, I am not sure about that amendment at all.

Of course, as with much of the Bill, the police already have existing powers under the Public Order Act that allow them to impose conditions on demonstrations that intimidate or harass people who wish to engage in worship. Those powers are rarely used or enforced, which drives me mad. Far too often, the police stand by and look on, which is why the Clause 124 stand part notice from the noble Baroness, Lady Moulsecoomb, appeals to me.

I am not convinced that a ban on demos in the vicinity of all places of worship in primary legislation is the right way to go, except perhaps while people are worshipping. I can imagine a situation in which, for example, there might be a demonstration or protest on something such as child abuse outside a Catholic church, or a protest outside a Church of England establishment about the closure of local parish churches or the paying of reparations—which, by the way, I think is mad. There are times where you can imagine a situation in which a protest outside a mosque would be perfectly legitimate if, for example, you had an Islamist hate preacher outside, or if there were young men tooling up outside and there was a counterprotest. In other words, I do not want a ban on having protests at any religious building, because although I believe very strongly in freedom of religion, I do not want any blasphemy-style laws being introduced either.

I have a question about Amendment 370AA, which would insert a new clause titled:

“Offence: incitement of holy or religious war or intifada”.

I appreciate that this amendment is at least specific. We know where we are going with it—“ban those slogans”—but as a free-speecher that always makes me feel a bit anxious because it potentially opens the door to a situation where the Government might gather slogans together that they will ban. I can at least see the point of the amendment.

I am particularly concerned about Amendment 378A, which is about protecting democratic buildings, parliamentary offices, constituency offices and surgeries. I think that democratic buildings are for the demos. There is a real danger of wrapping democratic buildings in cotton wool—or putting up gates, as we have done here, so that the public are the enemy and cannot see through them. I really do not like that, and I think that it is rather dangerous.

I feel very squeamish about the Minister’s Amendment 381, which is about the harassment of representatives in their own homes. That is not because I want anyone to harass representatives in their own homes—if there is harassment going on, people should be arrested—but I am worried about having special protection for politicians. Why not have it for other well-known public figures, celebrities or anyone else? In other words, I am worried about carving out the public square, where you say, “No protests here”, and say to the public that they are not allowed in the public square. That is very dangerous.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, I think that one of the biggest threats to protest rights is undoubtedly the Government’s Amendment 372. Can I ask the Minister, unless there is clarity, whether this is about geography, as other people have asked? The notion that an area cannot have regular protests seems peculiar to me. It is not about a particular geographic street with synagogues in it, by the way—but in this whole area of Westminster, there are regularly demonstrations, as there would be and should be, and as a vibrant democracy would have it. I do not want them to fall under this problem.

On the designation of extreme criminal protest group, which the noble Lord, Lord Walney, explained, to a pre-terrorist threshold, I really appreciate this sensible attempt to deal with the problem of the Palestine Action debacle. It has been a debacle to proscribe it and then turn the people who support it into free speech martyrs. That is ludicrous. I think there is something to be done there.

I also absolutely support the amendment that says that there should be no public funding for certain groups, which are obviously Islamist extremist groups, and so on and so forth. It seems sensible—but those amendments are very specific and very targeted, and they allow us something to really think about before Report. However, a lot of it is about the fact that we have problems in society and we want to solve them, so we bring in sweeping laws that are going to be anti-democratic and dangerous for everyone, rather than facing up to and confronting the real problems that we have, which are often not legal but cultural and political and caused by cowardice and their not being dealt with by politicians. They cannot always be dealt with via the law.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 370A, which seeks to grant the Secretary of State the power to designate and restrict extreme criminal protest groups—and I declare an interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

Last Monday, the Free Speech Union was the victim of an attack by a group that meets the definition in this amendment of an extreme criminal protest group. It is a group called Bash Back, which is a militant pro-trans group; it broke into the website of the Free Speech Union, stole confidential information about some of our donors and then published that information on its website and its social media accounts. To get that information removed, we had to apply for an emergency injunction; we then had to go back to court to put that injunction on a firmer footing; and there will be a third hearing or trial at which we try to make that injunction permanent. In the meantime, even though the information has been removed from the group’s website and social media accounts, that website and those social media accounts are still up. It has been extremely traumatic and disruptive—our website is still down. Applying for emergency injunctions and seeing that process through is by no means cheap; it is not entirely covered by our insurance.

One of the arguments we have heard this evening as to why the Secretary of State should not be granted this power is that the existing criminal law framework is adequate to deal with extreme criminal protest groups. I am glad to say that the Metropolitan Police does appear to be taking seriously what is a criminal offence—the data breach and the publication of that confidential data, in our case. The pro-trans group Bash Back has been active for at least six months and the criminal law as it stands has not been adequate to restrain it. This group took responsibility for vandalising the constituency office of Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health. In addition to smashing up his constituency office in Ilford North, it daubed the words “Child Killer” on the wall of his office because he said that he does not want the NHS to prescribe puberty blockers any longer. No one, as far as I know, has been interviewed by the police in connection with that violent assault on the offices of a Member of Parliament: certainly, no one has been arrested. The group followed up with an attack on a feminist conference in Brighton, and the threats and intimidation meant that that conference could not take place.

More recently, the group launched a violent attack on the offices of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, presumably because of the guidance note that the commission submitted to the Government about how to interpret the Supreme Court’s judgment about the meaning of the word “sex” in the Equality Act, which presumably the group does not agree with. It daubed graffiti on the walls of the office and used hammers to smash the glass on the office’s front. I do not suppose that I need to remind noble Lords that the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission at the time was the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and one of the commissioners at the time was my noble friend Lady Cash. This is an extreme criminal protest group which has seemingly been allowed to operate with impunity because the existing—

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

Forgive me for interrupting—and I have hiccups, which is why I am trying not to interrupt—but the more important point about the attack on the EHRC’s London offices is that it is in a large building shared by several other organisations. Not only were the staff of the EHRC threatened by the very act of the attack, but the other organisations that use the building were also extremely disturbed by what happened, and there have been repercussions for the EHRC as a consequence as a tenant. I cannot say any more than that, but I wanted to make that point.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that intervention.

The group in question advertises the fact that it breaks the law in order to shut down and silence its political opponents, people with whom it disagrees. It advertises the fact that it engages in criminal activity to advance its point of view, its agenda, on its website and its social media accounts. It uses its social media accounts to recruit additional members of the group. It operates with impunity in the public square, so I do not think it can plausibly be claimed that the existing criminal law is sufficient to rein in a group like this.

Now, I take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that we should be cautious before granting the Secretary of State additional powers to restrict the activities of protest groups. But I think it is worth bearing in mind that one of the reasons, perhaps, for the overdesignation of groups as terrorist groups under the powers granted to the Secretary of State by the Terrorism Act may be because the Secretary of State does not have enough flexible ways of responding to the threats posed by extreme criminal protest groups. Either he or she designates them as terrorist groups or they are allowed to continue to organise, protest and recruit. This would be an additional power—less extreme, I think, than designating a group a terrorist group.

One critical difference is that if a group is designated a terrorist group and someone expresses support publicly for that group, that can be a criminal offence. That is not the proposal in the case of what the consequences would be of designating a group an extreme criminal protest group. That is one respect in which it would be a less extreme restriction than designating a group a terrorist group. I hope that there would be less tendency to overdesignate.

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Like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, I had misgivings about the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist group, and I do not think that people expressing support for Palestine Action should face jail terms. Nevertheless, it would be useful if the Secretary of State had an alternative to designating a group a terrorist group with less severe consequences—but consequences nonetheless—which would have the effect of reining in some of these extreme criminal protest groups.

I will make just one final point—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am so grateful for the thoughtful way that the noble Lord is attempting to grapple with these difficult issues. Does he remember the spy cops scandal, for example? Does he understand the difficulty when we constantly try to find ways to treat people who are not terrorists, but who we disagree with even quite viscerally, as quasi-terrorists? Does he understand the difference between the importance of prosecuting individuals for their actions and the dangers of guilt by association, with its chilling effect on free speech? I say this to him as a free speech campaigner.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. The issue is not that the groups in question are advocating points of view with which I profoundly disagree. That is not the basis on which I am supporting this amendment. It is that the groups in question advocate and engage in criminal activity to restrict the liberties of others.

I anticipate that people will say that it is hypocritical of me to support this amendment because I am a free speech campaigner. But the Free Speech Union has always made it clear that we do not think that the right to free speech includes the right to break the law to try to silence other people and to try to deprive them of their right to free speech through fear and intimidation. That is why I have been able to reconcile myself to this amendment, which is an attractive alternative to designating groups such as Palestine Action as terrorist groups.

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I pay tribute to him in this context, because of his own lived experiences during the explosion of demos in the last few years in this area, and his own issues in obtaining access to the Palace. Likewise, I have taken testimony for Policy Exchange, which I direct, from my noble friend Lord Shinkwin. My noble friends’ lived experiences should be noted. Of course, it is not just them. Overall, it is part of a coarsening of political life, perhaps as a whole in this country, but certainly in this particular area in which we work, where we legislate.

It is not just about those we agree with and those we do not agree with. It has been said, by one or two speakers, that we do not like Palestine Action, and we do not like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This problem pre-dates 7 October. It predates the explosions in those demos. It relates to Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, which I do not agree with. But it also relates to the conduct, for example, of some ex-servicemen, whom I agree with on legacy issues and lawfare in Northern Ireland but who I have seen behave extremely badly towards some female colleagues of mine who do not work in this place. Similarly, I did not like the conduct of every person who was recently engaged in the farmers’ demonstration here; again, it is a cause which I support. It is across the piece and across the political spectrum. That is a problem which we need to take account of when we say that it is just people we do or do not like.

The issue at hand is the idea—which has been implied by one or two speakers in this debate—that we will become like Belarus or some other right-wing, authoritarian country if we go ahead with these amendments. The problem here is the very reverse: it is not the excessive power of the British state but its weakness and its failure to protect us—most dramatically demonstrated by the demonstrations that we have seen.

The blunt truth, as my noble friend has pointed out, is that too often we have had too many difficulties getting in and out of this House. Indeed, at some stages, we simply cannot get in at all. In my interviews with some senior police officers, they are basically saying, “You cannot seriously expect us to privilege the political classes by having extra protections” of the kind that my noble friend has talked about. Conversely, some noble Lords are quite demoralised themselves; when I have asked them about this, they say, “Well, we’re not very popular, so we’ve got to suck it up”. That is a tragic situation. What is so attractive to me about my noble friend’s amendment is that it asserts the absoluteness of our right to go in through the plenitude of entrances and exits of this House.

We all know that the future of this Chamber is being debated all the time, but for so long as we are here, we must have the right to do the work that we come here to do. One of the glories of today’s debate—including even the speeches of those whom I disagree with—is that we have all been able to get here to this House. I never want again to be in a situation where people cannot get in or out, or feel frightened to do so.

As my noble friend pointed out, the chilling effect is not just for us or for members of staff—I do not think we should be too precious about it; all of us are in public life, so noble Lords will have had death threats and various other forms of intimidation. The status quo ante, as described by my noble friend Lord Blencathra —which certainly obtained when he was first elected to the lower House in 1983—is light years away. We have to revert to that. That is why the necessary rectification that he is proposing is so important.

I agree with my noble friend on several other things, including charting the demise of the Sessional Orders in the House of Commons, and the legislative changes relating to protests in proximity to the Palace. He has already provided examples of the disruptive and obstructive protests around here in recent years. He was able to do that because it has increasingly become a feature of all our lives, and that needs to come to an end as quickly as possible.

There is one foreign example that is important for us all to note: the Dáil of the Oireachtas in Dublin. The Republic of Ireland provides protection for the workings of its national parliament through Section 7(1) of its Offences Against the State Act 1939, which forbids the obstruction or intimidation of any branch of government, including the legislature, from carrying out their functions. If we have anything to look at, it is among other foreign legislatures that are perhaps more zealous and solicitous in the protection of their well-being than we have seen in some quarters here in recent years.

Finally, there is the question of who is doing the demonstrations. As I said, I have been distressed by watching people on my side of the debate not behave properly. I remember watching Anna Soubry, whom I disagreed with on Brexit, being abused. But when one looks at recent history, one will find that we need to go back to a far more rigorous set of processes, where our needs are placed squarely—because of our public duties, not because of any private advantage—to ensure that we can discharge our responsibilities for as long as any of us choose to remain in this place.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the proposed legislation, in particular Clause 124 and Amendment 372, which would ban marches outside places of worship. Except, of course, it would not. It would empower a senior police officer to make a decision specifically if access to those places of worship is being denied to people who desire that access. So, the point the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, made about this meaning you cannot have any marches in London because London is full of places of worship would have been a good point, but it is only where there is going to be access—in other words, specific services—and it is only where a senior police officer makes that decision. I am not sure that that is right.

When there have been complaints about the terrible marches, which I will come on to in a minute, politicians have just put their hands up and said, “Terribly sorry, nothing we can do. It’s not down to us. It’s down to the police”. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in an excellent speech also made the point that we are piling on the legislation, but the police are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, as is. That is my reservation about some of this. It is perhaps for people with better legal abilities and experience than mine to think through how we might circumvent a situation where, for whatever reason and in whatever part of the country, the senior police officer is not taking the action that one might have hoped they would.

I speak also as president of Westminster Synagogue. Westminster Synagogue is on the corner of Rutland Gardens and Knightsbridge, not, as some people think, in the Palace of Westminster. We have had two marches past us recently, both on a Saturday. We negotiated with the police to ensure they did not pass on a Saturday morning, when we had services, but they did pass by us at lunchtime, so we had to abandon our community lunch events. We were told we had to leave the building before we had the lunch that we had planned.

On the second march, the demonstrators stopped some 20 metres away from our building and continued chanting while they stopped marching for some six minutes. It could be audibly heard from inside the building. I am sympathetic to the amendments that want to be specific about marches having be further away from the building than just in the area.

As your Lordships know, each and every one of the marches demonstrating about Gaza has contained vile, antisemitic slogans. These chants are not the sorts of chants we would have heard on British streets over many years, or indeed centuries, in marches by people wanting to express a view. These marches are populated by some calling for the extinction of Jewish life in Israel. On their call for Palestine to be free from the river to the sea, I had to explain to my daughter, when we were in Manchester and heard these chants, that that meant the slaughter and eradication of Jews in Israel. Their chants for a global intifada, or even death to the IDF, are chilling.

I salute the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for his anti-apartheid work and his campaigning. I have also marched in campaigns on other issues, but neither of us has called for the eradication of a people. Shockingly, we know that the calls for the death of innocent Israeli and Jewish citizens were answered in Manchester on the holiest day of the Jewish year, and again on Bondi beach on another Jewish festival. Yet, they would do it again. We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot allow anything which accelerates the radicalisation of lone wolves, or even gangs, against our own citizens—and they are being radicalised by these chants.

Of course, many of the people on the marches are no more than useful idiots who have no idea what they are chanting for. When questioned—I have seen a video—about which river and which sea, they have no idea. But others know exactly what they are doing. They are trying to stir up community hate against the indigenous British Jewish population and anyone connected to the State of Israel, which they want destroyed, even to the point of an Israeli restaurant in Notting Hill, as we discussed earlier. They are not a response to perceived, although mainly false, injustices in Gaza. We know that to be the case, because the protests started well before the IDF went into Gaza. In fact, the first one in the UK was on 8 October. That was well before any event took place in Gaza, but after the horrific crimes by Hamas in southern Israel.

21:45

Our Government have been clear that there is no genocide in Gaza, despite the protestations, and we know that, although there were food shortages, it is not clear that there was famine. But there were the awful consequences of war: there is no question of that. But there are wars all around the world, with much greater civilian casualties, in both absolute and proportionate terms. However, there are not demonstrations on the streets of London about the 60 or so other global conflicts, and these same people protesting in London about Gaza have not been seen protesting about what is going on in Iran.

The protesters are at a different level from those we are used to in the UK, and certainly those we had in mind when creating the Public Order Act 1986. Therefore, we need special and specific action to deal with their vile antisemitism and their determination to create an atmosphere of fear and aggression to Jewish people. They marched again straight after the Manchester killings. What sort of people are they? They are clearly not people we can trust or welcome to our streets. We need Clause 124 and Amendment 372.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, mindful of time, I will limit my comments to the first amendment of the group, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, and spoken to by my noble friend Lord Young.

A few people have mentioned that laws already cover the incidents referred to by groups such as Bash Back; I will focus on Bash Back because, as my noble friend Lord Young referenced, I was a commissioner at the EHRC at the time of that attack. There are laws that currently cover those incidents. There are criminal laws: there is aiding and abetting, criminal damage, attempted criminal damage, intimidation, harassment—all sorts of laws cover those attacks. But they are not implemented, and that is the second point I will come to in a moment: the behaviour of the police currently.

At the moment, when you have an organisation such as Bash Back advertising, encouraging, boasting about and celebrating criminal plans and then executed criminal acts, the police have a mountain to climb in order to identify all the individuals, all the individual offences, and the means by which to prosecute each one. I support this amendment because the noble Lord, Lord Walney, has very thoughtfully set out a means by which, when a group is advertising and encouraging criminal behaviour, and when a group—let us be honest—is seeking not to express an opinion but to close down the opinions of others using criminal behaviour, we have a means of addressing that, and doing so early, facilitating a way of managing the safety of the others.

I will just add that, for the individual members of staff in the building, and within the EHRC, in the particular incident of violence referenced by my noble friend Lord Young, all the windows were smashed in what was quite a large building owned by other people. It was really very frightening for the mostly young people who were there. I cannot say more than that at this time, but it was frightening. My noble friend Lord Young and I are both quite tough cookies, so for us it was probably easier to manage, but for the individual young people who experienced that, it was quite something, and it leads them to a situation where they have to question where they are working, what they are doing, how they are going to behave, and how they are going to express themselves in their workplace.

At the moment, although laws exist to address those individual events, they do not assist the police in the way that they need to be assisted, and nor do they assist the Government in the way they needed to be assisted to address Palestine Action. This is a step in between which would assist greatly, whether with Bash Back, Extinction Rebellion or any of the other groups that deploy criminal activity.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

I wonder if I might interject. The noble Baroness has raised Bash Back, as did the noble Lord, Lord Young. In its advertising, it makes a great deal of face coverings—which we discussed earlier today in the debate on whether Clause 118 stand part of the Bill—and the fact that no one needs to worry about being detected for this criminal damage because they can wear face coverings.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

I am grateful for that reminder. It is another point in support of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Walney. The overall position of the group is much more easily managed by the police when there are deliberate attempts to evade any type of prosecution.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, we have had a difficult and long debate on a major group on public order. Because it is so late and because there have been some central points, I shall confine what I say to a few of those.

I turn first, if I may, to Amendment 370A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, on extreme criminal protest groups. I accept, and indeed agree, that, at first consideration, it appears beneficial to have an alternative to proscription that does not involve the Terrorism Act and does not involve branding peaceful protest as an offence of terrorism. That would, of course, be the effect of Amendment 370A. I note that, in answer to an intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, the noble Lord, Lord Walney, confirmed that it was his clear view that that would be the position. Indeed, I have spoken on a number of occasions against the use of the Terrorism Act to make any support for a proscribed organisation, however peaceable, an offence under the Terrorism Act.

The designation provision in the proposed new clause from the noble Lord, Lord Walney—designation as an extreme criminal protest group—is not the problem, because there is a condition in proposed new paragraph (a) that

“the group has as its purpose, object or practice the deliberate commission of imprisonable offences, including but not limited to sabotage, criminal damage, obstruction of critical national infrastructure, or serious public order offences”.

At proposed new paragraphs (b) and (c), it refers to

“the intention of influencing public policy”,

and “democratic functions” and

“a risk of serious harm to public safety”.

The effect is the concern, not the designation as an extreme criminal protest group. The effect would be to criminalise extreme criminal protest groups’ activities to include in the formulation of offences under the proposed new clause, particularly at paragraph (b), public advocacy or the dissemination of groups’ materials, and those are offences that would be similar to the offence of support for a proscribed organisation under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, or offences of being a supporter, which can be proved by suspicion.

Amendment 370A would, I suggest, constitute a curb on free speech and on the legitimate freedom of expression, and would therefore run the same risks as the Terrorism Act of prosecutions of peaceful protesters. I am afraid I question the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, that criminal behaviour of the kinds that he described is not covered by other criminal legislation. I note the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, that other legislation may cover such behaviours but may not be implemented by the police. That may highlight a need for an alternative approach to policing, rather than for new legislation of the kind advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Walney.

Although I understand and applaud the aim of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, for a less serious alternative to the Terrorism Act, also advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, in practice, I doubt that it would be an attractive alternative to proscription under the Terrorism Act. Indeed, I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, had an answer to the intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, on the chilling effect of limiting freedom of expression with the criminal law. I doubt that the amendment would have the effect that the noble Lord, Lord Walney, seeks, so I do not support it.

The second area of concern that I would like to cover today is Clause 124 and the amendments to that clause—Amendments 371A to 371F—persuasively spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I support the analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, of the word “vicinity”, also supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady O’Grady. It is quite simply too vague. For my part, I am not convinced, for a number of reasons, that a 50-metre limit would produce the intended result either, so I agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, on that.

As I understood it—I will be corrected if I am wrong, and I invite the Minister to comment on this—the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, contended that the words “may intimidate” should be changed to,

“has the purpose of intimidating individuals accessing that place of worship … and would intimidate”.

I suggest that that may not be right. This part of the clause may be saved by the words in subsection (2)(c). Again, this is a point I would like the Minister to consider, because the clause requires that for an offence to be committed it must be

“in the vicinity of a place of worship and may intimidate persons of reasonable firmness with the result that those persons are deterred from … accessing that place of worship for the purpose of carrying out religious activities”.

The result has to be achieved before the offence is committed.

However, it is quite clear, as my noble friend Lord Strasburger said, that it is completely right to protect the rights of worshippers to worship at their synagogues, mosques or other places of worship—although as my noble friend pointed out, Clause 124 may be unnecessary in view of other legislation. But subject to clarification and limitation, the purposes of Clause 124 seem to me to be right.

The third argument that I wish to consider concerns government Amendment 372 and the whole question of cumulative disruption. For my part, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that the principal object appears to be a legitimate one to avoid repeated disruption on successive occasions of particular areas where there are places of worship, as in the streets around synagogues. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, mentioned protests and assemblies on repeated Sabbath days in the vicinity of synagogues.

Weighing the right to protest in balance against the interference with the rights and freedoms of others, as we all agree that we must, it is plainly right that the freedom of Jewish people to go to synagogue on successive Saturdays without repeated protests amounting to harassment of them should be protected. If that is what cumulative disruption is to mean then it is plainly right to take account of it. However, the use of the word “area” is, I suggest, subject to the same flaw of imprecision as the word “vicinity” that we considered earlier. I invite the Minister to consider between now and Report whether the use of the word “area” is appropriate.

22:00

It would be entirely wrong, however, to accept the Conservative amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and others in Amendments 373 to 378. These amend Amendment 372, substituting for the same “area” in the definition of what comprises cumulative disruption a definition that would legitimate restricting repeated protests by references not to their area—the area of a synagogue or whatever—and the potential for oppressive harassment that there could be if such repeated demonstrations were restricted, but by reference to their content. The Conservative amendments substitute for designation of a geographical area the reference to the content of the demonstrations. That change would enable outlawing repeat demonstrations on the same subject. That is objectionable for all the reasons outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and others. Repetition, and, often, repetition of disruptive protests, marches and assemblies, would be outlawable.

Disruption is often, even usually, what gives protest its force. The farmers, for example, did not force a change of heart by the Government by bringing their tractors to Westminster once but by doing so repeatedly. Repeated behaviour that might be categorised as disruption, having regard to the rights and freedoms of others, as laid down in the convention, is still at the heart of the right to protest.

On this point, what, then, is to be done? I suggest that the Government need to consult, to refine these provisions, to take into account the views of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, when they are published, and to amend the legislation if necessary.

Finally, I mention Amendment 370AA in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn, Lord Austin of Dudley and Lord Polak, outlawing

“incitement of holy or religious war or intifada”.

That amendment should, of course, be supported in the light of the tragedies at Manchester Synagogue, Bondi Beach and elsewhere, but I say further that the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, is absolutely right. He and others have spoken in strong terms about the dangers of antisemitism. It is a danger of extreme wickedness, and I agree with him and others who have spoken about it. The Government need to be very careful in that regard. I take pleasure in agreeing, perhaps unusually, with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, on this amendment.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, this is a very large grouping, and I shall be as brief as I possibly can, but there is quite a bit to cover. I support the principle behind Amendment 370A by the noble Lord, Lord Walney. We have seen a growth in the number of protest groups who engage in severe criminal activity to further their ends and yet, as organisations, are shielded from the full force of the law. There is a spectrum on which protest groups sit, from peaceful and non-violent to those proscribed as terrorist organisations. Inevitably, there will be groups that sit towards the more extreme end of the spectrum and yet do not meet the criterion to be designated as terrorists.

Bash Back is a transgender activist group which has used vandalism and intimidation to attack those who might disagree with its views. We have heard first-hand from my noble friend Lord Young of Acton as to their criminal activities. Whether this group’s behaviour qualifies a group as a terrorist organisation is a matter for the Government’s lawyers. But when Bash Back’s action guide, now taken offline, provides a step-by-step manual on how to commit extreme criminal offences and evade prosecution, there must be legal recourse that goes beyond targeting the individuals responsible and attacks the structure of the group. The noble Lord’s amendment provides a good framework for this, and I hope that the Government take it away and consider it further.

Similarly, I support the principle behind Amendment 370AA in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn, Lord Austin of Dudley and Lord Polak. For far too long have our cities been occupied on a weekly basis by angry and unruly marches that go well past their stated aims. Too often are innocent members of the public intimidated by calls for an intifada or for jihad. We have been too lax, I am afraid, in reining this in.

I broadly support the amendments tabled by noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and my noble friend Lord Leigh to Clause 124. Regardless of the merits of the clause in question, the measures would greatly clarify the legislation and remove the inevitable conflicts of interpretation that will currently result from it. I hope that the Government consider these improvements before Report, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Amendment 486B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, raises the important issue of public funding. We support the principle that organisations that promote, support or condone criminal conduct, or seek to undermine our democratic institutions through violent or illegal means, should not be eligible for public funds. Public money should never be used.

Amendment 486C, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, speaks to the deeply troubling rise in antisemitic offences. I am sure noble Lords are united in complete condemnation of the events at Bondi Beach last year. The proposal for a dedicated CPS unit reflects serious concern to ensure that such crimes are prosecuted effectively and consistently.

I turn to the two government amendments. Amendment 381 creates a new criminal offence of making representation outside a public officeholder’s home. The offence contains two elements. First, it criminalises a person being present outside a public officeholder’s dwelling for the purpose of representing to or persuading that public officeholder to do or not to do something in connection with their official duties. The second element is that a person will be committing an offence if they are present outside public officeholder’s dwelling for the purpose of representing or persuading them in relation to something

“otherwise than in connection with their role as a public officeholder”.

In other words, the amendment criminalises representations in relation to their public capacity and in a personal capacity.

I completely understand that the Government are seeking to take action against the intimidation or harassment of public officeholders, but serious concerns arise from this amendment. First, proposed new Section 42B(2) and (3) state that a person is to be considered as making representations

“by the person’s presence or otherwise”.

This implies that a person simply standing or holding a sign without saying anything could be criminalised. Can the Minister confirm that this is true?

Secondly, there is a distinct possibility that these provisions might capture political campaigners within its scope. As I have understood it, the second prohibited purpose in the offence captures making representation in relation to a public officeholder’s capacity as a private citizen, meaning that attempting to convince them to vote for another political party by campaigning could in theory be captured by the offence. For instance, say I am a party activist canvassing on the doorsteps, and I knock on the door of councillor of an opposing party. Would that, by my presence or otherwise, not be sufficient to constitute an offence? Let us say I post a leaflet for my party through the letterbox of the PCC of an opposing party. Would I be liable to arrest? Are the Government now saying that people should not be able to canvass or campaign? Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify whether this would be the case.

Thirdly, it is the case that the law already provides significant protections for people in their own home. Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 permits a police officer to force a person to leave the vicinity of another person’s home if the officer believes the person is likely to cause alarm or distress to the resident. It is a criminal offence to breach such a direction, and that covers both members of the public and officeholders. Does the Minister agree that this already provides quite a substantial protection for public officeholders from intimidation, harassment and abuse outside their own homes? On the basis that we do not need duplication, as the Minister said earlier, I suggest that this may well be the case here.

I have today posed a number of questions to the Minister regarding the amendment, and I look forward to what he has to say in answering them, but I must add that we do not think that this amendment should be made to the Bill today. The proposed change is a serious legal issue with profound questions about the nature of democracy and the relationship between public officeholders and those we serve. It has been introduced in your Lordships’ House in Committee and debated among 24 other amendments. It has not been considered by the other place, and it certainly has not received sufficiently detailed scrutiny in this place. I therefore do not believe it is appropriate simply to wave this through after so little consideration, and I hope the Minister will be willing to withdraw the amendment for now and bring it back on Report, when we can have a full and proper debate.

Finally, Amendment 372 would ensure that the police take into account the cumulative impact of protests when deciding whether to impose conditions on demonstrations and assemblies. We completely support this, but I am surprised that the Government now support this too. During the passage of the Public Order Act 2023, this exact same proposal was brought forward by the then Conservative Government. My noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom, who was the Minister at the time, moved Amendment 48 on the first day of Report on that Bill. While not identical in wording to Amendment 372, the government amendment to the 2023 Act would have permitted the police to consider the cumulative disruption to the life of the community.

The Labour Party opposed that amendment, and 133 of its Peers voted it down. Now the Minister comes back to the House and asks us to support the very thing that his party was previously opposed to. It would be eminently helpful if the Minister could explain to the Committee why his party has suddenly had a damascene conversion and now supports these measures.

The amendments in my name to government Amendment 372 are simply probing amendments. The text of the government amendment as it stands permits the police to consider only the cumulative impact of protests in the same geographic location. It does not permit them to consider the cumulative impact on communities arising from the content of the protest, nor the cumulative impact of protests organised by that same organisation in the past. The potential impact of permitting the police to consider only geographical location is that protests organised by completely different groups on entirely different matters, but held in the same place, could see conditions imposed on them that have no bearing on their own behaviour.

We see many protests down Whitehall by different groups protesting about completely different issues. Would it be right for the police to be able to restrict a protest by farmers in Whitehall simply because there has been a pro-Palestinian protest there the day before? We must also remember that certain groups are far more disruptive and prone to disorder and violence than others. If only geographical location was considered, the police would be forced to treat all protests the same regardless of the conduct of the protest group in question.

It is clear from polling conducted by Policy Exchange that a significant proportion of the British public believes that police should consider the cumulative impact of particular groups protesting for the same cause. Yet this is not what is proposed by the Government’s amendment.

In conclusion, I would be grateful if the Minister could explain the Government’s thinking as to why they have included only geographical location and not the subject matter, the context or the content of the protest in this amendment.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a long and wide-ranging debate, and rightly so. The issues that we are discussing in this rather large group of amendments go to the heart of who we are as a nation. I will try to do justice to the sincerely held, if somewhat, at times, diametrically opposed views expressed across the Committee.

Let me deal first with the two government amendments in the group. First, government Amendment 372 places a duty on a senior police officer to take cumulative disruption into account when assessing whether the serious disruption to the life of the community threshold is met and, in turn, whether conditions should be applied to a public prosecution or public assembly.

This Government are committed to upholding the democratic right to peaceful protest. However, this must not come at the expense of the right of others to feel safe in their own neighbourhoods. Over the last few years, we have seen the impact of repeat protests on the life of some of our communities. We saw this in the wake of the antisemitic terror attack on the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on 2 October 2025, which resulted in the tragic murders of Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz, as mentioned already by the noble Lord, Lord Polak.

As the noble Lord pointed out, protests continued in Manchester over the subsequent days, highlighting concerns around the need to protect specific communities and others impacted by the cumulative impact of protest. At this point I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for praising not just Rabbi Walker of Heaton Park Shul—who I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting during Hanukkah; he is an amazing individual and the way that he has held his community together is truly inspiring—but the CST, which continues to protect our Jewish community and lead the fight against antisemitism in our country.

22:15

The Government have a duty to balance the qualified right to peaceful protest with the duty to protect others’ individual rights. That is why, on 5 October, the Home Secretary announced the intention to authorise police to consider the cumulative impact of protests to help protect communities from repeated disruption, especially where the same site has been targeted again and again. Government Amendment 372 addresses this issue by amending Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 so that the police must take the cumulative impact of protest activity into consideration when deciding whether the serious disruptions to the life of the community threshold has been met, and whether to set conditions on protests.

Let me be clear that this does not allow police to ban a particular protest outright. So long as the legislative threshold is met, conditions may be set, such as the start and finish times or the route—for example, to specify that the route should not go past a particular place of worship. The police will now be obliged to take into account the cumulative disruption from any protest held, or intended to be held, in the same area, regardless of whether the protest is organised by the same person or organisation. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, for sharing her observations on the operation and experience of the Parades Commission in Northern Ireland.

The noble Lords, Lord Strasburger and Lord Marks, and my noble friend Lady O’Grady asked about frequency and proximity. I would say the measure is designed to require the police to consider evidence of whether protests have taken place at the same site and/or cause serious disruption to the life of the community. The management of protests and the use of this power to determine what is appropriate in the circumstances gives the police flexibility to manage the risks of disruption to the community. The Home Office will work with the College of Policing and the NPCC to include guidance on cumulative impact on the Public Order Public Safety authorised professional practice and the protest operational advice document. These contain operational advice for front-line policing and are regularly updated to include all police powers.

In discussing these measures, the noble Lords, Lord Strasburger and Lord Marks, and my noble friend Lady O’Grady said it would be impossible in an area such as central London that has lots of places of worship, principally churches, and this amounts to a blanket ban on all protests. The places of worship measure is not a blanket ban. Police will consider the intimidatory impact on those wishing to worship. It is absolutely about access and the right times for those wishing to worship and the context of the communities concerned; it is not just simply that there is a place of worship so therefore a protest cannot go past it ever. As I have said, police are well versed in making appropriate conditions and there will be further guidance on this for them. I find myself in agreement, I am pleased to see, with the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, on these matters.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, has Amendments 373 to 378, which are all amendments to Amendment 372. The intention of these amendments is to enable the police to take into account not the cumulative impact of protests in the same geographical area but rather the cumulative impact of protests about the same subject matter. While I acknowledge the sentiment behind the noble Lord’s proposals, the suggested amendment would fundamentally change the nature of the cumulative disruption provision from protecting a community in a geographical area to considering only the subject matter of the protest when considering cumulative impact. This would result in conditions being placed on repeated protests on the same subject matter, regardless of the location of the protest.

I thought the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, put it well when he was analysing the difficulty of using a subject condition. He talked about it in terms of narrowness of the subject being discussed from week to week. I thought there could be a breadth of conditionality imposed so a vigil to raise awareness about the plight of hostages still being held in Gaza at the time could be caught up in a subject condition that was meant to apply to protests about Gaza. There is an issue with this, and we have to be aware of unintended consequences in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I believe this could negatively impact individuals’ right to peaceful protests, which is a vital democratic value in this country. While it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that the life of the community is protected from serious disruption, it must always be balanced against the right to peaceful protest.

Amendment 381 seeks to strengthen the law in respect of protests outside the homes of MPs, Peers and other public officeholders. In recent years, we have seen troubling incidents where individuals have conducted sustained, intimidatory and targeted protests outside the private homes of public officeholders. These activities undermine the resilience of our democratic institutions by fostering environments where public officeholders, fearing for their safety, may feel compelled to make decisions they would not otherwise consider or revisit decisions already made. This erodes the integrity of democratic processes and weakens institutional confidence. We are at risk of public officeholders self-censoring, altering how they live and engage with constituents, and even how they vote, out of concern for their own safety and that of their families.

To address this, Amendment 381 makes two changes to the existing law governing such protests to be found in the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. First, it amends Sections 42 and 42A of the 2001 Act, which confer powers to direct protests away from a person’s home, so as to remove the requirement that protest activity must be linked to a specific future action. This change will ensure that harassing or intimidatory protests outside individuals’ homes are captured, regardless of whether they relate to past or future conduct.

Secondly, Amendment 381 will make it an offence to protest outside the private homes of public officeholders in certain circumstances. The new offence does not carry a harassment requirement, as the Government consider that any protest outside the home of a public officeholder should, by default, be regarded as harassment. The new offence will apply to any premises used as a private residence by a public officeholder, which may include a residential constituency or London address. There are some limited exceptions for certain official residences, such as No. 10.

In her comments, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, voiced some concerns about the carving out of public space. I would agree, but this is ultimately about private spaces—an MP’s, a councillor’s or a mayor’s private residence—and we should have some regard to the impact on their families and, indeed, their neighbours.

In this area the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, asked about safeguards around this power. It is a defence for a person charged under these powers to show that they were not aware that the premises were used by a public officeholder as a dwelling. If sufficient evidence is raised, the prosecution must prove otherwise beyond reasonable doubt. We consider this a necessary safeguard to prevent instances where individuals might unknowingly find themselves in breach of the law, for instance where someone is protesting about an issue unrelated to the public officeholder outside an apartment block where that officeholder lives. The noble Lord talked about reasonable behaviour, but I would say that reasonable behaviour is protesting outside a constituency office or a town hall, not outside somebody’s private home.

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord for taking the intervention, but my question was not about protest. It was more that, if an officeholder and a constituent met outside and had a conversation, I did not want that sort of interaction to be criminalised—not a protest, just a conversation.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

That is a helpful clarification. Ultimately, there are still the basic safeguard backstops of the CPS decisions to prosecute and police decisions to make arrests. There will always be discretion and flexibility, and one might posit that the CPS would not risk a prosecution where it was clear that there was not necessarily any offence caused. If the officeholder is engaged in mutual conversation, there would be no wish to see a charge brought, so I hope that addresses the concern the noble Lord raises.

Amendment 382 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would seek to strike out the new offence from the government amendment. The new offence gives the police clearer and broader powers to act swiftly to deal with protests outside the homes of public officeholders. It is right that we protect them and their families from the harassment, alarm and distress that such protests inevitably give rise to. We have purposefully limited the offence to the homes of public officeholders; as such, it would remain open to anyone to protest outside an MP’s constituency office, a council chamber, a town hall or indeed the Houses of Parliament.

I hope that I have been able to persuade the noble Lord, Lord Davies, of the need for the new offence in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 381. The new offence is targeted and proportionate in defending those dedicated public servants, in this House and elsewhere, who put themselves forward to take part in our democratic institutions. They should be able to do this without a fear of being harassed in their own home. If, however, the noble Lord continues to have concerns about Amendment 381 then we will not move it in Committee, but he should be clear that we will bring the amendment back on Report.

Let me now respond to the other non-government amendments in this group. Clause 124 strengthens police powers to impose conditions on protests in the vicinity of places of worship. I put it to noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that we have seen a clear need for this measure as a result of the protests we have seen following the conflict in Gaza, and indeed thugs targeting mosques as part of the disorder in the summer of 2024.

Frequent large-scale protests since 7 October 2023 across the UK have significantly impacted the Jewish community, particularly in London and in Manchester, Leeds and other cities. We have heard reports of fear and disrupted access to places of worship. To reassure the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, it is absolutely clear that this is related to the impact that we have seen in the wake of the protests arising from the conflict in Gaza, in the wake of 7 October 2023. I am slightly surprised that that was news to him, but fair enough.

Current police powers under the 1986 Act are insufficient to address the intimidating effects of protests that are currently being experienced by religious communities. Let me be clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that this is the lived experience of the Jewish community over the past two years. It is not about assuming the potential of harassment; it is about assessing and preventing the actual impact of harassment. Again, I commend the clarity and force of the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who spoke forcefully about the fact that it is about intention and impact. I am also grateful to him for raising the rationale for the Court of Appeal ruling out the judgment on cumulative impact in the previous secondary legislation. It had nothing to do with the cumulative nature of those regulations.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, touched on a number of things. We will probably not get to it tonight, but we are talking about facial recognition later in Committee, and indeed we have a consultation on it. We are not ignoring that, and we can attend to it. A number of Peers mentioned Palestine Action and the proscription. I am not going to relitigate discussions that we have had. My noble friend Lord Hanson has dealt with that very well on a number of occasions, but I will just add my tuppence-worth. You can very easily support the cause of Palestinian statehood and freedom and criticise the Israeli Government by supporting a range of organisations that does not include one such as Palestine Action, which has been proven to organise and behave like a terrorist organisation. I will say no more on that.

I fully appreciate the intent behind Amendments 371A to 371F, tabled by my noble friend Lady Blower, but the law must be clear to all concerned. I put it to my noble friend that this is already the case. The term “in the vicinity” is already used in Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 and is clearly understood in that context. Substituting reference to

“within 50 metres from the outer perimeter”

of a place of worship could be unduly restrictive.

Moreover, the power to impose conditions purposefully applies regardless of whether the organisers of the protest intended for the protest to have that effect. What matters is the impact of the protest on worshippers, not the intentions of the protesters. There is a question that arises from the formulation that my noble friend Lady Blower uses in her amendment. If you are using a place of worship but not necessarily for the act of worship—say, you are taking your child to a Sunday school or to a youth club at your synagogue, your mosque or your gurdwara—would that be covered by her amendment? But that may be dancing on the head of a pin slightly.

The question from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, of harm having to occur for the offence to have taken place and the formulation of the wording gets the cart before the horse. He saying that harm has to occur for the offence to have been caused. I say that this is about preventing harm and harassment being caused in the first place.

The noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Walney, and my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn have put forward various other new public order-related proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Walney, seeks to give effect to various recommendations contained in the report Protecting our Democracy from Coercion, which he submitted to the previous Administration. Of course, I pay tribute to his long-standing work in this area on political violence and extremism.

I do not propose to get too far into the detail of these particular amendments, given that the Government have commissioned a review of public order legislation led by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven. It seems like hours ago—actually, it was hours ago—that he showed perspicacity in guessing that I might pray this in aid. His review will publish its findings in the spring, and it is right that we wait for the outcome of the review before bringing forward further public order legislation.

On the cumulative impact proposals that we are adding to the Bill, the Government consider the need, as demonstrated by recent events, to impose a duty on the police to take into account the impact of cumulative disruption. Because we have had these repeated protests that have left communities, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe and intimidated, the legislation is an important step in ensuring that everyone feels safe in this country, while protecting the right to protest. This is a first step, but we will of course await the words of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, in the spring to see how we might develop these issues further.

22:30

Without prejudice to the Government’s considerations or the findings of the review, it may be helpful to noble Lords if I offer some brief observations on some of the other amendments before the Committee. Amendment 370AA was tabled by my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, and I to pay tribute to him. He spoke with real passion and power and did well to both present and represent the very real fears and concerns that the Jewish community in this country currently feels. Those concerns are real; we should not ignore them and, frankly, the Jewish community should not have to experience them.

I want to begin by acknowledging the importance of addressing language that may incite violence or hatred. The Government recognise the sensitivity of this issue, particularly in light of the attacks against Jewish communities both in Manchester and on Bondi Beach in recent months. My noble friend’s amendment seeks to create a new offence for using or displaying terms that promote or incite a holy or religious war or intifada.

While I understand the concerns that prompted this proposal, I stress that the conduct described is already covered by existing legislation. Sections 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 criminalise

“threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”

or visible representation likely to cause harassment or distress. Section 4 of that Act criminalises

“threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”

or written signs where these are used with the intention of causing fear of violence or to provoke the use of violence. These provisions have been consistently applied by the police and upheld in case law.

To be fair to my noble friend, he recognised the very welcome decision by the Metropolitan Police and the Greater Manchester Police to specifically recognise the impact of the phrase, “Globalise the intifada”. I would say to him that the Prime Minister has made it clear that there is no other interpretation of calls to globalise the intifada than that of a call for violence against Jewish communities, and that they are therefore entirely unacceptable. I commend his words, and I hope that they underscore the seriousness of the Government in tackling this issue. However, this amendment risks creating unnecessary duplication and confusion, and there are existing offences that provide the police with proportionate tools to respond to a range of behaviours.

I am over time, so I am going to try to speed up to address every amendment that I possibly can.

On Amendment 486C from my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, again, I understand the motivation behind it, but I respectfully submit that we should not be seeking to fetter the operational independence of the DPP in the way that his amendment would. However, I assure my noble friend that the CPS takes all hate crime extremely seriously, including that motivated by antisemitism, and has prosecutors in place specifically to prosecute such offences.

Amendment 382I, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to place a new duty on the Met police to ensure access to the Parliamentary Estate for Members and staff on any day on which either House is sitting. It was supported by a number of noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Godson. I agree with the sentiment that parliamentary business should not be disrupted by protests. However, the police may use their existing powers to this effect.

I turn to Amendment 370A from the noble Lord, Lord Walney. We agree that political violence has no place in society, and the Government are committed to countering extremism in all its forms. However, this amendment would create a new designation regime for extremist behaviour below the terrorism threshold. Deciding which groups, if any, meet the threshold for such a regime would be challenging. The effect of this provision would risk conflating legitimate protests with criminality in a manner that could impact democratic engagement.

There are already offences that deal with groups that aim to commit serious crimes to influence public policy. For example, in England and Wales, these include the offences of damaging or threatening to damage property, as well as conspiracy and encouraging and assisting crime. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, about the specific issue around the group Bash Back. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, recognised the important point that criminal law is already in place. Therefore, the solution is not necessarily to add new laws. Issues and evidential thresholds will apply, whatever the offence.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

I am sorry to intervene, particularly because of the time, but to clarify, I said that there are many individual laws that one could use to pursue individuals. It is incredibly difficult for the police to do that. They exist, but they are not applied in the way that we need them to, hence the need for the amendment.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I appreciate that clarification. Considering the time, I say to the noble Baroness that the review by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, is forthcoming. I dare say he will be reading this debate in Hansard with some interest.

Amendment 380, from the noble Lord, Lord Walney, seeks to apply the changes made by government Amendment 372 to Sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act to the provisions of Section 13 of the Act. I simply say that, in a democratic society, the threshold for banning a protest should always be markedly higher than that of imposing conditions on a protest. That is why, sadly, we will resist his amendment.

Amendment 382E, from the noble Lord, Lord Walney, similarly touches on one of the guiding principles of the review by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald—namely, whether our public order legislation strikes a fair balance between freedom of expression and the right to protest with the need to prevent disorder and keep communities safe. The ability to impose conditions on, or indeed ban, a protest based on the cumulative impact of protests on policing resources goes to the very heart of how we strike that balance.

Finally, Amendment 486B, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, is concerned with access to public funds for organisations promoting or supporting criminal conduct. I understand from what he said that this amendment may stem from comments made by the Irish hip-hop group Kneecap, which previously received funding from the Government through the music export growth scheme. I want to make it clear that I unequivocally condemn the comments that were made, which the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and others mentioned. In the light of that case, DCMS has made changes to the scheme, including requiring applicants to declare activity that may bring the scheme into disrepute, introducing further due diligence processes, adding a clawback clause to the grant agreement, and, where concerns are raised, escalating decisions to Ministers.

This has been a wide-ranging and thoughtful debate. We recognise the vital part played by peaceful protest in the functioning of our democracy. For the Government’s part, the measures in Part 9, together with Amendments 372 and 381, address gaps that we and the police have identified in the current legislative framework. We stand ready to address other operational gaps in the law, but before doing so we should await the outcome of the review by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald. I hope that that addresses all the questions that have been posed tonight. We will of course review Hansard and write if we need to. In response to the specific request from my noble friend Lady Blower, we are of course always keen to have conversations, and we can take that offline outside the Chamber.

We all have a part to play here and I observe that those organising, stewarding and attending protests, as well as having a right to protest, have a responsibility to ensure that what they chant and the placards they wave are not racist and do not threaten communities or intimidate fellow citizens. Sadly, that has not always been the case. With that, I commend the government amendments to the Committee.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I have two small points to make. First, there seems to be a lot of prejudgment of the report by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald—the Minister seemed to say that the noble Lord will not disagree with anything that has gone through in the Bill. I do not understand why we did not wait for the report to be published before the Bill was introduced. Secondly, I did not hear an answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, about why Labour has done a complete 180-degree turn on Amendment 372.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

In answer to both the noble Baroness’s points, the lived experience of the Jewish community, and that of other communities—the actions we saw against mosques and the Muslim community in parts of this country during the summer and since October 2023 provide a different context and this was recognised in the Metropolitan Police and GMP statement on chants to “Globalise the intifada”—over the past couple of years leads one to draw different conclusions. It is absolutely the case that the Home Secretary saw the importance of putting cumulative impact and providing reassurance to communities as a priority that could be folded into part of the review by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and that there was no need to wait for it and we could use the Bill to do it. That is what we have done, and I will be proud to move those amendments.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, it has indeed been a mammoth grouping. I am grateful to all noble Lords for the eloquence, passion and knowledge that they have brought to the many amendments that have been discussed. I will be happy to withdraw my amendment, pending Report, but I urge the Government to keep an open mind on this. I shall make a couple of points on why I think that this is really important.

My Amendment 380, on Section 13 of the Public Order Act and cumulative disruption, is important for this issue specifically but also on a wider issue. I do not need to tell my noble friend the Minister about the difficult position that much of the Jewish community in this country feel they are in, given the challenges that they face—but also in not necessarily always knowing that this Government have their back. There is real peril for the Government in saying to the Jewish community, “Yes, we hear you on cumulative disruption, and finally we are moving”, after years, but then not doing sufficient to make a genuine difference on protests. The proposals in Section 13 are absolutely in tune with what the Government have already put down; they do not prejudge the Macdonald review, any more than their own amendments do. I urge them to keep an open mind on that issue.

On a final, wider point, there have been eloquent speeches on both sides. Given the particular eloquence of those who have argued against the kind of changes that I have proposed and that the Government are bringing forward, I think that it is really important to acknowledge the situation that we are in. I took the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that it could be dangerous, if wrongly applied, to overly restrict protests around buildings that are important to democracy, such as Parliament, but let us just remember that two Members of Parliament have been assassinated for their political beliefs in recent years—our friend Jo Cox and Sir David Amess. We have a public risk register that suggests that the assassination of a political figure is one of the highest threats that we have. We had a situation in recent years when Parliament was surrounded by an angry mob, and the Speaker of the House of Commons was so concerned for the safety of MPs that he changed the regulations.

This is not an idle thing about MPs being able to take a bit of rough and tumble, and because someone had glory days in the 1970s in the anti-apartheid movement then, frankly, anything goes. We are in a really serious situation as a country, and it deserves to be taken seriously by this Parliament and this Government.

Amendment 370A withdrawn.

Amendment 370AA not moved.

Schedule 12: Specified Memorials

Amendment 370B

Moved by

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay]

370B: Schedule 12, page 298, line 8, at end insert—
“24A Field Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein Memorial, Whitehall, London. 24B Field Marshal The Viscount Alanbrooke Memorial, Whitehall, London.24C Field Marshal The Viscount Slim Memorial, Whitehall, London.24D The Women of World War II Memorial, Whitehall, London.24E Field Marshal The Earl Haig Memorial, Whitehall, London.24F George, Duke of Cambridge Memorial, Whitehall, London.24G Equestrian Statue of King George IV, Trafalgar Square, London.24H Major General Sir Henry Havelock Memorial, Trafalgar Square, London.24I General Sir Charles James Napier Memorial, Trafalgar Square, London.24J Air Marshal The Viscount Portal Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London.24K Fleet Air Arm Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London.24L Korean War Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London.24M Air Marshal The Viscount Trenchard Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London.24N Iraq and Afghanistan Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London.24O Chindit Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London.24P The Battle of Britain Monument, Victoria Embankment, London.24Q Royal Air Force Memorial, Victoria Embankment, London.24R Boadicea and Her Daughters Memorial, Westminster Bridge, London.”

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 370B, I shall speak to my further Amendment 370C. I must admit that I felt a little bit indulgent when I asked for them to be taken separately—but, as the noble Lord, Lord Katz, said, the previous group was rather a large one, which took us four and a quarter hours from start to finish. I hope that we can be a bit brisker in this group.

As vice-president of the Public Statues and Sculpture Association, I welcome measures in the Bill to protect some of our most venerable monuments. There is a long and lively history of such memorials serving as a backdrop to or focus of protest. As key ingredients of our public realm, it is understandable—perhaps even desirable—that they continue to form part of our national conversations today.

As long as those protests leave no lasting damage, many, including, I think, many of the people who are memorialised in them, might well say, “Fair enough”, but war memorials and memorials to wartime leaders hold a special significance in our national life. They stand as monuments to those who gave their lives for the freedom and prosperity that we now enjoy, including, of course, the freedom to protest. It is an insult to subjects and sculptors alike if these monuments are desecrated or dragooned into regular and unthinking protests. It is especially distressing when it happens to monuments that commemorate conflicts of which veterans or bereaved families are still among us.

22:45

Whatever our views about the other provisions of Part 9, and I have sat through and listened with interest to the debates this afternoon and this evening, I am sure that your Lordships are united in our desire to ensure that the memorials that we have collectively chosen to form part of our landscape—the physical manifestations of our national story—are treated with the respect that they deserve. But the Government’s proposed list of specified monuments in Schedule 12 feels curiously incomplete and inconsistent. My two amendments in this group seek to probe why that is.

In his comments earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, who is no longer in his place, suggested that the Government had selected the two dozen memorials set out in Schedule 12 because they are the listed monuments designated at grade 1, the highest tier of listing. I must say, as a former Heritage Minister, that that strikes me as flawed reasoning. The listed buildings regime focuses on the special architectural or historic merits of a built asset, whereas our focus here, surely, should be on the event or the person being commemorated. It does not matter whether the statue is particularly beautiful or well-accomplished; it is about the significance of the historical event, the war and the wartime leaders that it recalls.

Assets can, of course, be upgraded or downgraded from grade 1, grade 2, and grade 2*. Why not, therefore, pin the provisions in the Bill to a specific grade level, rather than set out in the Bill, in primary legislation, those which happen to be grade 1 at the moment but might come to be downgraded, and miss out those that are not yet listed at this level? It also misses out the separate categorisation of scheduled monuments, which exist separately to the listings process. For instance, the Dover Patrol Monument by Sir Aston Webb, which commemorates 2,000 war dead from the Great War, was listed at grade 2 in 1966. It was upgraded to grade 2* in 2015, but it is a scheduled monument and surely, even by the Government’s logic, deserves some protection.

Of course, as we heard in a previous group, it is estimated that there are over 100,000 war memorials across the United Kingdom, not all of them listed at grade 1, but, as my noble friend Lord De Mauley pointed out in a previous group, there is no clear definition or rationale in the Bill. Those 100,000 monuments stand sacred in almost every parish in this land, but Schedule 12 sets out just two dozen specified memorials to receive the protections proposed in Clause 122.

Commendably, the examples that the Government have chosen by this curious logic are drawn from across the country. I could have added many more, similarly drawn from across the United Kingdom, but my Amendment 370B focuses, for simplicity’s sake, on our capital city and seeks to add those other memorials past which protesters frequently march on the usual police-approved route down Whitehall to Parliament Square.

I had presumed that that well-trodden route is the reason for the inclusion in the Government’s list of the statue of Edith Cavell, just north of Trafalgar Square, and the omission of the statue of Florence Nightingale, just around the corner at Waterloo Place—or is it really just because one is Grade 1 listed and one is not that the Government think these two nurses deserve differential treatment? One memorial on that route which is Grade 1 listed is, of course, Admiral Lord Nelson’s. That is Grade 1 listed but has been excluded, perhaps on the grounds of inaccessibility—or maybe the Minister thinks that anyone who succeeds in scaling that column deserves special dispensation under the Act.

While the Government’s rationale captures some of the memorials that one might pass if marching south down Whitehall, the current list in Schedule 12, Part 1, overlooks several figures and events of profound national significance. Why, for instance, other than the grade at which they happen presently to be listed, are the statues of Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery and Field Marshal Viscount Slim excluded from this list? Monty secured a key turning point of the Second World War through victory at El Alamein, then served as Commander in Chief of the Allied ground forces for Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings. Field Marshal Slim, meanwhile, transformed a demoralised and defeated force in Burma into a highly effective fighting machine, leading to victory in the Eastern theatre. The brilliant leader of the Forgotten Army does not deserve to be a forgotten statue today.

It is absolutely right that Sir Edwin Lutyens’ grade 1 listed Cenotaph be afforded the full protection of the Bill. But why is the memorial to the women of World War II, which stands just a few feet away, not afforded the same protection? Unveiled on the 60th anniversary of VE Day by Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II—who herself of course served as a teenage mechanic and driver in the Auxiliary Territorial Service—it pays tribute to the 7 million women, including the young Princess, who took on vital roles in securing victory, in factories, in the Land Army, and as secret agents in the Special Operations Executive. To exclude this memorial from the primary list of protected sites suggests a hierarchy of sacrifice that I am sure the Government did not intend.

Because of the Government’s logic, they include, beyond the usual protest route, monuments such as the Guards Memorial on Horse Guards Parade. Accordingly, I have suggested adding the monuments and memorials alongside the Albert Embankment on the other side of the Ministry of Defence. These remember the brave men and women who fought and fell in other conflicts, including the Korean War, in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as heroic units drawn from around the world such as the Chindits. Surely the Minister wants the memorials to these brave heroes to share the same protection as others.

I have restricted my suggestions in my amendment to human subjects, but I note that subsection (8)(a) of Clause 122 states that something has a commemorative purpose if at least one of its purposes is to commemorate

“one or more individuals or animals”.

Does that mean that the Government might, if it were to be graded more highly in future, consider adding the Animals in War Memorial in Park Lane, the construction of which was secured in large part by the late Dame Jilly Cooper? A few years ago, sadly, that monument was the target of political vandalism, along with the RAF Bomber Command Memorial a few hundred yards away, causing thousands of pounds of damage. But, because the memorial is of no special architectural merit—with apologies to the late Dame Jilly —it will enjoy no protections from the Bill as drafted.

My Amendment 370C refers to Schedule 12, Part 3, which deals not with war memorials per se but memorials to wartime political leaders—or, rather, to a single one. Here, the Government’s logic breaks down even further, because the statue they have chosen is not grade 1 listed; it is the grade 2 listed—the lowest tier of listing—statue to Sir Winston Churchill. That stands in contrast to the grade 1 listed sculpture by Auguste Rodin of the Burghers of Calais, which stands just outside Parliament in Victoria Tower Gardens, and commemorates the surrender of Calais during the Hundred Years’ War—itself a wartime sculpture. Or, indeed, the grade 1 listed statue to Charles, King and Martyr, which stands at the top of Whitehall. Noble Lords will remember that King Charles I led this country through the Anglo-Spanish War of 1625 to 1630 and the Anglo-French War of 1627 to 1629. Is there to be a statute of limitations in the Bill for the soldiers and sailors who died in those conflicts because they happened to occur in centuries longer ago?

Even on their own logic, the Government’s case is confusing, because Churchill is not the only wartime Prime Minister this country has had: nor is he the only wartime premier who has a statue in Parliament Square. Standing next to him is David Lloyd George, who led our nation to victory in the First World War. He transformed the machinery of government to meet the demands of total war, ensuring that munitions and morale were there to see that conflict through to its conclusion. I see the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who I am sure would want to see that great former Liberal Prime Minister added to the schedule to the Bill.

Next to him stands the statue of Jan Christian Smuts, who, along with Churchill, is the only person to have served in the war Cabinets of both world wars. These two great statesmen first met as foes during the Boer War, when Smuts actually interrogated the captured Churchill, but became vital allies throughout both world wars. After his death in 1950, Churchill described Smuts as

“one of the most enlightened, courageous and noble-minded men … of the twentieth century”.

Surely, therefore, his statue—and his contribution to our collective allied victory—deserves the same protection as Churchill’s.

I have included in my list the statue of two other British wartime premiers memorialised in Parliament Square. One is Viscount Palmerston, another Liberal, whose robust leadership and refusal to accept defeat during the Crimean War ensured that British interests and prestige were maintained during that period of immense geopolitical shift. The other is Benjamin Disraeli, the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, whose decisive role at the Congress of Berlin, backed up by the naval action that he took in the Dardanelles, did so much to secure peace with honour, preventing a major European war and curbing Russian expansion in the Balkans.

I have also added the very fine statue of Clement Attlee that stands in Mile End. As Deputy Prime Minister in the National Government, he managed the home front with a steady hand, ensuring domestic stability while the nation fought for its survival, and then took up the mantle of leading Britain and her allies through the final months of the war through to VJ Day. I am surprised that a Labour Government should overlook his contribution in the list that they have prepared.

I have also added the statue in her hometown of Grantham of my late noble friend Lady Thatcher, who stood up to Argentine aggression and defended the Falkland Islands when so many others would have faltered. If the statue of Churchill is to be protected because of his role as a wartime leader, by what logic are these other statues—none of them grade 1 listed—also excluded from the Government’s list?

There is a non-legislative solution that the Government might have considered. I understand that the statue of Sir Winston has a mild electric current running through it to deter pigeons and other avian intruders from leaving their signs of physical protest, but in the absence of turning that current up slightly to deter other species, my Amendment 370C proposes that we extend the protections of this Bill to other statesmen who bore the immense weight of wartime leadership.

Under the terms of Clause 122(5), the Secretary of State may, by regulations, amend the curiously incomplete lists that are currently in Schedule 12

“only if the Secretary of State considers that there is a significant public interest in it being a specified memorial for the purposes of this section”.

I will be interested, when the Minister comes to answer, to learn why the Secretary of State does not think there is a public interest in specifying the other memorials that I have set out in my amendments ab initio. If he thinks that some of them might indeed be added at a future date, why not set them out now in the Bill and avoid the unnecessary and unavoidable distress and damage to these much-cherished monuments?

I worry also about contracting out this decision-making to Historic England in the way that the Bill seems to do. That places an unfair burden on that arm’s-length body. It may also have the effect of deterring it from recommending some of our most important memorials for grade 1 listing, since that will now be accompanied, through this Bill, by new restrictions on the protesting public. I will be grateful for the Minister’s response as to the Government’s thinking on this matter, and I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 370B and 370C—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

We agreed that we would finish at about 11 pm, which we have come to. I suggest that we adjourn further debate on this group of amendments.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I do not think that the group will take long, if the Minister is happy to respond.

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

I am conscious that we agreed 11 pm with the House staff. If it is going to be quick, then that is fine. But we do not want to be sitting here later, because it is not fair on the House staff. We agreed 11 pm.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I have about four minutes, if that is acceptable. I do not think there are many other speakers in this crowded House tonight who wish to speak on it. I am in complete agreement with the list of memorials to be added to Schedule 12. They should be protected. All we are seeking to do here is add that there are some important ones missing. It is not a technicality; it is a matter of national memory, public safety and simple consistency in the law.

These additions matter because memorials named in the amendments are at the heart of our civic life. They stand in Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Victoria Embankment and Parliament Square. That is where the nation gathers. That is where tourists and schoolchildren come to learn. That is where the machinery of Government operates. They are not just isolated pieces of stone and bronze; they are focal points for our national life and public ritual. They commemorate the service, sacrifice and leadership of men and women whose actions shaped our history and whose memory we owe to future generations.

23:00

The quality of the architecture does not matter; it is what the memorial represents that matters. No matter how ugly it is, it should be protected if it is a great national hero who helped us save this country.

The names listed in the Amendments 370B and 370C are not random. They include senior commanders and public figures whose leadership and service are commemorated because of their national significance in saving this country, from Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, and Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, the General Field Marshal Viscount Slim of Burma, who led the Forgotten Army, the Women of World War II Memorial, the Battle of Britain Monument, the Iraq and Afghanistan Memorial, the Chindit Memorial and others. These are modern memorials but historical remembrances for those who served in difficult theatres. Finally, the statues in Parliament Square, of David Lloyd George, Benjamin Disraeli, Palmerston, Jan Smuts, Clement Attlee and Baroness Thatcher, are of figures whose public service should also be protected.

Finally, the Government say that we can add other amendments later by regulation. But we have a good list here, so why on earth not add them now? Then you can add others by regulation. I conclude by saying we should perhaps add another one: we should look at the National Memorial Arboretum. I would like the Government to say that they will consider the National Memorial Arboretum, where there are 400 memorials, and the big one is the one to the Armed Forces, which should be protected in all circumstances. I look forward to many more supporting speeches tonight.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay for highlighting the importance of protecting the public realm. We support fully the inclusion of Clause 122 in the Bill. The prohibition on climbing on specified memorials was first introduced by the previous Conservative Government’s Criminal Justice Bill, and I welcome the current Government carrying this forward.

My noble friend Lord Parkinson has, in his customary eloquent way, spoken to the rationale and the substance of his amendments. In light of the late hour, I am going to very briefly comment on a few of the points made. I was going to select from his list in the amendments of the various people whose statutes he seeks to protect, but, given the lateness of the hour, I will just comment that these amendments do not ask us to agree with every decision made by the individuals whose statues we have. They simply ask us to recognise that our history is not something to be curated by omission or protected only in part. If the purpose of Clause 122 is to protect memorials and monuments from desecration and safeguard, in so doing, the shared inheritance of this nation, the memorials and statues in the amendments plainly belong within its scope. To exclude them would not be an act of neutrality; it would be an act of judgment by silence. For those reasons, I hope the Minister will give my noble friend’s amendments very serious consideration.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendments 370B and 370C, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, seek to expand the list of war and other memorials covered by the new offence of climbing on a memorial, which is provided for in Clause 122.

I fully acknowledge that many of the memorials listed in these amendments commemorate events and individuals of great national importance. However, the lists of war memorials in Parts 1 and 2 of Schedule 12 include only those on Historic England’s list of grade 1 war memorials, as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, pointed out. This provides an objective basis for inclusion in the legislation, as being those of the greatest historical interest, and ensures consistency and avoids arbitrary additions.

The one exception currently—and I will not go into all the variations that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, mentioned, because of the lateness of the hour—is the statue of Sir Winston Churchill. This is included in Part 3 of Schedule 12 because there have been repeated incidents of intentional targeting of this statue during protests. The Government consider that as a prominent national symbol of Britain’s wartime leadership, and due to the targeting of the statue by protesters, it is right that Churchill’s statue is included.

The Government are also committed to including the national Holocaust memorial and the national Muslim war memorial, once they are built. The provision includes a power for the Home Secretary to add further memorials by secondary legislation, and she will no doubt want to ensure that any further additions follow a methodical approach.

The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, specifically mentioned the issue of inserting “animals” as well as “individuals” in the legislation, and he got it in one—that is around the potential consideration of the national Animals in War Memorial on Park Lane that he mentioned. But, again, that is about leaving options open so as not to rule out including that at a later date.

In the knowledge that we have a power to add to the list of memorials to which the new offence applies, I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, that group took 21 minutes. I apologise for keeping the House five minutes past 11 pm, but after four and a quarter hours on the last group, I do not think it was unreasonable to ask the Minister to respond to my amendment, which I have sat and waited patiently to move, and I am grateful to the Government Chief Whip for allowing his noble friend to do so.

Sadly, the noble Lord did not have much longer to set out the Government’s case, but, even if he had taken longer, I do not think he would have persuaded me. This sounds like very curious logic. As I say, the problem with picking two dozen memorials that are presently listed at grade 1 is that those may not always be listed at grade 1, and future memorials may be added in. He curiously said that they might add the memorial to the animals of World War II, but not the monument to the women of World War II. I urge him to take that away and reflect more coolly.

I am grateful to noble Lords who have stayed to listen to this and I will reflect on this as we head to Report, but for tonight, and given the hour, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 370B.

Amendment 370B withdrawn.

Amendment 370C not moved.

Schedule 12 agreed.

Clause 123 agreed.

Amendment 371 not moved.

Clause 124: Places of worship: restriction on protests

Amendment 371A not moved.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 11.08 pm.