Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister, Lady Ludford and Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, on laying this amendment. I was not familiar with this issue until it was brought to my attention, but I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to take it seriously and address it.

I understand that the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 granted British citizenship to Chagossians who were resettled, but only if they were born in the 13-year window from 1969 to 1982. This has left families divided. For example, Jean-Paul Delacroix was born in 1968, and is the oldest of his siblings. At the age of 64, he wants, but cannot obtain, British citizenship; his siblings can. Having been refused, he is now here illegally and cannot even work to support himself.

In 2017, my honourable friend in the other place, Henry Smith, introduced a Private Member’s Bill—which has still had only its First Reading—and then laid in the other place the amendment to the Bill that has been referred to by noble Lords. As has been said— I find it difficult to understand their argument—the Government’s rationale for rejecting Chagossians’ right to British nationality relies on the cause of the injustice while refusing to correct it. Having forcibly resettled 3,000 individuals at the time, the injustice seems to be being compounded by refusing the small number of people who want, and I would argue deserve, to be in receipt of citizenship that opportunity. This Bill represents a chance for the Government to act on a long-standing injustice.

Amendment 11 would correct the nationality law consequences of exiling the Chagossians. Only those born there or born in that 13-year window can currently claim citizenship, but the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, would give the opportunity to all those who were born there. The five- year, time-limited window tries to address the Government’s concerns. Like my noble friend Lord Horam, I understand those concerns, but the Chagossians represent a unique case. It is hard to see this setting a precedent. I urge my noble friend the Minister to consider this concession before Report.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle signed the amendment and has asked me to speak in her place as she is unable to be here.

This is obviously a 50 year-old injustice, inflicted by the UK—by the Foreign Office, as the noble Lord, Lord Horam, suggests, so it might have been good to have a Minister from the Foreign Office here to answer our points. What was done to the Chagos Islanders—deprivation of their lands, dispossession of their community, chaos brought to individual lives—was not limited to one or two generations; it has gone on and on. True reparations would involve the right of return. This is not special circumstances or special treatment. This is justice that we can deliver, albeit very, very late. Simple justice ensures that we take responsibility for people whose lives we took control of without their consent. I hope the Minister can take this back and ensure that it becomes part of the Bill.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a founder member and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, a vice-chairman of the Chagos Islands All Party Parliamentary Group. Having once had the pleasure of meeting the Chagos Islanders based in Mauritius, I rise to strongly support this amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Horam, have explained, this issue is an international scandal for which the Government are entirely responsible.

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I will listen with care to the Minister’s response, but the accompanying factsheets of this Bill and the answers from Ministers to date do not seem to provide the necessary substantial evidence that there is a widespread problem which needs fixing; nor do they yet provide the reassurance that such new powers are proportionate or necessary, given the significant concerns that they cause among many, particularly minority groups. I hope that the Minister can reassure us with some clear evidence of the number of cases we are talking about and why it is that current powers are inadequate.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have been very pleasantly surprised to see the level of public anger that has been expressed against Clause 9. People are rightly absolutely furious to learn that there is a two-tier system of citizenship in this country, where if you have a second nationality you are at risk of the Government withdrawing your British citizenship. That is pretty grim. However, it is concerning that some people are suggesting this is something new. It is not new; it is already the law that dual citizens can have their British citizenship revoked with the very wishy-washy legal test of it being conducive to the public good.

That is why my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle has tabled Amendments 32 and 33. These will revoke the power of the Government to remove people’s British citizenship unless their citizenship was obtained by fraud or deception. Clause 9 extends the power, but simply defeating Clause 9 will not remove the power. I hope that we can work with noble Lords to remove the power on Report to eliminate this two-tier system of citizenship.

While we are discussing numbers, since 2006 the legal website Free Movement has found that at least 464 people have been stripped of their British citizenship. For comparison, in the 30 years before 2003 no one had been stripped of citizenship. So much for transparency —this could be discovered only through research, as the Government do not provide any sort of regular reporting on the figures. I ask the Minister if the Government will start doing that, so we can keep track and be fully aware of what they are doing.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, reference has understandably been made to one of the Acts which came to fruition when I was Home Secretary, and I do not resile from that. I speak this afternoon because this is a critically important debate, and the contributions so far have been both informative and enlightening.

Amendment 28 from the noble Lord, Anderson, has a great deal of merit. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for whom I have the most enormous respect and good will from working together on a whole range of other issues, that simply going back to day zero is not necessarily the best answer for the solution we are seeking. If we could find a way forward on Report that takes away the genuine fear from millions of people who believe—erroneously, but they believe it—that Clause 9 as drafted and the implementation of further measures will put them and their families at risk, then we will have done a good job in clarifying the situation.

To put things in perspective, the reason that there was a change from the early 20th century onwards has a great deal to do with the nature of dual citizenship, the way in which global movements have changed quite dramatically and the consequences of global franchise terrorism, which did not exist before. Our main threat, as we all know, up to the beginning of this century, was seen to be from the conflict in Ireland.

To be fair to the Minister, an effort to try to bring the present situation up to date is understandable, but the way it is being done is not. I do not think that the 2002 legislation, implemented in 2003, actually went too far. It was done on the back of the attack on the World Trade Center and beyond, and it was necessary to take into account the dangers that were foreseen and the people who were known to be a danger to our country. I thought that the measures taken at the time seemed to be proportionate. We can debate whether they were or were not, but it is absolutely clear that simply going further and further without justification is not appropriate in our democracy. A step back and a reflection on what it is we are trying to achieve, and why, would be beneficial.

By the way, I do not consider that the measures I was involved in were about punishing anybody. They were about protecting people from those embedded in the community who were no longer committed to our democratic society; in other words, those who had forfeited this part of their dual citizenship—citizenship of our country—because of the actions they took or were prepared to take. These were the actions of individuals, not actions imposed by government.

Let us try, if we can, to get this right on Report. If we can do that, we will take away that fear, which I think is the main reason why we should remove Clause 9.

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[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I agree with the noble Baroness that we have done good work on the Bill. On a more serious note, perhaps I may say how much we appreciate the chairmanship of the right honourable Harriet Harman MP, whose recent bereavement has saddened us so much.

I will speak to both Amendments 30 and 31. As has been said by other noble Lords, Clause 10 amends the British Nationality Act to introduce new requirements for the registration of a stateless child—a child born in the UK—and could make it even more difficult for them to acquire British nationality, to which there are already significant hurdles. I could not agree more with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. Why should it be a problem that children are becoming stateless and ceasing to have the security of nationality?

Under Clause 10, the Home Secretary has to be satisfied that the child is unable to acquire another nationality. That puts that child in the position of having to prove that they could not reasonably have acquired another nationality. The policy rationale seems to be a suspicion that parents are wilfully causing their child’s statelessness—the culture of disbelief that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to. As colleagues and the JCHR say, it is difficult to see how the best interests of the child, as required by the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, are served by the new test in this provision. How is it in that child’s interests to be left stateless?

Indeed, asserts the JCHR, Clause 10

“risks punishing the child for a perceived failure”

on the part of their parent or carer, which is obviously through no fault of their own. However, the UN convention does not impose a requirement on the parent to exhaust all avenues to seek the citizenship of another state. So Clause 10 could move the UK away from the convention. I was interested that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, quoted ILFA and the Bar Council as saying that they do indeed think that this is a contravention of the convention, and I can see why. Amendment 30 is an attempt to move the UK back towards the intention of the convention by saying that British citizenship could only be withheld

“where the nationality of a parent is available to the child immediately, without any legal or administrative hurdles.”

Amendment 31 aims to make the best interests of the child central to the decision-making.

Finally, in addition to the risk of alienation from our society of individual children, it cannot be in the interests of British society as a whole for young people born here to be excluded from sharing citizenship and thus rootedness in their community.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support the amendments and the proposal that Clause 10 should not stand part, and my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle has also signed them. We should be making it as easy as possible for children to obtain a nationality if they are already stateless. Quite honestly, who dreams up these cruel clauses at the Home Office? Do they not have a heart when they are writing these things? Do they not understand the impact that they can have on children through no fault of the child? The decision should be made purely in the best interests of the child, as provided by Amendment 31. I hope that the Government change course and make this as easy and straightforward as possible. People outside are looking in and are judging this to be cruel, unpleasant and perfectly horrendous.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Paddick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for tabling this amendment.

Briefly, a duty of candour would bring about a change of mindset and culture by requiring openness and transparency about what has happened in investigations. It would lead to a more efficient deployment of resources, which would have a beneficial impact on the public purse. It could very much help to contradict allegations of police corruption and will grow confidence in the leadership of the police service because there would be a statutory obligation of openness and transparency, and therefore an assumption there would be compliance with the law rather than a suspicion of cover-up or, even worse, corruption. The amendment is framed to protect all necessary matters but to enable a different positive approach to the delivery of policing. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I welcome that the opposition is united in support of this amendment.

The police have failed to own up to many of their mistakes. I personally have experienced police evasion, police spying and police deceit. It beggars belief that there is no duty of candour on our police force already. It actually imposes their own idea of what the law says and this is completely wrong, so I very much support this amendment.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, as a former police officer, I must tell the House that leaving the failure to abide by such a duty of candour to the police misconduct process, as the Government are asking us to do, is inadequate, as the decision on whether to investigate or take misconduct proceedings will be left in the hands of the police themselves.

If it is in the interest of the police that something is covered up, they will not investigate and they will not take action against the officers responsible. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has just explained, her experience of the inquiry into the Daniel Morgan murder demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt the need for this amendment, and we support it.

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[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the Government on this matter. It rather caught me by surprise that I was going to but, having studied the amendments with some care, I am on their side. As regards Amendment 116, these provisions are a serious improvement on what went before. I am bound to say that I was very uneasy with what went before but Amendment 116 addresses some of the concerns. I have two drafting points to make, which could be addressed in the House of Commons if the Government were so minded.

First, I absolutely agree with those who worry about the word “significant”. “Significant” is pretty trivial; it is not “substantial” or “serious” and, speaking for myself, I rather hope that the Government substitute “substantial” or “serious” when the Bill gets to the House of Commons.

My second point concerns proposed new subsection (2ZC). Here, I do not think that the Government have gone far enough, because what is being contemplated in that provision as it stands—I am sorry, I simply do not agree with the noble Lord who spoke from the Opposition Benches on this—is a total inability to carry on the work in the vicinity of the noise. But we should also address circumstances where there is a considerable inconvenience to ordinary citizens, which takes me to my fundamental point: of course demonstrators have the right to demonstrate, but ordinary citizens also have rights to go about their ordinary business, to work, to enjoy reasonable tranquillity and to expect others to respect that. It seems that the law has gone too far in favour of a demonstration, and that is very unfortunate. On the whole, I therefore support the Government in this matter.

It is true that if I was drafting this thing, I would have done it slightly differently. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, about unease. What does unease mean? The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, makes the same point and I agree. I also agree on the concept of not being able to carry on proper business. That is slightly doubtful to my way of thinking as well. However, on the whole, although I came initially to think these things had gone too far, I now think that the Government are broadly speaking right in trying to bring about a better balance between the rights of demonstrators and ordinary citizens.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Could I just mention to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that these are ordinary people who protest? These are people who quite often just do not agree with the Government. I support a lot of protests that happen at the moment; there are sometimes protests that I do not support, but I support those people’s right to protest. On noise, I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. How do the Government seriously think that protest is going to happen without noise? That is a fundamental part of it, whether it is drums, chanting or singing, or just talking through a megaphone. These provisions really are so oppressive. I have attached my name to Amendments 122, 133 and 147. These clauses should be deleted from the Bill. They are repressive and plain nasty, and they really have to go.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendments in this group standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, particularly those related to striking out Clauses 56, 57, 58 and 62. Briefly, in my view the Bill represents the biggest threat to the right to dissent and non-violent protest in my lifetime. It is deeply reactionary. It is an authoritarian attack on the fundamental liberties of our citizens.

If enacted in past generations, it would have throttled the suffragettes and blocked their ability to rattle Parliament’s cage to secure votes for women. It would have prevented antifascists stopping Mosley’s bullying, anti-Semitic blackshirts at Cable Street in the East End of London in 1936. It would have thwarted anti-apartheid protests that I led, in 1969 and 1970, which successfully stopped all white South African sports tours—a success which Nelson Mandela, then on Robben Island, hailed as a vital stepping stone in the ultimate defeat of apartheid. It would have prevented the Anti-Nazi League protests that stopped a resurgent and anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and fascist National Front in its tracks between 1977 and 1980, and in the early 1990s, similarly, the BNP. If Boris Johnson and Priti Patel want to be on the wrong side of history, the Bill is certainly the way to do it. I hope that this House will resist them.

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[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

We have amendments in this group, and I will refer also to the new government amendments. I will try to be brief since I do not wish to test the patience of the House, but I have a bit to get through. In that context, I congratulate the Minister on the quite enormous stamina which she has shown so far. I have to admit that it is way in excess of my stamina for this kind of thing.

We oppose the group of new government clauses on protest. In our view, they should not be added to the Bill, which already contains government proposals in relation to protests. The Bill has been in Parliament for some 11 months. However, these sweeping, significant and further controversial powers from the Government have not been looked at for a single minute by the elected House, which is normal practice in relation to controversial measures. In this House they have had just over one hour’s consideration, after midnight at the end of Committee, which meant, in effect, that the overwhelming majority of noble Lords were denied the opportunity to participate. We have now started to debate them here on Report at 9.50 pm and have been told that Report has to be completed tonight, whether before or after midnight. This is, frankly, an outrageous way to legislate. Sometimes a Bill needs late additions to respond to events that have to be addressed immediately. However, the Government did not apply this approach to abusive and intimidating protests outside schools and vaccine centres. Instead, this House compelled them to do so last week.

We support increasing sentences for those who protest dangerously by blocking motorways. This is also likely to cause a clear risk to life, and we were all aware of ambulances being impeded last year when motorways were obstructed and of members of the public being unable to complete time-critical journeys in the timescale required. Our Amendment 150A to government Amendment 150 would apply these increased sentences where they should actually be targeted: not at every road and highway across the board but at wilful obstruction of the motorways and major roads in the 4,300-mile strategic road network—SRN—at the core of our national transport system. Instruction of the SRN results in the most disruption due to volume of traffic, a lack of alternative routes and the difficulty of getting off such a major route because of infrequent junctions, for the large amounts of traffic obstructed. Our amendment would also largely prevent the higher penalties applying to obstruction of a grass verge or pavement, which may be interpreted as part of a highway.

The Government’s proposed locking-on amendment provides an exceptionally low threshold for a broad offence. It can be triggered by an act that is capable of causing disruption to two people. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services is not convinced of the need for this power. Its report on balancing protest powers states that

“most interviewees did not wish to criminalise protest actions through the creation of a specific offence concerning locking-on.”

The reality is that powers already exist for dealing with lock-ons. What we should be looking at is proper guidance, training and, as the inspectorate raised, improving our use of existing resources and specialist officers.

Our Amendments 160A to 160C are based on recommendations of HMICFRS, including consolidating police guidance on public order in one place and keeping track of national and local needs for specialist officers. These are examples of what could have been debated and worked on, if these proposals had been given proper scrutiny time, to find the best way through, but this House has not had that opportunity. I will make a reference to suffragettes: since locking on was used by the suffragettes, I hope that the Government are not going to tell us that it emerged as a tactic for the first time between Second Reading and Report, and that they had no opportunity to bring forward carefully drafted legislation instead of the rushed, broadly drafted power now in front of us.

Government Amendments 151 to 153 on obstruction of major transport works and key infrastructure are overreaching and unnecessary, as there are already existing public order powers that can apply to these situations. Amendment 151 will have an impact particularly on environmental protesters. Frankly, we have reached a sorry state of affairs when we legislate still further specifically against those concerned about the proven threat of climate change and its impact on our way of life and that of our children and grandchildren, and the tardy action on environmental issues. As the Prime Minister himself once committed to lying down in front of the bulldozers in opposition to a third runway, one wonders how much thought he has given to these widely drawn new powers.

We are opposed to the new stop and search on suspicion powers in Amendment 154. We have concerns over their disproportionate use in relation to black and minority ethnic groups and those groups’ level of trust in the police—a problem that we have not faced up to in other uses of stop and search; we also have concerns over how widely the powers are drawn.

It is, though, the final two powers—on suspicionless stop and search and serious disruption prevention orders—that we believe are the most extreme and pernicious. Suspicionless stop and search is a power that, until now, we have used to target serious violent crime and terrorism. These new government clauses would replicate that power to target peaceful protests. Where the power is used, it would permit any member of the public near a protest to be stopped and searched without cause and without suspicion.

The second of the final two powers—serious disruption prevention orders, which can be made without a conviction—are, in effect, essentially protest banning orders. HMICFRS has said that it believed that protest banning orders

“would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent.”

Like serious violence prevention orders, serious disruption prevention orders can be made using inadmissible evidence; they can be extended indefinitely; and breaching them is a criminal offence with terms of imprisonment attached.

These final two powers are overreaching, unwarranted powers which affect the rights of the British public. They should most certainly not be included in the Bill. The Government are trying to force them in through the back door, without full and necessary parliamentary scrutiny, including by this House.

The reason cannot be lack of parliamentary time to provide such full scrutiny—the Commons Chamber finished at 3.30 pm last Wednesday, following the Prime Minister’s performance at PMQs. We cannot support any of these last-minute, rushed and ill-thought-through broad powers in this group of new government amendments, with the exception of approving the increased sentences for wilfully obstructing motorways and major roads.

The absolute priority for us has to be opposing the Government’s suspicionless stop and search and the serious disruption prevention orders being put into statute. These, however, are down as the last new clauses in this group. Frankly, it is already quite late, and we ought to seek to have these votes as soon as possible, to ensure that as many noble Lords as possible can cast a vote.

I conclude by simply referring to what my noble friend Lord Blunkett wrote in April last year:

“Protest might be inconvenient for politicians, but it acts as a pressure valve, allowing citizens to express their views and vent frustrations that could otherwise boil over … If we suppress protest, we could see more anger towards institutions including the police, the judiciary and parliament.”


That is the direction in which we think the Government are heading with these new protest clauses.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I shall speak briefly, because I too want to get to the votes. Despite government claims to the contrary, these are draconian laws that are part of a wider assault on our democracy. We have a Government who are passing rules for us but not acting according to those rules themselves. The police protect the powerful, while getting more oppressive powers to use against the voiceless. This is an autocracy, not a democracy. The Government know that they will face bigger and more vocal protests while they get on with their dog whistle policies, which fail at the moment to distract from the terrible impact of their politics.

There will be a lot of climate change protests in future—I can see myself getting arrested, perhaps more than I have so far. Climate change is the biggest threat to human civilisation. It is an existential threat, and this Government are not acting fast enough.

The Government claim to speak for ordinary people, but it is ordinary people who protest on the streets, and the Government do not speak for them anymore; they do not speak for the great British public, because the great British public find the Bill and these late amendments offensive. The Greens here will be voting against all of these late amendments. We will not support the Labour amendment on the obstruction of the highway, only because it opens the door to the Government bringing back their original amendment. I just hope that the Government listen.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, gave an excellent speech in opposition to these government amendments and in support of other amendments tabled, and I have little to add to it.

I want to say a word or two about stop and search without suspicion. At one time, every year in London, about 180,000 people were stopped and searched without suspicion under the Terrorism Act. It caused tremendous anger and offence to those who were searched, particularly to those groups who fell into the broad definition of tropes used by police officers to decide who to stop and search. That was stopped. Interestingly, the provisions of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, as amended, now provide that an authorisation may be given for stop and search without suspicion by an assistant chief constable or above—a more senior officer than in this situation—and only if the person giving the authorisation

“considers it expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism.”

The Terrorism Act stop and search power is there for the prevention of actual acts of actual terrorism which kill actual people.

The dilution of without-suspicion stop and search powers is a menacing and dangerous measure. I urge the Government to recognise that it is disproportionate to have a lower level of officer allowed to give an authorisation to stop and search basically middle-income, middle-class, middle-educated people who have strong feelings about the environment, who are not going to commit acts of terrorism but will just be a pretty awful nuisance—and that of course has to be dealt with in this Bill. It is disproportionate, and the Government should think twice about it.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

I look forward to the Minister’s response and urge them to strengthen the democratic process underlying the potential rollout of SVROs. However, if the Minister cannot reassure the House about Parliament’s role in relation to the pilot, I will want to test the opinion of the House—and this has changed—on Amendment 95A, rather than Amendment 95B. If successful, Amendment 95B would become consequential. These two amendments are very much interlinked and you could say it is arbitrary which one we vote on. To explain, if the Minister cannot satisfy the House, we will have to test the opinion of the House.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

As a Green, I am very concerned about the Government undermining the doctrine that police on these islands gain their authority from the consent of the governed. Overuse of stop and search powers has deeply undermined community consent in many areas of the country. We worry all the time about the police being constantly distrusted. That is no wonder, especially with a measure such as this. There are racial and socioeconomic disparities in who gets targeted by the police—we cannot avoid that. These government severe violence reduction orders will create, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has said, a new suspicionless stop and search power, and once a person is issued with one of these orders they could face unlimited interference from police officers. We have to ask: is this the sort of measure that will bring those offenders back into society or will it turn them further away?

The Greens will support any amendments that improve this system of serious violence reduction orders, in particular Amendments 95B or 95A—whichever amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, comes up for a vote. That the reports from a pilot project are approved by Parliament before these orders can be deployed more broadly seems to me to be common sense. Why on earth would they be brought in before they have been measured? It is essential that the Government prove the efficacy of these measures and demonstrate that they are not being used in a way that is racially or otherwise discriminatory.

I particularly support Amendment 101 from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, which would repeal the existing powers of suspicionless stop and search. There should not be a power for the police to search without reasonable suspicion.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I support Amendments 90H, 90J, 95A, 95B and 95C, to which I have added my name. I also signal my support for other amendments in this group which also seek to control more tightly how serious violence reduction orders will operate. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my work on policing ethics, both for Greater Manchester Police and for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, as set out in the register of interests.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has indicated, Amendment 90H seeks to ensure that an SVRO can be applied only when a bladed article or offensive weapon is used to commit an offence, not simply when such an item happens to be present and in the possession of the defendant. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has indicated, as presently drafted, the Bill requires no substantive link between the weapon and the offence. An individual could, for example, commit a road traffic offence while driving home from a church picnic, with their used cutlery on the passenger seat next to them, and the prosecution could ask for an SVRO.

I can see that subsection (5) of the proposed new chapter is intended to mitigate that by requiring the court to consider that imposition of the order is necessary to protect the public or the defendant from possible future offences involving such weapons. However, I do not believe it adequately achieves that objective. Asking a court to conject what might happen in the future can all too easily invite decisions taken on discriminatory or flimsy grounds, especially as no court would wish to face public criticism for having failed to apply an SVRO should later violence occur. To legislate for future conjecture requires a robust link to what has already happened. Subsection (3)(a) gives that; it requires that the weapon was used by the defendant in committing the offence in question. Deleting subsection (3)(b), as this amendment seeks to do, would ensure that any order is based on genuine and evidenced risk. To put it bluntly, it would pass my church picnic test.

Amendment 90J, if I may turn to that, seeks to more closely tie the order to the offence by limiting it to the actual person who used or had possession of the weapon, not some putative third party who

“knew or ought to have known”

that they had it. The de facto joint enterprise element in the current drafting of this clause widens the net substantially for who can be affected, and includes people not convicted of knife crime. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has just said, this is likely to disproportionately affect women and girls, who may well know or suspect that a partner or family member may be carrying a weapon but are far too vulnerable to be able to extricate themselves from a situation where violence involving such weapons may be committed by others.

I understand that the intention may be to provide such vulnerable adults with an excuse to stay away from both people and situations with which violence may be associated, but when I try to put myself in the position of such a person, I cannot really imagine saying to my partner or brother: “Oh, I must not be near you when you have a knife because I might get an SVRO against me.” I think these people are far too vulnerable. I hope I have persuaded your Lordships that Amendment 90J will address this deficit.

Finally, on Amendment 90J, apart from it being grossly unfair by ignoring the impact on vulnerable people, subsection (4) appears to be unworkable. How will the court determine if someone “ought to have known” that some other person had a knife? The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, tease out this point specifically. I will leave others to speak to them at greater length, but if our own Amendment 90J does not win your Lordships’ support, I would hope that her amendments are more persuasive.

I now turn to Amendments 95A, 95B and 95C on the pilot scheme. In order to understand how SVROs operate in practice, these are entirely welcome. SVROs present a major innovation. There are significant risks of dangers from unexpected consequences—dangers that may outweigh any good that SVROs achieve. If we are to roll them out across the country, we need to have confidence that they are doing the job intended and making things better and not worse. For all the eloquence of our arguments in this House, there is nothing quite like having real, practical experience on the ground to draw on if we are going to get things right. These three amendments, taken together, simply seek to strengthen the pilot; to make it a genuine gathering of all the most relevant evidence, and one that will feed into a proper decision-making process here in Parliament, ahead of SVROs being rolled out across the nation.

In my early days as Bishop of Manchester, we had an idea of how we might make better and more locally informed decisions on where we deployed our vicars. We set up a two-year pilot across about a fifth of our dioceses. Towards the end of that period, we commissioned an independent evaluation by outside experts. We learned a huge amount from the exercise, and, in consequence, we never rolled out the substantive project. We did something different; we did something better. A pilot has to have the capacity to substantially implement the eventual shape of whatever is the final product, otherwise it is simply window dressing.

It is clear from speeches already made here today that there is considerable uncertainty about SVROs. In particular, noble Lords have drawn attention to the danger that they become associated with disproportionality and hence diminish confidence in policing and the courts. None of us wants that. We noted the risk that, rather than prevent criminalisation, they may draw more vulnerable people—especially young women—into the criminal justice system. We have remarked that extensive use of stop and search powers, especially in the absence of specific evidence of intention to offend, has over and again proved counterproductive. These last three amendments cover both the process and the content of the pilot evaluation. They will make for much better decisions on how and when, and perhaps most crucially if, SVROs are rolled out across the nation. I hope the Minister will be minded to accept them or to meet us to find an agreed way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I really did not want to speak today, because, whatever I say, I am going to get abuse, but I have been incensed by some of contributions. I point out, in an absolutely non-specific way, that the majority of speakers have been male, and they have spoken against the amendment. Two women have spoken for the amendment, because they perceive there is a problem. My party’s policy is that trans men are men and trans women are women, and I do not have a problem with that, but there are occasions when women in women’s prisons experience sexual predation by men who have falsely self-identified as women. The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, said that we are saying that all trans women are sexual predators. We are not saying that—of course not.

Will the Minister clarify whether trans men go to male prisons? My understanding is that they do not, because they would not be safe. What we are talking about here is keeping people safe. Vulnerable people of all kinds, whatever trans identity or sexual identity they have, should be kept safe. Clearly, prisons are the worst possible places to keep people safe; they are a nightmare. This Government are increasing the number of prisons. They are not trying to reduce the prison population and make our prisons safer; they are adding to the problem. Do trans men go to male prisons? Have there been cases where men have falsely self-identified as women and predated sexually on women? I have had emails and letters from women who have been abused by men who have falsely self-identified as women. What can we say to those women? We cannot say, “This is an ideology and we’re trying to look good”; we have to be serious about people who are abused, whether they are male or female, or trans men or trans women.

I would not vote for this amendment, because it is too hardline. I accept the issue of safe accommodation—that seems very sensible; I do not see it as demeaning at all. Prisons are demeaning; safe accommodation sounds very safe to me.

Only men in this debate have spoken against the amendment. Why do men think that is okay? I do not understand. They are ignoring the fact that some women are predated upon. Sometimes those women may not be telling the truth—I have no idea, but I rather suspect that they are. Please can we just think about the vulnerable people and stop being so ultra-sensitive and supposing that we are all getting at everybody. I am absolutely fed up with this debate, and I hope this is the last speech.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, it will not be, because this woman disagrees with this amendment. I speak as a woman who cares deeply about the physical safety of women. One of the things I find most objectionable about the campaign which has been run in the media for the past couple of years is the assumption that those of us who are women and who stand as allies with trans people do not care, because I do not believe that is the case at all.

It would be very tempting at this stage to answer some of the wide-ranging points which have been made about, for example, polls with leading questions, misinterpretations and mis-statements of the law, but I shall not do that. I shall simply stick to the facts that this House should look at when it comes to a decision on this matter.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, spoke about an entitlement of prisoners to go to an estate. There is no such entitlement. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about instances where self-identifying male prisoners had predated on women. That has happened, but my understanding is that it has not happened since the implementation of the policy which has been operational in the Prison Service since 2016 and was updated in 2019.

There are historical cases, which are trotted out all the time by people who wish to disparage trans people. Let us be absolutely clear what the current policy that is operated in our prisons is:

“A proper assessment of risk is paramount in the management of all individuals subject to custodial and community sentences. The management of individuals who are transgender, particularly in custodial and AP settings, must seek to protect both the welfare and rights of the individual, and the welfare and rights of others in custody around them. These two risks must be considered fully and balanced against each other … Decisions must be informed by all available evidence and intelligence in order to achieve an outcome that balances risks and promotes the safety of all individuals in custody”.


My understanding, from talking to prison officials, is that not only is there no entitlement for a prisoner to be held in an estate, but that the risk assessment includes an assessment of whether somebody is attempting to be transferred into an estate in order to perpetrate further crimes. If they are, it is held as a contra-indication.

I agree absolutely with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. What we have now is a policy, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said, that does protect to the full the human rights of individuals, but also balances them with the safety of everybody—that includes the staff in prisons as well; let us not forget them. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is therefore putting to us an amendment that is not based on evidence and is a retrograde step. I urge noble Lords to reject it.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, on an issue that we all care about. This Bill is absolutely atrocious. It is important that we remember in this debate that the impact of this law will be on some of the most vulnerable, damaged, endangered and downtrodden people in the entire world. We are talking about refugees fleeing their bombed-out homes or fields that cannot support crops anymore because of climate change, and people seeking asylum from oppressive governments—human beings who have been enslaved by callous criminals. At a time when the world feels more dangerous than ever, and while the UK continues to fuel global conflict by acting as one of the world’s largest arms dealers, history will judge our Parliament and our Government harshly for this legislation.

The Government speak warm words about making things safer for refugees and asylum seekers, but the Bill offers no solutions for genuine safe passage. It shuts the door on people and criminalises their desperation. It is knee-jerk legislation which appeals to the basest instincts of the Tory vote. It is appeasement to right-wing extremists and a continuation of the Conservative Party’s decades-long obsession with immigration. At the moment, the UK birth rate is about 1.5 children per woman, and we need 2.8 children per woman for replacement, so we need immigrants; we are an ageing and falling population.

There is also the problem that I do not think this legislation will work. Creating a two-tier system for refugees, divided on how they arrived in the UK, is unlikely to make any difference. It assumes that these people are taking legal advice and making calculated strategies, rather than desperately doing whatever they can to survive. The UNHCR has stated in no uncertain terms that this is discriminatory and in violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

There is the undermining of access to justice, fiddling with legal process, and curtailing rights to appeal, all of which significantly increase the risks of deporting people with valid claims, putting them at risk of further enslavement, torture or death. It is unclear how, under Clause 39, asylum seekers are supposed to enter the UK legally and without committing a criminal offence. Some 90% of people granted asylum in the UK are from countries whose nationals must obtain an entry clearance visa to enter the UK.

Turning to the deprivation of citizenship provisions in Clause 9, a lot of people will be surprised to learn that the Government already can—and do—remove people’s right to British citizenship. That is not new, but it means there is a two-tier system of British citizenship. The change is that the Government will now be able to remove people’s citizenship without any notice or warning whatever. The term

“otherwise in the public interest”

is so broad a discretion as to be almost meaningless. The Secretary of State can basically choose not to give notice on a whim. Of course, because citizenship will have been revoked without any notice, any judicial review or other legal challenge will only be able to be brought retrospectively.

In summary, the Bill is a continuation of the trend by this Government to remove individuals’ rights, undermine legal safeguards and view the legal profession as the enemy within. Rather than bring constructive solutions to these complex problems, the Government invoke criminal penalties and a legal quagmire. The end result is that injustices will go unresolved, genuine claims for asylum will be denied, and a great many people will be condemned to misery and suffering who ought to have been allowed to start life afresh on these islands. In words that might resonate with the Benches opposite, this Bill is a stain on British values.

As somebody who comes from Celtic stock—my lineage was here after the previous ice age—I welcome immigrants; I feel that they add life and vitality to what is sometimes a rather dull population. I will vote against the Bill and I very much hope that other Members of this House will as well.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beith, with his usual remarkable acuity, has put his finger on a very important point, which is the question of disclosure. It is clear that police forces have tended to use disclosure as the reason for obtaining much of the material that has been unnecessarily obtained, so let us be clear what the duty of disclosure is. There is a duty to disclose to the defence material that undermines the prosecution case or materially assists the defence case, but that cannot be a reason for oppressive conduct against a complainant.

I absolutely commend the amendments tabled by the Government—they are extremely helpful in taking this issue forward—but I also support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, which would strengthen the forward-looking view of the amendments. It is a real risk that women, and indeed young men, who are the victims of rape will not pursue the case because they feel oppressed, embarrassed or threatened by unnecessary requirements framed under the heading “disclosure”.

We have a situation in which the number of rape cases prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service, and the number of alleged rape cases reported by the police to the CPS, has diminished dramatically over the years. It is no accident; the CPS does not like to run the risk of losing cases if it can avoid it. There are certain types of cases where there might be an inherently higher risk of a prosecution failing, but they should still be prosecuted at a significant level because of the effect the complaints behind those cases have on the way society operates—the way men and women, and men and men, have their relationships, which are so crucial to a stable society. I believe that the CPS has been completely wrong and unwise to abandon the procedures put in place in previous years. I regret that it has failed to recognise that in as clear a way as it should.

I hope very much that the Government will look at all these amendments together and accept that improvements can be made to achieve an end that we all share. The way our children and, for some of us, our grandchildren now use their mobile phones is quite different from anything we would have imagined. They share intimacies on their mobile phones that would have been shared only orally one generation ago and not at all two generations ago. This is a change in our society. We have to recognise that we must respect some part of the privacy of such material.

My final point is that there is a great responsibility particularly on the police. I absolutely recognise that there are expert police officers dealing with RASSO cases now, but there is an absolute responsibility on police officers, including in rural areas where there is a significant shortage of training for specialist police officers, to explain to complainants what is going on before they ask for the material and before those individuals have to make a decision as to how much of their intimate material to reveal to the police, and potentially to the court. One of the pieces of advice that should be given to them—I am afraid I have to confess that I have done this—is that some quite extensive cross-examination sometimes takes place in courts that is not expected by victims of rape. My support is, I hope, intensely practical and intended to be constructive.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I very much hope the Minister can listen to this, because it is obvious that there is a general concern. I will keep my remarks brief because I agree with everything that has been said so far, particularly on the Hobson’s choice that victims are often given: either they hand their telephone over voluntarily or they have it confiscated. That really is an abuse of procedure.

I would like the Minister to answer a question for me: if there is that threat inherent in what the police tell a victim, would any evidence gathered under Clause 36 be inadmissible in court? I rather think it should be. We should remember that government Ministers have been very reluctant to have their electronic devices pored over by the police, and have dropped them or broken them or things like that. This is an intrusive and invasive procedure. It should be done as best as it can be, and at the moment it really is not.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, regarding the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about explanations, I absolutely support him, as do two of the amendments in this group—Amendment 43, in which “explanation” is used, and Amendment 50, concerning giving notice “orally”. I am sure that noble Lords will understand the significance of that. Many people will take in something which is explained to them face to face and orally in a way which they might not if given a rather formal document to read.

I ask the Minister about the extent of what is meant by “confidential information”. There is a reference to what will become Section 42. As I read it, it is not confidential in the normal meaning of the word, but refers only to journalistic material, legally privileged or business material, as referred to when one follows through the cross-references, and not to personal material. Can she confirm that, because it very much affects what these clauses do? Can she also help the House with the relevance in her Amendment 47, in the proposed new subsection (7C), of the amount of confidential information likely to be stored on the device? Amount is not the same as significance.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for that vote of confidence. I wish to speak to the amendments in my name and to the group in general.

I start with Amendment 63, on exceptional hardship. If you Google “exceptional hardship”, the first listing is an advert from a firm of solicitors. I will not give their name; they do not need free publicity from me because they also advertise on the television. They describe themselves as “exceptional hardship” and “totting up” solicitors. They define exceptional hardship as “real hardship”. They say they have covered more than 10,000 cases and have a 98% success rate. No wonder, as a recent FoI request revealed, there are 8,632 drivers driving around with more than 12 penalty points. The firm I have described is not alone; there are dozens of other firms of solicitors advertising similarly. This is an industry: this is not an exceptional situation that we are dealing with.

Amendment 63 seeks to define exceptional hardship as something significantly greater than the definition provided by that firm of solicitors and significantly greater than the hardship that would arise for a large majority of other drivers. The definition takes into account the offender’s economic circumstances, location and family circumstances. I bring this to the attention of the Government, and say that there is no point in putting down amendments for more and more stringent penalties if there is a gigantic loophole which is being exploited in front of our eyes.

Amendment 66AA, on bridge strikes, is the manuscript amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I am grateful to him for persisting with this issue because it is a very serious accident waiting to happen. As he has described, lorries hit bridges all the time. This causes a major impact on train services and on our economy, as well as obviously presenting a road safety issue. There are huge costs to the HGV drivers as well. Clearly, drivers do not do this deliberately, so there must be a problem. The problem is almost certainly in the signage; we have the technology nowadays, and improved signage needs to be implemented. There also needs to be a reappraisal of responsibilities between Network Rail and the highways authorities, where there is an interface.

Clearly, both my Amendment 66A and that of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, present examples of the type of issues that need to be included in a long overdue review of road traffic offences. My amendment is similar to that from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, but I have selected some other features that I think are important. It is unfortunate that all these are lumped together, but it is important that we look at this in a little detail. There is a separate group for pedicabs, which are a very small feature of modern roads and do not exist outside London, but they are one of a large number of new features of our transport system that need to be looked at and reappraised in the context of road traffic overall.

Another example of a new feature is e-scooters. It is reported that at least 11 people have been killed in the last year either on or by e-scooters. The Government’s approach has been to set up lots of pilot projects. Basically, e-scooters have been allowed to spread nationwide as a result of a lack of intervention. In a Written Answer I received from the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, when I made inquiries about safety issues associated with e-scooters, she said:

“While trials are running, privately-owned e-scooters will remain illegal to use on the road, cycle lanes or pavements.”


That is fair enough, but no one ever does anything about the fact that thousands of them are being used, and tens of thousands more will be bought this Christmas.

The large number of pilot projects has led people to believe that e-scooters are legal everywhere. The problem is that, because they are illegal, there are so many of them around and the rules not enforced, bad practice is now the norm. Noble Lords have only to walk outside this building to see that bad practice. There are issues such as minimum age—they are often ridden by very young people—maximum speed, wearing helmets, registration, and where you ride: on the pavement or on the road. This week, Transport for London has responded to the latest danger: fires from exploding batteries. There have been several fires on TfL vehicles because people carry those scooters on trains. Transport for London has said that people can no longer do that, but it has had considerable problems and all transport operators will have to consider this issue.

We will come later to the issue of alcohol levels, so I will leave that, but another issue I want to raise is road signage. In 2016, there was a relaxation of the specification and standards for road signs. It appears to be part of a drive to reduce red tape. Last week, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and I met the family of a young woman who drowned when she drove at night into a ford in bad weather on a country road. From the coroner’s report, it is obvious that the poor quality of the signage was a key factor because other people had also driven into that ford by mistake—luckily for them, with not such a terrible impact. The depth gauge at that ford was so slim and poorly marked that it was invisible at night. The previous standard for depth gauges, which was abolished in 2016, required a much bigger and clearer structure.

This and others are simply taster issues for the huge range that need to be included in a review. It was promised in 2014, with a public consultation phase. We are still working on the basis of the endlessly amended Road Traffic Act 1988. Our roads have been transformed since then by the number of vehicles, vehicle technology and capability and new sorts of vehicles. The key point I am trying to make with this amendment is that the review must be comprehensive, rather than just addressing a handful of issues that are annoying Ministers at the moment. It needs to be done now, not kicked into the long grass again. It needs specifically to grapple with new technologies and forms of transport such as autonomous vehicles. It must take an overall approach to consistency of sentencing.

The problem with the approach in the Bill is that the Government have plucked out some offences for tighter sentencing, which will inevitably leave them out of kilter with other offences. The Government’s approach is for stiffer sentences with longer jail terms, but many transport campaign groups would prioritise appropriate sentencing, especially disqualification and community sentences. There are many bad drivers out there, but they often lead otherwise law-abiding lives. We have nothing to gain as a society by locking them up, which is costly to the taxpayer in the short term and in the long term, as they become much less employable on release. So, alternatives ought to be considered to simply putting people in prison.

The good thing about disqualification is that it protects the public. The key point of my amendment is that there needs to be full public consultation. In 2016, in a debate in the other place, the Government claimed that there had indeed been a review, as promised in 2014, but there was no public consultation and no published outcome. That makes a mockery of the whole process, so I am very pleased to hear from the Minister that there are plans now for a proper review, and I shall be listening carefully to what she has to tell us. I hope it will be a full and comprehensive review with proper public consultation that will take place in the very near future.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is good that the Government have realised that our road traffic laws are a mess, because the cost—the human cost, the social cost—of the crimes and offences we are talking about is extremely high. When we think of the cost of the deaths and injuries to the NHS, to social services, to the emergency services, we are talking about billions of pounds and we really ought to understand that a lot of the causes are avoidable.

When I first got on to the Met Police authority, I went out a lot with the traffic teams—I have told this story before—and one sergeant said to me, “If I wanted to murder somebody, I would run them over with a car, because nobody could ever prove it was not an accident”. This brings me to the word “accident”, which we really should not use when we are talking about road collisions, road incidents and so on. It offends me and the whole road safety community deeply, because the minute you use the word “accident”, you are judging the cause of whatever happened and that is obviously unfair. You have to look into what really happened.

The most dangerous idea is people who should be disqualified from driving being able to plead exceptional hardship. We have heard a lot about “exceptional hardship”: what a misnomer. People are often allowed to keep on driving and quite honestly, they should feel lucky that they have not gone to prison because a lot of the time, it is complete nonsense. I have read about a lot of cases where the judge or the magistrate allowed someone to get away with—well, not murder, but certainly manslaughter at times. It is obviously a crime against society, not to mention the families themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Was that objection to what I am saying or support? I could not work it out. We should be aiming for zero road deaths. They just should not happen. The roads and pavement should be safe spaces. We achieve that by making sure that drivers—and pedestrians as well, of course—obey the law. Legislation must comprehend just how damaging bad and careless driving are.

Finally, Amendments 65 and 66A would require a total review of road traffic offences and penalties. That really is the only sensible way forward, and the only way for society to properly address the damage caused by car culture and start the journey towards zero road deaths. I look forward very much to hearing the details of the review and hope that it happens soon.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I most sincerely apologise to the House for not being present at the start of this debate. I strongly support the thrust of the amendment about bridge-bashing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. One day the holes in the cheese will line up and there will be a very serious accident, and the whole world will ask why we did not use technology to avoid such accidents. I strongly support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about “exceptional hardship”; I would not actually vote against the Government on it, but I strongly support it.

Hate Crimes: Misogyny

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Without going into the details, monitoring of some of the threats that we face goes on in the UK. Noble Lords will have seen in the press some examples of where that has led to more violent crime.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, we saw with the killer of Sarah Everard that he was part of the police and was protected by a quite toxic culture within the police. Does the Minister agree that if we had misogyny as a crime, the police themselves might improve on their behaviour?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

It was clear from the murder of Sarah Everard and the ensuing inquiry that we need to look into an awful lot of areas: the culture, vetting and other elements of what might have led to what happened. It probably goes beyond misogyny.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 (Continuation) Order 2021

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the order, which provides for the continuation of the Secretary of State’s TPIM powers, or terrorism prevention and investigation measures, for a period of five years, be approved.

The Government take all necessary steps to protect the public. The threat we face from individuals and groups who wish us harm is significant and enduring. It is vital that we have the tools necessary to keep this country safe. It is right that our first response to terrorism-related activity should be to prosecute or deport those involved, but it is not always possible. That is why we continue to require the powers conferred on the office of the Home Secretary within the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011. Section 21(1) of the Act states that the Secretary of State’s TPIM powers will expire at the end of five years from the date the Act was passed. Due to the continuing threat to the UK from terrorism, and following consultation with the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and the director-general of the Security Service, there can be no doubt that TPIMs remain an essential component of our toolkit to manage the threat from terrorism.

The Act provides the Secretary of State with powers to impose a TPIM notice on an individual if the conditions set out in Section 3 of the Act are assessed by the Secretary of State to have been met: namely, that she reasonably believes that the individual is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activity, and reasonably considers that it is necessary, for purposes connected with protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism, to impose the measures on the individual.

In addition to the power to impose a TPIM notice, the Secretary of State has powers to extend and vary a TPIM notice that is in force, and to revive a TPIM notice that has been revoked. Since the introduction of the Act in 2011, 24 TPIMs have been imposed. As of the last published set of figures on 21 October, five TPIMs were in force. If the TPIM powers are not extended, these five dangerous individuals will be at large without any measures in place to reduce the risk they pose to the public. TPIMs are imposed as a tool of last resort, when the Security Service judges that there are no other means, or that a TPIM notice is the only satisfactory means, to manage that risk.

I shall now outline some of the background to TPIM powers for the Committee. TPIMs are civil preventive measures designed to manage the threat posed by individuals who cannot be prosecuted for a terrorism-related offence, or deported in the case of foreign nationals. There is no question that TPIMs are extraordinary measures. That is why the 2011 Act provides for broad judicial oversight, including a requirement for High Court permission to impose the measures, except in urgent cases where the notice must be immediately referred to the court for confirmation; an automatic review hearing in each case, unless the individual requests that the hearing be discontinued; and rights of appeal for the individual against the refusal of a request to revoke or vary a measure.

The TPIM legislation also places a duty on the Secretary of State to consult on the prospects of prosecuting an individual before measures may be imposed, and a duty to keep the necessity of measures under review while they are in force. The Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021, which amended existing measures and introduced new TPIM measures, also reintroduced a requirement on the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation to publicly report on the operation of the TPIM Act.

The TPIM Act has been extended once, in 2016, by this House. Unless a new order is made under Section 21(2)(c), the powers in the Act will expire at midnight on 13 December this year. Just as was the case five years ago, it is absolutely essential that we have all the necessary powers to protect the public from terrorism-related activity. Having consulted as required by the Act, the Home Secretary has decided, due to the significant terrorist threat facing this country, to make this statutory instrument to provide for the continuation of TPIM powers for a further five-year period, which is the maximum allowable in the legislation.

It is essential that our counterterrorism strategy enables us to tackle the full spectrum of activity. TPIMs have been endorsed by the courts and successive Independent Reviewers of Terrorism Legislation, while the police and the Security Service believe that they have been effective in reducing the national security risk posed by those subject to the measures.

Our message is clear: we remain steadfast in our determination to defeat terrorism and we will take every necessary action to counter the threat from those who hate the values that we cherish. The safety and security of the public is our number one priority, and I commend the order to the Committee.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, here we are again: the five-yearly renewal of the TPIM scheme, which has been in place since 2006. I oppose these restrictive measures, which are an extrajudicial way of interfering with the rights and liberties of people who cannot be convicted of any crime.

I am curious to know whether the Home Office has explained to the Prime Minister that it is doing this. I ask because, while MP for Henley in 2005, Boris Johnson wrote of the Act in his Telegraph article of 10 March:

“It is a cynical attempt to pander to the many who”—


forgive my language here—

“think the world would be a better place if dangerous folk with dusky skins were just slammed away, and never mind a judicial proceeding; and, given the strength of this belief among good Tory folk, it is heroic of the Tories to oppose the Bill. We do so because the removal of this ancient freedom is not only unnecessary, but it is also a victory for terror.”

I hope that the Minister will at least pass this back to the Home Office to make sure that the Prime Minister is happy with this renewal. It must be so difficult for Ministers to do anything without Boris Johnson having opposed it somewhere at some point in the past; there is always an article somewhere that one can track down. Our Prime Minister is so very often so wrong, but on this rare occasion he was so right: it is heroic to oppose these measures, and the Greens in your Lordships’ House will register their opposition every five years when this continuation order comes round. I actually hope this will be the last time.

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

As Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation in 2016, I had no hesitation in recommending the second renewal of TPIMs in that year. I share the Government’s view that TPIMs, although they involve a particularly severe deprivation of liberty and intrusion into private life, may be an appropriate tool for dealing with a small number of individuals who are believed to endanger the public but whom it is feasible neither to prosecute nor to deport.

However, close scrutiny of TPIMs is important, all the more so since the maximum duration of a TPIM was significantly increased by the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021. I am here to raise with the Minister one concerning development that has arisen since my time as independent reviewer: the refusal of legal aid to TPIM suspects who cannot afford to progress the automatic review of each TPIM that is provided for in Section 9 of the TPIM Act 2011.

Jonathan Hall QC, the current independent reviewer, reported to the Government in November 2020 that, in the previous year, three subjects of so-called light-touch TPIMs, known as JD, HB and HC, requested the court to discontinue the reviews in their cases and that

“the absence of funding was a factor”.

In each case, they had been refused legal aid. The independent reviewer’s report, published in March 2021, recommended that, subject of course to means, legal funding should swiftly be made available to TPIM subjects for the purpose of participating in Section 9 review hearings. Mr Hall informed me this afternoon that, more than eight months after publication, there has still been no response from the Home Office to this recommendation. Can the Minister say when a response will be provided?

In the hope that it may influence the substance of any response, which, I might add, I do not expect today, I shall make four points. First, on 12 October 2020, the Government wrote to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, defending the TPIM regime on the basis that, among other things,

“all TPIM subjects have an automatic right to have a court review the imposition of their TPIM and each of the measures imposed. This hearing also provides an opportunity for the subject to hear the national security case against them.”

I assume that in the last sentence the reference is to the gist of the national security case, which is now provided to the TPIM subject. It is plain from what I have said, and from what the independent reviewer has said, that there is, in reality, no automatic right to review and that there will be no such right for as long as legal aid is refused to TPIM subjects on grounds other than means.

Secondly, it would be unacceptable if funding were to be denied because of a misapprehension that a Section 9 review is a form of challenge that requires a TPIM subject to establish reasonable prospects of success. As the independent reviewer explains in his report, Section 9 review was designed not as an add-on but as an integral part of every TPIM. Furthermore, it is not feasible to apply a merits criterion to the grant of legal aid, because the requirements of national security mean that TPIM subjects do not know, and will never be told, the full reasons for the Secretary of State’s decision to impose a TPIM.

Thirdly, if the aim is to save money or a desire to avoid giving money to lawyers for suspected terrorists, that aim is not only misguided but likely to be counterproductive. The legal aid issue affects very few cases—just three in 2019, as I indicated—but is bound eventually to lead to prolonged litigation about the fairness of proceedings.

White Ribbon Campaign

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Baroness will know that it is purely a Home Secretary decision. I think the other thing she will acknowledge is that in Dame Elish we have a highly respected, highly competent individual to lead the inquiry.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the Minister on her performance last night; it was a long one. A start, perhaps, to putting in a complete package on this issue of male violence towards women might be to make misogyny a crime. Are the Government considering that?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I think the noble Baroness is aware that we are not currently considering misogyny as a hate crime, but we have asked the Law Commission to look into whether hate crimes based on sex or gender should be considered.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I have not heard the rumour about keeping comments short. We are about to begin the 11th day in Committee of this Bill. In total, this House has sat for 60 hours in Committee, including starting early and going beyond 10 pm, as well as allowing three extra days. By the time when we finish today—and we intend to do so—we will have considered and debated more than 450 amendments.

As for the new clauses, they have been agreed with the usual channels and with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I would say to noble Lords who have spoken that we intend to finish Committee today.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I support the noble Lords who have spoken. Quite honestly, this is no way to treat the House of Lords. Especially as we get older, we do not want to stay up until 2 am—and, quite honestly, this Bill should have been four Bills. I think that everybody on the Government Benches knows that. Therefore, the 60 hours of debate and 400 amendments is not that that unusual. Bringing in these amendments at the last minute is really scandalous, and very typical of an arrogant attitude towards your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I no more want to stay until two in the morning than does the noble Baroness. We will get to the public order new measures later on. I understand that the Liberal Democrats wish to vote against them, and ultimately I shall introduce them but will withdraw them, so there will be another occasion on Report to discuss them as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to elongate this procedural debate before a lengthy debate that we are debating the length of, but the protest provisions in this Bill have been some of the most contentious—and not just in your Lordships’ House but in the country. They are not the final provisions or the final part of this Bill, even, yet they have been saved for the latter stages of this Committee, and the later hours of this last day will include this raft of new and even more contentious amendments. That is the reason for this suspicion and the concern that your Lordships’ House has not been shown the appropriate respect of a second Chamber in a democracy, when dealing with provisions that are, arguably, contrary to the human rights convention, and are certainly thought to be very contentious and illiberal by many communities in this country.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Something that we did last week was to start early. Why could we not start earlier today so that we did not need to go into the early hours of the morning? We could have started at 10, which would have been a reasonable start for most people.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

Because when we started three hours earlier, the usual channels asked us to finish three hours earlier—so it did not achieve anything.

--- Later in debate ---

So there is a persuasive argument for the Government to introduce a statutory duty on local authorities, the NHS and the police to improve long-term outcomes for children in their areas and to ensure that early help is provided to children living in families with serious parental addiction or domestic violence concerns, or parental mental ill-health, to those who are at high risk of criminal exploitation and to young carers. When we think about what this Bill seeks to do, I can think of no better way to try to prevent people going into the criminal justice system than to invest more in vulnerable children. I hope the Minister can respond positively.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 292H in particular. It is a bit of a stretch to have included Amendment 292J, which has been clearly explained, in this group, but I support it as well. I am afraid the inclusion of Amendments 320 and 328 has caught me out, because I know that my noble friend Lady Bennett would have liked to have spoken on those.

On Amendment 292H, it has been extensively reported that, despite the Protection from Eviction Act, the police routinely fail to assist tenants against illegal evictions. Part of this, as the noble Baroness said earlier, is lack of police, but it is also lack of training on this Act. Many police wrongly conclude that this is a civil matter and not a criminal one. As we know, this could not be further from the truth, and I hope the Minister can confirm that the police have power of arrest to prevent an unlawful eviction, so that we are all completely clear.

This has been a problem for quite some time, and it will only get worse in the coming months as winter comes on and Covid protections against evictions lift. Many frustrated landlords will want to kick people out of their homes, and some will knowingly or unknowingly try to evict without following the correct procedures. So I hope the Minister can confirm that police have power of arrest and that the Government will outline what is being done to ensure that the police properly protect tenants.

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 292H and declare my interest as director of Generation Rent. I also add my voice in support of Amendment 292J in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and others. As my noble friend Lady Blake of Leeds said, it is a criminal offence under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 for a landlord to try to evict a tenant themselves. Local authorities and police officers have a crucial role to play and have the powers to stop illegal eviction and to prosecute offenders. However, the law on illegal evictions is not enforced nearly as much as it should be. Generation Rent research has shown that less than 2% of cases result in a prosecution.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, there are too many instances where a tenant calls the police for help with an illegal eviction, only to find that the police officer dismisses the issue as a civil matter, despite it clearly being a criminal act. This was highlighted very well in a 2020 report by Safer Renting, a charity which helps tenants enforce their rights. If the Minister has not read it, I urge her to do so. In London in 2018, for example, there were 130 cases of homelessness due to an illegal eviction, but only 14 incidents were recorded by the police.

We need a stronger partnership between the police and local authorities to combat this serious crime. Requiring co-operation and sharing of relevant information by police forces is necessary. This amendment will help secure that co-operation. In addition, more needs to be done to reset police attitudes to illegal evictions, with better training of police officers and call handlers so that they know how to respond correctly when a renter is being illegally evicted. We need better data recording and the publishing of that data on incidents between landlords and tenants. Authorities need the powers that currently exist with regard to enforcing safety standards and licensing to demand documents from parties of interest to cover investigations into illegal evictions. The sentencing guidelines should also be addressed; only two of the 10 fines handed down in 2019 were of more than £1,000. Fines can even be lower than the £355 it costs to make a legal claim for possession through the courts. They are far too low to act as any real deterrent to the crime.

Illegally evicting someone is a grave offence, and it affects the most vulnerable renters. Amendment 292H is a step forward. It will improve enforcement of this crime through ensuring that closer working relationship between the police and local authorities which is necessary for proper enforcement and prosecution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to two amendments in my name. By way of preface, I must say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in his masterful presentation of the case against what the Government are doing, and of the observations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

The noble Lord mentioned proportionality. Proportionality was central to the case of Ziegler and others in the Supreme Court back in July. I thought the wording it used, as reported by the Times, summed up my feeling in a way:

“Peaceful protest was capable of constituting a ‘lawful excuse’ for deliberate physical obstruction of the highway … There had to be an evaluation on the facts of each case to determine whether any restrictions on the protesters’ rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful association was proportionate. There should be a certain degree of tolerance to disruption to ordinary life caused by the exercise of those freedoms.”


I do not think the Government like the concept of proportionality, and the whole direction of these clauses—and those in the subsequent group, more recently tabled —illustrates that.

The amendments I have tabled are probing one feature, which is the word “unease”. They are Amendments 297 and 307. In the new subsection that the Government propose, which is about

“the noise generated by persons taking part in”

an assembly, there is reference to the impact it may have on “persons in the vicinity” of that assembly

“if … it may result in the intimidation or harassment of persons of reasonable firmness with the characteristics of persons likely to be in the vicinity”.

A court is going to have some fun working out what the characteristics are of people likely to be in the vicinity, but that is another part of the story.

The subsection also applies if

“it may cause such persons to suffer serious unease”.

That is a very low bar indeed. It made me think of the Governor of the Bank of England speaking to the Treasury Committee a couple of weeks ago. He said that he was “very uneasy” about the inflation situation¸ but not so uneasy that he sought to raise the interest rates. In his view of vocabulary, “uneasy” is clearly nowhere near the top at all.

It is the purpose of numerous protests to make people uneasy; I have been made uneasy by both the intensity and subject matter of protests. The protests that went on in Glasgow were designed to make people feel uneasy about what is happening to the planet, and to do so in ways which might even more directly make them feel uneasy, by noticing that such a large number of people are involved and making such a lot of noise.

However, it has always been so. John Wesley and his followers made people uneasy, by preaching loudly out in the open air and singing loud hymns. It was to make them uneasy about the life they were leading and trying to cause them to change their way of life. I have been confronted in my time by all sorts of demonstrations and protestors, putting forward views which I sometimes agreed with and sometimes did not. But being even seriously uneasy does not seem any reasonable basis on which to restrict the rights of protest. I simply cannot conceive that the Government have any other intention than to make protest much more difficult, even in circumstances which most people, on reflection, would accept were reasonable.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, we have had some powerful speeches already and it is a real pleasure to hear them. This was supposed to be the worst bit of the Bill. It is a terrible Bill but this was meant to be the absolute pits. However, the Government have made things worse by bringing in the latest amendments, so this is not the worst bit any more; it is just the next worst bit.

I have signed about a dozen amendments in this group. I could have signed them all and definitely support them all. Many of them are good, and worth raising, but the only real way forward is to remove these clauses altogether. I hope that opposition parties can join together to do that on Report, because our civil liberties and human rights are far too important to be negated in this way.

Amendment 293 from the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, sets the scene perfectly because it stresses the importance of the right to protest in a free country. We always look down our noses at all these illiberal countries abroad who suppress their citizens—their human rights and liberty to protest—but this Government are trying to do exactly the same. Any restriction on the right to protest has to be really carefully considered, not rushed in with 18 pages of amendments at the last minute and without any proper discussion.

There is a balancing act between the rights of individuals and those of wider society. The balancing act already happens because there is a great number of restrictions on protest in this country. The police have many powers, which they use, and many tactics—some of which go too far, such as kettling. The Government want to ramp up these restrictions even more: being noisy or annoying could be banned. Some Peers could be banned because they are annoying. We could end up with the only protests, as has been said, being the ones that are so quiet and uneventful that they achieve absolutely nothing.

This is deep, dark politics. This is about a Conservative Government wanting to rewrite completely how we operate within society, as individuals against the state. I think they are planning, or hoping, to remain the dominant political party for generations to come. That is what could happen through these terrible amendments.

If you make protests impossible to perform legally, criminalise non-violent direct action, abolish or restrict the ability of citizens to challenge the Government in court through judicial reviews, turn people against lawyers, gerrymander the election boundaries and dish out cash in the way that looks best for Conservative MPs, that is deep, dark politics. Many of us here are not particularly political and perhaps do not see the dangers inherent in what you, the Government, are doing. It all seems like a calculated ploy to turn all the cards in favour of an unaccountable Government that cannot be challenged in the courts, at the ballot box or on the streets. We all have to unite against this and deleting these clauses from the Bill is the beginning of that fight.

I have a tiny quibble on the issue that noble Peers have mentioned about the survival of the planet. The chances are that the planet will survive. What we are doing in this climate crisis is destroying the little bit of ecosphere that supports human life, so that is what we have to think about. It is not about survival of the planet but about survival of people.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I may be able to tone down some of the hyperbole. Let’s go back to first principles on what this Bill is about. I think we are all united in this country in support of our right to protest. That is a very precious right that we all feel strongly about. Nobody wants to put that at risk and nobody is trying to put that at risk.

In a world which is becoming more divided, with people having very strong, trenchant positions in the views they adopt, we are trying to ensure that it is possible for people to express their views in a way which does not undermine some of the other social norms in our society which allow us to disagree but be united at the same time. Over the last few years, we have seen a new fashion of protest which is carried out in a way that is unacceptable to other people in its disruption; whether they agree with the matter in question or not is almost irrelevant. We need to try—I believe this is what the Government are trying to do through this Bill—to make it possible for protests to continue in a way which does not divide society further.

I do not support the amendments, but I agree with one point, made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. We have to be very careful on the issue of noise. It is impossible for people to protest silently and I will look to the Government for reassurance on that matter when the Minister comes to respond.

Let’s not forget what we are trying to do here: allow people to disagree in a way which does not divide us further. I worry that some of these amendments will perpetuate a division which we do not want to see happen in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Perhaps the Government could decide not to bring huge Bills such as this, so that we are forced to sit late at night.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

This is the 11th day in Committee on the Bill; I think we have given it due course. I am sorry, but I do not accept the noble Baroness’s views. Perhaps we can all respect each other and move on. Noble Lords have very important points to make, but if we can make them succinctly, that will be very helpful.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Respect goes both ways. The Government are not respecting this House.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am happy to wrap up. I am sorry, I had to read for my noble friend Lord Hendy, who had an amendment, and that took a little time. I beg your pardon; I will be very brief.

I have talked about the past—suffragettes and anti-apartheid, et cetera—and I have talked about Russia and China and the places that we have to persuade, in the current, dangerous world, not to suppress protest. The domestic context is that we have come out of Brexit, which was incredibly divisive; whichever side you were on, we know that it divided communities. I was subject to protesters who were very cross with me, and a little scary, but in the end, I put up with it. We are coming through a pandemic, and people are scared and very worried by climate change. I do not believe that oppressive powers giving this level of discretion to the police to suppress free speech will bring our communities together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend Lord Coaker has just said, but perhaps I may say a brief word about Amendments 315 and 316. They are there to improve the drafting of the offence to make it clear, first, that it is committed only when serious harm is done to the public, rather than to any one person, which is what the Bill’s wording is now, and, secondly, that when considering the reasonable excuse that the defence supplies, the court should take into account the importance of the rights guaranteed by Articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR. In other words, put simply, it is not about any one person but the public, and the courts should look at Articles 10 and 11 when coming to any decision about whether an offence has been committed.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, for me, this is getting like election night. Any politician in the room will tell you that it is when you are really tired but you are so wired that you cannot possibly sleep anyway.

I have signed three of these amendments but I wanted to speak mainly to Amendment 315A. I am concerned about this whole part of the Bill, because it is far too broad and risks criminalising a host of innocent behaviour. We heard earlier about the right to move around. Today, I was stopped by the police outside and could not go for nearly 250 yards on the pavement because a band was going through. I love an Army brass band—it is absolutely fine—so I joined the crowds on the other side of the road who were all pushing and shoving. We often take away the right to move around, sometimes for good causes. I would argue that protest is a good cause.

As regards stopping traffic, let us remember that traffic jams cost us billions of pounds every year and millions of people are inconvenienced, with long times added to their journeys to work—working people who are delayed by traffic jams. This morning outside the Marlin Hotel on Westminster Bridge Road, three Mercedes were parked in the bus lane. The buses had to go around them, slowing all the traffic. What are the Government doing about that sort of thing? I contacted the police and sent them the registration numbers, so let us hope that they were caught.

The definitions in the Bill of serious harm are a mess because serious annoyance cannot be a crime—it is too difficult to define. You cannot put people in jail for just being annoying. I am sure that sometimes we would all like to, but you cannot do it. I am particularly worried, after the way in which Covid was policed early on, about the inclusion of disease in the new public nuisance offence. At the start of Covid—and possibly all the way through—every prosecution was wrongful. That was partly because—and I will be generous to the Government for once—the Government were confused and blurred the lines between law, guidance, advice and so on. As I have said before in your Lordships’ House, it was hard for the police because they did not know what they should be doing and became a bit overzealous. That may have been well intentioned but it was not appropriate. There were wrongful prosecutions and convictions as a result. Let us be a bit more careful about the definitions in the Bill, because I think that they will cause more problems.

We are all boasting about our qualifications for going on demonstrations and that sort of thing. My first demo was in 1968 for CND, of which I am still a member, and we are still fighting nuclear weapons—but that is another issue. I argue that the Government are taking chaos and ambiguity to new heights and I urge them not to allow the dangerous and confusing language in the Bill to go through because it is certain to lead to injustice.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the Minister gave a powerful justification for upgrading and updating the criminal law to deal with these new forms of protest. She made the point that the general public have had enough, and we recognise that. We have all seen instances of workers begging protesters to let them through to go to work, parents trying to get ill children to hospitals and so on. We have seen frustration turn to fury and people often taking action on their own, dragging protesters away as the police have stood by. At least this section of the Bill makes sense to me based on that motivation, but we have spent hours and hours on previous sections on banning the types of protest in Part 3, which was justified on the basis that it was dealing with those kinds of actions, when in fact none of the measures that we previously discussed would deal with them at all.

The measures that we previously discussed in Part 3 elicited some very fine speeches about the right to protest. I was struck most recently by the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, which I related to. We were probably on the same miners’ demos. It properly and entirely understood why people were demanding the right to protest. All those fine words were effectively shot down by the Minister on the basis that these are things that we need to do to deal with Extinction Rebellion and these different kinds of protest. In fact, the only dealings that I had when I got caught up in an Extinction Rebellion protest—I mean that I was trying to get through it, rather than that I was on it, in case anyone panics—was when they were doing a five-hour silent vigil in mime. There was no noise involved. But we have spent all that time discussing how noise is going to trigger the police having a huge amount of power to deal with those people.

I find it utterly galling, because now we have a set of amendments, and at least I can understand why the Government have brought them in—and the public will think that they will tackle what they are furious about—and we should therefore, in this House, be able to scrutinise them line by line, as has been explained. People will probably like the locking-on offence—I say “people”, meaning that there might be popular support for it. But the noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Beith, have done a really good take-down of what the consequences of these measures would be beyond the headlines, and people might be less keen on the equipped to lock-on offence. Certainly, when they work out the frightening aspects of the serious disruption prevention orders, they might want to think again. The “causing and contributing to” aspect, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, noted, really is a very serious threat to free speech—absolutely. And this is a Government who claim all the time that they are here to defend free speech, but they are introducing, without even casually noting it, something that would absolutely have a damaging effect on free speech.

Maybe I am wrong, and maybe the Government could persuade us that these special kinds of protests need special laws, in which case we should have hours and hours to discuss it. Instead, here we are, fed up, having discussed a whole range of other legislation that was supposed to deal with these issues when in fact, it did not; and now, the things which might deal with those issues we do not have time to discuss. It is frustrating for all of us.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

When Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, he brought in a rule about not drinking on the tube, which was a solution in search of a problem—because it was not a problem at the time. But it immediately made me want to run out, buy a bottle of gin and go drinking on the tube, because it was such a stupid rule. This provision is a little bit like that: I do not really want to carry a tube of superglue around, but I have on many occasions carried a bike lock. It is absolutely ludicrous.

When the Minister read out the list of amendments, my heart sank. Although I had looked at them all individually, somehow hearing them one after the other made me feel that this is totally wrong. If the Government do not withdraw all these amendments, we should vote against the Bill in its entirety.

The Minister talked about protestors, referring to the issue of whatever their cause may be. But the HS2 protestors, of whom I consider myself one, have actually been trying to save precious things for the nation. It is not fun to be out on a picket line, being shoved around by security guards and hassled by the police constantly. I was standing next to one man on a picket line who said, “I retired last year and I thought I would be birdwatching, but here I am holding a placard”. Those are the sorts of people who have been protesting about HS2; they have been trying to save precious eco-systems for the nation, for all of us, and to prevent the chopping down of ancient woodlands. We really cannot dismiss these people as troublemakers, deserving of all these amendments. I admire the attempts of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to improve these measures, but it is a hopeless case.

The Government are very quick to talk about the views of the public and what the public want, perhaps from a few clips on TV and a few emails, but on the sewage amendment to the Environment Bill, they had thousands and thousands of emails, but they absolutely ignored them and carried on allowing sewage to be pumped into our rivers and on to our coastline. So please do not tell me that the public want this. The public did not want sewage, but the Government ignored that. The Government pick and choose to suit themselves what they design legislation around.

As the noble Lord, Lord Beith, mentioned, there is also the late tabling of these amendments. It is a democratic outrage. They are of such legal significance and such a threat to people’s human rights that they should be the subject of a whole Bill, with public discussion about it, public consultation, human rights declarations and equalities impact assessments. Every MP should be furious that they have been bypassed, because the only scrutiny they will get is, if they are lucky, a quick 20 minutes during ping-pong to find out what they are all about. Because they are whipped, they will probably not pay any attention to it anyway. This is nothing more than a naked attack on civil liberties and a crackdown on protest, and we must oppose it for both what it is and how it is being done.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak specifically to government Amendments 319F to 319J on powers to stop and search without suspicion, and Amendment 319K and subsequent amendments on serious disruption orders. Before I do, I add to the comments made by just about all noble Lords on the outrageous way in which the Government have proceeded in this matter. To bring this number of amendments, introducing, as they do, among other things, unlimited fines, wide-ranging suspicionless stop and search powers, the creation of criminal liability on the basis of the civil burden of proof, with powers of indefinite renewal, at such a late stage in the Bill and at this time of night amounts to absolute contempt of Parliament. I may not get to say this often when we are in Parliament together, but on this matter I agree with every word that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, had to say.

I turn to powers to stop and search without suspicion. As the Minister explained it and as other noble Lords have commented, this provides an extraordinary power, exercisable by any police officer in an area where an inspector or above has delegated that locality, under a whole series of offences. We already know how stop and search powers are abused. We know how disproportionate they are. My noble friend Lord Paddick set out the stark figures.

You do not have to take it from the Liberal Democrat Benches or the other Opposition Benches. We have heard a lot quoted from the former Prime Minister and Home Secretary this evening, but it is worth reminding the Committee of the issues that she has highlighted over suspicionless stop and search and the dangers that causes: the undermining of trust in the police and all the problems that come with that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, raised the important point that people on bicycles travel with locks. We all have locks on our bicycles. I should be interested to know the Government’s answer. Government Amendment 319J provides for 51-week imprisonment—nearly a year—for anyone who obstructs a police officer who, without suspicion, demands the right to search them. This is not how you stop protest; it is how you cause it.

As if that is not enough, we have heard about government Amendment 319K, which introduces serious disruption prevention orders, creating criminal liability based on the civil burden of proof, and imposing a series of potential restrictions on individuals. The penalty for breaching any of those conditions is imprisonment. As my noble friend Lord Paddick said, these are protest banning orders, and they have no place in our society.