Peaceful Protests

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, first I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for introducing this debate. Although there are very few speakers, it is actually a very important subject. I declare my interest as a sitting magistrate. I have heard cases regarding protests and sentenced protesters on occasion.

I am speaking for the Labour Party in this debate and we, of course, support the right to peaceful protest, which has helped us in this country win so many of our historic rights. In a democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and historic rights to protest run alongside the rights of people to go about their daily lives, the right to be free from harassment or intimidation and the vital need to ensure that essential services are not disrupted. That is why this House voted against the sweeping stop-and-search powers in the Public Order Bill that risked penalising peaceful protesters and passers-by. As one of the Labour Front-Benchers on that Bill, it was disappointing that the Government failed to pay due attention to the opinion of this House when they brought those measures back in secondary legislation only months later. Will the Minister say what assessment has been made of the impact of these measures?

This debate’s title is highly focused, and it would be useful for the Minister to respond in a focused way to the UN guidance being discussed, and how it relates to the UK’s current strategy towards protests. The debate’s title reminds us that peaceful protesters worldwide face intimidation, repression and human rights violations. Britain must show that the right to peacefully protest should be fiercely protected, while the minority who seek to abuse that right are stopped from doing so.

When the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, introduced her speech, she drew comparisons with Russia and Belarus. I have worked extensively in Russia and have visited Belarus many times, and I think her comparisons with those countries are completely absurd and alarmist. The noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, also made various alarmist claims, but the substance of the points he was making about the use of facial ID technology, and in particular live facial recognition technology, are indeed concerning. I was very interested to hear the fuller explanation of how the Metropolitan Police and other police forces are using this technology. Obviously, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, gave reassurances about who is on the police database and who can have access to that database when comparisons are made between the faces on the technology and the live facial recognition. He gave the example of stalkers and a couple of other examples. I understand that the noble Lord is talking about the practice of the Met—nevertheless, this is an alarming development, and I think the Government need to be very aware of the way this is developing.

While I accused the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, of being alarmist when comparing Britain to Russia, nevertheless it is the same technology that is being used. This is international technology. We are here talking about what the British Government do but, of course, that facial recognition technology is used completely internationally. There are huge databases of our faces and our characteristics being built up all over the world. We have debated the implications of that on other pieces of legislation fairly recently, and I know the Minister is aware of how that will impact on the way police forces and other agencies try to keep us safe in our own country.

To repeat myself, while I called what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said ridiculous and alarmist—I used those words very deliberately—we should be very concerned about the subject and keen to understand developments in live facial ID recognition. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that the Government are keeping the most serious eye on the way this technology is developing.