Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Tenth sitting)
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
I can help the hon. Gentleman on the officer point. Pre-procession—in other words, in respect of processions that are yet to happen—the conditions must be assessed, and if ordered, ordered by a chief officer. That is a chief constable outside London, and in London an assistant commissioner. That is the highest rank in a police force. Mid-procession, conditions are imposed by a senior officer, which is an inspector or above, at the scene. So I do not think that the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman describes will arise. It is another example of the checks and balances that we have tried to put in place throughout this part of the Bill to ensure that these decisions are taken by very experienced and specialised officers.
I have been given another example to help demonstrate the point. A noisy protest that lasts only a short time may not meet the threshold, so the 90 seconds of—I forget the piece of music—
Victoria Atkins
Thank you, Holst. But a protest creating the same amount of noise over several days might meet it, given the extended duration of the protest.
The vast majority of processions, assemblies and single-person protests will be able to continue making noise as they do now. Most organisations are able to continue to operate with a loud protest on their doorstep without serious disruption to their activities, and most individuals are able to endure loud protests without suffering serious unease, alarm or distress.
Bambos Charalambous
For clarification, is the senior officer expected to know the area and the types of buildings where the protest will be, as well as the nature of the demonstration—whether it will have lots of sound systems, or involve lots of whistles and chants? Is it expected that that will be known beforehand, or is there scope to act if that were to occur during a demonstration?
Victoria Atkins
That serves to demonstrate the dynamic nature of different forms of protest. If a decision is to be made during the course of a protest, it will be made by a senior officer of inspector rank or above, on the ground and assessing the situation. Let me try to provide a practical example. The inspector may assess the situation in Hyde Park, then walk through to an area where there is lots of high-density housing and consider that the circumstances there are different. It is about being able to react to circumstances as they change and evolve in the course of a protest. That is why we are trying to bring consistency between processions and assemblies—because of the dynamic nature of protests—but it will be for the senior officer, working of course with his or her colleagues, to assess the factors laid out in subsection (3).
The police will impose conditions on the use of noise only in the exceptional circumstances where noise causes unjustifiable disruption or impact. I emphasise that in doing so they will have to have regard to the number of people affected and the intensity and duration of the noise, and act compatibly with the rights of freedom of expression and so on within the convention.
The shadow Minister prayed in aid the non-legislative recommendations from HMIC. I want to place on the record that the National Police Chiefs’ Council has established a programme board to consider and implement those. I hope that helps.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Bambos Charalambous
The clause is designed to protect vehicular access to Parliament, and it will amend the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. That will ensure that preventing access to the parliamentary estate is prohibited, but it will not give the police powers to arrest those who contravene it.
Clause 58 requires a new controlled area around the temporary locations of Parliament, and the central rules around protests may be imposed around the temporary home of Parliament during restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster, whenever that may occur.
Clause 59 replaces the common law offence of public nuisance with the statutory offence of intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance. The new statutory offence of intentionally or recklessly causing a nuisance includes the term “serious annoyance”, and it is unclear what will constitute a serious annoyance or serious inconvenience. A person does not have to actually suffer any of the above consequences, but only be at risk of suffering them.
The Minister said in the evidence sessions that the term “annoyance” was not dreamed up on the back of an envelope, but follows many centuries of legal development, culminating in the 2015 Law Commission report. However, that does not help to explain or to guide the police as to how to enforce conditions on a protest that puts someone at risk of suffering “serious annoyance”. During the evidence session, Chief Constable Harrington, the public order and public safety portfolio lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said:
“On serious annoyance, we need to see what Parliament’s decision on the definition of that is and to interpret that accordingly… We will have to see what Parliament decides and whether it is able to give us some clarity about what that means”.––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 10, Q8.]
Can the Minister reassure us today by providing some clarity on what “serious annoyance” might mean and what is the threshold for “serious annoyance”?
I will finish on this point: the designated area for Parliament includes Parliament Square, where can be found a number of statues of celebrated pioneers of struggle and protest, including Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the suffragist Millicent Fawcett. I wonder what they would think about the state limiting people’s rights of protest in this way. I think we can all guess.
Victoria Atkins
If I may, Mr McCabe, I shall confine my remarks to clause 57, which deals with “Obstruction of vehicular access to Parliament”. I will take up the challenge on annoyance when it comes to clause 59.
Clause 57 delivers a clear recommendation from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). Its 2019 report, “Democracy, freedom of expression and freedom of association: Threats to MPs”, refers to
“unimpeded access to the Palace of Westminster for all who have business in either House, or wish to meet their representatives”,
and to how vital that is. The report continues:
“Even though there is a special legal regime for the area around Parliament, it is clear that those responsible for policing and controlling that area have not always given the need for access without impediment or harassment the importance it requires. This must change.”
We are acting on the recommendations of the Joint Committee and, through clause 57, strengthening and extending the Palace of Westminster controlled area in relation to section 142A of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011.
Bambos Charalambous
I stand to speak out against clauses 61 to 63. In doing so, I am reflecting the views of the Gypsy and Traveller community, the police, and organisations as diverse as the Ramblers Association and Liberty.
I want to start by thanking Abbie Kirkby from Friends, Families & Travellers for all its help on part 4 of the Bill. Part 4—clauses 61 to 63—would amend the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to create a new offence of
“residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle”.
It would also amend the police powers associated with unauthorised encampments in the Act to lower the threshold at which they can be used, allow the police to remove unauthorised encampments on or partly on highways, and prohibit unauthorised encampments that are moved from a site from returning within 12 months.
Like the clauses we have just debated on public order, this part of the Bill is controversial and has generated a number of organised campaigns in opposition to it, including an e-petition that garnered 134,932 signatures. The petition called the Government’s proposed criminal offence “extreme, illiberal and unnecessary”.
Mr Goodwill
Would any of the people who live near one of these illegal camps have signed that petition?
Bambos Charalambous
I do not know who signed the petition, but I am sure it is available. The right hon. Gentleman will have to explore the petition himself to see who signed it.
A broad coalition, from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to Liberty, from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to the Ramblers Association and from the police to Shelter, is united in the view that the proposals put forward by the Government would be wrong and unhelpful, and go against our basic rights.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
We have a big problem in Ashfield with the travelling community. They come two or three times a year. I did my own poll of about 2,000 constituents, and 95% agreed with me that the Travellers were creating a massive problem—crime was going up, pets were going missing, antisocial behaviour was going through the roof and properties were getting broken into. My constituents do not want them in our area anymore. That was a survey of 2,000 people, and that was the response from 95% of them. That evidence from my area is a bit more compelling than the petition the hon. Gentleman mentioned, which has probably been signed by 100,000 Travellers.
Bambos Charalambous
One of the problems is that there is less local authority provision for Travellers to go to. That loss of provision, which is partly due to cuts to local government, has caused more problems, meaning that more people are on the road at any given time. However, this issue does not affect just the Traveller community, as the hon. Gentleman will see when I go on to make further points. It also impacts people such as ramblers, birdwatchers and others who want to stay out and sleep in their vehicles while enjoying countryside activities.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend has made the point that there is a failure in our society to provide sufficient facilities for people from the travelling community, be they traditional Gypsies or people who choose to go on the road. Does he agree that the Government, rather than bringing in legislation such as this, should turn their attention to providing local authorities with the resources they need to provide facilities for travelling communities? Does he also agree that that should not be left just to some communities; communities across the country should take a share in providing such facilities so that Travellers can live with them cheek by jowl in a peaceful way?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That was highlighted by the representative from the LGA in her evidence to the Committee.
As one of the respondents to the Petition Committee’s survey on the criminalisation of trespass put it:
“The criminalisation of trespass will simply exacerbate an already fraught relationship.”
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)
Next to my constituency is a Traveller site that has spaces that could be used by people who choose to live a nomadic lifestyle, yet we still have people turning up and using public car parks. People going to do their shopping at the Keel Row shopping centre found that really intimidating and the police had to ask the Travellers to move on. When they did move on, they left a lot of rubbish and the place was really untidy. There was space at the Traveller site, but the Travellers chose not to use it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that was wrong?
Bambos Charalambous
I agree that there is no excuse for antisocial behaviour or criminal activity, such as fly-tipping, which is wrong and needs to stop. Equally, where sites are provided, they should be made use of.
Mr Goodwill
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must listen to local people in this respect? When sites were proposed in Stockton-on-Tees in 2014, there were 565 individual representations against them, four petitions signed by 850 people and a letter of objection supported by 55 neighbours, so even in Stockton-on-Tees, the constituency of the hon. Member for Stockton North, there is great opposition to having these Traveller sites in their communities.
Bambos Charalambous
Therein lies the problem: many people do not want to have Travellers anywhere near them, and that is partly why there are so few sites. If more sites were made available, that would potentially solve the problem.
Lee Anderson
We have already established that in places where Traveller communities set up, such as Ashfield, crime goes up; we know that there is a direct correlation between Travellers being in the area and crime going up. Does the hon. Gentleman think that crime will come down if we have a permanent site in Ashfield?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have said, there is no excuse for criminality, and the Gypsy and Traveller community is already overrepresented in the prison population, but I do not think that the two issues are necessarily related to what the clause is trying to achieve. The hon. Gentleman is trying to say that the Gypsy and Traveller community is responsible for crime in Ashfield. I do not know the facts and figures in relation to that, but what the clause does is criminalise communities for being in vehicles on public land. While each Member has a concern about their individual constituents, we need to get back to what the Bill is focusing on, which is criminalising anyone in a vehicle, even on their own. I think that is what we need to focus on.
Alex Cunningham
In Stockton, we have had facilities for travelling communities for many years. I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that this is about having proper facilities. Perhaps I can point him to the example of the Appleby horse fair, which attracts thousands of people every year. We see them travelling up, and they stay on the byways and all sorts of places along the way, but when they get to the site they are properly catered for. There is proper rubbish removal, proper facilities for animals, toilets and all manner of facilities, and they are put in place to provide for that particular need. Perhaps if other local authorities across the country took that approach, we would not have the problems that Government Members have described.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is right: if more facilities were provided, that would help to solve the problem.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
Although these clauses do not apply in Scotland, does the hon. Member agree that a significant number of Gypsy Travellers cross the border daily for work, to maintain family ties and for cultural reasons, and that these measures will cause further discrimination and harassment of this ethnic group, which is protected under the Equality Act 2010 as a recognised ethnic group?
Bambos Charalambous
I entirely agree with the hon. Member’s comments. He is right: this measure is targeting a particular group for criminalisation, and that has to be totally wrong. As one respondent to the Petitions Committee’s survey on criminalisation of trespass put it:
“The criminalisation of trespass will simply exacerbate an already fraught relationship. Travellers will still camp but there’ll be more prosecutions, more distrust, more public money spent on legalities”.
Other people with nomadic lifestyles have told me that they feel that they will no longer be able to live on the road in the way that has been seen in this country since the 16th century, and that the Bill risks criminalising their way of life. At a recent meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, we heard from the community about what might happen to them if these clauses become law. It was absolutely heartbreaking to hear from those people that they fear that their whole way of life will be taken from them if the clauses become law.
Can the Minister tell the House this? Under the provisions in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, what will happen to a Traveller family in a single vehicle who are residing on a highway and have nowhere else to go? Failure to comply with a police direction to leave land occupied as part of an unauthorised encampment is already a criminal offence, but the proposals create a new offence of residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle. The broad way in which it is drafted seems to capture the intention to do that as well as actually doing it, with penalties of imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to £2,500, or both. The loose drafting of this legislation invites problems with its interpretation, and it is simply not fair to put that on to the police.
The Opposition’s major concern about this aspect of the Bill is that it is clearly targeted at Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and the criminalisation would potentially breach the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010. When the powers in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 were first debated in Parliament, it was stated that the powers were intended to deal with “mass trespass”. However, under the Bill even a single Gypsy or Traveller travelling in a single vehicle will be caught by this offence.
These measures to increase police powers in relation to unauthorised encampments are not even backed by the police. When Friends, Families & Travellers researched the consultation responses that the Government had received, it found that 84% of the police responses did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments. Senior police are telling us that the changes in the Bill that relate to unauthorised encampments would only make matters worse: they would add considerable extra cost for the already overstretched police and risk breaching the Human Rights Act.
The views of the National Police Chiefs’ Council were clearly put in its submission to the 2018 Government consultation. It wrote:
“Trespass is a civil offence and our view is that it should remain so. The possibility of creating a new criminal offence of ‘intentional trespass’…has been raised at various times over the years but the NPCC position has been—and remains—that no new criminal trespass offence is required.
The co-ordinated use of the powers already available under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allows for a proportionate response to encampments based on the behaviour of the trespassers.”
At an evidence session of this Bill Committee, Martin Hewitt said on behalf of the NPCC that the group
“strongly believes that the fundamental problem is insufficient provision of sites for Gypsy Travellers to occupy, and that that causes the relatively small percentage of unlawful encampments, which obviously create real challenges for the people who are responsible for that land and for those living around… The view of our group is that the existing legislation is sufficient to allow that to be dealt with, and we have some concerns about the additional power and the new criminal provision and how that will draw policing further into that situation.”—[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 15, Q20.]
Siobhan Baillie
I have been listening to evidence about whether the existing powers are sufficient, which I challenge. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that if they were sufficient, we would not also have heard evidence about the tens of thousands of pounds that the case in Dartmoor cost. That was a huge cost to the council, thus making the taxpayer pay twice in having to deal with the issues beside them and through the public purse. We also heard countless other examples of what has been happening in communities. Does the shadow Minister think that our current legislation is truly sufficient? I think we need to look again, which is what the Bill is doing.
Bambos Charalambous
Civil remedies would still be available for people who engage in antisocial behaviour, fly-tipping and so on. All we would be doing is criminalising a particular group of people. In my view, the civil remedies would still be there and the cost to the council would still be there if proper facilities were not provided. To me, just criminalising a particular group of people is wrong.
To continue, the NPCC witness said:
“Really, our point fundamentally as the NPCC group is that the issue here is the lack of provision that theoretically should be made, which means that we have this percentage of Travellers who are on unlawful spaces and you end up in the situations that we end up with. Our view is that the current legislation is sufficient to deal with that issue.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 15, Q20.]
We have to ask: why are the Government determined to lock up Gypsies and Travellers, even against the advice of their own police? As Martin Hewitt clearly stated, existing legislation on police powers and unauthorised encampments is enough to tackle the problem. The police already have extensive powers to move on unauthorised encampments in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, and as of January 2020, just 3% of Gypsy and Traveller caravans—694—in England were in unauthorised encampments. Of those, 419 were on sites not tolerated and 275 were on tolerated sites. The police and campaigners tell us the evidence is not there that the new powers are necessary and that many more authorised encampment sites should be provided instead.
Alex Cunningham
I sometimes wonder whether the power to discourage Travellers from moving in is in the hands of communities. Travellers move around the country for work—to pick up scrap, to do all manner of gardening work, such as taking down trees for people, and so on. I have had many an argument with people living in communities who say, “We don’t want Travellers here,” but they put out their fridge or their scrap metal for them, they let them cut down their trees. They provide them with work and an incentive to be in the area. So perhaps people have it in their own power. Travellers will not come if there is no incentive for them.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which is worthy of further discussion.
I will run through a series of points the Minister for Crime and Policing made when responding to a Westminster Hall debate on this question. On concerns about the right to roam being threatened, he said the measures will not affect anyone who wants to enjoy the countryside for leisure purposes, but many organisations, such as the Ramblers Association and CPRE the Countryside Charity, are concerned that although the Government might not intend to capture others enjoying the countryside, they could still do so. The legislation is so open to interpretation that it could easily be applied to anyone with a vehicle. For example, how do the Government propose to ensure that the police distinguish between a modified Transit van or Volkswagen camper used at the weekends and one that is lived in? How will they distinguish between a family going on a caravan holiday and a Gypsy or Traveller family with an identical caravan before stopping them and seizing their property because the police suspect that they might stop somewhere they do not have permission to do so?
The Minister for Policing and Crime also said that there is a high threshold to be met before the new powers kick in, but only one vehicle need be involved, whereas section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act requires six vehicles. The bar seems to have been significantly lowered in the Bill. The police currently have discretion to decide whether to use their powers under sections 61, 62 and 62A to 62E, in the latter cases where a suitable alternative pitch is available, but under the proposals in part 4 of the Bill, police will be dutybound to act when they are informed that a criminal offence has taken place.
The term “significant distress” is highly subjective. Given the high levels of prejudice and hatred towards Gypsy and Traveller communities, we are likely to see countless reports of criminal offences being committed, based on someone saying that they are significantly distressed by an encampment. Marc Willers QC, of Garden Court Chambers, said in the evidence sessions:
‘It seems to me that a lot of the language used is vague and uncertain. There is a reference to causing “significant distress” as one of the conditions that could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who refuses to leave a piece of land. That, in itself, brings inherent problems, because a private citizen could very easily invoke the power and leave a police officer with a fait accompli—in other words, they have no option but to arrest an individual who refuses to leave land in circumstances where the occupier says, “I am being caused significant distress by the very fact that this individual is parking on land that I occupy.”’
Alex Cunningham
I am never happier than when I am in my own caravan—always on an official site—travelling around the country and into Europe. I have seen tremendous growth in the number of people driving motor homes, and I see them parked up all over the country, on private land, public land and elsewhere. Those people are also going to get caught up in this particular legislation, are they not?
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. We want to make sure that people are free to enjoy the beautiful countryside we are lucky to have in the UK without fear of being criminalised in such a way.
Marc Willers QC went on to say:
“That distress can be engendered or underpinned by the prejudice that Gypsies and Travellers face in our society today. It is a widespread and long-standing prejudice, dating back to the first time that Romani Gypsies came to these shores in the 1500s… There may well be unwarranted and unjustified concerns on the part of the occupier, which could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who has nowhere else to go.” —[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 72, Q104.]
Lee Anderson
At the beginning, the hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about Romani Gypsies coming here more than 500 years ago, but the Gypsy encampments that we are talking about in places such as Ashfield are not the traditional, old-fashioned Gypsies sat there playing the mandolin, flogging lucky heather and telling fortunes. The Travellers I am talking about are more likely to be seen leaving your garden shed at 3 o’clock in the morning, probably with your lawnmower and half of your tools. That happens every single time they come to Ashfield. Does he agree that there is some confusion on the Opposition side as to who these people actually are?
Bambos Charalambous
I have said previously that we certainly do not condone any antisocial behaviour or criminal activity, but this is one of the many prejudices that exist about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and it is these sorts of problems that would lead to people invoking some of the clauses in the Bill in order to criminalise people.
Mr Goodwill
Trying to describe this as some sort of inherent prejudice misses the point, in that the activities of some of these people are what cause concern to a community—for example, leaving a load of rubbish behind on a lay-by. In Whitby, we get a lot of Travellers coming for the regatta, and it is quite common for restaurateurs to complain to me that they just walk out of restaurants without paying the bill, or haggle over the price and pay only half, and there is nothing they can do about it. That is the problem. It is based not on inherent prejudice, but on actual experiences of dealing with some of these people. They may be only a small minority of the travelling population, but they do tend to spoil it for the rest.
Bambos Charalambous
The situation that the right hon. Gentleman mentions would not be caught by the clause in this Bill anyway. On his wider point, it is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. If there is a problem, there is legislation currently available to deal with it. This is entirely unnecessary, and it ends up criminalising a community when the powers to deal with the problem already exist.
Another point made by the Minister for Policing was that the clean-up costs of the encampments can be huge. This is truly a problem, but it will not be solved by these clauses. Friends, Families & Travellers has pointed out that there are tried and tested ways of saving money while supporting families on roadside camps. Adopting a working, negotiated stopping policy where local authorities provide basic facilities such as toilets, water and rubbish collection, and working with families on encampments to agree suitable temporary locations and lengths of stay, has been proven to significantly reduce the costs attached to encampments. Research from De Montfort University found that a negotiated stopping policy developed in Leeds was shown to be self-financing when financially analysed. The creation of permanent pitches leads to the generation of rent and council tax for a local authority. If there are issues of commercial waste management such as large-scale fly-tipping, local authorities can use the legislation that already exists to deal with that crime. Additional legislation is not necessary.
Lee Anderson
About five years ago, we had Travellers come to a car park in my village and they left a load of rubbish there, which cost the council over £1,000 to clean up. A few weeks later, they came back again, left another load of rubbish that cost another £1,000. I got that fed up with the local council that I hired a JCB and put two concrete blocks there, to stop the Travellers coming back and to keep the beauty spot tidy, and I got a £100 fixed penalty notice from my local Labour authority. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that was the right course of action?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have said, there are powers in place to deal with fly-tipping. Where people feel the need to secure certain sites, it is down to the local authority to deal with those issues. I am certainly not encouraging people to take the law into their own hands and deal with things in the ways they see fit. That would be the road to chaos. I have heard what the hon. Gentleman said, but I am not going to comment on individual situations. The law is there, it is available and it can be used. It has been used quite successfully by many local authorities and the police.
There are other solutions for managing unauthorised encampments such as negotiated stopping whereby arrangements are made on agreed permitted times of stopping and to ensure the provision of basic needs such as water, sanitation and refuse collection. The manifesto commitment and the Government response referred to littering as a problem, but then why do the Government not consider providing more authorised camping sites with proper refuse facilities? Why do the Government think that confiscating someone’s home, putting them in prison and fining them is the answer? Why do the Government not instead consider the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), whose private Member’s Bill would make it an offence to demand money to vacate an unauthorised encampment? That, along with a significant increase in permanent site provision, could prevent Gypsy and Traveller communities from being forced to make unauthorised encampments, having nowhere to go, and prevent the small minority of Travellers who demand money to leave sites where they are not entitled to be.
I acknowledge the difficulty that people or businesses can face with unauthorised encampments on their land. The Victims’ Commissioner put it well when she said that
“unless there is proper provision of authorised encampments, you have two sets of victims. I quite agree with you that the people who are distressed, damaged or whatever by an unauthorised encampment are victims of that. There is no doubt of it…but I want you to take into account the difficulty of finding somewhere to camp in a lot of places, which forces people into an unlawful place.” ––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 21 May 2021; c. 120, Q193.]
The Policing Minister also claimed that money for sites was available in the £150 million affordable homes programme pot, but the last shared ownership affordable homes programme in 2016 to 2021, with a budget of £4.7 billion, awarded grants for just two Traveller sites across the whole country in the scheme’s entire period. They were both just transit sites in Birmingham and Cornwall. That was revealed by Friends, Families & Travellers, which FOI-ed Homes England to find that information. Funding for Traveller sites must be more than warm words.
The Minister also claimed that there has been an increase in the number of caravans on sites from 14,000 in 2010 to 20,000 in 2019, but she failed to point out that the number of caravans counted on sites is different from the actual number of pitches. The 14,000 and 20,000 figures are the total number of caravans counted that are listed as unauthorised sites in the caravan parks. While there has indeed been a rise from 14,730 in January 2010 to 19,967 in January 2020, the number of caravans on socially rented sites fell by 364.
Small-scale, family-run sites are great for those who have the resources to pull this off, but they are incredibly problematic and inaccessible for those who live in areas where land is at a premium and who have limited finances. It is the number of permanent pitches that can really improve things for Travellers, residents, local authorities and the police. Although there has been a 39.9% increase in transit pitches alone, it amounts to an increase of only 101 pitches—the equivalent of 10 per year over 10 years—with an overall decrease of 11.1% in permanent pitches on local authority and registered social landlord sites. In fact, the Government’s published figures show that there has been an overall 8.4% decrease of pitches on local authority Traveller sites. Nesil Caliskan, the chair of the Local Government Association, told us in the evidence sessions:
“There has to be a commitment from local authorities that those sites are allocated. The statutory legislation that already exists for these protected characteristics needs to be taken seriously. We should be meeting the obligations that are already set in statute, which says that we should have adequate sites for these communities, but we just do not.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 68, Q99.]
The Government should focus on ensuring that local authorities have the resources they need to provide more space for Traveller communities to legally reside. By taking an enforcement approach to address the number of unauthorised encampments, the Government are overlooking the issue of the lack of site provision.
Part 4 of the Bill would cause harm to Gypsy and Traveller communities for generations. Gypsies and Travellers are already the most disproportionally represented group in the criminal justice system. Part 4 would compound the inequalities already experienced by Gypsies and Travellers and further push them into the criminal justice system, just for existing nomadically. I urge the Government to rethink these harmful proposals.
Victoria Atkins
I am very grateful to Opposition Members for debating this matter, because it gives me the opportunity to clear up some of the misunderstandings that appear to have arisen during the course of the Bill being debated and scrutinised by Parliament, and indeed by organisations outside Parliament.
We know that the vast majority of Travellers are law-abiding citizens, but when damage, disruption or distress is caused where a person resides on land without consent, it can affect local communities as well as landowners. Residents often feel helpless as their land or local amenities are damaged or disrupted, and councils are left with huge clean-up bills in some cases. In 2016, Birmingham City Council incurred costs of £700,000 due to evictions and clean-up costs resulting from harmful unauthorised encampments—that is £700,000 of taxpayers’ money. It is only right that the Government seek to protect citizens who are adversely affected by harmful unauthorised encampments, and to deter them from being set up in the first instance.
We have held consultations on this issue. In the 2018 Government consultation on enforcement powers for unauthorised encampments, it was made clear that people want to see greater protection for local communities, and for the police to be given greater powers to crack down on unauthorised encampments. In 2019, we ran a further consultation in which we asked how we should extend those powers. Some 66% of the people responding on behalf of local authorities were in favour of a new criminal offence for intentional trespass. At the start of our proceedings in oral evidence, we heard powerful accounts from PCC Alison Hernandez about the impact of unauthorised encampments in her area of Devon and Cornwall. Only today we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby, and from my hon. Friends the Members for Ashfield and for Blyth Valley, about the impact that unauthorised encampments and harmful behaviour within those encampments have had on their constituencies.
It is that caveat that is critical when we are looking at these clauses. Clause 61 introduces a new criminal offence for people residing on private or public land with vehicles who refuse to leave, without a reasonable excuse, when asked to do so, but only when they have caused, or are likely to cause, significant damage, disruption or distress. That is the key: that is what I kept asking those who spoke against these provisions during the evidence sessions. It is clear that for this offence to be committed, the conditions set out in subsection (4) of the proposed new section must be met: in other words, in a case where the person is residing on the land, significant damage or disruption has been caused or is likely to be caused as a result of P’s residence.
Victoria Atkins
Clause 67 provides a specific statutory power for the current charging arrangements for education courses offered for minor driving offences as an alternative to a fixed penalty or prosecution. Those courses help to improve road safety and reduce the burden on the criminal justice system. The provisions in this clause will not change the way in which courses are offered, administered or run, but will provide greater transparency over the way that fees are set. A local policing body may charge a fee to cover the cost of the approved course, but also include an uplift as a contribution towards the cost of promoting road safety, including road safety partnerships and speed cameras.
The clause will also allow the Home Secretary to prescribe in secondary legislation the types of courses in which motorists may be charged, the maximum amount that may be charged and the way that the charge can be used. It will allow provision to be made to prevent courses from being offered to repeat offenders. That means that any potential repeat offenders will face the deterrent of fixed penalty fines and penalty points on their licence. Equivalent provisions are made for Northern Ireland, and there are allowances for corresponding or similar provision for Scotland, following consultation with the Lord Advocate.
Bambos Charalambous
We support clause 67 and welcome that the charging regime for courses offered as an alternative to prosecution will be placed on a statutory footing. It makes a lot of sense that a course cannot be offered to repeat offenders, but I would like to ask the Minister a question about proposed new part 4B, section 91G, which states:
“A fee may be set at a level that exceeds the cost of an approved course and related administrative expenses, but any excess must be used for the purpose of promoting road safety.”
Can the Minister provide an example of why a fee would be set at a level that exceeds the cost, and how much that could be? How much do the fees vary across police forces? Police forces can decide which courses to offer, so not all courses will be available in all areas. The same offence committed in different force areas may be dealt with in different ways.
What will the clause do to ensure that there is a consistent application of diversionary courses across the country? If the courses are to be effective methods of deterrence and rehabilitation of offenders, it is important that their use be consistent. In its 2016 report, the Transport Committee said of diversionary courses:
“There are clearly concerns about the transparency of the operation and funding of diversionary courses, reinforced by the variations in fees between force areas and the profits earned by providers.”
It also recommended that:
“the costs for diversionary courses should be standardised nationwide unless there is a clear and convincing reason not to do so…so that the public can be confident in the transparency of these courses.”
Although clause 67 allows the Secretary of State to specify in regulations the level of fees, use of fee income and how fees are to be calculated, can the Minister tell us whether a standardised cost may be considered in secondary regulations?
Victoria Atkins
As I said, the clause permits charges to be laid in excess of the cost of the approved course, but will also permit a contribution towards the cost of promoting road safety, including road safety partnerships and speed cameras. In principle, that seems to be a good approach; if one falls foul of driving legislation, a contribution to the costs of keeping our streets safe locally seems to be a proportionate response.
The current course fee is approximately £100, but that can vary according to local course arrangements. The types of course offered and course costs can be found on the national driver offender retraining scheme, which is available online at www.ukroed.org.uk. The type of course offered and the costs can vary by police force and supplier, but we want to ensure that there is greater transparency in the way that fees are set, enabling the setting of maximum amounts that can be charged to provide, run and administer such courses. There is no immediate intention to introduce standard fees unless it is considered appropriate after consultation with relevant stakeholders.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 67 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 68
Charges for removal, storage and disposal of vehicles
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Victoria Atkins
The police have the power to remove vehicles that are illegally, dangerously or obstructively parked, broken down or abandoned, including after theft or a road traffic collision. The cost of the recovery, storage and disposal of such vehicles should not fall to the police or the taxpayer.
Clause 68 will clarify the legal basis for the police’s charging for vehicle recovery under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. That will ensure that the police can continue to recover the cost of removing, storing and disposing of vehicles, including those causing an obstruction or danger—for example, vehicles damaged in a road traffic collision. The clause will also ensure that all appropriate authorities covered under the 1984 Act can continue to recover such costs, which includes the Secretary of State and Highways England.
Bambos Charalambous
Clause 68 is described in the explanatory notes as being intended
“to return to a statutory footing”
the legal basis for charging for removing or impounding vehicles. However, in an article in the Daily Mail, it has been described as fixing an “incredible legal gaffe”.
The powers to charge for vehicle removal, storage and disposal were actually introduced in 1984, but the explanatory notes explain that
“the police’s power to charge for the removal, storage and disposal of vehicles within the meaning of ‘civil enforcement areas for parking contraventions’”
seems to have been inadvertently removed due to a drafting error. At the same time, the power of local authorities, the Secretary of State and strategic highways companies to charge for the removal, storage and disposal of vehicles were also inadvertently removed.
I want to ask the Minister about the implications of the error, and what changes or problems the passing of clause 68 might bring. Will the many drivers who for the past 30 years have been charged when the legal basis for that charge did not actually exist be able to take legal action? Will the Government review what has happened?
Howard Cox, of the motoring pressure group FairFuelUK, has said:
“Drivers who in the last 30 years have been charged illegally should demand their vehicle confiscation costs be repaid in full. They should be checking that they have the historic paperwork to mount a legal challenge. This is not a question of their offences being right or wrong—it is down to the government’s incompetence that is off the scale. The authorities and those responsible must pay for this idiocy.”
Jeanette Miller, of the Association of Motor Offence Lawyers, told the Daily Mail that it was
“a major error in the legislation that has resulted in goodness knows how many millions being charged to motorists without any lawful basis”.
She added:
“Where this leaves motorists in terms of seeking refunds is difficult to say. There is a limitation period of six years in pursuing civil claims, but this can start from the date of the breach or, crucially, the date of knowledge.”
The fees for storage and release of vehicles can be hundreds of pounds. The police and other bodies can charge £150 to tow a vehicle, and car-owners can also be charged up to £20 a day for storage of a car and up to £75 to dispose of it. The Government’s impact assessment says:
“There are no impacts associated with this measure. The new provision returns to a statutory footing the position as it applied before the inadvertent removal of these powers due to a drafting error. There will be no additional impact beyond that.”
It is hard to believe that there will be no impact if potentially millions of people have been charged for the storage and release of vehicles when there was no legal basis for that charge.
There is not simple data collection on the number of impounded vehicles, so could the Minister provide us with some figures for how many people she estimates have been affected by this error since 1991?
I also ask the Minister what this will mean for our cash-strapped police forces, local authorities and highways agencies. They could face huge bills if they are forced to compensate drivers for their legal costs, so this error could have serious, wide-ranging consequences. I hope the Minister can reassure the Committee that the Government will be taking swift action to come up with a solution, so that this mistake does not become a national scandal.
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for setting out the history of the regulation and its drafting. The police have other powers to charge for the removal of vehicles used in a manner that is causing alarm, distress or annoyance, or being driven without a driving licence or insurance. The only power affected was the power to charge for the removal of vehicles that were abandoned or broken down.
This provision clarifies the statutory basis of the ability of the police, Secretary of State or strategic highways companies to charge for vehicle recovery. Local authorities were not affected, as the amendment to the 1984 Act focused on the powers of local authorities and inadvertently removed other powers to charge. We believe it has been right for the police to continue to charge for vehicle recovery: that has avoided costs being borne by the taxpayer, and has allowed the police to continue removing abandoned vehicles to keep roads safe for other drivers and pedestrians. If the police were unable to deal with vehicle removal, significant inconvenience would be caused to the travelling public and commerce by the obstruction of highways by vehicles.
The hon. Gentleman stated some of the fees that can be charged. It is important to explain the thinking behind those: police contracts require operators to deal with a range of different vehicles, provide a guaranteed speedy response, and to have specialist equipment and secure storage facilities. Vehicles are often accident-damaged, do not free-wheel and are difficult to access—or they may require forensic examination, and must therefore be removed and stored with the highest standards of professionalism. I believe that is all I can do to assist the hon. Gentleman with his queries.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 68 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 69
Production of licence to the court
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Ninth sitting)
Bambos Charalambous ExcerptsTuesday 8th June 2021
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 8 June 2021 - (8 Jun 2021)
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 55 stand part.
Clause 56 stand part.
Clause 60 stand part.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Clauses 54 to 60 make up one of the most controversial parts of the Bill. We have seen fierce debates in Parliament and in the media, and protests up and down the country. Beneath the hyped-up culture wars is the very real issue that we will debate again today: what is the balance between our democratic right to protest and the rights of those around us? That is a legitimate question for the Government to ask.
How do we ensure that protests are peaceful? How do we balance the rights of others to go about their daily business? How do we, as parliamentarians, set the framework within which the police can do their jobs? The Opposition believe that the Government’s plans do not answer those questions and we reject the attempts to amend the Public Order Act 1986 with this loosely drafted legislation that would restrict democratic rights to peaceful protest.
Clause 54 imposes conditions on public processions, including powers for the Secretary of State to define serious disruption to the life of a community or the activities of an organisation carried out “in the vicinity” of a public procession, as well as powers for the police to impose conditions when they believe that noise might have
“a significant impact on persons in the vicinity”
or may result in
“serious disruption to the activities of an organisation”.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
We probably all have our favourite demonstration from our past. Mine was in the 1970s, when I was a student at Darlington College of Technology. It is lamentable that nowadays students do not spend more time on the streets demonstrating. I remember that day well, because we were going down the streets, shouting, “Heath out! Heath out!” That was the day that Heath resigned. We were very pleased with ourselves—a tremendous result from that demonstration. Does my hon. Friend agree that these restrictions could mean that students will feel even more inhibited about demonstrating in future?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I remember going on the “grants not loans” demonstrations in the late ’80s. He clearly had incredible persuasion in the demonstration he went on, resulting in the desired outcome, and I congratulate him on bringing about that change.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
I am pleased to hear that one of us at least had an extremely effective demonstration technique. I can recall many people on our side of the debate going on demonstrations and chanting, “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, out, out!” for years, and she did not move.
Bambos Charalambous
Not all demonstrations are successful, but that does not mean that people should not protest.
Clause 55 allows the police to place any necessary condition on a public assembly, as they can do now with a public procession. Clause 56 removes the need for an organiser or participants to have knowingly breached a condition, and it increases the maximum sentences for the offence. Clause 60 imposes conditions on one-person protests. Clauses 54 to 56, and clause 60, would make significant changes to the police powers, contained in the Public Order Act 1986, to respond to protests.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned one-person protests. Would he include in that the unacceptable behaviour of Labour’s Scarborough Borough Councillor Theresa Norton, who on 1 May sat in the middle of St Nicholas Street in Scarborough and caused widespread disruption to people going about their everyday business?
Bambos Charalambous
I am not aware of the situation that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about or the circumstances that brought it about. Clearly, people need to be respectful of the people around them when they protest, and they must do so in a lawful way.
Taken together, clauses 54 to 56 and clause 60 make amendments to the 1986 Act that will significantly expand the types of protest on which the police could impose conditions.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Can the hon. Gentleman cast his mind back about 12 or 13 months to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations on Whitehall, when several of his colleagues—Labour MPs—were out there with the rioters? Is that an acceptable level of protest?
Bambos Charalambous
Parliamentarians have a long history of protesting with many different organisations, so I encourage those who feel strongly willed to join protests, if they are appropriate. Clearly, such protests need to be within the scope of the law. If they are breaking the law, the protests need to be dealt with. That is why we have the law, and that is why the law is in place. People need to be respectful of the law in all circumstances.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I wonder whether my hon. Friend was as struck as I was when we had the witnesses in front of us and the police said that, actually, they feel that they have enough powers. They might not be used evenly across the country, which is obviously something on which we need more robust guidance. I remember that when I was very young, in ’89, I came down from the University of Sheffield to protest against the poll tax. We had big demonstrations here in London, and the police felt completely able to charge us on horses. We were kettled, and it was terrifying. Multiple arrests were made without the due process going through. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the witnesses, the police seem to have the powers. Is he as concerned as I am about where these changes are coming from, what the motivation is, and whether they are actually necessary?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. These are operational matters for the police. The police currently have the powers, and they have to be mindful of the impact of their powers on a demonstration and whether they will inflame the situation. Good policing will err on the side of caution on some occasions, but sometimes the police need to deal with a situation that they think will get out of hand. Trying to legislate for what is in the discretion of police officers is wrong, and we should actually trust the police in using their powers of discretion.
The clauses would also widen the types of conditions that the police could place on static protests. The clauses would significantly lower the legal test that must be met for the police to issue conditions on protests. The police would be able to issue conditions on protests where they are noisy enough to cause “intimidation or harassment” or
“serious unease, alarm or distress”
to bystanders. Before using their amended section 12 powers to issue conditions on a protest, the police would have to consider the “likely number of persons” affected by the protest, the “likely duration” of the impact, and the “likely intensity” of the impact. The clauses would also widen the types of conditions that police can issue on static protests to match their powers relating to protest marches. The police would also be able to issue any condition on static protests that they think is necessary
“to prevent…disorder, damage, disruption, impact or intimidation”.
Alex Cunningham
Has my hon. Friend had a chance to see the written evidence submitted by Zoe Everett? She describes herself as
“a member and supporter of ACORN for several years.”
In her written evidence, she said:
“Any peaceful assembly of members of the public, be they large-scale political demonstrations and marches, one-person protests, or local campaign actions by community organisations, are likely to be considered disruptive by those who are the intended object of the protest, be they state actors, private businesses and other organisations, or private individuals.”
The point that she makes in her submission is that these increased powers could drive more and more people directly into the criminal justice system. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be lamentable if people who simply want to protest about something very close to their heart could find themselves criminalised as a result of this new legislation?
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The people who want to impose these conditions are the very people who the protesters are trying to change; they do not like that, which is why they want to impose these conditions upon them. It is a suppression of people’s rights.
Mr Goodwill
The protest in Scarborough was all about building a third runway at Heathrow and climate change. The holidaymakers taking advantage of the first opportunity to come to the coast were not people directly responsible for making that decision. Their lives were being disrupted and they were not the people directly responsible for the issue that Councillor Norton was concerned about.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, I cannot comment on that individual protest, but the issue of climate change is a very important one; it affects us all, irrespective of where we live. The issue of a third runway may have also been about a wider issue that would have affected everybody, irrespective of where they live. As I say, I cannot comment on that individual protest, but we have to appreciate that certain protests have a wider significance than just the locality where they happen.
Alex Cunningham
The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby makes a really interesting point, because people were demonstrating in his constituency and it came to the notice of the local MP, so he has been directly influenced because of the demonstration that took place in his constituency, and he is the decision maker in relation to this particular issue.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and that demonstration is now going to be in the parliamentary record, so I think the person making the demonstration will have achieved her objective.
Mr Goodwill
I have to say that the correspondence I received in relation to this protest was not from people sympathetic to it. The correspondence was from people whose lives were being disrupted and who wished that something could have been done more quickly to stop that one person from sitting in the middle of the street, disrupting the whole town centre and affecting people’s jobs and livelihoods in Scarborough.
Bambos Charalambous
I accept the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making. However, if the purpose of the protest was to create greater publicity for the issue, then the person making the protest will have achieved her objective. That is not to say that disruption was not caused by the person making the protest.
Maria Eagle
I am listening to this exchange with some care. Does my hon. Friend agree that the context of all of this is that there is a fundamental right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly in this country, which is protected by articles 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights? It is only lawful to interfere with that where it is necessary and proportionate to do so. And it is within that context, of our having those rights as citizens, that any measures proposed in the Bill should be judged.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. These are human rights that have been fundamentally fought for and won. We need to do everything we can to secure them, and they should not be watered down as easily as is being proposed in the Bill.
These powers would also amend the offence of failing to comply with a condition imposed by the police on a protest. It would remove the legal test that requires protesters knowingly to breach a condition to commit an offence. People would commit the amended offence if they disobeyed a condition that they ought to have known was in force. Finally, these powers would allow the police to issue conditions on one-person protests. Currently, protests must involve at least two people in order to engage police powers.
The question we raised about how to ensure that protests are peaceful and how to balance the rights of others to go about their daily business is an important one as the covid crisis eases. We know that the emergency legislation introduced by this place shifted the balance of power away from citizens and towards the state. Organisations such as Liberty, Members across the House, lawyers and others have been concerned throughout that those powers are too great. We gladly handed over those powers, which was the right thing to do, but it is crucial, as we move out of the covid crisis, that we restore those rights with equal enthusiasm.
We need to remember that covid and public health formed the context within which many of the arguments over protests during the past year have occurred. Things have not been as they normally are. Decisions about allowing protests have had an extra layer of complexity, because of the need to protect public health. Decisions have been hampered by the inevitable problems of interpreting exactly what new laws mean, or should mean, in terms of protest. The fact that covid laws did not ban protests has meant that each decision has in part been subjective, putting the police in the firing line for every decision made.
I have heard many times from the police over the past year that they have struggled to be the ones interpreting the law, without the leadership from Government that they needed. The lack of the promised direction from the Home Secretary over the weekend of the Sarah Everard vigil is a stark case in point. The police were seen to be the ones making the political decisions because there was too much ambiguity in the law. That must be a firm lesson for us going forward. It is our job to define the law in a clear way, so that the police are not the ones getting the blame for our law making.
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend has got to the nub of the problem, which was highlighted by a number of the witnesses, as I will come to in my speech. This is ambiguous and lacks the clarity that the police need. There is no drive from the police that they need this measure, so why is it in the Bill? What is the motivation behind it? I support my hon. Friend in saying that it should not be there.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I will come to later. The Bill includes many ambiguous clauses that will no doubt cause lots of legal argument in the effort to define what they mean. That puts the police in an impossible situation.
A good starting point for this debate are the Peelian principles expressed by Sir Robert Peel when he set out ethical policing in the early 19th century:
“To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.”
Alex Cunningham
I do not know what my hon. Friend’s postbag or email account has been like over recent weeks, but I have been inundated by emails from individuals and organisations asking me to oppose these measures proposed by the Government. Not one person or organisation has contacted me in favour of these measures. He talked of the importance of the police having the approval of the public for what they are doing, but the public do not want this change. Surely the Government do not have the approval of the people for this piece of legislation.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes a good point: policing is done primarily by consent. If the consent is not there and the police do not have the approval of the people, it is a recipe for more disorder. That tips the balance—
Mrs Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I wonder where the constituents are coming from for the hon. Member for Stockton North.
I can assure him that in South Derbyshire my mailbag is full of mail from people saying, “Please get on with this. We don’t believe that the police use the police powers that they have already, so we need new police powers to make sure that they have those powers and will use them,” in the sure knowledge that their MP backs the Minister putting this through, but also that I am on the side of my residents.
Bambos Charalambous
The hon. Member makes an excellent point, but the point is that the police are the ones making the decision, and they should make the decision, because they are in the firing line. They are the ones who actually have to deal with the situation, and they have to call it as they see it. What they do not need is more legislation from Parliament, because they already have the powers in place. They are the ones who have to decide how those powers are used.
Maria Eagle
Does my hon. Friend agree that the police already have significant powers under the Public Order Act 1986 to impose conditions and to prohibit protests, that they have broad discretion as to how those powers are applied and that that can enable individual officers in charge of these matters to use their judgment? Is it not the case that this Bill is seeking to plug gaps that do not appear to exist?
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Good policing is done with discretion. What the Bill tries to do is to look at different ways of making the police do certain things that they may not want to do. I think that discretion is a great tool that the police have at their disposal, and they use it very well in what are often very difficult situations.
The Peelian principles are also:
“To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.”
Every word of the Peelian principles holds true today.
It is our belief that the powers in this Bill threaten the fundamental balance between the police and the people. The most draconian clauses are not actually what the police asked for. We believe that these new broad and vague powers will impede the ability of the police rather than helping them to do their job, that these clauses put way too much power into the hands of the Home Secretary and that the powers threaten our fundamental right to peaceful protest. We know that hundreds of thousands of people are very concerned that their democratic right to protest is threatened by these new provisions on public order.
Alex Cunningham
Has my hon. Friend seen the written evidence submitted by Leeds for Europe? It addresses some of the points that he has just outlined. It says:
“The proposals risk making protests ineffective and…curtail fundamental rights of citizens in a democracy, which allow people to express their concerns about the government of the day or other issues that they feel passionately about.”
I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that for the Home Secretary to have these new extensive powers proves that this objection is well founded.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This measure puts more power in the hands of the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary may have different views in the future and use the powers in an authoritarian way, which may have a further impact on people’s rights.
Lee Anderson
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the best way to protest is through the ballot box?
Bambos Charalambous
That is one way to protest, but elections only come every three or four years. In the intervening period, people have no way to exercise their right to protest via the ballot box and so have other means. The ballot box is also a vote on a whole range of things, while a protest might be for an individual issue not covered by an election.
A few weeks ago, we debated a petition signed by more than 250,000 people. The right to protest is a fundamental freedom and a hard-won democratic tradition that we are deeply proud of. Throughout our history, protests have led to significant changes for the better in this country. Suffragette protests put an end to the discrimination against women in our democracy. Historic trade union protests led to outlawing exploitative employment practices in factories, lifting health and safety standards for workers. Such protests have forced Governments to make the significant changes that we now recognise as fundamental parts of a civilised society.
If the public order provisions in the Bill had been in place when the suffragettes marched for the right to vote, would the women who shouted and screamed noisily for their future have been arrested? Does the Minister think that the marchers for the right to work or those on the anti-apartheid protests should have been stopped for causing annoyance or being too noisy? Do the Government want to stop the children who are shouting loudly for action on climate change or to prevent people across the country from marching to remind people in the establishment that black lives matter?
I support the police 100%; we in the Opposition listen every day to what they tell us. This is a most serious issue, but it is not quite as cut and dried as the Government would have us believe. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services reported on public order measures in its inspection report, “Getting the balance right?” On public order legislation, the inspectorate called for
“a modest reset of the scales”.
By any measure, this is not a modest reset.
The support for new powers on public order was qualified support for the five Government proposals the inspectorate was asked to respond to. What Matt Parr’s report actually said was that the vast majority of police forces were happy with the existing legislation. It was mainly the Met that wanted new powers to deal with very specific events—mainly large-scale, peaceful, Extinction Rebellion protests. What the police have asked for, they have not been given.
In the evidence session, Matt Parr said:
“We were very clear in what we said that any reset should be modest. We also said that, because of article 10 and article 11 rights, some degree of disruption is not just an inevitable by-product, it is sometimes the whole point of the exercise of protest, and on that basis, it has to be encouraged.”
He went on to say that the proposal—these clauses—
“clearly aims to set a lower bar. Personally, when I reviewed it, I did not think the bar was necessarily the problem. There is just as much of a problem with educating and training the police officers and making sure they understand how article 10 and 11 rights can be properly tempered. It was a question of training and understanding as much as it was of where the bar was for disruption.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 52-53, Q77.]
Alex Cunningham
I know this makes me a very old person, but I go back to the 1970s again and police and the exercise of their powers. I was a reporter at a sister paper of The Northern Echo, which had a strike that lasted for some 12 months. Eventually, the company managed to start producing a paper. We demonstrated outside every night and attempted to stop them getting the paper out of the building. It was very successful. The police were using existing powers to arrest many people, but there were very few, if any, convictions. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the new powers here, which we do not really know how the police are going to interpret, could lead to more people being arrested and ending up in the criminal justice system?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend again makes a very good point. The Government clearly have a desire to imprison more people, because they are embarking on a prison-building programme—I do not know whether that is part of the reason why they are introducing these powers. Good policing is using discretion, dealing with each occasion as it arises and policing in a sensitive way. Arresting people should be a last resort, albeit one that the police should use when appropriate.
To quote Matt Parr further:
“I think there are dangers and, as ever, the bar for measuring what was significant or what was serious should be a high one. We all recognise that. It should not be done on the flimsiest of pretexts. Again, it would then be open to challenge, and I think police officers would only wish to use it when they were confident.”—(Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 53, Q77.]
Matt Parr made some important points that should serve as a reminder to Ministers of the problems with clauses 54 to 60. He did not want a lower threshold; he wanted more training for police officers so that they can better understand how articles 10 and 11 might be adhered to. However, the clauses widen the legislation significantly. Does that not make the job of the police in enforcing the legislation more complex?
Lochlinn Parker, the head of civil liberties at ITN Solicitors, said:
“It is going to be down to police officers to try and determine a highly nebulous idea: what is annoying? Everybody is annoyed when a protest takes over the street, but lowering that [threshold] significantly is creating a situation where, if minded to, there will be very little protest that would be lawfully allowed.”
He continued:
“Police will be asked, as they frequently are by the government and the press, why wasn’t more done to stop this protest which caused disruption and problems”.
He also said:
“The political pressure on the police, and potentially their own inclinations in terms of keeping control and order, is going to come to the fore.”
Bob Broadhurst was gold command for the policing of the 2009 G20 protests and now lectures at the London Policing College. Apparently, he choked on his coffee when reading the explanatory notes for the Bill. He said:
“They’re saying protestors are now using new tactics—they’re locking themselves in, they’re gluing themselves down, they’re blocking roads. They were doing that 30 years ago.”
He went on to say:
“None of these tactics are new.”
Clifford Stott, a professor of social psychology at Keele University and expert in protest and police behaviour, argues that, although he vehemently disagrees with the proposals,
“under the Human Rights Act, the police will not be able to enforce any elements of the legislation which interfere with Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights—freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association.”
Sarah Champion
Does my hon. Friend share my concerns that the people who are absolutely set on protesting are going to do it regardless of the legislation, in that getting arrested is almost part of their MO? Does he also share my concern that the Bill will have a chilling effect on people’s right to protest, full stop? Secondly, there will be people who are, in their understanding, at completely lawful protests, and will, without any intention on their part, get caught up when the bar is lowered. A whole group of people who should not be arrested will, as my hon. Friend said, be clogging up the police system.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The lowering of the bar will mean that innocent people will be caught up in something when they have gone to protest about a perfectly valid issue that they are concerned about. They may get caught up in this unwittingly and could end up being criminalised as a result .
Maria Eagle
My hon. Friend is being most generous in giving way. Does he agree that this unnecessary criminalisation of dissent, which would happen if the Bill were enacted, goes against the very best traditions of our history and democracy? We have always prided ourselves on enabling people to dissent and on allowing people to express their views in the public space about current laws and things they wish to change. If these provisions were enacted, it would go completely against that tradition.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Many of the rights we have today are hard won and came about through protest. If it were not for those protests, we would not be here today—certainly, there would not be any female MPs if those rights had not been won.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
Forgive me. I do please want to place on the record the enormous contribution that the suffragists made. Indeed, some would argue that while the suffragettes did powerful work in raising awareness, it was the suffragists who worked with male Members of Parliament to pass the very laws that were needed to enable women to sit in this place.
Bambos Charalambous
I acknowledge the huge contribution that the suffragists made, but the suffragettes brought the campaign to prominence. The words displayed by the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square are the words that she delivered in a speech about Emily Davison, who threw herself under the King’s horse in 1913, which was another act of protest.
Let me conclude what I was saying about the comments of Clifford Stott, professor of social psychology at Keele University. Professor Stott said:
“If then subsequently this government or a subsequent government scraps the Human Rights Act, then those protections”—
that is articles 10 and 11—
“would no longer exist, and the government and police could interfere with those protected rights.”
Furthermore, Matt Parr was clear in his recommendations. They are about training and resources, which he asked the Government to ensure were in place for policing.
Alex Cunningham
I want to quote again the evidence of Leeds for Europe because there is a real reputational issue here for our country and our Government:
“Such draconian laws seem to align E&W to regimes such as those in Turkey, Hungary and Belarus, rather than those that we were aligned with when part of the EU. The police will have scope to expand their powers against the citizens and to use more active intervention, which might result in more draconian measures… There is a significant risk that the police would be regarded as a hostile agency and individuals seen as enemies of the state rather than people with genuine concerns and causes that they want to promote.”
Surely my hon. Friend agrees that we do not want to be seen as a country that oppresses its people in such a way.
Bambos Charalambous
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. Absolutely, we do not want to be a country that is seen to be oppressing its people. Those rights to protest are at first lost gradually, then quickly, so the transition from what is seen to be a democracy to authoritarian state happens very quickly and we need to be wary of that. We cannot go down that path.
Sarah Champion
I am grateful that the Foreign Secretary has been very good on protecting the right to protest internationally. It seems somewhat hypocritical that we are reducing the right to protest here while on the international stage we are advocating for it.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We cannot be seen to be criticising other Governments for the way they suppress the right to protest when we are doing the same here. That weakens our global standing and we should not go down that path.
The College of Policing has authorised professional practice, or APP, that contains 30 tactical options to deal with public disorder and protest. It is out of date. It does not include recent relevant case law or information on certain new and emerging tactical options. The college is planning a review. The inspectorate states:
“By 30 June 2022, the College of Policing, through its planned review, should bring the public order authorised professional practice (APP) up to date and make arrangements to keep it current, with more regular revisions as they become necessary. It would also be beneficial to consolidate the APP, protest operational advice and aide memoire into a single source (or a linked series of documents).”
The inspectorate notes:
“We found that forces do not do enough to share legal opinion or case law on protest policing. And officers and staff rarely use Knowledge Hub’s ‘Specialist Operational Support—Public Order Public Safety’ group… By 31 December 2021, chief constables should make sure that their legal services teams subscribe to the College of Policing Knowledge Hub’s Association of Police Lawyers group.
By 31 December 2021, the College of Policing should ensure that all Public Order Public Safety commander and adviser students attending its licensed training are enrolled in the College of Policing Knowledge Hub’s Specialist Operational Support—Public Order Public Safety group, before they leave the training event…
In making decisions about how to respond to a protest, public order commanders need to consider domestic human rights legislation. And they must also consider a patchwork of European case law. These have established precedents on issues such as how long protests can reasonably go on for, and the level of disruption that protests can reasonably cause.”
The inspectorate stated:
“Examining the gold strategies and silver plans submitted as part of our document review, we found that commanders generally showed a grasp of human rights legislation. However, we did not see evidence that they consistently considered the wider legal picture.”
The inspectorate also recommended:
“By 30 June 2022, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, working with the College of Policing, should provide additional support to gold commanders to improve the quality of gold strategies for protest policing. This support should include the creation and operation of a quality assurance process; and/or the provision of more focused continuous professional development. The additional support should ensure that gold commanders for protest operations include an appropriate level of detail within their gold strategies. This may include the levels of disruption or disorder above which enforcement action will be considered…
By 30 June 2022, the National Police Coordination Centre should revise the national post-event learning review form so that it contains a section to report on the policing operation’s impact on the community…
Forces usually have good protest-related briefing processes and commanders’ decisions generally reach the front line effectively. However, gold strategies often do not set out the limits of acceptable behaviour from the protesters. Better explanations of these limits would help officers to understand what is expected of them and empower them to take appropriate action.
Non-specialist officers receive limited training in protest policing. As a result, they often lack confidence in using police powers. Some officers are anxious about attracting complaints and being filmed in protest situations. It is important that forces provide good-quality training and briefing before deploying officers into these situations.
Forces should make better use of community impact assessments to evaluate the impact of protests on those who live in, work in or visit an area. The process should include regular reviews and updates, so the police can respond to changing circumstances. Only seven of the ten forces we inspected submitted any community impact assessments for examination, and some of those we examined were of a poor standard”.
With the covid legislation, we have seen the difficulty that rushing through new police powers can bring for the police. They have managed to do a brilliant job of enforcing the new laws, but they have faced a number of difficult decisions owing to the loose drafting of the law, and they have received criticism where they have got it wrong. The new protest powers will force the police to make political decisions about which protests they deem unlawful. That is extremely concerning and will put the police and the public in a difficult position.
Why do the Government want to make the police the gatekeepers for public protests? The Government are choosing to ignore the many peaceful protests that go ahead and are attended by police. The public order measures in the Bill risk putting the police in a trying position more often, and they risk creating more disorder and disruption. The Government should be putting the police in a position whereby the rules are not too confusing or too broad. If they do not do so, that will only create more flashpoints.
It is clear that police support for the Bill is not what the Government are saying it is. The Metropolitan police want more clarity on ways to manage very disruptive protests that go on and on, and to make sure that emergency services can get through roads. That is understandable, but the police want more clarity and certainty, which is what they said in the evidence sessions. These provisions bring the opposite. Instead of a modest reset, we have in front of us clauses that significantly widen police powers on public order.
Clauses 54 to 60 mark a substantial change in the approach to policing protest, which has the potential to be applied disproportionately and could curtail article 10 and article 11 rights that the inspectorate of constabulary is keen to protect. The police already have the powers to break up protests that cause harm, serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of a community. Many of the country’s best lawyers are telling us that the Public Order Act 1986 and the many other powers on the statute book to police protests are enough.
Alex Cunningham
One of the things that troubles me most about the Bill is the stuff in relation to this place—this Parliament of ours, and this democracy—and the fact that people could be prevented from protesting on our doorstep and disrupting our lives. People should have a right to disrupt the lives of MPs and those who work in this place, in order to get their point across. Does my hon. Friend agree that, for all the things that the Government want to do with the Bill, one thing they should not deny the people is the right to protest at the seat of our democracy?
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We are the decision makers in this Parliament. We are the ones who make decisions that impact on people’s lives, so if we do not hear and are not aware of the protests, how will that change be brought about?
Mr Goodwill
Surely the point is that as elected representatives, it is our responsibility to cast our votes in this place on behalf of those people. If a protest outside prevents us from coming here, that is acting against democracy, not in favour of it.
Bambos Charalambous
The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Yes, we should be allowed to come here. Nobody has prevented MPs from coming to Parliament since the civil war, and that right has existed and will continue to exist. We have the right to be here as elected representatives, and nothing should infringe on that right. That does not mean, however, that people should not be allowed to protest outside Parliament. We should be able to hear their voices and hear what they have to say. They should be allowed to make that protest.
Mr Goodwill
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. The point I am trying to make is that many of us drive here from distant parts of the country, which was particularly the case during lockdown. If we could not drive through Parliament Square and arrive at this building, we could not do the job on behalf of our constituents. That is tantamount to people blocking a polling station on polling day. I am sure he would condemn that as well.
Bambos Charalambous
I use public transport—I am a London MP, so it is easier for me to do that to get here—but clearly MPs should have access to Parliament. I am not disputing that at all because we need to be able to get here to act on behalf of our constituents, but I disagree with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying.
Maria Eagle
I understand the point made by the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby. That is a concern, of course. Does my hon. Friend agree that there have been many protests outside here? I have been a Member 24 years and have seen a lot of protests outside Parliament. The vast majority did not in any way at all threaten my ability to get here to vote in Divisions. The issue is proportionality.
Is it right to ban protests because there may have been an occasion when hon. Members were prevented from being able to drive to their place of work because of the way a protest in Parliament Square had been policed? That is an important point. It is about proportionality. We do not ban everything to prevent one instance of an undoubtedly undesirable effect at the far end of the spectrum. Is that not correct?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend is entirely correct. It is a question of proportionality, and we need to make sure that we are allowed to get here as parliamentarians, but also that protesters are allowed to air their views. It is about striking that balance. The legislation goes too far the other way, and does not strike such a balance. It is too much against the right to protest.
The reports by the inspectorate ask for modest changes, but the Government decided to go much further. The Bill targets protesters causing “serious unease”, those being too noisy and those causing serious annoyance. Clause 54 amends section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986 so that police officers can issue conditions on protest marches that generate noise, but may have significant relevant impact on persons “in the vicinity” or that may result in “serious disruption” to the activities of an organisation in the vicinity.
Sarah Champion
I do not know whether it was recorded properly, but I do not think we ever got to the bottom of what “serious noise” was. During our evidence session, a drill was going in the next room. I suffer from tinnitus and it was driving me insane. I could not concentrate and I wanted it to stop, but there are examples of protests at which I would be chanting and would think that that was acceptable. Did we ever get to the bottom of what “serious noise” was?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I do not think that we ever did, and that is part of the problem because there will be a disparity in how the Bill is implemented, which will lead to confusion because what one person regards as noise may not be what another person regards as noise. The last thing we want is confusion when protests are being policed.
Under clause 54, noise would have to have a relevant impact, resulting in intimidation, harassment, serious unease, alarm or distress to bystanders. The vague term “serious unease” is a very low threshold for police-imposed conditions.
Sarah Champion
Owing to the areas I campaign on, I have had protests against me and that does cause me serious unease—it is horrible. They have led to death threats and all manner of things, but I would not stop people’s right to protest because we all have our rights and I find it incredibly chilling that people’s rights are going to be stopped.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The term “serious unease” is vague. As MPs, we get, as the Minister has said, death threats and abuse, which we should not get, but “serious unease” is a very low threshold.
Victoria Atkins
Let me make a genuine effort to help Her Majesty’s official Opposition. They are surely not saying that death threats are an acceptable form of protest. Death threats are terrifying for those who are victims. Indeed, I would say they impede democracy in this country precisely because people worry about the threats to their personal safety. I just want to clarify.
Bambos Charalambous
My understanding is that the clauses will not affect people’s right to picket, but will the Minister provide reassurance that people’s right to picket or attend demonstrations will not be affected? There is also a penalty for someone who breaches a police-imposed condition on a protest when they ought to have known the condition existed. If someone attends a protest and the police have placed conditions on the number of people allowed to attend, how will the attendee know whether they are the 101st person to join a demonstration that has a limit of 100?
Alex Cunningham
I want to take my hon. Friend back to the issue of noise. Paragraph 546 of the explanatory notes to the Bill states:
“Where a senior police officer reasonably believes, having had regard to various factors, that the noise generated by a one-person protest may have a relevant impact on persons in its vicinity or may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity of the one-person protest, the senior police officer may give directions imposing on the person organising or carrying on the protest such conditions as appear to them necessary to prevent such disruption or impact.”
The Government give us that explanation, but they still do not define what a disruptive noise is. It would be helpful if the Minister told us.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It would be helpful if we had an idea of the definition of “disruptive noise”. If we are to pass the Bill, we should know what we are passing.
There have been problems when the police have not satisfactorily communicated conditions to protesters. Will the Minister provide the Committee with evidence to justify the proposed widening of criminal responsibility in clause 56? The HMICFRS report talked about a slight shift in the legal test on that, but what the Government propose goes way too far. Sir Peter Fahy, former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said that the legislation includes “some really dodgy definitions” that the police are supposed to make sense of. The point of protest is to capture people’s and the Government’s attention. Sometimes protests are noisy and sometimes annoying, but they are as fundamental to our democracy as Parliament is and as the courts are.
On 6 October last year, I had the pleasure of witnessing an impressive and effective protest outside Parliament, which was organised by the Let Music Live campaign to highlight the plight of freelance musicians who received very little support from the Government during the coronavirus pandemic. The protest involved 400 socially-distanced musicians, all dressed in black, playing 90 seconds, or 20%, of Gustav Holst’s “Mars”. Not only was the demonstration eye-catching, but it used the sound and the loudness of Holst’s piece to convey the message.
The demonstration consisted of 90 seconds of sound building until it came to an abrupt stop. Would such a protest fall foul of clause 54? I fear it might, but who would be qualified to assess whether a 90-second blast of Holst’s “Mars” constituted noise that might have a “significant” or “relevant” impact on “persons in the vicinity”? The phraseology is so vague and devoid of precise meaning that it will be a legal nightmare for the police to determine what the terms “significant”, “relevant” and “impact” mean for the purposes of the Bill.
Sarah Champion
I wonder whether the bar would be set at exactly the same level if the music were not classical, but heavy metal. Are we getting into a really subjective area here?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this will be very subjective. I used to play rugby, and this is what we would have called a hospital pass. It is going to put the police in an impossible situation, and they will have to make judgments about what constitutes “significant”, “relevant” and “impact.”
Maria Eagle
Does my hon. Friend agree that in addition to putting the police in an invidious position, the measure will promote different interpretations across different forces, and possibly within the same force? The officer on duty who has the obligation to make the call may well have a different view from another officer, on another day. What we are promoting here is confusion rather than clarity.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is going to be subjective. What one person considers noise might not be the same for another person. There may be a different view from different officers in the same force, which will lead to confusion.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. There is the potential for the Bill to have unintended consequences. In my Stockton-on-Tees constituency, all the churches come together once a year in the parish gardens, although they have not been able to do that in recent times. They have loud music, guitars, drums and all manner of things going on. Backing on to the parish gardens is the Royal Oak pub. Under this legislation, people in the Royal Oak may think that the people demonstrating their faith in the parish gardens are a public nuisance and are getting on their nerves as they enjoy a pint, and they could complain to the police.
Bambos Charalambous
I do not know whether that would be captured by the legislation, but if it would be captured, that would be wrong. I mentioned the Let Music Live protest. Even if such a protest were deemed permissible, it would still cause many problems of interpretation for the police, who would have to use the Bill to define whether the protest had “significant” or “relevant impact.”
Aside from music, what about singing? Singing songs and chanting have been a feature of every protest or demonstration that I have ever been on. Would singing be captured by the clause? The hymn “We Shall Overcome” was adopted as an anthem and sung as a protest song. In 1963, the folk singer Joan Baez led 300,000 protestors in song as they sang “We Shall Overcome” at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the civil rights movement march on Washington. Some 300,000 people singing “We Shall Overcome” must have made a fair bit of noise. Imagine a crowd of 300,000 outside the Houses of Parliament singing “We Shall Overcome.” Who would determine whether that constituted noise having a “significant” or “relevant” impact on “persons in the vicinity”?
Lee Anderson
There is another chant, “What a load of rubbish,” and that is pretty much what I am hearing today. Does the hon. Gentleman realistically expect that the police could stop 300,000 people singing a song?
Bambos Charalambous
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and ask, well, why not? Does he not think that is a noise? If it is not a noise, why is that not set out in the legislation? Where is the guidance on it? The legislation is badly worded and wrong, and its vagueness will cause confusion. The hon. Gentleman has demonstrated the point I am making; he says it is a load of rubbish, but in my view that would be captured under the legislation. Are songs and music exempt? Perhaps the Minister will tell us.
Some protests and processions are loud, colourful and joyful. I am sure the Minister is aware of the explosion of colour and sound that is the Pride parade, which takes place in towns and cities across the country. Pride in London is a wonderful event, and the procession is a joy to watch. It is also very noisy. There are drums, whistles, sound systems and cheering crowds; it is quite something. Will the London Pride parade, which passes down the top part of Whitehall, constitute noise and have a significant and relevant impact on persons in the vicinity? Part of the point of Pride is to be noisy. Could Pride be outlawed for being noisy? If not, why not? Let me put on record my support and solidarity of the LGBT+ community during this Pride month.
Even if the Minister brushes off music, song and noise made by the Pride parade as not constituting noise for the purposes of the Bill, does she concede that noise can be an integral part of protest? Earlier this year, we watched in horror as the military staged a coup against the democratically elected Government of Myanmar. There was outrage among people as the military clamped down on protest and imposed curfews. Faced with the prospect of curfews and armed brutality against street protests, protestors found other ways to make their protest heard. In February, in the city of Yangon, ordinary citizens staged a noisy protest, by banging pots and pans and anything they could lay their hands on from their balconies and homes, to create an almighty din and show civil disobedience and anger against the coup. Those same protestors in the UK, banging their pots and pans, would fall foul of clause 54. Noise is part of protests; whoever drew up the proposals clearly has not thought through the dilemma that the police will face, putting them in an invidious position as they try to enforce these sloppily drafted clauses.
I am surprised that the Government, who pride themselves so much on their libertarian values, are so prescriptive and authoritarian in trying to pass the legislation. The right to protest is a fundamental freedom, as is freedom of speech. The former Prime Minister and Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), was right when she said on Second Reading that the legislation is concerning and risks going against the right of freedom of speech. On the power of the Home Secretary to make regulations on the meaning of serious disruption to the activities of an organisation or the life of the community, the right hon. Member made another important point, saying:
“It is tempting when Home Secretary to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable, because we all think we are reasonable, but future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 78.]
If there were a peaceful protest outside the Home Office that the Home Secretary did not like, everyone could be criminalised for shouting too loud, so that people working were not disturbed. Does the Minister have a cause that she cares deeply about and may want to protest about? The Home Secretary would have the ultimate say on whether what she was saying was right or wrong. I know that I would not want the Home Secretary to have that power.
Michael Barton, the former chief constable of Durham police, compared the measures in the Bill to those of a paramilitary-style police force, and asked if the Government are
“happy to be linked to the repressive regimes currently flexing their muscles via their police forces?”
I reiterate his question to the Minister, and I hope she will answer it. The very same Home Office that is offering Hong Kongers British national overseas visas to escape the oppressive regime that last week banned the annual vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 would criminalise those Hong Kongers for demonstrating loudly outside the Houses of Parliament. Once again, the Government are on the wrong side of the argument; instead, they find themselves on the same side as those who curtail the right to protest and silence the voices of the people.
Sarah Champion
The march in Hong Kong that my hon. Friend refers to shut down the city. We, as a country, have been very outspoken about China’s action towards those protestors, for criminalising them in such a mass brutal manner. I bring my hon. Friend back to the hypocrisy that we might see should we welcome those protestors with welcome arms while, as he says, criminalising them in this country.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Why do we criticise the regime in Hong Kong when we are going to be imposing limitations on the right to protest here? It just does not make any sense. It does not add up.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Tenth sitting)
Bambos Charalambous ExcerptsTuesday 8th June 2021
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 8 June 2021 - (8 Jun 2021)
Victoria Atkins
I can help the hon. Gentleman on the officer point. Pre-procession—in other words, in respect of processions that are yet to happen—the conditions must be assessed, and if ordered, ordered by a chief officer. That is a chief constable outside London, and in London an assistant commissioner. That is the highest rank in a police force. Mid-procession, conditions are imposed by a senior officer, which is an inspector or above, at the scene. So I do not think that the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman describes will arise. It is another example of the checks and balances that we have tried to put in place throughout this part of the Bill to ensure that these decisions are taken by very experienced and specialised officers.
I have been given another example to help demonstrate the point. A noisy protest that lasts only a short time may not meet the threshold, so the 90 seconds of—I forget the piece of music—
Victoria Atkins
Thank you, Holst. But a protest creating the same amount of noise over several days might meet it, given the extended duration of the protest.
Bambos Charalambous
For clarification, is the senior officer expected to know the area and the types of buildings where the protest will be, as well as the nature of the demonstration—whether it will have lots of sound systems, or involve lots of whistles and chants? Is it expected that that will be known beforehand, or is there scope to act if that were to occur during a demonstration?
Victoria Atkins
That serves to demonstrate the dynamic nature of different forms of protest. If a decision is to be made during the course of a protest, it will be made by a senior officer of inspector rank or above, on the ground and assessing the situation. Let me try to provide a practical example. The inspector may assess the situation in Hyde Park, then walk through to an area where there is lots of high-density housing and consider that the circumstances there are different. It is about being able to react to circumstances as they change and evolve in the course of a protest. That is why we are trying to bring consistency between processions and assemblies—because of the dynamic nature of protests—but it will be for the senior officer, working of course with his or her colleagues, to assess the factors laid out in subsection (3).
The police will impose conditions on the use of noise only in the exceptional circumstances where noise causes unjustifiable disruption or impact. I emphasise that in doing so they will have to have regard to the number of people affected and the intensity and duration of the noise, and act compatibly with the rights of freedom of expression and so on within the convention.
The shadow Minister prayed in aid the non-legislative recommendations from HMIC. I want to place on the record that the National Police Chiefs’ Council has established a programme board to consider and implement those. I hope that helps.
Bambos Charalambous
The clause is designed to protect vehicular access to Parliament, and it will amend the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. That will ensure that preventing access to the parliamentary estate is prohibited, but it will not give the police powers to arrest those who contravene it.
Clause 58 requires a new controlled area around the temporary locations of Parliament, and the central rules around protests may be imposed around the temporary home of Parliament during restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster, whenever that may occur.
Clause 59 replaces the common law offence of public nuisance with the statutory offence of intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance. The new statutory offence of intentionally or recklessly causing a nuisance includes the term “serious annoyance”, and it is unclear what will constitute a serious annoyance or serious inconvenience. A person does not have to actually suffer any of the above consequences, but only be at risk of suffering them.
The Minister said in the evidence sessions that the term “annoyance” was not dreamed up on the back of an envelope, but follows many centuries of legal development, culminating in the 2015 Law Commission report. However, that does not help to explain or to guide the police as to how to enforce conditions on a protest that puts someone at risk of suffering “serious annoyance”. During the evidence session, Chief Constable Harrington, the public order and public safety portfolio lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said:
“On serious annoyance, we need to see what Parliament’s decision on the definition of that is and to interpret that accordingly… We will have to see what Parliament decides and whether it is able to give us some clarity about what that means”.––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 10, Q8.]
Can the Minister reassure us today by providing some clarity on what “serious annoyance” might mean and what is the threshold for “serious annoyance”?
I will finish on this point: the designated area for Parliament includes Parliament Square, where can be found a number of statues of celebrated pioneers of struggle and protest, including Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the suffragist Millicent Fawcett. I wonder what they would think about the state limiting people’s rights of protest in this way. I think we can all guess.
Victoria Atkins
If I may, Mr McCabe, I shall confine my remarks to clause 57, which deals with “Obstruction of vehicular access to Parliament”. I will take up the challenge on annoyance when it comes to clause 59.
Clause 57 delivers a clear recommendation from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). Its 2019 report, “Democracy, freedom of expression and freedom of association: Threats to MPs”, refers to
“unimpeded access to the Palace of Westminster for all who have business in either House, or wish to meet their representatives”,
and to how vital that is. The report continues:
“Even though there is a special legal regime for the area around Parliament, it is clear that those responsible for policing and controlling that area have not always given the need for access without impediment or harassment the importance it requires. This must change.”
We are acting on the recommendations of the Joint Committee and, through clause 57, strengthening and extending the Palace of Westminster controlled area in relation to section 142A of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011.
Bambos Charalambous
I stand to speak out against clauses 61 to 63. In doing so, I am reflecting the views of the Gypsy and Traveller community, the police, and organisations as diverse as the Ramblers Association and Liberty.
I want to start by thanking Abbie Kirkby from Friends, Families & Travellers for all its help on part 4 of the Bill. Part 4—clauses 61 to 63—would amend the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to create a new offence of
“residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle”.
It would also amend the police powers associated with unauthorised encampments in the Act to lower the threshold at which they can be used, allow the police to remove unauthorised encampments on or partly on highways, and prohibit unauthorised encampments that are moved from a site from returning within 12 months.
Like the clauses we have just debated on public order, this part of the Bill is controversial and has generated a number of organised campaigns in opposition to it, including an e-petition that garnered 134,932 signatures. The petition called the Government’s proposed criminal offence “extreme, illiberal and unnecessary”.
Mr Goodwill
Would any of the people who live near one of these illegal camps have signed that petition?
Bambos Charalambous
I do not know who signed the petition, but I am sure it is available. The right hon. Gentleman will have to explore the petition himself to see who signed it.
A broad coalition, from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to Liberty, from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to the Ramblers Association and from the police to Shelter, is united in the view that the proposals put forward by the Government would be wrong and unhelpful, and go against our basic rights.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
We have a big problem in Ashfield with the travelling community. They come two or three times a year. I did my own poll of about 2,000 constituents, and 95% agreed with me that the Travellers were creating a massive problem—crime was going up, pets were going missing, antisocial behaviour was going through the roof and properties were getting broken into. My constituents do not want them in our area anymore. That was a survey of 2,000 people, and that was the response from 95% of them. That evidence from my area is a bit more compelling than the petition the hon. Gentleman mentioned, which has probably been signed by 100,000 Travellers.
Bambos Charalambous
One of the problems is that there is less local authority provision for Travellers to go to. That loss of provision, which is partly due to cuts to local government, has caused more problems, meaning that more people are on the road at any given time. However, this issue does not affect just the Traveller community, as the hon. Gentleman will see when I go on to make further points. It also impacts people such as ramblers, birdwatchers and others who want to stay out and sleep in their vehicles while enjoying countryside activities.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend has made the point that there is a failure in our society to provide sufficient facilities for people from the travelling community, be they traditional Gypsies or people who choose to go on the road. Does he agree that the Government, rather than bringing in legislation such as this, should turn their attention to providing local authorities with the resources they need to provide facilities for travelling communities? Does he also agree that that should not be left just to some communities; communities across the country should take a share in providing such facilities so that Travellers can live with them cheek by jowl in a peaceful way?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That was highlighted by the representative from the LGA in her evidence to the Committee.
As one of the respondents to the Petition Committee’s survey on the criminalisation of trespass put it:
“The criminalisation of trespass will simply exacerbate an already fraught relationship.”
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)
Next to my constituency is a Traveller site that has spaces that could be used by people who choose to live a nomadic lifestyle, yet we still have people turning up and using public car parks. People going to do their shopping at the Keel Row shopping centre found that really intimidating and the police had to ask the Travellers to move on. When they did move on, they left a lot of rubbish and the place was really untidy. There was space at the Traveller site, but the Travellers chose not to use it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that was wrong?
Bambos Charalambous
I agree that there is no excuse for antisocial behaviour or criminal activity, such as fly-tipping, which is wrong and needs to stop. Equally, where sites are provided, they should be made use of.
Mr Goodwill
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must listen to local people in this respect? When sites were proposed in Stockton-on-Tees in 2014, there were 565 individual representations against them, four petitions signed by 850 people and a letter of objection supported by 55 neighbours, so even in Stockton-on-Tees, the constituency of the hon. Member for Stockton North, there is great opposition to having these Traveller sites in their communities.
Bambos Charalambous
Therein lies the problem: many people do not want to have Travellers anywhere near them, and that is partly why there are so few sites. If more sites were made available, that would potentially solve the problem.
Lee Anderson
We have already established that in places where Traveller communities set up, such as Ashfield, crime goes up; we know that there is a direct correlation between Travellers being in the area and crime going up. Does the hon. Gentleman think that crime will come down if we have a permanent site in Ashfield?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have said, there is no excuse for criminality, and the Gypsy and Traveller community is already overrepresented in the prison population, but I do not think that the two issues are necessarily related to what the clause is trying to achieve. The hon. Gentleman is trying to say that the Gypsy and Traveller community is responsible for crime in Ashfield. I do not know the facts and figures in relation to that, but what the clause does is criminalise communities for being in vehicles on public land. While each Member has a concern about their individual constituents, we need to get back to what the Bill is focusing on, which is criminalising anyone in a vehicle, even on their own. I think that is what we need to focus on.
Alex Cunningham
In Stockton, we have had facilities for travelling communities for many years. I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that this is about having proper facilities. Perhaps I can point him to the example of the Appleby horse fair, which attracts thousands of people every year. We see them travelling up, and they stay on the byways and all sorts of places along the way, but when they get to the site they are properly catered for. There is proper rubbish removal, proper facilities for animals, toilets and all manner of facilities, and they are put in place to provide for that particular need. Perhaps if other local authorities across the country took that approach, we would not have the problems that Government Members have described.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is right: if more facilities were provided, that would help to solve the problem.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
Although these clauses do not apply in Scotland, does the hon. Member agree that a significant number of Gypsy Travellers cross the border daily for work, to maintain family ties and for cultural reasons, and that these measures will cause further discrimination and harassment of this ethnic group, which is protected under the Equality Act 2010 as a recognised ethnic group?
Bambos Charalambous
I entirely agree with the hon. Member’s comments. He is right: this measure is targeting a particular group for criminalisation, and that has to be totally wrong. As one respondent to the Petitions Committee’s survey on criminalisation of trespass put it:
“The criminalisation of trespass will simply exacerbate an already fraught relationship. Travellers will still camp but there’ll be more prosecutions, more distrust, more public money spent on legalities”.
Other people with nomadic lifestyles have told me that they feel that they will no longer be able to live on the road in the way that has been seen in this country since the 16th century, and that the Bill risks criminalising their way of life. At a recent meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, we heard from the community about what might happen to them if these clauses become law. It was absolutely heartbreaking to hear from those people that they fear that their whole way of life will be taken from them if the clauses become law.
Can the Minister tell the House this? Under the provisions in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, what will happen to a Traveller family in a single vehicle who are residing on a highway and have nowhere else to go? Failure to comply with a police direction to leave land occupied as part of an unauthorised encampment is already a criminal offence, but the proposals create a new offence of residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle. The broad way in which it is drafted seems to capture the intention to do that as well as actually doing it, with penalties of imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to £2,500, or both. The loose drafting of this legislation invites problems with its interpretation, and it is simply not fair to put that on to the police.
The Opposition’s major concern about this aspect of the Bill is that it is clearly targeted at Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and the criminalisation would potentially breach the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010. When the powers in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 were first debated in Parliament, it was stated that the powers were intended to deal with “mass trespass”. However, under the Bill even a single Gypsy or Traveller travelling in a single vehicle will be caught by this offence.
These measures to increase police powers in relation to unauthorised encampments are not even backed by the police. When Friends, Families & Travellers researched the consultation responses that the Government had received, it found that 84% of the police responses did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments. Senior police are telling us that the changes in the Bill that relate to unauthorised encampments would only make matters worse: they would add considerable extra cost for the already overstretched police and risk breaching the Human Rights Act.
The views of the National Police Chiefs’ Council were clearly put in its submission to the 2018 Government consultation. It wrote:
“Trespass is a civil offence and our view is that it should remain so. The possibility of creating a new criminal offence of ‘intentional trespass’…has been raised at various times over the years but the NPCC position has been—and remains—that no new criminal trespass offence is required.
The co-ordinated use of the powers already available under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allows for a proportionate response to encampments based on the behaviour of the trespassers.”
At an evidence session of this Bill Committee, Martin Hewitt said on behalf of the NPCC that the group
“strongly believes that the fundamental problem is insufficient provision of sites for Gypsy Travellers to occupy, and that that causes the relatively small percentage of unlawful encampments, which obviously create real challenges for the people who are responsible for that land and for those living around… The view of our group is that the existing legislation is sufficient to allow that to be dealt with, and we have some concerns about the additional power and the new criminal provision and how that will draw policing further into that situation.”—[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 15, Q20.]
Siobhan Baillie
I have been listening to evidence about whether the existing powers are sufficient, which I challenge. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that if they were sufficient, we would not also have heard evidence about the tens of thousands of pounds that the case in Dartmoor cost. That was a huge cost to the council, thus making the taxpayer pay twice in having to deal with the issues beside them and through the public purse. We also heard countless other examples of what has been happening in communities. Does the shadow Minister think that our current legislation is truly sufficient? I think we need to look again, which is what the Bill is doing.
Bambos Charalambous
Civil remedies would still be available for people who engage in antisocial behaviour, fly-tipping and so on. All we would be doing is criminalising a particular group of people. In my view, the civil remedies would still be there and the cost to the council would still be there if proper facilities were not provided. To me, just criminalising a particular group of people is wrong.
To continue, the NPCC witness said:
“Really, our point fundamentally as the NPCC group is that the issue here is the lack of provision that theoretically should be made, which means that we have this percentage of Travellers who are on unlawful spaces and you end up in the situations that we end up with. Our view is that the current legislation is sufficient to deal with that issue.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 15, Q20.]
We have to ask: why are the Government determined to lock up Gypsies and Travellers, even against the advice of their own police? As Martin Hewitt clearly stated, existing legislation on police powers and unauthorised encampments is enough to tackle the problem. The police already have extensive powers to move on unauthorised encampments in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, and as of January 2020, just 3% of Gypsy and Traveller caravans—694—in England were in unauthorised encampments. Of those, 419 were on sites not tolerated and 275 were on tolerated sites. The police and campaigners tell us the evidence is not there that the new powers are necessary and that many more authorised encampment sites should be provided instead.
Alex Cunningham
I sometimes wonder whether the power to discourage Travellers from moving in is in the hands of communities. Travellers move around the country for work—to pick up scrap, to do all manner of gardening work, such as taking down trees for people, and so on. I have had many an argument with people living in communities who say, “We don’t want Travellers here,” but they put out their fridge or their scrap metal for them, they let them cut down their trees. They provide them with work and an incentive to be in the area. So perhaps people have it in their own power. Travellers will not come if there is no incentive for them.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which is worthy of further discussion.
I will run through a series of points the Minister for Crime and Policing made when responding to a Westminster Hall debate on this question. On concerns about the right to roam being threatened, he said the measures will not affect anyone who wants to enjoy the countryside for leisure purposes, but many organisations, such as the Ramblers Association and CPRE the Countryside Charity, are concerned that although the Government might not intend to capture others enjoying the countryside, they could still do so. The legislation is so open to interpretation that it could easily be applied to anyone with a vehicle. For example, how do the Government propose to ensure that the police distinguish between a modified Transit van or Volkswagen camper used at the weekends and one that is lived in? How will they distinguish between a family going on a caravan holiday and a Gypsy or Traveller family with an identical caravan before stopping them and seizing their property because the police suspect that they might stop somewhere they do not have permission to do so?
The Minister for Policing and Crime also said that there is a high threshold to be met before the new powers kick in, but only one vehicle need be involved, whereas section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act requires six vehicles. The bar seems to have been significantly lowered in the Bill. The police currently have discretion to decide whether to use their powers under sections 61, 62 and 62A to 62E, in the latter cases where a suitable alternative pitch is available, but under the proposals in part 4 of the Bill, police will be dutybound to act when they are informed that a criminal offence has taken place.
The term “significant distress” is highly subjective. Given the high levels of prejudice and hatred towards Gypsy and Traveller communities, we are likely to see countless reports of criminal offences being committed, based on someone saying that they are significantly distressed by an encampment. Marc Willers QC, of Garden Court Chambers, said in the evidence sessions:
‘It seems to me that a lot of the language used is vague and uncertain. There is a reference to causing “significant distress” as one of the conditions that could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who refuses to leave a piece of land. That, in itself, brings inherent problems, because a private citizen could very easily invoke the power and leave a police officer with a fait accompli—in other words, they have no option but to arrest an individual who refuses to leave land in circumstances where the occupier says, “I am being caused significant distress by the very fact that this individual is parking on land that I occupy.”’
Alex Cunningham
I am never happier than when I am in my own caravan—always on an official site—travelling around the country and into Europe. I have seen tremendous growth in the number of people driving motor homes, and I see them parked up all over the country, on private land, public land and elsewhere. Those people are also going to get caught up in this particular legislation, are they not?
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. We want to make sure that people are free to enjoy the beautiful countryside we are lucky to have in the UK without fear of being criminalised in such a way.
Marc Willers QC went on to say:
“That distress can be engendered or underpinned by the prejudice that Gypsies and Travellers face in our society today. It is a widespread and long-standing prejudice, dating back to the first time that Romani Gypsies came to these shores in the 1500s… There may well be unwarranted and unjustified concerns on the part of the occupier, which could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who has nowhere else to go.” —[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 72, Q104.]
Lee Anderson
At the beginning, the hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about Romani Gypsies coming here more than 500 years ago, but the Gypsy encampments that we are talking about in places such as Ashfield are not the traditional, old-fashioned Gypsies sat there playing the mandolin, flogging lucky heather and telling fortunes. The Travellers I am talking about are more likely to be seen leaving your garden shed at 3 o’clock in the morning, probably with your lawnmower and half of your tools. That happens every single time they come to Ashfield. Does he agree that there is some confusion on the Opposition side as to who these people actually are?
Bambos Charalambous
I have said previously that we certainly do not condone any antisocial behaviour or criminal activity, but this is one of the many prejudices that exist about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and it is these sorts of problems that would lead to people invoking some of the clauses in the Bill in order to criminalise people.
Mr Goodwill
Trying to describe this as some sort of inherent prejudice misses the point, in that the activities of some of these people are what cause concern to a community—for example, leaving a load of rubbish behind on a lay-by. In Whitby, we get a lot of Travellers coming for the regatta, and it is quite common for restaurateurs to complain to me that they just walk out of restaurants without paying the bill, or haggle over the price and pay only half, and there is nothing they can do about it. That is the problem. It is based not on inherent prejudice, but on actual experiences of dealing with some of these people. They may be only a small minority of the travelling population, but they do tend to spoil it for the rest.
Bambos Charalambous
The situation that the right hon. Gentleman mentions would not be caught by the clause in this Bill anyway. On his wider point, it is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. If there is a problem, there is legislation currently available to deal with it. This is entirely unnecessary, and it ends up criminalising a community when the powers to deal with the problem already exist.
Lee Anderson
About five years ago, we had Travellers come to a car park in my village and they left a load of rubbish there, which cost the council over £1,000 to clean up. A few weeks later, they came back again, left another load of rubbish that cost another £1,000. I got that fed up with the local council that I hired a JCB and put two concrete blocks there, to stop the Travellers coming back and to keep the beauty spot tidy, and I got a £100 fixed penalty notice from my local Labour authority. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that was the right course of action?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have said, there are powers in place to deal with fly-tipping. Where people feel the need to secure certain sites, it is down to the local authority to deal with those issues. I am certainly not encouraging people to take the law into their own hands and deal with things in the ways they see fit. That would be the road to chaos. I have heard what the hon. Gentleman said, but I am not going to comment on individual situations. The law is there, it is available and it can be used. It has been used quite successfully by many local authorities and the police.
There are other solutions for managing unauthorised encampments such as negotiated stopping whereby arrangements are made on agreed permitted times of stopping and to ensure the provision of basic needs such as water, sanitation and refuse collection. The manifesto commitment and the Government response referred to littering as a problem, but then why do the Government not consider providing more authorised camping sites with proper refuse facilities? Why do the Government think that confiscating someone’s home, putting them in prison and fining them is the answer? Why do the Government not instead consider the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), whose private Member’s Bill would make it an offence to demand money to vacate an unauthorised encampment? That, along with a significant increase in permanent site provision, could prevent Gypsy and Traveller communities from being forced to make unauthorised encampments, having nowhere to go, and prevent the small minority of Travellers who demand money to leave sites where they are not entitled to be.
I acknowledge the difficulty that people or businesses can face with unauthorised encampments on their land. The Victims’ Commissioner put it well when she said that
“unless there is proper provision of authorised encampments, you have two sets of victims. I quite agree with you that the people who are distressed, damaged or whatever by an unauthorised encampment are victims of that. There is no doubt of it…but I want you to take into account the difficulty of finding somewhere to camp in a lot of places, which forces people into an unlawful place.” ––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 21 May 2021; c. 120, Q193.]
The Policing Minister also claimed that money for sites was available in the £150 million affordable homes programme pot, but the last shared ownership affordable homes programme in 2016 to 2021, with a budget of £4.7 billion, awarded grants for just two Traveller sites across the whole country in the scheme’s entire period. They were both just transit sites in Birmingham and Cornwall. That was revealed by Friends, Families & Travellers, which FOI-ed Homes England to find that information. Funding for Traveller sites must be more than warm words.
The Minister also claimed that there has been an increase in the number of caravans on sites from 14,000 in 2010 to 20,000 in 2019, but she failed to point out that the number of caravans counted on sites is different from the actual number of pitches. The 14,000 and 20,000 figures are the total number of caravans counted that are listed as on authorised sites in the caravan count. While there has indeed been a rise from 14,730 in January 2010 to 19,967 in January 2020, the number of caravans on socially rented sites fell by 364.
Small-scale, family-run sites are great for those who have the resources to pull this off, but they are incredibly problematic and inaccessible for those who live in areas where land is at a premium and who have limited finances. It is the number of permanent pitches that can really improve things for Travellers, residents, local authorities and the police. Although there has been a 39.9% increase in transit pitches alone, it amounts to an increase of only 101 pitches—the equivalent of 10 per year over 10 years—with an overall decrease of 11.1% in permanent pitches on local authority and registered social landlord sites. In fact, the Government’s published figures show that there has been an overall 8.4% decrease of pitches on local authority Traveller sites. Nesil Caliskan, the chair of the Local Government Association, told us in the evidence sessions:
“There has to be a commitment from local authorities that those sites are allocated. The statutory legislation that already exists for these protected characteristics needs to be taken seriously. We should be meeting the obligations that are already set in statute, which says that we should have adequate sites for these communities, but we just do not.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 68, Q99.]
The Government should focus on ensuring that local authorities have the resources they need to provide more space for Traveller communities to legally reside. By taking an enforcement approach to address the number of unauthorised encampments, the Government are overlooking the issue of the lack of site provision.
Part 4 of the Bill would cause harm to Gypsy and Traveller communities for generations. Gypsies and Travellers are already the most disproportionally represented group in the criminal justice system. Part 4 would compound the inequalities already experienced by Gypsies and Travellers and further push them into the criminal justice system, just for existing nomadically. I urge the Government to rethink these harmful proposals.
Victoria Atkins
I am very grateful to Opposition Members for debating this matter, because it gives me the opportunity to clear up some of the misunderstandings that appear to have arisen during the course of the Bill being debated and scrutinised by Parliament, and indeed by organisations outside Parliament.
We know that the vast majority of Travellers are law-abiding citizens, but when damage, disruption or distress is caused where a person resides on land without consent, it can affect local communities as well as landowners. Residents often feel helpless as their land or local amenities are damaged or disrupted, and councils are left with huge clean-up bills in some cases. In 2016, Birmingham City Council incurred costs of £700,000 due to evictions and clean-up costs resulting from harmful unauthorised encampments—that is £700,000 of taxpayers’ money. It is only right that the Government seek to protect citizens who are adversely affected by harmful unauthorised encampments, and to deter them from being set up in the first instance.
We have held consultations on this issue. In the 2018 Government consultation on enforcement powers for unauthorised encampments, it was made clear that people want to see greater protection for local communities, and for the police to be given greater powers to crack down on unauthorised encampments. In 2019, we ran a further consultation in which we asked how we should extend those powers. Some 66% of the people responding on behalf of local authorities were in favour of a new criminal offence for intentional trespass. At the start of our proceedings in oral evidence, we heard powerful accounts from PCC Alison Hernandez about the impact of unauthorised encampments in her area of Devon and Cornwall. Only today we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby, and from my hon. Friends the Members for Ashfield and for Blyth Valley, about the impact that unauthorised encampments and harmful behaviour within those encampments have had on their constituencies.
It is that caveat that is critical when we are looking at these clauses. Clause 61 introduces a new criminal offence for people residing on private or public land with vehicles who refuse to leave, without a reasonable excuse, when asked to do so, but only when they have caused, or are likely to cause, significant damage, disruption or distress. That is the key: that is what I kept asking those who spoke against these provisions during the evidence sessions. It is clear that for this offence to be committed, the conditions set out in subsection (4) of the proposed new section must be met: in other words, in a case where the person is residing on the land, significant damage or disruption has been caused or is likely to be caused as a result of P’s residence.
Victoria Atkins
Clause 67 provides a specific statutory power for the current charging arrangements for education courses offered for minor driving offences as an alternative to a fixed penalty or prosecution. Those courses help to improve road safety and reduce the burden on the criminal justice system. The provisions in this clause will not change the way in which courses are offered, administered or run, but will provide greater transparency over the way that fees are set. A local policing body may charge a fee to cover the cost of the approved course, but also include an uplift as a contribution towards the cost of promoting road safety, including road safety partnerships and speed cameras.
The clause will also allow the Home Secretary to prescribe in secondary legislation the types of courses in which motorists may be charged, the maximum amount that may be charged and the way that the charge can be used. It will allow provision to be made to prevent courses from being offered to repeat offenders. That means that any potential repeat offenders will face the deterrent of fixed penalty fines and penalty points on their licence. Equivalent provisions are made for Northern Ireland, and there are allowances for corresponding or similar provision for Scotland, following consultation with the Lord Advocate.
Bambos Charalambous
We support clause 67 and welcome that the charging regime for courses offered as an alternative to prosecution will be placed on a statutory footing. It makes a lot of sense that a course cannot be offered to repeat offenders, but I would like to ask the Minister a question about proposed new part 4B, section 91G, which states:
“A fee may be set at a level that exceeds the cost of an approved course and related administrative expenses, but any excess must be used for the purpose of promoting road safety.”
Can the Minister provide an example of why a fee would be set at a level that exceeds the cost, and how much that could be? How much do the fees vary across police forces? Police forces can decide which courses to offer, so not all courses will be available in all areas. The same offence committed in different force areas may be dealt with in different ways.
What will the clause do to ensure that there is a consistent application of diversionary courses across the country? If the courses are to be effective methods of deterrence and rehabilitation of offenders, it is important that their use be consistent. In its 2016 report, the Transport Committee said of diversionary courses:
“There are clearly concerns about the transparency of the operation and funding of diversionary courses, reinforced by the variations in fees between force areas and the profits earned by providers.”
It also recommended that:
“the costs for diversionary courses should be standardised nationwide unless there is a clear and convincing reason not to do so…so that the public can be confident in the transparency of these courses.”
Although clause 67 allows the Secretary of State to specify in regulations the level of fees, use of fee income and how fees are to be calculated, can the Minister tell us whether a standardised cost may be considered in secondary regulations?
Victoria Atkins
As I said, the clause permits charges to be laid in excess of the cost of the approved course, but will also permit a contribution towards the cost of promoting road safety, including road safety partnerships and speed cameras. In principle, that seems to be a good approach; if one falls foul of driving legislation, a contribution to the costs of keeping our streets safe locally seems to be a proportionate response.
The current course fee is approximately £100, but that can vary according to local course arrangements. The types of course offered and course costs can be found on the national driver offender retraining scheme, which is available online at www.ukroed.org.uk. The type of course offered and the costs can vary by police force and supplier, but we want to ensure that there is greater transparency in the way that fees are set, enabling the setting of maximum amounts that can be charged to provide, run and administer such courses. There is no immediate intention to introduce standard fees unless it is considered appropriate after consultation with relevant stakeholders.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 67 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 68
Charges for removal, storage and disposal of vehicles
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Victoria Atkins
The police have the power to remove vehicles that are illegally, dangerously or obstructively parked, broken down or abandoned, including after theft or a road traffic collision. The cost of the recovery, storage and disposal of such vehicles should not fall to the police or the taxpayer.
Clause 68 will clarify the legal basis for the police’s charging for vehicle recovery under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. That will ensure that the police can continue to recover the cost of removing, storing and disposing of vehicles, including those causing an obstruction or danger—for example, vehicles damaged in a road traffic collision. The clause will also ensure that all appropriate authorities covered under the 1984 Act can continue to recover such costs, which includes the Secretary of State and Highways England.
Bambos Charalambous
Clause 68 is described in the explanatory notes as being intended
“to return to a statutory footing”
the legal basis for charging for removing or impounding vehicles. However, in an article in the Daily Mail, it has been described as fixing an “incredible legal gaffe”.
The powers to charge for vehicle removal, storage and disposal were actually introduced in 1984, but the explanatory notes explain that
“the police’s power to charge for the removal, storage and disposal of vehicles within the meaning of ‘civil enforcement areas for parking contraventions’”
seems to have been inadvertently removed due to a drafting error. At the same time, the power of local authorities, the Secretary of State and strategic highways companies to charge for the removal, storage and disposal of vehicles were also inadvertently removed.
I want to ask the Minister about the implications of the error, and what changes or problems the passing of clause 68 might bring. Will the many drivers who for the past 30 years have been charged when the legal basis for that charge did not actually exist be able to take legal action? Will the Government review what has happened?
Howard Cox, of the motoring pressure group FairFuelUK, has said:
“Drivers who in the last 30 years have been charged illegally should demand their vehicle confiscation costs be repaid in full. They should be checking that they have the historic paperwork to mount a legal challenge. This is not a question of their offences being right or wrong—it is down to the government’s incompetence that is off the scale. The authorities and those responsible must pay for this idiocy.”
Jeanette Miller, of the Association of Motor Offence Lawyers, told the Daily Mail that it was
“a major error in the legislation that has resulted in goodness knows how many millions being charged to motorists without any lawful basis”.
She added:
“Where this leaves motorists in terms of seeking refunds is difficult to say. There is a limitation period of six years in pursuing civil claims, but this can start from the date of the breach or, crucially, the date of knowledge.”
The fees for storage and release of vehicles can be hundreds of pounds. The police and other bodies can charge £150 to tow a vehicle, and car-owners can also be charged up to £20 a day for storage of a car and up to £75 to dispose of it. The Government’s impact assessment says:
“There are no impacts associated with this measure. The new provision returns to a statutory footing the position as it applied before the inadvertent removal of these powers due to a drafting error. There will be no additional impact beyond that.”
It is hard to believe that there will be no impact if potentially millions of people have been charged for the storage and release of vehicles when there was no legal basis for that charge.
There is not simple data collection on the number of impounded vehicles, so could the Minister provide us with some figures for how many people she estimates have been affected by this error since 1991?
I also ask the Minister what this will mean for our cash-strapped police forces, local authorities and highways agencies. They could face huge bills if they are forced to compensate drivers for their legal costs, so this error could have serious, wide-ranging consequences. I hope the Minister can reassure the Committee that the Government will be taking swift action to come up with a solution, so that this mistake does not become a national scandal.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Philp
The answer is yes. Providing the application is received by 30 June, while the application is being considered—and if it is made on 30 June, clearly it will be decided after 30 June—that particular person will be able to continue working and living as normal with status. So the critical point is to make sure that the application is made by 30 June.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
On 26 May, in response to a question from the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry), the Prime Minister told the House that the law would be “merciful” to any EU citizens left in a “difficult position” after the EU settlement scheme deadline passes on 30 June. Further to that, I note that today the Home Office website says that late applications to the scheme will be accepted if there are “reasonable grounds” for missing the deadline. Can the Minister assure me that the mercy that the Prime Minister spoke about will guarantee that no one who is entitled to EU settled status but has missed the deadline will lose their rights or access to benefits, or be forcibly detained or removed? Can he tell me how long the late application provision to the scheme will remain open for?
Chris Philp
I reiterate the critical point that people should apply before the 30 June deadline, which is already six months after the end of the transition period. The shadow Minister is right and, indeed, the Prime Minister was right as well. If somebody does apply late and there are reasonable grounds for them to have done so—for example, they might have been ill—then latitude will be shown. There is no hard time deadline to that. A reasonable approach will be taken, but again, the best thing to do for any constituent who is entitled to EUSS is to apply for it before 30 June.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Eighth sitting)
Bambos Charalambous ExcerptsThursday 27th May 2021
(2 years, 11 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 May 2021 - (27 May 2021)
Sarah Champion
I will start with new clause 37 on extending double jeopardy. I start with a quote from Dean Radford in the Metro in 2019,
“Like many young boys who grew up with a dream of becoming a footballer, the sport was my whole life. It was the be-all and end-all. I didn’t even want to think about not being offered a contract. That dream looked like it could become reality when I made it to Southampton Football Club at 13 years old. They had produced some of my favourite football heroes and I was given the amazing opportunity to train with boys like myself, who wanted to be the next big thing in football. All of this came to a halt when I was subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of a coach I trusted and looked up to.”
In the 1980s, Radford was one of six boys allegedly abused by their football coach and scout Bob Higgins at Southampton football club. Higgins was acquitted of all charges in the ’90s and continued in same line of work. In 2016 the football abuse scandal rightly erupted, and more than 100 people came forward in relation to Higgins. Higgins was convicted of 45 counts of indecent assault involving 23 victims over a period from 1971 to 1996.
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 sets out exceptions to the law of double jeopardy if the offences are considered “severe” or “serious”. Murder, kidnapping, serious drug offences, serious criminal damage offences, and penetrative child sex offences all come under that definition. The schedule does not exempt any offences relating to non-penetrative sexual assault or sexual activity with a child. Due to double jeopardy exemptions not applying in sexual assault or indecent assault, the original six complainants against Higgins from the 1990s were prevented from having their case reheard. I find it shocking that the law does not deem non-penetrative child abuse as serious or severe enough for retrial.
The Government is right to acknowledge that extending the list of qualifying offences is not something to be undertaken lightly, but any form of child sexual abuse, whether it involves penetration or not, should be considered a serious or severe offence. Survivors do not differentiate between the severity of different forms of sexual abuse; they do not have a hierarchy. They judge it by the impact on their lives, which tends to be both devastating and lifelong. Abuse of a child should be the very definition of a serious crime, regardless of whether penetration has taken place. I return to the quote from Dean Radford in 2019. He says:
“even though Higgins is in jail right now, he spends no time in his cell for the abuse he [allegedly] subjected us to. He sits in jail knowing he got away with it when it comes to us. He took away years of my childhood and ruined my adult life, without paying any consequences for it. There isn’t one day that I don’t feel sick to the stomach, or sleep through one night without waking up and thinking of what he did to me.”
New clause 37 would amend schedule 5 to the Criminal Justice Act to include child sex offences set out in sections 7 to 10 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and sections 14 and 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956. Will the Government at the very least commit to a review of the law in this area? It has been 20 years since the Law Commission conducted such a review. The proposed changes to the double jeopardy laws have received widespread support, including from the Victims’ Commissioner, the all-party parliamentary group for adult survivors of child sexual abuse, and over 15,000 people who have signed a change.org petition.
The case of Dean Radford, who was abused by Bob Higgins, is just one that devalues the fairness that should exist in our criminal justice system. Higgins was convicted of abusing a total of 24 boys, but the police, Crown Prosecution Service and clearly the criminal jury and judge appreciated the veracity and importance of Radford’s evidence, because as he was a witness at Higgins’ trial in respect of the abuse—but he did not get the conviction in relation to Higgins’ abuse of him.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. My constituent Ian Ackley was also abused, by Barry Bennell. He was one of the first whistleblowers on the sexual abuse of young men by football coaches, but because he was one of the first, he did not get the support that others got subsequently. As a result, he was encouraged to allow certain offences not to be pursued as much as he would have liked. Does she think that, with additional support, that would change—and how does that relate to her new clause?
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend knows that I have the great privilege of knowing and working with Ian. He is a remarkable survivor, who does everything he can both to prevent and to seek justice for child abuse. The problem in a lot of these cases is that the abuse happened in the past. As technology has moved forward—in the use of DNA, for example—the evidence available now will be so comprehensively different from that available to those brave enough and successful enough to try to get a case to court in, say, the ’70s or ’80s, that not to allow double jeopardy in the case of child abuse seems a really poor and morally reprehensible decision. We have the opportunity to change that now for these specific cases.
As I said, the last review into double jeopardy was conducted 20 years ago by the Law Commission. Since then, the disclosure in 2017 of abuse by Jimmy Savile and in 2016 of abuse within football, and disclosures in other parts of society have changed the societal landscape so radically that I ask the Minister to consider at the very least initiating such a review.
I will end with a question that I put to the Victims’ Commissioner:
“Non-penetrative child abuse offences are not seen as serious crime; therefore, they do not fall under the double jeopardy rule. Should they be?”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 20 May 2021; c. 113, Q178.]
Her answer, in a word, was yes. I urge the Minister, if she will not accept the new clause, to consider a review into this important topic, which is widely supported by the public and a number of bodies.
I will now speak to new clauses 39, 40 and 41 together, while giving a little bit more detail on each one. They all relate to online sexual abuse of children. It might seem silly to say, but people seem to see online abuse as not as severe as abuse in a room, which is nonsense, because online abuse is a child being abused; they are just not in the same room as the abuser. I have to put a health warning on some of the examples that I will give, but I need to give them to explain. Hopefully no one in this room has any knowledge about what is going on out there on the internet, but unfortunately some of us work in this field and so do know. It is pretty chilling, hence my earlier attempt to put “trauma” into the police covenant.
I have worked really closely on these new clauses with the International Justice Mission, which is a fantastic organisation.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Second sitting)
Bambos Charalambous ExcerptsTuesday 18th May 2021
(2 years, 12 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 May 2021 - (18 May 2021)
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)
Q
Phil Bowen: Of course. The Centre for Justice Innovation has long been a supporter of problem-solving courts. At their simplest, they bring together specialist supervision and intervention teams with the powers and authority of a court to review progress regularly against a sentencing plan. They generally operate out of existing courthouses and are built from existing resources. We already do work on and support about 11 courts across the UK that use problem solving to manage specific caseloads, including three in Northern Ireland, sponsored by the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland, and four in Scotland. That is in addition to the 14 family, drug and alcohol courts already in existence in England in the public family law system.
As you know from the Bill, the Government propose to pilot three separate and distinct models of problem-solving courts in England and Wales in the criminal court system: a substance misuse court model; a model to tackle domestic abuse; and a model to help vulnerable women avoid short-term custody. We are very supportive of the move, for which we have been calling for a long time. We believe that the evidence base on all three of those models is robust enough that the piloting of them in England and Wales would be useful as a first step before thinking about their further roll-out across the system. We think there is a real chance to reduce the use of unnecessary custody and tackle reoffending, particularly in the substance misuse and vulnerable women models and, in terms of the model to tackle domestic abuse, to really hold perpetrators to account and give victims a sense of safety and involve them in the ongoing supervision of those perpetrators.
Adrian Crossley: Thank you; I am grateful. I am very well aware of the work that Phil Bowen is doing. CSJ also endorses the use of problem-solving courts. They have the potential to be enormously beneficial to defendants sometimes facing serious matters across the UK.
In terms of the scope of the proposed pilots, I think that the chosen three categories—domestic abuse, substance abuse and vulnerable women facing prison sentences—are wise choices. What is best about a problem-solving court is that it draws from real specialist knowledge and experience that can really look behind a problem, understand it and provide practical solutions, so these issues are worth tackling. One point I would note as a matter of caution is that problem-solving courts at their best are fantastic, but they do pose dangers. I am pleased to see that we are starting with a relatively small pilot because it is important to get right the things that sometimes appear to be small. For example, listing cases for problem courts to ensure that they are before the same panel that can continually look at a case and review it, and understand that the team that they are working with and the person in front of them are important.
In our jurisdiction, we have sometimes had difficulty with listing in front of lay magistrates—problems that they do not necessarily experience to the same degree overseas in the US. So there are examples of things that need to be done well and right. I am pleased to see that those three categories have been chosen, because they are worth tackling, and I am pleased to see that the initial pilots are small enough to allow proper analysis and reform as we go along.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Q
The Chair
Adrian, would you like to go first?
Adrian Crossley: Yes. Thank you. I can entirely see that that concern is absolutely valid. We know from the CSTR—community sentence treatment requirements—model that substance abuse and mental health are both dealt with alongside each other, separately but often in the same hearings. It is an absolutely valid concern. I would also say that as well as substance abuse, there is now a growing need to consider the impact of gambling addiction. That issue is becoming increasingly prevalent in our country. Sadly, over the last 15 years, there has been an explosion in this sort of addiction, and it draws into crime the people who would not necessarily always fall into it.
What I would say—I have said it prior to this—is that problem-solving courts are good if they are done well, and I would hope that we do not get too prescriptive about what kind of person is in front of us and categorise them as a domestic abuse or a substance abuse case. Often people have complex and chaotic lives with lots of different things going on. I would hope that a problem-solving court done well might have a category that they call a substance-abuse court, but be equipped to deal with something such as mental health as well.
I practised as a barrister for some time and I know that often clients, like I had before me, have issues behind what is apparent from the offence, which could go unseen unless probed. I spoke to a colleague earlier today and he explained to me that there are some 300,000 people in the UK right now who are indebted to a loan shark. You will never see the chaos behind someone’s life from a simple shoplifting offence. You need to be able to explore that. If problem-solving courts and pre-sentence reports are done well, in line with the new probation reforms, this should become clear and we should be able to help people with multiple needs before the courts.
Phil Bowen: To add to that, I understand that the current plans in the Ministry of Justice are to pilot those three types of models, but as all the models are drawn up, there is an awareness that people who would be eligible for substance misuse court are likely to have co-occurring mental health needs, and those would need to be addressed at the same time. The substance misuse court that currently operates in Belfast and the drugs court that currently operates in Glasgow recognise the complexity of people’s substance misuse and other needs, and seek to address them.
It is pretty clear, from what I have seen, in existing practice and what the Ministry of Justice is beginning to develop, that there is a broad awareness that it may be a trigger for intervention that vulnerable women are identified as at risk of custody, but there will be a recognition and services targeted at a range of their complex needs, one of which almost invariably will be mental health. That is very much at the heart of what the Ministry proposes, and we support that.
Bambos Charalambous
Q
Adrian Crossley: We welcome the addition of the new statutory duty clause for courts that requires them to consider the welfare and best interests of the child. We think that is a positive part of the Bill. It would be nice if it could go further. Seeing custody as something to keep people safe is not correct, but there is broad support, as far as I can tell, from people with an interest in youth justice for this change. I know some of my colleagues would like it to go further.
Adrian Crossley: I can only add that we have seen a substantial reduction in custodial sentences for youths over the last 10 years or so. We welcome efforts to encourage rehabilitation and use it absolutely as a last resort. I think it goes far enough.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Q
Currently, as I understand, clause 45 would extend those definitions and include anyone aged over 18 who supervises or works with 16 and 17-year-olds. I know from personal experience with my own family that, often, older children at a dance school, perhaps over 18, often chip in to help with tuition and coaching. In some cases, they may even be in the same class at school as a 17-year-old who is part of that dance academy. I wonder whether there could be difficulties in situations such as that. Indeed, we also remove the right to give consent from 16 and 17-year-olds who may find that infringes on their ability to choose who to have a relationship with. Perhaps Mr Crossly might be most appropriate to respond first.
Adrian Crossley: The first point to know is that affording some protection in this area is absolutely imperative. We have seen abuse of trust that has led to not just inappropriate relationships—that is not what we are dealing with. We are dealing with sometimes highly vulnerable children who are sexually abused. In order to make an inroad into dealing with that sort of offending, we need to get to the crux of how it comes about. All too often, positions of trust can allow a perpetrator to hide in plain sight—not only that, they make the person who is abused feel partially responsible and incapable of speaking out. The perpetrator recruits the trust of the people nearest and dearest, including their parents.
While I appreciate that there may be some difficulties in the administration of this issue, that will not unnecessarily impinge upon the movement of people and their enjoyment of their leisure, I do not put that value at naught—absolutely not. I do see, at the other end of this, we have a very real risk, which has existed pervasively throughout our society for a long time. I think the extension into the position-of-trust model starts to move away from identifying it as in small pockets of society and to see it as the modus operandi of some perpetrators of crime. I think its broadness is important and the clause as it stands is sufficient.
The Chair
Let us try Councillor Caliskan again.
Councillor Caliskan: Hopefully you can hear me now. I agree with what David said about the pilots, and it will be interesting to see the outcomes. The direct comparison is to domestic violence homicide reviews, where there can be very clear learning; and being able to learn, as a system of multiple agencies, where you might have been able to intervene earlier to stop something helps us to reduce crime in the future.
The issue with offensive weapons homicide reviews is that the evidence shows that somebody with an offensive weapon may not necessarily know their victim. You can take knife crime, for example, and compare it with domestic violence. In most cases of domestic violence, the victim and the perpetrator would know each other; that is not necessarily the case—in fact, most often is not the case—when it comes to knife crime.
I think it will be interesting to see the outcome of the pilots, but we have to be careful that we are not just creating additional burdens on agencies and that we have clear criteria and pathways for learning. Also, who will be the owner of the outcomes? Who will be responsible for being able to implement some of those lessons learned? I think that level of detail is probably missing from the Bill, so I wait to see the outcome of the pilots.
Alison Hernandez: One of the challenges around domestic homicide reviews is the lengthy delay from, obviously, when the incident happened to when the review is completed. Often, the challenge we have is that people have moved on and some of the corporate learning from it is not actually kept well within the organisation. So I think that that accountability around this trial would be really helpful, to be clear. There are opportunities around things like local criminal justice boards and there are opportunities through police and crime commissioners of actually holding on to this as part of something that we have to report on. So I think it would be good to look at that accountability to make sure it does not become a paper exercise and is not really utilised in decision making.
Bambos Charalambous
Q
Councillor Caliskan: The burden of finding alternative accommodation is really about the fact that you are competing. You are competing because you may have victims of domestic violence that the local authority also needs to find accommodation for. So it is about limited resources. It does happen already: they will be rare occasions, but there may be examples where a young person needs to be relocated because they may have been involved in county lines or gang activity. But it is not simple and it is not just about relocating that individual—
The Chair
Councillor, I am very sorry to interrupt you. Is it possible to bring the mouthpiece closer to your mouth? We are really struggling to hear you.
Councillor Caliskan: How is that? Is that better? I will hold it.
The Chair
Let us try.
Councillor Caliskan: Hopefully you can hear me a bit clearer. The other point I was going to make is that it is not as simple as just relocating an individual. It is often a family that you have to relocate, and there are additional processes associated with that. Examples of issues are employment for the parents and the tenure of accommodation. If they own their own property, relocating them becomes more complicated. The picture is complicated, as you might expect. This is possible; local authorities do do it, but it takes multi-agency working and it requires a real bespoke approach depending on the individual and the family that you are trying to support.
Bambos Charalambous
Do Alison or David have any insights? I imagine not, but if they do I am happy to hear from them.
David Lloyd: All I would add—I am sure Members will be very much familiar with this—is that probably the vast majority of our criminals are under the age of 25 and a huge number of them are under 18. In Hertfordshire a couple of years ago, three quarters of our murders—we have very few—were committed by people under the age of 18. So in many ways we need to get how people are being remanded right. There are greater rights that children would rightly expect and have, but that does not mean to say that some of our most serious criminals are not children. Getting that balance right is difficult.
Councillor Caliskan: If I might add, there are good examples throughout the country where youth offender services are intervening at an early stage that not only supports individuals not to reoffend but provides a family approach, supporting siblings who may be at risk of being involved in criminal behaviour. That early intervention makes a real difference, so as local government we would look to see how such public health approach-led practice could be rolled out more consistently across the country.
The Chair
Commissioner Hernandez, do you have anything you want to add?
Alison Hernandez: Just one point in relation to youth remand. The challenge in helping young people and getting that right is the gap between arrest and conviction. With the courts backlog there is at the moment, that can be a long gap, and one of the challenges is that sometimes you cannot work with that young person until they get to the point of conviction. I just wanted to flag that up, but that is more about charge to conviction than remand and awaiting.
Bambos Charalambous
Q
Stephanie Roberts-Bibby: Absolutely. We would say that children who commit offences as children should be sentenced as children, and that, where possible, the court should take into account the age and maturity of the child at the time of the offence. I know that HMCTS has been working tirelessly—particularly at the moment with the covid pandemic—to make sure that children’s cases are held promptly and before their 18th birthdays.
Bambos Charalambous
Q
Stephanie Roberts-Bibby: We strongly believe that when the offence was committed as a child, that should be reflected in the length of the sentence, so they should be sentenced accordingly. We appreciate the logic for some of the tapering proposed in the Bill, but we feel that it fails to recognise that all children, who were under 18 at the time of the offence, had a distinct set of rights and vulnerabilities, and that the nature and length of time with which children and young people’s development takes place needs to be reflected. Indeed, evidence points firmly to brain development continuing up until the age of 25.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Stephanie Roberts-Bibby: We wholeheartedly support the introduction of secure schools. We very much welcome the Government’s proposal to open the first secure school at Medway and we look forward to a further secure school as part of the Government’s commitment to an alternative to secure accommodation for children. We have been working closely with Oasis, which was announced as the provider of the first secure school. It is a very strong academy trust and will offer a different operating model from the secure environments that currently exist. While there is some great practice that takes place across the secure estate, we know from the data about the outcomes for children who have been in the current secure estate that those outcomes are poor and that further offending continues.
Bambos Charalambous
Q
Derek Sweeting QC: I think the first part of the question is: what technology have we got in place at the moment?
When the pandemic struck, and once we got back in particular to jury trials in the Crown court, we did see the roll-out of CVP—Cloud Video Platform—which very few of us knew was under development at the time. That was vital to allowing work to resume in many jurisdictions. We have also got a new system on the way, so the technology is improving all the time.
The second part of the question is really about how satisfactory is remote participation by the witness or others in court proceedings, and I think it really prompts the question, if we can do it, whether we should. That is the point—that fact that we can is not really a reason for necessarily doing it. I think it is absolutely clear that proceedings in future will probably involve a hybrid, with some witnesses attending remotely where that is appropriate. That has to be judicially managed. I think for some hearings it is pretty clear that everything could be done remotely, particularly administrative hearings. But in hearings that are serious in their nature because they will result in the final disposition of a case and so on, there is a much greater argument for ensuring that all of the participants and all of the evidence start on the basis that if evidence can be given in person, it should be. Thought should then be given to what is unnecessary to have in person and what could be dealt with remotely.
It is an area where we are finding our way. The Bar Council has just issued a statement with the Bars of the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and of course England and Wales, which I represent, which actually makes that point. It says that there are many aspects of a remote hearing that are not satisfactory, in the sense that they are not as good as having everybody in the room—the old model, where you get two teams together with a referee and you have an adversarial contest. But that model anyway is something that we need to think about as we go forward.
There is plainly a use for more remote, but I think the profession would like some guidance as to what the parameters are for when we should be remote, what the starting position is and when it is appropriate, and only appropriate, to be in person.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Derek Sweeting QC: The two types of conduct that you have just described are in themselves likely to be criminal offences, so there is nothing new about that. Has protest changed in its nature? I think we have certainly heard some evidence that, particularly with social media, the way in which protests can be arranged makes it much more difficult for them to be managed. I think there is some public concern about that. The measures contained in the Bill, particularly in relation to noise levels and serious disruption to and impact on persons in the vicinity, raise a legitimate question about whether it goes a bit too far, particularly in relation to what “significant” means and who has to take that decision on the ground. You ask whether things have changed, and I think you might look at this and say that almost every suffragette protest would have been caught by the proposed legislation.
Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
This Labour Opposition have made it clear repeatedly that our first, overriding priority is, and always will be, to protect the British public and keep our communities safe. This includes from those who cynically and dangerously attack our values, customs and way of life through the provocation and perpetration of horrendous acts of terror. It is right that this foul group be outlawed as a terrorist organisation, so we welcome and support this proscription motion, which sends a strong message that racism, fascism and the glorification of terrorism simply will not be tolerated in our society or on our streets. We also welcome the clarity and direction that this measure will provide to counter-terrorism policing and the intelligence and security services, as well as their operational partners in respect of this organisation and its members.
As has been touched on, Atomwaffen Division, or AWD, is a white supremacist group, predominantly US-based, and it was active between the years 2015 and 2020. Disturbingly, AWD believes in an ideology that has come to be known as accelerationism. This group follows a collection of writings that advocate violence to bring about a white ethno-state by instigating the collapse of society through a race war. It is reported that AWD’s techniques include the harassment of public figures, such as politicians, journalists and others, and organising terror plots.
AWD’s vile propaganda in the online sphere has promoted and sparked terrorist activity. The content very likely remains influential among accelerationist terrorist groups. It is said that AWD inspired affiliated franchise groups abroad including Feuerkrieg Division—the last terrorist group to be proscribed. In March 2020, AWD claimed it had disbanded. The National Socialist Order announced itself as AWD’s successor in July 2020, following the same aims and ideology. It is believed that AWD is almost certainly operating under the NSO alias. Shockingly, under the guise of the NSO, the group has dedicated itself to bringing about white power government by “any means necessary”; this is seen to be an open endorsement of violence.
We know that the threat from far-right extremism and terrorism here in the UK and abroad is rising. Home Office figures show that the number of far-right prisoners in custody for terrorism-related offences has grown steadily for the last seven years. In the year ending December 2020, there were 42 persons holding far-right ideologies in custody for terror offences—the highest number on record, and accounting for a fifth of those in custody for terrorism-related offences. To put that into perspective, only five years previously in the year ending 2015, there were five persons with far-right ideologies in custody for terrorism-related offences, accounting for just 3% of those in custody for terror offences.
The latest Home Office figures for Prevent and Channel show that 43% of the 697 Channel cases in the year ending March 2019 were initially referred due to concerns about right-wing radicalisation—the most common reason by more than 90 cases. Some 22% of Prevent referrals more widely were referred due to right-wing radicalisation concerns.
It is profoundly concerning that AWD seems to have been operational since 2015 and to have expanded in March 2020, yet it is only now that decisive action is being taken. We raised similar concerns on the adequacy of timing back in July 2020, during the proscription of the white supremacist group Feuerkrieg Division. Why on earth has is taken so long for the Government to recognise this threat and finally proscribe this group? It is already way past its peak and action has already been taken against it in the USA. The slowness of the UK’s response begs the question: is the proscription process really fit for purpose? We have previously raised the need for action to be taken against organisations such as the Nazi occultist group, Order of Nine Angles, which has influenced Atomwaffen Division and still seems able to operate freely in the UK.
Counter-terrorism police leaders have long warned about the growing threat from far-right terrorism both here in the UK and abroad. I ask the Minister whether counter-terrorism policing has been granted all the funding and additional resources it has requested to tackle the operations of Atomwaffen Division and National Socialist Order, and shut down their existing networks. Can he tell me whether enforcement orders are being tracked and enforced?
We need to know what steps the Government are taking to ensure that proscription measures have the maximum possible impact, including preventing the group’s illicit operation in new formats in both the online and offline arenas. Proscription should be at the start of the enforcement process, not the end. Will the Minister tell me whether a ban has been imposed on the association of Atomwaffen Division to prevent the group from setting up as a new organisation again?
Today demonstrates yet more conclusive evidence of the Home Secretary’s lack of a robust, coherent strategy to deal with the growing menace of far-right terrorism. Labour has long warned the Government about this, but where is the action? How can the Home Secretary seriously claim that she is doing everything in her reach to address the threat without such a strategy, and how many times do the Opposition have to raise this matter? I trust that the Minister will recognise the gravity and urgency of these questions in the context of today’s motion and in terms of protecting the public, and I hope he can provide suitably adequate assurances to the House.
I wish to put on record our thanks to HOPE not hate for its hard work and dedication in monitoring the activities of far-right extremist organisations.
Our priority is to keep the public and our communities safe. Today’s proscription order is welcome in relation to that most important of goals, but we are seeing an emerging pattern from this Government—one of dither and delay on these vital decisions, with action happening far too late. Ministers must prove that they have a robust enough strategy to address this worrying rise in far-right extremism and terrorism, and tackle this appalling threat.
Draft Civil Proceedings Fees (Amendment) Order 2021
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.
As set out by the Minister, the purpose of the SI is a relatively simple one. When making civil money or possession claims, claimants have two choices—to make their claim online, or to submit a paper-based claim. To incentivise more people to make online claims, the Government discounted the online fees that claimants had to pay. Over time, and as more people started to make their claims online, the Government achieved their policy objective. At that point, the MOJ had two options —to continue discounted fees for those who make claims online, or to align the fees for online claims and paper-based claims so that all claimants pay the same. The Government have chosen the former option; effectively they will remove the discount applied to online claimants, so all claimants will pay the same, irrespective of how they lodge their claim.
From personal experience of issuing claims on the possession claims and money claims online portals, I know that the systems are easy to use and work well. Such claims are now most likely the norm, while paper-based claims in triplicate are now very much the exception. On that point, we can broadly agree with the Government. However, it seems unfair that claimants who either do not have internet access or are uncomfortable using it should be forced to pay more for the same service as anyone else.
Labour accept the larger point about the importance of having a properly funded justice system, so that courts and tribunals have the resources to deliver much needed services. Labour cannot accept, however, a measure that represents little more than a drop in the ocean in terms of the additional investment that HMCTS desperately needs.
The Government’s impact assessments set out that the SI will save the Ministry between £12 million and £35 million a year from 2022-23 onwards. Although all savings are welcome, they must be taken in context. Due to the closure of many court counters and difficulty in getting through to court staff, many vulnerable court users or people who have difficulty accessing justice are still disadvantaged by not receiving advice on how to pursue or defend a cause of action. Although the Minister has said that the money is set to be reinvested in the courts system, how much of the savings will be reinvested in providing early advice to people who have made applications to the court?
A decade of cuts has left the justice system on the brink of complete collapse. The crisis before us cannot be overstated, nor can it be exaggerated. There is an urgent need for investment in our justice system. As the Minister well knows, the backlog in the criminal courts now stands at a record high of more than 57,000, and in the magistrates courts it is close to 400,000. Victims of serious crime, including rape, are being forced to wait up to four years for justice. Meanwhile, violent offenders are being allowed to avoid prison because of delays. That is simply unacceptable and a disaster entirely of the Government’s own making.
Ten years of Conservative cuts to the courts and sitting days have allowed the backlog to grow to a staggering 39,000 cases, even before the pandemic began. Although covid has put a strain on the system, its foundations have already been eroded by systematic underinvestment.
As the Public Accounts Committee highlighted just last month, justice is—
The Chair
Order. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to make his comments relevant to the Order. I know that you want to get on to some other stuff, but it must be relevant to the issue of fees. I know that you are skilled enough to do that.
Bambos Charalambous
Thank you, Mr Paisley.
The Opposition have no issue with the Government about the SI, and for that reason we will not divide on the matter.
Forensic Science Regulator Bill
Bambos Charalambous ExcerptsFriday 12th March 2021
(3 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Forensic Science Regulator Bill 2019-21 View all Forensic Science Regulator Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 November 2020 - (11 Nov 2020)
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) on progressing his Bill to Third Reading, and I thank the Minister for his support on behalf of the Government for the Bill’s passage.
The Bill puts the regulator on a statutory footing, to ensure that the standards set by the regulator are met, and if they are not met, the Bill allows for enforcement action to follow. These measures are long overdue and should enhance the integrity of our criminal justice. The Bill is exactly in line with the Government’s forensic science strategy of 2016, which recommended giving the regulator these powers, and the Opposition very much support that. I want to end by putting on record my thanks to Dr Gillian Tully, whose term as the Forensic Science Regulator came to an end recently, for her years of service in the post, her wise counsel and leaving the role in good shape for her successor. We very much support the Bill.
Support for Women Leaving Prison
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. This is an important debate, on which there is much agreement, and I will add to many of the things that have been said today.
If the Government are serious about reducing reoffending by women, they need to support specialist services, such as those offered by women’s centres, to help them stop offending in the first place and, if they have offended, to give them support afterwards. Providing accommodation is key because being homeless is one of the biggest factors in reoffending.
Many women who have committed crimes and are therefore in the criminal justice system are disproportionately victims of crime themselves. They also tend to be imprisoned for crimes less serious than those committed against them. Addiction or being in an abusive relationship are also factors for many of those women.
Short sentences are very disruptive for women, especially if they have children. Most women serving short prison sentences are back in prison within a year. Reoffending levels are staggeringly high, with 48% of women reconvicted within a year of leaving prison. That rises to 61% for sentences of under 12 months.
The Minister will know that women released from prison are more likely to reoffend, and reoffend earlier, than those serving community sentences. Women receiving short sentences often lose their accommodation, with many needing to be rehoused with children, as they are primary carers. As we know, such accommodation is very limited for local authorities and there are huge waiting lists.
If women are victims of domestic abuse, they cannot go back to the place where the abuse happened. There is already a chronic lack of suitable housing, including for women with complex needs. Many women imprisoned from previous addresses, to which they cannot return, lose that local connection and their ability to be rehoused.
I welcome the recent announcement from the Ministry of Justice of £70 million funding for a pilot scheme to house prison leavers in temporary accommodation for up to 12 weeks. That is in only five of the 12 probation regions. I understand that that is a pilot but I would very much welcome its extension much further. I am also concerned that the Government are spending £150 million to build 500 new prison cells for women. That clearly indicates that the problem will not be solved, that there will be more women going to prison. That addresses the symptom, not the cause.
We need to get to the heart of what will stop women offending. For me, that is support for women’s centres. We know that women’s centres are very effective in helping women who are vulnerable not to offend in the first place. A survey showed that for every £1 spent, £2.84 was saved in costs, if the money were invested in women’s centres.
When women leave prison they are given only the discharge grant of £46, which is clearly not enough. Having to survive the first week out of prison on less than £7 a day is not going to get anyone very far. We need to ensure support networks are there for women when they leave prison.
To conclude, we need to provide more accommodation for women leaving prison, increase the discharge grant and invest in women’s centres. I thank Women in Prison, Agenda and Safe Homes for Women Leaving Prison for the excellent work they do and for their briefings for today’s debate.