Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

I want to come back really briefly on the language of “gender-responsive approach”. That is not a “gender-inclusive approach”: it is based on the ILO convention that our Government ratified, along with the rest of the global community, and relates to the fact that more women than men face misconduct at work. I wanted to clarify the language there, but I do take those points.

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

My Lords, I add my support for these probing amendments and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her work on this issue. I strongly welcome the Government’s promise to launch the largest crackdown in history to reduce violence against women and girls. While of course the misery of experiencing violence and harassment is not exclusive to women, surveys from the TUC and others have shown that it is overwhelmingly women who suffer this abuse. I also welcome the Government’s recognition that we need a whole-system approach that places prevention and survivors at its heart. As we have heard already, every part of society has to step up if we are to achieve the goal of every woman feeling safe everywhere, and that must include action to make the workplace a place of safety for women, too.

I had hoped that we had moved on from the notion that violence against women is somehow a private or domestic matter, but let us take the practical example of the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations. This is the UK’s health and safety law that requires employers to report specific serious work-related incidents, such as fatalities and major injuries, to the Health and Safety Executive. These reports help the HSE track risks and prevent future harm, making it a vital legal duty to maintain workplace safety and accountability. But, if you look at it today, you see that the HSE website explicitly states that, while acts of violence to a person at work that result in death or a major injury are reportable, a physical injury inflicted on one employee by another during a dispute about a so-called “personal matter”, or an employee at work

“being injured by a relative or a friend who visits them at work about a domestic matter”

is not reportable. So, the HSE has no responsibility to track violence against women that happens in the workplace which is deemed to be a personal or domestic matter. I find that pretty shocking. You have to question why women’s experience of violence at work is disregarded in this way.

As we have also heard, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has responsibility for the duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment, but it is open and public that it will investigate only what it describes as “strategic cases”, as it simply does not have adequate resources to deliver comprehensive enforcement. Surely, health and safety inspectors who have the powers and ability to go into workplaces have a role to play in enforcing prevention of sexual harassment.

The UK has fallen far behind the ILO’s recommended standard for the ratio of labour inspectors to the size of workforce. In effect, the safety and welfare of British workers has been deprioritised over the last decade and more compared with other countries. But it seems that the safety and welfare of women workers have been deprioritised even more. There is an opportunity for an update and a reset. The new fair work agency and boosting the number of labour inspectors will be vital, but we must get the health and safety framework right, too. For the sake of women workers, I hope the Minister will talk to other colleagues, for sure, but also give careful consideration to the amendments before us.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the objective of Amendment 348—who would not support the objective of preventing illegal violence and harassment in the workplace? I suspect that the main argument against Amendment 348 will be the burden that it would impose on employers, particularly small ones, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, made that point very eloquently.

I will briefly identify one reason why it is very much in the interests of the employer to have these duties. It is because if there is illegal violence and harassment in the workplace which causes, as it will, damage to the victim, she—and it normally will be she—will be looking for remedies, and the person against whom she is most likely to be advised to sue is not the rogue other employee but the employer. The employer is particularly vulnerable to such a civil claim if they have not, as required by Amendment 348—which no doubt can be improved in its drafting—conducted any sort of assessment to identify potential risks, have not implemented policies and procedures to eliminate those risks, and, in particular, have not provided at least basic training to all employees on the importance of these matters. So, yes, this will impose a burden on employers, particularly small ones, but it is very much in their interests to protect themselves against legal liability and to deter such action taking place.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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