Public Order Act 1986 (Serious Disruption to the Life of the Community) Regulations 2023

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

On consultation, I think it is unreasonable to expect the Government to undertake a comprehensive consultation process when the imperative is to correct quickly a legal loophole. I do have sympathy with the late tabling of the amendments on Report; I think that is a very fair point to make.

I shall finish with the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffman. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, talked about the importance of conventions. With that in mind, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hoffman, said in 2006 that

“civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country … But there are conventions which are generally accepted by the law-breakers on one side and the law-enforcers on the other. The protesters behave with a sense of proportion and do not cause excessive damage or inconvenience. And they vouch the sincerity of their beliefs by accepting the penalties imposed by the law. The police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint”.

That is what this regulation is about.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I make no comment on the merits of the policy that this proposal would introduce; it is the manner in which the Government have proceeded that has caused me, as it has my noble friend Lord Pannick, great concern. The Home Office has behaved in a way for which I can find no kinder word to use than “disreputable”.

For a start, the Explanatory Memorandum—whichever edition we are in now—did not mention the fact that the proposal had been rejected by your Lordships. When the committee quite rightly inquired why that was not mentioned, the reply could have won an Oscar for weasel wording:

“The details that have been included … are those which we … considered relevant to the document”.


When you are caught bang to rights, the proper response is an apology, not an obfuscation. Yet more astonishing —my noble friend Lord Pannick has already referred to this—is that in the section of the Explanatory Notes outlining anything that might be of interest to Parliament or the JCSI, the single word “None” appears.

Then there is the question of consultation. The Home Office ignored the Government’s own consultation principles and consulted on a selective and skewed basis. It brought to mind the Sellar and Yeatman description of the passage in Magna Carta which they alleged said:

“No baron should be tried, except by a special jury of other barons who would understand”.


In this case the Home Office set out to consult a selection of people it knew would support it, not those who might have a different view. A kind description would be that that was “not straightforward”.

Tom Hickman KC, the professor of public law at UCL, who has already been mentioned, pointed out:

“Where a public authority chooses to conduct a consultation process, that consultation must be conducted properly and fairly”.


He pointed to a ruling by the Court of Appeal that a consultation conducted before certain Covid-19 regulations had been unlawful because it had been conducted on an entirely one-sided basis. I do not see how the consultation carried out by the Home Office in this case could be described as proper and fair.

This instrument and the Explanatory Memorandum —again, whichever edition you care to quote—must have been signed off by a Minister. I think we might be told which Minister it was, and which Minister took the view that this was an appropriate way to treat Parliament. I hope the Minister here will be able to tell us. I do not want to see, and I am sure your Lordships do not want to hear, any pabulum about collective responsibility.

As I suggested earlier, I do not take a view about the merits of what this instrument would achieve. My concern is for the way in which Parliament is being treated and for the apparently resentful and sullen way in which the committee’s questions have been answered.

I am sorry—and I do understand what the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, was saying earlier on—that His Majesty’s Opposition do not wish to go further than regretting what is in front of us. Governments shrug off regrets; they make no difference. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said in the Queen’s Speech debate last year, if we make no difference, why do we not just go on talking? Incidentally, I should tell your Lordships that, in my recent email conversations with the noble and learned Lord, we have focused on England’s chances in The Ashes, and I know that we all send him our warmest good wishes in his convalescence.

This brings me to the fatal amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. At this point, it is very important to recall that it is a very easy thing for a Government to withdraw an SI, redraft it, relay it and start the process again. It is also—and, of course, the business managers will balk at this—not that difficult to achieve a change by primary legislation in a relatively short time. As some noble Lords have said, that is actually the right way to proceed. It is not just what you want to achieve: it is the propriety of the means that you use to get there. If noble Lords do not want this sort of thing to happen again, we should vote it down, so if the noble Baroness presses her amendment to a Division, I shall support her.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

May I ask the noble Lord whether, with all his decades of experience of parliamentary procedure, he has ever seen a set of regulations that so defies constitutional propriety?

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

I think the noble Lord will know the answer, and it is no.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I start by joining the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in the comments that he made about my beloved home city. I also pay tribute to the Nottinghamshire Police and all the emergency services for their responses to the dreadful events in the city today. Clearly, I send my condolences to the friends and families of those who were dreadfully murdered.

I should also start by saying that I very much understand some of the frustration that has been expressed in the debate so far today, whether it has come from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, my noble friend Lord Hunt on behalf of the committee, or in various other speeches that we have heard. It is important that the Government produce good-quality Explanatory Memorandums. They have not covered themselves in glory in this particular situation. I care about procedure— I do, very much—but I also care very much about the way in which this House conducts itself and the relationship that we have between this House and the Executive. I feel that, over the last few years, it has deteriorated. It has become increasingly hostile, and that has been clearly evident in the way in which some of the debates that we have held on a range of legislation have occurred. Sometimes, we have made our points in ways that have not showed any sense of disrespect to the Government—because that is not for the House to worry about—but have too often, I feel, shown disrespect to members of the public who take a particular position on things that some of us may not agree with.