Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 2
Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]]

Many of the rights we enjoy today were won not because of politicians with great ideas, but because people came together and demanded that their voices be heard. The Peterloo massacre caused politicians to pass the Great Reform Act 1832, the suffragist movement forced politicians to grant women the right to vote, and the striking Ford machinists and campaign for women’s equal rights inspired the Equal Pay Act 1970.

Our right to be heard is about to be eroded by one of the most pernicious pieces of legislation I have ever seen. Provisions in the Bill enable restrictions to be placed on freedom of assembly and association, which arguably contravenes article 11 of the Human Rights Act. Alarmingly, the Home Secretary will have the power to define what constitutes a “serious disruption” with regard to protests, allowing the Government to effectively determine what protests can and cannot take place. More insidious is the principle whereby protestors who

“intentionally or recklessly cause a public nuisance”,

by causing what is termed “a serious annoyance” can be subject to jail sentences of up to 10 years. A “serious annoyance” is purposely not defined, which should send chills down the spine of anyone who believes in democracy.

The Bill also fails to address the bias and discrimination that persists within our justice system. Indeed, the newly created serious violence reduction orders, which would allow the power to stop and search a person at any time, in any place, and even when completely free of suspicion, is at risk of being applied disproportionately to black and minority ethnic communities. The proposals to criminalise “unauthorised encampments” and establish trespass as a criminal offence, effectively criminalise the way of life for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. The Bill does not include any specific measures to prevent male violence against women, and it does nothing to address decades of underfunding for the sector tackling violence against women and girls.

What of the right to speak out against such injustices when the Bill is enacted? The Bill fundamentally erodes those rights, and consigns them to the history books, only to be told to our children, like a fairy tale of freedoms gone by.

“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.”

Those are not my words; they are the words of Margaret Thatcher. The reality of her tenure was very different, but frighteningly, her successors are now writing an even darker dystopian tale of their own, and it seems our freedoms play no part in that at all.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]]

This Bill is so pernicious in parts that it chillingly removes some of our most precious freedoms. Indeed, on press freedom, the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 already allows for the identification of journalistic source information via a judicial process when that is required by the police. The Bill appears not only to relax, but to ride a coach and horses through the legal process, with no clear protection or processes for journalistic whistleblowers, and by extending the people who can access the information not only to police officers and constables, but to employees of the Court of Common Council of the City of London, and immigration officers.

The Bill is littered with instances of racial and other forms of discrimination, from the biased operation of serious violence reduction orders, to attacks on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities through the criminalisation of their way of life. Then there are the Bill’s provisions on our right to protest. The Home Secretary will have unfettered powers to define what constitutes “serious disruption”, and protesters who simply cause a “serious annoyance”, which is not defined, can be subject to jail sentences of up to 10 years. Worryingly, Amnesty International has said:

“The Bill also gives Ministers further enhanced powers to issue further legally binding regulations around these highly subjective and vague thresholds, which raises the prospect that the current or any future government may misuse these powers to stifle criticism and views that it might find uncomfortable.”

I will finish with a warning. History is littered with examples of democracies sliding blindly into authoritarianism. It usually happens by stealth: undermining the judiciary one day, threatening the existence of public broadcasters the next, rigging electoral rules to make it much more difficult for Opposition parties to win elections and, of course, silencing dissent by restricting the right to protest. It all sounds chillingly familiar, does it not? If the Government believe in democracy, and I truly hope they do, let them prove it tonight. Drop the Bill, otherwise I will have no option but to determine that tonight, whether intentionally or accidentally, the Government begin their stealthy descent into authoritarianism.