Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-31
Topic: Civil Rights
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Motion D1 is in my name, but I shall take the Motions in order. On Motion A, we are pleased the Government have decided to give the Food Standards Agency the Police and Criminal Evidence Act powers that it is seeking On Motion B, we do not see the Government’s amendments in lieu, Amendments 72C and 72D, to be any kind of concession, in that the Government are duty-bound to respond to the Law Commission report on hate crimes in any event. We support the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, in his Motion B1, Amendments 72E and 72F, that police forces should be forced to record or flag offences aggravated by sex or gender by means of primary legislation set out in the Bill as this is the only practical way to ensure 43 autonomous chief constables comply I am not quite sure about the Minister’s arguments about the complexity around sex and gender: in relation to hate crime, it matters not whether the victim is somebody born a woman or is a trans woman, only whether the assailant believed that the victim was a woman and was motivated by hatred of women. I fear the Government are just looking for excuses. Having said that, misogyny is a problem in the police and in society as a whole, and we do need urgent action. With the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and Stella Creasy MP on the case, progress may be slow, but it is inevitable On Motion C, the so-called noise trigger in relation to processions, it is very difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, on that issue, but we agree with his Motion C1 that the noise trigger should not be part of the Bill in relation to processions or static protests, as I will come to in a moment in relation to Motion D. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said when we last considered it, these measures are not sensible or practical. I may be incorrect, but it seems to me that the larger the protest, the more popular the cause, the more likely the protest is to be noisy and therefore the more likely it is to be banned. Only a very unpopular cause, which is not going to be as noisy, will go ahead, if we are not careful As Liberty has pointed out in its useful briefing, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, the body whose report is relied on by the Government to justify the measures in Part 3, did not examine or support the establishment of a noise trigger. In evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for public order did not reference or advocate for a new power based on the noise that protests generate. I repeat, outside London—where the chief police officer and her deputy are appointed by the Home Secretary—the majority of police forces said police officer numbers were the limiting factor in effectively policing protests, not a lack of legislation On my Motion D1, Amendments 80J and 80G, we continue to be concerned about what the then Conservative Home Secretary said about the difference between processions and assemblies when the original public order legislation was debated in the other place. He believed that giving the police the power to ban an assembly would be an excessive limit on the human rights of assembly and freedom of speech.