Public Order Bill — House of Commons, 2022-05-23
Topic: Law and Crime
Sarah Ann Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I am not sure that today is the right day to be talking about people who have broken lockdown rules. Perhaps the hon. Member has not seen some of the pictures that the rest of us have been looking at this afternoon We believe that some of the provisions in this Bill effectively replicate laws already in place that the police can and already do use. There is already an offence of wilfully obstructing the highway. There is already an offence of criminal damage or conspiracy to cause criminal damage. There is already an offence of aggravated trespass. There is already an offence of public nuisance. More than 20 people were arrested for criminal damage and aggravated trespass at Just Stop Oil protests in Surrey. Injunctions were granted at Kingsbury oil terminal following more than 100 arrests, and there were arrests for breaching those injunctions, which are punishable by up to two years in prison—nine people were charged. When Extinction Rebellion dumped tonnes of fertiliser outside newspaper offices, five people were arrested. Earlier this year, six Extinction Rebellion activists were charged with criminal damage in Cambridge. In February this year, five Insulate Britain campaigners were jailed for breaching their injunctions. In November, we saw nine Insulate Britain activists jailed for breaching injunctions to prevent road blockades Removing people who are locking on can take a long time and require specialist teams, but a new offence of locking on will not make the process of removing protesters any faster. The Government should look at the HMICFRS report and focus on improving training and guidance, and they should look to injunctions I cannot but attack the issue of stop and search and SDPOs. This Bill gives the police wide-ranging powers to stop and search anyone in the vicinity of a protest, such as shoppers passing a protest against a library closure. The Home Secretary said the inspectorate supports these new powers, but the inspectorate’s comments were very qualified and talked of, for example, the powers’ potential "chilling effect" Many of my hon. and right hon. Friends talked of the serious problem of disproportionality, as did the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire, and talked of how these powers were initially rejected by the Home Office because of their impact. Members who have spent many years campaigning on these issues, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), pointed to the risk of these deeply concerning provisions increasing disproportionality, bringing peaceful protesters unnecessarily into the criminal justice system and undermining public trust in the police who are trying to do their job Our national infrastructure needs protecting. We hear the anger, irritation and upset when critical appointments are missed, when children cannot get to school and when laws are broken. As our reasoned amendment makes clear, we would support some amended aspects of the Bill, but we cannot accept the Bill as it currently stands. The proposals on suspicion-less stop and search, and applying similar orders to protesters as we do to terrorists and violent criminals, are unhelpful and will not work. The police already have an array of powers to deal with such protests, and injunctions would be a better tool to use. We will not and cannot stand by as the Government try to ram through yet another unthought-through Bill in search of a purpose. I urge all reasonable Members to support Labour’s reasoned amendment, and I urge the Government to focus instead on their woeful record on crime.