Public Demonstrations (Repeals) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer on introducing this Bill, which is appropriate and timely. I also thank her for organising many of us to be here to give it the best possible start. Two things emerge very clearly from the fact that we need the Bill so badly. The first demonstrates the role of Parliament, and particularly of this House, in scrutinising legislation. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act is a very good example of unscrutinised, ill-considered and under-discussed legislation, and we have to live with it in a very rough and ready and unsatisfactory form. Parliament should never forget its obligation to ensure that good legislation reaches the statute book, not poor and ill-thought-out legislation such as that law, which we have to live with until we change it. Secondly, I stress that one of the crucial elements of that law has created a crisis that all of us have read about this morning; the effect of lightly creating criminal offences when civil action, as my noble friend said, would be completely adequate to deal with the problem. Then we wring our hands because prisons are becoming increasingly full of human beings and civilians with no criminal intent, who have suffered receiving a criminal offence simply because they have expressed their views—for heaven’s sake—within 1 kilometre of the Houses of Parliament. That is ludicrous; and we really have to stop this business of drifting towards creating more and more criminality among fellow citizens of impeccable standing, decent integrity and high ideals. I have two quotations, and noble Lords will see why I use them. The first comes from our Prime Minister. He said it in the United States on 7 April 2002, at the opening of the presidential library for the first George Bush: "““When I pass protestors every day at Downing Street, and believe me, you name it, they protest against it, I may not like what they call me, but I thank God they can. That’s called freedom””." Now, they cannot, and where does the Prime Minister’s ringing quotation stand in the light of that? The second, more recent, quotation, comes from the Senate confirmation hearings of Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, in January 2005. She said: "““The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the ‘town square test’: if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society””." My goodness; we do not allow anyone simply to walk into the square of this town, which is called Parliament Square, and express their views without fear of arrest, imprisonment or physical harm. Frankly, we should be ashamed of ourselves that we have not protected this particular crucial, historic purpose of Parliament Square. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, in expressing the values that ran so deep in his party for so long, was expressing what many of us feel; a sense of shame that that square is no longer the place from which men and women can declare themselves. Incidentally, this is not just a statement about freedom of speech; it is also a critical statement about using Parliament Square as a barometer of how people feel. Mrs Thatcher learnt about the anger about the poll tax because there were demonstrations up and down the country. We should warn ourselves about the dangers of closing off those kinds of steam valves and expressions of feeling from our fellow citizens, because it means that we become more and more distanced from knowing what they really feel. The day that the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act became law, 200 members of the Stop the War Coalition simply stood silently in Parliament Square with their mouths bandaged so that they could not speak. They were arrested; which was an astonishing thing to have happened. My colleagues have mentioned cases such as those who read out the names of the Iraqi dead, and we should mention in that context the case of the man who read out the names of the Iraqi civilians killed, who received a double fine of £350. There is case after case of this kind. It is absurd that Mr Haw’s collection of notices, pamphlets and all the rest of it is being shown at Tate Britain. There is a line across the floor, one side of which what Mr Haw did is legal, the other side of which what Mr Haw did is illegal. We have been driven to such absurdities in trying to defend this legislation. I do not want to keep Parliament and this House long, so I conclude by saying, first, that we have a deep and profound responsibility to uphold the right of our fellow citizens to demonstrate, provided that the demonstration is peaceful. Indeed, there are no reasons to believe that it will not be peaceful because almost all our demonstrations have been. Secondly, Members of Parliament and Peers have an obligation to listen to what is being said to them and to make themselves available rather than hiding away. Thirdly, and finally, demonstrations are something that we should be proud of. Yes, Mr Haw was messy and could have been compelled by civil action to clean up his act, but when I brought American visitors to this House, one of the things that I always pointed to was Mr Haw’s demonstration. I said, ““Look, freedom of speech is alive and thriving in this country””, and they were duly impressed.