Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I am putting to the Government a rather simpler method of dealing with the whole problem. It is a gentler method. It is something that I have given a lot of thought to over a very long time. Indeed, I have a Private Member’s Bill, which was published on 1 February, which has received lot of support. I have now incorporated that into Amendment 244ZCCA and Amendment 244ZEZA. This starts from the premise that we are all agreed that Parliament Square is an excellent place for there to be public protest and where there has always been public protest. It is only in recent years that the problem has emerged at all. The catalyst for the problem, of course, has been the introduction of camping. Although Parliament Square is an ideal place for people to protest and should be made available for people, it is not a good thing that people are able to camp there for weeks, months or sometimes years and hog the space, which in effect prevents other people from having use of it. It also makes it a much less impressive, vibrant and immediate source of protest. Therefore, my solution is much simpler. All we really need to do is to ensure through practical housekeeping that people do not camp there. The problem of control of Parliament Square should be dealt with by having a Parliament Square committee, which would have the function of managing Parliament Square. All those who were interested could be on that committee. That is laid down in my first amendment. Then my suggestion is simple. At some point during each night during midnight and 6.00 am, Parliament Square should be swept clean and any detritus left is removed. People can come back in the morning, start all over again and do whatever they want. When my Private Member’s Bill was published, I got a telephone call from Westminster City Council which expressed great interest in it. I explained what I just said and someone said, ““We never thought of that””. It is not only simpler and gentler but—this might be presumptuous—it is more elegant. Frankly, the Home Office has an awful lot of people who labour to produce these things and inevitably they produce more detail. One detail leads to another and one factor leads to another. I have removed a couple of clauses from their Bill, which I hope they will not take too much offence at, but I have included in the categories in my second amendment the sort of things that could be removed. I hope very much that the Government will realise that this would deal with the essence of the problem. It would be much less confrontational and difficult. If it did not work, of course in the future this could be looked at again and we could do more. But by removing that catalyst of the permanent encampment and occupation of the square, which is a pretty dead form of protest, we would be moving forward. It is a solution that I hope will commend itself to the Government and I hope that they do not produce a lot of technical reasons why it is not practical. I beg to move.