Over the past few days I have been accused of being tired, emotional, erratic, and, just to put the record straight, I am all of those things and more. I want to be clear: unlike some Members in this Chamber, I have no time for those people who block roads, throw soup, and make a general nuisance of themselves. They are agents against their own interests, as they repel normal ordinary people. Having said that, serious disruption prevention orders are not the answer. They leave me absolutely cold; in fact I would go so far as to say that they are absolutely appalling because there are plenty of existing laws that can be utilised to deal with people who specialise in making other people’s lives miserable.
I know there is a convention here that we do not read lists, but I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I will be allowed to read a very short list just to set out the laws that already exist and have been covered by colleagues: obstructing a police officer, Police Act 1996; obstructing a highway, Highways Act 1980; obstruction of an engine, Malicious Damage Act 1861—we all remember that one —endangering road users, Road Traffic Act 1988; aggravated trespass, Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994; criminal damage, Criminal Damage Act 1971; and public nuisance, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. There are also other laws. There is the Public Order Act 1986 that allows police officers to ban or place conditions on protest.
So the Government’s attraction to SDPOs demonstrates our own impotence as legislators and the impotence of the police as law enforcers to get to grips with the laws already in place and to enforce them. This is what we do now in politics: we have these machismo laws where something must be done, so we go out and do it, and that makes a good headline in The Daily Telegraph and The Times, but we do it and then very little happens, or if it does happen it is way over the top.