It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). Our view remains that, despite the best efforts of the other place, the Bill continues to represent a draconian and utterly unjustified attack on protest rights. It is fair to acknowledge that the Government have given some ground, but it is far from enough, so we will vote against a number of the Government’s motions to disagree.
Let me deal first with no-suspicion stop and search, in clause 11. It is horribly ironic that as part of a Bill which the Home Office claims—unconvincingly—is designed to tackle “dangerous and highly disruptive” tactics, the Home Office itself is turning to one of the most dangerous and highly disruptive police tactics: suspicionless stop and search. It is a tactic that achieves next to nothing, yet causes considerable harm, including shocking racial disparities—a fact which I do not think the Government have properly acknowledged during the course of the Bill’s passage.
The profoundly negative impact of stop and search on individuals and on community faith in the police came across loud and clear to me as a member of the Home Affairs Committee when we heard evidence as part of our “The Macpherson Report: Twenty Years On” inquiry. Nobody with reasonable knowledge of the Macpherson report, numerous subsequent inspection reports, or the Home Affairs Committee report could responsibly think that expanding no-suspicion stop and search is a sensible way to go, or the answer to any of our problems. Our Committee report warned of the dangers of such search powers resulting in injustice and undermining the legitimacy that is fundamental to the model of policing by consent. In doing so, we echoed earlier inspectorate reports and the words of the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who in 2014 spoke about the huge damage done to the relationship between the police and the public when innocent people are stopped and searched for no good reason.
Similarly, when looking at the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights—we will hear from its Chair, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), shortly—objected to these powers. We fully support the Joint Committee’s conclusions on the inherent risk of arbitrary and discriminatory use, and the point that post-exercise accountability is simply not enough. The Committee rightly highlighted that such powers have been used only for really significant and serious offences, such as terrorism or serious violence. Now, the Government want to use them for non-violent activities that are only just now being made criminal offences. The question is: what comes next? It is a very, very slippery slope and a totally inappropriate use of such powers.
The trigger for the powers is also ridiculously low: it could be the possibility that someone somewhere is seriously annoying or inconveniencing somebody else—the public nuisance offence—or that somebody somewhere could lock on to a fence or a gate in a way that is capable of causing more than minor disruption to two people. Suddenly, the whole neighbourhood can be searched in the name of stopping that serious annoyance or the more than minor disruption for two people. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden quoted the police officer who told His Majesty’s inspectorate that
“a little inconvenience is more acceptable than a police state”.
That is absolutely spot-on. In short, it is a totally ludicrous proposal of dubious consistency with human rights law. It is similarly ludicrous and disproportionate that the penalty will put at risk of imprisonment completely innocent people who simply challenge an officer over an asserted use of a blanket power. That is a dangerous road to go down.
Turning to serious disruption prevention orders, we acknowledge again that the Government have come some way in diluting these highly objectional orders made otherwise than on conviction, but we remain of the view that the whole idea of SDPOs is utterly Kafkaesque and threatens an unjustified infringement on the right to protest of huge numbers of people each and every year. We support the critique provided by Lord Anderson in the other place. It is not long since terrorism prevention and investigation measures were reluctantly introduced, which see significant infringements of a person’s liberty without the use of a criminal court to protect the public from a risk of terrorism. Recently, this House gave cautious support for state threat prevention and investigation measures, but the application of similar ideas, not for the purposes of countering terrorism or espionage, but in the field of protest, is utterly disproportionate and unnecessary. The nature of the SDPO is less defined and lacks similar oversight, limitations or protections compared even with TPIMs or STPIMS, and that is extraordinary. The possibility of a prison sentence for a breach is ridiculous, and the trigger for the imposition of an SDPO is many times lower. Again, the question is: where next? It is a slippery slope indeed. The police do not ask for these powers, and the whole notion should be removed from the Bill.
Finally, we support new clause 1, which seeks to clearly define the meaning of serious disruption and put an appropriate threshold on it. That definition is crucial for a number of other offences and powers. The Government amendment in lieu puts in place so low a
threshold that we would prefer no definition at all. If this Government want serious harm simply to be “more than minor”, that triggers all sorts of crazy and unacceptable consequences. Crimes could be committed simply because two people or an organisation had to face moderate or even moderate to minor disruption. Frankly, it is such a wishy-washy low bar that the Bill would be better off with no definition at all. Our view remains that this whole Bill is rotten, overblown, unwelcome and a dangerous threat to human rights, perhaps a bit like the Government themselves. It is a dreadful attack on rights, and it is also dreadful that the constitution allows it to happen. Anything that waters it down is welcome, but in reality the whole Bill should go altogether.