Public Order Bill

I wonder if I could help the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, because he has not, with respect, read the amendment—or at least not very carefully. To be clear, there would be nothing to prevent the arrest of a journalist, filmmaker, legal observer or anybody else if the officer suspected the commission of a criminal offence, including offences in the Bill that I disagree with. The protection is only against the use of police powers for the primary purpose of preventing the reporting. That is a judgment that is left to the officer, but what he cannot do is to say, “You’re a reporter. You’re giving protesters the oxygen of publicity, and I’m gonna arrest you.” That is the protection given here to people such as Charlotte Lynch, who could not possibly have been reasonably suspected of locking on or committing any other criminal offence. Such people could be suspected only of what they were actually doing: their job as reporters in a free society.