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Human Rights

My hon. Friend certainly makes an important point. The question of photography comes up in all sorts of ways, and I will refer to some of those later in more detail. Issues include the photographing of protesters by the forward intelligence teams that the police use, attempts to prevent photography or to seize equipment, and efforts to photograph protesters as they leave demonstrations and to take their names and addresses, all of which are extremely questionable in law. My understanding is that new guidance is in train on all those issues, so we will have to wait to see what it says. My hon. Friend the Minister will, no doubt, fill us in on the details when she replies. The use of other legislation intended for non-protest purposes was also raised during the Committee's inquiry. We were concerned to hear that the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which was brought in primarily to deal with stalkers, has been used to obtain injunctions to prevent protest activities that seemed to us to be perfectly legitimate. We heard of the injunction obtained by npower against Dr. Peter Harbour over the Radley lakes issue, where npower wanted to use the lakes to dump ash from power stations, not surprisingly attracting community disapproval. He could not afford to challenge the injunction taken out against him and the protesters. An injunction was also taken out against a photo-journalist for merely taking pictures of what was going on in that case. That was successfully challenged in court, and presumably the case was financed by the journalist's publication. Injunctions are granted in private, ex parte—a process intended for urgency, and after the event it is often too costly to challenge. If the issue relates to peaceful protest, it is unlikely to be so urgent, so at the least the application should be on notice to the protester. That is what we require for injunctions in industrial disputes, and the same process should apply to protests. I urge the Minister to look again at the civil procedure rules to see if that could be achieved to gain a fair balance and prevent the misuse of that power.