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Human Rights

No, that is not what I am saying. My position on that will become clear later in my speech. In short, the real problem at present is that there is no gradation; we either have police officers in ordinary uniform or police officers in full riot gear. There is no gradual change up or down in the policing of demonstrations. We have complete escalation and very little de-escalation. I shall describe all that in a little more detail later. I was commending Assistant Chief Constable McCausland of the PSNI, who very much embraces the approach I am describing and demonstrated it himself to his own officers. He wrote:""Human rights sit at the very heart of the conception, planning, execution and control of every aspect of the operations of the Police Service of Northern Ireland…Human rights is a critical benchmark by which the PSNI measures the impact of its actions."" Pre-emptive action—for example, to stop protesters reaching a target—was also criticised. All these issues are consistent with the concerns expressed by the HMIC about the need to reinforce the traditional British model of policing by consent, rather than drifting towards what it described as a paramilitary model that is more familiar overseas. I entirely share its view that an approachable, impartial and accountable style of policing by consent that is based on minimum force is preferable, and is more consistent with the human rights of those involved in protests. Part of the problem is escalation. We see police in ordinary uniform or full riot gear—there is nothing in between to give tactical options for either a gradual increase in firmer policing, or, more importantly, for de-escalating from confrontation. HMIC called on the Home Office to "actively support" the traditional policing model based on the minimum use of force. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Home Office fully shares HMIC's view. The Committee also raised the issue of quasi-public spaces such as shopping malls, which the public would see as public spaces but are, in fact, privately owned property. This is a grey area. For example, how can we ensure respect for the rights of animal welfare activists who wish to protest outside a shop selling furs in a large, now private—formerly public—shopping area, or for the right of peaceful assembly by protesters who wish to use a council park? I saw that myself last year when a protest march against Conservative Barnet council's plan to axe sheltered accommodation wardens had to rally outside the council-owned park's gates because we were not allowed to go inside. There can also be difficulty in differentiating quasi-public from private property. The Association of Electricity Producers strongly argued that private property such as power stations needs to be better protected from protest activity through new legislation. We were pleased to hear that the Government are working with ACPO to clarify issues around quasi-public spaces. I would be grateful if the Minister told us what work is being done on that and when we will hear more about it. On policing proper, the police starting point seems to have been that any protest is almost certainly unlawful, to some degree. At the minimum, it will usually cause obstruction of the highway, for example. The problem is that the police, in some cases, assume that this unlawfulness should be prevented, per se, without balancing that unlawfulness with the corresponding rights to freedom of assembly and expression guaranteed by articles 10 and 11, as I mentioned earlier. Police officers are trained to use their discretion when conducting ordinary police work—whether to arrest someone or just give them a telling off, for example—but that does not seem to apply in matters relating to demonstrations. The basic discretion of the police officer needs to be used better in policing protest. A good example of this was the Tamil protest last year. There was a lot of obstruction, but little trouble. That indication of a change of approach was welcome. Of course, that protest created great inconvenience, including to people in the House, but in the end it was dealt with fairly. On the general legal policing framework, our main concern is that there are too many broadly-defined powers available to the police that can be used to restrict protest unfairly and unnecessarily. In scrutinising legislation, we have often been critical of the Government for relying on the argument that broad powers are consistent with the Human Rights Act because all public authorities must act compatibly with it. I will argue later that police training in human rights has clearly been inadequate. In addition, the Government's approach puts the onus on those whose rights have been infringed to pursue matters in the courts. This is the wrong way round; legislation should be drafted in precise terms to make the parameters of police powers clear, both to the police and the public.