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Human Rights

Putting aside the question of the legality of the war altogether, the Tamil protest is another example. The police had to tolerate it because the protesters' tactics gave them little real operational choice. We recommended that the relevant clauses of the 2005 Act should be repealed and replaced with amendments to the 1986 Act intended to ensure that the police had powers to deal with anyone seriously impeding access to Parliament. We were pleased that the Government accepted this recommendation and introduced amendments to the 1986 Act in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. We made some detailed comments on the Government's proposals in our report on the Bill and I tabled amendments on behalf of the Joint Committee to be debated during the Public Bill Committee. The Government also tabled amendments which specified the entrances to Parliament to which the police must maintain access and increased the area in which the new regime is planned to operate. Although this issue has been extremely controversial outside Parliament and has been debated on numerous occasions inside the House in recent years, has been the subject of several Select Committee reports, and directly affects Members of Parliament and everyone else involved with this building, the programme motion prevented there being any debate whatsoever on the Government's new proposals or our amendments, or amendments tabled by other hon. Members in the Public Bill Committee. It is completely unacceptable for contentious legislation on such an important issue to be made in this way.