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Human Rights

As the hon. Members for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew) said, I have been directly involved in these issues for quite a long time. I should say right at the start that although I am still critical of the position that the police sometimes take, and of the positions that the Government often take, we have come a long way in the past few months. It was entirely clear from my visits to the Heathrow climate camp, and subsequently from reports of what happened at Kingsnorth, that the police had immensely abused powers such as that to stop and search and that their intention was to disrupt the protests, rather than to maintain public order. There were also some rather extraordinary claims at Kingsnorth, with the police claiming through Ministers that injuries had been caused—the implication being that the protest had been violent and that the protesters had caused the injuries. It turned out that the injuries were health and safety problems and that police officers had injured themselves getting in and out of their cars, had suffered from toothache or, in one notorious incident, had been stung by a possible wasp.