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Human Rights

We have had a constructive debate and there has been a great deal of agreement. It is unfortunate that when winding up such a debate, one always wants to stress the points on which we have not agreed, to put down markers or have a second bite at a particular argument. I think my hon. Friend the Minister did not quite get what I was saying about the escalation issue in relation to protest. No one wants anybody to get hurt, whether it be a police officer or a protester, and what came out of the discussions that we had last week in Portcullis House was that policing can never be a no-risk occupation. There will always be an element of risk in policing, and the point made to me in Northern Ireland, and by those from the police service in our discussions last week, was that that was accepted. No one wants to take an unnecessary risk, but if things are done properly, it can sometimes de-escalate tension if certain risks are taken. I come back to the point that Assistant Chief Constable McCausland made to us about the challenge he gave to his officers when he said, "Look, I'm not asking you to do something I'm not prepared to do." He went to the head of what was, I think, a very difficult loyalist march in a Catholic area and proved that with proper, no-surprises policing, and proper discussions between people who come from difficult and conflicting circumstances, such scenarios can be de-escalated, rather than escalated. It is not a question of uniform or no uniform; it is a question of the policing approach. At the moment, the policing approach is all or nothing. That was brought home to us not just by our conclusions, but by the evidence that we were given, including from the police themselves and HMIC. It is important for there to be more sophisticated police training, particularly at the command level—bronze, silver and gold—to show that the objective is not to go straight to full-on riot policing, but to try to find ways of bringing tensions down, rather than pushing them up. The hon. Member for Cambridge made the point that the way in which the containment tactic is used to push people together increases the tension, particularly if riot police hit people on the legs with the edges of shields to try to push them back when there is no space for them to go to. We saw that there were people with their hands up saying, "We're not part of a riot," yet they were still being treated as if they were. That is not de-escalating the tension—it is potentially increasing the tension and increasing confrontation where there was none to start with. My hon. Friend the Minister and other hon. Members are absolutely right to say that the overwhelming majority of protests happen perfectly peacefully, with proper co-ordination with the police and without any difficulty at all. It is inevitable that we have to focus on when things have gone wrong, because by doing so we can try to improve things for the future and ensure that such difficulties do not arise. That is why, I am afraid, I have to come back again to the question of mediators or intermediaries. I fully accept my hon. Friend's point that the police want to be able and should be able to communicate directly with individuals, both on the front-line of the protest and at an organisational level. However, occasionally, as she accepted, trust has broken down to such an extent that there is no dialogue at all. The question is how to break through that lack of dialogue. The hon. Member for Cambridge tried to deal with that issue—he did not achieve a great deal, but he did try. The Northern Ireland experience shows that such an approach is not a one-off thing and that it takes time to build those difficult relationships. Building trust between the Police Service of Northern Ireland and some of the republican movement was a very difficult thing to achieve, but it was done through the use of intermediaries to start the dialogue. Direct contact then developed between the police and those involved.