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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

First, the hon. Gentleman seems unwilling to accept the rule of law; he wants to exempt himself from the ordinary courts. I do not see how that is acceptable. Secondly, there is already a right of confiscation of noise-making equipment—stereos and so on—under environmental health law. Many of us have been local councillors and have seen the police use this power in conjunction with environmental health officers. If it turns out that Westminster council is not very efficient, I suggest that Conservative Members should address themselves to their fellow party members who run that council. There is a third way in which demonstrations can be brought to an end; it is if they cause serious disruption to the life of the community, as contained in section 14 of the Public Order Act. If the hon. Gentleman wants to tell me that that cannot be used, I can tell him that I have seen it myself being used at the G20 demonstration. It is not the case that there is no remedy. I find the details of the amendment even more extraordinary. Confiscating all amplified noise equipment seems to me to amount to banning speeches at any demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament. Anyone who has tried to make a speech outside in a noisy city will know how difficult it is to make oneself heard. This seems to be a direct attempt to make sure that people cannot have their voice heard at organised demonstrations. Also, the Government picked up in their consultation that in a demonstration it is quite important for the stewards and organisers to be able to get their point across to keep order within their demonstration. Having to do that without the assistance of any amplification would make demonstrations more dangerous for the people taking part. There is a further point. It is often said—I have heard it said from the Conservative Front Bench as well as my party's—that any power we grant will end up being abused. A power is being granted here to seize any device designed to make a noise. That could cover almost anything—buckets, balloons or party poppers, for instance. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) is looking amazed, but all those things were seized by the police in the Kingsnorth demonstration in Kent, on the grounds that they were going to be used in illegal ways. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hendon has reminded me of the other things that were seized. I will not recount them all, but they included clown suits. The point here is that if one grants the police a power in respect of policing protest, experience shows that that power will be abused to interfere in the right to protest. I therefore cannot go down the route the hon. Lady proposes at all; I am sorry to have to tell her that she will not find consensus in support of her proposals from my party, or, I hope, from the Labour party. I shall now turn to the other 18 amendments in this group that were tabled by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). [Interruption.] I apologise to the hon. Member for Hendon for forgetting about his amendments—which are very moderate, I might add. The purpose of our amendments is to go in the opposite direction from the amendments tabled by Conservative Front Benchers. Our amendments would further protect the right to protest and freedom of speech. Amendments 8 and 9 would simply remove from the Bill the whole replacement regime for the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 regime. There is no obvious need for extra powers against demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament. However, I accept that we had a vote on that in Committee—there was no debate, but there was a vote—so instead of trying to explain why I think there is no need for this replacement legislation, I want to make a case for amendment 10, which offers a compromise between our view and the Government's. The Government propose a system of prior restraint under which the authorities can take pre-emptive action, where they think there might be interference with access to this House. We think that it would be perfectly adequate to have no prior restraint, but instead to have powers that allow the police to ensure that access to the House is preserved—we do not think that that is absolutely necessary, but we are assuming for the purposes of this amendment that we are wrong about that. Amendment 10 removes the pre-emptive powers and replaces them with provisions for what could happen, if it turns out that access to this House is being interfered with by protest. A senior police officer would be able, but only in circumstances where the Speaker decides that reasonable access to the Palace is being prevented, to give directions to anyone organising or taking part in the demonstration to do whatever is necessary to restore order.