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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

Actually, under amendment 10 it is the Speaker who decides that reasonable access has been prevented, which is a rather more traditional way of doing things, and then the Speaker gives the authorisation through a senior police officer. The senior police officer simply gets to say precisely what it is the demonstrators have to do in order to restore access. I think that ought to be a senior police officer, because this is an important interference with an important right and, as we have learned from many examples of policing protest, giving that kind of discretion to junior police officers is simply asking for trouble. I do not want to go through the 17 other amendments, but I want to ask the Government about a particular problem that is raised in our amendments 19, 20, 30 and 31. The problem has arisen because the Government amended their own Bill in Committee without any debate. They extended by a very great extent the area around Parliament that is covered by the replacement regime. Westminster bridge is now covered, as is a large section of Whitehall. Victoria Tower gardens is covered, too, in a way that it was not covered before. I am not sure why it was thought necessary to increase the area by so much.