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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My Lords, one of the great pleasures for me this evening has been the return of my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury. It is a tremendous moment for me. I have often listened to him in debate and it gives me great confidence to pick up his theme at the end of his speech because I want to talk about Clause 61. It concerns the right to protest in Parliament Square. As my noble friend said, those restrictions were ostensibly imposed because of security risks posed by the possibility of bombs being hidden in Brian Haw’s sleeping bag, but they were actually imposed because the Government were getting so embarrassed by and fed up with the continuing anti-war protests. Like this evening’s proposals, those provisions were passed in great haste without proper scrutiny. That led to the most ridiculous situation where the legislation required protestors to apply at Charing Cross police station for permission to protest. Overnight, this gave the police a mountain of paperwork and less time to tackle real issues of crime and security. Noble Lords will remember that the police had to issue permission for someone who wanted to have a picnic with the word "peace" iced on their cake. The whole crazy system was brilliantly ridiculed by the comedian Mark Thomas in his lone demonstrations. However, it had serious consequences for some people conducting peaceful protests. They were fined substantial sums because they had not got permission—£250 for a tea party protestor—and they got a criminal record. In an effort to stop that state of affairs, I introduced a Bill to end the system, but Conservative amendments meant that it never got past Second Reading. When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in July 2007, he said that he would change the protest laws. What we have before us in Clause 61(1) is the realisation of that commitment. However, it is a typical Labour idea of a change. Clause 61(1) repeals what is unpopular and unworkable, but Clause 61(2) immediately replaces it. The Minister said that this change has broad public support. It does but, as the Select Committee on the Constitution states, we have to be wary of Part 2 because the new powers, ""confer considerable discretion on the Secretary of State and on senior police officers"." It makes an important point about the stark contrast between this approach, which gives the Secretary of State the power to have these orders, and the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, which simply repealed the draconian SOCPA powers without replacing them. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee also has great reservations. It does not believe that we should deal with this issue so lightly. It recommends that, if orders need to be made under Schedule 9, that must at least be done by affirmative procedure and not, as the Government propose, by negative procedure. The Minister may say that the Bill states that the order may not apply to an area more than 300 yards from any entrance to Parliament and claim that that is an improvement. However, that effectively takes out Parliament Square, Old Palace Yard, Abbey Gardens, College Green, Victoria Gardens, Westminster Bridge and most of Whitehall—in other words, any place near enough to Parliament to make yourself seen and heard by parliamentarians arriving at Parliament. Anyone who was outside today will have seen a large number of demonstrations and a large number of the press on College Green, who could almost be said to be more aggravating to get through than all the demonstrators put together. Parliament cannot be said to be at the heart of our democracy when ringed around by a cordon sanitaire. It is already removed enough from the real world. E-petitions and virtual protests are not a substitute. The Minister knows as well as I do that there are sufficient powers under the Public Order Act to control demonstrations, marches and assemblies. There are also sessional orders to control access to Parliament. We also extended the powers in the Terrorism Act, which gives the police extremely wide powers to stop and search, including in the area around Parliament. The attempt to clamp down on demonstrations has always been more about cleansing the area around Parliament, a practice that is more associated with totalitarian regimes. We will not get a chance to amend the Bill, so I can only hope that in the wash-up this outrageous backsliding is removed, with Clause 61(1) remaining and Clause 61(2) taken out.