Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (Designated Area) Order 2005  

I shall briefly add a few remarks to those made by my noble friend Lord Dholakia and the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, simply to underline a few of the things that they have said and perhaps to raise one or two new points. I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that the reaction of the Government to the primary legislation seems disproportionate and goes far beyond what I think most Members of Parliament in both Chambers envisaged. It does indeed blot out a vast area, such that a demonstration could neither be heard nor seen anywhere near Parliament if it were to take place outside the designated area. Within the designated area itself, as we know, the regulations and restrictions are very strong indeed. I should point to the fact that the sentences proposed are quite extraordinarily high; up to 51 weeks in gaol and a level 5 fine is a hugely obstructive type of response to what could well be a perfectly genuine misunderstanding, or in some cases a spontaneous reaction of anger to a particular proceeding by the Government. Parliament is properly described as ““the people’s house””. It is the house of the representatives of the   people; it is not a house that belongs to the Government, but a house that belongs in the end to the people. Therefore, there has to be some way in which the people can have access or enable their feelings to be heard by Parliament. That is a duty on Members of Parliament, as much as members of the Government, and I find it extraordinary that we should be segregating members of the public from those that they elected. With regard to the European Convention on Human Rights, I have in front of me the Explanatory Memorandum to the order. Rather surprisingly, under the heading of ““European Convention on Human Rights””, at 6.1, it says that it is not applicable. One could argue that it is not an adequate reason to believe that we are not commensurate with Articles 10 and 11, but to say that it is not applicable is clearly extraordinary in light of the fact that these articles—as the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, made clear—are precisely about freedom of assembly and about freedom of expression. So it is strange that we should find the phrase ““not applicable”” in the Explanatory Memorandum; whatever is true, that is not true. I am profoundly concerned about the two aspects of   the conditions to be attached. Not only are those conditions extraordinarily wide-ranging—among other things, they say that no loudspeakers can be used, that the Commissioner of Police will be able to determine the size of placards being carried—but there is an extraordinary degree of minute and detailed intervention in the organisation of a demonstration. But what is in some ways even more frightening is the supplementary powers being given to any senior police officer—the most senior who happens to be present on the spot, so to speak—which enables them to change the original conditions. That really puts people of good will organising a demonstration with no intention to produce any violent reactions in an almost impossible position, as they can be told with almost no notice at all that the place, the time, the duration, the size of the placards and the use of loudspeakers can all be changed within a matter of minutes by a senior police officer. It is very hard to envisage how anyone could stay within the rules on that basis. I remind Members of the Committee that we have had a number of quite remarkable demonstrations in the past few months. I recall the march about Iraq,   the   hunting demonstration and the pensions demonstration, all of which were conducted with extraordinary numbers of   people involved. Yet in no case can I recall a single act of violence or a single act that involved more than very limited numbers of arrests by the police, almost all of them for unrelated offences. It is to my mind one of the great honours of our democracy that demonstrations do take place, that they are so extraordinarily disciplined and that we allow them to happen. Time and time again, when I have had foreign visitors, including people in governments themselves, I have demonstrated our demonstrations to them as a way to show just how lively our democracy is. We will suffer hugely by removing this visible sign that democracy is alive and powerful in our country. I conclude by asking three questions. First, for the reasons that my noble friend Lord Dholakia so eloquently put before the Committee, are the Government prepared to reconsider the current excessive size of the area to be covered by the proposals and controls listed in the order? Secondly, would they be prepared to reconsider the swingeing levels of fines that they have proposed—the maximum levels—of up to 51 weeks in custody and a level 5 fine? That seems quite excessive for people who are taking part in a demonstration, who are not seriously involved in any major crime. Of course, there are already huge pieces of legislation which would control a situation in which any major offence of violence or obstruction were perpetrated. Thirdly, will the Government consider whether it is necessary to take such extreme actions? I was a Minister in the Home Office back in the days when the famous demonstration took place against the US embassy in the middle of the war in Vietnam. It was one of the biggest demonstrations—perhaps the biggest demonstration—seen in our history up to that time. It was a violent demonstration, there is no question about that; it included many people who were anarchists and nihilists and who made it plain that they intended to break into the American embassy and if possible to destroy it. I was a Minister of State at the Home Office, when Mr Callaghan was at that time the Home Secretary. I spoke to him about the methods that might be used to control the demonstration, and I shall never forget what he said. He said that if you tried to control demonstrations beyond what is absolutely necessary and if you invoked the use of methods that go beyond what is absolutely necessary, you would be to blame for the fact that the next demonstration started where the last one let off. He went on to say that he could not accept the use of water hoses or jeeps and that he would only accept the police and mounted police intervening in a civilian demonstration. I have never forgotten those words of wisdom, which ensured that in our country demonstrators and police did not clash with the degree of violence that was characteristic of many others. I commend those very wise words to the Committee.