My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, gave a very graceful explanation of his previous intervention. Perhaps I should do the same and at the same time apologise to civil servants. If we accept what the Minister has said —that such actions as sleeping with campaigners to infiltrate those campaigns was illegal then and is illegal now—that still means that four Met commissioners sat in front of the body holding them to account and refused to commit to that. What does that say about our senior officers? We always have to bear this in mind, and I have been involved in this struggle for the past 20 years.
4 pm
It was possibly 15 or 16 years ago that some members of my family were at a festival and they said, “We think there’s some police spies among us.” I laughed at them and said, “I look at the Met police budget on a monthly basis—I know there’s no money for that sort of nonsense.” But you know what? There was. Somehow, while they were closing police stations and getting rid of sergeants, they still found time for the police spies, and that is outrageous. For us, there is a depth and colour to this legislation that I feel is lacking for others who have not experienced the other side of this police behaviour.
The amendments offer special categories—for example, political, trade union and of course blacklisting, which was a horrendous thing to have happened. I am not so sure that it is not still happening. I have tabled Amendment 82, which asks the Government to hold off on this Bill until the “spy cops” police inquiry is over. I realise that that is a bit too hard-line and will not happen, but my point is that it is a bit daft to bring this in when we do not have the experience of that
inquiry to draw on. In many ways this is quite heavy-handed. I hear, “Well, all the bad stuff happened in the past and it couldn’t possibly happen again.” I am afraid that my experience suggests otherwise. It would be useful to know by what formula the Government are going to respond to the undercover policing inquiry, because many of us have been following that for decades.
I turn to the other amendments. The trade union blacklisting was an appalling practice. Men—mostly men—lost their livelihoods, their houses and sometimes their families when they were banned from working because the police were passing information around. Is that not happening any more? I would really like to know. I think it probably is. It has to be illegal and the people involved should be prosecuted; there is no doubt about that.
Then there is the excellent Amendment 29 from the noble Baroness, Lady Clark of Kilwinning, who made a very good speech. I wish I had that sort of calm manner in your Lordships’ Chamber. There are times when I think to myself, “What on earth am I doing here?”, and I am sure there are lots of other people who think the same [Laughter]. The fact is that I am here because I care. I do not have to do this; I could go back to Dorset and look after my leeks—actually, they are my partners’ leeks; raspberries are what I do—and think about the garden. This Bill gets to the heart of what I care about in politics, which is justice, fairness and delivering on a society where people can express themselves without being closed down by other forces.
I shall go back to my speech, if I can find my place. The noble Baroness’s Amendment 29 refers to “legitimate political activity”, and there is lots of that. This is legitimate political activity, however heated it gets. For example, there is the question of economic well-being. I do not want a police officer to decide if my Green Party view of economic well-being is against the interests of society. I think the Conservative Party’s view of economic well-being is extremely damaging not just for us but for our whole planet. It is going to affect us very deeply as a country for decades to come, but I still do not want police going around committing crimes because of that.
I feel that there are issues here that we will have to come back to on Report. I had intended to sign Amendment 29, and I will do so if it can be brought back on Report.