UK Parliament / Open data

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

My Lords, I will be brief and not repeat the valid and chilling points that have already been made. I just say this: for me to even attempt a line-by-line examination of this whole suite of new amendments would result in not just the Leader coming in to censor me again, but me probably being arrested. I am not going to do that, but I will try to say two things that noble Lords have not said yet.

On locking on and in particular going equipped for locking on, and stop and search with or without suspicion of locking on, I am worried not about the

glue referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, but about people with bicycle locks. I am worried about young people going about their business, sometimes riding to a demonstration or being in the vicinity of potential demonstrations, carrying bicycle locks. I cannot see how they are not potentially in jeopardy, en masse, of both the stop and search powers, and going equipped.

Secondly, as a former Home Office lawyer and a director of Liberty, to me, this suite of measures, which could be a Bill in itself, looks, smells and tastes a lot like anti-terror legislation of the kind that I have always opposed as being disproportionate and counterproductive. Whether it is the new orders, the stop and search powers, including suspicion, or offences including thought crimes, this new Bill within a Bill looks like some of the anti-terror powers that, when they were introduced, noble Lords opposite and elsewhere, and I and some of my noble friends—forgive me, I hope—looked the other way. Those powers have inspired what we see here, but this time they are not for terrorists but protesters.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

816 cc986-7 

Session

2021-22

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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