My Lords, for me, this is getting like election night. Any politician in the room will tell you that it is when you are really tired but you are so wired that you cannot possibly sleep anyway.
I have signed three of these amendments but I wanted to speak mainly to Amendment 315A. I am concerned about this whole part of the Bill, because it is far too broad and risks criminalising a host of innocent behaviour. We heard earlier about the right to move around. Today, I was stopped by the police outside and could not go for nearly 250 yards on the pavement because a band was going through. I love an Army brass band—it is absolutely fine—so I joined the crowds on the other side of the road who were all pushing and shoving. We often take away the right to move around, sometimes for good causes. I would argue that protest is a good cause.
As regards stopping traffic, let us remember that traffic jams cost us billions of pounds every year and millions of people are inconvenienced, with long times added to their journeys to work—working people who are delayed by traffic jams. This morning outside the Marlin Hotel on Westminster Bridge Road, three Mercedes were parked in the bus lane. The buses had to go around them, slowing all the traffic. What are the Government doing about that sort of thing? I contacted the police and sent them the registration numbers, so let us hope that they were caught.
The definitions in the Bill of serious harm are a mess because serious annoyance cannot be a crime—it is too difficult to define. You cannot put people in jail for just being annoying. I am sure that sometimes we would all like to, but you cannot do it. I am particularly worried, after the way in which Covid was policed early on, about the inclusion of disease in the new public nuisance offence. At the start of Covid—and possibly all the way through—every prosecution was wrongful. That was partly because—and I will be generous to the Government for once—the Government were confused and blurred the lines between law, guidance, advice and so on. As I have said before in your Lordships’ House, it was hard for the police because they did not know what they should be doing and became a bit overzealous. That may have been well intentioned but it was not appropriate. There were wrongful prosecutions and convictions as a result. Let us be a bit more careful about the definitions in the Bill, because I think that they will cause more problems.
We are all boasting about our qualifications for going on demonstrations and that sort of thing. My first demo was in 1968 for CND, of which I am still a member, and we are still fighting nuclear weapons—but that is another issue. I argue that the Government are taking chaos and ambiguity to new heights and I urge
them not to allow the dangerous and confusing language in the Bill to go through because it is certain to lead to injustice.
11.30 pm