My Lords, we are at Report stage—although it would be very easy to misrecognise it as Second Reading. I have been supporting the Government this afternoon—but not at this stage and probably not for most of the rest of the debate.
The fact is that this amendment—and most that follow—to my mind, we must support. I entirely accept that it is nonsensical to suggest that by Clause 56, and most of those that follow, the Government is intent on repression. They are not trying consciously to suppress our hallowed rights of protest, of demonstration and of assembly. That is not the position. But I suggest strongly that that is the public perception—that is what the public believe—and understandably so, because it is such an overreaction to anything that has happened.
I too excoriate Insulate Britain: they behaved outrageously and undemocratically, so flatly contrary to the rule of law and wider interests, that we must amend to ensure that they are arrestable and imprisonable without going through the process of contempt of court proceedings in future. But these provisions, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, simply lack all common sense, they lack all balance and measure, and they are counterproductive.
The noble Baroness behind me suggested that we all, and the wider public, protest things such as stopping the Tube trains, but I would remind your Lordships—I think I have just read—that those who committed that apparent offence were resoundingly acquitted. The fact
is that if we pass laws such as this law, that is going to be the reaction: the Government are going to be regarded as tyrants and the public will not play.