My Lords, with the leave of the House, before I start, I thank all noble Lords from all sides of the House, the doorkeepers, the attendants, the security and the police officers, who have shown such kindness towards me following the sudden, unexpected and so far unexplained death of my husband. I am very grateful.
As the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, have explained, the definition of “serious disruption” underpins the entire Public Order Bill. It is an element of many of the new offences and the trigger for the use of new draconian police powers, which we will debate in the next two groups. The police asked for clarity, as there was no definition of “serious disruption” in the Bill that originally came to us from the other place, and we joined forces with His Majesty’s Official Opposition to provide a reasoned and reasonable definition of “serious disruption” that gave clear guidance to the police—Lords Amendment 1—which was agreed by this House. The Commons disagreed with our amendment and substituted Amendment 1A as an amendment in lieu.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, about the problem with ambiguity around the word “significant”, the fact is that the original amendment this House passed had examples clearly explaining to the police what we meant, so that ambiguity was not there in the original amendment passed by this House.
Instead of defining “serious disruption” as causing
“significant harm to persons, organisations or the life of the community”,
which would include, for example, preventing an ambulance taking a patient to a hospital, the Government have substituted, as we have heard,
“more than a minor degree”
for “significant harm”. With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and to address the concerns of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I will repeat what I said on Report: on a spectrum of seriousness, “minor” is at one end and “serious” is at the other. I say that as a former police officer speaking about how the police might interpret the legislation. For example, a minor injury is a reddening of the skin, and a serious injury is a broken limb or inflicting a fatal injury. My interpretation, as a former police officer, of what is being said in the Bill is that disrupting to
“more than a minor degree”
cannot reasonably be said to be “serious disruption”; it is far too low a threshold. While I understand that the noble and learned Lord wanted to establish a threshold—the exact point at which the law would be broken—our argument is that that point is far too low. We therefore support Motion A1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and we will support him if he decides to divide the House on his Motion A1.
I join the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, in saying that I am grateful to the Minister for Amendment 17A, mentioned in Motion C, which we support. It is right to protect observers of protests from being prevented from carrying out their work by the police.
Finally, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Fox of Buckley, for their kind words about my public service, but I reassure the House that this is not my valedictory speech.