Thread by @IanDunt

Day two of the anti-protest bill debate is going to start in about 15mins. For some unfathomable reason which I now deeply regret, I have committed to live tweeting it.

If you're not interested in the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill: mute this thread. Seriously. I'm like the haggard old man at the gas station at the start of a horror movie, telling the kids not to go to the cabin the woods.

This is yesterday's thread from the debate, if you missed the excitement of watching a country's moral capacity degrade in real time.

https://twitter.com/IanDunt/status/1371467127711010816?s=20

We should get a vote at 7pm, so probably a result about 7:20. The deputy speaker has said that MP speeches will be limited to three minutes.

There is an amendment from Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy here, which basically tells the bill it can fuck right off, but in more words than that

The deputy speaker has not selected it. He has selected one from Labour, but annoyingly I can't find it - will tweet it when I do.

Here it is

It goes without saying that it won't pass - more of an effort to allow Labour to vote against the bill while attempting the neutralise the Tory attack lines against them.

Jon Trickett, Lab: "This govt claims to have its roots in libertarianism. And of course they are champions of liberty, but it;s liberty only for the powerful and the wealthy."

"They've set their sights on our tradition of dissent because their legislation is designed to crack down on our rights to take action against injustice. BLM, workers who take industrial action, environmentalists and the women's movement - they're all in their sights."

"This House of Commons should be a beacon of liberty. Repressive legislation will never eliminate the thirst and hunger for justice which remains so powerful in our country today. It is the duty of the Commons to stand up this evening and reject this bill."

Quick reminder btw that my test for this debate is not that the bill is defeated, or that we witness a decent debate on the provisions in the bill. It is not even that the government or its supporters make a passable argument for the bill. These expectations are far too high.

My test is if a single MP or minister defending the protest provisions actually makes an argument for them. Yesterday, they either ignored them or argued for provisions in previous public order legislation which had no pertinence to this legislation.

You might say this is a very low bar, and indeed it is. But I doubt they will clear it.

Diana Johnson, Lab: "The bill attacks, on a permanent basis the fundamental human right of peaceful assembly. Noting the disgraceful events at Clapham Common on Saturday, I will be voting against this bill tonight."

Craig Mackinlay, Con, says the provisions on protest "seems to have got a lot of people exercised". But the scenes in Clapham Common weren't "a result of this bill". He finishes: "This bill does not attempt to stop protest, far from it."

Mackinlay has the cognitive functions of broken toy, but I think quite a few people are confused by how these two stories go together, so let's lay it out.

The key question which links Clapham Common and this bill is: How far do you trust the police? Clapham showed that they are prone to over-police events and misuse the powers they have, especially when it comes to events like vigils and protests.

That's not always the case. The hands-off policing when the Edward Colston statue was removed last summer was sensible and pragmatic. But it is often the case.

For instance, Netpol analysis of BLM demos found that "black-led protests disproportionately faced excessive interventions by police". And of course we all remember what happened to Ian Tomlinson in 2009 at a G-20 protest.

That's where the current bill comes in. It radically increases police power and discretion to impose restrictions on protests. It allows them to impose them not for disruption, but for "impact", and on the broadest, vaguest and lowest possible basis.

It then removes the defences protesters might have against failing to comply with those restrictions - even if they are literally unaware that they exist.

That is why Mackinlay is wrong to dismiss it as "people getting exercised", wrong that there's no connection between Clapham & the bill, & wrong that the "bill does not attempt to stop protest". He is also wrong about a great many other things, but that'll do in this instance.

Not going to pretend to be objective here. I think Angela Eagle is bloody brilliant. And it pleases me that she has exactly the kind of book-strewn home that I presumed she would.

Eagle: "Clauses 54 to 60 are a a premeditated attack on our right to protest. While ministers purport to be the defenders of our rights and freedoms, this bill actually diminishes both."

Stella Creasy, Lab: "The public have to be able to tell us when we're getting something wrong. And sometimes that message is noisy and it is messy. But it is important we do not try to silence it no matter how uncomfortable it might make us feel."

Oh good. The standard Tory MP narrative back again. "Ensuring that an ambulance cannot reach a hospital in an emergency is the exactly opposite of dangerous."

So I guess I'll say it for the first time today: We. Already. Have. Laws. For. This. You should know it, because it is the law you're fucking amending with this bill.

I do try really very hard to not resort to caps, but these people do make it really rather difficult.

Spot on from Maria Eagle, Lab: "It's got into the habit of writing framework bills with extensive Henry VIII powers, leaving vast scope for ministers to change primary legislation by personal fiat without adequate parliamentary scrutiny."

This is one of the most alarming elements of the bill - and Eagle is right that it is an increasingly common way for the government to pass law. They pass a broadly worded law, then hand the minister secondary legislation powers to fuck about with it at their leisure.

There are various levels of scrutiny to that - depending on whether it is positive or negative. But neither of them are very good and they are both a very great distance less than the kind of scrutiny you'd get by passing a bill.

In this case it allows the home secretary to change the meaning of the term "serious disruption" whenever she damn well pleases.

Imagine the govt passes a poll tax & there is a mass peaceful protest movement against it. By some miracle, those protests do not contravene any current definition of disruption or those in the bill - they are completely silent, inconvenience no-one, annoy no-one, alarm no-one.

Well even in that unimaginable scenario, Patel can now unilaterally change the definition of "serious disruption" to whatever formulation allows the police to restrict the protests and close them down.

This provision is so authoritarian, so utterly draconian, that even Theresa May - for Christ sake - stood up in the Commons yesterday and said 'Priti mate, that's a bit full on, even for me'.

And yet, once again *not one* minister or MP defending this bill has made an argument trying to justify that power. Not one of them.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Lab: "Historically we have been policing by consent in this country. This govt seems intent on ending that. More armed police, more random stop-and-search, ploughing on with the failed Prevent programme...

... and this very obvious demonisation of the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller communities, and now the suppression of peaceful gatherings and protests, This is draconian legislation, it will not make safer, and it should be opposed by everyone who believes in democracy."

Tory and Labour MPs basically speaking over each other. The government benches constantly get up to celebrate the provisions on tougher penalties for assaults on emergency workers, but simply will not engage on the parts of the bill that Labour is objecting to.

This results in Ruth Edwards, Con, engaged in the reprehensible spectacle of saying. "We are voting for tougher sentences on child murderers. Labour are voting against. We are voting to keep rapists in jail longer. Labour are voting against."

Other people have made this point better than I will, but there is something uniquely despicable about weaponising these kinds of crimes in a party political squabble, when the MPs making that argument are well aware Labour is not opposing those measures.

It's just so terribly fucking gross man. For the soul.

And of course: they could just take out the provisions on protest and Labour would support the rest of the bill - the shadow home secretary made that clear yesterday. But anyway.

Jess Smith, Lab, is one of those very rare MPs who is willing to suggest reform of drug laws. "It's counterproductive to criminalise drugs for personaluse... A serious debate on drug policy is long overdue."

Not strictly pertinent here, but it is so rare to hear an MP say something rational on drug policy that I couldn't help to write it down, almost out of shock.

Nadia Whittome, Lab: "There is so much wrong with this bill that three minutes couldn't possibly cover it. We're debating it today because the home secretary despised Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter."

"The bill... expands police powers to levels that should not be seen in a modern democracy. If we were debating this legislation in another country, I'm sure members of this House would be condemning that country as an authoritarian regime."

"We're sick of male violence. We'e sick of male violence whether it's at the hands of the state, our partners, our family members, or strangers. And we march because some people don't survive that violence. The public realm belongs to women too."

"It hands unaccountable power to the police. The same police that were forcing women to the ground on Saturday night."

That was a very good speech.

Every Tory speech is about the increase in the maximum sentence for those who assault emergency workers. Seems that this is today's script handed down to MPs.

In fact, I'm genuinely struggling to distinguish the Tory speeches.

Ooop. Little glimmer of independent-mindedness from Tory MP Rob Roberts, a man with a name so good his parents used it twice.

"I sympathise with some of the concerns that have been raised about provisions which refer to protest. Although I welcome this bill... I'm sure that in Committee these provisions will be carefully considered and scrutinised."

So we can add him to the Steve Baker gang of Tory MPs suggesting they'll support efforts to water it down in committee. And look, that's welcome, but it is insufficient. You get a sense of why by what he says next.

"I'd like to remind all members that in second reading we are considering and voting on the general aims and principles of a bill so to throw the whole thing out at this stage is just irresponsible."

See that's the thing. They haven't considered the general aims and principles of this bill. It contains extremely draconian measures against free speech - fundamental issues of individual liberty. That is a key element of the bill.

To act like this is just some kind of minor addendum to what is otherwise a sentencing bill misrepresents it. If they wanted to introduce a sentencing bill, they could have done so. And it suggests that ultimately MPs simply do not care about free speech or over-mighty govt.

Anthony Magnall, Con, is either so stupid he cannot read or so cynically he wilfully misrepresents what he understands. "There is no restriction. There is no restriction to people being able to protest. There is no restriction to people being able to have freedom of speech."

"I believe passionately in freedom of speech." Yes of course you do mate.

Oh god. He quotes John Stuart Mill. Again. This isn't fair on me, you can't ask me to deal with this shite. He calls him John Stuart Mills, of course, because he evidently has no fucking idea at all what he is talking about.

He also evidently has no idea what the harm principle is. The things he and Leadsom have said about Mill in this debate would be edited out of a GCSE textbook.

Mill was briefly an MP, by the way. Fittingly, for our purposes here, he introduced an amendment on changing the word 'man' in an electoral reform bill to 'person'. It was the first time the question of female suffrage was ever put to the Commons.

I imagine him up there on the backbenches shivering in horror at his name being used by these charlatan bellends to silence freedom of speech.

As soon as I wrote that, Nickie Aiken, Con MP for Cities of London and Westminster, which is Mill's old seat got up to speak. HE'S SPEAKING TO US FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Maybe he will inhabit her spirit and guide her in the true way of liberalism and the freedom of the individual.

Oh yeah, no that won't happen. "I believe passionately in the right to protest," she says. "The clauses in the bill do not restrict the right to lawful protest."

She claims many of her constituents are caused "distress" by protests and have become "prisoners in their own home".

What is it about protesters' ability to make a noise that makes these constituents "prisoners in their own home" I wonder? Because it's that - not violence, not disruption, not property damage - which is the key addition made in this bill. But she didn't see fit to discuss that.

Sally-Ann Hart, Con obvs, win the bullshit comparison of the night award. "Last year in London we saw extreme disruptive tactics in the Extinction Rebellion march, which reportedly cost police £16m. That... would be better spent on nature based solutions to climate change."

The she goes full Judge Dredd. "There is no freedom without justice."

Reels off examples: criminal damage, public order act offences, assaulting police or members of the public. Sigh. Look, I dunno. I feel as tedious as they are. But: this bill does nothing to address that.

Please, just one of you, mention the noise provisions. Just once. Have the courage to actually mention the thing you are voting for, rather than pretending it does not exist.

Wow. Full marks for David Amess, Con. He is an outright authoritarian, fucking pound-shop Mussolini. But at least he has the courage to make the case for it.

"My office looks onto Parliament Square and I have long complained about the endless demonstration that take place. It is very difficult to work because of the noise, with drums, horns and loudspeakers. Parliament being the seat of democracy, our work should not be disrupted."

Honestly, good on him, belligerent half-witted wannabe autocrat that he is. At least he had the spine to argue for it.

Jerome Mayhew, Con. I swear to god I can feel my faith in human integrity disintegrating with every speech from the Tory benches.

"Why should one section of the public have an unfettered right to impose massive disruption on the rest of society. What about their rights to get on with life. Where competing rights clash, the law must maintain a balance."

"Modern protest movements like XR game the system with disruption and not peaceful protest being their objective. The law must adjust to maintain the balance of competing rights."

The question Mayhew and his colleagues need to answer, and it is a very basic one, is: Were those XR demonstrators arrested? If so, how? The answer, of course, is existing legislation.

I swear most of these guys act like they're the first person to discover the idea of competing rights.

But the question isn't: do competing rights exist? Of course they do. It's: are these new provisions balanced? Do they address the problems you are raising?

And yet no defender of the bill - with the exception of David Amess - has said anything about noise, which is what the provisions target.

Kieran Mullan, Con, starts his speech by celebrating the "silent law-abiding majority". I like how they keep adding bits to that godawful phrase. They should keep going. Silent law-abiding hard-working alarm-clock-Britain majority.

He's a simpleton by the way, as you might have already guessed.

Richard Graham, Con, gets up and says there seems to be a gulf between Labour concerns about protest and Tory MPs praising the sentencing provisions. "So what is going on?"

For a moment I thought he was going to give a genuine appraisal of the various issues here, and the manner in which Tory and Labour MPs are speaking past each other. But of course he does not.

"The confusion comes I believe from a conflation between the policing of the peaceful vigil on Clapham Common, and measures in this bill to legislate on public order. They are separate issues."

That are, of course, not separate issues.

He then focuses on the trespass provisions. And how does he defend them? That his constituents have seen people "smash through fences". But of course, once again, altogether now, there was already law on property damage.

The new law is on the *risk* that they might conduct themselves offensively *in future*. And on that basis they can take away their home. But still, lets not dwell on what's actually in the bill, far simpler to pretend it says something else entirely.

Caroline Lucas, Greens: "Having seen the response from police on Clapham Common on Saturday night, it beggars belief this government is giving more powers and discretion to them via this legislation."

"As one of the few MPs to be arrested during a peaceful protest, and subsequently after a week's court case acquitted of any wrongdoing, I can tell her I have firsthand experience of the disproportionate action of the police."

John McDonnell, Lab: "If anything defines the depths this govt has sunk to, it's the attack in this bill on the last group in society that it appears, for some, it's still acceptable to racially discriminate against: The Traveller community." Quite right.

Ben Everitt, Con, says those equating Clapham with the measures in this bill are being "knee jerk" and - wait for it - "populist". Fucking incredible.

"Let's have a look..." he says, and for a brief flickering moment I think he;s going to say "what's really in those provisions". That just for one moment an MP might actually discuss the thing they're supporting.

But of course not. Instead we get: "... at what the Labour party are proposing to vote against." And then off he goes, reading the script set out for him by the party. "They'll be voting against protecting women and children from serious abuse."

I'm looking at the tab I kept open with the bill in it and feeling like: Oh you poor sweet naive child, did you really believe you might need to actually reference that?

Sir John Hayes, Con, delivering a speech which actually stands out for how completely inane it is.

Rails against "the small clique of bourgeois liberals who use wealth to segregate and insulate themselves from the reality of disorder and have sought to amplify the rights of thugs and villains and the civil liberties of the violent mob."

That's *Sir* John Hayes. Don't worry though, no contradiction there, he's still Sir John Hayes from the block.

James Daley, Con: "What Labour appears to be arguing is that police should not have powers to address the most extreme anti-social behaviour during protests".

Reminder: The bill allows police to impose restrictions if they believe a single passer-by will experience "serious unease" from the noise.

David Johnston is the latest Tory MP to have not read the bill.

He says his constituents describe Travellers engaging in "abuse, mess, noise, vandalism". He then says "it's absolutely not the way the majority of Travellers behave which is why it;s wrong for the opposition to say it's criminalising the lifestyle of Travellers."

In reality, the bill allows police to confiscate their property if they *suspect* they will at some point in future engage in offensive behaviour. So in fact it authorises extreme police action on precisely this law-abiding majority he supposedly wants to protect.

"It's common for the police," he continues, "to say they don't have the power to act." In reality, the majority of the
police forces & police commissioners who responded to the Home Office consultation opposed the proposal to criminalise trespass.

David Lammy up to close the debate for Labour.

You probably already know this, but Lammy is a hugely impressive speaker. Probably the best orator in the Commons in the last parliament, certainly the best in this one.

"The govt has prioritised giving the police the power to prohibit the fundamental freedoms of protest that the British public hold dear. And by giving the police the discretion to use these powers some of the time, it takes away our freedom all of the time."

"I'm thankfully the draconian limits on the power to protest were not in place during the great protests of the 20th Century that led to real change."

"When the Suffragettes marched for the right to vote, some of them were prepared to break the law to make their point just outside the House of Commons. Does the sec of state believe that those women, who shouted noisily, should have been arrested to?"

"Pandemic aside, what about society has changed exactly that means the police need more powers to control protests than they did yesterday?"

"And what about the images of the police tackling a mourning woman to the floor last weekend makes him think the police do not have enough as it stands?"

Look, I'll type what I can of this but I would strongly recommend you go on the parliament TV website, rewind it back a bit, and watch it. It is really very good.

"The Conservative party's principles are rooted in liberty and against the overreach of the state, I call on every member of the governing party who still believes in freedom to join with the opposition and vote against this bill tonight."

"The government would rather blow a dog whistle against minorities than keep women safe."

"Measures in the bill will further compound the inequalities faced by Gypsies and Travellers who are already the most over-represented group in the justice system. Why is this govt determined to lock up Gypsies and Travellers even against its own polices' advice?"

This isn't the first time I've been deeply impressed by Lammy in the House. But today there is a kind of controlled rage to him that is really very striking indeed.

Once again - I would urge you go watch that back. Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland stands to close the debate.

He says it's been a two day debate. Honestly, I feel I've been sat here for several years.

I wasn't expecting much from the secretary o state, but so far we're getting even less. "What beggars believe about the party opposite is they think that now is the time to turn unity into bitterness."

Fucking dreadful. "The vast majority of the public... want us to work together in the national interest. I'm afraid it looks like party interests are being put before the national interest. It gives me more pleasure to say that."

So it;s not enough to silence protesters, but opposition parties should be silenced too. "They are concocting synthetic arguments... they are inadvertently misstating some of the key provisions of this bill."

OK. If anyone from the government is ever going to try to defend the protest provisions in the bill, it'll be now.

"I would suggest what's happened here is as a result of a conflation between covid regulations and the interaction with the right to protest, they have conflated those arguments with measures in this bill that long predate what happened on the weekend."

"There's no relation between the two. I'd love to hear an explanation."

We've been over this, but the link is police discretion. Or as Lammy put it: "What about the images of the police tackling a mourning woman to the floor last weekend makes him think the police do not have enough as it stands?"

He wants to talk about annoyance - a phrase in the public nuisance provision. He says - correctly that the word annoyance is already in use in common law and has been moved over. That's correct - there's more on it here davidallengreen.com/2021/03/the-pr…

Nuisance has actually not come up much. The key questions are on noise in protest restrictions and trespass.

We get something on trespass. Steve Baker, civil liberties Tory gets up. But incredibly - absolutely incredibly - he does nothing to challenge the secretary of state.

Instead he says: "Will he agree with me that on this issue, and on protest, what we've seen is that the party opposite is refusing to engage with the legitimate limits on both freedoms?"

There it is. A fitting end to the debate. The great champion of liberty on the Tory benches, who doesn't just fail to vote against the anti-protest bill, doesn't even fail to ask a question of the minister. He attacks other MPs for standing up to the right to protest.

How the fuck that fits with his article this morning alongside Dominic Grieve is another matter. That really was a perfectly depressing ending to this entire shitshow.

It goes without saying that Buckland did not mention the provisions on noise at protest and made no attempt at all to justify them. He simply denied they existed.

I'm way behind, so only just caught up on result of Labour amendment vote.
Ayes: 225
Noes:359

Labour amendment, which would have killed the bill, fails. That's as expected.

Ayes: 359
Noes: 263

The bill passes second reading.

There is little good that can be said about this situation and I won't pretend otherwise.

Ultimately, when you've a govt with a big majority, bills are more likely than not to get through. But even in that scenario, you'd expect expressions of alarm, or trace elements of scrutiny, from Tory benches which have spent the last year wanging on about English liberties.

The most positive scenario I can construct is this: this is second reading. It's not done yet. Committee stage, where you give the bill a good going over, might be the place that Tories who have said they're unsure about the protest sections, might give it some attention.

I don't have much hope for that. Even those who mentioned concerns did it mostly as an aside. There is also the Lords, which might well kick this back. And there is a potential for a human right challenge, although I haven't looked into the viability of that.

Yeah. Nothing else positive to say apart from that. Not a bat-squeak of real protest from the Conservative backbenches. A betrayal of all the principles they once swore so passionately they defended.

I would claim to be surprised, but I'm not.

Time for a drink I think. Thanks for following along.