Where does the right to protest end?

Inside the Lords on my interventions about the Public Order Bill

Regular readers will know that, as much as I am no fan of Just Stop Oil and other disruptive protests, I have serious reservations about the new laws being drafted to stop them. The Bill currently going through Parliament (the Public Order Bill) would give the police new powers to stop new protest tactics, but which go, in my opinion, too far in criminalising myriad activities and will affect ALL of our rights.

Protest can be irritating, disruptive and often deeply upsetting - but I am constitutionally opposed to granting the police power over political life, rather than to actually deal with crime. In this instance, especially when the police already have an armoury of powers they seem reluctant to use, I find my instincts are no different.

Things became more complicated when, in addition to the egregious attacks on civil liberties contained in the Bill, a clause (Clause 9) has been added to criminalise a wide range of activities around abortion clinics. These include informing, persuading, or expressing opinions, and would make ‘buffer zones’ around clinics a matter not of local council discretion - but the default position.

I decided to challenge the Bill on these grounds, and so proposed a number of probing amendments. This ensured a wide-ranging and long debate in the chamber and will possibly lead to changes to the Bill later in the legislative process. You can read my full speech in Hansard here - Public Order Bill - Hansard - UK Parliament - or watch below.

This is a genuinely difficult issue as the pro lifers’ tactics of hanging outside abortion clinics and targeting women accessing legal terminations is gross, insensitive, and intrusive. I do not pretend to have easy answers to the unpleasantries of being barracked or even abused when accessing a medical procedure. But these behaviours do not - as such - either threaten access to abortion facilities or the legal right to abortion. 

Many of my closest friends have argued very persuasively, and passionately, that there is no such thing as a right to protest directly outside an abortion clinic – and point out that women are extremely distressed by the nature of some of these protests. But for me, I do not accept that distress can be the basis for making things illegal. Many things about public life are distressing. In today’s climate, more and more speech and behaviour by other people is deemed as so traumatic it should be banned. For example, some find statues of historical figures distressing, or the presence of anti-abortion activists, gender critical activists or even free speech societies on university campus distressing, and plenty of people find ME in the House of Lords or on debate platforms distressing! But this shows us that distress is not a good basis for criminalising things. I made these points in my summation speech about the amendment. Read that here - Public Order Bill - Hansard - UK Parliament - or watch below.

I recognise that abortion is a morally complex issue about which reasonable people can have disagreements. Solving those disagreements in society is what debate and protest is about, and therefore we need to be extremely careful about criminalising protests surrounding these issues. This is especially important, it seems to me, in the context of the Public Order Bill as a whole, which - quite aside from the buffer zones - is representative of a climate of hostility to dissent, and a slippery slope in which rights are being too carelessly eroded.

What I personally am less torn on is a woman’s right to choose. Indeed, you can check your inbox TOMORROW for one of our Letters on Liberty on this very issue of the moral case FOR abortion by Ann Furedi.

You can hear more about all this, and more about my work in the Lords, in the videos above. In particular, I recorded this episode as it was announced that net migration had reached the highest level since the Second World War, and I offer some thoughts about what is driving both the anxiety around migration and the government’s inability to get to grips with the migration issue.

Please do watch and if you found this interesting, share this post, and our work, with your friends!