The comments made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 21 March 2021.
Unacceptable scenes in Bristol tonight.
Thuggery and disorder by a minority will never be tolerated.
Our police officers put themselves in harms way to protect us all.
My thoughts this evening are with those police officers injured.
The comments made by Sajid Javid, the Conservative MP for Bromsgrove, on 21 March 2021.
Thoughts and prayers tonight with injured police in Bristol.
Hope these violent criminals are apprehended and punished with the full force of the law.
The comments made by Sarah Jones, the Labour MP for Croydon Central, on 21 March 2021.
I hope this criminal behaviour is dealt with swiftly. Thoughts are with the police who have been injured.
The comments made by Nigel Farage, the former leader of the Brexit Party, on 21 March 2021.
In Bristol tonight we see what the soft-headed approach to the anti-police BLM leads to.
Wake up everyone, this is not about racial justice.
These people want all-out anarchy and street violence.
The statement made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 21 March 2021.
Awful, shocking scenes in Bristol.
There is no excuse whatsoever for this violence.
Thinking of those officers who have been injured, and their families, and wishing them a swift recovery.
The statement made by Will White from Avon and Somerset Police on 21 March 2021.
What started out as a peaceful protest has been turned by a small minority into a violent disorder.
These scenes are absolutely disgraceful and they will be widely condemned by people across the city. There can never be any excuse for wanton disorder.
Officers have been subjected to considerable levels of abuse and violence. One suffered a broken arm and another suffered broken ribs. Both have been taken to hospital. These are men and women out there with the intention of serving and protecting the public – they should never be subjected to assaults or abuse in this way.
At least two police vehicles have been set on fire and damage has been caused to the outside of the station. Protestors are not inside the building.
We have requested mutual aid from neighbouring forces to bring this incident to a safe conclusion.
All those involved in this criminal behaviour will be identified and brought to justice. There will be significant consequences for behaviour such as this.
The comments made by Sean Ivey, a former marine whose house was attacked following this intervention, on anti-social behaviour, on 17 March 2021. A JustGiving page was set up after the destruction caused to Ivey’s property.
TIME FOR CHANGE!!!
Last night, four males walked into my Mam and Dad’s house and robbed them. They were carrying weapons and threatened them both. They stole money, alcohol and very personal belongings with great sentimental value. And another thing, this was at 7.30! Half 7 at night and they just walked in!
What the hell is going on!!!!!
At the weekend, I had a run in with a young male riding like a lunatic on an off-road bike in Shotton and causing damage to people’s property. The following day I saw another riding down Wingate front street, pulling wheelies and mounting the paths.
Groups of young lads have been see riding around on quads through Wingate, Station Town, Shotton, Wheatley Hill, Thornley etc, with absolutely no consideration for the public. They also caused 1000’s of pounds worth of damage to a local airfield.
A local councillor recently had his car set on fire right in front of his bedroom and so the flames burst through the window, causing damage to his house. Another elderly man was broken into, assaulted and burgled in his bungalow a couple of years ago.
Young people are congregating outside of Wingate Tandoori, hurling abuse at passers by and throwing objects at cars. Due to the abuse and damage to his car, one delivery driver for the Tandoori had to leave… this has affected his livelihood!
I was speaking to one lady who works in Wingate and lives near the point where these youngsters are congregating. She gets a lift home because she is afraid of walking past them!!! And this is not a single case!
Once upon a time, these were isolated incidents but unfortunately, they are not anymore.
Something really has to change!!! I don’t know how and I do not know what we can do but I think it’s time that the people, the good people of our communities, got together and come up with some ideas to hopefully get rid of these thugs and clean up our streets.
People are afraid of reporting incidents to the police because of the potential repercussions. Kids are being kept on much shorter leashes because parents are afraid of what may happen to them.
To that end, I am calling on the local Parish Councils to call public meetings and get a real idea of how we really feel living amongst these criminals, and then WORK TOGETHER (NOT INDIVIDUALLY!), to get them off our streets. They move and cause damage from one place to another so there has got to be something done which targets the area as a whole, not just Wingate or Horden or Wheatley Hill etc!!!
EVERYONE! It’s also time for our local council representatives to earn your wage and help us come up with some solutions. The police cannot do it alone because they don not have the man power and they need the evidence to arrest and convict.
If you’re as pissed off as I am then please write to your local councils and bombard them with orders that something must be done.
The speech made by Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2021.
This monster of a Bill includes the word “women” zero times in 295 pages, yet statutes, war memorials and monuments are mentioned multiple times.
The Bill is likely to go into Committee, so it is then that I will seek to improve it by tabling an amendment to prohibit the long-standing and continual, daily harassment and intimidation of women at abortion facilities. Every year, 100,000 women across England and Wales who try to exercise their right to a termination are told that they are going to hell, filmed, followed and given propaganda that is inevitably medically wrong and unwanted. That is not healthy, noisy protest but the shaming of individual vulnerable women for decisions taken perhaps as a result of rape or similar. It is gendered harassment, which is not included in the Bill but overlaps with part 3—the explanatory notes talk about
“disruption to the life of the community”
when
“the purpose of the organiser is to intimidate others into doing or not doing something that they have a right to do”.
Many women will have recognised what the Home Secretary said yesterday about how we all too often quicken our pace or grab our keys or phone in uncomfortable street encounters. Factor in being booked for a time-sensitive medical operation and there is no easy escape. This intimidatory activity is calculated to make women cancel their appointment or, at the very best, rebook it for when those people are not there. There is unpredictability and inconsistency: only three local authorities have gone down the byelaw route of local public space protection orders. This cannot continue; it is unequal access to justice, if nothing else.
When I asked the Health Secretary in this Chamber for his opinion on anti-vaxxers, he told me that no one’s access to legal medicine should be barred or prevented. By lumping such a measure in with prosecuting sports coaches who groom teams, criminalising already-persecuted Traveller lifestyles and introducing excessive sentences for toppling statues, the Government are inevitably going to accuse those who oppose the Bill of being soft on sex offenders, which is really disappointing.
Harassment of women is objectively wrong; it is surely not party political. Indeed, the cross-party will of the House is behind such a measure. The last time my private Member’s Bill was put to a vote in June, the House voted for it by 213 to 47. I even had Government Members on the payroll coming up to me all day saying, “Good on you, I wish we could have voted for this too.” So it is high time we updated what is being done in common law and put into statute, followed Canada—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I am terribly sorry; we have to move on.
The speech made by Caroline Johnson, the Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2021.
The first duty of any Government is to protect members of the public from harm, and I welcome the swift progress that the Government have made on that. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the Government have beaten the target of recruiting 6,000 extra officers by March 2021 and are ahead of schedule to recruit, as promised, 20,000 more police officers by 2023. With a new cohort of police officers protecting our communities, we should give them the protection that they need to do the job to the best of their ability.
At a time when we are battling an invisible enemy—the coronavirus—our exceptional frontline workers should not be at risk of violence from the very people they are trying to protect. I am glad that the Government have shown that they will not tolerate such attacks and are legislating to double the maximum penalty for assaults on emergency workers from 12 months to two years in prison—the penalty that fits such an abhorrent and selfish crime.
At a time when we have been tragically reminded of the senseless violence perpetrated against women and girls, it is important that our communities are protected from the most serious offenders. A previous Labour Government introduced automatic early release at the halfway point; we are legislating to ensure that that stops and that those convicted of the most serious violent and sexual offences must serve at least two thirds of their sentence before parole is considered.
I welcome the fact that more robust sentences for the worst offenders will be combined with greater efforts to rehabilitate. For offenders stuck in the revolving door of crime there will be things such as electronic monitoring tags to ensure that long and restrictive curfews are adhered to. Sobriety tags, which were first piloted here in Lincolnshire, will ensure that individuals comply with alcohol abstinence orders. Such measures will ensure that once criminals have left custody, robust monitoring is still in place both to stop further harm and to break the cycle of reoffending.
I am pleased to see that those who use their car as a weapon will receive longer sentences, but as we increase sentences for careless driving I look to the Minister for reassurance that we will not criminalise those who have a momentary lapse in concentration—something most of us experience at some point.
Burglary is a particularly invasive crime that many of my constituents fear, and it leaves people feeling unsafe in their home. Will the Minister consider increasing sentences for those who commit this particularly invasive crime?
The Bill represents a significant strengthening of our judicial system, with the flexibility to tackle both serious crime and the causes of crime. I am proud to see this Government delivering on their manifesto commitment to empower our judicial system and make our country safer, and I will support the Bill today.
The speech made by Jon Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2021.
I join others in expressing my condolences. This Bill continues the authoritarian drift of this Government. First, we had the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill, which basically gives immunity to people abroad serving our country who committed torture. Then we had immunity given to state agents breaking the law in our country, including the crime of rape. Now we have clause 59 of the Bill, which proposes a 10-year jail sentence for causing the risk of “serious annoyance”—those are the words in the Bill. Note that is not even for causing “annoyance”, but for causing the risk that there may be annoyance. There are many things with which we might risk causing annoyance every day, but it is only in dictatorships or repressive regimes that such actions are subject to drastic sentencing.
This Government claim to have their roots in libertarianism and, of course, they are champions of liberty, but it is liberty only for the powerful and the wealthy, the “get rich quick” merchants and the spivs, those whose freedoms allow them to cause all kinds of annoyance—firing decent, hard-working employees and then rehiring them on worse conditions and paying poverty wages. Now we have a new freedom—the freedom to bung multimillion-pound taxpayer contracts to mates in the private sector. They have set their sights on our tradition of dissent, because their legislation is designed to crack down on our rights to take action against injustice. Black Lives Matter activists, workers who take industrial action, environmentalists and the women’s movement are all in their sights.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend and I have organised and been on many peaceful protests together. The measures in this Bill are so regressive that, under them, surely some of those protests that we have been on would have ended up in scenes like those we saw on Clapham common, with us and others being arrested. This shows that peaceful protest is not safe under the remit of the Bill.
Jon Trickett
I have indeed worked many times with my hon. Friend on all kinds of activities. What the Government have in their sights are the ancient rights of assembly and freedom of association, which are now threatened by clause 59. The fundamental right to free speech means nothing if these other freedoms come under attack. We may end up with a situation in which we are free to shout at the telly in the privacy of our own homes but not free to organise ourselves collectively in public.
It is not as if our country has done away with all forms of injustice and inequality, is it? Yet instead of standing against injustice alongside, for example, the women on Clapham common the other night, the Government appear to be more interested in empowering the police force to arrest people who the state judges to have risked causing annoyance. It is interesting that many police officers have said that they do not wish that power to be bestowed upon them.
This House of Commons should be a beacon of liberty—a protector of our rights to speak, associate freely and assemble in public to express our reservations about how the country is going. Repressive legislation will never eliminate the thirst and hunger for justice that remains so powerful in our country today. It is the duty of the Commons to stand up this evening and reject this Bill.