Regular readers of my columns will know that I’m not a natural ally of the Labour Party.
For example, I believe that its current opposition to the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill – albeit belated – is broadly to be welcomed.
As suggested by the overly- long title of the proposed legislation, it is very much a dragnet, sweeping up all manner of issues together.
Some of these are admirable and reflect home secretary Priti Patel’s desire to reset the balance between the rights of the law-abiding individual and the punishments due to criminals. Examples include new measures to increase sentences for child killers and other violent criminals, toughen penalties for attacks on police officers and change sexual offences legislation to tackle abusive adults in positions of trust, such as teachers.
Others – not least the proposals to give police the most extraordinary powers to curtail peaceful and otherwise legal protests – are anti-libertarian and against long-established English freedoms.
If passed, the legislation would create a new offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”, which is in part defined as causing “serious annoyance” or “serious inconvenience”.
This means that the police could apply totally arbitrary measures as to, for example, the maximum noise limits allowed, regardless as to whether they were being made by a large crowd or a single individual.
If these limits have been judged at the time to have been breached, the Police would then have the powers to directly intervene on the basis that the noise is disrupting the “activities of an organisation” or has a “relevant impact on persons in the vicinity”.
Aside from officers conducting short market research surveys of those in the vicinity of any demonstration or being armed with noise monitors alongside their Tasers, this really means that it is entirely in the gift of the officer in charge to shut down a protest when he or she so wishes. And as you know, when you give anyone legal powers, they’ll use them, as clearly demonstrated over the past 12-months.
This is a serious potential diminution of the rights of individuals and an extraordinary over-reach in the powers of the state.
That it should manifest itself from within a broadly freedom-loving Government tells you all you need to know about how the apparatus of the state, unless checked by an ever-vigilant citizenry, tends towards authoritarianism.
In part, the new Bill builds on the powers that the state has taken for itself as a result of the COVID19 pandemic. As a lockdown sceptic, I’ve been consistently worried, both about the efficacy and the morality of individuals’ rights to act in their own self-interest and that of others, without a heavy-handed state forcing them in to submission.
Part of the problem has been the rather quiet opposition from Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
This has meant that lockdown powers continue to be rolled over for months at a time, including the emergency powers under the Coronavirus Act.
In a recent article for The Spectator magazine, James Forsyth rightly castigates this meaningful lack of scrutiny by the Labour Party which basically is allowing bad proposals to hurry their way onto the statute books. My big fear is the unintended consequences of this irresponsible evasion of responsibility.
But there are signs that an opposition is being mustered after the second reading of the bill was passed, from both the libertarian wing of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and a few others.
I would urge freedom-loving readers to write to their local MPs here in Suffolk and encourage them to support amendments to later readings of this Bill which preserve liberty and check the arbitrary powers being accorded to the agents of the state.
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