Submission by BSWN to the Public Bill Committee for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill
This submission is supported by colleagues in the South West including:
The Bristol Commission on Race Equality (CoRE) Dorset Race Equality Council
Wiltshire Racial Equality Council
Plymouth & Devon Racial Equality Council Bristol Somali Resource Centre
Exeter Communities Together
RAISE South West CIC
Creative Connex
South Gloucestershire Race Equality Network
We would first make some introductory points. Firstly, we use the expression ‘Black’ to refer to ethnic minority communities of people of colour because BSWN traditionally represents such communities in Bristol and the South West. We recognise that there are many ethnic minority communities in the South West, including Gypsy and Traveller Communities but while we willingly help people from these communities when they turn to us for help, generally they tend to be represented by their own community organisations.
Secondly, this submission does not intend to be a comprehensive response to the legislation proposed. Others cover that ground more than adequately and we particularly endorse the points made by Liberty in their evidence to the Government in their written evidence of May 2021. Black South West Network’s (and our colleagues supporting this submission) evidence concentrates on matters felt strongly in Bristol and the West of England and particularly by the Black communities we represent and these matters include the discriminatory effect of the proposals in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (hereinafter ‘the Bill’) on Black people, the threat to the right of assembly and protest and the measures relating to damage to memorials. We particularly support the submissions made in Liberty’s submission on trespass and encampments and in this regard, we also support the submissions of our colleagues Friends, Families & Travellers in their demand for the removal of Part 4 of the proposed legislation.
Thirdly we make the general point that a bill aimed at reforming police powers, Criminal Justice, Sentencing and the Courts should properly be about how these proposed reforms impact on civil society; yet this bill, where it addresses serious violence, seems to seek to stray into areas which are more properly the area of activity of the security services. In doing so it seems to us that parts of the Bill are in danger of turning our police, who police us by consent, into something dangerously approaching B.O.S.S. in apartheid South Africa - quite apart from the fact that Part 2 Chapter 1 of the Bill imposes a statutory duty on healthcare authorities, youth services, local authorities and education providers to collaborate with each other and the police to prevent and tackle ‘serious violence’ which is undefined but seems to mean terrorism. While clearly the police must have an involvement in the detection and arrest of terrorists there is a clear line between a democratically accountable police force policing us in accordance with the rules of a free society and the state’s security services which have a duty to monitor dangerous elements, detect them and keep us all safe.
Firstly, then, let us address the radical restriction of protest rights in Part 3 (clauses 54-60) of the Bill. This section constitutes a concerted attack on the right to protest, arrived at through several different means - from amending previous legislation to extending the police’s already extensive powers, to creating new offences, and targeting the manner, the method, the location and even the noise level of demonstrations. Taken together, these provisions would radically restrict not only our deeply cherished principles of freedom of assembly and expression, but also a vital tool and mechanism available to citizens of democratic countries to stand up to the State and make their voices heard. The former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, in ‘The Guardian’ on 2 April 2021 writes:
‘Protest might be inconvenient for politicians, but it acts as a pressure valve, allowing citizens to express their views and vent frustrations that could otherwise boil over. Irish politicians such as John Finucane MP have drawn on their experience of the Troubles to warn that stifling protest won’t work and risks undermining the belief that each of us has a stake in society. If we suppress protest, we could see more anger towards institutions including the police, the judiciary and parliament. We would lose the civil engagement and sense of celebration that we see at events such as women’s marches or Pride.’
We fully agree. Clause 54 introduces conditions, whether to public processions or static events, which border on the absurd for it allows the police to impose conditions on a procession if they have a reasonable belief that the noise generated by persons taking part in the procession may “result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried on in the vicinity of the procession” or may “have a significant and relevant impact on persons in the vicinity”. It confers a power on the Home Secretary to make regulations detailing the meaning of “serious disruption to the activities of an organisation carried on in the vicinity”. As Anne McLaughlin MP stated while speaking in the House of Commons on this section of the Bill and referring to the proposal to ban demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament Square,
“We will not hear them because we are putting in an exclusion zone around Parliament so far-reaching that what they have to say—their legitimate protest—will not fall on deaf ears; they will simply be so far away that it will not be audible. They will effectively be silenced. I want those people to know that I do not want them silenced, even if they are opposed to what I stand for. I want to be a Member of a Parliament that embraces democracy; the Bill is doing the opposite, and it is embarrassing”.
BSWN adopts this sentiment for what is a protest if it does not cause at least some inconvenience as a means of publicising the issue under protest?
BSWN was at the centre of the controversy in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protest in the summer of 2020 which culminated in the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol harbour. Clause 46 of the Bill would amend the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 to remove consideration of monetary value from “any offence committed by destroying or damaging a memorial.” In effect, this means that the court is no longer restricted to the maximum sentence of 3 months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of up to £2,500, based on the monetary value of the memorial. Instead, courts may issue the maximum penalty under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 of 10 years in prison. This is a clear response to that protest. There have been similar incidents and controversy surrounds the pillar on which a statue in Edinburgh of Henry Dundas who delayed the passing of the legislation making slavery in the British Empire illegal is situated dominating the centre of the city. Clearly incidents such as the desecration of Jewish cemeteries cannot go unpunished, but BSWN (and our colleagues above) is unapologetic about the removal of Colston’s statue. Such statues (like that of Dundas) are the relics of the sentiment of the time and may have been erected not by popular demand but for sycophantic reasons to please some local dignitary or even a dictator - one thinks of the famous pictures of Saddam Hussain’s statue being unceremoniously hauled down in Baghdad. Such acts, where no-one is hurt and which amount to letting off steam on what is a feeling of public outrage, should be legislated for with far more sensitivity and a sense of realism than Sec. 46.
As organisations focused on campaigning for race equality our particular concerns about the Bill are about the discriminatory effect of many of its provisions. Clauses 7 and 8 require NHS staff, local authorities and other public bodies to collaborate and to prevent and reduce serious violence while Causes 9, 15 and 16 establish wide- ranging powers for the Secretary of State to authorize disclosure of information. These provisions make clear that any disclosure to the police of information under these clauses would not breach a professional person’s legal or other professional obligation to maintain client confidentiality. These provisions will facilitate the expansion or creation of large police databases containing far more information than would traditionally be needed for policing. We have particular concerns about allowing the police to monitor the day-to-day functioning of the work of healthcare, education and other public bodies intruding on their right to perform their duties in their own professional sphere with the excuse that this provides the police with a tool in reducing serious violence.
The government must be aware of the powerful recommendations of The Young Review published in 2012. In that report the figures of those in prison and in custody were of great concern to all those with an interest in crime prevention and reduction and the rehabilitation of offenders. For example, there was greater disproportionality in the number of black people in prisons in the UK than in the United States and:
13.1% of prisoners self-identified as Black, compared with approximately 2.9% of the over 18 population recorded in the 2011 Census
Similarly Muslim prisoners accounted for 13.4% of the prison population compared with 4.2 % in the 2011 Census.
This figure had risen sharply since 2002 when Muslim prisoners were 7.7% of the prison population.
Furthermore, the more recent Lammy Review, an independent review into the treatment of and outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System (2017) has laid bare the disproportionality of those from a ‘Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background’ caught up in the criminal justice system. Both these important reviews explain how young Black and Muslim men in particular find themselves stigmatized and targeted. Just as the Prevent duty has disproportionately targeted Muslim and minority ethnic communities, it is likely that these human rights abuses would be felt most acutely by those already over-policed and over-represented in the criminal justice system.
Furthermore, the Serious Violence Prevention Duty (see following para.) would be imbued with all the assumptions and stereotypes that persist in the policing of serious violence contrary to the right to non-discrimination and the Public Sector Equality duty. We find ourselves in complete agreement with the warnings set out in Liberty’s passage in their submission at page 8 para.21 on Predictive Policing which practice by the police seems to us to be a system which simply adopts and endorses the mistakes of the past.
We have serious concerns about Serious Violence Reduction Orders (see Part 10 Clauses 139 & 140 of the Bill). The power to impose a SVRO hands the police a highly oppressive tool creating an individualised suspicion-less stop and search power entirely untethered to a specific and independently verifiable threat. This power may be exercised not just in relation to someone found in possession of an offensive weapon but any person in a group which includes the carrier of the weapon. Such a person might be entirely unaware that someone in the group is carrying a weapon and be entirely averse to violence. The Government must be aware of the doubts about the effectiveness of the police’s existing powers of Stop and Search which are at least accompanied by the proviso that the power can only be exercised where the constable has reason to believe that the alleged offender is carrying a weapon or in possession of a forbidden substance.
Another feature of the proposed use of SVROs is the power to intervene and impose an SRVO where the victim has a previous conviction or convictions. This is a complete reversal of the presumption of innocence. It is a long-standing rule of the system of justice in the UK that the disclosure of an accused’s previous criminal record ( if any ) cannot be disclosed until he or she has been found guilty of an offence. This power to stop and search an individual in the street for no better reason than that they have a previous conviction offends against that principle.
The existing powers of Stop and Search are just one element of the tools of a system which black people see as loaded against them. We have already referred to the findings of the Young Review and the Lammy Review which bear out the truth behind these feelings. Indeed, black people are 8.9 times more likely to be subject to a stop and search than white people, and other people of colour are 4.1 times more likely to be targeted by the power. In Dorset, that figure inexplicably rises to over 14 times in a county with a very low proportion of black people.
In conclusion, whilst we are already concerned about the lack of confidence in the police in Bristol and the South West among the communities we represent - predominantly Black people – we fears that the powers which the Bill will give the police and the state and the erosion of jealously guarded human rights will further erode that trust. We have in this country a tradition of being policed by consent and law enforcement has traditionally worked well where there is a general feeling that the police go about their duties as guardians of our safety and guarantors of our freedoms. This is not a feeling shared throughout the Black communities and the powers claimed by this Bill will exacerbate that widely feared feeling of distrust.