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Mr. Vernon Coaker (Gedling): Having spoken on Second Reading and from listening to the debate in Committee so far, I think that we have not only improved the Bill but are significantly continuing to do so. That should make us all proud of the procedures that we are adopting. As we saw, dialogue, debate and discussion between my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), led to considerable improvement. Such constructive dialogue and opposition is the House working at its best.
I want specifically to speak against Liberal Democrat amendment No. 20, to which the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) spoke,
which would delete the fourth option. I want to address the point that he made--and made well, although I fundamentally disagree with it. It is a very important point for the Committee to consider. I made the point on Second Reading and do so again under the amendment.With such legislation, there is always a clash between public interest and individual liberty. Law in general often infringes the rights of individuals to pursue their actions or freedoms without constraint. We do not allow people so to behave because we believe that, for the common good, in the public interest, there must be certain constraints on the actions and freedoms of individuals. We therefore legislate on different issues to constrain individuals. We have one such piece of legislation before us.
The Bill is about how we as a Parliament and a Government consider the problem of football hooliganism and deal with it. We have the serious problem of a number of individuals who are exercising their freedoms in a way that impacts on the law-abiding majority not only in this country but in other countries. That presents us with the difficult question of whether, because such people are infringing the rights of the majority--the rights of the majority of those conducting business, of countless families to enjoy football matches or go abroad without feeling harassed, and of huge numbers of people to feel free from fear--a limited number of individuals should forfeit some rights that we would normally wish to convey to them.
I think that the honest answer to that question is yes. Although the majority of people in this country would not wish their Government to legislate for the fourth option, I think that they would reluctantly conclude that, if the law is not to fall into disrepute, it must deal with the unacceptable behaviour that they have seen and the awful way in which some people have abused their freedoms.
Mr. Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman makes a very clear point, but would he take it to this conclusion: that it is justifiable for some people who are innocent either to have their liberties taken away or to be convicted, rather than that some people who are guilty should be let off? The existing criminal process always tends to let off some of the guilty rather than convict some of the innocent. Which side of that line does he fall?
Mr. Coaker: My point is that we have to curtail the individual liberty of some to protect the liberties of the many. That is why I support the fourth option--not because it will be popular or because it is something in which we can glory, but because it is a measure that people feel is necessary if we are to protect the law-abiding majority.
Mr. Gummer: If the hon. Gentleman could be assured that everyone made subject to the Bill will be guilty, the views he expresses would be perfectly right, but our concern is that the Bill will result in large numbers of people who are not guilty finding themselves subject to a process that will be extremely damaging to them, and that they will have few means of averting that damage.
Mr. Coaker: First, I do not believe that the number of people will necessarily be large; and, secondly, the police
will ultimately have to take individuals involved before the courts. Any law has the potential to affect individuals who are accused of doing something that they have not done, or who have not done anything wrong.My point is that I believe that the majority of people in this country feel that it is necessary for Parliament to reflect their concern about the way in which some so-called football supporters conduct themselves. They believe that Parliament needs to act. I believe that the majority of people outside and inside the House accept the necessity of our taking actions that, in an ideal world, we would not want to take. In other words, the curtailment of the liberty of some individuals is necessary if the law-abiding majority is to be protected. If the law fails to protect the majority who conform to it, that brings the law into disrepute.
Of course, the individual must be protected under the law and we must respect people's rights, but we cannot do that at the expense of public disorder, which flies in the face of the public interest. We cannot allow the law-abiding majority to feel that their rights are being usurped and that the rights of those who do not respect the law are being put before theirs.
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet): My name appears above the lead amendment, along with that of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and others. If the hon. Gentleman chooses to press it to a Division, I shall support it, and I shall outline the reasons why.
I am especially glad to have waited long enough to be speaking after the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), because he has, inadvertently, articulated all my fears. Those fears were mentioned the other night by my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), and no one doubts that he has worked extremely hard to respond to those issues. The hon. Gentleman has, in effect, echoed something that my hon. Friend said on Second Reading: that, in the interests of the greater good, the liberties of a few may need to be curtailed.
I represent a constituency in east Kent--one of those constituencies that is closest to the continent; one of those constituencies with greatest access to the channel ports of Ramsgate, Dover and Folkestone, and to Le Shuttle; one of those areas where the innocent law-abiding citizens are extremely likely to be affected by the legislation. Those are not, as was suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford and the hon. Member for Gedling, the minority. They are the majority.
Thousands of people travel daily through the port of Dover, and millions of people travel annually through the south coast ports. Most of them are law-abiding citizens, with no convictions in any court anywhere in the world, going about their lawful business. Under the Bill, those people are just as likely to be picked up as those whom the Home Secretary described as going abroad with a view to causing trouble. Unless we issue the Kent constabulary with crystal balls, I do not see how those policemen are to distinguish one from the other.
Ms Ward: Surely the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that a large majority of his constituents act in a way that might reasonably be considered to arouse the suspicion that they will cause disorder or behave violently, or that
they have convictions for violence in the past. Is he suggesting that a large majority or all of his constituents, as I understood him to say, fall into that category?
Mr. Gale: I am grateful to the hon. Lady because she leads me to my next point. During the timetable debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) suggested that although the Bill is supposed to deal with football hooligans, the overwhelming majority of people travelling across the channel during potential closed seasons, which the Bill will introduce, are not going anywhere near a football match and have no desire to do so.
Those people are travelling from all over the south coast of England and beyond, from London and East Anglia, to spend a couple of days across the channel, to go shopping in Cite de l'Europe or Ocean or wherever, to buy their duty-free goods and put our traders in east Kent out of business. That, at present, is their lawful right. They have nothing at all to do with football.
Having travelled frequently on channel ferries, I can say, and the hon. Lady may agree, that not all those travellers are endearingly attractive. One or two, on the passage out and on the passage back, have been known to consume alcohol. It is just possible that some of them may attract the eye of Mr. Plod.
The Bill places on the Kent constabulary a duty somehow to discern the day-trip traveller, the two-day traveller, the person visiting northern France, and others who may or may not be going to a football match, some of whom may or may not have an aura about them that suggests unpleasantness.
The Home Secretary said at the Dispatch Box earlier that the Bill would give the police powers to apprehend and detain people who had no convictions. As I said, I am not sure how the police will work that one out. The other night the Home Secretary told the House that of 950-odd people arrested during Euro 2000, only about half had criminal convictions. Therefore, he said, we need to control the others who had no previous convictions, implying that all the people who had been pulled in by the police were guilty--of what? It is of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and, as a result, under the Bill, having a stain on their character that could lead to their being pulled in by the police next time they wanted to go abroad.
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