Examination of Witness (Questions 500-519)
Mr Tony McNulty MP
17 JUNE 2008
Q500 Lord Tyler: There is also a
hiatus of course when they have not actually been passed so we
should not be falling back on them as a reliable set of regulations.
Mr McNulty: That is absolutely right. What we
do get to in terms of the broader regulatory architecture rather
than legislative between the House authorities and the police
is important and that is why we need to consult them, but it partly
goes back to what I was saying about mythology: the notion that
we can rely upon Sessional Orders to clear up all the difficulties
around unrestricted access is precisely that—mythology.
Q501 Chairman: Should we drop Sessional
Orders altogether then?
Mr McNulty: No. I think the relationship between
the House authorities and the metropolis does set out a reasonable
framework but, as Lord Tyler has said, I think it quite instructive
that they have not been utilised by the Commons for some time.
What I was trying to say was if there is either a different form
of Sessional Order, or some other regulatory architecture that
can prevail between the House authorities and the Metropolitan
Police to achieve the same goal, then I am quite relaxed about
that. Whether that involves dropping them or not, I do not know
until that discussion has been had.
Q502 Emily Thornberry: If the provisions
of the 2005 Act are abolished there has been some concern raised
that the police and other authorities would not have sufficient
powers to prevent noise disturbance, particularly the use of loudspeakers.
Do you think that they would be left with sufficient powers, or
do you think it does not matter?
Mr McNulty: This is not meant to be facetious
but I was going to say their powers would be sufficient as they
are now, notwithstanding SOCPA; i.e. not terribly strong anyway,
but there are regulatory frameworks and legislation and some bylaws
that could indeed prevail around the issue of noise disturbance.
Equally that is a reason why I highlight noise as well as access
as the two areas that we do need to talk to the House authorities
about in some more detail. I do not think it is any better or
worse with the removal of SOCPA and I do not think even if it
was that noise disturbance should be the reason why we do not
start from the presumption that there should be as free and unfettered
right to protest and demonstrate in the Square as possible.
Q503 Emily Thornberry: Section 134
gives the police a general power to impose conditions on the maximum
permissible noise levels to prevent hindrance to the proper operation
of Parliament, although I think it has been confirmed that the
police do not tend to use it.
Mr McNulty: No. Equally I would underline the
question in part is not simply noise disturbance level the larger
the crowd; there can be noise disturbances when the crowd is very
small, as we have seen.
Q504 Emily Thornberry: One of the
things that we have been particularly exercised about is the lone
protestors with loudspeakers for long amounts of time. What is
your view about whether or not there should be some powers in
place to allow there to be some control over that?
Mr McNulty: That is why I have set aside noise
as well as access to discuss further with the House authorities
in the first instance. On a purely personal view, which is deeply
courageous of any Government minister, I would say it is an irritant
but no more than that, and certainly has not impeded in any way
shape or form my ability to do what I do in my little way inside
the estate, but it is a pain.
Q505 Chairman: Did the Government
have discussions with House authorities before bringing in the
2005 Act?
Mr McNulty: I notified the Speaker's Office
that this was the route that we were seeking to go and would value
at some stage wider discussion around areas, particularly like
noise and access, with the Speaker and, through him, the House
authorities before we came to any long term conclusion around
some of the issues we have been discussing, but that the principle
of repealing these particular sections of SOCPA relating to Parliament
Square was something that the Speaker's Office, and I think the
wider House authorities, welcomed.
Q506 Chairman: I was wondering if
there were those discussions before we legislated for SOCPA?
Mr McNulty: No, because I think we were very
clear that the House authorities' views were not going to impact
on whether we should repeal SOCPA or otherwise, but clearly, as
I have said, there was a role for the House authorities, particularly
around noise and access, when looking at what will prevail if
SOCPA does not.
Q507 Lord Campbell of Alloway: What
are your views? Could you give us any information about whether
you are going to remove all the placards, the erection of tents
and one thing and another in Parliament Square on environmental
grounds? People come to this country and see this muck lying around
all over the place. Is anyone thinking about it, is anyone doing
anything about it and is there any prospect that anything shall
ever be done about it?
Mr McNulty: Plenty of people are thinking about
it or have thought about it. I would say given where we have got
to, and where particularly Westminster City Council has got to,
it is their little strip of highway, as you will know, then the
prospects of doing much about it are very limited and I would
not want to give anyone the impression that repealing SOCPA and
those proposals that are before us is going to do anything about
that particular display because I do not think it will.
Q508 Lord Campbell of Alloway: How
do we do something about it? How do we get onto this? Whose responsibility
is it?
Mr McNulty: As I understand it, that strip of
highway is Westminster City Council's. Westminster City Council
have tried variously through planning laws, unauthorised advertising
hoardings and other such attempts to get much of the display taken
down but without success. The difficulty in the broader sense
under the law is that whilst it might be public highway, given
the current configuration of Parliament Square you could not honestly
say that it is an imposition on people's right to walk the public
highway unfettered, given that nobody walks on that particular
strip. I suspect—it is again only a personal view—that
if the Mayor and the Greater London Authority move forward with
their plans for a World Square and pedestrianise much of what
is immediately in front of Parliament between where the display
is and block off that bit of the road, and the equivalent bit
on the other side in front of what I think we now have to call
the Supreme Court, then the traffic configuration there and the
broadening up of that particular stretch of highway may mean that
things can be done to that display that cannot be done at the
moment whilst the Square is configured in the particular way that
it is. I am sorry not to offer much hope in that regard but I
do stress that nothing that we are proposing here in terms of
SOCPA and discussions with the House authorities will do anything
at all to that particular display.
Q509 Mark Lazarowicz: On the issue
of noise, like yourself I tend to regard the noise as an irritant
and that is all, but on the other hand I have an office which
has a window over an internal courtyard, whereas colleagues who
have offices at the front clearly take a different view as to
the effect of the disturbance. Is it not right to think of having
some coherent framework of regulation to cover the control of
noise in this location because otherwise we are going to keep
coming back to this every couple of years with people just not
being able to cope with the level of noise? Is it not better to
have a clear framework which tries to control the level of noise
while at the same time trying to minimise the impact and the right
to protest?
Mr McNulty: It may well be but I think that
is more properly done between us, the Metropolitan Police and
the House authorities to see, quite rightly, what that coherent
framework should be. It might depend more readily on local bylaws.
It might well be—who knows—something for a broader
and perhaps more efficacious set of Sessional Orders or it might
be something in between. What I do not think it is is something
that is absolutely germane to a national legislative framework
that treats this place, however sensitive, as much like any other
place as possible in the context of protests and demonstration.
I do not disagree but that is what the discussion with the House
authorities in the first instance will be about along with the
point about access.
Q510 Lord Morgan: We have dealt with
more permanent protests and we have heard calls from the Clerk
of the House and the Serjeant at Arms for a ban on permanent protests.
On the one hand what would you think about the human rights aspect
of that? On the other hand, what do you feel about the point that
long term protest, which make protest a way of life, prevents
other people from protesting?
Mr McNulty: It is a novel manifestation, that
is very clear, and I think we would start from the presumption
of not trying to impede protest in the Square at all and whether
the authorities at large, like it or not, there is almost, to
use the planning lexicon, an established use there; ie the particular
individual has been there for some time. Until we do get some
sort of reconfiguration of the public highway and the traffic
around the Square, we are stuck with that particular instance.
I would not like to go down the notion of other suggestions too
where perhaps a little bit of the Square can be put aside for
static and more long term demonstrations or that they can be controlled
in other fashions. I do not say it lightly but we do start from
the premise that free and unfettered access for demonstration
and protest should be the norm.
Q511 Lord Morgan: Would residence
and the fact that people would be sleeping overnight there and
so on in the long term, would that give—
Mr McNulty: I think that is problematic and
as and when things in the Square move in terms of its current
configuration, I think that should be looked at. Part of the difficulties
as I understand it is that because it is such a narrow strip there,
because it is public highway and Westminster City Council's rather
than the rest of the Square which is the Greater London Authority's,
that is part of the difficulty. I would not support an outright
ban and I do not think much is going to change unless the configuration
of the whole Square is going to change, but we do need to seriously
reflect not just there, but elsewhere, on the conflict between
a static and permanent demonstration and this weekend's demo of
whatever description. I think you will have heard that the individual
concerned got on terribly well apparently with the Countryside
Alliance and that all went tickety-boo, but that is not always
going to necessarily be the case. Whatever form the static is
may well conflict with whatever the wider demonstration is and
we do have to balance all these competing rights and responsibilities
that go with them.
Q512 Chairman: I was a little concerned
about your reference to reliance on bylaws. What if bylaws did
impose complete bans that may even be non-compliant with human
rights? How would the Government respond to that?
Mr McNulty: As I understand it, I do not think
they would be lawful if they were going for outright bans that
contradicted the broader national legal framework. My point about
bylaws was simply they can and have been used more generally in
the planning world for things like noise abatement and the reduction
of noise where noise is a nuisance; so just in that narrow element
in terms of how to deal with noise around a loudspeaker, for example,
rather than the noise of considerable thousands in the Square.
It was just in that very narrow focus. I am not saying that we
are going to rely on the wonder of City of Westminster bylaws
for the policing of protests in Parliament Square.
Q513 Chairman: You are aware that
Westminster Council, the Mayor's Office and indeed the police
are in close co-operation; in fact they appeared here together.
Does that extend to consultation with government and indeed House
authorities so far as you are aware? Do you have a relationship
with them that allows these things to be looked at in the round?
Mr McNulty: I think we do have that broad relationship.
Had we had those discussions specifically on Parliament Square,
no, I do not think so, or I certainly have not, but I am sure
officials did.
Q514 Lord Tyler: I think many of
us share your basic premise and welcome it but I wonder whether
you therefore would be sympathetic to the view that has been put
to us in evidence that when the Square is re-planned to make it
more accessible for pedestrians, that might be a moment to make
it even more evident that this is the right place for people to
demonstrate their democratic right to support as well as to oppose
what may be happening in their Parliament and therefore we should
be looking towards something that would in a sense give self-discipline
to the Square by relocating Speaker's Corner in the Square. Do
you think that would be a good way to be looking at this situation?
Mr McNulty: I think it may well be. The starting
premise that if there is to be the development of the Square into
pedestrianised zones and part of this World Square type concept
that the last Mayor had, and which I do not think the new one
has resiled from and hopefully endorses, that should be an opportunity
to do both what you have suggested, which I would broadly endorse,
and try with all the assorted authorities to deal with issues
around noise, access and all the other elements all at once and
maybe even static demonstrations I think would be a splendid idea.
Q515 Lord Tyler: Is it your view
that if everybody had a right to express a view in Parliament
Square on an equal basis this would put in context the one and
only lone permanent protest which would then be rather diluted?
Mr McNulty: I am not sure that that is my view.
I am not sure I would want 15 static long term demonstrations
in the Square newly transformed as a World Square with pedestrianised
areas or otherwise, but I do think the essential premise that
this is quite appropriately a place that people come to air views
to MPs and peers of the realm is absolutely right. Most people
would accept that starting premise and accept that that should
happen within the context of the law, quite properly, and your
point that all these matters should be explored if we are transforming
it into a World Square, including I would say noise access and
other elements, is absolutely right.
Q516 Lord Norton of Louth: I am merely
coming back to an issue I think you may feel that you have already
answered. Certainly when we had the Serjeant at Arms and Black
Rod before us they took the view that, from the point of view
of a security risk, the existing legislation was not sufficient,
but the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile,
takes the view that now with the anti-terrorism legislation in
place it is sufficient. I take it from what you were saying in
opening that you would side with Lord Carlile that the legislation
is adequate?
Mr McNulty: I would absolutely, alongside the
other significant change since 2005 which is the assorted security
paraphernalia around the estate, I think that is right. That,
of course, in terms of the paraphernalia and how secure the site
is is always kept under review, but I think I would absolutely
side with Lord Carlile on that and think things are appropriate.
As I have said, in terms of broader security issues as and when
there are demonstrations and protest, I think ultimately in terms
of impact and effects on security then much of that security and
counter-terrorism legislation can, if need be, be brought to bear.
Q517 Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen:
Can we look at the public safety risk because, if SOCPA is repealed,
the police will lose their powers to impose conditions on a protest
on the grounds of the public safety risk. What do you think the
implications would be and do you think there are other powers
that we can rely upon to address public safety at the moment?
Mr McNulty: I think the police can, when a demonstration
or protest is happening, have due right under the law to constantly
review that public safety risk. But if we start from the premise,
as many of the consultees said, that the very notion that, under
SOCPA, you have to ask in advance for the right to demonstrate
that is probably anti-democratic and runs against the vein of
spontaneous protest. Even in that context I think there is still
sufficient provision for protecting the broader public safety
realm under public order and various other elements of legislation.
Even on the day of an event, it is still incumbent on the police
to bear in mind broader public safety concerns and risks in terms
of too many people in too small an area and various other aspects.
The broader public safety and welfare of the wider public on an
ongoing basis as they are policing a demonstration or protest
are core powers which do not diminish or go because of the repeal
of sections 132 to 138 of SOCPA. It is still a very strong duty.
Q518 Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen:
You would agree with Liberty and Baroness Mallalieu, who actually
maintain just what you have said, that in fact even if SOCPA is
repealed there are already in existence the laws for the police
to be able to act.
Mr McNulty: Yes, I would broadly.
Q519 Chairman: What core powers are
you talking about when you say there are sufficient in place?
You mentioned obstruction simply for access and so on, but what
other powers do you think?
Mr McNulty: I think broadly many of those outlined
in the memorandum. Even under the public order legislation there
is broad provision to maintain the wider public safety and risk
to the public and that is germane to the very core of policing
a protest and demonstration wherever it happens and that public
safety and public risk that I mention is as important to arresting
or picking someone up on public order offences as the fact that
they may well be able to commit some subsequent offence. That
is absolutely central to policing in the broadest sense.
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