16:16 Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]

We need investment at scale in Nightingale courts, equipped with the latest DNA forensic testing technology, so that rapists can be charged, prosecuted and convicted in weeks, instead of victims living in fear for years, as this Bill allows. The Government should empower our citizens and communities, but instead they attack the rights of all of us to peaceful assembly and protest—trade unionists, EU remainers, climate change activists, anti-war protesters, and vote-at-16 enthusiasts. They are curtailing the freedom of expression that feeds a healthy, responsive democracy. That will drive protest underground, generating heat in place of light.

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16:57 Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con) [V]

Much has been said over the past few days about the right to protest: a new crackdown on protest, curbing civil liberties, and putting rights fundamental to our democracy at risk. This Bill does not do that. It is indeed our fundamental right to protest: to gather and to have a voice. No one is stopping that. But for some protestors, peaceful protest is just not enough. Last year in London, for example, we saw extreme disruptive tactics in the Extinction Rebellion march that reportedly cost the Metropolitan police £16 million. That is not police money; it is taxpayers’ money that would be better spent on, say, nature-based solutions to climate change. This fundamental right does not come with a right to act in a criminal way—to be violent or disruptive. There is no freedom without justice.

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17:15 Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP) [V]

All movements for change involve an element of peaceful protest. Think of the suffragettes. I am sure many of us did when we saw the photographs from Clapham common on Saturday night. If women cannot speak up to protest their rights, what is our society coming to? Yes, the Extinction Rebellion protests may have been very annoying to those of us going about our business on London’s streets and public transport, but those protesters were protesting the biggest problem of our age—climate change—and I think that gives them the right to be a bit annoying.

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17:36 Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab) [V]

By limiting the type of protests that can take place outside Parliament, this Parliament risks becoming even more detached, even more of a bubble than it already is, divorced from the very real concerns of the people we are elected to represent. Since becoming an MP, I have joined protests outside Parliament alongside people from my constituency in Cynon Valley, to save jobs in Wales and demonstrate about climate change.

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17:48 John McDonnell (Labour)

The Bill is aimed not just at the traditional progressive campaigners and trade unions; its target is the young—the younger generation that rejects the racism, sexism and misogyny that permeate our society and understands that its future is being placed at risk by the existential threat of climate change. Through their participation in mobilisations such as Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion, the young have discovered their power; so, too, have this Government recognised the power of the young. The Bill is about ensuring that the younger generation are prevented from exercising that power.

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