Member

I do not think the 50-metre test mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, would work. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, mentioned access and egress from a place of worship but, as importantly, the distance you need to keep from a protester is either throwing distance, shouting distance—so they can make their point and probably abuse somebody in the process—or away from amplified sound, which can be quite a distance. Given the geography of many of the locations where protests might happen, I understand the point about making it a discrete area, but 50 metres could never work and I think trying to determine the distance would be quite difficult. Vicinity can work, because it is a reasonable test. We should leave that for the courts to decide and give the cops the opportunity to make the decision based on the circumstances they face. I am afraid that 50 metres is nowhere near reasonable.