Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)

My Lords, the Committee is in the business of precision and proportionality. Those two concepts have rightly been raised by a number of noble Lords and my noble friends. It is because of reasons of proportionality and precision that I agree that the concept of “the vicinity” is too vague and too broad. I say that while completely acknowledging that places of worship are sensitive places and that it is completely proportionate within the European Convention on Human Rights to give them some extra protection. There is precedent in Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for the concepts of “area” and “vicinity” being too flabby and too broad. Noble Lords may remember that this allowed an area not defined to be designated for the purpose of suspicionless stop and search. In 2003, in response to the anti-arms demonstrations at the ExCeL centre in the Docklands, a number of protesters were stopped and searched and issued notices. Only through the parliamentary debates and litigation that followed did the public become aware that all of England and Wales had been designated during the Iraq war. That was the breadth of the area for suspicionless stop and search—a power that was used as an anti-protest power. That does not mean that there cannot be limitations, but they need some definition. After many years of litigation in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the UK Government were found wanting because of that breadth and the blanket nature of the power, because there was no definition. I am trying to help my noble friends in government by suggesting that concepts such as areas and vicinities will be better for definition, so I support my noble friend Lady Blower and commend her remarks in speaking to her amendment. I also commend my noble friend Lord Hain and remind the Committee that he was not just an anti-apartheid activist in his day, digging up sports fields and whatever else he was digging up—