Protest is banned... by order of a Dead Parrot Parliament
WE HAVE ceased to be a parliamentary democracy. There was no military putsch. Nobody passed an Enabling Act allowing rule by decree. But the House of Lords and the House of Commons are now the Dead Parrot Parliament.
They are dead because they do nothing to hold the Government to account. They are parrots because, when asked, they obediently confirm decrees Downing Street put into effect, sometimes weeks before. We used to jeer that the so-called parliaments of Communist and Fascist states were mere rubber stamps. Well, we cannot jeer now.
The most shocking instance of this so far was the £10,000 fine imposed on the eccentric weather forecaster Piers Corbyn (brother of Jeremy) for his part in organising a protest in London.
That protest has, in my view, been wrongly portrayed as a mass of weirdos and conspiracy theorists. No doubt such people, and worse, were there. But many went to it out of a feeling their liberties are fast disappearing under a strange new regime based on fear and panic.
The keen-eyed lawyer Matthew Scott, an experienced barrister, is among many neutral observers greatly disturbed by what is happening. You may not like Mr Corbyn, and I have my problems with him, too. But he is in a fine and ancient tradition of troublemakers who have endured derision for standing up for what they think is right, so helping to keep us all free. They did not care if they were liked.
BUT what Mr Scott says is deeply worrying. The regulation used to fine Mr Corbyn – 5b of the Coronavirus Act – ‘was hastily made law the day before the demonstration was held. It was introduced under an emergency procedure and was neither debated nor given even the most cursory scrutiny by any parliamentary process.
‘It permits the most junior Community Support Officer in the country to issue a Fixed Penalty Notice to the suspected organiser of a political event, demanding £10,000 to avoid prosecution and consequent financial ruin.
‘Given its timing, even if it was not introduced with the purpose of targeting the organisers of a political protest against Government policy, it very much has that appearance.’
So a hugely important law, greatly shrinking the freedom of every Briton, was made on Friday and used, in my view rather selectively, on Sunday. No Green Paper. No White Paper. No First and Second Readings. No Committee Stage. No revision by the Upper House. No wait for Royal Assent. Just wham, thump, down goes the rubber stamp, and you must pay up!
Challenge this in the courts and you could end up with an unlimited fine and, ultimately, prison. But there was not even the pretence of a trial, which in my view is a blatant breach of the Bill of Rights of 1689. The police just grabbed Mr Corbyn, Belarus-style, and held him for hours before presenting him with an enormous bill.
Yet months of mostly Left-wing protest by Black Lives Matter, or against politically incorrect statues, went by with hardly a whisper of action. For it is one of the features of our new State of Fear that it acts with ferocity against anyone who suggests the fear is misplaced. If you refuse to be afraid of a not-very-severe outbreak of disease which is largely over, you’ll have to be afraid of the heavy hand of the law.
In my view this would not be much better if Parliament had agreed to it. But it did not. As far back as June, the respected Hansard Society warned that the great majority of Covid-related laws had been passed using a ‘negative’ procedure. This means Ministers are effectively issuing decrees. These become law unless Parliament actually finds the courage to vote them down within 40 days.
Where will this end? I cannot say but I think it unwise to wait and see.
In the Australian state of Victoria, whose laws are very much the same as ours, we may view the future. The people of Melbourne are now under a strict curfew and may only leave their homes for a short period each day, following a very small number of Covid deaths.
Last week, a pregnant woman, Zoe Lee-Buhler, living in the nearby town of Miners Rest, was handcuffed in front of her children, after masked police bearing a search warrant burst into her home. Her alleged offence was ‘incitement’ – that is to say supporting a planned anti-lockdown protest on a Facebook posting.
You want this sort of thing here? Then do nothing. If you don’t like it, write to your MPs, asking them what exactly it is they do for their generous salaries and benefits. If Ministers can make laws without them, why should we pay them? Keep writing till you get an answer.