On 6th September the MP for Bexhill and Battle, Huw Merriman asked a heavily loaded question of the leader of the House of Commons and Andrea Leadsom gave an equally loaded answer. Of course without the debate taking place it is hard to know what Huw and Andrea are referring to in their comments. However taking their comments at face value the two of them both agree that we need to have a society in which there is freedom of speech, yet both of them seem to be arguing that rather than society paying for this freedom of speech that someone else needs to do so. Andrea Leadsom seems to be asking who should pay for this. Huw seems to be suggesting that the people who express their views should have to pay for the policing and he is also suggesting that because there is no payment currently made, that the police fail to turn up. These views are both deeply mistaken and illogical.

Freedom of speech certainly can cost society a great deal in terms of security costs. However charging people to speak will mean that there is no freedom of speech at all and as people with a bit more knowledge than either Huw or Andrea appear to have will know, spirals into a much deeper set of problems. On top of this when police are aware of the protests taking place they do ensure that the protest is well policed. However in our society whilst there are ways of the police gathering intelligence from a variety of sources, there are also many occasions when protests take place well under their radar and the first they know about it is when they get a call from the people impacted by the protest. The challenge for policing protests is made much great because Huw and Andrea’s party have cut policing budgets so savagely ever since they came into office in 2010. In the case of Huws constituency this is not helped by additional cuts made to the police precept in the early years by his PCC, Katy Bourne who followed their parties guidance of freezing the precept. This simply made matters much worse as policing costs were rising significantly at the time, but Ms Bourne claimed her business experience meant she could reduce inefficiencies. Since then she has changed her stance, but the impact is still being felt when one looks at the budget today!

When the EDO protests took place in Brighton around the time of the millennium one of  the reasons that the nature of the protests were so painful, not just for the company, but for local residents and the police is that the protestors had experienced many years previously where police bodies generally did not support freedom of speech because that was the way in which the Tory Government under Margaret Thatcher organised matters. It takes years if not decades for culture to change in police forces and amongst groups of individuals who get together to protest about certain matters. I know that Sussex Police have spent several years developing the Protest Liaison Officer role, providing officers to engage with known protest groups so that trust can be built up wherever possible. Of course this is much harder to do when budgets have been cut and it is also harder to achieve when national protests take place as people come from hundred of miles away to protest at fracking sites, at G20 meetings and at arms fairs. There is one or two common threads at most, if not all of these events. The first and most significant is the Government. They organise G20 meetings, they organise arms fairs and they licence fracking. Their unwillingness to engage in a meaningful way with communities before such matters take place is clearly evident, and so Andrea and Huw if they are serious could debate a change in this. The other thread is that the Metropolitan Police are involved in many of the policing aspects of such national events. They need to do a great deal to improve their behaviour. It was noticeable when we had high profile protests taking place in Brighton over recent years that the Met Police appeared to lack awareness or interest in understanding the context of their work on the day. This is something that Andrea and Huw could also help to influence by raising such matters with the Home Secretary.

Finally it might be helpful for Huw and Andrea to remember that the cost of policing and the infrastructure in the House of Commons amounts to about £2Bn a year and whilst this covers our Parliamentary policy making, it also covers a great deal of freedom of speech issues that have no policy making impact and are full of personal or party benefit only. If the state is going to pay for this freedom of speech in the constituency of Mark Field MP, it seems perfectly reasonable for the state to also pay for the freedom of speech in Huw’s constituency and that of the other 648 MPs across the nation.