Public Order Bill (First sitting)

Q Thank you, and good afternoon. I had four questions, but I will keep it to two. I want to look at the offence of being equipped to lock on, which the Bill creates. That is where an individual has an object connected with locking on. How will the police decide what objects are connected with locking on, and could you give me some less obvious examples? A big chain with a padlock is fairly obvious, but there are more everyday items that people could have for legitimate purposes or for locking on. What are they, and how does a police officer decide?

Chris Noble: I do not want to broadcast too easily what people might want to use, but it is a good challenge. There will be very obvious elements, such as bamboo poles or scaffolding, which would probably give us a bit of a hint. But you are right: there are other, more innocuous items, such as bicycle locks—clearly, there are many cyclists around—glue and so forth. It will have to be very context-specific. It may well be relevant to other behaviours at the time—what else is going on, and have we picked up something on social media? It will be down to individual discretion. Again, this is not about criminalising people. The outcome we are looking for is minimising disruption, so the policing focus will be around how we do that, as opposed to how we criminalise someone for having an item that can be very difficult to prove exactly what it is for.