On May 6, Sussex will elect its Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC), whose role is to hold the Chief Constable to account for the performance of the police. They are also responsible for the local police budget and sets the precept, amount of Council Tax we contribute, to pay for policing. This election was due to take place last year but was postponed because of the pandemic. In the runup to the election Rory Finn asked all parties where they stand on LGBTQ+ issues. Liberal Democrat Jamie Bennett did not respond.
The last 12 months have been particularly challenging for minority communities which has at times been expressed through street protest. What is your view of the current proposals to curtail protest?
Katy Bourne (incumbent) – Conservative
Protests are an important part of our democracy. Under human rights law, we all have the right to gather and express our views but these rights are not absolute rights.
I absolutely support the right to protest. I don’t support the right to destroy property or intimidate local residents, or to bring normal business to a standstill.
Paul Richards – Labour & Co-operative
I am opposed to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021 which I consider to be a politically motivated attempt to stir up a culture war rather than a serious piece of evidence based legislation. I have been on hundreds of demonstrations over the years – against apartheid, austerity, cuts to the police, in support of the NHS, and outside the Department of Heath to support access to PrEP. I was on the anti-Section 28 demonstrations in London and Manchester during that campaign against the Tories’ attack on the LGBTQ-plus community. I wrote a piece here over a decade ago about it. The right to protest is sacrosanct. The proposed law is a mess and should be scrapped.
Kahina Bouhassane – Green
As a mixed race woman, I have seen all too often how inequality in our criminal justice system affects people from minority communities. The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the Government’s attempts to silence dissent using the Police, Sentencing and Courts Bill is a disgrace and must be resisted. My focus would be on safely facilitating lawful protest and protecting public safety and human rights.
Roy Williams – Independent
I disagree totally. Protests generally can be seen as ‘petitioning the crown’. This is a constitutional right which is also supported by the right to free assembly and free speech. These are inalienable rights which means they cannot be interfered with by the state and they are in force in perpetuity (forever). These rights are enshrined in the Bill of Rights and The Coronation Oath Acts of 1688 and are current pieces of legislation and as constitutional law they are higher tier and have more authority than more recent statute such as the Coronavirus Act 2020.
The role of the police in any protests is to keeps the peace, not to break up peaceful assemblies and tell them to go home because of some perceived health risk. These rights were not ignored during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 so why does this government think it has the right to ignore them now? Actions that seek to restrict our constitutional rights are illegal and commitments and prosecutions against people for exercising these rights are illegal.
Do you think the right balance has been struck by Sussex Police in its response to Black Lives Matter, Reclaim the Streets and other such demonstrations?
Katy Bourne (incumbent) – Conservative
Given the difficult circumstances that many demonstrations pose for policing, I do think Sussex Police have worked hard to strike the right balance. Senior operational officers within Sussex Police are very experienced and will always reflect on what lessons can be taken away after each operation. It is also worth noting that the recent police watchdog HMICFRS’s detailed report into the policing of the Vigils, clearly showed that politicians and commentators had been far too quick to judge the police based on what others had already said and based on selectively edited video clips.
If re-elected as PCC, I will continue to scrutinise the Force and monitor their activity to ensure any response is fair, proportionate and within the law.
Paul Richards – Labour & Co-operative
I think Sussex Police have done a much better job than the Met, but there is still room for improvement in relations between the police and campaigning groups.
Kahina Bouhassane – Green
No. Whilst Sussex Police has not been the worst offender, vigils for Sarah Everard and protests by the Black Lives Matter movement, Extinction Rebellion and others challenging the status quo have ended with riot police dragging people away, while marches by far-right groups are handled with kid gloves. I’ve found this deeply upsetting and absolutely unacceptable. Everyone should be treated equally before the law, and an aggressive approach to peaceful protestors for equality, human rights and the planet, while not pursuing clear cases of hate crime, is not the policing that we need.
Roy Williams – Independent
We have seen officers in uniform taking the knee at BLM protests. It is not the place of police to take sides however strongly they may feel about the event being policed. We have also seen large police officers manhandling an elderly woman and a young girl for exercising their constitutional right to assemble on a Sunday morning in a park in Hastings only a few weeks ago. It gives the impression of two-tiered policing and a re-establishment of constitutional law would help address this and would also send a message to the sitting government that ‘we wunt be druv’, as the old Sussex saying goes.
That concludes our series of questions to candidates. Polling takes place throughout Sussex on May 6.