By Andrew Gilligan

   Westminster is the physical heart of the British state, a centre of the Christian faith, and the symbol of Britain to the world. Nowhere else in Europe, with the possible exception of the Eiffel Tower, is more famous, or more emblematic of its nation. Nowhere else combines those supreme symbolic qualities with being the place where actual power resides and the highest work of government is done. Yet what should be a showpiece has declined into a degree of squalor and disorder. Windows of the great public buildings, broken by protestors, are splintered or patched with duct tape. Anarchist and anti-police graffiti is painted on those buildings’ walls; some of it has been there for more than two years. Urine trickles from the corners. Protestors have privatised the pavement, illegally and for hours blasting out amplified music that hinders the often critical work being done in the offices along Whitehall. Skateboarders use the steps of the parliamentary building, Portcullis House, as a regular practice area. The experience for visitors is dispiriting and may include being cheated by con-men on Westminster Bridge. Crowds of people press round the entrances to Parliament, banging on the sides of MPs’ cars as they drive in. Parliament Square is a three and four-lane traffic roundabout. MPs are verbally abused, occasionally chased. Some parliamentarians say they feel physically afraid to leave the building. People coming to see their MPs, or keep appointments in government buildings, can’t always get in. “Broken windows” theory says that visible signs of vandalism, anti social behaviour and neglect encourage further crime and disorder. It appears to hold true amid the literally broken windows of Westminster. Between 2013/14 and 2021/22, this study finds, violent crime in the quarter-mile immediately around Parliament has risen by 168 per cent, against a 47 per cent rise in the borough of Westminster as a whole and a 67 per cent rise in London. Public order offences have risen by 252 per cent - three and a half times - versus 75 per cent in the borough as a whole and 93 per cent in London.1 Offences, particularly of violence, have fallen recently, but remain at very high levels. Even without becoming a victim of any of these crimes, someone taking the ten-minute walk from, say, Waterloo Station to Parliament could easily pass as many as half a dozen breaches of the law, from the illegal vendors and confidence tricksters on the bridge, to the pedicabs blocking the traffic, to the bellowing loudspeakers of the protestors, to the people camping in the shop doorways. None individually is serious, but  they have an important cumulative effect. The area is a mess because its governance is a mess. Control of the public spaces around Parliament is split between eight different bodies, often with different policies. Parliament Square alone is controlled by three different official agencies. The government publishes a map to show you which bits are whose, and where certain restrictions apply.2 Symbolising the muddle, key details on it are wrong, so no wonder the policing of the area is a little confused. But the area is also a mess because of a lack of confidence and consistency by those in charge. There is of course no right to urinate in the street, or cheat tourists, or vandalise, but the authorities often seem unwilling to challenge such practices. The law is often ignored around the very building where the laws are made. There is a right to protest - or rather, there are rights to freedom of speech and assembly, including around Parliament, which this paper supports. But there is an important, if not always recognised, distinction between protest that happens to cause disruption to others (for instance, because many people have gathered in the same place) and protest that aims to cause disruption to others as a principal objective (for instance, by a handful of people blocking a road, or using amplification to make it difficult or impossible to work nearby.) The disruption caused by demonstrations of thousands is part of the price of democracy. But we question the way in which much smaller numbers of people are regularly, repeatedly and illegally allowed to cause disproportionate disruption, sometimes risk, and sometimes fear to others. The right to protest has sometimes been privileged over other rights, such as the rights of others to move freely, to work, to speak, and even to be safe. The authorities should act more strongly against protest whose principal aim is to annoy, inconvenience or intimidate, rather than to convey a message. Yet if enforcement is inconsistent, another part of the problem is that decisions by the courts and Parliament have made consistent enforcement harder. Over the last two decades the law has vaccillated. The “controlled area” around Parliament - where, for instance, loudspeakers and structures are supposed to be banned - has been reduced, then enlarged, then cut to almost nothing, then gradually enlarged again. But it is still smaller than it was - it excludes, for example, the whole of Whitehall (Parliament Street, which joins Whitehall to Parliament Square, is included, however). The Supreme Court’s Ziegler judgement, which says that those obstructing the road should not be convicted if it was a disproportionate interference with their rights of protest, has made it more difficult for the police to act. Amendments currently in Parliament seek to deal with this issue. Many of these problems were raised in a report by Parliament’s own Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), more than three years ago, after high-profile mobbing incidents of MPs in the area.3 Some things have changed for the better. The protestor camps in the middle of Parliament Square went in 2013. In 2016, a new pedestrian crossing allowed the square to be reached, and reclaimed, by the public. More recently, there appears to be slightly more proactive policing in Westminster. But not enough has changed, as the crime figures show. The government took almost 18 months to respond to the JCHR report and much of its response is non-committal.4 There are plans to dramatically improve at least the physical environment, removing traffic from two sides of Parliament Square and making the Palace of Westminster safer from terrorist attack. But they have been drawn up almost in secret; and they are stalled because the various official bodies are quarrelling about who should pay for them. In all these ways, too, Westminster symbolises Britain.   

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 37p.