I am grateful for the opportunity to raise in this House the widespread concern over the policing of the recent G20 protests and demonstrations. Like many hon. Members, I have been on my fair share of demonstrations and am well aware that police tactics are not always ideal. Since the days when I went on demonstrations nearly every Saturday, we have seen the rise of the citizen journalist. Police tactics and activities are subject to scrutiny as never before. The video footage and photographs of police crowd control at the G20 protests were shocking to many of our fellow citizens up and down the country in what could be called middle England. Such people might never have been on a demonstration and might not have believed previously what was said about police excesses.

We have a right to protest, and I am well aware that policing demonstrations and protests can be challenging for the authorities. From this Chamber we can hear the drumming of the demonstrating Tamils outside. That demonstration has been going on for three weeks and has caused sensation, impact and inconvenience. None the less, however challenging the citizen's right to protest may be, it is that right that separates free western democracies such as ours from totalitarian regimes such as Iran, North Korea and other despotic Governments of whom we are often critical.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating four charges against the police in relation to the G20 protests. A police officer hit Nicky Fisher and knocked the back of her legs with a baton when she complained. An unnamed man and a 22-year-old woman claim that they were assaulted. There is also the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson, which caught public attention the most. I remind hon. Members that as well as those four specific IPCC investigations, there have been 256 complaints to the investigatory body. Members of the press and the public have raised many concerns about the conditions that protesters were subjected to as a result of the kettling technique and the heavy-handedness with which the police broke up groups of peaceful protesters.

Before I speak about the events of that day, I draw the House's attention to the way in which our right to protest has been curtailed through legislation over the decades. The Public Order Act 1986 gave senior police officers the power to impose conditions on a protest. Under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, senior police officers can grant stop-and-search powers to other police officers to search anyone. Although ostensibly directed against terrorism, section 44 powers have been used against protesters. Famously, police officers used section 44 to prevent my Labour party colleague and the well-known activist, the elderly Walter Wolfgang, from re-entering the Labour party conference in 2005.

Section 50 of the Police Reform Act 2002 allows the police to demand the name and address of anyone whom they believe has acted in an antisocial manner. Failure to provide that information is a criminal offence. It is therefore a criminal offence to fail to give a name and address when stopped on mere suspicion of committing a non-criminal act, but it is not a criminal offence to fail to give that information when suspected of a criminal offence. In other words, the legislation imposes a more onerous regime on protesters than exists for people who are suspected of criminal acts.

Under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, ASBOs can be issued against anyone who displays behaviour that is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. ASBOs have been given to peaceful protesters. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 restricted protests in the vicinity of Parliament. Bit by bit over the decades, serious pieces of legislation have curtailed our right to protest. Overall, they have tended towards an atmosphere in which peaceful protest is criminalised. That is the context in which we must examine what happened during the G20 protests.

A number of hon. Members have raised concerns about the way in which the police hyped the threat of violence in the days leading up to the G20 protests. The Metropolitan Police Service seemed to focus on how violent the protests would be. My hon. Friend Mr. Dismore, the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, commented at the time that the hyped-up talk of violence from the police ran the risk of putting off peaceful protesters and of being confrontational to all protesters. Some of us feel that even before the day of the protests, the police had heightened the atmosphere and given the impression that they were in a combative mode. That was not the right way to prepare for a day of peaceful protests. Of course the police had to put the right mechanisms in place and needed the right number of officers to be available. However, the rhetoric of the police in the days leading up to the protests alarmed me and other hon. Members.

The use of the kettling technique, by which hundreds of people are hemmed in for hours in one place, has been raised with me. That technique was first used in the May day protests about nine years ago. The kettle is essentially a pen in which protesters and others are trapped by lines of riot police on all sides. Once the crowd is caught in the pen, the idea is that people should be let out slowly and dispersed. The police may take each person's photograph and contact details before letting them out. That is presumably so that they can be identified later.

The police might argue that kettling is peaceful and appropriate if it minimises the danger of damage to property. I have been in contact with a number of people who went to protest peacefully at the G20 protests, including women and people who took their children. A number of things are troubling about the kettling technique. First, it is indiscriminate. The police might pen in a few people who are intent on violence—we do not know. We do know that during the G20 protests, hundreds of people were caught up, including women and children, who were genuinely there for a peaceful protest. The police will capture in that pen people who just happen to be walking past; people who are not protesting but who are looking at what is going on—men, women and children; people who work in the area; and, as we know from the case of Ian Tomlinson, innocent people who are trying to make their way home. So, to contain a minority of potentially violent or troublesome protesters—it is always a very small minority—the police end up containing hundreds of innocent people.

Kettling is coercive: people are not allowed to leave once they are cordoned off and contained in that way, whether they have children to collect from school or have parents waiting for them—no matter what. Another problem with kettling is that it goes on for hours. People are not only denied access to food and water and not allowed to move around, but they are denied access to toilet facilities. Former Met officer John O'Connor has been quoted as saying, about kettling:

"Instead of sending snatch squads in to remove those in the crowd who are committing criminal offences, they contain everyone for hours. It is a retrograde step...it is an infringement of civil liberties."

I believe that kettling is wrong because it is indiscriminate, coercive and, ultimately, punitive. If we, as a society, defend the right to peaceful protest, why should we punish people by keeping them penned up for hours and hours, as at the G20 protests, when they have committed no crime? That punishment was doled out to a very large group of people on 1 April without any clear evidence that the majority of that group had any intention of turning violent or disorderly. The use of kettling and the punitive nature of that technique have caused a lot of concern not only among the people who were demonstrating on that day, but among the general public, observers and even some members of the police.

As I said, the IPCC is investigating four alleged incidents of assault following the G20 protests, but I want to focus on the tragic death of Ian Tomlinson. He was a newspaper vendor who was working on the newspaper stand on Fish Street hill on the day of the G20 protests. During his walk home, he encountered police officers on three occasions. First, he was reportedly manhandled out of the way of a police van by four riot police officers.