Offensive Weapons Bill
Wednesday 27th June 2018
(6 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The House will wish to know that Mr Speaker has certified clauses 6 to 8, 11, 12, 26 and 27 as relating exclusively to England and Wales on matters within devolved legislative competence.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
For the past two years, we have seen an unacceptable increase in recorded knife and gun crime. We have also seen a rise in acid attacks. Sadly, there was a vivid example just this week, with the fatal stabbing of Jordan Douherty, a young man of only 15 who had a great future ahead of him, but whose life was tragically cut short. The Bill will strengthen powers available to the police to deal with acid attacks and knife crime. Its measures will make it more difficult for young people to use acid as a weapon and to purchase knives online.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Craftsmen such as carpenters rely on mail order for the provision of their specialist tools because that can no longer be maintained locally. Will the Home Secretary ensure that this excellent Bill does not intrude on the provision of lawful trade?
Sajid Javid
I am glad that my right hon. Friend, like me, thinks that the Bill is excellent. I can give him that assurance. As I talk a bit more about the Bill, it will become clear that the right types of reasonable defence will absolutely be in place. For example, knife sales to businesses and for other legitimate use will remain unaffected.
There have sadly been 77 homicides in London alone this year, but violent crime affects all parts of our country, not just our big cities. Violent crime destroys lives and devastates communities, and it has to stop.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The murder of the young man to whom the Home Secretary referred at the beginning of his remarks took place in the Collier Row part of my constituency. My right hon. Friend will know that we are not used to that kind of crime and people in my area are living in fear. Yesterday we had another incident, this time involving a machete-wielding individual near the town centre. Last month, we had the murder of an elderly lady with a hammer. Crime is spreading out to areas such as Essex, and I have to say that we need more than what is in the Bill. Measures need to be much tougher and the punishment has to fit the crime. Most people want the Conservatives to be a party that really gets to grips with this issue, because people in my area and many other parts of the country are really frightened at the moment.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue. I know that soon after the terrible crime in his constituency this weekend, he was on the scene with others. I look forward, if I have the opportunity, to discussing the incident with him in more detail and listening to his ideas. He is right that more is needed than just this Bill, and I assure him that these measures are part of a much larger sweep of action the Government are taking, which I will talk about in a moment. I also want to listen to colleagues such as him about what more we can do. I would be happy to do that and to discuss how we can prevent such crimes taking place on our streets.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
As a west midlands MP, I was surprised and shocked by the latest figures on gun and knife crime, because we have more gun crime per head of population than London. Will the Home Secretary elucidate how he thinks these new strategies will deal particularly with urban knife and gun crime?
Sajid Javid
I hope that my hon. Friend will agree with what I say about the Bill’s provisions on the sale of knives and on the possession of knives and acid—I will come on to certain firearms later. Taken together, these measures will help. However, as I said to our hon. Friend the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), other measures in the serious violence strategy will also help to make a big difference.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
A young man in my constituency was tragically murdered in an incident in Liverpool recently, and unfortunately we in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan have also seen a rise in incidents involving knives. I am deeply worried about material glorifying violence that is shared online in closed social media groups and other forums. What is being done to tackle the sharing of such material online?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman is right to talk about how, in some cases, social media contributes to the rise of such crime. That was the main topic of conversation at the last meeting of the serious violence taskforce, and soon afterwards we unveiled the new social media hub on serious violence, which will work with internet companies to track down that kind of material. In some cases, that material will be taken offline and, in others, an alternative message will be put out. We are very alive to this and are responding with fresh funding, but I want to see what more we can do in that space.
I have seen at first hand the fantastic job that our police do to protect the public and to help to keep this country safe, but they cannot tackle serious and violent crime alone. We must all work together. I am committed to taking strong action to end this blight on our communities. My predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), published the comprehensive new serious violence strategy to which I just referred on 9 April. This marks a major shift in our approach to violent crime and is supported by an extra £40 million of new funding. It shows that the increase in violent crime is due to a number of factors, so this debate should not just be about police numbers, as is so often the case when we discuss such issues. I remind the House that this Government have increased police funding in England and Wales by over £460 million this year, and I have been clear that police funding will be a priority for me in the next spending review.
As the strategy makes clear, the rise in violent crime is due to many factors, including changes in the drugs market. A crucial part of the strategy is also about focusing on early intervention and prevention, which is why we are investing £11 million in an early intervention youth fund, running a national campaign to tell young people about the risks of carrying a knife, and taking action against online videos that glorify and encourage violence. To oversee this important work, we have set up a taskforce that includes hon. Members from both sides of the House, the police, the Mayor of London, community groups and other Departments. I hope that this is just the first stage of us all working together across parties and sectors.
The Bill covers three main areas: acid attacks, knife crime and the risks posed by firearms.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to tackling serious and violent crime, which we know has such devastating consequences for families. I also agree about the importance of prevention, as well as the legislative measures. Given that some of the measures announced in the serious and violent crime strategy were concentrated around London, Birmingham and Nottingham, and that we have had awful stabbings in Leeds, Wolverhampton and Ipswich, what more will he do to make sure that the prevention work is done right across the country?
Sajid Javid
I welcome the right hon. Lady’s support and the work she does on the Home Affairs Select Committee, which she chairs, to scrutinise this type of work. She is right that some of the announcements on the community fund to help with early intervention have focused on big cities, but this is just the start. We have more funding to allocate and are already talking to community groups well spread throughout the country. As I said right at the start, although there has been much debate about London and other big cities—we just heard about Birmingham—that suffer from these crimes, they are widespread and extend to our smaller towns and, in some cases, villages, so we have to look at all parts of the country.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend will know, there is some concern among Conservative Members about the proposal in the Bill to ban .5 calibre weapons, because it would criminalise otherwise law-abiding users of a weapon which, as far as I know, has never been used in a murder. Will my right hon. Friend undertake to enter into full discussions with his Ministers before the Committee stage?
Sajid Javid
I will say a bit more about that in a moment, but my hon. Friend has raised an important issue, and I am glad that he has focused on it. The Bill does make some changes in relation to high-energy rifles and other such weapons. We based those measures on evidence that we received from intelligence sources, police and other security experts. That said, I know that my hon. Friend and other colleagues have expertise, and evidence that they too wish to provide. I can give my hon. Friend an absolute assurance that I am ready to listen to him and others, and to set their evidence against the evidence that we have received.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
I generally welcome the Bill, but I should point out that the measures he is talking about mean banning the weapons. They relate to about 200 bulky, expensive and very loud rifles which, as far as I know, have never been used for a single crime in this country. It is probably the gun least likely ever to be used in a crime. Is the Secretary of State aware that in pursuing this policy without good evidence, he is losing the confidence of the entire sport-shooting community for no good reason?
Sajid Javid
According to the information that we have, weapons of this type have, sadly, been used in the troubles in Northern Ireland, and, according to intelligence provided by police and security services, have been possessed by criminals who have clearly intended to use them. That said, I know that my hon. Friend speaks with significant knowledge of this issue, and I would be happy to listen to his views and those of others.
Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
If we follow my right hon. Friend’s logic, we must conclude that literally every single weapon should be banned. Having served in Northern Ireland myself, I know that there is no end to saying that everything should be banned. If we accept that these weapons are not likely to be used if they are properly secured and controlled, we should think carefully about banning them. If we just go on banning weapons, we will not achieve what we want. In Waltham Forest where I live, handguns are available to any criminal who wants to use them, but those are banned as well. The right people cannot use weapons, but the wrong people certainly carry on using them.
Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend makes the point that our response must be proportionate, and we must ensure that banning firearms leads to the right outcome. He has alluded to his own experience in this regard, and I hope he is reassured by my indication that I am happy to talk to colleagues about the issue. He has also mentioned the need for control and proper possession of any type of weapon that could be used in the wrong way. The Bill contains clear measures based on the evidence that has been brought to us thus far, but I am happy to listen to what others have to say.
Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) referred to the pervasive nature of the culture that is leading to violent crime. Will my right hon. Friend work with other Departments on some of the drivers of that culture? Some people are driven by the internet and social media, but there may be other malevolent sources of information that lead people into the business of crime. This will require a great deal of lateral thinking, and I know my former apprentice is capable of that.
Sajid Javid
I thank my right hon. Friend for making that important point. He speaks with experience of the Home Office, and my predecessor as Home Secretary established the Serious Violence Taskforce for precisely this reason. I have already held my own first meeting of the taskforce. Each meeting leads to action, and, as I mentioned earlier, the last one led to action on social mobility and online activity. However, there are also roles for the Department for Education, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and other Departments. They will need to do their bit, because, as my right hon. Friend says, this will require cross-governmental action.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has spoken of the drivers of this type of crime, and the changing nature of the drugs market. I wrote to him this week about the “zombie” drugs, such as mamba, which are affecting my town centre. Is the Bill likely to lead to crackdowns on those new drugs?
Sajid Javid
The Bill does not focus on drugs, but my hon. Friend has made an important point. It is clear from the evidence that we have seen at the Home Office that changes in the drugs market are a major factor in the rise in serious violence, not just in the UK but in other European countries and the United States. We want to take a closer look at the issue to establish whether more work can be done on it.
The Bill covers three main areas: acid attacks, knife crime, and the risks posed by firearms. We have consulted widely on these measures, and have worked closely with the police and others to ensure that we are giving them the powers that they need. The measures on corrosives will stop young people getting hold of particularly dangerous acids, the measures on online knife sales will stop young people getting hold of knives online, and the measures on the possession of offensive weapons will give the police the powers that they need to act when people are in possession of flick knives, zombie knives, and other particularly dangerous knives that have absolutely no place in our homes and communities. I believe that the Bill strengthens the law where that is most needed, and gives the police the tools that they need to protect the public.
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
I support the Bill—I do not want the Home Secretary to think otherwise—but may I make a point about clause 1? When it comes to refusing to sell goods to individuals, it is shop staff who will be on the front line, and it is shop staff who may be attacked or threatened as a result. Would the Home Secretary consider introducing, in Committee, an aggravated offence of attacks on shop staff? They, like everyone else, deserve freedom from fear.
Sajid Javid
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s support for the Bill. As he will understand, we want to restrict sales of these items in order to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, but he has made an interesting point about those who may feel that they are under some threat, particularly from the kind of people who would try to buy knives of this type in the first place. If he will allow me, I will go away and think a bit more about what he has said.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Sheffield, like other cities, is deeply affected by a rise in knife crime, and I strongly support the Bill’s objectives in that regard. However, our city is also famous for knife manufacturing, and a number of local companies have expressed concern to me about the blanket prohibition of sales to residential addresses, which they fear could have unintended consequences. As the Bill progresses, will the Home Secretary consider alternative ways of achieving its objectives—for example, an online knife dealers’ scheme that would be mandatory for all distance selling, with age verification standards set by the International Organisation for Standardisation?
Sajid Javid
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but, as he will know, before we settled on any of these measures—particularly the one dealing with knives—there was an extensive consultation involving many people, including manufacturers from the great city of Sheffield and other parts of the UK. I hope it is of some reassurance to the hon. Gentleman that, while it is true that deliveries to solely residential addresses will be prohibited, deliveries to businesses operating from residences will not. There are some other defences which I think will help with the issue that he has raised. For example, the prohibition will not apply to table knives, knives to be used for sporting purposes, knives to be used for re-enactment purposes, or hand-made knives. I hope that that indicates to the hon. Gentleman that we have thought carefully about the issue, but if he has any other suggestions, he should write to me and I will consider them.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
The UK already has a reputation for having the strongest and best firearms legislation across Europe. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the intention of this Bill is to make sure dangerous knives and toxic chemicals are equally strongly legislated against, but it is not the intention to take action against law-abiding citizens?
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I could not have put it better myself. She will know that there are already some restrictions on knives; for example, there are restrictions on buying the so-called zombie knives, but there is no restriction on possessing them at present. Part of the Bill’s intention is to fill in some of those obvious gaps, as members of the public have asked why the Government have not addressed them before.
Mr Alister Jack (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I think the point my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) was making is that it is the law-abiding holders of .50 calibre guns who are being made criminals yet these are target rifles. Sometimes the law of unintended consequences in Bills catches us out, such as in the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and we should not be making these people criminals when no crime has been committed in Great Britain by using this calibre of rifle.
Sajid Javid
I understand my hon. Friend’s point and I hope he takes some reassurance from what I said on that topic just a few moments ago.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
All of us on both sides of the House wish to see action taken to combat the scourge of violent crime, but a great many of my constituents have written to me expressing concerns about the inadvertent impact of the Bill particularly on rural sports, and the Home Secretary has heard those today. Will he meet me and groups of others so we can make sure those concerns are heard and rural communities’ views are taken into account?
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend will know that my constituency is also very rural and I hear about issues of that type quite often myself. I am more than happy to meet him and other colleagues who have an interest in this issue and any of the measures in the Bill.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has explained that clause 1 bans the sale of corrosive products to under-18s. I support that, but some of us think the age limit should be at 21 rather than 18. Would he be open to an amendment along those lines? What is the reason for setting the limit at 18, rather than a higher age?
Sajid Javid
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, this was consulted on during the preparation of the Bill. We settled at 18 and I do not think we are interested in moving from that, but he does deserve an explanation: 18 is used as the legal age between child and adult for a number of things, and it felt to us to be the right age. It is also an age that is consistent with other Acts of Parliament. We think it is the appropriate age to set the limit on some of the measures in the Bill.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
It was clear from the consultation on high-calibre rifles that their owners were prepared to look at measures to make sure that those rifles were made as safe as possible so they did not fall into the wrong hands, yet the Government now intend to ban them. Will the Secretary of State look at the consultation again and at the assurances people were prepared to give, and make sure those law-abiding citizens are not adversely affected?
Sajid Javid
I hope the hon. Gentleman has heard some of the comments made around this issue over the past 20 minutes or so. I do understand the arguments around the issue, and of course he would expect the Home Office to listen to arguments on the other side as well, which as he says have had an input into the Bill. I am more than happy to listen to colleagues on both sides of the House on that issue and any other issues around the Bill.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Secretary of State will have received correspondence from the Countryside Alliance and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. One of the issues my constituents have asked me about is the compensation clause for weapons that might be taken back or retrieved. How will the value of the firearms be calculated, and where will the money for the compensation come from? Will it come from Northern Ireland or the UK centrally? Will people who surrender firearms face questioning or checks that might dissuade them from surrendering their firearms? We must have good communication with those who hold firearms and will be impacted greatly by this.
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman will know that these measures in the Bill are devolved in the case of Northern Ireland, and some of the issues he raised about compensation and how it is calculated may well be decisions that eventually the Northern Ireland Government, once in place, will reach. In England and in Scotland if it consents, we have set out how compensation can work, and our intention is to make sure it is reasonable and it works, and that is not just in the case of firearms—there is a general compensation clause. It is harder for me to answer that question in respect of Northern Ireland as ultimately that decision will not be made by the Home Office; it will be a decision that the Northern Ireland Government will have to settle on.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for the way in which he is approaching Second Reading; it demonstrates that Second Readings of Bills are extremely important and should happen with great regularity. May I commend to him the work in Hertfordshire and Broxbourne council to bring together agencies across the county and boroughs to deal with knife crime? There is a role for local politicians and local agencies in addressing this really complicated issue.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: ultimately, only so much can be done by the centre. The centre can set the laws and provide funding in certain cases, but much of the work being done, as we have seen with the serious violence taskforce, is community and locally led, and I join him in commending the work in Hertfordshire. We are very much aware of that in the Department, and it sets an example for many other parts of the country.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Building on the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), there is an important leadership role for police and crime commissioners working alongside the local constabulary and the other partners that have been mentioned. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State or his colleague, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, share with us, if not today, at a later date, what they consider to be best practice in terms of real leadership on the ground and partnership building to help tackle the problems that we all face?
Sajid Javid
In the serious violence strategy published in April there were some examples of good practice, but my hon. Friend makes the point that since then, because of the use of some of the funds for example that were in that strategy, we have seen other good examples. We will be very happy to share them with my hon. Friend.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
As a doctor who has treated children with both stab and gunshot wounds, I commend my right hon. Friend on what he is doing to try to reduce the violence on our streets but, equally, as a Conservative I am not keen to ban things that do not need to be banned. In the past, we banned handguns; what effect has that had on gun crimes committed with handguns in this country?
Sajid Javid
I share some of the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend: when a Government ban anything that must be led by the evidence. In doing that we must also listen to the experts on the frontline of fighting crime. As my hon. Friend said, she has in a way been on the frontline dealing with the consequences of this crime. She asked about handguns and the impact of the ban; I do not have to hand any particular numbers or statistics, but I will be happy to share them with her. My hon. Friend’s central point is appropriate: when any Government act to ban anything we must be very careful and make sure it is proportionate and led by the evidence.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
The Home Secretary has acknowledged that justice and policing are devolved matters, and has he recognised that we do not have a functioning Assembly at present; we have not had one for 18 months. I was therefore delighted that this Bill extends many provisions to Northern Ireland in the absence of a functioning Assembly. I am particularly pleased to see that there will be restrictions on offensive products being sold to persons aged 18 or under. I am also pleased to see the restrictions on knives. However, I must reflect to the Home Secretary the extremely troubling evidence that was given to us in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee this morning by the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who has requested an increase in police personnel and who has taken off the market three unused border police stations that were for sale. The issue, I have to say, is Brexit. Without infrastructure, there will be movement across the border of offensive weapons, including knives and corrosive products. How will the PSNI deal with those movements under this legislation, which I am pleased to welcome?
Sajid Javid
I thank the hon. Lady for her support for the measures in the Bill. She has raised particular questions about Northern Ireland. She will know that, because these matters are devolved and the police have operational independence, how they deal with the issues presented by the Bill and other cross-border issues will be a matter for them. She referred to evidence given to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee this morning, which unfortunately I did not listen to. If she wants to provide me with more information on that, and on how she thinks the Bill might fit in with it, I would be happy to look at that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sajid Javid
I must go on, as a number of colleagues want to contribute to the debate.
Turning to acid attacks, of course it is wrong that young people can buy substances that can be used to cause severe pain and to radically alter someone’s face, body and life. There is no reason why industrial-strength acids should be sold to young people, and the Bill will stop that happening. We will ban the sale of the most dangerous corrosives to under-18s, both online and offline. We want to stop acid being used as a weapon. At the moment, the police are limited in what they can do if they think a gang on the street might be carrying acid. The Bill will provide them with the power to stop and search and to confiscate any acid.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I welcome what my right hon. Friend is saying about acid. Will he give further thought in Committee to the question of the private purchase of these fantastically corrosive acids? Does he agree that there is little point in restricting their sale to those below the age of 18, because those over that age can also get very annoyed and use those substances to the devastating effect that he has set out?
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend makes an important point, but the evidence that we have seen shows that the real issue is about young people getting their hands on this acid. We have seen examples of them getting hold of it and separating it into two mineral water bottles, then carrying it around and using it to devastating effect. The measures that we have here, alongside the measures on possession of acid in a public place, will combine to make a big difference to the situation we find ourselves in today.
Sir Edward Davey
Yes. The Home Secretary is absolutely right to legislate for this offence. Will he tell the House how he and his colleagues will ensure that local authorities, trading standards, the police and others will be supported in enforcing this offence, to ensure that the new powers are actually used?
Sajid Javid
I must point out that when I said to the right hon. Gentleman, “On acid?” I was not asking him if he was on acid. It was a more general question, although I noticed that he readily jumped up and said yes. He makes an important point about ensuring that once the changes are made, all those who need to be aware of them will get training in the process of bringing them about. As he knows, this will involve trading standards and local authorities, and we are in touch with those groups. By the time the Bill has progressed and hopefully achieved Royal Assent, we will have worked quite intensively with the groups that have an interest in this to ensure that the measures in the Bill are well understood.
If I may turn to knives, it is already against the law to sell knives to under-18s, but some online sellers effectively ignore this. Sadly, such knives can get into the hands of young people and this has led to tragic deaths. We will stop that by ensuring that proper age checks are in place at the point of sale. We will stop the delivery to a home address of knives that can cause serious injury. We will also crack down on the overseas sales of knives by making it an offence to deliver them to a person under 18 in this country. I find it appalling that vicious weapons are on open sale and easily available. It shocks me that flick knives are still available despite being banned as long ago as 1959, and that zombie knives, knuckledusters and other dreadful weapons are still in wide circulation. The Bill will therefore make it an offence to possess such weapons, whether in private or on the streets, and it will go further and extend the current ban on offensive weapons in schools to further education premises.
Andrew Rosindell
A young man was murdered with a knife in terrible circumstances in Romford on Saturday evening. We can ban these weapons if we like, but the Home Secretary needs to be aware that if someone with criminal intent wants to get hold of one, they will find a way. I commend the Bill and I will support it, but surely we should also be looking at how young people are being brought up. We should look at what is happening in the home and in schools and at whether young people are being taught the values of right and wrong and behaving in a decent way. They can learn this from early childhood, and schools have a role to play in enforcing discipline. Parental guidance and strong support from families are also important. The family unit is important if young people are to grow up in a society where they can live freely without committing these kinds of crimes. Should we not be looking at the whole thing in a rounded way, not just banning things? Should we not be looking at how we can ensure that young people grow up to be good citizens of this country?
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend has raised the death of Jordan Douherty, which tragically occurred this weekend following a knife attack, and I am glad that he has made that important point. While the Bill can achieve a few things—we have talked about acid and knives falling into the wrong hands, for example—no Bill can by itself stop someone who is intent on taking this kind of vicious action. As he says, that requires a much more holistic approach to ensure that all aspects of government and non-Government bodies, charities and others are involved. Education is also a vital part of that, as is parenting. In some cases, there is better parenting, but there are no easy answers to any of this. He is absolutely right to suggest that we need to have a much more holistic approach. I can assure him that this is exactly why the serious violence taskforce has been created, and this is exactly the kind of work that we are trying to achieve.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
The Home Secretary will know that, tragically, we have had nine deaths related to youth violence in my constituency over the past year. I have some sympathy with what the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) has just said, but these things can happen to any family. The groomers out there find children from all kinds of families, and I do not want anyone watching this debate to believe that it cannot happen to them or to their children. We all need to be vigilant, and I am looking forward to the progress that the Home Secretary’s working party will make.
Sajid Javid
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. She has made a vital point. Sadly, anyone can be on the receiving end of this violence. Tragically, we see that in the UK every year, but we all recognise that there has been a significant increase this year, and we need to work together to combat that. Anyone can be a victim.
Finally, I want to turn to an issue that we seem to have discussed in some detail already: the measure on firearms. The Bill will prohibit certain powerful firearms including high-energy rifles and rapid-firing rifles. As we have heard, hon. Members on both sides of the House have different views on this. While preparing the Bill, we have listened to evidence from security, police and other experts, but I am more than happy to listen to hon. Members from both sides, to take their views into account and to work with them to ensure that we do much more to bring about increased public safety.
Lady Hermon
I am very grateful to the Home Secretary for allowing me to intervene again. He will be well aware that, yesterday, the Deputy Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland was appointed as the Garda commissioner, which is a brilliant appointment. One of the means by which the Home Office should try to ensure that the dangerous corrosive substances and knives banned under the legislation will not come across the border from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland—we will not have physical infrastructure on the border after Brexit—is to call the new Garda commissioner and his new team when he is in post. I make that warm recommendation following that excellent appointment to the Garda Siochana in the Republic of Ireland.
Sajid Javid
I commend the Garda on their appointment. The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service will be in touch with the new head of the Garda in his new role. I am sure it is an opportunity to discuss such cross-border issues and see how we can co-operate even more.
hope the measures in the Bill will attract widespread support on both sides of the House. They fill an important gap in the law, and they give the police, prosecutors and others the tools they need to fight these terrible crimes. The Bill will help to make all our communities safer by helping to get dangerous weapons off our streets. As Home Secretary, I will be relentless in ensuring that our streets remain safe. I commend the Bill to the House.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
It is important to begin on a note of agreement. The Opposition pledged in this House that the Government would have our support if they came forward with measures on acid sale and possession and further measures to combat knife crime, so we will support the limited but necessary measures in the Bill. Throughout the Committee stage, we will take a constructive approach in areas in which we believe it needs strengthening.
In and of themselves, the measures cannot bear down on a violent surge that has left communities reeling. That will require a much more comprehensive change. It is as well to look at the context of the Bill. Knife crime offences reached record levels in the year to December 2017. Homicides involving knives increased by 22%, and violent crime overall has more than doubled in the past five years to a record level. The senseless murder of 15-year-old Jordan Douherty, who was stabbed after a birthday party in Romford community centre over the weekend, brought the number of murder investigations to over 80 in London alone this year.
As we have heard, the problem is far from being just a London one. In my home city of Sheffield, which historically and until very recently was considered to be one of the safest cities in the UK, there was a 51% increase in violent crime last year on a 62% increase the year before. That is not a spike or a blip, but a trend enveloping a generation of young people and it requires immediate national action.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that what is omitted is of far greater consequence than what has made it into the Government’s serious violence strategy and their legislative response today. First, it must be said that unveiling a strategy that made no mention of police numbers was a serious mistake that reinforced the perception that tiptoeing around the Prime Minister’s legacy at the Home Office matters more than community safety. The Home Secretary might not want today’s debate to be about police numbers, because a dangerous delusion took hold of his predecessors that police numbers do not make the blindest bit of difference to the rise in serious violence, but that view is not widely shared. The Met Commissioner Cressida Dick has said she is “certain” that police cuts have contributed to serious violence. Home Office experts have said it is likely that police cuts have contributed too. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary said in March that the police were under such strain that the lives of vulnerable people were being put at risk, with forces so stretched that they cannot respond to emergency calls.
Charge rates for serious violence have fallen as the detective crisis continues, undermining the deterrent effect, but still Ministers pretend that a staggering reduction of more than 21,000 police officers since 2010 has had no impact whatsoever.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
In the west midlands, the Labour police and crime commissioner has been able to raise additional funds through an increase in the precept, yet he has chosen to put no extra police on the beat, particularly in my constituency. Regardless of how much money is available, we have to get over the obstacle that police and crime commissioners might decide to spend it differently.
Louise Haigh
Recruitment is a matter for chief constables. My understanding is that West Midlands police are undergoing a recruitment drive. Obviously, I cannot speak to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but how chief constables spend the money the precept raises is up to them. The issue we have with using the precept to raise funds for the police—the House has rehearsed this time and again—is that a 2% increase in council tax in areas such as the west midlands will raise significantly less than in other areas of the country such as Surrey or Suffolk. That is why we opposed that fundamentally unfair way to increase funding for our police forces.
The reduction in the number of officers has reduced the ability of the police to perform hotspot proactive policing and targeted interventions that gather intelligence and build relationships with communities, These not only help the police to respond to crime but help them to prevent it from happening in the first place. That is the bedrock of policing in our country. Community policing enables policing by consent, but has been decimated over the past eight years. That has contributed not only to the rise in serious violence but to the corresponding fall in successful prosecutions. Not only are more people committing serious violent offences, but more are getting away with it.
Stephen Doughty
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. She will be aware that I have long campaigned for Cardiff to get additional resources because of the challenges it has as a capital city. I am glad that the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service has agreed to meet me, the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner in south Wales to discuss these very real concerns. Does my hon. Friend agree that community policing resources are absolutely crucial? Community police can deal with the grooming that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) described, whether it is to do with knives and violence, drugs or extremism.
Louise Haigh
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who is a committed campaigner for Cardiff to receive the police resources it needs. That is why the Labour manifesto put neighbourhood policing at its heart. Neighbourhood policing not only enables the police to respond better to crime, but it is an important intelligence-gathering tool for tackling terrorism, more serious crime and organised criminal activity.
The proposals in the Bill to strengthen the law to meet the changing climate are welcome, but, without adequate enforcement, they cannot have the effect we need them to have. The Government must drop their dangerous delusion that cutting the police by more than any other developed country over the past eight years bar Iceland, Lithuania and Bulgaria has not affected community safety. They must make a cast-iron commitment that in the spending review they will give the police the resources they need to restore the strength of neighbourhood policing so recklessly eroded over the past eight years.
Andrew Rosindell
One problem in my constituency following the murder on Saturday evening is the feeling that the police do not have enough resources. I agree with the hon. Lady. We cannot keep reducing resources for policing and say it will not have an effect on crime; clearly it will. However, Havering in my area, for example, is part of Greater London, so the resources are allocated by the Mayor of London. Our area gets far less than other parts of London. Yes, let us have more resources, but does the hon. Lady agree that areas like mine need a fairer slice of the cake? If crime is moving out to areas such as Essex, we need resources. We are not inner London—we are completely different—and therefore need a different style of policing and adequate resources to make our communities safe.
Louise Haigh
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that resources should follow demand. That is why it is a crying shame that the Government have kicked the can down the road on the police funding formula, which has denied resources to areas of the country that are in serious need of police resources. That funding formula should be based on demand.
Vicky Ford
Following the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), will the hon. Lady join me in thanking Essex police and congratulating them on the 150 officers they are adding to our force?
Louise Haigh
It is welcome when any police force recruits additional police officers. I do not have to hand the number of officers that Essex has lost since 2010, but I imagine that it is significantly more than 150.
Let us look at the Home Office research on the drivers of trends in violent crime. Neighbourhood policing was certainly mentioned; social media was acknowledged to have played a role, as were changes to the drug market, as the Home Secretary mentioned, particularly in respect of the purity of crack cocaine. They are all factors in the spate of recent murders, but one of the most important factors that the analysis showed was that a larger cohort of young people are now particularly vulnerable to involvement in violent crime because of significant increases in the numbers of homeless children, children in care and children excluded from school. Just 2% of the general population have been excluded from school, compared with 49% of the prison population. As much as this Bill is, and should be, about taking offensive weapons off our streets, the issues around serious violent crime are also a story of vulnerability.
The Children’s Commissioner has shown that 70,000 under-25-year-olds are currently feared to be part of gang networks. The unavoidable conclusion is that, for a growing, precarious and highly vulnerable cohort of children, the structures and safety nets that are there to protect them are failing.
Behind this tragic spate of violence is a story of missed opportunities to intervene as services retreat; of children without a place to call home shunted between temporary accommodation, with their parents at the mercy of private landlords; of patterns of truancy and expulsions; and of troubled families ignored until the moment of crisis hits. The most despicable criminals are exploiting the space where well-run and effective early intervention, prevention and diversion strategies once existed.
As the Children’s Commissioner notes, the pursuit of young children is now
“a systematic and well-rehearsed business model.”
The Home Secretary himself highlighted the importance of early intervention in tackling violence when he told “The Andrew Marr Show” that we must deal with the root causes, but the £20 million a year we spend on early intervention and prevention has to be seen in the context of the £387 million cut from youth services, the £1 billion cut from children’s services, and the £2.7 billion cut from school budgets since 2015. For most communities, the funding provided by the serious violence strategy will not make any difference at all. How can it even begin to plug the gap?
We know what happens when early intervention disappears. A groundbreaking report 18 years ago by the Audit Commission described the path of a young boy called James who found himself at the hard end of the criminal justice system before the last Labour Government’s progressive efforts to address the root causes of crime through early intervention:
“Starting at the age of five, his mother persistently requested help in managing his behaviour and addressing his learning difficulties. Despite formal assessments at an early age for special educational needs, no educational help was forthcoming until he reached the age of eight and even then no efforts were made to address his behaviour problems in the home. By the age of ten, he had his first brush with the law but several requests for a learning mentor came to nothing and his attendance at school began to suffer. By now he was falling behind his peers and getting into trouble at school, at home and in his…neighbourhood…
Within a year James was serving an intensive community supervision order and…only then did the authorities acknowledge that the family had multiple problems and needed a full assessment. A meeting of professionals was arranged but no one directly involved with James, other than his Head Teacher, attended, no social worker was allocated and none of the plans that were drawn up to help James were implemented. Within a short space of time, he was sent to a Secure Training Centre and on release…no services were received by James or his family. He was back in custody within a few months.”
How many Jameses have we come across in our constituencies? How many mothers like James’s have we met in our surgeries? The pattern described here could just as well be attributed to a young man I had been seeking to help over the past year but whose life was tragically ended just last month. He was stabbed to death in my constituency, and another 15-year-old charged with his murder.
It very much feels as though we have learned these lessons before and are now repeating the same mistakes.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
Given the intelligence we have received that the Mayor of London is doubling his PR budget, what role does the hon. Lady think he can play in trying to address the urgent problem in this city?
Louise Haigh
The Mayor of London has put £150 million into recruiting additional police officers. I appreciate the serious concerns in London but this is a national problem, as I have made clear and as the Home Secretary has acknowledged. This is not a London-only problem. Indeed, the increase in violence in London is actually lower than in other parts of the country, which is why a national solution is required. It is politically easy to pass the blame on to the Mayor of London, but it simply is not the case that that is the only solution.
Sir Edward Davey
The hon. Lady is speaking huge common sense, as everyone in this House knows. Anyone who looks at our prison population knows that people in prison are suffering from mental health problems and learning disabilities, all of which could have been dealt with through early intervention. I ask her not to be put off by completely irrelevant interventions.
Louise Haigh
The right hon. Gentleman need not worry; I will not be put off at all by interventions from Government Members.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentions that this is not only a London problem, but a lot of it does emanate from London. The county line operations and many other things start in our big cities, so will she join me in encouraging the Metropolitan police to work far more closely with other forces to make sure we break these county lines? The county lines are now heading across the country, but they largely start in London.
Louise Haigh
I completely agree that the county lines emanate from many metropolitan areas, and certainly not just London—they originate with organised criminal gangs in Birmingham and on Merseyside, too. I commend the Government’s approach through the national county lines co-ordination centre. Working between police forces is a nut that we really have to crack, because the county lines business model has been developed to exploit the challenges that police forces and other agencies experience in working together.
Andrew Rosindell
I agree with much of what the hon. Lady says, but can she envisage how local people in Havering feel? We are part of Essex, yet we are lumped into Greater London. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) proudly speaks of 150 new policemen for Essex, but people who come to Romford will realise that we are Essex, rather than London. However, we get so few resources from the Mayor of London—we really are left out. We are getting no extra policemen and far fewer resources than we need.
Will the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) please speak to Sadiq Khan and see whether he will prioritise the London Borough of Havering and give us the resources we need, or whether he will give us the chance to be a unitary authority outside of the Greater London area so we can manage our own resources and keep our communities safe?
Louise Haigh
I am sure Chelmsford has received both policemen and policewomen. I am sure the Mayor of London will be watching this debate closely, but I commit to passing the hon. Gentleman’s remarks on to him.
Stephen Doughty
My hon. Friend is making some excellent points, and she will recognise that in Wales the Welsh Labour Government have invested in keeping police community support officers in our communities, which has made a huge difference in my own community. Will she also pay tribute to the many voluntary organisations that are working with young people in particular? Tiger Bay and Llanrumney Phoenix amateur boxing clubs in my patch are working with young people who are very much at risk of being groomed or caught up in such things, and they are making a huge impact on those individuals’ lives.
Louise Haigh
I am grateful for that intervention. Across the country, such community organisations are filling a vacuum that has been created by Government cuts over the past eight years. They are doing sterling work with at-risk young people, and preventing many of them from falling into exploitation and violence.
I take this opportunity to commend the work of the Scottish Government not just through the violence reduction unit, which I am sure we will hear much of in today’s debate, but in their commitment to long-term research on the patterns of youth offending and violence. The last major national study of youth crime in England and Wales was 10 years ago, which means we do not know the impact of social media or, indeed, of austerity. We urge the Government to repeat that survey, to commission research on why young people carry weapons and on the risk factors that lead to violent offending, and to commission an evidence-based analysis of the success of various interventions. That could build on the excellent work led by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who pioneered the Youth Violence Commission.
In Scotland, the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime found that violent offenders are significantly more likely than non-violent young people to be victims of crime and adult harassment, to be engaged in self-harm and para-suicidal behaviour, to be drug users or regular alcohol users and, for girls in particular, to be from a socially deprived background.
Although, of course, I accept wholeheartedly the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) that any young person can be at risk of exploitation, it is in the public good for such vulnerable young people to receive targeted interventions at a young age, rather than to see them fall into the costly criminal justice system and their lives wasted. We hope to see significantly more action from the Government on that.
Vicky Ford
I am a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, and we have been looking at the evidence on early intervention. As has been highlighted, there are areas of excellent practice, including Manchester and, I am glad to say, Essex. Will the hon. Lady look at those areas of excellent practice? I reject the suggestion that, somehow, this is linked to cuts. Our good practice in delivering early intervention helps to make the difference.
Louise Haigh
I heartily recommend that the hon. Lady reads the Home Office’s own analysis, which suggests that cuts to neighbourhood policing and early intervention have played a part in the rise of serious violence, but of course I accept that some excellent work is going on throughout the country. That is exactly the point I am making: we need a proper evidence-based analysis of that work to make sure that we roll out the successful pilots.
Let me turn to the possession and sale of corrosives. We welcome the move to clarify the law. In March, the Sentencing Council explicitly listed acid as a potentially dangerous weapon, but it is welcome that that is made clear in the legislation. Nevertheless, concerns remain about the lack of controls on reportable substances. We welcome the passing of secondary legislation to designate sulphuric acid as a reportable substance, but the time has come for a broader look at the two classes of poisons to determine which are causing harm and should therefore be subject to stricter controls.
The purpose of the legislation prior to the Deregulation Act 2015 was to allow the sale of commonly used products while protecting the individual from their inherent dangers. The sale of such poisons as hydrochloric, ammonia, hydrofluoric, nitric and phosphoric acids was restricted to retail pharmacies and to businesses whose premises were on local authorities’ lists of sellers. That situation was not perfect, but in considering reform we should note that the Poisons Board preferred a third option, between the previous system and what we have today, which would have designated as regulated all poisons listed as reportable substances, meaning that they could be sold only in registered pharmacies, with buyers required to enter their details.
The Government have conceded the point that some acids that are currently on open sale are dangerous and so should not be sold to under-18s. Schedule 1 lists hydrochloric acid and ammonia as two such examples, but we know that only one in five acid attacks are conducted by under-18s. That means that four in five attackers will be free to purchase reportable substances despite the clear evidence of harm. Of the 408 reported acid attacks, ammonia was used in 69 incidents. In the light of that, will the Government conduct a full review of the designation of reportable substances and bring forward regulations to re-designate those causing clear harm?
We note that the Government have failed to extend to corrosive substances the specific provisions on the possession of knives in schools. There can surely be no justification, beyond a reasonable defence, for the possession of corrosive substances on a school premises. If we are to send a message that the possession of corrosive substances will be treated with the same seriousness as the possession of knives, it should follow that the provisions that apply in respect of knives in schools are extended to acid.
On knife possession, the measures on remote sales and residential premises are important, but a cursory internet search demonstrates the easy availability of a wide range of weapons that are terrifying in their familiarity: knives disguised as credit cards and as bracelets; weapons designed with the explicit purpose to harm and to conceal. With the increasing use of such weapons and the widespread use of machetes in certain parts of the country, we wish to explore with the Government what further action can be taken to bear down on such pernicious weapons, and how apps and platforms on which such weapons are made readily available can be held to account.
As the Bill is considered in Committee, we wish to explore the concerns, mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) earlier, of retailers and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers about the offences imposed on retailers.
David Hanson
As the chair of the USDAW group of MPs—I declare that interest—I welcome that commitment. I was greatly encouraged by the fact that the Home Secretary said that he will look into this issue. I hope that we can consider it on a cross-party basis to ensure that shop workers are free from fear and that regulations can be put in place to make sure that we defend those who will have to defend the Bill’s provisions on the frontline, in shops.
Louise Haigh
My right hon. Friend is a long-standing campaigner for the rights of shop workers and I echo his point about hoping that we can do this on a cross-party basis.
Concerns remain about the open sale of knives in smaller retail stores, which is an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). Many of the larger stores have taken steps to secure knives in cabinets, but the fact that it is far too easy to steal knives from smaller stores renders much of the control of knife sales ineffective.
It was surprising to see that higher education institutions have been omitted from the extension of possession offences, given that they were considered in the consultation earlier this year. The justification that the Government gave for the proposal then was, I think, right, so I am interested to hear why higher education institutions have been omitted from the Bill.
On firearms, the laws in the UK are among the toughest in the world, but there is concern that restricted supply might be leading to the repurposing of obsolete firearms, meaning that law enforcement must be alive to the changing nature of firearms use. There has been a significant rise in the use of antique guns that have been repurposed to commit serious crime: 30% of the guns used in crime in 2015-16 were of obsolete calibre. The repurposing of handguns designed to fire gas canisters, and of imitation weapons, has grown in the past 10 years. We intend to press the Government on whether the laws surrounding decommissioned firearms, which are not subject to the Firearms Act 1968, need to be strengthened. The availability of firearms has been shown to be increasing through the legal-to-illegal route, so we very much support the Government’s proposals.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, but as someone who has recently renewed their shotgun licence, I should say that that is a very thorough process. I would not want the wrong impression to be given of people who shoot for sport—I shoot only clays; I do not shoot animals—because it is a very responsible sport.
Louise Haigh
My hon. Friend brings his own personal experience to the debate and makes an important point. I am sure that will be heard in Committee.
Finally, we believe that the Bill is a missed opportunity for victims. The Conservative party manifestos in 2015 and 2017 promised to enshrine in law the rights of victims, a group too often neglected by the criminal justice system. With crime surging and the perpetrators of crime more likely than ever to escape justice, the Bill should have gone further and looked to strengthen the rights of victims of crime.
Vicky Ford
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way yet again. On the point about repurposing or reactivating deactivated firearms, will she mention for the record that of course the reactivation of a deactivated firearm is in itself a criminal act?
Louise Haigh
Yes, and I was not trying to suggest otherwise, but, as I have laid out, the number of crimes using repurposed weapons has increased significantly over the past 10 years, so it is clear that in considering the Bill we should look into how we can restrict the availability of decommissioned weapons.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
On the subject of a victims law, Sharon Fearon is the mother of Shaquan, a young boy who was murdered in my constituency, and there was never a conviction in that case. Sharon and I met Minister after Minister, including the Attorney General, and the one thing we were promised was that there would be a victims law and that their voices would be heard.
Louise Haigh
My hon. Friend has done sterling work over the past three years on youth violence, and particularly on the rights of victims, and her work is one of the reasons we think it is so important to strengthen the rights of victims through this Bill. I hope that we can do that on a cross-party basis, given the promises that were made in the 2015 and 2017 Conservative manifestos.
We would like to see a recognition that the rights of victims should be paramount, so we want consideration to be given to the introduction of an independent advocate, in line with the recommendations of the Victims’ Commissioner, to help victims of serious crime to navigate the range of services in the aftermath of a serious crime. With fewer than one in five violent crimes resulting in a charge, we will seek to legally entrench a victim’s right to a review of a decision by the police or the Crown Prosecution Service not to bring criminal charges or to discontinue a case. With homicide rates surging, Labour will also seek to provide national standards for the periodic review of homicide cases, because many families are deeply concerned at how cases can often be left to gather dust, with nobody brought to justice.
In the debate around serious violence, it is vital that the rights of victims are not forgotten. The aftermath of such an incident is traumatic and disorienting, with victims who are struggling to deal with their own personal trauma forced to navigate the at times baffling criminal justice system. As the number of victims of serious incidents is growing, now is the time to strengthen their rights.
I confirm again that we support the measures before us and will seek to be as constructive as possible in enhancing them. I hope that as deliberations on the Bill continue, we can have a full debate about adverse childhood experiences and the consequent policy considerations, such as trauma-informed policing and schooling, and about the implications of school exclusions and the increasing number of homeless children and children in care. As a result, I hope that we can improve on the measures in the Bill to begin to tackle the root causes of this growing epidemic. Violent crime is a contagious disease that is infecting communities across our nation. Without concerted political will and sustained Government investment, we will continue to see many more unnecessary tragedies.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
This is a substantial Bill that has been published only relatively recently. After today’s debate, I shall continue to look into some of the points that have been raised with me about the Bill, as clearly some need further investigation, particularly those in relation to guns, as we have heard from some of my hon. Friends.
There is clearly a problem with violent crime, knife crime and the horrific acid attacks that we have all heard about. There are many things that I would like to see us do to curb those terrible crimes. The shadow Minister knows that I totally agree with her about police numbers. That would be a good place to start. We could also stop releasing prisoners automatically halfway through their sentences, and then giving them scandalous 28-day fixed-term recalls when they reoffend. We could stop faffing around and interfering with the police on stop and search and let the police get on with their job. We could also ensure that much tougher sentences are handed down by our courts in the first place to persistent and serious offenders.
This Bill is clearly the Government’s attempt to do something. I just hope, as I do with all Bills, that there are no unintended consequences. One thing that strikes me as a possible example of that is the intention to prevent online and remote retailers being able to deliver knives to residential premises. That means that people will have to pick up knives themselves, and in an age of increased internet shopping, this will reverse that trend, forcing the general public to collect their own knives and somehow get them home. I sincerely hope that ordinary, decent, law-abiding people do not get caught up in any possession charges for, for example, forgetting to remove the knife for a few days after purchase, and finding that they have no legal, lawful authority to be in possession of the blade.
The present situation is that if the knife is being delivered, it goes from the shop or warehouse straight to someone’s home, so this is currently not an issue in these circumstances. Conversely, it also seems to me to be a very handy possible excuse for someone caught in possession of a blade: a person just needs to buy a knife every day, and if they ever get stopped they can say that they have just bought it, as they could not buy it online, and then, presumably, they have a legal defence for carrying it.
Knives are very difficult to control, because they are everywhere. How many knives are in each and every household? That will not change. Knives will always be very accessible indeed. There is not really any need for anyone under the age of 18 to buy an average knife, as they will already easily be able to get hold of one if they so wish. What we can and must do is crack down on those who think that it is a good idea to carry them around with a view to using them in an attack, or defending themselves from an attack. On this point, I have some rare praise for the knife crime sentencing guidelines, which, as I understand it, have been amended recently and will increase the starting point for possession of a blade to about six months’ custody.
Bearing that in mind, the sentences proposed in the Bill for actions that are currently perfectly legal—in relation to traders for non-compliance after this Bill becomes law—also range up to 51 weeks. Although I appreciate that that is a maximum, I am not sure that these offences are in anything like the same league. Perhaps more pertinently, we were told, just the other day when we were discussing the sentences for those who attack emergency service workers, that it was right that the maximum should be set at a year. Therefore, giving 51 weeks to a trader for posting a knife to a residential address and also to someone for attacking an emergency service worker does not necessarily sit well with me.
Let me turn now to threatening offences with knives and offensive weapons. I should say in passing that the House should realise that, in terms of sentencing on knives, 40% of knife possession offences attracted a prison sentence—therefore 60% did not—and 62% of offences of threatening with a knife resulted in custody. Again, many offences of threatening someone with a knife—38%—do not result in a custodial sentence. In 2016, somebody with 14 previous knife offences was still not sent to prison for committing a further knife offence.
Lyn Brown
I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying. I know that he will hear me when I tell him that, in my constituency and in other similar constituencies, some young people carry, unfortunately, because they are afraid. Simply brandishing a knife does not necessarily mean that that person wants to use it, or that they are anything other than terrified by the situation in which they find themselves. I am pleased that our courts are showing some discretion. I urge him to consider carefully where he is going with this.
Philip Davies
Where I am going is to make this point: somebody who had 14 previous knife offences and who was then convicted of another knife offence should be sent to prison. The hon. Lady might not agree with that—that is her prerogative—but she will find herself in a minority on that particular view.
I hope the Minister will listen carefully to my next point. Serious offences with knives and offensive weapons, not necessarily trading offensive weapons, should come within the unduly lenient sentence scheme. Perhaps that is something that could be addressed in this Bill. I also wish to support an extension of the principle that committing a subsequent similar offence means a mandatory sentence. I would like to see a sentencing escalator, which means that every time a person is recommitted for the same offence they get a higher sentence than they received the previous time.
Andrew Rosindell
Very quickly, I wholeheartedly endorse everything that my hon. Friend is saying. Does he agree that there must be a deterrent? If there is no deterrent, the crimes will carry on being committed and there will be no end to this. The punishment must fit the crime, and people must be deterred from committing these acts of violence.
Philip Davies
I will give way briefly to my right hon. Friend and then I will make some progress because I know that other people wish to speak.
Mr Hayes
In the same spirit as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), I say that the key thing is that the criminal justice system must be retributive. This is not about treating people who are sick, but about punishing people who are guilty. Until we send out that signal from this place, the general public will believe, with cause, that we do not understand what they know to be happening in their communities.
Philip Davies
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We hear very little in this place about people being punished for committing crimes, but there is nothing wrong with it. Again, on these kinds of issue, this House is completely out of touch with the general public in their views on law and order, sentencing and the criminal justice system, but my right hon. Friend, as usual, is not.
I think that there is a quite an important drafting mistake in the Bill, and the House of Commons Library seems to agree with me. Clause 26 amends the two Acts dealing with the offence of threatening with a knife and changes the test regarding the level of physical harm likely to result from the knife. I welcome that. I certainly welcome the thrust of what this clause seeks to do. As the clause is worded, it will still leave in law the definition of violence as being the original higher test. This is what the Library says on this point, and hopefully the Minister will take note of it.
“Section 139AA (4) and section 1A (2) both define the term ‘serious physical harm’, which forms part of the current wording of the offences set out in section 139AA and section 1A. However, the term ‘serious physical harm’ is not used in the proposed new wording for the offence as set out in clause 26, and would instead be replaced by the term ‘physical harm’. Clause 26 does not set out any particular definition for the term ‘physical harm’, nor does it amend or remove the existing definition of ‘serious physical harm’ in sections 139AA (4) and section 1A (2).”
I do not know what the Government’s intention is here. If they want to define the new term “physical harm”, the existing wording in sections 1139AA (4) and 1A (2) would need to be amended to set out a suitable definition. If they want to leave the new term undefined for the courts to interpret, the existing wording in those measures that I mentioned should be removed altogether.
I hope that the Minister will go away and look at this, because I think that there has been a genuine mistake. I think I know what the Government are trying to do, and they have half done it, but they have not squared the circle.
I want to see a rare outbreak of common sense with regard to criminal justice legislation. Clause 27 will extend the “threatening with a knife” offence to further educational establishments. Although that is a welcome step, it does not go nearly far enough as far as I am concerned. I will be tabling amendments to replace this clause to make it an offence to threaten somebody with a knife anywhere.
I cannot for the life of me see why someone who threatens somebody with a knife should not be prosecuted for this offence, regardless of where the offence takes place. Currently, it has to be in a public place or on school premises, and the Bill will extend that to further education premises. But why should it not apply to all premises? Why is threatening somebody with a knife an offence only if it is in a public place, school premises or a further education establishment? Threatening somebody with a knife should be an offence wherever it happens—surely that is common sense—but the law is not being extended in that way.
I am afraid that I am firmly of the belief that the Ministry of Justice has needlessly tied itself in knots over this issue for years. When the offence of threatening with a knife was introduced, it included a defence of lawful possession of the knife. This was clearly ludicrous and would have seriously affected convictions. Would anyone at the Ministry of Justice listen? No. How can the possession of a knife be a defence for threatening somebody with that knife? But the Ministry of Justice would not listen. I am not a lawyer—I say that with some pride—yet, even with a House full of legal eagles, the Bill would have gone through with this glaring drafting error, which seems to have arisen because the legislation on possession of a knife has simply been copied and pasted, with the “threatening” bit added instead. Clearly, lawfully carrying the knife is a defence in the case of possession, but it should never have been a defence for threatening with that knife.
In desperation, I went to see the then Prime Minister, David Cameron. It was only when he agreed, weighed in and overruled the Ministry of Justice that the Bill was thankfully changed before it was too late. People can check the record; it is absolutely true. That is why I have a very keen interest in this particular area of legislation.
The other glaring omission, which is quite possibly a throwback to the same original bad drafting, is that the offence is not committed in private premises. Possessing a knife in the home is clearly perfectly fine and legal—naturally. But why should it not be an offence to threaten with a knife in a domestic context? In a written question last November, I asked the then Secretary of State for the Home Department
“if she will extend the offence of threatening with a knife to incidents taking place on private property.”
The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who is in her place today, responded:
“It is already an offence to threaten someone with a knife whether in public or on private property.”
Well, if we read this provision literally, it clearly is not.
I followed up with a letter. As the Government seemed to think that that was already an offence, I hoped that when they realised that it was not, they would be keen to make it one. Alas, it was not so simple. The latest line seems to be to say that there are other offences that can be charged. Well, I know that. Thanks to the Public Order Act 1986 there are actually more offences that can be charged in a public place. Yet this was not a reason to stop the offence of threatening with a knife in a public place becoming law, so why should it stop the offence of threatening somebody with a knife in a private place becoming law?
The trouble is that the various departmental bubbles do not always appreciate the real world. I know of real-life, actual cases where people should have been charged with threatening with a knife, but they could not be charged because it did not happen in a public place. The alternative charges to which we are referred do not attract the same sentence as threatening with a knife, and therefore do not reflect the seriousness of the offence.
Just one example was of a man in a hostel who threatened a female member of staff with a knife and had to be dealt with by an armed response unit. That must have been particularly terrifying, given that the member of staff concerned knew only too well of the man’s previous violent record, as the hostel was housing him on release from a prison sentence for violence. As the hostel was not a public place or a school, the offence of threatening with a knife could not be used by the Crown Prosecution Service. I understand that this was specifically confirmed by the prosecutor when the case came to court. An offence with a six-month maximum penalty was substituted and, with the man’s guilty plea, the maximum sentence available to the court was four months. This would have been avoided if the law had applied to all places equally, as it quite clearly should.
I really hope that I will get some cross-party support for this amendment so that we can make a positive change to the Bill. I am not, perhaps, always known as someone who unites the House—at least, not with me, but sometimes against me—but on this occasion there is not actually a great deal for people to disagree about. There may be some resistance from civil servants, who do not like any ideas other than the ones that they have come up with themselves, but I would like to hear, in the real world, just one good argument for not taking this opportunity to change the Bill in this small way, but in a way that would make the law much better and safer for many of our constituents.
Threatening somebody with a knife is a serious offence that we should crack down on. It should not make any difference where the act of threatening with a knife takes place, so I hope that my amendment will be accepted in due course.
The Minister and I have spoken. I very much appreciate the time that she has spent with me on this issue, but I would welcome a commitment on the Floor of the House that she will look seriously at this again. I hope that she will think twice before peddling a civil service standard reply, which I am sure that she would never do, but which I am sure the civil servants would always encourage her to do. She must look at this matter herself. If she does, I am sure that she will see that this is a very sensible amendment, which would make a big difference to the Bill.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
On behalf of the Scottish National party, let me welcome the Bill. We certainly support the broad principles behind it and fully support its Second Reading. The Bill will help to reduce the possession and use of weapons, including corrosive substances, so we look forward to engaging with the Secretary of State and his team as it progresses through the House. As is evident from the Bill, there has already been extensive and constructive engagement between the Government here and the Scottish Government, reflecting the fact that these issues are a mixture of devolved and reserved matters.
The dramatic rise in crimes related to noxious or corrosive substances is appalling, with 454 occurring in London alone during 2016. But while London is currently the epicentre of this horrendous new form of crime, gruesome incidents involving the use of such substances have ruined lives right across the UK, including through an attack in my constituency that left three men with life-changing burns. It is extraordinary to think that the UK now has one of the highest rates of acid attacks in the world, and a distinct feature of the issue in the UK seems to be its close connection to gang culture.
We welcome moves to clamp down on how these substances are obtained and used, especially the ban on sales to under-18s of the most concentrated and dangerous corrosive substances, and restrictions on how such substances can be delivered. We particularly welcome the offence of possession in a public place, given concerns that corrosive substances may be becoming more widely used in attacks because they represent a so-called “safe” weapon to carry for those who are looking to commit a violent crime, as opposed to carrying a weapon that already attracts a custodial sentence.
When we debated corrosive substances in Westminster Hall in December last year, I welcomed the interim measures that the Government had implemented while their consultation was under way. During that debate, we also explored the options open to the Government on how best to tackle corrosive substances. As well as the measures that the Government have outlined in the Bill, other possibilities included identifying the most harmful corrosive substances that are currently only considered reportable under the Poisons Act 1972 and reclassifying them as regulated substances. That would mean that members of the public would require a licence to purchase some substances. Assuming that the Bill receives its Second Reading, it would be worth returning to that issue in Committee so that we can explore what role that alternative scheme might still have.
There are other detailed issues that we want to explore, such as whether the Bill properly covers all situations that we would want it to, including the supply of substances that does not involve payment. The Bill currently seems focused on the sale of substances, so I am not sure whether the offence would cover cases in which there is no financial consideration. None the less, the Bill’s broad thrust is certainly welcome.
We also welcome the broad thrust of the changes that are being introduced in relation to knives. Members do not need me to rehearse the tragic consequences that knife crimes are all too often inflicting on our citizens. We particularly welcome moves to put in place further safeguards regarding the purchase of knives remotely so that existing laws against sales to young people can no longer be circumvented. The requirement for adequate age verification checks for online sales could be particularly important. Indeed, the then Justice Secretary in Scotland wrote to the UK Government back in January 2017 to raise concerns about the online sale of knives and the need for a joined-up approach, and that is what is happening through the Bill.
As the Secretary of State said, it is already an offence to sell knives to anyone under the age of 18, including online. The maximum penalty in Scotland for possession of a knife was increased in March 2016 from four years’ imprisonment to five years’ imprisonment. People who are convicted of a crime of violence in Scottish courts are now more likely to receive a custodial sentence than they were 10 years ago. The average length of custodial sentences imposed for knife crimes has more than doubled over the last decade. Ultimately, though, we cannot arrest and imprison our way out of these problems.
The Secretary of State explained some of the new work that the UK Government are undertaking to prevent knife crime and to stop people carrying knives in the first place. We welcome any emphasis on prevention. As the shadow Minister said, evidence-based investment in violence reduction programmes, especially for young people, has long been a key focus for the Scottish Government. They include the No Knives, Better Lives youth engagement programme, the national violence reduction unit, the Mentors in Violence Prevention programme, and the use of community-based officers who engage with and support students and staff in schools as part of the community policing service. That work has thankfully seen the number of young people under 18 in Scotland who are convicted of handling an offensive weapon fall from 430 in 2007-08 all the way down to 91 in 2016-17. But every young person carrying a knife, and every person who is a victim of a knife crime, is one too many; that is why we will support and engage constructively with this Bill.
On firearms, I have listened with interest to the reasoning behind the Government’s proposals to extend the ban on certain firearms and firearms accessories. I am sympathetic to what they say, but we will reserve final judgment until we hear evidence in Committee.
The final word must be with the victims, as ultimately they are who the Bill is all about. Every MP will have known constituents who have been affected by the tragedy of corrosive substance crimes or knife crimes. Clearly, we all want to do everything we can so that the number of victims becomes as close to zero as we can get. Prevention is the best response and it must be our priority. Making it more difficult to obtain these substances and weapons is an important part of that, and we are therefore happy to give our support to the Bill.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
I rise to support the Bill and its proposed legislative changes. I shall focus particularly on knife crime and preventive measures, notwithstanding the concerns raised by colleagues about the possible unintended consequences of some of the firearms measures. I am particularly pleased that action is being taken on zombie knives and corrosive substances. I pay tribute to the work of the Express & Star newspaper in the west midlands, which has been relentless in its campaign for action on knife crime, and particularly on zombie knives.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), I am also especially pleased about the Government’s proposals in clause 26 which, as he outlined, change the definition of what we mean by the threat posed by somebody with an offensive weapon. I proposed such a measure at Prime Minister’s questions almost five years ago following the killing of a schoolgirl on the No. 9 bus coming out of Birmingham to a school in my constituency. In principle, tightening up that definition, notwithstanding some of the concerns that my hon. Friend raised about the wording of the clause, is a significant change that will help to ensure that people are properly sentenced for threatening behaviour while using offensive weapons like knives. I very much welcome the insertion of clause 26 and the changes that that makes to the Prevention of Crime Act 1953.
The Bill has emerged out of the Government’s serious violence strategy, which was published in April. That is a very interesting document, because it sets out that the Government are clear that the violent crime that we see in certain parts of our communities will not be solved just by law enforcement. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, I am an advocate of tough sentencing and people being punished for their crimes. However, I think all Members would agree that that will not solve the underlying problems in some of our communities. That approach is necessary, but it is not sufficient to deal with this problem.
Mr John Hayes
My hon. Friend is exactly right. As I said earlier, the drivers—the causes—of crime are complex, as he suggests, but the way in which we deal with and respond to crime is not incompatible with taking the kind of lines that he has recommended. Both need to be addressed—the causes and the response.
James Morris
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I totally agree—those things are not incompatible.
What we are seeing in some of our communities is not confined just to London. My constituency is just on the fringe of Birmingham, and we have seen examples of the increasing use of offensive weapons in Birmingham and other areas throughout the country. We need to be careful about exaggerating the problem. The issue has certainly arisen, but we must not exaggerate its consequences. However, we must ask some difficult questions about what leads young people, in particular, towards gangs, and what I would call the fetishisation of weapons. What is leading to that, and to this outbreak of serious violent crime, in certain parts of our communities? The Government’s serious violence strategy is quite clear that one of the drivers is drugs. It says, in particular, that increases in the dealing of crack cocaine and its supply chains are leading to gang violence. We need to be serious about addressing some of the issues of organised drug crime.
The reason why young people are turning to weapons and violence is a complex picture, and we need to face up to that complexity, notwithstanding the need for stronger sentencing. We need to look at issues around unstable family backgrounds. A lot of the kids who end up being part of gangs come from extremely unstable backgrounds.
Lyn Brown
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but may I warn him about the idea that unstable family backgrounds are what leads to young people being groomed? I know of a police officer who is one of two parents and has a problem with his child being groomed and taken into the county lines orbit. I really do not want parents to believe that their children will be safe because they have two parents and even go to a Catholic church on a Sunday afternoon. That does not make them safe. It does not mean that they will not be involved in gang culture at some point in the future.
James Morris
I accept what the hon. Lady says up to a point, although all the evidence, including the strong evidence that we see in the Government’s serious violence strategy, is that a lot of the kids—girls and boys—who end up in the sorts of situations that may lead to serious violence have come from family situations in which they have been considerably traumatised, and trauma of that nature has led to various other consequences. We cannot shy away from that.
Vicky Ford
When I was involved in a Select Committee inquiry into online issues, we were given evidence that the online recruitment of children from quite stable backgrounds is now being used to bring such children into gangs. We need to realise that no child is immune.
James Morris
I will come on to the point about social media. I am emphasising the point about kids who come from traumatised backgrounds because we need to examine what that leads to and what its drivers are. Often it leads to such things as social exclusion, school exclusion, and a cycle of behaviour that leads to violence. This is about young people not having a stake in civilised society, as we would call it, with their values, their sense of structure and the way in which they think about the world being derived from the gang, which is where the violence and fetishisation of violence comes from.
Eddie Hughes
I do not want us to get stuck on this part of the debate—my hon. Friend is obviously keen to move on—but it is important. My understanding of data from Brent Council is that a typical gang member is 24 years old and was arrested for the first time at 14. Given that profile, it is likely that they will have had a troubled childhood, leading to a troubled adolescence.
James Morris
My hon. Friend is right. The evidence—again, this is from the Government’s serious violence strategy—is that 40% of gang members have been identified with a severe behavioural problem by the age of 12. That significant number allows us to understand how we might address some of the underlying behaviours that lead to violence and the targeted approaches that are necessary to deal with that.
As Members will know, I have been a long-term campaigner for improving mental health care in this country. The Government have made significant progress on improving mental health care for children and adolescents, but we need to do more, specifically by focusing on this cohort of vulnerable children, especially those who have faced trauma and come from looked-after backgrounds.
Will Quince
My hon. Friend mentions vulnerable children. In so many cases, they are 12, 13 or 14 years old. Does he think the answer is to label them criminals or actually to see them for the victims they are? If we do not criminalise them, they will have life chances that do not lead to just a continuation of criminality.
James Morris
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a balance to be struck. As I said at the beginning of my speech, we need a very tough law enforcement framework in this area. The evidence from the police is that they want that, because it provides a deterrent. However, he is exactly right that the balancing item in the argument, as expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), is that we need to understand the underlying drivers. That is why, as the Government recognise in their strategy, we need to focus on prevention and diversion strategies that take young people away from the criminal justice system. One weakness of the criminal justice system, for historical reasons, is that it can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle whereby young people get trapped in the system and cannot escape it.
Mr John Hayes
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way a second time. This dilemma has bedevilled youth justice in particular since the 1960s. The Children and Young Persons Act 1969 which, broadly speaking, took a treatmentist approach to juvenile criminals, led to all kinds of favourable treatment for them, with intermediate treatment orders being the classic example. That essentially meant that victims were devalued in the system, and we emphasised the individual criminal, rather than the event—the crime. The victim of a violent crime is more interested in what has been done to them than who has done it.
James Morris
My right hon. Friend makes some fair points, but we have to get the balance right in our approach because, as he will recognise, there are a lot of complex drivers.
I am conscious that other Members want to speak and I have taken a number of interventions, so I will draw my remarks to a conclusion. I support the measures in the Bill to tighten up the law enforcement regime for offensive weapons. However, we must reflect on the Government’s serious violence strategy, which recognises that the only way we will solve this problem is by taking a multifaceted approach. Law enforcement, in and of itself, is not going to solve the problem. Too many young people are dying in this country, and that is a waste of potential and human life. We have to take the right measures to get to the bottom of why this is happening, and do it soon.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division. In respect of the question relating to healthcare and associated professions, the Ayes were 467 and the Noes were 2, so the Ayes have it.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Today I am going to address the corrosive substances provisions of the Bill and welcome the progress that has been made. Had I realised the direction that the debate was going to take, I would have sought to speak for longer and to discuss the wider concerns that have been raised today. I have been seeking a Westminster Hall debate on those wider issues, and if any other Members wanted to join me in trying to secure a debate in the dying days of this term, I would be delighted.
Last year, there were 85 attacks using corrosive substances in Newham and 468 in the whole of London. In the five years since the start of 2012, the number of acid attacks in London has increased by some 600%, and my constituency is something of a hotspot. This time last year, the fear in my constituency about acid attacks was palpable. I heard about constituents of all ages and backgrounds who were afraid to leave their homes because the perception was that these acid attacks were random. It was a crisis, and it needed a strong response from Government. I called for that, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), and I am happy to see that many of the specific measures I called for are in the Bill.
Most importantly, the Bill takes a step forward in recognising that corrosives are just as dangerous as knives. They can do just as much harm physically and emotionally, so they should receive the same kind of legal and police response. The introduction of a clear and specific offence of possession of a corrosive substance in public should make the job of the police and the courts easier in catching and prosecuting those who carry acid as a weapon.
The ban on the sale of corrosive products to children is also very welcome. Although I accept the arguments for the age restriction of 18, I join colleagues in asking whether a higher age restriction might be appropriate. I also think that the Bill Committee should look closely at the broader issue of supply, and not just sale. Would it be better to introduce an offence of supplying a child with acid in an unsafe way, not just selling in exchange for money, which I suggested last year? It is important to get this right because some acid attacks, I am told, are revenge, punishments or even initiation rites for junior members of criminally run gangs. If an older man gives acid to a child and tells them to commit an offence or an attack, will the act of giving be covered by an offence in the Bill? Can we prosecute the man who has given the acid to the child as effectively as we would if he had taken money for it? Personally, I think that that is a higher offence than those of unwitting sale or of not taking a salesperson’s responsibilities as seriously as the law demands.
Over the past year, I have raised several concerns about online sales of corrosive products. At this time last year, people could buy 96%—I stress, 96%—concentrated sulphuric acid in large bottles from Amazon for about five quid each, with no checks. There is still a requirement for online sellers, like all sellers, to monitor suspicious purchases under the Poisons Act 1972, but the Government have failed to convince me that they can implement or enforce this online, so I welcome the ban on home deliveries of corrosive products. I think that that will take us where we need to be. I hope that it will indirectly ban these sales, because if we cannot make online sales safe, they simply have to be stopped to protect communities.
This Bill is a step forward. It will help to ensure that sellers of these products have face-to-face contact with buyers and can ask them questions. There is really no other way that the law could work. It was always a bit of a joke to suggest that online sellers could monitor suspicious purchases, and I think we got that message across in our debate before Christmas.
I hope this change will make suspicious transaction reporting more workable, but putting a greater emphasis on reporting by retailers only increases the need for proper guidance and for the Home Office to monitor and enforce the legal requirement. Retailers have to understand that there is a real chance that the Government will take action against them if they fail. In written questions, I have asked Home Office Ministers whether the Department has a programme of test purchases, but—bless them—I keep being given vague answers to my questions. I would like to hear about this issue from the Minister today, or if she wants, she could write to me about it.
Sir Edward Davey
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. She has done a lot of campaigning on this issue, and I congratulate her on it. The point she is making is absolutely crucial to ensure that the legislation is absolutely effective. Trading standards departments in local authorities up and down the country have been the butt of quite a lot of cuts because councils can get away with it. Unless we support trading standards departments and officers, and back the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, we will not be able to detect such crimes. We will not have the scale of test purchasing that we need to make sure that retailers are acting responsibly.
Lyn Brown
I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. As so many others have gone outwith the Bill, I suggest that the Government could at the same time look at the minimum wage legislation, because that would give my constituents an awful lot of help.
The Government could have taken a different approach to the Bill. In my speech before Christmas, I argued that several corrosive substances need to be brought under greater control, including ammonia, sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid, as well as sulphuric acid. I am reassured that all those substances have been included in schedule 1 as corrosive products. The list in schedule 1 is new, and does not match the lists in parts 1 to 4 of schedule 1A to the Poisons Act. The Minister could use this Bill or a statutory instrument to move more poisons or chemicals into parts 1 or 2 of schedule 1A to the Poisons Act, meaning that they would require people to have an official licence and photo ID before purchase. That would prevent us having to rely so heavily on retail staff to spot suspicious purchases, and it would restrict these chemicals to the hands of trained professionals who, I presume, will use them safely.
Sulphuric acid has now been moved into part 1 of schedule 1A to the Poisons Act, as I and others have called for. It will require people to have a licence from the end of this week, which is very welcome. My question, however, for the Minister is: why was that decision made for sulphuric acid only, not for the other chemicals I have highlighted? Why not move hydrofluoric acid into part 2 as a regulated poison? It is highly dangerous: as I said in the debate before Christmas, exposure on just 2% of the skin can kill. Why not move ammonia into part 2 as well, given that ammonia was found at 20 out of 28 crime scenes tested by the Met? Perhaps the Department has better evidence about which chemicals are being used in crimes or about those that pose a risk, but if so, I would argue that such a case needs to be made, and made transparently, during the passage of the Bill. That only leaves me to welcome the progress that this Bill represents, although I hope the Minister will agree with me that there are still some serious issues to be addressed.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I am grateful to have caught your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, in this important and welcome Second Reading, although I am sorry that I have to be here. I say that because I have had extensive discussions with the Minister on a contentious clause, which proposes the banning of weapons with a muzzle energy of more than 13,600 joules or 10,000 foot-pounds. In this country, there are about a million firearms and shotgun certificate holders, who legally hold about 2 million weapons. They are some of the most law-abiding people in this country; only 0.2% of all recorded crime is committed with legally held firearms. I seek to persuade the House and the Ministers on the Front Bench that the proposal is wholly disproportionate, lacks an evidence base and penalises a group of very law-abiding citizens.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is right about this. It is clear from listening to a few words from him and to the previous speaker that the Bill needs a lot of work in Committee. Properly evidenced crimes are clearly being missed by the Bill, yet we are taking out legal protection against a group of people who have never done anything wrong and never will, and who have weapons that are absolutely impractical for any sort of criminal activity. This is just badly thought-out legislation.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, as he has made some of the points I wanted to make in my speech. When he examines the record, he will see that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has, at the Dispatch Box, given me a pledge that he will undertake extensive discussions with any right hon. or hon. colleague, or any stakeholder in this matter, who wishes to involve themselves in those discussions to see whether we can find a more sensible way forward between now and Committee.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend is not too harsh. I am simply saying to him that there is concern among Government Members, and it is worthy of further discussion.
Sir Edward Davey
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that some groups representing disabled shooters are concerned that this legislation may particularly affect them, although the Government’s equality statement says that it does not? Does he have a view on that matter?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I do. Of course we want shooting to be used by every group in society; no group should in any way be excluded. I was not intending to talk about bump stocks and the VZ58 MARS—manually actuated release system—proposals in the Bill. I know that representations have been made that those semi-automatic additions to rifles help disabled groups, but I take the view, having received representations from the groups I represent, that such adaptations of otherwise bolt-action single-shot rifles, converting them into, in effect, semi-automatic rifles should be banned. After the horrific shootings in the United States, even President Trump was minded to say that they should be banned. On that basis, I think Ministers are doing the right thing, although I accept that it might well disadvantage some disabled people. We have to find other ways of helping those groups, perhaps by adapting rifles or the places where these people shoot.
I am chairman of the all-party group on shooting and conservation, and I work closely with all the professional shooting bodies, including the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the Countryside Alliance and the British Shooting Sports Council. They have made lots of very professional representations to the Minister on this subject. I have also been working closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who represents the BSSC but could not be here for our debate because, unfortunately, he has had to attend a family funeral today. We are seeking to persuade the Minister to consider modifying the proposals.
In clause 28(2), the Government propose to ban all weapons that have a muzzle energy greater than 13,600 joules. The Bill would put them into section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968—in other words, it would make them a prohibited weapon. There are about 200 of those weapons—a small number—and just over 200 people, probably, have a licence to use them. I will discuss where the weapons should be stored, but I want to give the House a sense of the sort of people who are disadvantaged by the Bill by quoting paragraph 7 of the British Shooting Sports Council brief:
“In fact, the Fifty Calibre Shooters Association…which is dedicated to target shooting with this calibre has its origins in the early 1980s in the USA and has over 2,500 members internationally. It is affiliated with .50 calibre target rifle shooting groups in Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and, in addition to regular competitions, hosts the annual World Championship in which UK FCSA target shooters compete. The UK FCSA is a Home Office Approved Club, has existed as a well-respected target shooting club since 1991 and has grown to a membership of over 400.”
These are the sorts of people whom we are disadvantaging. As I have already said, and as I stress again to the Minister, these are some of the most law-abiding people in the country.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend aware that the Government’s latest impact assessment for the Bill suggests that the measure could cost them up to £6 million—not only in compensation for loss of weapons, but through the loss of revenue at Government Ministry of Defence rifle ranges?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out that this is going to be expensive. Nobody would mind the expense if it was rooted in public safety—that is beyond question—but, as I will seek to explain in a minute, I do not think that it is.
In case anybody gets the impression that I am a mad rifle-wielding individual, I should say that, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on shooting and conservation, I have been working closely on making the licensing of firearms and shotguns more effective. There is a serious health and safety issue at the moment because some doctors are refusing to co-operate with the police in the granting of certificates. That is completely unacceptable: the Firearms Act 1968 is predicated on the basis that somebody can be licensed to have a shotgun or firearm only if they are a fit and proper person. If they have certain medical conditions, they should not hold a shotgun or firearms certificate. I believe, at this moment, that people out there have firearms certificates who should not have.
Bill Wiggin
I think my hon. Friend means mental health conditions, not medical conditions. Does he agree that, happily, because of our stringent licensing system, evil terrorists are not committing crimes using legally held guns?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend has pulled me up: words are important in this place. What I meant to say was medical conditions which might include a mental health condition—but there are medical conditions that might mean that someone was not granted a shotgun or firearms certificate.
I want to move on to the .50 calibre weapons themselves, and why they are not likely to be used in a crime—and never have been, as far as we know.
Simon Hoare
A moment ago, my hon. Friend said he did not want to be caricatured, and that is absolutely right. It is important for everybody to understand that this is not a rampant, American, NRA-type debate, but one based on evidence, fact, practical experience and trying to make good law.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend makes a really potent and timely point; I was about to demonstrate why these weapons have never been implicated in any crime. There was one incident when one was stolen; the barrel was chopped down but the gun was quickly recovered and never implicated in a crime. There has been only one other incident: more than 20 years ago, a .50 calibre weapon was stolen in Northern Ireland and used in the troubles and then, again, recovered.
Instances of such weapons being likely to fall into the wrong hands are incredibly rare. Even if they did, they are most unlikely ever to be used by a criminal, as I shall try to persuade the House. They are as long as the span of my arms and incredibly heavy and bulky. They demand a great deal of effort between shots. They are simply not the criminal’s weapon of choice. The weapon of choice of a criminal is likely to be something gained from the dark web or the underground. It is likely to be a sawn-off shotgun, or a revolver or pistol of some sort. These really heavy, clunky weapons are simply not the weapon of choice of the criminal. In the one instance I suspect my hon. Friend the Minister will cite in her summing up, a criminal stole it, realised what they had got hold of and that it was not suitable to be used in a crime, and chucked it over a hedge.
Kwasi Kwarteng
My hon. Friend uses the phrase “weapon of choice” among criminals. Is it not an irony that the criminals’ weapons of choice are already banned and are held illegally?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and it is very sad, when people gain pleasure from using these rifles, that the Government want to effectively ban them. The muzzle energy will effectively mean a ban on the .5 calibre. The only reason the Government are banning them is that they happen to be one of the largest calibres. The police and the other authorities are saying that because they are so large they must be dangerous. I have to tell the House that any rifle is dangerous in the wrong hands and used in the wrong way. A .22, the very smallest rifle, is lethal at over a mile if it is fired straight at somebody. All rifles need to be handled with great care and held in very secure conditions.
In summing up, the Government will, I think, cite some evidence as to why these rifles need to be banned. They will cite the one that was stolen and chucked over the hedge with the barrel chopped off, they will cite the fact that one was used in the troubles in Northern Ireland, and they will cite the fact that more high-powered weapons are being seized by customs at our borders. But this has nothing to do with .5 calibre weapons. It has everything to do with illegal weapons, the sort of weapons of choice that, sadly, the criminal and the terrorist will use, but not these particular weapons.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend not agree that the three examples he cites are actually applicable to pretty much any weapon, and that, if we concede on that point, perfectly legitimate rifles and shotguns would be at risk of being removed from society all together?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
That is precisely the point I am making. This whole thing would set a precedent: .5 weapons today, then .60—where do we go next? Just because people think they might get into the wrong hands and be used by the wrong people. That is the wrong way to govern. We should not prohibit things unless there is really good evidence for doing so.
I have been having discussions with Ministers. I have said that instead of banning these weapons, as there are so few of them and they are able to be fired legally at so few ranges by so few people, why not toughen up the rules on storage to make it absolutely impossible for them ever to be stolen? If they had to be stored in an armoury, at a gun club by arrangement with the police or in a military storage by arrangement with the military, storage would have to be approved by the police. There could be alarms and CCTV in the storage and weapons would not be licensed unless the police approved places of secure storage. That would be a much more effective and useful way of going forward if we want to stop weapons falling into the wrong hands, and would make it much safer for us all.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
I agree with my hon. Friend 100% on the point he is making. One of the ranges used is in my constituency. In a bizarre way, I would say that when the club is shooting there it is one of the safest places to be, because people are trained and know what they are doing. We should be looking at the security and storage element, not banning these weapons.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend is exactly right. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to look at this again. The proposals in the Bill are disproportionate. They are unworkable, because they are very easy to get around. They target some of the most law-abiding people in the country and they will not make this country any safer, because the criminal will use a different weapon of choice.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I want to express rather more support for the Bill than the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) did, but I will comment just on the elements that deal with corrosive substances. I particularly welcome clause 5, as others have, which creates the new offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place.
A year ago on 21 June, in our borough of Newham, Jameel Muhktar and his cousin, Resham Khan, were sprayed with acid while they were sitting in a car on the way to a party celebrating her 21st birthday. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said in her excellent speech, after that event there was a wave of revulsion and fear across the borough. Mr Speaker was good enough to grant an Adjournment debate on 17 July, the intention of which was to bring forward proposals in response to that wave of fear. However, by the time we got to that debate, there had been the series of incidents on 13 July, when there were six acid attacks from the back of a moped in the space of 90 minutes across Hackney and Islington, and there was a lot of public interest in this whole issue. One of the two perpetrators involved in the attacks in Hackney and Islington was, we know now, aged 16 at the time, and he pleaded guilty to carrying them out.
In that Adjournment debate, at which my hon. Friend was present, we called for two specific changes to the law. The first was that the purchase of sulphuric acid should require a licence, and, as she pointed out, that has been done through a statutory instrument that will take effect from Sunday. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), in opening this debate for the Opposition, argued that there should be a review of the list of substances in that category under the explosive precursor regulations that require a licence to be purchased. I agree with her and I am very pleased that sulphuric acid has been added to that list, but we need to look at what else should be there as well.
The second change that we called for was that carrying acid should be an offence, just as carrying a knife is, and I am very pleased that that is included in clause 5. I thank the Minister for successfully delivering that change. She and I would probably both have been pleased had the legislation been introduced a bit faster, but I am very pleased that it is before the House today. I am also grateful to her for keeping me and other Members informed about the progress in working up the legislation.
I have some detailed questions, however. Clause 1 bans the sale of corrosive products to persons under 18. As we have been told, the products are listed in schedule 1. Would it not be better to do that in regulations rather than having a schedule to the Bill, so that the list can be added to or amended? It is unlikely that that list and the particular concentrations that are set out in the schedule will be the last word. I am interested to know how the particular list of concentrations was come up with, for example. It looks a bit arbitrary. There may be some reason for choosing those concentrations, and if so I would like to know what it is. This looks like the kind of thing we sometimes chide Ministers for wanting to put in regulations, but in this case I think there could be a good case for doing it through regulations so that it can be changed at a later date. It seems a bit odd that as things stand, any change to the list of substances or concentrations would require another Act of Parliament, so I wonder why it has been done in that way and whether it ought to be done in regulations instead.
Clause 5 bans having corrosive substances—not corrosive products—in a public place and it tells us that a corrosive substance is a substance capable of harming human skin by corrosion. I presume that means that it covers substances not on the list in schedule 1. It seems a bit odd to have two different definitions of “corrosive substance” in two different parts of the Bill, one in schedule 1 and one defined as causing corrosive harm to human skin. Clause 5 does not refer to schedule 1. Does the Minister expect the police in practice to use schedule 1 to work out which products are covered by clause 5, or does she expect them to come up with a different list? It seems a little untidy to have two definitions.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham and others, I think it would be better to ban sales to under-21s, rather than under-18s. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley rightly suggested that the current restrictions, which the Bills extends, on knives in schools and further education colleges ought to apply to corrosive substances. What we already do for knives should apply as well to acid. I would hope that that extension could be made.
Acid Survivors Trust International has rightly made the case that more needs to be done to address the impact of acid attacks, which, as we all recognise, can be horrifying. The number of attacks in London nearly trebled between 2014 and 2017. I tabled a series of parliamentary questions last month to try to understand the economic impact of acid attacks—the cost to the police, the cost to the health service and the cost of imprisoning people who carry them out—and all received the answer: Ministers do not know what the impacts are. The Home Office does not collect national statistics on acid attacks. I think it should. We ought to make that addition to the statistics collected. In April, the Department asked the National Police Chiefs’ Council to undertake a data-collection exercise on acid attacks. Will the Minister tell us what came out of that exercise and whether she will consider adding these figures to those routinely collected by her Department? We should have a more systematic way of knowing the scale of this crime.
I pay tribute to Jabed Hussain, whom I believe the Minister has met. He is a moped delivery driver in London who was the victim of an acid attack and subsequently organised other drivers into what he calls the Workers Union London. He argues, correctly I think, that changes to the law, while very welcome—and I certainly welcome what is proposed in the Bill—will not solve the problem on their own. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley made this point powerfully. As Jabed Hussain points out, the scale of police cuts in London has made the problem significantly worse. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner herself has acknowledged that the cuts to police numbers have undoubtedly contributed to the surge in violent crime, and those cuts need to be reversed. Jabed Hussain also makes the point that we are nowhere near addressing the scale of the physical and psychological damage suffered by acid attack victims and their families, and that the children of victims need help, too, yet there is nothing available for them at the moment.
There is a correlation between gang membership and the use of acid as a weapon, as others have suggested. The Government’s efforts to step up their response to gangs will be crucial. I welcome the establishment of the centre in London to deal with the county lines issue around the country.
I welcome the Bill and congratulate the Minister, but I think that, alongside the Bill, an enormous amount more needs to be done.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
I am glad to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who I know has very personal experience of these issues.
As a London MP, I welcome the Bill as a vital tool in the fight against the kinds of violent crime that are sadly increasing across the capital. While overall crime continues to fall, knife crime, gun crime and homicide are unfortunately on the rise, and we are seeing lives torn apart by utterly senseless violence, as the age profile of both victims and perpetrators shifts lower. Although some of that increase can be attributed to improvements in police recording, changes in the illegal drugs trade seem to be driving the other part of the trend. Criminal gangs have been adapting their business model to exploit previously untapped markets beyond inner London, using vulnerable young people as distributors, and upping their violence and intimidation to break into new territory. Meanwhile, there was a record number of acid attacks in London last year. I therefore welcome the fact that the Bill bans the sale of the most dangerous corrosive products to under-18s, and criminalises the possession of corrosive substances in a public place.
As the fear of crime rises in tandem with those trends, too many young people are choosing to arm themselves, which is why the Bill introduces tough new restrictions on the online sales of knives. It will also become illegal to possess certain offensive weapons in private, including zombie knives and knuckle-dusters. To assist prosecutions, clause 26 amends the legal test regarding threats made with an illegal weapon.
As many Members have pointed out, the Bill is not a panacea, and the Government recognise that. Legislation and policing must be complemented by cross-agency working that involves schools, social services and communities. Such a partnership lies at the heart of the Government’s serious violence strategy, whereby Home Office funding will knit together a cohesive, cross-departmental approach to violent crime. I hope that that approach will include consideration of the worrying rise in school exclusions. Criminals are feeding on vulnerable young people who are falling out of the system. With the number of secondary permanent exclusions climbing for the fourth consecutive year, too many students are being taught in pupil referral units. We need new core schools to sit between mainstream schools and those units, working hand in glove with social services to support vulnerable pupils.
I am also concerned about the fact that local authorities are overstretched owing to outdated assumptions about need. My borough of Havering is dealing with the fastest-growing number of children of any London authority. In fulfilling statutory duties towards vulnerable youngsters, the council is left with little cash proactively to address other problems affecting that group and their families, such as addiction. Meanwhile, the pressures on social workers are leading to additional demand on police. One of my local officers says that he is now being called more regularly to tackle matters that are best handled by trained social workers.
The Mayor of London’s first reaction to rising violence on his watch seems always to be to blame the Government for his funding settlement, but money cannot be a substitute for strategy. The Mayor must turn urgently to a review of performance, operations and tactics, and the building of better collaborative partnerships across London to mimic the success of our mayoral team in halving teen knife deaths between 2008 and 2011 at a time of budgetary constraint. None the less, I am not so naive as to discount resourcing as a problem. More money has been provided by the Home Office for counter-terrorism duties, and the Mayor is now able to increase his precept substantially. There are more efficiencies to be found from the new technologies that are finally being deployed. The Government must, however, acknowledge that the demand on police in London is increasing rapidly.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
As my hon. Friend rightly notes, resourcing is an issue, but it is equally important to ensure that we get enough bang for our buck. In that context, does she agree that putting more police officers on bikes, which enables them to be visible but also to cover a great deal of ground—particularly in a constituency that is flat, such as Cheltenham—is basically a good idea?
Julia Lopez
That does indeed sound like, basically, a good idea. I think everyone agrees that police visibility is vital to maintaining the trust of the community, and to the sharing of intelligence.
The variety of issues that the police are being asked to tackle is becoming ever broader, and rapid demographic and technological changes are spreading the challenges across more boroughs. To put it simply, we need more resources, whether that means officers on the ground or analysts who can track and understand trends. My policing team has said that one of the big problems across the Met is the reduction in the number of analysts at Scotland Yard who can spot where crimes are happening and deploy resources accordingly.
We must also give officers the confidence that they will be backed in using the powers available to them. I have raised these issues at a high level within Government and encourage the Met and Home Office together to take a firm grip and disrupt the criminal gang networks relentlessly. Recent media reports suggest that the takeover of the crack cocaine market by Albanian mafia is partly responsible for a new wave of violence, so how are we working with authorities in Albania and other countries to ensure the swift deportation of violent criminals from these shores?
On a parochial level, I am concerned that the Mayor’s policing assumptions are not keeping up with the change under way in London’s suburbs. It is not surprising that the fear of crime in my constituency is high, even if violent crime levels are comparatively low. In neighbouring Romford, where many teenagers from my constituency shop and socialise, we saw at the weekend the needless stabbing to death of a 15-year-old schoolboy, and knives have recently been wielded openly in the local shopping centre.
The trust of a community in the responsiveness of police is vital to ensuring local intelligence is shared and crime kept low. That trust is being lost due to problems in reporting, particularly through the 101 service. The initial problems in police response times following the Mayor’s tri-borough policing restructure seemed to have been resolved, but the community distrust was then compounded by the planned closure of Hornchurch police station.
Without that physical presence, residents are understandably concerned that town centres in my constituency will be neglected so as to tackle the growing problems in Romford, Barking, East Ham and elsewhere. In the meantime, our borough is attempting to purchase the police station from the Mayor and provide community space for police elsewhere, and the Mayor ought to be encouraging more of this kind of community partnership work.
Finally, I offered to raise concerns put to me by constituents about the provisions in the Bill on rifles, as eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). One resident, a retired police officer and someone who represented our country in shooting, is concerned that the prohibition of certain firearms is a tokenistic response disproportionate to the risk. Other constituents advise that no legally owned rifle of the types this Bill prohibits has ever been used in criminal activity despite being used by target shooters for many decades. They are unconvinced by the Home Office’s evidential base for this move and feel therefore that this proposed legislation amounts to an abuse of process. I hope some of these issues will be ironed out in Committee.
Those concerns aside, however, I broadly welcome the Bill in providing us with another tool to tackle violent crime. But we must all be mindful not ever to see legislation as a cure-all. This urgent task requires the right laws, the right policing tactics, the right resource, the right punishment and the right partnership work to drive this scourge from our communities.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
I begin by thanking the Minister for crime, safeguarding and vulnerability for taking time out of a very busy diary to meet me recently to discuss the Bill in greater detail. The opportunity to raise some matters of specific concern to my constituents was much appreciated.
I, along with Plaid Cymru, welcome the Bill and support the Government’s desire to control the purchase and possession of offensive weapons by those who, frankly, have no legitimate reason to have them. The Minister will be aware, however, of some of my concerns, particularly about the unintended consequences this legislation might have for legitimate uses of some knives and firearms by responsible citizens, and I shall focus my remarks on those points.
Like the Minister, I represent a rural constituency in which many small businesses and tradesmen use knives to carry out their professions. Some of them have contacted me recently to express their concerns about the impact that these new restrictions, particularly on the online sale of some knives, might have on them.
In a rural constituency such as Ceredigion, it is often not practical, and certainly not always easy, for people to travel to a designated location to verify their identity, as opposed to receiving a delivery of tools at a home address, for example. This would pose specific difficulties for some smaller businesses as well.
It is important that, in combating knife crime, legislation targets specific blades and offenders, and that its impact on responsible users is mitigated as much as possible, be they woodsmen and farmers, Scout group leaders and outdoor educators, chefs or even those participating in historical re-enactments, all of whom have contacted me to express concerns. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister elaborated on how the Bill will mitigate the impact of these changes on responsible users, to provide reassurance that it will target the unjustifiable use of offensive blades, but still allow others to be used responsibly for justifiable work or leisure-related purposes.
I also want to echo some of the arguments made about the need to take a proportionate approach to changes to firearms regulations. It is appropriate that those who hold firearms certificates are rigorously assessed by the police and subjected to medical assessments, background checks and continuous monitoring. Firearms of any calibre and description are dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands. Concerns have already been expressed—I will not go into them again in too much detail—that some of the proposed changes, including those to muzzle velocity regulations, will unfairly impact legitimate law-abiding firearms holders such as target shooters without achieving greater public safety or reducing gun crime. Will the Minister reconsider those concerns in Committee and provide greater detail on the justification for those changes?
Alex Chalk
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has, like me, received representations from legitimate sportspeople saying that they would be open to considering further proposals such as additional storage security measures to allay any lingering concerns that may remain.
Ben Lake
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have indeed received many representations from responsible sportsmen, and from target shooters in particular, who are very open to looking again at the conditions connected to the licensing arrangements, particularly with regard to the storage of firearms. It would be both proportionate and reasonable to pursue the matter further in Committee.
Chris Davies
I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. As well as being neighbours, we also share a police force. Does he agree that if the extra restrictions were put in, our police force, and indeed all the police forces around the country, would easily manage to ensure that they were enforced?
Ben Lake
I concur wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. I am aware that Dyfed-Powys police already enforce the licensing arrangements thoroughly. It would be a reasonable and logical step to add some additional requirements with regard to the security of storage, and I am sure that the police will be fully able to ensure that the law is complied with. It is incumbent on us to ensure that any changes to the regulations are effective in reducing gun crime while not punishing responsible firearms certificate holders unnecessarily. The aim must be to enhance public safety by reducing gun crime, so it is important that any assessments suggesting that such changes will realise that aim should be published in full detail for scrutiny.
I would like to conclude by referring to the horrific incidents we have seen all too often in recent years that have made the corrosive substances aspect of the Bill so vital. The rise in the number of instances in which acids or corrosive products have been weaponised is frankly frightening. The availability of those products has made them a weapon of choice for those of wicked intent, with devastating consequences. It saddens me that, in the 21st century, we find ourselves having to discuss ways to prevent such acts of barbarity and of stopping individuals using otherwise legitimate products to inflict devastating harm on others, but we are where we are. It is entirely appropriate—and indeed, incumbent on the Government—to legislate to try to prevent such hideous crimes from taking place.
I have asked for assurances from the Government on the proportionality of the proposed measures on knives and firearms, but let me be clear that I welcome their efforts to control the number of knives, firearms and corrosive substances on our streets. There is absolutely no reason for an individual to have a zombie knife, a flick-knife or a knuckleduster, or for them to carry acid on our streets. Those items have no purpose other than to inflict as much damage as possible, and I therefore welcome the Bill’s move to tighten the law in relation to their possession.
More must be done to tackle the root causes of such crimes, with greater support being given to those who feel the need to carry a weapon in the first place, and to tackle the decline in police numbers. Those matters are perhaps beyond the scope of the Bill, but we as legislators have a duty to consider them, and I hope that the Government give the House that opportunity in the near future.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). I agree with him wholeheartedly that it is sad that we are debating these issues and that the Government have had to introduce the Bill. It should not be necessary—people should not throw acid in people’s faces, which has a life-changing impact, and they should not use knives on our streets.
However, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, we are where we are. This is a hugely important Bill because the scourge of knife and acid crime touches not only a number of constituencies within London and our inner cities, but all our constituencies up and down the country. I am sorry to say that its intensity is growing outside the major cities, and it is finding its way into towns such as mine and rural communities. It devastates communities, including mine, where we have had horrific knife attacks. I agree that one victim of an acid or knife attack is one too many. The tragedy is that, in many cases, young people’s lives are taken at an early age when they have so much promise ahead of them, which devastates not only the families but the wider community.
We know that the victims and perpetrators of such offences are often from outside the towns in which those offences are committed. I have referenced one incident in the House previously. There were six knife attacks in Colchester in one evening, and in all six cases, the victims and perpetrators were from outside Colchester—they came from London. This is not just a city issue anymore. County lines are bought and sold like franchises. The perpetrators use children—they know that they are less likely to be stopped and searched on the train or other public transport—to carry drugs, bringing with them fear, intimidation and violence to towns up and down the country. As I said, in the case I mentioned, the victims and perpetrators were all from London. There is an increase in county lines activity and the barbaric activity known as cuckooing. Much of this is, sadly, drug-related.
I welcome the Government’s serious crime strategy and the £40 million that comes with it. I was pleased to speak in the debate just a few weeks ago about that very subject. I have my own views about what we need to do to tackle serious crime, and especially on prevention and diversion. The Government’s strategy includes a number of measures that I wholeheartedly support but, as the Minister knows, because we have had this conversation, the question is how we treat children who have been involved in county lines operations. In many cases we are talking about 12 to 15-year-olds who are groomed by drug gangs in a similar way to how sexual predators groom young people. It can start with the purchase of trainers or a financial gift of some description, or it can start with violence and intimidation of either the young person or a family member. Do we treat those children like criminals, bearing in mind their life chances from that moment on, or do we treat them like the victims they are, and put them back on the right track to a fulfilling life in which they contribute fully to society?
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that children’s criminal records should not haunt them for the rest of their lives and that our system should wipe the slate clean at a certain point?
Will Quince
I broadly agree with my right hon. Friend. When we criminalise a child at a young age, the problem is that their life chances are impaired to such an extent that a life continuing along the route of criminality is sadly almost inevitable. We should break that cycle when we have the opportunity to intervene—such opportunities are often rare—and ensure that we put them back on the right path. One way to do that is to ensure that a criminal record does not stay with a child forever. For example, someone might commit an offence at a young age after they have been groomed or forced into that action due to violence and intimidation. They could then completely turn their lives around and think, 10 years later, “I want to contribute by becoming a police officer and serving my community.” Currently—I stand to be corrected by the Minister—that would not be possible, because their criminal record continues. I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend.
I welcome the Bill and will support its Second Reading. It has huge merits but, as a number of right hon. and hon. Members have said, it is not without issue. By its nature, it is reactive legislation that deals with weapons that gangs and criminals have moved on to. Some of those weapons—knives and corrosives—can probably never truly be banned, as we all know that they are available in households across the country. I could probably find several in my kitchen. We need to ensure that we have a multifaceted approach to tackling this issue, and the serious violence strategy has a significant role to play.
First, we need to make sure that our legislation gives the police the powers they need to deal with offenders, which is one thing that the Bill does. Secondly, we need to make sure that, when we intervene, we do so as early as possible. We need to turn children away from gangs and, indeed, when they are the victims of gangs or grooming, we need to give them the protection and support they need.
As I have said previously in the Chamber, we need education in schools to ensure that children know the dangers of carrying a weapon. There are some fantastic charities across the country—many have been set up by parents who have lost a child to knife crime—that go into schools to educate children about the danger of carrying knives. The charities teach children that they are far more likely to be the victim of a knife attack if they carry a knife themselves, and they show them in a graphic way the devastation caused by a knife attack. They show the awful wounds, and they also show what it feels like to be a family member whose child is in hospital or, even worse, has been fatally wounded or murdered.
Thirdly, judges need a full range of sentencing powers so that a person who is repeatedly caught carrying a knife, or who is caught harming an individual, can be given a custodial sentence. I agree with Members who have said that we need to come down very hard on those who are repeatedly caught carrying a knife or weapon, and on those who harm another individual, but there need to be other solutions, such as educational and non-custodial approaches, so that we do not fill our prisons with young people who have lost their future.
At the moment, an individual who is caught carrying a knife may get just a caution. In my view, they should also be sent on a weapons awareness course. A person who is caught speeding, for example—I am not conflating carrying a knife and speeding but, to some extent, it is a useful comparison—has the option of paying a fine or going on a course. It should be mandatory that a person who is given a caution for any kind of weapon-related offence is sent on a course. They should have to see the devastation caused by such weapons, which hopefully would go some way towards breaking their attitude towards carrying a weapon and knife crime. That would not work for everyone, but for some individuals, especially those who are particularly young and have made a mistake—for many first-time offenders it will be just a mistake—it might just break the cycle, and at very small cost. Such courses are, in many cases, run by charities across the country.
Fourthly, we need to identify and address the root causes of this criminality. Why do people carry weapons? How has our society got to this position? It could be social breakdown, regional inequality, family breakdown, absent father figures or a lack of male role models. It could be school exclusion, which has been mentioned, or social isolation—gang culture can provide a sense of belonging. It could be county line activity or prostitution. It could actually be education and the messaging we send out about drugs and drug use.
I find it bizarre that we have middle-class people in this country who drive around in their electric vehicles, drinking their Rainforest Alliance coffee and eating their Fairtrade chocolate, but who have no qualms whatsoever about going out at the weekend and having a few lines of coke, because that does not harm anyone, does it? If only those people saw the devastation that that causes both in the country where the cocaine is sourced from and through the county line activity in this country that takes the drugs from the point of entry to the point at which they are sold. If only they saw, in so many cases, the children whose lives have been devastated as a result. We need to send a clear message that drug taking is not acceptable and that, through the damage it does, it is not a victimless crime.
Mr John Hayes
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point that deserves amplification. The gated-lived, middle-class liberals who take drugs have little or no care because they have little or no contact with the kind of people he describes. It is the people on the frontline who suffer, and they deserve to be treated as a priority.
Will Quince
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. It is important to note, though, that although in the past people have thought, “This isn’t a problem for us—this isn’t something that our children would be involved in,” the reality is that it is now quite the opposite. These grooming gangs are looking for people who are not stereotypical. They are looking for children who are particularly vulnerable, and that is not just children from socially deprived backgrounds or from council housing estates—the people one would perhaps automatically associate with being easy prey for some of these grooming gangs—but the young people who are easiest to groom and are less likely to be stopped and searched by a police officer. The enemy is at the gate, and to think that our own children and the children of middle-class families are not as affected as anybody else is a myth. It is a dangerous assumption not to think that every single part of our society and every town in our country is affected, and even rural areas. We should absolutely send out the message loud and clear that this affects everybody’s children, not just somebody else’s.
On root causes, we need to take a much tougher stance on antisocial behaviour. If we do not take a tougher stance on very low-level crime, it will be easier for people to think that other crimes are acceptable. A policing focus on drugs would be particularly helpful. To tackle the issues, we really need to understand the root causes. The strategy goes some way towards achieving that, but there is more work to do.
Let me turn to the specifics of the Bill. There is no reason whatsoever for under-18s to be able to buy these weapons, nor for them to carry them in public, so I very much welcome the Government’s position. There is also no reason to possess certain weapons in private properties. There is no justification for having zombie knives, knuckle dusters and death stars, even in private possession.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Successive Governments have failed to tackle the knife culture in this country, so in a way this is not really a political thing. We have had instances in Coventry, going back around 20-odd years, of people giving evidence in court and the individual being given a sentence, but then visiting them as a punishment. That is one part of the whole argument about witness protection schemes.
Will Quince
The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. There is no easy answer to this issue; if there was, successive Governments would have addressed it. That was why I was making the point that to really address knife crime and why people carry weapons, we need to understand the root causes and then put in place interventions at numerous points on the journey towards criminality. Even when someone has entered criminality, we should intervene at the earliest possible opportunity to try to break the cycle and turn someone’s life around.
On the online sale of weapons, I very much welcome the banning of the delivery of knives and corrosives brought online, and especially the fact that they will no longer be deliverable to residential addresses. I agree with the position in the Bill: there is no reason why such items cannot be purchased in person. The Bill goes some way to addressing the move towards online purchases, but I have a couple of questions for the Minister. Have we looked into age verification on delivery, which is an option that already exists for a number of products? I appreciate that there are some flaws with that approach, but I think there is something in it to be teased out in Committee. Have we assessed the possibility of individuals getting these weapons delivered to workplaces instead? So many people have even private parcels delivered to their workplaces, so we must ensure that there is no loophole for people to purchase corrosives or knives using that route.
On retailers, have we done any liaison with retailers on theft? If we are to make knives more difficult to come across—I refer back to what I said about these items being in most of our kitchens up and down the country—what work has been done on theft? I can walk into any Sainsbury’s or Tesco store—other supermarkets are, of course, available—and notice that in the kitchen aisle it is only the high-value knives that have any kind of security tag. Some of the very sharp, low-priced knives are just there on the shelves for anybody to pick up. I should also point out that they are not even always above the height that children can reach, which is perhaps another point that needs to be considered. I am not sure whether we need to go as far as having all knives behind a counter so we have to request one, as we do with cigarettes. Perhaps we should look at some kind of security tagging of knives, especially sharp knives. I do not know whether we have looked at having cabinets in shops. I am conscious that that is not the panacea; it will not fix the issue, but it might go some way towards making it harder for individuals to get hold of a knife.
As has been said by many hon. Members, constituents have raised firearms as an issue. Although I represent a wholly urban constituency, I have a number of people who are interested in firearms for sporting purposes. I have some sympathy with the Government’s view on the banning of .50 calibre rifles for civilian ownership. These are very high-powered rifles that can punch through armour. I know that they have been banned in California under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Inevitably, with any such policy, we must make sure that it is evidence based. I understand that there is a case of one of these weapons being stolen, but it was recovered very quickly by the police. We need to make sure that our policy is evidence based. We are talking about a very small number of these weapons. As far as I understand it, we do not have any evidence of these weapons having been used in crimes.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As for what the Government have tried to achieve, this Bill is, in every other respect, almost a perfect Bill. However, what they run the risk of doing with a ban on .50 calibre rifles is demonising people in the community who are incredibly law abiding. What we do not want to do is to fall into the trap, which we did with the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and the handgun ban, of creating bad law when, actually, this Bill in every other respect is very good law.
Will Quince
I agree with my hon. Friend. I could understand it if there was a compelling case that these particular weapons had been used in extensive criminality, or indeed if there was a very strong evidence-based case against them because there was a threat that they would be used in some form of criminality. My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) put it very well: there are a very small number of individuals who use these weapons. If the Government believe that there is case to do something, then absolutely, yes, let us do so. Let us look at the security of these firearms. Let us perhaps look, in extremis, at allowing them to be kept only at ranges, and secured with equipment that is not usually found domestically. However, there is concern among the sporting firearms fraternity that this might be the thin end of the wedge and that it would lead to further such banning of weapons.
All I am saying to the Minister is: can we take a look at this matter in Committee to make sure that any approach that we take is indeed evidence based? That also goes for the case in relation to manually actuated release system rifles. I agree with the Government’s fundamental position that these are, in theory, dangerous weapons, but I also appreciate the views of those constituents who have contacted me who have a disability. One in particular has contacted me and said that this is the only weapon that he can fire, and the measure would mean that he could not partake in his sport. We need to consider whether we argue for an exemption, whether we tighten up the measures to ensure that these rifles are more secure than most other firearms have to be, or indeed whether they have to be kept at a registered range. I hope that the Minister will take that away and look at it, along with a number of points that have been made by colleagues, in Committee. Let me reiterate the point that any change that we make must absolutely be evidence based.
To conclude, this is a good Bill. Its intentions are indeed very good and sound, but there is work to do in Committee, and there is certainly further work to do on the serious crime strategy. I just hope that we can be pragmatic and look at any and all measures in the future that will go some way towards addressing the scourge that is knife crime—or indeed any crime involving weapons of this nature.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I broadly welcome this legislation to crack down on crimes involving knives, firearms and corrosives. Valid concerns have been raised in this debate, and I urge Ministers to think carefully about whether changes can be made to the Bill to reflect some of them.
Although overall levels of crime have fallen using the established measurements, the recent uplift in serious violent crime is hugely worrying to me and everyone else in the House, particularly in our capital city, where my constituency is located. Even my constituency of Chipping Barnet has not been immune from this problem, with a fatal shooting in Cockfosters in February. The Bill will assist the fight against this type of brutal crime.
At the summit held in April, which was attended by the Home Secretary, the Mayor of London and a broad range of elected representatives across London from different parties, there was widespread agreement on the need for a robust policing and criminal justice response, and this legislation will assist on that score, because it will help to keep dangerous weapons off our streets. I attended the summit, where we also agreed that we needed to go beyond a policing and justice response to tackle this problem. We agreed that a renewed focus was needed on early intervention to try to prevent young people from becoming involved in gangs. I welcome the fact that many Members have made similar points this afternoon, and that this point is a key part of the Government’s serious violence strategy. I very much hope that the early intervention youth fund, which is part of the Government’s strategy, can play a valuable role in bringing to an end this totally unacceptable spike upwards in the murder rate—including, sadly, crimes involving the sorts of offensive weapons targeted in the Bill.
It is important to deliver on the commitments in the Government’s strategy on county lines, which, as others have said, are bringing the blight of drug-related serious violence to many towns, cities and, indeed, rural areas across the country. In London we need the Government, the Mayor, the police, and local groups and communities to work together to combat this new menace to children and young people. I therefore welcome the commitment in the Government’s strategy to support local groups and partnerships, which need to be at the heart of an effective response to these problems.
We should be in no doubt that it is possible to bring down levels of this type of serious violent crime because that has been done before in this city. In the closing years of Ken Livingstone’s mayoralty, there was a similar jump in the murder rate, but this was brought down by determined action by his successor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), and his deputy Mayor for policing, Stephen Greenhalgh. I appeal to the Government and the current Mayor to learn from what the former Mayor was able to achieve. In particular, the current Mayor needs to hold the police to account regarding their delivery of the objectives that he sets them in this important area.
The role of the Mayor in holding the police to account is an important part of an effective criminal justice response to serious crime. I also believe that the Mayor should reconsider his decision to close Barnet police station. The station came under threat in 2012, but I was one of a number of people who helped to persuade the previous Mayor to keep it open, so it was saved then, but its closure by the current Mayor has caused considerable anxiety.
I accept that front-desk services in police stations are not as heavily used as they once were, and that there are now many different ways in which to report crimes to the police. This issue is not just about front desk closures. Once the Mayor’s closure plans go ahead in full, the police in Barnet will be left with no base at all in my constituency of Chipping Barnet. I am concerned that a visible police presence in my constituency will inevitably be greatly reduced when all officers are based several miles away in Colindale.
Dr Offord
Is my constituency neighbour aware that the London Borough of Barnet is one of the largest London boroughs and one of the largest net contributors to the Metropolitan police budget? This means that we do not get the police officers that we pay for. There are 736 people in Barnet per officer, whereas the rest of London—excluding the City of Westminster—has just 529 residents per police officer. Does my right hon. Friend think that that is fair?
Theresa Villiers
I do not. I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s highlighting of that problem. I am going to come on to it, because we need a fairer system for the allocation of resources in our capital city—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell).
I am concerned about the impact of the police station closure on visible police presence. Only today, I received a report of retailers being robbed in High Barnet, with a recent incident of men in balaclavas who were wielding weapons robbing a shop in broad daylight in front of frightened children. Over recent months, during the regular doorstep calls that I undertake in my constituency, many people have highlighted their anxiety about burglary. I appreciate that budgets are constrained, but I have appealed to the Mayor to give Barnet a fairer allocation of police resources to help provide concerted action on burglary and other crimes, including those involving the offensive weapons targeted in this Bill. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord), Barnet has fewer police per head than many other boroughs, although, sadly, we face a number of problems very similar to those of inner-London boroughs.
Julian Knight
What my right hon. Friend is saying is very resonant for me, because our police and crime commissioner closed our police station in Solihull. Burglars, in particular, often use fear-inducing weapons such zombie knives and death stars to commit violence. Does she agree that this Bill is very welcome in that respect?
Theresa Villiers
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Burglary is a deeply distressing crime for its victims, but unfortunately it can be made very much worse by threats of violence and the use of weapons of the type targeted by this Bill.
The Mayor of London does have choices with regard to resources. He has, for example, about half a billion pounds in reserves. He is proudly allocating £150 million a year to cycling measures. He had earmarked £60 million to pedestrianise Oxford Street. This is not the occasion to debate the merits of those funding choices, but it shows that even with a small switch from those priorities to policing, the Mayor could keep our police station in Barnet open. It is not enough for him to seek to blame the resources he is given by Government. He has choices and he should make them in a responsible way that gives the suburbs their fair share of police resources.
Finally, I want to share with the House some very depressing news on a crime committed in my constituency at the weekend. On Sunday, thieves broke into the site of the Summer Soulstice festival in Mays Lane in Arkley. They used acetylene cutting gear and hammers to break into a safe and made off with over £45,000 in takings from the event that was awaiting transfer to the bank the next day. It seems that they may have deliberately planned the break-in to coincide with the England World cup game, when those clearing up after the festival had gone home to watch the football.
This crime is made all the more repellent by the fact that the Soulstice festival is entirely run by volunteers and all its proceeds go to a local charity, Cherry Lodge Cancer Care. The event was established in memory of Andy Weekes, who was sadly lost to cancer in 2006, and it has raised over a quarter of a million pounds for Cherry Lodge over the course of 11 years. The family of the late Andy Weekes and the whole team behind Soulstice are apparently devastated by what has happened. I am sure that the whole House will share my dismay about this crime. I do not imagine that the perpetrators are likely to read Hansard, but they should feel a deep sense of shame about what they have done. I very much hope that the police will catch them swiftly and that they will be locked up for a very long time indeed.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure, if that is the right word, to speak in this important debate. From the outset, may I say how much I associate myself with the comments made by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) and in particular my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)? The speeches by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) were strong and compelling, particularly in their urging the Government to include a wider range of acidic substances in the list of those that we seek to prohibit the carrying of, particularly by those who are 18 or under.
I hope I will not be accused of making an overtly party political point. However, I have served for a short period as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, and I have listened to a huge number of speeches and oral questions at Home Office questions. Given that very often, though not exclusively, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester said, this is seen as a London-centric and urban daily threat, I am surprised by the lack of representation on the Opposition Benches today, with the exception of the fine speech by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), and the right hon. Member for East Ham and the hon. Member for West Ham. I am slightly surprised that those who have often spoken most loudly about the need for this legislation and what underpins the imperatives that drove it are conspicuous by their absence this afternoon. Sunshine, I know, can be a rather seductive entity, but I thought they might have forgone that for just a few hours on an issue of this importance.
The key thing to bear in mind is that, while the debate is often painted within the confines of an urban narrative, this affects all our towns and cities across the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester said. On 7 January 2016, a hairdresser in my constituency, Katrina O’Hara, was putting the rubbish out at the end of the working day in the little courtyard behind the barbershop in which she worked in Blandford Forum. Blandford Forum is a jewel in the North Dorset crown. It is a small Georgian market town; it is not one of the fleshpots of metropolitan England by any stretch of the imagination. Katrina was attacked by a former partner with a knife that he had taken from the kitchen drawer in his house. He stabbed her. She died of her injuries. He attempted then to take his own life, but was apprehended and resuscitated by Dorset police. He was put on trial and found guilty.
I relate that story because, as one can imagine, it had the most huge and profound effects on a market town community like Blandford Forum. The ramifications of it still reverberate in conversations just over two years later. It was not a crime perpetrated by drug users or by minors, and it was not a crime in which somebody had to go out and buy a knife to use as a weapon, either directly from retail or on the internet; the knife was just taken out of a kitchen drawer. That is the scale of the issue that this sort of legislation is trying to grapple with.
There is much to commend in the Bill. The Home Office and the relevant Ministers are to be saluted for their clear care and dedication in the consultation process and in talking to Members. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary gave a commitment to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds that that conversation would continue, and that is important.
As I say, there is much to commend in this legislation and the foundations of it are clear, but I would echo the comments made by a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and indeed by right hon. and hon. Members of the Opposition, about how, although the foundations may be very secure, the edifice emerging through the Committee process will require some work. On the eve of my 49th birthday, I may be able to claim some similarity with that. My foundations are fine—
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
You must be older than that.
Simon Hoare
I’ll give you something in a minute.
There is a clear and compelling narrative that some changes to the Bill are needed as it moves forward. What does the Bill seek to achieve? If anybody thinks that by the stroke of a legislative pen and the creation of new statutes these crimes will be eliminated—I am not suggesting for a moment that Ministers on the Treasury Bench believe this—they will find that that is not going to be the case, although the Bill will clearly act as a deterrent.
As so often, however, when putting in place deterrents, we have to be careful. We know who we are seeking to deter, but very often the legislative deterrent has no impact at all on their daily modus operandi of criminality, gangland behaviour, drug dealing and so on. However, as an unforeseen consequence, it may be the most terrible burden and nuisance to law-abiding citizens trying to go about their daily business or to pursue their hobby. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds mentioned, we quite rightly have one of the most, if not the most, rigorous firearm licensing regimes in the world, but, notwithstanding that, we still have gun crime. Previous legislation has made certain pistols and handguns illegal, but they are very often the preferred weapon of those in gangs and the weapon of choice of others engaged in criminal activity.
Simon Hoare
Notwithstanding my hon. Friend’s earlier rudery, I will give way.
Mark Garnier
I am sure my hon. Friend needs to take the weight off his feet for a moment or two during his magnificent speech. The important point he makes about gun crime is that it is committed not with legally owned guns, but with illegally owned guns. In keeping guns away from criminals, the law is probably not working as well as it should do, and that is what should be addressed.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend is right. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), was a prosecuting barrister in a previous life. She will know, as lots of other people do—[Interruption.] Ah, here she is; she arrives. As if by magic, my hon. Friend is summoned up. I was just saying that, in a previous existence, she was a prosecuting barrister, and I know—not least because she has told me this on so many occasions—that she will appreciate the importance of evidence. We are making law, and as important as the issues are that we are seeking to address, the law has to be based on evidence.
It may well be that there are certain things that my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench cannot tell the House: there may be evidence from the National Crime Agency and others that it would be entirely inappropriate to share with those who are not Privy Counsellors, or whatever. However, I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier). Like colleagues, I have yet to find any canon of persuasive evidence that does not lead me, for what that is worth, to the conclusion that if we harry and pursue the softest targets—those who have a licence, those obeying the law to the letter and those who have clearly indicated, in response to consultation, their willingness to go the extra mile in terms of security, vetting, referencing and so on and so forth—they will be the ones most affected, without the concomitant benefit of increasing safety on our streets.
If there is evidence telling us that a whole cadre of crimes is committed on our streets by people who are licensed to have a shotgun or other firearm, clearly the House will need to recalibrate its message on that point.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The problem would be if people who lawfully hold a shotgun or firearm see this legislation and think that they might be criminalised next. They fear that this is setting a precedent and they do not know where it is going to end.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend is right about that. Those who see these things as the opening of a Pandora’s box are often right to see proposals in that way, and I am inclined to think that we are not necessarily looking at this from the right end of the telescope. I would much prefer a far more rigorous approach to sentencing, so that it actually acts as a deterrent, and my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester and others have intimated the same. I am not convinced that the criminal minds, the modern-day Fagins who recruit these often vulnerable youngsters to commit these crimes to aggrandise the Fagins of, particularly but not exclusively, the drug world, will give tuppence ha’penny about what statute law says. If they want to get hold of a shotgun or something else, they will jolly well do it. We need to be focusing a lot more attention on sentencing than we have hitherto.
Obviously, we have do this as part of a legislative mosaic, which, as others have said, calls for even greater intergovernmental and cross-departmental working. The Times has been running an interesting series of articles this week. It has alluded to all the things that we know about gang culture—family breakdown, the lack of feeling of belonging, a lack of aspiration, poor educational attainment, and that self-breeding fear and anxiety that says, “I live in an unsafe area so I must tool up to protect myself.” In that way, the cycle just continues and continues. A lot of additional work needs to be done and other Departments need to be involved in it.
I wish to say a few words about the impact on small businesses. I do not understand the logic of a lot of these proposals on where and how one can sell, and on not delivering to a residential address. I am sure the Minister will be able to fill, to the point of overflowing, the lacuna in my knowledge of this, but I cannot understand the differential in respect of being able to have something delivered to a business premises or a post office, but not being able to have it delivered to one’s own personal address—likewise, where the Bill says that even if someone has ordered something online, they have to collect it from the branch. That is fine for national operators, but I have received a number of representations on this. Some have come from Mr Duncan Chandler, an artisan manufacturer of woodland and survival knives in my constituency, who is anxious about this matter and the impact it has on his business. Others have come from Mr Philip Hart, who runs the excellent Harts of Stur, 80% of whose kitchenware, which includes knives, is sold online across the country—the company has only one branch and it is in North Dorset. I ask the Minister to think in Committee about the definition of “knife”. I am talking about rather peculiar things here and am flicking through my notes to try to find the reference point I was looking for but I cannot. I shall say merely refer to a constituent of mine who manufactures and sells straight razors for wet shaving. Are they to be included in the definition of “knife” or not? Will they fall within the new requirements?
In conclusion, I support this legislation. If it is pressed to a Division, I shall certainly vote in favour of its Second Reading, but with a presumption that there will be some fairly dramatic changes in Committee: a greater understanding of the needs and difficulties of small businesses in particular, and an element of rural proofing. We are trying to address a national issue, but as it stands the Bill does not reflect some of the differentials between urban and rural living. I draw comfort from the fact that the Minister understands rural issues to her fingertips, representing, as she does, the second most beautiful part of the country after North Dorset.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). I am sorry to have missed a few of the earlier speeches; I had to be at a sitting of the Home Affairs Committee. The quality of the debate has been excellent and I am happy to support the Bill. It is a pity that it has been made necessary in the light of a recent uptick in violent crime, and not only in London. As my hon. Friend just said, the devil will be in the detail when it comes to practical implementation. We all know that acid and knives are not in themselves offensive weapons; the person using them makes them so.
I do, however, have some reservations, which I share with a number of hon. Friends, about the proposals on .50 calibre rifles. Shooting is a legitimate pursuit for sport or countryside activities. As Members have said on numerous occasions, it is weapons held without a licence by criminals that cause the crimes. Legitimately held, licensed weapons are very rarely involved.
Our gun control laws are rightly among the tightest in the world. I do not want to do anything that would weaken that, and I would certainly not go down the absurd lines of President Trump’s recent statement that the reason for our upsurge in knife crime is that we do not have gun ownership to combat it. That is a very slippery slope, and I do not think anybody has taken it seriously in this country, but we need to make sure that the restrictions are evidence based and properly risk assessed.
We are talking about fewer than 1,000 of the 2.25 million rifles and guns held legitimately on certificate—just 700 rapid-fire rifles and 132 .50 calibre rifles are involved. I have had more representations on that element of the Bill than on any other, particularly from disabled constituents who have used these rifles as part of their recreational activity.
The shooting community views these prohibitions as a gross breach of natural justice. Despite repeated requests, the Home Office has failed to provide any evidence that the rifles pose a risk to public safety. As it stands, applicants must provide clear and evidenced good reason for each and every rifle they wish to acquire and use. The very few who apply for and use high-muzzle-energy rifles have well documented and good reasons, and are limited to using them on specific ranges. Various shooting associations have suggested enhancing suitability assessments if that would help to prevent an outright ban, which seems disproportionate.
It is also reasonable to ask the Government what reductions in firearms crimes are expected as a result of the prohibitions in the Bill. It is difficult to see what problem we are trying to solve.
I have had representations from members of legitimate rifle clubs, such as the Aldershot Rifle and Pistol club. My constituent Martin runs the local disability forum. He shoots from a wheelchair using one of these guns. He started target shooting as an Air Training Corps cadet back in 1959. Prohibition would end his participation in the sport, because his disability means that it is not easy for him to use the alternatives. It is notable that of the 10,712 responses to the Government consultation, over 60% related to these firearms proposals.
I want to talk briefly about acid. I am pleased with the inclusion in the Bill of measures to deal with acid. This is a particularly cruel and vicious form of attack. People can recover from a gunshot or knife wound, with minimal scars in some cases, but the effects of acid are a life sentence of disfigurement, especially when acid has been used on the face. If anything, acid attacks deserve harsher sentences than attacks using some of the more conventional weapons we have been describing. The problem is that there are no official statistics on the extent of acid attacks. Voluntary data across 39 police forces found that there were some 408 acid attacks between November 2016 and April 2017, which represented a large increase on estimates that had gone before. It is also interesting that such attacks are prevalent in certain cultures, particularly in the Indian subcontinent, and among jilted partners. Globally, on the figures we have, 80% of the victims are women, but in this country the majority of victims are white men.
I pay tribute to the work of the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). He is not in his place, but he spoke earlier. When I looked at this issue, I was astonished to find that acid is freely available online to anybody of any age, including children. Incredibly, certain forms of acid needed in the making, as my wife does, of jams and cordials are restricted to registered pharmacies, but this stuff can be bought online without any problem. It has to be right to restrict the sale, at least to under-18s. It has to be right to beef up the penalties for possessing harmful corrosive substances where they are intended to cause injury.
The devil will be in the detail. The evidence shows that only one offence in five involving acid is committed by a child under the age of 18. We need qualifications in the Bill on substances that are capable of causing permanent harm. There is also a worry about the number of people coming forward: according to the St Andrews Centre for Plastic Surgery and Burns, fewer than half of acid attack victims in this country pursue criminal charges against their attacker.
On knife crime, again we need make to the tools of violence as difficult to procure as possible. I see absolutely no legitimate reason for possession of zombie knives and so on. There are all sorts of problems: age-verification online, as trading standards has stated; what we do about weapons imported from overseas; and what the duty of care will be on Royal Mail and other carriers. The rise in knife crime in London has been particularly horrendous. What has been more worrying since 2014 is that the age of both victims and perpetrators has been getting younger and younger. That is, of course, drug related.
We have to look at the complicity of social media. The major social media companies have been in front of the Home Affairs Committee with regard to radicalisation, access to hardcore imagery and hate crime. Increasingly, we are seeing easy accessibility to gang rap songs, with gangs brandishing and glorifying knives on social media platforms. That needs to be prevented in the first place and taken down immediately when spotted. Social media companies need to be much more responsible and proactive.
I query why the Bill does not, as far as I can see, extend the existing offence of having a knife or offensive weapon on school premises to cover other types of educational institution, as was covered in the consultation, but the problem is bigger than just the availability of offensive weapons, and bigger than just having stiffer sentences.
The measures in the Bill will increase the use of mandatory minimum custodial sentences for children, yet evidence shows that custody is failing in being rehabilitative. Last year, 69% of children released from custody reoffended within a year. That is a considerably higher figure than for those who were given community sentences, so we need to think much smarter about the criminal justice system and how we keep people out of jail and sustainably out of trouble.
Working in partnerships, we need to understand why gang culture in this country is increasingly using these weapons. I filmed a documentary back in 2009 called “Tower Block of Commons” in which I spent time with youth gangs in Newtown in inner-city Birmingham. Through the help of former gang members who then set up a charity to try to rehabilitate some of these people and bring them back in from the dark side, I began to understand some of the sensitivities and vulnerabilities of people who turn to gangs. This is about not just the penalties and the availability, but understanding the mindsets of the people who think it is good to use these weapons.
Finally, the Bill is just one part of a jigsaw, but we need to be smarter and take a much more holistic approach to violent youth crime.
Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
It is a prevalent liberal misassumption that things can only get better. Their mindset is that progress is inevitable and that whatever we do, society will advance. It is true that, as Disraeli said:
“Change is inevitable…change is constant”,
but things can simultaneously deteriorate as well as improve. In my lifetime, there is no question but that that is exactly what has happened.
In the 60 years of my life—I know you are thinking, Mr Deputy Speaker, “How can that possibly be true? How can that callow youth standing before me possibly have been born in 1958?”, but it is true—civil society has been weakened, respect for authority has dwindled and many of the once routine civilities and courtesies that mitigate the inevitable pitfalls of human existence have been derided, eroded or abandoned. Consequently, life is less gentle than it was when I was a boy. Many have been brutalised and some are brutal. It is very difficult for the liberal establishment to come to terms with that, because the unhappy reality of increasing disorder and criminality contrasts with the myth of progress. It is therefore either disguised or ignored by those who cannot bear to face the facts.
I thought I would offer the Chamber some of those facts this afternoon. They are so extraordinary that when I researched them, I could barely believe them, but they are based on information available from the Library. In the year of my birth, 1958, the total number of violent criminal incidents was 31,522. At the end of 2014—a year for which the figures are available—the total number of violent incidents was 1,245,000. This is an extraordinary change. Even allowing for the change in population, which is significant, and for the changes in the definition of crime, which are not irrelevant, the truth is that there has been an explosion in the amount of serious and violent crime in our country. Most Members in this Chamber will know someone in their circle, family or beyond who has been a victim of some kind of serious or violent crime. Of course, we know that our constituents have been, but many of us will have encountered it in a much more familiar way than that.
Will Quince
Notwithstanding my right hon. Friend’s point, does he accept that it has become a lot easier—in fact, has never been easier—to report a crime?
Mr Hayes
It is true that in criminal statistics there is the well-established principle of the dark figure—the number of crimes never discovered because they are never reported—and that this also needs to be taken into account in any comparative analysis, which is why I qualified mine heavily before I offered it.
None the less, in the year of my birth there were 1,194 recorded robberies; the number now, extraordinarily enough, is 74,130. We have had roughly a seventyfold increase in the number of robberies during the 60 years of my life. This is indeed an extraordinary change. As parliamentarians, our recognition and acceptance of this is an important part of reconnecting ourselves with the lives and assumptions of the people who suffer these kinds of crimes. The more we detach ourselves from this reality and bury our heads in the sand, the more people believe we either do not know or, worse, do not care. I know that people across the Chamber do care, but denial is not good enough.
That is why I welcome the Bill. It is an important acceptance that action is needed, that further measures are required. It is not, of course, the whole solution—the Government would not claim it was, as right hon. and hon. Members have said—but it is a step in the right direction, although it will need to be refined in Committee. I will not go into why and how, because that has been amply rehearsed already, but it is important to consider some of the issues the Bill deals with: the availability of weapons; how easy or difficult it is for the police to deal with prosecutions; and the culture associated with this increase in violence, particularly among the young and in urban areas.
Our preoccupation with the here and now does not help. We have a culture dominated by the immediate at the expense of measured contemplation. We no longer think about what was or might be; we think of now, and we do not want people to feel that now is worse than it once was. Yet, having that long-term view and more contemplative approach to public policy is an important way to deal with some of the things I have described.
The idea that things are not getting better is unpalatable, which is why the Bill is pertinent and welcome. Crime has many causes, and some have been rehearsed in the debate. They include communal disintegration, family breakdown and the absence of opportunity, but fundamentally criminal behaviour is about the absence of values—values that the law-abiding take as read: care for others, personal responsibility, respect for the rule of law. In the absence of those values, the gulf is filled by altogether less desirable things—greed, anger, sloth, lust, gluttony, envy, pride. They are not, after all, new sins; they have been common to the human condition since man was made—and the results can be deadly.
Crime is not an illness to be treated, and the perpetrators of crime are not patients. Crime is the product of choices that people make. Those choices might have been affected by their circumstances, but it is pretty insulting to working-class people of the kind I was brought up among to tell them they are more likely to be criminals because they live on a council estate, work in a factory or never had a formal education of the kind I and many here enjoyed. Let us be clear: we have to identify malevolent behaviour and deal with it appropriately in the interests of public respect for the fairness of the justice system. Every time we do not, we undermine the regard for the rule of law among less well-off people—those hard-working decent people who do the right thing and do not choose the course of crime but go about their lives in a peaceable, decent and honourable way.
Let us now think about what more needs to be done. Certainly we need to tackle some of the “drivers” of crime, as they have been described by other Members. I have mentioned a few, in the context of health and the life of civil society, but I think that the internet is, or can be, a malevolent influence in this regard. We need to get tough with the social media platforms that glamorise violence, and, in particular, glamorise the use of the weapons of violence.
As I suggested earlier to the Home Secretary, we also need to adopt a cross-departmental approach to deal with support for the family and support for communities. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh)—who I thought spoke extremely well, as I told her privately—mentioned early intervention. Early intervention does matter, and there is no better early intervention than a strong and stable family. My early intervention was my mum and dad, who taught me the difference between what was right and what was wrong. You can fudge these things, and you can have a high-flown debate in fancy terms about sociology, but in the end it comes back to that: people having a very fundamental sense of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, and what is good and what is bad behaviour. Families really matter in that respect.
We know that there is an association—if I may get sociological for a moment—between certain kinds of young people and crime. They tend to be young people whose families have broken down, and who have not had the role model of a strong father. We need to take a lateral approach in considering some of those causal factors.
Finally—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Mr Hughes, you are very close to the top of the list. I am sure you do not want to go down the list. I know that Mr Hayes is about to finish his speech. Come on, Mr Hayes.
Mr Hayes
As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, generosity is not merely my middle name; it is my every name. None the less, my dear friend will have to wait, because I am about to conclude my remarks.
The real risk with the Bill is not going too far, but not going far enough; not taking more steps than are necessary, but not taking the necessary steps. I will leave the House with Proust. Proust said, “You must never be afraid to go too far, because the truth lies beyond.” There is no Minister in this Government more committed to the pursuit of the truth than the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who will sum up the debate.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I have to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I do not have any Proust. Instead, I will regale you with west midlands crime figures.
Julian Knight
It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for the rather evocative-sounding South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). I thought that his speech was superb in its evocation and exploration of the rise in crime over such a long timescale. It was very informative indeed.
I agree with my right hon. Friend him about the glorification of knife culture in social media, which was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). We need to get a grip on social media companies, because they have a wide responsibility. They are not above and beyond society; they are part of society. We should not treat them in a way that makes them publishers, as it were, but they must be reminded of their responsibility to invest the necessary resources to ensure that such things are kept off their platforms, as quickly as possible.
This Bill represents a much-needed update in the law governing offensive weapons. It is an unfortunate fact that criminals are wont to adapt to new conditions when the law changes, so it is important for the Government to move swiftly to close loopholes when they arise.
I wanted to speak in the debate because of the almost silent gun and knife epidemic in the west midlands. It may surprise Members to know that the level of gun crime is higher there than it is in London: over 25 gun crimes per 100,000 people. In fact, the region is the only part of the country in which that level is reached. We also unfortunately have the third highest rate of knife crime of all areas of the country; only the Metropolitan police area and West Yorkshire are above us. To give a bit of context, Warwickshire abuts Birmingham and the West Midlands Police area, and knife crime in that area is about half the level that it is in the west midlands.
I see evidence of this on a regular basis in Solihull. We do not experience incidences of shootings and stabbings, thank goodness, at this time, and I hope this Bill will help to prevent any such incidences, but we are seeing a growth in aggravated acquisitive crime involving knives, particularly terror-inducing knives such as death star and zombie knives. I think of death stars as planet-killing weapons from “Star Wars”. Death star knives are absolutely shocking and there is no need for that knife to be in production at all, and there is no need for any individual to purchase such a knife. As acquisitive crime, particularly car crime, has increased, I have heard reports that criminals have sometimes brandished those knives. At present, because London gets a lot of focus there is not sufficient focus to ensure that we crack down as hard as possible. That is one of the reasons why I support the Bill; it will help indirectly to keep my residents safe.
The response of the police and crime commissioner has not helped the situation at all. Despite a massive rise in acquisitive crime—over 29% over the past year in Solihull borough—he has chosen to close, without any proper consultation, Solihull police station, effectively leaving 209,000 people without a police station. We have been promised that at some unspecified date in future there will be a new front desk effectively; that could be in a shopping centre or in Chelmsley Wood in the north of the borough. As a resident of the south of the borough, I can say that it is easier for me to get to Warwick than to get to Chelmsley Wood in the north of the borough. What message does that send out to the public when we are seeing an increase in violent acquisitive crime? Residents are saying, “We are paying our council taxes; Solihull residents are paying for an increase in precept, yet the police station is being closed.”
That will lead to longer response times. The police station is located at the centre of the constituency and of Solihull borough. If it is located at some unspecified date in the future in the north, there will be longer response times, or officers might have to come out of area from Coventry or parts of Birmingham. My residents are extremely concerned about that.
Turning to the mechanics of the Bill, the main policy concern is about balancing the Government’s aims against the rights and liberties of individual citizens. I take on board the point that many hon. Friends have mentioned about .50 calibre rifles, and I am glad that those concerns are being listened to by the Government and there is active engagement. I, too, have been approached by the law-abiding shooting community, which is very cognisant of the need for gun control and very supportive of it. It has said to me that there is always a possibility that people could end up not being able to pursue their sport because of this change. I am pleased that we are at least looking at that and addressing it.
More generally, criminalising the possession of these articles will make it much easier for the police to intervene before they are used against the public—my constituents. The Bill introduces sensible requirements for online vendors to ensure that they are not selling restricted articles to under-age buyers; this is another example of how technology and evolving consumer habits can leave the law behind.
While these specific measures will no doubt help to reduce the presence of dangerous weapons in our public spaces, I am glad that the Government recognise that the problem of violent crime cannot be tackled in isolation. In the foreword to the “Serious Violence Strategy” published in April the then Home Secretary made it clear that she intended to wage a comprehensive campaign that included not only law enforcement but charities, communities and the private sector, as well as health and education partners. That is commendable, and I hope that the Government will maintain that commitment, tackling not only violent crime but the driving forces behind it. That is something that has been reflected by the societal issues that have been raised in the debate today.
It is the first duty of the Government to protect the public, and it is right that the recent spate of vicious acid attacks has drawn a prompt legislative response. I have no doubt that the Bill will help to protect the public. This is the vilest crime that I can imagine. The horror of an individual splashing acid on to someone’s face would keep many of us awake at night. These crimes follow people throughout their lives, and we have seen instances in which people have taken their lives as a result of such acid attacks.
In conclusion, I support the Bill. In almost every respect, it is a fit and good Bill, and I look forward to supporting it. More generally, I want to send a loud and clear message to the West Midlands police and crime commissioner that the Government are doing their job and that he now needs to do his by ensuring that my community is properly protected and that we have a working police station in a town of 209,000 people.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
I want to begin by welcoming the nature of this debate. I am a relatively new Member in this place, and this is unfortunately one of only a handful of times when I have sat through a debate where there has been genuinely measured and constructive comment from both sides and where Members have made new, interesting and constructive criticism of the Bill in question. I hope that the criticisms we have heard today will improve this one. I would single out the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who is no longer in her place, for her measured and positive contribution. I have actually gone through my speech and crossed out the passages that slagged off the Labour party, because it did not feel wholly appropriate to use them in this environment. This is not normally in my nature, but I have done it—[Interruption.] Disappointing, I know.
I welcome the Bill. It is an important step forward in keeping our communities safe. We have talked about the rise in crime. Broadly, it has come down over the past decade, but the changing nature of crime is all-important to the way in which we police it, and violent crime in particular has been on the rise. It is crucial that the police have the powers that they need to target the criminals effectively in relation to knife crime and a range of other issues that can contribute to it, including drugs. I mentioned that issue to the Home Secretary earlier, and I wrote to the Home Office about it only this week. The Bill aims to achieve exactly that, with new tough provisions to tackle knife crime and acid attacks.
In Mansfield and Warsop, we have had some issues with violent crime and the use of weapons. In April, there were 10 arrests for possessing a weapon. The majority of those were made around the town centre, which is becoming an increasingly unwelcoming place because of the growing problems of very public drug use, antisocial behaviour and violent crime. This is putting people off visiting our town centre, so this is not just about the safety of our local people; it is about the local economy and our town and our shops as well.
I hope that the Bill will enable the police to prosecute a greater number of offenders and keep my constituents in Mansfield safe. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) said, drugs are a huge driver of violent crime, and I hope that the Government will also build a strategy around the changing nature of the drugs market, which is having a huge impact in my constituency. I met Nick Butler, the neighbourhood policing inspector in Mansfield, earlier this month, and it was good to talk to him about his work and his priorities locally. It was clear from our conversation that, while police officers are working hard and are keen to catch criminals, they need the powers to do that and the ability to charge offenders robustly. I believe that the Bill will enable the police to do that more easily and to target this particular brand of criminals more effectively.
Legislation that creates extra controls on knives and corrosive substances that are bought online is important. Our laws need to keep up with technological change and the changing nature of violent crime. The Bill will make it harder for young people to buy knives and acid online, with sellers requiring rigorous age verification to prove that those purchasing knives or corrosives are over the age of 18. That is a huge step forward in tackling the changing way in which people get hold of those weapons. It is good news that crime has fallen by more than a third since 2010, but the increase in violent crime in particular is worrying, and I am glad that the Government are taking decisive action to tackle this issue.
The first serious violence strategy, which was commissioned by the Home Secretary and which is backed by £40 million of funding, marks an important step in our response to knife and gun crime. It strikes a balance between prevention and law enforcement, and crucially targets violent behaviours at an early age. As Members on both sides of the House have said, education, intervention and support are huge factors to go along with taking action against such weapons. Early intervention is incredibly important—the early intervention youth fund for community projects is another example of helping people to live lives free of violent crime. Other Government legislation can have an impact. Hon. Members have mentioned the impact of social media regulation on the lives of young people and their access to things that might radicalise them or promote violent behaviour.
I have come to a passage in my notes that I have crossed out—it was particularly mean about Labour—so I will move on to the clever things that other hon. Members have mentioned. I would have said them first had I been called earlier. If my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is correct on the detail, what he says makes perfect sense. There is no reason why threats with a knife made in the home should be any less of a priority than threats made in public areas. I am sure that the Minister more than recognises the impact of domestic violence, which is in her brief. She has been to Mansfield to meet domestic violence charities in my constituency and has seen the impact first hand—my constituency has the highest level of domestic violence in Nottinghamshire. I hope that the problem raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley can be improved at a later stage.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that our hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) made a good point when he referred to police response times? The speed with which the police respond is important in snuffing out crime, particularly in developing situations in town centres.
Ben Bradley
My right hon. Friend is right. The police response to incidents is important. I am very pleased that the structures within our response and neighbourhood policing have changed. I hope that that and additional officers will improve the situation in Nottinghamshire—I am sure that that is replicated in other forces around the country.
A number of colleagues raised the distinction between weapons at the opposite ends of the scale—weapons used for crime and those used in sport, agriculture or rural communities that are safe and properly licensed. All the signs are that Government Front Benchers are listening and that those points will be carefully considered in Committee.
That said, the Bill is a significant commitment as part of our work to tackle serious violence and to make it harder than ever for people to get their hands on dangerous weapons. Banning the possession of weapons such as zombie knives and knuckledusters is a positive step. In many ways, it is unfortunate that we have to legislate—I am not naturally a proponent of banning lots of things—but this is an important and all-too-necessary part of the Bill.
The rise of acid attacks is simply horrific. Creating a new criminal offence of selling corrosive substances to under-18s is a positive step in the right direction, along with preventing the delivery of those substances to people’s homes. Importantly, the Government will ensure that police have the powers to arrest people who carry such corrosive substances in public. I hope that we can continue to equip local police with robust powers, particularly to deal with the drugs issues that I have mentioned.
The Government are determined to help to prevent the sale and possession of dangerous weapons. This tough legislation will make it harder than ever for people to get their hands on them. I am glad we are taking decisive action and look forward to supporting the Bill.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
I want to explain briefly why I was so keen to intervene on my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) briefly popped into the Chamber. I am a fan and enthusiastic supporter of her manifesto for strengthening families and I wanted to acknowledge her presence while she was here, but you very wisely stopped me doing so, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The idea of banning stuff does not come naturally to me. I have the tendencies of a classical liberal inasmuch as I believe that the freedom of the individual is considerably more important. However, I agree wholeheartedly with two thirds of the banning provisions in the Bill. Why would I not? In fact, we might ask ourselves why we are having to ban these things. Why have they not been banned already?
Some Members will be much more conversant than I am with some of the terms used in the Bill, but I had to google the term “zombie knife” to understand what one is. The classic definition is that a zombie knife has a straight and a serrated cutting edge but also includes markings or wording that suggests the knife will be used for violent ends. The idea that we might sell such things, the idea that someone thought it a good idea to design such an overtly violent piece of equipment and then sell it, strikes me as a bit crazy in the first place, so we are unfortunate to be in this position.
My excellent local newspaper, the Express & Star, is, as has been mentioned previously, campaigning to ensure that other knives are considered for inclusion in future legislation. When we walk down the high street and see the range of what can only be described as weapons that are freely available, we need to ask ourselves what other purpose they could possibly have than to be used for acts of violence or intimidation.
Banning such knives is clearly a good idea, because they are obviously offensive weapons, but I am not naturally given to the idea of banning things. I recently read this in the paper—I do not know whether it is true, but I just could not make it up—but did Jamie Oliver really meet Nicola Sturgeon to consider the banning of two-for-one pizzas? I do not know, but that is what I read. A guy who has allegedly made £240 million from selling food now wants to dictate what the less well-off can eat. A good middle-class family could go to one of Jamie’s restaurants and get a good deal on pizza, but he does not want the same opportunity for low-cost food to be extended to less well-off people. Counter-intuitive? Bonkers? Others can decide.
Instead of tackling the problem of children eating too much high-salt, high-energy food, how about endorsing the idea of a mile a day? All children should be encouraged to walk or run a mile a day, in the hope that the practice persists when they become adults. As someone who has spent six hours sat in the Chamber today, I would appreciate getting out to do my mile. I look forward to some exercise after this debate.
The idea that people might carry acid in public, in small amounts, for purposes other than to do harm to others is clearly also counter-intuitive, and it is something that we should ban.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I thank my very good and hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene. I do not understand how anyone can be allowed to buy acid except for scientific purposes; I just do not understand how that can happen in our society. What purpose would it serve other than to do bad?
Eddie Hughes
My hon. Friend makes an important point. When people from the outside world look into this Chamber, they will question why some of these things are not already against the law. I am a member of the Women and Equalities Committee, and in this Chamber we recently debated upskirting, which is another example of something about which the general public would surely think, “Are you crazy? Surely this should be against the law already.”
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, but perhaps we are asking and addressing the wrong question. By the time a young gang member, typically aged between 14 and 24, picks up a knife to carry out an assault, we have already failed them. A number of Government programmes are upstreaming the work to try to prevent people from getting to that point in the first place. For example, £920 million has been invested in the troubled families programme, which started in 2011. A subsequent round of funding was agreed for 2015 to 2020, with the aim of reaching 400,000 families. It has had some mixed reviews of its effect, but the idea is that there are a certain number of families in communities—everybody knows who they are—who require intensive support from several agencies, both governmental and voluntary, and they need to be where we maximise our focus and effort because, as I said, once someone is in a gang something has already gone wrong.
Before I came to the House, I worked for the YMCA in Birmingham, a charity that supports young, previously homeless people. It has 300 accommodation units, but it does not just provide accommodation; it helps vulnerable people who need a wide range of support. These are people who are not used to accessing medical and health services in the way the rest of us would; they need to be got up in the morning and shown the way to the dentist and to the doctor so that they can attend appointments. It is clear that fragile people who are offered support can be saved from a life of crime and gang culture. Often, those who engage in gang culture are reaching out for some validation—for somebody to say, “You’re welcome in our group, we will protect and support you, and you will be one of us.” That is surely the embodiment of what we consider family to be.
I completely endorse some elements of the Bill, but I am still confused about the measures on firearms. Members spoke eloquently earlier and from an informed position, asking, “Why are we trying to ban something that has super-limited previous exposure to crime and that is, generally speaking, held by people who have already gone through all sorts of security checks and is held in the most secure way?” Those provisions possibly feel like a step too far, so I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State say he would further consider that element of the Bill.
As a Government, we are doing the right thing by offering a broad range of support to the most vulnerable young people in society, because the upstreaming of support is incredibly important, and we should indeed be banning these weapons.
Finally, I have had a long-running disagreement with the West Midlands police and crime commissioner. He is moving police officers from Bloxwich in my constituency to Wolverhampton, thereby reducing response times and moving those officers away from the community that they serve. That is not a good move. The Government have provided him with extra resource by allowing him to increase the precept to put more police on the street, but he has patently failed to do so, because he believes that that money is better spent on office staff. That is completely wrong.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes). He is part of a small coterie of us who have sat through the whole of this afternoon’s debate, so I feel some sense of camaraderie with him.
There is a lot in the Bill to be welcomed. I think I speak for many in the House when I say that any legislation that improves our constituents’ safety is to be applauded. However, I wish gently to advise the Minister that legislation alone is not a panacea for reducing crime in the United Kingdom. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friends the Members for Solihull (Julian Knight), for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) have all said, the PCC determines priorities, and that affects the level of crime.
As a London MP, I can speak only about London. It is a fact that crime is on the rise in our capital and has been since the incumbent Mayor was elected. I say with no particular pleasure that it is rather disappointing that his standard excuse is that he could tackle the problem of violent crime if he had more resources. I certainly do not agree with that point of view. It is completely disingenuous of the London Mayor to demand more funding. The Government have continually provided financial support to him, including through a scheme for him to receive a cut from business rates, which has provided an additional £60 million. The Government have also allowed the Mayor to raise council tax to bring in an additional £49 million to support the police service in London. Therefore, overall, the Government have supported the Mayor by giving him access to more than £110 million, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet and my hon. Friends the Members for Solihull and for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) have mentioned. Then of course there are the millions of pounds that the Mayor of London holds in reserves.
All police services need legislation to address changing criminal behaviour. The vile issue of acid attacks is just one of those where the law needs to catch up. Indeed, under Ken Livingstone crime started to go up, but his replacement—my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson)—Stephen Greenhalgh, who has already been mentioned, and my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) made it a political priority to address violent crime, particularly crime affecting young people. History proves to us that policing is not just about money and legislation, but about political will.
I am very pleased to see that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire has entered the Chamber and is in his place because I wish to mention the article he wrote in January for the Evening Standard. He said that when he was appointed deputy mayor for policing in London, the number of teenage murders in his first year was 29. He made it a political priority to address that rise and ensured that, when he left office, the number had been reduced to eight. The trajectory that he was previously on would have put the number of deaths at more than 50. The number of deaths in London now is about 80, so we are at a higher level.
My hon. Friend said that there was a culture in the Metropolitan police whereby teen murders were not considered statistically high in comparison with other world cities. That is appalling. He also said that the view of the Met police was that deaths of black youths were considered a fact of city life. That is abhorrent. He also outlined in his piece that many of the initiatives were controversial because they disproportionately affected black communities. That required him and the Mayor continuously to reassure communities that their actions were keeping their children safe. That is a commitment that the current Mayor should accept.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), who has returned to her place but who is perhaps not entirely listening to me, made a claim that crime in London was not actually increasing—or that it was doing so proportionally slower than in the rest of the country. There are reasons for that. The significant population of London shows that any percentage increase has a disproportionate effect on crime. Under the leadership of the current Mayor, London is undergoing a surge in violent crime. Since the beginning of his mayoralty, acid attacks are up 65%, knife crime is up 44%, homicide is up 16%, GBH is up 8% and rape is up 36%. Indeed, the chairman of the London Police and Crime Committee has launched an inquiry into why policing in London is failing. He says that the rise is not only unacceptable but deeply troubling.
Back in April, seven people were murdered in the capital, and when asked repeatedly whether he had met the bereaved families, the Mayor told LBC Radio:
“No, I haven’t spoken to the bereaved families. I’ve got a deputy mayor and a police commissioner...the point is that we are a team.’’
Well, I can say that, no, they are not. We introduced police and crime commissioners so that someone was accountable—so that an individual could be held responsible. That job is held by one person, and in London it is the Mayor. He may have a team supporting him, but he must take the lead, show leadership and stop hiding behind his employees. His standard response to any criticism is to release a press release, but given the fact that he has increased the budget of his press and public relations team to £2.5 million, he has time to do that. Recently, he put out a press release asking schools to take up his knife wand policy, which is laudable in its aspiration, but he had a take-up rate of just 2.4% of London schools. That has to be wrong, and it is not keeping our children safe.
In addition to the legislation that we are discussing today, there are lots of other things that the Mayor of London can do to tackle knife crime.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
May I just advise the hon. Gentleman that the Bill is not a personal attack on the Mayor of London? [Interruption.] I am sorry; did the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) say something?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I thank you for that, because otherwise I would have something to say and that would not be helpful to you. I am just trying to be constructive. We are on Second Reading of a Bill, and I am allowing latitude, but Members must focus on the Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker
The hon. Member for Spelthorne is helping out again. Let me just reassure you: the Bill is about knife crime, and not about other issues. As much as you think you are getting good advice from the hon. Gentleman, I would take your advice from the Chair.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I just want to intervene on my hon. Friend to say that I was simply making a personal remark to myself; I was not addressing the House. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend is focusing on the issues related to the Bill that apply directly to the capital.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I want to move the Bill on, and I want to ensure that we do not need to have a time limit. Please, let us carry on.
Dr Offord
Whether it is the Mayor of London or any police and crime commissioner, I feel that they could all do certain things to tackle knife crime, including better community engagement, better use of stop and search, and the provision of preventive initiatives.
There are several parts of the Bill which I have some concerns about. I am never convinced that attaining the age of 18 should allow an individual to engage in any particular kind of behaviour or activity, whether that is drinking, voting, fighting in the armed forces or buying bleach. I therefore have some concerns about the age of 18 with regard to the provisions in the Bill. It is my understanding that the Home Office does not regularly collect data on the age of those engaging in acid attacks, but information collected from 39 forces showed that only one in five acid attacks was committed by a person under the age of 18. This leads to questions about whether the person who has purchased the substances is over or under the age of 18. I hope the Minister will take up this issue and legislate on it.
While preparing for this debate, I had a look on the internet to see how easy it is to purchase a knife online—for example, on eBay. I was pleasantly surprised to find that flick knives, gravity knives and zombie knives are not readily available. However, kitchen knives are, so the provision in the Bill that seeks to ban knives being sent through the post does not seem to be a very effective use of the legislation, given that most knives used in crime usually come from kitchen drawers.
I would also like some detail on the proposal to make the possession of a knife on a further education premises an offence. As has been mentioned, there are some scenarios where this is permissible. In the case of training, gamekeepers, chefs, cooks, hairdressers, electricians, builders and carpenters all require a bladed instrument, so in many respects these people will have to be excluded from the provisions.
The Bill seeks to ban the .5 calibre rifles that many Members have spoken about today, but these are legally held weapons. The owners have been vetted. They have been through a process where they have been judged to be not only competent but safe to own a gun. Many of them also regularly attend a club. I therefore have to ask, what does this have to do with violent crime? The owners have exemplary records and are among the most law-abiding people in this country, so why are they being victimised when they have nothing to do with violence, particularly in cities such as London?
The reason I am very interested in knife crime is that I witnessed someone being stabbed in 1990. It was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) said, quite an experience. It certainly had an impact on me. I was actually photographing at the time, and was pleased that I managed to take a picture of the perpetrator. He was subsequently convicted, but would not have been if not for my picture. My recollection of the person who fell into my arms with a big hole in his back will certainly never leave me.
We are approaching 80 murders within the capital this year. I conclude by mentioning two people, who were both my constituents. Back in the winter in Mill Hill, Vijay Patel was punched, hit his head and died; and Raul Nicolaie was stabbed to death in his house. I believe that this legislation will ensure that such tragedies do not occur in the future. I appeal to the Minister: if there is to be any legacy from this legislation, let this be her legacy, because the legacy of the Mayor of London currently is one of a lost generation.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
I am delighted to speak in this debate, and, like a number of people, I have had the honour and privilege to sit through the vast proportion of it. The debate has been well conducted, with a lot of speeches touching on a number of important issues.
The issue of knife crime and murder in our capital city of London is highly relevant to the Bill. Let no one pretend that what is happening in London has not directly influenced the Government in their desire to see some form of legislation on this particular issue. The situation in the capital is, frankly, scandalous.
When my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) was Deputy Mayor in charge of policing, the crime rates were significantly lower than they are today. That was because of policy and political leadership. It is entirely legitimate to suggest that the kind of leadership that London had at that time no longer exists. It would be invidious, I fully agree, to blame the current Mayor of London entirely for the situation in the capital. I am not saying that it is all his fault, but he does bear some responsibility for it.
It is no accident that, given the increase in knife crime and the increase in fatalities here in London—in our capital—the Government have introduced the Bill. Those two events, I would suggest, are related. It is therefore entirely appropriate for Members who represent London seats—my seat is just outside London, but many of the issues in London pertain to the bit of Surrey that I represent—to address and focus their remarks on the situation here in London.
The Bill has many excellent provisions. Surely the laws against selling dangerous acid to youngsters—to children, in many instances—are well overdue and will be well received across the House. There are issues relating to knives. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) said that he thought it extraordinary that so-called zombie knives had not been banned a long time ago. He was quite right to suggest that the manufacturers of these knives—and their designers, if one can call them that—clearly fully expected that the knives would be used not only to commit grievous, violent crimes, but to threaten and intimidate. There seems to be no other reason that such knives should have been manufactured. Not even for ornamental reasons would the case be a strong one.
Some provisions in the Bill have rightly caused a measure of concern among Conservative Members. The proposed ban on .5 calibre guns seems a little excessive because, as many Members have pointed out, these guns have never been used, as far as we know, in the commission of violent crimes. Banning them therefore seems wholly disproportionate to the threat that they actually pose to members of the public. As has been observed many times in this debate, people who possess these weapons are vetted. They have gone through a measure of screening. They are people who are law-abiding. They pursue their interest in arms in clubs. They practise their activities in highly regulated and very safe conditions.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. As he knows, the Bill has been drafted in such a way as to refer not to .5 calibre rounds, but to 13,600 joules of energy. The reason for doing that is to include other weapons, including .357 Lapua Magnum rifles, but that cannot account for the people who use home loads and lower the velocity of the round. The Bill is about whether the rifle is capable of firing it. People do use home loads, and they lower the capacity, the velocity and energy. The Bill does not account for that at all.
Kwasi Kwarteng
As I suggested, there is a social context that gave birth to the Bill—a huge increase in violent crime and fatalities in London. The two things, as I said, are related. If the Government are trying to address the issue of knife crime and fatalities in our capital, it is beyond my imagination to understand why .5 calibre guns should be banned as proposed in the Bill.
I am delighted that the Secretary of State has openly and generously offered to meet MPs and other people for a wider consultation on the details in the Bill.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) has put his finger on an interesting point. Clause 28(2) references “any rifle” from which a shot of more than 13,600 joules can be fired. The Bill is drafted much wider than just .5 calibre weapons.
Kwasi Kwarteng
That is a legitimate point. I hope that many of these difficulties and anomalies will be ironed out in Committee, because the Bill as drafted raises some interesting questions and, dare I say it, has a number of holes.
Broadly, we have to accept that something had to be done. The new spate of acid attacks is largely unprecedented. I understand, as a point of history, that in the 19th century people used sulphuric acid and other noxious substances in this way, but for our generation this is completely unprecedented, and it is quite right for the Government to legislate to curtail the sale of this offensive weapon.
Broadly, this is a good Bill and I am fully happy to support its Second Reading, as I suspect are the vast majority of Members on both sides of the House, but I urge Ministers to consider some of the objections made in this wide-ranging and stimulating debate to certain of its provisions.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
Prior to the debate, we were furnished with a huge number of statistics, and those statistics make stark and appalling reading, because behind every one of them is a real life that has been lost, a family that has been destroyed or a person left with life-changing disfigurement and injury. In 2017—a particularly bad year—we saw a 22% increase in offences involving knives, an 11% increase in firearms offences and a near tripling of recorded corrosive substance attacks. Within a few miles of where we sit, in the city of London, we have seen more than 70 murders just this year.
I am pleased that a good proportion of the Bill is devoted to putting on a statutory footing many of the voluntary commitments that retailers have given over the last couple of years, and I know that many local authorities have worked with local traders to implement codes of practice regarding knife and corrosive substance sales. I am also pleased that the Bill extends to internet business-to-consumer sales, which is long overdue.
Clauses 12 to 27 contain expansive measures to restrict and control the supply and ownership of bladed items. That has been mentioned at length this afternoon, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes). We need a complete prohibition of these things called zombie knives, which are particularly fearsome and have no value in what they look like. They are not like 18th-century samurai swords; they have one sole purpose. They have cutting, serrated edges and are deemed and bought to be threatening and offensive.
Bob Stewart
I am particularly concerned that on the internet, for under a tenner, one can buy a commando knife, which is the ultimate killing knife.
Craig Mackinlay
My hon. Friend is all too aware of the use of such weapons from his previous life. He makes a valid point—it is not just zombie knives. All manner of offensive and dangerous weapons are available out there.
The provisions related to bladed articles are proportionate, robust and to be welcomed. However, the great problem, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) spoke, is that in every single kitchen in every single house there are the tools available to cause havoc on our streets. No matter how we frame the Bill, it is very difficult to legislate against the domestic knives that exist absolutely everywhere and are too often the weapon responsible for murders on the streets of this country.
Also, we heard clearly from my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) that we must be careful not to criminalise the legitimate sale of bespoke, expensive cutlery by mail order. That is a consideration.
The great difficulty, which I do not think this Bill fully addresses, is sale on the internet from foreign sources to domestic customers in this country. It is obviously impossible for a UK Bill to extend its remit extraterritorially, but I recommend that the Minister give serious thought, either this afternoon or in Committee, to including in the Bill a provision for responsibility to fall on the agent company that has facilitated the trade—whether a corporate body such as eBay or Amazon, or something else. These have become the primary facilitators of foreign business transactions and of selling to UK domestic consumers, and it is time they bore responsibility for what they are doing.
I understand the thinking behind the provisions in clauses 28 and 29, relating to high muzzle velocity rifles, but in my view this precautionary principle simply goes too far. As many right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned, there are no cases at all of high muzzle velocity or high-energy rifles being used in any criminal act. It is also beyond me how it was decided that 13,600 joules—or 10,000 foot-pounds in old money—should be the limit. Why not 13,500 joules or 10,000 joules, or anything else?
These are obviously powerful weapons, and they could be used as a sniper rifle, for instance, but they have never been used as such. They are large, heavy and unwieldy, and they have never been used for such purposes. For those who want to own such weapons, the reality is that it is very difficult to get hold of one. People are required to apply for a firearms certificate, which means an interview by the local police force, a Disclosure and Barring Service check and security measures in their house to ensure that any such weapon is securely stored, while increasingly—this applies across many police forces—their vetting will need to be confirmed by a GP.
Given the numbers involved, these provisions are ill thought out. As the Minister will be aware, the handgun—banned since 1997, but all too easily obtained and illegally held—is the criminal’s weapon of choice. This weapon is the killer on the street. Banning high-power rifles, on the basis of what I consider an overweening precautionary principle, would be as daft as banning vans or lorries, which in some circumstances can be, and have been, used as offensive and lethal weapons.
I support the thrust of the Bill—I absolutely support the measures against bladed weapons and chemicals—but I ask for some sensible thinking about single-shot high-energy rifles. I really beg the Minister to look again at internet facilitators, because it is time that they took responsibility for connecting businesses abroad with consumers at home and that they were held accountable for what they are doing in the consumer market.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Many of my constituents in Chelmsford write to tell me how concerned they are about the changing nature of crime. They know that crime overall has dropped, but they see more crime happening online and more violent crime. This morning, I spoke to my police and crime commissioner to make sure that I was fully up to date with what was happening on the streets. Violence with injury has increased by over 10% in Chelmsford in the past year, although that is lower than the national increase of 15%. Possession of weapons has increased by nearly 50%, and there has been a rise in wounding with intent.
My police and crime commissioner says that the police are doing a great deal. Operation Raptor is under review, while Operation Survey, which is targeted at serious violence, has also been helpful. They are launching their new violence and vulnerability framework, and they believe that they can get ahead of this surge. However, they want to make more use of stop-and-search, and a commitment to more policing resources. We know that a lot of this is related to county lines, and that the increased crime is related to the more complex ways in which drugs are moved around the country by gangs. The Government and Parliament need to take a lot of action.
As elected politicians, our top priority is to care about the safety of those we represent, who expect us to act. The police and crime commissioner made a comment about extra resources. I was pleased to work last year with colleagues from across Essex in making a strong statement to the Policing Minister about the need to increase the cap on local police funding so that our police would get the resources that they need. Those extra 150 police officers are now being recruited and are going into action across Chelmsford.
We can do more about some of the causes of crime. In an intervention, I mentioned the young people who are being recruited into drugs-related gangs through online platforms. The evidence in the Science and Technology Committee was to do with drill music being played through YouTube; those who had written it could then directly message the young people. The point made in the Committee was that that could happen to any teenager and that no one is immune. That has definitely been seen in Chelmsford. I believe that we will act on this issue through the internet safety strategy, about which I have just had a meeting with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
There is also the issue of what weapons are being used—that is why we are discussing this Bill about offensive weapons. We need to strengthen laws to prevent the possession and sale of knives in particular. I have seen many images shared by my local police of knives that they have intercepted—particularly the “zombie killer” type. I am pleased that the Government are taking action on knives.
There is also the issue of acid attacks. A few months ago, I visited Chelmsford mosque and spoke to some of the young people about what they felt as they went around the streets these days. I was taken by how many young members of that community referred to how concerned they were about recent acid attacks, particularly those carried out on some sort of religious grounds. If I can go back to that group now and say that we are strengthening the law to make it illegal for young people to buy acid and to carry it in a public place, that will be an extremely important and positive message. I am glad that such provisions are in the Bill.
I turn to firearms legislation. I never expected to spend a lot of my life as a politician working on that issue, but I do spend an enormous amount of time on it. I led the reform of European firearms legislation through the European Parliament a couple of years ago following the Paris attacks in the Bataclan theatre, where firearms that had supposedly been permanently deactivated—they therefore could be bought and sold without licences in many parts of Europe—were actually not deactivated. Pins had simply been put through the barrels; they were pulled out and the firearms were reactivated by the terrorists. Ninety people were murdered in that attack.
In the UK, we were not immune: 35 of those same firearms were found in a marina on our shores, having been smuggled here. The then Home Secretary—the current Prime Minister—went to Europe and said that we needed to tighten up European gun laws because those affect our own security. I must make one point: those incorrectly deactivated firearms could not have been bought and sold under our law without a licence because the UK has among the strongest—if not the strongest—firearms legislation of anywhere in Europe. It was absolutely in our interest to make sure that the rest of Europe rose to that challenge.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Lady is correct about the measures relating to firearms. Does she agree that those who transgress and break the law are not those who have a licence to hold arms legally? The Government need to focus attention on the law breakers, not those who uphold the law.
Vicky Ford
I completely agree and that brings me to my next point. What I learnt from looking at our firearms legislation, and firearms legislation across the continent of Europe and in Ireland, is that there are many very good reasons why genuine law-abiding people may need to have a firearm. There are particular sensitivities relating to personal security in Northern Ireland, where many people have permission to hold firearms that would not be permitted in other parts of the UK. The devil is in the detail and it is really important detail. There are many legitimate reasons for why people might want to hold firearms. They could be historical re-enactors, filmmakers—Britain has more filmmakers using firearms than anywhere else in the world, which is one reason why we have such an active filmmaking industry—farmers, target shooters or people involved in the countryside.
My concern is that the Bill makes changes to what firearms are available to law-abiding citizens. Measures have possibly been strengthened without thinking through all the consequences. If I may, Mr Speaker, I would like to read just one email I received from a constituent:
“I completely agree with the other sections of the Bill, but believe that these restrictions on the shooting community unfairly target law-abiding members of our society. I am a keen target shooter and police officer, and I don’t see how these restrictions will cut down on the amount of gun crime on our streets. I have yet to see any of this type of firearm that is due to be restricted used in any criminal activity.”
If we are to tighten the law in this area, we need to make sure that we maintain the confidence of the law-abiding gun-holding community and make sure we can explain to them the evidence the Minister has seen for changing the law.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford).
I have had the opportunity to listen to the majority of contributions to the debate, but I would like to start my contribution by paying tribute to the Minister. She has gone out of her way—I have heard other Members refer to this as well—to go through the content of the Bill in detail, and to listen thoughtfully, productively and passionately to the arguments put forward. She knows that most of our arguments with the Bill focus on the firearms aspects, but I shall speak about the whole Bill in its current form.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) made a comment about not understanding why anyone would need to buy acid if they were not a scientist. I can only assume that he can afford a very good cleaner who has to procure and use such acids in his own home. There are many legitimate reasons why individuals might wish to buy acid—I am delighted for him that he does not have to go through the trials and tribulations of normal life like the rest of us—whether in a domestic setting, or for agricultural use. In industry, hydrochloride is regularly used for cleaning.
There are legitimate reasons for buying acid, but there have been incredibly harmful and distressing illegitimate uses of acid for personal attacks, and some for personal defence. They horrify us. We have seen the news stories and the ramifications. We have seen the efforts of countless passers-by and members of society who come along with bottles of water to try to clear acid from a victim’s eyes and skin. It is obnoxious that anyone would seek to use domestic acids for such a cruel purpose.
It is right that we as a Parliament decide that enough is enough and take steps to frustrate the purchase and illegal use of acid. This does not mean that acid will not be available if somebody really wants to get their hands on it, but the Bill will empower the police, giving them the powers to stop people having it who should not have it in a public place. That is the right step to take.
The Minister also knows that we raised some practical points relating to proposals on postage and delivery for the online purchase of blades. This issue is important, because if we look at Parliament’s consideration of online sales and its scrutiny through Select Committees of how online sellers and marketplaces describe themselves, we see that they have thoughtfully avoided much of the legislative restriction that we have sought to place on them, because they say that they only facilitate sales and that the contract is with the individual seller, not the marketplace. Whether it is Amazon or eBay, they have all argued, “Yes, you can have whatever legislative provision you want, but it does not attach to us—it attaches to the person who uses us as a forum to sell.”
Whether we do this with online delivery charges and considerations around the unfairness of differences in postal charges, it will be important, for the provision on the delivery of knives in particular, that we have complete buy-in and sign-up from the marketplaces, rather than just the sellers. It is important to make sure that we know who is buying the blade and that they are able to buy it—that they are of a legal age and we know their identity—and we need to make sure that all who are involved in the process adhere to the Bill. I hope that the Minister has thought about that, engaged with the online sellers and taken the opportunity to tell them that they also have a duty in this process.
I was flicking through my phone 20 minutes ago—I will not say who was speaking at the time, but it was no reflection on their contribution—but zombie knives and combat knives are available for purchase. People can go on websites that say, “Here are UK legal blades. Here are blades that fold, that are less than three inches, that are suitable penknives for sporting purposes, and so on,” but many other sites will callously sell something that is designed to hurt, injure or kill. Having seen and heard the outrageous and horrendous stories in our broadsheets, on our television screens, in our communities and from our constituents, it is important that we take steps—I am not saying that this is entirely the right way to frame the legislation—to provide protection in our community. Having never had the privilege of serving on a Bill Committee and being very unlikely to have the privilege of doing so, I hope that members of this Bill’s Committee will take the opportunity to thoughtfully consider the provisions and augment them in a way that will ensure that the Bill will do what the Minister hopes.
Let me turn, in particular, to the firearms provisions. I made an intervention that touched on energy and velocity, and I think there are fundamental issues, which I raised with the Minister. The first is about safety. When we consider safety, why is something above 13,600 joules unsafe but something under that is not? Why does this Parliament need to interject ourselves in this discussion? Are we saying that 13,599 joules is okay? Is it any less lethal? No, it is not.
Jim Shannon
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In this Bill, the Government are considering removing .50 calibre rifles of a certain velocity. If someone shortens the barrel or reduces the load, however, they can reduce the impact of a .50 calibre rifle or anything else of that size. There are other ways to do this so that law-abiding people can obtain these guns.
Gavin Robinson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but this is about the purpose of the Bill. What are we trying to achieve? Is it to make the public safer? The arbitrary figure of 13,600 joules cannot make the public safer. We are talking about law-abiding sport enthusiasts who have been through all the processes, as has been discussed this afternoon. Are we saying that 13,599 joules is okay, but 13,601 joules is not? It makes no sense. It is not just .50 calibre rifles either; it is exactly the same for .357 Lapua Magnum rifles. It does not matter if someone home loads, as my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, and lowers the velocity of the round, because the Bill is framed so that what matters is not what they put through a firearm but what the firearm is capable of delivering.
I am afraid that the public safety test in the Bill does not cut it. A .22 rifle can remove life and has a much lower velocity. Families often introduce their young ones to the sport of firearms shooting—target shooting, plinking around the farm—with .22 rifles or air rifles, but a person can still lose their life from a .22. What, then, are we trying to achieve? What arguments and evidence base has the Home Office used to advance these provisions? I do not think they have any, and neither do sporting enthusiasts throughout the country. There has never been any discernible or detected use of rifles of this calibre, legally held, in the commission of a crime.
Some mention was made of the Northern Ireland provisions that allow us to access handguns and other firearms that people cannot access in the rest of the UK. That is true. Several Members of this House are in that position. Every time a person purchases a firearm of that capacity—handgun size, whether a 9 mm, a .40 calibre, a .45 ACP, or whatever—they must first apply for permission and show justifiable grounds for having one and then, shortly after purchasing it, hand it in to the police. They then take it away and put it through forensics and ballistics testing so that if that legally held and approved firearm were ever used and in the commissioning of, or during, a crime and the case left where it was used, the ballistics report would tell the police that it was that person’s firearm.
Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)
Of course, the hon. Gentleman was about to say that it is also subject to a ministerial decision about who should be allowed to carry a personal protection weapon in Northern Ireland. Is this not a very regulated market?
Gavin Robinson
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but it is subject to a ministerial decision only if the person fails to satisfy the conditions earlier in the process. The right hon. Gentleman served as a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office and has regularly and routinely seen the constraints and strictures, and how strenuous is the process to ensure that only appropriately approved people have access to firearms and in an appropriate way. The Firearms (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 and the guidance from the NIO outline the conditions under which a person can make an application.
The important point, however, is that the ballistics and forensics evidence is there for those firearms. The same process could be applied to these circumstances. The approach in the Bill is to constrain access to 13,600 joules of energy—to use the term in the Bill—coming from a firearm. A similar forensics report could be made of that firearm and held by the state so that should that legally held firearm ever be used in the commissioning of crime, which has never happened before, the state would know whose weapon it was. It would be very simple, and I suggest that it should be considered in Committee as a further step to strengthen the existing provisions.
Let me make another point, on which I know I will have no support from Conservative Members. In Northern Ireland, no one can have an air rifle unless it is registered on a firearms certificate. An air rifle can be a deadly weapon. It may be a .177, it may take a small slug, it may operate through the force of air rather than black powder, but it can still be a lethal weapon. Air rifles are not even registered on firearms certificates in England. However, we are imposing serious restrictions on sporting pursuits which I think are unnecessary.
I have canvassed the Minister on the bump stock proposal, and I accept the argument that has been advanced. I think it absolutely right that bump stocks cannot be used in this country, and that the Bill allows the police to seize them. That is a fair argument, and one that we support. As the Minister will know, it has been argued that MARS rifles are useful to disabled shooters, giving access to the sport to those who have trouble handling bolts. I accept that, so far, none of the Paralympic shooting organisations—or, indeed, any of the national shooting organisations—have produced any evidence to substantiate that argument, but I trust that it will be considered later in the Bill’s passage.
We need to engage in very productive consideration. What are the reasons, what are the root causes, and how do we address the fears that are associated with some of these items? I have talked about the money that has just been invested in the .50 calibre range at Silverstone, which was specifically designed to be a safe environment for the use of such rifles, but they will certainly not be used regularly in gangland crimes. We are talking about a rifle weighing 30 lb, which will cost £3,000 or £4,000. The Minister is well aware of some of the historic issues that have arisen in Northern Ireland when paramilitaries have had access to such weapons, but they were never legally held, they were never on a firearms certificate, and they are not what we should be considering today. We are talking about the lawful pursuit of interest in a sport. That is something that we should support, something that forms part of our Olympics set-up, and something that we, as a country, fund participants to engage in, be involved in, and represent our country in. My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) knows David Calvert very well. Calvert is a Commonwealth Games and Olympics shooter and gold medallist from Northern Ireland, who excels in the sport.
As a Parliament, we want our society to be safe. As a Parliament, we recognise that regulation is necessary. As a Parliament, we recognise that we should take steps to ensure that anyone who has access to something that is potentially lethal is controlled and monitored, and that there are systems in place to ensure that it is as safe as it can possibly be. However, in the absence of any rationale or evidence to justify this change, I think that it is a step too far.
I welcome the Minister’s willingness to engage with the issue, and I welcomed the Secretary of State’s indication at the start of the debate that he would engage in thoughtful consideration in the weeks ahead. I look forward to playing whatever part I can on the periphery of the Committee to help to improve the Bill.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
This has been a wide-ranging and, on the whole, thoughtful debate. There is agreement across the House on the broad themes of the Bill: the prohibition of the sale of corrosive substances to under-18s and the prohibition of the dispatch of bladed products and corrosive substances to residential addresses. I think it right that the Government are tackling the issue of online sales, and, more generally, the sale and possession of acid and knives. We want to ensure that death stars and zombie knives, which have no purpose other than to cause harm, are no longer a problem on our streets.
I counted no fewer than 20 Back-Bench speeches today. I pay particular tribute to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who focused on corrosive substances and referred to the 85 attacks that had taken place in Newham. She rightly drew attention to the physical and emotional impact of such attacks on victims. She spoke with her usual knowledge and passion, and I pay tribute to her for her sustained campaigning on this issue.
I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for his speech. He focused on corrosive substances, and brought his technical knowledge to bear on his analysis of the Bill and set out a number of useful suggestions that I hope will be taken into account as the Bill moves into Committee, not least the fact that the Home Office does not collect national statistics on acid attacks, and it would be very useful if it chose to do so. It is important—my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) the shadow policing Minister made this point in her opening remarks—to review the list of substances that require a licence for purchase, because that will surely evolve in the months and years to come. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham drew attention to the fact that police cuts have absolutely had consequences that should be acknowledged.
I pay tribute to the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson), who said that it was essential that we protect shop workers, who are on the very frontline of the sale of some of these products. I thank the Home Secretary for his positive reaction to that intervention, and I hope that that will be looked at in Committee.
While we welcome the broad thrust of the Bill, it is of course on its own not enough; we need to look at this issue in a broader context. I have said previously in the House that adequate resourcing on its own is not sufficient, but it certainly is necessary. Ministers must acknowledge that it cannot be said that police numbers are irrelevant. We have seen that in a leaked Home Office document—we know that that is the advice that has been given—which says:
“Since 2012-13, weighted crime demand on the police has risen, largely due to growth in recorded sex offences. At the same time officers’ numbers have fallen by 5% since 2014.
So resources dedicated to serious violence have come under pressure and charge rates have dropped. This may have encouraged offenders.”
That is the advice Ministers have been given. I know they say that they never comment on leaks, but if they have not seen this document they should be asking for it, and they should come clean on the impact that the cuts to our police have had on the rise in serious and violent crime. It is not only the 21,000 fewer police officers that have had an impact—so have the 18,000 fewer support staff and the 6,800 fewer community support officers.
I also draw attention to the wider austerity context, and the impact that has had across our public services, not least on youth services in England. There has been a substantial reduction in the number of youth workers, which has clearly had an impact on our young people. Work needs to be done across government to look at whether those leaving care, as well as those who are homeless and those who are excluded from school, receive appropriate support. It is a great shame that central Government funding for youth offending teams has been reduced from £145 million in 2010-11 to just £72 million in 2017-18. That clearly has an impact on the ability of our young people to make a new life for themselves and move away from a potential life of offending.
A number of the contributions across the House made it clear that multi-agency working is important, and it absolutely is, but multi-agency working can only be effective if all those agencies are properly funded and resourced. They can all make a contribution to what is a much broader problem in this context.
We must not forget the situation in which this debate takes place, because there are some sobering statistics on violent crime in our country. The number of violent offences is now more than 1.3 million, compared with just 709,000 in 2009. There were nearly 40,000 offences involving a knife or a sharp instrument in the year ending December 2017. That is a 22% increase on the previous year. There were well over 6,500 firearms offences last year—an 11% increase on the previous year. All those statistics give greater urgency to the need for the House to act, and yes, the Bill is certainly part of that. We have made it absolutely clear that the tightening of the law in respect of acid and knives is welcome, but if the Government were to simply stop here and assume that the Bill will do everything, I fear that they would be mistaken.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham described speaking to someone in his constituency, and he made it absolutely clear that this issue should be looked at in a broader context. Unless, together with the Bill, there is serious funding for the agencies that provide the necessary support to our young people and people right across our society, this legislation will not be as effective as it needs to be. Above all, we must think now about all those people who have been injured and had their lives adversely affected by the terrible attacks on our streets. The debate today has on the whole been positive, and it has recognised what people have gone through. Let us now take the Bill into Committee and provide improvements where needed to ensure that it is effective, and that it is matched by the necessary resources.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I am grateful to all hon. and right hon. Members across the House for their contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) said that this had been a constructive and thoughtful debate—that is sadly too rare in this House—and I agree with him. Colleagues have made considered contributions, and it is clear that there is much common ground between us. The fact is that we all want this violent crime to stop, and the Bill is a tool with which the Government, and I hope Members across the House, are trying to tackle this serious issue.
It is apparent that everyone is committed to tackling violent crime head on, and rightly so. Recorded knife and gun crimes are on the increase, and hon. Members will know the devastating impact that those crimes have on communities across the country, not just in London. Before I go on to deal with the Bill, it is worth reflecting on why the legislation is necessary. From the teenage son stabbed to death outside a shop in Camden and the 15-year-old killed in Romford at the weekend to the man in Liverpool whose arm was severed by a machete in a county lines punishment and the fatal stabbings in Wolverhampton, and Sheffield—all those crimes and many more in every part of the country have left behind them grieving families and devastated communities. I consider meeting the victims and the grieving families of these terrible crimes to be one of the most important parts of my role. It is an essential part of my job, and that is why, when I stand here at the Dispatch Box, I speak not just from my notes but from the heart. It is for those people that I am helping the Government to take this legislation through.
We are clear that this is just a part of our strategy to tackle serious violence. We published the serious violence strategy in April, and its emphasis is on the themes that we have heard so much about today. It is about early intervention, about prevention and about the community drawing together and relying on local partners, as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said. It is about us working together and seeing this not just as a law enforcement issue, important though that is, but as a societal issue as well. The measures in the Bill will strengthen the powers available to the police to deal with such crimes. When a family has suffered a terrible crime, they want to feel that the police have the powers they need to bring the offenders to justice. The measures will not solve all crimes involving knives, guns and corrosives, but they are important. We must pursue and prosecute those who commit violent crimes. The Bill gives the police and others the powers they need to do so.
The corrosives measures in the Bill will help to stop young people getting hold of dangerous corrosives and are supported by interested businesses. They build on the voluntary arrangements already in place and will close down the sale of acids to under-18s, both online and offline. The Bill also creates an offence of possession of a corrosive in a public place so that police can take additional action to prevent acid attacks. We know that gang members decant corrosive substances into water bottles to evade detection. This measure gives the police the powers they need.
Other measures will help to stop young people getting hold of knives online. That is a major concern of the communities and charities we have worked with in drawing together the serious violence strategy. We know that such sales have led to knives being used in crime. I have seen some of the knives on sale online. As colleagues on both sides of the House have said, they have no practical use; they are clearly designed to glamorise violence and encourage criminality, and are promoted as such.
Mr John Hayes
My hon. Friend is right about the sale on the internet of those weapons, but the internet has other malevolent influences on young people. Several hon. Members raised the issue of social media and its glamorisation of violence. Will she work with others to clamp down on those people who allow those images and messages to be broadcast to vulnerable young people?
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, not just for the concise and clear points he made in his contribution but for the poetry that he always brings to our debates.
My hon. Friends the Members for Solihull and for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) also made the point about social media. That is why the Home Office serious violence strategy is funding the social media hub pilot, which will give the Metropolitan police the powers they need to work with social media companies to bring those videos down. I have seen drill videos; they are horrific and they need to stop.
The measures on the possession of offensive weapons give the police the powers they need to act when people have flick knives, zombie knives and other offensive weapons that have absolutely no place in our homes.
A number of colleagues mentioned clause 28, which is on high-energy rifles. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said at the start of the debate that we will listen to colleagues’ concerns. I reiterate that this is not an attack on rural sports; it is a response to the threat assessment of the National Crime Agency and the police.
Given the strong concerns expressed, I will take a moment to explain how clause 28 came into being. For those who are not familiar with such weapons, they are very large and heavy firearms that can shoot very large distances. One example I have been given is that they can shoot the distance between London Bridge and Trafalgar Square—some 3,500 metres. I can share with the House the fact that there has been a recent increase in seizures at the United Kingdom border of higher-powered weaponry and ordnance. The assessment is that those weapons were destined for the criminal marketplace, and that the criminal marketplace is showing a growing demand for more powerful weaponry.
Victoria Atkins
I will finish my point if I may.
That is the background against which we are operating. Having received such an assessment, we must consider it with great care. We have a duty to consider it and to protect the public. I gently correct the suggestion that such high-energy rifles have not been used in crime. As the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said, high-energy rifles were used in the 1990s during the troubles to kill people who were charged with securing Northern Ireland. We are listening, and, as I hope colleagues saw, I sat through the vast majority of the debate. Those and other issues will be addressed in the conversations that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and all the ministerial team will have with colleagues on both sides of the House.
I must pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who has devoted a great deal of time and energy not just to the Bill but to protecting our young people and tackling serious violence.
Theresa Villiers
Will the Minister acknowledge that, even assuming the Bill makes it to the statute book, we will not tackle this problem unless the Mayor of London and other police and crime commissioners take it very seriously and ensure that they hold their police to account, set objectives for them and ensure that they deliver on this crucial work, as they did when my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) successfully got crime levels down?
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Indeed she and my hon. Friends the Members for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), for Hendon (Dr Offord) and for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) all focused on the importance of local policing and local leadership in policing. We introduced police and crime commissioners to enable local people to have the power to influence policing in their local area. Of course, I very much enjoy working with the Mayor of London and, as far as we are concerned, more power to his elbow when it comes to local policing.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend will have heard the widespread concern in many different parts of the United Kingdom. She seems to want to ban these big-calibre weapons solely on the basis that they might get into the hands of a criminal or a terrorist. If that is the case, rather than ban them why does she not adopt my suggestion of improving the secure places where such weapons have to be held? There should be all the security, with the weapons checked in and out, to make stealing them much more difficult.
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention and for his contribution. He and I have been in constant conversation about this for some time. He will forgive me for not committing to changing the Bill on the Floor of the House, but we are in listening mode. Indeed, I was in listening mode when my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made a typically robust but thoughtful contribution, and it may be that we work together on looking into that.
Victoria Atkins
That is literally the next thing on my to-do list. The hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) are both relentless campaigners on corrosive substances, and I have taken on board her point about adults supplying corrosive substances to children. I will look into it, and perhaps there are already laws to cover it.
The substances in schedule 1 have been included on the basis of recommendations provided by our scientific advisers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which provides science and technology advice to the Government. We have tried to ensure that Parliament can scrutinise the list, which is why it is in the Bill, but there is of course capacity to change and add to the schedule through regulation.
I am cantering through, but I am grateful for the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), who brought his mental health expertise to the Chamber and showed the complexity of the issues we face, and of the right hon. Member for East Ham—I know he is interested in banning sales to under-21s, but we do not feel we have the mechanisms to do that.
I am grateful to all colleagues who have emphasised that this is not just an urban issue but a rural issue, too. There is real intent on both sides of the House to deal with this, and I note that colleagues believe social media and internet companies should join us in our determination. That message is coming out loud and clear from this Government, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Offensive Weapons Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Offensive Weapons Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 13 September 2018.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration and any proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Kelly Tolhurst.)
Question agreed to.
Offensive Weapons Bill (Money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Offensive Weapons Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of compensation in respect of surrendered weapons, firearms and ancillary equipment.—(Kelly Tolhurst.)
Question agreed to.
Mr Speaker
Before I proceed to the next business, I have now to announce a correction to the result of today’s deferred Division. There must have been a miscount by those who attend to these matters. In respect of the Question relating to healthcare and associated professionals, the Ayes were 465, not 467, and the Noes were 2, so the Ayes have it.
Offensive Weapons Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 17th July 2018
(6 years, 4 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 17 July 2018 - (17 Jul 2018)
The Chair
Before we begin, let me say that Members can take your jackets off if they wish; I am certainly going to take off mine. Please switch all electronic devices to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings, but you can finish the ones that you have—I am feeling lenient. Date Time Witness Tuesday 17 July Until no later than 10.55 am Redthread; The Ben Kinsella Trust; St Giles Trust; Acid Survivors Trust International Tuesday 17 July Until no later than 11.25 am The Crown Prosecution Service; London Borough of Croydon; The Chartered Trading Standards Institute Tuesday 17 July Until no later than 3.15 pm The National Crime Agency; The National Ballistics Intelligence Service; National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on firearms and explosive licensing; The Metropolitan Police Tuesday 17 July Until no later than 4.00 pm National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on corrosive attacks; National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on knife enabled crime Tuesday 17 July Until no later than 4.30 pm The British Retail Consortium; British Independent Retailers Association Thursday 19 July Until no later than 12.00 pm The British Association for Shooting and Conservation Thursday 19 July Until no later than 1.00 pm The Children’s Commissioner; The Victims’ Commissioner Thursday 19 July Until no later than 2.30 pm The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers Thursday 19 July Until no later than 3.00 pm Thames Valley Police
We will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper, then the motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication, and then the motion to allow us to deliberate in private about our questions before the oral evidence sessions. In view of the limited time available, I hope that we can take those matters formally without debate.
I call the Minister to move the programme motion in her name, which was discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee for the Bill.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 17 July) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 17 July;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 19 July;
(c) at 4.30 pm and 7.00 pm on Tuesday 4 September;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 6 September;
(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 11 September;
(f) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 13 September;
(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following table:
TABLE
(3) proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clause 1; Schedule 1; Clauses 2 to 30; Schedule 2; Clauses 31 to 40; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(4) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 13 September.—(Victoria Atkins.)
The Chair
The deadline for amendments to be considered at the first line-by-line sitting of the Committee is Thursday 30 August.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Victoria Atkins.)
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I am grateful for the publication of written evidence, but the responses to the consultation that was the forerunner to the Bill have not yet been published. A summary of the responses is on the Home Office website, but several of the witnesses who will give evidence today reference their consultation responses in their biographies, and we have not had access to them. Could we at least have the consultation responses from the witnesses who are giving evidence today and on Thursday, if not all the responses?
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The list of corrosive substances in schedule 1 is based on some scientific advice that the Government have received, as I understand it. Could that advice be made available to us as well?
Victoria Atkins
If I may, I will check with the officials and get back to the Committee on that.
The Chair
Copies of written evidence will be made available in the Committee room.
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Victoria Atkins.)
The Chair
Good morning. We are now in the public part of our sitting. We will hear evidence from Redthread, the Ben Kinsella Trust, St Giles Trust and Acid Survivors Trust International.
I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill. We must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has already agreed. For this session with the four witnesses here, we have until 10.55 am. Before we start, do any Members of the Committee wish to declare any relevant interests in connection with the Bill?
Victoria Atkins
For the sake of completeness, Mr Gapes, I used to prosecute for the Crown Prosecution Service and other prosecuting agencies before I was elected to this place.
The Chair
Thank you very much. Any others? No.
I ask the witnesses that when you answer a question for the first time, please introduce yourselves and tell us about your background. We will do it that way rather than any other way round, to save time.
Victoria Atkins
Q
John Poynton: My name is John Poynton. I am chief executive of Redthread, a youth work charity that works in partnership with health, particularly emergency departments at major trauma centre hospitals. The charity meets young people when they are victims of violence and attends the emergency departments. It uses that window of opportunity or teachable moment to help with wrap-around support and to encourage and empower young people to help to break their cycle of violence.
There is a recognition in working with the London major trauma centres and other local emergency departments and the major trauma centres across the midlands that by the time a young person attends a major trauma centre with a major trauma stabbing or shooting injury, they have often already attended on average four to five times with lower-level injuries. The idea is that violence breeds more violence. Some victims will go on to become perpetrators if there is not an opportunity to interrupt the cycle of violence, and others will go on to become victims time and time again.
There is an amazing opportunity in that clinical setting for Redthread youth workers—I am sure Rob will talk about the St Giles team on the trauma ward at the Royal London—to be embedded and to work shoulder to shoulder alongside the doctors and nurses, so that they meet the victims of violence in the department and follow the patient to give them support and really use that teachable moment.
Rob Owen: I am Rob Owen from the St Giles Trust. I suppose we are best known for the fact that I probably employ more former armed robbers and drug dealers than any other organisation in the UK. They like the fact that I am a reformed ex-investment banker, so that probably fits well.
Our model is that we want to use people with lived experience, who have had similar life experiences, to help our client group. In this field in London we want to focus predominantly on the preventive side. We run a very effective project called SOS+, using people who have had those lived experiences, who have been trafficked, sometimes exploited and certainly involved in gangs, to go into, now, predominantly primary schools and secondary schools to explain to kids the realities of getting into a gang—the realities of having a drug debt; the realities of someone forcing you to take drugs out of your backside at point of violence. They demystify the allure that a lot of people feel about county lines, getting involved in drugs and carrying weapons. The spread of county lines in market towns and coastal areas is something that I am sure you guys are aware of and something that is going to become an increasingly big problem in the UK.
That is the preventive side. On the doing side in London, we run one of the largest gang-exit services, again called SOS, which was founded 10 years ago by an amazing man called Junior Smart. It uses people who have very credible life skills to work with those who are in gangs and are at the point when they probably feel they can exit. We want to get them out safely, so sometimes we work intensively with the police to get them relocated, but getting a young child out of a gang is often much simpler.
Finally, to go back to John’s point, we were very fortunate in being approached by Martin Griffiths who is the most amazing trauma surgeon in Britain and was celebrated by the NHS 70-year awards. He was fed up with the fact that 46% of young people on his slab had been there before—it was very interesting what John was saying. Martin was upset by the fact that these kids now have on average seven puncture wounds. They are not being attacked, as in the old days, by one kid on one kid; they are being attacked by multiple kids, so you get one person with very traumatic injuries. He was fed up with the fact that these same kids were coming back again and again. He brought in, through Redthread, our ability to come in and have those SOS caseworkers at the hospital, at the point of most need—a point of reachability, I suppose is the answer—to try to de-escalate violence that could occur because that young child has been attacked with their peer group, but also to take that kid and give them a much better chance of not getting involved again in the cycle of gangs. That percentage has gone from 46% to 1%, which we are obviously quite pleased with and which I think Martin is very relieved about.
The people we are dealing with are multi-disadvantaged and very hard to engage. They feel they have no role or stake in society. The only way to help them is to put in place intensive support that encompasses their family and their siblings as well. That is the scope of what we are doing.
Patrick Green: My name is Patrick Green, CEO of the Ben Kinsella Trust, which was set up 10 years ago following the murder of Ben Kinsella in Islington in north London. We work with children who generally display really good behaviours and values and go to school. A lot of the children we speak to would not normally be those whom we feel are concerned with knife crime, but our ethos is that it is important that all young people should have a conversation around knife crime. We believe there is a teachable moment much earlier in the process, and our job is to stop young people going to John’s and Rob’s services. We hope to lower that number.
Many young people learn about knife crime from other young people or via social media, which are never the most reliable sources. We give young people the opportunity to talk to a credible adult and have an experience that helps them to embed good values. No young person is born with a knife in their hands. It is a learned behaviour. If you can help them to unlearn those behaviours or value the good behaviours and values that they have, at a point in the future when they might be tested, they can go back to a point that they have a reference on, and it makes a big difference in making more positive decisions. We have worked with about 10,000 young people since 2012.
Jaf Shah: Good morning. My name is Jaf Shah, executive director of Acid Survivors Trust International. Interestingly, we have always historically had an international focus, but the rise in attacks in the UK, particularly over the last five years or so, led a number of our partners and Government organisations with whom we have worked overseas to say, “Look, you are advising us. Why aren’t you doing anything in the UK?” In order to not appear hypocritical, we decided to take on a largely advocacy role here in the UK to bring about some of the changes that we have brought about in other countries with a great deal of success. Our focus over the past few years has been about trying to raise awareness of acid attacks in the UK, to place them within the context of how it happened—why it happens, who are the victims, who are the perpetrators—and to use some of the methodologies that we have acquired to tackle those issues in other countries—with, as I said, some success. It is a new journey for us here in the UK because we are dealing with a quite different demographic than we would be dealing with in terms of perpetrators.
Our latest research is based on a Freedom of Information Act request, having approached all the police forces in the UK. I was of the view two years ago that the vast majority of attacks were committed by young men on young men, but our latest Freedom of Information Act request has revealed that that figure is distorted by the figures from London, where it is true to say that two thirds of victims are young men and a third of victims are female. If you take the Met figures out of the equation, you realise that at least 52% of victims are women, which then starts to follow more closely the global pattern.
Here in the UK, we are looking to bring a change in legislation, and we are working with local partners to start to engage with the communities most affected. Our offices are based in Tower Hamlets, which has probably the third highest number of attacks in the whole of London. We particularly want to engage with survivors to begin engagement with young people around education programmes, and many survivors with whom we are working closely are very interested in pursuing that goal, with the desired outcome of reducing attacks in the UK.
Victoria Atkins
Q
John Poynton: I do not have the precise statistics on what is coming in, but there is no question that there is no place for zombie knives, machetes and large weapons like that. My concern is that a number of young people will come to hospital with all sorts of improvised weapon injuries from screwdrivers and the like. Clearly it is important to make weapons less easy for young people to get hold of, but there will always be a need for education and earlier intervention, to look at how we get young people to understand that certain weapons are tools, and that there are ways to use them. This should not be about finding any sharp implement, be it a screwdriver or something else that has been sharpened, to use. When young people come to hospitals, it is not as clearcut as saying that it is just about zombie knives or kitchen knives.
With regard to availability, a lot of young people talk about the traditional method of ensuring that the public feel safer that weapons are being taken off the streets: we see the traditional use of photos of weapons that have been found or taken, and that helps us to feel that those weapons have been removed. The broader picture—the public health approach to looking at this issue—is that lots of young people will see those same pictures that make us feel safer, but they will perhaps not read all the copy that goes with the picture and they will see those pictures as showing the weapons that are available, and they are somewhat traumatised by the idea that those weapons are available. The availability or lack of availability of certain weapons needs to sit alongside a clear and simple narrative to ensure that the entire community—including young people and us—understands that the community needs to be safe. We all need to have the same perception that the community is safe, and not have this misunderstanding of what they need to do to feel safe.
It was interesting for the police to recognise last year that only 25% of knife crime could be attributed to gangs. My question is about what we do with the 75% of “normal”—for want of a better phrase—non-gang members. How do we really educate them to understand that they do not need to pick up a knife to feel safe on the streets?
Rob Owen: Picking up on John’s point about escalation, it is almost like an arms race. What is happening with county lines in particular is that London gangs are looked up to as the grandfathers of gangs, and regional areas aspire to be more like London gangs, often because of social media. They are saying, “We now need to have weapons, because we need to up our game.” In the old days the drug market in a market or coastal town was safer. Nowadays the kids who are involved in county lines or local drug dealing groups are thinking, “We need to have the next big thing.”
There is definitely an escalation in violence, and there is definitely an escalation outside London of the use or ability to use a weapon. The really sad thing is that a screwdriver is more deadly than a knife. If you talk to a surgeon, they will say that it is more complicated to sort out a stab wound from a screwdriver than from a knife, which I was surprised by. In primary schools, it is about demystifying. On social media, people see that there are safe places to stab each other—this is well documented. Actually, there is no safe place to stab someone, because if you hit an artery, it is pretty much game over.
A public health approach has to be taken. When the police catch a kid with a knife, one of the things that has to happen is that has to be seen as a beacon of need—that that kid needs some support to try to break that cycle. The kid is carrying that knife for a multitude of factors, but we are not going to solve things by taking that knife away or taking the drugs off them—then they would have a drug debt, too—and throwing them in prison. They will come out and have the same problems. It is about putting in that intensive care, even if they are caught with a knife, however unpalatable that is to the Daily Mail or whatever it is. It is about a beacon of need. All these kids who are being targeted by gangs are either in pupil referral units or have been excluded from schools. So 100% of the clients we are working with on county lines who are carrying weapons have been excluded from school. If you ever want a beacon of need for where resources should go, it is kids who have been excluded from school.
Patrick Green: Clear, unambiguous messaging around knives is important in the preventive world. If you are working with young people and there is any ambiguity, you get the “but” argument—“but I know somebody who this didn’t happen to”. You can lose the group. We are working with peer groups in schools, and that is so important.
I believe that it is important that the online world is brought into line with the retail world in terms of sales and the restrictions on sales. I have no figures for you, but from the conversations we have with the young people we deal with—particularly those who admit to carrying a knife or having carried a knife—knives will mostly be got from domestic settings, but shoplifting comes very high up in where they get knives from.
I feel that the voluntary code for e-tailing is not delivering as it should be. That possibly relates to the second part of your sitting today. The open display of knives gives young people an opportunity to take knives that they might use in other places. They are less likely to buy a knife and are more likely to shoplift it. That is why I think the legislation is important. It will help the preventive agenda and our conversations with young people. It will make it clearer to them what they can and cannot do, and that is important at this time.
Jaf Shah: I would echo much of what has been said, particularly around deploying a public health approach to addressing the root causes of this escalation not only in acid attacks, but in violent crime. In the case of acid and the availability of corrosive fluids, many complications clearly arise from the availability of lots of household products that contain high levels of corrosive content. How you regulate access to those types of products is a challenge. What the Bill proposes around licensing for sulphuric acid is an important step, because sulphuric acid at a concentration of 98% causes enormous physical and psychological damage to survivors. That licensing is a vital step, but the passing of legislation in itself is insufficient.
We need to ensure that we deploy a long-term approach to dealing with the root causes. We know that once you reduce the availability of one type of weapon, another weapon becomes available, and I think that is what has happened with the rise of acid attacks. It came at a time when there were greater attempts by law enforcement agencies to control other weapons. Many would-be perpetrators saw loopholes in the existing system that are now being addressed, so they chose to use acid, because it is a lot easier and cheaper to purchase and causes an enormous amount of physical and psychological scarring.
Louise Haigh
Q
Rob Owen: I think it is very varied. We do work on prevention. Through SOS+ we go into quite a few PRUs. They have been fantastically helpful and welcoming. It is really mixed. A lot of schools do not like to admit that there is a gang problem—some primary schools particularly are very worried about admitting that they are becoming targeted.
The gangs are becoming much more sophisticated in the way they recruit. They often do it through siblings. It is not simple. The different county lines are not uniform; they all have their own style and tolerance to violence. They all do it slightly differently, but there is a theme emerging that any child excluded from school becomes a target, because they have become alienated, and are the sort of material that the gangs are looking for.
Sadly, the people we are looking at are 10, 11 and 12-year-olds. It is no longer 16 or 17-year-olds. County lines have been going forever, but it was always older kids doing it. Now the real problems are the level of sophistication in almost brainwashing them into the gang, the levels of violence that are associated with those gangs, and the targeting of kids who have been excluded from school.
Patrick Green: I would echo that. It is really sad. We work with a lot of young people who have been excluded from school. There is no question that they are in a particularly difficult place in terms of the level of intervention and support that they need. I feel that some schools, as you would expect, do that a lot better than others.
I do not think that there is universal engagement at the moment. Things have definitely changed. Certainly, schools listen to Ofsted. We could get far more co-operation from Ofsted in terms of safeguarding, not just in the school itself but in the surrounding area and on the journey that young people make to and from school.
I just think that far too many young people are being excluded from school in the first place. We can probably tell when primary schools come to us and highlight young people whom we are already concerned about, purely from the attitude that we can see in a short two-hour workshop. Far more could be done in terms of safety nets and checks and balances on young people. When they get to being excluded from school, it is really difficult and a tough road back.
John Poynton: There is a real need to not make the schools and the young people feel as if they just have to focus on a lesson on gangs and knife crime. We have all mentioned that knife crime, gangs and county lines are symptoms of much deeper, longer-term root causes. Schools will probably not have any problem recognising that they have children who have had adverse childhood experiences throughout their lives. They have parents who perhaps are not able to support their children in quite the way they need. I suppose I really want to look at how schools are supported to engage the families and the children on those root-cause issues, rather than at trying to talk a headteacher into just having a gangs, knives or county lines lesson plan in their personal, social, health and economic education. I think you need to do both but, again, this is similar to my point about showing weapons that have been taken off the street. In going into schools, my colleagues here obviously do a very good job of ensuring that children are not traumatised. For children who perhaps are not engaging or listening in quite the same way as those who are going to stay on in mainstream education and do well, they might hear that this is normal. There is an element of re-traumatising, or possibly triggering a previous childhood trauma.
For me, it is again about ensuring that schools are better supported to work as early as possible around adverse childhood experience and support the parents through primary school, so that, as Rob pointed out, we are not having to bring the personal, social and health education lessons around county lines and gangs lower and lower, because we should be meeting it at the very beginning.
It is less threatening to teachers and to heads to talk about how we support all children with adverse childhood experience from reception, rather than to try to go backwards in talking about the more worrying subjects. I am not saying it is either/or; it is both.
Louise Haigh
Q
“Children carry weapons for a multitude of…reasons”
and criminal justice measures are unlikely to be effective in tackling this. It also says:
“There is no evidence that the threat of custody deters children.”
Is that a concern that you share?
Rob Owen: I broadly do. I do not think that, for many of our clients that we are working with, that is a factor that stops them carrying a weapon, sadly. A lot of it is to do with the glamorisation on social media, which has been mentioned before. Social media is now explaining to kids the most effective place to stab someone in the heart. How is that possible? Failure rates of surgery are very sensitive, but kids are now being shown on videos the two places if you are going to kill someone.
It is not a simple solution about saying, “You’ll have a mandatory sentence if you get caught with a knife.” It is completely about educating kids to understand the effects it will have longer term and the effects it will have on families. The longer term solution has got to be much more about education than sentences. That is not working; it is not putting people off.
Louise Haigh
Q
Rob Owen: There have got to be two things. One is that there have to be regulations and laws, and I completely get that. At the same time, there has also got to be some form of common sense and humanisation about that situation and about what the best thing is for that person to ensure that they do not create another victim.
My experience of parents of victims, sadly, is that what they are most obsessed about is ensuring that no other child suffers and no other parent has to go through what they have gone through. What we are trying to achieve is that the best environment for that to happen is available. But that is often not just about sentencing; that has got to be about a package of support that is put in place.
Patrick Green: It is a difficult one. Certainly, from the victim’s perspective, many of the young people who have been victims of knife crime are often concerned that the perpetrator is back on the streets very quickly, and that heightens their feeling of insecurity. Our view in terms of first-time offences is, yes. Young people carry knives for a range of reasons; some of them may be around protection, and people are just making a mistake. Certainly, when it comes to second offences, there is due concern there about the young person falling into a trend and sentencing really playing a part in helping take that young person off the street.
The key issue is the support from the first offence to the second offence. I am not entirely sure that young people who are caught with a knife are getting the right level of support to help them and deter them from coming back on to the street the second time. The “two strikes and you’re out” should absolutely be the final option, but there should be a range of support. This is about rehabilitation and helping—as somebody said earlier on, if you are carrying a knife, it is almost a cry for help, and we should be doing far more around that.
John Poynton: Earlier this year, with Sarah Jones, we had young people from all around the country attend the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime to talk about their experiences. One of the overriding messages from them was that their experience of prison or the threat of prison was not a clear deterrent to being involved in risky or criminal behaviours. As Rob says, there needs to be a clear package of support. I think it is really important that that strategy is recognised. It is about vulnerability and safeguarding, and we need to look at how we support the young people.
The comment was made that young people are very clever at finding loopholes. We had a number of young women who talked about the fact that they are coerced into carrying weapons so that the young men are not caught carrying them. I am just making the point that the young people carrying the weapons are very possibly not the young people likely to be using them. That is a statement—just to recognise that young women and very vulnerable young children are coerced into behaviours that they would not otherwise deem normal on their own.
You cannot have a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I am very aware that the strategy is not saying that—it is putting a raft of support in to look at how we work with these young people—but my concern would be the classic “cry wolf” issue or the “but what about” point that Patrick made. Young people will always know of someone else who has been stopped twice holding a weapon, who, perhaps quite rightly for a number of reasons, may not have been given a mandatory sentence. The issue is that that will always become the narrative, “In that case, it is not going to happen to me.”
I would push for a really broad package of support for young people and a very simple narrative around the issue, so that young people recognise that they should not be carrying weapons. We also need to look at why these young people are being coerced into carrying weapons or drugs or other things that they would not normally do on their own.
Jaf Shah: May I flip back briefly to an earlier question around engagement with schools? As I mentioned, our engagement in the UK at a programmatic level is embryonic, but what we know from our work overseas in terms of engaging with schools, schoolchildren, teachers and so on, and engaging from a very young age, is that it is a very effective way of engaging with children about the repercussions of a violent act—in particular acid violence. By the very nature of acid attacks, the face is targeted, so you have a very visible form of violence. When survivors go into schools and talk with children, the impact is very strong. They certainly realise that there is a human beyond the facial disfigurement and that they have their own narrative, and that story carries a very strong message.
I was very interested when I visited Scotland and met Dr Christine Goodall from Medics Against Violence. I thought that their work was absolutely brilliant. It is a strand of work that could work particularly well with survivors of acid attacks engaging with school children.
To fast-forward to the most recent question, it is enormously difficult around the mandatory sentencing of under-18s, because there are many complicating factors. I have been hearing locally that young children are actually carrying acid in schools—but as protection, because it has become so commonplace. I think it is a very difficult subject in terms of having an absolute answer. It requires, as everyone else has mentioned, a far more sophisticated package of engagement with groups who might be affected.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
Q
Rob Owen: Same age.
Nigel Huddleston
Q
Jaf Shah: The demographics vary between London and outside London. Within London, particularly in the three boroughs that are most affected in east London, the average age might be late teens, but there have certainly been some high-profile cases where 16 or 17-year-olds have engaged in what might be described as a spree of attacks in a very short space of time.
Nigel Huddleston
Q
Rob Owen: There is obviously higher usage among men, but the focus now for a lot of these gangs is to recruit people who do not stand out, so women or young girls are more likely to get targeted to become members, because they are less likely to be stopped and searched, and so on. The interesting thing for us, particularly in the county lines world, where gangs are looking to export the drugs out of London, is that they are now recruiting locally. The old model was to use London kids to go out to Dover, Ramsgate, Margate or wherever, but now they are recruiting locally, and they are recruiting lots of girls—obviously less, but an increasing amount. The worry is that there is starting to be an overlap between not only transporting drugs and weapons but being used in the sex trade. So there is an increasingly nasty element of exploitation—modern slavery, effectively—that is happening, and that is happening with lots of young girls, sadly.
Nigel Huddleston
Q
Jaf Shah: A combination of interventions is required to deal with a pretty complicated scenario. Obviously, in understanding acid violence, we know that, effectively, 50% of acid attacks occur in London. Within London, the three boroughs most affected constitute probably in the region of about 35% of attacks. It is no coincidence that those three boroughs are the three poorest boroughs in London, so you have to think about the issues of disadvantage of many young men—it is predominantly young men.
From 2017, in our data, 75% of perpetrators were men, 10% women and the rest unknown. What we are seeing is, again, the gap in what those young men aspire to and what they can realistically achieve through legitimate means. The aspiration thing is a key element. Every young person aspires to achieve something, and that might mean material goods, but what happens if you are not going to achieve that aspirational goal?
Not only do we have to ensure that there is a very strong educational programme that works around issues of respect and anti-violence, but we have to create opportunities for those young men, in particular, to find alternatives. That might be further education; it might be university. Clearly, most young people want to have some money in their pockets, so the issues around employment opportunities also come into play. If you take a trauma approach to dealing with the problem, you have to understand that many young men who commit these crimes have probably been victims of violence themselves. You have to engage with them at that level as well.
It is a very complicated scenario—hence the fact that I think you need to have an integrated approach in dealing with the problem, because it requires engagement with so many different stakeholders. That is not going to happen very easily; it will take at least two years—maybe a year if you are lucky—to embed the infrastructure, align all the stakeholders to a clear objective and then deliver a programme of work.
Patrick Green: It is all the things you mention. If I can borrow from public health language, in a health setting, in preventative work, we send out positive help messages to everybody to eat well, exercise well, not drink too much and so on. We have those positive, preventative messages. If there is then early intervention in terms of screening, we screen people and hope that everything is positive. For those that are negative, we move in very quickly and intervene. We do whatever is necessary to stop it going to the next stage.
It is a similar approach to tackling youth violence and knife crime. We need to do far more in terms of the preventative work. The early intervention work can be all the things you mention plus 100 things more. It comes down to really good youth work. You have to really understand what is happening for the young person involved, both for them and in their environment. If you put the right measures around them and allow them to fail once or twice along the way, then, generally, you can pull young people back from that setting. Sadly, it is not just about doing a prescribed number of seven or eight different things, and I think the serious violence strategy captures a lot of this; it is about doing a large number of interventions in a strategic manner.
Stephen Timms
Q
Jaf Shah: No, but the Home Office last year commissioned the University of Leicester to look into the motivations behind the attacks. Some of the critical data and understanding of what types of corrosive fluids are being used in attacks could be produced through the forensic work conducted within hospitals and the investigation process when attacks are reported. There is a lack of data because it is a relatively new crime; well, it is not a new crime, as we all know—it is an old crime—but the numbers are so much higher than they have ever been in the past. Suddenly we are addressing a relatively new crime, and we are at those early stages where more data needs to be accumulated to better understand the problem, the motivations and the environment in which perpetrators are committing those attacks—to understand the real motivations behind those acts.
I commission a lot of research on the subject because it is a relatively new phenomenon here in the UK. I have commissioned law studies to understand what laws are in place in other countries, how we can learn from those laws and how they are being implemented.
Stephen Timms
Q
Jaf Shah: There were 470 reported attacks in London in 2017, out of 948 nationwide.
Stephen Timms
Q
I would be interested in your views about something that puzzles me about the Bill—no doubt at some point we will have the opportunity to ask the Minister about this. There are two main offences in the Bill relating to corrosive substances: selling them to people under 18—the Bill bans that—and having them in a public place. However, the definition of “corrosive substance” differs for those two offences. For the first, there is a reference to a schedule: you must not sell the products in schedule 1 to people under 18. For the second, there is a different definition, in clause 5(9), which states that
“‘corrosive substance’ means a substance which is capable of burning human skin by corrosion”.
From your point of view, which of those two approaches is preferable? Should we have a list setting out the problem substances, or would a more general definition work better?
Jaf Shah: I would be interested in having a list. The reason I would prefer that method is that once you start to collect data after an attack has been committed and you have the forensics, you can understand which substance is most likely to have been used. If you can compare it with an existing list, that helps in terms of accumulating hard data, and then we can actually target the particular fluids that were used. It makes sense to have a list and to report against that list.
Stephen Timms
Q
Jaf Shah: Yes, it does.
Stephen Timms
Q
Jaf Shah: If I remember correctly, there are about eight substances, and they certainly constitute the types of substances that have been used in attacks internationally.
Stephen Timms
Q
Jaf Shah: I would certainly be open to extending the ban to people under 21. I put forward 18 initially, really to tie it in with existing controls for other weapons so that there was consistency, but I can certainly see the value of increasing the age to 21.
Stephen Timms
Q
Jaf Shah: I certainly think so. Part of the issue we have is a lack of data. If we keep our options open, we may prevent attacks from occurring in the future. Limiting the range may be detrimental in the long term, I suspect.
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
Q
Rob Owen: I think there is generally a very low level of awareness. If we twist this slightly, to stop this happening and effectively break the cycle of offending, in our view, you need to inject into that person’s life a credible caseworker who they can relate to and who will go that extra mile to start sorting out pragmatic issues. Often they revolve around the family situation. We are not talking about nuclear families here; we are talking about multiple siblings—many of them failing at school and being failed by school—who are very well known to social services and to nine-plus Government agencies, but there is no one in that person’s life who they actually want to engage with.
I suppose the great trick with these individuals is to put someone into their very complicated lives who they actually believe in and can see is on their side, and who is enabled to do something about it. We always talk about going the extra mile, but if you are trying to help someone with a housing situation and you go down to the homeless persons unit, it will take you five or six hours to advocate through that glass. Several times you will get back a piece of paper saying, “You brought the wrong form. Come back again tomorrow.” If you leave that to the client, it is never going to happen. You often need someone there with the right skills and the right determination, and who that client believes in, to start changing their attitude from, “I’m not going to engage in school.”
You need to get in place someone who is the right role model who will actually start changing their perceptions. The point about aspirations is interesting. Lots of young people who are very vulnerable want the trainers and so on, and they think the easy way to get them is by dealing drugs. The reality is that they earn less than they would do at McDonald’s, and they have a threat to their life. Education is about having someone in their life who they believe in and can engage with. A lot of people are put into their life but they do not want to engage with them, so it is a complete waste of time and makes things worse. That is the reality.
Paul Scully
Q
Rob Owen: The reality is that if you are a youngster who has been offered a couple hundred quid to do county lines, going off to poor old Margate, they know where you are going and that you have drugs on you. Someone will come and take the drugs off you, often at knife point. You now have a drug debt. The cost of a life is about £800, so if you have a debt bigger than £800 and you cannot pay that back, your family is threatened. They threaten to rape mums or sisters as well, so there is a drug debt and threats of violence. They are effectively in bonded labour.
The glamour of going “out county”, or whatever it is called, disappears when they have to spend time in a crack den as a 10 or 11-year-old, with people vomiting and needles everywhere. They look down on the junkies. It is not as though there is a relationship there. They are cuckolding vulnerable people out in the sticks to use their premises, and trafficking young kids to deal the drugs from there. They are not making any money out of it because often they have a drug debt. They are being forced to carry packages of drugs internally. If they cannot get them out at the right time, they are sometimes pinned down and people will use spoons to force it out of their backside—girls and boys. The reality is not that you are earning lots of easy money. The reality is sadly very different. They do not believe that from someone who is a well-meaning probation officer, youth worker or whoever it is; they need to hear it from someone who has actually been there and done it.
Paul Scully
Q
John Poynton: That was a Metropolitan police figure. I do not think that we have got to the bottom of why 75% of young people who are not known gang members, and are not on the gangs matrix, are carrying. I think it alludes to the fact that young people do not feel safe. We know from research that young people do not have the cognitive ability to make clear adult decisions and recognise the consequences of their actions until they are 23 or 24.
For us, putting ourselves at risk of being caught with a weapon just does not make sense, but it does not work like that for young people who are very much in their development phase. That is why we, as adults, cannot have clearcut ideas about what should put someone off. There is definitely an element of young people not feeling safe and then potentially carrying weapons in order to feel safe, or vulnerable young people are being coerced into carrying weapons for others who are more ready to perpetrate or deal and use them.
It is about looking at how we get to the bottom of this. For want of a better analogy, there is no one silver bullet answer; it has to be about a really clear package of support for these young people. As Rob has clearly said, they are known to so many agencies, but often they are not engaging with them. Key workers, youth workers and case workers are often very good at working with all those agencies and advocating on behalf of those young people. If a young person does not have the ability to put two and two together, and work out what the consequences are, we need to look at their network, both professional and family, and all the underlying issues to make sure that we help and support them to make those decisions.
This cannot be about telling young people, “Do not carry weapons.” We know that telling a young person not to do something will not work when they feel or know that their peers are doing it anyway. We have to work with the whole network, the whole peer group and the families, and we have to do so much earlier. We must not look at this simply as an offensive weapons issue, a knife crime issue, a corrosive substance issue, a gangs issue or just a county lines issue; all violence is joined up.
I think we need a health approach to tackling violence, because then we would be getting early intervention and helping parents to teach their children at the earliest age how to make good decisions and how to develop good decision-making skills. It is too little too late to wait until my team is working with them when they have been stabbed. That is an incredibly powerful, reflective, teachable moment when a young person is on a bed in a resus bay in a hospital A&E department. I would be very happy for Redthread to be put out of a job by a much earlier, broad public health approach work that educates parents, peer groups and professionals.
Paul Scully
Q
Patrick Green: I do not—that is the honest answer. Domestic knives seem to be more popular because of ease of access. Lower-level knife carriers tend to talk about carrying domestic knives. As young people drift into more offending, they tend to get bigger knives, for want of a better expression, because they are now competing with somebody else who has a knife, so they need to have something that provokes a level of fear. So yes, there is that runaway train, and that is why there is the attraction towards zombie knives.
Paul Scully
Q
Patrick Green: They have a fear factor. If you have got a bigger knife than the other guy, you have a higher standing. We should be aware that the funnel is getting quite tight at that point. Very few young people who carry zombie knives are those who St Giles and Redthread engage with right at the end. They are probably involved in some level of criminal activity such as drugs. They carry them more to protect their occupation than for perceived safety.
Paul Scully
Q
Rob Owen: What I am hearing is that it is an arms race. As I said before, London gangs are looked up to by more regional gangs, so they now want to upgrade their arsenal. There is not at the moment a great use of firearms, but I am sure it will increase and start to ratchet up. Sadly, the people who are caught with the weapons, particularly pistols and so on, are not the people who will use them; there will be a young girl who has been asked to look after it and it is found under her bed. There is a lot of coercion with weapons. It is complicated.
Paul Scully
Q
Jaf Shah: This is largely anecdotal, because we do not have a lot of hard data, but my understanding is that many young men literally just walk into hardware stores, the local shops, where they can buy drain cleaner. That seems to be the most common type of product—there are fairly well known brands—that will do some damage. Some of those products contain pretty high levels of corrosive content. I have proposed that the manufacturers think about reducing the concentration of some of the more dangerous products and think about the viscosity of the liquid itself so that it is less easy to fling at someone. There are a range of other potential measures that can be examined by the industry and by the guys who produce and sell the products.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
On the education side, everything you said chimes with what I have seen. In Croydon we had 60 serious case reviews of youth violence, and in every single case each of the 60 kids was outside mainstream school, so there is clearly a pattern there. What specifically do we need in terms of resources in schools? We have not touched on policing in schools, which is one aspect that may or may not be worth mentioning. What engagement is there from the Department for Education on this, and indeed from Ofsted? We talked about Ofsted potentially having a greater role. The question is about what traction you are getting from other Government Departments.
John Poynton: Shall I jump in and answer the first part? Redthread hosted a symposium of all of the hospital-based violence intervention programmes in the country—Victoria kindly opened the conference for us last week. That is a conference of only about eight existing hospitals, but there is a growing number of emerging interested hospitals. We had colleagues come from Glasgow and Edinburgh, from across Nottingham and Birmingham, and also from London, who are delivering hospital-based programmes, such as those at Redthread, St Giles and the Royal London.
There are 23 major trauma centres in England and Wales, four of them in London. The four in London have hospital-based violence intervention programmes embedded within them, between Redthread and St Giles. Redthread is working in Nottingham and is launching this month in Birmingham, so there are a number—I will let you do the maths. A number of other major trauma centres are interested, but it comes down to the resource question.
There is brilliant and innovative commissioning from police and crime commissioners, from the Home Office’s tackling crime team and the Mayor’s office for policing and crime in London, where commissioners are recognising, from the policing and criminal justice side, that we cannot arrest or enforce our way out of this problem. They are looking at where they can innovate and spend their money. But there is not match funding coming from other Government Departments—from the Department of Health and Social Care, from NHS England, from Public Health England or from the Department for Education.
The only way for us to be able to have hospital-based violence intervention programmes, where we know that we will be able to wrap around a comprehensive package of support in this teachable and reachable moment for young people, when they are victims of violence and they are most reflective and open to breaking their cycle of violence, is to have a clear cross-Government match-funding approach. We know that the Department for Education needs to be on board with this because, as we have talked about, perpetrators and victims of violence are very likely to have dropped out of mainstream education.
Coming from a family of teachers, I am not saying it is just about putting more responsibility on classroom teachers and headteachers but it is looking at resources. It is looking at how we support these young people outside of the classroom. There needs to be a clear approach from health colleagues in how they support this. There is advocacy and championing of a hospital-based violence intervention programme from clinicians on the shop floor; from Mr Martin Griffiths or Dr Emer Sutherland or Dr Asif Rahman, to name a few clinical champions in London hospitals.
There is funding in kind in ensuring that there is space for youth workers, caseworkers to be embedded in those hospitals, but there is no financial resource coming from the top down. As I have advocated, this needs to be an approach that is not just about knife crime or gangs or just about corrosive substances. This needs to be moving down to looking at a foundational approach to all forms of violence. There is a very clear example model for us to take a closer look at in the way that sexual assault referral centres are commissioned. Those are clearly accepted to be commissioned jointly by criminal justice and NHS England. That is one form of special commissioning from NHS England, where it jointly match-funds with its justice colleagues. That is an example that could be looked at in match funding in order to find the resource that we need to ensure that we can work with the victims.
The Chair
We only have a few minutes left and four people still wish to ask questions. If we have quick questions and brief answers, we will get everybody in; otherwise, we will not be able to, as we have an absolute cut-off on the time. I call Mary Robinson.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
Q
One clear link struck me—that between school exclusion and young people becoming involved in county lines. It is a clear marker, which says to me that it is a clear point for intervention. At the point of school exclusion—the education side of things may have failed for whatever reason, and young people may have troubled family backgrounds—are the interventions robust enough? Are they strong enough? What needs to be done? Given that we are seeing county lines moving out into other regions and other areas, which may not have the experience of London, can we take the learning experience and do something there quickly in terms of interventions?
Rob Owen: This is something I feel very strongly about. We are failed by the Department of Health and Social Care. It does not fund any of the trauma work—MOPAC does. Surgeons beg for funding, but they do not get it. The NHS has a major role to play. Sadly, education is really letting these kids down. If you get a kid from school, they do not go missing for a day or two—they sometimes go missing for two weeks. The parents are often worried about reporting that to social services because, first, they do not trust social services, and secondly, they do not want to engage with social services.
The kid comes back from disappearing and doing county lines for a couple of weeks and they are supposed to have an interview, but the kid does not want to say anything to the person doing the interview and the school does not quite know what to do, so nothing gets done. If you go missing from school for two weeks, that should be an absolute beacon of need—come on! That is where we need intensive intervention. It is not just working with that young child; it is working with their family and their siblings.
At the moment, the sad thing is that people do not want to spend money on that preventive stuff. The cost of investigating one murder is £1 million a year. What we are talking about is tens of thousands of pounds to have caseworkers in the hospitals or working with the kids who have been excluded from school, to be able to stop several murders a year. We have got it all wrong. We need to invest up front, so that there are intensive caseworkers about who can prevent things down the line. At the moment, the analogy is that we are putting an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff when we could just build a fence along the top. That is where it really goes wrong.
Patrick Green: The issue is partly that a school’s clear goal is academic achievement. The young people we are most concerned about are those who have really poor aspirations. They just want to make money, but have no idea how to do that. In terms of the safeguarding element, schools and education need to look at building the person. You do not need to have full academic achievement to go on in life. Many people do really well not doing as well in education. That is what is missed, and it is missed very early on.
John put the point really well about the level of support needed for young people when they have been excluded from school—it is an environmental issue; it is not just one thing. That is what is missing. We probably do not know enough about the schools that are doing really well in this area. All we know is that the level of exclusions is getting worse.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Q
Rob Owen: I think “Scared Straight” was a disaster. It is not something in which we believe in any way, shape or form. It was targeted at the wrong people. If you want evidence then please go to our website. It features people like PwC, Pro Bono Economics and Frontier Economics, who can demonstrate that using ex-offenders with that client group reduces reoffending rates by a further 40%. I would be pleased to talk you through it. There are robust evaluations on the St Giles Trust and our SOS work. We pride ourselves on this.
Vicky Foxcroft
Q
Rob Owen: That is for different services. We have had multiple evaluations.
Vicky Foxcroft
Q
Rob Owen: Using people’s lived experiences to work with complicated young people has a massive impact on reducing their reoffending rates. I would love you to read through the reports; they are all on our website.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Q
Patrick Green: Generally our experiences are positive. We see good relationships being built up between young people and the police officer, and the level of trust builds up. The caveat is that it depends on the police officer. Some are really good at this work, and then it works really well. You need a police officer who understands youth work and how complex that is, rather than just a police officer.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Q
Jaf Shah: I suspect that it is quite common, so it would be a big concern. I will, if I may, briefly divert back to the point we have all been making around the public health approach and make an economic case for that: we conducted an economic impact assessment of acid attacks in the UK for six years. Acid attacks alone cost £350 million over six years. If we include knife crime and gun crime then we are looking at costs far in excess of £1 billion. That is an economic case to make a long-term public health approach a viable way of dealing with the problem.
Tulip Siddiq
Q
Rob Owen: There is slowly, slowly beginning to be some work. The platforms they use are well known; it mainly involves two or three platforms. The Home Office are trying to engage with the issue, but there is still a lot of resistance from them. Often it is hidden, and is not obvious. The youngsters know where to go to find it, but not many others do. It is about starting to get to gritty levels where someone can flag it and it gets taken off instantly, with the process being speeded up. There are small amounts of funding going in and it is beginning to happen, but obviously it is not enough.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of the time allotted for this first panel. I thank all four of you for coming this morning; your evidence has been very useful and will help with deliberations when we consider the Bill.
Examination of Witnesses
Andrew Penhale, Trish Burls and Ben Richards gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the Crown Prosecution Service, the London Borough of Croydon and the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. We have until 11.25 am for this session. Would you like to introduce yourself briefly?
Andrew Penhale: My name is Andrew Penhale, I am the chief Crown prosecutor for the north-east of England. In common with many chiefs, I have a legal lead area, which is knife crime, gang crime, firearms and corrosive substances.
Ben Richards: Good morning. My name is Ben Richards, I am from the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. I am here as a double act with Trish. My background is doing our workforce survey for the last few years, so I offer the national perspective, while Trish has the more legislative perspective.
Trish Burls: Good morning. I am Trish Burls, I am the manager of Croydon trading standards and the London lead for trading standards in relation to knife test purchasing, alongside the Metropolitan police.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Andrew Penhale: It probably has not been adequately dealt with as it should be. Part of the work we have been doing in conjunction with trading standards and the Metropolitan police has been to look at measures to deal with online companies that sell knives without putting checks in place. The obvious check for a standard retailer is that you can ask for ID when somebody comes to pick it up. Responsible retailers will do that. Online, that is a little more difficult. There is a declaration, and if a credit card is used, that may to some extent offer a guarantee that somebody is 18, but of course, people can lie. Online retailers do not always put in place the checks that they should. There have been test purchases made and companies have been given warnings. There are current test purchase investigations underway.
The Bill changes the picture because it imposes concrete obligations on retailers to check the age of the purchaser and to ensure that the items are delivered only to somebody who is 18. That is a completely different picture from what we have had before. It also requires the packaging to be marked up accordingly so that it is clear to the deliverer, who may be completely different from the retailer. The Bill imposes a series of obligations that are really needed, because at the moment the online picture is not one where the checks are adequate.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Andrew Penhale: That is true. The trouble is in establishing that all due diligence and checks are put in place. That is quite clear when you have got a retailer like Sainsbury’s, for instance, with a face-to-face transaction, because they can ask the question. It is a bit more complicated in the online sphere. How do you carry out a check? Without improved measures there is not really a position. The law has not kept up with technology, and as a result the Bill is really needed to resolve that.
Trish Burls: I think we should make a distinction. The police take prosecutions through the CPS route, whereas local trading standards departments take them through their local authority’s prosecution route. As far as I am aware, trading standards have not taken any online prosecutions. The onus of a prosecution will fall on a local team’s budget. The work we have done up to now has been alongside the police.
The new measures are welcome. However, it is important to say that we are missing a set of statutory powers in the Bill, which will not necessarily aid trading standards in carrying out much more work in that area.
Victoria Atkins
Q
Andrew Penhale: Again, it is important and needed. There is this gap with online provision, and it is really important that that is duplicated from knives. It is exactly the same problem: there needs to be a verification process to ensure that they are delivered to people 18 or over.
Ben Richards: We mirror the importance of this, and we understand that. As Trish has touched on, the issues are within statutory duties and resources to be able to take on duties on top of those already being carried out.
Louise Haigh
Q
Trish Burls: For trading standards officers, yes, it is.
Louise Haigh
Q
Trish Burls: We have powers within much of the rest of the legislation that we enforce that allow us to do things such as enter premises and seize documentation and goods in relation to an inquiry we are carrying out if we suspect that an offence has taken place. The Bill does not contain any powers for trading standards officers, whereas police powers would obviously come from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
Louise Haigh
Q
Trish Burls: We could submit that to the Committee.
Louise Haigh
Q
Andrew Penhale: Gosh, that is a broader question than I had anticipated. We have resource. I cannot answer the question of whether we have sufficient to do our jobs as a whole; that is a bigger question that I guess the director would have to answer. We are resourced how we are resourced, and we are dealing with the crimes presented to us. We are certainly not not prosecuting because we lack resources to do the job.
We prosecute in accordance with a code, and whether cases meet the code because they are not evidentially sufficient is another matter. We can only prosecute those cases that do meet the right standard. In a very short answer to your question, we are not not prosecuting because we lack the resources to do so.
Louise Haigh
Q
Andrew Penhale: There are a number of cases that collapsed where decisions were made that should not have been made because of a lack of consideration of wider evidence. That is not necessarily a resource issue; that is a decision-making issue.
Louise Haigh
My point, Mr Gapes, is that there is not a lot of point passing new legislation if it is not going to be enforced.
The Chair
I understand your point, I am just gently suggesting that we focus on the Bill.
Louise Haigh
Q
Andrew Penhale: By the nature of their being mandatory, there is not a great deal of judicial discretion. In relation to some offences, they are there for a reason that Parliament has decided, which is to signify the importance of dealing with knife crime and firearms robustly. There are other offences where mandatory sentencing is imposed. Essentially, Parliament has made that decision. It is not really for the Crown Prosecution Service to say whether or not that is the right thing; we have got to implement what Parliament requires us to.
Louise Haigh
Q
Andrew Penhale: First, I think it is really important that the victims’ views in the criminal justice system are taken into account. The Crown Prosecution Service has a victim’s right to review system, which requires us to go back and explain our decisions, but also to review them where the victim disagrees. That process is already well established. Whether there is a place for a separate advocate is, again, for a wider debate rather than for the Crown Prosecution Service.
Paul Scully
Q
Trish Burls: We have local responsible retailer agreements on knives, which echoes the Home Office’s established voluntary agreement on the storage and sale of knives. These are local; it is not national. There are no regulations that prohibit the way in which a knife is displayed, whether that is via a shop doorway or for open access. We rely very much at the moment on retailers’ good will and common sense.
Paul Scully
Q
Trish Burls: Yes, we do.
Paul Scully
Q
Trish Burls: On the whole, very well. The vast majority of retailers—both bricks-and-mortar and online—are law-abiding, very decent people who want to make this law work and want to make the place safer. It is an unusual retailer that will not abide by that, although we do have one or two who refuse to put their knives behind the scenes.
Paul Scully
Q
Trish Burls: All our knife retailers in Croydon have been visited. Together with a member of the police, they have signed a formal agreement whereby they agree to store their knives safely and not to sell to under-18s. As I said, that is a voluntary agreement; we cannot force them to put them behind the scenes.
Paul Scully
Q
Trish Burls: Up to now, corrosive substances have not been enforced at all by our team. There is going to be a large resource issue that will no doubt have an impact. I am sure that Ben will be able to tell you about that in a moment. We anticipate as a local team—the Croydon team—that before this becomes law we will roll out a very similar agreement, whereby we try to raise awareness and educate, so that people are aware of it before it becomes law. We will roll out a responsible retailer agreement on acids pretty much along the same lines as the one on knives. Then, when it becomes law, the requirements are hopefully already embedded in people’s minds.
Paul Scully
Q
Trish Burls: Absolutely.
Ben Richards: What I would say is that some areas are very different depending on what their local priorities are. Some areas will not have those voluntary agreements in place. Likewise, as the changes come in, there will not be that preparation for taking action in their local area, because it will not be seen as a priority at all. It is the decision of each local authority to make those preparations how they see fit.
Stuart C. McDonald
Q
Andrew Penhale: The trouble is, what constitutes a supply? A mother buying bleach for a son who is 17 and moved into his own flat would constitute a supply. Once you move into the domestic setting it becomes rather difficult to police in a neat way. There are offences that could be committed if, for instance, somebody purchased a corrosive substance with a view to an offence being committed. You would need wider evidence of that, but we could prosecute that now.
Stuart C. McDonald
Q
Andrew Penhale: It would seem a bit odd to make it an arrestable offence to supply in a perfectly innocent way. I understand the point you are making; I just think the practicalities of drafting would be quite difficult. I think there are sufficient powers. You would have to prove that there was a degree of knowledge or belief that a criminal offence was going to be committed. If, for instance, somebody provided bleach for a domestic purpose, clearly an offence would not be committed. The evidential hurdle would be to prove a knowledge or belief that an offence was going to be committed. I think we could prosecute for that already. There are offences under the Serious Crime Act 2015, for instance, that allow us to prosecute offences of incitement or assistance in the commission of an offence. The hurdles are evidential rather than legal ones.
Stuart C. McDonald
Q
Andrew Penhale: I think it does go far enough. The difficulty is where you impose the obligation. These days, the delivery companies are often people who are completely unconnected with the retail function; they are just paid on a job to deliver to x number of people in a certain amount of time. I think the requirement for due diligence on their part is really important. Whether that should go further, I am not sure.
Stuart C. McDonald
Q
Andrew Penhale: I think that is an additional measure to capture those occasions when, obviously, the retailers have not gone through that due diligence because they are operating internationally, so it is then required on delivery. The difficulty is, of course, that if they do not know what it is, they would not have committed the offence. We cannot impose obligations on international companies. That is an additional element, which is an important obligation on them, but whether it has sufficient weight is debatable, because they might not know what they are delivering.
Stuart C. McDonald
Q
Andrew Penhale: I might have to come back to you on that. It is an interesting point. Various measures have been specifically drafted to allow handmade products and things like that. On whether there are wider concerns in the CPS, I would like to come back to you, if I may.
Stuart C. McDonald
Q
Trish Burls: I would certainly like to come in on the residential premises one. The definition of residential premises could cause a problem for businesses and enforcers alike, in that residential premises have been defined in the Bill as places purely for residential use—no business use at all. These days, increasingly, many people work from home or have businesses registered at home and so on, so businesses might find that difficult to comply with and enforcers might find it difficult to enforce against.
Stephen Timms
Q
Trish Burls: In terms of age-restricted products in general, do you mean?
Stephen Timms
Yes.
Trish Burls: We enforce a range of products already—alcohol, tobacco, fireworks, butane and knives, obviously—and trading standards advocates age check 25 or age check 21, a system whereby a retailer is encouraged and advised to check someone’s age if they look under 25 so as to give the retailers a big gap between 18 and 25, and to get them into the habit of asking for the appropriate identification at that point.
Levels of compliance have got much better in recent years, in part because of the fact that age-restricted products are high on the agenda for trading standards to keep children safe. Most trading standards departments do regular checks on this through test purchasing—almost a double band of checks as well. In Croydon we offer a lot of education to traders—we offer free-of-charge trader training sessions for them so as they aware of the law in that area—and we will check that they are complying by carrying out test purchasing, using young people.
Overall, I feel that the age of 18 is challenged a lot more now. Certainly our rates of failure, in terms of test purchases carried through by a young person’s purchase of an age-restricted product, are lower than they used to be.
Stephen Timms
Q
Trish Burls: I do not know, is the simple answer, I am afraid. I would guesstimate that when advice and education go first there will be a high degree of compliance among retailers, because awareness is raised. As I said before, it is an unusual retailer who will deliberately sell an age-restricted product into the hands of a young person, but I am afraid I do not know.
Ben Richards: We do not have any concrete figures. The only thing we would say is that obviously consistency will be the issue. Some areas are very proactive with their business communities, reaching out with advice and guidance. Some are less so, because of resource constraints. That will be an issue with the delivery of the obligation.
Stephen Timms
Q
Trish Burls: I think exactly that. At the moment, this is still a new area for them. I would anticipate that there would probably be a low level of compliance if you were to go out now and carry out a series of test purchases on acid-related products, simply through lack of awareness and lack of training. Certainly, some work needs to be done before this becomes law to educate to prevent sales.
Nigel Huddleston
Q
Andrew Penhale: First, let me deal with some numbers. At the moment, we bring very few prosecutions for threatening with an offensive weapon, whereas we bring quite a number of prosecutions for possession. The difference in numbers is vast. To illustrate, I think last year there were about 9,000 prosecutions for possession whereas only about 600 for threatening. One of the difficulties is that the test requires us not only to show that the person who has an offensive weapon is using it in a threatening way, but that there is also a risk of immediate serious violence—the test is the risk and immediacy of that violence.
The Bill is designed to change that test to shift the evidential burden on to the reasonable belief of a member of the public or reasonable person and their expectation of a risk of serious violence. Rather than having a test that can essentially be objected to, because, for instance, there might not be a proximity and therefore no immediate risk, when the people witnessing the threatening behaviour feel a sense of immediate risk, even though they may not be immediately proximate, that offence would now be captured. So it would capture a degree of behaviour that is not currently captured, and, obviously, it is a more serious offence than simply possessing an offensive weapon. I hope I have explained that clearly.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of our oral evidence session. The Committee will continue to take oral evidence this afternoon from 2 pm. I thank our witnesses on behalf of the Committee for their evidence and ask the Government Whip to move the adjournment.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Paul Maynard)
Offensive Weapons Bill (Sixth sitting)
Tuesday 4th September 2018
(6 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 4 September 2018 - (4 Sep 2018)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
Clause 1(10) provides a delegated power for the Secretary of State, and for the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland, to amend schedule 1 by secondary legislation. Such regulations would be subject to the affirmative procedure. Any changes required in future will be undertaken on the advice of the police—including Police Scotland, which would not be covered by the amendment because it is not part of the National Police Chiefs Council—and of our scientific advisers, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. We would also consult with manufacturers, retailers and the Scottish Government before making any regulations to amend the schedule.
Although we would take police and scientific advice, consult with others and make the outcome of those discussions available to Parliament when making any regulations, we do not think that there needs to be a legal requirement to publish evidence. Parliament will have ample opportunity in the debates on the regulations in both Houses to question the Government about why we are amending the schedule. Having a legal requirement could also lead to problems; for example, if the NPCC changed its name, further primary legislation would be needed before any regulations could be made.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Clause 1(10) refers to the “appropriate national authority” to make additions or changes to schedule 1. Could the Minister clarify what that authority will be? Will it be a different authority in different parts of the UK, or a single authority throughout?
A couple of times, the Minister made the helpful point that regulations to make such changes will be subject to the affirmative rather than the negative procedure. Could she point us to where in the Bill that assurance is provided? I have not been able to find it.
Victoria Atkins
The appropriate national authority will be the Secretary of State in England, Wales and Scotland, and the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland. We will consult the Scottish Government, however, because clauses 1 to 4 deal with matters that are reserved in relation to Scotland.
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about where in the Bill the affirmative procedure is specified. Clause 37(2) requires that regulations be
“approved by a resolution…of each House of Parliament.”
As ever, I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his forensic eye for detail, and I invite the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley to withdraw the amendment.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
As with the previous group of amendments, I thank the Minister for her response. I am satisfied that the legislation referred to in clause 1(10) will fulfil the objective that our amendment was attempting to achieve. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment made: 14, in clause 1, page 2, line 29, at end insert—
“( ) See section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 1, 3 or 4) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland.”
This amendment and Amendments 16, 19, 20, 31, 33, NC5 and NC6 provide for certain evidential presumptions relating to the nature of substances that are or were in containers to apply in Scotland in relation to an offence under section 1, 3, 4 or 5 involving a corrosive substance or product.—(Victoria Atkins.)
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
There is an issue that has not been raised through any amendments, and I hope the Committee will bear with me as I briefly address it. Clause 1(8) relates to the coming into force of section 281(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. We attempted to table an amendment to ensure that this provision is enacted within six months of the Bill coming into force. The subsection was legislated for 15 years ago and is still to come into practice. There is concern that the Government continue to bring forward legislation—as I am sure the previous Labour Government did—that rests on magistrates courts being able to give sentences of up to 12 months.
I understand from previous conversations with the Minister’s colleagues that there are some issues for the Ministry of Justice around enactment but, 15 years on, we need to overcome them. If we cannot, we should not be putting such provisions into new legislation, pretending that we can. I would like the Minister to clarify whether we are likely to see those provisions coming into force. If not, should we not be clear in the legislation that, in reality, the sentencing is six months and not 12 months?
Victoria Atkins
I note that the amendment in question was not permitted in the groupings, Mr Gray. With regard to the 2003 Act, the hon. Lady has correctly identified that this is a Ministry of Justice matter, and this small Bill is not the place to introduce a provision that will have ramifications across the whole of the criminal justice system. We keep magistrates’ sentencing powers under review, but there is currently no intention to implement provisions of the 2003 Act in the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 2
Defence to remote sale of corrosive products to persons under 18
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
Just for the information of the Committee, the consultation responses from the Government are now available and in the room, if hon. Members would like to have a look.
Louise Haigh
Thank you, Mr Gray, and I thank the Minister for providing those consultation responses. We welcome clause 2 on defence to remote sale. It is an extremely important part of the Bill, because a significant proportion of the purchasing is likely to occur online, as it does at present.
Our concerns relate to the defence to remote sale under condition A, which I referred to earlier:
“that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”.
In subsection (6)(a), a seller is regarded as having taken all due diligence if they
“operated a system for checking that persons who bought corrosive products…were not under the age of 18”.
We know from evidence given to the Committee that there are concerns about what a system for checking persons who bought corrosive products would look like. Would it look like the online age verification controls introduced by the Digital Economy Act 2017? That would present significant difficulties. That legislation was limited to major commercial players, which have the means and capacity to implement age verification controls. However, such controls have proven perilously difficult to implement in a workable form. Has the Home Office considered what standard of age verification software or controls would be acceptable under clause 2?
The British Retail Consortium said:
“Ideally, we would like to see some standards, so we can be sure that online age verification systems developed by businesses such as Yoti and others will be accepted as due diligence by the enforcers.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 62, Q154.]
Currently, offline systems are standardised and clearly laid out in the legislation, but it is difficult for retailers to be sure that they are complying with online systems, which is why the Government are banning the delivery of corrosive products and bladed articles to residential premises, to make sure they are complied with. However, I want to press the Minister on what age verification controls the Government have considered and, as we will come to later, why they do not consider them sufficient to prevent the delivery of corrosive products and bladed articles to under-18s.
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her speech. We have not set out in the Bill the measures that businesses could take to satisfy themselves that the person to whom they are selling is under 18 because we are conscious that different age verification systems are available, and the technology is developing at a very fast pace, as we have seen in relation to the Digital Economy Act 2017. We did not want to stipulate a specific approach in primary legislation for fear that it would quickly run out of relevance.
However, there are conditions of due diligence under the defence in clause 2. There has been a certain amount of misunderstanding about the conditions in the defence relating to knives—which I will come to in due course—but clause 2 is about ensuring that these dangerous substances are not sold to under-18s. We want sellers of these products to understand from the very beginning that they have a duty of due diligence to determine the age of those to whom they are selling. We know, from experience of other age-controlled items, that businesses will quickly develop these systems. It will be for the seller to show that they have robust age verification systems in place.
Louise Haigh
I completely agree, and I would never advocate including technological guidance or prescriptions in primary legislation. However, would it not be advisable to set standards that we expect retailers to comply with, for both corrosive substances and bladed articles, particularly given the very low rates of prosecution by trading standards? Perhaps there is an issue with “due diligence” being too vague for trading standards to be able to bring prosecutions forward.
Victoria Atkins
In other statutes—for example, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974—we have the test of “reasonably practicable”. I am anxious that, if a case reaches the court, we do not bind the hands of a magistrate in determining the facts of the case. I will happily consider what I think is the hon. Lady’s point about whether there is scope to provide best practice, guidance and so on, but we are of the view that the defence as it stands should be set out in statute and that it should then be for businesses and retailers to ensure that they comply with the law.
Louise Haigh
I am grateful for that reply, but a bit concerned that the Home Office had not already planned to issue guidance to online retailers. With something like this, I would have thought that, given that some retailers are not currently subject to age verification legislation at all, the Home Office would automatically issue guidance on what it would expect such age verification to look like—not best practice, but a standard beneath which a retailer would not be able to fall under the legislation. Is that not the case?
Victoria Atkins
We will publish guidance when implementing the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Delivery of corrosive products to residential premises etc
Amendments made: 15, in clause 3, page 4, line 35, at end insert—
‘(13) In Scotland, proceedings for an offence under this section may be commenced within the period of 12 months beginning with the commission of the offence.
(14) Section 136(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 (date when proceedings deemed to be commenced) applies for the purposes of subsection (13) as it applies for the purposes of that section.”
This amendment provides for proceedings in Scotland for an offence under Clause 3 to be brought within 12 months of the commission of the offence. Under section 136 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 the default period for bringing summary proceedings is 6 months.
Amendment 16, in clause 3, page 4, line 35, at end insert—
‘( ) See section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 1, 3 or 4) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland.” —(Victoria Atkins.)
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.
Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment 43, in clause 4, page 4, line 41, leave out
“and the seller is outside the United Kingdom at that time”.
This is a probing amendment to allow debate on whether the offence should be restricted to where the seller is outside the United Kingdom.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 44, in clause 4, page 4, line 45, after “was” insert
“or ought to have been aware”.
This is a probing amendment to allow discussion on whether requiring proof of actual knowledge is the appropriate test.
New clause 9—Purchase of offensive weapons from outside the European Union—
“(1) A person commits an offence if they knowingly purchase an offensive weapon from a seller located in a country that is not a member of the European Union.
(2) A person who is guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to a fine;
(b) on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”
Stuart C. McDonald
Clause 4 concerns the delivery of corrosive products to under-18s. Amendments 43 and 44 are probing amendments, tabled in my name, and they seek to test the Government’s thinking in this area. Amendment 43 merely queries why a delivery company commits an offence in delivering a corrosive substance to a person under 18 only if the seller is outside the United Kingdom. Why is it okay for that delivery to take place on behalf of a seller based within the UK? That is a straightforward question.
Amendment 44 queries the test that the prosecution will have to meet. As I understand, under the Bill’s current drafting, the prosecution would have to prove actual knowledge on behalf of the delivery company, and that it was aware that a corrosive substance could be involved in the contract to deliver products. From recollection, I think that some offences permit prosecution if it can be shown that the delivery company ought to have been aware of that—for example, if the client who was sold the product remotely is a well-known manufacturer of corrosive substances, and that is the main part of its business. Perhaps that should be enough in itself for the prosecution to make its case, but, again, I simply seek the Government’s view on those issues and wish to test their opinion.
Stephen Timms
I rise to speak to new clause 9. It arises from a number of conversations that I had with a man called Mr Raheel Butt, whom I would briefly like to tell the Committee about. He grew up in West Ham, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), rather than in East Ham, and as he would freely acknowledge, he went wrong for several years and served a term in prison. I think he left prison in 2012, and since then he has made it his mission to try to ensure that other young people do not make the same mistakes he made. He set up a community interest company called Community & Rehabilitation Solutions, which works with the Metropolitan police in a number of ways, and he is very concerned about the ease with which people can get hold of very unpleasant weapons and corrosive substances—the new clause covers both corrosive substances and bladed weapons.
I arranged to meet Mr Butt a couple of weeks ago, and he came to Portcullis House to have a conversation with me about this issue. About five minutes after he was due to turn up, I realised that he had not arrived, so I gave him a call on his mobile. He said, “Well, the problem is I don’t know how to get past security with my offensive weapons.” I had not realised that he was planning to bring his offensive weapons with him, but that was indeed his intention. It caused a significant security alert; I actually never got to see the offensive weapons, because they were taken off him before he managed to get through Portcullis House security. I suppose that was reassuring.
The point he wanted to make, however, was that it is extremely easy to buy the most dreadful weapons online extremely cheaply. For example, I am just looking at a product that he pointed out to me—the ones he showed me are all readily available on eBay, and I know there are other websites where they are available as well. “Ultralight Self Defense Tactical Defense Pen Outdoor Glass Breaker Writing Pen” is the name of a product that costs £2.84 on eBay. It is designed to look like a pen, and it does look like a pen, but it is actually a lethal weapon. My worry, which I am sure is also the Minister’s worry, is how to stop these things getting into the hands of people who want to do harm with them, of whom there are sadly far too many at the moment.
Clause 4 covers the delivery of corrosive products to people under 18, and clause 15 covers the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. In both cases, the Bill places requirements on the suppliers. My worry is what happens in a case such as one Mr Butt drew my attention to. That ultra-light product on ebay.co.uk is supplied by a Chinese company called vastfire-luz. My worry is whether this legislation will cover companies such as that one in China, or companies elsewhere, that are sending these very damaging and unpleasant items to people in the UK.
I know that clause 15, on the delivery of bladed products to residential premises, puts in place arrangements to cover the situation where the supplier is outside the UK. An onus is placed on the delivery company; we will no doubt come to that in due course, but it is not clear to me how effective that will be. If a Chinese company posts an item, which could be in a perfectly innocuous small package, to somebody in the UK, will the arrangements in the Bill help us pick up that it is, in fact, a lethal weapon that is being delivered? It might be delivered by the Royal Mail through the post or by a delivery company of some kind. It is difficult to see how the measures in the Bill, although clearly intended to stop that kind of delivery being made, will in practice have that effect for suppliers determined to get around the impediments being put in their way.
That is the reason I have tabled new clause 9, which I accept looks like a rather odd proposition on the face of it, to move that a person
“commits an offence if they knowingly purchase an offensive weapon from a seller located in a country that is not a member of the European Union.”
The Bill is intended to manage sellers and delivery agencies, but I am sceptical whether that will work in practice. Through my new clause, I instead place an onus on the purchaser and, indeed, on people such as eBay who are facilitating these sales, and say to them: “If you are an individual purchasing an offensive weapon from a seller outside the EU, that is an offence.” That would be one way of shifting the onus on to the purchaser. Clearly, it would still be possible for businesses to import items into the UK in the ordinary way. What I am worried about is individuals buying the dreadful implements that are freely on sale at the moment, on eBay and elsewhere and that, as far as I can see, the well-intentioned measures in the Bill will not capture. This proposal would be another way of trying to stop those very damaging things getting into the country.
Louise Haigh
I rise briefly to congratulate my right hon. Friend on the ingenious way he has brought forward the new clause to tackle the thorny issue of websites outside the UK and the difficulties that the Government will have in prosecuting those who attempt to sell corrosive substances and, indeed, bladed articles, which are dealt with later in the Bill.
I want particularly to address the issue of platforms. As my right hon. Friend said, platforms such as Wish, eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Amazon proliferate the use of horrendous weapons. In 2016, a teenager killed a young man called Bailey Gwynne in a school in Aberdeen. He was cleared of murder, but convicted of culpable homicide. He had paid £40 on Amazon for a folding knife with an 8.5 cm blade. It is illegal even under the current law—prior to the Bill—to sell a folding knife to a buyer aged under 18 if the blade is more than 3 inches long, but that 16-year-old had been able to get around Amazon’s age-verification checks by pinning a note to his front door rather than accepting delivery in person.
I am sure that large retailers and online providers such as Amazon will comply with this new legislation, but individual sellers who sell through Amazon, Facebook Marketplace, eBay and so on are unlikely to comply, so there has to be a way, if we do not use the exact wording that my right hon. Friend has proposed, for us to crack down on platforms; otherwise, we will leave a gaping hole that will render essentially meaningless the worthy principles that the Bill is designed to implement.
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and the right hon. Member for East Ham for the amendments and the new clause. If I may, I will deal with amendments 43 and 44 first and then move on to new clause 9.
I start by saying that, sadly, it is of course not just in the context of the use of offensive weapons that there are people who do not have the scruples that we do when it comes to crimes and harms; they use online platforms to sell their wares. Indeed, only yesterday my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary gave a powerful speech on his expectations of all members of the tech industry when it comes to addressing the horrific prevalence of child sexual exploitation online. We are discussing here a different form of criminality, but of course we have to work to ensure that criminals do not have a gaping hole open on the internet to sell these horrific weapons.
Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 prohibits the sale, importation and other things of disguised knives. The Bill extends that to cover their possession, so I hope that that addresses the point made about the disguised weapon that Mr Butt—
Stephen Timms
Can the Minister clarify the law on this? If it is illegal to sell disguised weapons in the way that she has just said, but there are loads of them on eBay and anyone can look them up and anyone can buy them, who is committing an offence in that situation?
Victoria Atkins
If I inadvertently fall into error, I will write to the right hon. Gentleman to correct what I have said. With marketplace platforms such as eBay or Amazon, it depends. Let us take the example of Amazon. Sometimes Amazon sells as a retailer itself and at other times it is acting as—well, it has been described to me as an antiques fair where someone comes and puts up their stall. Because Amazon has headquarters in the UK, we believe that these provisions apply to those instances where it is selling the knives itself, directly. With the marketplace/antiques fair example, we are in very difficult territorial waters, because of course then Amazon is not selling the item directly itself. It depends on where the seller is based. Section 141 of the 1988 Act addresses the importation of weapons. The example of a zombie knife or a disguised weapon would fall under that section.
Stephen Timms
The Minister made the point earlier, if I understood her correctly, that it is illegal to sell a disguised weapon. Lots of those kinds of weapons are freely available on ebay.co.uk, which presumably has some sort of UK presence. They are being sold by companies in China and around the world. If one of those companies sells a disguised weapon to somebody in the UK, has a crime been committed?
Victoria Atkins
These weapons, I hasten to add, are the ones described under the 1988 Act and under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988. If an item is an offensive weapon under that order, its importation is an offence. I am pretty sure I am on the right track. If the sale was a UK seller to a UK buyer, that is covered by section 141, but if it was a Chinese seller, using the right hon. Gentleman’s example, we do not have jurisdiction. We do, however, have jurisdiction over the person buying a disguised weapon, which is obviously one of the harms we are trying to address in the Bill.
Stephen Timms
But if it is, as it would be in the case of an eBay purchase, an individual buying the product online and then receiving it through a postman or courier, has anyone committed an offence? If so, who is it?
Victoria Atkins
I am struggling to keep up with the example. If an individual has imported a disguised weapon, it falls under section 141. If a UK purchaser has bought it from a UK seller, then both can be prosecuted under section 141 because sale and importation are in that section. If it is a UK buyer and an overseas seller, it is the buyer of a disguised weapon who falls foul of section 141. I hope that assists the right hon. Gentleman.
To deal with the point that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East made—I am moving on from amendments 43 and 44—we do not want to put deliverers, couriers and office workers in the impossible position of trying to guess whether a parcel may or may not contain offensive weapons, which is why we have defined things in the way we have in the Bill. There is a contract with the delivery company and the seller to deliver it. We would obviously expect the seller to make it clear, or for the delivery company to satisfy itself, that the requirements of the Bill were being met.
On new clause 9, I have already referenced the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988. It is already an offence to sell, manufacture, hire, loan or gift such weapons in the UK and to import such items, so we are of the view that the criminality that the right hon. Member for East Ham rightly seeks to address is covered by existing legislation, regardless of whether it occurs inside or outside the EU.
Stephen Timms
The Minister has given the Committee a lot of helpful information. From what she says, anyone who buys the kind of product that I described, which is freely available on eBay, is committing an offence. If I buy a disguised weapon on ebay.co.uk from a Chinese company, I am committing an offence. How is it that eBay continues to offer all these things on its platform? At the very least it is highly irresponsible because, by definition, anyone who clicks on that item and makes a purchase is committing a crime. Surely that should not be permitted?
Victoria Atkins
That is a very good question for those tech companies—not just eBay but others—that allow those items on to their platform. The right hon. Gentleman knows that the Government will look at the huge issue of online responsibility and online harms in a White Paper being published later this year. That will cover not just the incidences we are looking at now but sexual abuse, violence, online trolling and bullying, and so on. These are all issues that we have drawn consultations on and that we are carefully considering. I will make sure that the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport very much bear the right hon. Gentleman’s point in mind.
Stephen Timms
I rise to make a contribution. The Minister referred to the obligations that the clause places on delivery companies in cases where purchases are made from a company outside the UK, as we have just discussed, with the onus therefore needing to be on those companies. Will she spell out for us what checks the delivery company will be required to make? She emphasised the importance of not making unreasonable demands of delivery companies, but how far will the legislation expect them to go in making sure that they are not delivering a corrosive product to somebody’s home?
Victoria Atkins
The defence is set out in subsection (5). It is the same threshold as that set out in clause 2: taking all reasonable precautions and exercising all due diligence.
The Chair
I am slightly confused. I think the Minister was responding to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. He has now spoken twice. If he wishes to speak again he may, but it is becoming a bit backwards and forwards.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful, Mr Gray, and I apologise for the confusion. I will make one final contribution, if I may. Can the Minister tell us a little more about what is regarded as reasonable? If a delivery company enters into a contract to deliver products from a supplier outside the UK and that supplier says that none of the products is corrosive, and if the delivery company believes them, has it taken all reasonable steps, or should it check the consignments to see what is in them? Should it check all of them, or just some of them? It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us a little more about what is expected of delivery company in such situations.
Victoria Atkins
The delivery company will know the nature of what it is delivering, because it will be under the arrangements with the seller. It is about whether the person it is handing the package to is over the age of 18. I am speculating, but it may well be that delivery companies set demands and expectations on the people with whom they enter into agreements when people are selling corrosive substances or bladed articles. The point is that it is about a contract to deliver substances or products that may fall under the Bill, as well as knives.
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful to the Minister for her explanation. I will give it some further thought. A couple of points in her explanation seemed to hinge on not wanting to allow posties and so on to get caught up in these provisions. We must remind ourselves that, as I understand it, this offence will be committed by a body corporate, so we will in no way see posties being brought before a court of law and so on. I am not sure that properly explains why the Government have limited the offence to where the seller is outside the UK—I will give it some thorough thought—nor why the state of awareness has to be quite as high as it is. I will take it away and think about it further, but in the meantime I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Victoria Atkins
I beg to move amendment 17, in clause 4, page 5, line 13, leave out “is guilty of” and insert “commits”.
This amendment and Amendment 23 have the effect that Clauses 4(4) and 18(4) provide that a person commits an offence in specified circumstances rather than that a person is guilty of an offence in those circumstances. This is for consistency with other provisions in the Bill and does not change the legal effect of Clauses 4(4) and 18(4).
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28.
Victoria Atkins
These are amendments to iron out a couple of drafting inconsistencies in the Bill. Clauses 4(4) and 18(4) say that a person “is guilty of” an offence in certain circumstances, whereas the other free-standing provisions of the Bill, such as clause 1(1), say that a person “commits” an offence in certain circumstances. Both formulations appear on the statute book and work legally, but we are looking to adopt the “commits” approach, for the sake of consistency.
Government amendments 24 to 28 pick up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on Second Reading. He pointed out that the definitions of “serious physical harm” in section 1A(2) of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 and section 139AA(4) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 need to be omitted. That is because clause 26 of the Bill now replaces references to “serious physical harm” in section 1A(1) of the 1953 Act and section 139AA(1) of the 1988 Act with “physical harm”. Unfortunately, that was not picked up when the Bill was drafted and we are now taking the opportunity to correct that oversight. I thank my hon. Friend for spotting the inconsistency. All these amendments are minor and technical in nature.
Amendment 17 agreed to.
Amendments made: 18, in clause 4, page 5, line 45, at end insert—
“(11) In Scotland, proceedings for an offence under this section may be commenced within the period of 12 months beginning with the commission of the offence.
(12) Section 136(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 (date when proceedings deemed to be commenced) applies for the purposes of subsection (11) as it applies for the purposes of that section.”
This amendment provides for proceedings in Scotland for an offence under Clause 4 to be brought within 12 months of the commission of the offence. Under section 136 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 the default period for bringing summary proceedings is 6 months.
Amendment 19, in clause 4, page 5, line 45, at end insert—
“( ) See section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 1, 3 or 4) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland.”—(Victoria Atkins.)
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.
Clause 4, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
I beg to move amendment 52, in clause 5, page 6, line 44, after “otherwise” insert
“, and any place other than premises occupied as a private dwelling (including any stair, passage, garden, yard, garage, outhouse or other appurtenance of such premises which is used in common by the occupants of more than one such dwelling).”
This amendment would extend the definition of public places in relation to England and Wales and Northern Ireland.
This amendment was specifically requested by serving police officers because of concerns about the definition of public place referenced in this clause. I appreciate that it is also referenced in other pieces of legislation, so I fully accept and expect that the Minister will raise concerns about differing definitions of public place, but it is important to have this debate about the clause, given the gravity and extent of the offences that could be committed, and because of the police’s concerns that the definition is too narrow and limits their powers in the event of possession in a communal area of a residential dwelling.
Our intention is to make it absolutely clear that “public place” also refers to any area that is exempt from the definition in the Bill due to its not being a place where any ordinary member of the public has access, but which is still regarded as a public place because it is not within a premise occupied as a private dwelling. Such places include any stair, passage, garden, yard, garage, outhouse or other place of such premises that is used in common by the occupants of more than one dwelling.
The amendment helpfully mirrors legislation in Scotland that gives the police broader powers to ensure the safety of residents in communal areas—clearly because of criminality that has taken place in such areas and in response to the police’s limited powers to take action. The existing definition of “public place” in section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 is
“any highway and any other premises or place to which at the material time the public have or are permitted to have access, whether on payment or otherwise”.
In Scotland, in this Bill and other legislation, it is
“any place other than premises occupied as a private dwelling”,
such as a garden, yard or outhouse. That reflects the existing definition of “public place” in Scottish legislation. The offence of having an offensive weapon, or a bladed or pointed article, in a public place is set out in sections 47 and 49 of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995.
A 2011 report by the Scottish Government explained that the definition was changed to capture locations such as the ones in our amendment. The explanatory note to section 37 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 made it clear that possession in a public place offences
“may be committed by possession of an offensive weapon or a knife on the common parts of shared properties such as common landings in tenement blocks of flats.”
We strongly believe that these measures must be extended to those public places to bring security to residents in those areas and to give the police the power to act if offensive weapons are possessed within them. It is clear that the police need and want this power, and we see no reason why we should not align ourselves with the measures in Scotland.
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to Opposition Members for tabling this amendment. It proposes that we extend the definition used in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to bring it closer to the definition used in Scotland, which would be an extension of the current definition and would include private properties. I absolutely understand why the police and others are seeking to close what they perceive to be a gap in the law. It appears that some private properties would not be covered by the offence in clause 5.
Of course, possessing a corrosive substance in a private place is not an offence. It may well be that some of us have an assortment of cleaning products that would qualify as corrosives in our home, so the Bill does not seek to make it illegal to possess a corrosive in a dwelling. There may well be properties that are not homes and have legitimate uses for corrosive substances, some of which we have already discussed during our scrutiny of the Bill. We do not want the Bill to criminalise members of the public who are going about their daily lives or enjoying a hobby outside their home.
The amendment applies solely to the offence of possession. It is worth noting that a number of other criminal offences are available to the police, in relation to threatening with a corrosive. For example, there is the offence of threatening the use of a corrosive substance as an offensive weapon, and it would be possible to charge a person with common assault under the 1998 Act or with a public order offence. I can see that there may be some benefit in expanding the definition to cover possession in all places that are not dwellings. I would be grateful if the Committee would allow me time to consider this matter further with my officials.
Louise Haigh
I am very grateful that the Minister is willing to consider the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment made: 20, in clause 5, page 7, line 4, after “See” insert “—
(a) section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 5) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland;
(b) ”—(Victoria Atkins.)
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Timms
I very much welcome the inclusion of clause 5 in the Bill. It is a very important step forward to make an offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place, in exactly the same way as having a knife in a public place is an offence. I am hopeful that the Bill will address some of the problems we have seen in areas such as mine.
I just want to ask the Minister one question. Subsection (2) makes the point that it is a defence for somebody if they can prove that
“they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place”.
Subsection (3) goes on to say that it is a defence if the person has the corrosive substance with them for work. Will the Minister set out what the courts should expect to regard as a good reason for carrying a corrosive substance in a public place? I think that all of us would rightly accept having it for work to be a perfectly defensible reason. I wonder whether there is a risk of getting into some difficult areas where people come up with a raft of potential excuses for carrying acid in a Lucozade bottle. Has there been any thought about what would count as a good reason or lawful authority for having this substance, to give some guidance to magistrates courts and others who might themselves quite quickly having to make these judgments when cases come before them?
Louise Haigh
May I request a couple of clarifications from the Minister? She mentioned testing kits earlier. Are they to be made available to every constable in every police force in the country? If not, to whom will they be made available to enable testing while on the beat, so to speak?
With regard to the definition in clause 5 about not burning human skin. We discussed bleach earlier; household bleach does not corrode skin, so would that not fall under the definition in clause 5, since it does not in schedule 1? Will the Minister give us some examples of products that would match the definition in clause 5 but not come under schedule 1, if that makes sense?
Victoria Atkins
I will definitely have to write to the hon. Lady on that last point. That is all about concentrations and how long the substance has to be on the skin to corrode.
In answer to the question that the right hon. Member for East Ham asked about how subsection (2) as a defence adds to subsection (3), which is the specific work defence, it is to cover situations where, for example, someone might have bought a high-strength drain unblocker and are taking it to use at home. In the example he gave of the substance being decanted into a Lucozade or drinks bottle, the act of decanting the substance into another bottle would be a strong aggravating feature, certainly if I were prosecuting and hoping to prove my case on not being able to rely on subsections (2) or (3).
On the clause as a whole, we hope that this new offence will be able to help the police in the important and difficult work they do in tackling these crimes. I heard what the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley said about testing kits. We will have to review the policy of supplying them on the basis of what we know. After all, as the right hon. Member for East Ham said, his borough sadly has the highest incident of acid or corrosive substance attacks, but in other parts of the country they simply do not happen. I do not want to tempt fate or to mention the word “resources,” but we want to ensure that the resources are best deployed where the need is clear, as it is in some parts of London.
I hope that the Committee supports the clause, which will mean that the police can deal with someone carrying around acid for no good reason—
Louise Haigh
I am grateful to the Minister—I appreciate that she was literally about to sit down. I am a bit concerned about how that will work in practice. As a former special constable—I know I mention that often—I struggle to see how I would have implemented this offence without the testing kit being available. If I do not have such a kit and I stop and search someone, perhaps finding a water bottle, what am I meant to do? Obviously I am not going to test it on my own skin, so I would have to take the person to the police station to do forensic tests there, which seems like an unconscionable use of police resources. It is difficult to envisage how the police will implement the legislation if they do not all have the testing kit available, although I completely appreciate the Minister’s point about directing the kits to where the problem is most prevalent.
Victoria Atkins
Of course, the police will be leading our knowledge on this with the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs Council, so I do not want to commit to every single constable having a kit in their possession, in case those who know day-to-day policing in and around their force areas say, “Actually, we don’t think we need it in this area.” I do not want to make a promise, only for it not to happen in good faith. If I may, I will leave the Government’s answer as being that we will of course consult the police on the deployment of the testing kits.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
May I comment on what we have just heard? I am resident in the Bristol area, and I am slightly concerned that the Minister suggested that in certain parts of the country we might not be looking further. We had an incident just outside Bristol, in the suburbs, in an area that might not normally be expected to have such an incident. We do not know the details yet, so I cannot comment further, but it highlights the fact that even in a family retail park, in essence, that sort of incident can still happen. Equally, over the summer I was out with the DVSA and the police to look at the testing of diesel in relation to trailer safety, and the logistics of how we equip officers for testing need to be thought through more. I am a little concerned that we do not seem to know how the testing will be operationalised. It would be helpful to know that before the Bill returns to the Floor of the House, so that we can be clear about how, operationally, police officers will be equipped to respond to this offence and whether they will be carrying more kit and so on.
Victoria Atkins
I absolutely understand the spirit in which the hon. Lady raises the issue. However, we have been very keen to act as quickly as we can. The Government, with all our various layers of consultations, work-rounds and so on, wanted to get this piece of legislation before the House as quickly as possible so that the police have the powers and can start to deploy them.
We have commissioned the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, along with the NPCC lead, to develop the testing regime that will allow officers to test suspect containers for corrosive substances. A project team has been appointed and a work programme is being developed. I do not know—though I will ask the question—whether, frankly, I will be able to provide the Committee with an answer about force decisions on whether every police officer will be given a test kit. In fact, I suspect I will not be able to, because that is a matter for the chief constables. Once we have developed this, it will be for chief constables and police and crime commissioners to assess their local policing landscape and see whether this is a piece of equipment that they feel the officers need.
I am trying to leave my answer as open as possible, not because I am not trying to help the Committee, but because I want to give the police and the commissioners the space to be able to make the right decisions that are appropriate for their areas. Clearly, there will be some areas, such as certain parts of London, where this will be a really important piece of kit. There will be other parts of the countries where frankly it will not be, because there has not been any such attack.
Louise Haigh
I think my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South was asking whether it would be possible for this information to be made available before the Bill returns to the Floor of the House on Report. In particular, although I appreciate that its roll-out will be a decision for chief constables and police and crime commissioners, will it be made clear whether they will be provided by the Home Office or whether police forces will have to pay for them out of their budgets?
Victoria Atkins
I am conscious that the project team is being appointed and a work programme is being developed. I will use my best endeavours to bring those answers before the next stage of the Bill, but if I am not able to, that will be because these matters are out of my hands and the laboratory or others may need more time to provide those answers. We want to get the Bill passed as quickly as possible and we want to be able to help officers to use clause 5, where they need it, as quickly as possible.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Appropriate custodial sentence for conviction under section 5
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
As with the entirety of the Bill, we fully support the intention and most of the content of the clause, but we share the concerns of some of those who have given evidence to the Committee and to the Home Office about mandatory minimum sentencing for children. The clause has been lifted from an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, proposed by the former Member Nick de Bois, that introduced a two-strikes sentence, meaning that adults convicted more than once of being in possession of a blade will face a minimum six-month prison sentence and a maximum of four years, and that children aged 16 and 17 will face a minimum four-month detention and training order.
Since that legislation was introduced, there have been multiple media reports that have suggested that those sentencing arrangements are not being carried out for adults or children covered by that clause. Will the Minister provide details of how many offenders have been sentenced under those provisions and whether there has been monitoring of how many offenders do not receive a custodial sentence included in that clause, having been charged and convicted of knife possession on two separate occasions?
For example, the Telegraph reported in March 2016 that provisional data indicated that since the legislation was introduced, only 50% of offenders had been jailed, while another 23% had been given suspended sentences. Of those offenders, 907 were adults and 50% received a custodial sentence with an average sentence length of 6.6 months. It stated that
“The remaining 59 cases were offenders aged 16 or 17, with…46 per cent receiving an immediate custodial sentence.”
Has there been any review by either the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice of whether those reforms in the 2015 Act are being implemented by the courts—and, more importantly, of whether those reforms are effective? Are they improving public protection? Are they acting as a deterrent to children and adult offenders? Are they reducing recidivism? Has there been any review of the measures? If not, would it not have been desirable to conduct such a review before bringing forward the identical measures in this Bill?
Part of the written evidence we received came from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which made a compelling case as the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 passed through Parliament—it restates it here: that mandatory minimum sentences for children do not necessarily act as a deterrent, do not necessarily rehabilitate children who are caught with knives and do not ensure that the public are protected, as opposed to when the judiciary has full discretion.
The Children’s Commissioner said in evidence:
“I want to have a system that can respond to individuals, so my instinct is not to go down the mandatory minimum sentences route but to look at individual cases.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2018; c. 90, Q223.]
I fully acknowledge that during that same evidence session we heard from the Victims’ Commissioner, who said:
“I have to say that victims tell me they want mandatory; only then will it be effective.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2018; c. 91, Q223.]
Of course, it is understandable that victims and the public at large should want to see people who commit, or intend to commit, abhorrent criminal offences sent to prison for a reasonable amount of time, but the ultimate objective of custody must be to reduce offending and keep the public more secure. To achieve that, we believe that we have to look at each individual case, especially when it involves children, and the judiciary should have full discretion to respond appropriately.
The Standing Committee for Youth Justice’s evidence is compelling in that regard. On the claim that custody acts as a deterrent, it contests that awareness of second sentencing among children is perceived by frontline practitioners to be low. There are many children in and around the criminal justice system who we would not expect to make rational choices, in the economic, behavioural sense of the word.
As well as that, children carry knives and weapons for numerous and complex reasons, often because of the perception that it is necessary for self-protection. Punitive measures, particularly custodial measures, are unlikely to act as a deterrent, even if the child is aware of the punishment and able to act rationally. In other words, for those children who fear for their safety and their lives, carrying a knife or corrosive substances may be seen as the rational course of action, and the threat they are facing—perceived or real—will be more significant than the threat of a custodial sentence. Research on deterrents has consistently supported that, with studies finding little or no evidence that sentence severity or the threat of custody acts as a deterrent to crime for children.
The statistics on knife-crime offences also support that evidence. Since the introduction of mandatory minimum custodial sentencing in 2015, the number of children convicted of possession or threatening offences involving bladed articles or offences weapons has risen.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I want to add to the sensible speech my hon. Friend is making. In the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, our first meeting was with about 15 young offenders who had been in prison for knife offences. We had a conversation with them about whether prison was a deterrent or not. Some of them said, shockingly, that going to prison was a relief, because it was a break from the streets. They could keep out of trouble and be fed. They were in a secure institution. Their lived experience was so tough that being in prison was not the worst thing in the world, so I endorse everything she is saying about it not necessarily being a deterrent.
Louise Haigh
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. She has done amazing work chairing the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, following the tragic experiences of her young constituents. She brings that evidence and wealth of experience to bear, to show that it is not a deterrent.
The other argument made is around public protection. It seems obvious that if an offender is removed from the streets and detained, the public are better protected. That is undeniably true for many offence types and for prolific offenders, but children in and around the criminal justice system are a relatively transient group. They are quickly replaced by others. They can sometimes—more often than not—go through phases of criminality that they grow out of, so custodial sentencing is unlikely to have a significant impact on public protection.
The reoffending rates for children leaving custody are stubbornly high. Last year, more than 68% of children who left custody reoffended within a year, yet for those who received youth community penalties the figure—still too high—was 58%, which is significantly lower. We know from all the evidence that diverting children away from the formal youth justice system is more effective at reducing offending than any punitive response. I completely accept what my hon. Friend said about custody being a relief, but the evidence also indicates that custody is itself criminogenic: it encourages crime.
I am not for a second saying that offenders under 18 should not serve custodial sentences under any circumstances. Only a couple of weeks ago, a constituent of mine was attacked in the street and stabbed five times—including once in the heart and once in the lungs—by a 15-year-old, and I have urged the Crown Prosecution Service to review the sentence that he received on the grounds of undue leniency. However, that just demonstrates that every case is different.
Clearly, in the vast majority of cases, the carrying of acid for a second time should result in a custodial sentence. However, if the youth justice service and the judge deem that other interventions would be more effective, they should have the full discretion to impose them. I do not believe that subsections (2) or (4) provide for that. Will the Minister furnish the Committee with examples of the use of the sister clause of subsection (2) in the 2015 Act? It would be very helpful for us to understand in what circumstances that
“relate to the offence, the previous offence or the offender”
judges have chosen not to implement the mandatory sentencing otherwise expected in the 2015 Act.
I was interested to hear the Minister mention that one reason why the Government decided not to go above the age of 18 for the sale of corrosive substances and knives is that 18 is the internationally recognised age of the child. She is absolutely right: the UN convention on the rights of the child states that clearly. On that basis, how can we justify delivering mandatory minimum sentences for children, when so much of the evidence suggests that it is not effective or appropriate? The UN convention on the rights of the child states that mandatory sentences remove judicial discretion and the ability of courts to ensure that the penalty best fits the circumstance of the offence. Indeed, our own Sentencing Council in the UK said that a custodial sentence should always be a measure of last resort for children and young people; it seems that the clauses directly contradict the Sentencing Council’s guidance.
The Law Society also backs up those concerns. It said:
“In our view, courts should be trusted to impose the most suitable and just sentence in the unique circumstances of the offence and the offender before them. Sentencing guidelines exist to provide consistency and indicate aggravating factors, such as previous convictions. We accordingly do not support the setting of a minimum sentence for corrosive substance offences for the same reason.”
I appreciate that, even if the Minister agrees with these concerns, there are difficulties, given that we are trying to mirror what is already in legislation. However, I hope the Minister will accept the concerns that have been raised. If she is wedded to going ahead with the clauses, perhaps she will provide us with the evidence base for requiring mandatory minimum sentences for children, particularly relating to reoffending, public protection and deterrence.
Victoria Atkins
The clause is being inserted in the context of corrosive substances because we want to mirror the provisions in legislation concerning knives and to send out the clear message that corrosive substances are just as much as an offensive weapon as knives.
On the first occasion when someone comes before the court, the sentencing judge will obviously have all powers and options open to her or him to sentence the person in possession of a corrosive substance or a knife; they will have that power to exercise their discretion. However, as is the case with knives, we want to send out a tough message. Someone who has already been through the court process and stood in front of a judge—who may have given them a community penalty rather than imprisonment if that was deemed appropriate—is then on notice that, if they walk around with a knife or corrosive substance again, a court will have the power to impose an immediate custodial sentence, unless subsections (2) and (4) apply. Subsections (2) and (4) are important, because they allow the court to divert from the mandatory minimum sentence, if it is
“of the opinion that there are particular circumstances”.
Louise Haigh
I fully appreciate that there is a wide spectrum of views out there. In regard to the campaign led by the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, I would say that hard cases make for bad law. I made several requests in my speech for the evidence underpinning the clause and the provision in the 2015 Act. Rather than ceding to those siren voices that we routinely hear in this place about increasing sentence lengths—I often add my voice to them too—I would be grateful if the Minister provided us with the evidence that the provision will improve public protection and reduce reoffending.
Victoria Atkins
I am so sorry; I have got a note here. I am going to ask the Ministry of Justice and write to the Committee with a response to the questions the hon. Lady asked about figures and statistics and so on. That material is held by the Ministry of Justice, which owns this territory. I hope that assists the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7
Offence under section 5: relevant convictions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
If I may, I want to ask for one quick clarification in relation to subsection (2), which states:
“References in subsection (1) to a conviction for an offence are to a conviction for an offence regardless of when it was committed.”
Will the Minister confirm that that is compliant with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974? Is subsection (2) the case even if any such conviction is now spent?
Victoria Atkins
Those who spend a great deal of time and effort in drafting the provisions of the Bill will no doubt very much have that at the forefront of their mind. It might well be that it is such a nuanced position and topic at 8.18 at night that I might have to write to the hon. Lady.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Search for corrosive substances: England and Wales
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
The Minister made a slight reference earlier—it came as a surprise to me—to the Home Office consulting on stop-and-search powers. I note the consultation that the Home Office released last month, which I believe relates to codes C and H of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. That does not cover stop-and-search, but I note the Home Secretary’s announcement today that he is mulling over increased powers for officers on stop-and-search in relation to corrosive substances. I was confused by that, because clause 8 clearly provides constables with the power, under an amended PACE, to stop and search offenders who they have reasonable grounds to believe have committed, are committing or are going to commit an offence under the Bill.
Can the Minister confirm whether the Home Office is considering additional stop-and-search powers? Is it not convinced that the reformed stop-and-search powers in the Bill are sufficient to tackle the issue of corrosive substances? Does it have further plans to lower the stop-and-search threshold to levels currently associated only with section 60 of PACE, which, as far as I can see, is the only distinction that the Home Secretary could have been making in what he said today? He said that officers would have to have only suspicion, which I assume is a lesser threshold than the current threshold of reasonable grounds. I would be grateful if the Minister clarified exactly what the Home Office is taking further steps on. If it is not convinced that the Bill is sufficient, why is it not tabling amendments at this stage?
Victoria Atkins
While existing powers allow a police officer to conduct stop-and-search for a corrosive substance where it is suspected that a person is in possession of a corrosive substance to cause injury, they do not extend to the proposed new offence of possession in a public place. The proposed extension of stop-and-search seeks to address that gap to enable the police to take preventive action. We have to consult on such an extension, so it is clause 8 that we will be consulting on, but the consultation has not opened yet.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 9 and 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11
Consequential amendments relating to section 5
Victoria Atkins
I beg to move amendment 21, in clause 11, page 10, line 25, at end insert—
‘(1A) In section 37(1A) of the Mental Health Act 1983 (powers of courts to order hospital admission or guardianship: effect of provisions requiring imposition of appropriate custodial sentence)—
(a) omit the “or” at the end of paragraph (c), and
(b) at the end of paragraph (d) insert “, or
(e) under section 6(2) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2018 (minimum sentences in certain cases of possession of a corrosive substance),”.
(1B) In section 36(2)(b) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (review of sentencing in case of failure to impose appropriate custodial sentence)—
(a) omit the “or” at the end of sub-paragraph (iii), and
(b) at the end of sub-paragraph (iv) insert “; or
(v) section 6(2) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2018.”’
This amendment and Amendments 22, 29 and 30 provide for amendments to be made various Acts in consequence of the provisions in Clauses 6 and 7 on appropriate custodial sentences for the possession of corrosive substances.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 22, 29 and 30.
Victoria Atkins
These are minor and consequential amendments to clause 11, on the possession of a corrosive substance in a public place, and clause 38, which deals with the extent of the provisions in the Bill. They make amendments to various Acts in consequence of the provisions in clauses 6 and 7 on appropriate custodial sentences for the possession of corrosive substances. The purpose of the amendments is to bring the sentencing measures in relation to the prohibition on corrosives in the Bill in line with those for existing offences involving knives.
Amendment 21 does two things. First, it will allow a court to provide for a hospital or guardianship order under section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983 as an alternative to a minimum sentence for a second offence of possessing a corrosive, which mirrors the existing approach for knife possession. It also allows unduly lenient sentences to be referred to the Court of Appeal by the Attorney General.
Amendment 22 will prevent the court from imposing an absolute or conditional discharge under section 12 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, where an appropriate custodial sentence must be imposed for an offence under clause 5. It also allows for a reduction in sentence for a guilty plea under section 144 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, in line with the rules in place for existing offensive weapons offences. Amendments 29 and 30 relate to the territorial extent of amendments 21 and 22, which is England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and England and Wales respectively.
Amendment 21 agreed to.
Amendment made: 22, in clause 11, page 10, line 30, at end insert—
‘(3) In section 12(1A) of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 (provisions preventing the making of an order for absolute or conditional discharge), after paragraph (f) insert—
“(g) section 6(2) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2018.”
(4) In section 144 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (reduction in sentences for guilty pleas)—
(a) in subsection (3), at the end insert—
“section 6(2) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2018.”, and
(b) in subsection (5), at the end insert—
“section 6(2) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2018.”’—(Victoria Atkins.)
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 24.
Clause 11, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Paul Maynard.)
Offensive Weapons Bill (Seventh sitting)
Thursday 6th September 2018
(6 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 September 2018 - (6 Sep 2018)
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Welcome back, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
Clause 12 deals with the age verification systems needed to enforce the measures, it. We will discuss again the standards that will be required by the Home Office if the legislation is to have effect. I hope the Minister can give details of what she considers will meet the requirements of subsection 4(a), which refers to sellers operating
“a system for checking that persons who bought articles to which section 141A applied by the same or a similar method of purchase to that used by the buyer were not under the age of 18.”
What would be a reasonable system? Requiring a person to check a box to say they are over 18? Referring to the electoral roll? Requiring use of a credit or debit card owned by someone over 18, though that would not prove that the individual buying was the owner of the card? What kind of standards will the Home Office require?
Concerns have been raised about the work of trading standards with regard to online test purchases, which is frequently found to be unsuccessful. Can the Minister provide us with statistics on the online test purchases conducted, on the basis for bringing forward the clause, and on prosecutions brought by trading standards over the last year against retailers that have failed to comply with existing legislation on the sale of bladed articles to under-18s?
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Gray.
The clause is the first of the Bill to deal with knives. I report to the Committee with a heavy heart that there were 702 knife crimes in my borough of Newham last year—the second-highest number in London and a 15% increase on the previous year. Of those, 214 involved injury. In London as a whole, there were 80 fatal stabbings in 2017, including of 20 teenagers. I need not elaborate to underline the horror of those figures, and particularly of the fact that so many young people lost their lives as a result of being stabbed.
That was in 2017. In the first three months of 2018, there were 30 fatal stabbings in London. The fatality rate for those three months was 50% higher than in 2017. Of the 30 people who died, six were teenagers. It was reported in April, I think, that in the first couple months of this calendar year, London had a higher murder rate than New York, which is extremely troubling and chilling for all of us.
I looked this morning at the website of my local paper, the Newham Recorder. There are three headlines there at the moment: “Guilty: Three teenagers convicted for stabbing 14-year-old boy in Manor Park”; “Police appeal to find Fatjon Koka following stabbing in Stratford”; and “Man to appear in court following Romford Road stabbing”. Those are three separate and entirely unrelated items in the current issue of my local newspaper. The changes to the law in the Bill to bear down on this scourge are extremely welcome. There is clearly a pressing need to get a grip on what is going on, to change things, and to stop this seemingly rapidly escalating problem affecting so many people, particularly the young.
To get on top of this problem, we will have to increase police resources. For a number of years, the Government cut police resources and police numbers, and crime did not rise, but an increase in crime was utterly inevitable given the scale of the reduction in police numbers. The crime surge was delayed, but it is now very much with us. It is hitting us extremely hard. I very much hope that the clause and the other measures in the Bill will help, but we will need significant additional police resources.
On Tuesday, the Committee discussed how the Bill would affect sellers of corrosive products outside the UK. The same issues arise in the case of sellers of knives who are outside the UK; as I understand it, the Bill deals with them in the same way as sellers of corrosive products. We had a debate on Tuesday about my new clause 9, and as I indicated in the context of corrosive products, I am not convinced that the way the Bill deals with this problem is altogether satisfactory. The concern is greater here, because as I informed the Committee on Tuesday, Mr Raheel Butt has pointed out to me that it seems to be the norm for online purchases of appalling knives to be made from suppliers outside the UK, on platforms such as eBay. The Minister pointed out on Tuesday that the purchase of knives disguised to look like something else is clearly illegal in the UK, but there is no shortage of online platforms offering those products in the UK. They are freely available to purchasers here, even though their purchase is illegal, and in the particular case I mentioned, the suppliers were all located outside the UK.
Will the clause not have effect if a seller is outside the UK, as was the case with corrosive products, which we discussed on Tuesday? Will we therefore need to depend on separate measures—set out, I think, in clause 18, in which a responsibility is placed on delivery companies—to address the problem of sales from outside the UK? If so, can the Minister can clarify the position in cases where sellers are located elsewhere in the EU? As I have pointed out previously, eBay offers some pretty ghastly weapons supplied by firms in Germany, which is a member of the European Union, as are we, at the moment. Will clause 12 have no effect on sellers located elsewhere in the EU, as I think the Minister indicated was the case in the parallel discussion we had on Tuesday? If so, I am a little bit puzzled as to why. If a seller in Germany sells a weapon that is illegal in the UK to somebody in the UK, or a knife to a 16-year-old in the UK, how is it not possible to prosecute that company somewhere else in the European Union for having committed an offence?
We had a debate on Tuesday about amendment 53, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, which proposed that the age threshold for knife purchases be raised from 18 to 21, and the Minister quite properly explained some of the difficulties with that. However, I hope that we will not leave this issue here. There is a compelling case for saying that some of those very unpleasant weapons, the only purpose of which can be to do damage to others, should not be freely available, as they are at the moment, to 19 and 20-year-olds. I take the point that there is not an amendment that would have that effect on the amendment paper at the moment, but I hope that we will not let this matter pass. We have to change the way the age restrictions work and find ways to limit the supply of weapons that are inflicting appalling injuries—and indeed death—on far too many people in our country.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
It continues to be a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Police records show that knife crime has increased by 16% and possession offences have increased by 28% in the year ending March 2018. The right hon. Member for East Ham has given us a taste of the devastation that those offences cause to not just the people immediately involved in the aftermath of an attack—families and friends—but the wider community. That is why, after months of detailed work with charities, the police, local authorities, health care providers and others, the Government gathered together the evidence and published the “Serious Violence Strategy” in April this year. I hope the right hon. Gentleman and others will see that it is a game-changer in how we tackle serious violence. It does not just focus on how the police tackle serious violence, although that is very important, but puts the emphasis on early intervention. As we know from discussions in this Committee, many perpetrators and victims of these crimes are children.
As part of the strategy, we are investing £22 million over the next two years in a new early intervention youth fund to provide joined-up support to youth groups and communities working with children and young people. The right hon. Member for East Ham mentioned police resources; I will touch on that lightly, as we discuss this subject in many forums. Although the policing response is incredibly important, there are other much bigger drivers of the upsurge in violence. Sadly, we all know the upturn in county lines and know that the drugs market is a major driver of the violence, but that is for another occasion.
Victoria Atkins
On 2 August, we announced the 68 successful bidders for funding from the latest tranche of the local community fund knife budget. The £1.5 million funding helps communities, including smaller charities, to tackle knife crime—I will be writing a “Dear colleague” letter soon to explain which charities have benefited. We have launched a new advertising campaign, #knifefree—
Victoria Atkins
—to reduce knife crime among young people. The Offensive Weapons Bill is part of that strategy. There is great concern about the sale of knives online to under-18s. It is already illegal, but it seems that sellers are not doing enough to stop children buying knives online. I am getting the figures for the right hon. Member for East Ham about trading standards, but evidence from online test purchase operations has shown that the majority of retailers sampled failed to have effective age verification procedures in place.
A lot of colleagues have written to me about the proposals in this Bill. There seems to be a misunderstanding among some online retailers—not all, by any means—that this law does not apply to them. It does not matter their size; since 1998 the law has been that bladed products cannot be sold online to people under the age of 18. The law was updated in 2006 to make it clear that that covered online sales. The purpose of the provisions is to make absolutely clear our expectations of people who sell knives and bladed products online.
We are introducing clause 12 because we do not want to have simply a box-ticking exercise for retailers, who could be delivering potentially dangerous products without sufficient checks on the people they send them to. We expect our measures—both at the point of sale and at the point of delivery—to really clamp down on the ability of young people to order knives online.
Louise Haigh
As the Minister has just made clear, in that instance the seller committed a criminal offence under the existing legislation. Clearly, there is an issue of enforcement, and, as she said, of some online retailers’ awareness of the existing legislation. Can she make clear what the clause requires of online retailers that is not already required? Are they not currently required to have a system for checking that buyers are over 18, and if they are not, how is the current law enforced?
Victoria Atkins
Months of work have gone into the “Serious Violence Strategy”, and the Bill will try to assist not only the police but online retailers. I do not for a moment suggest that they are deliberately trying to evade the law, and we want to help law-abiding retailers to fulfil their responsibilities under the law. We hope that setting out these conditions, which will no doubt be widely disseminated in the industry and among retailers, will help retailers satisfy themselves that they have met the expectations of the law on those sales. The clause should be read in conjunction with clause 15, which is another stage in the process of preventing knives that are bought online being delivered to residential premises.
Stephen Timms
The Minister gave the example of somebody aged 16 buying a knife online. I am not sure that an offence would have been committed there if the supplier of the knife was based outside the UK. I do not know if they were, but that is very likely; they could have been from Germany or China. Was there a prosecution in that case, and if the supplier was outside the UK, is there nothing the law can do about it?
Victoria Atkins
Because Bailey was killed, the police who conducted the investigation charged the young boy with murder. The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the subsidiary offence of possession was probably not on the indictment—or the Scottish equivalent—although I do not wish to speculate on that. However, Aberdeen City Council conducted an independent review of the circumstances of Bailey’s death and found that the boy had bought the knife via Amazon.co.uk. The point of the clause is to say that if someone is relying on the existing defence of having taken reasonable precautions, they must meet the four conditions in clause 12. It sets out those conditions in a strict manner. I will come on to the point about overseas sales in a moment, if I may.
Stephen Timms
By the sound of it, there should have been a prosecution in that case. Someone who was 16 was sold a knife. Clearly, if it was a UK supplier—I think the Minister indicated that it was—a criminal offence had been carried out. Surely there should then have been a prosecution.
Victoria Atkins
It was sold by means of Amazon. It was a Scottish case, so I will have to find that out for the right hon. Gentleman, but I make the point about Amazon. If he remembers, we had this discussion about the difficulty with Amazon or a business such as Amazon. That difficulty is discerning when Amazon is selling in its own right as Amazon and when it is acting as a marketplace, antiques fair or whatever analogy one wants to use. That is difficult, a very tricky area in which to put into law the ill-harm we are addressing. The provisions on overseas sales try to address that. I do not pretend that we are 100% there, but we are trying to weave our way through to ensure that companies that knowingly take on online delivery of overseas sales meet the threshold. We will return to that at the appropriate clause.
Clause 12 amends section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which makes it an offence to sell bladed articles to people under 18. That defence—namely, that the seller took
“all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”—
is modified, or explained, in clause 12 for when the sale is conducted remotely. If sellers do not put in place minimum requirements to meet the conditions set out in the clause, they will not be able to avail themselves of the defence that they took “all reasonable precautions” or “exercised all due diligence” to avoid an offence being committed.
The first requirement is that the seller has a system in place to verify the age of the purchaser. Sellers are expected to have robust age-verification processes to reassure themselves that the person to whom they are selling is 18 or above. The legislation does not prescribe what constitutes a robust age-verification procedure, and that is deliberate, because we know all too well how quickly the online world is moving. The age-verification industry is evolving rapidly, as we saw with the Digital Economy Act 2017. We do not want to put something in statute that is a commercial decision for retailers or that might result in out-of-date measures in 12 months’ time or ones that could already be improved.
Frankly, it is for business owners to decide which solution is best for their business model. I draw an analogy with the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which does not set out what is expected of anyone running a business such as a construction company or an iron foundry, but does set out the expectation that those employers will take all reasonable practicable steps to protect their workforce and members of the public.
Louise Haigh
We had part of this debate on Tuesday, when it was made clear that we should not be putting technological processes or procedures into primary legislation. However, it is reasonable to set minimum standards in primary legislation. I am afraid that the comparison with the Digital Economy Act, in relation to age restrictions for online pornography, does not hold water because the issue with age verification there is that there is no connection to an online sale in that Act, but there is in the Bill. That is why the age verification for online gambling is a good standard and should have been replicated in the Bill, because it is connected to a sale. For example, a bank can verify whether an individual is over 18. That does not get us round the issue that I mentioned earlier—that although the age of the card holder can be verified, it is not possible to tell whether the individual using it is over 18—but software is available to enable selfies to show that the person using the card is the owner.
Louise Haigh
I am sorry, Mr Gray. My point is that the provision is too vague for online retailers. It is too vague to be effective. We would like the Government to bring forward at least draft guidance for the Committee to show what standards they will require of online retailers.
Victoria Atkins
As I say, we have set out the expectations. We have already discussed, in the context of corrosive substances, things like checking the electoral roll and providing proof of a council tax bill, for example, and so on. I think retail will find ways in which to satisfy themselves that the buyer is over 18. Government can do so much, but if retailers are selling these products, all they have to do—I do describe it in that way—is work out that the customers with whom they have a relationship are over the age of 18.
Louise Haigh
Will the Minister make it absolutely clear that it will not be sufficient to meet the requirements of the clause for retailers to ask the customer to tick a box confirming that they are over 18?
Victoria Atkins
Yes, that is absolutely what we are trying to improve upon. Some retailers think that that is sufficient. It is simply not sufficient. If they are going to make those sales, I am afraid that, in the interest of the wider community, they have to ensure that they are lawfully permitted to sell to the people to whom they are selling. A tick-box exercise is simply not good enough.
A second requirement is for the package to be marked clearly to the effect that it contains an article with a blade—or one that is sharp and pointed—and that it can be delivered only into the hands of a person aged 18 or over. Frankly, I should have hoped that sellers would already have similar arrangements, if they wanted to ensure that a knife sold remotely would not be handed over to a person under 18, under current legislation. However, unfortunately some sellers do not mark the package as age-restricted, so we are building the further safeguard into the Bill.
The third requirement is for the seller to take all reasonable precautions to ensure that when the package is delivered it is handed to a person aged 18 or over. Again, the seller has a responsibility to ensure that the company delivering the item understands that age must be verified before it is handed over. The fourth requirement is for the seller not to deliver the package, or arrange for it to be delivered, to a locker. Some delivery companies nowadays have those facilities. That is not permissible for the sale of bladed articles—bladed products—under the clause. Obviously it would fall foul of the age verification process.
We expect that, with the placing of those minimum requirements on a statutory footing, they will be standard practice to comply with existing legislation.
Stephen Timms
Before the Minister concludes, can I ask the question I raised earlier? Is it the case that a seller outside the UK is outside the jurisdiction of the measures?
Victoria Atkins
It is. There are very few offences for which we have been able to seek extraterritorial jurisdiction. The right hon. Gentleman will know, for example, that if murder or female genital mutilation are planned outside the jurisdiction, we can make applications for extraterritorial jurisdiction to be satisfied, but on this occasion if the act of sale takes place outside the UK, it is not covered by the Bill. That is precisely why we are using clause 18 to try none the less to contain that activity.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 13 and 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 15
Delivery of bladed products to residential premises etc
Stephen Timms
I beg to move amendment 46, in clause 15, page 14, line 37, leave out “residential premises” and insert
“premises other than a registered business address”.
The Chair
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 48 to clause 15, page 15, line 1, leave out subsections (5) and (6).
Amendment 47 to clause 15, page 15, line 1, leave out “solely”.
Stephen Timms
These three amendments are intended to plug what seems to me a fairly obvious loophole in the arrangements set out in clause 15. I should make it clear that I come from a position of wanting to support clause 15, although I recognise that there will be others who will want to express some misgivings about it. Nevertheless, it is right that the clause aims to stop the delivery of weapons to people in their homes.
As the clause makes clear, it will not apply if there is any business carried out from the address in question. Subsection (6) says:
“The circumstances where premises are not residential premises for the purposes of that subsection include, in particular, where a person carries on a business from the premises.”
For example, if somebody lived in a flat above a shop and had the same address as the shop, I think that as the clause stands there would be no bar to their having a knife delivered to their home.
Surely what we ought to be doing is stopping the delivery of weapons to places where people live. Amendments 46 and 48 attempt to do that by restricting the delivery of weapons to a registered business address. At the moment, clause 15 says that weapons cannot be delivered to residential addresses. My amendment suggests that that should be turned around, so that the clause says that they can only be delivered to a registered business address. Amendment 47 would do things rather differently, changing the definition of “residential premises”, so that premises where people both live and work would be included in the bar, by removing “solely” from clause 15(5).
I am conscious that neither approach is entirely without problems, so I do not plan to press the amendments to a vote. However, it is important to raise this issue, as the clause seems to have a significant loophole. Can the Minister reassure the Committee that that loophole will be plugged? I would also like to make some wider comments about the clause 15. Would you like me to do that now, Mr Gray, in the debate on these amendments, or shall I wait?
The Chair
It would be very sensible to do that now rather than have a stand part debate, yes. [Interruption.] The two Front-Bench spokespeople have indicated to me that they will seek a stand part debate on clause 15. Therefore, broader discussion of the clause will have to wait until then and we will deal with the amendments now.
Stephen Timms
I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn was about to intervene on me.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
A constituent of mine, Robert from West Hampstead, wrote to me saying that
“As a self-employed cabinet maker and a wood carver, I rely on having such tools for my business and, indeed, having them delivered to my home and place of work from time to time.”
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although his amendment is a sensible one, it is necessary to ensure that the self-employed are not unduly caught up by this well-meaning clause?
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend makes a very fair point and I have no doubt that it was instances such as that that lie behind the framing of the clause as it stands. Indeed, I myself have been contacted by a company that sells tools for hunting; I think that is right. That company asked whether my amendment would exclude the delivery of knives to sole traders—people working from home.
I must say that I have got a bit less sympathy for people who are selling knives from home than for people like my hon. Friend’s constituent, who are simply obtaining tools for their own use to pursue their occupations. Of course, if we went down the amendments 46 and 48 route, whereby such things could be supplied only to a registered business address, that would avoid the difficulty to which my hon. Friend rightly refers. The amendment 47 approach would exclude delivery to people such as my hon. Friend’s constituent, and I accept that that would be difficult to justify. That is why I made the point that I do not think that either of the two approaches I have described is the solution to the problem. The Government are right to want to restrict sales of very dangerous weapons to people’s homes. There is a bit of a loophole here, and I hope it can be addressed.
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his amendment. We have tried to limit the impact of these measures wherever possible to the issue of real concern: preventing young people from having access to the most offensive types of knives online. We are not trying to make life difficult for the constituent of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn. It is a balancing act.
Amendment 46 would have the effect of restricting the range of addresses to which a remote seller can send a bladed product. It might mean, for example, that bladed products bought online could not be sent to a school or a hospital, which may not be registered as business addresses. A person working from home—for example, someone working part-time or engaged in irregular work from home—might not have registered their home as a business address. A farm might or might not be registered as a business address. We are very conscious of the fact that clause 15 will already have an impact on the online trade of bladed products, which can cover anything from breadknives to specialist bladed knives used for woodworking or agricultural activities, as the right hon. Member for East Ham described. We are trying to limit the impact on that legitimate trade by allowing deliveries to businesses to continue. The business could be a farm, a hospital, a school or a business run from someone’s home.
We considered using a registered business address as the basis for the offence, but we decided against that because there is no simple way for sellers to ascertain whether a premise is a registered business address—particularly if the person working there is self-employed or part-time. Of course, not all types of businesses that we would want to be able to receive deliveries will necessarily operate from a registered business address. We therefore took the approach of preventing the dispatch of bladed products to a premise that is used solely as a residential premise. That will allow deliveries to continue to hospitals, hotels, care homes, schools, restaurants, farms and any residential premise from which a business operates, such as a plumber who operates from home.
The right hon. Gentleman gave the example of a flat above a shop. It depends on the construction of the premise, but if it is a divided premise—in other words, if the flat has nothing to do with the shop—I suspect it would be viewed as a residential premise and so would be covered by the clause.
Louise Haigh
Will the Minister confirm how the seller is meant to confirm that a residential premise that they are being asked to deliver a bladed product to is used only for residential purposes?
Victoria Atkins
There are a range of ways in which the seller may satisfy themselves of that purpose. They could ask the buyer to produce evidence that the address to which they are delivering is a business. It might take the form of a document confirming that it is a registered business address. It might be that the buyer supplies business papers showing the address, a document setting out that the property is subject to business rates or a simple confirmation email from the buyer to confirm that they work from that address.
There are many ways in which to tackle this issue, and the step-by-step process that the Bill proposes will make it less and less likely that a young person who is sadly on a path of criminality will think it is worth the hassle, frankly. Sellers emailing buyers to confirm their business address and to ask what sort of business they operate and so on will put a responsibility on the buyer as well, and rightly so. I hope that that explanation of our approach satisfies the right hon. Gentleman, and I invite him to withdraw his amendments.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the Minister for that response, which she set out clearly. I am interested to hear that officials considered the approach based on a registered business address. In my mind, given the importance of restricting access to dangerous weapons, it might not be a bad thing to say to people that, if they want to buy what can be used as a dangerous weapon, they will have to register their address as a business address. However, I take the point that that is perhaps not the appropriate step to take for now. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
I fully understand and appreciate why my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham tabled his amendments, and that was an interesting discussion. However, I believe that the clause is fraught with potential consequences that could result from its application.
I think I am right in saying that the clause’s sole purpose is to ensure that the clause around sale to under-18s is absolutely safeguarded; as the Minister just described, the Bill, as it goes through, step by step, enforces previous clauses. However, it does not seem that other options presented to the Government, the Home Office and the Committee that would equally enforce those clauses have been properly considered by the Home Office, and I am confused about why they have not been added to the Bill.
One potential solution lies within the Bill itself. As we have discussed, clause 18 sets out the provisions by which an international seller can use a delivery company to deliver a bladed article, and the obligations on that delivery company to ensure that it is delivered into the hands of an adult. Could we not mirror that clause for UK sales, so that delivery companies for all UK sellers required age verification to prove that a buyer was over 18? Alternatively, the Minister could consider section 151 of the Licensing Act 2003, which covers the delivery of alcohol to children and when a seller is liable to a fine if a delivery is made to a person under the age of 18.
As the Committee has established, the clause’s potential consequences are extremely far-reaching; we have heard one example already, but others abound. I am sure that many Committee members will have received representations from businesses in their constituencies. As someone from Sheffield, I have obviously heard from plenty of knife manufacturers from the great steel city. I will come on to their concerns shortly.
I am concerned that an outright prohibition on sales to residential addresses, and all the unintended consequences that would follow, would not be necessary if the Government were clear on measures for online age verification. Surely, if we are prescriptive enough on age verification standards, these clauses would be unnecessary. However, the Bill makes no provision for such standards. We still do not know what the guidance, which the Government intend to issue, will say, when it will be issued or whether it will be statutory. It would be helpful if the Minister provided the Committee with the draft guidance that the Government intend to issue to online retailers on age verification. The Digital Economy Bill Committee, which passed verification measures, received draft guidance to help us scrutinise that Bill.
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend has drawn the Committee’s attention to an interesting alternative approach suggested by industry. If I have understood correctly what she has said, the real problem is stopping knives from getting to under-18s. I am more sympathetic to what I understand the Government’s aim to be—stopping dangerous weapons getting to anybody, however old they are, and being delivered to them at home, but my hon. Friend raised some interesting and telling points.
When I read clauses 15 to 17, I did wonder whether the Government intend to stop the delivery of cutlery to people’s homes. The Minister is indicating that that is not the Government’s intention, but it is not clear to me where that is carved out in the wording of the Bill. As my hon. Friend pointed out, clause 17 tells us what a bladed product is, and I cannot see there where cutlery is carved out. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that.
Louise Haigh
My understanding is that a bladed product must be able to provide serious injury. I do not believe that that would include cutlery, although steak knives would be covered.
Stephen Timms
I am sure my hon. Friend is right. The real question I wanted to raise here is different: the position of sellers from overseas. As we have now discussed on a number of occasions, there is a real difficulty in stopping overseas sellers who are contacted online from doing things that the Bill does not want them to do.
In the case of clause 12, which is about the sale of bladed articles to under-18s, clause 18, which puts an onus on the delivery company where the seller is outside the UK, had to be alongside it. In clause 15, as far as I can see, there is not another parallel clause placing responsibility on the delivery company.
I hope I am wrong—if I am, I am sure the Minister will point it out—but it looks to me as though sellers outside the UK will be entirely exempted from the requirement set out in clause 15, because there is no way for them to be penalised for sending a dangerous weapon to residential premises somewhere. If that is the case, the clause will simply force everybody who wants these things delivered to their homes to buy them from overseas suppliers instead of UK suppliers, such as those based in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley. That would be a pretty damaging outcome.
If clause 15 is going to be made to work, something must be done to address the problem of overseas sellers simply carrying on sending dangerous weapons to people’s homes, which the Bill as it stands makes no effort to address. The clause will be pointless because people will get round it in a very straightforward way.
Victoria Atkins
Clause 15 provides that where a sale is carried out remotely, it is an offence for a seller to deliver or arrange for the delivery of a bladed product to residential premises or to a locker. Checks should not be done only at the point when the seller processes the sale, but at the moment when the product is being given to or issued by the despatcher. The reason for that is the methodical journey of the sale process. If young people want to get their hands on dangerous knives, we must make it as difficult as possible, with the help of retailers, and ensure that that does not happen.
Various points have been raised. I have noticed in the correspondence over the past few months that there seems to be a misunderstanding, so this is a great opportunity to clarify exactly what is meant by clauses 15 and 17. We are not seeking to stop the online sale of knives or bladed products. We are trying to craft the law so that those who are entitled under the law to buy knives that have sharp blades can do so if they are over 18. We have used the phrase “bladed product” precisely because we want to differentiate it from the phrase “bladed articles” used in the 1988 Act, which is not as restrictive.
In answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, we have excluded cutlery, because we appreciate that people will want to be able to buy cutlery. With the best will in the world, a table knife will not meet the criteria set out in clause 17(1)(b). If we had not defined it, it would be an offence to sell a disposable plastic knife to someone under-18, which would miss the point of the legislation. The wording seeks to pinpoint the risks that we are trying to address.
Victoria Atkins
I will just finish this point. The hon. Lady has raised concerns from a variety of stakeholders and if their products fall within the definition of clause 17, they must satisfy themselves that they fall within it. We are not saying they cannot sell the products online. We are simply saying they have to meet the conditions of clause 12 and that, when it comes to delivery, the product should be delivered to the local post office, delivery depot or village shop that acts as the delivery depot for a company. Picking up packages from the post office and delivery depots is a fact of life in the modern age, when we all order stuff on the internet. The clause is not about stopping food processors being sent to people; we will just have to go to the post office to pick them up. I represent a rural constituency, so I am rather pleased that we will drive more business to rural post offices so that they continue to thrive in our villages and market towns. The clause is not about stopping bladed products being sold and delivered to people in a lawful manner.
Louise Haigh
Is the Minister confirming that the definition of a bladed product will cover food processors, coffee grinders, scissors and razors, and that those products will no longer be able to be delivered to residential addresses?
Victoria Atkins
Folding knives with a blade of less than 3 inches are excluded from the definitions of both “bladed article” and “bladed product”, and a scalpel would be covered by both. All I am saying is that the purchaser will have to go to the post office with identification to pick up such a product—that is it.
Louise Haigh
But what about the examples I just gave: food processors, coffee grinders, razors and scissors?
Victoria Atkins
I am afraid I do not have expert knowledge of the lengths of the blades in a Magimix food processor. The definition is clear. Products with blades of less than 3 inches are excluded from the definitions of both “bladed article” and “bladed product”.
Louise Haigh
I am sorry, but the definition is not clear in the slightest. Will it cover scissors? Will it cover razors? The people who gave us evidence were not clear, and I do not know about other Members but I am not clear either. I do not think it is unreasonable to ask the Minister to answer to those questions.
Victoria Atkins
If a blade is less than 3 inches, it is excluded from both definitions and as an article under CJA 1988. Some scissors are; some are not.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the way she is responding. I am struggling to think of a pre-packed men’s razor over 3 inches apart from traditional cut-throat razors, for which, to be blunt, there should be a separate regime. I do not really see the difficulty with what the Minister says.
Victoria Atkins
Precisely. We have tried to acknowledge the different ways in which we rely on blades in day-to-day life. We know children do not go out with encased razors to threaten people on the street. They use knives, clearly. That is what the definition seeks to clarify. If Opposition Members had a yearning to buy a pair of scissors with blades longer than 3 inches, they could do so—they would just have to go to the post office to pick it up. That is the point.
If we did not have such a system, the seller could do everything they were supposed to do to check age at the point of sale, but the item may be put through the letterbox anyway and get into the hands of someone under 18. We know that has happened; we just want to stop it happening again. Again, I do not pretend that this is a magic solution that will solve all knife crime, but we are trying to build a journey for bladed articles and products that makes it substantially more difficult for young people, if they are so minded, to get around the measures that retailers take when selling them.
The condition that such articles cannot be delivered to a locker is also important. The clause is about deterring young people from trying to buy such articles online and getting around the law.
Louise Haigh
The Minister helpfully mentioned that the Government’s assumption is that such an article will be delivered to someone’s local post office or sorting office, or to a depot. Why, therefore, is there no mention in the Bill of the requirements on the individuals handing over the bladed product? Will there not be a corresponding offence for them of not verifying someone’s age? If there is not, how can we enforce checking at that point of the delivery?
Victoria Atkins
It is actually because the Government are trying to help post office workers by not making them criminally liable for handing over a package when all they are doing is their job and when they have had no involvement in the act of purchasing. Indeed, we have been in a great deal of discussion with delivery companies, including Royal Mail, about how together we can ensure that the Bill’s intentions are met in a way that balances the risks regarding young people with not placing post office workers, delivery drivers and so on under such a level of criminal liability. If the retailer has not done its job, I would feel uncomfortable about putting that duty on post office workers.
Kevin Foster
Will the Minister reflect on the fact that a range of age-related products—films and other things—are already successfully delivered with enforcement arrangements and that similar principles could be applied in this area? Actually, even in the most rural of locations there is usually a post office not a million miles away where an urgently needed product can be collected.
Victoria Atkins
This is all it is. I hope that this message is made clear to those retailers who have understandably expressed concerns: it is simply about ensuring that, at the point of sale, they have done what they should have done to check the age of the customers they are selling to. Frankly, they should have been doing that for the past 30 years. Let us not forget that the item will be clearly labelled at the point of handover—that is a condition of clause 12, as it is for the retailer to ensure that the delivery company, the post office, or whoever, knows that—and those conditions must be met. A great deal of thought has gone into the clause. We have very much tried to balance the needs of small businesses, Royal Mail and other delivery drivers, and of the law-abiding community who want to purchase knives online. We have excluded businesses run from home because we have listened to the responses to the consultation. We accept that a farm may well require bladed articles, and a farm on which someone lives and from which they run their business is frankly not the target of the Bill.
Stephen Timms
As I have indicated, I am comfortable with the clause, although the Minister should acknowledge what my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley pointed out. It will not be possible in future to have kitchen scissors, for example, delivered to a home because they have blades longer than 3 inches. That is what the Minister is telling the Committee, and I have no problem with that, but she must acknowledge that that is indeed the implication. If kitchen scissor blades are longer than 3 inches, which normally they are, as I understand the clause it will not be possible to have those scissors delivered to a home; they will have to be picked up from a post office.
I want to ask her, as well, about my point on overseas sellers. As I understand it, someone selling products to customers outside of the UK will be able to carry on posting them directly to customers’ homes without any hindrance. Is that correct?
Victoria Atkins
I am afraid I will not say that all kitchen scissors are prohibited under the legislation, as the right hon. Gentleman would like me to do. With the best will in the world, I cannot say whether every pair of kitchen scissors has 3-inch blades or not. [Interruption.] I am sorry, I did not hear the intervention from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley. Manufacturers will have to look at the definition. We have tried to accommodate the needs of business while keeping the intent of the Bill intact.
We will move on to the international element in clause 18, but extraterritorial jurisdiction issues mean that because the point of sale is overseas and English jurisdiction does not stretch to Germany or China, we have had to try to deal with what we can here in the UK. We will move on to that debate in due course, but there is a reason we have differentiated UK and international sales. If a manufacturer or a seller has an existing agreement with a delivery company, and the delivery company knows the person to whom they are selling products, we expect them to make age checks themselves. That is a different scenario from, say, the woodcutter in Hampstead who sells the items. They can use all the delivery companies in this country as long as they follow the steps, and someone will have to go to a shop or a post office to pick the package up.
Louise Haigh
Can the Minister confirm that the legislation will not ban the delivery of screwdrivers to residential premises?
Victoria Atkins
Again, if it meets the criteria of the Bill, it will. If it does not meet the criteria, it will not. I will not go into a long speculative list of items because someone will always come up with another item that has a blade. The idea of a gang member walking down the street with a Magimix is a new one in my portfolio. I will not list items, because the wording is there in the Bill.
Tulip Siddiq
I understand the Minister does not want to go through an extensive list of items, but if there are household items that in the past have not had to be delivered to a post office and could be directly delivered to a house, there must be some merit in clarifying that a legislative change will mean that people who have normally had such items delivered to their houses can no longer have that. It is about public awareness, which is what I think my colleagues are getting at.
Victoria Atkins
It is the job of business to have that conversation with their sellers. We know already that online retailers such as John Lewis, which has signed up to our voluntary code for businesses in trying to prevent the sale of knives and corrosive substances, have stopped selling knives online because that is a business decision they have taken. For other sellers, when somebody puts an order in, they will have that conversation and say, “I’m sorry; you will have to go to the post office to pick this up.”
Louise Haigh
I am afraid it is not the job of business; it is the job of the Committee and the Government. When introducing a new definition into legislation, we must be clear what that definition covers. We have to provide guidance to those that will come under the legislation and that definition. I asked about screwdrivers because, as the Minister knows, they are routinely used in violent offences. The legislation might stop children accessing knives online, but it will not stop them buying screwdrivers online and using them in violent offences. My point is that the ban will have far-reaching consequences for individuals and businesses, but it will probably not have a significant impact on the number of violent offences committed by children.
Victoria Atkins
I have to say that I do not share the hon. Lady’s pessimism. If I may say so, her assertion is not made on the basis of evidence. To accept that, one would be extrapolating from the idea that children, having listened to this Public Bill Committee debate, will then suddenly start purchasing screwdrivers to commit violent acts. I fully accept that young people use screwdrivers as well, but the purpose of the Bill is to try to address the concerns that the police, charities and others have about the types of wounds they see emerging in A&E departments, and we need to fill the loophole we have discovered when it comes to the online sale of bladed products.
I could go through every item and say tick or cross, but I do not believe that is the duty of this Committee. The definition is set out in the Bill. It is for those affected by the definition to ensure that they meet the standards expected by law, which are already in existence; the concept of not being able to sell knives to under-18s has been in existence now for nearly 30 years. This is about addressing the problem of children getting hold of knives online, which we want to try to stop as much as possible. The Bill is directed at achieving that.
Louise Haigh
The Minister has not answered the questions about the licensing system that many knife retailers have put forward. She mentioned a loophole, but it seems to me that the licensing system would address many of the loopholes, including the platform issues that we have discussed at length.
Victoria Atkins
We have based the Bill on existing offences, rather than setting up a completely new approach. There has been a lot of talk about small businesses. The system that the hon. Lady described strikes me, as someone who used to be self-employed, as a whole raft of new bureaucracy, in a way that these measures will not be. We did not consider that option, because we felt that this system is preferable to trying to construct a whole new system that would place a burden on the woodcutter in Hampstead or the occasional crafter in rural areas. We believe that these conditions are sensible and reasonable, and I think that they will become part of day-to-day business life very quickly.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 15 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16
Defences to offence under section 15
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I beg to move amendment 45, in clause 16, page 15, line 26, at end insert “for a particular lawful purpose.”
This is a probing amendment to allow debate on the appropriate scope of defences under Clause 16.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Given the vigorous debate we have had on clause 15, clause 16 is also important, because it provides the defences to the offence that we have just been discussing. One of those defences is simply that the seller did all they reasonably could to avoid delivery to residential premises, but the other three set out circumstances in which the law will deem it justified to sell and deliver to residential premises and a defence can therefore be made.
The Minister referred to a balancing act. That is the test that we have here. On the one hand, there is clearly a concern—we have heard it today—to ensure that the defences are wide enough to protect legitimate businesses. On the other hand, there is also a concern to concern that we do not draft the defences so widely that they can be abused to avoid culpability, or in a way that means that the offence set out in clause 15 becomes worthless.
The amendment is designed to provoke discussion about whether we have that balance right. It asks a couple of immediate questions. First, why is there a particular purpose test in clause 16(3), which relates to sellers who have adapted bladed products in accordance with specific instructions, but there is no particular purpose tests in clause 16(2), where a bladed product has been designed or manufactured in accordance with specific instructions? It is not immediately clear to me why the purpose of either the adaptation or the design is relevant to one but not the other.
Secondly, does there need to be more restrictions on the range of purposes that will allow for the defence to arise? All that is required now is that it is a particular purpose. I am guessing that it is implied in law that the purpose must to be lawful—for example, adapting a blade for the particular purpose of making it more efficient as a weapon does not amount to a defence—but I would appreciate confirmation.
Tulip Siddiq
I am inclined to agree with the hon. Gentleman that the section could be more specific in scope. For example, if historical re-enactment is to be included as a defence, as it is in line 35, surely it will be necessary to have a comprehensive list of bladed articles associated with that activity, so that carrying them is not classified as an offence. Does he agree that the clause could benefit from greater detail and clarity over exemptions for reasonable, law-abiding people, such as the self-employed artists in my constituency who have been lobbying me on this?
Stuart C. McDonald
That is a perfectly legitimate question. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say to that. It begs the question: to what extent is there an onus on the seller to scrutinise the claimed purpose of the adaptation, be it for historical re-enactment or anything else? Is it simply a case of whether the adaptation was consistent with the claimed purpose, or is there more involved?
We have already heard about the other defence, and the specific purposes set out that would make it acceptable to deliver to residential premises—sporting purposes and historical re-enactments. It gets to the point where I wonder whether, in an ideal world, we might simply provide an exhaustive list of purposes for which it would be acceptable to deliver. I appreciate that that would not be easy, or without risks, but it might be a much clearer way of approaching the challenge. Obviously a list could be added, perhaps by statutory instrument.
The amendment flags up concerns about whether the defences will really do the job of protecting from prosecution the businesses that we do not want to be prosecuted, while ensuring that the provisions cannot be abused by those who want to do harm.
Victoria Atkins
Clause 16 sets out the defences that apply in relation to the offence in clause 15. Subsection (1) sets out that it is a defence for the accused to prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid sending the item to a residential address. That is an important safeguard. We expect sellers to check that the address to which the bladed article is to be delivered is not residential and, in case of doubt, to send the package to a collection point. However, sellers should not be penalised if, for instance, records show incorrectly that an address is a business address when in fact it is residential.
I will deal with subsections (2) and (3) together because the rationale behind them is the same. Subsection (2) provides an exemption if the bladed product was designed or manufactured in accordance with specifications provided by the buyer. Subsection (3) provides that it is a defence if the bladed product was adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating its use for a particular purpose. So those who sell or manufacture custom-made bladed articles, or who adapt them, will continue to deliver those specialist items at a residential address. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East mentioned the impact on disabled people. The provisions may well help in circumstances where, for example, someone has to have a knife adapted because of disability. The defence would be available to the seller that it was delivered to a residential address for that purpose.
Subsection (4) provides for a defence if the bladed product is to be used for sporting purposes or historical re-enactment. We received a lot of submissions on historical re-enactments—I am surprised and delighted to see that so many people in the country engage in that interesting activity. Subsections (8) and (9) set out what is meant by the phrases “historical re-enactment” and “sporting purposes”.
The Chair
Order. Perhaps I may interrupt the Minister briefly. I think that she is addressing the stand part debate, rather than amendment 45, proposed by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East.
Victoria Atkins
Forgive me, Mr Gray. I had got the wrong note.
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for probing the defences. It may be useful if I set out the background to the defences in the Bill. Clause 15 makes it a criminal offence to arrange for the delivery of bladed products bought remotely in the UK to premises used solely for residential purposes.
A large number of businesses are involved in the manufacture and sale of bladed products. That includes craftsmen, and the selling of knives not readily available on the high street. That may include sporting swords or replica historical knives. The scale of those businesses is such that they are viable only as online sellers; they do not sell enough to be able to afford a high street presence. The only way buyers who need those types of bladed products can acquire them is online.
We have taken the representations we received during the consultation on board. We note that many of these products are very expensive and highly unlikely to be bought by a young person for criminal purposes. The issue of the clause’s impact was raised strongly in the consultation, so we have taken a number of steps to try to ensure that we get the response right. We have made it clear that the clause will not cover deliveries to businesses. We have limited the definition of bladed product so that it excludes things such as table knives and plastic disposable knives. We have also exempted encased razor blades and folding knives with a blade of less than 3 inches.
Under clause 16, we have provided defences for three types of bladed product, including bladed products that are designed and manufactured for a buyer in accordance with specifications provided by the buyer, and bladed products for the purposes of sport or historical re- enactment. There is a power in clause 16(7) for the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers or the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to add further defences, by secondary legislation, should it become clear that they are required.
I appreciate that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East has tabled this as a probing amendment. Adding the phrase “for a particular lawful purpose” at the end of the defence for bespoke bladed products would mean that to use the defence, it would need to be shown both that the product was made to specifications from the buyer and that the buyer was acquiring it for a lawful purpose. We suspect that adding this phrase might be meaningless, as the buyer would presumably just say yes, but it is also unnecessary. Such items are expensive and there will be a relationship between maker and buyer that makes the risk of their being sold to a person under 18 very slight. Again, this is part of the balancing exercise to ensure that the intent of the Bill is implemented by the legislation. I therefore invite the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Paul Maynard.)
Offensive Weapons Bill (Eighth sitting)
Thursday 6th September 2018
(6 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 September 2018 - (6 Sep 2018)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
On a point of order, Mr Gray. Having reflected, I want to ensure that the issues that the Committee debated just before lunch are clear, because hon. Members rightly asked me questions about screwdrivers and so on. As I said during the debate, the definition of a bladed product is in the Bill and does not include table knives, disposable plastic knives, screwdrivers or things like them, encased razor blades, a folding pocket knife with a cutting edge of less than 3 inches or flick knives, gravity knives or any other weapons prohibited under section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. A bladed product might include bread knives, steak knives, cut-throat razors and lots of other items, such as axes and swords, that I should hope people would already think capable of causing serious injury. In short, the definition is in the Bill, and I hope that adds clarity.
The Chair
That is not technically a point of order, but I know that Committee members will be grateful for the Minister’s clarification of her previous remarks. If any Member wants to return to that matter they may do so shortly, during the stand part debate.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I thank the Minister for her explanation of the defences set out in the clause. I do not think that anybody has a problem with the defence set out in subsection (1), which seems absolutely reasonable. Subsection (4) seems fine, so far as it goes, although there is some suggestion that it might be useful to add some other purposes to that list.
However, subsections (2) and (3) are what my amendment is really about. I suspect and hope that they will work absolutely fine in practice, but they seem to have been drafted in a rather woolly manner. Subsection (2) is about bespoke manufacture. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think she said that adding “for a particular lawful purpose” into subsection (2), as my amendment would, would probably prove pointless in reality, on the basis that a buyer would simply make up a purpose to circumvent the rules. I may have picked that up wrong.
However, the amendment’s wording simply reflects virtually the same test that is already in subsection (3), which is about bespoke adaptations. Why is it pointless for bespoke manufacturers to have to check the purpose of the instructions that they are given, but sensible, and included in the Bill, for those doing adaptations to have to ask the buyer’s purpose and perform some sort of check? I do not know why there is that inconsistency. What is required of those doing bespoke adaptations in checking the purpose? Do they simply have to see whether the adaptation seems to fit the purpose that they have been told it is for?
As it stands, and as I pointed out earlier, the Bill does not even require that purpose to be lawful—it only has to be a “particular purpose”. I suspect that it is implied that it should be lawful, but that is not absolutely clear to me. For example, if I ask for an adaptation for the purpose of making a blade even more lethal, that would be a “particular purpose”, but it certainly would not be a lawful one. I would like some reassurance that that defence would not be allowed to be made. It may be that I am worrying over nothing, but it seems that there is still a little bit of difficulty in working out where we stand with subsections (2) and (3). For now, I think it is probably best that I leave it to the Minister and her officials to discuss. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I want to consider a couple of other areas that we have not covered on which the Committee received evidence. One such example is a request for a defence under the clause for Scout groups and other such charities. We have received evidence that a large number of people who buy knives from this particular business are Scout groups and Scout leaders and, because of the way they operate, the majority of their orders are placed by Scout leaders and delivered to their homes. They are concerned that this ban would stop that and force them to go and pick up from other access points. The evidence we received requested that a specific defence could be made allowing charities to have knives delivered to their registered addresses. All Scout groups are registered charities.
The other area of concern that has been raised is antiques. I appreciate that in another part of the Bill we will be discussing antiques and the need for more controls on antique firearms, but just for the purposes of clarification and to respond to the many people who are concerned about this bit of the Bill, could the Minister tell us why she has rejected the proposals to include purchases for charities and of antiques as a defence under this clause?
Victoria Atkins
In clause 16, we have responded to the consultations made in the course of the Bill’s being drafted. I am conscious that I read out some of my speech on this previously. With the Committee’s consent, I will not repeat that, because the evidence is on the record.
We will come on to museums a little later in the knife provisions. I am seeking to pass an amendment to include museums under the clauses outlawing possession of weapons that are so offensive that Parliament has previously judged that they should not be sold, imported, or anything of that nature. We are just trying to close that gap. We will seek an exemption for museums, which may have flick knives or zombie knives in their collections.
If I may, I will write to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley about charities, because I would like to explore whether the definition of a business would also include a charity.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
Meaning of “bladed product” in sections 15 and 16
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
I just want to reiterate the concern about the clarity of the definition. Will the Minister confirm that, essentially, any blade over 3 inches will be covered by this definition?
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady. Would it help if I repeated my point of order?
Victoria Atkins
Thank you, Mr Gray. I went back to the definition in the Bill, and the specification of the size of the blade relates to folding pocket knives only, so the example of the kitchen scissors would fall under this legislation. I hope that clarifies that.
I appreciate that this is a complication that people setting up home or adding to their cutlery drawer have not had to contend with before, but with this Bill we are trying to stop young people from finding a way of getting hold of these sharp products online. I hope that if members of the public order their kitchen scissors or whatever, they will be able to pick them up at the post office or, if they have ordered through a shop that has branches across the country, they can go and pick them there up at some point.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
Personally, I find the definition in this clause very clear, in terms of both the blade and its capacity to cause serious injury, which deals with some of the more minor points we heard earlier. Does the Minister agree that not that long ago to buy any of these products one would have had to go to a shop or a hardware store, so it is not the greatest of suffering in an area that would not have had those stores to head to the local post office to pick up those items, if needed?
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us that we have been in this world of expecting deliveries through the post because of online sales for only the last decade or so. He is right that to buy a pair of kitchen scissors, a steak knife or whatever in the past a person had to go to a local shop.
Louise Haigh
That is absolutely right. But, apart from the issues for disabled people and people living in isolated areas, the burden is not really on the individual, although it will be a pain to have to go to the local post office when previously something could be delivered to people’s houses. The burden will be on business, in having to separate out products that can, at present, be delivered to someone’s home without any additional checks other than perhaps, for certain products, that the recipient is over 18. Now businesses will have to separate out those products and choose somewhere else to deliver them to. That is why we need clarity about which products can be delivered where, otherwise I fear the legislation will have a devastating impact, particularly on smaller online retailers.
Victoria Atkins
As I said, we have tried with the use of the new phrase “bladed product”, different from the language used in the Criminal Justice Act, to simplify the definition as far as possible so that, under clause 17, the test is whether the product
“is or has a blade, and…is capable of causing a serious injury to a person which involves cutting that person’s skin.”
That is why, for example, encased razor blades are not included, or table knives, cutlery knives and disposable plastic knives, but the definition does include knives such as bread knives, steak knives, kitchen scissors and so on. The Bill has had to balance the needs and concerns of everyone.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 18
Delivery of bladed articles to persons under 18
Amendment made: 23, in clause 18, page 17, line 21, leave out “is guilty of” and insert “commits”.—(Victoria Atkins.)
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 17.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
At the risk of replicating the discussion, I will repeat some of the points I made earlier, because I do not think the Minister responded to the alternative proposal of expanding the clause to cover sales made internally in the UK, rather than just sales outside the United Kingdom.
We believe it could be possible to mirror this clause to cover internal UK sales, so someone would be entitled to purchase a bladed article online from a retailer outside of the UK and all they would have to do is prove that they were over 18 when it was delivered. Much of that would circumvent the issues that we discussed regarding clause 15.
Although the term “article” has, as we discussed, a different definition, it is clear that many bladed articles will be captured by the definition of “bladed products” in clause 18. Therefore a delivery to a residential address for an adult would be possible under clause 18, but not under clause 15. Will the Minister explain why there is not a similar provision to that in clause 18 for internal UK deliveries?
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
As my hon. Friend has pointed out, clause 18 deals with sales of knives by sellers outside the UK. The Minister has already rightly pointed out to us on a number of occasions that the British Government, or our laws, can impose very little control outside the UK.
The difficulty was illustrated by this morning’s discussion, in which it emerged that if in future I buy kitchen scissors from a British supplier I will have to go to the post office to pick them up. If, on the other hand, I buy them online from an overseas seller they can be posted direct to my home. That is quite problematic, and I imagine there will be more discussion of that as the Bill progresses through this House and the other place. It highlights the real difficulty of dealing with sellers located outside the UK. I have no idea what proportion of the dangerous weapons purchased in the UK are bought from sellers outside the UK, but my sense from looking at places such as eBay is that quite a large proportion of them are.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
We also have the unresolved issue of what happens, should we leave the European Union, about movement across the Irish border, and the propensity of these sorts of weapons—blades and so on—to be moved or sold from within the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland. We need to know what the provisions will be because Ireland will be an overseas country.
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. I rather hoped that being in the EU would mean that we could regulate what those sellers are doing, but I gathered from the debate this morning that we cannot. The fact that Germany is in the European Union does not seem to give us any more purchase over what German sellers do than we have over Chinese sellers, and my hon. Friend is right that the impact of leaving the EU will need to be considered.
In clause 18, we are trying to ensure that knives bought from sellers outside the UK are not delivered to under-18s. I reiterate my view that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley argued persuasively on Tuesday, that age is too low; it should be higher. It should be set at 21, rather than 18.
It is clear—the Minister gave us a good example this morning—that a lot of knives are reaching under-18s in the UK. Reducing under-18s’ access to knives from sellers outside the UK will help to reduce the number of young people being injured and, indeed, killed.
We should go further than clause 18. We need something a bit more robust. The Minister rightly pointed out that sellers outside the UK are beyond the reach of UK law, so clause 18 instead places the responsibility on the delivery company. I accept that that is a perfectly reasonable way of doing this, but I worry that sellers outside the UK that are determined to increase their profits by selling knives to under-18s in the UK will fairly easily be able to get around the restrictions that clause 18 imposes. The delivery company in the UK is absolved of blame under subsection (1)(d) if it did not know when it entered into the arrangement that it covered the delivery of bladed articles. I would prefer that companies delivering parcels from overseas to households in the UK be required to carry out some degree of checking what is in those parcels. I am not suggesting that every parcel should be opened and scrutinised, but there must be some degree of checking what is being delivered. A sample should be checked.
If it turns out that the seller outside the UK with whom the company has a contract is delivering a significant number of knives, even though the seller did not tell the delivery company that they were knives, in practice the delivery company would eventually probably realise that. Someone would open a parcel on the doorstep, or perhaps a parcel would fall open en route. I think the delivery company probably would in due course pick up that it was delivering knives. Were that to happen, the delivery company should be required to end its contract with that supplier, because the supplier had obviously been dishonest and not told the delivery company that the contract involved the delivery of knives. It would be entirely appropriate for the contract to be ended.
As clause 18 is worded, however, the delivery company does not have to end its contract if it becomes aware that it is in fact delivering knives. Subsection (1)(d) requires only that it should be
“aware when they entered into the arrangement”
that it related to knives. At the very least, that should be extended so that if the delivery company becomes aware in the course of the arrangement that it is in fact carrying knives, the clause takes effect. The fact that it did not know at the moment it entered into the arrangement imposes a very limited restriction. I have not tabled an amendment to address the issue, but I wonder whether the Minister could reflect on it. I am not expecting her to give an answer today. Will she reflect on whether it would be appropriate to tighten the wording?
Say a delivery company has a contract to deliver products from a supplier that is outside the UK to purchasers in the UK. It is not aware when it enters into the contract that some of the products are knives, but discovers in the course of its deliveries that some or perhaps all of them are knives. Surely the delivery company should then be required to terminate the contract. I would go further and argue that companies delivering goods from outside the UK should be required to carry out at least some checks to find out whether they are delivering bladed articles. If they do find out, one way or another, that they are delivering bladed articles and the seller has not told them, they should surely at least be required to end the contract.
I have another question to ask the Minister. Presumably when these parcels are imported to the UK, they will have to go through customs of some sort, where some level of checking of what is in them will be carried out. Perhaps it will emerge in one of those checks that a parcel contains a knife. What would happen at that point? Would customs inform the delivery company to whom the parcel was being shipped that it contains a knife and should not be delivered to somebody under 18? I appreciate that it is not only the delivery company that is involved in checking what is in parcels. I am sure there will be some element of checking in customs. When such a check reveals that there is a knife, what is the response of customs?
My concern is that clause 18 as framed does not go far enough to restrict the ability of overseas sellers—we have established that they account for a significant part of the problem we are facing in constituencies such as mine—to deliver dangerous weapons to young people under 18.
Stuart C. McDonald
I will be brief. There was a lot of sense in what the right hon. Member for East Ham said, particularly about the wording:
“when they entered into the arrangement”.
I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that. It brings to mind the amendment I tabled on the equivalent provision on corrosive substances, where the test in the Bill is that the delivery company is “aware”. I queried whether that should be “ought to have been aware”. As the Bill is drafted, there is a danger that delivery companies will take an approach of “see no evil, hear no evil” and will not make active inquiries about what products they will actually be asked to deliver. If, at the very least, we put in a test of “ought to be aware”, that will mean other companies actively trying to work out what a company will generally be requiring them to deliver. That might also be something for the Minister to think about.
Victoria Atkins
Clause 18 introduces a criminal offence if a delivery company delivers, on behalf of a seller based abroad, a bladed article into the hands of a person aged under 18. A bladed article is an article to which section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies. Eagle-eyed Committee members will have noticed that we have moved from talking about a bladed product to a bladed article. The law under section 141A of the CJA applies to knives and certain articles with a blade or point—for example, axes, razor blades other than those that are encased, and all knives other than folding knives with a blade of less than three inches. Actually, with bladed products the length of the blade is also irrelevant, unless it is a folding pocket knife.
I am very conscious of the points that the right hon. Member for East Ham made about clause 18(1)(d), and I will reflect on them. I am also very conscious of the points made by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, and will reflect on those, too.
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for her observations. It is part of the balancing exercise regarding delivery. If a delivery company makes the commercial decision to enter into a contract or arrangement with someone overseas selling products, we have sought to place the responsibility on the delivery company for ensuring that all is well with the person to whom they are providing a service. Extra-territorial jurisdiction is sadly not just an issue in the case of offensive weapons, but in many areas, such as ordering drugs over the internet, particularly using the dark web. We have sought to control it through that mechanism.
For sales where the seller and buyer are in the United Kingdom, we asked delivery companies as part of our consultation exercise what they would make of placing criminal liability on their post office workers or delivery drivers. We concluded that were we to expand the provision to all online sales of knives, delivery companies might start to say to themselves, “It’s just not worth it commercially for us to deliver these knives or bladed products at all. We won’t do it.” That would leave our small businesses in great trouble, because they would be unable to get their products to their customers.
I know that small businesses are having to go through a number of checks to get their products into the hands of their lawful purchasers, but we hope that the provisions in relation to the online world overseas will mean that delivery companies are very careful when they enter into such arrangements.
Louise Haigh
Will the Minister give an example of how a delivery company could ensure that, in her words, all is well with a seller overseas? Can she give an example of what that would have to look like to meet the standard in the Bill?
Victoria Atkins
These delivery companies are very big businesses by and large. They have extraordinary human resources departments. They will be drafting contracts with the people with whom they have delivery contracts. If someone orders anything from a major department store or online shop, it is unlikely, frankly, that they have their own in-house delivery service. They probably subcontract that to various companies—I will not advertise them in today’s proceedings, but we know who they are.
Frankly, I expect those delivery companies to understand what they are potentially delivering when entering into such arrangements. We are all aware of how illicit items can be posted from overseas to avoid customs and so on, so I expect those business to satisfy themselves that they are meeting the law. Every company conducts its contractual negotiations differently, but if a delivery company enters into an arrangement with a business that sells knives, it should be on red alert to ensure that it is a reputable business with which to do its trade.
Louise Haigh
In the example that we have discussed at length—someone buying an offensive weapon or corrosive product off an individual through a platform—how does the Minister anticipate that the delivery company will satisfy itself about what the individual seller is selling? It is one thing saying that it should establish that it is delivering for a reputable business, but if it is an individual overseas, how will the company ensure that it is adhering to the standards in the Bill?
Victoria Atkins
To clarify, does the hon. Lady mean that the delivery company has a contract with Amazon, for example, which is being used as an antiques fair?
Victoria Atkins
In those circumstances, I hope the delivery company will have a good understanding from Amazon, which will have a good understanding from the seller about the products. I am not pretending that this is easy, but that is the conundrum we all face nowadays with the global internet marketplace.
Louise Haigh
The issue here is the individual seller that uses a delivery company. Amazon and other platforms do not have their own deliverers—well, they do if they are directly selling—but individuals contract a delivery company, so Amazon is taken out of it at that point. I struggle to see how a delivery company can satisfy itself to the standards rightly included in the Bill that the individual is selling what they say they are selling.
Victoria Atkins
We have had to restrict this to contracts with direct arrangements between a delivery company and the seller. As I say, we are trying to close the net on these sorts of products. That is why I will be very interested to reflect on the point made by the right hon. Member for East Ham about what happens if, having entered into the arrangement in good faith and not understanding that bladed articles are in the marketplace, the delivery company then discovers that. If I may, I will reflect on whether they are then opened up under the clause.
Louise Haigh
I am sorry to press the Minister on this. We could easily have a situation in which an individual advertises a knife on Amazon and sells it online, and then takes it to the equivalent of the post office in their country and tells it that the item is something completely different. Is it sufficient, in that situation, for the delivery company—whoever it is—to have been told that it is completely harmless? Will the delivery company have met the standards in the Bill?
Victoria Atkins
That scenario is not envisaged by the Bill. Subsection (1)(c) states:
“before the sale, the seller entered into an arrangement with a person who is a body corporate”—
in other words, a company—
“by which the person agreed to deliver bladed articles for the seller”.
We foresee a relationship whereby someone sets themselves out as a knife seller. That is what they do—intricately carved knives, or whatever. They know that in the UK they have to get them delivered, and an arrangement is set up between the delivery company and the person selling the knife.
Louise Haigh
So is it the case that individuals who are not set up as body corporates will not be covered by this legislation?
Victoria Atkins
The wording in the Bill is “body corporate”, as in the delivery companies. I suspect by now the Committee has an idea of the difficult balancing exercise we have had to engage in to try to tease out these corners of the online international marketplace. This the arrangement that we have put into the Bill. In those circumstances, it will be up to the court to determine, on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the individual circumstances of the case, whether reasonable precautions were taken and all due diligence was done. Particular subsections in relation to Scotland are in the Bill.
Karin Smyth
To follow on from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, given the land border on the island of Ireland, has the Department consulted officials about the scenarios in the Republic of Ireland for how this Bill, once enacted, would be operational on the island, in the context of the Republic of Ireland being an overseas territory?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady will understand that there are a great many discussions ongoing with Northern Ireland. The fact that the Assembly is not in action in Northern Ireland complicates our passing legislation not just in this context but in others.
Kevin Foster
Is the Minister aware of the particularly significant trade in bladed items across the border between Donegal and County Londonderry? There are particularly large knife-selling businesses located there. On body corporates, surely it is highly unlikely that someone would send a personal courier with a weapon. Quite bluntly, if they did, I would like to see that person stopped at the border.
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend persists in popping little interesting and sometimes amusing comments into the debate. I am not personally aware of the online knife market between the Republic and Northern Ireland, but if my hon. Friend is suggesting a Committee trip to the emerald isle to explore that, perhaps he will have some support. He is right about body corporates; we are trying to get at the businesses that do the bulk of the delivery work in this country to try to secure their assistance with the aim of the Bill. I am told that there have been discussions with officials in the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland. There have not been discussions with officials in the Republic, but I am happy to take that away.
Karin Smyth
Regarding the point made by the hon. Member for Torbay, this is a serious matter. As we leave the European Union, the Republic of Ireland will be, for the first time, treated as an overseas country for all these matters. If there is not a trade now, there is a possibility of future trade. It is incumbent on all Departments to be aware of that in passing legislation. It is also incumbent upon the Government, as a result of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, to have detailed co-operation with enforcement officers in the Republic of Ireland on all such matters. Before the Bill goes back to the Floor of the House, it would be helpful for that to be discussed with officials in the Republic of Ireland as well as in Northern Ireland.
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Lady for that observation.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 18, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 19
Amendments to the definition of “flick knife”
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
I have a few concerns to express on behalf of several organisations and individuals who have given evidence to the Committee. We of course wholeheartedly support the principle behind the clause, which is to update definitions in order to reflect change in weapon designs.
The existing definitions include,
“any knife which has a blade which opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife, sometimes known as a ‘flick knife’ or ‘flick gun’”,
and any with a blade released by “force of gravity”. Respondents felt that neither of those particular knives was of the type used in criminal activity now. We are not convinced by that argument, because the definition the Government were considering had not been published during the consultation. Now that the new definition has been published, I think it adequately captures the offence and has the benefit of being broadly defined. Many organisations, charities and those in the legal and criminal justice sector agree with the proposal, but there are some legitimate concerns.
In other cases, the definition for any knife, bladed article or bladed product has tended to expand as it has made its way through the courts and into case law. For example, butter knives are now bladed articles, thanks to a judgment in 2004, I believe. The majority of reservations expressed by retailers and individuals were around the possibility that the revised definition might capture knives that can be opened with one hand but are used in everyday life by those pursuing a hobby, such as rock climbers, or by those who require such a knife for their work.
One concern related to the definition in subsection (1)(a), which refers to a
“button, spring or other device in or attached to the knife”,
rather than
“in or attached to the handle of the knife”.
I have been provided with examples of safety knives used by kayakers that can be deployed with one hand by using lateral pressure against the stud of the blade, rather than the handle. That type of knife, which now involves only a possession offence without the reasonable excuse defence, would be prohibited. Will the Minister reassure the Committee that she has considered the representations of such sports enthusiasts regarding the definition and that she is satisfied that it will not criminalise perfectly legitimate products?
Victoria Atkins
The good news is that butter knives are not bladed products under clause 7.
Clause 19 amends section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 to provide that the definition of a flick knife will include knives that mimic the way in which a flick knife is opened, where the open mechanism design does not bring the knife under the definition set out in 1959 Act. In existing legislation, a flick knife is
“any knife which has a blade which opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife”.
That is an old definition and new designs are now available that mimic the speed with which a flick knife can be opened but that do not strictly fall under the 1959 legislation. There are suspicions that they have been designed deliberately to skirt around that definition. I have seen some models that allow the blade to open at great speed from a closed to a fully opened position, but the mechanisms are not in the handle. However, we know that they can be very dangerous and that they are the sort of weapons that people who have ill will in mind find very attractive as an option for arming themselves.
We have therefore set out to include in the new definition of a flick knife any knife that opens automatically from a closed or partially opened position to a fully opened position by means of
“manual pressure applied to a button, spring or other device”
contained in a knife or attached to it. Knives opened manually, including those opened with a thumb stud, will not fall under the new definition. Similarly, knives with a mechanism that opens the blade slightly but not completely and need to be opened fully by hand will not fall under the definition. We are very conscious of representations made by tree surgeons and others, and we have tried to encompass their concerns. The definition will ensure that knives for a situation in which it is necessary to open a knife with one hand are available in the market. For tree surgeons, for example, the fact of their occupation would lend them comfort under the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 20
Prohibition on the possession of certain dangerous knives
Victoria Atkins
I beg to move amendment 35, in clause 20, page 18, line 43, leave out “and (3)” and insert “to (3A)”.
This amendment and Amendments 36 to 41 provide for various defences to the existing and new offences relating to flick knives and gravity knives. The defences apply to the making available of a knife to, or the possession, lending or hiring of a knife by, a museum or gallery.
Victoria Atkins
The amendments in this group do one thing: provide a defence for museums and galleries, so that they can continue to own and display historical examples of flick knives and gravity knives. I will explain why such a defence is needed.
The 1959 Act makes it an offence to sell, manufacture, hire or import flick knives and gravity knives, so the supply of these weapons has been inhibited since then, and as we have just agreed, clause 19 updates the definition of the flick knife. Clause 20 extends the prohibition on the supply of flick knives, including those caught by the new definition, and gravity knives by making it an offence simply to possess such knives. The intention behind these measures is to make it harder for young people to get hold of dangerous weapons and to ensure that the police can take action when they come across these weapons.
Flick knives and gravity knives exist as pure weapons; they have no purpose other than to cause injury. That is why we have been keen to ensure that the law keeps pace with their design. The new definition will assist in that. Although it is not an offence to buy flick knives and gravity knives, anyone who has bought one from overseas since 1959 has broken the law by importing it. We have become aware through the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that some museums, such as the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Armouries Museum, hold examples of flick knives and gravity knives in their collections. Some come from the first and second world wars or are considered to be of historical interest in other ways. These museums are also, in some cases, restricted by law as to how they can dispose of items in their collections and may only be able to do so in certain, very narrow circumstances.
The amendments in this group provide a defence for museums and galleries, should they ever be prosecuted for the offence of possessing a flick knife or gravity knife. The provisions enable them to hold and display historical examples of such weapons, to acquire new items, and to lend or hire such items to other institutions for cultural, artistic or educational purposes. They are similar to provisions already provided for museums and galleries for weapons covered by section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. We have agreed with the devolved Administrations that the defence will apply to museums across the United Kingdom.
Where a member of the public owns a flick knife or a gravity knife that is of historical interest, they can pass them to a museum or surrender them to the police under clause 24 of the Bill and claim compensation. I hope that explains why these amendments are necessary, and that they will be supported by the Committee.
Amendment 35 agreed to.
Amendments made: 36, in clause 20, page 19, line 14, at end insert—
‘(3A) After subsection (2) insert—
(2D) It is a defence for a person charged in respect of any conduct of that person relating to a knife of a kind described in subsection (1)—
(a) with an offence under subsection (1), or
(b) with an offence under section 50(2) or (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979,
to show that the conduct was only for the purposes of making the knife available to a museum or gallery to which this subsection applies.
(2E) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1A) to show that they possessed the knife only in their capacity as the operator of, or as a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery.
(2F) If the operator of, or a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery to which this subsection applies is charged with hiring or lending a knife of a kind described in subsection (1), it is a defence for them to show that they had reasonable grounds for believing that the person to whom they lent or hired it would use it only for cultural, artistic or educational purposes.
(2G) Subsection (2D) or (2F) applies to a museum or gallery only if it does not distribute profits.
(2H) In this section “museum or gallery” includes any institution which has as its purpose, or one of its purposes, the preservation, display and interpretation of material of historical, artistic or scientific interest and gives the public access to it.
(2I) A person is to be taken to have shown a matter mentioned in subsection (2D), (2E) or (2F) if—
(a) sufficient evidence of the matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.””
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 35.
Amendment 37, in clause 20, page 19, line 27, at end insert—
‘(4) It is a defence for a person charged in respect of any conduct of that person relating to a knife of a kind described in paragraph (1) with an offence under paragraph (1) to show that the conduct was only for the purposes of making the knife available to a museum or gallery to which this paragraph applies.
(5) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under paragraph (2) to show that they possessed the knife only in their capacity as the operator of, or as a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery.
(6) If the operator of, or a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery to which this paragraph applies is charged with hiring or lending a knife of a kind described in paragraph (1), it is a defence for them to show that they had reasonable grounds for believing that the person to whom they lent or hired it would use it only for cultural, artistic or educational purposes.
(7) Paragraph (4) or (6) applies to a museum or gallery only if it does not distribute profits.
(8) In this Article “museum or gallery” includes any institution which has as its purpose, or one of its purposes, the preservation, display and interpretation of material of historical, artistic or scientific interest and gives the public access to it.
(9) A person is to be taken to have shown a matter mentioned in paragraph (4), (5) or (6) if—
(a) sufficient evidence of the matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.” —(Victoria Atkins.)
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 35.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Stephen Timms
I have a question arising from what the Minister said earlier about what Border Force can do if it finds an offensive weapon coming across the border in a parcel or something of that kind. She said that if Border Force believes that there is a good prospect that the police could prosecute, it is empowered to seize the weapon. Proposed new section 1(1A) of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 says:
“Any person who possesses any knife of a kind described in subsection (1) is guilty of an offence.”
It is clear that a person who receives such a weapon commits an offence, and from what the Minister was saying, Border Force would be empowered to seize that weapon. However, where under-18s are receiving knives, it is the seller who commits the offence by selling a knife to a person under the age of 18.
If Border Force found a knife in a parcel addressed to an individual, and was aware, or could establish, that the individual was under the age of 18—admittedly, it probably would not know that—would Border Force be able to seize it? My worry is that it probably would not, because nobody would have committed an offence. The person who has bought the knife has not committed an offence; because of the way the law is framed, the seller has committed the offence, but the seller is outside the UK and outside the remit of the law. If Border Force found a knife addressed to somebody under 18, would it be unable to seize it because no offence had been committed, or is there some basis on which it could seize it? It would clearly be an unsatisfactory state of affairs if Border Force could not do that.
The Minister quite rightly explained that Border Force would need to be satisfied that there was a reasonable chance of a prosecution being secured. Where a knife or other offensive weapon is being sent to an under-18, it is not clear that an offence has been committed. Does that mean that Border Force would not be able to seize the knife? If that is the case, we may need to look at how the law is framed, because I want to see Border Force playing a role in—
The Chair
If I may, the right hon. Gentleman knows a great deal more about the Bill than almost anybody else in the room, and I have been a little gentle with him, but I suspect he is addressing something other than clause 20.
Stephen Timms
I raise the matter under clause 20 because the clause provides a form of words that clearly gives Border Force the ability to seize a weapon on the basis that the Minister explained. My concern is that if a knife is sent to an under-18 and the seller is outside the UK, no offence may technically have been committed, and Border Force might not be able to intervene. I just wanted to clarify the position, but I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr Gray, and for the compliment.
Victoria Atkins
If we are talking about clause 20 and flick knives, those knives are so offensive that there is no age restriction on their possession; if the Bill were passed with this clause, anyone in this room who possessed a flick knife would be committing a criminal offence. The clause aims to assist the police in circumstances where they make a house arrest—I am speculating—and one of those items is found. At the moment, the police cannot charge for simple possession because there is a gap in the law, so we are trying to close that gap.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the Minister, and I completely accept that the position in clause 20 is clear: an offence would have been committed, and Border Force could seize the knife. I have a question arising from our earlier debates about knives being sent to under-18s. As far as I can see, an offence has technically not been committed in that situation, so would Border Force be unable to seize a knife at the border, even though it knew it was being sent to an under-18?
Victoria Atkins
It is an offence to import a flick knife under the 1959 Act, so the offence would be the 17-year-old trying to import a flick knife, because it is such an offensive weapon.
The Chair
Order. We may have flogged this one to death.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 20, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Prohibition on the possession of offensive weapons on further education premises
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
The Minister knows from Second Reading and from amendments that we have tabled that we would like this clause to go further. We await her response before considering what further amendments might be needed to capture fully all educational premises, and to include corrosive substances, so as to bring them in line with knives.
When the proposals were announced at the beginning of the consultation, we were under the impression that all educational premises, up to and including higher education premises, would be captured. The news release accompanying the consultation to the Bill—issued in July last year by the Home Office—specifically mentioned higher education institutions, but not further education. I am not persuaded by the argument that higher education facilities have been omitted because otherwise halls of residence would be captured, which are private and therefore legitimate places to possess bladed articles and products and corrosive substances. It would be relatively simple to put in caveats to ensure that possession of offensive weapons would not be considered in a domestic residence of a university campus. Subsection (7) covers this for an employee of a further education premises or a 16-to-19 academy; it explicitly excludes
“any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution.”
It is difficult to see why that cannot be extended to exclude any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a student of a higher education institution. In any case, that will be covered by the good reason defence under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
The 2003 Act and the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 have created specific offences relating to knives in schools and other educational institutions in order to make them a safe space for learning. Students should know that their school is safe and that they are free from harm, which is critical to any learning environment. Sadly, for many school students in this country that is not the case. That is the principle behind the extension to further education premises, which we support, and why we think it would also be welcome and significant to extend the clause to university campuses, particularly as college and university campuses are so often open and city centre-based. University campuses should be free from knives, other than those carried for legitimate purposes.
In the Bill—I appreciate the Minister will come back to this—the definition of “public place”
“includes any place to which, at the time in question, the public have or are permitted access, whether on payment or otherwise”.
Would that cover an individual arrested for possession on a walled-off university campus that they accessed via a key code? Probably not under the definition of the Bill, so they would be able to carry knives into that area without any reasonable excuse. Would it cover lecture theatres, which, on many of the city campuses of our universities, are places the public have access to, though perhaps they are not permitted there? Would it include walkways, departmental buildings or cafés on campus?
Under existing legislation, I think the best way to define “public place” is to look at the ruling in the landmark case at the Court of Appeal of R v. Kane of 1965, which gave guidance on whether a place is public. It said:
“The real question is whether”
the place
“is open to the public, whether on payment or not, or whether, on the other hand, access to it is so restricted to a particular class, or even to particular classes of the public, such, for example, as the members of an ordinary householder’s family and his relations and friends, and the plumber or other tradesmen who come to do various repairs about the house. If it is restricted to that sort of class of person then, of course, it is not a public place, it is a private place”.
Before land can be said to be public, the onus is on the prosecution to prove that the public had access to it. The following have been held by the courts to be public places: a field where point-to-point races are held; a football stadium; hospital grounds where visitors to the hospital and their friends were permitted to enter; a public house car park; a multi-storey car park; and the upper landing of a block of flats in respect of which there were no notices, doors or barriers to restrain the public. It is clear that many of the spaces on a university campus would not be covered by that definition. That is why we are pleased that the Government are willing to consider expanding the definition of “public place”, and why we want the clause expanded to cover university campuses. Clearly there would need to be carve-outs regarding scientific laboratories or use for educational purposes, just as there are for schools and will be for further education institutions.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I want to speak to the clause briefly, as it is important to my constituency. I welcome the extension of the offence of having an offensive weapon on school premises to further education premises. As a London MP, I am aware that between January and March this year, the city suffered double the number of fatal stabbings it did during the same period the previous year. Half the victims were 23 or younger, and I know from speaking to victims’ families that many were involved in further education settings. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, has said, expanding the policy to university campuses would help tremendously in my constituency—especially in Camden, where we have a large number of university campuses, and where many of these incidents took place. Time and again, that age group suffers the worst of the knife-crime epidemic that has hit the capital.
I want to mention a few statistics from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime; in our discussions of the Bill, we have not mentioned precisely the target group who have suffered most from knife crime. As has been mentioned, victims of gang-related knife crime were more likely to be male, accounting for about 88% of the total, and 76% were under 25. A significant proportion of the victims—68%—were from a black and minority ethnic background. Young BAME men between 16 and 20 account for almost a third of all victims of gang knife crime.
Library statistics show that about 1,161 individuals between the ages of 10 and 17 were cautioned for possession of a knife in the first quarter of this year, as compared with 4,062 aged over 18. That shows the purpose of expanding the number of young adults that come into the scope of the Bill, and how it is necessary. The statistics I have talked about reflect my experiences of working on these issues in Hampstead and Kilburn, where specific communities have suffered more profoundly than others—especially the Somali community in Camden, where certain families have suffered the loss of multiple family members within just a matter of months. There was a very high-profile stabbing a few months ago that many people have probably read about. It was heartbreaking speaking to the mother of the boys affected.
The Greater London Authority figures I have talked about are simply appalling; they reiterate why the clause is absolutely correct and why I support expanding the scope of the offence to further education settings. But in the process of supporting the clause—there is always a “but” when an Opposition MP speaks—I would like to pose a few questions to the Minister. In June, I attended the Regent High School with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). We had a discussion with students focusing on youth safety, knife crime and gun culture. The students were well aware of the horrific violence taking place in Camden, but they suggested that the Government might consider introducing a standardised educational programme, and possibly incorporating it in the curriculum.
I have a few questions on the clause for the Minister. By extending the scope of the offence, will she make a commitment that it does not warrant the end of efforts in schools by the Government? Is including lessons on violence in the curriculum something that the Government will consider? Will she also explain whether expanding the scope of the offence, as the clause does, means additional duties on local authorities? If so, will she explain whether they will be given additional resources to ensure that they can meet the challenges of clause 21?
Answers to these questions will be particularly important to Camden Council, which will be publishing the findings of its youth safety taskforce. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras is involved in chairing the taskforce, which is looking at patterns of youth violence and the relationship with spending on youth services and educational settings.
The word “crisis” is overused in politics, but in London that is what we have seen with knife violence among our youth, especially our young black men. Although I have not tabled an amendment to the clause, I hope the Government will use it as a platform to launch education programmes, in all settings, that will prevent further bloodshed in my constituency and across the country.
Victoria Atkins
Clause 21 amends section 139A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to extend the offence to include further education premises. The change reflects the significant expansion in the number of students and the changes in such institutions since the law was amended by the Offensive Weapons Act 1996. The number of incidents of knife possession in education institutions other than schools is unknown because possession per se is not an offence at the moment, but the number of incidents reported in the media is low—although I know that, sadly, there is experience in some Committee members’ constituencies of such incidents. We want to give the police the powers they need to deal with an incident before it happens.
Colleagues have understandably asked why universities are not included in clauses 21 and 27. While standing by the promise I made on Tuesday to reflect further, I will explain the thinking behind that. It is that universities are generally attended by adults rather than children—in other words, people aged over 18. As such, a university can be regarded as more akin to an office or other place of work than a place where children, as strictly defined by the law, are taught. Not all parts of universities can be considered a public place—for example, halls of residence—and a person possessing a bladed article, or offensive weapon or corrosive substance, on part of a university campus that is open to public access would be caught by the existing and proposed offences.
I am conscious of the debate about keypads and stairwells and so on, and it reminds me that one of the most contentious cases in the last few decades in the Royal Courts of Justice was over the definition of a Jaffa cake. I am afraid that this is a similar sort of debate. We all know what it is and we know what we want to achieve; the issue is how we get the wording into statute in a way that can be applied properly by the courts.
I am delighted that the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn and the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras have been visiting schools in London to talk about knife crime. Hon. Members may remember that, not long after I was appointed, I invited former gang members into the House of Commons so that we as Members of Parliament could listen to them and they could contribute their ideas about what Government and Parliament can do to help to safeguard them better. Their thoughts—delivered directly, but also delivered through the great charities we work with, such as Redthread, the St Giles Trust and Catch22—very much fed into the serious violence strategy. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn will know that, having announced in April that we were setting aside £11 million to fund early intervention initiatives, the Home Secretary doubled that to £22 million over the summer recess, because we understand the importance of this issue and want to help organisations that are doing such great work on the ground to get the message out.
Just before schools rose for the summer holidays, I wrote to headteachers across the country and invited them to encourage their teaching staff to talk to children about knife crime before the holidays. We were conscious that sadly, summer holidays sometimes mean that children find themselves in very damaging situations. I do a lot of work on the curriculum with my colleagues in the Department for Education, and gangs and their impact form part of the latest safeguarding guidance from the Department. That issue is also addressed through the serious violence taskforce, which brings together the Home Office, all other Government Departments, senior Ministers, the Mayor of London, chief constables, police and crime commissioners, charities, healthcare providers, and so on. That taskforce is doing a great deal of work on what more we can do through early intervention to help children at an earlier stage.
This summer, we announced the results of the continuing anti-knife crime community fund, which is having a real impact on smaller charities in local areas that are working on the ground with children to safeguard them and lead them away from paths of criminality.
Louise Haigh
Will the Minister explain why the Home Office was considering higher education premises at the beginning of the consultation period, when it knew that universities are not occupied by children? What has changed the Home Office’s mind during the consultation process?
Victoria Atkins
Just that we have been troubled by this definition of a “public place.” Having listened to the submissions made through the Committee, we will look at the issue again, but this is a difficult area, because higher education premises tend to be frequented by people who are adults in the eyes of the law. Of course, if an adult walks around with a knife or does anything worse with it, that is already caught by the existing legislation, but higher education premises are a grey area, as are stairwells in communal housing. I will see whether we can do anything more that will withstand any challenge through the courts.
Tulip Siddiq
When the decision was made to not include university premises, was any consultation done with deans, chancellors or safety officers on university campuses, for example?
Victoria Atkins
I do not know the answer to that question on the spot, but I am sure we can write to the hon. Lady. I just wish to emphasise that it is difficult to pinpoint where is public and where is private in an area such as a university.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Prohibition on the possession of offensive weapons: supplementary
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
I hope that it goes without saying that the Opposition wholeheartedly support the intention behind this clause, which was in no small part motivated by the tragic killing committed by Blaise Lewinson with a zombie knife in 2016. Lewinson, who was eventually convicted of manslaughter, was fascinated by such knives, and the judge called the weapon used to commit the murder “ferocious.” There is no doubt that these weapons can and do glorify violence, and their manufacture and use brings a quasi-military element to the streets of Britain. That may have a significant psychological impact on vulnerable young people and those who have fallen into, or are on the borders of, the criminal justice system or organised crime.
I would like to press the Minister on the definition in the clause to ensure that the House has properly considered whether it fully matches the Government’s intention. Proposed new paragraph 1(s) of the schedule to the Criminal Justice Act 1998 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1998 describes
“a ‘zombie knife’, ‘zombie killer knife’ or ‘zombie slayer knife’, being a blade with—
(i) a cutting edge;
(ii) a serrated edge; and
(iii) images or words (whether on the blade or handle) that suggest that it is to be used for the purpose of violence.”
Victoria Atkins
The definition of “zombie knife” in the Bill is the existing definition under section 141(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 set out in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) (Amendment) Order 2016. I appreciate that we are fighting a constant battle to future-proof the definition of such knives, but that is the definition in law. I have listened to what the hon. Lady said about crossbows and I am happy to reflect on it. The definition of “zombie knife” was agreed by Parliament in a statutory instrument in 2016 and we have sought to be consistent with that.
Louise Haigh
Since that statutory instrument, how many possession convictions, or associated convictions, have there been in which the weapons cited by the statutory instrument were still being manufactured and sold?
Victoria Atkins
I will have to write to the hon. Lady about that. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 24
Surrender of prohibited offensive weapons
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
There are some costings involved in clauses 24 and 25. I believe that the impact assessment estimated that a national amnesty would cost between £200,000 and £300,000, and the cost of compensation for surrendered knives would cost about £200,000. Whose budget will that come out of?
Victoria Atkins
Clause 24 provides for the regulations for compensation. I will provide a draft of the regulations in due course, and there will be an opportunity to scrutinise the arrangements when they are laid before the House following Royal Assent. The budget for the compensation will come from the Home Office.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 25 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 26
Offence of threatening with offensive weapon etc
Amendments made: 24, in clause 26, page 25, line 14, at end insert—
‘( ) Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 (offence of threatening with offensive weapon in public) is amended in accordance with subsections (1) and (1A).
This amendment and Amendments 25 to 28 provide for the repeal of the definitions of “serious physical harm” in section 1A(2) of the Prevention and Crime Act 1953 and section 139AA(4) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Clause 26 replaces references to “serious physical harm” in section 1A(1) of the 1953 Act and section 139AA(1) of the 1988 Act with references to “physical harm”.
Amendment 25, in clause 26, page 25, line 15, leave out from “In” to end of line 16 and insert “subsection (1)—”.
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 24.
Amendment 26, in clause 26, page 25, line 21, at end insert—
‘(1A) Omit subsection (2).
(1B) Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offence of threatening with article with blade or point or offensive weapon) is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).’
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 24.
Amendment 27, in clause 26, page 25, line 22, leave out from “In” to end of line 23 and insert “subsection (1)—”
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 24.
Amendment 28, in clause 26, page 25, line 28, at end insert—
‘(1A) Omit subsection (4).’—(Victoria Atkins.)
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 24.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Louise Haigh
The clause attempts to lower the threshold for the offence of threatening with an offensive weapon. The offence of threatening with an article with a blade or a point, or an offensive weapon, set out in section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 requires the prosecution to prove that the defendant threatened another person with a weapon
“in such a way that there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm to that other person.”
This modification will strengthen the law to make prosecution easier.
The clause amends existing offences of threatening with an offensive weapon or article with a blade or point. There is a mandatory minimum custodial sentence of a four-month detention and training order for children aged 16 and 17 and a custodial sentence of at least six months for an adult convicted under the existing legislation. Let me take this opportunity again to put on the record the Opposition’s concerns about mandatory minimum sentences for children and the conflict between the Sentencing Council’s advice and the Government’s legislation.
The clause raises a number of questions, and several organisations have made their concerns clear. The Law Society stated:
“We are not persuaded that the proposed change to the definition of this offence is necessary. The requirement that the prosecution prove that there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm arising from the threat, as introduced by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, remains an appropriate, sufficient and objective, test.”
As far as I could see, the consultation paper provided no examples of cases where the current law proved inadequate, so will the Minister elaborate on that? Can she provide examples where someone should have been convicted of an offence but the threshold could not be met? If not, why is the clause in the Bill? What advice has she received from the police service about the evidential threshold being difficult to meet? The impact assessment suggested there would be a 10% uptick in prosecutions. Presumably that figure was not plucked from thin air, so may we have more information about how the Home Office arrived at it?
The Law Society continued:
“It is not clear what exactly is the asserted inadequacy with the current law to justify this change in the law. While we note the inclusion of an objective element of the reasonableness of the victim’s fear, by reference to a hypothetical person of reasonable firmness, this will provide fertile room for debate and appeals, in much the same way as occurred in relation to the old defence of provocation.”
That is important. As the Minister will know, the old defence of provocation is in section 3 of the Homicide Act 1957 and was changed in 2009. In its first report, the Law Commission stated that there were significant problems with that defence as it did not appear to be underpinned by any clear rationale, and that the concept of loss of self-control had become troublesome.
In the 2005 case of Harriot v. DPP, for example, a man at a bail hostel returned to find his room had been burgled. He placed two knives in his pockets and started becoming agitated in the communal reception area. He then went outside into the front garden of the hostel. The staff locked him out and the police were called. After searching him and finding the knives, they arrested him for possession of sharply pointed implements and he was convicted. However, he won his appeal by arguing that the private front garden was not a place where that offence could be committed merely because the public’s access to the area was unimpeded. That goes back to the problems with the definition of “public area”. In that scenario, could the staff be regarded as having a reasonable fear that they were at risk of physical harm? Would that be any more the case under the Bill than under existing legislation?
This is the ultimate question: has the Minister properly scrutinised the clause for such unintended consequences, and does she intend to define “reasonable” in clause 26(1)(b)?
Victoria Atkins
I should declare an interest: I used to prosecute for the Crown Prosecution Service and other law enforcement agencies. I say with my legal hat on that I am very pleased that we are changing the test from subjective to objective. The problem the CPS has under current legislation is that, to prove the offence, it has to get the victim to court to show they were worried that they were at risk of violence. We want to stop victims having to come to court to give evidence in situations where, frankly, a reasonable person would feel in fear. The old offence made it difficult for the CPS to bring prosecutions in cases where someone walked around shouting and threatening to use their knife. That is why so few prosecutions were brought.
I met a senior member of the CPS to discuss how we could help the police and the CPS to tackle that criminality, and the test in the clause was arrived at. It is a perfectly standard, objective test of a reasonable person. I do not accept the proposition that the courts will be unable to grapple with the “reasonable person” test. The objective test is used across the criminal justice system for all sorts of offences. This is simply about placing someone in court when they choose to go out and threaten people with a knife or put people in fear of their actions. It is about ensuring that we protect the community and that the police have the powers they need to bring such people to justice.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 26, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Paul Maynard.)
Offensive Weapons Bill
Wednesday 28th November 2018
(5 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 28 November 2018 - (28 Nov 2018)
15:31 - The House divided: - Ayes: 309 / Noes: 274 - Question accordingly agreed to.
18:01 - The House divided: - Ayes: 272 / Noes: 303 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:16 - The House divided: - Ayes: 235 / Noes: 300 - Question accordingly negatived.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 3—Controls on miniature rifles and ammunition—
“(1) The Firearms Act 1968 is amended as follows.
(2) Omit subsection (4) of section 11 (Sports, athletics and other approved activities).”
This new clause would amend the Firearms Act 1968 to remove the exemption on miniature rifle ranges, preventing individuals without a firearms certificate from being able to acquire and possess semi-automatic rifles without a check by the police.
New clause 4—Possession of component parts of ammunition with intent to manufacture—
“(1) Section 1 of the Firearms Act 1988 is amended as follows—
(2) After subsection 4A insert—
‘(4B) A person other than a person permitted to manufacture ammunition by virtue of being a registered firearms dealer or holder of a firearm certificate authorising the type of ammunition being manufactured commits an offence if—
(a) The person has in his or her possession or under his or her control the component parts of ammunition and,
(b) The person intends to use such articles to manufacture the component parts into ammunition.
(4C) A person guilty of an offence under subsection 4b is liable—
(a) On summary conviction—
(i) In England and Wales to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months (or in relation to offences committed before Section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 comes into force 6 months) or to a fine or both.
(ii) In Scotland to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both.
(b) On conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years to a fine, or to both.’”
This new clause would create a specific offence for the possession of component parts of ammunition with the intent to manufacture, for all persons other than those registered as firearms dealer or holders of a firearms certificate authorising the type of ammunition being manufactured.
New clause 18—Offence of failure to store an air weapon in a locked cabinet—
“(1) A person commits an offence if they fail to store an air weapon in their possession in a locked cabinet.
(2) The offence in subsection (1) has not been committed if the person has the firearm with them for the purpose of cleaning, repairing or testing it or for some other purpose connected with its use, transfer or sale, or the air weapon is in transit to or from a place in connection with its use or any such purpose.
(3) For the purposes of this section, ‘air weapon’ has the same meaning as in section 1(3)(b) of the Firearms Act 1968.
(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”
New clause 19—Sale of an air weapon without a trigger guard—
“(1) A person commits an offence if, by way of trade or business, they sell an air weapon that is not fitted with a trigger guard.
(2) For the purposes of this section, ‘air weapon’ has the same meaning as in section 1(3)(b) of the Firearms Act 1968.
(3) The Secretary of State may by regulations define ‘trigger guard’ for the purposes of this section.
(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”
Government amendment 26.
Amendment 23, in clause 30, page 30, line 9, leave out from “rifle” to end of paragraph and insert
“, other than a rifle which is chambered for rim fire cartridges, which ejects an empty cartridge case using energy which comes (directly or indirectly) from propellant gas and subsequently chambers a cartridge by mechanical means through the operation of the firing trigger mechanism alone.”
Government amendments 27 to 33.
Amendment 24, in clause 31, page 31, line 9, leave out from “rifle” to end of paragraph and insert
“, other than a rifle which is chambered for rim fire cartridges, which ejects an empty cartridge case using energy which comes (directly or indirectly) from propellant gas and subsequently chambers a cartridge by mechanical means through the operation of the firing trigger mechanism alone.”
Government amendments 34 to 55.
Karin Smyth
I hope that this is third time lucky. I understand the difficulties that the Government are in, but our constituents, on whose behalf we speak, watch these proceedings with great interest and concern, often because it is their loved ones who have lost their lives or been injured. The postponement of this debate on Report has been unacceptable for them.
Having said that, I am pleased to have the opportunity to outline the importance of new clause 2, with which I simply seek to establish in law the requirement for the Department to publish a report on the safety of air weapons. Such a report is necessary because the statistics on air weapons offences are not routinely recorded and official data is difficult to find. The report would require the Department to assess the strength of existing legislation on the use of air weapons. An important aspect of the debate is licensing, to which I shall return in a moment. The report would also require consideration of the existing guidelines on safe storage, about which my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) will speak in more detail later. I thank him for his support and for the work that he has done on this issue previously.
The report would also force an assessment on the current age limits for the possession and use of air weapons, which we discussed in Committee. This is important, because young people are disproportionately victims of air weapons offences. I managed to obtain via the Library information that shows that a disproportionate number of 10 to 19-year-olds were victims of air weapons offences in 2017, considering their share of the population, but we need more detail.
The subject of licensing has come up in a number of debates over the years, including in this place and in Select Committee hearings, but there seems to have been a reluctance to push collectively for real change. The dangers posed by air weapons cannot be ignored: their misuse is a matter of public safety. That was the argument put forward by Members of the Scottish Parliament in 2015, when they voted to license air weapons. While others were perhaps doing other things during the conference recess, I went to the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood to hear the arguments for and against licensing and about the experience of it.
The logic for the system in Scotland seems straightforward: as a matter of public safety, only those who have good reason for using, acquiring, purchasing or possessing an air weapon ought legally to be able to obtain one. The Scottish police believe that the scheme has been a success thus far, with more than 21,000 weapons having been surrendered by owners. Some 24,000 licences were issued up to February this year. There is a cost of £72 per licence to cover the administration fee. The Scottish Government's position is clear: those who have a legitimate use for an air weapon—including for sports and pest control—are not prevented from obtaining one. That gives important clarity to a subject that can be confusing. It sends a clear message that these weapons are not toys and capable of causing serious injury or even death. I simply ask the Minister whether he can demonstrate to me that my constituents in Bristol South are as safe from the misuse of air weapons as people in Scotland, where the guns are licensed.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
I do not disagree with anything that the hon. Lady has said, but for the record, has the information from Scotland shown that there has been a decrease in the misuse of air weapons since the change to the law?
Karin Smyth
I cannot answer that question directly, but one issue in Scotland relates to the collection of data from the stable point and into the future. That is important to consider. If the police there see that one of these weapons is in the house when they go to a domestic abuse incident, for example, they can legitimately ask whether there is a licence for it. They have reported anecdotally—I am happy to get more figures—that they certainly feel that that has been helpful in such circumstances.
The Minister previously said that the Department’s response to the air weapons review will answer everything, but I am wondering whether the review that we have been seeking will ever see the light of day. The review closed more than nine months ago and, despite numerous assurances to many Members, we are still awaiting its conclusions. We owe it to the victims of air weapons, and their families, to stop the Government kicking the issue into the long grass. It took the Scottish Government just a few months to consider the responses to their consultation on air weapons. We must now demand the same single-mindedness of our Government. I have here the documents, all the way from Scotland, should the Government wish to use them to make progress on the review and look seriously at licensing.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
I declare an interest: as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am chairman of the British Shooting Sports Council, the umbrella body for British shooting organisations. I rise to speak to Government amendment 26 on .50 calibre rifles but, on behalf of British sports shooting people, I thank the Government for having listened and acted on this matter, and confirm the BSSC’s wish fully to engage with the Government on getting the law right in this policy area. Having just listened to the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) talk about air rifles, I hope that the Government will learn from the debate on .50 calibre rifles. I agree that there are issues in respect of air rifles that need attention and clarification, but we should deal in a cautious and proper manner with the 3 million or so owners of such guns.
The proposal in the Bill to ban firearms with a muzzle velocity of more than 13,600 J, including .50 calibre guns, was not, under any interpretation of the facts, going to help the fight against crime. The guns are very expensive, costing around £20,000 each. There are therefore very few in number, with only 150 or so in private hands. They are extremely bulky, heavy at 30 lb and slow to load, with large, hand-loaded ammunition. In fact, one could hardly find a firearm less likely to be used in a crime. They are simply too big. That is probably why they have never been used in a crime in this jurisdiction.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I am trying to remember, but I think that .50 calibre weapons were used by terrorists in Northern Ireland, although I stand to be corrected.
Mr Djanogly
I believe that they have been, but I advisedly used “in this jurisdiction” for that purpose.
If we are to start banning things just because of the use to which they might be put, logic could dictate that all firearms should be used, as well as all knives. That is not my idea of a free society.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
Just to correct what our hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said, the weapons used in Northern Ireland were illegally imported into this country.
Mr Djanogly
I thank my hon. Friend for that important clarification.
The National Crime Agency position brief was received by the Library and heavily commented on by shooting experts across the board. The following points are based on their feedback. The NCA brief states that .50 calibre rifles
“are built around enormously powerful cartridges originally designed for military use on the battlefield and to have devastating effect”.
That is true, but it is also true of one of the most common target rifles ever used, the .303 Lee Enfield rifle and one of the most common hunting rifles, the .308, which is also based on a military round. The current full bore civilian target shooting round, at 7.62 mm, is a military round often used in machine guns. The NCA brief further states:
“The propellant mass in a standard M33 .50 calibre ‘ball’ round is nearly ten times as great as that in the standard ‘ball’ round used in the…Army’s primary battlefield rifle, the L85.”
However, that is simply disingenuous, as the 5.56 round used in the L85 is specifically designed to be light and to perform a totally different role from the .50 calibre rifle. In particular, that round is designed to enable large quantities to be carried by troops and is faster firing and easier to use at close quarters, but to say the L85 is any less dangerous as a result is bizarre.
The irony is that .50 calibre firearms could have their barrels shortened, thus taking them beneath the maximum velocity. The 13,600 J limit is entirely arbitrary, and many owners and manufacturers could simply adapt their guns down to the new limit. The NCA refers to recent seizures of guns, including fully automatic weapons, as showing that crime groups are seeking more powerful weapons, but the .50 calibre is not automatic and there is no evidence of crime gangs ever having wanted to use it.
There was also a failure to consider the historic arms position. People should have the right to engage in shooting sports, unless serious possible injury to the public can be proved. I am a Conservative, and Conservatives to my mind do not ban things for the sake of it.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
It is about 20 years since I fired a .50 calibre. My hon. Friend is entirely right to talk about how large and inappropriate they are for crimes. I very much support the case that he is making.
Mr Djanogly
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.
It is unfortunate that this debate is not about the criminals whom we should be targeting, namely the owners of illegal guns that are being used for crimes, but about the law-abiding sporting men and women who would lose out for no good reason.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and thank the Minister for seeing common sense and considering a consultation. I have a shooting range in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that the majority of the totally law-abiding people using my range and others are primarily ex-servicemen and women or ex-policemen and women, and that it is important that they can continue doing what they do?
Mr Djanogly
I am not sure whether those people are primarily ex-servicemen and women, but I am sure that a lot of them shoot. A lot of children learn to shoot on the range in my constituency, which is an important part of the community that provides an important sporting outlet for disabled people, who cannot do other sports and hugely enjoy their shooting.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; he is being extremely generous. I would ask him to consider this scenario, which happened in my local shooting club. Somebody who was clearly quite troubled was able to book up all the shooting lanes and then held up the shooting range official, took the guns and murdered two women a mile away from my constituency border. My hon. Friend talks about the illegal versus the legal and about the risk being minimal, but when things go wrong, even in minimal-risk circumstances, it can have devastating impacts. That is why I find myself a little hesitant about what is now being changed.
Mr Djanogly
My hon. Friend makes a very fair point. Firearms are potential very dangerous things to use. I can only say to him that, as I said before, the number of legally owned weapons used in crimes is very limited, although that is not to say that we do not have a gun problem in this country. We certainly do, and we need to address it.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) said, my hon. Friend has been extremely generous in giving way. Guns are meant to be fatal if they are used properly. That is why they have to be protected with super-legislation—the toughest in the world—to ensure that the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle are safe. Indeed, some of the vilification that I suspect my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) got was most unwelcome, because some of the effort that we went to with the tremendously helpful Minister was intended to seek further protection, so that the public were safer.
Mr Djanogly
I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. I can honestly say that I have never heard a Member of Parliament or anyone involved in the shooting fraternity say that we do not need very tough rules, but they must work and must be fairly applied.
Just as worrying to the shooting community is the “thin end of the wedge” effect. If we could ban a calibre that is not held illegally and has never been used in a crime, how much easier would it be down the road to ban calibres that have been held illegally and are frequently used in crimes? By picking on the seemingly easy target of only 150 gun owners, the unamended Bill would have undermined shooting sports in this country as a whole.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)
Nuclear weapons have never been used for a crime, nor are they used in sport, yet they are not allowed to be held by civilians. I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman’s logic, but I am afraid that I am struggling.
Mr Djanogly
I am afraid that I do not really understand the hon. Gentleman’s logic. I am talking about sports.
It was important and impressive that 74 hon. Members across the House signed the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) to remove the .50 calibre provisions. The Government are to be congratulated on tabling their amendments.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
May I begin by reiterating Labour’s support for the Bill? We gave our support on Second Reading and in Committee, but let me also say how disappointed we have been at the Government’s consistent mismanagement of this important legislation. This should have been a comprehensive and honest response to the horrifying surge in violence that we are seeing in every community in our country. Instead, it is a relatively meagre collection of proposals that, rather than being strengthened in making its way through the House, has been watered down, as the Government have rolled over in response to their Back Benchers.
It is deeply regrettable that the Bill before us is far less effective than what was presented on Second Reading and that, in the Government’s complete paralysis in the middle of Brexit negotiations in their own party, they have refused to listen to the voices of the most senior counter-terror and security experts in the country and instead have once again allowed ideology to win the day.
It is a very sad reflection on our times that matters of great public importance—no task is more important than the Government keeping their citizens safe—are being sacrificed at the altar of Brexit. We have offered our sincere and constructive support throughout the passage of the Bill, supporting the Government’s efforts to respond to the surge in violent crime. We offered our support in Committee and now on Report in their attempt to ban the .50 calibre rifle, but, unfortunately, once again they have proven themselves unable to govern in the national interest, in hock to a group of Members who are prepared to risk public safety.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As the lead signatory to the amendment that sought to remove these 0.50 calibre weapons from the Bill, the hon. Lady has implicitly accused me of endangering public safety. That is completely untruthful and unworthy, and she should withdraw her remarks.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I did not see that comment as a personal accusation. One thing is clear—the hon. Gentleman has certainly put his view on the record.
Louise Haigh
Later in my speech, I will come to exactly why we think the amendment that the Government have tabled will indeed risk public safety.
The Home Secretary said back in April that he wanted to bring forward an Offensive Weapons Bill within weeks and that if it achieved cross-party support, it would become law “very quickly”, making a “big difference”. Over the weekend in London and across the country, more lives have been taken in senseless violence. Thirty-seven children have been killed this year. How can it have been allowed that the already limited measures in the Bill have been held up three times now because of a fight over high-calibre rifles? It reflects very poorly on this Parliament.
I speak in support of new clauses 3 and 4 in my name, new clause 2 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), and new clauses 18 and 19 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson). I will also refer to the amendments regarding .50 calibre rifles, with which the Labour party profoundly disagrees.
New clause 3 would bring miniature rifle ranges under the existing provisions of the Firearms Act 1968. It would remove a loophole in our decades-old firearms law that is providing easy access for non-firearms holders to get their hands on ammunition. Law enforcement officials have been clear on this. They have said in no uncertain terms that the exemption in section 11(4) of the Firearms Act is glaring and provides an easy route for terrorists and criminals to access firearms. This little-known exemption allows non-certificate holders to acquire and possess up to .23 calibre miniature rifles and ammo in connection with the running of a miniature rifle range.
Section 11(4) also allows a person claiming that they are running a miniature rifle range to acquire an unlimited number of .22 calibre rifles and ammunition without any background checks being completed or the police being made aware. In this context, the term “miniature rifle” is something of a misnomer. They are semi-automatic rifles and go far beyond that which is safe in the hands of a non-certificate holder. These are potentially lethal weapons, so this exemption is far too broad.
We are asking the Government to consider using this legislation to stop criminals having ready access to potentially lethal weapons. We were not at all convinced by the Minister’s justification in Committee and were staggered that she suggested that the Government had not been approached regarding this loophole, when they have been copied into the specific correspondence from counter-terrorism experts and the police. They simply cannot say they have not been warned. Will the Minister outline the Home Office’s thinking? Why does the Department believe, in the face of expert evidence, that this exemption does not pose a threat?
New clause 4, in my name and the name of the shadow Home Secretary, would make it an offence to possess component parts of ammunition with the intent to manufacture. Again, this has been explicitly recommended to us by the National Ballistics Intelligence Service, which said in Committee:
“There is a lack of control and legislation around purchasing and acquiring ammunition components. People can freely acquire all the equipment they need to make ammunition; the offence kicks in only once you have made a round.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 42, Q99.]
Senior law enforcement officials have said:
“the reality is that individuals are being found in possession of primers (for which there is no offence) cartridge cases (for which there is no offence), missiles i.e. bullets (for which there is no offence) and smokeless powder (which is technically a minor offence contrary to explosives regulations but rarely…prosecuted).”
The fact is that, unless complete ammunition is found, there is no prosecution despite very strong suspicion that someone is making ammunition to be used in criminality. This simply cannot be right. New clause 4 is an attempt, in the light of the growing threat picture from DIY ammunition making, to give law enforcement the tools needed to clamp down on this practice, which is undoubtedly raising the threat to the public from firearms.
Bob Stewart
To the hon. Lady’s knowledge, have any of these heavier calibre weapons been used in criminality? If they have not, I am wondering what we are arguing about.
Louise Haigh
Twice in the last two years these guns have been found in the hands of criminals: once in the north, when the barrel was shortened and discovered in wasteland; and once when the weapons were found in the hands of a gun smuggler to organised criminal gangs.
Labour will vigorously oppose these amendments today and any attempt to weaken the already desperately weak provisions in the Bill. The measures contained in clause 30, which in effect ban the enormously powerful .50 calibre, 14 mm and 20 mm are necessary and proportionate. They have been backed up with expert justification of the risk assessments and we are convinced that that assessment has been made in good faith. We will not be playing politics with public safety.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
In my mind, I make a distinction between a legal gun owner and an illegal gun owner. In the two incidents that the hon. Lady described, were the guns held legally?
Louise Haigh
In one case, the weapon was held legally; in the other, it was held illegally. I hope that will help the hon. Lady make up her mind as to how she wishes to vote today.
There are many who seek to question the motives of the senior firearms officers who presented evidence to Parliament on the basis of an assessment of the facts. Those officers gave a reasoned, evidence-based analysis, and we are confident that they are not supporting anything that is not completely necessary to their work to keep us safe.
The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) made a point about ammunition. In fact, the user requirement for this gun for the military is a system that can immobilise a vehicle with all UK in-service .50 calibre ammunition—not exotic military ammunition at all. Mark Groothuis of Operation Endeavour, the counter-terror policing unit in the Met, told us:
“My concern is that, if one of these guns were to be stolen…and if it were to get into terrorist hands, it could be very difficult to fight against or to protect against. There is very little—nothing, as far as I know—that the police service have that could go up against a .50 in the way of body armour or even protected vehicles.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 33, Q66.]
How is this a risk worth taking? This is a proportionate ban affecting weapons of staggering power. This is the most powerful weapon of its kind still available to the public.
The idea heard in some quarters that this is part of an overall assault on lawful gun-holders is simply nonsense. Last year, there were 157,581 firearms certificates covering over half a million weapons, and over half a million shotgun certificates covering more than 1 million shotguns. This amendment would affect 129 weapons. The truth is that the only way to protect the public from this weapon’s enormous power is to remove it from public hands altogether, and the Government have utterly failed in their duty to do so.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We have lots of Members who wish to speak, so if we can be brief we can try to get in as many as possible.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am very grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, to catch your eye in this debate on this important Bill, which contains necessary provisions on the use of corrosive substances and on knives. I think the whole House would applaud that. What the Government should be doing, as I will demonstrate in the few words that I have to say, is acting on the basis of real evidence.
As the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) said, this is the third time that the Government have listed for debate this Bill’s remaining stages. For me, as the lead signatory to amendments trying to remove .50 calibre weapons from the Bill, this is third time lucky. After extensive negotiations with the Government, I persuaded them that there was, as I will demonstrate, no real evidence to ban these weapons, and that they should remove them from the Bill and have a proper evidence-based consultation as to whether these weapons do or do not form a danger to the public.
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)
My hon. Friend may have seen that I sought to intervene on the shadow Minister on this earlier. He may wish to confirm that it is also the case that there are legitimate reasons for wishing to possess these weapons.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. Of course, those who possess these weapons use them for entirely peaceful purposes. They are some of the most law-abiding people in this country. To ban these weapons on the basis of, as I will demonstrate, very little evidence, if any, is a completely illiberal thing for a Conservative, or indeed any, Government to do.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary very much indeed for reviewing the evidence on these rifles. He listened to everything that I and other colleagues had to say. My amendments attracted no fewer than 75 signatures from across the House. I thank every single one of my colleagues who signed them. I particularly thank and pay tribute to the Democratic Unionist party of Northern Ireland, all of whose Members signed them.
There is very little evidence for banning these weapons. The press seemed somehow to think that my amendments were all about Brexit and assumed that all those who had supported them did so to achieve Brexit. Nothing could be further from the truth. We were genuinely—I speak as chairman of the all-party shooting and conservation group—trying to do the right thing by a group of citizens who, as I indicated to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), are some of the most law-abiding in the country.
Mr Djanogly
I just want to put it on the record that I support shooting and I supported getting rid of this clause, and I do not support Brexit.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Indeed. There will be lots of other colleagues who signed the amendments who are also of the remainer class. I do not agree with them, but I am nevertheless grateful to them for supporting my amendments.
Since the Bill was published, I have become aware that shooting associations have been concerned that the advice received by Ministers was not based on the facts but on a misrepresentation of target shooting. The consultation in advance of the Bill described .50 calibre single-shot target rifles as “materiel destruction” weapons. Nothing could be further from the truth. Civilian target rifles fire inert ammunition at paper targets. Only the military possess materiel destruction weapons that fire explosive and armour piercing rounds—all illegal in this country for civilian use.
Much of the evidence given to the Public Bill Committee continued on this theme. These target rifles were described by those who advised the Government as “extreme” and “military”, and inaccuracy, exaggeration and misrepresentation were given full play to support the ban. Much of this was refuted by the shooting organisations. They pointed out that the National Ballistics Intelligence Service was mistaken in declaring that the effective range of these .50 calibre rifles is 6,800 metres. The actual effective range is much less than a third of this.
I want to go on to the National Crime Agency’s letter, which the Government seem to place such reliance on and which was placed in the Library of this House.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman may well be coming on to this, but I thank him for giving way. I wonder what evidence he wants if evidence from one of the most senior counter-terrorist police officers in our country is not good enough for him. I wonder why he feels that he maybe knows more about these weapons than they do.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I greatly respect the hon. Lady, and if she will just be a little patient, I will give her exactly what she is asking me for.
The National Crime Agency wrote to the Home Secretary and the letter was circulated to MPs and placed in the Library. It was signed by Steve Rodhouse, the director general of operations at the National Crime Agency. The argument he used, essentially, is that these very powerful rifles might do serious damage. But the same could be said of most commonly used sporting rifles. Indeed, the most commonly used deer rifle in the UK is a .308 that could, and does, do lethal damage. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) pointed out, that is what it is designed to do. It is designed to kill vermin against which it is licensed to be used.
In the letter, Mr Rodhouse uses the words “military” and “extreme”. Nearly all calibres of commonly used civilian rifles originated as military rounds. He also quotes the MOD requirement for immobilising a truck at 1,800 metres. What he does not say is the round used, as I have said, is a high-explosive, incendiary and armour-piercing projectile. That is illegal for civilian use in the UK, where these rifles are used for punching holes in paper targets. It is as illogical to say that a civilian .50 calibre rifle should be banned because the Army uses it to fire at trucks as it would be to ban a .308 deer rifle because the Army uses the same calibre to fire at men. Equally, the residual strike of a .50 calibre bullet and the strike of a .308 bullet are both going to achieve the same end.
With regard to security, which was the basis of my original amendments, and to which I urged the Government to pay very close attention in their consultation, every firearms dealer in this country has to adhere to a level 3 security requirement, and the chief police officer of every police force that licenses every firearms dealer has to be satisfied that those requirements are in place. Some firearms dealers carry weapons that are far more lethal than a .50 calibre weapon because they store them on behalf of the Army. I would suggest that level 3 security would have prevented at least one of these crimes because there would have been the necessary security involved to do that.
Bill Wiggin
I have been very upset to hear the nature of this debate, because the worst thing for any police officer must be to knock on someone’s front door to tell them that their loved one is a victim of crime. This is not a moment to play party politics at all. All guns are dangerous; all guns are for killing. These things are lethal; they require proper protections. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: what we all want to do is to make it as difficult as possible for these accidents to happen, and a ban is not the right way to achieve that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Can I just say to Sir Geoffrey that hopefully he will recognise that we have six more Members and the Minister to get in?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I am grateful for your advice, Mr Deputy Speaker, but it is important, in view of what the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) had to say, that I refute some of the facts that have been put about.
The figures for stolen firearms should be put into context, which Mr Rodhouse does not do. There are 2 million firearms in civilian hands. Up to July this year, only 204—I accept that that is 204 too many—had been stolen, and the vast majority were shotguns, not rifles. Only 1% of non-airgun firearms crime is committed with rifles, and none of those has ever been from a .50 calibre legal weapon.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley might be interested to know that Mr Rodhouse did not give the whole story regarding the case of the stolen .50 calibre weapon. The police dealing with the theft considered it opportunistic and that the .50 calibre was stolen with other firearms and not specifically targeted—[Interruption.] She should just listen for a minute. The .50 calibre was rapidly abandoned, and there is a suggestion that the police were told where to find it. All this points at the criminals finding the .50 calibre unsuitable for their purposes, and one can understand why—a single-shot rifle, requiring hand-loaded ammunition, weighing 30 lb and around 5 feet long, is very difficult to carry, let alone use in a criminal or terrorist incident.
The second case mentioned is the Surdar case. The whole point is that Surdar did not sell his legally held .50 calibre rifle to criminals; they did not want it. In the first case, level 3 security would have prevented a crime, and in the second case, it was a dealer who was not entirely above board.
Mr Rodhouse goes on to talk about the threat of illegal importations. That will not be cured by banning legally held guns. How many .50 calibre weapons have been seized as illegal imports? The answer is none. It is true that most UK firearms law is the product of outrage in the wake of atrocities such as Dunblane or Hungerford. At least legislators in those cases were seeking to improve the law with clear evidence. Mr Rodhouse, on the other hand, is seeking to persuade Parliament to change the law in relation to .50 calibre weapons without any significant evidence whatsoever.
The Government’s original proposal was not supported by the evidence. We in this House have a duty to protect minorities and to ensure that we do not act illiberally by banning things when there is no evidence. I submit that the Government have done the right thing in withdrawing these weapons from the Bill and are right to have a properly evidence-based consultation, to which all experts, including the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley, can give evidence. If, at the end of it, the Government conclude that there is an issue of public safety, we will need to debate that further in the House. I rest my case.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
It is good to finally get down to further consideration of the Bill, at the third attempt. Let me say at the outset that my party welcomes the Bill. There has been close working between the UK and Scottish Governments in relation to it, and we are largely, but not completely, happy with where it has got to after a pretty thorough Committee stage.
The Bill covers a mixture of reserved and devolved matters, with legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament required for some parts of the Bill. How far the legislation should encroach on devolved issues such as Scots criminal law has been carefully worked through by the Governments to serve specific purposes, and we take the view that that is pretty much as far as the encroachment should go.
There are a number of amendments that I will speak supportively and sympathetically about and will not oppose, but in so far as they are drafted in a way that extends to Scotland, we ultimately take the view they would be better left to the Scottish Parliament to exercise its devolved competence. That includes the three new clauses relating to air weapons. I am sympathetic to what the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) seeks to achieve with those new clauses and the work she is doing, but as she pointed out, the regulation of such weapons was devolved to the Scottish Parliament, which has established a new licensing regime under the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015. For those reasons, as far as Scotland is concerned, we wish to leave any further reform of air weapons licensing and regulation to the Scottish Parliament.
There are other amendments, however, that are clearly in reserved territory and that we will consider supporting, including new clauses 3 and 4. For the sake of time, I will not repeat all the arguments made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). I will simply say that we agree with her analysis.
On high-energy and .50 calibre rifles, having looked at all the evidence in the round, we would have supported the position set out by the Home Secretary and the Minister at every previous stage of the Bill’s passage. We echo much of what the shadow Minister has said today. In Committee, we heard persuasive evidence from the NCA, the National Police Chiefs Council, ballistics experts and counter-terrorism police about the power of these weapons. The evidence we heard was that these rifles are dangerous because of their range and because there is little—perhaps nothing—that the police have in the way of body armour or even protected vehicles that could go up against some of these weapons.
I emphasise that we are not in favour of prohibition for the sake of it. If those same expert witnesses think that an alternative solution to alleviate risk can be found, we will listen. We fully appreciate the impact that this would have on the recreation of a small number of citizens, but it is a small number; we are talking about 18 certificates in Scotland altogether.
The point is that the Home Secretary said he would further consider the proposed prohibition months ago on Second Reading, way back before the summer, yet no amendments were forthcoming before the previously scheduled final stages of the Bill. There has been no adequate explanation of what has changed in the past couple of weeks, and as matters stand, the Bill will leave this place with the prohibition removed but no alternative measures in its place.
The Home Secretary is now going against and ignoring the evidence we received from the NCA, the National Police Chiefs Council, ballistics experts and counter-terrorism police, as well as what I have been told by Police Scotland. I have tried, without success so far, to find out whether any of those witnesses has changed their view. In the absence of any adequate explanation, this reeks of internal party politics trumping important issues of public safety. It is not the right way to make legislation, and it is not the right way to treat the public.
Mr Baker
The purpose of my amendments 23 and 24 is to avoid banning lever-release rifles. They are probing amendments; I just wish to explore the Government’s position, and I do not intend to press them to a Division.
I would like to start by thanking Little Chalfont Rifle and Pistol Club and my constituents who are members of it for helping me better to understand lever-release rifles by allowing me to fire several of them. Lever-release rifles are built and designed in the UK. They have a mechanism by which the rifle unloads itself with propellant gas but stops short of reloading. In a sense, they are self-cocking, but not self-loading. A lever is pressed to release the working parts and load the next round. My amendments would allow lever-release rifles but ban so-called MARS—manually activated release system—rifles, which allow the working parts to come forward using a second trigger press.
The lever-release mechanism was produced within current firearms law to be suitably used and owned on a section 1 firearms licence. These rifles are a valuable resource for disabled and elderly shooters in particular, who can struggle with conventional operating actions, and are no more dangerous than any other legally owned firearm of a similar calibre. The mechanism is not a bump stock, which has no place in target shooting; there seems to be unity about that.
The National Rifle Association has provided evidence that lever-release systems do not significantly increase the rate of fire capability of rifles. Lever-release rifles have a comparable rate of fire to bolt-action rifles—that is, one to two rounds per second, against one or less with a bolt-action rifle. Those rates of fire are based on un-aimed shots. In reality, the rate of fire for aimed shots, including the time taken to come back to aim and replace magazines, will yield an aimed shot about every two to four seconds in the hands of an expert marksman, regardless of the system used. I can certainly testify to that, having tried them. They have considerable recoil, and the idea of having a high rate of fire with aimed shots is really for the birds.
The lever-release system can allow an able-bodied shooter to maintain their firing position, assisting accuracy in a sport that is defined by accurate shooting. According to British Shooting, disabled people currently make up 25% of recreational shooters—a number that it is committed to increasing further. The NRA has informed us that 42.5% of its members are aged 60 or older. Lever-release rifles can allow less able people to continue to participate in the sport.
It seems unnecessary to ban lever-release rifles. My amendments would ban so-called MARS firearms, where the trigger is pulled a second time. I would like the Minister to set out exactly why shooters with lever-release rifles should have those weapons taken from them. A cornerstone of democracy is minority rights. I do not think that these weapons represent a significant additional risk for having a lever-release mechanism, and though I am only probing the Government’s position, I would like the Minister to set out in detail why owners will be stripped of those firearms.
Finally, in the original impact assessment, published alongside the consultation document, the Government estimated the total cost of compensation for the owners of these firearms to be between £1 million and £1.1 million in the first year of the policy. Responses to the consultation suggest that this was a considerable underestimate, and I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give us a new and more accurate estimate of the cost of the compensation.
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
I wish to speak in support of new clause 2, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), and new clauses 18 and 19, which I tabled for the House to consider today.
I confess that I would not have tabled new clauses 18 and 19 had we had some clarity from the Government on the consultation on air weapons. Members will recall that the Government were asked to undertake a consultation on air weapons safety by the West Suffolk coroner on 10 October 2017 and that the Government announced a consultation on air rifle legislation on 12 December 2017. It closed on 6 February 2018, to which as I recall—on 20-something November 2018—we still have not had a response, despite some 50,000 consultation responses.
The reason why I want this to be looked at is quite clear and quite tragic. My constituent George Atkinson was killed by an air rifle in a tragic accident at a cousin’s house some years ago. The air rifle in the house was not locked in a cabinet, and George had access to it. Playing with air rifles, as I did myself in my own house as a child, resulted in George’s accidental death, and his family had the tragedy of losing their 13-year-old son.
John and Jane Atkinson, George’s parents, have campaigned very strongly to try to get some measure of safety added to air rifles. They are not against the use of air rifles as a whole, but they want some safety measures added. The figures back up their concerns. We have seen some 25 cases of serious injury from air rifles this year and 288 cases that resulted in slight injury, while air rifles have been used in some 2,203 incidents—not just accidents, but deliberate use—involving offences in 2016-17.
The legislation—this is where I hope my two new clauses will come in—is currently the Firearms Act 1968, which says that it is an offence for a person in possession of an air weapon to fail to take reasonable precautions to prevent someone under the age of 18 from gaining unauthorised access to it. However, it does not define what reasonable precautions are in relation to protection for individuals.
As I have said, my constituents, although they have lost their son, do not wish to see airguns banned; they wish to see them made safer. My new clauses would do two things. The first new clause would ensure that airguns had to be kept in a lockable cabinet at home, with the key kept separate from the cabinet. If that had been in place, it would accordingly be an offence if the cabinet was accessed. There has to be a lockable cabinet.
The second new clause shows that we want trigger guards to be added to air rifles that, again, are only accessible by the owner of the air rifles. That does not prevent anybody from owning an air rifle or using an air rifle, or impose legal requirements on using one for sport or any other purpose. However, the new clauses would put in place two significant measures that would strengthen the Firearms Act and make the reasonable precautions measurable. Without measurable reasonable precautions, nobody can say what a reasonable precaution is.
For the memory of children and young people such as George Atkinson, it is important that we seek to have reasonable precautions. I want to hear from the Minister whether she will look at and support new clauses 18 and 19, and when she expects to respond to the consultation. Will she take on board those two suggestions, and, ultimately, not ban such weapons, but—perhaps as part of the wider examination mooted in new clause 2, moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South—look at what measures we can take to make them safer?
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that when the firearms legislation was revised in 2002, just before he became a Northern Ireland Minister, it brought anything firing a projectile with over 1 kJ of energy within the ambit of a firearms certificate? That distinguishes between airsoft and air rifles, so every air rifle in Northern Ireland has to be on a firearms certificate. That does not ban them, but it brings in the security protections and measures that he has outlined.
David Hanson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of the proposals that were brought in for Northern Ireland.
New clauses 18 and 19 are reasonable. A lockable cabinet and a lockable trigger guard will ensure that children and young individuals, who do not realise the potential power of these weapons, have more difficulty accessing weapons whose legal owners may currently keep them in an unlocked cabinet and without a trigger guard. I think the Minister needs to look at this, and I hope that she will support the new clauses. If she will not do so, I hope for a good explanation why not.
Huw Merriman
I wish to speak to Government amendment 26 and other related amendments. I had not intended to speak, but I feel duty bound to do so. Some time back, when the proposal to ban .50 calibre weapons came to the fore, like many of my Conservative colleagues, I wrote to the Minister to ask for the evidence base for it. The response I got back did not ultimately persuade me that there was such an evidence base. I think of myself as a libertarian, and if we are going to ban anything, there needs to be a justification for doing so. I was very much part of raising that query and concern.
I absolutely supported the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), which would have tightened up some of the rules around gun clubs with regard to these weapons. I am speaking in order to do almost an about-turn—I touched on this in my intervention during my hon. Friend’s speech—and this has really come to light for me. The issue is not so much about the .50 calibre weapons. I take the point, and it is well made, that one would not be able to remove and use this type of weapon in such a way; they are used for a specific purpose. None the less, if we are not careful with our gun clubs and do not make sure that the rules are tight, there will be situations where there are breaches that have tragic consequences. I want to reference what I touched on in my intervention.
I will run through the exchange that happened during the court process. Mr Craig Savage, the constituent I referred to—in fact, this happened just into a neighbouring constituency—managed to book his local gun club. It is my local gun club—I have actually used it—and the same one that has written to me to try to persuade me how safe it is and what a great pursuit the sport is.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Does my hon. Friend not agree—I am aware of the point he is about to make—that gun clubs provide a sport that is gender-blind, ability-blind and age-blind, and that target rifle shooting is one of the most egalitarian sports available?
Huw Merriman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Gun clubs do, indeed, provide such a sport. I will suggest to the Minister where we can support them in their endeavours and actually make things better. Quite frankly—and gun clubs are aware of this as well—if they do not fulfil their role in a safe and secure manner, they know full well that it will be very hard for us, as their representative MPs, to justify their continued existence.
I want to take the House through the transcript involving the defendant and 1066 Target Sports. The defendant had asked whether he and a friend could book a live fire at 6.30 pm on the Friday. In one email, he asked whether it was busy during that time, and he later took up the offer of booking out all the lanes so that he and his friend
“could have the place to ourselves”.
I am sure colleagues are wondering why, at this point, nobody smelled a rat. The next day, he emailed to say that his friend had dropped out and he would have to “swing back another time”.
The defendant arrived at the complex at about 5 pm on the Friday of the shooting and was met in reception by Mr Graves, the deputy manager. Mr Graves said that the defendant had mentioned that he had prostate cancer and did not have much time to live. During the live firing he spoke about religion and rifles, and he made reference to “police-assisted suicide” and wanting to be “remembered as a man”. The defendant then went to the toilet. While the deputy manager was reloading, the defendant returned, wrestled the gun away, aimed it at his chest and said, “I will not hurt you, but I will need you to open the door”, which he duly did.
The defendant then made the 10-minute journey to Bexhill Road, where at 7.40 pm Raven Whitbread, her mother Heather Whitbread and her sister Michelle Savage were sitting in the lounge relaxing and eating a meal. Suddenly the defendant smashed through the window. Raven was told by her sister and mother to hide, as she was seven months pregnant. Raven said that she saw Craig Savage standing over her sister, and then she saw her body jolt. She ran into the annexe to call the police. Her mother was shot dead thereafter.
That is what happens if we do not get this right. People lose their lives in tragic situations because sometimes we too blindly see the risks as being so small that they will not occur. But when the law is broken, tragic events occur and people lose their lives. I think that we are duty bound not to say that the risks are so small that we should not control legitimate behaviour. We should ensure that those risks are minimised even further, and reduced to zero if possible.
I am asking the Minister whether we can look at gun clubs to ensure that they are made more secure, along the lines that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds talked about, and really to look at a wholescale review and reform of gun clubs. If we do—I will tell my local gun club this—I just cannot support them.
John Woodcock
I will keep my remarks brief, as you have requested, Madam Deputy Speaker, because we are shortly to vote. That was a brave speech by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). I hope that the Minister would accept that I am prepared to support the Government when they do the right thing on national security, and that therefore it is not out of overt partisanship that I think this cave-in is truly shameful.
I feel sorry for the Minister, because I think that it is the Home Secretary, or indeed the Prime Minister, who should really be here to account for why they are now disregarding all the advice they have received from the police and intelligence officials and caving in to—I have to say it—the backwoodsmen and, occasionally, women of their own party, rather than seeking to govern in the national interest on security. There was a way here whereby a Government who either had a level of authority or were prepared to reach across the House to do the right thing on national security could have got a clear majority for this important measure.
The threat of terrorism in this country is growing. It is inadequate, and potentially morally bankrupt, simply to say that because there has not been an attack recently, since the IRA threat, then there will not be one in future.
John Woodcock
No, I am not going to give way.
We know that the terror threat is growing. The Government received clear advice that these—
John Woodcock
No, I am not going to give way to the hon. Lady, who I am afraid will say anything that the Whips tell her to say. If the Whips had told her to say the opposite, she would absolutely have said the opposite. [Interruption.] Well, okay then, if she wants to tell me why—
Vicky Ford
Why? Three years ago, almost to the day, more than 100 young people were killed in an attack on a Paris theatre. It was our Prime Minister who called for reform of European gun law, and I was the Member of the European Parliament who led that reform. This is a Government who are committed to the highest standards of gun control across Europe. If we are to continue that ongoing co-operation with our European neighbours, it is vital that we have evidence-based legislation that directs the gun controls at the right organisations. That is why I will be supporting the Government today.
John Woodcock
Well, I have to say that the hon. Lady would be supporting the Government whatever their position was. I thank her for the intervention, however, because it does make an important point. The Prime Minister, as a former Home Secretary, does understand the threat, so the fact that the Government are doing the wrong thing because of party interest is shameful.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I thank all Members across the House for their passionate and heartfelt views on these important topics. I welcome the indication from the shadow Minister that the Bill continues to have the support of the Opposition.
The first duty of Government is to keep the public safe. That is why we have brought the Bill forward, to give the police and other agencies the powers they need to tackle serious violence and crime. But it is the definition of democracy that Government must meet that duty in ways that are effective but also proportionate. We have some of the strongest gun laws in the world, particularly for rapid-fire rifles. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has indicated that his amendment is intended to be probing. However, those rifles remain in the Bill because we are concerned that they can discharge rounds at a rate that brings them much closer to self-loading rifles, which are already prohibited for civilian ownership under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968. Indeed, that appears to be one of the selling points for such rifles. We have therefore included them in the Bill, because we are of the view that the indiscriminate use of rapid-firing rifles, including lever-action rifles, is such that they should be prohibited in the same way as other full-bore, self-loading rifles. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe has raised the interests of disabled shooters. Of course that is part of our assessment, but we are satisfied that there are other rifles that those with disabilities can use if they are prevented from using these rifles.
Let me move on to air rifles. I know that the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) and the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) have run long campaigns on air rifles. I hope that they both know that we have conducted this review following the coroner’s report into the terrible and very sad death of Benjamin Wragge, a 13-year-old boy who was shot accidentally with an air weapon in 2016. As I said in Committee, we received more than 50,000 representations from members of the public, and the issues raised by the new clauses tabled by the hon. Lady and the right hon. Gentleman will be considered in that specialist review, which will be published shortly. I therefore ask them not to press their new clauses to a vote.
I want to make a small point that might assist the right hon. Member for Delyn in deciding whether to press new clause 19 to a vote. The new clause refers to trigger guards, rather than trigger locks. I understand that he wants to look at locks. At the moment, air weapons are fitted with trigger guards. But I am happy to have a conversation with him, and with any other Member, about the applicability of locks as part of the review process.
On Government amendments 26 to 55, I recognise the very, very strong feelings across the House. I spoke at the beginning about the balancing act—indeed, it is a discussion we had constantly in Committee—between effectiveness and proportionality. We saw that today, let alone on Second Reading and in Committee, in relation to clauses 30 and 31. The clauses were included in the Bill to strengthen the controls on high muzzle energy rifles. They are currently controlled under general licensing arrangements. The effect of the clauses would be to subject those rifles to the more rigorous controls provided by section 5 of the 1968 Act. This was because our law enforcement colleagues have concerns as to the potential effect if these rifles fall into the wrong hands. Our strong gun laws mean that those who shoot in the countryside or at ranges have met the standards expected in firearms licensing and by their local police force.
Gavin Robinson
I know the Minister has had extraordinary tension over this issue and has engaged very sincerely on it over the course of the Bill’s proceedings. I commend her commitment to public safety—I think unfair comments have been made today. I recognise, as a signatory of the amendment—others have signed it as well—that there is a willingness to engage sincerely in the consultation that she will bring forward to deal with this in the appropriate way.
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He mentions the consultation, so I should formally mention our consideration of all the concerns we have listened to. The Home Secretary has listened very carefully to those concerns, as well as to the representations and advice from law enforcement colleagues. In the light of those circumstances, it is now the Home Secretary’s view that we should give further detailed consideration to this and other issues relating to firearms that have arisen during the course of the Bill. It is therefore our intention to launch a full public consultation on a range of issues on firearms safety that have arisen over the past few months during the passage of the Bill. Accordingly, we have decided to remove those clauses at this stage. I emphasise that the current licensing arrangements remain in place. The consultation will include other issues that have arisen, including for example, points relating to miniature rifle ranges raised by colleagues across the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman).
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division in respect of the question relating to child support. The Ayes were 310 and the Noes were 230, so the Ayes have it.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
New Clause 16
Offence of threatening with an offensive weapon etc in a private place
‘(1) A person (“A”) commits an offence if—
(a) while A is in a private place, A unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person (“B”) with an article or substance to which this subsection applies, and
(b) A does so in such a way that there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm to B.
(2) Subsection (1) applies to an article or substance if it is—
(a) an offensive weapon within the meaning of section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953,
(b) an article to which section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offence of having article with blade or point in public place) applies, or
(c) a corrosive substance.
(3) In the application of subsection (1) to an article within subsection (2)(a) or (b), “private place” means a place other than—
(a) a public place,
(b) a place which is part of school premises, or
(c) a place which is part of further education premises.
(4) In the application of subsection (1) to a corrosive substance, “private place” means a place other than a public place.
(5) For the purposes of subsection (1) physical harm is serious if it amounts to grievous bodily harm for the purposes of the Offences against the Person Act 1861.
(6) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, to a fine or to both;
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years, to a fine or to both.
(7) In relation to an offence committed before the coming into force of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (maximum sentence that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way), the reference in subsection (6)(a) to 12 months is to be read as a reference to 6 months.
(8) In this section and section [Search for corrosive substance on school or further education premises]—
“corrosive substance” means a substance that is capable of burning human skin by corrosion;
“further education premises” means land used solely for the purposes of—
(a) an institution within the further education sector (within the meaning of section 91 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992), or
(b) a 16 to 19 Academy (within the meaning of section 1B of the Academies Act 2010),
excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution or the 16 to 19 Academy;
“public place” includes any place to which, at the time in question, the public have or are permitted to have access, whether on payment or otherwise;
“school premises” means land used for the purposes of a school, excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the school; and “school” has the meaning given by section 4 of the Education Act 1996.’—(Victoria Atkins.)
This new clause and NC17 and Amendment 25 make provision for and in connection with a new offence of threatening another person with an offensive weapon, bladed article or corrosive substance in a private place.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new clause 17—Search for corrosive substance on school or further education premises.
New clause 1—Protection for retail staff—
‘(1) A person (“the purchaser”) commits an offence if they intentionally obstruct a person (“the seller”) in the exercise of their duties under section 1 of this Act.
(2) In this section, “intentionally obstruct” includes, but is not limited to, a person acting in a threatening manner.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.’
New clause 5—Prohibition of bladed product displays—
‘(1) A person who in the course of a business displays a bladed product in a place in England and Wales or Northern Ireland is guilty of an offence.
(2) The appropriate Minister may by regulations provide for the meaning of “place” in this section.
(3) The appropriate Minister may by regulations make provision for a display in a place which also amounts to an advertisement to be treated for the purposes of offences in England and Wales or Northern Ireland under this Act—
(a) as an advertisement and not as a display, or
(b) as a display and not as an advertisement.
(4) No offence is committed under this section if—
(c) the bladed products are displayed in the course of a business which is part of the bladed product trade,
(d) they are displays for the purpose of that trade, and
(e) the display is accessible only to persons who are engaged in, or employed by, a business which is also part of that trade.
(5) No offence is committed under this section if the display is a requested display to an individual age 18 or over.
(6) The appropriate Minister may provide in regulations that no offence is committed under section 1 of the display complies with requirements specified in regulations.’
New clause 6—Report on the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within 6 months of this Act receiving Royal Assent, lay a report before Parliament on the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons.
(2) The report under subsection 1 must consider, but is not limited to,
(a) The effect of the reduction in police numbers on the levels of youth violence with offensive weapons;
(b) The effect of the reduction in public spending on—
(i) children’s services,
(ii) Sure Start,
(iii) state-maintained schools,
(iv) local authorities,
(v) youth offending teams,
(vi) Border Force, and
(vii) drug treatment programmes.
(3) The report under subsection 1 and the considerations under subsection 2 must consider the benefits of the public health approach to violence reduction.
(4) The report must contain all departmental evidence held relating to subsection 2 and 3.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to review the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons.
New clause 7—Offence of threatening with an offensive weapon—
‘(1) Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 (offence of threatening with offensive weapon in public) is amended as follows.
(a) After “Offence of threatening with offensive weapon” leave out “in public”.
(b) In subsection 1(a), after “weapon” leave out “with him or her in a public place”.
(c) In subsection 3, after “section” leave out ““public place” and “offensive weapon” have” and insert “offensive weapon” has’
This new clause would mean that threatening with an offensive weapon anywhere would be an offence, not merely in a public place.
New clause 10—Threatening with a bladed article or offensive weapon in a dwelling—
‘(1) Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offence of threatening with article with blade or point or offensive weapon) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection 12 insert—
13 Where the threatening offence takes place in a dwelling, a person charged with this offence may rely on the defence available in a “householder case” set out in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
14 In subsection 13 above, “dwelling” has the meaning given in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.’
New clause 11—Threatening with a bladed article or offensive weapon in a dwelling (No.2)—
‘(1) Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 (offence of threatening with offensive weapon in public) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection 10 insert—
11 Where the threatening offence takes place in a dwelling, a person charged with this offence may rely on the defence available in a “householder case” set out in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
12 In subsection 11 above, “dwelling” has the meaning given in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.’
New clause 12—Threatening with a bladed article or offensive weapon in a dwelling (No.3)—
‘(1) Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 (offence of threatening with offensive weapon in public) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection 10 insert—
11 Where an offence under this section takes place in a dwelling it shall be a defence for a person charged with such an offence to prove that he had lawful authority or reasonable excuse for having the article with him.
12 In subsection 11 above, “dwelling” has the meaning given in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.’
New clause 13—Threatening with a bladed article or offensive weapon in a dwelling (No.4)—
‘(1) Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offence of threatening with article with blade or point or offensive weapon) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection 12 insert—
13 Where an offence under this section takes place in a dwelling it shall be a defence for a person charged with such an offence to prove that he had lawful authority or reasonable excuse for having the article with him.
14 In subsection 13 above, “dwelling” has the meaning given in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.’
New clause 14—Protection for retail staff: bladed articles—
‘(1) A person (“the purchaser”) commits an offence if they intentionally obstruct a person (“the seller”) in the exercise of their duties under section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
(2) In this section, “intentionally obstruct” includes, but is not limited to, a person acting in a threatening manner.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.’
New clause 15—Offence of threatening with blade or offensive weapon (No.2)—
‘(1) Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offence of threatening with article with blade or point or offensive weapon) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection 1(a), after “applies” leave out “with him or her in a public place or on school premises”.
(3) Omit subsection 2.
(4) Omit subsection 3.
(5) Omit subsection 5.’
This new clause would mean that threatening with a knife anywhere would be an offence, not merely in a public place or school/further education premises.
New clause 20—Offence of threatening with a non-corrosive substance—
‘(1) A person commits an offence if they threaten a person with a substance they claim or imply is corrosive.
(2) It is not a defence for a person to prove that the substance used to threaten a person was not corrosive or listed under schedule 1 of this act.
(3) In this section, “threaten a person” means—
(a) that the person unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person (“A”) with the substance, and
(b) does so in such a way that a reasonable person (“B”) who was exposed to the same threat as A would think that there was an immediate risk of physical harm to B.
(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.’
New clause 21—Prohibition on the possession of a corrosive substance on educational premises—
‘(1) A person commits an offence if that person has a corrosive substance with them on school premises, further education premises or higher education premises.
(2) It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) to prove that they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance on school premises, further education premises or higher education premises.
(3) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (2), it is a defence for a person charged in England and Wales or Northern Ireland with an offence under subsection (1) to prove that they had the corrosive substance with them for use at work.
(4) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3), it is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) to show that they had the corrosive substance with them for use at work.
(5) A person is to be taken to have shown a matter mentioned in subsection (4) or (5) if—
(a) sufficient evidence of the matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.
(6) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to an imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, to a fine or to both;
(b) on summary conviction in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;
(c) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years, to a fine or both.
(7) In relation to an offence committed before the coming into force of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (maximum sentence that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way) the reference in subsection (7)(a) to 12 months is to be read as a reference to 6 months.
(8) A constable may enter any school, further education premises or higher education premises and search those premises and any person on those premises, if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that an offence under this section is, or has been, committed.
(9) If, in the course of a search under this section, a constable discovers a corrosive substance they may seize and retain it.
(10) The constable may use reasonable force, if necessary, in the exercise of entry conferred by this section.
(11) In this section—
“corrosive substance” means a substance which is capable of burning human skin by corrosion;
“school premises” means land used for the purpose of a school, excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at a school;
“school” has the meaning given by—
(a) in relation to land in England and Wales, section 4 of the Education Act 1996;
(b) in relation to land in Northern Ireland, Article 2(2) of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 (SI 1986/ 594 (NI 3).
“further educational premises” means—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, land used solely for the purposes of—
(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, land used solely for the purposes of an institution of further education within the meaning of Article 2 of the Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (SI 1997/ 1772 (NI 15) excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution”.
“higher education premises” means an institution which provides higher education;
“institution” includes any training provider (whether or not the training provider would otherwise be regarded as an institution);
“higher education” means education provided by means of a higher education course;
“higher education course” means a course of any description mentioned in Schedule 6 to the Education Reform Act 1988.’
New clause 22—Offence of threatening with corrosive substance on educational premises—
‘(1) A person commits an offence if that person threatens a person with a corrosive substance on school premises, further education premises or higher education premises.
(2) In this section—
“corrosive substance” means a substance which is capable of burning human skin by corrosion;
“threatens a person” means—
(a) unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person (“A”) with a corrosive substance, and
(b) does so in such a way that a reasonable person (“B”) who was exposed to the same threat as A would think that there was an immediate risk of physical harm to B.
“school premises” means land used for the purpose of a school, excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at a school;
“school” has the meaning given by—
(a) in relation to land in England and Wales, section 4 of the Education Act 1996;
(b) in relation to land in Northern Ireland, Article 2(2) of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 (SI 1986/594 (NI 3).
“further educational premises” means—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, land used solely for the purposes of —
(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, land used solely for the purposes of an institution of further education within the meaning of Article 2 of the Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (SI 1997/ 1772 (NI 15) excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution”.
“higher education premises” means an institution which provides higher education;
“institution” includes any training provider (whether or not the training provider would otherwise be regarded as an institution);
“higher education” means education provided by means of a higher education course;
“higher education course” means a course of any description mentioned in Schedule 6 to the Education Reform Act 1988”.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to an imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, to a fine or to both;
(b) on summary conviction in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;
(c) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years, to a fine or both.
(4) In relation to an offence committed before the coming into force of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (maximum sentence that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way) the reference in subsection (7)(a) to 12 months is to be read as a reference to 6 months.’
New clause 23—Advertising offensive weapons online—
‘(1) A person or company commits an offence when a website registered in their name is used to advertise, list or otherwise facilitate the sale of any weapon listed in Schedule 1 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order (SI 1988/2019) or any offensive weapon capable of being disguised as something else.
(2) No offence is committed under this section if—
(a) the website removes the advertisement or list within 24 hours of the registered owner of the website being informed that the advertisement or list includes a weapon listed in Schedule 1 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order (SI 1988/2019) or any offensive weapon capable of being disguised as something else.
(3) The registered owner of a website that is guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, to a fine or to both;
(b) on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.’
New clause 24—Enforcement—
‘(1) It shall be the duty of every authority to which subsection (4) applies to enforce within its area the provisions of Clauses 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20 of this Bill.
(2) An authority in England or Wales to which subsection (4) applies shall have the power to investigate and prosecute for an alleged contravention of any provision imposed by or under this section which was committed outside its area in any part of England and Wales.
(3) A district council in Northern Ireland shall have the power to investigate and prosecute for an alleged contravention of any provision imposed by or under this section which was committed outside its area in any part of Northern Ireland.
(4) The authorities to which this section applies are—
(a) in England, a county council, district council, London Borough Council, the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority and the Council of the Isles of Scilly;
(b) in Wales, a county council or a county borough council;
(c) in Scotland, a council constituted under section 2 of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994(1);
(d) in Northern Ireland, any district council.
(5) In enforcing this section, an enforcement authority must act in a manner proportionate to the seriousness of the risk and shall take due account of the precautionary principle, and shall encourage and promote voluntary action by producers and distributors.
(6) Notwithstanding subsection (5), an enforcement authority may take any action under this section urgently and without first encouraging and promoting voluntary action if a product poses a serious risk.’
New clause 25—Investigatory powers for trading standards—
‘(1) Schedule 5 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is amended in accordance with subsection (2).
(2) In Part 2, paragraph 10, at end insert—
“section (Enforcement)”.’
This new clause is consequential on NC24
New clause 26—Aggravated offence of possessing a corrosive substance or dangerous knife—
‘(1) A person is guilty of an aggravated offence of possessing a corrosive substance in a public place if—
(a) they commit an offence under section 6 of this Act, and
(b) at the time of committing the offence, the offender was—
(i) the driver of a moped or motor bicycle, or
(ii) a passenger of a moped or motor bicycle.
(2) A person is guilty of an aggravated offence of possessing certain dangerous knives if—
(a) they commit an offence under section 1A of the Restrictions of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, as amended, and
(b) at the time of committing the offence, the offender was—
(i) the driver of a moped or motor bicycle, or
(ii) a passenger of a moped or motor bicycle.
(3) A person guilty of an aggravated offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, to a fine or both;
(b) on summary conviction in Scotland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, to a fine or both.
(4) For the purposes of this section, “moped” and “motor bicycle” have the same meanings as in section 108 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.’
New clause 30—Review of the Act—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within one year of this Act receiving Royal Assent, appoint an independent person to conduct an annual review of the provisions contained in this Act and the effect those provisions have had on crimes involving offensive weapons.
(2) The review under section 1 must consider, but is not limited to—
(a) the impact the provisions on corrosive substances have had on crimes involving these substances, and whether these provisions are still adequate;
(b) the impact the provisions on firearms have had on crimes involving these weapons, and whether the provisions are still adequate;
(c) whether existing police funding is sufficient to ensure the adequate enforcement of the provisions of this Act and offences relating to offensive weapons; and
(d) anything else the Secretary of State, or independent person appointed to conduct the review, thinks appropriate.
(3) The annual review under section 1 must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.’
New clause 31—Amendments to the Crossbow Act 1987—
‘(1) The Crossbow Act 1987 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 1 insert—
“1A Requirement of crossbow certificate
(1) Subject to any exemption under this Act, it is an offence for a person to have in their possession, or to purchase or acquire, a crossbow to which this section applies without holding a crossbow certificate in force at the time, or otherwise than as authorised by such a certificate.
(2) It is an offence for a person to fail to comply with a condition subject to which a crossbow certificate is held by them.
(3) This section applies to crossbows with a draw weight of which is to be determined in regulations designated by the Home Secretary, following consultation with—
(a) the National Police Chiefs’ Council;
(b) any other person or body the Home Secretary may deem necessary.”
(3) After section 1A insert—
“1B Application for a crossbow certificate
(1) An application for the grant of a crossbow certificate must be made in the form prescribed by regulations issued by the Home Secretary to the chief officer of police for the area in which the applicant resides and shall state such particulars as may be required by the form.
(2) A crossbow certificate shall be granted where the chief officer of police is satisfied that—
(a) the applicant is fit to be entrusted with a crossbow to which section 1 of this Act applies and is not a person prohibited by this Act from possessing such a crossbow;
(b) that he has a good reason for having in his possession, or for purchasing or acquiring, the crossbow in respect of which the application is made; and
(c) in all the circumstances the applicant can be permitted to have the crossbow in his possession without danger to the public safety or to the peace.”
(3) In section 6 (punishments), in subsection 1, after “section 1” insert – “, or section 1A or section 1B”.
(4) After section 7 insert—
“7A Regulations
(1) A power to make regulations under this Act is exercisable by statutory instrument.
(2) Regulations under this Act may make provisions for the issuing of a crossbow certificate.
(3) A statutory instrument which contains regulations under this Act is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”’
Amendment 12, in clause 1, page 2, line 11, leave out “imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks” and insert “a community sentence”
This amendment, along with Amendment 13, would replace the custodial sentences for the new offence in Clause 1 (sale of corrosive products to persons under 18) with community sentences.
Amendment 13, page 2, line 14, leave out “imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months” and insert “a community sentence”
This amendment, along with Amendment 12, would replace the custodial sentences for the new offence in Clause 1 (sale of corrosive products to persons under 18) with community sentences.
Amendment 14, in clause 6, page 7, line 7, after “place” insert “with intent to cause injury”
This amendment would make it an offence to have a corrosive substance in a public place only with the intent to cause injury to someone.
Amendment 3, page 8, line 3, after “otherwise” insert
“and means any place other than premises occupied as a private dwelling (including any stair, passage, garden, yard, garage, outhouse or other appurtenance of such premises which is not used in common by the occupants of more than one such dwelling).”
This amendment would extend the definition of public places in relation to England and Wales and Northern Ireland to include communal spaces within residential blocks.
Amendment 15, page 8, line 39, leave out clause 8
This amendment, along with Amendment 16, would remove mandatory custodial sentences for people convicted under the new offence in Clause 6 who have at least one previous relevant conviction.
Amendment 16, page 9, line 37, leave out clause 9
This amendment, along with Amendment 15, would remove mandatory custodial sentences for people convicted under the new offence in Clause 6 who have at least one previous relevant conviction.
Government amendment 56.
Amendment 8, in clause 17, page 16, line 41, at end insert—
“(ab) the seller is not a trusted trader of bladed products, and”
Amendment 9, page 17, line 3, at end insert—
‘(3A) The Secretary of State may by regulations determine the conditions of being designated a trusted trader of bladed products in England and Wales for the purposes of section 17(1)(ab).
(3B) Scottish Ministers may by regulations determine the conditions of being designated a trusted trader of bladed products in Scotland for the purposes of section 17(1)(ab).
(3C) The Department of Justice in Northern Ireland may by regulations determine the conditions of being designated a trusted trader of bladed products in Northern Ireland for the purposes of section 17(1)(ab).”
Amendment 1, in clause 18, page 17, line 44, at end insert—
‘(4A) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under section 17 to prove that they reasonably believed that the buyer bought the bladed product for use for decorating purposes.”
Amendment 2, page 18, line 24, at end insert—
‘(10) For the purposes of this section a bladed product is used by a person for decorating purposes if and only if the product is only used to make improvements, enhancements or repairs to real property or personal property.”
Amendment 4, in clause 23, page 23, line 8, after “further education premises” insert
“and higher education provider premises”
Amendment 5, page 23, line 10, after “further education premises” insert
“and higher education provider premises”
Amendment 7, page 24, line 8, at end insert—
‘(7A) After subsection (6A) insert—
(6B) In this section “higher education provider” means an institution which provides higher education; “institution” includes any training provider (whether or not the training provider would otherwise be regarded as an institution); “higher education” means education provided by means of a higher education course; “higher education course” means a course of any description mentioned in Schedule 6 to the Education Reform Act 1988”.
Amendment 6, page 24, line 11, after “further education premises” insert
“and higher education provider premises”
Government amendments 57 to 61.
Amendment 22, in clause 25, page 26, line 41, leave out “the purpose only of participating in religious ceremonies” and insert “religious reasons only”
This amendment extends the defence to cover the possession of a ceremonial Sikh Kirpan for religious reasons on occasions other than religious ceremonies.
Amendment 17, page 28, line 28, leave out clause 28
This amendment, along with Amendments 18 and 19 would retain the current definition of risk for the existing offences in Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 and Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and for the new offence in Clause 29.
Amendment 11, page 29, line 6, leave out clause 29
This amendment would mean that threatening with a knife anywhere would be an offence, not merely in a public place or school/further education premises.
Amendment 18, in clause 29, page 29, line 14, leave out “(“A”)”
This amendment, along with Amendments 17 and 19, would retain the current definition of risk for the existing offences in Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 and Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and for the new offence in Clause 29.
Amendment 19, page 29, line 16, leave out from “that” to the end of line 18 and insert
“there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm to that person”
This amendment, along with Amendments 17 and 18, would retain the current definition of risk for the existing offences in Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 and Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and for the new offence in Clause 29.
Amendment 10, in clause 39, page 35, line 34, after “section” insert “17(3B),”.
Government amendments 25, 62 and 63.
Victoria Atkins
This group of new clauses and amendments deals with matters on which I know there is a great deal of agreement across the House. I will speak to Government new clauses 16 and 17 and Government amendment 25, and in response to new clauses 7, 10 to 13, 22 and 15 and amendment 11, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).
Let me start by saying how grateful I am to my hon. Friend for his new clauses and amendment. I know that he has raised this issue in the past, and, of course, he spoke very eloquently about it during our Second Reading debate on 27 June. There are offences available for the prosecution of a person who threatens someone with an offensive weapon in private, but those offences do not describe the criminality sufficiently, and do not attract the same penalties as those that are possible when the offence is committed in public. I have therefore been convinced by my hon. Friend that there is a gap in the law that should be filled.
Under new clause 16, it would be an offence for a person unlawfully and intentionally to threaten another person with a corrosive substance, a bladed or pointed article, or an offensive weapon in a way that poses an immediate risk of serious physical harm to that person. The offence will apply in any private place, which means anywhere other than a public place or school, or further education premises, where it is already an offence. In respect of a corrosive substance, a private place means anywhere other than a public place. The lawyers have been terribly exercised about that.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
As the Minister probably knows, there was a nasty incident in Coventry a couple of days ago when a young man lost his life as a result of people carrying knives. How does she propose to strengthen the Bill? We have been here before—we have had amnesties and all sorts—but we never seem any nearer to tackling the problem. Has the Minister any proposals in that regard?
Victoria Atkins
Let me say first that I am terribly sorry to hear of the incident in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but I cannot comment on the specifics. The Bill is but one part of the Government’s serious violence strategy, which has been a rolling programme of action since April. The purpose of these measures, particularly in relation to knives, is to address the concern expressed to us by charities, the police and others about the ability of young people to get hold of knives.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Does the Minister appreciate the serious concern in the British Sikh community about people being in possession of a kirpan? As president of Gatka Federation UK, I know that many people are concerned about the practice of that Sikh martial art. Various individuals and organisations, including the Sikh Council UK and the Sikh Federation UK, have expressed solid concerns, and I think that an amendment has also been tabled. I hope that the Minister can allay those genuine concerns.
Victoria Atkins
I am delighted to say that I can, and I promise to deal with that in more detail in due course. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), her colleague the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who have led discussions on the issue.
Victoria Atkins
May I make a little more progress?
In relation to the issue of a private place, it will become an offence to threaten someone with a corrosive substance on educational premises, for example, a point raised under new clause 22 by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). This provides for a maximum penalty of four years, in line with the maximum penalty for the public offence and considerably more than the current six-month maximum for a threat that amounts to common assault, which is the offence that may be charged currently.
The Government amendment would avoid householders having to justify owning their kitchen knives—again that demonstrates the balancing exercise we have had to do in this Bill. It targets the criminality that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley wants to address while denying my fellow lawyers the chance to argue about possessing domestic implements, a sentiment I know my hon. Friend will endorse. New clause 17 will provide the necessary powers to enter and search for a corrosive substance on school and further education premises in support of the new offence.
Government amendment 25 simply sets the extent of the new offence as England and Wales, but I know my hon. Friend and others are keen to ensure that householders who have to defend themselves against burglars are not caught inadvertently by this new offence. That is not the intention of the Government, or I suspect the House, if this new offence is passed. The new offence is designed to capture perpetrators who have no recourse to the well-established defences of self-defence, defence of another and defence of property.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for giving way. The Minister said that the corrosive substances offence applies only to England and Wales, but I understand that some of the legislation applies to Northern Ireland. Can the Minister confirm either now or later that this legislation, which we welcome and wish to see, can be applicable in Northern Ireland under the rules and laws we have there as well?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Gentleman is drawing me into the incredibly complex area of applicability in Northern Ireland. He is right that many of the measures in the Bill have corresponding provisions for Northern Ireland, but I am sure that in due course I will be able to help the House with the particular point on corrosive substances, if I may return to that.
Gavin Robinson
The Minister will see in the Bill that for the specific provisions in clauses 1 to 4 it is for a newly appointed Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland to bring forward an order on the day that they so appoint.
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.
I hope that this new offence will attract widespread support across the Chamber. It recognises that some threats in private can be very serious indeed. I will therefore ask my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley not to press his amendments and I commend to the House new clauses 16 and 17 and amendment 25.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I thank the Minister very sincerely for the way she has engaged in this issue. Clearly it was a ridiculous loophole that the offence of threatening somebody with a knife applied only in a public place and not in a private place, and I am delighted that the Minister listened to the argument and engaged with it and has brought forward these new clauses today, which I will happily support. On that basis I am very happy to confirm to her that I will not press my new clauses in this regard.
Victoria Atkins
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend and thank him again for his help not just on this but on a drafting correction that we made in the Bill Committee.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
He is always helpful.
Victoria Atkins
My colleague sitting next to me is quite right: my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is always helpful.
Government amendments 56, 62 and 63 are minor amendments and have been included at the request of the Scottish Government. It is fair to say, as I said in Committee, that my officials have had a good working relationship with the Scottish Government on this Bill. These new amendments are intended to facilitate the operation of the new offences within the Scottish legal system. Under the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 provision is made for matters of routine evidence in criminal proceedings. These provisions operate so as to allow to be admitted into evidence certain routine matters by virtue of a certificate provided by an authorised expert. That means that if the accused person does not provide at least seven days’ notice of an intent to challenge the evidence prior to trial it is admitted without any further proof being necessary. Given that many prosecutions in this area may be at summary court level, requiring expert testimony in these cases as a matter of course would be unduly expensive, so these amendments will ensure that the new corrosive offences included in the Bill are subject to the existing matters of routine evidence provisions.
Amendments 57 and 58 will limit the new offence of possession of an offensive weapon in section 141(1A) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to possession “in private”. That is to prevent overlap with existing offences. In shorthand, the aim of clause 24 is to prohibit the possession in private of offensive weapons as defined by section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988—for example, zombie knives. Amendments 57 and 58 clarify this to mean in private, because it is already against the law to possess any bladed article—which is obviously wider than the definition of offensive weapons—under section 139 of the 1988 Act.
The approach that we have taken to the new possession offence in the Bill is to mirror the defences that already applied to the manufacture, importation, sale and general supply of curved swords. The burden of proof for the defences that apply to the current legislation for manufacture and so on is to show that the defence applies. Therefore the burden of proof for the defences provided for the new possession offence in the Bill will also be to show that the defence applies. However, the burden of proof for the defence in relation to possession of an article with a blade in public is to prove, which is a higher burden, so to avoid inconsistency we are limiting the new possession offence in the Bill to places other than a public place. In this way, we will continue to rely on existing legislation for possession in public, and the new possession offence in the Bill will apply only in private.
I shall turn now to amendments 59 and 61, and to the Opposition’s amendment 22. Amendments 59 to 61 clarify the wording of clause 25 so as to include “religious reasons”, rather than “religious ceremonies”. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), who tabled amendment 22 and worked with me and my officials to get the law into a better place. This included facilitating discussions with representatives of the Sikh Federation last week, and it was a pleasure to meet them. We can now ensure that the Bill does not inadvertently prohibit the possession and supply of kirpans as part of the observance of the Sikh faith.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I should like to thank the Minister for her response to the amendment on the possession of the kirpan, the religious sword that is used by Sikhs. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) and I represent a large Sikh community, and they have been very concerned about the omission in the Bill. We would also like to congratulate the all-party parliamentary group for British Sikhs on the work that it has done, and we thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for their willingness to listen and to act on behalf of the Sikh community.
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I want to make it clear that it was never the Government’s intention to worry anyone or inadvertently to criminalise acts of faith in that way. I hope that the Sikh community and those who represent them understand that we did this with the very best of intentions.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
I should like to thank the Minister for the open, listening approach that she has taken in response to representations from myself, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the Sikh Federation and others who have contacted her. Can she clarify that the effect of the Government amendments to the Bill will be to maintain the status quo as far as Sikh religious practice is concerned? That is all that the community were asking for throughout this process, and if that is what the amendments will do, I believe that they will be warmly welcomed.
Victoria Atkins
I am happy to confirm that. The original wording mirrored the wording used in existing legislation for offences in public, but we have of course understood that praying at home, for example, may not fall within the definition of ceremony. We do not want to leave any doubt or room for worry; we are amending the Bill to enable prayers and so on at home to continue.
Mr Jim Cunningham
The Minister has been very generous in giving way. May I identify myself with my colleagues in support of the amendment? Like them, I have been approached by the Sikh Federation, and when I referred earlier to the knives issue, I was not referring to the federation and its members’ religious practices; I was talking about crime and so on.
Victoria Atkins
Of course. I am sure that everyone who works in this complex area has sympathy with the hon. Gentleman in wanting to clarify the point he raised in his earlier intervention.
As the Government have tabled amendments 59 to 61, I hope that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston will not press amendment 22.
Victoria Atkins
I shall move on to new clause 1. The right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) continues to raise the issue of the safety of retail staff, and I thank him for that. Indeed, I recently discussed that issue with him, and also with the head of the British Retail Consortium. Although the Government fully understand the concern of retailers and their staff about being threatened or attacked if they refuse to sell a corrosive product or bladed article to a member of the public, we do not believe that a new criminal offence as set out in new clauses 1 and 14 would provide additional protection or result in more people being prosecuted. The law already provides the police and Crown Prosecution Service with sufficient powers to prosecute this type of offending and provide protection to retail staff. A number of criminal offences are available to cover a wide range of unacceptable behaviour, including that described in the tabled amendments, ranging from abusive and threatening language to actual violent offences against the person. So, we submit that there is no gap.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
A group of women shopworkers came to see me because of regular threatening behaviour by a gang of youths. These women were afraid and fearful, especially when they had to work alone. We have an opportunity today to strengthen the law; it clearly needs strengthening. We should do so.
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely concerned to hear that, but I wonder why the local police are not using the powers already available to them, because if a gang is behaving like that, there are offences that would enable the police to deal with that threatening behaviour, and any violent acts.
The Sentencing Council has set out, in its definitive guideline on assault offences, that it is an “aggravating factor” for an offence to be committed against those who are either working in the public sector or providing a service to the public, and an offence against either group could result in a more severe sentence within the statutory maximum for the offence—and that includes retail and shop staff.
However, there is more to this than the shape of the legislation, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would agree. That is why, in October 2017, the National Police Chiefs Council—with the support of Home Office funding—launched the national business crime centre, a repository for good practice, standards and guidance for all business nationally. It also acts as a national alert and data feed service, to enable businesses to have more information regarding crime in their local area.
David Hanson
If all the Minister says is true, why has every retail organisation in the country, and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, argued in favour of new clause 1, which I shall be moving shortly?
Victoria Atkins
They are of course free to do so, but we have looked carefully at the law. However, I chair the national retail crime steering group, which brings retailers and police together to tackle retail crime, and I am happy to ask the police, in that forum, why retailers feel this way.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
If the Minister genuinely does not want to frustrate the content of new clause 1, could she not simply accept it given that there is genuine concern out there that, currently, the law does not go far enough?
Victoria Atkins
I know this will not meet with the approval of Opposition Members but, having looked very carefully at it, we have not been able to identify a gap in the law, which is why, regrettably, I cannot accept new clause 1. We encourage closer local partnerships between police and retailers so that better crime prevention measures are put in place, because that must be a factor. We want to ensure that local police respond effectively to reported crime.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
The reality on the ground, and USDAW and the Co-op Group have been clear about this, is that the police do not consider offences such as shoplifting, and all the things that go on around it, seriously enough even to turn up at a store to take a statement. It is a fact that shop workers at the tills are the ones enforcing the legislation that we pass. When we demand that identification is presented for alcohol and cigarette sales, and the like, it is those workers who are on the frontline in defending the legislation we pass. Surely they deserve our support, too.
Victoria Atkins
Of course, anyone working on the frontline deserves our support. The criminality the hon. Gentleman describes, such as shoplifting, is already enforced, so the discussion should be about local policing priorities. If he writes to me with particular instances in his constituency, I am very happy to raise it through the national retail crime steering group.
Victoria Atkins
A lot of Members are seeking to intervene, and I will give the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) a chance.
Toby Perkins
The hon. Lady is very kind. She says that she will speak to her committee of retail representatives about why they feel this is necessary, but should she not have done that before rejecting the amendment? It is clear that they are saying it is necessary, so it is a little late for her to say she will vote against the amendment while saying she will start consulting on it.
Victoria Atkins
As part of our discussions—I not only include myself but Home Office officials—of course we talk about the safety of retail staff. As I said, I had a meeting very recently. It is not a question of just starting now; we are aware of these concerns. Of course, hon. Members voicing those concerns in the Chamber gives me and my officials more material to ask the National Police Chiefs Council what is happening on this and whether there is more that can and should be done at local level.
Jim McMahon
I appreciate the Minister’s courtesy in allowing me to come back. The reality is that serious violent crime, organised crime and online crime, and the protection of vulnerable groups, takes up a significant amount of police time. In Greater Manchester we have lost 2,000 frontline officers, so it is not right for the Government who have made those cuts and made that decision to put the pressure back on Greater Manchester police to maintain a police service with diminishing resources when crime is going up. It just is not correct. She has an opportunity to respond to the debate, to respond to new clause 1 and to show that we are sticking up for shop workers. It is not good enough to defer responsibility on this.
Victoria Atkins
Forgive me, but it is not a question of deferring responsibility. It is the responsibility of the local police and crime commissioner and the chief constable, under our system of policing, to decide local policing priorities. That is why we had the police and crime commissioner elections a couple of years ago.
The right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) is assiduous in his parliamentary questions to me about retail crime, but if hon. Members have concerns that retailers and retail staff in their local area are not being looked after, I encourage them to take it up with their police and crime commissioner, because it really is their decision as to how local resources are prioritised.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
Does the Minister not realise quite how this looks? Shop workers across the country—in every part of the country, every constituency and every region—the frontline workers, their union and the police are saying, “We do not need consultation; we need a change in the law to protect us.” What the Minister is saying, and I say this with respect, is that she and her officials know better. I say we should listen to what the shop workers of this country are telling us and mend the gap in the law.
Victoria Atkins
I do listen—I must disagree with the hon. Gentleman on that. The point I am making is that the laws that can protect shop workers are already in force, so it is not a question of making a new law because we hope that that will address the criminality, because those laws are already in place. There are public order offences, so where someone is rude or abusive, that is a criminal offence already. Our job here is to make law, but this is also sometimes about how it is applied on the ground, and that is what I am talking about. I am talking about saying to the NPCC and others, “What’s happening on these concerns colleagues are raising about how retail workers are being treated in their shops?” I know that this is an important issue, not only to Labour Members, but to my colleagues and to me. That is why if we can do nothing else, we should get the message out there that the law already exists to protect shop workers. We should focus on how that is pushed and put into effect.
Victoria Atkins
I am just about to move on to the next topic, but of course I will give way.
Susan Elan Jones
I am grateful to the Minister for that. Does she realise that many shop workers across the country are scared to death about all this? They are scared to death of knives being pulled on them. This is no longer just a problem in our inner cities; it goes right across the country. This is happening in rural areas and in small towns. My view is that we need to make the legislation as strong as possible, not just to protect the shop workers, but to send a message to people out there that this is a really serious issue.
Victoria Atkins
I completely agree that we need to communicate the fact that the behaviour the hon. Lady described is utterly unacceptable, but she has given the example of a knife being pulled on a shop worker and legislation is already in place to deal with that. Furthermore, the independent Sentencing Council, which sets the guidelines for the judiciary across the country, has said that in that scenario the fact that the knife was pulled on a person in their line of work can be an aggravating factor. So the law is already there and we just need to make sure it is being used as effectively as possible, not just by our police, but by our judiciary.
On the point about serious violence more generally, the hon. Lady will know that we published the serious violence strategy in April. It has marked a step change in how we tackle serious violence, because we acknowledge that serious violence is no longer restricted to our large urban centres and is spreading out across the country, particularly with the rise of county lines. She will know that one of the drivers behind this rise in serious violence is drugs—the drug markets. A great deal of work is being done just on that one stream to tackle that.
For example, a couple of weeks ago we held an international conference, drawing together law enforcement and public health officials from across the world to talk about the rise in serious violence, because this is happening not only in the UK, but in other countries. From that conference, which I was able to attend, although sadly just for a little while, we could see the lessons that we can learn from other policing experts across the world and from public health officials. That is also why the Home Secretary has announced recently that we are looking into a consultation on making tackling serious violence a public health duty for local authorities—all arms of the state. That goes further than the models in Scotland and in Wales, which are often rightly cited as good examples, because we want to look into whether having a public duty will help with the sharing of information and the working together. Those of us who served on the Public Bill Committee and those of us who take a particular interest in this topic know that these things do not always work as well as they should.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Interestingly, the Minister said that the Home Secretary has talked about adopting a public health approach—I believe that was at the Conservative party conference. Since then we have heard absolutely nothing in this Chamber about what is happening on the public health approach. I believe I have asked nine times in this Chamber when we will be getting a debate on this. I do not suppose the Minister would like to respond to that now.
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady asked me about this at the last Home Office orals and I said I would be delighted to debate with her. She has asked this in business questions, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has written to me and to the Home Secretary. I am keen to have the debate, which I think is really important, and the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), has heard this exchange, so who knows what opportunities may be made available.
Victoria Atkins
I give way to the hon. Lady, whom I am tempted to call an hon. Friend because she and I have discussed this issue so often.
Lyn Brown
I am delighted that the Minister modelled this part of the Bill on my asks on acid crime. I know that she will have studied my 5 September speech really closely to see our other asks on this issue. When might she find the time to introduce a strategy to deal with the violent crime that is rising from the county lines experience across the country and that will literally join up all the cross-Government actions that have been taken to deal with it?
Victoria Atkins
I pay tribute to the hon. Lady and her constituency neighbour, the right hon. Member for—I am going to get this wrong—
Victoria Atkins
Thank you. She and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) have done a great deal on not only county lines but on corrosive substance attacks. She will know that we now have the corrosive substance action plan, which is a voluntary commitment that we introduced at the beginning of the year to get all the major retailers on the right page when it comes to the sale of corrosive substances, because we knew that it would take time to introduce legislation in this place. I hope that she is pleased and satisfied with the Bill’s provisions on corrosive substances.
On county lines, the hon. Lady will know that we have announced the launch of the national co-ordination centre. It brings law enforcement together because, frankly, law enforcement has not been sharing information as well as it could throughout the country on the movement of these gangs of criminals, who exploit the distances between the major urban centres and rural and coastal areas, knowing that constabulary boundaries sometimes get in the way. The national co-ordination centre was launched in September and had an extraordinary week of action in which something like 500 arrests were made. If have got that figure wrong, I am sure I will be able to correct it in due course.
It is important to note that the co-ordination centre brings together not only law enforcement officials but those involved in looking after children—local authorities—because we know that the most vulnerable children have been targeted as they are attending pupil referral units or while they are living in care homes. We need to ensure that when the police go in and do a raid, we have social services there to pick up the children and start caring for them, to avoid their being re-trafficked. Indeed, I hope the fact that so many cases are now being prosecuted not only in the traditional manner, for conspiracy to supply class As, but using the Modern Slavery Act 2015, brings real stigma to those gangs that bizarrely and extraordinarily think that it is somehow okay to exploit children.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I hear what my hon. Friend says about the national co-ordination centre. From my experience talking to my local police force, I recognise that crime is interlinked. We can talk about drugs and we can talk about weapons, but they are interlinked issues, and they are interlinked with so many other things. We are asking the police to think holistically in how they look at these issues so that they can put into place a better strategy for dealing with these problems.
Victoria Atkins
That is very much the case. Indeed, in my previous career prosecuting serious organised crime, on occasions we prosecuted organised crime gangs for, for example, the importation of counterfeit cigarettes, because that is what we could get them on. We suspected that they were importing other things, because if they had the lines open to import one type of illicit material, it followed that they probably had the ability to important other illicit materials. Sadly, as we get better at identifying modern slavery, we know that that can also include people.
Let me turn to new clause 5, which deals with an important area that colleagues across the House have expressed interest in.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
If I have understood correctly, the key thing that new clause 16 does is to fill a gap in the law to cover things that happen in private properties, such as the flat in lower Westgate Street in Gloucester, where one of my hapless constituents was murdered precisely because of an argument over drug selling receipts. Can the Minister confirm that police and others would have powers under new clause 16 to move much earlier against the sort of threat that might arise in that situation?
Victoria Atkins
Indeed, and I thank my hon. Friend for being kind enough to show me his great city only a few months ago. We met with senior police officers and others to discuss a number of issues relating to vulnerability, including the vulnerability of those being stalked. He brings to the Chamber his commitment to helping the most vulnerable in his constituency, and he has hit the nail on the head. Filling that gap to cover threatening behaviour in a private place makes it possible to address the sort of situation that he has described. Where gangs are in somebody’s home, perhaps at a party, and things turn nasty, the location of the person holding the knife changes under the current law depending on where they are in relation to the front door. The purpose of new clause 16 is to make it irrelevant whether their threatening behaviour takes place when they are standing on one side of the front door or the other.
New clause 5 concerns the secure display of bladed products. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley, who tabled it, knows that I have taken great interest in this area. We have looked carefully at whether prohibition as set out in the new clause would address the concerns that she and others have rightly raised. Our concern is that the prohibition is a blanket requirement. I have looked into whether there are ways that we could make it more targeted, so that councils with a particular problem with knife crime can lay an order covering the display of bladed products in shops in their locality. What we are doing—not what we would like to do, but what we are in the process of doing—is encouraging much stronger voluntary action by retailers to take more robust measures on displays using a risk-based approach.
Louise Haigh
The Minister is absolutely right that new clause 5 would impose a blanket ban on retailers displaying bladed products, but the Government are proposing a blanket ban on the sale of bladed products to residential premises. Why is it one rule for online and another for face-to-face retailers?
Victoria Atkins
We are indeed introducing a blanket ban on the delivery of bladed products to homes, first because we know that test purchases online have not led to the sort of results that we have seen with retailers. We wanted to close that gap and make it clear to online retailers, some of which do not seem to understand that they currently are not allowed to sell bladed products to under-18s and should have robust measures in place to ensure that they do not. The Bill seeks to re-emphasise that, but we also want to ensure that the person picking up the knife has to go to a post office, delivery depot or local shop with such arrangements and show identification to establish that they are over 18. That is the purpose behind those measures.
We do not currently have evidence of the rate of shoplifting of knives by young people who go on to use them in crimes. That is part of the problem. As a first step, my officials are working with retailers to come up with a much stronger voluntary response, which we know retailers are responding to well, because, in fairness, the voluntary commitments have been working well.
Bob Stewart
When packages are delivered to post offices to be picked up, are they clearly marked, “This is a knife”, or does the post office official know that it is a knife so that it cannot be given to someone under the age of 18?
Victoria Atkins
The conditions in the Bill require those who are selling such products to make it clear on the packaging.
Victoria Atkins
Oh, gosh. I am going to try to finish my speech by 4.30 pm, so I will give way to the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) because she has tabled amendments to which I will not have time to speak.
Anna Turley
I appreciate the Minister’s generosity. I hope to speak to those amendments but if time eludes me, fair enough; that is why I want to raise this issue now. Have the Government done an impact assessment of the implications of these measures for online retailers? I speak on behalf of a constituent who runs a DIY shop, and thinks that the implications would be in the region of £30,000 if he was unable to sell wallpaper scrapers and specific DIY knives to residential addresses.
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Lady’s constituent will be able to sell the products. We are not banning the online sale of bladed products; we are making it clear that retailers have to conduct proper checks as to the age of the person to whom they are selling. They should be doing that at the moment anyway, and this legislation means that they will also have to package the items up as they do if they are selling online or at a distance. The point is that the package has to be labelled, and that it will then be kept at the post office or wherever before being picked up by a person with ID.
Mr Betts
Sheffield is obviously the home of knives in this country—knives for proper purposes. I visited Taylor’s Eye Witness, a firm in my constituency that manufactures and wholesales knives. As it is a wholesaler, 10% of its business is by post, passing things on through other retailers. It says that that aspect of its business is threatened by this legislation. Will the Minister consider amendment 9 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), suggesting a trusted trader scheme, to see whether the requirements of this measure could at least be reduced for trusted traders? This business employs 60 people, whose jobs could be at risk.
Victoria Atkins
Of course I acknowledge the great history of Sheffield as the centre of knife making in this country and, dare I say it, across the world. We have looked very carefully at the trusted trader amendments, but we believe they would introduce more bureaucracy for retailers, which is why we do not support them. This is simply a matter of conducting checks, and then the grown-up who is buying their kitchen knife going to a post office and showing their ID to prove that they are in compliance with the law.
Victoria Atkins
I will take one more intervention because I have promised that I will finish at 4.30 pm.
Alex Chalk
The Minister is extremely kind. Although I and, I dare say other hon. Members, can understand the public interests of this proposal entirely, retailers would want to be satisfied that there is a level playing field, so that overseas retailers importing knives into the UK are governed by the same rules, and that they are not going—if this is not too much of a pun—to undercut domestic suppliers.
Victoria Atkins
I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he has identified one of the problems with which we grappled in Committee. The Bill includes a clause specifically for overseas sales. The requirement is that any delivery company that enters into a contract with an overseas retailer or manufacturer must itself conduct the checks as to the age of the person to whom it is delivering. Arguably, the checks are more arduous on delivery drivers for overseas retailers than for UK-based retailers. He will understand that, if a retailer resides in China, there is very little we can do to require it to comply with these laws, but we have tried to address that point.
I hope and believe that the Bill addresses the concerns that have been raised about the sale and delivery of corrosive products, the possession of corrosive substances, the sale and delivery of knives and so on. I will listen with interest during the rest of this debate because hon. Members have tabled several interesting amendments. I hope that I have answered their concerns with regard to the amendments and new clauses I have spoken on thus far, but I may seek to address one or two amendments at a later stage if there are particular questions they would like me to answer.
David Hanson
I rise to speak to new clause 1. I say to the Minister straightaway that I think she has missed the point on this. We are trying to strengthen the Bill to protect retail staff who are upholding the law. I support the Government’s position in relation to the banning of sales to under-18s of corrosive products and the restrictions on sales of knives. However, the question is whether it is right that those who hold stocks of those items are accordingly prosecuted if they sell them.
The key question for this House is: what about the people who are at the frontline in upholding the law through enforcing this legislation? Under this Bill, in the case of refusal to sell corrosive products and knives, it will not be the police or the security services, police community support officers or police and crime commissioners, or the local council or trading standards who are at the frontline in upholding the legislation that we hope the House will pass this evening. It will be the individual shop staff—often alone; often, perhaps, not much older than some of the people who are trying to buy these products—who are at the frontline of that challenge.
Let us just picture for a moment a large, 24-hour supermarket open at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning with a shop assistant at the front counter refusing to make a sale of a corrosive product or a knife, upholding the legislation that the Minister proposes. Imagine for a moment a small, open-all-hours shop refusing to sell these products, or a DIY store on a Saturday afternoon refusing to sell at that frontline. When that member of staff says no, they say no on behalf of us all in upholding this legislation.
The simple measure that I have brought before the House would strengthen the Bill to give those people some protection. It would tell them what their rights are in upholding this legislation and what defences we are giving to them.
Philip Davies
As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows, I worked for Asda for 12 years before I first entered this place, and what he has said about shop staff is absolutely right. It is a hellishly difficult job working on the checkouts in a supermarket—or in any shop, for that matter—and we ask an awful lot of those people, who are not paid an awful lot to do the really responsible job that they do. I agree that the least that we can do in this House, when we put such pressures on them, is to give them the support that they need. On that basis, I very much support his new clause 1.
David Hanson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. As he will know, the frontline staff are the people who are upholding the law not just on this issue but on all age-related sales. While today we can only discuss amendments on corrosive products and on knives, the Minister needs to look at this issue in relation to all age-related sales. Shop staff are upholding the law on our behalf, and they deserve protection. My new clause would strengthen that protection. It provides for a level 4 fine of up to £2,500 for abusive behaviour when staff are enforcing the legislation that the Minister proposes.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, support my right hon. Friend’s new clause 1. Does he agree that there is a particular point about staff in small shops that are often open until 8, 9 or 10 o’clock at night? The shop will often be the only place open in that community and not in an area where people are walking past. The one or two staff in there could find themselves under immense pressure from people wanting to buy substances, and they have to reject them with nobody about to help.
David Hanson
My hon. Friend is right. If the Bill was passed with new clause 1 included, shop workers could at least point to a sign on the till saying, “You will face a fine if you do not desist from this behaviour.” There are fewer police on the streets to call, but this is an opportunity to at least strengthen the protection of individuals working in these shops.
The retailers we have all met in the past few weeks as part of the “Freedom from Fear” campaign are doing their bit. They are installing CCTV and putting security measures in place. I visited the Co-op in Leeswood in my constituency, where staff have handsets and headphones so that they can communicate, and individuals are being banned from stores. It knows that it has a duty of care for its staff. All I am asking is that the Government recognise they have a duty of care also.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
I, too, support my right hon. Friend’s new clause. Does he agree that workers in rural locations, where shops are often single-staffed and the distance from the nearest police station may be significant, are often left in a very vulnerable situation indeed?
David Hanson
Indeed. My new clause—if adopted, or if the Minister looks at this as part of age-related sales—would give additional protection to shop workers who are upholding the legislation that this Government have introduced.
The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, of which I am a proud member and which—I declare an interest—gives some support to my constituency party, supports my new clause. The Co-op party, the co-op movement, the Association of Convenience Stores, the British Retail Consortium and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents all support the new clause publicly and visibly because they recognise that they have a duty of care to their staff.
This matters because, in the past 10 years, we have seen a rise in the incidence of assaults on and threatening behaviour towards retail staff. An USDAW survey showed last year that 66% of staff have reported verbal abuse, and the number who reported threats of physical violence increased to 42% in the past year alone.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I support my right hon. Friend’s new clause. I visited a Co-op shop in Croydon recently. The manager there had had a knife pulled on him. There had been several occasions in recent times when incidents had occurred but the police had not come, because the incidents were not deemed important enough. Those shop workers were having to deal with all kinds of incidents. They feel a lack of protection, and they support what my right hon. Friend is trying to do.
David Hanson
My new clause would give added protection, but more importantly, it would show retail staff on the frontline that we are on their side, backing them up and giving them the support they need.
The British Retail Consortium and the Association of Convenience Stores have identified violence to staff as the most significant risk in the sector. The National Federation of Retail Newsagents has published research showing that there are 2,300 incidents daily among its members. The Association of Convenience Stores has said that enforcing the law on age-restricted sales is one of the biggest triggers of abuse against people working in convenience stores. The British Retail Consortium has said that age verification checks are one of the key triggers for attacks. USDAW has said that shop workers are on the frontline of helping to keep our community safe, so their role should be valued and they deserve our respect. The Co-op and police and crime commissioners such as Paddy Tipping in Nottingham have said the same.
If the Minister can agree to this new clause or take it away and look at the general principle with the National Police Chiefs Council, she will be standing shoulder to shoulder with every member of staff who is upholding the law. She will be saying that she is with them and protecting them. She should do the right thing. The 15,000 members of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents want this new clause. The British Retail Consortium, representing 70% of retail trade, wants this new clause. The Association of Convenience Stores, representing 33,000 stores, wants this. The Co-op group wants it. The Co-op party wants it, and the USDAW trade union wants it. It seems that the only person who does not is the Minister. I know that she is concerned about this issue. I ask her to reflect upon it, to support this new clause and to work with those bodies to come to a solution that protects retail staff who are enforcing the legislation that this House has enacted.
Vicky Ford
At the moment, many of our constituents seem to think the only thing we are discussing in this place is yet more Brexit, so it is with great pleasure that I am here to speak about something so important, unfortunately, to the daily lives of many of our constituents.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak to a group of 16 to 18-year-olds in my constituency. Colleagues will know that that can sometimes be quite a challenging group of constituents to please. When I told them that one of the things we were working on in Westminster was a new law that would make it so much more challenging to buy and sell dangerous knives—zombie knives and the like—on the internet, they stood up and clapped, because it is so near the top of their list of concerns and of their agenda for how to keep themselves safe when they are out on the streets. They have been shocked, as we all have been shocked, by the rise in violent crime across the country. When violent crime increases, it is, unfortunately, very often our young people who suffer. I believe that it is the first job of politicians to try to keep our constituents safe, and that is why I welcome the Bill.
We have discussed the sale of knives online, stopping them being sent to residential addresses, and if they are legal sales—in other words, sales of a permitted bladed article to someone over the age of 18—making sure that those who receive them provide identification. I welcome the parts of the Bill that make it illegal to possess the most offensive weapons in private as well as in public, including zombie knives and knuckledusters. New clause 16, moved today, will make the offence of threatening with an offensive weapon in a private place part of the Bill. This new offence of making it unlawful to have offensive weapons in private means that, when the police find a zombie knife in a private place or someone’s home—as members of Chelmsford police have—they can arrest and charge the owner with the proposed offence and remove the weapon from the owner.
I am extremely pleased that the Bill extends the current offence of possessing such bladed articles or offensive weapons on school premises to cover all further education premises in England and Wales as well as schools. As I have said, it is this group of 16 to 18-year-olds in my constituency who have campaigned very hard since my election for stronger laws against this type of crime and for stronger action against this type of weapon.
In Essex, we have the highest number of violent incidents relating to urban street gangs and county lines in the whole of the east of England, but we have a police and crime commissioner who is committed to reducing that. While violent crime across the country has increased by 12%, the police and crime commissioner in my own county—the police, fire and crime commissioner; she has now taken on the fire commissioner role as well—told us just last Friday night that it has increased by 3% to 4% in Essex. That is lower than the national rise, but it is still increasing.
Thanks to Ministers listening to the pleas from Essex police, we will now have 150 additional police officers on the streets in Essex, because we have been able to increase the police precept. Essex MPs were united in asking for the increase in the police precept. I am sure the Minister will be very glad to hear that a whole tranche of those new Essex police officers will hold their passing-out parade on Friday afternoon. We are very proud to see that decision actually turning into reality.
At the end of the summer, I spent a day and a night on patrol with my local police. While I have the Minister’s attention, I will mention some other items that I would like her to consider. The officers in my district alone did 172 stop and searches last month. They said that the power to stop and search is vital for tackling county lines and getting on top of the increase in violent crime. Stop and searches quite often result in the seizure of offensive weapons, such as the ones we have been discussing.
Anna Turley
I rise to support my two amendments, amendments 1 and 2, with regard to a specific constituency case I mentioned earlier to the Minister. I am afraid her response did not go quite far enough to satisfy me, so I would like to press my case a bit further.
My point refers specifically to an online decorating business in my constituency, which expressed deep concerns that the proposed legislation could potentially force them out of business. My constituent estimates that were the Bill to be enacted as it stands, he would lose approximately £32,000 per year. That is probably enough to destroy a small business. He currently sells a number of bladed decorating tools, including bladed paint scrapers, craft knives, safety knives and utility blades—all very niche tools for the DIY trade. These items are delivered to residential addresses and so the provisions under clause 17 could potentially make a significant part of his trade illegal.
There could also be a wider impact on the rest of his business. As customers often purchase those items with other decorating materials such as wallpaper and paint, my constituent is concerned that if people are forced to visit decorating stores to buy a single tool, such as a scraper or a knife, they will buy all their decorating materials and bladed items there in one go. That would have a huge impact on his business.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I wonder whether my hon. Friend has seen, as I think would be the case under the Bill, that people like her constituent would not be able to post those products to somebody’s home, whereas somebody selling identical products from overseas would freely be able to carry on sending them by post to the purchaser.
Anna Turley
My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. That is just another huge loophole in the Bill that will have an impact on British businesses, forcing them to be unable to compete. Ahead of Small Business Saturday, I really hope Ministers will take that under consideration.
In response to my question earlier, the Minister responded that the simple difference would be that people would just have to go to a post office to sign for these goods. In areas like mine, people often travel as far as six or eight miles to get to the nearest post office. That is a long way, so why would they not go to the nearest B&Q or other big store to buy all their DIY needs? We are driving out small online businesses who have struggled to get themselves up and running. They are losing out yet again to major stores, because we are making their customers’ lives more difficult.
My constituent is just one example of many small and medium-sized businesses across the country that could be inadvertently affected by the Bill. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and local communities, and we will all be celebrating them this weekend. I am sure the Government did not intend for the Bill to unjustly penalise online retailers and I am sure this is just an oversight in the drafting. The proposed legislation already makes very specific exemptions on bladed items for activities such as sporting or re-enactment. It would therefore not be unreasonable to extend that flexibility to decorating items which similarly support a genuine public purpose and are used regularly by law-abiding citizens.
I would also like to speak in support of amendments 8 and 9, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), which seek to address the same problem. There will obviously be a number of other businesses—we have already heard today about the importance of Sheffield steel and Sheffield knives—affected by the poor drafting of the Bill, including in the catering and the arts and crafts industries. The amendments would create a trusted trader status entitling qualifying businesses to sell bladed products to residential premises, creating another means of protecting such legitimate businesses. As long as there was not a resulting excessive administrative burden or unnecessary delays to trading while registering, the trusted trader approach could be an effective means to ensure a satisfactory balance between necessary restrictions on the sale of blades to those who intend to use them as weapons, and ensuring legitimate businesses can continue to operate.
The Minister raised the point about overburdensome regulation in opposition to the amendments. Again, she is already asking people to send their customers to the post office, so that we try to make sure that they are not selling to those under the age of 18. We are already putting such restrictions on people. I do not think it is that burdensome to ask someone to register as a trusted trader, which is a positive thing for them to sign up to and would enhance, not jeopardise, their businesses.
I hope that the Government will look again at the amendments and recognise that there is, I am afraid, a serious flaw in the drafting of the Bill. I hope that they will work with the Opposition to amend the Bill as it continues its passage through the House, while engaging fully with the retailers and others affected. Otherwise, I am afraid that the Bill as it stands will have a disastrous effect on many of our hard-working small businesses, which are the lifeblood of economies such as mine.
Huw Merriman
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), who is a fellow Arsenal fan and one of the nicest people in this place—[Interruption.] There was no career to lose—at least for me.
I want to speak about new clauses 5 and 26. I am conscious that the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) has not yet spoken, so I will leave time for her to do so. Generally, I am very supportive of the Bill, and I am very concerned that the number of offences of violence against the person recorded by the police in 2017 was 21% higher than in 2016. That demonstrates the need for more to be done across the House to support the police. There was also the highest level of offences involving knives or sharp instruments since 2011, so we clearly have a problem. This should not be a party political issue; it should be for all of us as constituency MPs to work together to deliver a solution. That certainly came through to me last night, when I was due to be meeting a friend—not just a friend to me, but to many in this place—who works for Save the Children and who I went to the Syrian border with. She did not turn up to the meeting that we were due to have because she was attacked and mugged by somebody carrying a large knife. She is well known to us all, so this is going on in our communities.
Let me deal with new clause 5. I am indebted to the Minister, who is not in her place, but we spoke at length this morning. When I look through the clause, which was tabled by the shadow police Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), it is very difficult to see anything in it that I would not agree with. I can see that the issue may be the impact that it could have on small businesses. However, if I wished to harm myself by going into a shop and buying a packet of cigarettes, those cigarettes would be behind a counter locked in a cabinet, often in very small premises, yet if I wished to harm somebody else, I could go into a shop and pick up a bladed article to do that. Of course, the issue is with regard to shoplifting. Although I absolutely agree with the need to support small businesses and be proportionate, I say to the Minister, through the Front Benchers who are here now, that if we find out from a review over a period of months that we still have difficulties with knives, and that the measures taken on internet restrictions and delivery to addresses have not dealt with this matter, the new clause will need to be looked at again. I therefore ask those on the Front Bench, in return for me supporting their position and the Bill overall—notwithstanding that I think the new clause is excellent—to ensure that we see the new clause again if it is absolutely demonstrated to be necessary.
When I was speaking to the Minister, I had the feeling that we were looking for other solutions, because if we compare the scenario in south London, where knife crime is prevalent, with my constituency, where it is not as prevalent, we see that a one-size-fits-all ban across every single shop may not be proportionate. However, we do have public spaces protection orders, which were brought in to allow local authorities to put orders in place to prohibit certain behaviour relevant perhaps just to that community. Such an order can be applied for if the activities are being carried out in a public space within an authority’s area and those activities have a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality and are likely to be persistent, unreasonable and justify such a restriction—so, something as crucial as knife crime should fit within that.
I understand from the Minister, who is back in her place, that the difficulty is that the definition of “public space” would not include a shop. I am sure that that has been tested legally. I was trying to find the research, and in the short time I had I could not do so, but I did notice that the US definition would actually include a shop because, in effect, it only precludes areas relevant to a private gathering or other personal purposes. I understand that a “public space” would tend to be open, but I would ask if lawyers could reconsider whether that is relevant and, if it is, whether local authorities in areas where knife crime is prevalent should be able to apply for such orders. That would have the same effect as the new clause.
Huw Merriman
I understand it is the law, but it also sends out a certain message, does it not? The police are looking for our support in dealing with an incredibly difficult problem. I have mentioned how it is blighting many constituencies, including those of Opposition Members. To send out a message that they should not be doing this, and thereby to focus on the police rather than the perpetrators—I made a similar point to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley about new clause 5—is rather demoralising for the police.
Louise Haigh
Unfortunately, there is not time for me to address all the amendments in the group, but I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and for Redcar (Anna Turley), my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), who have all tabled reasoned, evidence-based amendments that would significantly improve the Bill. I support them all wholeheartedly.
The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) was very kind in offering his support to new clause 5, which would introduce a simple prohibition on the display of bladed products in shops. The new clause is the result of a huge amount of work led by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who is chair of the cross-party Youth Violence Commission. One of her most important recommendations was the prohibition of knife displays in shops, a matter that was discussed when experts gave evidence to the Committee. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers said that it would be helpful to put knives behind displays in shops. A representative said:
“Obviously, now big retailers are increasingly going down the route of making it more difficult for customers to get their hands on the product until they have been age-checked and the transaction is safe. The problem with it, of course, is that all sorts of bladed things are being sold and it is about where you draw the line.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2018; c. 98, Q239.]
Obviously we want retailers to check people’s ages properly when they seek to purchase knives, but the fact of the matter is that many young people who want to access knives will go into shops and steal them if they are readily available. Ultimately, there is little point in having the provisions in the Bill, and putting all the restrictions and burdens on online retailers, if we are not asking face-to-face retailers to abide by the same regulations.
There are a number of restrictions under the law relating to other products—most obviously, the extremely restricted provisions relating to the sale of tobacco, which prohibit the display of tobacco products except to people over the age of 18. The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 specifically refers to under-18s, so the principle already exists in law. New clause 5 simply transposes to knives the already sufficient and proportionate response to tobacco. As the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle said, if we walk into a shop and buy cigarettes with which to kill ourselves, they will be behind locked cabinets. A young person, or any person, who walks into a shop and steals a knife in order to kill another person is free to do so: as things stand, the knives are not even behind locked cabinets. We see no reason why that should not be extended to bladed products. Given that the Government are so committed to clamping down on online sales, we hope they recognise that face-to-face sales are a clear issue that needs further consideration.
While we are on the topic of restricting the supply of knives, let me turn briefly to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central. The clause to which they relate was debated extensively in Committee. We fully support the Government’s intention, but are worried that the clause may punish businesses while having little impact on the ultimate aim—to reduce violence.
I remain baffled as to why the Home Office has not simply put strict age verification controls on the sale of knives online, as it does, for example, with gambling, but instead has chosen to punish the online sales industry and traders such as those mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar. My hon. Friend’s amendments are very reasonable compromises, put forward by the very businesses that the Minister claims have complained that they are too bureaucratic. I fear that the clause has not been thought through sufficiently, and will have untold consequences.
New clause 1 was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn, whom I congratulate on his incredible, impassioned speech and the fantastic campaign that he has mounted. We have made clear from the outset that we are prepared to support amendments to protect shop workers. In Committee, we heard powerful evidence from USDAW and the British Retail Consortium about the increase in the number of attacks on shop workers as a result of restricted sales, and we wholeheartedly support any measure that which will improve their protection. I congratulate USDAW on its brilliant campaign.
Let me now deal with new clause 31. The death of a pregnant woman, Sana Muhammad, just a few short weeks ago in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) has, in his words,
“shocked people…to the core.”—[Official Report, 14 November 2018; Vol. 649, c. 310.]
She was attacked in front of her five children by a man with a crossbow, and was tragically pronounced dead a short while afterwards. That tragic case has brought to light, once again, the remarkably weak controls on crossbows, which have lethal effects. It is incumbent on us as a Parliament to decide whether we are comfortable with circumstances in which a lethal weapon is freely available to anyone over the age of 18, with no licensing restrictions at all.
There have been many tragic and disturbing incidents involving crossbows, and the law as it exists has developed only incrementally. Our new clause would create a licensing system. That is not a step that any Parliament should take lightly, but we believe that it has the potential to remove the unregulated sale and possession of some of the most lethal crossbows, while also ensuring that the law-abiding community who use crossbows for sporting purposes are still able to carry out their legitimate pursuit. The clause also creates safeguards which allow further consideration of the power under which a crossbow would become subject to licensing provisions, allowing the Secretary of State to make regulations determining the appropriate draw weight.
Our new clause 6 calls for a report on the causes behind youth violence, a topic that is not discussed much in the entire debate around offensive weapons. The new clause goes to the heart of our issues with the Bill and the Government’s seriously weak serious violence strategy. The strategy was published only in April yet we have already seen a U-turn from the Home Secretary, finally agreeing that the public health model must be adopted and that agencies need to be working better to tackle violence. We have been telling the Government all of this for at least the last year, so we are pleased to see progress, but we are alarmed that the strategy is so desperately short on detail. Members hear almost every day from constituents about the levels of crime and the cuts to policing in our constituencies.
The police service is at risk of becoming almost unrecognisable to the public and irrelevant according to the Home Affairs Committee. “Panorama” reported recently that up to half of crimes are being “screened out” by some forces, meaning they get no investigation at all. This is just the latest indication of a police service creaking under the strain of soaring demand after eight years of austerity. When crimes are not being investigated, deterrence reduces and crime rises further still. It is a vicious circle and one the present Government have locked us into with little recognition of their role in it.
Axing the police was a political choice that has done incalculable harm to our communities, and it is a choice that I suspect many Conservative MPs who voted for swingeing cuts privately regret.
Mr McFadden
I strongly agree with the points my hon. Friend is making. Does she agree with me that if the Government get the police pensions wrong, the issue she has just highlighted will become even worse, because we have been warned by chief constables and police and crime commissioners around the country that thousands more officers could be lost if they are forced to pay for it out of existing police budgets?
Louise Haigh
My right hon. Friend is right. After eight years of cuts to frontline policing, the Government have slapped on another £465 million cut by 2022, which we have been warned will cut another 10,000 police officers from our communities. It is completely intolerable.
New clause 6 would release the Home Office evidence—that we know exists, thanks to leaks—to public scrutiny. We know that Home Office officials believe that the reduction in police numbers has led to a reduction in so-called hotspotting and to an increase in violent crime.
But of course this is not just about police numbers; we need a wholesale review of the impact of the Government’s austerity agenda on the vital safety nets that keep our communities safe and the consequent impact on rising crime levels. The now famous example of where we have seen a successful approach is on our doorstep in Scotland, where a 20-year strategic approach was taken to reducing youth violence. That is what is required, as opposed to the Government’s strategy, which uses the rhetoric of early intervention and prevention but represents at most a three-year strategy.
The amendments in my name and those of my hon. Friends seek to strengthen and improve the weak legislation before us today. They seek an evidence-based response to the long-term trend in violence that we are witnessing as a result of this Government’s austerity agenda. We hope the Government will accept that much more needs to be done if we are to prevent any more young lives from being needlessly taken and will accept the amendments in our name.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I rise to speak in support of my new clause 26, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) for her support in that. I also, surprisingly, thank the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) for his support for the amendment, although I am disappointed that he did not say that I am one of the nicest people in the House—perhaps I can prove that to him afterwards.
Some Members have already referred to the Metropolitan police video that went viral showing officers tactically nudging criminals off their bikes in the height of chase. Regardless of whether people support that police strategy, the strength of feeling on this matter is demonstrated by the fact that the video was retweeted thousands of times and appeared on the front pages of the papers. That is because so many people have been, or know someone who has been, a victim of crimes committed by people on mopeds.
Criminals use mopeds because of the element of surprise it gives when attacking the victim, the victim’s helplessness when hit by someone on a moped, and the speed at which the criminal can get away, which makes it particularly effective for theft. Constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn have told me that they are now scared to walk down the street either talking on their phone or showing any of their possessions because they fear someone on a moped snatching those items away. I speak today to give those people a voice and to speak up on behalf of those who believe that the existing legislation to deal with such crimes is no longer sufficient.
Stuart C. McDonald
I shall be brief, as lots of hon. Members wish to speak.
The provisions in the Bill in relation to corrosive substances and knives are also largely welcomed on the SNP Benches, but I do not think anyone is arguing that the new provisions will transform or revolutionise the fight against knife crime or acid attacks; they can merely play a part in reducing the number of lives affected.
There has been close working between the UK and Scottish Governments, including on amendment 56, which the Minister highlighted. Many of the other amendments in the group would not extend to Scotland, or do not seem intended to do so, so we would argue that further changes to the criminal law of Scotland should be left to that Parliament and I shall speak only to one or two of the amendments tabled.
I welcome the changes to the defence relating to possession of swords for religious ceremonies. We congratulate all involved in tabling and supporting amendment 22 and we welcome the Government response, which we trust will ensure that the new offence of possessing certain particularly offensive weapons catches only those who it is really aimed at, not those involved in religious ceremonies.
It is important to speak about new clauses 1 and 14. We agree absolutely that they flag up a serious problem that must be addressed, and it is good that it has been highlighted today. In Committee, we heard evidence about the growing problems faced by shop workers and the increasing number of thefts and attacks that they face. As part of the recent Respect for Shopworkers Week and USDAW’s Freedom from Fear campaign—like other Members, I suspect—I visited a local Co-op store to hear about the challenges faced there and the steps needed to help support shop workers. I totally agree that the problem must be tackled.
A private Member’s Bill is being finalised for tabling in the Scottish Parliament in relation to the protection of shop workers, having attracted the requisite cross-party support. The Scottish Government have said that they have an open mind on whether they would support such a Bill. The proposals contained in the Bill consultation for new offences cover not just shop workers selling age-restricted goods, but bar staff, and indeed door staff. I appreciate that those tabling the amendments before us today have been restricted by the scope of the Bill before us, but as the consultation in the Scottish Parliament pointed out, age restrictions on tobacco and alcohol are almost certainly the most common flashpoints, and if we are to take a legislative approach, I would argue that ideally that would need to cover such sales, too, rather than simply corrosive substances and knives. In short, although I sympathise with the arguments that have been made today, I leave it to the Scottish Parliament to decide the issue holistically in respect of that offence in Scotland.
I will not further delay the House by talking about other amendments with which I sympathise but that relate to devolved matters. New clause 6, which would give rise to a reporting requirement, is slightly shoehorned into the Bill. A general report on the causes of youth violence would clearly be better than one restricted to youth violence with offensive weapons only, but it would, of course, be open to the Secretary of State to go further. Although crime is devolved, some of the possible causes that would be reported on under new clause 6 are not; they are reserved. To finish on a happy note, we willingly shoehorn in our support for new clause 6.
Richard Graham
I rise to comment on two of the new clauses. First, my hon. Friend the Minister has spoken convincingly on new clause 16 and there is widespread agreement in the House that extending the Bill to cover private places, as well as public places, is important. To add to what I said earlier, several recent knife crimes in Gloucester have been committed in public places, most tragically one at the All Nations club, one outside the Pike and Musket pub and others, but, more recently, some have been committed very much in private places—in flats and properties—and I am delighted that new clause 16 covers those places.
New clause 1 was tabled by the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson), and everyone in this House wants to see not just shop workers but everyone who engages with the public—including people who work in our railway and bus stations, who are often on the frontline against such antisocial behaviour—fully protected by the law against totally unnecessary behaviour by other members of the public.
It seems to me, and I stand to be corrected, that new clause 1 would apply only to the handling of corrosive substances or bladed instruments. Although that is a good thing, most shop workers want to know that if somebody intentionally obstructs them—in other words, if somebody acts in a threatening manner—that same behaviour would be a crime whether it is a bottle of beer, a bottle of whiskey or a bladed instrument. The new clause perhaps does not suit shop workers as well as it might, but I ask the Minister to consider taking it back to the Home Office for discussion to see what might be done about it.
Victoria Atkins
I hope my hon. Friend realises that I listened with great care to the speech of the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson), and I agree that we want to ensure that our shop workers feel protected, as well as being protected, by the law. If I may, I will reflect further on new clause 1, and I invite the right hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and organisations involved in the retail arena, including trade unions, to the Home Office for a roundtable so we can further discuss the concerns that have been raised this afternoon.
Richard Graham
I am very grateful to the Minister. That is a really good step forward, and I wonder whether the right hon. Member for Delyn would like to comment.
David Hanson
I happily accept the Minister’s offer to revisit this with the trade unions and shop organisations. The reason why new clause 1 would cover only corrosives and knives is because that is the scope of the Bill; it should cover age-related products. I would welcome it if we can reflect on that, but I reserve the right to return to the matter in another place should the meeting not prove successful.
Richard Graham
I am not sure this is how these things often work on the Floor of the House, but this is a helpful way forward for all sides. I am grateful to the Minister and the right hon. Gentleman.
On that note, I have said all I want to say on new clause 16, which I think is good, and new clause 1, which will be taken away for consideration.
Vernon Coaker
Let me start by saying that I think we are all pleased with what the Minister has just said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) about his new clause 1. The shop workers of the country, the unions and people across the whole of our nation will be pleased with that and will look forward to what we come up with in due course.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) on his excellent speech and I associate myself with his sentiments. The Bill makes some welcome improvements to how the police and courts tackle threats to the public from offensive weapons. Given the violence and the deaths we are seeing now, it is vital that we act. I welcome some of the amendments, particularly those tabled by Labour colleagues, including new clauses 1 and 6. However, a number of details in this Bill would prove counterproductive in the fight against crime—things that are not based on evidence—so I have tabled a range of amendments. I will speak only briefly to some of them now, given the time available and the fact that other Members wish to get in.
Amendments 12 and 13 would in essence replace short-term prison sentences with community sentences. As the Bill stands, the new offence in clause 1 of selling corrosive products to under-18s is punishable by up to 51 weeks in prison. We are puzzled by this, because it directly contradicts Government policy as articulated at the Dispatch Box. The Secretary of State for Justice himself has said that short-term prison sentences do not work. He said that they should be used only “as a last resort.” Amendments 12 and 13 therefore appear to be in line with Government policy and would ensure that the offence set out in clause 1 is punishable by an effective community sentence and/or fine, instead of by an ineffective short-term prison sentence.
Amendment 14 would amend the welcome new offence of possession of corrosives by adding to clause 6 the words “with intent to cause injury”. I assume that the current wording is the result of a drafting error.
Finally, amendments 15 and 16 would remove mandatory prison sentences for a second offence of possession of corrosive substances. In other words, they would prevent this House from yet again trespassing on judicial discretion. I have never understood why Governments and colleagues think that they are capable of second-guessing the facts of a case that has not yet happened, or why this House should pretend that it makes any sense at all to bind the hands of judges, who see and hear the real facts of the case, are trained to assess the facts and are experienced in sentencing.
The House may remember when, back in 2014, a Conservative Back-Bench new clause was passed to create mandatory prison sentences for a second offence of possession of a knife. My party voted against that new clause on the principle that mandatory sentences tie judges’ hands, put more pressure on already overburdened prisons and mean that more people, especially young people, end up with ineffective short-term prison sentences. Regrettably, that new clause was passed, thanks to some Labour MPs supporting it, the Conservative Front-Bench team abstaining and Conservative Back Benchers voting for it.
To be fair, there were Labour MPs who voted with those of us who opposed the tying of judges’ hands. One Labour MP in particular made a fine speech, and said:
“There is a principle at stake here. There is a Sentencing Council and legislation on what is and is not a crime, but surely it must be for the courts to determine what is appropriate for the prisoner in front of them, rather than to have that laid down by statute.”—[Official Report, 17 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 1041-1042.]
That MP was the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), so I hope that the Labour Front-Bench team will support our amendments to get rid of mandatory prison sentences.
Back in 2014, when the House debated similar proposals in respect of knife crimes, the supporters of tying judges’ hands said that it would send a message to the people, and that that message would reduce knife crime. That was a rather odd argument, which seemed to assume that young people especially tuned into our proceedings with enthusiasm. It had no basis in fact at the time. We now have the benefit of seeing how four years of limiting judicial discretion over knife crime has worked—how the message that Parliament apparently sent was heard.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am listening intently to the right hon. Gentleman, as always, and in a friendly way I express the confident hope that he is approaching his peroration.
Sir Edward Davey
Mr Speaker, you are right to be confident because I am.
There may now be more people behind bars to whom the judges might have given, on the evidence, community sentences. We may now as a society pay more in taxes to keep locked up people whom it would be better not to lock up, so we may not be able to use the money that is currently spent on prisons in other ways, such as for spending on police or youth services.
All that does not look like a good outcome from the message sent by mandatory sentences, so why are we repeating the mistake? What evidence are Ministers using to introduce more mandatory sentences? What happens if the person was coming home from the shops and he or she was holding his mum or dad’s shopping bags when stopped and searched? Surely it is for judges to act on the basis of fact, not for Parliament to second-guess it. We do not think that mandatory sentences are the right approach, and I hope that the other place will deal with the matter.
Stephen Timms
Given the constraints on time, I will speak only to new clause 23, from among the six new clauses that I have tabled, which deals with a particularly important subject.
It might come as a surprise to the House, as it did to me, to learn that weapons that cannot lawfully be purchased in the UK can be purchased online without anyone committing an offence. That cannot be right. The aim of new clause 23 is to plug that gap. It differs from the proposal that we debated in Committee as it allows for a defence if the website removes the offending advertisement for an illegal weapon within 24 hours of being informed of it. That reflects some recent helpful discussions that I have had with eBay about the practicalities of implementing the change that I propose.
The background is that the Criminal Justice Act 1988 introduced a list of weapons that are illegal to sell in the UK, which was expanded in 2002 to include disguised knives. A disguised knife is
“any knife which has a concealed blade or concealed sharp point and is designed to appear to be an everyday object of a kind commonly carried on the person”.
It is now illegal to sell that kind of weapon in the UK.
I have been speaking to Mr Raheel Butt, who runs an organisation in the borough of Newham called Community and Rehabilitation Solutions. He is from a gang background and has served a prison term, but since he left prison in 2012, he has made it his mission to stop others making the mistakes that he made. He has pointed out to me that a lot of the weapons being used to kill young people on the streets of our cities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) pointed out, are being bought online, a lot of them from eBay.
I should say that since I raised these points in Committee, disguised knives have been removed from eBay, although they can still be freely found on other websites. Mr Butt tells me that it is on those sites that those who are killing young people are getting their weapons. However, is it illegal for a website with a UK domain name to advertise weapons that are illegal to buy in the UK? Surely the answer ought to be yes, yet there is some uncertainty about that. If I understood her correctly, the Minister advised us in Committee that she thought that it was unlawful for an illegal weapon to be sold in that way, but then she wrote to us and said, “Actually, no. There is a defence available, because these are simply platforms.” My argument is that selling a weapon on a UK website that it is illegal to purchase in the UK should be illegal. That is the aim of my new clause 23.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
I am sure that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) intends to detain the House for no longer than three minutes and possibly for less.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I will do my very best, Mr Speaker.
I rise to speak to my amendments 8, 9 and 10, to which a number of colleagues have referred. I fully support the objectives of the Bill. We have a serious problem with knife crime. We need serious solutions, but we need the right solutions. Knife manufacturers in my constituency are seriously concerned about the possible unintended consequences of clause 17, which prohibits the delivery of bladed products to residential properties, and believe that it will not provide the right solution. I raised this issue with the Home Secretary on Second Reading and wrote to him afterwards. I appreciate the response from the Minister, who said that the Government do not intend to stop people purchasing knives online or to stop manufacturers selling their products online.
I have tabled my amendments in that spirit. Large retailers with regional shop networks might well be able to deal with age-verified collection easily and with little impact on cost, but smaller manufacturers, which use the internet to reach niche markets, will struggle. They are acutely aware of the risks of knife crime and they already take proactive steps and have stringent controls to tackle the issue. They are responsible companies. They are traders whom we can trust. They support measures that would make such safeguards widespread across the industry.
The Bill makes an exception for bladed products used for sporting purposes. Under those provisions, a sword could be delivered to a residential property, but one of my local manufacturers’ steak knives could not, and nor could the decorating tools that my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) mentioned earlier.
Much more could be done to develop effective age verification for all sorts of online activities, but a trusted trader scheme could tackle the specific issue of knife sales. Online sales actually offer a better audit trail and record keeping than face-to-face sales. The Minister said earlier that the Government were interested in working with the industry on a voluntary basis to tackle problems in relation to retail sales in shops. If she is prepared to work with the retail sector, why not with the manufacturing sector? Will she agree to meet me and representatives of the industry to discuss how a trusted trader scheme might work, so that we can amend the Bill as it progresses? If she will, I will be happy to withdraw my amendments.
Vicky Foxcroft
I will try to be brief to ensure that everybody has a chance to speak. I served on the Bill Committee and am grateful for another opportunity to speak on the Bill’s content. As many of my hon. Friends will know, I also chair the cross-party Youth Violence Commission, so this a subject of significant interest to me.
I will use my time to pick up on two main points. The first is my disappointment that new clause 6 was rejected in Committee. It calls for a report on the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons within six months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. Although many of the Bill’s provisions are to be welcomed, I am concerned that the siloed approach of dealing with offensive weapons in isolation will do little to tackle serious violence. From my work with the commission, I know that the increase in youth violence that we are seeing is the result of a vulnerable cohort of young people being denied the support and multi-agency early intervention work necessary to prevent them from falling into a downward spiral.
New clause 6 calls for the Home Secretary to examine the effect not only of the reduction in police numbers on the levels of youth violence with offensive weapons, but of the reduction in public spending on children’s services, schools and local authorities. When the Minister was making her opening remarks, she struggled to stick within the confines of the Bill and touched on all these areas, so this new clause could be extremely useful to her.
My second point concerns the sale of knives. As recently as September, Lewisham police responded to reports of 40 young people storming a branch of Poundland in my neighbouring constituency of Lewisham East, with the intention of stealing knives and sharp implements. There is the Minister’s evidence. That is one of the reasons that she should implement this proposed legislation.
In the Make Your Mark ballot, more than 1.1 million young people voted for knife crime as their top priority. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker); we should be talking about this issue every single week in this Chamber. This issue is so important—our young people and our communities say it is important. If the Minister accepts one measure tonight, I urge her to accept new clause 6, so that we can thoroughly debate the issue.
Preet Kaur Gill
I have tabled an amendment to this Bill that has cross-party support. Members of all parties and I were concerned that the Bill would place severe restrictions on the ability of members of the Sikh community to observe and practise their faith. I thank the Minister for her clarity and assurances today, and I will not press my amendment.
I believed these consequences would have been inadvertent and perhaps due to a lack of consultation with the Sikh community, so I welcomed the opportunity to meet the Secretary of State and the Minister to outline these concerns and to clarify their position. Following these meetings, I was pleased to see a desire to avert what would have been the Bill’s damaging consequences for the Sikh community. I welcome amendments 59, 60 and 61, which are the Government’s own amendments to avoid that situation, and I fully support them.
On behalf of the all-party parliamentary group for British Sikhs, I would like to record my appreciation to the Secretary of State and the Minister for listening to the concerns raised by the APPG and the Sikh Federation about the Sikh kirpan. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) for their support in this process. I will briefly outline the importance of the Government amendments in ensuring that the Bill will maintain the status quo in continuing to legally safeguard the sale, possession and use of large kirpans.
I should say at the outset that the Sikh community in the UK is fully behind tightening the law on offensive weapons. We have all been appalled by the toll that knife crime is taking on innocent young lives, and every Member supports a robust and just system of law to crack down on this very serious problem. That system of law should include the measures in the Bill on restriction of sales of particular types of knives and appropriate punishments. It must also be paired with early intervention to tackle youth violence and the police being provided with adequate resources to tackle violent crime. We cannot go on with the level of knife crime that is taking place in many parts of the country.
Observance of the Sikh faith for practising Sikhs requires adherence to keeping what we call the five Ks, one of which is to wear a kirpan. Larger kirpans are used on many religious occasions such as during all Sikh wedding ceremonies up and down the country, during nagar kirtans in April and November, in front of the holy scriptures, in gurdwaras and in homes, and during gatka demonstrations where thousands take part. I could go on.
The Bill in its current incarnation would—I paraphrase from the policy equality statement produced by the Home Office in June 2018—place limits on the use and availability of these ceremonial kirpans that can be found in virtually all Sikh households. The current language would expose Sikhs who have kept kirpans at home for years to prison sentences of up to a year for doing nothing other than following one of the key tenets of our faith and the Sikh way of life. There are strict rules about the carrying and use of the kirpan. It is strictly ceremonial and must never be used in an aggressive, confrontational or offensive manner. These rules are respected and understood by the Sikh community.
Our amendment sought to amend the Bill to allow the use of ceremonial kirpans as they have been used, with no threat to public safety or public order, up until now. The Government’s amendment does nothing other than to maintain the status quo. I am pleased to support it, alongside the understanding that there will be an accompanying set of documentation that explicitly mentions the kirpan and therefore reflects the importance of not criminalising the Sikh community for the sale or possession of large kirpans.
Lyn Brown
I want to focus on new clause 6 as well. Although we all know how falling police numbers are impacting on crime in our communities, we also need to look at other things, including cuts to children’s services. I have heard directly from parents who are most affected by social workers no longer having the time to build proper relationships with families, or not having had the right training so they do not recognise when a child is being groomed by criminals in a gang and instead blame the family and criminalise the child.
I am happy to see that this issue is being dealt with through training, as recognised in the new protocol against criminalising children this month. However, I am concerned, yet again, about whether any additional resources will be available to fund the big programme of training we desperately need and to monitor its implementation. The fact is that when public services are underfunded, that makes it easier for the county lines gangs to exploit local children, and that exploitation breeds violence. I seek further measures that would ensure that the police and courts focus on the true perpetrators of county lines violence—those who control the gangs and reap the profits. The Minister talked about the reported arrest of 500 groomed children or young adults, but, with all due respect, that will not change the nature of the county lines infiltration into our communities. Only by arresting the groomers—those who are reaping the massive financial rewards at the top of the tree—will the game be changed.
We need to support youth workers who prevent grooming and violence by working with children of all ages, all year round. We need training for every professional who works with young people, from the police to social workers to teachers, so that they understand the threat of gang grooming and the tactics that groomers use. We need a third-party reporting system that young people will actually use; they will not do so at the moment because they believe that the police can get information without anyone being put in danger. We have to make public authorities responsible for protecting people who are at risk because they have done the bravest of things and given information to the authorities. We need to support them and their families with a path to a secure future. We need to take stronger action against incitement online. We need to support communities after the trauma of a young death.
This Bill is a start, but it ain’t the panacea that my community so desperately needs. We need further legislation from this Government to tackle the real issues that are afflicting our communities.
Sarah Jones
I rise to speak in support of new clause 6. I was pleased to serve on the Public Bill Committee, and I am glad to see the Bill finally coming back to the Floor of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) spoke passionately about why new clause 6 is so important. Simply put, it says that the Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament on the causes of youth violence with offensive weapons. We are trying to fix a problem, and we have to understand what that problem is before we can fix it.
I want to make two points. The first is about data. We do not know where the people who commit these offences get their knives from. We do not know at what exact time of day these knife crimes are committed, although we have some evidence. We do not know how many people are involved in gangs who commit knife offences. That is really important, because a very small number—somewhere between 3% and 25%, depending on what we measure—of people who commit knife offences are in gangs. There is a lot that we do not understand about what is going on in this situation that we are trying to fix.
The second important part of the new clause relates to evidence. There is a growing consensus that there is an epidemic of violence—the Secretary of State has said it, and the Minister said it today. It is spreading out across the country. Violence breeds violence. There is evidence that can fix this growing national problem. We know from what has worked in other areas how effective interventions can be when they are evidence-based. I think of my friend, Tessa Jowell, whose memorial service you and I attended recently, Mr Speaker. Her interventions in introducing Sure Start and the teenage pregnancy reduction strategy were evidence-based and had a real impact. That is what we need to seek to do.
My final point is that when we look at the evidence, we need to look at the increasing number of children who are being excluded and finding themselves lost to the system. If we are trying to fix this national problem, why on earth would anyone want to vote against this new clause?
Victoria Atkins
I thank all Members for a most interesting and informative debate. I want to clarify a point made by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) about the applicability of measures on corrosive substances in Northern Ireland. Those measures are within scope for Northern Ireland. It is possible for them to extend to Northern Ireland, and I will ask officials to look into that with their Northern Irish colleagues.
I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for his contribution on new clause 23. Anyone who sells or hires, offers for sale or hire, exposes or has in his possession for the purpose of sale or hire anything contained in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988 is guilty of an offence. That applies to not only people but bodies corporate. Where the user of a website places advertisements for anything contained in the order on that website, the website service provider may be able to rely on the defence under regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. Whether regulation 19 applies will depend on the facts of the case. There may well be jurisdictional issues if the service provider is based overseas. Regulation 19 does not apply where the provider of the website is offering the items for sale directly and where the provider had actual knowledge of the unlawful activity. We therefore consider that the provider of a website who sells items on it directly would be likely to be caught under the wording of the legislation. Where the provider of the website is enabling advertisements to be placed by others, the defence under regulation 19 may be available. That is an awful lot of legalese, but this discussion is timely, as the Government prepare the online harms White Paper.
I turn to amendments 8, 9 and 10, tabled by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). Age verification checks cannot be done only at the point when the seller is processing the sale and preparing the item to be dispatched. Checks also need to be done when the item is handed to the purchaser. That is why we are stopping bladed products—namely, articles with a blade capable of causing serious injury—from being delivered to residential addresses. The amendments would undermine what the Bill is trying to achieve and seem to introduce some sort of validation scheme by the Government to enable certain online sellers—those awarded trusted seller status—to deliver bladed products to residential addresses. That goes against what the Bill seeks.
Victoria Atkins
I am conscious of the time, so I will not. I am always happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, but it is important to make it clear that we do not believe his amendments fit in with the overall structure of the Bill.
Finally, on new clause 6, we published the serious violence strategy this year, which already takes a public health approach, stressing the importance of early intervention and prevention through a multi-agency approach to tackle the root causes. We appreciate the need to keep parliamentarians informed of progress on delivery of the strategy, but we do not believe that a statutory requirement is necessary. We believe that scrutiny will be provided by the serious violence taskforce and the House, and we hope that the House can contribute its views on this very important piece of legislation.
“The Offensive Weapons Act 2018 | ||
Sections1(1),3(2) and (3) and4(4) (offences relating to sale and delivery of corrosive products) | A person authorised to do so by the Scottish Ministers | In relation to any particular product which is identified in the certificate— (a) the name and Chemical Abstracts Registry number of that product, or (b) the name and Chemical Abstracts Registry number of a substance contained in that product and the concentration of that substance in that product. |
Section6(1) (offence of having corrosive substance in a public place) | A person authorised to do so by the Scottish Ministers | That the particular substance identified in the certificate is a corrosive substance within the meaning of section 6(9) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2018.” |
Mr Speaker
Consideration completed. I will now suspend the House for no more than five minutes in order to make a decision about certification. The Division bells will be rung two minutes before the House resumes. Following my certification, the Government will table the appropriate consent motion, copies of which will be made available in the Vote Office and will be distributed by Doorkeepers.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I can now inform the House that the Speaker has completed certification of the Bill, as required by the Standing Order. Copies of the final certificate will be made available in the Vote Office and on the parliamentary website.
Under Standing Order No. 83M, a consent motion is therefore required for the Bill to proceed. Copies of the motion are available in the Vote Office and on the parliamentary website and have been made available to Members in the Chamber. Does the Minister intend to move the consent motion?
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
indicated assent.
The House forthwith resolved itself into the Legislative Grand Committee (England and Wales) (Standing Order No. 83M).
[Sir Lindsay Hoyle in the Chair ]
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I remind hon. Members that if there is a Division, only Members representing constituencies in England and Wales may vote. As the knife has fallen, there can be no debate.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order no. 83M(5)),
That the Committee consents to the following certified Clauses of and Amendments to the Offensive Weapons Bill—
Clauses certified under SO No. 83L(2) as relating exclusively to England and Wales and being within devolved legislative competence
Clauses 8 to 10, 14, 28 and 29 of the Bill as amended in Committee (Bill 265), and New Clauses NC16 and NC17 added on Report.
Amendments certified under SO No. 83L(4) as relating exclusively to England and Wales and being within devolved legislative competence
Amendment 56 made on report to Clause 13 of the Bill as amended in Committee (Bill 265).—(Amanda Milling).
Question agreed to.
The occupant of the Chair left the Chair to report the decision of the Committee (Standing Order No. 83M(6)).
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair; decision reported.
Third Reading
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
I beg to move, that the Bill be now read the Third time.
As the House is all too aware, we have seen a rise in violent crime, including knife crime and homicides, in recent years. That is why there is an urgent need for us to tackle the whole issue of serious violence and see what more we can do. I know that Members across the House will agree that we must do all we can to try to put an end to the bloodshed on our streets, and we must do everything in our power to try to bring more perpetrators to justice. I believe that the Offensive Weapons Bill is an incredibly important part of our response. It provides additional powers for the police to tackle serious violence. It will prevent the sale of corrosive products to young people, and make it a crime to possess corrosive products in public with no good reason. It will make it harder for young people to purchase deadly weapons, and make the possession of knuckle dusters, zombie knives and death stars illegal, even in private premises. Sellers will be required by law to impose vigorous age verification measures to prove that anyone purchasing blades or corrosives is over the age of 18, or they will face prosecution.
Simply put, the Offensive Weapons Bill is all about preventing young people from getting their hands on dangerous weapons such as knives and acid, and causing irreparable damage.
The Bill has of course, as many Bills do, raised some tricky issues. We recognise, for instance, that knives, corrosives and firearms are not in themselves offensive weapons, and that they have many lawful and legitimate uses in people’s everyday lives. That means that a balance needs to be struck between protecting the public and ensuring that legitimate activities are in no way unduly affected. I believe that the Bill strikes the right balance.
We have made some important changes to the Bill after debate. So, for example, we have made it an offence to threaten someone with an offensive weapon in private as well as in public, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for first suggesting such a change and then helping us to work that through. We have also ensured that our museums are able to continue to keep important examples of historic knives in their collections, and we have made changes to reflect the different legal system in Scotland.
We have also addressed the concerns raised by the Sikh community, and by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), who I was pleased to meet to discuss the issue regarding the private and public ownership of kirpans.
During the Bill’s progress, a number of important points have been raised on firearms, which we think merit further consideration. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for his work on this matter. I will be looking to launch a public consultation to consider those issues in further detail.
Ultimately, I urge Members to focus on the important changes that this Bill will bring about, and I am in no doubt that the Bill is key to tackling violent crime. The public rightly want violent crime to be dealt with properly and to be dealt with urgently. They want to feel that their neighbourhoods and their children are safe, and this Bill will help to ensure just that.
I commend the Bill to the House.
Louise Haigh
Labour will not oppose the limited measures in this Bill tonight, but we regret how very limited the measures are. This country is facing a contagion of serious violence and, faced with that challenge, the Government have introduced a Bill that barely tinkers around the edges. We have record levels of knife crime, the largest continuous rise of violent crime on record, and high-harm offences are all on the rise. The number of unsolved crimes now stands at more than 2.1 million. We have a national crisis in detective numbers and a Government who are unwilling to take the action necessary to plug it. Some 21,000 officers, 6,800 PCSOs and 18,000 police staff have gone yet, rather than give the police the resources they need to launch a national offensive against violent crime, the Government instead seem intent on lumbering the police with a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds of pension liabilities, which the National Police Chiefs Council warns could lead to the loss of another 10,000 officers.
The levels of serious violence are not a spike; they are part of a now five-year trend. Behind the figures are stories of young lives destroyed and families torn apart. The serious violence strategy and the Offensive Weapons Bill stand as the Government’s response—it is nowhere near enough. It does not even begin to scratch the surface. As long as they insist on underfunding our police, nobody can say that they are taking serious violence seriously.
With regard to the limited provisions of the Bill, Labour has sought to enhance protections on the sale and possession of knives, to close dangerous loopholes in our gun laws that have been left open for too long, to force the Home Office to release evidence on the consequences of cuts to vital services for the levels of serious violence, and to advocate for the rights of victims of crime, which have been neglected, despite repeated manifesto promises from the Conservative party. There is no doubt that the Bill would have been enhanced by the inclusion of those measures. It is a matter of regret that important issues in relation to serious violence and the rights of victims have not been accepted by this Government.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
I am slightly confused. I thought that, during the opening speeches, Labour Members suggested that the Government should have moved quicker with this Bill and that they are disappointed that there have been some delays, yet they do not seem to welcome any elements of the Bill. They just seem to regret the excellent progress that we have made.
Louise Haigh
We supported this Bill on Second Reading and in Committee, and we supported the Home Secretary’s attempt to ban the .50-calibre rifle, on which the Government have now capitulated to their Back Benchers in the face of overwhelming evidence from police, security and intelligence officials. We backed the measures in the Bill; it is a shame that the Home Secretary did not back his own measures.
We will not oppose these limited measures tonight, but we must be clear that they will not stem the tide of serious crime without measures to address its root causes and without a recognition from the Government of their own culpability in creating the conditions for crime to thrive. With a vulnerable cohort of young people without the support they need as services fall away and an ailing police force unable proactively to gather intelligence and build community relations, and unable adequately to investigate crimes that have taken place, this Government are unwilling and unable to address the consequences of their own actions. As such, this Bill can never meet its objective to bear down on violent crime.
Stuart C. McDonald
I commend the Minister for steering the Bill through the House of Commons, and I commend the shadow Minister and other Opposition Members for the constructive way in which they have probed and questioned. I thank all the Committee and research staff who have supported our work as helpfully as ever.
The Home Affairs Committee recently launched its new inquiry into serious violence, and it heard powerful and moving evidence from the parents of young people who have lost their lives in stabbings and shootings. It was a timely reminder, if one was needed, of the awful impact that knives, firearms and other offensive weapons are still having on too many.
Obviously, the provisions in this Bill will not stop knife crime and shootings, but they will surely save some lives, as we can see when we can look at the case of Bailey Gwynne, the 16-year-old from Aberdeenshire who was murdered by another young teenager who had arranged online for a knife to be delivered and left at a shed behind his family’s house. That prompted a letter to the Home Office from the Justice Secretary in Scotland seeking a tightening of the rules around online sales and delivery. Delivery like that would, we hope, no longer be possible.
Officials in Edinburgh and at the Home Office have worked closely on this Bill, and we welcome the results, not only the provisions on the online sale of knives, but the new provisions on corrosive substances. We have, however, expressed our concern today about changes that have been made to the Bill in relation to firearms.
As we all know, the Bill is not a game-changer, and I do not think anyone can pretend it will be. Much more important are efforts to stop individuals feeling the need or desire to carry and use knives and other weapons in the first place. Strategies and policies that work require support, such as the successful violence reduction unit based in Glasgow, which has been mentioned earlier in debates. In short, we need proper resourcing of public services by the Chancellor—that would be a genuine game-changer.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
One problem we often have is that the Opposition parties are critical of some of the legislation we bring forward. That is when they see it in isolation. This Government are making great progress in a number of Departments, on a number of fronts, which collectively are addressing crime. That applies to this Bill as it does to a Bill considered earlier outlining our reforms of the judiciary, which provides a great opportunity to change the allocation of responsibilities for staff, so that we can streamline the way the service works and make sure—
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
I have heard the Opposition’s message that they are disappointed by the Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree that although no single solution is going to solve the problem of offensive weapons, this Bill goes a long way to addressing the most important ones?
Eddie Hughes
My hon. Friend makes an important point and I agree with it completely. The Express & Star newspaper that covers my constituency ran a campaign to ban zombie knives, so I was keen to support the Bill in its earlier stages and to champion that newspaper’s campaign, which has proved invaluable. The newspaper does a great job of highlighting issues locally, and it must be good for it to see that this Government respond to those needs. My hon. Friend is right to say that there are many strands to tackling crime—and not only dealing with it once it has been committed; this Government also invest considerably in preventing crime. I came into the House from the YMCA, where I worked with young homeless people who had come out of prison. I was aware of the work the Government had done with them, supporting them in prison in order to improve their academic attainment, and allowing them to learn new skills and services that would help them find employment when they left prison. Obviously, it was unfortunate that some of those people then ended up needing the services of YMCA, but I say again that the Government support supported housing as well.
Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
I just want to put on the record my thanks to the Government for bringing this excellent Bill through. I know that the police in Yeovil are very keen to have these measures in place so that they can make more arrests, get more prosecutions and, in particular, get knives off the street. We have had some terrible incidents in Yeovil recently, and this Bill will make a genuine difference in trying to combat the awful scourge of knife crime.
Gavin Robinson
I commend Ministers for their efforts on this Bill. Although the Secretary of State introduced the Third Reading debate, I engaged with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) throughout this process. I had never served on a Bill Committee and had never had the joy of going through the intricate detail of a Bill such as this, but the Minister met me more times than I had planned and more than she would wish. We had thoughtful engagement and the outcome is right. I stand now only to say that some of the comments made from the Opposition Front Bench were facile. They do a disservice to the efforts that went into this Bill and the outcomes that will be the product of it. We will have protections in place on streets and protections against corrosive substances, and we will do further work on significant calibre weapons. I commend and praise the Minister for her efforts, where she has engaged thoughtfully across the range of issues contained in this Bill, and I say the same about her officials.
Huw Merriman
I shall not talk for long; the Whips are worried that I might inadvertently talk out the Bill, which of course I would never want to do because I absolutely support it.
As I did not do so earlier, I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for giving me a lot of her time and reassuring me about some measures about which I was concerned. Across party lines, some great suggestions have been made this afternoon. A lot of them came from the Opposition Benches, and I would struggle to vote against them. I hope that in a few months the Minister will assess whether the measures in the Bill as passed will fix some of the issues; if not, we should reconsider new clauses 5 and 26, and perhaps some of the other proposals, because they have a lot to recommend them. Overall, I support the Bill and hope that the House will give it a Third Reading.
Victoria Atkins
It is now my challenge not to talk out the Bill.
It is a pleasure for me to close the Third Reading debate on this important Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, the measures in it will prevent young people from accessing dangerous weapons such as knives and acid and causing irreparable damage with them, not only to the lives of others but to their own lives.
I am genuinely grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members from all parties—particularly those from Northern Ireland—for their valuable contributions and for the debates that we have had on the Bill. We have had a series of constructive debates, and at times like this the House is at its best, so I thank hon. Friends and colleagues for their contributions.
Particular thanks must go to my hon. Friends who served on the Bill Committee and scrutinised the Bill line by line. It was an absolute pleasure to serve with them in doing that important work. I also thank the Parliamentary Private Secretaries. We do not often get the chance to thank them, but they are the ones who make sure that the political wheels run smoothly. Of course, I also thank the officials, who have done an incredible amount of work on the Bill. [Interruption.] I am being prompted, but I had made a note, so now that I have finished thanking the officials I thank the Whip, the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), because I know which side my bread is buttered. I also thank those in the Whips Office for their hard work on the Bill. Every time that we excited and enthusiastic Ministers put policies and legislation before the House, it is the Whips Office that has to deliver it, and I am extremely grateful for the help I have had on this Bill.
I extend my thanks to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) for their contributions, not only today but in Committee, and for the constant attention that they pay to this really important issue. I hope that the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford will keep pressing her case for a debate at tomorrow’s business questions.
I also thank the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) for his perspective in the debates. It has been a pleasure to work with him and, indeed, the Scottish Government on the Bill.
Let me end this Third Reading debate by drawing the thoughts of the House back to the people whom the Bill is intended to help and protect. I thank every single victim of knife crime and corrosive-substance attacks, as well as every family member who has been affected, sometimes devastatingly, by serious violence. It is for those people that we put the Bill and the other measures in the serious violence strategy at the forefront of our thoughts, as well as for the communities that we all represent, who really do want us to ensure that our laws are up to date and that we have in place the strategy to keep our country safe.
On that note, it is my absolute pleasure to send this Bill elsewhere. I hope that it goes with the best wishes and best intentions not only of every colleague present, but of the victims whom we seek to serve and represent.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Speaker has ruled several times that the convention of Members notifying other Members before visiting their constituencies applies to Ministers on official visits. I was deeply disappointed today to find out that the Scottish Secretary and the Prime Minister no less have visited Bridge of Weir in my constituency and that I have yet to receive a notification. The Scottish Secretary found time to tweet about his visit to Bridge of Weir just over two hours ago, to which I replied, asking for notification. He has not complied with that request. Clearly, paragraph 10.10 of the “Ministerial Code” applies in this case.
The sad thing is that the Prime Minister said earlier in answer to my question at Prime Minister’s questions that she knew nothing about Home Energy and Lifestyle Management Systems’ green deal mis-selling, which affects hundreds of people in my constituency. Had I been made aware of the visit, I could have scheduled meetings with the constituents affected, at which she could have learned a lot more about this terrible issue. Can you advise me, Mr Deputy Speaker, what recourse I have when the ministerial code is broken and Ministers fail through their answers in their obligations to Members and this House?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
It is the convention for any Member going to another Member’s constituency to carry out political business to inform the Member concerned, whether that be the Prime Minister or whoever. Please, do the right thing by colleagues and always inform the Member you are going. You do not have to meet the Member, but at least let us keep with convention. That is the advice that I would give. I am sure that hon. Gentleman will remind the Secretary of State when he catches up with him and has a debrief on his constituency, and I am sure that it will be a great pleasure for him to receive that debriefing.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Thursday 29th November 2018
(5 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 28 November 2018 - (28 Nov 2018)
Offensive Weapons Bill
Monday 7th January 2019
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 28 November 2018 - (28 Nov 2018)
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, in the last few years we have seen a very concerning rise in the number of serious violent crimes in the UK. This includes an ongoing rise in knife crime, as well as the emergence of acid attacks.
Such horrific crimes seem to be increasing in not only their frequency but their severity, with ever-worse injuries for victims who are increasingly younger and younger. Tragically, the rise in knife crime has contributed to an increasing number of homicides, and the House will be aware of the tragic event last Friday where a father was fatally stabbed on a train from Guildford to London. I am sure the whole House will join me in offering our sympathy to the victim’s family and friends.
Violent crime can have a devastating effect on communities and can blight the lives of young people. In 2018, 134 homicides were recorded in the Metropolitan Police area, 79 of which involved knives. The Offensive Weapons Bill is born out of the necessity to tackle this serious issue. Violent crime must be reduced and its perpetrators brought to justice. Tackling serious violence will require a united approach from the Government, working with key partners on the ground, be they police officers, parents, teachers or charities. That collaborative approach is at the heart of the Government’s Serious Violence Strategy, which was published in April 2018. The strategy sets out a comprehensive programme of action and looks to multiagency working to deliver real results on our streets and in our communities. A crucial part is its focus on early intervention and prevention to stop young people getting involved in violent crime in the first place. We have established a serious violence task force to oversee this work, which consists of members of the police and community groups, the Mayor of London and government departments.
The Bill is a key part of the Government’s response to serious violent crime and will create new offences as well as provide additional powers for the police. Legislation alone can never be the complete answer to such complex problems, but it is an important component of the wider government response to serious violent crime. The Bill covers three main areas: acid attacks, knife crime and the risks posed by firearms. On all of these areas we have engaged widely through consultation and close collaboration with the police and other interested parties, to make sure that we are providing the powers that they need. The measures contained in the Bill aim to stop under-18s getting hold of particularly dangerous acids and purchasing knives online, and will give the police the powers they need to take action when people are in possession of dangerous weapons in private.
Acid attacks have life-altering consequences and there are no reasons why industrial strength corrosives should be sold to under-18s. The Bill will ban the sale of highly corrosive products to under-18s, both in stores and online. It will also make it an offence to possess a corrosive substance in public without a good reason, which will enable the police to directly tackle the issue on the streets, extending their powers to perform stop and search for the confiscation of corrosives.
The sale of knives to under-18s is already illegal, but too often knives are still finding their way into the hands of young people, with tragic consequences. In particular, it is too easy for under-18s to acquire knives from online retailers, including those operating overseas. The Bill will mean that online sellers in the UK need to meet certain conditions when they sell knives online. It will also prohibit the delivery of bladed products to a residential premise or locker. We are making it an offence for a delivery company in the UK to knowingly deliver knives to a person under the age of 18 where these have been bought online from a seller overseas.
The Bill makes it an offence to possess certain offensive weapons in private. This will mean that the police can act on intelligence concerning people possessing shocking weapons such as zombie knives and knuckledusters, designed only for violent purposes. It also extends to further education premises the current ban on possession and threatening with bladed articles and offensive weapons in schools, and makes it an offence to threaten with an offensive weapon in private.
Turning to firearms, the Bill bans the possession of rapid-firing firearms, as well as bump stocks, which have been specifically designed to circumvent existing prohibitions and are often marketed as such. Due to their higher rate of fire, these weapons pose a heightened risk to the public if they were to fall into the wrong hands.
There has been much debate in the progress of this Bill on the prohibition of high-power rifles. This has been shown to be a particularly complex issue requiring further consideration before we proceed with legislation. It is for this reason that the House of Commons removed from the Bill the clause prohibiting such weapons. However, the Government are committed to further public consultation on this issue, including with the law enforcement agencies and the target-shooting community. I am sure that noble Lords will also want to debate this issue and I welcome the contribution that they will bring to our further consideration of the appropriate regulation for these weapons.
The public want violent crime to be dealt with now, and rightly so. This Bill will help to do that—I therefore commend it to the House.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, after repeated delays in the other place, I am pleased that today we have the opportunity to debate this much-needed legislation at Second Reading. My Front-Bench colleagues in the other place have made it clear that efforts to tackle the sale and possession of acid and the growing knife crime epidemic would be welcomed by these Benches so, although lacking in some areas, the Bill and its limited measures have the support of the Opposition. Needless to say, we will seek to amend the Bill at later stages, but with our support for the legislation assured, I hope the Minister will engage constructively with our efforts to improve it.
We should not underestimate the challenges ahead in making our communities safer. In the 12 months leading to March 2018, England and Wales saw a 16% increase in knife crime. In total, there were 40,000 offences—the highest number since 2011. That rise is backed up by NHS hospitals in England, which recorded a 7% increase in admissions for assault by a sharp object, while the Office for National Statistics confirmed that this represents a “real change” in incident numbers. While some communities have been worse impacted than others, the issue of county lines is seeing gang violence and serious crime find a way into towns across the UK.
The issue is not isolated, nor is it contained. With surging crime and falling charge rates, the Bill is a missed opportunity to address the wider issues leading to this surge. If we are to turn back the tide and guarantee safer communities, we must begin by equipping the police to best offer their protection. Aside from Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland, this Government have cut police numbers more than any other developed country. We have lost 21,000 police officers, over 18,000 police staff, and around 7,000 community support officers. If the Government are to put the police on the front foot to tackle violent crime, they must first build the front line back up.
In addressing the factors behind serious crime, the Government should also consider the need for greater early intervention, which the Bill fails to tackle. Time and again, the precursors to articles in the press about violent crime are the same tragic stories of vulnerability, abandonment and exploitation. The reduction in youth workers, the neglect of children leaving care and the cutting of local government funding used to provide support have only spurred on the problem. As public services are stripped back by cuts, the same patterns emerge of individuals in need of help instead turning to crime. The Government must do more to protect the most vulnerable in society, and it is disappointing that the Bill has not been used to meet calls to tackle these root causes.
In the past, we have heard reassuring comments by the Secretary of State recognising the importance of early intervention, but that has not been reflected in the actions of the Home Office; nor has it been reflected further across Whitehall. The reality is that spending on crime prevention by local authorities has been cut in half since 2010. In real terms, £1 billion has been taken from children’s services since 2012 and £2.7 billion from school budgets since 2015. There can be no doubt that this has contributed to wider societal problems, which have fuelled violence and crime. The Government must commit to greater social cohesion and early intervention, and it is a shame that the Bill has not been used to do so.
The Government also need to make more concerted efforts specifically to overcome gang violence, and the omission of steps to do so in the Bill is disappointing. It has been estimated by the Children’s Commissioner that around 70,000 of those aged under 25 are involved in gang networks, yet the fund for ending gang violence and exploitation has been given only £300,000 as part of the Government’s flagship strategy. We also need to see further efforts to combat county lines—an issue which has seen greater prominence since the introduction of the Bill. I am concerned that the Government do not understand the urgency with which the public want to see this issue sorted. Repeated concerns have been raised over the lack of prosecutions despite significant media attention. In October, I was pleased to see an announcement of the first county lines prosecutions under the Modern Slavery Act. I hope this House can explore whether further measures can be introduced at later stages best to equip police forces to put an end to the misery caused.
I am further disappointed that for the victims of crime, again the Bill offers little. In the Conservative Party manifestos of 2015 and 2017, pledges were made to legislate for the rights of victims, who are too often left in the dark by the criminal justice system. There is no sign of this in the Bill or across the Government’s wider agenda. We have heard calls for safer staffing levels in the ambulance service and the NHS to protect those who become victims of the weapons the Bill hopes to tackle, yet there is no sign of provisions to improve the situation, either in the Bill or across the Government’s wider agenda. In legislating for safer communities and to tackle violent crime, the voices of victims must be front and centre, yet those voices have again been ignored by this Government.
Moving on from what is omitted from the Bill to how measures can be strengthened, I am sure noble Lords will recognise that firearms regulations in the UK are among the world’s strongest, and the provisions in the Bill to complement and strengthen them will, I hope, be welcomed across this House. However, as restrictions have developed and extended in recent decades, we must recognise how criminals have adapted to restricted supplies, including by repurposing obsolete firearms and through the increasing trend of legally held firearms being stolen from certificate holders. These loopholes allowing gun ownership are, in the word of some of the most senior counterterror officers in the UK, “glaring”. Of course, we must also be alert to the threat of higher-calibre weapons, and it is greatly disappointing that, despite overwhelming evidence of the danger, supported by the police, the Government have succumbed to their own Back-Benchers and removed these provisions. The police have made clear that they have no known protection against these rifles. There can be no justification for any individual owning one. We will confront this issue in the later stages of the Bill, and I hope the Minister will recognise the strength of feeling across both Houses, not just from a narrow wing of her party.
The measures relating to corrosives are, again, welcome but do not go far enough. The disturbing trend of individuals using these substances to cause harm has created great concern following high-profile incidents across the UK, and it is right that the Government are seeking to restrict their possession. Unfortunately, the Bill falls short of fully recognising the danger they can cause and leaves their restriction on a lesser pedestal than other weapons. The Bill also fails to acknowledge the spate of so-called fake acid attacks where individuals have been threatened with a non-corrosive substance in a manner which gives cause to believe it is indeed a corrosive substance. We cannot allow individuals to capitalise on fear without consequences. We must tackle this threat head on with the severity it deserves.
Finally, I come to knife crime and the Bill’s provisions relating to bladed weapons. The measures relating to remote sales are particularly welcome, as are those for residential premises but, as I mentioned, we must adapt to changing threats and consider the other ways in which weapons are obtained for violent crime. There are different purchasing platforms and different weapons that we must understand, and I look forward to the House considering measures to confront them. There are also questions to be asked about why higher education premises have not been recognised on the same level as further education premises in the prohibition of possession, and there is cause to believe that these have not been fully answered in the other House.
I will touch briefly on an issue that USDAW, the shop workers’ union, has campaigned on extensively. As the House will be aware, the Bill creates a number of statutory duties for shop workers who sell objects that can be used as weapons. We can expect those performing these duties in shops to encounter individuals who choose to threaten or, worse, attack them for acting responsibly. We must ensure that shop workers have the utmost protection under the law, and I hope the House will consider how this can be provided for in the Bill. Unfortunately, efforts to amend the Bill to reflect such protection were resisted by the Government during the Bill’s passage through the Commons, and I hope Ministers will be prepared to engage better on this issue during its passage through this House.
Earlier, I told the House that the Opposition will not stand in the way of the passage of this legislation. Our issues with the Bill are largely to do with what has been omitted rather than what has been included, and I urge the House to look beyond the narrow measures currently contained in the Bill and to consider the greater causes behind serious violent crime. The spike in incidents that we have seen in recent years will not be cancelled out until we look beyond the face of the crime and consider how front-line police cuts, the neglect of youth services and the abandonment of early intervention have contributed to a melting pot that has allowed violent crime to emerge as an epidemic.
In finishing, I briefly remind the House and the Government of the UK’s restrictions on the availability of weapons, which are among the most respected in the world and testify to cross-party efforts under Governments of all colours. Therefore, I sincerely hope that, as the Bill progresses through the House, the Government will take heed of precedent and reflect concerns raised by both sides of this House.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the tragic stabbing to death of a father on a suburban train last week, and of course our thoughts are with all those affected by such a tragedy. However, the fact is that young people in our inner cities are dying from knife crime almost every day of the week, and that is the real tragedy that the Government should be highlighting.
This Bill has a familiar ring to it. Again, the Government, wanting to be seen to be responding to the crisis of violence on our streets, resort to legislation and imprisonment rather than investing to tackle violent crime, investing to bring about long-term changes in behaviour and taking immediate steps to save young people’s lives by properly investing in policing. And the reason? To avoid raising the taxes of those who can most afford to make a contribution.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. Violence stems from inequality and poverty, from failing to invest in children and young people, from creating a vacuum that used to be occupied by community policing and youth services and has now been filled by criminal gangs. The Government’s serious violence plan—it does not deserve the title “strategy”—is in fact a patchwork of unco-ordinated and underfunded initiatives, however well intentioned, that lack the real money and real leadership that could really make a difference, and this legislation is yet another piece of that inadequate and ineffective patchwork.
A very good piece of legislation that deals with offensive weapons is already on the statute book. The Prevention of Crime Act 1953 states:
“Any person who without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, the proof whereof shall lie on him, has with him in any public place any offensive weapon shall be guilty of an offence”.
This was the staple of my days as a constable on the beat. There were two types of offensive weapon. There were items such as daggers that were made to cause injury to people—made offensive weapons—but the majority had more than one use; for example, a kitchen knife which, when carried to a fight, was an intended offensive weapon. It was therefore straightforward. The chef on his way to work did not commit an offence when carrying a kitchen knife, whereas the gang member on his way to confront a rival gang did.
In 1988, Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act shifted the burden against the innocent, introducing an offence of having in a public place any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed. From what I can see, this is the origin of the shift that we discussed at some length in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill: a shift away from whether someone commits an offence, subject to whether they have lawful authority or reasonable excuse, to an absolute offence where,
“it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence to prove that he had good reason or lawful authority”.
This Bill creates new offences of, for example: selling a corrosive product to a person under the age of 18, having a corrosive substance in a public place and delivering a bladed product to residential premises or a locker—no matter whether every precaution has been taken to ensure dangerous items do not get into the hands of children. It is a defence for someone charged with any of these offences to prove that they took all reasonable steps to avoid this happening. However, unlike the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, there is no reference to Section 118 of the Terrorism Act, which noble Lords will recall places the burden of proof on the prosecution and says:
“If the person adduces evidence which is sufficient to raise an issue with respect to the matter, the court or jury shall assume that the defence is satisfied unless the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is not”.
Presumably, this means that the man carrying his drain-unblocking fluid home from the supermarket commits an offence, for which he has a defence if charged; it is only then that he will have the opportunity to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he has a blocked drain at home. I do not want to get into arguments at this stage of the Bill around necessity and proportionality when the police use their powers of arrest. Suffice to say that I will again challenge this type of approach, particularly when we are confronted with cases such as that of the couple arrested over the recent drone incident at Gatwick Airport. Legislation should be worded so that, if someone has lawful authority or reasonable excuse, as in the 1953 Act, they do not commit an offence—not that they have a defence once they have been charged.
I understand that Acid Survivors Trust International blames lack of tight controls on acid sales or,
“legislation specific to acid attacks”,
for the rise in the number of attacks, but this needs to be put into perspective. Acid attacks have increased from 228 recorded crimes in 2012 to 601 attacks in 2016. In 2017 there were 39,598 offences involving a knife or pointed instrument; the number of acid-related offences is tiny. Corrosive substances carried with the intention of causing injury, for example in a spray or a squeezable washing-up liquid bottle, are offensive weapons under the 1953 Act and causing an injury using acid is clearly a serious assault. Notwithstanding ASTI’s concerns, one has to ask whether the Government are doing something that will be effective by introducing this legislation, or whether they just want to be seen to be doing something. In many other areas, the Government claim that self-regulation is preferable, that legislation is unnecessary, and one has to ask these questions here.
The Bill potentially puts further strain on an overcrowded and therefore ineffective prison service. Underage selling of corrosive products potentially carries a sentence of 51 weeks in prison, possession in a public place carries up to 12 months on a first offence and a compulsory four-month or six-month sentence for a second offence, removing the discretion of judges once again. There is only one thing worse than unnecessarily adding to an overcrowded prison system and that is short sentences that destroy social ties, take away people’s jobs and are not long enough to allow education, training and rehabilitation.
What happened in the other place? The only change, under pressure from Conservative Back-Benchers, was that the Government went against the advice of the police and caved in to the wealthy and privileged who wanted to keep their high-powered rifles.
We acknowledge that criminalising the sale of corrosive substances, making it a specific offence to carry corrosive substances in public and restricting online sales of knives sends a message, but messaging is the argument that the Government usually use to oppose the creation of new offences, not to create them. We on these Benches need a lot of convincing that this legislation as drafted has a useful part to play in containing the epidemic of violence on our streets. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has said, the Bill is a missed opportunity.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, we enter a new year with another firearms Bill. We have had 35 pieces of primary legislation dealing with firearms since the Firearms Act 1968, which I think shows the seriousness of this subject and the continuing need of every Government to take action on a fairly regular basis as criminals adapt to whatever new laws are proposed. As a result of all these pieces of legislation, let alone the secondary legislation, we have some of the toughest firearms laws in the world. I support my Government in their efforts to continue the combat against violent crime. It is good to note that firearms offences last year were actually down by 5%, and I hope my noble friend will be able to continue that trend. The problem is of course not the law-abiding citizen; it is, as noble Lords have already said, the small minority of criminals who abuse firearms, knives and corrosive substances.
Regarding the Bill, I am glad that the Government withdrew the legislation on the .50 calibre rifle and have gone for further consultation, because the position is much more complicated than was originally put forward and the Government believed. For my part, I support what was put forward in the other place by my honourable friend Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown when he suggested that the bolt and the firing mechanism should be kept separate from the rest of the rifle. That seems to me a totally logical position and, for what it is worth, that will be my little contribution towards the consultation.
Bump stocks, the device used in the Las Vegas shootings in 2017, have absolutely no place in a law-abiding person’s armoury. I therefore totally support the Government in their proposed prohibition of bump stocks.
We all want legislation to work, and we all want to be able to respect the police and the NHS. My noble friend on the Front Bench will guess that I am referring now to the 2016 Act and the question of the medical background checks that are needed. Sadly, that Act is not working. It is leading to dislike of the legislation because it is not working and to resentment of the police and the NHS, who are abusing the situation within the Act. I ask my noble friend whether in order to make that Act work better—if the Act works better then there will naturally be greater control of firearms, which is what we all seek—she will seek to implement, at the earliest opportunity, the suggestion put forward by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Shooting and Conservation and supported by the British Shooting Sports Council.
The package put forward by the APPG to try to make the Act work better consists of five points. The first is a compulsory and once-only medical records check by a GP in response to a police inquiry about the physical and mental health of the applicant. The second suggestion is an enduring marker to be placed by the GP on the patient’s medical record noting that he may be in possession of a firearm or shotgun, to ensure that thereafter the GP is reminded to draw to the police’s attention any future adverse change in the patient’s health that may have a bearing on his ability safely to possess a firearm or shotgun. The third is an agreed reasonable fee for the GP’s initial medical records check and placing the enduring marker. On that, the Home Office has said that there should not be a fee for the initial check but, quite clearly, there is evidence that GPs are already charging a fee. The fourth suggestion is an extension of the life of firearms and shotgun certificates from five to 10 years, which will reduce pressure on licensing departments. The fifth and very important point is that there should be a protection on the confidentiality of applicants and certificate holders’ data.
If my noble friend could encourage her department to take forward a package on those lines, she would find much more support than she has had for some of the bits of legislation. If existing laws worked better, we would all be encouraged to follow new legislation more carefully and in the same spirit.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I shall concentrate in my contribution on the possible impact of the Bill on children under the age of 18, an aspect that received less than full attention during its passage through the other place. However, I exclude Sir Ed Davey MP from any criticism for that, a number of whose resisted amendments I shall support if they are tabled by his party. However, before making that contribution, I thank Russell Taylor for his extremely comprehensive and helpful Library Briefing.
I submit to the Minister that, despite the Bill generally receiving cross-party support in the other place, there are two reasons why this House should not be invited to undertake any further stages beyond Second Reading until they have been resolved. First, I have never before come across a Bill about which the two members of the Cabinet most affected appear to be at odds over one of its main provisions. In an interview published in the Times on 26 May 2018, the Secretary of State for Justice, David Gauke, expressed his desire for there to be a limitation on the use of short prison sentences of less than 12 months, because of their ineffectiveness in reducing reoffending. As he knows better than anyone, our overcrowded and understaffed prison system finds it difficult enough to occupy longer-term prisoners, let alone being able to do anything with and for short-term ones, and the youth justice system is in particularly dire straits—the Chief Inspector of Prisons reported in 2017 that none of the institutions in which young offenders were held was safe. Yet the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, is proposing mandatory sentences of less than 12 months for a number of additional offences created by his Bill.
Why does this matter? It matters for two separate reasons. First, some argue that harsher punishments such as mandatory minimum custodial sentences will deter people, particularly children, from committing crime. There is no evidence to support this contention. Indeed, in support of the Justice Secretary’s desire, the quarterly criminal justice statistics from the Ministry of Justice, published in June 2018, show that the number of children convicted of possession or threatening offences involving knives or offensive weapons has risen since the introduction of mandatory minimum custodial sentences in 2015. A number also argue that locking up those who carry out crimes will reduce the level of crime on the streets. Home Office research proves the expensive unreality of this argument, showing that a 15% increase in child custody numbers is needed to obtain a 1% decrease in crime.
Secondly, mandatory sentences remove judicial discretion. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that custody should only be used as a last resort. The Sentencing Council’s guidelines emphasise the need to look closely at a child’s particular circumstances when sentencing, taking into consideration their background circumstances, vulnerability and developmental age, as well as their chronological one. Removing judicial discretion works against these guidelines. I respectfully suggest to the Minister that this issue must be sorted out before the House is asked to make further progress on the Bill.
The second reason why further progress should be postponed is that the Government announced on Report in the other place that they had decided that a consultation on firearms proposals was needed. That has not taken place. In her opening statement, the Minister gave us no details of when it will be launched. Like other noble Lords, I have been lobbied by a number of firearms specialists on various points of dispute with the Bill’s terms, but in view of the promised consultation I do not propose to consider the firearms clauses, nor should the House be asked to.
No Government responsible for the protection of the public can afford to ignore the mounting public concern about the rise in knife crime and the recent spate of acid attacks in some inner-city areas, but they should be careful that, in their populist rush to be seen to take a hard line with offenders, they do not create problems by not thinking through the implications of what they are proposing. In this connection, I am reminded of the words of Archbishop William Temple, who said in 1934 that the essence of punishment is that it is the reaction of the community against a constituent member. This community has three interests to consider: the maintenance of its own life and order, upon which the welfare of all its members depends; the interests of individual members generally; and the interests of the offending member. Wrong is done if any of these three is neglected.
In their Serious Violence Strategy, launched in April 2018, the Government emphasised the importance of tackling violent crime through a variety of measures, including law enforcement, but also partnerships across a number of sectors such as education, health, social services, housing, youth and victim services—an approach widely welcomed by those working at the coalface.
Like other noble Lords, I am grateful to the Standing Committee for Youth Justice and the Prison Reform Trust for their very helpful and relevant briefings, on which I shall, unashamedly, draw. I am also grateful for a detailed briefing from Junior Smart, a former offender and winner of the Longford Prize, who works with gangs in the East End of London for the St Giles Trust. As he did, I shall discuss knives first.
The sad fact, as reported by Junior and his fellow workers, is that the main reason why young people carry weapons is for fear of being killed. Living in areas affected by serious violence can feel like growing up in a conflict zone, and a fact that needs to be appreciated and understood is that many young people freely admit that they would much rather be caught by the police while carrying a weapon than by their rivals or enemies without one. In other words, they feel like victims as well as perpetrators. Criminalising already disadvantaged young people further can have disturbing consequences, among which are: the risk of driving further inequalities and bias, damaging already fragile community relations; and driving a further rift between disadvantaged young people and authority, when many people, such as the Mayor of London and charities such as the St Giles Trust, are focused on building bridges between the two.
Short prison sentences disrupt a young person’s life in terms of housing, employment and family relationships, while not providing them with meaningful access to rehabilitation support, as all the evidence shows. A criminal record will affect a young person’s life prospects. Here I must declare an interest, in that I have been trying, without success, to persuade the Government to amend the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 through a Private Member’s Bill. At present, progress is stalled until the Supreme Court gives a judgment on a government appeal following defeats in the High Court and Appeals Court. Criminal records have been an issue for far too long.
The Mayor of London is leading a public health approach to tackling the complex causes of serious violence in London. In September last year, he announced the setting up of a violence reduction unit, bringing together police, health, criminal justice and local government. His knife crime strategy uses this approach to strengthen and empower communities to help them make a difference, working with schools, Ofsted and mental health providers—including major trauma centres —and making use of social media outlets, to address the root causes of the problem. Junior Smart, welcoming this approach, advocates the use of more individuals like him, with first-hand experience of the problem, in delivering solutions. Young people already entrenched in serious violence need patient, persistent and under- standing help to enable them to overcome barriers and realise positive change. Legislation including mandatory short prison sentences will not help a generation of young people growing up in a culture of fear.
Moving on to corrosive substances, Clause 6 creates a new offence of possessing a corrosive substance in a public place, for which Clause 8 imposes an “appropriate custodial sentence” of less than 12 months—for both adults and children—for two or more possession offences. A corrosive substance is merely defined as a substance,
“capable of burning human skin by corrosion’,
and nowhere is there a comprehensive list of what these substances are. Many household products, such as bleach, contain low levels of harmful corrosive substances. The Bill creates a situation where a child could legally be sent to buy a household product without realising that it is illegal for them to possess it in public. Furthermore, the Federation of Small Businesses, which supports the aims of the legislation, points out that the way in which Schedule 1 is worded leaves small businesses in doubt as to what products are or are not subject to the Bill, including such items as car batteries. The federation has asked the Home Office whether the administrative burdens brought about by age verification requirements can be mitigated. Will the Minister please tell the House what is being done about this?
The impact of the Bill on black and minority ethnic young people cannot be ignored, not least because they are more often subject to stop and search procedures that are already the cause of strained relations between BAME children and the police.
To conclude, violent crime is clearly a serious problem and violent behaviour needs to be prevented and stopped, but as far as children are concerned many are the victims of violence, and the creation of new offences and sanctions is unlikely to alter this view. The law currently mandates minimum sentences of four-month detention and training orders on 16 and 17-year olds who are convicted of two or more possession offences, or one of threatening a person in public. This conviction threshold should remain until there is sufficient evidence that lowering it will be effective in tackling violent crime, or until the public health approach, advocated both by the Government in their Serious Violence Strategy and by the Mayor of London and others, has been properly resourced and tested throughout the country. Until then, I think that further processing of the Bill should be suspended.
Baroness Newlove (Con)
My Lords, I first pay my respects to the family of Mr Pomeroy and to his young son, who witnessed his father’s murder. I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackling violent crime, both legislatively, via the Offensive Weapons Bill, and with the preventive measures outlined in the Serious Violence Strategy published in June last year. None the less, while its provisions are to be applauded, I fear that the Bill may be a missed opportunity in focusing so narrowly on the weapons themselves, rather than on the symptoms of why individuals are drawn to carry them in the very first place. For instance, surely this legislation would be an apt vehicle for introducing a specific offence of inducing a child or vulnerable person to carry out such a criminal activity.
I have spoken previously about the scourge of vulnerable children being groomed to carry drugs around the country—“county lines”, as it is known in police language. Sadly, we know all too well that violent gangs’ funds are capitalised by these acts, and the gangs really like the vulnerability of these young people. Children are certainly not doing this off their own bat, yet their vulnerabilities are the enablers for these violent gangs, who use a promise of money beyond their wildest dreams to induce young people to deal these drugs and carry offensive, lethal weapons, in the sadly mistaken belief that this will shield them from any harm. Other than the high bar of evidence set by the Modern Slavery Act, this coercion and intimidation will be considered as an aggravating factor only at the point of sentencing. In my many conversations with police and agencies working in communities up and down our country to divert children from criminal activity, this is pointed to as a very real gap in our statutory provisions. We should surely use the opportunity presented by the Bill to plug that vital gap.
I am also troubled by the lack of action against those who turn a blind eye to the glamorising of serious violence and criminal lifestyles. I include in this the tech companies behind social media, as well as the radio stations that host and play tracks, aimed at teenagers, which speak carelessly about the carrying of these lethal weapons as a status symbol or badge of honour. I have worked with agencies that inform me that their intelligence has to keep constantly on top of this. The weapons are cool and essential accessories; before leaving the house the teenager thinks, “Phone, wallet ... oh, blade”. Yet their weapon may be the one that takes away their life or that of somebody else where they live. It is hard not to think that we are fighting a losing battle if we are trying to ban the carrying of ninja stars on our streets, yet any self-respecting six year-old knows that a ninja star is the weapon of choice of their favourite Lego Ninjago character, Zane. Have we not just had family celebrations for Christmas?
As a mother myself, I know full well what gang violence looks and feels like. I ask noble Lords to type “gravity knife” into Google. The second YouTube video that comes up is entitled “Cool Gravity Knives”. This is not an Xbox or PlayStation game; this is the everyday reality that we face. Offensive weapons are in our homes. Worse, I fear, is that they are being normalised and people are becoming desensitised; they are nothing to be feared. I hold my hands up and am the first to admit that such weapons are not my area of expertise. Yet, sadly, they have an impact on many families up and down the country. As noble Lords would expect, as Victims’ Commissioner it is for me to remind your Lordships that behind the rising numbers in homicides, knife crime, robbery and gun crime are individual people and families, left bereft and taken to the edge by their grief and unbearable loss. This loss also causes rival gangs to go out and get revenge. The reality is that going through our criminal justice system becomes as traumatic as the crime itself.
My noble friend the Minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe there was an attempt in the other place to introduce an amendment creating an independent advocate for victims of incidents involving offensive weapons. Such a person would be professionally trained and could explain the process, as well as the true meaning of sentencing. The advocate could refer victims to those able to provide practical support and make sure that they have the assistance they need and, what is more, are entitled to expect. More importantly, they could prevent these victims feeling as though they are on a criminal justice conveyor belt, being passed from one agency to another, having to repeat their traumatic story as they meet another usually well-meaning but unacquainted face. Independent advocates can provide a victim-centric service, providing support that will pay vast dividends in helping those bereaved families to rebuild their lives and move forward—to cope and recover.
I want to see the Bill providing for victims. They are not just a crime statistic; they are human beings and families suffering unbearable pain and loss. They must be given better emotional support and guidance to steer them through every step of the justice system so that they can recover from the crime and live their normal lives. Victims constantly tell me that they feel their status in the criminal justice system is not comparable to that of the offender. I look forward to working with the Minister as the Bill progresses. I will continue to push the Government to ensure that victims, whose lives may be devastatingly transformed by the crime committed against them, are afforded the rights they so justly deserve. It saddens me to stand here today knowing that it is 12 years since I lost my husband to gang crime. They had no weapons but hands and feet, yet we are discussing the corrupt and vicious goings-on in communities and it saddens me that we are not helping young people aspire to better things. Money is one thing. Respect is one thing. But taking a life and a family losing a child is hard to bear every day and into the future.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
It is a great privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. She speaks with authority and personal passion and we should listen with great care to what she says. I listened to her a few weeks ago at the annual Livia Awards, a remarkable institution created by the parents of a young woman who was killed in a road traffic accident to recognise in the Metropolitan Police those who expend extra effort and trouble to bring perpetrators to justice—but, again, focused on the victims of crime. I did the guest of honour speech last year and the noble Baroness did it this year. It is a remarkable organisation, to which I pay tribute.
It is one of the tragedies of the way in which Brexit has sucked the oxygen and energy out of political discourse that issues such as this, which are of huge importance to people in their daily lives, have been sidelined and have not been given anything like the attention they deserve. Therefore it is right that the Government should expect detailed consideration of this Bill and that we should spend a little time on it. It raises a whole host of major issues, which have come out already, even at this early stage.
There are deep social problems in our society today, some of which are manifesting themselves in the violence that is affecting so many parts of the country. We in this House are a million miles away from a lot of those social problems and find it difficult to understand them, let alone find remedies that will be applicable to the areas which they deeply affect. I took part in a programme recently and the very senior presenter, a prominent person in public life, told me on the sidelines of the interview that his son had been stabbed in an incident in London. He had been an inch away from ending his life—a young man now completely traumatised and whose personality has been changed. The presenter said, “It’s like the wild west out there”. For somebody to say that about our country and our capital city highlights something very serious, which merits our concern.
I come from Scotland. In Glasgow the problem manifested itself a number of years ago. All the agencies came together in the violence reduction unit that was created at that time, and a radical difference has been made in the situation there. I am glad that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has taken on board the lessons of that and that a violence reduction unit has been created in London. I know that Ministers and the Government are also paying attention to the success of something that has worked. Of course, all this is highlighted by the terrible incident that took place on a train last week, and I am sure that all of us here feel profoundly for the Pomeroy family, and especially for their young 14 year-old son.
I will concentrate on only one aspect of the Bill, firearms. I have a degree of knowledge and expertise in this area as I was Defence Secretary of this country and then Secretary-General of NATO, and it was perhaps part of the armoury of military forces to know a lot about these instruments. But I am also a resident of the town of Dunblane. At the time of the 1996 incident, I was the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and I lived in the town. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, was the Secretary of State for Scotland, and although we were political combatants at the time, we were welded together in the wake of the evil perpetrated by a criminal who both of us knew. I played a part in the legislation that was passed when we came to power in 1997 to abolish the private ownership of handguns in this country, legislation which has had a major influence on gun crime in this country as a whole.
That background gives me a deep concern about the progress of the Bill, in particular the fact that .50 calibre high-powered rifles have now been taken out of the legislation after the initial plan to keep them in. The term “.50 calibre rifle” does not mean an awful lot to the ordinary person, but they are colloquially known as “sniper rifles”. That is a technical expression used in the military to describe guns that kill people at long distance, and that is effectively what they are. If you look them up on the internet you will find that .50 calibre rifles are also known as sniper rifles. The Government’s impact assessment—an interesting document on the subject of .50 calibre rifles—states:
“There is concern about the availability of .50 calibre and rapid-fire Manually Actuated Release System (MARS) rifles being available to some civilian firearms licence holders. The range and penetrative power of 0.50 calibre rifles makes them more dangerous than other common firearms and were they to be used in criminal or terrorist activities would present a serious threat to the public and would be uniquely difficult for the police to control. Due to the rate of discharge MARS rifles pose a comparable risk to the public and police as other self-loading weapons already banned in the UK. The Government need to intervene to ensure the purchase, ownership or possession is illegal”.
That was the opening statement of the Government’s own impact assessment, which went on to go through all the other effects. In the Second Reading debate in the Commons, the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, said:
“We based those measures on evidence that we received from intelligence sources, police and other security experts”.
He was challenged throughout the whole of that Second Reading debate by a concerted group of Conservative Back-Bench MPs who are part of the All-Party Group on Shooting and Conservation, and he went on to say:
“According to the information that we have, weapons of this type have, sadly, been used in the troubles in Northern Ireland, and, according to intelligence provided by police and security services, have been possessed by criminals who have clearly intended to use them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; cols. 918-19.]
Those are not my words or the words of gun campaigners but the words of Her Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Home Affairs, speaking in the House of Commons.
Why on earth were the Government persuaded to take out the clause in the Bill that would have removed those weapons from legal ownership? I appreciate that the Minister and the Government have said that they are now open to consultation on the matter, but they have not even included some of the safeguards that the gun lobby was recommending, as outlined by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, to separate out these elements. At the moment, there is nothing: there is no restriction on these weapons. These are weapons that can immobilise a truck—or a human being—more than a mile away from the person handling the rifle. We are talking about a serious weapon with enormous potential. If the Home Secretary of this country believes that they are in the hands of those who may use them, the call for action was all the more important. The police, the intelligence authorities and the National Crime Agency have all come to the same conclusion.
As I read the debate in Hansard and the background documents, the echoes came back of the arguments we had after Dunblane from the shooting lobby, who said that these guns were only for recreation and were in the hands of people who were properly licensed, et cetera. But the evil criminal who perpetrated what happened in Dunblane and the one who perpetrated what happened in Hungerford were holding legally obtainable guns at the time. It is right and proper that assessments be made and that we listen to the people who know. As I said, if the Home Secretary of this country believed that there is the potential for these weapons to be used, action should have been taken.
I hope that during the course of the debate in this House, we will return to this subject and perhaps go down the road that the Home Secretary was deliberately on before he was derailed.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, my objective in participating in debate on the Bill will be to improve what I think is basically a good Bill and a good direction to go in. I declare an interest as the possessor of various forms of caustic liquids and a large number of knives and other blades. I have owned rifles and shotguns and I am captain of the House of Lords target rifle team.
Here we are looking at the balance between the possession of articles which we may all hope or wish to own at one time or another and the danger which those articles can cause our fellow citizens. It is a matter of balance, examining the detail, taking our time, making a fair judgment and looking at the reality of the risks that some claim, the effectiveness of the measures that others propose and dealing with issues at a level of detail that makes the whole outcome fair and effective, not just arbitrary, so that we arrive in this area of interface between ordinary life and danger at a reasonable set of conclusions.
I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said at the instigation of USDAW. In the Bill, we are putting immense obligations on individual shop workers—often not well-paid or trained people. At the moment, they have similar obligations in relation to alcohol and cigarettes but, frankly, if a kid gets away with a bottle of vodka, the chances of serious harm are quite small. You can rely on ordinary, day-to-day systems: “Yes, I saw their ID and believed it”. Will we be satisfied with that level of protection and practice when it comes to knives? If I turn up as a courier at someone’s gate and accept the identification stating that the person I am handing the package over to is 18, will the courts and the police really be happy if I just say, “I saw it”, or will some kind of process and record be required? The Government owe a serious duty to couriers and shop workers to lay out exactly what procedures they expect their bosses to put in place, so that they can know as they go about their perfectly ordinary business what level of protection they will have if they behave in a specified way.
It is merely a case, I hope, of taking our thinking forward a little and making sure that we encourage the Minister to make statements during Committee on what the Government consider proper practice in these cases so that shop workers and others are protected properly. There are also arguments for making attempting to buy a knife while underage an offence. We have such an offence for alcohol; why has it not reappeared for knives? We need to look at the protection of the people we expect to enforce the Bill effectively. During Committee, or in conversations before then, I also hope that we will get a good deal more detail on what kinds of offences are committed with knives, including what knives are used and where they come from.
The same goes for firearms, on which a useful report was produced. Rifles make up less than 1% of firearm crime at the moment. We talk about regulating them further in the Bill but what kinds of rifles are we talking about, and in what circumstances? Are we dealing with sporting rifles used in domestic arguments or with criminals using rifles obtained from communities that hold rifles legally? Are we dealing with people importing rifles of different specifications? Frankly, trying to use a bolt-action rifle in a crime is a pretty daffy thing to do: it is extremely hard to aim them straight and they are hard to manoeuvre in close quarters. If you were going to use a gun of that size, you would use a shotgun, at least for effect if you do not aim straight. We need a real understanding of what is going on out there: where the dangers lie, where they are concentrated and where we should concentrate preventive measures. At the moment, we do not have the data we should to understand whether the Government’s measures will be effective.
We ought to examine the definitions in the Bill too. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, Clause 6 defines a corrosive substance as something,
“capable of burning human skin”.
Ice, fertiliser, cement, laundry detergent—all sorts of things—can burn human skin if you leave them on for long enough. The definition ought to include duration, for example if a substance burns the skin within a minute or some other relatively short timescale. Otherwise, people will not know what they are allowed to carry in public under the extent of the Bill.
Schedule 1 contains a list of corrosives, but it is a very short one. Where are bromic acid, iodic acid, perchloric acid, triflic acid, lime, hydrogen peroxide and the numerous hydroxides, all of which are available caustic chemicals? Why this shortlist, which does not even contain the obvious examples? For example, hydrogen peroxide is easy to come by, even in relatively high concentrations. The list does not seem right to me. It is easy to have a more extensive list. People cannot invent new examples of these chemicals, by and large. It is an established list, mostly of inorganic chemicals. Let us get the full list in the Bill so that we do not have eternally to come back and extend it.
When it comes to knives, the established definition of a “bladed product”—with which I am comfortable, by and large—is used earlier in the Bill. However, a different definition appears in Clause 19. A bladed product means an article that,
“is or has a blade, and … is capable of causing a serious injury to a person which involves cutting that person’s skin”.
That could apply to a safety razor. The established definition of a blade specifically excludes safety razors in a careful sort of way. You are allowed to wander about with a safety razor as long as it falls within certain specifications, but this definition includes safety razors. It also includes lawnmowers, food processors, scissors and an awful lot of other things that you would expect to have such as steak knives and saws. It covers any kind of steel blade for which there are innumerable reasons for people to want to order over the internet. You are producing quite a wide and undefined definition that will require many people to think carefully about where the boundaries of the law actually lie in terms of labelling their products and the processes they use to get them out to the public. We ought to be clear about where the boundaries are in this area.
Why is a stiletto not included in this definition, although it is under the existing definition? That talks explicitly about pointed objects that are designed to stick into people but here the Bill talks just about bladed objects. It is not clear to my mind that we have got the definition right. This is something that a lot of people are going to have to interact with, so it should be absolutely clear and fair.
I am quite comforted by what is set out but I would like to go into further detail about how we are going to deal with knives ordered from foreign websites and what mechanisms will be put in place to deal with something that appears in a brown paper parcel saying that the contents are worth less than £19.95. It can simply wander in. How are we going to pick these packages up? I can see that we can catch Amazon and eBay—or at least Amazon—but are we really dealing with the myriad suppliers who on the internet or are we just taking the online trade in knives and shoving it offshore to no benefit to ourselves?
I turn to rifles—again, this is a matter of going into the detail. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, has a great deal of experience in this area while my experience is merely practical. It is very hard to use a lever-action rifle to achieve rapid fire and you would have to practise a lot. I am not referring to MARS rifles. If you are practising a lot, presumably you will be part of a registered gun club and thus within the controls over ownership, so that becomes important. Suggestions have been made about storing these things separately and there are concerns about whether we are implementing properly the 2016 Act. All of these issues need to be looked at over the course of the Bill’s passage so that we draw the right line between firearms that we are happy for people to possess under particular circumstances and those which we think no one should possess. There is no absolute line on these things so it has to be drawn with care and consideration. More time and more information would be welcome. My personal suggestion is that since we are considering what to do with high-powered rifles, we should include MARS and lever-action rifles and take one consistent decision across the whole of the blurred line we have at the moment for what is acceptable.
I look forward very much to the debates on this Bill and I hope that we will end up improving it. I am absolutely delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has shown such liberal principles in his defence of the rights of people when faced with charges under this legislation. I shall be behind him if he presses amendments on that theme. We are criminalising people who we have no business criminalising and there is no justification for pushing the burden of proof that far in so many circumstances—and certainly not when it amounts, as the noble Lord illustrates, to children carrying a can of detergent home. That is not the sort of thing where the burden of proof should be tilted against the citizen.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for emphasising, in her presentation of the Bill, that this is just one small part of a whole gamut of approaches that the Government are taking to this huge problem of violence in our society. Listening to this debate, I think of a recent visit to Feltham young offender institution. I heard from the director the huge problem it faced with gangs, with maybe 15 young men attacking two or three others. When I used to visit 15 or 17 years ago, it would be two or three young men attacking another boy. This is a sea-change in our society. It is a huge challenge.
Knife crime is perhaps the most important of the many important elements to this Bill. I know it has touched several Members of your Lordships’ House, and there was a terrible recent incident. It is terrible to think of loved ones being removed from this life prematurely in such an awful way. I think about 30 years ago when I worked with young people on housing estates in this country, in London. I thank heaven that at that time there was not this issue of knives or gangs; it was challenging enough as it was. I am grateful to the Minister for emphasising that this is just one part of a larger strategy.
Referring back to visiting prisons, which I do fairly often, I share the concern about criminalising more young people when that might be avoided and introducing short sentences, which are ineffective and put a greater burden on prisons. Our prisons are already vastly over- burdened. I am grateful for the new money injected into prisons. At the last prison I visited, an officer had been attacked during the night. It was very demoralising for the whole workforce, but more demoralising still was the sense that over several years their funding had been cut. The promise of new money gave them some hope. I will listen with great interest and I expect I will want to support those concerns about criminalisation and short sentences.
I will try, as several of your Lordships have done, to look at the Bill from the perspective of the welfare of young people. I will emphasise how crucial it is to secure a long-term and robust government commitment to youth work. Can measures in the Bill be extended to the age of 21? This seems much more developmentally appropriate than cutting them off at the age of 18. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Brent Centre for Young People, a mental health service for adolescents, and of the child welfare charity the Michael Sieff Foundation, both of which are in the register.
While the factors contributing to the use of dangerous weapons by young people are complicated, it is always useful to first consider the need for security in young people’s lives—security of relationships to people, places and institutions. Young people carrying knives because they are fearful was mentioned earlier. If you are fearful of walking to school because a gang of boys might attack you, it does not seem too far-fetched to think of carrying a knife—as unwise and risky as that is. It is no surprise that young people who have experienced local authority care are so overrepresented in the criminal justice system when one considers the multiple losses that many of them have experienced. Many will have had their relationship with their parents, their family home and their school broken. Within local authority care, they may face changes in foster carers, further changes in school and then early removal into independent living. It was very troubling to read this weekend of the increasing numbers of young people leaving care at the ages of 16 and 17 and being placed in bed and breakfast and hostel accommodation. Many years ago, I talked to a young woman who had been placed in hostel accommodation. She had no proper lock for her door and was the only woman among several men, some of whom were dealing with drug addiction.
I understand that local authorities do not have sufficient funding to deliver the services that they should, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for referring to that. It is particularly sad because there has been good progress in improving the quality of condition for care leavers. However, while thinking of young people who are frightened, we should remember that care leavers are the most isolated, and possibly the most frightened, young people.
The purpose of this Bill is to protect the public from dangerous weapons, but what goes on outwith the Bill is also important. I therefore welcome the Government’s serious violence strategy, the additional investment in youth support and the recruitment of the Redthread agency to intervene when young people are most likely to be amenable to change. However, I hope the Government recognise that, strategically, it is immensely important to secure a sound base for the future of youth work. The Minister will be aware of the sad history of youth work in this country. It is a story of boom and bust: investment is made and then removed. What parent would encourage their child to enter a profession that is guaranteed to have the plug pulled in the next financial downturn? Youth work is a challenging profession, as has been highlighted on the front page of newspapers for the past two years. Think of Damilola Taylor, the growth of youth gangs and the ever-growing availability of hard drugs. We have to give our firmest commitments to the profession of youth work.
Will the Minister therefore tell us what progress has been made in strengthening the duty on local authorities to provide youth services? Does she recognise that the weakness of this duty has contributed to the dearth of youth services and the impoverishment of youth work? What timetable is there for improvement in the regulation? Does she accept that the new duty must be fully funded by central government? The Minister has indicated in the past that some progress is being made in this area, so I would very much appreciate an update. High-quality youth work is just part of the response to the current crisis but it is, surely, a crucial part. After all the broken relationships that many of the young people who might choose to acquire dangerous weapons have experienced, it is vital to offer them a steady and long-term relationship with a caring, thoughtful and effective youth worker. My noble friend Lord Ramsbotham helpfully highlighted this when he spoke of Junior Smart, the youth worker.
I see that in Committee in the other place attempts were made to raise the age at which suppliers could be sanctioned for supplying young people with dangerous weapons from 18 to 21. Such a move would be wholly developmentally appropriate. The science points to adolescence drawing to a close at about 21. During adolescence, a young person can often be in turmoil; in particular, she or he may have great difficulty in managing their impulses. I hope the Minister and the House will support a raising of the age, and I was glad to hear it mentioned by noble Lords who spoke previously.
In implementing this Bill, we will of course want to think about stop and search, which will have to be made use of to make it work. However, there is a risk of alienating young people if it is done injudiciously, particularly those from a BAME background. I know that the police give very careful thought to how this is used, and clearly they need to be adequately resourced. It is crucial that we have enough community support officers and beat officers with relationships with these young people, so that they do not feel intimidated and so that, when stop and search has to be used, it is used sensitively.
I look forward to the Minister’s response and to working on the details of the Bill with her and your Lordships in Committee and on Report.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, I broadly welcome this Bill, and we have already heard about some of the ways in which it could perhaps be improved. I welcome it on the ground that, apart from anything else, it is the Government’s responsibility to protect the public, and the Bill is about improving public safety—and who would not wish to see that happen?
I am not an expert on the rise in knife crime. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, raised the issue. I have not seen much of it, but in some communities in this country there has been a huge rise in knife crime. If we read the Evening Standard, which I try not to do, we discover that there appears to be an explosion in some kinds of knife crime, especially in the capital. That must worry us all. We have all heard about the ghastly murder on the train at Clandon at the weekend. I had never really heard about acid attacks until the last few years and they seem to be on the rise as well—so I commend the Government and certainly support moves, which I hope will be successful, to combat those crimes.
I will focus on firearms alone. I absolutely agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, who said that our firearms legislation UK is “among the world’s strongest”—and quite rightly so. We have very little firearms crime in this country compared with, for instance, somewhere such as the USA. Frankly, the USA’s record on gun crime is abominable. Even as someone who owns a shotgun, I say that the way in which people can get hold of weapons and firearms in the USA is a grave worry. The gun lobby seems to be ill judged in that which it is protecting. I declare an interest in that I own a shotgun. I go game shooting and have used, and occasionally still use, a rifle. I was in the Army for many years and used a great many weapons, for obvious reasons. Before we ban something that perhaps we do not wish to do, we should look at the evidence to see what the impact would be. Noble Lords mentioned .50 calibre rifles in particular, so I will home in on that issue.
A long time ago I used a .50 calibre machine-gun. I understand that there are only 137 .50 calibre rifles licensed in this country. For those who do not know, it is a big, unwieldy heavy piece of kit—so it is pretty difficult to use in a hold-up, for instance, as my noble friend Lord Lucas just mentioned. A terrorist in Northern Ireland used to snipe at security forces with a .50 calibre rifle. I do not know whether he is on one of those letters of comfort that were issued after the Good Friday agreement. I do not know whether he was ever caught. I do not know whether he is alive or dead. But the point about the rifle is that it was illegally imported, and of course its use was illegal. I think that it was part of the three or four shipments that Gaddafi sent from Libya to the IRA. The last one was seized by the French Navy in 1987. The MV Eksund had 120 tonnes of armaments—weapons and ammunition—on board. That is the sort of scale that one is looking at. So if we are talking about banning illegally held .50 rifles, there are 137 in this country. So we should bring this into perspective.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is no longer in his place. As he said, he was closely involved in the Dunblane massacre—the appalling incident when Thomas Hamilton murdered 17 children and teachers in a classroom. Noble Lords may remember the Cullen report that followed, in which Lord Justice Cullen—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cullen—found failings in the police’s registering of the weapons that Hamilton had, and also failings in general public services such as mental health services, because issues were raised back in 1991 about Hamilton’s mental suitability to have firearms. Those were not taken up.
Cullen did not recommend the banning of pistols. Now I am not a pistol shooter, so the ban did not affect me in any way. I am not arguing on my own behalf. But one has to ask what effect it had on crime using handguns or pistols. I dug out the statistics. Of course, Hamilton had legally held pistols. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who I thought argued very well—so I am not criticising him. But in 1996, the year before the legislation came in, there were 3,347 handgun-linked instances of crime reported. In 2001-02 that had gone up to 5,874. It has since come down again. In the last year for which we have statistics it was 2,675. Almost all these weapons—and I would say now all these weapons—have never been legally held. So by banning people spending their weekends firing pistols, which I did not and most people did not, we have not particularly contributed to a reduction in firearms crime because you can buy pistols. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, will stop me if I am wrong, but I suspect that there are pubs in London where you can buy a pistol—if you know the right pub, which I do not.
While I support the Bill, we should not go into the business of interfering with people’s lives where it is not necessary. If it is necessary, we should. On that note, I commend the Bill to the House in general terms.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, this is, quite rightly, a sombre Second Reading debate. I followed the passage of the Bill through the other place with interest and I share the sadness of many speakers so far that we need this legislation.
Sometimes we need to take a step back and understand why things happen and the causes of actions. Sometimes a knee-jerk reaction saying “We need to ban something” is not always the right approach. Let us be quite clear: today in our country many women, particularly young women, walk out at night with their car keys acting as knuckle-dusters in case they are attacked. It is a natural reaction to be fearful. If our communities were safer, if there were more police on the beat and if there were community policing, perhaps people would feel safer and would not feel the necessity to arm themselves. That is not to say that stabbing somebody to death or throwing acid in somebody’s face is acceptable. In my view, in most cases it is downright evil.
I cannot imagine anything worse than a police officer appearing at the door and telling you that your son or daughter has been stabbed or shot to death or being told that your daughter or son had been charged with a stabbing or shooting offence. It is sad that legislation is needed, but we must keep our communities safe and protect the most vulnerable. Only a few days ago in my city a knife-wielding gang ran amok in daytime in the city centre terrifying tourists and residents alike. I was shocked when my noble friend Lord Paddick said that every day in the UK somebody is stabbed to death. Many of us have mentioned Mr Pomeroy, who was stabbed nine times. Our hearts and thoughts go out to all the people who have been caught up in these awful events
In the Government’s Serious Violence Strategy, published in April 2018, we learned that:
“We want to make clear that our approach is not solely focused on law enforcement, very important as that is, but depends on partnerships across a number of sectors such as education, health, social services, housing, youth services, and victim services”.
The four strands of that strategy are,
“tackling county lines and misuse of drugs, early intervention and prevention, supporting communities and partnerships, and an effective law enforcement and criminal justice response”.
When I read the strategy, I was very pleased that the second strand was early intervention and prevention. I have an interest in children and young people. While the Bill is focused on the fourth of these strands—the effective law enforcement and criminal justice response—I think that in this debate we need to place on the record the importance of early intervention and prevention, which is a much more significant and positive approach than those which the Bill proposes.
Chapter 4 of the Serious Violence Strategy, published in April 2018, deals with early intervention and prevention, and there is a list of what the Government call “Key actions and commitments”. The chapter opens with the following:
“We must prevent people from committing serious violence by developing resilience, and supporting positive alternatives and timely interventions. Prevention and early intervention are at the heart of our approach to tackling serious violence”.
It goes on to say:
“A universal intervention builds resilience in young people through supporting positive choices, improving critical thinking skills, providing healthy, stable and supportive frameworks whether in the home or school”.
The strategy talks about further work to support schools and,
“plans to deliver face-to-face support for parents of children with mental health problems and improve early interventions with young people with mental health issues”.
I am tired of hearing about intentions to improve mental health provision for children and young people. We all know which road is paved with good intentions. The record of recent Governments on mental health in general and child mental health in particular is, quite frankly, not good enough.
Today, the Prime Minister launched the NHS Long Term Plan, with yet more promises about child mental health. The Government seem proud of the fact that,
“in 2017/18, around 30.5% of children and young people then estimated to have a mental health condition were able to benefit from treatment and support, up from an estimated 25% two years earlier”,
and they seem satisfied that:
“Over the next five years the NHS will fund new Mental Health Support Teams working in schools and colleges, building on the support already available, which will be rolled out to between one-fifth and a quarter of the country by the end of 2023”.
The intention to roll out support to 25% of schools and colleges by 2023 will be of no comfort to the 18,000 schools that do not make the cut. And to read that:
“The NHS work with schools, parents and local councils will reveal whether more upstream preventative support, including better information sharing and the use of digital interventions, helps moderate the need for specialist child and adolescent mental health services”,
is, quite simply, ridiculous.
Developing resilience is another major element of the preventive strategy. I am all in favour of developing resilience and promoting character-building in children and young people, but the Government still cannot agree to make PSHE a statutory part of the national curriculum or agree on what would be included in that provision. This is surely the subject in which resilience can be developed. Our children and young people are tested endlessly on a content-based curriculum, with school leaders and teachers’ futures dependent on performance tables. This focus on SATs and EBacc results has squeezed out many of the curricular and extra-curricular activities that help children and young people develop resilience and build character.
I was not going to mention social media, but the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, in her quite emotional speech, did. I do not think that we have understood the significant impact that social media can have on the minds of young people. To see teenage gangs glorifying knives and other weapons and being allowed to run these things on social media for days and sometimes weeks on end is, quite frankly, not good enough. Similarly, we have not completely understood the whole issue of video games. I think that they have a serious effect on young people. When children can get hold of video games that glorify violence, that must be something for us to think about, and perhaps this will be an opportunity for us to do so.
I shall give another example. In our rush to get better results, we now “off-roll” pupils. To get rid of difficult pupils and difficult problems, many schools will off-roll pupils to the street corner, where they become easy prey for violent teenage gangs and, in some cases, drug dealers. In terms of diverting young people away from violent activities, it is unfortunate, to say the least, that, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rightly said, we have seen youth services cut to the bone, with the voluntary sector often the only providers of these services. Detached youth workers would seek out disaffected young people, whether they gathered near the bus shelter, on the street corner or in the park, and would talk to them, help and advise them. They no longer exist. There is no longer any support for those young people.
I am sure that we do not want to adopt the American response to violence which, with the full support of the President, is to give more people guns. The commission investigating the high-school massacre in Parkland, Florida, unanimously approved a report which included the recommendation that teachers should be able to carry guns—my goodness. Fighting fire with fire is not a solution for the UK. The answer is building up young people’s resilience, dealing with mental health problems immediately and effectively, and providing support in communities.
I support this Bill while regretting the necessity for it; however, I deplore the fact that austerity has been used an excuse to deprive young people of so many positive alternatives to carrying a knife or worse. Let us reflect on the fact that it costs £40,000 per year to keep a young person in prison—twice the cost of a youth worker.
Baroness Couttie (Con)
My Lords, I begin by reminding the House of my interest as a deputy chairman of the Local Government Association.
No local authority leader will ever forget the first death from a knife attack on their patch, while they were in charge. Early in my leadership of Westminster City Council, I was deeply affected by the murder of a 16 year-old boy who was hacked to death with machetes by a gang of youths on a busy Pimlico street at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. This horrific crime was part of a dispute relating to drug-dealing territories; the police swiftly found the perpetrators and brought them to justice along with those who attempted to hide them. This was about seven years ago; as we all know in this Chamber, knife crime, along with serious violence involving guns and corrosive substances, has continued to rise and it is our young people, often from deprived areas, who are in the front line. For this reason, I welcome the Bill and its approach to tackling violence on our streets.
The Offensive Weapons Bill will give police greater powers to tackle the growing problems we face but, more importantly, it is part of the Government’s Serious Violence Strategy launched in April last year. This strategy advocates a partnership approach between the police, local government, charities and local people; in my experience, it sets out the collaborative working needed not only to deter potential offenders, through swift and strong justice, but to divert those at risk of becoming victims or perpetrators from becoming part of the culture—often linked to gangs—that is so prevalent in some of our most deprived areas.
In the interests of time, and basing my words on my own experience, I will speak about the work that London Councils has undertaken to combat this growing problem in our capital and to illustrate how the Serious Violence Strategy can work in practice. All 32 boroughs plus the City of London work collaboratively across London; they do so not only as boroughs, but by bringing in many other relevant providers in sectors such as health, schools, the voluntary sector, the GLA and local residents, as well as, of course, co-ordinating with the police. Within London boroughs many, such as Westminster, take a cross-departmental approach, bringing in expertise from housing, social services, planning, culture and children’s services.
London is a very diverse city; it is therefore important that each borough develops approaches that suit its local needs and can be co-ordinated across boroughs. Boroughs have developed different approaches to best fit their circumstances, and this allows cross-borough experimentation and learning. London Councils has established a repository of practice on serious youth violence, which has useful links to data sources and other resources and makes available to boroughs the knife crime action plans of community safety partnerships. These set out the core elements that would appear effective in a local knife crime plan so that boroughs developing plans do not have to reinvent approaches.
In order to facilitate this collaborative approach, some boroughs have established integrated gangs or anti-violence units. Some have collocated staff from different departments and other bodies while others use virtual collocation; both strategies seem to be working well. Westminster has one of the highest volumes of weapon-enabled crime in London, as a result of the concentration seen predominantly in the West End area and linked to the night-time economy. The council has used the multiagency approach to tackling this issue to great effect. It begins with a grass-roots approach, which challenges the belief that carrying a knife keeps you safe and that selling drugs has no victims. It is an online platform that uses a series of films to portray the full impact of drug dealing and carrying knives. The films are made by young people from Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham.
Westminster’s integrated gangs unit is a multiagency team launched in 2011 in response to the rising rates of gang violence and aims to intervene and divert young people away from gangs and criminality. In 2018 Westminster established a task group to look at the changing nature of violence and weapons use and ways that council departments and other agencies can further work together to greater effect. The youth offending team not only works with those who have committed a crime but delivers a range of preventive interventions targeted at young people and parents. Community weapons sweeps aid the removal of offensive weapons from our streets, while anonymous reporting gives the council and local police valuable intelligence to help the fight against violence. The Westminster trading standards team is also working with local businesses to create a partnership to stop the sale of corrosive substances to young people.
Several boroughs have taken a public health approach, focusing on harm reduction, primary prevention and early years. This approach is focused on analysing the underlying causes of serious youth violence and tackling those issues before they develop into a serious problem. Similarly, other boroughs such as Lewisham use a trauma-informed health approach, the key principles of which are to develop a local understanding of the adverse impact of childhood experiences on the prevalence of violent crime. They endeavour to ensure that schools are a place of safety for young and vulnerable people and offer a space to address adverse childhood experience early, aiming to develop resilience and emotional intelligence in children so that they understand how to live a safe and healthy life.
One particularly effective technique used by many schools and youth groups is talks by ex-gang members about the dangers of the lifestyle that they have left behind them. The speakers are usually young men who the children can relate to, who look cool and could be seen as role models. But it is not just about trying to put young people off involvement; alternative activities need to be available as well, which is where youth clubs and programmes have such an important role to play. Boxing clubs, football clubs and centres that offer facilities with teachers for young people to compose or play music, or for other creative activities, are vital for ensuring that young people are engaged in positive activities in a social environment instead of on the streets with little to do, where they are easy prey for those wishing to pull them into the gang lifestyle.
There is still much to learn and much to do to reverse the frightening trend of increasing serious youth violence and its use of offensive weapons. The Bill will help the police to target and punish those who are already intent on inflicting or threatening injury and those who assist them, and I support it. It is clear, however, that to really have an impact, prevention needs to be at the heart of any approach. Diverting those who are at risk of being sucked into gangs or feel vulnerable if they are not armed must be at the centre of what we do, and I sincerely hope that the Government’s serious violence strategy is backed up with sufficient resources, not just for the police but for those other bodies on the front line of dealing with this problem.
Lord Bilimoria (CB)
My Lords, I was brought up in India with my late father, Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, who served as an army officer and rose to become commander-in-chief of the central army. From a young age we were exposed to firearms. I was exposed to live shelling at a very young age. Throughout this, my father always imposed on my brother and me how dangerous firearms are. In fact, when he gave me my first airgun he said, “Son, even an airgun can be lethal”. When he gave me my first Swiss army knife, he said, “This is a dangerous weapon”, and sure enough, a few days later, I cut my hand when closing the knife. All guns and knives can be offensive weapons.
The Bill concerns the increasing number of violent offences that we see coming out every day. The statistics show that this is the case, and I thank the House of Lords Library briefing team and Russell Taylor for their excellent briefing. The intention of the Bill is to strengthen the law to help to tackle violent crimes, particularly those involving knives, firearms and corrosive substances such as acid. The statistics show that the number of police-recorded offences involving knives and sharp instruments are going up, as is the number of admissions to hospitals in England for assaults involving sharp instruments. The number of homicides has increased, following a long decline.
I commend a lot of the measures in the Bill, including the area dealing with the sale and delivery of corrosive products and the possession of corrosive substances. It talks about the sale and delivery of bladed weapons. The Minister spoke about the online sale of knives. Clauses 17 to 19 would make a remote sale an offence in certain circumstances. The Explanatory Notes to the Bill state that, for the purposes of this offence, a bladed product is defined as,
“articles which have a blade and which are capable of causing serious injury to a person’s skin by cutting”—
like my penknife. There are 400 million knives in the UK; virtually every one of them is capable of causing injury. Where does one draw the line between knives used violently and knives for everyday use in kitchens and by chefs for cooking? Of course, the Bill talks about the prohibition of certain firearms; when it was first introduced, rifles,
“from which a shot, bullet or other missile, with kinetic energy of more than 13,600 joules at the muzzle of the weapon, can be discharged”,
were to be prohibited—this included .50 calibre rifles. This has now been removed because of a government amendment.
On Second Reading, Sajid Javid said:
“The Bill will help to make all our communities safer by helping to get dangerous weapons off our streets. As Home Secretary, I will be relentless in ensuring that our streets remain safe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; col. 927.]
As Home Secretary, he is rightly making the security of the country’s citizens the Government’s number one priority. In the Labour response, the shadow Minister for Policing, Louise Haigh, brought up the issue of police numbers and the cuts in spending, believing these issues were significantly contributing factors in the growth of violent crime—I will come to that later.
Then, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative MP who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Shooting and Conservation, argued that, instead of focusing on banning such firearms, rules should be tightened regarding their storage, with licence decisions potentially contingent on police approval of secure storage arrangements. He stressed that this would be better for public safety than the “disproportionate” measures set out in the Bill, and said:
“They target some of the most law-abiding people in the country and they will not make this country any safer, because the criminal will use a different weapon of choice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; cols. 951-52.]
Of course, the government amendment means that these weapons have been taken out of the prohibited list.
In his excellent speech, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, spoke from his great experience as a former Secretary of State for Defence and Secretary-General of NATO, and as somebody who lived in Dunblane. He spoke about the use of .50 calibre weapons as sniper rifles, and gave his view. The other view was given by Jonathan Djanogly, the Conservative MP who is chairman of the British Shooting Sports Council or BSSC. He thanked the Government for listening, and stressed that he wants to engage with them. He explained:
“The proposal in the Bill to ban firearms with a muzzle velocity of more than 13,600 J, including .50 calibre guns, was not, under any interpretation of the facts, going to help the fight against crime. The guns are very expensive, costing around £20,000 each. There are therefore very few in number, with only 150 or so in private hands. They are extremely bulky, heavy at 30 lb and slow to load, with large, hand-loaded ammunition. In fact, one could hardly find a firearm less likely to be used in a crime. They are simply too big. That is probably why they have never been used in a crime in this jurisdiction”,
with the exception that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, spoke about. Other firearms are equally dangerous and, as Jonathan Djanogly said, .50 calibre rifles could be adapted to avoid the prohibition. He said:
“The irony is that .50 calibre firearms could have their barrels shortened, thus taking them beneath the maximum velocity. The 13,600 J limit is entirely arbitrary, and many owners and manufacturers could simply adapt their guns down to the new limit. The NCA refers to recent seizures of guns, including fully automatic weapons, as showing that crime groups are seeking more powerful weapons, but the .50 calibre is not automatic and there is no evidence of crime gangs ever having wanted to use it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/11/18; cols. 283-84.]
He also said that people should have the right to engage in shooting sports.
The Minister spoke of the risks posed by firearms and target shooting. In its briefing, the BASC talks about the confusion in advice to Ministers; there is confusion about calibre, and machine guns are confused with rifles. It talks about maximum range versus effective range. It cites an example:
“There is no relationship between .50 calibre rifles and the 2017 shootings in Las Vegas. The rifles used in the Las Vegas shootings were .223 and .308, smaller than .50 calibre and not covered by the Offensive Weapons Bill. They were semi-automatics, illegal in the UK, turned into virtually automatic rifles by the use of a ‘bump stock’”,
which we are banning. The BASC continues:
“There is no evidence that bump stocks have been used in the UK and the Offensive Weapons Bill seeks to ban them—with the support of the shooting associations”.
Then there is the issue of lever release rifles and manually actuated release systems—LR and MARS. One has to bear in mind the effect that the proposed ban on this type of rifle will have on sports shooters who have disabilities and injuries, who are unable to operate the other rifle actions, such as bolt action or straight pull. Lever release rifles are very inclusive and enable disabled and injured shooters to carry on with their sport and hobby. Statistically, firearm owners are the most law-abiding citizens in the UK. No crime has ever been committed with a lever release rifle. The criminals’ weapon of choice is an illegally obtained shotgun or handgun. Handgun crime has risen to the point that the Bill has come forward, even though handguns are already illegal.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is my captain as captain of the House of Lords shooting team, of which I have been a member for years. We shoot in the Vizianagram trophy at Bisley. What Wimbledon is to tennis and Lord’s is to cricket, Bisley is the headquarters of world shooting. When we have our match against the other place, the Oxford and Cambridge annual varsity match also takes place.
There has been concern from the shooting community about this Bill. Shooting is a global, Olympic sport. As things stand, shooting has not been included in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022. Is the Minister aware of this? I brought this up with Matt Hancock, the current Health Secretary, who was at that time Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. He assured me that the Government were very supportive of shooting being included in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. I have had representations from the president of the National Rifle Association of India, who is now also vice-president of the International Shooting Sport Federation, His Highness Raninder Singh, expressing his concerns. India and Britain win many medals in shooting in the Commonwealth Games. It is an inclusive sport for all ages—people shoot over the age of 50—competed by small countries in the Commonwealth. The Falkland Islands put forward a big shooting team. Will the Minister assure us that the Government are making every effort to include shooting in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022?
At Third Reading the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, acknowledged that the Bill had raised some difficult issues regarding proportionality, but stressed his belief that the right balance had been struck. He said:
“We recognise, for instance, that knives, corrosives and firearms are not in themselves offensive weapons, and that they have many lawful and legitimate uses in people’s everyday lives. That means that a balance needs to be struck between protecting the public and ensuring that legitimate activities are in no way unduly affected. I believe that the Bill strikes the right balance”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/11/18; col. 367.]
That is what we will debate in Committee.
I want to conclude by going to the most important issue in all this: the rise of violent crime. We had a debate on violent crime in November. I started my contribution then by telling the House about my older daughter, who was so scared by stories of things happening to her friends that she became scared to walk home from the tube station to our house. I said:
“What is our country coming to?”—[Official Report, 29/11/18; col. 793.]
Now, sadly, just few days ago, in broad daylight in the middle of the day on a train, what happened to the Pomeroy family in front of a 14 year-old boy?
This Bill is necessary, but on its own it is useless. The number of police in London has fallen below 30,000 for the first time in 15 years. Cressida Dick, who is a very capable Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said that a lack of resources was a factor in homicides reaching a 10-year high. Does the Minister agree? The police are defending a new initiative of moped ramming, a tactical contact initiative they are now using to try to tackle the situation. There are more and more accusations that the Government are losing control in the fight against crime. Offences have risen by 14% while the numbers of officers have plummeted to record lows. I spoke earlier about the surge in knife crime.
The big issue is that the number of police officers has fallen to 121,929, the lowest figure since records began 22 years ago. On top of that, there has been a drop in neighbourhood policing. I do not see neighbourhood police officers any more, but I used to see them walking or cycling around every day. Overall funding has fallen by 18%, taking inflation into account, compared with an increase in funding of 31% between 2000-01 and 2010-11. Of course, we know who became Home Secretary then: our current Prime Minister. Direct government funding has fallen by 25% over the same period. There were 40,000 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument—a 16% increase. These figures are corroborated by records of National Health Service hospital admissions resulting from the crimes which I have spoken about. With 1.1 million violent crimes recorded—an increase of 21%—the rising trend has simply continued. The police are under so much pressure.
This has to be looked at in another context as well. Is our criminal justice system good enough to cope with this? Rory Stewart, the Justice Minister, said that:
“Knife crime is horrifying—it causes catastrophic damage to families with tragic consequences”.
Noble Lords have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, about her own tragic personal experience.
The situation is awful. Scotland Yard is a global brand and has historically been respected around the world. The Bill is crucial, but it can be effective only if we increase our police officers and neighbourhood policing, double our number of armed police officers, and continue to make the nation’s security the number one priority of any Government.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Bill and will talk about the provisions relating to corrosive substances and acid attacks. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Scar Free Foundation, a medical research charity that seeks to find a cure for scarring. Through this work, I have had first-hand experience of talking to victims of acid attacks, the effects of which are utterly devastating and very often a severe, lifelong sentence. Victims may suffer blinding, permanent scarring of the body and face, and acute social and psychological difficulties from the disfigurement and pain. It is worthwhile that the Bill puts such a significant focus on dealing with this issue. It is absolutely shocking that the UK has one of the world’s highest rates of recorded acid attacks per capita. According to Acid Survivors Trust International, there were 228 attacks in 2012, rising to 941 in 2017.
This issue deserves our attention and I pay tribute to the Home Secretary and the Home Office for moving quickly. However, there is a fear that simply toughening sentences and strengthening legal definitions is not enough to make a change on this issue, and could be distracting. Acid attacks happen all over the world, and there is a pattern of behaviour by Governments in different countries. Parliaments instinctively reach for the rulebook to address these horrendous crimes, but the story of legislation on acid attacks around the world is not encouraging. In the national and regional legislatures of the countries that are most affected, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Cambodia, you will see passionate politicians trying to make a difference by introducing frightening-sounding new laws. But these have little effect on the cultural and social causes of the problem. The police and the judges seem incapable of stopping this crime, and the suffering continues.
I do not deny that there is a huge amount of support for the measures in the Bill, and they certainly have my support. However, there is a concern that we could make the same mistakes as Parliaments in other countries. If noble Lords think that Britain is in some way exceptional, I will give a couple of examples of what I mean. A recent FOI request to the Civil Nuclear Constabulary revealed that, to date, not one individual had been caught in possession of a corrosive substance as a suspected offensive weapon.
Of the 2,078 acid attacks recorded in the UK between 2011 and 2016, only 414 resulted in a charge being brought. The Bill will do much to close loopholes, but if we are to have any chance of reducing these horrible crimes, we cannot stop at legislation. We need to see acid attacks in the context of street theft, gang retribution, hate crime, domestic abuse and so-called honour-based violence. Each of these has complex causes and solutions. Having a more sophisticated approach to dealing with them was the subject of the excellent crime debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, in November, which supported the use of a sophisticated, multiagency, public health-style approach to crime prevention. I recommend that these be applied here.
I have two questions for the Minister. First, how can we be sure that that the charges and measures introduced by the Bill are anything more than virtue signalling and will actually generate prosecutions? For instance, there are the costs of implementing an inspection regime or the forensic challenges of establishing a provable audit trail back to the retailer. How does the Minister envisage measuring how the selling of corrosive substances will actually lead to convictions? I appeal to the Minister not to allow the Home Office and all the relevant agencies of the state to be distracted by this useful legislation from the bigger battle to reduce this horrific crime wave.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to be able to contribute to today’s Second Reading debate on this welcome and very necessary Bill. Violence in all forms is unacceptable, particularly when dangerous and offensive weapons are involved. Such violence gives rise to serious harm and has a traumatic impact on individuals and their families. There is a serious likelihood that in an environment where individuals carry and use weapons, this will contribute to an increase in weapons carried by others, who will feel the need to defend themselves from unlawful violence or to protect a criminal enterprise and the proceeds of that enterprise.
The Bill has been widely welcomed as being overdue and very necessary. In a changing environment the Bill provides a set of norms and makes it very clear what is not acceptable in a civilised society. I was most interested to hear the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Bethell, as I share his interest in crimes associated with acid attacks. The Centre for Social Justice has collected evidence in relation to corrosive substances, to identify current attitudes and evolving norms and codes of behaviour. Its work involved networks of victims and self-identified at-risk groups. It received 236 responses to a short survey, some of the highlights of which showed some very surprising and concerning information. Some 78% were in fear of being subject to an acid attack; 78% said there were areas where they would not go for fear of being attacked with acid or a knife; 89% felt that the Government were not taking the issue seriously; 75% believed that the police were not taking the issue seriously; 89% believed that police should routinely test substances being carried by suspects; 94% wanted to see tougher penalties for those carrying acid; 73% believed that carrying acid should be treated more severely than carrying a knife; and 90% believed that we should tackle the root causes behind such crimes. As many speakers today have recognised, behind these crimes are things that we need seriously to address.
Additionally, a charity working with the CSJ provided information that some of those at greatest risk of being involved in serious youth violence—as an offender or a victim—reported that acid is easier to conceal than a knife; for example, by transporting it in a water bottle. Acid can be used at a greater distance than knives or other points or blades. Acid causes serious and potentially lifelong injuries but is unlikely to result in death. An individual can use acid more effectively than a knife against a group of individuals at once. Acid is often readily accessible. Corrosive substances can often be found under the kitchen sink, or equally easily as bleach on a supermarket shelf.
It is welcome that the Bill makes it an offence to sell a corrosive product to persons under 18 or for a seller to deliver to a residential premises when the sale is made remotely. However, I do not believe that all violent attacks involving corrosive products have been committed by someone under 18. Extending the age to 21 is something we should consider. The Bill provides law enforcement officers with appropriate investigative and enforcement powers in relation to the offence of possessing a corrosive substance in a public place. It will be vital for the Home Office to give appropriate support to police forces most affected by the rise in acid attacks, and to equip front-line officers with testing kits. The kit will need to allow for the routine testing of substances carried by suspected offenders or those who might be at risk of carrying acid in preference to other weapons. The Bill should send a clear signal and curtail the growth in this offence, and sentencing should be more severe. The sale of corrosive substances should be subject to the same standards of checks as those for the sale of knives. To change behaviour, there needs to be an increased risk of detection. The testing equipment needs to be low-cost and available to the majority of front-line police officers.
The Bill is an important strand of the Government’s serious violent crime strategy. The strategy is being led by the Home Office, but there needs to be work across all government departments and agencies. Tackling serious violent crime requires multiagency partnerships across education, health, social services, housing, law enforcement and local government. Most importantly, it requires a strong emphasis on and investment in early intervention. For the Bill and the serious violence strategy to be successful, sufficient resources for all agencies with an essential role must be made available.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, I too believe that the Bill is both timely and necessary. As a Sikh, I would like to voice my appreciation of the sensitivity shown by the protection of the existing right of Sikhs to wear a short kirpan for religious reasons. However, it appears that the common Sikh practice of presenting a full-length kirpan, or sword, as a token of esteem or appreciation to those who have made a significant contribution to Sikh ideals, such as tolerance and respect for other faiths, has been overlooked and is not currently protected.
The recipients of this honour do not have to be Sikhs. I have made presentations on behalf of the Sikh community to His Royal Highness Prince Charles, when he joined us as the main guest at a major function at the Royal Albert Hall, and to the late Lord Weatherill, the former Speaker of the House of Commons, for his work with the Sikh community in India and Britain. Years earlier, the Sikh community in Leicester honoured Sir John Templeton, founder of the Templeton Prize, after he awarded me the UK equivalent for furthering religious understanding.
For Sikhs, this custom is no less important than the protection given in the Bill to the use of a sword for theatrical performances or for its keeping for historical reasons. Unfortunately, the presentation and keeping of this token of esteem is not protected in the proposed legislation. It is important that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, so eloquently put it, we do not criminalise people unintendedly. On behalf of the UK Sikh community, I will seek a small amendment to the existing wording to ensure that the presentation and receipt of this traditional ceremonial Sikh honour remains protected.
The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)
My Lords, I broadly welcome the Bill. My interest in it stems from my record as an enthusiastic supporter of the shooting sports. I am a former president of the Gun Trade Association and a former president and chairman of the British Shooting Sports Council, and a former chairman of the Firearms Consultative Committee at the Home Office, appointed about four weeks before Dunblane happened. I am a member of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers and a member of both the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the Countryside Alliance. From that, your Lordships will probably realise that I am quite keen on my chosen sport and, I hope, moderately knowledgeable.
Every shooting organisation to which I have ever belonged has had one common goal: the responsible promotion and enjoyment of its chosen discipline while ensuring that safety, especially the safety of the public, should always remain paramount. Indeed, I recall that during the passage of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, Her Majesty’s Government wished to ban and remove from circulation entirely and without compensation the Brocock air pistol. This weapon, which was easily capable of conversion—probably in a garden shed—into a deadly little weapon using basic tools, had become popular as the weapon of choice of criminals. It had been used in a number of fatal shootings, and there were very many of these guns in circulation. The Gun Trade Association and the other shooting organisations actively supported the Government’s view that these guns should become a prohibited weapon under Section 5(1)(af). However, under the Act, and as a consequence of the Government’s unwillingness to compensate owners and the manufacturers, some people were permitted to hold such a gun under a Section 1 certificate. Today, around 60,000 Brococks are still in existence somewhere out there—nobody really knows where—and the manufacturers have still not been compensated for the loss of their expensive tooling and equipment. The support of the Government’s actions by the various shooting bodies bears testament to a responsible shooting community.
In that light, I will offer a few comments on the Bill, specifically with regard to guns. First, the question of so-called bump stocks was raised in the Government’s policy paper, in their overarching fact sheet. That document states that the Bill will prohibit,
“high energy and rapid firing rifles and a device known as a ‘bump stock’ which increases the rate of fire of rifles and provides for compensation of owners”,
of such weapons. Compensation is not normally the case.
I take this opportunity to remind your Lordships of just what is a bump stock. It is, in simple terms, a piece of equipment which, when fitted to the stock of a self-loading rifle, enables it to fire missiles much faster, and exponentially turns that firearm into an automatic weapon. Incidentally, although a legal definition of a self-loading rifle is yet to be decided, a useful one could well be: “a weapon where, after the weapon is fired, it is reloaded without the intervention of the operator”. The perpetrator of the massacre in Las Vegas used guns fitted with bump stocks. So far as I am aware, such stocks are made only in the United States, and they were subject to a ban on importation into the UK in 2017 through the Notice to Importers 2896 of 4 December 2017. In any case, self-loading rifles are already prohibited firearms under Section 5(1)(ab) of the Firearms Act 1968 as amended.
Briefly, on .50 calibre rifles, it is my understanding that these weapons came under the scrutiny of the police when one was stolen from a car and recovered, having not been used in a crime but with its barrel sawn off. Anyone who is stupid enough to do that to a .50 calibre and fire it is ensured of a very brief life expectancy.
In addition, I understand that the police misguidedly believe that such weapons are used for material destruction. The ones used by the military most definitely are, as they are used as snipers’ rifles. There are only about 130 civilian versions of these rifles held privately in the United Kingdom. They are used by target shooting enthusiasts with Section 1 target ammunition only. Owing to their barrel length, their weight of about 20 pounds and the fact that they are single-shot or bolt action, it is extremely unlikely that they would or could be used in criminal activities. They are target-shooting guns for very specialist marksmen and are used in a very small number of specialist licensed ranges, many of which are military ranges.
A far more sensible way of legislating for those rifles would be to keep them as Section 1 with a few modest security requirements—for example, the bolt having to be kept at a licensed club, separate to the rifle, the ammunition being secured at a club with usage being signed for in and out and being on the owner’s firearms certificate.
I am delighted that, following debate in the other place, Her Majesty’s Government have thought again and will have further consultation. My concern is, first, that this round of consultation must be a vast improvement on the last one, which was universally regarded as heavily flawed, and that Her Majesty’s Government do not try to slip a quiet little clause into the Bill during its passage through your Lordships’ House. I am certainly not intimating that the Home Office might be disingenuous; I am simply rather an old hand on gun legislation.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving way. If the case is as strong as he makes out, why was the Home Secretary convinced that criminal elements in Northern Ireland and on the mainland were likely to use the .50 calibre weapons?
The Earl of Shrewsbury
It is my belief that, as my noble friend Lord Robathan said—he served for a long while in Northern Ireland—that was a one-off case of an imported, illegal .50 calibre used. That is the only time, to my knowledge and to the knowledge of the shooting sports associations, that a .50 calibre has been used in criminal activity. That was for material use as well as human destruction.
Surely if the police have issued certificates which also control the amount of ammunition that can be possessed, they have done so because the good reason test for possession has been justified. Therefore, the Government must review the original consultation and bring forward a proposal which is better worded to meet the needs of public safety. If this were done and further evidence offered to support the need for a ban, in the event of MARS and lever release becoming subject to Section 5 prohibition, I would strongly support the view of the British Shooting Sports Council and support an amendment by which the possessor of such rifles could have them converted to a straight-pull or bolt action function and thus retain them on a Section 1 certificate. In the view of the BSSC experts, which I wholeheartedly support, surrender and the cost involved in either conversion or deactivation would attract compensation. This compensation was mentioned in the policy statement, as I said. I should be happy to table such an amendment in due course, unless HMG wish to table their own.
I turn to air rifles and air weapons in general. I am aware that the Government have stated that they will consider what action or actions might be appropriate with regard to air weapons. That is fair enough, but there must be a thorough consultative process—a process which would have the support of the BSSC. A while back, on a Starred Question concerning air weapons, a noble Lord opposite from Scotland mentioned that we should follow the Scottish Parliament’s lead in legislating for the licensing of air rifles. Heaven forbid. That process north of the border has been an unmitigated disaster which has achieved absolutely zero benefit to the safety of the public.
I turn to medical issues relating to firearms licensing. I can do no better than quote the BSSC’s view on this matter. This issue affects every firearms certificate and shotgun certificate holder in England and Wales. The EU firearms directive mandates in Article 5.2 a medical assessment of every applicant for a certificate. In England and Wales, there is no consistency of practice between police forces, nor is there any consistency of the fee charged to the applicant by his or her GP for a medical assessment.
What is required is, first, a compulsory and once-only medical records check by the GP in response to a police inquiry about the physical and mental health of the applicant; secondly, an enduring marker to be placed by the GP on the patient’s medical record, noting that he or she may be in possession of firearms or shotguns, to ensure that thereafter the GP is reminded to draw to police attention any future adverse change in the patient’s health which may have a bearing on their abilities safely to possess a firearm or shotgun; thirdly, an agreed reasonable fee for the GP’s original medical records check and placing of the enduring marker; fourthly, an extension of the life of firearm and shotgun certificates from five to 10 years, which would reduce pressure on licensing departments and police forces; and, finally, protection of the confidentiality of applicants’ and certificate holders’ data. Despite warm words from my honourable friend Nick Hurd, there appears to be inaction by the Government to bring that forward, although it has the backing of both the BSSC and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Shooting and Conservation.
In conclusion, I agree with suggestions that a firearms advisory committee should be established, provided that it is statutory. My experience as a former chairman of the then FCC was first class. On that committee, we had representatives at most senior levels of the police, forensic scientists, shooting organisations and those who supported gun control. That committee demonstrated a true ability to work well to address complex technical and legal issues. Further, we developed a rapport and an excellent working relationship with the police, instead of the usual perceived combative attitude so often held by some elements of both sides.
I rest my case and look forward to hearing my noble friend’s comment on the issues I have raised when she winds up.
The Duke of Montrose (Con)
My Lords, as the last listed Back-Bench speaker, it has been encouraging to hear the great support all around the House for the purposes of the Bill and to listen to all the experience and wealth of statistics being brought forward.
I shall talk about some of the peripheral effects of the Bill. It has a simple title but, as we see from its 48 pages, it is far from easy to have workable legislation on this topic. It is endlessly complicated by having to allow for three devolution settlements, with special sections peppering the text. I am most encouraged to read in the accompanying notes that the Scottish Parliament has passed a legislative consent Motion. I should be interested to know whether, if amendments are passed in this House, we will have to go back to legislative Assemblies around the country to see whether they approve.
The rural life that I have led, rather in parallel to that of my noble friend Lord Lucas, has been full of what are described as corrosive substances, offensive weapons and firearms. In all of these, one was given instruction in their use and the dangers that they could pose. One is conscious that is not available to those who live in urban areas and the use to which they tend to put the weapons which fall into their hands.
I declare an interest as an office-bearer of the National Sheep Association and of the National Farmers Union of Scotland. In that context, I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the rural scene has changed radically since the main legislation in this area was framed. Many of the rules which will apply refer to “a public place”. As we see in Clause 6(9), a public place is no longer confined to what one normally thinks of—a road, a highway or a building—but includes anywhere where the public are permitted access. This now includes large sections of the countryside.
Another element that has changed is that, in many parts, traditional farmhouses, which used to be the focus and constantly manned part of the business, have been sold off, and farmers are managing their business from a house somewhere else. A lot of the time, there may be no one on the site of the farming activity. That begins to bear some relevance when we talk about the supply of corrosive substances or weapons to the farming community. There may be a question, too, whether your supplier is prepared to regard your house as of a sufficient size to be your place of business. Problems will arise for those taking delivery of the substances required by the business. The Bill rules out delivery to a locker, but will that mean that deliveries will have to be received by somebody in person? Who knows what time of day a delivery man or courier will appear? We have all experienced waiting for their non-appearance.
I have similar concerns to those of my noble friend Lord Lucas on corrosive substances. I hope that the Minister can give the House more of an indication of how wide the interpretation of the given definition is envisaged to go. Clause 6(9) defines them as anything capable of “burning human skin”, but Schedule 1 goes on to list specific compounds, mainly of an inorganic nature, and says that they might give rise to chemical abstracts. Is that definition considered fairly wide, or is the schedule designed to limit the products to which the ruling can be applied? Formic acid is one of the things listed; I am aware that it is used in farming to preserve silage. I have also had experience of another extremely aggressive organic acid—propionic acid—used to preserve moist grain. It gives rise to a product known as Propcorn, which is not at all the sort of thing you might buy in the cinema. Will these organic acids be covered by some definition?
On a slightly lighter note, but in a similar vein to the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Singh, I notice that for some reason only in Scotland is there a focus on bladed weapons when they come into your possession if the defence is used that they were required for theatrical performances, films or television programmes. Of course, those also occur in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I happen to be a member of the Royal Company of Archers, which parades around the country with swords and arrows. I wonder where this regulation will leave it and other bodies, such as one known as the Atholl Highlanders—the private army of the Duke of Atholl—which are given to producing weapons that would certainly be considered dangerous.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for not putting my name down to speak. The debate has been excellent and bodes well for later stages.
I have three points to make. First, I agree that high muzzle energy rifles are a real problem and that we need to do something about them. It is about not just their range and hitting power, but their accuracy. I do not think that we need to ban them; we just need to provide separate storage for the bolt. I am confident that we can achieve that with the Bill. Secondly, I am content with Clause 32, which prohibits certain types of firearms. Let us be honest, they are self-loading rifles, made legal by means of a loophole; it may be possible to modify them. Since they represent a loophole, I am not happy with the compensation provisions in Clauses 36 to 38.
Finally, I have taken a close look at the UK prison system. I share the concerns of many noble Lords regarding the custodial sentence provisions in the Bill, not because I am a fluffy bunny—I am not—but because our current prison system is not fit for purpose, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, told us. Until we have an effective system where we can be confident that we will improve the character and capability of youngsters both significantly and obviously, we should be very cautious about using increased prison sentences.
Motion to Adjourn
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 5.55 pm.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, may I oppose the Motion? We have got to a point in the debate on the Bill where we should just finish it.
Baroness Barran
The reason for the delay is that the start of the health Statement in the other place has been delayed. The adjournment has been agreed through the usual channels.
Lord Lucas
So let us just finish the Bill. We have merely the Front Benches to hear from; we can then go on to the Statements. Why keep us here for an extra couple of hours? There seems to be no reason for it.
Baroness Barran
The adjournment has been agreed through the usual channels.
Lord Lucas
The usual channels do not rule this House; we do. It is our decision. If the Minister wishes to call a vote, that is fine.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I join the Opposition Front Bench in asking the House to respect the tradition that the Government Chief Whip controls the business. The adjournment is appropriate; it is a matter of the business of the other House starting on time. The delay will not be a couple of hours, but exactly the delay advertised in today’s business.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I have just been given notice that the health Statement has now started in the Commons. We have a difficult decision to make. With the will of the House, we will continue the debate and finish it.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I see. We will continue with the Urgent Question then hear the Statement after that.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Monday 7th January 2019
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 28 November 2018 - (28 Nov 2018)
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, returning to the Offensive Weapons Bill, I do not think I have ever had quite so much enthusiasm and encouragement for a speech as I received before the Statement. I hope I do not disappoint.
I start by declaring an interest as a board member for the charity Safer London, which works with young people to prevent entry into crime and assist exit from crime. I agree with much of what has been said this afternoon, including thanks to the Library for its excellent briefing.
A month or so ago, we had a debate in this House on serious violence, which followed seamlessly from a debate on schools: the issue of school exclusions—one of the results of a focus on attainment, one might say—was one of the issues that cropped up again in the serious violence debate. The ideas that we shared during that debate on cross-cutting issues, a cross-sectoral approach and a public health approach are in my view more likely to be fruitful than much of what will come out of the debate over the weeks and months—who knows?—on this legislation. The witnesses to the Public Bill Committee in the Commons also applied the language of health to addressing violence. Rob Owen of the St Giles Trust talked about intensive care and similar points have been made during this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, referred to early intervention; others have made the same point.
I could sum up the position of these Benches, as set out in the speech by my noble friend Lord Paddick, as “underwhelmed”. Yet again, we are in danger of thinking that legislation is the answer, even when we have adequate legislation in place and—as pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and my noble friend Lord Storey—of not addressing the symptoms of the problem. I am one of those who has my keys in my hand when feeling insecure at night.
I start, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, did, at the end, as it were—on sentencing, especially the sentencing of children and young people and on short sentences. I say “at the end”, but for many offenders a sentence of imprisonment is actually the end of the beginning; it amounts to an induction course in crime. The House will be well aware of the opposition of these Benches to mandatory sentences—an issue that we addressed during the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill running concurrently with this Bill.
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, was one of those who made that point as a witness to the Public Bill Committee. She said:
“I know that when we criminalise children there is one path. We know that over the last two or three years, there has been a doubling of children, under 18, who are in prison because of knife crime. Once they are in there, we know that 68% reoffend, so there is one route. My position is firmly on preventing that from happening, and using that as a trigger”.—[Official Report, Commons, Offensive Weapons Bill Committee, 19/7/18; col. 86.]
Indeed.
We might take a slightly different view if mandatory sentences, as they currently apply and are proposed in the Bill, were not custodial. I do not apologise for repeating the observation of the Chief Inspector of Prisons that there is not a single custodial establishment in England and Wales that is safe to hold children and young people. I had taken heart from the Justice Secretary’s apparent opposition to short prison sentences but, as so often, the quiet, thoughtful approach is drowned out by a more simplistic knee-jerk reaction so that it can be said, “The Government are doing something. They’re sending a message”.
I am grateful for the briefings from the Prison Reform Trust and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. We are reminded that by removing judicial discretion, the proposals work against the guidelines of the Sentencing Council. They acknowledge the importance of considering the individual child and his circumstances in a way that legislation inevitably cannot.
Does a custodial sentence act as a deterrent? There does not seem to be evidence of that, given the rising numbers of children convicted of relevant offences, many of whom feel the need to provide their own protection—or what they see as protection. I was horrified to read of children now carrying acid for protection as well as knives.
I would have thought that the chances of being caught were more in a potential offender’s mind, so it is inevitable that we should refer to police resources, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, did. I myself would much rather see taxpayers’ money spent on local policing and diverting children—both under-18s and those who are a few years older, a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—away from the formal youth justice system rather than on expensive custody, which is ineffective in terms of diversion from crime but too effective in consolidation towards crime.
The Bill extends the legislation on knives and introduces provisions on corrosive products or substances—we might be debating those terms—although, as my noble friend tells the House, this may not be new after all. I am of an age where my tendency is to hark back to the old days, and I include the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 in that. I am sure we will be reminded that the police and the CPS will apply both common sense and the well-known tests to, “My mum asked me to take the drain cleaner down to my auntie because she’s desperate and she’s got a houseful for Christmas”, but we should not be having to think about going there.
I have to say that there is much more to consider in these clauses than I had expected. The psychology of the choice of a weapon is interesting: we learn that there are more male victims of acid attacks in London than female. However, what is not in the Bill? How do we take advantage of the teachable or reachable moment that is at the heart of the public health approach? On corrosive substances, the House will benefit from the experience of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton.
Retailers are central to the Bill, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the progress of the discussions to which USDAW has alerted us. It tells us that it has met the Minister and described that as a major step towards dealing with outstanding issues, but I am not clear quite what progress has been made. Perhaps she can assist the House.
Local authorities too are central, as are trading standards, which are a part of local authorities, although more needs to be done. We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Couttie, in that connection. That raises issues of resources and specific investigatory powers for trading standards officers.
At this point I have one simple question. As I read it, there has been quite a discussion in the House of Commons of barcodes. Has there been any consideration of labelling of the products in question? That would give information to the purchaser as well as to the seller. Has the Home Office actually met local authorities and trading standards to discuss their practice and the day-to-day issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who I suspect is going to have a lot of amendments at the next stage of the Bill? I would also be interested to know what the position is in the development of roadside test kits, which have been mentioned.
My noble friend Lord Paddick raised the issue of whether the reasonable excuse should be a defence or whether it should preclude an offence in the first place—I think few of us had heard of Section 118 until recently, but it has become a sort of go-to provision. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, has had correspondence with the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability about the use of persuasive and evidential burdens, and I suspect we will want to follow that up in Committee. The explanation by the Minister that acids are simply being put on all fours with knives as a weapon is not one that I find wholly persuasive.
On firearms, I admit to having to resist bias in myself against anything that in any way normalises guns and does not tighten gun control. The noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, will not be surprised at that rather urban outlook. I have to say that I have often found it quite hard to square the Government’s support for rights defenders when the issues are the ownership or use of firearms; it is not quite the same when the rights in question are those of privacy.
In connection with rights, the noble Lord, Lord Singh, rightly reminded us of the cultural and religious issues that are in play here.
The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, asked what to me were rather necessary and important questions about the paradox at the heart of the removal of provisions advised by the services without including the safeguards suggested by those who have an interest in shooting. I too could not get Dunblane, Hungerford and other events out of my mind in thinking about this.
What is the timetable for the consultation about firearms safety? Why can we not do something now that could be rescinded—I do not know whether there would be a disproportionate cost to individuals and the Government—given the shortage of parliamentary time, of which we are all aware? As urged by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, we must be objective; I will certainly keep on telling myself that.
Lastly, I turn to victims. However, I am uncomfortable about referring to them in my last paragraph, as it were. I do not want to indicate that support for victims is of the least importance—not only in the context of offensive weapons, of course. One lens through which we should keep looking at the Bill is how it will be perceived by individuals who have been victims. Concern for perpetrators, as mentioned at the start of the debate, and for victims, and sometimes for individuals who are both, are not matters that are mutually exclusive.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I will first put on record that the Opposition support the general aims of the Bill. In that sense, we will support its passage through this House. That is not to say that there are not areas where we think it can be significantly improved. It is my intention, along with my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe and others on the opposition Benches, to probe, to seek to persuade and, if necessary, to vote on amendments on Report to make much-needed improvements to the Bill.
Knife crime is all too prevalent at the moment. Only on Friday we learned of the horrific murder of Mr Lee Pomeroy on a train in Surrey in front of his son. As others have done, I offer my condolences to the poor man’s family and friends.
As we have heard, it is the first duty of government to protect the public: we can all agree on that. That, though, is made all the more difficult by spending reductions to police forces and the refusal by the Government to accept that that is what they are doing—and the ludicrous suggestion that there is no connection between the number of police officers and the level of crime, which we have heard far too often.
The noble Lord, Lord Blair, who is not in his place at the moment, made it crystal clear a few months ago that there was a difference between the level of resources he had at his disposal when he was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the level of resources available to Cressida Dick. The noble Lord stepped down in December 2008 and Cressida Dick is the third person to hold the position since then. The current level is around 20% less than what the noble Lord had at his disposal. Those are shocking figures.
When he spoke earlier, my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe spoke of the 21,000 police officers, over 18,000 police staff and over 6,800 community support officers that have been lost since 2010; these roles were all axed, despite the Government’s pledge to protect the front line. This, along with the hundreds of millions of pounds cut from local authority youth service budgets and the loss of social and youth workers, has contributed to the terrible situation we find ourselves in at present.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made important points about mental health and the problems of young people leaving care at 18 and going to totally unacceptable and unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation. Social and youth workers work under real pressure and are struggling to cope, as the noble Earl told us.
There are some excellent voluntary projects, delivering support for young people on council estates and in youth clubs. During my time as a councillor in the London Borough of Southwark in the 1980s, I recall the excellent work in my ward of the Crossed Swords youth club at St Paul’s Church Lorrimore Square in Southwark, or more recently, the work taking place on the Wyndham Estate in Camberwell to get young people away from violence. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made an important point about young people, their circumstances, and thinking through the consequences of their actions. These issues deserve proper consideration, both in Grand Committee and on the Floor of the House. My noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen made an important contribution about the seriousness of the problems we are facing in many towns and communities across the UK. In making reference to reductions in spending in local authorities, I should of course draw the attention of the House to the fact that I am a vice president of the Local Government Association.
While the Bill has the support of the Opposition for what it does, it does nothing to tackle the root causes of crime, and early intervention work has been further undermined through the cuts I have outlined. The Bill does nothing to tackle the bad side of social media, which fuels abuse and can incite violence. In so many ways, social media has been a source of good and has revolutionised how we operate our lives, but it has a vicious, nasty, wild-west side and it is disappointing that the Government are again choosing to do nothing to bring this under control, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, mentioned.
Gang violence is a serious problem which needs real, focused attention from the Government. It is shocking to hear there are estimated to be around 70,000 people under the age of 25 involved with gangs. The full extent of the county lines problem is beginning to be fully understood. While out with the police in south London recently, I heard from police officers that young people were being picked up in seaside towns in Kent and Essex and were being used to transport illegal substances. Again, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove: the Bill is a missed opportunity and more needs to be done to protect young people and deal with those who benefit from these crimes, as well as to support the families who are left with unbearable grief after the loss of a loved one. When she responds, will the Minister tell the House why we are still waiting for the Government to deliver on the 2015 and 2017 manifesto pledges to legislate for the rights of victims? There is nothing about that in this Bill, or any other proposed legislation I am aware of, despite the pledge being made in two Conservative Party manifestos.
I will now move on to look at the provisions of the Bill itself. The first part of the Bill deals with the sale and delivery of corrosive substances, including banning their sale to persons under the age of 18 and their delivery to residential premises. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, gave some stark figures about acid attacks, and I agree with him about the reasons for these attacks and the solutions to deal with this horrendous crime; the measures in the Bill, though welcome, are not the whole solution to the problem we face today. I will look further at the proposals in the Bill and see if they can be strengthened.
The next section makes it an offence to be in possession of a corrosive substance in a public place, and this is very welcome, because of not only the horrific injuries that have been caused but the fear that this type of violent attack brings to people and communities. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe made reference to the spate of fake acid attacks, and this is one area where I think we could possibly look to table an amendment to deal with the fear factor that attacks of this kind bring to people and communities.
The proposals contained in the Bill regarding the sale and delivery of knives and other bladed weapons to individuals under the age of 18 are welcome. The loss of life through stabbings is truly tragic, and anything that can be done to get weapons out of the hands of people who would do wrong with them must be supported. I welcome the proposals in the Bill for an orderly surrender of the weapons that will become prohibited under this legislation. However, I wonder whether it is time for a more general weapons amnesty to get as many weapons off the street and disposed of as soon as possible.
The clause on prohibiting offensive weapons in further education premises is welcome, although I learned from the police that there is a tendency for individuals to hide these weapons outside schools and colleges. They hide them in bushes, walls and trees and they bury them, so the weapons never come into the premises in the first place. Again, I will probe this in Grand Committee to see what more can be done to protect people in this regard. However, it would be helpful if the Minister could explain why higher education establishments are not included in this extension. In particular, I will want to probe what more can be done to ensure that the sellers of bladed articles are taking all reasonable precautions to comply with the law, and also what further actions could be taken to deal with those people who break the law in this regard, either intentionally or recklessly.
I welcome the further prohibitions of certain offensive weapons. I must confess that I had never heard of some of these weapons before I started looking at this Bill—I did not know what they were—but, now I know about them, I am very pleased they will be banned. Moving onto the question of firearms, I agree we have some of the toughest firearms regulations in the world and I am very pleased with that. I am strongly in favour of it, and the additional restrictions in this Bill are most welcome. However, it is always the case that, when you put a restriction in place, people will seek ways of getting around it; we must always be alert to that and ready to take further action. Will the Minister tell the House whether she is satisfied with the provisions and protections presently in place on bringing deactivated or obsolete weapons back into use?
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, was right when he said that the problem was not with law-abiding citizens but criminals. I strongly agree, but, unlike him, I was disappointed that the Government, under pressure in the House of Commons, removed sections of the Bill that would ban firearms with a muzzle velocity of more than 13,600 joules, including .50 calibre weapons. I do not think that the argument that these weapons are very large, slow to load and expensive, that there are only about 150 of them in the UK today and that they have not been used in a crime in the UK are acceptable reasons for having agreed these amendments. I will come back to that in Committee and on Report.
My noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen made a very powerful contribution. He quoted the Home Secretary’s comments at Second Reading in the other place and highlighted the complete U-turn that took place as a result of pressure from his own Back Benches, which was disturbing and unjustified. The noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, made some interesting points concerning inconsistences between police forces and also medical certificates. I agree that we need consistency on these matters and I look forward to exploring that further in Grand Committee.
I know very little about weapons. I have fired one or two in my time. I fired a sniper weapon on an Army range. I accept that that is a very heavy weapon, but these things are serious and I want to make sure that we have the best possible protections in place.
The last issue I will come on to is the protection of shop workers. I used to work in a shop a very long time ago when I was very young and had ginger hair. While it can be enjoyable, it involves very long hours, it is not paid very well and it is not without its risks from people attempting to shoplift or to use stolen credit or debit cards. The risk of assault is always there when individuals are challenged. I used to be a member of USDAW. It is a great trade union representing shop workers. I very much support the aims it has put forward for the Bill.
I should also say that many employers also understand those risks. I know that the Co-op does, and the British Retail Consortium is certainly very concerned about the risk to employees—to name just two organisations. I was shocked to learn that approximately 230 people are assaulted in shops every day while trying to do the job that they are paid to do. We should show some solidarity with shop workers and some support for these people who are treated in such a dreadful way and assaulted. I very much agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in that regard.
I am aware that colleagues in the other place and USDAW representatives met with the Government, and we hope for some good news from the Government during the Bill’s passage to improve protections for shop workers, because we expect shop workers in effect to police and enforce the law. That will include the new proposals we are debating, but we are not presently adding new protections for them. The issue has rightly been raised that shop workers can be prosecuted for selling these products—I have no problem with that; it is absolutely right if they sell these things illegally—but there is no corresponding offence of buying them. Again, that needs to be looked at. I think the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made that very point in his contribution. I hope we can come back to that in Committee and on Report.
The noble Lord, Lord Singh, rightly brought to the attention of the House important issues of cultural and religious significance. We again need to look at that in Committee and on Report.
In conclusion, I generally welcome the Bill. It makes a great step forward. However, there are issues that we need to address and I look forward to engaging constructively with the noble Baroness and with the rest of the House.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in what has been quite a wide-ranging debate on an extremely serious subject, certainly in the shadow of the death of Mr Pomeroy only the other day. Of course, noble Lords have mentioned Dunblane and Hungerford. All noble Lords will never forget those times.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made a very important point during her speech that this is not just about legislation, which goes to the heart of some of the frustration felt by noble Lords when they think that this or that should be in the Bill. As she said, we cannot solve this just by legislation. There has been work on county lines and the serious violence strategy, which I will mention shortly, on prevention, early intervention, and of course the all-important multiagency work that my noble friend Lady Couttie mentioned.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talked about the consultation on the public health duty. That is at the heart of the Home Secretary’s approach. We have already started working with Scottish officials to develop learning from their public health approach. The Home Secretary chairs the cross-party, cross-stakeholder serious violence task force, together with the Mayor of London. There will be a consultation on the new legal duty that will underpin the public health approach to tackling serious violence. The Government will launch that consultation shortly. This approach is not before time, as many noble Lords mentioned.
A number of noble Lords questioned the legal certainty around the terms of the new offences provided for in the Bill, a point also raised by the JCHR, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is a member. Possession of corrosives in a public place requires a different approach from the sale of corrosives to under-18s. For the sale of corrosives, we have taken the approach of listing the specific chemicals in Schedule 1. However, for possession of corrosives in a public place an approach is needed that can be used operationally by the police. That is why Clause 6(9) defines a corrosive as,
“capable of burning human skin by corrosion”.
This definition would not capture most household cleaning products, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, posits, but it would cover some stronger drain cleaners and industrial cleaning agents.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham asked about the Schedule 1 list and the difference of approach we have taken to defining a corrosive product for prohibiting the sale of corrosives to under-18s and a corrosive substance for the purposes of possessing a corrosive. For the sale offence, manufacturers and retailers need absolute clarity over what they can and cannot sell, so we have listed the specific chemicals and concentration levels in Schedule 1. The relevant products will be barcoded—I hope that that answers the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—to help retailers avoid selling them to children. For the possession offence, we need a simpler definition that police can use on the ground because, of course, they are not chemists. We have used a definition based on the burning of human skin that can be tested by the police using a simple kit that is currently being developed, which I hope goes to the point made by my noble friend Lord Lucas.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked about car batteries. We are aware of the potential issue relating to sealed batteries used in cars and mobility scooters. We are looking at this further. I am sure we will return to it in further stages. Our intention is certainly not to cause unintended problems from the measures in the Bill on legitimate activities. The Bill is aimed at tackling violent crime, not restricting legitimate business.
My noble friend Lord Lucas asked why we have not provided a full list of banned corrosives. The corrosive products in Schedule 1 reflect the advice of the police and the government scientists. They are substances that are most likely to be used in acid attacks. The concentration levels reflect those that are likely to cause permanent damage if used in an attack. There is a delegated power to add further substances to Schedule 1 if further evidence shows that it is required.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about raising the age to 21, rather than 18, for age-restricted products such as corrosives and knives. The current universal age of a child is someone until the age of 18. Placing the age restriction on measures on corrosives in the Bill would set a precedent for other age-restricted products such as knives and alcohol. We need to consider proportionality. Knives and corrosives are not in themselves weapons. They have many legitimate uses. It would be wrong to say that an adult cannot buy drain cleaner or, indeed, a bread knife. A better approach is to challenge those who might look under the age of 21. This is something that responsible retailers already do.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about the good reason defence for the purposes of Clause 6. The good reason defence has existed for some time for bladed and pointed articles and has been operated by the police with no issues. A good reason would include taking the corrosive home for its intended purpose, or use in the course of employment or academic study. As I said before, we do not expect the police to challenge shoppers as they leave supermarkets. It is intended to tackle those who have serious violent intent, acting on intelligence and reasonable suspicion.
The noble Lord also raised the issue of stop-and-search powers. As he will be aware, if an officer has reasonable grounds to suspect someone of carrying a prohibited article, such as a corrosive substance, with the intent to cause injury, the police already have the power to conduct a stop and search under PACE 1984. We have been consulting on extending stop and search to ensure that there are no gaps in police powers. Police officers will still need reasonable grounds to justify the use of these powers for the new offence.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and another noble Lord asked about acid testing kits. We have jointly commissioned the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, along with the NPCC, to develop an effective and robust testing regime which will allow police officers to be able to safely test suspect containers and bottles for corrosive substances. It is our intention to have a viable testing kit available to the police before the provisions on the new possession offence are commenced. My noble friend Lady Eaton made the very sensible point that the testing kit needs to be cost effective. Of course it does.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked about labelling, alongside the issue of barcoding. We considered labelling of corrosive products but chemical manufacturers were opposed to this. Their products are sold internationally and having specific labelling for the UK market would have been expensive. However, I know from personal experience that certain products are already labelled, particularly those that contain substances which can prove to be corrosive in their more concentrated form.
There was a lot of discussion on .50 calibre rifles. The noble Lords, Lord Paddick, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Ramsbotham, all questioned the removal from the Bill of the prohibition of high-power rifles, although this change to the Bill was welcomed by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury. I assure all noble Lords on both sides of the argument that we have looked into these issues in great detail. It is apparent that they are more complex than they at first appeared, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and my noble friend Lord Caithness pointed out. This issue requires further careful consideration before deciding how best to proceed. We therefore feel that it is only right to consider the issue further in consultation with interested parties. In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that will be in the next few months and probably after the passage of the Bill. In the interim, it would be wrong to pre-empt the outcome of that work by including a ban on these weapons in the Bill.
My noble friend Lord Caithness talked about taking up the APPG suggestions. I shall certainly look at those before Committee. My noble friend Lord Attlee has put forward a helpful proposal. We welcome all these ideas and will consider this further as part of the wider consultation.
The noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, and my noble friend Lord Robathan talked about Northern Ireland and the fact that some of the firearms used there are still not banned. We did consult fully, but the consultation options were limited to whether or not to prohibit them, not whether enhanced security, as has been suggested for the .50 calibre rifles, would be a factor in mitigating any threats raised by law enforcement. Public safety is our number one priority. In response to the points made on the security of such weapons, I can say that we expect owners to continue to take all reasonable security measures and ensure that the relevant level of security is in place, under existing firearm certificates.
There was a lot of support for shop workers and I totally understand where that point is coming from. The noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Kennedy, and my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out that shop workers are not only under strain but are intimidated by some customers. They asked how we can afford greater protection to those workers. The Government continue to consider the case for a bespoke offence relating to assaults on retail staff. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I can say that last month my ministerial colleague the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Crime hosted a round-table meeting attended by David Hanson MP, Richard Graham MP and representatives from the British Retail Consortium, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents. It was a very productive meeting and we are currently considering how best to proceed.
My noble friends Lord Shrewsbury and Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, talked about manually activated release system rifles, or MARS as they are more commonly known. The firing systems in these weapons means that they can discharge rounds at a much faster rate than conventional bolt-action rifles. There are, no doubt, some shooters who can manipulate a bolt-action rifle very quickly, but we cannot ignore the fact that these MARS and lever release rifles are closer to self-loading rifles, which are already prohibited in civilian ownership. We have sought to point out, in the public consultation and subsequently, that potential misuse of these rifles presents an unacceptable risk. It is therefore appropriate that they should be subject to the most stringent controls. If individual owners wish to convert their rifles to a straight-pull action or to have them deactivated before the Bill passes into law, as my noble friend suggested, they will have that choice. If not, I can confirm that we will make arrangements for compensation to be paid to owners who choose to surrender their rifles instead. We will return to the subject of an amnesty and discuss it further in Committee.
My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and other noble Lords raised the issue of air weapons and the need for consultation ahead of any action in relation to them. The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service announced a review of the regulation of air weapons in October 2017, following the coroner’s report into the tragic death of Benjamin Wragge, a 13 year-old boy who was shot accidentally with an air weapon in 2016. The Government recognise that there are very strong views on the regulation of air weapons. As the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability said in Committee in another place, it is our intention to announce the outcome of that review shortly.
My noble friend also made a number of valuable points in relation to the medical suitability of firearms certificate holders. My noble friend Lord Bethell talked about modernising the processes for obtaining firearms licences, so that we can continue to command the public’s trust in the efficacy of the system. I assure my noble friend that the Government and the police, who administer firearms licensing, see the need to make progress in modernising the existing arrangements. As a step towards this, legislation was introduced at the end of 2017 to allow for the electronic submission of firearms and shotgun applications to the police. These changes were introduced to help pave the way for online processes and they mean that individual police forces can now accept applications electronically if they wish to do so. This is very much a first step, but it will help both the police and individual licence holders to begin to benefit from the efficiencies that digitisation will bring.
My noble friend also raised the issue of prosecution in relation to offences involving corrosive substances. I take his point about the need to do more to ensure that all offenders who use a corrosive substance are brought to justice: that is why the NPCC has been working hard to ensure that the policing response is effective and that training is developed for officers dealing with these attacks, including new first responder training and advice. Special investigative guidance has also been developed to help officers understand how to safely recover and handle any evidence at the scene, and the evidence required to build a case for prosecution. A number of high-profile court cases over the course of 2018 resulted in successful convictions and lengthy custodial sentences. That has sent a clear message that these horrendous attacks will not be tolerated. We think that sentences act as a deterrent.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talked about sentences. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about minimum mandatory sentences. The minimum mandatory sentence that applies in England and Wales for the offence of possessing a corrosive substance in a public place mirrors that which already exists for possession of a bladed article in public. We believe that corrosives should be treated as seriously as knives as a weapon, particularly for repeat offences. Under Clause 8 the court will have the flexibility not to impose a minimum sentence where it would be unjust to do so.
My noble friend Lord Bethell asked how measures in the Bill on corrosives will lead to successful convictions. We will be working closely with police and trading standards on the implementation of measures prohibiting the sale and delivery of corrosive products to under-18s and prohibiting the delivery of corrosive products to residential premises. This will include developing guidance to ensure that the new offences can be effectively enforced. In addition, we will look to work with retailers, through relevant trade associations, on the implementation of these measures, to ensure that retailers know which corrosive products are caught by this and that they will need to apply their Challenge 21 and Challenge 25 policies where appropriate. We have already put in place a set of voluntary commitments on the responsible sale of corrosive substances. These prohibit sales to under-18s, and a number of major retailers have signed up to them.
My noble friend also spoke about the need for prevention and early intervention, as did I. This goes to the heart of our efforts to tackle this terrible problem. I reassure my noble friend that we will use the research findings that we have commissioned to help us shape effective prevention and early intervention programmes that can be delivered in various settings, whether that is in schools, pupil referral units or youth projects. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked why the Bill does not cover the threat of fake acid attacks. Actually, threatening with an inert substance such as water which the person claims is acid is already an offence that can be prosecuted as common assault or as a public order offence.
I know I am running out of time, but I will address the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Singh, about kirpans. What is now Clause 25 provides for a defence for the purpose of “religious reasons”, as opposed to the original wording, “religious ceremonies”. This ensures that the possession in private of large kirpans for religious reasons can continue, even when not in the context of a ceremony such as a wedding. It does not extend to the gifting of ceremonial swords with a blade of more than 50 centimetres in length, but I would be happy to meet the noble Lord, Lord Singh, ahead of Committee.
I shall finish by talking about police numbers, because a lot of questions were asked about this. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, made a point about the noble Lord, Lord Blair, and I am now going to make a point about the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. That points to the fact that the issue is complex: I am not saying that the police are not under strain, but of course other factors, such as the increase in drugs markets, have contributed to the rise in serious violence. Of course, overall public investment in policing will grow from £11.9 billion in 2015-16 to £13 billion in 2018-19.
Finally, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Newlove, not only for all she has done to support victims but for some of the things she has been able to share with us today from her very tragic experience. I know that she is meeting my officials shortly. She has made every articulate point, as has the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, about the importance of support for victims. The Government are putting victims and survivors at the heart of our response. We want victims to feel confident in coming forward, so that the perpetrators of these crimes can be brought to justice.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Before the noble Baroness sits down, will she go back to her point about .50 calibre weapons? She said that this is very important and serious and that the Government want to consult properly and do not want to ban things before they have had a consultation. I see that train of thought—but she then said that the consultation will finish after we have considered the Bill. What will happen if the Government then decide to ban the weapons? Do we then need further legislation or is there a power in here that the Government could take? Perhaps she can come back to me on that.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That is a very fair point and I will come back to the noble Lord about just how that process will work.
If the House will indulge me for another minute, the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe, Lord Storey and Lord Paddick, my noble friend Lady Couttie and others all talked about early intervention and prevention, and the balance between prevention and law enforcement. I have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who said we are not funding some of the early interventions. We are providing £17.7 million over the next two years through the Early Intervention Youth Fund, about which I have spoken in this House. We also support early intervention and prevention through the new rounds of the Anti-Knife Crime Community Fund for 2018-19 and 2019-20. The fund for 2018-19 was recently increased to £1.5 million, which has funded 68 projects. Our continued focus on a multiagency approach is absolutely the right one to tackling serious violence. I shall leave it there. I will write to noble Lords about the higher education point, the definition of a bladed product, the points made by my noble friend the Duke of Montrose and of course the Commonwealth Games, which I will take back.
The Earl of Listowel
Will the noble Baroness write to me about the future of youth work as a career—one which is stable over time and which does not face huge funding cuts every time there is a financial downturn? I welcome what she said about the large investment in the Early Intervention Youth Fund, but a secure career for youth workers would be such a boon in this area for the future.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That is probably beyond my purview, but I will certainly refer it to either DCMS or MHCLG, as it is now called. On that note, I commend the Bill to the House.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Monday 28th January 2019
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 149-II Second marshalled list for Grand Committee (PDF) - (28 Jan 2019)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I remind the Committee that, if there is a Division in the Chamber, we will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sound of the Division Bells. I also draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that, on the Marshalled List, there are explanatory statements to some of the amendments. These are included as part of a trial of their use and they have no procedural impact, lest anybody should be in any doubt.
Clause 1: Sale of corrosive products to persons under 18
Amendment 1
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, alongside the amendment to page 1, line 5, would make a failure to take precautions or exercise diligence criteria for the offence, as distinct from defences which would come into play only after the person had been charged.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I will speak to the other amendments in the group in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. These amendments seek to change the offences in the Bill from those where there is a reasonable excuse defence only when charged to ones where, if someone has a reasonable excuse, they do not commit an offence. They seek consistency in approach between legislation where no offence is committed if someone has an offensive weapon in a public place because they have a reasonable excuse and legislation where, in exactly the same circumstances, a person does commit an offence and has to rely on a defence only once they have been charged. The amendments also seek consistency between offences where the burden lies on the prosecution to disprove a reasonable excuse defence and offences where the burden lies on the accused to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a reasonable excuse.
We return to an issue that I raised in discussion of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill and which is applicable here; namely, creating offences where a completely innocent person commits an offence and has to rely on a defence once charged, rather than someone with a reasonable excuse for his actions not being guilty of an offence in the first place. In the context of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, the Government acknowledged this problem in relation to the designated areas offence. In that Bill, the Government accepted that, rather than a person entering a designated area and having a defence once charged if they had good reason to be there, if they entered or remained in a designated area involuntarily or for a range of other reasons stipulated in the Bill, they did not commit an offence. The Government accepted that there could be legitimate reasons for visiting or remaining in a designated area and that it was more sensible to say that no offence was committed if they had good reason, rather than that they committed an offence but had a defence once charged.
In one part of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, the person does not commit an offence if they had good reason yet, in another part, a person has a defence once charged—a different approach in different parts of the same Bill. It is still a Bill, I think, and has not yet received Royal Assent—I am getting nods from the back, so that is good.
In Clause 1 of this Bill, a person commits an offence if they sell a corrosive product to a person who is under the age of 18. They have a defence, if charged, by proving that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence, rather than it saying, “They do not commit an offence if they act reasonably”. In Clause 3, a person commits an offence if he delivers the corrosive product or arranges its delivery to residential premises. They too have a defence, if charged, if they prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence, rather than it saying that if they act reasonably, they do not commit an offence. There is also an issue with Clause 4, but it slipped through the net and therefore there is no amendment in this group to address it.
In Clause 6, however, a person commits an offence if they have a corrosive substance with them in a public place. It is a defensive charge if they prove that they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place, rather than the provision being that if they had good reason or lawful authority, they do not commit an offence. It will perhaps be clearer if I concentrate on the latter of these three offences.
If a 19-year-old young man has a corrosive substance with them in a public place with the intention of using it to attack someone else, they commit an offence under the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 of having an offensive weapon with them in a public place with the intention of causing injury to someone. It is an intended offensive weapon. However, if they have been sent out by their mother to buy drain cleaner in a squeezable bottle to unblock the kitchen sink—I speak with some experience having recently cleared one of my drains; drain cleaner does come in squeezable bottles—they do not commit an offence under the 1953 Act. They have a corrosive liquid with them in a public place, in a squeezable bottle that could be used to cause injury to someone, but have a reasonable excuse for possessing it. Were the police to stop and search the youngster, a quick phone call to the mother could establish the reasonable excuse.
Under the Bill, the 19 year-old running the errand for his mother commits a criminal offence because, under Clause 6(1):
“A person commits an offence if they have a corrosive substance with them in a public place”.
Under Clause 6(2), it is a defence for the youngster charged with an offence under subsection (1) to,
“prove that they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place”,
but a police officer would be justified in arresting the youngster, because he is clearly committing a criminal offence.
When discussing the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, we also debated the principle of necessity in relation to arrests. One of the circumstances included in the reasons why an arrest might be necessary under Section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 is to allow,
“the prompt and effective investigation of the offence or of the conduct of the person in question”.
It would be quite easy for a police officer to reason that the quickest and easiest way to determine whether the young man has a blocked drain is to arrest him and take him to his home address, to see whether the kitchen sink is blocked.
I am sure that the Minister will say that of course the police will act reasonably, but the police do not always act reasonably. Believe me, from 30 years’ experience in the police service, including four years as a bobby on the beat, I can say that sometimes police officers look for any reason to arrest someone. For those who might argue that my experience is not current, I point out that if you own a drone, live within a short distance of Gatwick Airport and have suspicious neighbours, apparently you can end up being arrested even when you can easily prove that you were miles away at work at the time the offence was committed.
There is another anomaly. In the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, in offences that remain of the “defence when charged” type, the burden is on the prosecution to disprove the reasonable excuse defence put forward by the accused, and to do so beyond reasonable doubt. Section 118 of the Terrorism Act 2000 states:
“If the person adduces evidence which is sufficient to raise an issue with respect to the matter the court or jury shall assume that the defence is satisfied unless the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is not”.
Indeed, in Clause 3(10) of this Bill we find a similar provision, except that it applies only in Scotland. South of the border, not only is it only a defence once charged—as in subsection (8)—but the person charged has to,
“prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”,
presumably beyond reasonable doubt. Noble Lords will recall that Section 118 of the Terrorism Act saved the Government from the accusation of reversing the burden of proof but, in these offences, the burden of proof is on the accused, presumably to the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt, that they have a reasonable excuse. Why is the burden of proof reversed in this Bill, except in Scotland, but not in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, which passed through this House only recently?
Sending a message to the police that an offence is not committed if someone has lawful authority or reasonable excuse is preferable to saying that an offence is committed and that there is a defence once charged. Sending a message that you have nothing to fear by buying corrosive substances for illegitimate purposes and carrying the substance home through the streets or to a place of work is preferable to saying: “You are committing an offence and have to prove to a jury beyond reasonable doubt that you did so innocently”. The principle adopted in Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, which deals with offensive weapons, is that you are innocent if you have a reasonable excuse. That legislation has not been repealed, nor have the Government sought to amend it. That is the principle adopted by the Government in recent weeks in relation to an offence under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, and it is the principle that the Government should adopt in this Bill. I beg to move—
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
Not being familiar with police procedures, to me the essence of the argument seems to be about when the defence is deployed. Can the noble Lord explain what that means in practical terms?
Lord Paddick
My Lords, when the police are told that the offence is not committed if somebody has a reasonable excuse, the clear message sent to them is that they need to investigate the matter there and then to establish whether that reasonable excuse exists. If a Bill, as in this case, says that somebody who carries a corrosive substance in a public place commits an offence, it sends a message to the police that investigation of any reasonable excuse that the person may have can wait until later because, according to the legislation, the defence is available only once the person has been charged.
Lord Judge (CB)
My Lords, I support the Bill. The issue of the misuse of corrosive substances and all other kinds of offensive weapons is too obviously something that has to be addressed. However, I want to raise an issue which is troublesome in the context of the amendment.
Unless an offence is absolute—and we take a strong stand against absolute offences—it is a long-standing principle of criminal justice that you are liable to conviction and sentence, or to go back earlier, to be arrested and charged if you have done something or acted in a way prohibited by the law. Fine—but the proviso to that is, “Provided that simultaneously your state of mind was itself similarly criminal”. You may have done it intentionally or recklessly. There are all sorts of ways in which your state of mind can be identified as criminal but it is of the essence that these two concepts stand or fall together.
This statute asserts that, where certain facts are proved, you have committed an offence—full stop. Without reference to your state of mind or any other circumstance, the offence is established and you are therefore liable to be arrested. It then says, “We shall graciously allow that, in certain circumstances, you may have a defence”, and if you prove them you would have a defence. Perhaps the most gracious of all the circumstances is to be found in Clause 2(6) to (9), where a whole series of them have to be established. You then have a defence, but you have been arrested and may have been charged. Nobody has to examine these two concepts together and say, “The evidence shows that he had a guilty mind”, or “He was reckless”, or whatever it might be.
What I really want to raise in Committee is that we should stick to the normal principles that have worked well for us: you are not guilty of anything and have not committed an offence unless your mental state was simultaneously as criminal as the actions you committed. That is what we believe. I do not want to be overportentous; I cannot see the Minister making any concessions about this. However, I would like to put down a marker. This way of legislating for criminal justice is inappropriate and we should avoid it. We should certainly be very careful not to allow it to happen without us spotting it and stopping it.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, listening to the debate and the presentation of the amendment, I wonder how the amendments might protect the important relationships between young people and the police—maybe particularly between young people from ethnic minorities and the police. I can see that if the authorities have to do more work before they can detain a young person or take them to a police station, it might prevent trouble between the police and young people. My sense—and I am sure we will discuss this further on—is that one of the reasons young people carry knives is because they distrust the police and do not feel that authorities are there to protect them. The amendment may be helpful in engendering more confidence in the police—and indeed the authorities—among young people, particularly those from minority-ethnic communities, and help to make it less likely that young people will carry knives. I would be interested to hear the view of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, on that, from his experience on the beat, if he has time towards the end of this discussion.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, the Opposition are generally in favour of this Bill, but I find the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, somewhat persuasive. I particularly like the way the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, put things in the general perspective of law. Even little deviations from sound general principles are a bad thing, so I hope the Minister will not reject this out of hand but will ponder this set of amendments. The only area I am slightly unsure about—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, or the Minister may want to address this—is the argument that the defence has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. My understanding was that there was a general piece of law that said that defences have to be proved only on balance of probability. It is important to know which of those tests the defence has to meet.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their points and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for tabling these amendments. As he explained, they address the construction of the new offences relating to the sale of corrosive products to under-18s, the prohibition on sending corrosive products to residential premises when bought online and the possession of a corrosive substance in a public place. The noble Lord’s basic premise is that it is unjust that a person who took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the sale or delivery should be guilty of the offence, rather than having to rely on the permitted defence to establish his or her innocence. The same principled objection applies to the possession offence and the person who has a reasonable excuse for having a corrosive substance with them in a public place.
As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, this has echoes of the recent debates we had on the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill. However, as my noble friend Lord Howe indicated in that context, we are not persuaded that whichever way these offences are constructed will make much material difference to a suspect or how the police go about an investigation.
In relation to the sale offence and the offence of sending corrosive products to a residential premises, I think it is quite right that it should be for the seller to prove that they took reasonable precautions to avoid the commission of these offences. The seller will clearly know what checks they carried out to stop a sale to a person under the age of 18. In the shop context, they will know whether they asked the buyer in appropriate cases to verify their age, which will normally consist of asking them to produce a passport, a driving licence or an age proof card. In the online case, it is important that the seller has put in place some arrangement for checking the buyer’s age. Clearly where a seller has shown that they have verified age, no prosecution will take place.
In answer to the question asked by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, about the normal principles of criminal law, the Bill reflects knife crime legalisation going back at least to the Criminal Justice Act 1988. His point about consistency is important, but I can point to other examples in other areas of law.
Going back to sellers, it is important that they take responsibility in this area and it is right that they have to prove what checks they have made rather than placing the burden on the prosecution. That is what happens in relation to other age-related sales, such as knives, alcohol and tobacco, and the approach is well understood by retailers, trading standards and the police.
Similarly, with the offence on arranging delivery to a residential premises or locker when a corrosive product is bought online, it should be for the seller to ensure that they are not sending the product to a residential address and to make sure they have the appropriate checks in place to stop this happening. The seller should be able to do this easily, and I can see no benefit in placing the burden on the prosecution to prove that the seller made the appropriate checks.
In the possession offence, as I have said before—for example, on the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill—the police on the ground will use intelligence to decide whether someone may be in possession of a corrosive substance without good reason. They will not stop people coming out of B&Q with their cleaning products and question them, just as they do not stop people coming out of B&Q with garden shears and scissors. The police will use this power only where they have reasonable grounds for suspecting the person has a corrosive substance on them in a public place without good reason—for example, where a group of young people may be carrying a corrosive that has been decanted into another container. Establishing good reason on the street should be relatively easy. If a person can show they have just bought the cleaner and are taking it home to unblock their drains or that they are a plumber and need the substance as part of their work, good reason will have been established and no further action would be taken. It is only where a person cannot provide a good reason—for example, for why they have decanted the substance into another container that will make it more easily squirtable, or where they cannot say where they bought the substance or what they intend to use it for—that further action may be taken, and in this case it is quite right that the person should have to set out any good reason why they had the substance in a public place.
That aside, and returning to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, it is important that we have consistency across similar offences. I have just explained the sale and possession of knives. We think that corrosives have the potential to be used as a weapon just as much as knives and that wherever possible the legislation dealing with the two should be consistent. Both corrosives and knives are widely available and have legitimate uses—they are not in and of themselves weapons—and to have a different approach for corrosives would suggest that they are somehow less of a threat as a weapon.
Retailers are familiar with the existing law relating to the sale of other age-related products and know what measures they need to put in place to ensure they comply with the law. It could be confusing to retailers if we now constructed these offences differently. The police are also familiar with the approach relating to possession and we are not aware that the good reason defence has caused any issues regarding possession of a bladed article in a public place.
On the question from the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, on the standard of proof, I can confirm that if a defence is raised, the defendant has only to prove that the defence is made out on the balance of probabilities. There was a question on Scotland: obviously it has a separate legal jurisdiction with its own sentencing framework. The Bill’s provisions work with the grain of the existing sentencing provisions. For example, the maximum penalty on summary conviction is 12 months in Scotland, but only six months in England and Wales. The same is true for the burden of proof, where the Bill reflects existing Scots law.
I appreciate noble Lords’ concerns but, as I said, the approach we have taken is to follow a well-precedented form for offences relating to other age-restricted goods. If we reconstructed the sales and delivery offences for corrosive products we would be creating a different legislative regime from other age-restricted products, such as for knives. I am therefore not persuaded that we need to change the construction of the new offences. With those words, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, will be content to withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
This might have been dealt with before and I apologise if it has, but is a farmhouse a residential address? Farmers would certainly receive all sorts of corrosive products.
Lord Paddick
Could I assist the Committee? We will return to the problems of not allowing corrosive substances to be delivered to any residential address in an upcoming group. It might be more appropriate to discuss that matter then, if that assists the noble Earl.
Lord Paddick
Not at all.
I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. It is interesting that the Minister seems to have ignored the inconsistency in approach between the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Bill. In the Prevention of Crime Act, which is a piece of legislation specifically dealing with offensive weapons, you do not commit an offence if you have a reasonable excuse, which is inconsistent with the Criminal Justice Act and the Bill. The Minister says, “We worded it this way for things to be consistent”. It is not consistent.
On the point from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I do not want to get into the disproportionality of stop and search. What I would say is that I envisage certain circumstances where a 19-year-old young man who has a corrosive substance in their pocket, because that is the only thing they were sent out to the shop for, is stopped by the police very easily leading to arrest if the offence is worded in the way it is, whereas a police officer might be given cause to think twice if it were worded in the way I suggested it should be changed. The Minister and her officials are on slightly dodgy ground in suggesting to me what makes a practical difference to a police officer on the street or not about the way they implement the law.
That will give an indication that we are likely to return to this matter at the next stage. However, at this juncture, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
“( ) The defence in subsection (2) is satisfied if a person has complied with a process that has been certified as adequate by the police.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would mean that complying with police certified processes would be a sufficient defence under subsection (2).
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 13, 14 and 15 in this group. I do not put any particular weight on the drafting of these amendments. What concerns me is that we are putting a lot of weight in this Bill on the shoulders of people whose occupations we consider so lowly that we will not let them be the subject of apprenticeships. You cannot get an apprenticeship as a shop worker or as a delivery driver. There is no established pattern of training for these people, but we are putting them in a situation where something that they sold is used very quickly in a horrific crime and all the weight of the media and public opinion comes down on their shoulders as to whether they erred in their action or not. The whole machinery of justice is impelled towards convicting them because it wants some victim to compensate for the crime that has been committed. This is all too regular and humiliating, and we owe it to these people to put them in a situation where they can have a set of rules and know that if they follow this set of rules they will be safe.
It is not satisfactory to have that set of rules be just invented by the small shopkeeper who happens to employ them. There has to be some way in which their employers can establish that what they are doing is proof against whatever accusations might come their way. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, the burden of proof rests on their shoulders: they have to show that they did what was necessary to avoid the liability in this Bill. The other side of that coin is that we have to do what is necessary to enable them to do that and to enable them to be sure that they have done that. There are plenty of available recording devices around: you can take a picture of the document that you saw or the person himself, but then you are running straight into GDPR. We cannot start doing that without there being a clear set of permissions and expectations at the back of it. We want this to happen: we want a delivery driver, turning up on a wet Sunday and poking something through a gate that somebody might not see too well in the early morning light or in the evening, knowing that what they are doing is right and sufficient. I do not mind what it is, but we must do something. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I support the amendments in this group in principle, but I will make one or two comments about them. First, there is an apparent contradiction between the pair of Amendments 3 and 13 on the one hand and the pair of Amendments 14 and 15 on the other. The first pair suggests that the police should design a scheme to ensure that corrosive substances are not delivered into the hands of those under 18. The second pair dictate to the police, at least in part, what that scheme should be. However, I understand the principle behind what the noble Lord is saying.
It is currently possible to order age-restricted products online and there are schemes in place designed to prevent age-restricted products being delivered to those under 18. Amazon’s instructions to the buyer say:
“By placing an order for one of these items you are declaring that you are 18 years of age or over. These items must be used responsibly and appropriately.
Delivery of age restricted items can only be delivered to the address on the shipping label, but this can include the reception of a commercial building. A signature of the recipient will be required upon delivery. Amazon adopts a ‘Challenge 25’ approach to delivery of age restricted products. Photo identification will be required if a person appears under 25, to prove that they are over 18 years old. An age restricted item can be delivered to another adult over the age of 18 at the same address. Delivery to a neighbour or nominated safe place location is not available for these items. If an adult over the age of 18 is not available at the address, or if an adult has not been able to show valid photo identification under the Challenge 25 approach, the item will be returned to Amazon”.
The acceptable photo identification is a passport or driving licence.
Would this scheme or something like it be sufficient to restrict the sale and delivery of corrosive substances—and knives for that matter—to those under 18, obviating the need for banning the delivery of such items to residential addresses?
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is absolutely on the right lines. One of the troubles is knowing what is permissible and what is not. In speaking to the amendments in his name, I will suggest something which takes it a bit further. I declare an interest as chair of the Digital Policy Alliance, which, among other things, worked for several years on age verification for the Digital Economy Act. This Bill has exactly the same problem as Section 3 of that Act: what systems are adequate for proving the age of someone in an online sale? We worked on such systems and if noble Lords want to see that it can be done properly and securely I recommend they go to the web portal dpatechgateway.co.uk, where there are several to play with. The challenge is that there is no official certification scheme in place, but those systems are compliant with BSI publicly available specification 1296. I chaired the steering group that produced that standard and it had a lot of different people on it—people from the industry, academics, legislators, lawyers, et cetera. It shows that it can be done securely.
This goes one stage further than the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that the police can certify. Here is a system that you could trust. The technology also enables it to be on a mobile, so you can do point-of-delivery verification. You have got the person there: you can compare them with the device. Amendment 13 goes some way to solving the quandary for a seller, but what is “adequate”? Someone in the industry has suggested to me that it might be better to insert a new paragraph (c) after line 22 saying that: “The Secretary of State may lay regulations as to which bodies are recognised to provide standards against which age-verification schemes can be assessed”. In that way, a certification system could be set up. The BBFC and DCMS have been struggling with this for some time. They are getting there, but there is a lot to be learned from the fallout from that which could be imported into this Bill. Giving the Secretary of State the power to say what schemes can be certified against would go a long way to making life far simpler. We are moving into an online age. We cannot do all this offline and we should not pretend we can.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is right that we are in the hands of sellers and delivery drivers, who have quite a lot of responsibility. If they get this wrong, they could be convicted, go to prison and have a criminal record. I am not against the Bill—in general I support it—but it is reasonable for it to set out what people need to do to protect themselves. One way of going forward may be a police guidance scheme. Another would be requiring the delivery driver to take photographic evidence. This would be a very good thing to do, because it is important to protect the people who are doing this work. People do make unintentional mistakes. They need to know that the person at the door is the right age and can hand over documents as evidence, or that they have abided by a police-approved scheme to which their company has signed up. These amendments go a long way to ensure protection for the seller, as well as making sure that the items are handed to the right people who are entitled to buy them.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am grateful to my noble friend for explaining these amendments, which deal with the evidence required to satisfy the defence if a seller is charged with selling or delivering a corrosive product to someone who is under the age of 18. As regards Amendment 3 to Clause 1, I understand my noble friend’s intention but I am doubtful that it is necessary or appropriate to require the police to certify a seller’s processes as adequate. There are already well-established and widely recognised age-restricted policies in place for retailers and sellers through Challenge 21 and Challenge 25. These policies are used day in and day out by retailers to deal with situations where an individual may appear to be under 18, particularly in relation to the sale of alcohol or tobacco. I have concerns about the value of asking the police to certify a seller’s processes and about the burden this would place on police forces. I am also concerned about whether this approach would undermine these established policies. Arguably this amendment would necessitate the police certifying the specific age-restriction policies of every individual seller of a corrosive product, whether a high-street store or an online marketplace. This not a valuable use of police time when we want them to be focused on preventing and tackling violence in our communities.
In any event, I am not persuaded that the police would be the appropriate agency to discharge this function. We must not forget the important role that trading standards plays and its expertise in this area. That said, I would have the same concerns about the resource implications for local authorities if they, rather than the police, were to be made responsible for certifying the systems put in place by all retailers of corrosive substances caught by the Bill.
The defence we have put in place for the Clause 1 offence is similar to that for the sale of knives to under-18s, and it seems right to have a seller prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence of selling to an under-18. Similar considerations apply to Amendment 13, which would again require the police to certify as adequate a seller’s system in preventing, in this case, the remote sale of a corrosive product to someone under 18. We have not specified an age-verification system in the legislation as there are various types of systems available and, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, pointed out, the technology behind such systems is continuing to develop at a fast pace. As a result, we did not want to prescribe a specific method or set a minimum standard for what these systems need to do, first, because we need to ensure that we future-proof the legislation, and secondly, because it is for sellers to determine the most appropriate system for their businesses to be able to demonstrate that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised due diligence to prevent the sale of a corrosive product to an under-18.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I see the point the Minister is making. She referred to various age-verification systems. I do not know whether we are going to have any guidance from the Government when this Bill becomes law. I want to ensure that these products are not sold to young people, but equally I want a system whereby I am confident that the person selling these items has had to reach quite a high bar to get this wrong so I am more confident that they have sold them deliberately. Will there be some sort of guidance saying that the Government would expect a seller to be in a scheme for age verification, so that if you are a courier company delivering products we would expect you to be in a scheme that does this and your driver would have professional training to know that, when he knocks on the door, he has to have done such and such? We need to make sure that we give the maximum amount of direction to people so we avoid these things getting into the wrong hands.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord makes a perfectly practical point. We are aiming to produce guidance. We talked about shopkeepers the other day and the abuse of shopkeepers who are trying to abide by the law. I think some of the conversation we had with USDAW will prove very fruitful in developing our thinking on that.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Will you produce guidance along the lines of what I have suggested? Or are you not sure yet? Will you get to it later on?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
We will produce guidance and I will of course take the noble Lord’s points into account. I cannot say whether supermarkets are currently part of the Challenge 21 or Challenge 25 scheme; I do not know the answer to that. However, in the production of guidance, you consult the various interested stakeholders to make sure that the guidance is as clear as it possibly can be.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
With the greatest respect, you would expect some of the bigger companies to have systems in place. I am more concerned about smaller couriers and shops—one-man-band operations—which may not have anything in place. Being directed to sign up to a scheme would be good for everybody concerned.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
In fact, I was thinking precisely of the small shop owner, who may not have the resource. If they could sign up or reference some sort of guidance that would be ideal. I was thinking along the same lines as the noble Lord.
The Earl of Erroll
Can I add something on that subject? I was not suggesting that the Secretary of State should specify specific company schemes, or whatever. However, I agree entirely that there should be a certification process so that people know whether they are okay or not. If there is not, there will be a massive test case in the courts, which will be very expensive for someone, to test what is adequate. The Secretary of State could avoid this by giving some direction on the regulations which reflects where you can change them, with changing technology, and which would satisfactorily protect the seller from vexatious things and awkward situations. The Government should look at this again.
Baroness Hamwee
I mentioned that, not long before coming into this debate, I—and no doubt other noble Lords—had a note from the British Retail Consortium. It also makes the point about how helpful it would be to have guidance—“possibly through guidance”, it says. Different situations may be different, but we are all concerned about not just protecting the seller but making sure that purchasers are able to purchase when it is reasonable to do so. I think it was my noble friend who mentioned John Lewis’s current policy on sending cutlery through the post.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, essentially come back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, made. Sellers want to make sure they are abiding by the law but, as the noble Baroness said, buyers want to make sure they are abiding by the law as well. On the systems that the noble Earl raised, I hope I did not suggest that he was trying to imply a specific system. I made the point that it would be wrong to specify a system in the legislation, given that systems are developing all the time.
To answer the point from the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, about age-restricted products, I have already mentioned knives, alcohol and tobacco, but lottery tickets are age-restricted as well, of course. Retailers are very used to operating in these systems, without a specific approved system in place.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
This is a different type of retailer—hardware shops. You usually buy your lottery ticket from a different sort of place. I think we need to deal with these like for like.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is both right and wrong. A shop might sell a range of products that includes all these things—I am thinking of Tesco, for example—whereas a corner shop might be entirely different.
The amendments would place additional burdens on sellers and delivery firms or couriers beyond the conditions proposed in Clause 2 that would need to be met by any remote seller who is charged with an offence of selling a corrosive product to someone under 18 and wants to rely on the defence for remote sales. We have already prescribed a tight set of conditions on remote sellers if they want to rely on the defence in Clause 2. There is clearly a balance to be struck, but I am not sure that we want to go further and be more prescriptive by imposing a requirement for photographic evidence, albeit that some firms may well want to adopt such an approach.
As for obtaining and retaining photographic evidence that the corrosive product was only delivered into the hands of someone aged over 18, I would have concerns about the storage for an appropriate period of such photographs under the general data protection regulation. The person who received the package would of course need to give their consent to any photograph being taken. We also need to bear in mind that it might not necessarily be the seller making the delivery; it could be a third-party delivery firm or a courier. That would raise the question of how the photographic evidence was transferred to the seller for retention. There is also a concern that the seller would not be able to fulfil the conditions set out for condition C in Clause 2 if the delivery firm or courier delivering the package failed to take and send the photographic evidence to the seller. The seller would not be able to demonstrate that they had taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to ensure that, when finally delivered, the package was handed over to someone over 18. I accept that these difficulties are not insurmountable, but they demonstrate the drawback of imposing a level of regulation beyond what is arguably necessary.
I reassure noble Lords that we will work with retailers, the police and trading standards on implementation of the measures relating to the sale and delivery of corrosive products to ensure that those measures are adequate. As I said, we will want to produce guidance to ensure that retailers and sellers know what steps they can take to ensure that they comply with the law. I hope that, with those explanations, the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Could I just come back to the issue of getting people to provide information? I understand the point that the noble Baroness makes about the GDPR, but we want the person who is knocking on the door to take all reasonable steps to know who the person answering the door is. Age can be quite deceptive. I had to go to the Co-op last night to get a package. I had my passport and my driving licence and I had to put in a PIN, just to pick up a jacket. These days, people often buy things that come in the post or have to be picked up from the post office or elsewhere, so giving identification is not a big issue now. If you are not doing anything wrong, why would you not provide that information anyway?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I think that the noble Lord was referring to the taking and retention of photographs, which is slightly different, and we need to acknowledge the distinction.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for saying that there will be guidance. Perhaps we might drop that into the Bill on Report, just to make sure. I think that guidance would be enough, but we should recognise that we have chosen to put into the Bill the words “all due diligence” and “all reasonable precautions”. That is a very high test. If we had meant the current systems to apply, we should have left out the word “all”. Nobody gets killed by being sold a lottery ticket—or at least not just one—but we are looking here at things that might quite quickly turn into serious criminal incidents. If in court someone says, “I looked at his passport”, but the police prove that the person in question has no passport, the poor delivery driver or shop worker is sunk. Noble Lords might remember a rather amusing TV ad from when we watched such things, “We’re with the Woolwich”, where somebody showed their Woolwich passbook to get out of East Germany. This passport or driving licence can presumably be of any nationality. How is a relatively untrained shop worker or delivery driver supposed to know that this is a Polish passport, not a Polish bankbook? We are asking people for whom there is no structured training to act as if they are trained. Under such circumstances we have to—
Baroness Hamwee
The noble Lord has made a very interesting point about the phrase “all reasonable precautions” and “all due diligence”. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord can help the Committee, but that looks like a normal phrase. I did not read it in quite the same way as having to take every possible step that might be a reasonable precaution. I wonder whether the officials might help us as to the provenance of the phrase before Report.
Lord Judge
If I might say so, “all” means “every”. Without “all”, you have just to take reasonable precautions and show due diligence. Once you put “all” in, you fall foul of any particular point you could have but did not look at and did not do.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
This is something we talked about earlier. If we are to put “all” in, it is not unreasonable to have some sort of guidance in the Bill to protect people, otherwise people are just left hanging.
Lord Paddick
Would it help the Committee to suggest that the Government have put in Clause 4 exactly the sort of things the delivery courier should be looking at to take reasonable precautions?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, that is where the guidance comes in. All roads are leading back to the guidance. I hope I can leave it there.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, it was those sorts of concerns that led to me think of taking photographs, because taking a photograph of a document is a reasonable precaution. If you have not done it, you have not taken all reasonable precautions. Yet if you take a photograph you get into all sorts of complications because it is not required, so you are into GDPR in all sorts of interesting ways. Guidance therefore becomes very important and we ought to drop the requirement for guidance into the Bill. I am very grateful to my noble friend for her help on this and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would replace the custodial sentences for the new offence in Clause 1 (sale of corrosive products to persons under 18) with community sentences.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, in moving Amendment 4 I will speak to Amendments 5, 6, 7, 20 and 21. This is not the first time that the Liberal Democrats has made clear our opposition to short custodial sentences, which, in our view, tend not to do good and too often cause harm. We are grateful to the Standing Committee for Youth Justice and the Prison Reform Trust in particular, as well as other organisations for helping me to articulate this. These amendments and some later ones repeat amendments that my right honourable friend Sir Ed Davey tabled in the House of Commons. We have thrown in some additional references because this is the scrutinising House. I heard a noise of agreement from behind me and it is clear that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is on the same page on this.
A good deal was said at Second Reading on the complexity of what lies behind the carrying and use of weapons, and the context of that. Many noble Lords took what we regard as a necessarily broad view of the issues, expressly or implicitly criticising the use of legislation to send a rather broader message than the message to the police, to which my noble friend Lord Paddick referred. The Government recognise this, but not consistently. At Second Reading, I mentioned the Justice Secretary’s apparent opposition to short custodial sentences and his support for community sentences, which the Ministry of Justice’s own research shows are more effective at reducing offending. Surely that view counts. It is not so very long ago that home affairs and justice were in a single department, which was very unwieldly, but I hope that attitudes and values have not diverged to any extent.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 4 and 5, and I will also speak to the other amendments in this group. I looked in vain for Amendment 19 on the Marshalled List and the order of groupings today but I noticed that it is not there. As 19 comes before 20 and 21, I would like to speak to that as well because it also mentions custodial sentences—
Lord Ramsbotham
I am sorry. I mentioned at Second Reading that I was astonished that the Bill should bring forward the Home Secretary’s apparent desire to increase the number of mandatory short sentences while the Ministry of Justice and its Secretary of State, followed by the Prisons Minister last Saturday in the Daily Telegraph, oppose the mandatory short sentences because they were so ineffective. I would have thought that that ought to have been sorted out between the two Cabinet Ministers before the Bill was brought to the House.
When I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, I learned of the Scandinavian system, which gave to the sentencer prospectuses of what could be done with and for a prisoner. The sentencer took that into account in awarding the length of sentence and ordered that certain courses or programmes were to be completed by the prisoner so as they could rehabilitate him or herself. If the prisoner completed the mandatory parts of the sentence laid down by the sentencer, the governor of the prison could take the prisoner back to the sentencer and, because the prisoner has jumped through all the hoops that were set, ask that they please be released. That was a factor in reducing overcrowding in Scandinavian prisons.
What worries me is that our overcrowded and understaffed prisons are finding difficulty enough in producing programmes for longer-term prisoners. But they can do nothing whatever for short-sentence prisoners and therefore there is no purpose in people going to those prisons, because they will get absolutely nothing. If you expect that the purpose of the sentence is to rehabilitate, that will not happen in our present prison system. Staff shortages, for example, mean that there are not enough staff to escort people to programmes that they are meant to be attend. So even if a programme was laid down, it is unlikely that it would be completed.
I admit that community sentences need to be improved. In preparation for this debate, last week I visited the Wandsworth probation programme and asked staff what they could do with and for people accused of violent offences. They said that, at the moment, they could do absolutely nothing because they did not have the wherewithal. However, there is no doubt that, if they were given the wherewithal, they could devise a meaningful sentence that would gather credibility in the community.
I also spoke to the Justice Secretary last Thursday and mentioned that there was apparent disagreement between him and the Home Secretary. Personally, I am on his side, because I saw the effect of short sentencing in prisons and saw people coming out having got nothing. That does little to increase the reputation of the justice system in the community, and it can ill afford to lose any more of its reputation in the country.
I notice that, in her foreword to the Serious Violence Strategy, the then Home Secretary said two things. The first is this:
“The … Strategy represents a very significant programme of work involving a range of Government Departments and partners, in the public, voluntary and private sectors”.
That may be, but we have not as yet seen any evidence of this partnership working. At Second Reading, we talked a lot about a public health approach. I do not think that that approach has had time to bed in. The second thing she said was that:
“The strategy supports a new balance between prevention and effective law enforcement”.
Prevention has not yet been tried, and to lay down mandatory short sentences is imposing law enforcement on prevention and damaging the hopes that prevention may bed in and achieve something.
Baroness Newlove (Con)
My Lords, listening to the debate on this amendment makes me feel very nervous. As someone who has been a victim of crime by a gang of youths, and as the community champion when I came to this place, my worry is that there is an argument about short-term sentences, because of the process a prisoner goes through. I have gone into prisons and youth offender schemes, so I have done my homework and have worked with them a lot. My nervousness is because, while this is about short imprisonment, imprisonment is effective for people for whom a community sentence does not carry that weight.
Going around the country and speaking to communities, I find they do not feel that their voice is being listened to when someone is given a community sentence. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, quite rightly said that we need to have quality community sentences. At the moment, we have painting fences and gardening while wearing visors. I am conscious about how we shift this pattern of our community sentences and what they are worth.
In addition, there is kudos in this in the gangs that we deal with. When there were ASBOs, it was cool to have an ASBO. I am conscious that we need to look at short sentences and at the messages we are sending to the community and to the gangs, who can hold one sentence against the other. If the Government are going to go that way, I would like quality community services.
I have been out with youth offender trainers. They are short-staffed and underresourced. The intelligence I had from young people who were going into gangs was that they were not bothered whether they were going to prison or doing community service. They had no idea of what they were in trouble for. That is where the serious violence strategy needs to be better—it is about the two together. I am very nervous about community sentences. Can we have further discussions about them? They are part of the essential message we are sending to youngsters and to communities that are suffering and are scared to come forward because their lives are being threatened.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support these amendments. I recognise how important it is for the Government to make a robust response to public concerns about knife crime and the use of corrosive substances—the Victims’ Commissioner has just reiterated that. One must bear in mind the huge cost of sending people to prison. I would be very grateful if, in her reply, the Minister could give some idea of how much a short prison sentence costs compared to community provision. We have just heard that there is insufficient investment in high-quality community provision. The difficulty is that, when one starts ramping up the prison population, one has to spend more and more on an expensive provision which is ineffective. It is perhaps a difficult communications job for the Government, but the best way of protecting the public from these kinds of crimes is to invest in high-quality community provision, community support officers and police on the ground so that people can see them in their communities.
We are facing an uncertain future as a country. We recognise the limitations on our resources. If we start increasing the number of people being placed in prison, as we have done in the past, we perhaps do not have the money to do both, and we will not be able to make the most effective provision. For instance, we are not talking about children in this amendment, but I think I am right in saying that 68% of children who serve a short prison sentence will commit a crime within a year of being in prison, whereas 58% of those placed in community intervention will do so. That statistic takes into account the gravity of the crime.
There is scientific evidence that community interventions are more effective than prison sentences, at least for children. In seeking to reassure the public, we risk spending a lot more money on something which is relatively ineffective and not putting resources in an area where they are demonstrated to be effective. It is a difficult job, because the Government also have a role to reassure the public. If the public really believe that prison sentences are the only way to respond to this, we are in a difficult position. I think the public can be persuaded that we should not put money into expensive things which are not effective.
Baroness Newlove
I have an issue with the cost of putting extra money into prisons. The communities that I am involved in, and see on a daily basis, are not nice rural villages. On a daily basis, they are being told the absolute opposite of what the noble Earl is saying. Investing more in communities—to get their trust in services—will give them confidence and will nurture our society.
I have been in prisons and I am not saying they are not horrendous. One young offender who had been in a riot said to me: “It’s minging in here”, but he still could not grasp what he had done. He was a first-time offender and his solicitor had said: “Don’t worry, son, it’s your first offence”. I have an issue with giving this line to young people. I also have an issue with governors. I have seen good services, such as training young prisoners in the skills to get involved in optician work for children abroad. But when another governor comes in, he completely whitewashes everything and wants his own blueprint. That happens everywhere.
If it is about money, we need to look further at what we can do. We also need to look at what we are trying to achieve by not sending people to prison. I have an issue with money because our prisons would not be full if you invested it well. Communities need to feel safe and, at the moment, they do not. They feel that what they hear and say are worthless.
The Earl of Listowel
I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. I think we are saying the same thing: we need to put the money where it can be effective. We can put money into the community in many different ways, including increasing the number of community support officers or police officers on the beat. In particular, young men—so many of whom are growing up without fathers in the home—need to find mentors they can identify with and so begin to turn their lives around, as I have seen so often myself. Those services are effective, but they are easily cut. I am concerned that, in progressing with short prison sentences, we are actually throwing money down the drain. However, I see that the Government are in a difficult position. They need to be seen to be making a robust response to something that so many people are afraid of.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
I support the words of my noble friend Lady Newlove. Much of what the Committee has heard this afternoon about corrosive substances has referred to the appalling use of them by young people. Statistics on this are more difficult to find than on some of the other offences that we will be discussing later. I have serious concerns about the connection with drugs. The threat of acid attack is regularly used on young people involved in county lines.
One thing we have not mentioned this afternoon is the terrible situation of violence against individuals in domestic abuse situations, which is less frequent and not often reported. Surely short-term sentences will not deal with that. This is not the same as the pressures on young people to conform to gangs and so on. This is something quite different and I would like to think that there are very serious responses to that in our system.
Lord Paddick
If I could assist the Committee at this stage, these amendments relate to the offences of selling and delivering to young people, not to the possession of corrosive substances by young people. We are talking about sending the owner of the corner shop or the Amazon delivery man to prison for delivering these substances into the hands of people who are under 18. I want to ensure that noble Lords are aware that that is what we are talking about in this group of amendments.
Lord Judge
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. Views have been expressed here which I respect but do not share. The seller will be, or is likely to be, an adult, and certainly will not be a vulnerable child. The purchaser, or the person to whom the product is sold, may be a very young child. It may be a 17 year-old who lives in an area where there is an awful lot of violence and who has a bad record which is known to the seller. We have to be careful. I am implacably opposed to minimum terms—we may come to that at some stage—because minimum terms do not do justice. However, a person who sells to a vulnerable child, or to somebody who leads a gang or who has been given a community sentence first time round, with a condition that he is prohibited from selling corrosive products but continues to do so, merits a prison sentence as punishment. Prison is not just about rehabilitation. Short sentences do not do much good; indeed, the evidence suggests that some of them do a lot of harm. However, some short sentences do some good because they punish the offender. Therefore, I cannot support these amendments.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, as you heard, Amendments 4, 5, 20 and 21 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, seek to replace the punishment that a person is liable to get on conviction, as set out in the Bill, with a community sentence. Amendments 6 and 7 allow conditions to be added to prohibit offenders from selling corrosive substances.
I am very sympathetic to these amendments. We have heard about the debate that is going on in Government at the moment between the justice department and the Home Office on sentencing policy. Generally, as we have heard, short-term sentences are not the right thing to do; they can be expensive and counterproductive, and they are not long enough to deal with a person’s issues. They can actually do more harm than good: the person can lose their job, home and family and then of course they have to go back out into the community. These amendments concern the delivery driver and the owner of the corner shop—the person who sold the products—not the young person who may want to commit other offences.
I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Magistrates have the ability to look at the case in detail and decide on the best punishment. It could be that, for a second or third offence, prison might be the right place to put this person, because they will not listen. Equally, I want to make sure that the magistrates deciding these cases have that ability because they will know whether the offence merits a community sentence. I want to hear that a suite of punishments is available to the court and not have it driven down that they must impose a mandatory sentence. On that basis, although I have some sympathy with the amendments as they are, I want a much broader suite that enables the court to look at the evidence before it and make a sentence that it believes is appropriate.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for tabling these amendments and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for speaking to them, as it provides us with the opportunity to debate the appropriateness of the penalties we are proposing for anyone found guilty of selling a corrosive product to someone aged under 18 or for arranging the delivery of a corrosive product to residential premises or a locker. I am not persuaded of the case for replacing custodial sentences of up to six months for the sale and delivery offences with community sentences. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, very articulately outlined why they might be necessary for some, but not all, offences. Let me explain my reasons for this.
We need to consider the significant harm corrosive products can cause if they are misused as a weapon to attack someone. My noble friend Lady Eaton pointed out one such circumstance in which this might happen: domestic abuse settings. The effects can be significant and life-changing for a victim, leaving them with permanent injuries, not to mention causing serious psychological harm. But it is important to be clear that in providing this maximum custodial penalty we are providing the courts with a range of penalties, from custody through to a fine or both. That gives the courts the option to impose a community sentence if that is most suitable, taking into account all the circumstances of the offence and, of course, of the offender.
There is also the requirement under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that the court has to be satisfied that the offence is so serious that only a custodial sentence can be justified, so we can have every confidence that our courts will be sentencing offenders appropriately. Where a custodial sentence is justified they will impose it, but where a community order would be better for punishment and rehabilitation while protecting the public nothing in our provisions prevents it. There is also the broader legal framework to consider and the novel problems of a maximum penalty being a community order.
I must point out to noble Lords that, under Section 150A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, a community sentence can be imposed only where the offence is punishable by a prison sentence. That is an important point to note. Even if it were possible to change the maximum penalties we are proposing, it would raise the problem that if someone wilfully breached their community order, then, as the law stands, it would not be possible to sentence them to custody. The courts would be able only to re-impose another community sentence. As a result, it is important that custodial sentences are available to the courts as one of the penalties available for anyone convicted of the sales offence. Such an approach is also consistent with the range of penalties available to the courts for anyone who has been convicted of selling a knife or bladed article to a person under the age of 18.
It was very clear from the debates in the House of Commons that we should treat the threat of violence from corrosives as seriously as that from knives. We have therefore tried to ensure that the offences relating to corrosives mirror those for knives wherever possible, as we discussed. I note that this approach was strongly supported by the Opposition during the detailed consideration of the Bill in Commons Committee. These amendments would undermine that approach, and would in effect be saying that selling a corrosive product to someone under the age of 18 was less serious than selling a bladed article to a person under the age 18.
I add that, as with other age-restricted products, in many cases it is the company selling the product or arranging for its delivery that would be prosecuted. Although the person at the checkout desk is sometimes prosecuted, it is more likely the case that it will be the company operating the store, because it will be responsible for ensuring that procedures and training are in place to avoid commission of the offence. This goes back to the guidance point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. Where it is a company that is being prosecuted, the sentence is likely to be a fine rather than a custodial or community sentence, but if an individual is prosecuted, the full range of penalties should be available.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am more comfortable with the Minister’s explanation than I am with what is written in the Bill. Perhaps we can look at this again between now and Report. The Bill seems harsh—it says that there will be a prison sentence—whereas the Minister has said that a whole suite of options will be available to the courts, including community sentences. It seems a shame that what is written in the Bill is not the whole case. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, prison might be the right option in some cases, but in other cases a community sentence would be appropriate. I not a lawyer—I am a lay person—but perhaps we can look at how the Bill is written. As I said, I am happier with what I have heard than with what is in the Bill.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her helpful, informative and careful reply. I particularly welcome what she said about the need to think about placing women in prison, given the stubbornly high level of female imprisonment over many years now. I was thinking about the fact that one in 10 lone-parent families is headed by the man. Is there any advice to the courts on whether, when deciding on sentencing, they should take into account whether a man is looking after the children in the family? The Minister will not have it to hand, but I imagine that there is some guidance on that. Perhaps we can look at it at some point.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am happy to look at that point. Of course, every case is different, so I cannot give a pronouncement here in Committee this afternoon. I have visited Styal prison, an all-female prison near to where I live. I would imagine that Styal is an example of best in class, as it tries to support the family as opposed to just dealing with the woman in custody. I recommend any noble Lords who get the chance to visit that prison, which is an example of a very supportive environment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, we have ranged widely and it is tempting to respond to some of the points that have been made, continuing that wider debate, as opposed to focusing on Clauses 1 and 3, but I will try to resist that.
I think that we all agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, that this is about the quality of sentences. I would regard it as rather despairing to accept that there should be imprisonment because community sentences are inadequate—not fit for purpose, in the jargon. I referred to comments made in April last year, I think, by the Secretary of State for Justice, David Gauke, in response to evidence published by the MoJ showing that, for people with matched offending backgrounds, community orders were more effective than a short prison sentence at reducing offending.
I should make it clear that we are not in favour of selling corrosives that may be misused—I do not want that to come out of this debate. Clause 6 includes the offence of possession, and it is this clause that prompts me to ask whether the Minister can confirm that the offences under Clauses 1 and 3 are summary only offences. Clause 6 refers to conviction on indictment, which would allow imprisonment for up to four years. One always learns something, and I did not expect to learn about the 2003 Act. There are two ways of looking at that: either our amendments are fatally flawed or we have material to come back to at Report. That is neither a threat nor a promise, but perhaps the Minister can answer my question about summary only offences.
Baroness Hamwee
We have all shared a lot more of our views on this Bill than I thought likely to be the case when I tabled these two amendments. I beg leave to withdraw.
Viscount Craigavon
Member’s explanatory statement
This is a paving amendment for the amendment tabled at page 4, line 23. Together both amendments seek to exclude objects such as car and motorcycle batteries from the definition of a corrosive product in section 3 to allow for their continued delivery to residential premises.
Viscount Craigavon (CB)
My Lords, of the two amendments in this group, both in my name, the first is a paving amendment to Amendment 18, in Clause 3, which has the heading, “Delivery of corrosive products to residential premises etc”. Clause 3 would carry on the same definition of corrosive products, but my Amendment 18 would allow for an excepted class of product, of which an example is motorcycle and car batteries. The amendment is solely to deal with their delivery to residential premises.
While fully and obviously agreeing with this Bill providing sweeping protection from the misuse of corrosive products, I hope the Government will recognise that unintended consequences—on quite a scale—could occur in the particular case that I am setting out. I hope that the Minister will not want this Bill to disadvantage or even punish an important section of the population, when, by accepting this amendment, a perfectly safe resolution can be achieved.
The wording of my main amendment might appear to be rather obscure, but it is, with reason, copied from what is successfully used in the Poisons Act, as amended. The clue is in the wording: I have narrowed its scope and restricted it to just one of the nine substances listed in Schedule 1, sulfuric acid. It applies to objects containing sulfuric acid, which will usually, but not exclusively, be batteries.
In making my case here I will concentrate on car and motorcycle batteries, in particular the latter category, which would be most affected by an unamended Bill. We are talking mainly about the delivery to residential premises of such batteries. I declare my interest in this matter as a frequent motorcyclist and a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Motorcycling. The Motorcycle Industry Association has picked up the potential problem: the present extensive online sale of motorcycle batteries to individual customers at their residential address would simply be unable to continue were this Bill to pass unamended.
I use the example of motorcycle batteries but this would apply to car batteries and other such sulfuric acid battery users. However, motorcycle batteries are produced and designed in small sizes, to fit particular specialisations and models, unlike car batteries, which are fairly standard and interchangeable and some of which can be bought sealed with a lifetime guarantee. I know to my cost that motorcycle batteries, which are normally sealed, have to be frequently replaced in the normal course of things, and then by the exact shape and power of battery that each machine requires. They are much more prone to failure and the effects of the cold and normally have to be replaced every two or three years. I say all that to emphasise the need of motorcycle owners to obtain ordinary and specialist batteries on a regular and speedy basis, specified for their machines.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the noble Viscount. This is an example of how complex this ban on delivering corrosive substances to residential premises is. That is an issue that I will return to in group 7; I shall keep my powder dry until then.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I also rise briefly to support this amendment from my noble friend. He is absolutely right. It is not just cars and motorcycles; things such as uninterruptable power supplies for computers, in which I have a particular interest, have them and I do not know whether the fact that the battery is inside another bit of kit which can be unscrewed matters or not. If you have a heavy-duty burglar alarm panel, that will probably have a lead-acid battery behind it. There are lots of reasons why you might want to get replacement batteries. I personally find it very inconvenient, except for the fact that I am married to a farmer. If I was living in a normal place—like my son for instance, who lives in London—I would not be able to buy batteries like that. They are a damned sight cheaper online, I can tell you that.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I think the noble Viscount makes a fair point. He has listed some examples of when this could be a problem. I look forward to the Minister’s response to these valid concerns.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
My Lords, before my noble friend responds—the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, raised some very pertinent points—she might consider that if a miscreant wanted to obtain a corrosive substance, buying a brand-new motorcycle battery would be an extremely expensive way of doing it. When we look at banning things, we have to be very clear about what we think the benefit will be. This is a substance that is still very easy to obtain. It feels as if we are doing a great thing by banning things—we all want to see a reduction in the availability of these dangerous substances—but the reality is that any backstreet garage or facility will have stacks of used car batteries, from which these substances can be taken. We have to consider whether the delivery of an expensive motorcycle battery that may cost £50 is really a likely route for a miscreant who is trying to get hold of these substances. I am a motorcyclist too, although my battery appears to be very reliable.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, for raising this important issue. Before joining your Lordships’ House, I was warned that I would be surrounded by world experts on almost every topic and this short debate has reinforced that view.
The noble Viscount’s amendment seeks to address the potential that the provisions in Clauses 1 to 4 will have unintended consequences for suppliers of car and motorcycle batteries and, as the noble Viscount pointed out, other batteries which contain acid, for example those used in mobility scooters. I agree that this is an important point. Noble Lords may be assured that, in the light of discussions we have had with the representatives of the industry, the Government are carefully considering the impact that the Bill may have on the sale and delivery of such batteries. We remain committed to preventing young people from getting hold of acid in a form that they can use in the sort of horrific attacks that we have seen. But I agree with my noble friend Lord Goschen that it is quite a different matter to prevent the sale or delivery of car batteries and the like to those who have a legitimate need for them.
I ask the noble Viscount to bear with us a little longer. The Government need a little more time to consider how best to meet the point without impacting on the purpose of the Bill. I fully expect that we will have completed this work ahead of Report when I hope we will be able to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Given this assurance, I ask the noble Viscount to withdraw his amendment to give the Government further time to consider this issue.
Viscount Craigavon
My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the spirit of that reply and to all noble Lords who have spoken in support. There is a genuine problem, which I outlined. It is useful to know that the Government are discussing this and coming up with some sort of answer because it has to be dealt with. I think it can be dealt with. I deal with it also under Clause 3. The Minister mentioned Clauses 2 to 4. I hope this can be dealt with. I am grateful for her answer. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require consultation before any amendment of Schedule 1 (corrosive products).
Lord Paddick
My Lords, Amendment 9 is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I shall speak also to my Amendments 10A and 10B, which are also in this group. I apologise to the Committee for the late arrival of those amendments.
Amendment 9 simply suggests that if the appropriate national authority amends Schedule 1—the list of corrosive products—for the purposes of Clause 1 by regulation, it should consult representatives of those likely to be affected. Amendments 10A and 10B probe the necessity for including 3% or more nitric acid and 15% or more sulphuric acid in Schedule 1 when they are already regulated explosives precursors listed in Schedule 1A to the Poisons Act 1972 as amended by the Deregulation Act 2015. These substances are already restricted for sale to the general public. If a member of the public wants to buy these substances, they need to apply to the Home Office for a licence to acquire, possess and use these substances. Will the Minister explain why these substances therefore need to be included in Schedule 1 to the Bill and why the existing restrictions are not sufficient? For those who are amazed at the depth of my knowledge of these issues, I am very grateful to the House of Lords Library for its excellent briefing on the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, Amendment 10 simply asks why not just list all these substances, since we know what they are and the list will not change. Substances have been left off, such as slaked lime, which are seriously corrosive to skin, might be used and are very easy to obtain, and there are others on the list that would be very difficult to obtain. None the less, if we are going to have a list, since the list is not going to grow over time but is a small collection of basic inorganic chemicals, why not have the lot? It really does not add a lot of weight to the Bill to complete the list.
Baroness Barran
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and my noble friend, Lord Lucas, for explaining their amendments, which relate to the list of corrosive substances in Schedule 1. I can deal quickly with Amendment 9. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that we would consult with affected persons before making regulations amending Schedule 1. Whether we need to specify this in the Bill is a moot point, but I am happy to consider her amendment further ahead of Report.
Turning to Amendment 10, I know that my noble friend expressed concerns at Second Reading about the list of corrosive substances set out in Schedule 1 and felt that it did not go far enough and that we needed to have a more comprehensive list. It might be helpful if I set out how we arrived at the corrosive substances and concentration limits in Schedule 1. We based it on the advice from our scientific advisers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory as well as from the police.
The substances that we want to prohibit sales and delivery to under-18s and to residential premises are those which we know have been used in attacks to harm and cause permanent injury and those that are the most harmful. Furthermore, the concentration limits are at those thresholds where, if the product was misused, it would cause permanent injury and damage. This seems a proportionate approach when talking about prohibiting the sale and delivery of corrosive products. It is important to remember that we are talking about products that have legitimate uses in our homes or for businesses. Consequently, we should not be criminalising the sale or delivery of particular corrosive substances without good cause.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and commend her on her mind-reading ability. Although Amendment 9 is in my name, she correctly identified its author. My noble friend and I are both grateful that the Government are considering their response to the amendment. I am still not quite clear why we need to ban the sale to under-18s and delivery to residential premises of nitric acid and sulphuric acid in the concentrations specified in Schedule 1. The point of the question was that people cannot acquire these substances unless they have a Home Office licence under the Poisons Act, so they are very unlikely to be sold to somebody aged under 18 or delivered to a residential address. The Government are normally keen not to have unnecessary legislation, and including those two substances in Schedule 1 to this Bill appears to be unnecessary, bearing in mind that they are listed in Schedule 1A to the Poisons Act 1972. We may come back to that at a later date, but at this point I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to probe and clarify why the seller needs to show the method of purchase employed.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, in moving this amendment on behalf of my noble friend I will speak also to Amendment 16. These are nothing like as technical as the matters raised in the previous group. Indeed they are probing, as all amendments are at this stage in Grand Committee.
The first probe concerns condition A, one of the defences in Clause 2, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has already referred. The Explanatory Notes very straightforwardly state of condition A that,
“at the time of any alleged offence being committed, a seller had a system in place for checking the age of anyone purchasing corrosive products that was likely to prevent anyone under the age of 18 from purchasing that product”.
That seems quite straightforward. What is important, as I read it, is that there is a system in place to check that purchasers are not under the age of 18. The amendment would delete the words,
“by the same or a similar method of purchase to that used by the buyer”.
I am not entirely clear to what those words refer. I do not understand them and I apologise to the Committee if they are perfectly obvious to other Members. The purpose of my amendment is to obtain an explanation of what the words add to those in the Explanatory Notes.
Amendment 16 relates to Clause 2(10) and queries the term “supply”. We have a buyer and a seller, a reference to sale and a reference to delivery, which is to be read as its “supply” to the buyer or someone acting on the behalf of the buyer. The offence in Clause 1 is that of sale. That is not the same as delivery. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain the choice of terminology here. I beg to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, if I can give some comfort to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I did not understand it either.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am sure that the noble Baroness is very much comforted. I hope I can clarify the meaning.
Amendment 12 seeks to test why it is necessary to include in Clause 2(6)(a) the words,
“by the same or a similar method of purchase to that used by the buyer”.
There are many different ways to make purchases online or in response to an advertisement by post or telephone. The simple purpose of the condition set out in Clause 2(6)(a) is to ensure that, at the time of making the sale, the seller had the required arrangements in place to verify the age of the buyer. This would assist in proving that an offence had been committed.
Amendment 16 seeks to clarify why Clause 2(10) uses the term “supply” instead of “delivery”, given the terms of the Clause 1 offence. The use of “supply” is correct in this context because it is about the actual handing over of the product to a person or their representative at the collection point, rather than its delivery to the address from where the buyer ordered the product. I hope that provides clarification, although the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is looking even more puzzled than she initially was.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am afraid I remain a bit puzzled. I do not find all of this Bill entirely easy. My prejudice was confirmed this morning when, ironically, I got a rather painful paper cut from the Offensive Weapons Bill. On the second point, “supply” has all sorts of other connotations, particularly with the drug trade. That perhaps diverted me, but “delivery to a person” is not the same as delivery to premises. I remain puzzled by that. I will have to read what the Minister said about Amendment 12, but I thought she more or less said what I said I thought it should mean without the rather difficult words. I will go back and read that.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am confused as well, so I am in good company. Maybe an example would help the Committee. I am certainly confused about what the words mean.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Would it be helpful if I wrote to noble Lords giving examples?
Baroness Hamwee
I think that would be an excellent idea. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, the purpose of opposing the Question that Clause 3 stand part of the Bill is to raise issues around the practicality of the operation of the clause and to ask the Minister why the scheme suggested in Clause 4—Delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18—cannot be extended to sellers inside the United Kingdom as well as outside, thus obviating the need to ban delivery to residential premises. The practicality of Clause 3 arises out of subsection (6) where premises are not considered residential premises when a person carries on a business from the premises. How does a courier know that the house he is delivering to is also used to conduct a business from? For example, I could be registered as a sole trader with Revenue & Customs, as I used to be before my introduction to your Lordships’ House. I was registered as a writer and public speaker and carried on my business from my home. Unless the courier was able to access— presumably confidential—information held by Revenue & Customs, how would he know? In any event, why should being a writer and public speaker carrying on a business from my home allow me to have corrosive substances delivered there, whereas now I cannot? The noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, gave another practical example about the delivery of acid batteries.
Clause 4 applies to the sale of corrosive substances where the seller is outside the United Kingdom. It applies where the seller enters into an arrangement with a courier to deliver the substance. The courier commits an offence if they do not deliver the substance into the hands of a person aged 18 or over. The courier is deemed to have taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence if he is shown a passport, a photocard driving licence or other document specified by Scottish Ministers or something that looked like one of those documents and would have convinced a reasonable person that it was genuine. This seems to me to be the proof-of-age system that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was looking for in Amendment 3. Why can this system not be modified or added to so that UK sellers can not only age verify as far as possible at the point of sale but, if they are delivering the substance, age verify at the point of hand-over? If there is age verification at hand-over, as set out in Clause 4, why does there need to be a total ban on the delivery of corrosive substances to residential addresses, assuming that that ban is designed to prevent under-18s getting their hands on corrosive substances?
The Earl of Erroll
I apologise for my earlier intervention that should have come under this clause. I can see that it is dealt with in Clause 3(6) about farmhouses, and so my earlier intervention was irrelevant. However, the noble Lord has a very good point about why we are banning delivery to residential premises if there is someone there who can prove that they are over 18. The ban is actually not about whether the substance goes to residential premises. There are many reasons why you might want something delivered. For instance, if you are cooking and things like that—I know that is a later section. There are cleaning products and stuff like that. I cannot see the purpose of the ban if the delivery is being accepted by someone who is over 18. As I said in my earlier intervention, it is easy to do now with modern technology; we can now age-verify people extremely accurately.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, as we have discussed, Clause 3 makes it an offence, where a sale is carried out remotely, for a seller to deliver, or arrange for the delivery of, a corrosive product to residential premises or to a locker. Given the concerns over the use of corrosive substances in violent attacks and other criminal acts, to restrict access effectively we believe that it is necessary to stop delivery to private residential addresses. This does not mean that corrosive products cannot be purchased online in the future, merely that individuals will be expected to collect the product from a collection point where their age can be verified before the product is handed over to them. This provision is important as it will ensure that checks are made and that the purchaser will need to prove that they are 18 or over in order to be able to purchase and collect a corrosive product. If the purchaser cannot collect the corrosive product in person, they would have to be able to send a representative who is also over the age of 18.
We have also included an exemption within the provision to ensure that deliveries to businesses that are run from home—such as a farm—would not be affected by the prohibition on delivery to a residential address, for example, where corrosive products are ordered by small family-run businesses, such as metal working, soap making or even farms, in the case of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. We have also provided defences that are available in cases where the individual has taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, questioned why both Clause 3 and Clause 4 are needed. Clause 3 relates to the dispatch of corrosive products bought online in the UK to a residential premises or locker in the UK. We cannot apply the same restrictions on sellers who are based overseas without taking extraterritorial jurisdiction for this offence. Such a step would be inappropriate for a sales offence such as this and, in any event, there would be practical difficulties mounting a prosecution given that an overseas seller would not be within the jurisdiction of the UK courts. Clause 3 is therefore supported by Clause 4, which makes it a criminal offence for a delivery company in the UK to deliver a corrosive product to a person under the age of 18 where that corrosive product has been bought from a seller overseas and where the delivery company knows what it is delivering. The purpose of Clause 4 is to try to stop overseas sellers selling corrosives to under-18s in the UK and having them delivered to a person under the age of 18. There is no overlap between Clauses 3 and 4; we think that both are needed. Clause 3 deals with UK online sales and Clause 4 deals with online sales from overseas sellers.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, again brought up the use of home as a business, which he has mentioned to me before. It will be a matter for the seller under Clause 3 to satisfy themselves that the delivery address is being used for a purpose other than residential purposes. If they cannot satisfy themselves, they should not deliver to that address. Again, it is something that we can deal with in the planned guidance. He also mentioned to me previously his concerns about Amazon’s terms of trade in relation to the sale of alcohol. We are clear from evidence of test purchases of knives that we cannot rely on such terms of business to ensure that the law on age-related restrictions is properly adhered to in the case of online sales.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I have to confess to being even more confused than I was before. Is the Minister saying that you can purchase corrosive substances from a seller overseas and have them delivered to your residential premises, but you cannot get corrosive substances delivered to your residential address if you order them from a UK seller? That appears to be the effect of Clauses 3 and 4.
Lord Lucas
That seems a bit odd. If you can get the corrosive stuff only from overseas sellers, you will get the rest of your stuff from an overseas seller too because it is that much more convenient. If there is no positive effect—because people can still get the corrosive substances from an overseas seller—why ban getting them from a UK seller? It is really very easy. A lot of sellers that you think are in the UK are overseas.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Can I be absolutely clear? Are we saying that you cannot buy it from a UK seller but you can buy it from an overseas seller?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
You can buy it from either, but the mechanisms for age verification are slightly different.
Baroness Hamwee
We have referred quite a lot to Amazon. I do not use it very much, but the few times I have, I have ordered from Amazon but got my items from the producer or seller, which was often in the UK. Is the seller overseas or in the UK in that situation?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
If the seller is in the UK, the seller is in the UK. If the seller is overseas there is a slightly different mechanism. As I said, that is because of our ability to enforce sales in the UK as opposed to online sales abroad. The two are very different, but we are banning the delivery of corrosive substances to under-18s when ordered from an overseas seller, just as we are banning that here.
Baroness Hamwee
But if I order from Amazon, am I buying from Amazon or from the manufacturer in the UK?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That depends entirely on whether the seller is a UK seller or an overseas seller.
The Earl of Erroll
I think the contract is with Amazon, because you pay Amazon for the product. I therefore think Amazon is technically the seller. The website could well be hosted abroad and Amazon has its headquarters abroad. Therefore, your contract is with someone in a foreign country, but the delivery agent may be someone in the UK who happens to have the product and is remunerated by Amazon for it. I am not at all clear. Because this is so obscure, it seems that aligning the two clauses would be sensible—remove the residential bit from Clause 3 and insist on proper age verification of the person receiving the goods, whether the address is residential or business.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, if you buy from Amazon, you are buying from Amazon UK.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I think the point still stands. If you order online from an overseas supplier, you can have your corrosive substance delivered to your residential address and the courier, under Clause 4, is obliged to check the age of the person who it is handed over to, to ensure it is not delivered to somebody under the age of 18. Why on earth—
Lord Lucas
How can the courier know that there is a corrosive substance in the package? It will just say Amazon on the outside.
Lord Lucas
But this is an overseas seller. It is not subject to this law. It just sends a plain package.
Lord Paddick
Clause 4 says that if the courier knows it is a corrosive substance, they have to take these precautions. That is what Clause 4 says. It makes no sense to me at all. If age verification at the point of handover is effective in preventing under-18 year-olds getting hold of substances in the case of overseas sellers, why cannot age verification at the point of handover be effective in preventing them getting hold of corrosive substances delivered to residential premises from a UK supplier? It seems to make absolutely no sense whatever.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I think it is because there is an unwillingness to do that with UK sales. We have made provision for this arrangement to apply where the product is picked up, but we cannot impose extraterritorial jurisdiction on overseas sellers and therefore we are putting the onus on the courier to ensure that the product is labelled as a corrosive substance. That is why the two schemes are slightly different.
Lord Paddick
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for reminding me of that but I am even more confused. She seems to be saying that, in the case of a UK online sale, somebody can pick up the substance from a pick-up point, where their age will be verified. What is the difference between that and a person at the front door of a residential premises having to prove to the courier that they are over the age of 18? I do not understand how picking up the substance at a collection point or picking it up at your front door makes a difference to the ability of the person handing it over to ensure that the person is over the age of 18.
The Earl of Erroll
I can see that this will also get more complicated because you can order a product from a supermarket located just across the channel and have it delivered to your residential premises, which presumably means that it is an international transaction. A particular supermarket was mentioned earlier. I do not think that any supermarkets want to lose their trade to people located just across the channel, but a ban is suddenly going to be put on a lot of local supermarket deliveries.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
It seems that in this debate we have highlighted a massive hole in this legislation. Obviously when legislating on matters such as this, you are legislating not for the law-abiding people but for those—villains, crooks and suchlike—who want to do harm to others. It now seems that if you are a person who wants to use these products to attack somebody, you can go to a bad company abroad that will very happily sell them to you. You can make the transaction and the product will come in the post. You think, “Thanks very much”, and off you go to commit your crime with no problem at all. That is a very bad place for us to be in. It might be useful if the noble Baroness could write to those taking part in the Committee to explain where we are, because a big coach and horses could be driven through the Bill in this area. Unfortunately, we will find companies abroad that will sell to bad people in this country, making a mockery of the law that we are trying to pass here.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, obviously in a perfect world the overseas arrangements would mirror the home arrangements, but the rigour of the age-verification procedures applied to the arrangements for pick-up points cannot be relied on or effectively enforced for home deliveries. It would be great if we could do the same for both situations but we cannot, although I shall be very happy to talk about these issues further before Report.
Lord Tunnicliffe
Given the lack of clarity, if a letter could be sent to us before any discussion takes place, that would be good.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to clarify why delivery arranged after the sale is concluded (as a matter of contract) does not fall within the Clause.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 22 but I wonder whether, with the indulgence of the Committee, I can go back to Amendment 12. As it has puzzled at least three noble Lords—three of us have confessed to it—I urge the Minister, as well as writing, to consider whether the wording might be clearer. We would be happy to look at a government amendment on Report because, if it confuses people who are used to reading legislation, there is a good argument for making it clearer to others who will also read it.
Amendment 22 again concerns some detailed wording. Clause 4(1)(c) provides that the clause applies if before the sale the seller has entered into an arrangement for delivery. Why before the sale? Does this apply only if the seller already has delivery arrangements in place? Often that will be the case but I am puzzled as to whether those words might, in a few situations, limit the application of the clause. I beg to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe
May I join the noble Baroness and say that I too am confused?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I fear that I am about to confuse people further—I hope not—because the noble Baroness is effectively asking why Clause 4 is drafted on the basis that the delivery arrangements for an online sale made to a vendor based overseas will have been made at the point of contract and not subsequently. It therefore might be helpful if I explain how we have drafted the clause in this way.
The purpose of Clause 4(1)(c) is to avoid criminalising a delivery company in instances where an overseas seller has simply placed a package containing a corrosive product in the international mail. By doing this, it then places an obligation on the delivery company, and potentially the Royal Mail, to deliver the item without having entered into a contract or necessarily knowing that the package contains a corrosive product. If we did not have the provision in place and in combination with the provisions of Clause 4(1)(d), which makes it clear that the company was aware that the delivery arrangements with the overseas seller covered the delivery of the corrosive product, then delivery companies such as the Royal Mail would be committing an offence.
We want to mitigate this, which is why we have constructed the offence in this way so that it requires the delivery company to have entered into specific arrangements to deliver corrosive products on behalf of an overseas seller.
The noble Baroness looks far less confused than she did in my previous explanation and I hope I have provided the explanation she seeks.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, that is perfectly clear and I am grateful. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Offence of obstructing a seller in the exercise of their duties under section 1
(1) A person (“the purchaser”) commits an offence if they intentionally obstruct a person (“the seller”) in the exercise of their duties under section 1 of this Act.(2) In this section, “intentionally obstruct” includes, but is not limited to, a person acting in a threatening manner.(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would create an offence for those who obstruct retail staff in performing their responsibilities under this Act.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for adding his name to this amendment and I am happy to support his Amendments 24 and 25.
We discussed shop workers on Second Reading and, as Members of the Committee will know, the issue was also discussed in the other place on Second Reading during its progress there. I am glad to be here today. As we have heard before, we are placing shop workers at the forefront of the delivery issues. They will be at risk of committing criminal offences, being sent to prison, or incurring a community penalty or possibly getting a fine. If they have sold this product incorrectly, I have no problem with that; if things are wrong, they should be dealt with. What is missing in the Bill is anything about protection for shop workers. In a Question to the Minister last week my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley talked about some of the discussions that have gone on between Victoria Atkins and Members in the other place. A number of initiatives are going on; that is all very welcome, and I support them, but what is missing from the Bill is anything about a specific offence. USDAW, which is promoting this, and organisations such as the Co-op and other companies, the British Retail Consortium and the Association of Convenience Stores have said that this is missing from the Bill.
USDAW has run its Freedom from Fear campaign for many years. I used to work in a shop on a Saturday when I was at school. It was hard work, but it was great fun and I enjoyed it—you got to talk to people. But equally, I remember getting knocked over once when someone ran out with a credit card. In those days you had to phone up to check that the credit card was legitimate; it was not, and the person legged it down the road, leaving me lying on the floor. People get assaulted in shops and can be treated very badly. Here we are putting on shop workers some big obligations that they have to comply with and deal with, but we are doing nothing to support them. People can get assaulted and abused, so we need to see what we can do to improve that. As I said, we have had the discussion around helping the Government, and what they said there is fine, but there is nothing in the Bill. We are asking shop workers to report knowledge and enforce the legislation, as it were, so we should require the Government to do something to support them. There is evidence: plenty of facts and figures. A survey from the Health and Safety Executive found 642,000 reported incidents of violence at work—assaults and threats— and there are other aspects about how people are dealt with.
One of the problems we have is that people are assaulted, abused and threatened. I know that the Minister will say to me in a moment, “There’s no problem here, Lord Kennedy, because you’ve got all these things we’re going to do as a Government, and on top of that, of course, you’ve got the legislation in place already, so people who commit offences will be dealt with”. But, of course, far too often these offences are not prosecuted; people are assaulted in shops and the perpetrators are not prosecuted. That is why we are asking for a specific offence to deal with this. No one goes to work to be punched, pushed over, or abused. If you are assaulted at work and it is particularly traumatic, it can cost people their job or their livelihood; people may not want to go back to work after having been knocked over or assaulted. Why would you put yourself in that position? People can get very scared about going back to work, so again, we need to look at that. To have a specific offence would give shop workers the comfort to know that people recognise that they have been asked to do an important job and support them. Equally, as regards the prosecuting authorities, it should be clear that if people are assaulted in a shop, the prosecutors know that this offence has happened, and the perpetrators can then be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for that offence.
I will leave it there, but this certainly simplifies sentencing, would encourage prosecutions, and would have a deterrent effect, as people would know that if they go into a shop and abuse or threaten a shop worker, they will have committed X offence and, potentially, things can happen to them. I beg to move.
Amendment 24 (to Amendment 23)
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to insert reference to section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 in subsection (1) of this amendment.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have Amendments 24 and 25 in this group. These amendments are designed to have the effect of extending the scope of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, to cover the sale of knives as well as sale of corrosive substances—or, should I say, to prevent the sale of these items to those under 18.
We had an Oral Question last week on this issue, and I suggested that shop workers were acting as law enforcers in the circumstances. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, suggested that shopkeepers were simply obeying the law in not selling age-restricted items and that we all have a duty to obey the law. I disagree. The circumstances in which this offence would take place are those where someone underage tries to buy an age-restricted item and is prevented from doing so by a shop worker, who in these circumstances is enforcing the law. They are compelling observance of or compliance with the law, which is the definition of “enforce”. As such, they deserve the protection of the law in carrying out this duty. I support Amendment 23.
Baroness Newlove
My Lords, I support both amendments. I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, not just on the question of having a specific offence but on support within the community. In my previous role and going around the country, I saw women workers on their own selling alcohol and other quite serious items—corrosives and knives—where the employer put their staff in a predicament by not supporting them fully. When they go out of the shops, they are under further threat in their local communities from these groups of gangs, both girls and boys. So I support a specific offence to put that message right through, because workers do not feel that they are getting the right support. Even from the bigger businesses, I am concerned for workers who are scared to lose their jobs as well.
I also really agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about knives. It sends a message within the communities and the bigger employers who do not know every individual who works for them. It shows loyalty, as well. I am concerned about people who work in local shops, in their local communities, especially where they have security guards to protect the staff but they do not get the support through the law to protect the jobs they so need to feed their families.
Lord Deben (Con)
I hope my noble friend will listen carefully to what has been said, because there is an increase in the anger constantly found around the country. I do not want to get down to some of the reasons for that, but there is certainly an increase in anger. The sort of people who will be prevented from buying those products are, of course, those who are most likely to give way to anger. I have recently come from a meeting today in which a senior representative of one of our largest supermarkets said how much more there is now a problem with people who will not take the advice of the shop worker that this is not possible.
I really think the Government have to come to terms with the fact that we are a much less willing society. We are not a society that is prepared to go along with these things, as once was true. So although USDAW has had this campaign for a long time, it is more necessary now than it might have been 10, five or even two years ago. The circumstances we are facing at the moment are likely to make more people more angry, and therefore it will become more acceptable. Anger, and showing anger, on the roads or in shops is more accepted by society than it ever has been before—certainly in modern times.
I say to my noble friend that it may well be sensible to make the point specifically that we are asking, indeed insisting, that shop workers—I will not argue whether they are acting as law enforcement people or not—take a stand against people who, by their nature, are likely to be angry, to demand that the shop worker give way to them and to use intimidation for that purpose. I cannot think of a reason why you should not repeat it. I know what the Government often says—all Governments do—because I was a Minister for a very long time and I know I used to say it. I would say: “There is no need for this. We’ve got this and we’ve got that and we’ve got the other”. If it is not actually harmful, perhaps it is a good thing to put it in. I am not sure it is enough that other things cover it. If this reminds people that there is a specific protection for shop workers in this situation, where we asking them to take a stand, that is a valuable thing. I hope my noble friend will take it seriously.
Lord Judge
We are devising a system which will impose considerable burdens on sellers. The arguments in favour of this amendment are absolutely obvious. May I make a completely separate point, though? The amendment is brilliant legislation too, unlike the rest of the Bill. Here we have a clear statement of what act you have committed—obstructing the seller—and simultaneously the state of mind you are in: you are acting intentionally. Intention to obstruct is a perfectly clear, simple piece of legislation that anybody could understand. There is an argument that there are various ways those who work in shops can be protected, against violence and so on, but this is very limited in what it is seeking to address: obstructing somebody. In these circumstances, when the burden is so heavy on the seller, they ought to be protected.
Lord Paddick
My Lord, if I may have a second go, until very recently I did not support particular protections for shop workers. Being from a policing background, I know we have taken the steps in the law to protect law enforcers, and recently there has been a Bill to protect all emergency workers in this way. But here we are talking about people who are intent on violence; they are looking to get their hands on knives or corrosive substances to commit violence. That is the sort of person that these shop workers are likely to confront, and that is why I am now convinced that this is the right thing to do.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said I would say that there is no problem. I am not going to say that, but I am very grateful to him for explaining his amendment. He attaches particular importance to affording greater protection for retail staff, and his noble kinsman, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, raised this question last week. It was a very good opportunity to discuss the issue, which is of great concern. I understand the concerns of retailers and their staff about being threatened or attacked in the course of their duties, including as part of verifying a person’s age when selling a corrosive product. As my noble friend Lord Deben said, it may be those very people who want to buy these things who will be those who mete out the abuse on retail workers. Nobody should have to experience this sort of behaviour at their place of work, especially when providing a service to members of the public.
As I said at Second Reading, the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability held a roundtable on 11 December with David Hanson MP, Richard Graham MP and representatives from the retail sector, including USDAW and the British Retail Consortium, to discuss what more we can do ensure greater protection for shop workers. Last week, I met USDAW to see what more we can do to ensure these greater protections. Following the discussion at the roundtable I am very happy to update the Committee. We will be taking forward the following actions: first, the call for evidence, which I spoke about last week and is intended to help us ensure that we fully understand this issue and look at all the options for addressing it; secondly, that we provide funding to the sector to run targeted communications activity to raise awareness of the existing legislation that is in place to protect shop workers; and thirdly, we are refreshing the work of the National Retail Crime Steering Group, co-chaired by the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability and the British Retail Consortium. An extraordinary meeting of the group, focused exclusively on violence and abuse towards shop workers, will take place on 7 February. That discussion will help to shape the call for evidence.
In addition, the Sentencing Council is reviewing its guidelines on assault. A consultation on a revised guideline is anticipated to commence this summer. These measures are intended to complement existing work under way to tackle this issue. For example, the Home Office is providing funding of £1 million for the National Business Crime Centre over three years between 2016 and 2019. The centre was launched by the National Police Chiefs’ Council in October 2017 to improve communication between police forces on business crime, promote training and advice, and help to identify national and local trends.
In addition, through the national retail crime steering group, which includes representatives from across the retail sector, the police and others, we are taking forward a range of work to strengthen the collective response to these crimes, including: the creation of a “crib sheet” for retailers to use when reporting violent incidents to the police so that they get the information they need to support a timely and appropriate response; exploring options for improving consistency in the recording of business crime by the police, which will include a short pilot analysis of forces applying business crime flags; and the development of guidance on impact statements for businesses to increase their use. These statements give businesses the opportunity to set out the impact a crime has had and are taken into account by courts when determining sentences.
I know that there are concerns about the adequacy of the existing legislation for protecting those selling age-restricted products. The call for evidence is intended to help us understand better how the existing law is being applied and whether there is a case for reform, including in the context of the sale of age-restricted products. However, I want to provide some reassurance about the legislation we have in place, without dismissing noble Lords’ points. A wide range of offences may be used to address unacceptable behaviour towards shop staff—including those who sell age-restricted items—covering the full spectrum of unacceptable behaviour, from using abusive language to the most serious and violent crimes.
Some of the existing offences available include behaviour that causes another to fear the immediate infliction of unlawful violence, which is already an offence of common assault under Section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Where shop workers are threatened or experience abusive language, this may be captured by the offences under the Public Order Act 1986. There is also the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which means that assaults against shop workers could be considered as assault occasioning actual bodily harm under Section 47 of that Act. In addition, courts have a statutory duty to follow sentencing guidelines when considering any penalty to be imposed further to criminal conviction, unless it is not in the interests of justice to do so. In all cases, the fact that an offence has been committed against a person serving the public may be considered an aggravating factor for the purpose of passing sentence.
In answer to my noble friend Lord Deben and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the specific offence in Amendment 3 could be counterproductive and encourage prosecutions for the new obstruction offence with a maximum penalty of a fine—I think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, made that point as well—rather than a more serious offence, such as assault, which carries a higher penalty. That said, and going through the list of offences that this may capture, we understand retailers’ concerns about the risk of their staff being threatened or attacked—particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, for smaller retailers, such as corner shops. The call for evidence is intended to improve our understanding of the issue and identify potential solutions. We will seek to issue the call for evidence as soon as is practically possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked whether shop workers were law enforcers. It is a moot point on which I think we will agree to differ. I was trying to make the point that they are not policemen but they have to uphold the law. With that, I hope that I have given the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, enough to help him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This would extend Lord Kennedy of Southwark's amendment so it would also be an offence to obstruct retail staff in their responsibilities in preventing the sale of knives to persons under 18.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken for their support. I agree very much with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. We have to remember that we are talking about usually very low-paid people, often working in difficult situations. I can often see these things happening late at night or early in the morning. It does not really matter whether you work in a big organisation or in the corner shop. As we know, in many big stores there is no one around late at night. That is part of the problem. If ever you leave this House and go to the supermarket on the way home—I do sometimes—there is no one in them. It is the same if you go to a big hardware store. Whatever the people’s job is, it is not to sell the young person the knife or the acid, and they are put in a difficult situation.
I agree with most of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, about anger. There is a lot of anger around in this country at the moment for all sorts of reasons. That is another debate for another time, but angry young men going into stores late at night wanting a knife or acid are not the sort of people I would want to meet. I would not want to be behind the counter saying, “You can’t have that”, and we are leaving people to do that. As the noble Lord said, if the amendment is not harmful, what is the problem? I recall debates on other Bills. On the counterterrorism Bill, we passed a few amendments and accepted that what we were agreeing was wrong—but it was all fine to carry on as though that were not a problem.
If you go into a store and commit this offence, the amendment would make things easier for prosecutors and give some comfort to shop workers. I certainly intend to come back to it at a later stage. I look forward to meeting USDAW. I know that my friend Paddy Lillis will put forward a strong case for holding those discussions before Report and I hope that we can persuade the Government to act on these matters. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would make it an offence to have a corrosive substance in a public place only with the intent to cause injury to someone.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, the amendment is in my name and in those of my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. We are back to group 1 and the issue of completely innocent people having to prove their innocence beyond reasonable doubt.
We discussed this at considerable length on group 1 and I do not intend to rehearse those arguments again, save to say that people acting completely innocently commit an offence as the legislation is drafted, hence the need for the amendment. That having been said, if someone has a corrosive substance with them in a public place with the intention of causing injury to someone, they commit an offence under Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, which defines an offensive weapon as:
“any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him”.
If they have a corrosive substance in a water pistol or a washing-up liquid bottle capable of squirting the corrosive liquid at someone, it is an article adapted for causing injury. If they have a corrosive liquid in the bottle it was sold in, intending to pour it over someone, it is intended by the person to cause injury, and an offence under the Prevention of Crime Act.
To quote from the briefing on the Bill from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice and the Prison Reform Trust, the clause,
“creates a very loose and ill-defined offence, that fails to satisfy the requirements of legal clarity and will lead to unjust prosecutions and custodial sentences”.
It continues:
“New legislation is unnecessary. Currently, someone found in possession of corrosive substances, where there is intent to cause injury, could clearly be prosecuted under existing offensive weapons legislation … Prosecutors should be required to prove intent to cause harm …The new offence puts the onus on the child”—
or adult—
“to show they have good reason for carrying the corrosive substance … Proving such a defence may be difficult”.
I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment purely to be consistent with what I said at Second Reading. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has pointed out, it could be that children are sent to collect corrosive substances from shops. They do not know that the substance is corrosive, as defined by the Act, and could be caught in possession by stop and search techniques, resulting in thoroughly unfortunate imprisonment.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for explaining the rationale behind this amendment which would, as he has acknowledged, fundamentally change the nature of the offence provided for in Clause 6. As the noble Lord pointed out, we return in part to the arguments that he put forward in the first group of amendments. I appreciate the noble Lord’s concerns, but I will set out the reasons why we are seeking to introduce this new possession offence.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made reference at Second Reading to the existing legislation in this area, and I will explain why it is not sufficient to tackle the problem of individuals carrying corrosive substances in public. Under Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, it is already the case that anyone who is in possession of a corrosive substance can be prosecuted for the offence of possession of an offensive weapon. However, for the accused to be guilty of the Section 1 offence, it is necessary to prove that they are carrying the corrosive substance with the intention of causing injury. Such intent can be proved, for example, in cases where an individual has decanted the corrosive substance into a different container for the purposes of making it easier to squirt or throw at another person and also to conceal it from the police. However, the intention of Clause 6 is to strengthen the powers available to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. We want to remove the burden on the police and the prosecution to prove that the person was carrying the corrosive substance with the intention to cause injury.
This approach is not novel; it is consistent with the possession offence for knives and bladed articles. We have modelled the new offence on existing legislation in place for the possession of knives under Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. There is also a similar offence in place in Scotland. We have put in place suitable defences for members of the public to prove that they had good reason or lawful authority to be carrying the corrosive substance in a public place. These defences are also modelled on existing legislation for the possession of knives.
I know that noble Lords may be concerned about law-abiding members of the public being stopped by the police as they leave their local supermarket or tradespeople being stopped. However, I reiterate the points that my noble friend made at Second Reading about how we envisage the new offence being used by the police. This is not about the police criminalising tradespeople, children sent on an errand or law-abiding members of the public. We would fully expect the police to use this new offence in response to information or intelligence from the local community that someone was carrying a corrosive substance in public.
Furthermore, as my noble friend also indicated at Second Reading, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, we have jointly commissioned the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory to develop a testing kit for the police to use to be able to identify corrosive substances in suspect containers. This work is well under way, and we want to have a testing kit in place before commencing the new possession offence.
We need to strengthen the law to tackle the abhorrent use of corrosive substances as weapons. This amendment would effectively leave the criminal law as it currently is. I hope that, in these circumstances, the noble Lord is persuaded of the case for the new offence as currently formulated and would be content on reflection to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I seek clarification, however, on Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, about which the noble Earl said that in order for somebody to be guilty of an offence under that Act, intent had to be proved. However, if the person is in possession of a made offensive weapon—an offensive weapon that has no other purpose than to cause injury: a dagger, for example—then my understanding is that no intent is required. Indeed, if the article that the person has with them is adapted to cause injury—for example, a water pistol filled with a corrosive liquid—again, there is no need to prove intent. That would make the existing offence even stronger than this offence as amended by this amendment.
The noble Earl talks about consistency with Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 regarding bladed and pointed instruments. I accept that the offence as drafted is consistent with that Act, but, in my view, two wrongs do not make a right. The noble Earl and the noble Baroness earlier talked about how the Government envisage that the police will use this legislation. They fully expect the police to use it in response to intelligence. I go back to what I said on the first group: having been an operational police officer for more than 30 years, I do not share the confidence that the Government have about how, in every case, the police are going to use this legislation. This is the source not only of my concern but, as I have said, of the concern of the organisations I mentioned in proposing the amendment.
As far as the testing kit is concerned, that is something that we will return to in a successive group later on. However, having made those points, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, along with the amendment to page 7, line 14, is to probe what “lawful authority” is and how it is obtained.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 30 and 31. These amendments are in my name and that of my noble friend. Amendments 29 and 30 seek to understand what is meant by “lawful authority”. In Clause 6(2)—I am not making any concessions about the points made on the first group of amendments this afternoon—it is a defence to prove that a person had “good reason” or “lawful authority” for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place. Obviously, lawful authority is not the same as good reason, otherwise it would not have to be provided for—although one would have thought that lawful authority would be good reason. But what is lawful authority? Where does the authority come from? Who gives it? How does one apply for it? Is it a consequence of some other arrangement that is in place? Amendment 29 applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Amendment 30 to Scotland, but they make the same point.
Amendment 31 makes a very small point, but I have discovered over the years that sometimes small points are worth making. Under Clause 6(3) one can show that one had the corrosive substance for “use at work”. My amendment would substitute for those words “the purposes of work”, thereby distinguishing in my mind the purpose and the place. These days “work” is very often used to designate the place. Technically, that might be a bit lax, but it is what people say: “I’m going to work”. They do not mean, “I’m going to put in a good day’s effort”; they mean, “I’m going to my place of work”. The Minister may say that “for use at work” implies “purpose”, but one might take something to use at a place where there is no legitimate reason for using it. I beg to move—and I wish Hansard could record the look on the Minister’s face.
Earl Howe
My Lords, as the noble Baroness explained, these amendments address the defences available if someone is charged with an offence of possessing a corrosive substance in a public place. As I understand her, these amendments are intended to probe what would constitute lawful authority to be in possession of a corrosive substance in a public place. She then went on to comment on the phrase “for use at work”.
On the lawful authority issue, let me give your Lordships one example. Under the Poisons Act 1972 there is a licensing regime for regulated substances such that a Home Office licence is required to import, acquire, possess or use a regulated substance. Both nitric acid at above 3% concentration and sulfuric acid at above 15% concentration are regulated substances. Therefore, there may be circumstances where a Home Office licence holder has purchased a corrosive product containing one of these substances and is transporting it from A to B. This would be a scenario where the defence of lawful authority might come into play.
However, for the majority of cases, a person would need to rely on the defence of having good reason—unless, of course, they were a tradesperson and had purchased the corrosive for use at work. This brings me to Amendment 31, about how we have framed the defence for tradespeople and businesses. The reference to “for use at work” replicates the terminology used in existing knife legislation. The existing defences in relation to the possession of an offensive weapon in a public place are well understood by the police and various trades and businesses, and we are not aware of any issues in the operation of them in relation to the possession of knives.
While I can see the intention behind the amendment, I will need to think about what the noble Baroness has said—but I am not convinced that it is necessary or in practice achieves any significantly different result. I am also concerned that having a different defence in place for possession of corrosives, compared with that for knives, would or could cause confusion and unnecessarily complicate the law. So I hope that, at least for now, I have been able to provide sufficient clarification to persuade the noble Baroness to withdraw these amendments—although, as I have said, I promise that I will read carefully in Hansard what she said.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am grateful for that. The approach to the wording of legislation has been updated quite a lot recently. That was partly in my mind when I raised the point about “at work”—that one wants legislation to be read as easily as possible, using words as they are normally understood. I understand, of course, a resistance to distinctions between offences relating to corrosives and offences relating to knives. That is not how it was dealt with in the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and in our amendment to it on shop workers. That does not mean that you cannot amend the earlier legislation.
Regarding licensing under the Poisons Act, it seems that one would have a good reason and would not have to rely on the lawful authority defence. I believe that we are going to look at the Poisons Act again—it has been brought up several times. Certainly for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would replace the definition of corrosive substances provided in the Bill. The amended definition would include reference to the conditions under which a substance may corrode human skin, such as temperature.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, as has been pointed out already, these are absolute offences in this Bill. Therefore, people ought to know what it takes to be guilty of that offence. The clause here states that,
“‘corrosive substance’” means a substance which is capable of burning human skin by corrosion”.
That is, of itself, a very loose definition. There are obvious substances that would fall under this, such as cement. Lots of builders get burned by cement every year; if it gets trapped against the skin for any length of time it can cause nasty burns that take a long time to heal, Wart cures, by and large, are designed to burn human skin. There is also a large collection of substances that will burn skin under relatively unusual circumstances, such as household bleach. Generally you would not be exposed to household bleach for a long time, but it would fall within the definition here because it will corrode human skin if you use it for long enough. We talked earlier about hydrogen peroxide, which will corrode human skin if it is hot enough.
We need something here that gives the people who are subject to this clause a clear idea of what is forbidden. My noble friend hinted earlier that there may be some testing kit. Great—but if there is a testing kit, there must be with it a very clear statement of what gets caught. When people are committing or are in danger of committing an absolute offence, they must know what conduct will put them in danger of that. If the Government want a looser definition, it should not be an absolute offence. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)
I advise the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 33.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is in the same territory as my noble friend and I. Like him, we seek to know how one objectively defines “corrosive substance”. His amendment asks what happens if the skin is particularly sensitive. I am not sure that there is such a thing as the “average human hand”, which he refers to in his amendment. I suspect that sensitivity may depend on age—whether one is young or old could affect vulnerability—as well as all sorts of other matters.
Our amendment proposes two points. The first refers to the testing method. That would not help the point, with which I have a great deal of sympathy, about knowing whether a substance falls within the definition but it enables us to ask about the status of the testing kits. The noble Earl has said that work on them is well under way. Can he tell us any more about them? Are they intended to work—as I understand it—like a breathalyser? It is enough to get you taken off for a second and different test, but does it start with a roadside test? As with a breathalyser, it may look as if you have failed it. Again, this is as I understand it; I do not have personal experience of going down to a police station and giving a blood test or a mouth-breath test. The point is about the process.
My second question is about the definition of the substance as one capable of burning human skin. Our amendment refers to eyes, since a lot of awful acid attacks have involved throwing acid into someone’s eyes. Are eyes “skin” for this purpose? We simply want to be sure that we have covered the ground here.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, perhaps I may speak briefly on this rather macabre amendment. First, I am not sure who the testing is to be done on. I cannot see many volunteers being willing to be corroded. My second and more substantive point is that I cannot see why the definition is required because, as I read the Bill—not an easy Bill to read, as we have discovered today—a corrosive substance is de facto defined by Schedule 1. I would have thought it much more satisfactory to retain the concept of a schedule, which can be altered by order, than to have this rather frightening test.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for explaining his amendment, which seeks to modify the definition of a corrosive substance for the purposes of the new possession offence. This provides me with the opportunity to clarify why we have taken the approach that we have, and to reassure him about how the new possession offence would be used.
We know that perpetrators of these horrendous attacks often decant the corrosive into other containers, for example soft drinks bottles. This is done to make the substance easier to use but also to conceal.
Police officers who come across an individual carrying a bottle containing a suspect liquid will not know exactly what chemicals it contains or at what levels. As a result, the approach we have taken for the sales and delivery offences of defining a corrosive product by substance and concentration limit will not work on our streets. The police require a simpler definition for use operationally, so we have defined a corrosive substance by its effect rather than by its specific chemical composition—that is, as a substance capable of burning human skin by corrosion.
Baroness Hamwee
Before the noble Lord responds, first, will there be an opportunity for Parliament to consider the arrangements for testing when they are pretty much complete? I am sure it will be of interest. Secondly, are skin and eyes similarly sensitive? Or do we risk not outlawing a substance that might damage the eyes but would not damage the skin?
Earl Howe
In answer to the second question, my understanding—on advice—is no. A substance capable of burning the skin by corrosion would also be capable of doing severe damage to the eye, and the other way round. We do not think we are excluding any substance by accident in defining corrosive substances in this way. On the noble Baroness’s first question, as I understand it, the approval of the testing kit will not be subject to any formal parliamentary procedure, but I am sure the noble Baroness is capable of finding ways to tease out relevant information from the Home Office at the appropriate time.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, in thinking about how criminals might think about getting around the law that the Government are proposing, I add this as a footnote to take away. Would it be possible to take two separate substances, which on their own might be quite innocuous, but when mixed together could be powerfully corrosive and thereby say you were not carrying corrosive substances? That is something to take away as a possible concern.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that response. Could he write to us on this question of eyes? I am aware of quite a large number of substances which have hazard signs about getting them in your eyes, but nothing about getting them on your skin. Hydrogen peroxide would be an obvious example, but there are others. I wondered if you might question that. Are we covering stuff thrown in people’s eyes effectively, so that there is no risk of permanent damage from substances that can be washed off the skin easily, causing a bit of redness but not much else? I am not an expert, but this is not what I have read. I would be grateful if my noble friend could drop us a line on that.
As for the general principle, this is something we will have to chew over and come back to on Report. I am concerned that people should know when they are committing an offence. If you look up acetic acid, otherwise known as vinegar, you will find that it is highly corrosive to the skin and eyes. This is being drawn very widely; I can understand why, but when the testing kit is published, it has to be clear what it applies to and what it will pick up, or we have to have a defence in here that the substance was not actually a weapon—that it contravened this, but was not capable of being used as a weapon. If we do not, we shall give the police opportunities which they should not have to bounce people off the wall when they feel like it. Occasionally it happens—there is a nice little story doing the rounds about the Humberside Police, who grilled a man for 35 minutes because he retweeted a limerick. The police can sometimes be quite interesting in the use of their powers, and one should not assume that they will be perfect on every occasion.
Something like this, which gets down to the relationships between communities, and gives police officers an opportunity to pick up people where perhaps they ought to be doing other things, requires giving some thought to how to make it as fair as we can while not removing from police officers the opportunity to nab someone they suspect has something on them intended to do people harm. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, in moving Amendment 34 in my name and those of others, I will speak to my opposition to the clause. My comments about Amendment 34 apply to the clause as a whole.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has already mentioned the very good briefing which many Members have received from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice and the Prison Reform Trust. Speaking about the new possession offences, it forecasts that the measures will be ineffective because they increase the use of ineffective short mandatory minimum sentences. They create legal uncertainty, may lead to disproportionate sentences and are likely to increase black and ethnic minority disproportionality, further damaging trust in the justice system. I apologise for saying some of this earlier in the debate on another amendment.
Amendment 34 seeks to move the application of this clause from the age of 16 to 18, and is entirely in balance with the Children Act 1989, which lays down that every person in this country under the age of 18 is a child. My contention is that, if mandatory short sentences are ineffective for adults, they are even more so for children. The appropriate sentence advised in Clause 8 is,
“a detention and training order of at least 4 months”.
That means that they will have only two months in prison and two months supervision. Bearing in mind the conditions in our prisons at the moment, and remembering that last year the Inspectorate of Prisons reported that there was not a single young offender institution in the country in which young offenders were safe, that means that—with the overcrowding and shortage of staff—two months will not be enough even to complete an assessment of what a young offender needs.
I therefore think that, in all cases of children involved in possession, custody should be eliminated from the equation—and eliminated from this Bill. As I mentioned, community sentences are in some disarray at the moment, but that does not apply to the youth offending teams, which have the benefit of being under local government control and are therefore able to reflect the wishes of the community in the community sentences that they impose.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend and I support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, particularly on the question of the clause standing part. I am conscious of progress in the Chamber, so I will not say as much as I might otherwise have done. It looks like some negotiations are going on. We have a number of other amendments to these clauses as well. In addition to supporting what the noble Lord has said, I want to make clear our implacable opposition to mandatory sentences—in this case custodial ones. Judicial discretion is very important and precious in our system.
Clause 8(4) is a get-out clause, referring to having regard to the duty under the 1933 Act to have regard for the welfare of the child. I do not think this works. It was obviously a response to representations, but it applies only to children, not young adults, and seems to be a nod to that well-established provision without changing anything that surrounds it. I also have a question about the particular circumstances in Clause 8(2). I had a look at the sentencing guidelines yesterday. If that phrase originates from those guidelines then subsection (2) is actually an inversion of them. They require the court to look at the particular circumstances, but Clause 8(2) is the reverse: it is an “unless” provision. Finally, Amendment 37 deals with the appeals subsection. We have added a reference to the criteria in Clause 8(2). I am not sure whether this is appropriate technically, but perhaps we could have an explanation as to how the appeal takes into account the points made in that subsection.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support these amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the clause stand part Motion spoken to so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. The noble Lords made the case very strongly against short-term prison sentences. I want to add my voice to emphasise very strongly just how unhelpful these short-term sentences are, particularly to the very vulnerable young people who are most likely to be caught up in these offensive weapons allegations or crimes. Apart from doing nothing for those individuals, short-term sentences do absolutely nothing for society as a whole. If we do not prevent these young people committing crimes in the future, our society will be all the worse off.
Scotland has shown the way. The removal of judgment in Scotland has been proven to be more cost effective and positive when responding to people with drug and alcohol addiction and other problems often associated with the carrying of knives or corrosive substances. I believe huge proportions of these young people have drug problems. As others have mentioned, the Ministry of Justice has already produced its own evidence of the ineffectiveness of short-term imprisonment. Perhaps the Minister can explain why we are adding to these short-term sentences in this Bill.
I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the radical Checkpoint deferred prosecution scheme in Durham, run by Chief Constable Mike Barton, and very much supported by his police and crime commissioner, Ron Hogg. Checkpoint is a multi-agency initiative which aims to reduce the number of victims of crime by reducing reoffending. This is what this should all be about. The scheme targets low and medium-level offenders—it is not just for people right at the bottom—at the earliest stage of the criminal justice process and offers them a suspended prosecution. It encourages them to engage in services designed to address their problems instead of receiving a caution or going to court, which does not seem to have anything to do with where these kids or young people are coming from. Checkpoint is evaluated by Cambridge University. This is very important because the evidence on this is really very thorough and reliable.
If this amendment were to be accepted by the Government, the objective would be for the Checkpoint policy, or something like it, to be applied to children and young people who are found in possession of an offensive weapon. I know very well how utterly appalling these corrosive substances are. I happen to know a young, beautiful girl whose face has been utterly destroyed by an acid attack. The poor girl has had endless operations and she will not be the beautiful person that she was, although she will be a beautiful person inside and that is what really matters. Nevertheless, I want people to know that I really understand that these are shocking and horrible crimes. The most important thing that we can do is to cut them down, reduce them and, ideally, eliminate them. Anything that somehow does not achieve that is an utter failure, so I feel very strongly about it because we have to do something that is effective.
Checkpoint shows that it is the threat of punishment, rather than the severity of a punishment, that is cost-effective and, most importantly, effective. It argues in favour of taking a whole-person-centred approach to understand the causes of their offending and ensure that those people receive appropriate interventions to address the problems of drug dependence, debt issues or homelessness—a whole range of problems that these young, very vulnerable people face. Indeed, its figures from a random control trial—and I emphasise that it is a random control trial, not just any old tin-pot kind of study—show that reoffending is reduced by 13% if we do not send these people to custody but instead try to get them involved in help for their problems.
Its study of young offenders who have committed crimes on more than five occasions within a year is very important. You might think that these are hopeless cases and that there is no point in doing anything. This study looks at the traumatic experiences during childhood that so many of those repeat offenders have experienced. Almost all have been exposed to violence, physical harm or danger, parental offending or admissions to A&E due to physical harm or trauma. They have frequently exhibited violent behaviour or problems in school and have been excluded.
We have to ask ourselves about the effect of putting those young, very vulnerable, damaged children into custody for just another dose of punishment. They obviously need a great deal of therapeutic help and support to begin to recover from their childhood experiences. Durham Constabulary, West Midlands Police and other police services are, in my view, leading the way in exploring policies which will benefit not only the vulnerable but society as a whole by reducing reoffending and will also save vast police and prison resources, but that is not the point. This is about reducing these terrible crimes and helping the vulnerable.
I hope this legislation can be amended to ensure that it works with the grain of new, evidence-based criminal justice policy. It is interesting that police services are taking the lead in this crucial field. Of course, the police have their street-level experience; I always have great regard for the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for this reason—he knows what goes on on the street. They are saying we should not send these people to prison because they see them coming round again and again. I take this very seriously; I think we all should. I hope the Minister will discuss with us how best to amend this Bill. I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I will hold the Committee for only one moment, but I very much agree with the arguments put forward by those who tabled this amendment. It seems that this is another example of saying, “We’ve got to do something, so let’s do this”. But “this” has failed. It does not work and is a disaster. There is no more stupid thing to do than to give young people short prison sentences. Countries throughout Europe have shown that it does not work and that other things do. I really am tired of people coming forward with the same answer to a problem, which does not work. Therefore, I very much hope that my noble friend will say that this Government will not go on with this kind of answer. It will take time, money and resources to make sure that we have something which works, and we should learn from other countries which have found a way through, instead of repeating a failed policy.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I would like to follow what the noble Lord has said. We have seen what works in this country. Indeed, a Conservative Government set up the intermediate treatment centres. I think the noble Lord, Lord Elton, very much led this work 30 years ago. I worked in one of those centres at that time. There was a male social worker and a female teacher, so the children and young people saw a model of a man and a woman in co-operation together, being courteous and respectful towards one another. There were six boys, ranging from eight to 15. The eldest was mad about motorbikes and was just about to get on a mechanics course. I saw these boys sitting down together sewing, with the teacher’s help. If you make the right kind of intervention, you can really turn these young people’s lives around. To put this in historical context, perhaps I may take my hat off to the coalition Government, as we have reduced the number of children and young people in prison in this country by 71% over the last seven or so years.
We have been through this process before. I remember that about 10 or 15 years ago, there was an outcry about mobile phone theft and various pushes to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, but really being tough on crime was putting more and more young people in custody. What did we see there? A boy who had just entered care, on his first or second day in a children’s home, was with a group of children and one of them stole a mobile phone. He ended up in court and there were no suitable places for him in custody, so he was placed in an insecure prison and ended up hanging himself within two days. His mother has been grieving for him ever since. As a trustee of a mental health service for adolescents, I know that adolescents become more and more interested in their peer group. So when you send a child off to one of our young offender institutions or secure training centres, you send them into a peer group where they will get the best information about how to join a gang or be destructive.
On some occasions it may be necessary to do that, if they are too dangerous. But leave it to the judges and magistrates to decide that; do not tie their hands. I know there will be exceptions, but I suggest to your Lordships that we do not want to tie the judiciary’s hands in this case, and having mandatory sentencing is not helpful.
I have been a trustee of the Michael Sieff Foundation, which was set up around the time of the Children Act 1989. I had the privilege of working for several years with Dr Eileen Vizard, a forensic child psychiatrist who worked with the NSPCC. She made the point that, once the criminal justice system gets children into the secure estate, they are likely to keep on coming back, and so we should try not to get them in there.
I share the conviction of all the noble Lords who have spoken in Committee today. I hope that the Minister can give us some comfort in his response.
Earl Howe
My Lords, Clause 8 provides an appropriate custodial sentence where a person is 16 years old or older and is convicted of the offence of possession of a corrosive substance in a public place in England and Wales and has at least one relevant previous conviction, as defined in Clause 9. We have made it a requirement that the court must impose an appropriate custodial sentence unless it decides that there are particular circumstances relating to the offence, the previous offence or the offender which would make it unjust to do so. We have defined an “appropriate custodial sentence” as a custodial sentence of at least six months’ imprisonment for an offender aged 18 or over. For an offender aged 16 or 17, we have defined an “appropriate custodial sentence” as being a detention and training order of at least four months’ duration.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, referred specifically to Clause 8(2). It is not designed, as she suggested, to reflect the sentencing guidelines. The clause mirrors existing knife legislation and ensures that anyone aged 16 or over who is convicted of a second possession or similar offence, such as an offence relating to a knife, will receive a custodial sentence unless the court determines that there are appropriate circumstances not to do so. The use of appropriate custodial sentences will make it clear to individuals that we will not tolerate people carrying corrosives on our streets and other public places in circumstances which would enable them to cause injury or commit another offence, such as robbery.
Amendments 34 to 36 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Paddick, seek to confine these provisions to adult offenders. I understand why the noble Lords are proposing this but I really think—as do the Government, very firmly—that, given the nature of this particular form of offending and the appalling injuries it can cause, the minimum sentence should apply to 16 and 17 year-olds as well as to adults, as for the existing offence of possession of an offensive weapon in a public place. We fully recognise, however, that this cohort of young offenders should be treated differently from adult offenders. I have already indicated that for 16 and 17 year-olds the minimum sentence is a four-month detention and training order as opposed to six months’ imprisonment in the case of adult offenders.
In addition, for this age group, we have ensured that when considering whether there are particular circumstances which would make imposing an appropriate custodial sentence unjust, the court must have regard to its duty under Section 44 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. This relates in particular to the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Under that section, the court must have regard to the welfare of the child or young person, take steps to remove them from undesirable surroundings and ensure that proper provision is made for their education and training. We have also ensured that there are procedures for appeals in those circumstances where a relevant conviction, which was relied upon by the court to impose an appropriate custodial sentence, has been set aside on appeal.
I recognise that there are some Members of the Committee such as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who object as a matter of principle to minimum sentences as provided for in Clause 8. I fully accept that the normal practice is for Parliament to set maximum sentences and leave it to the discretion of the court to determine the appropriate sentence, having regard to the facts of an individual case. However, there are already a number of exceptions to this rule, including, as I have said, in relation to second convictions for possession of an offensive weapon in a public place. We regard the possession of corrosive substances in a public place as equally serious and therefore deserving of the same sentencing framework.
As I have indicated, the requirement to impose the minimum sentence is not absolute and the provisions still allow for some judicial discretion. The court must still consider the particular circumstances of the case and, if there are relevant factors relating to the offence or the offender such that it would be unjust to impose the minimum sentence, the court has the latitude in such a case not to do so. That could be: where the seriousness of the offending falls far below a level deserving custody; strong personal mitigation of the defendant; or the undue impact that going into custody may have on others. In addition, the courts would have to consider the effect of a guilty plea. In the youth justice system, four months is the minimum detention and training order available, so any reduction would mean that a community order is imposed. It is important to emphasise that.
It remains a matter for the court to weigh up all the relevant aggravating and mitigating factors before deciding the appropriate sentence to impose, at or above that required by this clause, and subject to the question of it being unjust in all the circumstances which I have mentioned. In short, the Government are firmly of the view that in exceptional cases such as this, there is a place for minimum sentences in our sentencing framework. We are dealing here with repeat offenders who pose a particular risk to others and our communities, and the law and the courts should recognise this.
Finally, Amendment 37 deals with the test to be applied by an appellate court on any appeal against sentencing where the provisions of Clause 8 apply and a previous relevant conviction has been overturned. In any case where there was only one previous relevant conviction and that conviction was subsequently overturned on appeal, the criteria provided for in Clause 8(2) would not be relevant in the case of an appeal against sentence to which Clause 8(6) applies. Where the conditions requiring a court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence no longer apply after the fact, a court hearing an appeal against a sentence would be bound to quash it and pass a new sentence without regard to the provisions in Clause 8. Given this explanation, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will withdraw his amendment and that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, will support Clause 8 standing part of the Bill.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. With regard to children and young people in local authority care, and young people leaving such care, might the courts not be given some guidance as to a more lenient treatment of them? I think we recognise the statistics on the high levels of children from care and care leavers in custody. We have a corporate parenting responsibility towards these young people. We know that over 60% of them enter care because of physical abuse or neglect on the part of their families, and that very few of them enter because of criminal or anti-social behaviour. Will the Minister consider giving guidance to the courts on our corporate parenting responsibility to these young people and, regarding their histories, should we consider giving them a more lenient approach in the courts?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Earl has often and rightly emphasised the vulnerability of children in care and young people leaving care. I fully accept that point. However, as he has heard, the provisions under the 1933 Act constitute a very considerable duty on the court to look at the pertaining circumstances of a case. He will also know that the Sentencing Council provides exactly the kind of guidance to which he alluded. If there is any more I can say on that, I will be happy to write to him. I am sure that the Sentencing Council will not be slow to follow up on any proposal emerging from the provision in the Bill.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate on this amendment. I assure the Minister that this is not a matter of principle against short sentences. I have seen how ineffective they are. I know how ineffective they are, and I have been saying so for more than 20 years. It is not a question of principle; it is knowledge that they are ineffective. I fail to see why the Justice Secretary, who is against mandatory minimum sentences, is on one side saying one thing and then the Home Secretary is imposing yet more mandatory sentences on the other. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I am sure we will return to it at a later stage.
Lord Bethell
“Review of sections 1 to 12 and 31
The Secretary of State must each year, for the period of three years beginning with the year in which the last of the provisions in sections 1 to 12 and 31 of this Act come into force, lay before both Houses of Parliament a report reviewing the effectiveness of the measures contained in those sections.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish a report each year for three years after the Bill comes into force reviewing the effectiveness of the provisions relating to corrosive substances.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 39. I thank noble Lords for returning and doing me the courtesy of hearing this out. I really appreciate it and I will be very quick. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, put it very well—I wish she were still in her place—but I also feel very passionate about the victims of acid attacks and corrosive substance crime. I am a trustee of the Scar Free Foundation and I have met a lot of the victims, and I have been blown away by how these crimes have seemingly come out of nowhere and become a very big deal: there were nearly 1,000 attacks last year. I am very much aware of how innovative criminals have quickly become, to get around the law and invent new crimes. I am aware that our responses have got to be very quick as well. I applaud the speed with which the Home Office has reacted to this crime wave. I will not go through the list, but it is an impressive list and I completely endorse the approach.
We owe it to ourselves to recognise that this is an experimental approach: international data suggests that legislation on acid attacks is very difficult. It does not always work, so we should keep track of how this legislation proceeds and whether it is worth analysing its effectiveness and what is happening with the arrests that come out of it. That is why I suggested these two amendments: so that in two or three years’ time, we are not left worrying whether we have been on the right track and so that we have the right data to be able to fine-tune and make any changes to our approach.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, in this, because so many things that were alleged about the inefficiency of various measures are unproven. For example, short sentences are said to be no deterrent. We do not know for certain, and therefore I support entirely a continuous review. We must have more data to be able to be more precise in the measures that we take.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Bethell for setting out the rationale for these amendments. I understand his intention, but I hope to persuade him that there will be adequate reporting of the use of the new powers in the Bill relating to corrosive substances without the need for statutory provisions such as this. Once the offences in this Bill are brought into force, the collection of data regarding corrosives offences will be much more accessible for police forces and will allow for a much clearer picture to be presented on the extent of corrosive attacks and the corresponding law enforcement response.
My noble friend may be aware that we are already working with the police to improve how offences involving corrosives can be better captured in police data to help understand the scale of attacks. We have submitted a joint application, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, to the police data requirements group to establish a new data collection requirement with respect to corrosive attacks as part of the annual data requirement on all forces in England and Wales. Subject to agreement, these would allow for regular publication as part of the Office for National Statistics quarterly crime statistics.
In relation to Amendment 38, I simply point out to my noble friend that all government legislation such as this is subject to post-legislative review five years after Royal Assent. In the intervening period, there are the usual arrangements for scrutinising government policies and the operating of new powers such as contained in this Bill. For example, it will be open to my noble friend to table periodic Written Questions or initiate a debate.
Given these established methods, I am not persuaded that we need a bespoke duty to report annually on aspects of this Bill. I fully accept that this is a serious issue, but I hope I have provided my noble friend with sufficient reassurance on the action that we are taking to address it and that, accordingly, he will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Bethell
My Lords, the Minister puts it very persuasively and I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Wednesday 30th January 2019
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 149-II(Rev) Revised second marshalled list for Grand Committee (PDF) - (29 Jan 2019)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Rogan) (UUP)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and will resume after 10 minutes.
Amendment 40
“Sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18
(1) In section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18), in subsection (3) (articles to which the section does not apply)—(a) at the end of paragraph (a) insert “or”, and(b) omit paragraph (b) and the “or” at the end of that paragraph.(2) In Article 54 of the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (SI 1996/3160 (NI 24)) (sale of bladed articles to persons under 18), in paragraph (3) (articles to which the Article does not apply)—(a) at the end of sub-paragraph (a) insert “or”, and(b) omit sub-paragraph (b) and the “or” at the end of that sub-paragraph.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would modify the offences of sale of a bladed article to a person under 18 in section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and Article 54 of the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 1996. Currently these offences do not apply to weapons to which section 141 of the 1988 Act applies and the new Clause would remove that exception.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the purpose of the amendments in this group is to remove loopholes in the law relating to the sale of offensive weapons to persons under the age of 18. Amendment 40 amends Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which prohibits the sale to a person under 18 of knives, knife blades, razor blades, axes and other articles with a blade or sharp point made or adapted for causing injury.
The prohibition does not apply to weapons covered by Section 141 of the 1988 Act. Section 141 prohibits the supply of certain offensive weapons that are set out in secondary legislation. These include knuckle-dusters, push daggers and zombie knives, which are excluded from Section 141A on the basis that their supply, including their sale, is already prohibited and therefore the prohibitions on their sale to a person under 18 and their dispatch to a residential premise or locker is not relevant.
However, a significant number of exclusions and defences apply to the supply of weapons covered by Section 141. These include an exemption for antique weapons and defences for swords with a curved blade of 50 centimetres or more made before 1954 or by traditional methods and for sporting, re-enactment purposes and religious reasons. Given these defences and exemptions, it is possible that offensive weapons covered by Section 141 could be sold to a person under the age of 18. Amendment 40 therefore removes the exclusion of offensive weapons covered by Section 141 from Section 141A of the 1988 Act. Amendments 48 to 53 to Clause 19 are directed to the same end.
Clause 19 defines a “bladed product” for the purposes of the new offence of arranging delivery of a bladed product to a residential premise or locker under Clause 17. “Bladed product” excludes any weapons in an order made under Section 141 of the 1988 Act. It is therefore possible that offensive weapons covered by Section 141 could be dispatched to a residential premise or locker on the basis that they were covered by one of the exemptions or defences available to Section 141 articles—for example, if they were an antique or intended to be used for sporting purposes. Amendments 48 to 53 therefore remove the exclusion of Section 141 from Clause 19.
I hope that, with that explanation, noble Lords will agree that these amendments sensibly close a gap in the existing law and the provisions in Clause 19. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I am glad as always to have the Government’s explanation for their amendments, and my comments are not about substance. Earlier in the Bill as well as on this clause, I found that I spent quite a lot of time going to and fro between Section 141, the order, Section 141A and so on. That is okay for us—it is our job—but one would not like to think of members of the public having to scour through all this to find out what sort of offensive weapon they might have. Will the Home Office give some thought as to how they can produce a Keeling schedule for the public?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I can utterly appreciate the noble Baroness’s point. When I look at legislation, I have to refer to other legislation, and it can be a minefield, but such is the nature of legislation built up over time. The guidance will help people in that endeavour and, as I said on Monday with reference to another issue, it will be very helpful to members of the public in knowing exactly where the offences are and what aspects of the Bill strike out other aspects of legislation.
The Duke of Montrose (Con)
The noble Baroness was on her feet very quickly but I hope that I can still ask a question. As was said a few minutes ago, this is a bit like a Russian doll—you uncover one thing and it leads to another. Having been rather green on this subject, I would like to know where these exceptions are contained, as I cannot find them in Section 141.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
They can be found in regulations associated with the Acts I have just mentioned.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
I echo the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. It is a problem throughout our legislative activity; this is bad enough but FiSMA 2000 is even worse, having been amended so often.
I hope that after the madness of Brexit has settled down, we can give some consideration to helping these debates by providing richer Explanatory Notes, particularly where a single theme is being carried through. However, we have no objection to the amendment.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for a statutory basis, in addition to police and CPS discretion, to rely on reasonable precautions and diligence before the seller is charged.
Lord Paddick (LD)
In moving Amendment 40A in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, I shall also speak to the other amendments in the group.
Amendment 40A is simply about the wording of the legislation, somewhat contrary to the Member’s explanatory statement. The other amendments are similar to those in our debate on Monday. Amendment 40A questions the way in which proposed new subsection (3) of new Section 141B is worded. It currently states:
“The seller is not to be regarded as having proved that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence unless, as a minimum, they prove that the following conditions are met”.
Surely it would be better to say that the seller is to be regarded as having taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence if, as a minimum, they prove that the following conditions are met. That is effectively putting it positively rather than negatively.
Amendments 42A, 43F, 57B and 57C again turn the offences of delivering a bladed article to residential premises and delivery of bladed articles to persons under 18 from those for which there is an offence if charged into offences where, if the accused has taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence, they do not commit an offence. We debated this way of legislating at our last sitting. In criminal law, there are two elements—actus reus and mens rea: the guilty act and the guilty mind. The offences in this Bill are completely without any examination of the mens rea until after someone has been arrested, detained and potentially charged. As this legislation is drafted, only after arrest and charge is it necessary to consider the mens rea; it is a defence for a person charged with an offence to prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said on Monday,
“we should stick to the normal principles that have worked well for us: you are not guilty of anything and have not committed an offence unless your mental state was simultaneously as criminal as the actions you committed … This way of legislating for criminal justice is inappropriate and we should avoid it. We should certainly be very careful not to allow it to happen without us spotting it and stopping it”.—[Official Report, 28/1/19; GC 153.]
My Lords, we spotted it and we are trying to stop it. I beg to move.
Lord Judge (CB)
My Lords, I agree—particularly with the last observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, says, these amendments return us to the debate we had on Monday about the proper construction of the offences in the Bill. We had a good discussion on Monday, and I will not cover the ground in the same detail as I did then.
Amendment 40A would alter the defence provided in relation to the sale of bladed articles. Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 provides that it is an offence to sell, with some exceptions, articles with a blade or point to persons under the age of 18. It is a defence for a person charged with an offence to prove that he or she took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence. Clause 14 modifies the operation of the defence in relation to remote sales to include a number of conditions that must be met as a minimum. Amendment 40A removes the post-charge element of the defence and instead requires the enforcing agency to make a judgment whether the seller took all reasonable precautions before a charge is made.
I understand the noble Lord’s intention, but the defence provided in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 has been in place for quite some time. I am not aware of any problems or concerns with how the police, prosecutors and the courts apply the legislation. It has been in place for over 30 years, so it cannot be said that we are introducing a new construct into the criminal law.
Amendments 42A and 43F provide that failure to take all reasonable precaution in relation to the offence of delivering a bladed product to a residential address would be criteria to be taken into account before a person is charged. This is in contrast to the defence provided under Clause 18, which can be invoked when a person is charged with the offence.
Amendments 57B and 57C apply the same principles to Clause 20, which is concerned with the delivery of bladed articles sold by sellers based outside the UK. Clause 20 applies to delivery companies that have entered into an arrangement with a seller based abroad and provides that it is a criminal offence for a delivery company to deliver a bladed article into the hands of a person under 18. It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under Clause 20 to prove that he or she took all reasonable precautions and exercised due diligence to avoid committing the offence.
In practice, the enforcing agency—the police, the CPS or local authorities—will always consider whether the seller or the person who delivers the article has taken reasonable steps and exercised due diligence before bringing a charge. It would not be in the public interest to bring a prosecution if the enforcing agency considers that it is very likely the court will find that the seller had taken all reasonable precautions to avoid committing the offence. As I said before, this type of defence has been in place for some considerable time in relation to the sale of articles with a blade or point, and we are not aware of any issues in its operation.
In short, the approach taken in the Bill both in relation to knives and corrosives is well precedented. The existing law has operated for 30 years without difficulties, and it would further complicate the law and lead to confusion if we now adopted a different approach in the Bill. I suspect—as in the discussion on Monday—noble Lords will want to return to this issue, but for now I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for his brief intervention and to the Minister for her response.
The fact that the defence is similar to that in the Criminal Justice Act 1988, but contrary to almost every other piece of legislation on the statute book, including the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 which specifically deals with offensive weapons—that is, you are not guilty if you have a reasonable excuse for your actions—does not persuade me, I am afraid, that the Government are right in this case and that we are wrong. The Minister mentioned that the prosecuting authorities would not bring a prosecution if the person had taken all reasonable steps, but that does not stop the person being arrested and detained before that charging decision is made. The problem is still there. It is contrary to most criminal law on the statute book and it is the current legislation, rather than the amendment, that adds to the confusion. We will return to this on Report, but at this juncture I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“(aa) the seller is not a trusted trader of bladed products, and”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would create a trusted trader status for those selling bladed products.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, Amendments 41 and 43 in the name of my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe are intended to enable a trusted trader scheme and status to be set up for sellers of knives and other bladed products in the UK. As drafted, the Bill will prohibit the delivery of bladed objects and products to residential properties. The concern is that this will have a detrimental impact on the business of small and medium-sized knife manufacturers and retailers here in the UK. As more and more sales move online, consumers normally expect to receive their deliveries at home. My colleagues in the Opposition fully support the aims of the Bill, but have concerns that this is a legislative sledgehammer that will affect small and medium-sized businesses here in the UK, while having very little impact on knife crime. To achieve the objectives we all want to see delivered—a reduction in knife crime and violence, but at the same time not damaging or destroying businesses—I suggest that we need a greater enforcement of existing legislation that prohibits the sale of knives to under-18s and the carrying of a knife without good reason. The amendments we are debating will seek to enable good, well-run businesses to operate in a trusted trader scheme, while not causing difficulties or putting their businesses at risk.
I understand that the Home Office carried out a consultation between October and December 2017 on these issues, with more than 10,500 responses. On 25 July, the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, Victoria Atkins MP, wrote to my friend the Member for Sheffield Central in the other place, Mr Paul Blomfield MP. In her response, the Minister indicated that there were concerns over the delivery of knives purchased to residential premises, and concerns about the sale of knives online to under-18s—which, of course, is already illegal—but that some sellers were not doing enough to stop children buying knives.
My friend Paul Blomfield, Clive Betts and some Sheffield knife manufacturers met the Minister on 15 January. The department had looked at the trusted trader scheme, but seemed to rule it out on the basis that it would add more bureaucracy and burden to the businesses. They looked at placing the burden on delivery companies, and the measures in this Bill.
It is an offence under the Criminal Justice Act, as we know, to sell knives and other bladed products to a person under the age of 18. But there is a defence if the person can prove that they took steps to make all reasonable precautions and exercise due diligence to avoid committing an offence. The sellers will have to meet these conditions to rely upon that defence but the industry also agrees with the objectives of the Bill: to reduce knife crime and make it more difficult for people under the age of 18 to order knives. Many businesses already exercise robust age-verification checks and label their packets accordingly. Their concern is that the Bill’s prohibition on selling bladed products to residential premises will cause them particular damage.
This is about the damage to small and medium-sized businesses, with its knock-on effect on UK manufacturers. The larger retailers and a lot of companies often buy their knives from overseas, so there is really no issue for them. But these small producers are selling niche and often highly priced products, which are not sold anywhere by the large companies. The industry would like some evidence. What is the evidence of people purchasing knives online to commit crime? Apparently, there are roughly 424 million knives in the UK at the moment and there is little or no evidence that people buy knives online to go out and commit a crime. There are plenty of knives around everywhere. The Metropolitan Police and the Cutlery and Allied Trades Research Association have suggested that most knives used in violent crime are old knives, which people can get their hands on from a variety of sources.
The trusted trader scheme would in effect mirror what is presently in place for the delivery of alcohol. Such a scheme would help to drive up standards across the board while providing protection for responsible businesses. Coupled with better enforcement of existing legislation, the scheme would help and not impede small and medium-sized enterprises. The industry wants this, so the objection from the Government that it would mean more bureaucracy does not really hold water for me. If there is a choice between a ban—not being able to sell your products for delivery to homes—and having a scheme which ensured that you verify who you are selling to, this would be better for them. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, while I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is trying to do with his amendment, if he is quoting the Government correctly then I agree that it would be an expensive, bureaucratic scheme and difficult to enforce. It would be impossible to enforce in relation to sellers outside the United Kingdom. It would be to the benefit of large retailers. Perhaps the amendment is trying to appeal to the Home Office’s usual approach to these things by saying that it should be self-financing. Membership of the scheme would clearly involve a fee; large retailers would easily find the money for that, whereas it would disadvantage small businesses.
As we discussed previously in relation to corrosive substances, we are again heading for a situation where UK sellers of bladed articles are unable to sell such products for delivery to residential premises, whereas overseas sellers will be able to sell bladed articles for delivery to home addresses. In the case of overseas sellers, the courier has to ensure age verification at handover but UK sellers are unable to use this scheme. The real solution to the problem that the noble Lord is trying to solve is to allow age verification at the handover of bladed articles at residential premises for all sellers, both UK and overseas, so that both corrosive substances and bladed products can be delivered to people’s homes.
As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has just asked, what evidence is there that gang members, for example, are ordering ordinary kitchen knives, such as carving knives, online in order to use them in crime? I am not talking about prohibited knives, such as zombie knives or the type of knife that the Government seek to ban in the Bill. The evidence from the police is that most people carrying knives have got them from the kitchen where they live because they are there already. Why would a criminal who is looking to commit knife crime create an evidential trail by ordering online rather than going to a shop and paying cash to get their hands on a weapon? I seek the Government’s explanation as to why this provision is necessary.
We discussed on Monday whether a residential premises is used for carrying on business. I have had a communication from a company that deals with the sale of bladed items online. It says:
“Our information after consulting Royal Mail and UPS is that there are no means to quickly and robustly identify tradesmen who operate from home as opposed to individuals who might pose as tradesmen. These so-called defences are wish fulfilment from the Home Office and are unworkable in the real world”.
I agree.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I sympathise with the request made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for some information from the Minister on why this clause will make anything better. I have been unable to find any evidence that knives delivered in this way are a measurable, let alone a serious, source of supply for knives used in offences. It seems entirely wrong to penalise ordinary people, particularly British traders, when no good will come out of it; it is mere virtue signalling by the Home Office. If this is a real danger, let us deal with it properly—my next group of amendments seeks to do that—but none of this is justified if it is not real. We have allowed age verification for sulphuric acid to be at the gate. What is the difference between that and a kitchen knife? They are equally dangerous items; it is exactly the same process that one is asked to go through, and you get a system that is completely sensible and useable by British traders. One can see the reasonableness of it. In other words, it is a small addition to the bureaucracy that people go through for a small addition to safety. I do not see that the Government have produced any evidence to justify the approach that they are taking in this clause.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
My Lords, I support what has been said by other speakers on this amendment. I believe that we are engaged in something of a futile pursuit in this part of the Bill. Hundreds of millions of knives are broadly available. This measure will not stop one single person getting hurt. I agree with an awful lot of what the Government are trying to do in the Bill. Flick-knives, zombie knives and products of that type are terrible and every effort should be made to prevent them being sold and held, but anyone can put an edge on a screw driver, chisel or kitchen knife—they are everywhere.
We are using up parliamentary time to put in place regulations that are highly unlikely to make a contribution to what we are all looking to achieve. The Government have to be careful not to bring the law into disrepute to pursue an easy target, when measures such as those highlighted by Members of the Committee far more knowledgeable than me about the subject are needed to deal with the reality of people holding knives on the street. There is a terrible epidemic of knife crime and I empathise with all the measures being taken to stop it, but preventing the delivery of knives is unlikely to have any effect in preventing a single stabbing incident.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, since our Grand Committee sitting on Monday we have heard from the police that they identify 10,000 children who are being exploited by organised crime to deliver drugs in county lines. This is newish and important information relevant to this debate as an important conduit for children to access knives. On Monday we debated mandatory sentences for children. We are hearing that children are being groomed to deliver drugs and are provided with weapons—not guns, but knives and so on. This may put a very different complexion on our debate. Will the Minister provide the Committee with a note before Report responding to this new information in the context of our discussions on mandatory sentencing for children?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for explaining the trusted trader scheme. I hope to set out the context of the provisions of the Bill. I agree with the Committee that evidence is important to this end.
It is already an offence to sell a knife to somebody under the age of 18, but we know that some sellers are not doing enough to stop children buying knives online. Evidence from online test purchase operations shows that a worrying number of online sellers sampled failed to have effective age-verification procedures in place. Trading standards conducted two online test purchase operations in 2008 and 2009. A test purchase operation commissioned by the Home Office conducted in 2014 showed that 69% of the retailers sampled failed the test. This was a slight improvement on the exercise five years previously but showed that a large majority of online test purchases failed and retailers were breaking the law.
A further test purchase operation was carried out in December 2016. The results showed that 72% of retailers tested failed to verify the age of the purchaser at the point of accepting the order and only 19% went on to require further evidence of age and refuse the sale when the evidence was not produced. Recent test purchases targeting online retailers conducted in late 2018 under the Government’s new prosecution fund show that 42% of the retailers sampled failed the test and sold knives to persons under the age of 18. We have evidence that online retailers are selling to people under the age of 18.
Lord Paddick
Can the Government give any evidence about how many under-18s are buying knives online other than those people masquerading as being under 18 and carrying out test purchase operations?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
All the information I have is the test purchases. If test purchases show a failure in the system, that suggests to me that there is an ongoing failure in the system. It does not matter whether the person is actually 18 or is pretending to be; if the system is failing, the system is failing. If an online seller is selling to someone who says they are under 18, the system is failing and the Government are concerned by that. We know that test purchases show that under-18s are being sold knives. In most cases, it is not possible to determine whether the knife purchased is being used in crime, but we have evidence that young people say that buying a knife online is easy. That information was obtained when we were researching the knife-free campaign.
We know through the test purchases that the sellers are breaking the law and we hear the evidence from young people. With the provisions in the Bill, we are sending a clear signal to online sellers that their age- verification processes must improve. The fact that there is still a high rate of failure should be a matter of concern to noble Lords and tell us that the provisions in the Bill are needed. It is not enough for retailers selling remotely simply to ask the purchaser to tick a box to say that they are over 18. It is unacceptable when it comes to delivering the article simply to hand it over to a person without verifying their age or, worse, simply to push the package through the letter box or leave it on the doorstep without any checks about the age of the recipient. We know the tragic consequences of not having strong checks in place to prevent under-18s buying knives online, from the beginning of the transaction through to the end of the sale process.
I utterly understand the thinking behind the noble Lord’s amendment, but it would in effect transfer the responsibility for complying with the legislation and responsible sales from the seller to the Government, by requiring the Government to set out the details of the proposed trusted trader scheme, which would then allow for the delivery of bladed products to residential addresses. The scheme would require sellers to demonstrate that their age-verification systems and procedures, from the point when they receive the order to when their designated delivery company hands the item over at the point of delivery, are robust and that it is not possible that a knife will be handed to a person under 18. In the light of the results of recent test purchase operations, however, we are not persuaded that sellers can provide such reassurance in a systematic and consistent way. We believe that only by requiring age verification at the point where the item is physically handed to a person, at a dedicated collection point, is it possible to guarantee that a bladed product will not be handed over to a person under 18.
There is another point. Setting up, administering and overseeing a trusted trader scheme would create burdens of its own, although I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that it could be self-funding.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am sorry—well, I would have accepted the point. In addition, simply being part of a scheme or being in possession of a seal of approval as a trusted trader does not guarantee compliance with the conditions in the scheme. I hope that I have been able to set out the Government’s explanations—
Lord Paddick
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. She repeated something that she mentioned on Monday, which I questioned but did not receive a response on. Why is age verification at the point of handover at a delivery point likely to be more thorough or more successful than age verification at the point of handover at the front door of a residential premises? The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggested a scheme whereby the delivery agent would take a photograph of the driving licence or passport to show proof of age at the front door. I accept from what the noble Baroness has said that the age-verification process that online retailers put in place must be thorough and rigorous and that there must be penalties for those who fail to comply, but I do not understand the blanket ban on delivery to residential premises when people have carte blanche to order online and collect from what could be a local newsagent. Last week, I ordered something from Amazon and collected it from a convenient store where the people are very busy. I do not see what advantage there is, when it comes to age verification, for such an article to be handed over at a collection point rather than at the front door of a residential premises.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I do not want to be unhelpful to my noble friend the Minister, but can she point to any cases involving knife crime where the knife was acquired online?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am sure that I could point to such cases if I had them in front of me. What I can point to is the evidence I have just given to the Committee that young people have said it is easier to buy knives online. I am not saying those young people are the ones going on to commit crimes, but the fact that it is easier for an under-18 to purchase online says to me that it is an easier route, should that person have criminal intent, to make that purchase online. I hope that is helpful to my noble friend.
The Duke of Montrose
Will the Minister tell us what sanctions have been imposed on people failing to obey the law in this way? It seems to me that there is plenty of scope for people to be charged. That will still apply. On the trusted trader scheme, perhaps the one point that has not been mentioned is that the designation could be taken away were there any doubt that somebody was not complying with the law, rather than having to go through some legal process that might deter people or make them more certain to check.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I hope that I have outlined what the Government have found through these test purchase failings. They have improved over recent years, but there is undoubtedly a basic failure in the system of the online purchase. Regarding the sanction for current failures in the system, it is a criminal offence, although it has been shown not to be a terribly compliant environment. It is far easier to have robust arrangements in place at a central delivery point rather than on each and every doorstep. That is the thinking behind the delivery point rather than the residential address.
Lord Paddick
I am grateful to the Minister. There is no such thing as a central delivery point. When you ask for these articles to be delivered to a delivery point, they are all over the place. There are five within a mile of where I live—corner shops are the places where these items are being delivered. In support of that, does the Minister have any information on these test purchase operations? Specifically, how many of these knives were successfully delivered to somebody who appeared to be under the age of 18 at a residential premises, and in how many of the offences were the knives delivered to a collection point? This might provide the evidence that the Government seem to have that it is much safer for it to be delivered to a collection point than to the front door of a home.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I have provided the detail on the test purchase failures. To return to my noble friend the Duke of Montrose on how many persons or companies who sold knives to under-18s have actually been prosecuted, I understand that there have been 71 prosecutions between 2013 and 2017 under Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act. If I have any further information for the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, I will certainly put it in writing. I hope I have given a general overview of some of the failures within the system of the online sale.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am still at a loss as to why we have two systems in this Bill—Clause 4 and Clause 17 —applying to products which the Government say are equally dangerous. If we need Clause 17—prohibition of delivery to residential premises for knives—why are we not asking for that with corrosive products? What is the difference?
Lord Paddick
I think I may be able to help the Committee. The noble Lord is right that we are in a parallel situation, but you cannot order online from a UK company and have corrosive substances delivered to your home address. You can order corrosive substances from a company that is outside the UK and have them delivered to your home address. The parallel situation also applies with knives, which shows how absolutely ridiculous this whole thing is.
Lord Lucas
I am clearly reading Clause 4 wrong. It appears to permit delivery to residential premises. I am sure the noble Lord has read the clause better than me. It just appears to ask for age verification when it is delivered.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is right. I am very grateful to him because now I do not have to explain it.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I probably forgot to ask the Minister to meet a delegation of Sheffield MPs and businesses concerned before Report. I am sure she will.
There have been some really interesting figures in this debate. We have 424 million knives in circulation and 71 prosecutions of companies selling knives online incorrectly. If the Bill goes ahead, we will ban businesses operating in the UK selling knives online, but if they are based in France, Germany or the United States, it will be fine—off you go, no problem at all. That is some of the nonsense that we have here.
I respect the Minister very much, but I was disappointed by her response. I do not believe she has made the case for this. As other noble Lords have said, we are not convinced that this part of the Bill will do what it seeks to achieve. If that is the case, I would be very happy if it were not in the Bill at all. I moved this amendment because the industry is keen to avoid this ban and to have something else in place, and it has been working with Sheffield MPs on this. This amendment was put forward in the Commons and I have put it forward again today. This is not a scheme we have dreamed up.
These businesses sell niche products that are not available in most shops. If you go into a big shop, the knives in them are likely to have been made in China and elsewhere. These are businesses whose products have not been bought by high street retailers and which now survive by selling their products online. We are now going to make that harder for them without any particular evidence that it is causing problems. If you are going to go out and commit crime with a knife, where would you go? I would go to my knife drawer at home—I have a load of knives in there. That is what people would do. I do not believe that people are buying these knives online to commit crimes. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, they would be creating an evidence trail if they are then hauled up. For me, that is a problem.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I hope the noble Lord will not mind if I intervene on that point. He is right that, if you want to commit knife crime, you could go to your kitchen drawer and probably get a fairly effective weapon out of it. But that is not the nub of this legislation or of what we are trying to achieve. There are a number of interventions we are trying to make. I think I explained right at the outset when I introduced the Bill that no one intervention is going to solve the problem in and of itself. It is the range of measures that we have in place, including this legislation, that we hope will reduce what has become a scourge in society which is blighting the lives of young people.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I should first declare an interest as chair of National Trading Standards which is a recipient of Home Office money and was responsible for the test purchases that have been talked about. However, I do not intend to comment on the detail of those test purchases—partly because I have not been briefed on them—but to make a specific point on the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about creating an evidence trail.
One of the issues of concern is young people who decide they need to carry a knife notionally for their protection. It is not that they intend to use it, but they carry it for their protection and unfortunately it then gets used. One has to be particularly concerned about that category of person. They may well have a careful parent who would notice the disappearance of a knife from a knife drawer, or they may believe that they would be stopped or other social pressures be applied if they tried to get one in a way other than online; they would therefore be attracted to the online route. So while this particular mechanism may or may not be the most effective way of dealing with it, this is the category of person one should be concerned about. It is about dealing not with those who are intent on committing knife crime but those who seek to have a knife that no one else knows about, which they can carry with them, because they think it will defend them.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord makes a very good point. Young people are being forced to carry knives for protection. We have an awful situation where young people become both victims and perpetrators of knife crime, both in self-defence and, perhaps, more maliciously. I thank him for making that point.
The Earl of Listowel
I wonder how the Minister can say that young people are forced to carry knives for their own protection and, at the same time, bring in mandatory prison sentences for children who carry knives. There does not seem to be much consistency in that. I do not expect the Minister to respond but, if children are feeling forced to carry knives in fear for their own safety, how can one introduce mandatory prison sentences—they have already been introduced— for children who carry knives? It seems a bit of a puzzle to me.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The challenge is to get to a situation where children do not feel they need to carry knives for their protection or in order to attack others.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank my noble friend for that point, although I am not sure that I agree with him.
As I was saying, I do not believe the Government have made their case on this. We have seen 71 prosecutions and the evidence here. There are issues with knives and we all want to see knife crime reduced. This is the classic case of the Government using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
The Minister nodded to say that she would be happy to meet the Sheffield MPs and knife manufacturers. This is about the high-end, niche manufacturers who do not, or very rarely, sell their products in UK stores any more but almost wholly online. We will potentially damage their businesses but, at the same time, allow firms abroad to sell here with no restrictions whatever. That is regrettable.
I will leave it there for now. I will bring this issue back on Report—I guarantee that—but before then we can have that meeting and try to persuade the Government to look at this again. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
“( ) For the purposes of this section a person in the United Kingdom is to be regarded as a seller if they perform fulfilment functions for a seller outside the United Kingdom.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to ensure that UK fulfilment operations are liable under the Bill.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, in moving Amendment 42 I will also speak to Amendments 54 and 57. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for educating me in the course of the last amendment. I apologise for my misreading of the Bill.
If we are going to take online purchase and delivery so seriously, we must deal with overseas purchases. While the noble Lord was speaking, I managed successfully to order a pretty nasty-looking knife online. There was no hint of age verification. It appeared to be a British company that I was ordering from but, actually, I happen to know that this company is based in Holland. The knife will be shipped from Holland by ordinary post. How will this be prevented? The company is a big, well-known retailer of knives online. It is an ordinary place that a lot of people know; it carries a good variety of knives and other things. Nothing in this Bill, as it is at the moment, prevents someone ordering in that way.
I am not saying that my amendments have any particular merit in the mechanisms they propose. But if the Government are serious about this, we need to tackle things that are obviously going to happen and make it possible for us to prevent—since the Government are convinced that this needs preventing—the delivery of knives that are ordered with great ease and facility from overseas suppliers.
First, we should deal with fulfilment in this country. Amazon has a very large fulfilment business. You appear to be purchasing goods from an overseas supplier, but actually they are sitting in an Amazon warehouse, where the instruction comes through and they dispatch. There are a number of independent people in the fulfilment business too; they know exactly what they are sending out. They are the ones who do the packing, and must be caught by this legislation. We cannot allow that obvious loophole—that is my purpose in Amendment 42.
When we are dealing with standard imports by post, we have systems to prevent people sending in guns. It is a fairly obvious thing, to make sure that if guns are coming in postal packages, you intercept them. People who are shipping them in bulk in engine blocks are a different kettle of fish, but wrapping one up and sending it as a parcel is something which we believe there are mechanisms to deal with. Those mechanisms will work for knives, but we need to empower the border authorities when they come to their notice to open the packages, confiscate the knives and not compensate anyone. It needs to be easy for our border security people to do, in the same way that it is not easy for someone to send guns through the post. That is what I am trying to do in Amendment 54: to replicate or allow for the replication of the system that we have for controlling guns sent through the post, and extend that to blades sent through the post.
In Amendment 57, I am merely trying to strengthen the contractual obligation that people are under when they are delivering these things; they cannot pretend, like the three monkeys, that they did not know that they should have taken sensible steps to know that they are dealing with a seller who deals in bladed products, and therefore need to take care. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
I see what the noble Lord is trying to do with Amendment 42, but again I am not sure it is a practical solution. He talked about buying a knife from a company in Holland where it is going to be delivered by ordinary post. How does the post office know what is in the parcel? One can think of circumstances where they would not know what is being delivered.
In relation to Amendment 54, I understand that there is a scheme for firearms and you need a licence before you can import them. But if you order a set of cutlery to use for Sunday lunch from a German manufacturer, which includes knives, do you need an import licence in order to buy it and have it delivered to your home? The problem here is that firearms are a very narrow type of good, whereas knives cover a whole spectrum—I think we get on to palette knives and butter knives later—through to zombie knives and very dangerous items.
I come back to the issue that if it is a foreign seller, the Bill has to provide that age verification has to happen at the front door of residential premises. If the Government are placing so much weight on preventing under-18s getting hold of knives generally, why that age verification at the front door of a residential premises can … not also apply to UK sellers as it does to overseas sellers?
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I had not really intended to intervene but I have come here and it is a fascinating series of amendments.
The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is an extremely interesting one and has much wider ramifications than the purposes for which he has put it forward. There is a real issue—again, I refer to my interests as chair of National Trading Standards—about fulfilment houses in relation to all sorts of trading standards offences and issues. The noble Lord talks about Amazon, but that is at the upper end of the fulfilment house market. There are plenty of fulfilment houses that have essentially been set up by people in their front rooms. I am not sure which of those is more or less likely to know the content and precise nature of some of the orders they are fulfilling. There are a lot of attractions in going in the direction that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, wants us to go, which would place an obligation on that stage of the distribution process as well as on the point of sale. But I suspect it raises much wider issues around how other laws—for example, consumer protection laws—would apply to fulfilment houses.
I would quite like to see fulfilment houses having to take some of that responsibility, but it is the same argument about internet service providers taking responsibility for the content of what appears on their services. There is a lot to be said for that as well. I suspect, however, that tackling the issue may not sit easily in this Bill, as opposed to perhaps a rather more widespread look at the role of fulfilment houses—an area that will grow inevitably with the increase of online markets.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I want merely to thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for putting forward a proposition which means that the Government have to give a comprehensive answer to it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I would hope the noble Lord thinks the Government always try to give comprehensive answers to things raised.
Moving swiftly on, Amendment 42 would in effect extend the offence created by Clause 17, which is concerned with the delivery of bladed products to residential premises, to any UK-based company that assists in the process between the sale of the item over the internet and the delivery of the item to the buyer where they provide fulfilment functions. I will take a minute to explain fulfilment functions.
We understand what my noble friend is referring to: activities such as stocking, dispatching the order, customer service and returns for sellers outside the UK. In the Bill, the word “seller” carries its normal meaning and is therefore unlikely to cover circumstances where an overseas seller uses a platform in this country to complete or facilitate the transaction, if the company here is not involved in its actual sale. The offence created by Clause 20 is intended to address the issue of overseas sellers. The Government are of the view that it would be a step too far to apply Clause 17 to companies that provide a fulfilment function but are not themselves the sellers. The Government expect that companies facilitating sales online will make sellers who use their platforms aware of the legislation in relation to the sale of knives in the UK, but it is not in their power to compel a seller based abroad—or in the UK, for that matter—to comply with the legislation. They can, of course, remove the seller from their platforms if they fail to comply with UK legislation. I hope that they consider doing so, as sellers that do not comply with the law will damage the reputation of their company.
This does not mean that sellers based abroad, whether they use online platforms or sell directly, will not be affected, albeit indirectly, by the provisions in the Bill. We cannot enforce legislation on to sellers based abroad, and that is why Clause 20 introduces an offence for a delivery company to deliver a bladed article into the hands of a person under the age of 18. Where a platform provides a fulfilment function relating to delivery, Clause 20 may apply to them.
Amendment 54 seeks to introduce measures to ensure that imports of bladed products from sellers based abroad are subject to checks. This is achieved by introducing a licensing scheme for bladed products as defined in Clause 19. The scheme would require importers to have a licence. The amendment would therefore have the effect of limiting the number of persons who would be able to import these items. At the moment, anyone can buy bladed products from abroad. However, if a licence were required, only licensed buyers would be able to import these items.
I believe that the amendment—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was quick to click on to this—has been modelled on the registered firearms dealer scheme. However, as the noble Lord pointed out, there are significant differences between firearms and bladed products, as bladed products have much wider application. Whereas it is desirable to have a control mechanism to ensure that only authorised persons can import firearms, I am not persuaded that it would be proportionate to introduce a similar scheme for bladed products. Everyday products present in most households, such as a wide range of knives, gardening tools and the like, are capable of being bladed products. These items can be purchased in the UK freely without a licence, provided that the buyer is over 18.
The Government’s intention is not to stop people buying bladed products or bladed articles in general. We want only to stop these items being sold and/or delivered to people under the age of 18. In relation to remote sales, the Bill already provides for measures to achieve this aim. It does this in relation to domestic sales through the provisions in Clause 17 and in relation to sellers based abroad through Clause 20. A licensing scheme is likely to place burdens on sellers and, either directly or indirectly, on local and central government, which will need to provide administration of the scheme and monitor compliance.
My noble friend is rightly concerned about whether the Bill provides adequate provisions to prevent bladed articles from sellers based abroad being delivered to persons under 18. I believe that the provisions in the Bill are adequate to achieve this end. I state again that we cannot enforce the legislation against sellers based abroad, but we can place the onus on the person who delivers the merchandise here. That is the reason why Clause 20 introduces an offence for a delivery company to deliver a bladed article into the hands of a person under the age of 18. If a bladed article is being delivered on behalf of a seller based abroad, the delivery company has the responsibility to ensure that the item is not handed over to a person under 18, whether the item is delivered to a private address or to a collection point.
Finally, Amendment 57 is concerned with the online sale of bladed articles by sellers based abroad. It would prevent bladed articles from being delivered to under-18s by ensuring that the deliverer takes adequate precautions to ensure that this does not happen. As I indicated, we cannot apply Clause 17 to sellers who are beyond the jurisdiction of UK law and our courts. Sellers based abroad may not be able to determine when they sell a bladed article whether the delivery address is residential or business or whether the seller is under 18—indeed, they may not care. That is why Clause 17 will not apply to sellers based abroad.
The Government consider that it is fair and proportionate to adopt a different approach in relation to delivery of items from sellers based in the UK. In the case of UK-based sales, the Clause 17 offence is committed by the seller, not the person who delivers the article. We think that this is a sensible and practical approach, which will go further in restricting the sale of these items to under-18s. Clause 20 deals specifically with sellers based abroad and the offence is committed by the person who makes the delivery in the UK, who, in this instance, will be the person within the jurisdiction of the UK courts. This addresses the perennial problem of tackling illegal sales made by those based abroad who can otherwise circumvent the intent of our domestic legislation.
Lord Garnier (Con)
Clause 20(1)(d) requires that,
“that person was aware when they entered into the arrangement that it covered the delivery of bladed articles”.
Is there any provision which requires a foreign exporter of bladed instruments to identify on the outside of the packaging what is inside it so that nobody can be in any doubt that what is being posted from, let us say, Holland is a knife with a 10-inch blade? If it says on the outside of the packet, “This is a butter knife”—subject to one believing the description on the label—that might prevent a number of the problems that we seem to have been discussing. It seems fairly simple to stick a label on the outside which places the burden on the original seller, makes the importer or functionary aware of what they are handling and makes the postman or parcel deliverer to the address or corner shop concerned equally aware of what is going on. It could not cost very much to stick a label on.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
The noble Lord make a very valid point. I shall certainly read Hansard carefully, because some of the Minister’s responses may have been contradictory. If I was a manufacturer of high-end knife products in Holland or Germany, I would be very pleased when the Bill became law because I could then launch a big campaign. I would know that the British Government were attempting to hamstring manufacturers in their own county but that I could carry on selling this stuff with no problem at all. We have no jurisdiction beyond our own borders. All we are doing here is hurting British business on the basis of very little evidence.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, as usual, I need educating. How is even a British business to know that a particular address is residential? What source of information do the Government expect a seller of knives to use to establish whether, for instance, 1 Lavender Hill SW11 is a residential or business address, particularly when in such a location there is probably a shop on the ground floor and flats above? What source of information will be reliable and satisfactory in a prosecution for someone to demonstrate that they believed reasonably that it was not a residential premises?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
We had that debate on Monday, but I am happy to go over it again. On my noble and learned friend’s point about labelling bladed products, it would be very good practice if foreign sellers did that, but we do not have the legal jurisdiction to make them do it.
Lord Garnier
I am sorry to be tiresome and to interrupt yet again. We could prevent the import of a parcel or the continuance of its progress if it arrived at Dover, Felixstowe or wherever it might be with no label on. It could then be held up. If on the other hand it said on the outside, “butter knife”—assuming that we could trust the writer of the label—or “hand grenade” or “sharp knife”, the answer seems self-evident.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My noble and learned friend would have a very good point if it was clear that the object contained in the package was a knife. It becomes a lot more difficult where it is not clear what is in the package. I do not disagree with him that it would be good to label such packages, but we cannot compel foreign companies to do it and it might not always be clear what is in the package to stop it at the port. My noble friend makes a very practical suggestion—I am sorry to be the blocker of practical suggestions—but that is the explanation.
My noble friend Lord Lucas asked how one proves an address—we went over that on Monday a couple of times. There are various ways in which a seller can ascertain whether a premises is used as a business. The buyer could provide evidence that their house was registered for business purposes or confirmation in writing of their business entity and that their business was run from home.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I think the Minister referred to premises that are registered for business purposes. That could be a home, could it not? If I work from home, knives could be delivered to my home.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is right that a house could be registered for business purposes because it could be a business. I think we went through that on Monday. Clause 20 creates an offence relating to overseas sales, with the focus on ensuring that the delivery company does not deliver a bladed article into the hands of a person under the age of 18. I think that was all I was going to say on the subject and the amendments. I know that the foreign company versus the UK company issue will come back again and again, but I hope the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
On that point, this is very anti-British business for no obvious reason or benefit for anybody concerned. If I were a German company or a French company, I would be delighted with this legislation.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord will know that the last thing this Government want to do is to make things difficult for British companies, but we want to clamp down on some of the terrible effects of knife crime.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the Government have certain contradictions in the way they are approaching this. Suppose a Dutch company sells a knife to a residential address. It drops it into the post, nicely wrapped as a parcel with nothing on the outside to indicate what the contents are. Who puts the contents of a parcel on the outside? I cannot recall when a package came to me containing something I had ordered over the internet which said obviously on the outside what was on the inside. The Royal Mail, which looked at this, has no ability to know that the parcel contains a bladed product. The only point at which it becomes possible to know that is at the point of importation.
I know the Government have systems—and I know what they are, but I am not going to describe them in public—for preventing the importation of weapons, firearms in particular, which would apply very nicely to the importation of knives. That is the point at which we as a country know that there is a knife, and since the Government have oversight of the process through which it is being imported, that is the point at which they can establish whether the address is likely to be residential premises. If we want this to be an effective prohibition against a company abroad sending a knife to a residential address here, we need to give those authorities the power to confiscate the knife at that point. I propose one way of doing that, and there are surely many others, but we absolutely need to do it.
The other way in which an overseas sale can get into residential premises is if I apparently order from a website abroad. That website abroad telegraphs its fulfilment house here and someone in that fulfilment house takes the knife out of a box, puts it in a package, addresses it and pops it into the post. There we have someone absolutely within our jurisdiction who knows that it is a knife and who should know that the premises are residential, but we are not catching them. We cannot expect the poor old postman to know what is in the package. We have two very good opportunities to intercept knives and other bladed products coming in from abroad. I do not mind how the Government achieve that, but it is so easy to get knives from abroad. If someone really wants to get a knife delivered to residential premises all they have to do is order it from overseas and it will happen without interruption because sellers will organise themselves so they do not get their delivery agents into trouble. They will just use the Royal Mail. These are small items that do not require special delivery and fit through postboxes.
The amendments show that there are good, easy, efficient and effective ways in which the Government can get a bite on the main streams of supply from overseas agents. As my noble friend said, overseas agents will respond by sticking a label on the outside. If that is what they are asked to do, and if that is what it takes to get it through customs, that is fine—in supplying all over the world, they are used to customs regulations. This is not hard or expensive for us to do; it is easy, and it is the only thing that makes sense of the Government’s interest in stopping the ordering of knives over the internet. If we stop only UK sellers and leave the door wide open to overseas sellers, we are not achieving anything other than obstructing UK business.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Does the noble Lord agree that the Committee generally agrees with the laudable aims of the Bill but on all sides we are highlighting the large holes in it? It is easy to make a mockery of what is being set out here. I hope that the Government will listen carefully to this. We want to have discussions between now and Report so that we can get this legislation right. Where we are at the moment is honestly ridiculous. The more discussions I hear now, the worse things seem to me.
Lord Paddick
I echo the noble Lord’s comments. We want to do whatever it takes to reduce the availability of knives for use in knife crime. I hope that, in all our discussions, it has not gone unnoticed that we oppose this group of amendments and the previous group.
I will probably be disciplined by my party for saying so but, presumably, if you are buying from a supplier outside the customs union, there needs to be a customs declaration on the package as to what is contained in it. That is a legal requirement. It is not about trying to get a foreign supplier to comply with British law; rather, it is internationally accepted that you need to put a customs label on a package describing what is inside. I do not know whether that applies if the supplier is within the European Union, but certainly if you buy something from the United States of America, for example, there has to be a visible customs declaration on the outside to say what the product inside the parcel is. That would enable whoever is delivering the parcel to the end delivery point to take the appropriate action in accordance with Clause 20, if the label describes that it is a bladed product.
The Duke of Montrose
If noble Lords will allow me, rather than pointing out what might be missed by this legislation, I want to draw to the attention of the Committee places where people will be caught. One that strikes me, given my background of having been responsible for the sheep industry, is this. In the clipping of sheep, we use largely foreign clippers, often from New Zealand. They come here and stay in bed and breakfasts. As they move around, their blades have to be sharpened and replaced. I am sure that, in the current system, they just ask the company to supply it by post, but they do not have a residential address. They could probably work their way round it, but I want to highlight the problems that people will have.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)
Is it the noble Lord’s wish to withdraw his amendment?
Lord Lucas
I was still mid-flow. Having allowed those interventions, I very much hope that the Government will listen to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and consider whether there is something we can do here.
I know that there is a system of customs declarations and that misdeclaration on small packages is responsible for the UK losing about £1 billion in VAT every year. I am not confident, therefore, in that system—someone has to check what is inside. We have the ability to do it, and I agree that a bad customs declaration would result in inaction. But, by and large, we do not open small packages to see what is inside, or else we would be better at collecting the VAT when something said to be worth 5p is actually worth 50 quid.
We can do better in preventing knives coming in from overseas. I very much hope that the Government will look again at the opportunities. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
I apologise to the noble Lord for trying to cut short his remarks.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
The purpose of this amendment, along with the amendments to page 17, lines 38 and 41, is to probe the extent to which the offence in Clause 17(2) covers delivery to a person who works from home.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, in moving this amendment I will speak also to Amendments 43B and 43C. We are still on the issue of residential premises, and I will not go down the route of customs declarations or indeed of the Immigration Bill as it might apply to New Zealand sheep-clippers and so on. There are a lot of aspects that could be raised.
On Monday, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, asked about farm-houses. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lord Paddick asked how you know about residential premises. My noble friend, referring to UPS and Royal Mail, quoted comments made by a company in this sector about unworkability in the real world. The Minister convinced me on Monday about not wanting to criminalise Royal Mail through my amendment. She mentioned then that Clause 17(6) was there to satisfy concerns about small traders—individual craftspeople and those running relatively small businesses from home. I would like to raise aspects of that in this group of amendments.
The first of my amendments would provide that residential premises are premises used solely or principally for residential purposes. We have gone round in so many circles on this, but it seems to me that the amendment would be of reassurance to individual craftspeople, to take just one group, who use a shed at the back of their house or a room in the home for their business.
Amendment 43B is a drafting point, and not a very good one. I am afraid that Amendment 43C would create a double negative, but, again, it deals with the owner or occupier who resides in the premises. It probes whether the premises can be residential for somebody other than the resident carrying on a business in it, even if the residential area is only a small part of the whole of the premises.
I have been trying to apply the terminology of the clause to what one knows goes on in all sorts of different types of premises, because we are causing—certainly for me—a good deal of confusion. As I have said before, one wants to get it right, and, as my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, we are trying to make this Bill workable and fair. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining these amendments. I do not think we are far apart in what we want to achieve in relation to deliveries to residential premises. I hope that I will be able to clarify our intentions and assuage any concerns that might remain.
Clause 17 makes it an offence for a remote seller of bladed products to send them to residential premises or a locker. When developing the offence, we were keen to ensure that it did not apply to the delivery of products to residential premises from which a business was run—the noble Baroness gave the example of a craftsperson in a shed. We heard during the consultation from builders, plumbers and others who ran businesses from their homes. These people sometimes needed to have tools and other bladed products delivered to them quickly to allow them to carry on their businesses. We were also keen to ensure that farms would not be affected by the prohibition on delivery to residential premises. This point was made on Monday by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and again today by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose.
To achieve this, the definition of a residential premises at Clause 17(5) is limited to those that are,
“used solely for residential purposes”.
This means that anyone who runs a business from their home can continue to have bladed products delivered there. To put this beyond any doubt, Clause 17(6) explicitly states that, where a business is carried on from a premises, it is not to be regarded as a residential premises. I hope this addresses the example that the noble Baroness gave; her face suggests that she is not entirely convinced.
Amendments 43A, 43B and 43C would achieve the same effect but are unnecessary. Where a person runs a business from residential premises which they own or occupy, the Bill already ensures that they can have bladed products delivered to such premises. It will be for the seller to satisfy themselves that they are not sending the bladed products to an address that is used solely for residential purposes. The noble Baroness raised the earlier example from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, of UPS, the delivery company. The noble Lord is right that there is no fool-proof way of establishing whether a property is a genuine business address. However, we are creating in Clause 17 a new offence for the seller, and in Clause 18(1) we set out the defences to that offence. We hope that these together will motivate the seller to take “all reasonable precautions” in verifying the address, although we acknowledge that there is no fool-proof way of doing that.
There are various ways that a seller could ascertain whether a premises is used as a business. The buyer could provide evidence that the house was registered for business purposes or they could provide confirmation in writing of the business entity and confirmation that the business is run from home. In many cases the seller will also have a relationship with the buyer as a business, possibly having supplied them with bladed products over many years. I hope this provides the clarity sought on these provisions and that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendments.
The Duke of Montrose
Again, going back to my problem of sheep-clippers, or itinerant workers, do the business premises being delivered to have to be in the name of the person carrying out the business? If you happen to land with somebody who is running a business, could you have something delivered there?
Baroness Barran
There is no restriction on delivering to a business premises.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the Official Report has already recorded my response, as noted by the noble Baroness.
I think we will all want to spend some time after this stage of the Bill looking at the various provisions that together make up what can and cannot be done. I would add to the mix the point raised on Monday which arises under Clause 18—it is not only my noble friend’s campaign about offences and defences—about the terms “all reasonable precautions” and “all due diligence” and how “all” applies in this situation. I want to spend quite a lot of time understanding what we have been told, how it is reflected in the Bill and what we should pursue at the next stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and the other to page 18, line 5, would replace the short-term custodial sentences in Clause 17 with community sentences.
Baroness Hamwee
I shall speak also to Amendments 43E, 63A, 63B, 64A, 65A, 65B, 65C, 65D, 65E and 65F. This takes us back to community sentences. We debated their value and the problems associated with short custodial sentences extensively on Monday. I do not want to rerun all the same points today on Clauses 17, 22, 23 and 24, although I have noticed that Clause 23 brings in the possibility of an indictment where the term would be much longer. To the extent that that is relevant to this discussion, it strengthens my view that seriousness can be reflected by the prosecution being sent up to the Crown Court. The Minister directed the Committee to Section 150A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 reminding us—or in my case, informing me—that a community sentence can be imposed only if the offence might attract a custodial sentence. I would say that was game and set—or some other sporting analogy—but I am not sure it is quite yet match, at least not until I am convinced that this is a good way of going about sentencing as there is a much wider issue behind this.
Section 150A does not apply if Section 151(2), which confers power to make a community order, does apply. Section 151 is about community orders for persistent offenders previously fined. Am I right in thinking that this is not yet in force? Has it been shelved? Is there an intention to review it? More widely, does the Minister accept that, given the potential value of community orders, the generally acknowledged problems with short custodial sentences and the state of our prisons, it would be a good move to review Section 150A as she explained it on Monday? I beg to move.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, this group of amendments echoes one of our debates on Monday; namely, whether it is appropriate to provide for custodial penalties of less than six months’ duration for certain new offences in the Bill. It will not come as a surprise to the noble Baroness to learn that I remain unpersuaded of the case for replacing custodial sentences of up to six months with community sentences for the knife-related offences in the Bill. As we have already discussed in Committee, we all know that the impact of knife crime on society is devastating. Young people getting hold of knives by using remote sales can have tragic consequences if they go on to use the weapon for a crime. The possession of prohibited weapons is and should be a serious offence. The Government believe it is proportionate and fair that those committing these offences should expect robust sentences.
The noble Baroness will recall that I explained on Monday that community sentences cannot be set as a maximum penalty for an offence as, under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, community sentences are available only for offences which are imprisonable. In providing this maximum custodial penalty, we are providing the courts with a range of penalties. This gives courts the option to impose a custodial sentence, a community sentence, and/or a fine as they deem appropriate, having regard to all the circumstances of the offence and the offender. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, welcomes this flexibility and the range of sentencing options which we considered earlier in the week.
As I mentioned on Monday, there is also the requirement under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that the court has to be satisfied that the offence is so serious that only a custodial sentence can be justified. I therefore remain confident that the courts will sentence offenders appropriately, taking into account the circumstances of the offence and the offender. Where a custodial sentence is justified, they will impose it, but where a community order would be better for punishment and rehabilitation, while protecting the public, then nothing in our provisions prevents that.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, is not in his place, but he said on Monday that,
“some short sentences do some good because they punish the offender”.—[Official Report, 28/1/19; col. GC 169.]
I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, and we should not now be depriving the courts of the full range of sentencing options.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked whether the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act she referred to are in force. I will have to write to her on that specific question, if she is amenable to that. On that note, I ask that she withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
I would expect the Minister to answer no less. She started by saying that I would not be surprised by the Government’s response, and she will not be surprised to hear that we are not persuaded either.
I accepted what she said about Section 150, which is why I looked it up and spent the usual frustrating few minutes trying to work out whether something that applied to it was in force or not. I think it is not, which is why I took the opportunity to ask the question. My overall question is whether it would be a good move to review Section 150A and bring that part of our attitude to sentencing up to date. But we clearly cannot pursue this any further today and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. I will, however, ask the Minister to accept that I have fulfilled my undertaking to be very quick—the clock had not even reached one minute by the time I had finished.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
The purpose of this amendment is to seek clarity as to how the seller can necessarily know the purpose for which the buyer intends to use the knife; and why adaptations are not dealt with in the same way as design.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, Clause 18 sets out defences to an offence under the previous clause. One defence, in subsection (3), is if the person charged proves that,
“the bladed product was adapted for the buyer before its delivery in accordance with”,
the buyer’s specifications and that,
“the adaptations were made to enable or facilitate the use of the product by the buyer or its use for a particular purpose”.
My amendment would take out the latter part of that provision.
I wrote down “designer knife” as a heading for my notes and then thought that it has a very different and much more sinister connotation than referring to a chef’s knife, which is the sort of thing that I understand this provision is aimed not to block, especially when we talk about adaptations in the context of designer knives. No doubt the proof— there has to be proof here—would in the event be a matter for the jury. But in view of the wording I referred to a few moments ago about the defence of taking all reasonable precautions and exercising all due diligence, it is important that the person who may commit an offence knows what precautions to take.
Proof that the product was designed in accordance with specifications that the buyer provided seems likely to be easier. They would be unlikely to make an order which does not set out the specifications but that may not be the same with adaptations, because they might have a conversation on the phone about their requirements. I want to pursue that issue, and why the activities which amount to the defence are to be undertaken “before its delivery” when those words are not in Clause 18(2). I do not see the distinction there nor the distinction between the two subsections, given the words “for a particular purpose”. How does the person who may be charged know the purpose? I beg to move.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for setting out the amendment in the name of her noble friend Lord Paddick. As we have seen from earlier debates, these are complicated provisions but unavoidably so, I am afraid. She wants to know two things: first, how the buyer can know what purpose the bladed product will be used for and, secondly, why the provision relating to the adaptation under Clause 18(3) differs from that for design and manufacture under Clause 18(2). I hope to be able to provide some clarity but perhaps I may first summarise what we are talking about.
The defences at subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 18 are aimed at allowing the dispatch of bespoke, handmade knives to a person’s home address. One issue that came out clearly from the consultation is that there is a significant number of makers of handmade knives. These are often individual tradespersons who make specialist knives for individual buyers. The most commonly cited example, which the noble Baroness gave today, is chef’s knives, which are made or adapted to specifications provided by the chef—for example, on the length or shape of the blade, or the weight of the handle. Such handmade bespoke knives are very expensive and, in most cases, there is a relationship between the seller and the buyer, which means there is no risk of these knives being sold to a young person. We therefore wanted to allow such knives to continue to be sent to the buyer’s home address.
Clause 18(2) covers where a buyer asks a seller, who in such cases is also likely to be the manufacturer, to design or make specific knives to specifications that they have provided. This would cover where a chef, for example, asks the seller to make them a set of knives to very specific specifications. The seller in these cases will often have a relationship with the buyer and it should be easy for the seller to prove that they are making the knife to specifications, because they will have correspondence with the buyer setting out the requirements.
Clause 18(3) covers where the buyer wants an existing knife adapted to meet specific specifications—for example, where a chef wants a blade shortened or changed in shape or where they want the handle changed, or where a disabled person wants changes to a knife so that they can use it—and these changes are to enable the knife to be used for a particular purpose, such as catering, outdoor pursuits or other activities. Again, in these cases the seller will often have a relationship with the buyer and they will easily be able to evidence that the bladed product was adapted in accordance with specifications of the buyer and the purpose for which it was going to be used, because this would be part of the conversation or communication on which adaptations to make. For example, the maker would know that the knife was needed for gutting fish—that issue was raised the other day—or because the buyer had one hand and needed it for sawing branches, as that would be part of the decision on what changes needed to be made. The purpose of Clause 18(3)(b) is to exclude the etching of a person’s name on a bladed product, as we did not want to provide a defence for bladed products where the only adaptation to the product was the engraving of words on, or similar superficial adaptation to, the product.
I hope that, in light of that explanation, the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the Minister’s last point about engraving a name had not occurred to me, although I do not quite see how it is distinct from the situation under subsection (2), where you might ask for a product to be manufactured with the specification of adding your name. I will go through what the Minister said, but for the moment, at any rate, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to probe and clarify the definition and use of “bladed article” under Clause 20.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I will also speak to the other amendments in this group. Most of the amendments were tabled just to give me an opportunity to listen to the Minister on why the Bill contains two definitions of bladed items: “bladed article”, which is the current definition in legislation, and “bladed product”, which is introduced just for the purposes of Clauses 17 and 18. I would like to know the reason for the choice of application and the need for two definitions.
On the definition in Clause 19, why does a pointed article appear to be excluded? If I was to wander about the streets wanting to do people harm, a sharpened knitting needle would be a pretty good thing to take with me. It would be easy to shove through clothing and it has a nice little button on one end, so that it does not go into me. Under the clause as drafted, it appears to be exempt. Why is that?
If we are going to use such a wide definition, we need to help people who are in the business of selling products to understand that it has a wide application. As I read it, it would apply to a helicopter—not that many helicopters get delivered to residential premises—as a helicopter is a bladed article. It would also apply to fans, if not to Mr Dyson’s fans, and it would apply to lawnmowers and various other things that have blades. It ought to be clear to people who have to obey this law whether they will be caught by it. I do not object to how widely the Government draw it, but its extent should be made clear, as it should in respect of which items people are likely to have to apply it. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I too look forward to the Government’s explanation of the difference between “bladed product” and “bladed article”, and of why there is a distinction between the offence of delivering of a bladed product to residential premises and that of delivering a bladed article to persons under 18. I thought the whole point—no pun intended—of banning delivery to residential premises was to prevent under-18s getting their hands on it. Why does it need to be a bladed article in one part and a bladed product in another?
In relation to Amendment 45, I agree with the noble Lord and would go further. In the course of my duties as a police officer, I have seen daggers with very sharp points, but with blades not necessarily sharp enough to cut—the dagger is specifically designed to stab people, but is not capable of cutting. It would be exempt from the definition as written in the Bill. I am not sure whether it is necessary to list examples of what are and are not bladed products, but we certainly need a much better idea of what we are trying to do here.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I was not intending to come in on this item, but the more I sit here listening to this Bill, the more concerned and confused I get. I support the intentions of the Government in trying to deal with knife crime and violence—they are absolutely right there—but, listening to this, I am not convinced we are on the right track.
Is the Minister aware of the Better Regulation Executive? It is part of BIS, or whatever the department is called now, and is in charge of regulatory reform across the British Government. Its policy is described in these terms:
“Some regulations are ineffective and unnecessary. Complying with them costs businesses time and money, and can restrict economic growth … Governments generally attempt to ensure regulations are fair and effective. The Better Regulation Executive's purpose is to effectively strike the right balance between protecting people’s rights, health and safety and freeing them from unnecessary bureaucracy”.
If it has not gone there already, the Bill needs to go there straightaway. Clearly, there is a lot of mess in this Bill. I say it should go there because we are affecting lots of British businesses and putting them at a competitive disadvantage to other businesses in Europe and around the world. We need to get our businesses up and working well, and I do not see how this is helping. Maybe it has gone there already and been improved by it. If it has not, I hope we can get the Bill off to it and maybe get something back before Report.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, would the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, agree that perhaps his trusted traders scheme would also need to go through that process?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I certainly would. I would be delighted for it to go through the process, because the scheme I have been keen we talk about has come not from me, but from the industry. They want the scheme, so I would be delighted for it to go there, since they are the people who make these niche products and are worried that the Government are putting them at a competitive disadvantage.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I wonder how the rest of the world deals with these issues. The Minister may have described that to us at some point. The situation clearly seems to cry out for international co-operation if there are serious issues in other nations with knife crime and corrosive substances. For instance, what does Germany do with regard to these issues? I know that recent circumstances here have changed very rapidly, so it may be an issue just in this country. The United States probably has an even more significant problem with it and may be more resistant to intervene than we would be.
Knife crime is a symptom of many other things, including, as we were hearing yesterday, our issues around drugs. We heard from two police officers, one a retired undercover drugs detective. He was saying that since the introduction of the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Regulations 1988, we have seen a soaring in the number of people using drugs. He pointed out that 10% of users take up 50% of the supply of serious drugs; so 10% of chronic heroin users are consuming 50% of the drugs market.
If one addressed the needs of these drug users, as we used to do before the misuse of drugs Acts—if we provide users quickly with methadone and with safe places to take drugs—the demand would disappear and the supply would shrink. These would perhaps be more effective options. Maybe the Minister can write to us about what happens in other nations and how they deal with these issues.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for outlining his amendments. Amendments 45 and 46 are intended to bring weapons such as stilettos and—as he mentioned—knitting needles within the definition of “bladed product”. We have deliberately not defined the word “cutting” in the Bill. It will carry its normal meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb “to cut” as, among other things, to,
“make an opening, incision, or wound in (something) with a sharp-edged tool or object”,
and to,
“trim or reduce the length of (grass, hair, etc) by using a sharp implement”.
The normal meaning is therefore capable of capturing a wide range of items with which cutting, in all its ordinary meanings, can be done, including knives, scissors, axes, machetes and the like. It follows, therefore, that items such as stilettos, knives or daggers are already caught by the definition of “bladed product” in the Bill because they have a blade and are capable of cutting the skin.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, perhaps I may address that particular point in relation to Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which refers to,
“any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed”.
Clearly the drafters of that clause felt the need to define “or … sharply pointed”. In other words, something that is sharply pointed does not have, and is not, a blade. It is essential that in Clause 19(1) the object we are talking about is, or has, a blade, whereas Section 139 clearly differentiates between an object that has a blade and an object that is sharply pointed. I do not see how we can have at the same time in legislation one clause that says these two things are separate and another which maintains that they are the same.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I hope that I will get some inspiration from behind me in the course of what I am going to say. I started by saying that items such as stiletto knives or daggers are already caught by the definition of “bladed product” in the Bill, because they have a blade and are capable of cutting the skin. There is, therefore, no need to add a further reference to piercing the skin, which would be the effect of my noble friend’s amendment. I note that he has clarified that his concern is to ensure that the definition covers “weapons such as stilettos”. I hope he will accept that the definition in the Bill is already sufficient to capture stiletto knives. I do not think that he has in mind stiletto heels—or does he?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That is good. These would not fall within the definition in the Bill as they do not generally have a blade. It is our intention that the definition of “bladed product” excludes those articles with a blade that are unlikely to cause serious injury if used as a weapon. They might include cutlery, fans and lawnmowers—which he mentioned—among other things. We believe that it is unlikely that such items will be procured by persons under 18 to be used as weapons. We also want to exclude articles that can cause serious injury only other than by cutting, for instance when used as a blunt object. Ultimately, it will up to the courts to determine whether an item is or has a blade and is capable of causing serious injury by way of cutting the skin. However, we will issue guidance in consultation with the police and business to provide further clarity on this and other provisions in the Bill.
Perhaps I might add that Amendment 46 highlights the risk of including an indicative list of examples in legislation, which brings complications of its own. For example, one might ask why the list includes screwdrivers but not chisels, or lawn mowers but not hedging shears and so forth. It is better, I suggest, to leave it to the police, prosecutors and the courts, supported by the guidance to which I have referred, to determine relevance in the circumstances of each situation.
This leads me to Amendments 44, 47, 55 and 56, which would change the types of articles to which Clause 20 applies from “bladed articles” to “bladed products”. My noble friend Lord Lucas has rightly asked why, in Clause 20, the term “bladed articles” is used rather than “bladed products”. A bladed product is defined in Clause 19 as,
“an article which … is or has a blade, and … is capable of causing a serious injury to a person which involves cutting that person’s skin”.
“Bladed article” is defined by Clause 20(11), in the case of England and Wales, as an article,
“to which section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies”.
My noble friend referred to this.
Section 141A applies to: any knife, except a folding pocket knife with a blade of three inches or less; any knife blade; any razor blade, except those permanently enclosed in cartridges; any axe; and any other article which has a blade or which is sharply pointed and which is made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person. “Bladed article” therefore captures a wide range of articles with a blade from kitchen knives to cutlery knives, scissors, and so on. This is the language used in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 in relation to the sales of knives and possession offences. “Bladed product” refers to a smaller set of items with a blade: those which can cause serious injury by cutting the skin, as defined in Clause 19. The effect of Amendments 44, 47, 55 and 56 would therefore be that the range of articles to which Clause 20 applies would be smaller than is currently the case in the Bill.
I hope that my noble friend is reassured by the provisions in Clauses 17 to 20. If a bladed article is delivered on behalf of a seller based abroad, the delivery company has the responsibility to ensure that the item is not handed over to a person aged under 18, whether the seller uses a marketplace platform or sells direct, or whether the item is delivered to a private address or a collection point. As I said earlier, we cannot enforce legislation against a seller who is based abroad but, in this instance, we have the ability to place the onus on the person who delivers the merchandise here to ensure that they do not deliver a bladed article into the hands of a person aged under 18.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked about the business impact. I concur with him that we should be concerned about the impact on British businesses. We have published an impact assessment alongside the Bill, which can be found on the Bill’s page on GOV.UK.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
So would this not have gone to the Better Regulation Executive to look at?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
In terms of better regulation, I do not think that it has but I will double-check before Report. It probably has not.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about the position in other countries and the approach we have taken. Of course we always learn from other jurisdictions, and I hope that they learn from us, but we must legislate as we consider it appropriate to address the position as we find it in this country. Regarding the problems underlying drug addiction, we will come on to that when we reach Amendment 63 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who I do not think is in her place at this point.
I want to make one final point about articles with a blade or point: we do not want to capture items such as screwdrivers and crochet needles because they are not usually used for harm—that is not to say they are not used for harm, but not usually. Hence we are referring to “blade” and not “sharp point”. I hope that, with those explanations, the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Before we get to that point, the Minister has mentioned guidance, which will certainly be very welcome. Can we be assured that the practitioners—I do not mean those with real knives, but those in the criminal justice sector, prosecution, the Bar Council, police and so on—are consulted about how the guidance is presented? I can see a nod at that. That will be very helpful.
I cannot help observing that whoever gave the Minister the note about crochet needles is not someone who uses them, because they have a curved end.
Lord Lucas
I am very grateful to my noble friend for that explanation. I shall read it with care in Hansard. I expect, as with the previous amendment, that I might like to ask her to put the requirement for guidance in the legislation, because it is important that people should know what the ambit of this legislation is. I thank her on behalf of vampire hunters everywhere that they can have their wooden stakes safely delivered to their houses without obstruction. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the Minister’s amendments at page 19, lines 16, 21, 22, 30 and 31 would modify the offences relating to delivery of a bladed product in Clause 17. Currently these offences do not apply to weapons to which section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies and the amendments would remove that exception.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister’s amendment at page 19, line 15.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister’s amendment at page 19, line 15.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister’s amendment at page 19, line 15.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister’s amendment at page 19, line 15.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister’s amendment at page 19, line 15.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to probe why this exemption exists.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I did not move Amendment 55A because there was an equivalent that we debated on Monday. Amendment 57A would have had an equivalent amendment, but I missed it—nobody is perfect. However, this allows us to return yet again to the distinction between sellers outside the UK and sellers carrying on the,
“business of selling articles of any kind from premises in any part of the United Kingdom”,
at the time of the sale.
I was curious about that distinction, and have one or two points I would like to check. Am I right to think that “carrying on business” does not mean that the business has to be based or domiciled to fulfil that description? I assume that the seller does not have to have his own premises and can operate, for instance, from a contractor’s premises; and that the description “selling articles of any kind” will be met if the seller sells teddy bears, for instance, rather than knives from within the UK.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I am sorry to have missed a bit; the Committee may have dealt with this. On overseas and online sales, on Monday I mentioned Amazon. I have confirmed that Amazon is an international seller. It is headquartered in Ireland and qualifies as such, but the delivery mechanism is within the UK. Apparently, that is a clear ruling from elsewhere so there is a big problem, as the noble Baroness has just said. I was also told, because I was chairing a meeting on the subject, that retailers are now dropping the sale of ordinary kitchen knives and such things. It is just too difficult. They will drop all sorts of other household products if they think they might fall under the Act. It will just cause great inconvenience for UK households.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Baroness for outlining her amendment. I understand that its purpose is to probe the meaning of Clause 20(3). Obviously, we will have a discussion before Report and I am happy to discuss the unwillingness of companies, but I go back to the first group of amendments, where I outlined the failing in the system of test purchases.
Clause 20(3) sets out when a seller, other than an individual seller, is to be regarded as outside the UK. Where an overseas seller is an individual, it is relatively easy to establish that they are based overseas, but where a seller is a company it might not be so obvious where they are based. For example, the company might operate mainly from China, where its headquarters are based, but might also have offices and shops in the UK.
The provision is constructed so that a company selling bladed articles is considered to be based outside the UK only when the business is not conducted from premises in any part of the UK—that is, where the company is based solely overseas and does not sell articles in this country. If the seller conducts the business in any part of the UK, it would be subject to the provisions in Clause 17 and prohibited from dispatching bladed articles to a residential premises or locker. I hope that that explanation helps the noble Baroness.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I hear what the Minister says, but this would not cover Amazon, because at the moment the selling is done from abroad.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I do not agree with the noble Lord on that point.
Lord Lucas
Well, my Lords, perhaps we could enter into some correspondence about that. What Amazon does in this country is the fulfilment; the selling is done from Ireland or Liechtenstein, but certainly not from within this country. We need to be clear that these activities can get split, particularly in the case of big companies. The whole action of selling the knife, preparing it for delivery and delivering it is what should be considered as selling it, not just the technical act of selling.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, that is why I asked some of my questions, as the activities can be split—although I do not want to promote Amazon. These issues may not be far from the taxation points that arise in connection with some of these organisations. As it happens, I do not quite agree with the noble Lord about who is selling. Last night, I looked up an item that I have only been able to find to buy through Amazon and the website said, “This is dispatched from and sold by” somebody else. However, a lot of questions remain.
Lord Lucas
That is an Amazon Marketplace thing and not an Amazon own product.
Lord Deben (Con)
I was here at our last meeting, when this issue was discussed. It has obviously caused us a great deal of misunderstanding and we have found it quite difficult to undo. I am concerned about the customers; I am not sure that they would understand it at all. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will agree to try to work this out in a way that the public can understand. Part of what we are trying to do is to make suitable controls. I was not able to be here earlier, but I have been here for this discussion. Even so, I am in the same position as I was when we talked about this before: I do not understand it wholly and I am not sure that the noble Baroness does, although she is very clever and often understands things when I do not. Clearly, we do not understand it, so is it possible for us to look at it again? If it means that it is better to be a seller from abroad than to be a seller at home, frankly I would not like to have to explain that on a platform to the public. I would find that difficult. In the end, we ought not to help people who are domiciled abroad in order to avoid paying taxes and who undermine people who are here paying taxes. I am not terribly keen on that and, again, I would not like to explain it on a platform. I always think this about the small “p” political things: if I were standing on a platform and someone asked me the question, could I give them an answer that would not mean that the hall threw rotten apples? I am afraid that this is rotten-apple time.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am grateful for that. I do not think that I would manage even to get as far as the rotten apples, because I would have bored the audience. It is not just the buyer who needs to be clear about this; it is the seller and everybody in the chain. There needs to be more clarity than I have obtained and I look forward to the meeting when we will discuss this further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Tunnicliffe
“Prohibition of bladed product displays
(1) A person who in the course of a business displays a bladed product in a place in England and Wales or Northern Ireland is guilty of an offence.(2) The appropriate Minister may by regulations provide for the meaning of “place” in this section.(3) The appropriate Minister may by regulations make provision for a display in a place which also amounts to an advertisement to be treated for the purposes of offences in England and Wales or Northern Ireland under this Act—(a) as an advertisement and not as a display, or(b) as a display and not as an advertisement.(4) No offence is committed under this section if—(a) the bladed products are displayed in the course of a business which is part of the bladed product trade, (b) they are displays for the purpose of that trade, and(c) the display is accessible only to persons who are engaged in, or employed by, a business which is also part of that trade.(5) No offence is committed under this section if the display is a requested display to an individual aged 18 or over.(6) The appropriate Minister may provide in regulations that no offence is committed under subsection (1) if the display complies with requirements specified in regulations.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would prohibit the open display of bladed products in shops.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, this amendment in the name of my noble friend seeks to insert a new clause after Clause 20 to prohibit the display of bladed products in shops. The honourable Member for Lewisham Deptford, Vicky Foxcroft, the chair of the Youth Violence Commission, has done some excellent work on this matter. Members from all sides in the other place, along with academics, practitioners, youth service workers, the police and experts connected with youth violence have been very involved in the work of the commission. I commend the commission’s report, which was recently published—it should be read by all noble Lords. One of its important recommendations is the prohibition of knife displays in shops. During consideration in the other place, USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—was asked whether it believed that putting knives behind displays would be helpful. Doug Russell, representing USDAW, said:
“It would be. Obviously, now big retailers are increasingly going down the route of making it more difficult for customers to get their hand on the product until they have been age-checked”,—[Official Report, Commons, Offensive Weapons Bill Committee, 19/7/18; col. 98.]
and they have assured themselves that a transaction is safe. I want people’s ages to be checked properly when they seek to purchase knives.
We must also protect against the theft of knives. There are several restrictions in law relating to other products, most obviously the extremely restrictive provisions for the sale of tobacco, which prohibit the display of tobacco products in relevant shops and businesses in England. The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 refers specifically to under-18s, so the principle already exists in law to protect under-18s from harm by prohibiting the open display of goods. I see no reason why this should not be extended to bladed products. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, if I understand this amendment correctly, I do not feel I can support it. Clearly bladed products should be displayed in a way that ensures they are safe and cannot easily be stolen, but I cannot agree with the suggestion that they need to be hidden in case they lead people into being tempted to use them for criminal purposes, if that is what the noble Lord is saying. The noble Lord mentioned cigarettes. They are now hidden from view and advertising them has been banned because they are always and in every circumstance bad for your health and addictive, but the same cannot be said for knives. We do not conceal alcohol or glue as they have legitimate uses, and we do not believe it is necessary to conceal knives.
Baroness Barran
As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has explained, this amendment would make it a criminal offence for a businessperson to display a bladed product. The amendment seeks to replicate for knives the legislation in place on the display of tobacco products.
As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has just pointed out, the prohibition on the display of tobacco products is to help reduce the major risk to public health that comes from smoking: it is to help reduce smoking uptake by those under 18 and to support adult smokers who want to quit by removing temptation from open display. We do not want to stop people buying knives, only to stop their sale to under-18s. Requiring businesses to remove all bladed products from open display and to have them hidden away could have significant cost implications in terms of staff to operate the secure displays and for fixtures and the layout of stores. Our estimate shows that the cost to business of a requirement to lock bladed products into cabinets would be very significant. The Government believe a legal requirement not to display knives for all sellers, regardless of whether knife crime is a problem in the area where the business is placed, is not a proportionate measure. We believe that voluntary action on a risk-based basis will achieve the same aim.
The Home Office voluntary agreement with retailers including Wilko, Morrisons, Tesco and Argos includes an agreement that retailers will ensure knives are displayed and packed securely as appropriate to minimise risk. This includes retailers taking practical and proportionate action to restrict accessibility, avoid immediate use, reduce the possibility of injury and prevent theft. Retailers are also looking at more technology-based measures to prevent theft and to ensure that age verification takes place consistently in every case. For instance, retailers tell us that the use of tagging and more advanced bar-coding have proven to be an active deterrent in relation to both theft and age verification.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I thank the Minister for her response. I felt that it was more persuasive in favour of the amendment than my own words, but I cannot agree with the conclusions she came to. Sadly, given the widespread support for the amendment, I beg leave to withdraw it.
Lord Tunnicliffe
“Enforcement of sections 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20
(1) It shall be the duty of every authority to which subsection (4) applies to enforce within its area the provisions of sections 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20 of this Act.(2) An authority in England or Wales to which subsection (4) applies shall have the power to investigate and prosecute an alleged contravention of any provision under sections 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20 of this Act which was committed outside its area in any part of England and Wales.(3) A district council in Northern Ireland shall have the power to investigate and prosecute an alleged contravention of any provision under sections 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20 of this Act which was committed outside its area in any part of Northern Ireland.(4) The authorities to which this section applies are—(a) in England, a county council, metropolitan borough council, unitary authority, district council or London Borough Council, the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority and the Council of the Isles of Scilly;(b) in Wales, a county council or a county borough council;(c) in Scotland, a council constituted under section 2 of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994;(d) in Northern Ireland, any district council.(5) In enforcing any provision under sections 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20 of this Act, an authority must act in a manner proportionate to the seriousness of the risk and shall take due account of the precautionary principle, and shall encourage and promote voluntary action by producers and distributors.(6) Notwithstanding subsection (5), an authority may take any action under this section urgently and without first encouraging and promoting voluntary action if a product poses a serious risk.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause, for the relevant authorities, would create (a) a duty for them to enforce the relevant sections of this Bill, and (b) a power for them to investigate alleged offences under this Bill.
Lord Tunnicliffe
Amendments 59, 60 and 86 in this group, which are tabled in my name, seek to give trading standards powers to enforce the relevant provisions of the Bill and a power to investigate alleged breaches of the relevant provisions contained in the Bill. There are excellent examples of good work already going on, which this amendment seeks to build on. Croydon Borough Council has worked with local retailers to improve their understanding of the law around knife sales through training and to encourage them to go further than required by law through responsible retail agreements and has caught traders willing to break the law on underage sales by using test purchasers in person and online. Croydon trading standards now has 145 retailers signed up to its responsible retailer agreements. It ran eight “Do you pass?” training sessions with retailers over the past year, encouraging additional measures, such as Challenge 25 and the responsible display of knives in stores. The training sessions are a good indicator of which retailers are keen to work responsibly and which might not be. Finally, 61 test purchases of knives have been carried out in the past year to identify those retailers which are not complying with the law. We have also seen excellent work done in this regard by the police in Greenwich through test purchases by cadets.
These additional responsibilities will create a resource issue as this will be an additional power and an additional requirement, but one that I think is needed. I recognise that the Serious Violence Strategy released by the Home Office contained the promise of a prosecution fund for trading standards for two years to support targeted prosecution activity against online and instore retailers in breach of the law on the sale of knives to underage people. The strategy is not clear about how much funding will be made available and gives no clarity to trading standards about support two years down the line. Perhaps the Minister can update the Grand Committee on this.
In putting these amendments forward, I am aware that the budget for trading standards has been cut by half since 2010, from more than £200 million to barely £100 million, while the number of trading standards officers has fallen by 56% in the same period. The cuts I refer to have led to the downgrading of the protections that consumers depend on. In many cases, they have been reduced to a system based on consumer complaints. Relying on such a system is not an effective way to enforce laws, particularly when we talk about the purchase of knives or corrosive substances. I hope to get a positive response and that the Minister will speak to her amendments in this group. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am not sure whether the Minister wants to introduce the government’s amendments now, so perhaps I should just ask some questions. At Second Reading, I raised the role of trading standards so it is obviously welcome that it is being addressed.
There are some obvious questions about the Government’s amendments. First, why weights and measures authorities? I confess that I have not looked up the statutory definition of a weights and measures authority, but there must be one. Why is it that rather than local authorities? The Chartered Trading Standards Institute makes the point that if the obligation was placed on local authorities as a whole, they might have more flexibility in how they dealt with the issue. Secondly, why is it not a statutory duty? On that point, the institute says that, in its experience, local authorities are less likely to provide the resources to deal with a problem, let alone with the training and recruitment of staff. The issue of resources is huge, and it is the elephant in the room in this context. We are all aware of the constraints on local authorities. It is a while since I was a local councillor, and I used to think that we had problems then. I do not know how local authorities manage now to juggle the calls on their resources, so I must make that obvious point as well as asking these few questions. It is right that the role of trading standards is recognised here, as is their role with offensive weapons as a whole, given their understanding of how the communities where they work actually operate.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I apologise for missing the first few words of my noble friend’s introductory remarks on this amendment. I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said because I wonder whether the wording in the government amendment is as precise as it is intended to be. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute—I refer to my interests in terms of trading standards—says that a correct definition, if you mean just weights and measures authorities, would be,
“a local weights and measures authority”,
in Great Britain,
“within the meaning set out in section 69 of the Weights and Measures Act 1985”.
The Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland may enforce within its area, rather than simply talking in those terms. I wonder whether a broader definition would not make sense, given that in many local authorities now the trading standards function, which is so diminished, is often spread with other responsibilities. That may be something the Government want to take away and look at to make sure that what they are trying to achieve meets the obligation.
The second point about whether this should be made a duty is important as well. People I know very well in the Chartered Trading Standards Institute try to get this both ways: they complain constantly about all the statutory duties placed on local authorities, and therefore the inability of local authorities to take them seriously, but they also say, “Here is something which ought to be a statutory duty”. The psychological effect of making it clear that the Government wish to place a responsibility on local authorities to pursue their role in this matter would be extremely helpful and valuable. If the Government were to find some way of making the resources available, so that, rather than just placing the duty, they could also ensure that local authorities had the wherewithal to take effective action, that would be extremely helpful.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, the amendments in this group are directed at a common end—namely, to support the effective enforcement of the provisions of the Bill by local authorities. Amendment 59 introduces a legal duty on local authorities to enforce the legislation in relation to the sale and delivery of bladed articles and corrosive substances.
Local authorities in England and Wales already regulate the sale of bladed articles using general powers in Section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972. Under that section, where a local authority considers it expedient for the promotion or protection of the interests of the inhabitants of its area, it may prosecute, defend or appear in legal proceedings and, in the case of civil proceedings, may institute them in its own name.
There is no reason why local authorities could not use the general powers under the Local Government Act 1972 to enforce the provisions in the Bill in relation to the sale of corrosive products. It is also possible for the legislation in relation to sales of bladed articles and corrosive products to be enforced by the police. Consistent with these existing powers, the Government do not believe that it is necessary to impose a duty on local authorities to enforce the legislation in relation to the sale of bladed articles and corrosive products.
That is not to say that local authorities’ enforcement powers in this area cannot be strengthened. This leads me to Amendment 60, which seeks to extend the application of the investigative powers provided for in the Consumer Rights Act 2015. These powers enable local authorities to: require information from sellers; observe the carrying on of business; enter premises without warrant; inspect products; test equipment; require the production of documents; or seize and detain goods.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I am very slow today. The Minister has spent a lot of time agreeing with me and then she has not suggested that we should adopt the amendment. Is she suggesting that we should adopt the amendment or is she trying to persuade me that it is not necessary?
Baroness Barran
I am trying to persuade the noble Lord that the Government’s amendments will achieve the same aim.
Baroness Barran
Returning to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about weights and measures, I am advised that this approach goes with the grain of existing legislation. We believe that weights and measures authorities are in fact local authorities, but I will confirm that in writing.
Baroness Hamwee
When that is done, could examples —not a whole list of the grain to which the Minister refers—be given to us?
Baroness Barran
We will gladly do that.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked for more detail about the prosecution fund that was announced in the Government’s Serious Violence Strategy. The Government committed £500,000 in 2018-19 and another £500,000 in 2019-20 to support local authorities to bring prosecutions, where appropriate, in relation to age-restricted sales of knives. The prosecution fund is managed by National Trading Standards, which is the body that brings together trading standards representatives in England and Wales. The fund will be used by 11 local areas identified as having a knife crime problem to test compliance with sale of knives legislation. I think the noble Lord will be pleased to hear that Croydon is among the 11 areas since he referred to the good work that is going on there.
Amendment 86 would enable local authorities and companies to establish partnerships with the purpose of complying with the provisions in the Bill. The noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect that this amendment is aimed at extending the benefits of the primary authority scheme. The primary authority scheme was created in response to recommendations in the Hampton report published in 2005, which noted widespread inconsistencies of regulatory interpretation between different local authorities. It was introduced in April 2009. The Enterprise Act 2016 included measures to amend the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 to enable many more small businesses and pre-start-up enterprises to participate in primary authority.
The primary authority scheme provides greater regulatory consistency for businesses operating across a number of local authority areas. This is expected to improve compliance with the legislation. The scheme is based on the creation of a statutory partnership between a business and its primary authority. The primary authority acts as a key point of contact for a business that it partners with, in relation to the business’s interaction with local authorities that regulate it, known as enforcing authorities. The primary authority acts as co-ordinator of other local authority inspections of that business. The primary authority supports businesses in meeting their obligations by helping them to understand what needs to be done to achieve or maintain compliance: setting out a way of doing so, or providing information that the method of compliance chosen by the business is acceptable. For the benefit of noble Lords, I will mention that all the major supermarkets, Amazon and the Association of Convenience Stores—given that your Lordships have mentioned the importance of smaller retailers several times—are all part of the primary authority scheme. The scheme has been received positively and has had widespread uptake and support from businesses, professional bodies and local authorities. Government Amendment 82 therefore extends the scheme to the sale of bladed articles and corrosive products. Amendments 88 and 90 are consequential on the earlier amendments.
In short, the government amendments in this group achieve much the same end as the amendments in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Kennedy. On that basis I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw Amendment 59.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I shall read the Minister’s response with some care, but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to exclude from the provisions of the Bill knives that are opened using pressure from the thumb on a small protuberance on the blade (rather than a nail nick), to enable climbers, fishermen and others to make use of knives that can be opened one-handed.
Lord Lucas
In moving Amendment 61, I shall speak also to Amendment 62. Amendment 61 is intended to remove or make it clear that certain knives do not fall under the prohibition in Clause 21. There are a number of occupations and trades where it is very important to be able to have a knife that can be opened with one hand. This is often a safety-critical feature—if you are a climber, an at-sea fisherman, a parachutist or in various other trades that involve the use of ropes, you need to be able to cut and at the same time use your other hand to hold on to something. The way that is generally achieved is to have a small button looking something like a wart on the blade that you can push using the pressure of your thumb to open it; sometimes the alternative is a large opening in the blade.
I want to make sure that the Government are clear that those sorts of knives are not intended to be caught by this clause, because—coming on to the history behind Amendment 62—when Clause 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 was promulgated, allowing folding knives with blades shorter than three and a half inches, it was widely assumed that that would allow blades that locked, because nobody who is going to use a knife wants a blade that does not lock. A folding knife with a blade that does not lock is a toy—you can use it to sharpen a pencil and nothing much else safely. If you have any use for it in hobbies or business, you need a blade that will lock open. The locking requirement was introduced as a result of case law.
If the Government wish to maintain that, I would like my noble friend to make it absolutely clear that “good reason” is understood to be really quite wide. A tradesman will generally have among his tools a knife with a blade that locks, because that is all that is safe to use. You can therefore expect to find it in and about their vehicle, when their vehicle is in a public place, or when they are moving between, or might be going to, places where they will need to employ their knife.
At present, people who use knives in such ways tell me that the police are understanding, but if we reach the point of being much harder on the carrying of knives, I want to be sure that it really is understood that a locking knife is an essential tool of the trade, that people who have a trade or hobby that requires it will often have it in their possession and that the police take an understanding attitude to that at a time of heightened tension. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My noble friend and I have given notice that we oppose Clause 21 standing part of the Bill. Our concern was that expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about people who need to be able to open a knife with one hand because their other hand is otherwise engaged in the same operation. We wanted also to know how the needs of disabled people who may have the use of only one hand are to be dealt with. A button, spring or other device that the noble Lord has described seems to be exactly the sort of knife that would fall within this clause. I see a problem there, and I am glad that he has identified it more specifically than we have done. I could not quite see the way to deal with it, so I took the rather wider approach of opposing the clause standing part, but we have to pin it down in a way that satisfies everyone—and not just by the police being understanding.
Viscount Goschen
My Lords, I draw to the Committee’s attention that that this type of knife is often contained in a multi-tool type product, for which there are numerous applications. Motorists, hobbyists, farmers and all sorts of people regularly carry them. They often have small blades which, because of the multiplicity of functions within the product, are accessed by a knob or protuberance of metal. It would be regrettable if such products were caught by accident within the clause.
Perhaps I may ask the Minister a question to which I would be happy for her to reply in writing—it refers to something that we have recently passed. If an individual were to steal a knife from a shop, would they be considered to be guilty also of being in possession of that knife, of carrying it? If not, I suggest that it might be looked at in regulations and that the law should consider it a more serious offence than stealing something of the equivalent value of a Mars bar or some other food item, but it is a technical point.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank my noble friend for clearly outlining the intention of his amendments. On Amendment 61, I say from the outset that it is not the intention of Clause 21 to prohibit knives that can be opened manually. The types of knives covered by the legislation are those which can be opened automatically, from either a closed position or a partially opened position to the fully opened position. The legislation makes no reference to knives that can be opened manually and therefore those knives that can be opened with one hand using pressure from the thumb on a small protuberance, usually known as a thumb stud, do not fall under the legislation.
Amendment 62 would exempt folding knives which may be locked into position when fully extended, provided that the blade is less than three inches long. In responding to this amendment, it may assist the Committee if I briefly outline the current legislation regarding possession of bladed articles. Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes it a criminal offence to carry a knife in a public place, except for folding pocket knives if the cutting edge of the blade does not exceed three inches. Section 139(4) and (5) of the 1988 Act provide a good reason or lawful authority defence for persons to have the article with them in a public place. In addition, and without prejudice to the generality of this defence, there are specific defences where the bladed article is for use at work, in a person’s possession for religious reasons, or is part of a national costume. Therefore, if a person needs to carry a folding locking knife owing to the nature of the activity to be undertaken—for example, to participate in outdoor activities such as fishing—they can avail themselves of one of the defences provided in the legislation.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Sorry, may I intervene? I have been referring to the noble Baroness but I meant my noble friend.
Lord Lucas
I am very grateful—whoever I may be —to receive that answer, which, in respect of Amendment 61, was all the comfort I could have asked for. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I have the greatest difficulty in understanding how a person with one hand can open a modern milk bottle. There are greater tests than opening a pocket knife. I understand what my noble friend says about folding knives that can be locked open, but one very much relies on the police to take a sensible attitude to the necessary prevalence of these items among people who use knives for a purpose. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Meacher
“(1AA) A person charged with an offence under subsection (1A) who is certified by the relevant police force as being addicted to drugs must be referred for treatment to an addiction rehabilitation service, and, if they comply with their treatment, must not be referred to court.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require those charged with the offence of carrying a flick or gravity knife who are also certified by the relevant police force as being addicted to drugs to be referred to a rehabilitation service for treatment before attending court. Charges would be dropped if they complied with their treatment.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I must first apologise to the Committee that I have been horribly absent, but there was an event in the other place that I had to attend—I will not bore your Lordships with the explanation, but there really was no option.
Amendment 63 aims to ensure that vulnerable children or young people found with an offensive weapon in a public place are assessed for addiction. So many of these vulnerable children and young people are addicted to drugs. If they are found to be so addicted, they should not be processed through the criminal justice system; rather, they should be referred to a rehabilitation service for help with their addiction and related problems. Many of them are homeless and have all sorts of mental health problems and so forth. The Government have recognised that short-term prison sentences are generally unhelpful. Re-offending rates following such sentences are very high. In the case of drug addicts, a prison sentence will generally achieve—I really mean this—absolutely nothing positive, but it is very likely to increase the vulnerability and addiction, and therefore the criminal activity of these young people.
Several noble Lords attended an interesting meeting yesterday where senior police officers and a police and crime commissioner from the West Midlands explained this. I quote one of the officers, “The police cannot reduce the illegal drugs market, however many drug dealers we arrest and imprison”. That is a powerful statement on behalf of men on the front line who deal with these things day in, day out. Those people spend their lives that way. Neil Woods, who has written two books about his time as an undercover officer arresting drug dealers over many years, explained that he came to realise that he was not achieving any reduction in the availability of drugs. He was completely wasting his life away, so he changed to a very different view about how these things should be dealt with.
The police officers also talked about how much more effective alternatives to punishment are in persuading young people to back away from the illegal drugs market. Ronnie Cowan MP talked about the work in Glasgow where young people are diverted from the criminal justice system and helped to return to a normal life. Perhaps the Minister will tell the Committee whether she is familiar with the work in Glasgow. If she is not, it may be worth her looking into it before Report.
This amendment is really important from the pure efficiency point of view on reducing addiction and crime in this context, but let us also look at it from the point of view of the children and young people involved. As I said at the beginning, a very high proportion of children found carrying a knife or another offensive weapon in a public place will be vulnerable children, who have become addicted to drugs or been targeted by the drug gangs. The Children’s Commissioner estimates that at least 46,000 children in England are involved in gang activity. It is estimated that about 4,000 teenagers in London alone are being exploited through child criminal exploitation in what has come to be known as county lines. These vulnerable children should be seen as victims of trafficking and exploitation rather than as criminals.
Gangs are deliberately targeting vulnerable children. They watch for a child walking home from school day after day alone, head down, looking miserable. These children are unsafe, unloved or unable to cope for one reason or another. Gangs take advantage of their vulnerability. They threaten or trick children into trafficking their drugs for them. They may threaten a young person physically or threaten a family member. They often offer food, which the child or family may desperately need, alcohol or clothing to the child or their family in return for co-operation.
Once children have received gifts, they feel indebted to the gang. They quickly feel they have no option but to continue. As many noble Lords will know perfectly well, the gangs use these vulnerable children to store their drugs and to move cash proceeds or the drugs themselves. No doubt they give them a knife or something else to protect themselves with. The county lines groups use high levels of violence, including the ready use of firearms, knives and other offensive weapons, to intimidate and control members of the group and its vulnerable victims. The victims are exposed to varying levels of exploitation including physical, mental and sexual harm. Some of the young people are trafficked into remote markets to work. Others are falsely imprisoned in their own homes, which have been taken over using force or coercion. I must say that I had not heard of that until I read it rather recently.
The National Crime Agency report County Lines Violence, Exploitation & Drug Supply 2017 analysed the exploitation of vulnerable people, including those with mental health or physical health problems. Sixty-five per cent of police services reported that county lines activity was linked to the exploitation of children. The police know perfectly well that we are dealing with victims here. Once involved, victims may want to get out of their situation but do not want to involve the police for fear of self-incrimination or retribution by the perpetrators. They are really caught in the middle. These victims may carry a knife or other weapon for self-protection, as I have mentioned. The real question is whether they are really criminals for carrying that knife for self-protection. Other noble Lords talked about what is in the mind. These children have got a knife not to attack others, but to protect themselves. That surely makes all the difference to one’s approach to dealing with these children.
This is a very complex problem but the courts and the prison system are not the right vehicles for dealing with victims. Yes, send the gang leaders to prison, though retraining and psychological treatment will be essential for them, too, if they are not to spend their time in prison, come out of it later and then start all over again, with just a little more bitterness added to what they already had. I hope we can have a discussion—a serious discussion—before Report about drug issues in relation to the Bill. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment because it advocates one public health approach, along the lines advocated in the serious violence strategy. The sad fact is, however, that too many of the intervention and preventive measures outlined in the strategy are not sufficiently resourced and may not materialise.
Last week, the drugs, alcohol and justice cross-party group that I co-chair heard about an initiative from Thames Valley Police, about which I immediately wrote to the Home Secretary, encouraging him to take an interest in it. It is a diversion scheme—modelled on the mental health diversion scheme so successfully introduced after the report by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley—requiring those found to be in possession of drugs to attend for voluntary treatment. The interesting thing was that the constables on duty in the Thames Valley streets reported that they found it extremely simple and clear to use.
As many other noble Lords have pointed out, knife carrying is a symptom of wider social issues. Many young people carry them because they fear for their lives. However, in confirmation of my warning that too many of the intervention and preventive measures outlined in the serious violence strategy are not sufficiently resourced, the Institute of Mental Health in Nottingham —I declare an interest as a member of its external advisory board—has found that only 18% of the community commissioning groups recognise that they have any responsibility for funding probation, which includes mental health and drug treatment. This emphasises the need for this significant programme of work—words used by the Home Secretary to describe the strategy—to involve a wide range of government departments, including liaison between the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Health on this issue.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. She referred to cuckooing, which is when a vulnerable adult has someone move in who then uses their home to supply drugs. I have heard of this happening in the past among care leavers. Sometimes a local authority will provide a young person leaving care with a flat but they are vulnerable and feel isolated, so it is very easy for people to take advantage of them and start misusing their premises in that way.
I attended the meeting yesterday with the former undercover detective and a senior detective from the Midlands police force. They were talking about drugs and county lines. I asked them, “Since we are dealing in Committee with knife crime and corrosive agents, do you have any advice relating to your experience on them?”. The detectives’ response was that dealing effectively with drugs would probably be a more effective way of tackling the problem than the legislation we are working on at the moment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the Minister will expect us to support the principle of what is encompassed in this amendment. I do not need to repeat what has been said about the importance of diverting—in every sense of the word, with or without a capital “D”—people away from the criminal justice system and towards something that can help them to deal with the problem in all its manifestations. I am not quite sure about some of the wording of the clause—about the need to look at whether there has been a charge or certification by the police force—but those points do not detract from our general support for the approach.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
I agree with a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has been saying. In fact, I am involved with a charity in Gloucestershire which deals with women who would otherwise go to prison; instead, the criminal justice system sends them to us. We have three houses in Swindon, Gloucester and Somerset. Most of the women who come to us have been drug addicts and we find that in most cases their problems started when they were teenagers. We have had terrific success in treating them in our houses, giving them the chance of a much better life and of moving on. I ask the Government to think seriously about this amendment.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for affording us the opportunity to discuss her amendment and to outline the Government’s approach to tackling that combined problem of drug misuse and knives. Noble Lords will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talking about the link between knives and the growth of the drugs market. It is absolutely right that she has tabled this amendment. I pay tribute to all the work that she has done in this area and to the work done by the charity of the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, to divert vulnerable women from prison.
Clause 22 prohibits the possession in public and private of flick-knives and gravity knives. A person guilty of this offence is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months’ imprisonment, a fine or both. However, under this amendment, a person who is dependent on drugs would have charges dropped if the police refer the person to treatment and the person complies with the rehabilitation treatment. It is worth noting that Clause 25 prohibits the possession in private—the possession in public is already a criminal offence—of offensive weapons to which Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies, for example push daggers and zombie knives.
The aim of this amendment is that a person who is addicted to drugs would have charges for possession of a flick-knife or gravity knife, but not any other prohibited knife, dropped if the police refer such a person to treatment and the person complies with the rehabilitation treatment.
I know the noble Baroness and others are keen, as we all are, to deal with the underlying issue where offenders have a substance misuse problem. We will not break the cycle of offending unless we do just that. She and other noble Lords said that. I assure the noble Baroness that the Government are already taking action to address the links between drug misuse and offending. A key aim of the Government’s Drug Strategy 2017 is to take a much smarter approach to drug-related offending to address the drivers behind the crime and prevent further substance misuse and offending.
The police have a range of powers at their disposal to deal with drug-related offences in a way that is proportionate to the circumstances of the offender and the public interest. This includes the appropriate use of out-of-court disposals. We continue to encourage wider use of drug testing on arrest to support police forces in monitoring new patterns around drugs.
Baroness Meacher
The West Midlands police and crime commissioner made the point that the police do things almost outside the law, if you like, but it is quite uncomfortable. They want a change in the law to make it clear that the right thing for the police to do is to get drug-addicted young people into really good services that will move them on and get them right away from the illegal drug market. I do not think it is okay to say that the police are doing things—even though they are—because they are not really happy about it. They want the Government to lead.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
We have to get the balance right between protecting vulnerable people from becoming further involved in drugs or crime generally and criminalising some of the people who caused them to get into that life in the first place, which may involve drug abuse.
I shall outline some of the things the Government are doing, which go right to the heart of what the noble Baroness is talking about—early prevention, intervention and treatment. Noble Lords will have heard me talking about the Home Secretary’s commitment to a public health approach to drugs, taking into account all the resources that different agencies have at their disposal to tackle such problems. The noble Baroness was talking about the work in Scotland, which is very effective and very good in terms of intervention.
NHS England is rolling out liaison and diversion services across the country. They operate at police stations and courts to identify and assess people with vulnerabilities, substance misuse and mental health problems and criminality, which are quite often interlinked. They refer them into appropriate services and, where appropriate, away from the justice system altogether. If we went back 10 years, the noble Baroness could talk about the police operating aside from the law, but there is much more understanding now that early intervention and diversion are the way forward. The schemes that the NHS is currently running cover around 80% of the population in England, and we are looking to full coverage by 2021.
The Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice are working with NHS England and Public Health England to develop the community sentence treatment requirement protocol. The protocol aims to increase the use of community sentences with drug, alcohol and mental health treatment requirements as an alternative to custody, to improve health outcomes and reduce reoffending. It sets out what is expected from all involved agencies to ensure improved access to mental health and substance misuse treatment for offenders who need it. The Department of Health is currently leading an evaluation of the implementation of the protocol across five test-bed sites to inform further development.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, also talked about funding. I do not know whether he knows, but a youth endowment fund of £200 million is being introduced—quite a substantial amount of money. It will run for 10 years, so it is not a short-term approach. The fund will open shortly, so I hope that alongside some of the things we are doing, it will help us in our endeavours to tackle some of the root causes with early interventions and diversions from that type of activity. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
I shall briefly raise a matter I should have raised before. I thank the Minister for her reply, for the tone of what she said and for her recognition of the need to get to the underlying problems. I omitted to develop the concern about children and young people in care and care leavers. As the Minister will know, there is a long-standing concern about the criminalisation of young people in care and care leavers. Very few arrive into care because of criminal activity, but far too many are represented in our prisons, both as children and as adults. My noble friend Lord Laming led an inquiry into reducing the criminalisation of children, and he is concerned to see all agencies working together to keep young people—both those who have left care and those who are in it—out of the criminal justice system. What the Minister and the noble Baroness have said is helpful in this regard. But there is also a new strengthening duty on the corporate parenting responsibilities of all agencies to support young people leaving care. These are important matters to relate to this particular issue, and I thank the noble Baroness for allowing me to make those points.
Baroness Meacher
I thank the Minister very much for her thoughtful response, but she did not respond to my reference to Report stage or to whether we could do something to align this Bill with the Government’s thinking on people addicted to drugs who get into these awful situations with gangs. Does the Minister feel able to say something about what we might do between now and Report?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness. She and I have had many discussions on this subject—we have not had one for a while, so perhaps it would be worth having another. Early intervention and prevention, and a multi-agency approach to assist in diverting people away from the criminal justice system, need to be balanced with the fact that there are quite hardened criminals out there involved with drugs and gangs who we need to capture via the legislation. We need to run both in parallel.
Baroness Meacher
I thank the Minister, and could not agree with her more. In my little remarks, I also made the point that there are such hardened criminals who are turning these young people into victims. It would be good to discuss all that before Report. On that basis, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Lucas
“(2I) It is a defence for any person charged in respect of his or her conduct relating to a weapon to which this section applies—(a) with an offence under subsection (1) or (1A), or(b) with an offence under section 50(2) or 50(3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 (improper importation),to demonstrate that his or her conduct was only for the purposes of functions carried out on behalf of the Crown or of a visiting force.(2J) In this section—reference to the Crown includes the Crown in right of Her Majesty’s Government in Northern Ireland; and“visiting force” means any body, contingent or detachment of the forces of a country—(a) mentioned in subsection (1)(a) of section 1 of the Visiting Forces Act 1952; or (b) designated for the purposes of any provision of that Act by Order in Council under subsection (2) of that section,which is present in the United Kingdom (including United Kingdom territorial waters) or in any place to which subsection (2K) below applies on the invitation of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom.(2K) This subsection applies to any place on, under or above an installation in a designated area within the meaning of section 1(7) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964 or any waters within 500 metres of such an installation.(2L) It is a defence for a person charged in respect of his or her conduct relating to a weapon to which this section applies—(a) with an offence under subsection (1), or(b) with an offence under section 50(2) or (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979,to show that his or her conduct was for—(a) the purposes of theatrical performances and of rehearsals for such performances;(b) the production of films (within the meaning of Part 1 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 – see section 5B of that Act);(c) the production of television programmes (within the meaning of the Communications Act 2003 – see section 405(1) of that Act).(2M) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) or (1A) to show that the weapon in question is one of historical importance, as certified by subject matter experts from museums or auction houses or militaria experts as designated by the Secretary of State in regulations.(2N) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) or (1A) to show that the weapon in question is an antique, manufactured before 1945. (2O) For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown a matter specified in subsection (2D), (2E), (2I), (2L), (2M) or (2N) if—(a) sufficient evidence of that matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would widen the defences for those charged under the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 or the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 to cover conduct relating to a weapon for the purposes of functions carried out on behalf of the Crown or a visiting force, for the purposes of theatrical performance or filming, or in relation to a weapon of historical importance or manufactured before 1945.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, in moving Amendment 64 I shall speak to Amendment 65. The purpose of these amendments is to explore the potential for defences for the weapons covered under Clause 22 to bring them into line with the defences that are available to weapons to which Clause 24 applies. Clause 24 will cover, for instance, samurai swords. There is a substantial set of defences available under Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, so the second amendment in this group simply has the effect of closing down the relevant bit of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, and dropping all those weapons into Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act, so that we have a common set of defences whatever the particular type of weapon.
If, however, we are keeping it in Section 22, there are a number of defences that we ought to explore: first, for forces of the Crown and visiting forces, and, secondly, for theatrical use. Both of these are reasonably self-explanatory. The third defence is for items of historical importance.
Baroness Barran
I am grateful to my noble friend for his explanation of these amendments which relate to the provisions in Clause 22, updating the prohibition on flick and gravity knives. Amendment 64 seeks to widen the defences for those charged under the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 or the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 to cover conduct relating to a weapon for the purposes of functions carried out on behalf of the Crown or a visiting force, for the purposes of theatrical performance or filming, or in relation to a weapon of historical importance or which was manufactured before 1945. It may be helpful if I describe briefly the current legislation and the changes provided for in the Bill.
Section 1(1) of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 makes it a criminal offence to manufacture, sell, hire or lend a flick-knife or a gravity knife. The importation of such knives is prohibited by Section 1(2) of the Act. Clause 21 amends the 1959 Act to update the definition of a flick-knife. The current definition is quite old, and new designs are available that mimic the speed with which a flick-knife can be opened, but do not strictly fall under the existing definition. For example, in many models currently on the market, the mechanism that allows the blade to open at great speed may not be in the handle—as required by the current definition—but the knives nevertheless mimic a flick-knife.
Clause 22 extends the current offence of possession of a flick-knife or gravity knife in a public place to cover any possession, whether in a public or private place. These weapons have no legitimate use, and we believe that it is appropriate that they are prohibited both in public and in private. This will ensure that the police will be able to seize these weapons if they come across them.
Clause 22 provides a defence for a person charged with an offence under the 1959 Act if the person shows that they have the weapons in their possession for the purpose of making the knives available to a museum or gallery, or if the person is acting on behalf of a museum or gallery. We have included this defence following responses to the public consultation that informed the Bill. In relation to whether a defence should be provided for the purposes of functions carried out on behalf of the Crown or a visiting force, flick and gravity knives have been prohibited for a long time. As my noble friend would expect, we have consulted the Ministry of Defence about these provisions and it has advised us that there is no need for such a defence to cover the Armed Forces. In relation to a defence for the purpose of theatrical performance or filming, new subsection (2F) already allows the lending and hiring of flick-knives and gravity knives by museums or galleries for cultural, artistic or educational purposes.
Nor am I persuaded that a defence should be provided for items of historical importance or which were manufactured before 1945. I am concerned that this defence may be used by people who want to use these weapons in crime. Such a person may deliberately seek to acquire a knife made before 1945, or they may argue that the knife belonged to their parents or grandparents and that the weapons were manufactured before 1945. I believe that we need to be cautious and should not provide defences under this legislation that could be easily abused. I hope that my noble friend agrees with me on this point.
Amendment 65 also seeks to exclude from the ambit of the law flick and gravity knives manufactured before 1945. As I understand it, my noble friend’s intention is also to future-proof the legislation to ensure that, irrespective of the passage of time, a flick or gravity knife manufactured after 1945 can never acquire the status of an antique. Again, I hope I can persuade my noble friend that this amendment is not needed. The 1959 Act does not provide an exemption for antique flick and gravity knives. The antique exclusion applies only to weapons to which Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies, which brings me to the beginning of my noble friend’s earlier words. I accept that there is a disparity between these two provisions, but it is one that has been in place since 1988. Moreover, the prohibition on flick and gravity knives has now been in place for 60 years and has operated successfully without an exception for antique knives. That being the case, I am unpersuaded that we should now alter this approach by merging the regimes under the 1959 and 1988 Acts as the amendment seeks to do. I hope I have been able to persuade my noble friend that these amendments are unnecessary and that he will be content to withdraw them.
The Duke of Montrose
The question of exception for use for theatrical purposes was included in the 1988 Act under Section 141. Is it necessary to repeat it here?
Baroness Barran
The advice I am getting is that it is necessary because they are subject to different legislation. If that is not entirely clear I am happy to write to my noble friend.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I hope that I will have the opportunity to pursue some details of this with my noble friend afterwards. I am particularly interested in what the Government propose to do about the major item to be prohibited under this legislation, which is World War II German paratroopers’ knives. Since these are of no conceivable use—they are gravity knives but without a point—they are not something that can sensibly be used in knife crime. I do not know whether the Government intend to compensate people who are currently legal owners of these objects and let themselves in for a large bill or whether they are to be turned in without compensation, but I am happy to cover those matters in conversations between Committee and Report. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Barran
“(2A) In paragraph 1, after paragraph (s) insert—“(t) the weapon sometimes known as a “cyclone knife” or “spiral knife” being a weapon with—(i) a handle,(ii) a blade with two or more cutting edges, each of which forms a helix, and (iii) a sharp point at the end of the blade.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would make it an offence under section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to manufacture, supply or possess a weapon known as a “cyclone knife” or “spiral knife” in England and Wales or Northern Ireland.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, these amendments add a knife often referred to as a “cyclone knife” or “spiral knife” to the list of offensive weapons prohibited under Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The prohibition will apply in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Sections 141(1) and (1A) of the 1988 Act prohibit the manufacture, sale or hire, and possession in private of those offensive weapons specified in an order made under Section 141(2). Currently 19 weapons are prohibited in England, Wales and Northern Ireland under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988, with separate legislation applying in Scotland.
So-called cyclone knives are designed and manufactured in a way that has no purpose other than to cause injury. We have not been able to identify any legitimate alternative uses for such knives. The way they are marketed in the USA is purely in terms of their ability to inflict significant harm to individuals and cause maximum injury. We have also seen videos on several platforms where the weapon is promoted for its ability to pierce police armour and to leave a wound which is “difficult to stitch up”.
Although there is no evidence that these weapons are being marketed in the UK in the same way, we believe that there are no reasons why they should be on sale. There is no evidence, as yet, that cyclone knives have been used in criminal activity in the UK, although a cyclone knife was discovered by Metropolitan Police officers in a dawn raid in Lewisham in August, along with class A and class B drugs. We believe that it is right to act pre-emptively and prohibit these knives now.
In defining a cyclone knife, the most important elements are that it has a twisted blade, a point and a handle. The handle is important because we want to avoid capturing large screws and drill bits in the definition. Certain types of drill bits will have sharp edges along the length of the bit, but it is the presence of a handle that would make any item useful as a weapon. An implement with twisted blades but a blunt point would also be limited in its utility as a weapon. Finally, what distinguishes a cyclone knife from others is that it has more than one cutting edge along the length of the helix. I am sure noble Lords would agree that there is no place for such knives where their only conceivable use is as a weapon. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran
“(8) The Schedule to the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons)(Scotland) Order 2005 (SSI 2005/483) is amended as follows.(8A) In paragraph 1, after paragraph (q) insert— “(r) the weapon sometimes known as a “cyclone knife” or “spiral knife” being a weapon with—(i) a handle,(ii) a blade with two or more cutting edges, each of which forms a helix, and(iii) a sharp point at the end of the blade.”(8B) In paragraph 2”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would make it an offence under section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to manufacture, supply or possess a weapon known as a “cyclone knife” or “spiral knife” in Scotland.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 28, line 40.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 28, line 40.
Lord Tunnicliffe
“Kirpans
(1) The Criminal Justice Act 1988 is amended as follows.(2) After section 141A, insert—“141B KirpansFor the purposes of sections 139, 139A, 141 or 141A it shall be lawful for a person to possess a Kirpan for religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that the Kirpan, a mandatory article of faith for a Sikh, possessed for religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons is exempt from provisions relating to the possession of offensive weapons under the relevant sections of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
Lord Tunnicliffe
Amendment 70, tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord Kennedy, and with the support of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, would place in the Bill a provision to exempt the kirpan from the provisions relating to the possession of offensive weapons under the Criminal Justice Act. There is no question that the Sikh community is fully behind tightening the law on offensive weapons. We are all appalled by the toll that knife crime is taking on innocent young lives. The Government have responded to this issue in the Commons but I seek to go further, and that is the purpose and intention of what I am moving today.
The noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, raised the issue during the Second Reading debate, and my noble friend Lord Kennedy responded to those legitimate concerns in his speech. Observance of the Sikh faith for practising Sikhs requires adherence to keeping what I understand is called the five Ks, one of which is to wear a kirpan. Larger kirpans are used on many religious occasions such as during Sikh wedding ceremonies. It is fair to say that noble Lords in all parties and on the Cross Benches would be concerned if restrictions in this Bill had unintended consequences for the Sikh community in observing and practising their faith or caused upset or concern where a member of the community was using a kirpan for ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons.
My first ask of the Minister is that she meet my noble friend Lord Kennedy, the noble Lord, Lord Singh of Wimbledon, and representatives of the Sikh community. In asking for a meeting, I put on record that the status quo is not adequate, as it only provides a defence of religious reasons if a person is charged with a criminal offence. It does not cover other reasons such as ceremonial, historical or sporting, where kirpans are offered as gifts to dignitaries. The status quo only provides a defence if a person is charged—the amendment in the name of my noble friend will provide an exemption for the possession of kirpans. The amendment will provide specific reference in the law for the kirpan, which Sikhs have been calling for. Sikhs are a law-abiding community who make a wonderful contribution to the United Kingdom. However, the community still faces difficulties in workplaces, education and in leisure with their kirpans, and this amendment will provide great assistance in education about the kirpan. I beg to move.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. I shall give just a little background. Sikhs are sometimes referred to as a martial race. The description is wrong on two counts: we are neither martial, nor are we a race. Sikh teachings criticise all notions of race or caste, emphasising that we are all equal members of one human race.
The martial assumption comes from the fact that Sikhs have had to endure being a persecuted minority for many years—at one time, there was a price on the head of every Sikh caught dead or alive. Sikhs have had to develop dexterity with a sword to survive, and, importantly, to protect the weak and vulnerable of other communities in society. Kirpan, the Sikh word for sword, means “protector”, and figures prominently in religious practice and ceremony.
This amendment is particularly necessary to protect the Sikh tradition of presenting a kirpan as a token of esteem. Recipients have included royalty, a former Speaker of the Commons and a police chief. Sikhs are grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Tunnicliffe, for introducing this amendment and for a large measure of cross-party support.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I will also speak to the amendment initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. As a member of the Sikh community, I know that the kirpan is an important part of our identity. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, rightly pointed out, it is part of the five Ks, particularly for all practising Sikhs.
Adding to what the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, the Sikh community is one of the most law-abiding in this country. This symbol is often very well hidden when worn; it is there as a symbol and nothing more. As the noble Lord, Lord Singh, said, it is often gifted to those who come offering friendship to us. I hope that, given its essence as part of the Sikh community’s cultural identity, this will be one area around which we will all coalesce. I know that both my noble friends take these cultural issues seriously, as does the Home Secretary, and we need to try to find a way of being able to ensure that the Sikh community does not feel that it has not been heard properly by Parliament. I hope that, when the Sikh community comes, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, will extend his invitation to all Members who are interested in meeting with them.
Lord Sheikh (Con)
My Lords, I begin by saying that I agree with Amendment 70. The amendment seeks to protect the tradition of the kirpan and those who possess it. It permits individuals to possess the kirpan for,
“religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons”.
There is disquiet among those in the Sikh community, who feel that their right to possess a kirpan is being threatened, and they need assurances to be able to do so. There needs to be a comprehensive solution which is acceptable to the Sikh community.
I was born and brought up in east Africa, where there were people of different religions and racial backgrounds. I learned to speak several languages and developed an understanding and respect for all religions. I am actively involved in promoting harmony and peace between various racial and religious groups. Although I am a Muslim, I am a patron of non-Muslim associations, including the Sikh Forum and the British Sikh Association. I am also the chairman of Guru Nanak Worldwide, which promotes the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of the Sikh religion.
I have a strong connection with the Sikhs and have visited their temples, which are called gurdwaras, on numerous occasions. I have studied Sikhism and have written a book on the life and times of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In this book, I have included some principles of the Sikh religion and also mentioned the teachings of the 10 Sikh gurus. The 10th and last human guru was Guru Gobind Singh Ji, who transformed the Sikh faith. In 1699, he created the Khalsa, a community of the faithful who wore visible symbols of his faith and trained as warriors. Today, the Khalsa community comprises a significant proportion of the Sikh community. As has been mentioned, Guru Gobind Singh Ji also proclaimed five kakars, which were kacha, karha, kesh, kanga and kirpan.
Sikhs are proud of the five Ks and therefore comply with what has been proclaimed. The kirpan represents the values of the Sikh faith and is an essential article of faith for the Khalsa Sikhs. The kirpan is curved, contained in a sheath. It is often made of steel or iron and can be of varying sizes. It is normally worn in a strap, which is called a gatra. In the Sikh community, the kirpan is used for ceremonial and cultural practices such as during weddings and processions. It is also used in martial arts and can be given as a gift. In fact, I was presented with a kirpan in Amritsar when I visited the Golden Temple. My family’s connection with Amritsar goes back nearly 200 years, so I was privileged to be presented with a kirpan, among other items, in the Golden Temple.
The UK as a whole has a long history with the Sikhs, stemming from colonial India and the World Wars. We recently celebrated the centenary of the Armistice ending the First World War, and I have spoken in your Lordships’ House on the contribution of the soldiers from the sub-continent of India. India raised an army of over 1 million soldiers, 20% of whom were Sikhs. We owe gratitude to the Sikhs for the sacrifices they have made to preserve our way of life. This amendment is an opportunity to provide a specific defence for those who possess—I emphasise “possess”, as they do not necessarily wear it—the kirpan.
I cannot recall any occasion where a Sikh possessing the kirpan has used it as an offensive weapon and caused physical harm to anyone. This afternoon, in fact, I spoke to an ex-commander of the Metropolitan Police who verified what I say; it has not been used as an offensive weapon by the Sikhs. I therefore feel that a kirpan should not be deemed an offensive weapon and provision must be made for that in this legislation. As has been mentioned, the Sikhs are law-abiding people. The kirpan needs to be exempted from the relevant sections of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I support this amendment, which is why I added my name to it. There is little that I can usefully add because, as members of the Sikh community, the noble Lord, Lord Singh, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, have already articulated exactly why this amendment should be accepted. I hope that the Government can accept it.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for setting out the case for exempting all kirpans from the relevant provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. I can reassure him from the outset that both I and my noble friend Lady Williams would be delighted to meet representatives of the Sikh Council UK and other noble Lords as the noble Lord sees fit to discuss their concerns.
Before I go on, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, and my noble friend—
Lord Singh of Wimbledon
Could I just correct that to the Network of Sikh Organisations, not the Sikh Council?
Baroness Barran
I thank the noble Lord for the correction. The spirit of my comment is that we will respect whoever he feels it is appropriate for the Minister and me to meet. I also thank him for his very helpful introduction, which gave us a sense of the historical context of the discrimination that Sikhs have faced over the years, despite their values, which he outlined for us. I thank also my noble friend Lady Verma for her explanation of the importance of the kirpan to the cultural identity of the Sikh community.
While I have great sympathy for the issue raised by noble Lords, a key difficulty with this amendment is how to define a kirpan in legislation in a way that does not open up a glaring loophole that could be readily exploited. A kirpan is only a kirpan in relation to Sikh culture and faith, otherwise it is simply a knife or a sword. In our discussions with the Sikh community, it was made clear that there is no such thing as a standard kirpan. They can come in all forms: some have curved blades and some do not; some have long blades, while others have short blades. The fundamental problem with the noble Lord’s amendment is that it depends on a legally sound definition of a kirpan which until now simply does not exist. The only thing that distinguishes a kirpan from other swords and knives is its use for religious purposes.
Under Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 it is already a defence to possess a bladed article, including a kirpan, in a public place with good reason or lawful authority. The legislation is clear that good reason includes religious reasons. Similarly, Section 139A of the 1988 Act, which prohibits possession of a bladed article or offensive weapon on school premises, includes a good reason defence which again includes religious reasons. As the noble Lord is aware, Clause 25 amends the Criminal Justice Act (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988 to provide a religious reasons defence for the possession in private of weapons covered by Section 141 of the 1988 Act, which can include large ceremonial kirpans where they have a curved blade of more than 50 centimetres.
The possession of kirpans for religious reasons is therefore covered under all of the possession offences. In addition to religious reasons, the offences include other defences—for example, for re-enactment activities and sporting purposes, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, and for items of historic importance—but these are not just aimed at kirpans.
Finally, we should be clear that when a kirpan is possessed for non-religious reasons it should be treated like any other bladed article. Crime is unfortunately committed by all parts of our society including, sadly, the Sikh community. Just because something is claimed to be a kirpan does not mean it cannot be used as a weapon, and it is quite right, for example, that the police might want to question why someone is carrying a ceremonial kirpan at three in the morning if they are hanging around a former partner’s home. Clearly Sikhs should be able to own and carry kirpans in public and use them in Sikh martial arts where this is part of their faith. The law already provides for that.
Baroness Verma
I hope I can be helpful to my noble friend. The kirpan is worn as part of the five Ks. We do not carry the kirpan in any other form. It is worn. Where the difficulty will lie is that it is always worn for religious purposes. People who are practising Sikhs have to have it as part of their five Ks. I am looking to the noble Lord, Lord Singh, who is much more experienced in this than I am, as I do not know how we would be able to differentiate the carrying from the wearing for religious purposes. I understand what my noble friend says about gifting it to a non-practising Sikh when it could be seen as a weapon, but in worship through the Sikh faith the kirpan is worn as a religious item. I hope that clarifies this rather than muddying the waters.
Baroness Barran
I thank my noble friend for her helpful explanation. I hope we can explore these things in detail when we meet, before too long, I hope.
The Sikh Federation (UK) and the Sikh Council UK raised concerns via the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Sikhs about the provisions.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon
I wish to put in context that the Sikh Federation (UK) is not a representative body of the Sikh community. Concerns have been raised by the Network of Sikh Organisations. They are trying to capitalise and muddy the waters. It would be helpful if the Government dealt with the Network of Sikh Organisations, which represents the vast part of the Sikh community.
Baroness Barran
I thank the noble Lord for his advice. As I mentioned earlier, the spirit of our meeting is that we will take his steer on who we should talk to about this. The point I raised simply reflected the fact that those organisations raised concerned with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on UK Sikhs about the provisions in the Bill.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon
The All-Party Parliamentary Group and the Sikh Federation are one and the same thing. They are exactly the same, and everyone knows it.
Baroness Barran
I thank the noble Lord for clarifying that point. Concerns were raised on the possession of long kirpans. As a result, the Government amended the Bill to include a defence for religious reasons rather than religious ceremonies, which is narrower. No concerns were raised in relation to any other provisions of the Criminal justice Act. Moreover, members of the Sikh community have been able to carry kirpans in public, including long kirpans, in religious parades—I am not sure whether that addresses my noble friend’s earlier point—and the Bill will not change that. I am therefore not persuaded that a wholesale exemption for kirpans from the provisions in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 is needed. I fully understand the importance the Sikh community attaches to this issue. Indeed, I understand it better thanks to the interventions of noble Lords. With the reassurance of a future meeting, I hope I have been able to persuade the noble Lord that we have the balance right and that he will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Tunnicliffe
This takes me back to those heady days when we had a Labour Government and I was a lowly Whip. That sounds like a very Treasury counterargument. One day when I was handling a particular clause, I was told that it was impossible to frame the legislation to meet the need. I said, from my lowly position in the massive meeting, “You’d better try because otherwise you will get the words that are in the amendment because it will pass at the next stage”. At that, there was a great writing of things and, lo and behold, the Government managed to find an amendment which was satisfactory. I strongly recommend that the Government make an intense effort to frame an amendment of their own which meets the across-the-board support for the spirit of this amendment.
Lord Paddick
Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment, it should be said that concerns are being expressed at the impression being given by the Government of there being no room for negotiation on this issue. I hope that they will at least approach that meeting with an open mind rather than giving the impression, as might be inferred from what the Minister has said from the Dispatch Box, that there is no room for manoeuvre.
Baroness Barran
I can reassure the noble Lord that the Government will approach the meeting with an open mind. I tried to be clear that the key issue is achieving a specific definition for a kirpan, which we will obviously make every effort to work with. We will see whether that is possible.
Lord Sheikh
I have had representations from various Sikhs in the past few days—not members of the association but ordinary Sikhs—asking me to speak on this subject. They feel very strongly about it. What is being asked for is reasonable. As I said, there is great disquiet among Sikhs that this is happening. I therefore suggest to my noble friend that she enter dialogue and not close the door. That would be greatly appreciated by the community—I do not necessarily mean the association; the noble Lord, Lord Singh, has already alluded to that. Let us have a discussion with the community to see whether an amicable settlement can be reached that is acceptable to it. I speak as a Muslim and not as a Sikh.
Baroness Barran
I hear the concerns of several noble Lords. I reassure them again that we will enter the conversation with a very open mind.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I cannot remember the last time I had such broad-based support. I feel that I need to bask in it for a few seconds, but enough is enough. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Wednesday 6th February 2019
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 149-III Third marshalled list for Grand Committee (PDF) - (4 Feb 2019)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, we have started a little late for the obvious reason that people cannot be in two places at once. I must make the normal announcement that if there is a Division in the House, the Committee will immediately adjourn for 10 minutes.
Clause 26: Surrender of prohibited offensive weapons
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I have given notice of our intention to oppose the question that this clause should stand part of the Bill. I will also speak to Amendments 71 and 72. Clause 28 would change current legislation in terms of the risk that must be present for an offence of threatening someone with an offensive weapon to be proved. Currently, the person threatening must do so in such a way that there is an immediate threat of serious physical harm. The Bill changes this level of risk to what a reasonable person would think was an immediate threat of physical harm, not serious physical harm—it is only a perceived threat and not an actual threat.
In their joint briefing, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice and the Prison Reform Trust point out that the new definition is a much lower threshold for conviction. The person being threatened does not have to be present or at actual risk of harm. Previously, there had to be an immediate threat of occasioning grievous bodily harm; now, it is an undefined level of physical harm, and the “reasonable person” test is vague.
Clause 28 relates to offences in public places and Clause 29 to offences on further education premises. I question why these offences are needed at all. Section 3 of the Public Order Act 1986 states that a person is guilty of an offence,
“if he uses or threatens … violence towards another and his conduct is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety”.
An affray may be committed in private as well as in public, and a person guilty of affray is liable to a maximum sentence of three years in prison or a fine, or both. Can the Minister explain which parts of these new offences are not covered by the offence under Section 3 of the 1986 Act?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for affording the Committee the opportunity to debate the provisions in the Bill updating the offences of threatening with an offensive weapon. It may assist the Committee if I briefly explain the provisions in Section 1A of the Protection of Crime Act 1953 and Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and then explain why we have brought forward changes to these provisions. I will also cover Section 3.
Section 1A of the 1953 Act provides for an aggravated possession offence where the person in possession of the weapon threatens another person with the weapon in a public place. Section 139AA of the 1988 Act similarly provides for an aggravated possession offence where the person in possession of an article with a blade or point threatens another person with the article in a public place or on school premises.
Unlike the offences in Section 1 of the 1953 Act and Section 139 of the 1988 Act, which are simple possession offences, where a person is convicted of an offence under Section 1A of the 1953 Act or Section 139AA of the 1988 Act, the court must, in the case of an adult, impose a custodial sentence of at least six months’ imprisonment, unless it would be unjust to do so. The power to make a community order is not available in circumstances where the mandatory minimum sentence condition is met.
It is an essential element of these aggravated offences that the defendant threatened the victim with the weapon,
“in such a way that there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm to the victim”,
as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, explained. However, the view of the Crown Prosecution Service is that the requirement that the defendant threatens with the weapon or article,
“in such a way that there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm to that other person”,
sets too high a bar to prosecution and does not take proper account of the effect of the threat on the victim.
The noble Lord will be aware that in the 12 months to September 2018 there were just under 13,500 offences resulting in a caution or conviction for possession of an article with a blade or point and just under 7,000 for possession of an offensive weapon, but only 958 for threatening with a knife or offensive weapon. I hope the noble Lord will agree that fewer than 1,000 offences of threatening compared with more than 20,000 possession offences does not appear to be an accurate reflection of what is happening on our streets, where we are seeing one homicide a week in London as a result of knife crime. The noble Lord will be aware that this point was made by the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the north-east, Andrew Penhale, when giving evidence in another place.
The penalty for the offence of affray, which the noble Lord referred to, is three years’ imprisonment or a fine, or both. The penalty for threatening with an offensive weapon is four years. The Government consider that that reflects the seriousness of using an offensive weapon to threaten an individual. Importantly, the Government also believe that it is fairer to the victim that the test be based on how a reasonable person in the victim’s place would respond to such a threat, not on whether the victim was objectively at risk of immediate harm. The reference in Clause 28 to the effect on a reasonable person removes the element of subjectivity on the part of the person threatened. We believe that the replacement objective test is more appropriate in the context of these aggravated offences.
Striking out Clause 28 and amending Clause 29, as the noble Lord seeks to do, would maintain the current test of what constitutes risk of physical harm for these aggravated possession offences. However, I put it to the noble Lord that these offences were introduced to protect victims threatened with offensive weapons and ensure that offenders are appropriately punished. Clauses 28 and 29 will ensure that the victim’s point of view is put at the heart of these offences. I hope that I have been able to persuade the noble Lord of the case for the new test and that he will support Clause 28 standing part of the Bill.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend say how many offences are committed annually on further education premises, which are the subject of Clause 29? Further education premises are a place where perhaps a majority of the people have an offensive weapon, as defined in the Bill, as part of what they need to do their training. If someone is spending their day with a screwdriver because they are on an electronics course and someone comes up and kicks them in the butt, and they turn round with the screwdriver in their hand, under the amended provision, they will be in chokey for it. We do not seem to have incorporated in it any defence which says that the person had the weapon for perfectly good reasons and was using it for perfectly good reasons when somebody else did something which caused the threatening situation. In public, one does not come across this often, but in an FE college it is a routine occurrence. I cannot see that we should criminalise arguments in FE colleges without there being some reasonable defence.
Baroness Barran
I thank my noble friend for his question. As we are including FE colleges for the first time in the legislation, we do not have the data as yet, but that will be captured in future. We have the data on schools and public places, which I am happy to share with my noble friend. On his last comment, there is no intention of criminalising arguments. We are talking about people in possession of an offensive weapon and threatening someone else with it in such a way that any one of us—assuming that we are all reasonable people—would assume that there was a risk of physical harm.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, if you are waving a screwdriver about, there is a risk of physical harm, which is the point of the old wording of “serious physical harm”: to rule out such a random occurrence. In public places, in schools, by and large people do not handle physical, offensive weapons openly. In a further education college, a lot of people will be, because it will be part of what they are required to do. Nobody doing anything serious with a knife uses a blade that does not lock. Anybody using a screwdriver or other pointed implement will be using something that will be classified, or is capable of being classified, as an offensive weapon. We should make sure that somebody reasonably having in their hands an offensive weapon because they are using it at the moment when the flash of an argument starts does not become the cause for a mandatory prison sentence. There has to be the scope for a court to take a sensible view of what is going on. It is not like a school; it is an environment where offensive weapons are routine and where a lot effort goes into making sure that people use them safely. Common sense needs to be applied when considering whether it is an offence with a bladed weapon or just an argument taking place when one or both of the parties happen to be holding an offensive weapon, because that is what they were supposed to be doing at the time the argument started.
Baroness Barran
I hope that I can reassure my noble friend on two points: first, the spirit of the legislation is not to criminalise people in the way that he has described; secondly, the sentencing guidelines were updated relatively recently, in June last year, and give multiple scenarios for the courts to consider in sentencing—which I think would allay my noble friend’s fears.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister remind us of the youngest age to which these provisions apply? I remind her that it is the effect of the legislation, not the intention, that matters.
Baroness Barran
The youngest age to which the provisions apply is 10—the standard age of criminal responsibility.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, I invite the Minister to look at proposed new subsection (1A)(b) under Clause 29(2) on page 31 of the Bill, where there is reference to unlawfulness and intention.
Baroness Barran
I thank my noble and learned friend for helpfully pointing out that detail.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her explanation, most of which does not seem to hold water. She said that under the existing offence, someone can only get six months in prison, so they are unable to get a community sentence. However, an offence of affray carries a three-year sentence; therefore, you can give a community sentence to somebody convicted of affray.
The Minister also said that existing offences under the Prevention of Crime Act and the Criminal Justice Act set the bar too high, evidenced by only 958 offences of threatening and almost one homicide per week. If a knife makes contact with somebody, that is a substantive offence, probably of grievous bodily harm or wounding, possibly with intent. Inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent carries a maximum life sentence, so the number of instances where somebody threatens but does not make contact is likely to be small, but the number of offences where somebody is found in possession of a weapon—perhaps in their pocket—and is not threatening another person is likely to be high. The number of offences of GBH or, regrettably, homicide is likely to be high. That is the plausible explanation for why the number of offences of threatening is low, rather than the evidential bar being set too high for the existing offences.
However, the only reason why the offence of affray does not provide a legitimate and reasonable alternative to the Government’s proposals here is that one carries a sentence of three years and the other a sentence of four years. Of course, that could easily be amended by increasing the maximum sentence for the offence of affray. An objective test is included in the offence of affray under the Public Order Act. I am afraid that apart from the difference in the length of sentences, all the reasoning seems to fall away, bearing in mind that an offence of affray can be committed in private as well as in public so the offence would apply in FE colleges, schools and public places. However, I will not pursue the matter any further at this stage.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Offence of threatening with a non-corrosive substance
(1) A person commits an offence if they threaten a person with a substance they claim or imply is corrosive.(2) It is not a defence for a person to prove that the substance used to threaten a person was not corrosive or listed under Schedule 1 to this Act.(3) In this section, “threaten a person” means that the person—(a) unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person (“A”) with the substance, and(b) does so in such a way that a reasonable person (“B”) who was exposed to the same threat as A would think that there was an immediate risk of physical harm to B.(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would create a new offence for those threatening with a non-corrosive substance that they claim or imply is corrosive.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, Amendment 73 seeks to add a new clause to the Bill concerning threatening someone with a non-corrosive substance; as we have heard, it is known as a fake acid attack. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe first raised this matter at Second Reading in your Lordships’ House.
We all know that acid attacks are horrific. They give the victim a life sentence of disfigurement, pain and mental anguish, and they need great courage and resilience to overcome that and rebuild their lives. The noble Lord, Lord Bethell, who was in the Room earlier, knows a lot about victims of acid attacks, particularly through the charity work he does.
The threat of an acid attack strikes absolute fear into a person. The person being threatened has no idea that the substance in the bottle in front of them is not real and not corrosive—that it could just be water. They feel the same distress, anguish and fear that the victim of a real attack would feel at that point. This amendment would create a new offence to deal with these fake acid attacks. While the substance itself is not dangerous, it is the fear we seek to address here. We can draw parallels with people pulling out fake guns. Most people would not know whether a gun was real—you would still be very scared if someone was pointing a gun at you. We need to look at that issue.
The offence in question would be a summary offence, and at this stage the amendment is a probing amendment, as I am very keen to hear the Government’s attitude to this issue and how they think it can be dealt with. This is a real issue; fake attacks do happen. I look forward to the debate and the Government’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Garnier
My Lords, I fully appreciate the intention behind the noble Lord’s proposed new clause. Personally, I have a concern about filling up our statute book with more and more criminal offences, particularly when they replicate existing crimes. It is already an offence to threaten violence. I take the point he makes about replica, fake or toy guns, but might not his better route be to invite the Government to amend the law to increase the penalties for this sort of behaviour or to allow this sort of offence to be dealt with—if it is not already—in the Crown Court, where the sentencing powers are greater, rather than as a summary offence? To fill up—for no doubt worthy purposes—the criminal law with more and more offences that just replicate existing offences strikes me as unfortunate. There may be a better route than the one the noble Lord is advocating.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, for supporting what I said in the last group of amendments—albeit he has saved his comments for this group. My argument is that perfectly good legislation is on the statute book, and the additional offence concerning further education premises that the Government are creating in this Bill is unnecessary. To coin a phrase, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Would the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, not agree that Section 3 of the Public Order Act, which states that a person is guilty of an offence,
“if he uses or threatens … violence towards another and his conduct is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety”,
completely encapsulates the circumstances he is talking about in his proposed new offence? That offence, as I have said before, carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison, a fine, or both.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for explaining his amendment, which he went through at Second Reading. I cannot say that I disagree with the sentiment behind it, because we all know of cases where people have been threatened with fake acid. I also remember the spate of fake gun attacks a few years ago. When the person states that the substance is corrosive and it is not, that adds to the victim’s distress—there is absolutely no doubt about it—and such things cannot be tolerated. But as my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, pointed out, criminal offences are already available that allow such fake acid attacks to be dealt with. Perhaps I should outline some of them.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for her response. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for their contributions to this short debate; both made reasonable points. I am not in favour of filling up the statute book with lots of laws; I have often thought that we should be consolidating more legislation. Legislation is sometimes confusing for ourselves, let alone members of the public. However, I tabled the amendment to highlight this offence. Young people in particular can often get involved in these situations without realising that they are guilty of an offence, and we must find a way of ensuring that they understand that. I will leave it at that at this stage, but I may come back to the issue on Report. I am grateful to everyone who spoke in the debate, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“PART 5KNIFE CRIME PREVENTION ORDERSKnife crime prevention orders made otherwise than on convictionKnife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction
(1) A court may make a knife crime prevention order under this section in respect of a person aged 12 or over (the “defendant”) if the following conditions are met.(2) The first condition is that a person has, by complaint to the court, applied for a knife crime prevention order under this section in accordance with section (Requirements for application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction)).(3) The second condition is that the court is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that, on at least two occasions in the relevant period, the defendant had a bladed article with them without good reason or lawful authority—(a) in a public place in England and Wales,(b) on school premises, or(c) on further education premises.(4) In subsection (3) “the relevant period” means the period of two years ending with the day on which the order is made; but an event may be taken into account for the purposes of that subsection only if it occurred after the coming into force of this section.(5) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3), a person has good reason for having a bladed article with them in a place mentioned in that subsection if the person has the article with them in that place—(a) for use at work,(b) for educational purposes,(c) for religious reasons, or(d) as part of any national costume.(6) The third condition is that the court thinks that it is necessary to make the order—(a) to protect the public in England and Wales from the risk of harm involving a bladed article,(b) to protect any particular members of the public in England and Wales (including the defendant) from such risk, or(c) to prevent the defendant from committing an offence involving a bladed article.(7) A knife crime prevention order under this section is an order which, for a purpose mentioned in subsection (6)—(a) requires the defendant to do anything described in the order;(b) prohibits the defendant from doing anything described in the order.(8) See also—(a) section (Provisions of knife crime prevention order) (which makes further provision about the requirements and prohibitions which may be imposed by a knife crime prevention order under this section),(b) section (Requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes further provision about the inclusion of requirements in a knife crime prevention order under this section), and(c) section (Duration of knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes provision about the duration of a knife crime prevention order under this section).(9) Section 127 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 (time limits) does not apply to a complaint under this section. (10) In this section—“court”—(a) in the case of a defendant who is under the age of 18, means a magistrates’ court which is a youth court, and(b) in any other case, means a magistrates’ court which is not a youth court;“further education premises” means land used solely for the purposes of—(a) an institution within the further education sector (within the meaning of section 91 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992), or(b) a 16 to 19 Academy (within the meaning of section 1B of the Academies Act 2010),excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution or the 16 to 19 Academy;“public place” includes any place to which, at the time in question, the public have or are permitted access, whether on payment or otherwise;“school premises” means any land used for the purposes of a school, excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the school; and “school” has the meaning given by section 4 of the Education Act 1996.”Member’s explanatory statement
This Clause and the other amendments of the Minister to insert new Clauses after Clause 31 would make provision for knife crime prevention orders and interim knife crime prevention orders imposing requirements and prohibitions on defendants and subjecting them to certain notification requirements. The proposal is that the Clauses should become Part 5 of the Bill and the Bill should be divided into Parts when it is reprinted.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the new clauses to be inserted into the Bill by Amendments 73A to 73U introduce knife crime prevention orders. These new civil preventative orders will provide the police with the powers they need to more effectively manage people engaged, or at risk of engaging, in knife crime and help steer them away from crime.
As noble Lords in the Committee will agree, knife crime is devastating for victims, their families and for our communities. We must do all that we can to combat this epidemic. The latest police recorded crime figures, published by the Office for National Statistics in January for the year ending September 2018, show that there were 39,818 knife-related offences—an 8% increase compared with the previous year. Noble Lords will not have failed to notice the headlines in the Evening Standard on Monday.
The number of homicides where a knife or sharp instrument was used has increased by 10% in the last year to 276 offences. Of all recorded homicides in the latest data, over four in 10 involved a knife or sharp instrument. That proportion is higher than the previous year when the figure was 37%. Police-recorded offences involving the,
“possession of an article with a blade or point” ,
rose by 18% to 19,644 in the year ending September 2018. That rise is consistent with increases seen over the last five years and is the highest figure since the series began in the year ending March 2009.
The total number of homicides in London in 2018 was 134. The Metropolitan Police had the largest volume increase, accounting for 35% of the total increase. In 2017, there were a total of 116 homicides.
It is vital that the police have the powers they need to prevent knife crime and protect the public from the devastating effects of violent crime on our streets. It is already too late when we prosecute young people for knife crime. The police have asked for a new order which will help them to manage those at risk of knife crime in their communities.
Knife crime prevention orders will provide the police with the powers they need to steer people away from knife crime, where there is evidence that they carry a knife. The orders are aimed at those young people most at risk of engaging in knife crime, people the police call “habitual knife carriers” of any age, and those who have been convicted of a violent offence involving knives. Their simple purpose is to help protect the public, and to help respondents leave a dangerous lifestyle involving knife-related crime. In the case of young people, the police may have intelligence that a young person routinely carries a knife but, for a variety of reasons, they have been unable to charge them with a possession offence. Before risky behaviour escalates, a KCPO could be in place to divert a person away from a life of prolific offending.
People whom the police deem to be habitual knife carriers could also benefit from KCPOs. These are people who may have previous convictions for knife crime, or on whom the police have intelligence that they regularly carry knives. The KCPO would enable the police to manage the risk of future offending. This is the cohort that the police see as their main target for these orders. It is estimated that there are some 3,000 habitual knife carriers across England and Wales. The orders will enable the courts to place restrictions on individuals such as curfews and geographical restrictions, but also requirements such as engaging in positive interventions. KCPOs are not a punishment, but a means to support the individual who is subject to an order to stay away from crime.
It may be helpful if I explain how the order will work. KCPOs are available on application and on conviction. An application for a KCPO can be made by a relevant chief police officer to a magistrates’ court or, in the case of young people, the youth court. A court dealing with an application may make a KCPO only if two conditions are met. The first is that the court is satisfied to the civil standard—on the balance of probabilities—that the defendant had a bladed article, without good reason, in a public place or education premises, on at least two occasions in the preceding two years. The second condition is that the court considers the order necessary to protect the public or prevent the defendant committing an offence. An application can be made with or without notice, but it will be made without notice only on an exceptional basis. If an application is made without notice to the defendant, the court may only make an interim order, which will take effect on service and will last until a full hearing takes place.
A KCPO is also available on conviction following an application from the prosecution, and where two conditions are met. The first condition is that the defendant is convicted of a relevant offence. This means a violent offence, or an offence where a bladed article was used by the defendant or another in the commission of the offence, or the defendant or another had a bladed article with them when the offence was committed. The second condition is, again, that the court considers the order necessary to protect the public or prevent the defendant committing an offence.
A KCPO may require a defendant to do anything described in the order, and/or prohibit the defendant from doing anything described in the order. The KCPO can include any reasonable prohibition or requirement which the court is satisfied is necessary, proportionate and enforceable. A KCPO which imposes a requirement must specify a person who is responsible for supervising compliance with the requirement. For instance, if the requirement is attendance of a knife awareness intervention, the person designated to supervise compliance may be the youth worker providing the intervention.
KCPOs will have a maximum duration of two years and must be reviewed by the courts after 12 months. KCPOs issued to under-18s are expected to be subject to more regular reviews. There are provisions for variation, renewal or discharge of KCPOs on application by the defendant or the police. There are also provisions for appeal against the making of the order. A breach of the order without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence subject to a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.
KCPOs are closing a gap in the law that has hindered the police in taking an active rather than a reactive approach to diverting people away from knife crime and managing the risk of knife crime offending. They provide an opportunity to take a proactive and preventive approach, re-engaging with them at an early stage and helping to protect those most at risk of using knives and, of course, of falling victim to them.
There are other civil orders available, such as gang injunctions and criminal behaviour orders, but not all individuals in the targeted cohort are gang members. Criminal behaviour orders could be used in some cases, but such orders are available only when a court is sentencing a person for an offence. It is important that the police have the right tools for the right situations and can make use of them.
Of course, the police have a range of powers to deal with knife crime, including the existing offence of possessing a bladed article in public without good reason, and stop and search powers under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. However, given the unacceptable scale of knife crime, it is important that the police have a broad sweep of possible powers to use as circumstances dictate. KCPOs will be a valuable addition to the tools available to the police to disrupt harmful behaviours, while avoiding the premature criminalisation of individuals. We expect them to be targeted at a relatively small but high-risk cohort.
This Government are determined to do all that we can to protect the public and keep people safe. This is why we are redoubling our efforts to end this senseless crime. The introduction of KCPOs has been welcomed by the National Police Chiefs Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners. On behalf of the NPCC, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Duncan Bell said:
“The introduction of knife crime prevention orders will provide us with further means to help deter young people from becoming involved in knife possession and knife crime”,
while West Yorkshire’s Labour PCC has said that he fully supports the new knife crime prevention orders.
I commend the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, who is not in his place, for his prescience in tabling Amendment 77, which also calls for the introduction of KCPOs. I hope one of the noble Lords on the Labour Front Bench will agree that we should grasp the opportunity provided by the Bill to legislate now for KCPOs, so that we can do everything in our power to stop the tragic loss of life and serious injury caused by knife crime that is all too evident on our streets. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me to discuss these amendments before today’s debate. It will come as no surprise to her that we vehemently oppose them and will object, should she insist on them at this stage.
Noble Lords will recall ASBOs, anti-social behaviour orders, introduced by the then Labour Government in the face of an epidemic of anti-social behaviour. They were opposed for many reasons. They were an order that could be made on the basis of the balance of probabilities against very young children with no previous convictions, yet the breach of one of those orders was a criminal offence with a custodial sentence attached. In effect, the criminal burden of proof—beyond reasonable doubt—was circumvented by making the order subject only to the civil burden of proof, while a breach of the order resulted in a criminal conviction. As a result, hundreds of young people acquired a criminal record through that unfair and unreasonable route. This was rightly seen as disproportionate, and the subsequent coalition Government—in a move championed by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May—removed ASBOs from the statute book.
Other reasons for scrapping ASBOs included their ineffectiveness in curbing anti-social behaviour, the high rate of breach of the conditions of the orders, the difficulty in monitoring compliance and the resources required to ensure their enforcement. In some communities, having an ASBO was seen as a badge of honour, and peers looked up to someone if he had acquired one.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I entirely understand why the Government feel that they have an obligation to take meaningful and effective steps to protect the public from those who use offensive weapons. Even before today’s letter in the Times, though, I already had five reasons for being extremely concerned about their proposal to introduce knife crime prevention orders, as set out in Amendments 73A to 73U. Like the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, I am concerned that the proposal should have been rushed through at such a late stage in the passage of the Bill, meaning that the proposed orders were not subject to scrutiny in the other place.
I am interested that all my reasons are shared by the Magistrates Association. First, there is no evidence that orders like these are effective at tackling harmful behaviour or will address the root causes of knife carrying, which, as many noble Lords have said at various stages during the passage of the Bill, is a symptom of wider social issues. Secondly, the orders can be imposed, on the balance of probability rather than a criminal standard of proof, on children as young as 12, which will result in the criminalisation of people who have not committed a criminal offence. Thirdly, I share the belief of the Prison Reform Trust and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice that a criminal sanction of up to two years in prison is a disproportionate sanction for a breach of a civil order. I also question the lack of any distinction between the penalty for breach by a child and by an adult, believing that a sentence of imprisonment for breach is not appropriate for children.
Fourthly, there is no detail about how much the proposed orders will cost or how they are to be resourced. Neither is there an explanation of how the very wide-ranging requirements that will be placed on individuals made subject to orders are linked to offences with bladed articles, or how courts could know what requirements are going to be effective in reducing the risk of knife crime. The already inadequate impact assessment contains no details of cost, nor has the cost of the likely increase in custody numbers due to order breaches been factored in. The Police Federation of England and Wales has questioned the capacity of the police to enforce the orders, given the impact of cuts to police budgets and resources. Its chair commented:
“How the Home Secretary thinks we have the officers available to monitor teenagers’ social media use, or check that they are at home at 10 pm, when we are struggling to answer 999 calls, is beyond me”.
Fifthly, the proposed orders seem to be the very antithesis of the public health approach to the problem—the essence of the serious violence strategy advocated by Ministers both in this House and in the other place during the passage of the Bill. Furthermore, the orders are bound to increase the already alarmingly disproportionate outcomes for black and ethnic minority young people, which many noble Lords mentioned in connection with their relationship with the criminal justice system. If we could vote in Grand Committee, I would certainly vote against the amendments and I look forward to doing so on Report.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendment although I note that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in objecting to it, said that he would support some form of order if not this particular one, which seems in principle to suggest that something needs to be done. My reasons for supporting it are the ones laid out by the Minister. First, there is clearly a problem. Even last night, a young man was murdered in London— a 19 year-old—and it continues to be a problem. The problem has not gone away.
I do not have the same recollection of ASBOs as the noble Lord. They were a response to a moral panic. There was an issue about anti-social behaviour and for a time they provided a solution. I do not think that they were such a grave intervention in young people’s lives, unless they chose to ignore the civil order that had been made by the courts. They were not criminalised by the order that gave them the ASBO, nor will this knife crime prevention order criminalise them. They will be criminalised only if they breach the order. That is an important distinction. It is then up to the court, which is unlikely always to award two years’ imprisonment. There is no minimum sentence so I believe it is up to the judge to decide in each case what to award. But as part of changing the culture it is necessary.
We have sadly seen through various generations that young men in particular have used different types of weapons. The 1953 Act, for those who remember, was intended to address Teddy boys and greasers. It is a sad reality that gangs have used weapons and sometimes we have to change the law to change that culture.
The point about resources was a fair challenge— I have only just recently made the point that the police could certainly do with far more—but the police have asked for this measure. I checked before making my comments and certainly, the Metropolitan Police feel that they could police these things. Given the numbers involved and the seriousness of the offence, they think it is manageable. Of course, nobody would deny that it is an extra burden. But if the numbers are true—3,000 people in the UK, broadly—not all of them will get these orders and clearly not all of them will breach them so the measure is not entirely unmanageable.
The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about age was fair. Nobody wants to criminalise very young people, but the sad reality is that people as young as 12 are joining gangs and they are attracted by the drugs and money that go with it. I am not sure that they make a conscious, adult, mature decision to begin that process, but it is true that they can be threatening and that should be considered. In that context, I am trying to make sure that the orders are effective, rather than claiming that they are not necessary
A knife crime protection order is a non-conviction order for someone who is found carrying a bladed item on two occasions during the relevant period. What concerns me is that they could have been carrying an offensive weapon such as acid on one occasion, which presumably contributes to this concern that they may be involved in violence. If this order is intended to reduce that risk, that should be taken into account. I know why this provision tries to keep things simple—it is a bladed item, and we are all worried about knives. Sadly, they are not the only offensive weapons that young people use.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak against this group of amendments. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said that he supported the amendments but then went through a number of reasonable concerns. That shows that the process has not been consulted on adequately; indeed, it has been consulted on only with police forces directly and not on a wider scale with the large community of people concerned about youth crime.
Previous speakers have made the same point as the many people who have approached me, and other noble Lords, no doubt, about the possible unwanted effect—some people say that it is a certain unwanted effect—of criminalising young children who breach the order. Of course, many other forms of both statutory and non-statutory intervention are available to the courts, the police and YOTs.
I speak as a London youth magistrate who regularly sits at Highbury Corner Youth Court. I see the effects of knife crime very regularly. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Sater—she is a friend but I will refer to her as “the noble Baroness” for today’s purposes—who sits in the same court as me. I know that she has true expertise in this matter. It would be easy for me to give a long, bloodcurdling list of the sort of offences I have had to consider in Highbury but I will make two simple points.
First, in the youth court, we deal with children. The court’s primary purpose is to prevent reoffending. The offenders are still children, even when they are well over six foot tall and have committed knife offences. Secondly, a large proportion of the young knife offenders I see are also victims on multiple occasions. They are frightened, as are their families. In court, they tell me that they carry knives for self-protection. They are more frightened of being attacked with a knife than they are of the possible consequences of a court intervention of one sort or another. I understand that the Bill’s purpose is to be preventive in order to break this deadly cycle of knife offences.
As I am sure most Members of the Committee have done, I read the Lammy report. Its central theme was a breakdown in trust, particularly between the BAME community and the police. I want to make a slightly different observation to that made by David Lammy. My observation of young people is that they tell adults when they feel in danger. Sometimes, but not often, they tell their parents. They tell youth workers, YOT officers and social workers. They tell people they come across in the street. If they are in school, they may tell teachers. In my experience, they even tell police officers because the officers are often—always, in fact—embedded in YOTs and tend to be very good at building good relationships with the young people who come into the YOT offices. Those officers are told when young people feel vulnerable.
This is a political forum, so it is fair to make the party-political point that the number of police officers, YOT officers, youth workers and street workers has been cut. Fewer of them are available to young people in their day-to-day lives. It is fair to say that the party opposite bears responsibility for that reduction in support for young people in Britain.
I have three questions for the Minister. In fact, she answered the first in her opening remarks, so I understand that these orders are appealable and reviewable. Secondly, are there any identifiable benefits of this order over the multitude of other orders available to us? There is no shortage of legislation. Thirdly, if this order got on to the statute book, would it be appropriate for it to be applied for after a failed criminal prosecution? We do this in other scenarios. If a domestic abuse prosecution fails, the CPS often applies for a restraining order, often against the man, and often that order is put in place. Is it possible—as far as I know, nothing prevents it—to apply these orders when there is a failed criminal prosecution?
I have received the same briefings as other noble Lords, but I thought that the one that summed up the position most succinctly and persuasively was that from the Association of YOT Managers, which made two points. First, these orders could fast-track children into having a criminal record—it will not necessarily be a sentence of two years, but a breach of the civil order will still lead to a criminal record. Secondly—all the briefing that I received says this—there may well be disproportionate effects on BAME youngsters.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
Before becoming Bishop of Newcastle, I was an archdeacon in south-east London. In my archdeaconry, sadly, was Eltham, where Stephen Lawrence died. I do not, therefore, underestimate the sheer heartbreak and devastation of knife crime, particularly when young people are involved. This crime is growing and growing. I have sat with families whose children have been victims of knife crime. I have officiated at a funeral where that has been the case. The circles of devastation and heartbreak just go on and on. I do not underestimate the seriousness of this problem; nevertheless, I object to this amendment and hope that it will be withdrawn, so that there is more time to reflect on it.
I wish to make two points. First, a legal process that treats children and adults in exactly the same way cannot be right. We have learned a lot as we have come to see how we were blind to what was happening in cases of the sexual exploitation of children. The girls who were involved—it is not always girls, but it often is—were just seen as bad girls, who had absconded from care and were drinking and taking drugs. These children were not seen as children in desperate need of our protection and were not seen as victims. I think about the situation in which a child of 12 is carrying a knife, probably because they are terrified, and then I look at the purpose of this measure, which is to protect the general public. Of course we need to protect the general public, but we, the general public, have a duty of care to the children in our society. We owe a duty to protect some of the children who might be caught by this legislation. We need to see what is happening when young teenagers are in this situation, where they are being seen as perpetrators but they are, as has been said, at least as much victims. I hope that we will look at the age-blind element of this proposal, as it cannot be right.
My second point is more general, although it still applies to children more than to adults. Up in the north-east, I have been seriously engaged in meeting governors and chaplains in our local prisons— HMP Durham, HMP Northumberland and HMP Low Newton, the women’s prison. One thing that I have been told again and again is that sentences under 12 months are disruptive to people’s lives in a completely dreadful way but serve no rehabilitative purpose. All the evidence shows that to be the case. The proposed sentences go up to two years, but that maximum may not often be applied and, as I said, a sentence of 12 months or less has no positive effect. If that is true for adults, it is even truer for young people. I hope that the sentencing structure can also be looked at again.
Baroness Newlove (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendments from the Government, because we have to send a message out there for young people. While I respect all noble Lords who talk about criminalising young people, I stand with several hats on here. I have worked with young people in prisons and with a YOT, and have gone around to find out evidence. The main thing that worries me in all this is that we can put prevention orders up—we have to send a message; we owe that to the rest of society, who do not feel safe—but I want to prevent the young people I have spoken about having to carry a knife to feel safe. We need to stop them early, saying that it is not really right for them. Some young people in gangs have said they do not want to do it but have no choice.
There are several messages here about young children. I have three young daughters who saw their father murdered by hands and feet; they have suffered and could have gone down the criminal route. It would have been justified to put them in that box and to say that there is a reason why they do it. It is the same for a knife. These young people will carry knives to protect themselves, but do not want to. So we have to have something there—a message for communities and young children to feel safe. I am very grateful for the Centre for Social Justice briefing on this. It welcomes the process of the order, but is concerned about the mechanisms of how it will be carried out.
The whole point here is protecting the child. We are hearing much about criminalising a child but not about looking after the child’s welfare. I ask my noble friend the Minister, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, whether we could make it a weapon-neutral offence that sends a message to all those carrying blades, knives and everything. Making it specific to a knife or blade does not really have the effect we want. We need to send a generalised message to help protect young people. I am concerned that we are not standing up here and protecting young people in the first place. We are looking at criminalising young people when they have been caught with something on them. We have to protect the people I have been speaking to, because they are really scared to come out of the school grounds. They go home to protect themselves. We are not looking at that niche of young children.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support many of the comments made by other noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and in particular the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. There are many problems with these prevention orders. We may need orders of some sort, but surely not these. I hope we have a really serious discussion about how to protect children. In subsection (5) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 73A, the reasons accepted as good reasons for carrying a knife do not include a fear of harm. Yet, as other noble Lords have said, this is probably the most common reason. I regard it as utterly right and proper; we do not want kids carrying knives, but if you are terrified of being attacked you should not be criminalised for carrying a knife in your pocket to protect yourself. I hope that before Report the Minister will give serious thought to including at least that—that is just one tiny bit—in the reasons accepted as good reasons.
A second problem is that, according to subsection (1) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 73C:
“An application for a knife crime prevention order … may be made without the applicant giving notice to the defendant”.
The police can impose an interim knife crime prevention order, and the same requirements may be made under that interim order as under a full knife crime prevention order. Yet the defendant does not even know this is happening and has not put their side of the story or explained, for example, that they were carrying the knife only because they were petrified of the three boys who live down the road who were trying to get them involved in a gang. What is going on? I am terribly worried about that bit of it.
Others have mentioned the standard of proof— the balance of probability—when these kids go into criminality. Surely that cannot be right. However, there are many more general concerns about the imposition of yet more criminal deterrents on children as young as 12. I have read some briefings carefully and I want to refer to the one from the Children’s Society. According to its Good Childhood Report 2017, an estimated 950,000 children aged between 10 and 17 had experienced crime. No wonder crime is often cited as the reason children carry weapons. This problem is rife and of course we all want something done about it, but are we really tackling it in the right way here? I do not think so.
We know that for two decades the Government have attempted to deter violent crime and anti-social behaviour through the imposition of criminal and punitive civil deterrents. So far, such deterrents have not had a substantial impact on reducing the level of youth crime and youth violence, but that is what we all want—we certainly do not want knife crime. Of course we want violence to be reduced, but these approaches have been shown not to work. As we know, the level of knife crime has risen sharply. There is a body of evidence to show that criminalised interventions do not lower crime rates. I referred in an earlier debate to the meeting in which we listened to Neil Woods. After years of working as an undercover officer and catching people involved in criminal gangs and so on, he realised that he was making not a jot of difference to criminality and violence. He threw it all up and has now written books on the subject. He knows that he has not made any difference, having put his whole life on the line and having been in considerable danger for many years. We need to listen to people like him.
Does the Minister accept that the Home Office needs to make targeting the adults who coerce, control and threaten these kids a much greater priority? Surely Ministers should not target these children with these orders. It just does not feel right and, to be perfectly frank, I do not understand it. Therefore, can we amend these proposed new clauses before Report to ensure that, if we are to have prevention orders—and I think that we probably need them—they focus on positive inputs for children under the age of 18 with the provision of support, treatment in the case of kids addicted to alcohol or drugs, educational guidance and help to secure the safety of the child.
When a child is considered for an order, surely they should be referred to children’s social care for an assessment under the Children Act 1989 or to the national referral mechanism as appropriate. If the child is found to be at risk of exploitation, the police response surely needs to be entirely different from that envisaged in these amendments. I am not saying that there should not be a response but it should be different. As I said in relation to another amendment, we know that short-term prison sentences have very poor results in terms of reoffending. Why would we have more of them? In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will be willing to discuss how the emphasis of the amendments can be shifted from punitive, unsuccessful, short-term incarceration to something that will work. We have quite a lot of knowledge about what might work.
It is difficult to debate these proposals without reference to the huge cuts to youth services in this country. I know that it could be said that this is a political point but I do not mean it to be that at all. It is pretty desperate when £400 million is taken off those services at a time when we want these children to be referred to them for support, and £51 million has been put into the Serious Violence Strategy. That is one-eighth of the cuts—it is a peanut; it is nothing. Local authorities are facing a deficit in their budgets for children’s and young people’s services of £3 billion over the next five years. It seems that spending on police, courts and prisons is fine but spending on real prevention and turning young people around is something that we can dispense with. I say that because it is obvious that we should put money there rather than elsewhere. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Hogan-Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said that because I had made a suggestion about how the amendment might be improved, it indicated a lack of consultation. In fact, one of the amendments was a police proposal which has not found its way into the Bill, so I am re-presenting it. It was not that it not been asked for or shared; for whatever reason, it was not there, which I found odd.
More fundamentally, we have to keep an eye on what the Bill is trying to do. Good parents of young people will either try to stop them mixing with the wrong people or stop them going to certain places where they would get into harm or cause it. That is broadly what the Bill tries to do where a parent cannot or will not: it tries to restrict where people can meet and whom they meet if they are causing a problem.
The right reverend Prelate said that she hoped the law would acknowledge the difference in age. The sad reality is that the criminal law makes no distinction about age other than by criminal responsibility. Murder is murder. Whether you are 16 or 33, it is murder. From 14 onwards, it is absolute liability; from 10 to 14, one has to prove a certain intent. We have to accept that that is true. The thing that concerns me in some of the contributions is that we seem almost to be giving a defence to someone who is terrified—which I accept—that it is therefore okay to carry a knife. That means that the offensive weapon law is useless. I understand that it is a sincere belief—I do not challenge that—but that is what everyone says. Sometimes it is true, and sometimes they are the aggressor. However, even if it is true, unless we are going to agree to people carrying guns and any offensive weapon justified by their fear about defending themselves, it is a real difficulty. It may be something on sentencing, or it may be that you can show reasonable cause—I do not think you can ever show reasonable cause for carrying an offensive weapon—the definition of an offensive weapon is something intended, made or adapted to hurt people. It is important that we keep an eye on that because if we put a defence of that type in, it will be abused.
Baroness Meacher
The noble Lord suggests that some of us are saying, “It’s okay to carry a knife”. I want to make it clear that I am not saying that. I have a feeling that noble Lords around us are not saying it either. It is not okay for kids to carry knives. The only issue is what we do to help them not to have to carry a knife.
Lord Elton
If I may go back to the noble Baroness’s speech, I am drawn to my feet simply to endorse her view of the inappropriateness of a short prison sentence and, with juveniles, of any prison sentence. For a time, I was Minister responsible for the welfare of young people, other than their health, at the DHSS, which simply meant juvenile offenders in secure accommodation and keeping them out of it. I then had three years being responsible for prisons in the Home Office. I therefore dedicated the next chunk of my life to stopping young people going to prison. You cannot do it when they are into crime; you have to do it before. You have to see that they are not frightened. They must feel safe at home, at school and on the streets, and you must see that they are not bored. The two spurs are fear—“To protect myself I must be armed”—and, “What on earth am I going to do? Let’s go and make trouble. Let’s take a car that does not belong to us and drive it very, very fast around Blackbird Leys in Oxford”. It is the buzz they have to get. We have to provide that by means other than punitive, by pre-emptive means before the event. We have to engage them. When they are on the edge of the event, we have to try even harder. One good way is to find a group of young adults with enthusiasm for almost anything, but preferably a team sport or team activity; for example, white-water rafting, jazz playing, football, canoeing or rock climbing, give them the small amount of money necessary to set up a group to do that and the bored young and the frightened young will come there in clusters. When we did that when I was in what one might call civilian life, the people concerned learned to get £5 of funding from elsewhere for every pound that my people were able to give them.
What I am trying to preach here is outside the terms of this Bill, and I apologise for that, but we are putting the money, as the noble Baroness says, in the wrong place, too late. If only we had enough cash to do a sensible job for our young people. Many of them have no male adult role model, and it is almost impossible to get male teachers into primary education now because the dangers of being sussed as having improper relations with pupils are so great. It is a risk to cuddle a child if they fall and hurt themselves, and we have the new phenomenon of mobile phones which are distracting young adults so that they do not pay attention to children at all. All of that has got to be remedied by the community acting together to give young people things to do which excite them, in safe places with secure adult supervision. That cannot go into this Bill, but I hope nothing which puts juveniles in danger of short prison sentences will go into this Bill, because that is wholly counterproductive.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I share many noble Lords’ concerns about the way in which these clauses have been drafted. I hope we will get a decent opportunity to review them, and chew through them, in a way which would have been better afforded if these amendments had been laid earlier. I received scant briefing, but they need serious attention and application of time to find out how to make this idea work.
I will raise a few detailed points. If under subsection (5) of the new clause inserted by Amendment 73A we are to expand on the definition of good reason, we are opening ourselves up to dangers, as we always do when we start doing these sorts of things. In paragraph (a) of subsection (5) we ought to say “in work”, because a lot of uses are in work and not “at work”. We also ought to include those reasonable uses of a bladed article which are associated with hobbies. If you are a carver, a fisherman, a sailor, let alone someone doing anything with ropes, you are going to need a knife. That that is excluded from paragraph (a) somehow downgrades those reasons for possessing a knife. We should be satisfied with the old test of good reason. Paragraph (a) introduces the danger that a lot of good reasons for having a knife are going to be downgraded.
The scope of the order is very wide, and we should be conscious that similar orders are being used quite actively. Last month, we passed a nine-month jail sentence on a rap group for singing a song in contravention of an order, so you do not have to do much to get a criminal record under these sorts of orders. Therefore, we ought to be conscious of how this lot apply to children, particularly the disruption to their already chaotic lives that can be caused by what we order them to do or not to do and the way that interferes with their education, or the beginning of their work. Indeed, who is allowed to know that they have one of these orders, and what is a school supposed to do if is knows that one of its children has one of these orders? That children’s aspect needs to be more clearly worked out.
I entirely agree with the Government’s sentiments in wanting to do something effective. As always, it is the role of this House to make sure that what is proposed is effective, and to not let the Government get away with it if it is not.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. As I was sitting here listening to so many excellent and knowledgeable speakers, I thought that this debate should have been in the Chamber, but that is for another day. I fully accept that knife crime prevention orders put forward by the Government today are, as the noble Baroness says, to deal with habitual carriers of knives. In that sense, we can support them in principle but there need to be some changes.
I am also clear that the present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, as well as the previous commissioner and the Mayor of London, support the idea of a prevention order as it could be a valuable tool in dealing with the epidemic of knife crime. It is always heart-breaking to see families destroyed when they have lost a loved one, but of course the perpetrator’s life is destroyed as well. There is a huge issue with young people carrying knives and so on. I have met one or two gang members; they can be very challenging individuals to meet. Some of the younger ones are certainly very frightened.
I was on the Wyndham estate some time ago, near where I went to school, to meet some of these young people and they offered me an escort off the estate. I said, “It’s all right, I don’t need an escort—I’ve lived round here”. I was fine. I walked off with no problem at all because I am a fairly big 56 year-old bloke; I am not a 15 or 16 year-old, and I am not black. If I had walked out of there in other circumstances, I would have had a problem getting to the bus stop but, in my situation, there was no problem at all. The young people thought that I would not be safe walking on the estate, which was not the case.
The noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Ramsbotham, made the point, as I think other noble Lords did, that it is a shame the way these amendments have arrived in this House. They have been tabled in Grand Committee and, as has been said, have not gone through the procedures in the House of Commons. My understanding of that House is that if these provisions had been in the Bill from the start there would have been an evidence session in the Commons with experts coming in to look at them. That has been lost and cannot happen now, which is a shame. I support the idea that they have come into the Bill very late. They were announced to the media, and here we are in Grand Committee, not the main Chamber. We will come back to them, or something like them, on Report. Having that at the end of the passage of the Bill is regrettable.
That is why we have tabled Amendment 77 in this group, which was put forward by my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe. It attempts to insert a new clause which would require the Government within three months of the Bill becoming an Act to publish a draft Bill to bring in knife crime prevention orders. It would mean there would have to be a Bill, which I hope would start in the Commons so that it could have evidence sessions. As it would be a draft Bill, even before that there would be a Joint Committee of both Houses to look at the stuff in detail. We want to get this right. On each side of the House, we can give examples of where we have passed measures and have got them right or wrong, but most of the things that were done wrong were done in haste. If we want to sort out an issue, we all charge off and do something, and months or years later, we find that we did not quite get it right. Amendment 77 in my noble friend’s name would ensure that we could do that and look at it in detail.
I am a big fan of draft Bills. When my noble kinsman Lady Kennedy of Cradley—I suppose I should refer to her as that—was on the Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill, I saw the work that she and other Members did. I remember the phone calls from the Home Office when the Minister talked to her—it was Karen Bradley—and a lot of detailed work went on to get that Bill right. I think we all accept that it is very good legislation. There were one or two issues—the noble Lord, Lord McColl, made efforts to improve some of the aftercare—but generally it is very good legislation. I would contrast that, as I often do, with the Housing and Planning Act, which is terrible legislation done on the back of a fag packet. It is absolute rubbish and most of the Government have quietly forgotten about it. It has been pushed to one side, so that no one ever mentions it again. I am a big fan of draft legislation, especially when it concerns sorting big issues out. The intention behind the amendment from my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe is to do that.
This might seem a bit over the top, but we have had reports of these poor people being killed and their families destroyed. Why is COBRA not meeting to discuss this? We have COBRA meetings when we have a flood or a problem with the trains. This is about young people dying, so why is the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary not convening COBRA and getting the right people in the room to ask them, “What’s going on here?”
There is an issue about youth workers, social workers and cuts to services because if we are going to have penalties to deal with the issue we need to deal with the causes as well. Why is COBRA not meeting? People are losing their lives, so I want a response on that. As I said, these are very important issues.
The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, made some excellent points as did my noble friend Lord Ponsonby with his experience as a magistrate in youth courts. He has experience of dealing with these people when they get to court. A lot of them have form. That is an important point. The right reverend Prelate also made some good points about the work that she has done in Newcastle and in south-east London. I used to go to a youth club—the Crossed Swords youth club—which was run by St Paul’s, a Church of England church. Reverend Shaw used to run it. I am a Catholic, but I used to go there because it was a very good club. All the kids from the estate went there. It is important that we have those things. In many parts the country they have disappeared. Whether voluntary or local authority, they have all been lost, and the people are lost there. We need to get those things right.
The shame with this Bill is that it seeks to deal with the punishment of offenders but does not address any of the causes, which is one of the losses in this Bill. Generally speaking, I am not against the orders. They need to be looked at, refined and changed but in principle I am not against them. Noble Lords made valuable points and I hope that the Minister will take them on board.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, before the Minister responds, I did not address Amendment 77 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, which we totally support. I did not want to stifle the debate, but it might be helpful for the Committee to be aware of the advice that I have been given, which is that if the Government insist on moving these amendments in Grand Committee and there is an objection to that taking place, the amendments will be lost and cannot be brought back on Report. I am sure that the Minister will bear that in mind in her response.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, following what the noble Lord just said, I wonder whether my noble friend would consider this. If the amendment is likely to be defeated, she could withdraw it and return to Committee as the first part of Report—I remember doing that with a Home Office Bill—so that given the concerns around the Committee, we could have a proper Committee stage and then very soon after that, come back on Report. In Committee, we can talk twice, and that should give the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, a chance to put down something constructive rather than the constant destructive arguments.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I have not found the comments destructive, although I thank my noble friend for the points that he made. I will not press the government amendments today. I take on board completely the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the timing of the amendments. We will bring the amendments back on Report when again we will have a full chance to discuss them. The practice of noble Lords speaking only once on Report has fallen slightly by the wayside because noble Lords seem to speak several times in Committee and on Report.
To sum up today’s debate, we all seek the same end, but the means by which we would get there differ. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, at the outset for clarifying a number of points that I did not know the answer to. He has saved me having to write to the Committee. I also thank my noble friend Lady Newlove for the very real-life experience with which she speaks and which we never fail to be moved by.
It is clear from the debate that some of the support for KCPOs is qualified. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick—and the theme was carried on by other noble Lords—said that KCPOs seek to criminalise children. As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said, their aim is quite the reverse. They are to prevent young people getting into criminality.
Lord Paddick
I never suggested that the aim of the orders is to criminalise young people. I said that young people being criminalised is the inevitable outcome of the orders.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My words were that the noble Lord said the orders risk criminalising children, rather than having the aim of criminalising children. The aim is to prevent that. As the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle said, young people are often the victims. Other noble Lords made the same point. We have a Catch-22 situation where they are both victims and perpetrators.
The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, questioned the benefits of KCPOs, given his experience. Their aim is to have a preventive effect. Far from fast-tracking young people into a criminal record, the aim is quite the reverse. The orders are an alternative to prosecution. The imposition of restrictions aims to divert young people away from the criminal justice system. Of course, where a defendant is found not guilty of a violent offence, the option to give a KCPO remains open to the police, further keeping the young person out of the criminal justice system.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, asked a very good question: what about the adults? Adults can be part and parcel of the problem, but can also be part of the solution. She is absolutely right that we must not forget the role of adults in all this.
At the outset, I reiterate that KCPOs are not punitive in nature. They are an additional tool for the police to help steer those subject to the orders away from knife crime. They are aimed at young people at risk of engaging in knife crime, at habitual knife carriers of any age and at those who have been convicted of a violent or knife-related offence. The Government are very concerned by the increase in knife crime, as other noble Lords have articulated. We are determined to do all we can to address it. We have set out a comprehensive programme of action in our Serious Violence Strategy to tackle knife crime and prevent young people being drawn into crime and violence, but we know that we need to do more. That is why we listened when the police—those on the front line of such activity, who are best-placed to know the nature of the problem and the profile of the people who carry knives—told us that they need additional powers to deal more effectively with people being drawn into knife crime.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about the approach that the police might take when responding to a breach of a KCPO. Clearly, it would be for the police to decide what action to take where such a breach occurs. Similarly, it would be for the CPS to consider whether there is enough evidence against the defendant for a realistic prospect of conviction and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute them. The public interest will likely vary from case to case, taking into account factors such as the seriousness of the offence, the harm caused and the proportionality of prosecution in response. It has never been the rule that a prosecution will automatically take place where the evidential test is met, so prosecutors may advise on or authorise out-of-court disposals as an alternative to prosecution, which is not necessarily the end result. In addition, a person commits an offence and can be convicted only if a breach occurs without reasonable excuse. The maximum sentence is two years’ imprisonment. It would be for the courts to determine the appropriate sentence in the usual way in any given case, so two years is not necessarily the end result and a community sentence is an option, too.
Unfortunately, as we have seen from the press so often recently, an increasing number of young people carry knives. Some are as young as eight. Many come to the attention of the police after teachers or youth workers have already tried to deal with the problem without reporting the incident to the police, for fear that a young person would be criminalised. However, as we have all said today, by the time that young person is prosecuted it is too late. Furthermore, I am sure noble Lords will agree that prosecution of young children is not always the most appropriate response if they are found with a knife. We have had those discussions today. KCPOs will enable the police and others to address the underlying issues and steer those young people away from knife crime through positive interventions.
The amendments contain important safeguards to ensure that KCPOs are not used inappropriately against young people under 18. In particular, the amendments require the police to consult the relevant youth offending team before an order is made. Once made, an order must be reviewed by the courts after 12 months. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, asked why 12 months was put in place. That is as a safeguard to ensure that a review is carried out. We fully expect the statutory guidance to provide for more regular reviews where a KCPO is issued to a person under the age of 18.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked why on orders made on application we have not adopted the approach applied to anti-social behaviour injunctions, where a breach is dealt with as a contempt of court rather than a criminal offence. In developing the KCPO, we considered that approach, but it is important to remember that we are dealing with individuals at risk of engaging in serious criminality, not simply those involved in anti-social behaviour, as debilitating as that can be for victims and communities. KCPOs will be used for individuals with a history of carrying a knife. Many will be habitual knife carriers, and we are clear that these orders will not be effective if those subject to a KCPO do not see that breaching the order would have serious consequences. They must include the possibility, at least, of a criminal prosecution and a custodial sentence on conviction. Other civil orders of this kind adopt the same approach, including sexual risk orders and serious crime prevention orders.
I am indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for his invaluable contribution, which highlighted the operational need for these new orders. The noble Lord made a couple of very interesting suggestions: first, that the scope of KCPOs be extended to help tackle gun crime and the use of corrosives, and, secondly, on the use of electronic monitoring. Given the prevalence of knife crime, it is right that it should be the initial focus of the new orders but as we evaluate their effectiveness over time, we most certainly can explore whether they might have wider application. We can explore the possibility of adding an electronic monitoring requirement to these orders once they have bedded in.
The noble Lord asked about stop-and-search powers in relation to someone subject to a KCPO. We believe that the police already have adequate stop-and-search powers under PACE to monitor whether someone is carrying a knife. As he knows, if a police officer has reasonable suspicion that someone subject to a KCPO is carrying a knife, the officer can stop and search the individual under those existing powers. He also asked when the orders might start. The court may provide discretion that the order takes effect from release, when the defendant ceases to be subject to a custodial sentence, or if the defendant ceases to be on licence. It may take effect earlier while a defendant is on day release and subject to stringent conditions.
A number of noble Lords asked me about funding and tackling the issue locally. They will know, from statements I have made, of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary’s intention to make up to £970 million available to the police next year. On a more local level, we are providing £1.5 million in 2018-19 for the community fund, which has funded 68 projects, and £1 million in 2019-20 to help communities to tackle knife crime. The Committee will have heard earlier today about the youth endowment fund, which has £200 million over 10 years to build evidence for early intervention. It will focus on those most at risk of youth violence, including those displaying signs such as truancy, aggression and involvement in anti-social behaviour.
We can take into account many of the issues raised today when preparing the statutory guidance provided for under Amendment 73S, and as part of the pilot we intend to run in the Metropolitan Police district before implementing these orders across England and Wales. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has signalled that he cannot support these amendments today I will of course withdraw them, with regret. However, the Committee can be assured that I will return to them at Report.
Lord Lucas
“Increased security measures for certain firearms
(1) The Firearms Act 1968 is amended as follows.(2) Before section 5 insert—“4B Increased security measures for certain firearms(1) A person commits an offence if, other than at times when he or she has a weapon specified in this section on or about his or her person, it is not secured in accordance with Home Office Level 3 Security.(2) The weapons specified in this section are—(a) any rifle with a calibre greater than .45 inches, or(b) any rifle with a chamber from which empty cartridge cases are extracted using—(i) energy from propellant gas, or(ii) energy imparted to a spring or other energy storage device by propellant gas.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to enable discussion of security measures for firearms generally.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, in moving Amendment 74 I shall at the same time speak to Amendment 78 in this group.
This Bill is about where we set boundaries to protect the public from the misuse of dangerous objects. This amendment gives us an opportunity to discuss where that boundary should be set in the case of rifles. In other bits of the Bill we quite clearly take the decision to ban dangerous objects for which there is no legitimate use and to control those for which there is a legitimate use. There is no perfect or absolute formula that I have been able to discover, in any country, for where that boundary should be set. Different countries come to different conclusions at different times. The use of weapons in sports is widely allowed—for example, archery, fencing, shooting, jousting, javelin and discus. It is commonplace, up to the highest level, that sports derived from martial arts—including those using our own bodies—should be allowed, and I support that. Given that, we then have to consider what restrictions we put in place. In doing that, I believe we should consider what restrictions are necessary. What evidence is there that a restriction is required? We should start from a principle of allowing and then work to look for evidence that allows us to restrict.
When it comes to making firearms safe—meaning rifles rather than shotguns, for which you would have a firearms certificate—the issuing of a certificate to a holder is the principal means of protecting the public from the misuse of firearms.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
I am listening to what the noble Lord is saying and the assumptions he is making about the guns that are being talked about—or in this case, not talked about—and them not falling into the wrong hands. Why does he think the Home Secretary of this country said in the House of Commons that,
“according to intelligence provided by police and security services”,
these .50 calibre guns,
“have been possessed by criminals who have clearly intended to use them”?—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; col. 919.]
Does the noble Lord have better information and intelligence than the Home Secretary?
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, if I might help my noble friend, it is possible that Ministers and Members in another House have been slightly inaccurately briefed. For instance, they were told that the effective range of a .50 calibre round is 6,800 metres, whereas in actual fact, it is only about 1,800 metres.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I was talking about the two forms of rifle which are specifically addressed in the Bill. These are not .50 calibre rifles, but lighter ones, which are adapted for use by disabled people and make it easier to reload the round using power derived from the previous shot. That is a .50 calibre, but again, the calibre alone does not tell you all you need to know about the rifle; you need to know whether a particular weapon is dangerous. The weapons used in target shooting tend to be heavy and cumbersome and the ammunition is not the same as that used in military operations.
I have asked for evidence. There may be evidence out there, but it has not made its way to me. My particular arguments are about the guns addressed in the Bill, as there is no evidence of misuse of those guns or available evidence showing that these are fundamentally more dangerous than other rifles. There is also no evidence that they cannot be properly secured through a mixture of physical security and the systems we have to ensure that firearms are only held by the people who ought to hold them.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
Before Hungerford and Dunblane, there had not been evidence of legally held handguns being used to massacre people. However, Hungerford and Dunblane happened, and after that, we passed legislation and the country is much safer as a result.
Lord Lucas
Absolutely. We need to keep these things under consideration. However, if one took the noble Lord’s argument to its logical conclusion, we would ban cars because they have been used deliberately to kill people. Any kind of weapon, including knives, presents a danger to the public. Because there is a legitimate use for these objects, we choose to look at how to balance the potential danger with the potential good. I hope that we will choose to do it on the basis of evidence, which says, yes, these things are dangerous, but we have systems in place which negate that danger. Rules on the weapons the public may hold legitimately, plus the safeguards we take, mean this is not the route through which weapons reach the people who will misuse them. In society as a whole, we have adopted a system which is safe and which allows us to live with the existence of those weapons. It seems to me that the evidence says that is the case at the moment. We do not have a recent history of misuse—of any degree at all—of the weapons which are currently allowed.
It is important to keep these things under review, but it is also important to be sensible. A lot of what is in our lives is dangerous. It is the business of legislators to balance that danger with utility and reach a conclusion; there are lots of different conclusions that can be reached. If we say that people are to have weapons of any description, it seems to me that the current arrangements for allowing people to have firearms are working very well. There is no evidence that incremental banning of particular types of firearm will produce any benefit at all and, as a matter of principle, we ought to take those sorts of decisions based on evidence, rather than because someone feels like it somewhere and no one quite knows why because it is buried in the decision-making processes that created this Bill.
My appeal to my noble friend is that we ought to be looking at where this process is going in the long term, at what we should be doing to make sure that firearms can be legally held, and at the security we want around that. Then, when we arrive at that conclusion, we can show that the weapons which fit within that are not a source of danger to the public, by their nature, because they are not what people who wish to commit crimes will go for.
A lot of guns are being recovered by the police, and by and large they are illegal guns because the guns that are being brought in are much more suitable for use in crime. People will not go for a hunting rifle to commit crime with. We are not talking about hunting rifles in the Bill, but the same considerations apply. If hunting rifles were being widely used in crime, we would be fussed about it, but they are not. The rifles that are the subject of this Bill are not used in crime. There is no instance of them being used in crime. There is nothing obvious about them which makes them more dangerous than other firearms in the context of the controls that we have. As a result of the deliberations in another place, our concerns about .50 calibre are under review. We ought to do the same with the other rifles that are mentioned here and come to a coherent, evidenced conclusion about where in this society we now choose to draw the line on the firearms that people may legally hold and on the purposes for which they may legally hold them. I am not saying that there is an absolute value to any particular place to draw the line; I am saying that we ought to do this on the basis of evidence, and nothing that my noble friends have been able to provide me with at the moment offers evidence that the rifles we are discussing pose any greater danger than the many other rifles that we permit people to hold. I beg to move.
The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend’s amendment and to speak to my Amendments 78B, 79A and 79B. Additionally, I want to refer to an earlier comment about the Dunblane massacre and the handguns that were banned afterwards. I was chairman of the FCC at that time and remember it very well indeed. The only effect of the ban on handguns at that stage and of the incoming Government’s Bill to ban other handguns below .32 calibre was to drive those handguns underground. Since then, it is fair to say that there are many fewer legally held handguns because it is illegal to hold them, but nine out 10 of the guns used in crime are illegal, and the number of illegally held handguns has ballooned over the years since Dunblane.
I wish to address lever-release and MARS rifles which are the subject also of my noble friend’s amendment. They are used in general by disabled shooters who find it extremely difficult to use a standard rifle. These disabled shooters normally have big problems, such as arthritis in their fingers and hands, or mobility problems so they have to shoot from a sitting position. Prohibition of these two types of guns would cause those shooters considerable hardship and probably leave them unable to take part in their chosen target disciplines and competitions. I am certainly not aware of any evidence that MARS or LR weapons have ever been used in crime, and I feel strongly that they could easily be held on Section 1 certificates with level 3 enhanced security, which comes in guidance to the police. I have no problems with that provision whatever. These people look after their guns incredibly safely in any case. I look forward to my noble friend’s views on those matters.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery (CB)
I object to some parts of the amendment. There are two or three areas where there is insufficient attention to detail for it to supersede the original Bill. For a start, there is a question about MARS and lever action which, as has just been raised, is used by target shooters in international competition. This is an important aspect of Paralympic competition and normal shooting competitions, so we do not want to catch those weapons in the amendment. Another item left out from the amendment, I suspect by mistake, relates to a prohibition on the use of .22 rimfire semi-automatic rifles, which are widely used for vermin control and the like. That certainly should be in the amendment. Another point is that although the amendment refers to,
“a calibre greater than .45 inches”,
there are quite large numbers of rifles out there—
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, I do not think that .22 calibres are caught. I think the noble Earl is incorrect there.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery
As I read it, the amendment does not refer to the .22 calibre whereas a similar paragraph in the Bill does.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, I think that may be a typographic error. It should refer to the .22.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery
Typographic error or no, it is not in there. Going back to large-calibre rifles, quite a lot of people get much fun out of remarkable things such as black-powder, muzzle-loader and Snider .577 rifles, which are far larger but have very low effects. Again, more detail is required to ensure that these sort of things can be legally held.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 80A to 80D in this group. If the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, had not tabled his Amendment 79 concerning .50 calibre rifles, he would have been best described as asleep at the wheel. I think the Committee will be grateful for the opportunity to discuss this matter and, hopefully, identify a solution. Other noble Lords have discussed the genesis of this matter. A .50 calibre rifle is clearly in a class of its own. However, I have some concerns about the quality of briefings given to Ministers and to Members of the House of Commons. It is therefore not surprising that the Government had to drop their provisions on .50 calibre rifles in the House of Commons.
While .50 calibre target rifles have some extraordinary characteristics, they are entirely dependent on the skill of the user. It is tempting to believe that all one has to do to hit the V-bull centre of the target is to line up the cross-hairs of a telescopic sight and squeeze the trigger. The reality is rather more complex. It is a great sport simply because it is so difficult, and therefore not surprising that target shooting is an Olympic sport. First, the rifle has to be held correctly and in exactly the same way for every shot. The shooter’s breathing has to be controlled perfectly. If I was trying to shoot at 1,000 yards I doubt that I could keep the cross-hairs on the target, let alone the bull. Trigger action is also all-important. For instance, snatching the trigger is the cause of a lot of inaccuracy. Frankly, due to the recoil, if I tried to fire a .50 calibre target rifle I would be terrified—a 7.62 target rifle is bad enough. For all these reasons, an applicant for a firearms certificate for a .50 calibre target rifle will not be successful unless considerable skill can be demonstrated with lighter but full-bore target rifles.
It is of course exceptionally unlikely that a terrorist would have the necessary skill to use a .50 calibre rifle in the way feared by some. My noble friend Lord Lucas said that these rifles had never been used in crime.
I do not have a philosophical objection to private ownership of a .50 calibre target rifle. However, two mischiefs remain. The first is that if one was stolen it could for a while give rise to major security concerns. This might result in certain events being cancelled. The second is this. I do not have the skill to use a .50 calibre rifle effectively. However, I have the skill to incorporate one into a remote-controlled weapon system and it would have none of the marksmanship weaknesses that I have. The good news is that it is very unusual for someone with this level of engineering skill to use it for such evil and illegal purposes. It is even less likely in the case of today’s radicalised terrorists, who usually have very limited skills.
In the UK, we suffer mercifully few disasters with legally held firearms. This is because we get the balance right. Ministers generally make the right decisions, taking into account advice from Home Office officials. There is one particular official who has done sterling work over many years and has briefed or worked with many of us in this Committee. I am sure that noble Lords know who I am talking about and we should be grateful for his efforts.
My Amendment 80A would build on my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 74 and provide that special storage and transport conditions on a firearms certificate were mandatory in the case of a high muzzle energy rifle; that is, one with more than 13,600 joules of energy.
My Amendment 80B would give the Secretary of State an order-making power to specify the special storage and transport conditions to be included on the certificate. Of course, we could go for guidance rather than an order. I have made no provision for parliamentary scrutiny because I do not believe it to be sensible to make the security details public.
So far as I can see, the current standard gun cabinets are designed to prevent unauthorised access or opportunistic theft and they appear to do so. However, they are not designed to resist a determined attack using specialist equipment. My noble friend Lord Lucas proposes a much higher level of security and I support this. While my noble friend’s amendment is clear on what is proposed, I think that there are drafting issues and I suspect that the same applies to my amendment.
I understand that some owners of .50 calibre target rifles already have the requisite secure facilities. However, some might not be so lucky and there is also a vulnerability when these guns are in transit. Currently, it is illegal to possess any of the key components of a firearm without a certificate and this includes the bolt. My Amendment 80C would allow another person to be in possession of a bolt if this was in connection with a special storage and transport condition. I would expect there to be documentary conditions involved. This provision could be useful in allowing club officials to hold the bolts for the owners of a .50 calibre rifle. It could also allow the rifle to be transported without the bolt being present with the rifle. Therefore, if a rifle is stolen but the bolt can still be accounted for, there is no security problem and no risk.
I have made no special provision about the ammunition because I do not believe that it is necessary or beneficial. This is because dealing with the rifle solves the problem and it is not particularly difficult to acquire or reload a few rounds of .50 calibre ammunition for some terrible purpose.
I am not fixed on whether we solve this problem by storage conditions or by disassembling the rifle, thus rendering it harmless except when in use on a range, or a combination of the two. It may be best to have a range of options available to suit the circumstances, and this could be provided for in the proposed order or guidance. If we want to have a disassembly option available, we need my Amendment 80C, or something similar on the face of the Bill.
If the sense of the Grand Committee is that something along the lines of my suggestion is acceptable, the Minister may be more tempted to take the opportunity to come up with a properly drafted government amendment. The consultation could then go forward as planned and, with benefit of the consultation, the Government could implement the necessary changes by whatever means is provided in the Bill.
My final amendment in this group is Amendment 80D. The Firearms Act 1968 does not define a rifle, other than to say that the term includes a carbine. This is because there was no need. I was concerned that the prohibition of high muzzle energy rifles might catch preserved artillery and tank guns, which are currently licensed by an ordinary firearms certificate if they have not already been deactivated. I have been assured by officials that the term “rifle” would exclude artillery pieces, and this makes sense. However, if we do make the changes regarding HME rifles, an individual police officer might want to make a name for himself by claiming that an artillery piece is caught by any legislation we eventually pass. He could claim that the term “rifle” means a firearm that has been rifled. Indeed, one noble and gallant Lord has asked me to look at and raise this point. I have previously been involved with a problem arising in this way, concerning the Vehicle Excise Act, concrete pumping machines and mobile cranes— don’t ask.
It would be best to define a rifle in the 1968 Act, but I would be happy if the Minister gave a categorical “Pepper v Hart” assurance that the term “rifle” does not include larger pieces of ordnance.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I want to make a couple of general comments about these amendments. I never think it is worth passing legislation just because it looks good. Is it going to be effective, or not? Sometimes, where there is a problem, one hits something that looks like an easy target; it sounds good, and will keep the papers and the public happy. It may not change anything in the real world, which is about trying to protect people.
Some of this legislation could be held to be against the Disability Discrimination Act, in that some people who have problems can shoot with modified rifles, take part in international competition and get a huge sense of pride and success from doing well in it. However, the rifles do need to be modified and without these amendments, it looks as if they will be excluded from competition. It would be very sad if people who cannot run, jump or do other things have the one thing they are good at taken away from them. We should think quite hard about that.
Purely defining something by its muzzle size catches a lot of things that are not dangerous at all—muzzle loaders, for example. We have not really dealt with .50 calibre properly. Although a .50 has a good range, it is not going to pierce armour and cause huge destruction unless you have a military-grade armour-piercing round for it. You are not going to get one of those very easily, and you certainly are not going to load it yourself.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I have some bad news for the noble Earl. Even a .50 calibre ball round has very high destructive power.
The Earl of Erroll
I suppose it is destructive, but it was penetrative power I was thinking of.
The Earl of Erroll
I stand corrected, but there are many other things that do too. I do wonder whether we are just homing in on one particular device, when you can make yourself a mortar that can blow up a lot of people. Why would you want to choose that particular weapon? I am very sad when I see us unable to take part in international competitions on a global stage, because we are worrying about something that has not been a problem yet.
Baroness Barran
I do not want to stifle the debate but there is concern about the number of groups of amendments we have to get through. If noble Lords could keep their comments reasonably brief, that would be much appreciated.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
I appreciate what the Minister is saying but this is a critical part of the legislation, where some strong views are held on both sides. Having sat through the debate so far, I also appreciate that we want to finish the business. I am not an expert in this field but I know that there are many experts around, who will undoubtedly contribute. This matter has excited a lot of interest outside the House.
First, I am not anti-target shooting. I was a member of the House of Commons rifle club, when it existed, and went target shooting in the subterranean depths of this building. Of course, I was Defence Secretary and then Secretary-General of NATO so I must have ordered huge quantities of guns of every description. As I said at Second Reading, I am a resident of Dunblane and became deeply engaged in the debate that took place after that shooting. I would contradict what was said about the banning of the private ownership of handguns leading to an increase in the amount of crime involving them. My colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, who has now left, also disagreed with that.
I am here to probe the issue of .50 calibre guns. In other contexts, they would be known colloquially as sniper rifles; they certainly have a destructive power over very long distances. I want to pray in aid what was said by the Home Secretary. I am not normally a great disciple of his—I think that he is running for Prime Minister at the moment, or at least leader of the Conservative Party when the vacancy eventually and inevitably occurs—but, as the Home Secretary, he has access to a lot of information that the rest of us do not. So, when he comes to the House of Commons and makes Statements, we should listen carefully.
We should also listen to what the Home Office had to say in preparation for the Bill. The department produces impact assessments—a very good innovation, whenever they were brought in, to describe the impact of legislation on costs, society and provisions on law and order. An impact assessment was done on .50 calibre rifles but, oddly enough, it is not in the Printed Paper Office. An impact assessment on the knife aspect of the Bill is available, but not one on the part about guns. If I can read its very small writing, the impact assessment which I found on the internet states:
“There is concern about the availability of .50 calibre and rapid-fire Manually Actuated Release System (MARS) rifles”—
as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—
“being available to some civilian firearms licence holders. The range and penetrative power of 0.50 calibre rifles makes them more dangerous than other common firearms and were they to be used in criminal or terrorist activities would present a serious threat to the public and would be uniquely difficult for the police to control. Due to the rate of discharge MARS rifles pose a comparable risk to the public and police as other self-loading weapons already banned in the UK. The Government need to intervene to ensure the purchase, ownership or possession is illegal”.
That Home Office impact assessment was delivered to the Government in preparation for the legislation.
In the House of Commons, the Home Secretary said when he presented the Bill:
“We based those measures on evidence that we received from intelligence sources, police and other security experts … According to the information that we have, weapons of this type have, sadly, been used in the troubles in Northern Ireland, and, according to intelligence provided by police and security services, have been possessed by criminals who have clearly intended to use them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; cols. 918-19.]
These are not my words or an exaggeration by anti-gun campaigners, but the words of the Home Secretary. He did not resile from these comments when he withdrew the clause from the Bill, under pressure from a large number of Back-Bench Conservative MPs. All he has said is that the matter would be subject to further consultation. The danger between now and the end of the consultation is represented precisely by the Home Secretary’s warning. I hope the Minister will be able to explain why the Committee should listen to outside experts when the Home Secretary of this country has given such a graphic description of the dangers presented by these weapons.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I hold the noble Lord in very high regard, but is he saying that Ministers and their advisers are infallible?
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
They are certainly not infallible—I speak from great experience on that— but the Home Secretary clearly did not come to the House of Commons unprepared and without checking thoroughly in advance. His statements are clearly there. His predecessor was misled and she resigned. I do not think that the present Home Secretary is likely to make that mistake again or that he has been misled; he said what he believed and what he had been told.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
My Lords, I will make a brief intervention in this debate. I declare an interest as a holder of a firearms certificate and the owner of a number of rifles, none of which would come anywhere near the type of muzzle energy we are talking about.
I support the description of our firearms licensing regime given by my noble friend Lord Lucas. It is generally accepted internationally that the UK has one of the most rigorous and best informed firearms licensing regimes in the world. It is also generally accepted that the shooting community respects and understands that the holding of a firearms certificate is a privilege that can be removed. Because of that, they are a very law-abiding section of the community. They are acutely aware that their sport and activity can be curtailed should they be involved in criminal activity entirely unrelated to the use of their firearms.
With that in mind, we have to be a bit careful of banning things because they are an easy target—forgive the pun. It is easy to work out where a particular category of firearm is and remove it from circulation. I hold no particular candle for the .50 calibre rifle and I am open to arguments about where the line should be drawn, because one indeed has to be drawn somewhere. We have acted in the past regarding handguns, fully automatic weapons and a number of other eventualities, but I very much support my noble friend Lord Lucas’s contention that before we ban something we have to have a closely argued, coherent case that is evidence based. Just banning something because we feel like it or because it is easy to do should not be a proper course of action.
Debate on the Bill has, on the one hand, largely been about very large numbers of people carrying knives, often using them and being closely tied up with the criminal fraternity, particularly drug dealers. On the other hand, the Bill talks about banning the use of a piece of equipment that is legally held when no recorded crime has ever been committed using a legally held rifle of such high-muzzle energy, as far as I understand it. I am open to correction by my noble friend and other Members of the Committee. We have to be very careful about that. Where do we draw the line?
I quite accept what the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said: these are weapons of very high power and very high destructive capability. That is absolutely correct. On the other hand, their utility for criminals is much lower than that of many other sniper rifles. He described them as sniper rifles, and indeed they are. But they are not the typical sniper rifles used by the British Army, which are in calibres much closer to sporting rifles and are much smaller pieces of equipment. We have to put this in perspective and look at the actual threat.
When the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, referred to what was worrying the Home Secretary about these rifles, it occurred to me to question whether he was worried about the theft of these 130 or so rifles, a tiny number, or about one of those firearm certificate holders turning bad. Or was it really about someone purchasing one of these—in America, for example—and turning it into a small number of machinery components, putting them in a container and smuggling them in, as a vast number of illegally held pistols arrive in this country. The real danger faced on the streets is from illegally held weapons, not legally held weapons.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery
My Lords, I will add a couple of points. It is very instructive to look up “sniper rifles” on Google because you get a huge list of them, the vast majority at 7.62 calibre not .50 calibre. It is also interesting to see that three of the most popular .50 calibre rifles are made in this country and well known globally as some of the most popular sniper rifles. There are currently believed to be 200 large- calibre rifles in the UK, which is not a very substantial number. The cost of acquiring one of these .50 calibre target rifles is also not cheap—about £20,000 for the whole package, so there are never going to be very many of them.
Another point, which has already been made, is that only one of these rifles has ever been stolen in this country and it was found shortly afterwards, dumped by the opportunist thief, who realised that there was absolutely nothing he could do with it. They weigh about 36 pounds, which means they are not exactly the easiest things to carry around, and are very substantial in length—a length from here to the end of the desk. So we are talking about a rare beast indeed.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I hate guns, so I have no interest in promoting any cause. I do not want to trivialise firearms offences because they can be very serious, but they are relatively small in number compared with the number of knife crime offences, for example. Only 1% of non-air weapon firearms offences involve rifles. Bearing in mind the very low number of offences committed using rifles, can the Minister tell the Committee why the Government have set these hares running?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I have Amendments 79 and 80 in this group. They are word-for-word what was in the Bill when it was first published in the House of Commons. I am attempting to put back into the Bill the clauses put forward by the Government originally—not my usual role here as opposition spokesperson; I am usually trying to take out government clauses or change them, but here we are today trying to put them back in.
My noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen set out clearly at Second Reading and again today why these weapons should be banned. They are more dangerous in terms of their penetrative power and range. My noble friend quoted the Home Secretary’s comments; I shall not quote them again. The Home Secretary was very clear why these weapons had to be banned; he had had intelligence about why it was important to do that. Then we had a complete about turn and the clause was taken out between Second Reading and Third Reading. I am sure we will find out at some point what happened and why that was done. My honourable friend Louise Haigh, the shadow Policing Minister, was very clear that the Opposition backed the Government’s original position and that the provision would pass through the House of Commons without any problems.
It is interesting that the Government have gone much further than what people on the Government Benches wanted. The Member for The Cotswolds, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, suggested level 3 security, but that is not here. They were not looking for the weapon to be banned but wanted enhanced security, very much along the lines of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, but there is nothing here. That security level means that the gun, the bolt and the ammunition are kept in three separate safes. At the moment the Government are proposing not to do that. They are going to leave the security as it is. That is regrettable.
I am not an expert on guns. I do not particularly like guns, but I have fired some weapons, including a sniper rifle and a few shotguns. I fired them on ranges, and when I was in the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme I did some stuff. I have shot only at targets and clay pigeons. I am very pleased that we live in a country where we have tough laws on weapons. I am very proud that we have them, and they are good.
My noble friend Lord Robertson was right to point out in respect of evidence that, before Hungerford and Dunblane, handguns were not generally seen as an issue. It was only after the two tragedies that Government had to act to ban them. We can never say what is going to happen in the future.
The Government were right in their original proposals, and it is shame we are here today. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has tabled an amendment to improve the position today. I am very pleased to see it because it is better than the Government’s suggestion. It at least gives level 3 security. That will make it more difficult for weapons to be obtained illegally, and although it is not an absolute guarantee it is certainly progress. I shall not press my amendment, but I am looking forward to hearing the Minister’s comments in response to the debate, because these are serious issues. As my noble friend Lord Robertson said, although the Government removed the two clauses, at no point has the Home Secretary withdrawn the remarks he made. My worry is that after we have had this review, the Government will decide that we need to ban these weapons and then will say that we have no legislation to ban them and we will have to wait until something comes along. That is the often the case with many things which we suggest in opposition. The Government aim to do things and say they will do them at some point when they find a Bill they can put them in. My worry is that we may end up there. I raised that point at Second Reading with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. If the Government are going to do a consultation and then decide to ban these weapons, they should take a power to enable them to do that through secondary legislation. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas began by quite rightly pointing out that this is a Bill about setting boundaries. As we have heard, this group of amendments deals with what is the appropriate form of regulation for high muzzle energy rifles. We have heard a variety of views from all sides of the Committee. Some noble Lords are seeking to restore the prohibition of these rifles removed from the Bill in the Commons. Other noble Lords are seeking to go further than the amendments made in the Commons by also removing the prohibition on so-called MARS rifles, while yet other noble Lords seek to find a middle way by introducing mandatory security requirements. I will endeavour to disentangle these competing approaches by setting out the Government’s considered view on the various amendments.
I begin with what is, in effect, the middle-way option, if only because my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 74 is the first one in this group, but I will address my noble friend Earl Attlee’s Amendments 80A to 80C as they cover similar ground, albeit from a different perspective. Amendment 74 provides us with an opportunity to test whether a requirement to apply the highest standards of security for the storage of specific firearm types when not in use might be an alternative to prohibition. The Government are not seeking to prohibit ownership of high muzzle energy rifles through this Bill, so it is relevant for us to discuss the merits of applying enhanced security to the storage of such firearms while they continue to be available to civilians under our firearms licensing arrangements. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, takes the contrary view, and I will come on to his amendments shortly.
The Bill will prohibit civilian access to more rapid-firing rifles, which makes any discussion of secure storage in respect of these weapons otiose, although we will come to Amendments 78A and 79A, which would have the effect of removing that prohibition from the Bill, and Amendments 78B and 79B, which seek to make changes to the prohibition.
The Government are concerned about the potential public safety risks that more powerful and more rapid-firing rifles pose, should they fall into the hands of criminals or terrorists. It is therefore right that where any such firearms remain available for civilian use and ownership on a firearms certificate issued by the police they should be subject to the highest standards of security to prevent theft and misuse. I therefore understand the reference in my noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment to the requirements of level 3 security. This relates to different levels of security arrangements that are set out in the Home Office’s Firearms Security Handbook, with level 3 being the highest level of security measures set out in the handbook.
The first point I want to make in respect of this amendment is that it would be something of an anomaly to specify particular security conditions in this way in the Bill. It is currently an operational matter for police forces to satisfy themselves that the security in place for any firearm held by a civilian is proportionate to the risk that the specific firearm poses, taking all relevant factors into account. The issue of the relevant firearms certificate can be made contingent on the required levels of security being in place. While it is right that we should ask the police to have due regard to the requirements of the handbook, it would, as I have said, be an anomaly to set out in primary legislation the level of security required for one specific rifle type.
While I fully understand the point behind the amendment, it is important to be aware that the Firearms Security Handbook is a joint Home Office and policing document, intended to guide forces. The document has no specific legal weight and can be amended administratively. In such circumstances, I contend to my noble friend, it would not be appropriate to specify level 3 security in this Bill.
Amendments 80A to 80C in the name of my noble friend Earl Atlee address the same issue, but in a different way. These amendments in turn seek to amend the Firearms Act 1968 in order to provide the Secretary of State with an order-making power to specify the conditions relating to the secure storage and transportation of high muzzle energy rifles, which must be attached to the relevant firearms certificates issued by the police. The point behind the amendments is important. Dangerous firearms held in the community must be kept and stored as securely as possible.
The Government have given a commitment that we will consult on the issue of whether high muzzle energy rifles should be subject to a general prohibition, along with a number of other issues relating to firearms safety, after the Bill has completed its passage through Parliament. But the Government recognise the strength of feeling on this issue, on all sides. I know that some, including the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, have concerns about waiting for a further public consultation to run its course, particularly if this leads to a call for further legislation. We therefore take the point that there is a case for action in this area at this time. The Government will therefore give further consideration to the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Lucas and Earl Atlee ahead of Report. I cannot at this juncture give a commitment beyond that, but I assure both my noble friends that the case they put forward has landed and will be looked at seriously.
Amendments 78, 78B, 79A and 79B provide us with an opportunity to consider potential alternatives to the prohibition of the rifle types specified in Clause 32. Clauses 32 and 33 will strengthen the controls in respect of rapid-firing rifles, as defined by these clauses. As I explained earlier, these are currently available for civilian use or ownership under general licensing arrangements administered by the police under Section 1 of the Firearms Act 1968 or Article 45 of the Firearms (Northern Ireland) Order 2004. This means that at present they can be owned only by somebody who has a firearms certificate for which they have been vetted by the police. Following advice from experts in the law enforcement agencies, we consider that these rifles should be brought under stricter controls. That will be achieved by adding them to the list of prohibited firearms provided for by Section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968 and Article 45 of the Northern Ireland order. Weapons that are so prohibited are subject to more rigorous controls than other firearms and may be possessed only with the authority of the Secretary of State.
My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, argued that the proposed ban of rapid-fire rifles could discriminate against disabled shooters. That point was raised during discussion of the Bill in the other place. I have to say straight out that I am not impressed by that argument. If the prohibition has an impact on disabled shooters, those who provide shooting facilities should see what alternative assistance might be provided to disabled shooters by shooting clubs, whether by adapting other types of rifle or adapting the places where disabled people shoot. So I am afraid that I do not find my noble friend’s and the noble Earl’s argument particularly powerful on that issue.
It is not our intention to restrict unnecessarily or arbitrarily the lawful use of firearms by licence holders for legitimate sporting purposes, for example. The vast majority of people in lawful possession of firearms use them responsibly and it is right that any controls need to be proportionate. But at the same time, the Government are concerned about the recent rises in gun crime and the changing threats and heightened risk to public safety. All firearms are by their very nature potentially dangerous and, indeed, lethal, but the rifles specified in Clauses 32 and 33 are considered to be more dangerous than other firearms permitted for civilian ownership under the firearms legislation. These rifles can discharge rounds at a much faster rate than conventional bolt-action rifles, which are permitted under licence and are normally operated manually with an up-and-back, forward-and-down motion.
The definition as set out in the Bill refers to the use of the energy from the propellant gas to extract the empty cartridge cases. This brings them much closer to self-loading rifles, which are already prohibited for civilian ownership under our firearms laws. The Government are therefore concerned about their potential for serious misuse and loss of life if they were to fall into the hands of criminals or terrorists.
Viscount Goschen
My Lords, I said that I was open to hearing the arguments. I was saying that we should have a powerful case before we move to such a ban, if that is the direction that Her Majesty’s Government seek to take. The airing of these issues in this House and in another place are very helpful, but we need to follow the spirit of evidence before any action.
Earl Howe
That is extremely helpful. I agree with my noble friend. That is exactly why the Government felt that a longer public debate about this issue was appropriate.
In the light of representations made by representative firearms bodies and others during the passage of the Bill, the Government sought advice from the National Crime Agency on whether heightened security standards governing the safe storage of these rifles would be sufficient to reduce the concerns expressed to us. In the light of the advice received, we took the view that we should look again at options for enhancing the security requirements associated with these particular rifles, rather than push for their prohibition under the firearms legislation at the present time. That is why the provisions to prohibit high muzzle energy rifles were removed from the Bill on Report in the Commons.
It is the Government’s view that we should not proceed with prohibition without considering further the views of the police, relevant shooting organisations and members of the public. As was announced in the Commons, it is the Government’s intention to launch a full public consultation on this and on the firearms safety issues that have arisen during the Bill’s progress. That will provide an opportunity fully to consider the views of all those involved or with an interest and to make a better assessment of whether enhanced security, as proposed by my noble friends, would be sufficient to address the risks set out by the police and the NCA.
Finally, Amendment 80D in the name of my noble friend Lord Attlee seeks to make a change to the definition of “rifle” in Section 57 of the Firearms Act 1968. The purpose of that definition is to make it clear that the ordinary definition of “rifle” includes carbines, a particular type of long gun firearm with a shorter barrel than a normal rifle, which is classified as a rifle for the purposes of firearms controls. As he helpfully set out, my noble friend’s purpose in tabling the amendment is to make it clear that when we talk about rifles, including for the purposes of Clauses 32 and 33, we are talking about hand-held rifles, specifically those that are fired from the shoulder. My noble friend is clear that he wants there to be no confusion with artillery or guns fitted to tanks. The Government are not persuaded that this change to the Firearms Act is necessary. “Rifle” will continue to carry its normal meaning. I understand that this might have been a concern had we been talking about rifled weapons, but we are not.
In the light of the explanations I have provided and my commitment to consider further Amendments 74 and 80A to 80C, I hope that my noble friend Lord Lucas will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
In my contribution, I made a point about the Government taking out amendments then putting them back in. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, at Second Reading, the Minister referred to consultation. Today, the Minister told us that the Government remain very concerned about these weapons and their power. I worry that we will have the same problem as with the rogue landlords database. We wanted to make the database public through the Housing and Planning Act. We won the votes in the Lords, but they were overturned in the Commons. A year later, the Government changed their mind. Now, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, is saying, “The Government want to make the database available. We need primary legislation but we cannot find anything to tag it on to”. I worry that the Government will decide in the end that they want to ban these weapons but will say that they cannot find the legislation. Will the Government consider a precautionary power so that if they decide to, they could do that very quickly through secondary legislation?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, could achieve his objective by supporting my amendment, or at least the concept behind it, slightly more strongly.
Earl Howe
It was in an endeavour to address the general concern put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that I undertook for the Government to consider seriously my noble friend Lord Attlee’s amendment and my noble friend Lord Lucas’s arguments. However, I take his point. I am sure that it will not be lost on Home Office Ministers or officials. Of course, we will give that further consideration.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful for my noble friend’s calm and consideration, as ever. He would make an excellent target shooter. I will try to persuade him to join the Lords’ team for our battle against the Commons in July. I am grateful for what he said about Amendment 74, but when it comes to what my noble friend referred to as rapid-firing rifles, I would be grateful if he could share with us the evidence on which the Government have based the conclusion that the lever release rifle, in particular, is in practice a rapid-firing rifle.
I am not trying to pose as an expert in these things, but in terms of the evidence I have seen from people outside government, that matter is in question, and that is what lies behind my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury’s amendment. If my noble friend felt able to share the information or opinions on which that conclusion was based before Report, I would be immensely grateful.
Lord Lucas
I am always very grateful to my noble friend and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
“Implementation of firearms licensing guidance
(1) The Secretary of State must, within the period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, publish a report on how the Government’s Guide on Firearms Licensing Law (April 2016) is being implemented. (2) A report under subsection (1) must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.(3) The Secretary of State must include in a report under this section—(a) an assessment of the number of encoded reminders that have been placed on the patient records of firearms licence applicants following the grant or renewal of a firearms licence,(b) an assessment of the fees charged by General Practitioners to provide medical information to support a firearms licence application, and(c) an assessment of the number of General Practitioners who have refused to provide medical information to support a firearms licence application, and the reasons for those refusals.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to report within six months of the passing of this Act on how the Government’s Guide on Firearms Licensing Law is being implemented, particularly in relation to medical information.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, in Amendment 75 I address the medical information that is requested by police forces when someone applies for a firearms certificate or a shotgun licence, both on original grant and on renewal. This issue affects every firearm and shotgun certificate holder in England and Wales. I mentioned all this in my speech at Second Reading.
Paragraph 2 of Article 5 of the EU firearms directive mandates a medical assessment of every applicant for a certificate. In England and Wales, there is no consistency of practice between police forces nor is there any consistency in the fee charged to the applicant by his or her GP for a medical assessment. By way of an example, I was looking on the internet the other day and I saw—no names, no pack drill—a GPs’ practice that stated quite plainly that they were conscientious objectors and that they would not take anyone on who was applying for a shotgun or coterminous or firearms certificate or had any interest in shooting—I find that strange, but there it is. I suppose if you were told that by your GP you would go elsewhere—but their charges were slightly different as well. The conscientious objectors said on the next page, “But we will charge you £200”, and on the next page it was £360, so that does not quite make sense.
What is required is: first, a compulsory and once-only medical records check by the general practitioner in response to a police inquiry about the physical and mental health of the applicant; secondly, an enduring marker should be placed by the GP on the patient’s medical records noting that he or she may be in possession of firearms or shotguns in order to ensure that thereafter the GP is reminded to draw to the police’s attention any future adverse change in the patient’s health, including mental health, which may have a bearing on their abilities safely to possess a firearm or shotgun; thirdly, there should be an agreed, reasonable fee for the GP’s original medical records check and the placing of the enduring marker; fourthly, there should be an extension of the life of firearm or shotgun certificates from five to 10 years, which would reduce pressure on licensing departments and police forces; and finally, there should be protection of the confidentiality of applicants and certificate holders’ data.
To shooting sports bodies, the APPG on Shooting and Conservation, the police and, I hope, the Home Office, that should all make perfect sense. It serves to secure and enhance the safety of the public. It is high time that the Home Office moved forward on this. I beg to move.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury for raising this issue. I agree with everything he said. My noble friend Lady Barran suggested that we ought to be economical with the time, but we are discussing primary legislation and will take as long as we need.
I am increasingly disappointed by the attitude of the BMA, and the medical profession generally, in respect of statutory medicals necessary to protect the public. I need a regular medical to keep my HGV driving entitlement. Of course, I can afford the fee, but for a poorly paid lorry driver, it can be a problem. The cost may also discourage experienced drivers from maintaining their entitlement when they no longer use it. It seems blindingly obvious that the doctor best placed to determine if an individual is safe to hold an HGV licence or a firearms certificate is the applicant’s general practitioner. The GP is paid by the state to look after the health of all their patients; they are also the person most likely to be aware of any problems at home.
We are rightly proud of our firearms licensing system, which we have got about right. However, I would make one observation about some police forces deliberately making the process as difficult as possible to deter applicants. For a few months in early 2003, I was running around in the Middle East on Her Majesty’s Service with a loaded Browning Hi-Power pistol in my holster, so someone must have thought that I was a reliable person. When I returned to the UK in June that year, I realised that the land around my house in the middle of Lincolnshire was infested with rabbits, which were no doubt having an adverse effect on agricultural output. I could have done with a bolt-action .22 sporting rifle, but I did not bother applying for a firearms certificate as I was deterred by the deliberate difficulties I knew I would encounter. It was not important to me. Nevertheless, someone with an unhealthy interest in firearms will do whatever is necessary to secure a firearms certificate, so we are having precisely the opposite effect to the one we desire. An unco-operative medical professional would have been just one more difficulty to deter me. I therefore wish my noble friend success with the points he made.
The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment and support it. As my noble friend Lord Lucas said on the previous amendment, the safety of the public is of paramount importance when we talk about shooting; the way we ensure that is by licensing rifles and shotguns.
I have no interests to declare. I do not have a firearms certificate and I do not own shotguns, but this is of great importance to me. It is sad that my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and I had to table the amendment. It would not have been necessary if the Home Office had got on and dealt with the problem earlier. It has known about it and promised consultation in this area, but it has dragged its feet continuously. The consultation should be well under way by now and the results known so that we could debate it.
Returning to the Minister’s old department, what action is the Department of Health taking to encourage GPs to obey the guidance agreed in 2016? Clearly, as demonstrated by my noble friend Lord Attlee, both GPs and the police are not following the guidance. They want to charge fees when it was agreed that no fees would be charged on initial application.
On another point, in declaring something of an interest, can the Minister confirm that the mental health check will apply to everybody with access to the gun cabinet? It is hugely important for not just the person who owns the rifle or shotgun but for anybody with access to the cabinet as well. People often store other things in those cabinets. In my personal experience, we stored my wife’s jewellery in the shotgun cabinet. It was the safe lock-up. She therefore had access to it and to a gun to commit suicide—she was not going to kill anybody else. I do not believe that her suicide could ever have been prevented, but it would not have happened with a shotgun if she had had to undergo a medical test. Can my noble friend confirm that point for me?
Lord Ribeiro (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for not having been present for Second Reading and for speaking from the wrong side of the Room.
I will give you a medical perspective, as medicine has been mentioned and is very much part of this. I am holding a letter I got from the Hampshire Constabulary when I applied for my firearm renewal. It says:
“Thank you for your application for the renewal of a firearm and shotgun certificate. In your application you have disclosed that you have glaucoma.
To suffer from a medical condition of any kind does not preclude you from possessing a firearm. When considering application for Firearm or Shotgun Certificates the Chief Officer of Police has a statutory responsibility to ensure that people wishing to possess firearms can do so without being a danger to public safety or to the peace.
To enable the application to progress we require a medical report from your General Practitioner … detailing the background to your condition, the effects it may have and a description of the medication or treatment you received and are currently receiving”.
That is pretty clear on what the police require. It goes on to say:
“Any physical or mental condition that may affect your ability to possess and use firearms safely should be declared”.
Here it diverges slightly from the nine conditions listed in the 2016 Act, in that it includes,
“mental health disorder, epilepsy, stroke, stress related illness, depression, alcoholism, substance use or dependency”,
which are all in the nine conditions, but it then mysteriously adds heart disease and cancer. I could not really see the relevance of that. It goes on to say:
“This list is not definitive”.
I read that out because we already have a pretty stringent process with the police.
In answer to the question about the cabinets, I remember that when I had my cabinet inspected by the police, they came to the house, had a look and asked, “Who has responsibility for and possession of the key? Does anybody else have access to this key? Yes, you can put your wife’s jewellery in there”—I do from time to time—“but technically she should not know where the key is”. That addresses that point.
I have permission from my GP to give noble Lords some idea of the process that GPs go through in doing this. First, the GP will see you—my GP is a senior practitioner in her practice. All the requests are initially screened by the administrative staff, who then pass them on to the GP. The GP makes time to review the patient’s records and checks the history and the paper records—increasingly, these are electronic—for any relevant correspondence or letters that come through and any prescribed medication. The GP then has to make a judgment as to whether there is a risk. If no risk is identified, a relevant code is added to the notes. Administration then takes over the case. It is filed away and an invoice is made—in my case, for £15; we have heard the variations in the cost. If a risk is identified, a report is produced and sent to the police. GPs inevitably get the blame if the application fails. The patient’s record is flagged with an encoded reminder or marker. Should a relevant medical condition occur over the five years of the licence’s term, there is a visible reminder that the patient has a firearm or shotgun certificate.
My GP notes that although this should be straightforward, many reminders relating to other data collections come into their systems and must be dealt with, and that GPs must cope with an element of reminder fatigue. From time to time, an alert may go unnoticed; that is human error but it does happen. I know that the BMA is reported as being against flagging notices, citing a lack of clear protocol for their removal, but the 2016 firearms licensing law requires GPs to place that reminder code in the patient’s notes. That is a very clear statement and GPs should be doing it.
My GP also noted that in the context of extending the period to 10 years for those with mental illnesses, which is being mooted at the moment, GPs would like much more prominent markers so that they can associate a developing mental illness with the person holding a firearm or shotgun certificate. Mental illness is the one real area of concern for general practitioners here. GPs want a much more prominent marker to be flagged up on their screens when this situation arises.
The firearms licences and medical evidence factsheet being produced identifies who should pay fees and when that payment should be made. Where the applicant has declared a medical condition on the application form, as I did, a fee would be expected. If a further medical report is required, the police must pay. During the normal course of validating a certificate, the GP initially checks the patient’s records. There is no current expectation of a fee being submitted, but as noble Lords will know, there has been variability in the amount of fees charged. In some cases, the charging of fees as high as £200 for just an initial check has been reported in Scotland. We must address that lack of conformity now. We should suggest a standard fee equivalent to the charge for a heavy goods vehicle licence, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury, right across England and Wales.
Providing firearms reports for the police is part of a GP’s job but not of their core general medical services, so they have freedom to charge if they wish to. GPs are under considerable pressure to get this right. The system is in place and is effective. We need clear systems for flagging up critical medical problems to which GPs can respond. I support the amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, as I have said before, it is crucial that the Government get this right. I hope that they will put some energy behind it. I say to my noble friend that the answer to a plague of rabbits is not a .22 rifle but a pack of Sporting Lucas terriers.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I will speak very briefly. The amendment is clearly a good addition. We certainly want consistency on medical checks, police checks and how people look at this issue. Without that, we will have problems. That cannot be right. We want to ensure that people’s suitability to have a weapon is assessed, and to know that this is done to the highest possible standards. We are all clear on that. Where we have inconsistency, we have problems. I support the amendment and I hope that the Minister will respond positively to the issues raised.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury for raising this issue. His amendment would place a duty on the Secretary of State to,
“within the period of six months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, publish a report on how the Government’s Guide on Firearms Licensing Law (April 2016) is being implemented”.
The Home Office has published guidance on firearms licensing law for many years. The latest edition was published in 2016 and is currently undergoing revision to take account of recent legislative changes. It is an important document as it assists police forces in applying firearms law.
The Government want to ensure consistency of approach and high standards for police firearms licensing, and for this reason, we introduced the power to issue statutory firearms guidance in the Policing and Crime Act 2017. The new statutory guidance will apply to issues such as background checks, medical suitability and other criteria aimed at protecting public safety. We will be holding a public consultation shortly on the introduction of the new statutory guidance.
The amendment moved by my noble friend indicates a particular interest in the medical aspects of the firearms guidance, and in the engagement by GPs with the information-sharing arrangements which were agreed and introduced in 2016. These arrangements were brought in to help ensure that police would have sight of relevant medical information about certificate holders and applicants, to safeguard both licensed gun holders and other members of the public.
The Earl of Caithness
I thank my noble friend for what he said, particularly on the point I raised. I want to press him on the consultation. We have been told “soon”, “shortly” and “in the near future”. Can he give a specific date? It would be helpful if a date could be announced before Report.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
I am most grateful to my noble friend for his response. I am somewhat disappointed because this has been hanging around for a long while and action needs to be taken. I find it incredible that, in a modern country such as ours, the Home Office and general practitioners cannot come to some sort of agreement for a level playing field on fees. It seems such a simple thing to do. Most people in commerce and industry would try to agree this sort of thing every day. I will read my noble friend’s words and I reserve the right to talk to him again about this, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Impact assessment of section 31
(1) Section 31 may only come into force if a Minister of the Crown has laid before Parliament an assessment of its impact on different racial groups as defined in section 9 of the Equality Act 2010 (race).(2) The impact assessment must be conducted by a body independent of the Government following consultation with representatives of different racial groups.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would require an independent assessment of the impact of searches in schools and further education premises on different racial groups.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendment 76 would add a new clause to the Bill which would require a Minister of the Crown to lay before Parliament an assessment of the impact of Clause 31 before it comes into force. This is important because Clause 31 gives the police powers to search schools or further education premises for corrosive substances. That is an additional power for the police.
The worry is that this will disproportionately affect BAME children and young people who we know are already more likely to be stopped and searched, and that is something we must be aware of before the measure comes into force.
The equality statement on the policy does not appear to contain any specific analysis of the likely equality impact of the extension of the investigative and enforcement powers. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that in her response. This is about getting the balance right. We must get things in proportion and take care not to damage relations between the black community and the police. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, we need to ensure that the police have appropriate powers to deal with threats on school or further education premises involving corrosive substances. Given the significant harm that corrosive attacks can cause and the fear that they can instil, it is important that we ensure that the police have sufficient powers to be able to take swift and preventive action.
We know that there are around 800 attacks per year in England and Wales, and we need to ensure that action can be taken not just to deal with actual attacks but with threats to use a corrosive substance. Clause 31 is designed to ensure that the police can effectively enforce the offence of threatening with a corrosive substance in a private place as it applies to schools and further education establishments.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has explained his concerns that this new power will be disproportionately used against black, Asian and minority ethnic pupils and students. I appreciate and understand the noble Lord’s concern, which should be taken seriously. It is, however, important to recognise that this power can be used only in circumstances where a police officer has reasonable grounds for suspecting that someone has been threatened by another person with a corrosive substance. Reasonable grounds might include a report from a teacher, a parent or a pupil.
It is also important that we ensure there are sufficient protections in place for our schools and further education premises to deal with any situations where a pupil or student may threaten to throw or squirt a corrosive substance over another student or a teacher. The police need to be able to enter and search a school or further education premises and any person on them to prevent an actual attack. That said, I have indicated that the noble Lord has raised a perfectly proper concern.
While I do not consider this amendment to be necessary, I can give your Lordships an undertaking that we will consult relevant school and further education bodies, including teaching unions, local authorities and other associations, on the implementation of this power before we bring the clause into force. With that assurance, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, I had read this clause as primarily directed to the power to enter and search premises—in fact you have to do that—as well as a person. Can the Minister assure the Committee that, as well as the consultation she has mentioned, information and statistics will be kept that show the BAME profiles? I should not use the word “profile”, but the Minister will understand what I am saying. This is an issue we have brought up at other points in the Bill.
Baroness Barran
I am glad to be able to reassure the noble Baroness that that will be the case.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for her response, which was very helpful. At this stage, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
“Payments in respect of converted or deactivated firearms other than bump stocks
(1) This section applies to firearms of the kind referred to in—(a) the paragraph to be inserted into section 5(1) of the Firearms Act 1968 by section 32(2), or(b) the sub-paragraph to be inserted into Article 45(1) of the Firearms (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 (SI 2004/702 (NI 3)) by section 33(2).(2) A person making a claim and who was entitled to have in their possession on or immediately before 20 June 2018, by virtue of a firearm certificate held by them or by virtue of being a registered firearms dealer, a firearm described at subsection (1) above and who—(a) opts to retain it after either modification into bolt action form or deactivation, and(b) provides documentary evidence within one month of the start of the surrender period to the Chief Officer of Police who issued his or her firearm certificate of the transfer of the rifle to a registered firearms dealer with an appropriately conditioned section 5 authority, and(c) on completion of the modification or deactivation, provides documentary evidence thereof to the Chief Officer of Police who issued his or her firearm certificate,shall receive payment from the Secretary of State equivalent to the cost of modification or deactivation.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to provide compensation to those who opt to have modified to straight-pull bolt action form, or to have deactivated, MARS and Lever-Release rifles prohibited under this Bill.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, Amendment 80K deals with compensation. My intention with this amendment is to ask my noble friend the Minister two things. First, will he confirm that in the event of MARS and lever-release rifles becoming prohibited compensation will be paid, as stated in the Government’s policy statement? Secondly, will compensation will be provided to cover the cost of modifications for those who modify to straight-pull bolt action or deactivate? I beg to move.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, if I may make an observation, if we still had the Firearms Consultative Committee, which was so well-chaired by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury, and before that by Lord Kimball, we would have identified that we had a problem with the MARS and lever-action release system. The problem could have been snuffed out fairly early on by the committee advising the Home Secretary to ban them. The Home Secretary could then have made a Written Ministerial Statement saying that they were to be banned, and that compensation would no longer be payable for anything bought after that Statement was made. Will my noble friend the Minister consider reinstating the Firearms Consultative Committee, or something similar, so that we do not have a similar problem? Officials are shaking their heads, so I suspect that I will get a negative answer.
Earl Howe
My Lords, it is fair and right that owners of previously legally-held firearms, who voluntarily hand these weapons over to the police for safe disposal, should be properly compensated. The purpose of the surrender and payment provisions in the Bill are directed to that end.
Amendment 80K seeks to extend these compensation arrangements such that compensation would be payable to owners who choose to modify their rifles, or indeed deactivate them, so that they may lawfully retain them. The reason for the payment scheme in the Bill is to rightfully compensate owners for the value they lose when surrendering these rifles to the police. My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury has suggested that owners may look to modify their rifle to a straight-pull bolt action function and therefore retain it on a section 1 certificate. We are not against this; individuals are perfectly within their right to do so. However, it is one thing to compensate owners of these weapons where they are deprived of their property, and quite a different proposition to expect the state to pay for their conversion or deactivation. We are seeking to remove these potentially dangerous rifles from our streets, and it is right that the Government should use public money to compensate only those individuals who surrender their prohibited rifles.
The arrangements covering compensation payments for firearms made unlawful by the Bill will be set out in regulations. I hope noble Lords will have had an opportunity to read the draft regulations which my noble friend Lady Williams circulated late last week. These regulations will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, so in due course they will have to be debated and approved by both Houses before they can take effect.
There is clearly a balance to be struck here, taking into account the proper use of public funds. It is the Government’s view that compensation should only be paid to those who surrender firearms prohibited by the Bill. If an owner instead chooses to modify or decommission one of these firearms, such that it may continue to be lawfully held, that is a matter for them, but it would not be right for such modifications or decommissioning to take place at taxpayers’ expense. Given that explanation, which I am sure will come as a disappointment to my noble friend—I am sorry about that—I ask him to withdraw his amendment and support Clause 36 standing part of the Bill.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, at least I get 10 points for trying. I am most grateful to my noble friend the Minister for what he said, and I understand it all. Having been around at the time of Dunblane, and through other guns being prohibited and compensation being given, I understand where he is coming from. If I may ask one further question, with compensation being paid for the guns which are to be handed in—if the Government go ahead and ban them—does this include compensation on manufacturing equipment for the businesses that manufacture these guns? I know that it does not include ammunition, but does it include manufacturing and the stock held?
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, I am most grateful. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Barran
“Enforcement of offences relating to sale etc of offensive weapons
(1) A local weights and measures authority may enforce within its area a provision listed in subsection (2).(2) The provisions mentioned in subsection (1) are—(a) section 1(1) of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 (penalties for offences in connection with dangerous weapons),(b) section 1 of the Crossbows Act 1987 (sale etc of crossbows to persons under 18),(c) section 141(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offensive weapons),(d) section 141A of that Act (sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18), (e) section 1 of the Knives Act 1997 (unlawful marketing of knives),(f) section 2 of that Act (publication of unlawful marketing material relating to knives),(g) section 1 of this Act (sale of corrosive products to persons under 18),(h) section 3 of this Act (delivery of corrosive products to residential premises etc),(i) section 4 of this Act (delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18),(j) section 17 of this Act (delivery of bladed products to residential premises etc), and(k) section 20 of this Act (delivery of bladed articles to persons under 18).(3) For the investigatory powers available to a local weights and measures authority for the purposes of enforcing a provision listed in subsection (2), see Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015.(4) Nothing in this section is to be construed as authorising a local weights and measures authority to bring proceedings in Scotland for an offence.(5) In paragraph 10 of Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (duties and powers to which Schedule 5 applies), at the appropriate place insert “section (Enforcement of offences relating to sale etc of offensive weapons) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would confer the investigatory powers in Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 on Trading Standards for the purposes of enforcing various existing and new offences relating to offensive weapons.
“Application of Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008
In Schedule 3 to the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 (relevant enactments for the purposes of relevant functions to which Parts 1 and 2 of that Act apply) at the appropriate places insert— “Criminal Justice Act 1988, sections 141(1) and 141A”;“Offensive Weapons Act 2019, sections 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20”;“Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, section 1(1)”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would apply Parts 1 and 2 of the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 to enforcement of the provisions listed in subsection (2) of the first new Clause to be inserted after Clause 39, to the extent that Part 1 or 2 of that Act does not otherwise apply in relation to those provisions.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Advertising offensive weapons online
(1) A person or company commits an offence when a website registered in their name is used to advertise, list or otherwise facilitate the sale of any weapon listed in Schedule 1 to the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order (SI 1988/2019) or any offensive weapon capable of being disguised as something else.(2) No offence is committed under this section if the website removes the advertisement or list within 24 hours of the registered owner of the website being informed that the advertisement or list includes a weapon listed in Schedule 1 to the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order (SI 1988/2019) or an offensive weapon capable of being disguised as something else. (3) A registered owner of a website who is guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, to a fine or to both;(b) on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would place responsibility on website owners to prevent the sale of weapons.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendment 83 would insert a new clause into the Bill to make the owner of a website, be that an individual or a company, responsible for ensuring that weapons listed in Schedule 1 to the Criminal Justice Act are not advertised on their site. The Bill places responsibilities on shop workers, delivery people and others; making website owners responsible for their content should be welcomed by the Government. I asked a similar Question today about anonymous accounts and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made the point that when people are made responsible, things happen. If they are not responsible, they will do nothing. There should be consequences. In some ways, this is in a similar area.
Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause would provide for the owner to have committed no offence if, within 24 hours of being notified of the advertisement, they arrange for it to be removed. Then there would be no problems whatever. In some cases, there is a defence under Section 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, but that depends on the facts of the case. I accept entirely that there can be jurisdictional issues if the provider is based overseas.
This is only a probing amendment to highlight an issue that is part of a much wider problem, which I asked a Question about today: how we control what is on the internet and how we deal with such issues. These are serious matters. I hope that the government White Paper will deal with some of them, but I seek to include a clause in the Bill to make owners responsible for the content on their site and the adverts they place. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, is trying to do with the amendment. It raises again the issue of websites that are hosted overseas and the lack of territorial reach to apply the suggested offence to overseas website owners. That creates an imbalance, as we discussed on previous elements of the Bill, between UK and overseas sellers of knives and corrosive substances, for example. I see some practical difficulties with this but I understand what the noble Lord is trying to achieve.
Baroness Barran
I am grateful for the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, which seeks to make it a criminal offence when,
“a website … is used to advertise, list or otherwise facilitate the sale of any weapon listed in Schedule 1 to the Criminal Justice Act 1988 … or any offensive weapon capable of being disguised as something else”.
We can all agree on the spirit of the amendment. Indeed, in preparing my remarks, I spent five minutes googling what I could buy online. The noble Lord makes a good point: some very shocking weapons are easily accessible online. However, I hope to persuade him that his amendment is not needed.
We are satisfied that there is no gap in the law and that legislation addressing the criminal behaviour outlined in the amendment already exists. Indeed, the noble Lord alluded to that in his remarks. The Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability wrote to the Public Bill Committee in the other place to set out the legal position on online platforms that advertise or sell offensive weapons in contravention of Section 141 or Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. It may assist your Lordships if I set out the position.
Section 141 of the Act states that,
“any person who manufactures, sells or hires or offers for sale or hire, exposes or has in his possession for the purpose of sale or hire, or lends or gives to any other person, a weapon to which this section applies shall be guilty of an offence”.
A list of such weapons is set out in Schedule 1 to the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988. Section 141A of the 1988 Act makes it an offence to sell certain articles with a blade or point to anyone aged under 18. Clause 1 of the Bill will make it an offence also to sell corrosive products to a person aged under 18. As is clear from these provisions, anyone who sells, hires, offers for sale or hire, exposes or has in their possession for the purpose of sale or hire any of the weapons to which the 1988 order applies—whether online or otherwise—is guilty of an offence. This would apply to individuals, but “a person” can include a body corporate or unincorporated, such as a company.
Where the user of a website places advertisements or listings for anything contained in the 1988 order on that website, the service provider may rely on the defence in relation to hosting under Regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. Whether Regulation 19 applies will depend on the facts of the case. As the noble Lord mentioned, there may also be jurisdictional issues if the service provider is based overseas. I assure noble Lords that the sites I found were all based overseas. Regulation 19 will not apply where the provider of the website is offering the items for sale directly and where the provider had actual knowledge of the unlawful activity and upon obtaining that knowledge did not act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the information.
We therefore consider that the provider of a website who sells items on it directly would likely be caught under the wording of the legislation. Where the provider of the website is enabling advertisements to be placed by others, the defence under Regulation 19 may be available. We have discussed the matter with the Crown Prosecution Service, which is of the view that these provisions can be used to prosecute where appropriate. In the light of this explanation of the existing law, I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for her helpful response. I tabled the amendment to highlight the problems in this area. It was good to hear that there are already provisions in place to deal with these matters. I look forward in due course to the Government’s White Paper on the wider debate on the internet, the good that it does and how we deal with its bad side. At this stage, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Tuesday 12th February 2019
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 149-IV Fourth marshalled list for Grand Committee (PDF) - (8 Feb 2019)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Rogan) (UUP)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
“(ja) section (Enforcement of offences relating to sale etc of offensive weapons)(5);(jb) section (Application of Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendments to insert new Clauses after Clause 39.
“(za) section (Sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18)(1);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause before Clause 14.
“(ca) section (Enforcement of offences relating to sale etc of offensive weapons)(1) to (4);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert the first of two new Clauses after Clause 39.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 28, line 10.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 28, line 10.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 28, line 40.
“(aa) section (Sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18)(2);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause before Clause 14.
“(ca) section (Sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18)(1);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause before Clause 14.
“(ca) section (Sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18)(2);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause before Clause 14.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, that concludes the Committee’s proceedings on the Bill.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Tuesday 26th February 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 160-I Marshalled list for Report (PDF) - (22 Feb 2019)
21:32 - Division on Amendment 35 - Ayes: 145 / Noes: 84 - Amendment 35 agreed.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, along with similar amendments to this Clause, amends the defence for the offence in this section to set a less demanding standard than all reasonable precautions / all due diligence.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 1 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Paddick, as are all the other amendments in this group—Amendments 2, 15, 16, 25, 26, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70 to 73, 78 and 79—16 amendments, each deleting a three-letter word. The word is “all”, as in taking “all reasonable precautions” and exercising “all due diligence” in connection with the sale of corrosive products to someone under 18, in Clause 1; the sale of bladed articles to someone under 18, in Clause 15; and the delivery of bladed articles to residential premises, in Clause 18. These are defences to the offences contained in those clauses, so it is no minor matter.
The meaning of “all reasonable precautions” and “all due diligence” emerged in Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised it, others followed it up, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said:
“If I might say so, ‘all’ means ‘every’. Without ‘all’, you have just to take reasonable precautions and show due diligence. Once you put ‘all’ in, you fall foul of any particular point you could have but did not look at and did not do”.
Clearly, this is a very high bar, and it took a number of noble Lords somewhat by surprise, I think. I am unclear about what it might mean, particularly when coupled with “reasonableness”, because it is not just about doing the reasonable thing; it is about doing every reasonable thing. The Minister said in that debate:
“All roads are leading back to the guidance”,—[Official Report, 28/1/19; col. GC 163.]
having told the Committee that the Government want to produce guidance—we will debate that later—to ensure that retailers and sellers know what steps they could take, with regard to Clause 1, to ensure that they comply with the law. On the wording, is it about steps that they can take or steps that they must take? It seems to me that the wording used throughout the Bill does not allow for common-sense alternatives or even minor omissions. Of course, guidance is produced by the Executive, not by Parliament. Indeed, to end with a question, will one necessarily have complied with the law, even if one follows guidance to the letter, if all reasonable precautions and all due diligence have to be applied? I beg to move.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Baroness explained, these amendments relate to the level of burden of proof required for retailers and delivery companies if they want to avail themselves of the defences available to them if charged with an offence of selling or delivering a corrosive product or a bladed article to an under-18 or the offence of delivering a corrosive product or bladed article to a residential address. Under these amendments, retailers and delivery companies would need to prove just that they had taken reasonable precautions and exercised due diligence to avoid the commission of the relevant offence, rather than, as the Bill provides, that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence, as the noble Baroness explained.
I am not persuaded, despite the noble Baroness’s words, that it is unjust to require a person to prove that they have taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid selling or delivering corrosive products or bladed articles to under-18s or to avoid delivering such products or articles to residential premises. Retailers have had to operate to this standard under existing law and to lower the burden of proof would leave us with a burden of proof in the Bill that was out of sync with existing legislation. I will give some examples.
Under Section 141A(4) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, it is a defence for someone charged with the offence of selling a knife to an under-18 if they can prove that they,
“took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”.
The Licensing Act 2003 requires a defendant to prove that,
“he had taken all reasonable steps to establish the individual’s age”,
in regard to the selling of alcohol to an under-18. Under Section 7 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, which prohibits the sale of tobacco to under-18s, the defence is in similar terms. Part 4 of the Gambling Act 2005 includes various offences in relation to children; under Section 63, it is a defence to show that the defendant “took all reasonable steps”.
As a result of these examples in law, I urge that the higher burden of proof is an established defence, and one which has been in place for a significant amount of time without issue. Retailers now know what is required of them by way of proof if they wish to make use of the defence if charged with the offence of selling a knife or bladed article to an under-18. It is understood by retailers, Trading Standards and the police. Having two different burdens of proof in place would, I think, be confusing to all concerned. I do not think it would help the police, Trading Standards officers, prosecutors or the courts. Noble Lords are always calling for consistency, and I think there is a strong argument for consistency here. I hope that, on reflection, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would agree and be happy to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, it is certainly a burden in the sense of the weight of it rather than the balance of it, which is how we normally consider the burden of proof. The Minister says that retailers now know. My question was whether they will know from the guidance that is to be produced. I shall have to leave that hanging, as this is the point that we are at. Maybe the Minister will be able to answer that when we come to the next group and talk about guidance. Perhaps we will also have to wait for an answer on whether guidance across all the offences—not just those within this Bill but others that the Minister mentioned—will be consistent. Clearly, we are not going to be of the same mind here but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
“( ) The Secretary of State must, within one month of the coming into force of this section, publish guidance as to how the requirements of the defence under subsection (2) may be fulfilled.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, following the Minister's remarks at Committee stage (28 January, HL Deb, col 160GC), is intended to ensure that guidance will be issued, so that those responsible for designing and carrying out checking procedures will be able to judge their adequacy.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is unable to be here but has asked me to move this amendment on his behalf so that we may get the matter on the record. However, I will not speak to Amendment 81, which is in this group and also in his name, because he will get the opportunity to do so if we leave it to be discussed in sequence on the next day of Report.
The amendment seeks guidance. We have government amendments in this group, and no doubt the answer to Amendment 3 is Amendment 106. In the Government’s amendment, the guidance is about a large number of offences relating to various sections in legislation, including Clause 1 of this Bill, and therefore it covers a wide area. Guidance can be very helpful—it sounds as though it will be essential here—but, as I have said before, it should not take the place of clear primary legislation. It is executive, not legislative. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord’s Amendment 81, which he will speak to himself when we come to that point in the Bill, ask the Secretary of State to issue guidance. We are placing burdens on shop workers and delivery drivers, and it is incumbent on the Government to issue proper guidance. I know that we have the government amendments and I look forward to the Minister setting them out, as we have a situation where people can be prosecuted and end up in prison, so we need to make sure that they understand their responsibilities. I look forward to the Minister setting that out for the House.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I think that a bit of certainty here is essential. One of the problems that exist elsewhere is uncertainty surrounding what is going to be required. It is very difficult for traders if they do not know what part they are going to play. However, when we come to the next amendment I will say something about that which I think will be helpful.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank noble Lords for their comments. I agree that, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, pointed out, people have to understand their responsibilities. In Committee there was much debate about the need for guidance, particularly for retailers, manufacturers, delivery companies and the like, about the operation of the provisions in the Bill relating to the sale and delivery of corrosive products and offensive weapons.
In response to the debate in Committee, I said that it was our intention to issue appropriate guidance. A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Lucas, wanted to see that commitment reflected in the Bill, and government Amendment 106 does just that. It enables the Home Secretary, Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland Department of Justice, as the case may be, to issue guidance about the provisions in the Bill, and the existing law as amended by the Bill, relating to corrosives and offensive weapons.
Importantly, the amendment also sets out that, before guidance is published, the relevant national authority must consult,
“such persons likely to be affected by it as the authority considers appropriate”.
We would, for example, expect to consult organisations representing both small and large retailers of knives and corrosive products. This would ensure that those directly impacted by these measures have a hand in developing the guidance that is most useful to them. That is an important part of the Bill.
Were he in his place, I hope that my noble friend Lord Lucas would agree that government Amendment 106 covers similar ground to his Amendments 3 and 81 and, indeed, provides a more comprehensive list of the provisions where it might be appropriate to issue guidance. Government Amendments 108, 112 and 113 are consequential to Amendment 106. I hope that on that basis the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw Amendment 3 and support the government amendments.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am indeed. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to enable the Bill to encompass such electronic systems of age verification as Yoti once those systems have passed scrutiny by the Home Office, as a way of addressing age verification challenges.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and at his request, I move Amendment 4 and shall speak also to Amendment 69 in this group.
Amendment 4 is intended to enable the Bill to encompass electronic systems of age verification such as Yoti, once those systems have passed scrutiny by the Home Office, as a way of addressing age verification challenges. With regard to Amendment 69, the Bill requires retailers to undertake age verification online and offline. In the absence of recognised standards against which online or offline age verification schemes can be audited and recognised, this amendment allows retailers to comply with the requirements of the Bill through any scheme they choose which is recognised by the Secretary of State. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendments 4 and 69, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raise the issue of age verification. Our world is becoming more digital and, when age verification can be done digitally, it should obviously be done in that way. That might not be possible yet but it is becoming easier and, if it can be done, it certainly should be. I have to admit that I had never heard of Yoti. Perhaps I am showing my age but I had absolutely no idea what it was. However, I have learned something today. Amendment 69 would provide for schemes to be recognised by the Secretary of State as suitable for this purpose and would provide for the maintenance and updating of a list of those schemes. That seems sensible and I certainly support the amendments.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I want to say a couple of things about this as I have been involved in this area for some time as a result of the Digital Economy Act, which raised exactly the same challenge of trying to check people’s ages. As a result, a lot of work has gone into doing this online or electronically. We can use technology to make this work and that technology exists now.
The great thing is that most young people now have a smartphone, which checks that the correct person is using it as many people now access their phone using a fingerprint or another biometric, such as face recognition. Many of your Lordships probably have a mobile smartphone issued by the House which they unlock with their thumb print, so it is possible to know whose phone it is. Therefore, that can work, and several age check providers—not just the one mentioned, although it is one of the leading ones—are experts in establishing proof of age. They will check people.
A lot of young people will establish their age when they first register if that is the only way that they can operate in the future. They will be checked against another document or something else, so the age check providers know how to do that. When it comes to proving their age to someone else, they do not have to release any personal details; it can be proved on their smartphone or online. What is released is not proof of age but the result of the age check, and a certificate can be issued to show that that has been done.
Therefore, there are several solutions. As I have mentioned before, if noble Lords want to see what they are like, they can go to dpatechgateway.co.uk. If they want to, noble Lords can see that in Hansard later. You can look at and try several solutions there and see how easy they are: these solutions will work very easily online and at the point of delivery by using the recipient’s mobile or similar technology. They are all compliant with the British Standards Institution’s Publicly Available Specification 1296, which goes into exactly how to do this and how to verify that people have done it properly. It also has addenda about privacy and everything like that. I know this because I chaired the steering group—I suppose this is an interest, but I did not get paid for it.
It frustrates me that the technology is there and this Bill says that,
“the accused is to be treated as having taken reasonable steps to establish the purchaser’s age if and only if … the accused was shown any of the documents mentioned in subsection (5)”.
The first two of those are “a passport” and,
“a European Union photocard driving licence”.
I suppose that becomes a problem in a few months’ time—or a few years’ time—because I do not know if the UK photocard licence will be good enough. The list continues:
“such other document, or a document of such other description, as the Scottish Ministers may prescribe by order”.
Does that apply to things in England as well if one Scottish Minister okays it—“The English can use that too”—or are we stuck with a passport? How many people over 18 do not have a passport? The Home Office could enter the 21st century and start to realise that this stuff can be done much more effectively using modern technology. We know that not all passports are genuine. We can move to better standards than are prescribed in this Bill.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for moving this amendment in the absence of my noble friend Lord Lucas. The two amendments allow us to consider the merits of prescribing one or more specific electronic methods for establishing the age of a purchaser of a corrosive product or bladed article as an alternative to the examination of official documents such as a passport or driving licence.
Amendment 4 would enable an electronic method of age verification to be prescribed solely for use in Scotland. I assume this is because Clause 1 imposes particular requirements on retailers in Scotland if they wish to benefit from the defence of having taken reasonable steps to establish the purchaser’s age. In Scotland, in line with a number of existing age verification laws that operate in that part of the UK, a retailer is obliged to establish a purchaser’s age by examining his or her passport, photocard driving licence or other document, as prescribed by the Scottish Ministers. There is no such requirement in England and Wales and Northern Ireland. Consequently, Clause 1 would not preclude the use of electronic age verification technology.
The age verification requirements as they apply to Scotland have been discussed and agreed with the Scottish Government and are intended to reflect the law as it currently applies to other age-restricted products. We have drawn the Scottish Government’s attention to my noble friend’s amendment and will ensure that they have sight of this debate. However, they have advised that they would prefer any steps in this area to be taken on a consistent basis across all age verification provisions. As such, they have advised that we should be wary of introducing in this Bill new procedures on a piecemeal basis that disturb wider current age verification procedures related to the sale of age-restricted products in Scotland.
In short, I commend the development of technological solutions to age verification. I am sure that this is something that the Scottish Government will want to look at in future. However, any change to the current arrangements regarding age-restricted products in Scotland should be considered across the piece and not in isolation. As I have said, we will draw the Scottish Government’s attention to this debate.
Amendment 69 would require the Secretary of State to publish and maintain a list of systems assessed as suitable for online and offline age verification. Again, I recognise the place for the use of technology to verify the age of a person seeking to purchase age-restricted products, as a number of noble Lords have mentioned. However, I have concerns about what is proposed here.
I am sure noble Lords would accept that Government cannot be seen to be endorsing one or more proprietary age verification systems over others. There are different types of age verification systems available and a number of different providers. The technology behind these systems is continuing to develop at a very fast pace. There is a danger that, if we prescribe a specific electronic method for age verification, this could quickly be overtaken by technological innovations.
The Earl of Erroll
Before the noble Baroness sits down, I would like to correct her: there is a British standard. As I mentioned, it is PAS 1296. It is technology independent, does not specify anything and is written to be as future-proof as possible. I recommend it to her as some bedside reading to bring her into the 21st century.
Baroness Barran
I will certainly do that. I reassure the noble Lord that I did go to dpatechgateway.co.uk, so my bedside reading is now complete.
Lord Paddick
I thank the Minister for her explanation, although I am a little confused. My understanding is that, as part of compulsory age verification for access to online pornography, there is a list of age verification systems endorsed by the British Board of Film Classification on the Government’s behalf, and that these online pornography sites have to comply with the restrictions that the BBFC imposes in line with government instructions. Therefore, there is some age verification that relies on electronic systems, so a lot of what the Minister says seems to contradict what is happening in another part of the Government, the DCMS.
I thank other noble Lords for speaking to these amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, wanted the Government’s response on the record. We now have this, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 4 withdrawn.
Amendment 5
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, along with other amendments to this Clause, would remove the short term prison sentences from the offence in this section.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, in moving Amendment 5 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Paddick, I shall speak also to Amendments 6, 7, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and 34.
For most of us in society, the idea of going to prison for even a short amount of time, with the loss of liberty that that entails, is a real deterrent. But that thinking fails to get into the mindset of many of today’s criminals, who may be reckless or who may not fear prison because they have friends and family who have done time. Perhaps their lives are so chaotic that, in the scheme of things, prison does not seem so bad. That is true of no group more than those serving the shortest sentences. It was recently said:
“In the last five years, just over a quarter of a million custodial sentences have been given to offenders for six months or less; over 300,000 sentences were for 12 months or less. But nearly two thirds of those offenders go on to commit a further crime within a year of being released. 27% of all reoffending is committed by people who have served short sentences of 12 months or less. For the offenders completing these short sentences whose lives are destabilised, and for society which incurs a heavy financial and social cost, prison simply isn’t working”.
By now noble Lords may have recognised the source of this quotation. The speaker went on to say that,
“there is a very strong case to abolish sentences of six months or less altogether, with some closely defined exceptions, and put in their place a robust community order regime. Let’s be honest. The public will always want to prioritise schools or hospitals over the criminal justice system when it comes to public spending. But where we do spend on the criminal justice system, we must spend on what works. Why would we spend taxpayers’ money doing what we know doesn’t work, and indeed, makes us less safe? We shouldn’t”.
Thank you, Justice Secretary, for putting the case so well.
I commented at the last stage of this Bill that, not so long ago, the Home Office and the MoJ were a single department. It was too big, but it is a great pity that thinking has moved so far apart that one department is now legislating for a sanction which the other considers unproductive.
These amendments would remove the sanction of short-term imprisonment for up to 51 weeks—the same points apply as those made by Mr Gauke in his speech a few days ago. We are dealing with various offences: the sale of corrosives to under-18s, the delivery of corrosives to residential premises and having the corrosive in a public place. We would have preferred to focus on robust community sentences, but we learned during the last stage that they can be applied only as an alternative to a custodial sentence. In my view, that needs updating—but that is for another day. I hope that the Government might address this: otherwise, we will do so at a suitable opportunity.
In Committee, it was said, understandably, that victims feel let down because community sentences do not have the same weight and are ineffective. That is an important issue, which should be addressed by the robustness of community sentences. I have heard over the years that a tough community sentence is much harder than custody.
The offences in question are rather difficult. The first two that I mentioned are likely to be committed by adults. Being found to have committed a criminal offence and being fined, which is what our amendments would achieve, would have a serious impact on the offender as an employee—or possibly, in the circumstances, as an ex-employee. The third offence may be committed by an adult but also by a child. The arguments about custodial sentences being rather good at fitting someone for a life of crime particularly apply.
The Minister in Committee talked about the significant harm that corrosive products can cause if misused. The offences in question, which are the subject of these amendments, are not about the use of corrosives as a weapon. We are not seeking to minimise or make light of the harm that corrosives can cause; that is not the point. The Minister will also say that the court has discretion as to disposal, which is of course true up to a point.
That takes me to Clauses 8 and 9—the subject of the last two amendments in this group—which we would leave out. They require particular, mandatory sentences. Clause 8 applies to, among others, children over 16 who have one previous relevant conviction. We are concerned about the age threshold, for reasons that we went into fairly extensively at the last stage and which, I suspect, other noble Lords may raise today. I say in advance that I will probably agree with them. We have an in-principle objection to mandatory sentences. The Minister described them as providing the appropriate custodial sentence. But is not “appropriate” something that the court should determine? We may have criticisms of pre-sentence reports and so on, but the court is looking at both the offence and the offender; those taken together will lead the court to take a view on what is appropriate.
In Committee, we explained our opposition to the application to under-18s—I felt then, and still feel, that Clause 8(4) is inadequate. It is, if I may put it this way, the legislative equivalent of lip service that,
“the court must have regard to its duty under section 44 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933”.
The text refers back to Clause 8(2), which tells the court that if it is,
“of the opinion that there are particular circumstances”,
it can take a different course. But the circumstances here are that the person is under 18. So how does having regard to the welfare of the child or young person actually work? Does it mean that one child is more resilient than another, that one offence is less serious than another, or that the circumstances make custody “unjust”? This is what discretion in sentencing is about, and these Benches prefer judicial discretion to executive sentencing. I beg to move.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, I am going to say some contradictory things on this amendment—I have spent a career doing that, so it is perhaps not that unusual. Fundamentally, I think we probably need fewer people in prison. We could probably manage with half the number we have now. The question might be how we get there. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned, the Government have said that they would like to have less use—if not no use—of short sentences, so this seems a little contradictory. I would not do that myself; I would find other measures to reduce the prison population. That would probably mean releasing people at the end of their sentence rather than not putting them in there in the first place should it be deemed that they have committed a serious offence.
Here we should come back to the idea that prison is needed as a sanction in these cases; I think that it is relevant. There is no doubt that prison is not helpful for recidivism. All the evidence shows that, when people go to prison, some 80% reoffend within two years of their release. The most effective mechanism for reducing recidivism is called a police caution: broadly, 70% of those who offend never reoffend when they have received a police caution. So prison on the whole will not help with recidivism, but of course while offenders are in there, they will not attack members of the public—although they might attack each other.
The offences here are serious enough for prison at least to be considered. There would obviously then be a debate on how long the sentences should be. If the Government do decide to exclude short sentences, either on this occasion or as a general policy, that would also exclude things like weekend sentences, which would help reduce the prison population. They can be a very constructive way of reintegrating someone after a long sentence, or they can be an alternative to a short sentence.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, I too want to say something controversial, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, will find more controversial than most. I was convinced, 35 years ago, on incontrovertible evidence, that a course of non-custodial treatment was more effective than a custodial sentence in curing people of crime. The people in question were young people, and since then I have devoted a great deal of my life to trying to stop young people getting into crime. For three years I was in charge of the Prison Service, and nothing that I saw there changed my mind. Thereafter, I became chairman of the National Fund for Intermediate Treatment, the function of which was to provide excellent treatment in the community for offenders, which was monitored. When government funding was withdrawn, I founded a charity to do the same thing.
Non-custodial treatment must be done properly—it is not about turning up and ticking in a book or sweeping the street; what you need is an experience that the young person has not had before. In a frighteningly high percentage of cases, what these courses—or whatever you like to call them—provide is the first experience a young person has of an adult who actually cares what they are doing and what they are doing with their lives, and that has an electric effect. It cannot be produced in custody. It can be produced in outward bound programmes, in a jazz band or in whitewater rafting. It depends on the adult and young person’s relationship. It works, it is far cheaper than custody and far more effective. I echo the words of the Secretary of State for Justice in support, which are powerful evidence:
“Why would we spend taxpayers’ money doing what we know does not work, and indeed, that makes us less safe?”
That is what is being advocated. I do not often fall in step with noble Lords sitting on the Benches opposite, but on this occasion, my lifetime’s experience means that I have to support them.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support these amendments. The one thing we know about short sentences is that people do not receive any education, training, therapy—anything at all, in fact, because, well, they are not there long enough to benefit. Therefore, as the noble Lord said, why on earth do we spend all this money only to create hardened criminals? I very strongly support these amendments.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I too support the amendments. I was at the speech given by the Secretary of State for Justice last Monday, in which he said that in the last five years, there have been just over 250,000 custodial sentences of six months or less, and over 300,000 of 12 months or less. He went on to say that nearly two-thirds of the offenders had gone on to commit further crime within a year of being released. He also said that the Government were now taking a more punitive approach than at any time during the Thatcher years, which I thought was a strange admission from him. I wrote to him pointing out that this Bill appears to be him against the Home Secretary, and he replied today that “work in the area will require careful collaboration with other government departments to ensure a consistent approach to sentencing reform which reflects my ambitions and, most importantly, keeps the public safe”.
Everything has been said about the growing body of evidence that diverting children away from the formal justice system is more effective at reducing offending than punitive responses, and I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on that. I also deplore the removing of judicial discretion, which works against the Sentencing Council’s guidelines. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child resolved that the interests of the children must be placed first. Mandatory short prison sentences have been proved to be ineffective—I have seen them to be ineffective—because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, there is nothing happening in any young offender institution which is worth the while, and if people are there for a short time, nobody has time to establish their needs, let alone tackle them. Therefore, I strongly support the amendments.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I also support these amendments, particularly Amendment 32, which would remove Clause 8. I worked in an intermediate treatment centre many years ago. It was an astounding institution. May I say how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for leading this extraordinary work?
I am a trustee of a mental health service for adolescents, a charity that works with a local youth offending team, and also works in schools with young men, mostly BAME boys with behavioural issues. It is called Sport and Thought, and it can transform lives; teachers are shocked at the difference that this intervention can make. It involves working with a therapist and a football coach. There are such good and effective ways of turning these young peoples’ lives around, so I really do share the concerns voiced.
Crispin Blunt, the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons and Youth Justice, was speaking at an open meeting three weeks ago. I raised the question of mandatory sentencing. He said that it does not work, it inflates the numbers of people going into prison and is completely counterproductive. To have mandatory sentencing for 16 and 17 year-olds is against logic.
We must remember where we came from. About 10 years ago, we had 3,000 children in custody, by far the largest number in Europe. All parties were very concerned about this, and thanks to the work of the coalition Government, we reduced it to 1,000. We do not want to go back there. I recognise the deep concerns about this terrible offence of throwing corrosive substances at people. Yes, there must be a robust response, but in trying to protect children from these offences, let us not put them in harm’s way.
I visited a prison four or five years ago with the chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. She said that because we had been so effective at reducing the numbers of children in custody, those in prison now are the very toughest and most challenging children. She said that by obliging courts to put many of the children subject to this offence into custody, they are very likely to be bullied or to traumatise themselves. It makes them into more hardened criminals in the longer term if we do this.
I have to think about our responsibility in this area. It is very easy to appoint blame but let us look at the very high rate of exclusions from schools at the moment. I think that we are still waiting for Mr Timpson’s report, but when children are excluded from school, they are so much more likely to get involved in this sort of activity. Look at the cuts in funding for early intervention services; as an officer of the All-party Parliamentary Group for Children, I know very well how all those important services for supporting families have been deeply cut, due to understandable financial and economic circumstances—but they have been cut to the bone. So many children’s centres have been closed down.
Another issue, which perhaps does not get talked about enough, is that many of these children—many boys—are growing up without fathers. In certain ethnic groups, 60% of these boys grow up without fathers in the home. My noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe was talking about investing more in mentors for such young people, which can make a huge difference in their lives.
When dealing with challenging young people, my experience from a long time of working with troubled adolescents is always that it is so tempting to come in hard, perhaps if you are working in a children’s home and a child provokes you. The extreme is known as pin down, where one might chain children to beds or whatever. It is always tempting to come in hard but the thoughtful, considerate, effective professionals stand back and try to be dispassionate. They try to do what is most effective, not what appeals most to the emotions.
I recognise the difficulty that the Government are in and that they wish to make a robust response, but perhaps they might listen to the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I strongly support Amendment 32, which would remove Clause 8 from the Bill.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I am happy to support the noble Lord’s amendments today. The noble Baroness wants to stop short sentences; debates are going on now in the country about those. We have heard the quote from David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, who wants to reduce these short sentences and the prison population. I agree with him, and with the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, that we need many fewer people in prison. The problem we have is that for the court to be able to impose a community penalty, there must be an option of imprisonment for it to impose. I am a supporter of the greater use of community penalties, but they have to be of a standard that challenges the offending behaviour and helps with the rehabilitation of the offender; otherwise, they have no effect whatever. I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Elton, about the importance of these penalties being effective.
Many years ago, I was a magistrate and served on the Coventry bench when I lived in the Midlands. We would often get people coming back into the court who had breached or not delivered on their order. When you talked to them, all they would say is, “I was given X number of hours as a community penalty. I have now turned up for three Saturdays in a row and no one is there to actually see me, so I’ve booked the day off—or I might be given an hour and then sent home”. They got to the point of thinking, “I’m not going to come back again”, because they turned up and it was a complete waste of time. So if we are to have a community penalty, it has to be rigorous and challenge the offending behaviour. We cannot have a situation where people turn up and have nothing to do. That is very important.
I also spent a bit of time recently with the Met Police in Greenwich. There is a really good unit there that works with young people who are on the edge of falling into criminality. The unit works with these people and has made a tremendous change to them. When they work with them, you can see the change. As other noble Lords have said, it is probably the first time that an adult has taken any interest in them whatsoever. That has an effect. I met some of the older young people whose lives have been changed and were now helping the younger people. They said, “Yes, it was PC so-and-so who helped me to turn things around”. Lots of good work is going on but it has to be meaningful. People are not going to turn up each day if it is a complete waste of time; we cannot have that.
For the present, however, we have to leave these matters for the courts to decide. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, we may need to think about decoupling community sentences from prison sentences, so that they can impose a community penalty. That would of course require us to amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and I hope the Government will consider that. We might bring that back at a future date because it could give us the chance to do other things. Given the amendments before us, I do not think that fines are necessarily the right thing. The courts need to have a suite of things but if we could decouple those, it would certainly be progress. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank noble Lords who have spoken to these amendments, which are about the use of short custodial sentences and minimum custodial sentences. I have reflected on the concerns raised in Committee by noble Lords but I remain of the view that there is—as noble Lords have reiterated today—a place for custodial sentences as part of the range of penalties available to the court for the offences in the Bill. The noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Kennedy, articulated that.
In Committee, I stressed the significant harm and injuries that corrosive products can cause if they are misused as a weapon to attack someone. We are talking about a serious offence, one for which the use of custody should be available to the courts in certain circumstances. I was very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who is not in his place today, when he made the point in Committee that custodial sentences have a place when dealing with specific types of offenders. He referenced cases where a retailer has repeatedly sold a corrosive product to under-18s and may have already been subject to a community sentence. That is one set of circumstances; there may be others where the offending is so serious that only a custodial penalty should be imposed.
In the earlier debate the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, was concerned that a range of different sentencing options is available to the courts. I want to stress that by providing custody as a maximum penalty, we are providing the courts with a range of sentencing options from custody through to a fine, or both. This means, to speak to the points made by my noble friend Lord Elton, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that the courts will also have the option to impose a community sentence. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, the application of these sentences has to be meaningful, but they can be imposed if they are the most appropriate sentence, taking into account all the circumstances of the offender and the offence. As I said in Committee, there is also a requirement under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that the court has to be satisfied that the offence is so serious that only a custodial sentence can be justified. We can have every confidence that the courts will sentence offenders appropriately, based on the circumstances of the offender and the offence.
Lord Elton
Can my noble friend assist me? I ask forgiveness for my ignorance but as I read subsection (7), it says:
“A person guilty of an offence … on summary conviction in England and Wales”,
is liable to be imprisoned,
“for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, to a fine or to both”.
There is no reference to any other treatment or sentence. My noble friend said that there was access to that; I would be grateful if she could tell me how it died.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I do not know whether my noble friend was in Committee, but when the amendment on having just a community sentence was moved, we discussed the fact that when there is the possibility of a custodial sentence, it is open to the courts to impose that or a lesser sentence such as a community sentence, which can have the conditions that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and my noble friend referred to earlier. It is open to the courts to have some flexibility over what the penalty should be, as it relates to the particular offence that has been committed. We also discussed in Committee that under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the court has to be satisfied that the offence is so serious that only a custodial sentence can be justified. I hope and think that we can have confidence that the courts will sentence offenders appropriately, based on the circumstances of both the offence and the offender.
Lord Elton
If I may trouble my noble friend once more, as I read it, they are prohibited from applying a sentence of more than the time specified in the Act. My objection is to exactly that: the short duration. If there has to be custody, it needs to be long enough for the person to be assessed, treated and known properly. Six months does not do it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My noble friend is absolutely right about the maximum sentence, but alights on an important aspect of someone’s rehabilitation, which is not just about the custodial sentence—it is about all the other interventions that go with it, both while that person is in custody and upon release.
The other difficulty with the amendments is the damage that they do in undermining the steps we have taken in the Bill to ensure consistency, regarding the maximum penalty available to the courts when dealing with offences relating to the sale to a person under 18 of corrosive products on one hand, and of a knife or bladed article on the other. When the Bill was considered in Committee in the Commons, there was strong support from the Opposition for a consistent approach to be taken.
I am well aware of concerns about individual retail staff or delivery drivers being prosecuted, and the impact that would have on them. However, the experience from other age-restricted products is that in many cases it would be the company selling the product or arranging its delivery that would be prosecuted. There could be occasions when it might be a shop worker who was prosecuted, but it is more likely that it will be the company operating the store, because it will be responsible for ensuring that procedures and training are in place to avoid commission of the offence. Where it is the company that is prosecuted, the sentence is likely to be a fine rather than a custodial or community sentence; but if an individual is prosecuted, the full range of penalties should be available.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
The Minister mentions an interesting point, about the company being prosecuted, and then talked about the range of penalties. Would it be an individual, such as the chief executive, managing director or personnel director, who would be prosecuted?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
In precedence for these sorts of cases, it is quite often the company that is prosecuted, with a fine—of a range—imposed on it. Obviously, if an individual is prosecuted, the full range of penalties should be available.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
When we had the debate before, I think it was suggested by one of the Minister’s noble friends that when health and safety law changed and responsibility was brought to bear on company directors, all of a sudden health and safety improved dramatically in this country. If the company directors or chief executive were more liable, the training they gave to their staff might dramatically improve.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The prosecution may well fall on a director, because the director is seen to have fallen short in some of the processes to comply with the law. However, yes, it is usually the corporate body rather than the director, but I see the noble Lord’s point.
We have heard that there is evidence that short sentences are ineffectual regarding rehabilitation. The Justice Secretary and Prisons Minister are looking at the question of short sentences and the use of prison in the round. A number of noble Lords have raised that; the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, quoted the Justice Secretary in a speech on this very subject.
We have already been clear that custodial sentences should be seen as a last resort, and that offenders with complex needs—including female offenders—should be dealt with in the community wherever possible. However, we must ensure that sentencing matches the severity of a crime, and prison must always be available for the most serious offenders. I am concerned that we do not send out the wrong message that the use of corrosives as a weapon is somehow less serious than the use of knives.
Amendments 32 and 34 seek to strike out the provisions in respect of mandatory minimum sentences in Clauses 8 and 9. Again, the effect would be to treat carrying corrosive substances in a public place less seriously than carrying a knife. These clauses mirror existing knife legislation, and ensure that anyone aged 16 or over who is convicted of a second possession offence or a similar offence—such as an offence relating to a knife—will receive a custodial sentence unless the court determines that there are appropriate circumstances not to do so. The use of minimum custodial sentences will make it clear to individuals that we will not tolerate people carrying corrosives on our streets and other public places with the intention to harm or commit other crimes, such as robbery.
We are talking about serious offences here, where someone is carrying a corrosive substance which could result in someone being attacked and left with terrible injuries, as well as the fear that this can instil into communities. We should bear in mind that the requirement to impose the minimum sentence is not absolute; there is judicial discretion. The court must consider the circumstances of the case, and if there are relevant factors that would make it unjust to impose the minimum sentence, the court has the latitude not to do so.
I recognise that there is a wider debate to be had about our sentencing framework, but this Bill is not the place for it. We are dealing here with particular offences and seeking to ensure consistency between how the criminal law deals with the sale, delivery and possession of corrosive products and substances on one hand, and of knives and offensive weapons on the other. On that basis, I hope that I have been able to persuade the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment. If not, I invite the House to agree that for these offences, short custodial sentences and minimum custodial sentences continue to have a place, and that noble Lords will accordingly reject the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, may not expect me to be grateful, but I am. His raising the issue of weekend sentences was very interesting, and confirms what has come from a number of noble Lords—that the legislation around sentencing generally needs a good look at and some updating to how it operates. Even if you take a firm position one way or the other regarding short sentences, the way that the provisions in legislation interact is clearly troubling a number of noble Lords.
I do not want to respond to all the points made and repeat what I have already said. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and my noble friend Lord Paddick could reel off the offences that might be used in the case of the use of corrosive substances causing injury. That is not the subject of these amendments or of the clauses in question.
I also regret the absence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who has made it very clear that he opposes mandatory sentences. I will leave it at that point and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barran
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the Minister's amendment at page 2, line 41 would exclude batteries from the offences in Clauses 1 to 4 relating to the sale or delivery of corrosive products.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, in Committee I undertook to consider an amendment tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, which sought to exclude batteries from the offences in Clauses 1 to 4 relating to the sale or delivery of corrosive products. These government amendments do just that. As I indicated in Committee, we were already aware of the unintended consequences of Clauses 1 to 4 on battery retailers and manufacturers and were working on how best to frame any exemption for batteries. We have also had discussions with representatives from the battery industry on exempting batteries, to better understand the various types of batteries available and their different uses. These government amendments will exempt all batteries from the prohibitions on the sale and delivery of corrosive products under Clauses 1 to 4. I trust that this satisfactorily deals with the point raised by the noble Viscount. I beg to move.
Viscount Craigavon (CB)
My Lords, as I moved the original amendment in Committee, I will intervene first. I am grateful to the Government and the Minister for coming up with these amendments, which give me and the people I am interested in more than I asked for. That is a very good start. The wording is much clearer and more elegant than that of the amendment I tabled at the previous stage, which I described as “rather obscure”. The key phrase, which will be totally intelligible to anyone reading the Act is:
“References to a corrosive product … do not include a substance or product which is contained in a battery”.
I am grateful to the Government for coming up with that simple phrase.
I am also grateful to noble Lords who supported me in Committee and for all the lobbying which must have been going on outside Parliament. I support this amendment.
The Duke of Montrose (Con)
My Lords, I will probe whether the amendment fully does what the Government intend on one or two points, and look at the issues surrounding wet batteries. I declare an interest as a farmer with numerous occasions to use batteries, both in vehicles and outside them. When I first read the amendment I was surprised. Noble Lords will be aware that Schedule 1 says that sulphuric acid is permitted if it is under 15% concentration. Batteries are 32%, so they contain a very corrosive substance. I recognise the problem raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, in Committee and with the Government, for those who sell batteries. The Bill mainly tries to deal with the remote ordering and delivery of weapons and corrosive substances. By their very nature, batteries are unlikely to be sold remotely—they are normally sold in a face-to-face meeting—but it is still worth looking at what the law requires to police that.
From what the Minister said a minute ago, the new phrasing means that Clause 1(1) will not be implemented for the sale of batteries. Does this mean that anybody under 18 will be able to buy a battery, or do the Government wish to prohibit those under 18 buying wet batteries? I can also see that, in everyday use, issues might arise with Clause 6(2). How would you get around someone using a car for social or, particularly, recreational purposes having to prove that they have a good reason or lawful authority for having a battery with them? With any luck, the Government’s wording will cover that.
There is a danger in the phrasing of the clause excepting sulphuric acid in a battery. Somebody might contend that they were allowed to extract the acid from the battery and carry it as a weapon. Would the Minister wish to address this at a later stage? Rather than saying,
“product which is contained in a battery”,
should the amendment say, “product while contained in a battery”? You could, admittedly, say that extracting the acid was a stupid thing to do, but you never know what interpretation people will put on these things.
Clause 6(1) refers to having a corrosive substance in a public place. The Bill does define what constitutes a public place: in Scotland, particularly, it is anything other than a private residence. My concern is, perhaps, slightly wide of the immediate issue but will this clause entail that ordinary garages or agricultural engineers, which usually have a site for monitoring and recharging batteries, will be required to install that in a secure room, so that no member of the public can access the liquid while visiting the premises and find themselves in possession of a corrosive substance in a public place?
Viscount Goschen (Con)
My Lords, I spoke in support of the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, in Committee. I thank the Government for coming forward with an eminently practical amendment to address a consequence of the Bill that was surely never intended. This is the House of Lords doing its job quickly and properly. I thank the Minister for orchestrating this and look forward to hearing her response to my noble friend’s questions.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Duke of Montrose for his detailed questions about the use of batteries. I can reassure him that under-18s will be allowed to buy batteries. He also asked about having a good reason to have a battery in a public place and about extracting sulphuric acid from batteries. I am not a battery expert but, as I understand it, all batteries are sealed and you would have to cut one open to remove the acid. The acid has never been used—
The Duke of Montrose
I am sure that my noble friend the Minister has looked into this in more up-to-date detail than I have. Car batteries and anything of that size are sealed, but I think there are larger batteries, with a capacity of around 100 amps, which have individual cells with a screw top. You can probably get at those rather more easily.
Baroness Barran
I think this is above my battery expertise. I was advised that even open vent batteries have caps which are sealed for home delivery, but I hope we are not going to argue with my noble friend about this. The principle behind the logic of many of the clauses is that we are trying to prohibit access to acid that has been used in attacks; there is no evidence that acid has been extracted from batteries of any type and then used in attacks. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that my noble friend Lord Goschen pointed out in Committee that this was an extremely expensive way of accessing sulphuric acid. I hope that reassures my noble friend.
Baroness Barran
“(12A) Before making regulations under subsection (12) the appropriate national authority must consult such persons likely to be affected by the regulations as the authority considers appropriate.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the appropriate national authority to consult before making regulations under Clause 1(12) which amend the list of corrosive products in Schedule 1 to the Bill.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, Schedule 1 contains a list of corrosive products for the purposes of the offences in Clauses 1 to 4 that relate to the sale and delivery of corrosive products. The Bill includes a power by regulations to amend Schedule 1. In Committee, I undertook to consider an amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to require prior consultation before any such regulations are made. As I indicated in the debate, we would fully expect to consult affected persons in any event, but we are content to include an express requirement to this end in the Bill. These amendments do just that. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for these amendments. One of the main things that irked people in the police service was people taking credit for other people’s work. These amendments were originally spotted and drafted by my noble friend Lady Hamwee.
Baroness Barran
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment at page 2, line 36.
“(13A) References to a corrosive product in this section and sections 2 to 4 do not include a substance or product which is contained in a battery.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister’s amendment at page 2, line 29.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, alongside the amendment to page 45, line 17, is to probe the relationship between the Bill and the Poisons Act 1972.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, in moving this amendment I will speak also to Amendment 13. The only purpose of revisiting these amendments which we tabled in Committee is to make a point—and I refer to a letter in relation to these matters from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, dated 12 February—about the fact that two substances of the concentration specified in Schedule 1, sulphuric acid and nitric acid, are specified there as substances which should not be sold to people under the age of 18. This is despite the fact that you need a Home Office licence under the Poisons Act to buy these substances. Therefore, the chances of someone under 18 getting a Home Office licence to buy what are precursors for making explosives are diminishingly small. Indeed, in her letter the noble Baroness says that it is extremely unlikely that anyone under 18 will be able lawfully to acquire or purchase these acids. This goes to the point of a lot of this Bill—that it is there simply to send a message, which is not what we should be using legislation for. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, pointed out, these amendments return to the debate we had in Committee about the relationship between some of the substances we have listed in Schedule 1 to the Bill and the provisions of the Poisons Act 1972. The noble Lord is concerned that we have listed both nitric acid and sulphuric acid in Schedule 1, despite the fact that these are already regulated substances within the Poisons Act.
I reiterate the point I made in Committee, that both sulphuric and nitric acid were identified by our scientific advisers at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the police as appropriate for inclusion in Schedule 1. This was because we know that sulphuric acid has been used in attacks, and that nitric acid is considered to be one of the most harmful corrosive substances. While I understand the noble Lord’s concerns about including these two poisons which are already regulated under the Poisons Act, our overriding concern in framing the Bill’s provisions relating to the sale and delivery of corrosive products is that we do all we can to prevent anyone under 18 getting hold of these substances. We therefore think it is appropriate that they are included in Schedule 1.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, the Minister has completely failed to address the point that I just raised—but in any event I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, along with other amendments to Clauses 3 and 4, would allow for companies in the UK to sell corrosive products to residential premises as long as they take appropriate measures to ensure that the item is delivered to a person over the age of 18.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, in moving Amendment 14 I will speak also to the other amendments in this group.
As drafted, the Bill creates a ludicrous, verging on farcical, situation where corrosive substances and bladed articles cannot be delivered to a residential address unless they are ordered from an overseas company. If they are ordered from an overseas company and the UK delivery company does not know what the content of the parcel is, there are no restrictions whatever on these items being delivered to a residential address. At the same time, UK companies are prohibited from delivering both corrosive substances and bladed articles to residential addresses.
If, however, there is an agreement between the UK delivery company and the overseas company that the delivery company will be alerted to any corrosive substances or bladed articles which it will be asked to deliver to a UK residential address, the Government set out in this Bill the steps that the delivery company must take to ensure that the corrosive substance or bladed article is only delivered into the hands of someone 18 years of age or older on the doorstep of the residential address.
If overseas companies are allowed openly to sell and deliver corrosive substances and bladed articles to UK residential addresses, with a system of age verification at the point of handover, why on earth cannot UK companies do exactly the same thing? It is happening right now in the UK in relation to alcohol, so why not enshrine it in legislation and apply it here?
The Bill as drafted not only disadvantages UK companies compared with overseas competitors, but prevents companies like John Lewis delivering items such as food processors, because they have a blade, to people’s homes. It also creates the anomaly of self-employed plumbers and the like, who run their businesses from their home, being able to have these substances and items delivered to their residential address even though the seller and the delivery company may have no way of knowing beyond reasonable doubt that a business is carried on from that address. The Bill creates other anomalies where designer knives—ones made specifically for the purchaser, for example—can be delivered to residential premises.
The sole purpose of prohibiting the delivery of corrosive substances and bladed products to residential addresses is to keep them out of the hands of those under 18. All these anomalies and difficulties can be avoided if an age-verification system at point of handover—a system already set out in this legislation—is available to both overseas and UK businesses. That is what these amendments seek to do. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, these amendments, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, seek to allow the delivery of corrosive and bladed products to residential addresses where steps are taken to ensure that the recipient is over the age of 18. If we can get to a position where this is possible, I would be very happy to support these amendments. Getting the balance right between putting in place precautions to stop young people getting their hands on these products, and adequate offences, is something we should all support. If that can be done in a way that is not damaging to business, that is all the better.
I am, of course, very concerned about the situation regarding knife attacks in Sheffield, and we will come on to my amendments about that later. We had a very positive meeting earlier this week. I am happy to support these amendments if we can get that balance right. I still have an issue about putting restrictions on overseas companies as our jurisdiction ends here in the UK. If we can get a system whereby we ensure that British companies are not disadvantaged and, equally, have some restrictions, I will fully support that.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for explaining the rationale of these amendments, which would change the new offence of sending a corrosive or bladed product to residential premises or a locker so that no offence is committed if a product is delivered into the hands of a person over the age of 18. This would mean that sellers could continue to dispatch products to residential premises providing that they are sure that the products will be delivered to a person over 18. The amendments for corrosive products also amend the defence of having taken all reasonable precautions, to include that they believed that the products would be delivered to a person over 18 and they had either taken reasonable steps to establish the person’s age—for example, relevant age-verification documents such as a passport or driving licence had been provided—or it was clear that the person was not under the age of 18. It would also be a requirement for a delivery company acting on behalf of the seller to confirm they had checked the person was over 18 at the point of delivery. In effect, the amendments in this group say that if a seller meets the first of these requirements, they can go ahead and sell the items to residential premises.
The Government’s approach to the sale of corrosive products, bladed articles and products in relation to UK remote sellers is twofold. First, we want to drive an improvement in the age-verification and dispatch processes of remote sellers. We are doing this by saying that unless they meet certain minimum conditions, they will not be able to rely on the defence that they have taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence if they are prosecuted for the offence of selling a corrosive product or a bladed article to a person under 18. These conditions include that they have suitable age-verification systems in place at the point of sale, that they clearly label the items when they are dispatched and that they have arrangements in place to ensure that when finally delivered, the items are delivered into the hands of a person over the age of 18. Many of the requirements covered by the amendments in this group are already reflected in the Bill.
Secondly, we believe that in addition to stronger checks by remote sellers, the dispatch of corrosive and bladed products to a residential premise or locker should be banned and that instead, buyers will need to pick them up from a collection point. This will ensure that the items are not delivered to a person under 18. There are two reasons why the Government believe that, in addition to age checks at the point of sale, sellers should also be prohibited from sending the products to a home address. First, it will be possible for buyers to get round any age-verification systems at the point of sale in relation to remote sales, for example by using a borrowed credit card or using another person’s passport or driving licence. Until we are confident that online age-verification systems are robust, we do not want to depend on them entirely.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, I have a series of amendments later on to do with the delivery of bladed articles to residential premises. One of the matters that will always arise is that the Government say that if you can get your house classified as a place of business, then you come into the permitted category. However, I have two questions: first, what constitutes designating your premises as a place of business and secondly, will that affect the local authority’s view as to the level of rates that it would impose on the premises?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Turning to my noble friend’s question, if your home is also your registered business address, then clearly is it both. The noble Lord actually raised that point in Committee. The residential address can be either just a residential address or both a business and a residential address.
Returning to my other point about someone being prohibited from selling a product to a home address, we want to avoid any liability regarding checking age falling on the delivery company when the item is handed over. This is because delivery companies indicated in our discussions with them that they might simply refuse to deliver items on behalf of sellers if the legal responsibility for checking age falls to them. We are willing to accept this risk in relation to overseas sales because we are less concerned about the impact on overseas sellers, should their trade be affected, but for UK sales we do not want to place a liability on deliverers because there is a risk that they will then refuse to deliver any bladed items. The Government position is therefore that any liability for ensuring that any remotely sold corrosive and bladed products in the UK are not sold and delivered to under-18s should fall solely on the seller.
I have one final point to make, about a meeting that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and I had with the Sheffield knife manufacturers. As a result of that meeting, I want to satisfy myself of the position in relation to a couple of major delivery companies to ensure that that has not changed. Nothing in the meeting led me to doubt the position, but I just want to clarify that. In the meantime, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his qualified support for these amendments. As far as the explanation from the Minister was concerned, however, if you are a sole trader, you could be considered to be conducting your business from your home address. The Inland Revenue would be the only ones who knew that, and that information would be confidential. Therefore, there is no way that a delivery company could establish beyond reasonable doubt whether your residential address was a business address or not. As with a lot of this Bill, it clearly has not been thought through. The Minister has completely avoided the fact that this significantly disadvantages UK businesses as opposed to overseas ones. If they do not inform the UK delivery company what is in the parcel, there is absolutely no comeback on the delivery company whatsoever. Anything can be delivered to a residential address, whether it is a bladed article or a very strong acid ordered from an overseas business.
The Government say they want to avoid putting a liability on delivery companies, but this legislation puts liability on delivery companies if they are delivering corrosive substances or bladed articles from overseas. The only difference concerns whether the company is from the UK or overseas. Again, the Minister failed to answer how age verification at a collection point is more secure than on the doorstep. She completely failed to address the issues I raised. However, there are far more important things to get on to so at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Offence of obstructing a seller in the exercise of their duties
(1) A person commits an offence if they intentionally obstruct a person (“the seller”) in the exercise of their duties under section 1 of this Act and under section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (sale of bladed articles to persons under 18).(2) In this section, “intentionally obstruct” includes, but is not limited to, a person acting in a threatening manner.(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, or to both.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I raised this issue at Second Reading and in Grand Committee. I am grateful for the support I have received from across the House. We are placing shop workers at the forefront in the Bill. They risk a prison sentence or a lesser punishment if they get it wrong, as they will have committed a criminal offence in selling the products referred to in the Bill to a person under 18 years of age. I have no problem with that. These products cannot be sold to young people and we need a deterrent in place to make sure that this is adhered to.
My issue is that the Bill places additional responsibility on shop workers but gives them no additional protection. This issue has been raised many times in the House, not just in the context of the Bill. My noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley raised this matter in a recent Question to the Minister. When I was young—a long time ago—I was a shop worker. I enjoyed the work very much. As a young person, it got me talking to people, which gave me confidence. It was hard work and not without its risks, but it was enjoyable.
I know that the Government are looking at this issue; they are seeking further evidence, but the evidence is already there. Even if the Government decide to act at a later date, I worry that we will have moved on and in the weeks, months and years to come, I will be sitting here asking when the Government will introduce legislation, only to be told that they are waiting for a suitable Bill. There are always pressures on legislation—we all know that—but this time, the pressure is paramount. I am very worried that we will move no further forward.
No doubt the Minister will tell me shortly that there is no problem and there is a whole range of offences; for example, anyone who assaults a shop worker can be charged and, if found guilty, convicted. However, far too often, these offences are not prosecuted; that is a serious problem. Indeed, many offences are not even reported so they get nowhere near a police officer. In the Bill, we are placing duties for specific offences on shop workers but giving them no further protection. Let us imagine being in their position, refusing to sell knives or acids to angry young people who want these products. That is not a nice place to be. We expect shop workers to enforce the law in that situation but give them no protection to do so. We owe them a minimum additional protection, which my amendment seeks to provide. Approximately 280 shop workers are assaulted every single day. I was once a member of USDAW; it is a great trade union. It campaigns for shop workers and knows the industry its members work in. It regularly consults the Government and other agencies and puts forward its view. It has done a good job of finding evidence of the problem.
My amendment is different to the one I moved in Committee in one key respect: it goes beyond the imposition of a fine and introduces a maximum imprisonment term of six months. That is not because I want to increase the prison population—I support community sentences—but I want to give the court the power to look at the full suite of options available and impose a sentence that fits the crime. On reflection, limiting it to a fine was not the right thing to do—it is too restrictive—so I wanted to give the court the power to impose the penalty it thought was appropriate for the case. Perhaps I should have done that in the first place, but it is the right thing to do. I hope that the Minister will respond to this debate in detail and give me some good news. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, as I said in Committee, we support the amendment. Until last Friday, we were prepared to vote with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, should he divide the House, for the reasons he clearly set out. However, at the end of last week, the noble Lord changed the amendment so that the penalty attached to the proposed new offence included a maximum term of imprisonment of six months. Noble Lords will know from the comments of my noble friend Lady Hamwee on the fourth group of amendments that we oppose short-term sentences, as does the right honourable David Gauke MP—the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Justice—and Rory Stewart, the Minister of State for the Ministry of Justice. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is also opposed to short-term prison sentences but that this is the only way to secure a community sentence, as we discussed previously, which has to be an alternative to custody. If only there were some way of having the latter without the former. Of course, as I have explained to the noble Lord in correspondence, if the threat to, or the assault on, a shop worker were more serious, there are alternate offences with which someone could be charged and which carry a sentence of imprisonment.
We support the principle that shop workers expected to enforce the law on the selling of age-restricted items, in that they are being asked to prevent underage people making such purchases, should have some legal protections not afforded to other members of the public.
Viscount Goschen
My Lords, I listened with interest as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, introduced his amendment. I am sure that all Members of the House are broadly sympathetic to what he seeks to achieve in terms of protecting shop workers. No one should be put in harm’s way through their employment if it can possibly be avoided. I understand what he is driving at with the thrust of the amendment.
I am interested in how the law copes with other circumstances where shop workers and other members of the hospitality trade, such as people in pubs and betting shops, have to make age-related decisions regarding their customers. For example, someone may want to buy a drink or glue, but such products are already age-restricted. I would have thought that similar circumstances to those described by the noble Lord of people being aggravated because they are not being sold those products could arise. It strikes me that there is nothing particularly new, per se, in the circumstances before us in the Bill. When my noble friend the Minister responds to the debate and the noble Lord has the opportunity to respond to her comments, perhaps both of them could consider how the current circumstances work; for example, what happens if a barman has to deny service to someone aged 17 because they have been asked for their identity documents and have produced a fake ID, which I understand is prevalent, and is any specific statutory protection applied to that worker? If not, why should this case be different?
The purpose of my intervention is to understand in rather more detail the current legislative circumstances surrounding people who have to make age-related decisions. My understanding is that younger people are used to being asked for ID; one has to look only in a tobacconist’s or an off-licence to see lots of signs saying that those aged under 21 should be prepared to justify their identity. It seldom happens to me, but it is possible. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, as some noble Lords know, my background is in retail, and I have experience of managing the sale of dangerous objects—such as knives—and of alcohol and glue in shops, as my noble friend mentioned. This is an important issue, and we all have a lot of sympathy with workers in this sector. It is also important that we get it right, and while the issue affects shop workers, it is important to look at it in detail and work out what sectors would be affected. There has been a call for evidence and a meeting of the National Retail Crime Steering Group to look into this matter. It is important to look carefully at these offences, and provide time for interested parties, such as those representing shops, the unions and other stakeholders, to come forward and look at the detail of the arrangements. That makes it difficult, given we have got to Report, to deal with it in this Bill.
We all recognise concerns raised by stakeholders. Indeed, the Bill is about trying to make sure that offensive weapons do not get into the wrong hands. I am sympathetic to more work being done on that, but it is important to look at both legislative and non-legislative options for this sort of proposal. I look forward to hearing my noble friend the Minister’s response to this important amendment.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for speaking to this amendment. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his tireless work throughout the Bill to raise awareness of the violence and abuse towards shop workers, often those in small corner shops who are on their own, late at night, with little protection and who face, as my noble friend Lord Goschen pointed out, quite abusive behaviour. I thank the noble Lord and representatives from USDAW for meeting me, and having a constructive discussion about how we can improve protections for shop workers, and whether there are any gaps in both the legislative and the non-legislative space that we can work on. I am concerned for retail staff who do not feel safe when they are carrying out their duties at work. As I have said previously, everyone has the right to feel safe at work.
We had a good debate on this matter in Committee, and I understand the strength of feeling on this issue—I am very sympathetic to it. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, was grateful to have a meeting with the Minister in the other place on this issue as well. Before I outline the Government’s work in this area, I want to be absolutely clear that we do have an extensive legislative framework in place to protect those facing abuse in the workplace. It ranges from civil tools and powers, including civil injunctions to address lower-level anti-social behaviour we often see, to criminal offences including harassment, common assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and threats to kill in some rare cases. Where an offence is committed against a shop worker in the course of carrying out their duties, the courts can, quite rightly, take into account as an aggravating factor the fact that the offence was committed against a person serving the public. That, in part, answers my noble friend Lord Goschen’s point. In addition, the Sentencing Council is due to consult on an updated guideline on assault this summer.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I am pleased that we are going to have a call for evidence so that we can look at these matters in detail, but I have a concern. It is not a party political point because I am sure that it has happened under Labour Governments and the coalition Government. Governments gather evidence and have reviews, but then trying to fit work into the legislative programme becomes very difficult, if not almost impossible. I know that I keep raising the issue, but I will talk again about the rogue landlords database. We could not persuade the Government to make it public, but after the law was passed they said that they did want to do that. However, now we cannot bring forward a piece of legislation to actually make it public. That is so frustrating. I worry that I will be standing here in two years’ time making the same points. I hope the noble Baroness understands the point that I am trying to make.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I totally understand the noble Lord’s point. He reminds me at every opportunity and I think that I will have written on my grave the “rogue landlords database”. However, I have to say that bringing forward the call for evidence will expose any gaps in the legislation. I appreciate, and I know that the noble Lord does as well, that we are going through a busy legislative time. However, we will provide opportunities to bring forward legislation should it be needed.
My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe asked what the evidence will cover. As I have said, this was discussed at the extraordinary meeting of the National Retail Crime Steering Group on 12 February. We want to take into account the group’s feedback and to use the call for evidence to strengthen our evidence about the scale and severity of the issue. As she has said, we hear lots of anecdotal horror stories, but we want to look at the broad evidence. Any abuse of a shop worker while doing their job is absolutely unacceptable, but we want to understand in more detail how frequently people are the victims of serious crime. I turn to the point made by my noble friend Lord Goschen about what sorts of businesses we are talking about. The scope and the direction will be led by the National Retail Crime Steering Group.
We want to use the findings to consider what more we can do to ensure that shop workers have the protections they deserve. That is at the heart of the noble Lord’s point. If the call for evidence shows that there is a gap in the existing criminal law, we will give that serious consideration. The group also discussed the options for strengthening the existing workplan. It includes actions to support staff who report incidents to the police and to improve police recording. We have committed to providing £50,000-worth of funding for a sector-led communications campaign to help raise awareness. We appreciate that there will be a huge spectrum of awareness across the sector.
I am grateful to noble Lords for their work in raising awareness of the challenges faced by shop workers and indeed I am grateful to the representatives of USDAW who have taken the time to articulate these issues to me. I hope that our commitment to exploring this issue further through the call for evidence and the wider work being taken forward by the Home Office will reassure the noble Lord that we are taking the concerns raised about this issue very seriously. The fact remains, though, that until we have had the call for evidence and we have studied the responses, there is not sufficient existing evidence to support the need for any new offence as provided for in the amendment.
I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment. I know that in taking time to raise these concerns with me that he is not trying to be troublesome. He is addressing a real concern from the retail industry and I hope that we can work together on this.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I wonder whether my noble friend could comment on who sits on the National Retail Crime Steering Group if that is going to be important in carrying forward this work. I presume that the retailers’ unions will be represented, along with the police and other relevant people. If she is not able to answer the question, it would be helpful to have that information by way of follow-up because I think that there is a consensus across the House that it would be good to find a way forward in this area. However, we will want to make sure that the legislation covers the right areas and carries the right penalties.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Representatives of USDAW are part of the steering group along with staff from large retail organisations right down to small shop owners. It is important that we have a wide range of representation from organisations so that we can see the full spectrum of exactly what issues are involved. I am aware of my noble friend’s past employment with Tesco. Somehow I had assumed that a big organisation would suffer less abuse because the shops are covered by security officers, but that is not necessarily the case. I have witnessed this myself in big retail organisations, and to improve our understanding, we need representation from across the spectrum of those retail companies.
Lord Hogan-Howe
I am minded to support the amendment, because the case is a good one for shop workers. I just wonder whether, if the Government are not minded to support an explicit offence—whether for shop workers or any retail worker who is enforcing a licence—in legislation in whatever form, the Sentencing Council could consider that as an aggravating factor in the offences that already exist. This could relate to many other types of offence, so we may be able to support the people who need supporting without needing all the legislation to change to cover the different types of licensee who need that support.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord makes a good point about aggravated offences—and of course, that can be explored through the call for evidence. As he will know, it is already an offence to abuse or attack someone who is serving the public. USDAW wanted something specifically related to shop workers, and that is one of the suggestions that could be taken forward—in fact, it may well be taken forward—to the call for evidence.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate. There was a lot of support around the House for the issues that I am bringing forward, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. We can all agree that no one should be threatened or abused while doing their lawful business and earning a living. That is important. The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, asked why we particularly want this now. It is because in the Bill we are putting burdens on shop workers, who risk going to prison if they do not enforce its provisions. That is why we have responded. We are giving them particular offences that they can commit, but we also want them to have further protection in relation to these very serious products.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for his support, although it was qualified. I am sorry if I caused him concern; I never intended the sentence to be custodial, but when I looked at it I realised I would have to put that option down. If nothing else, that highlights the need to review how we impose custodial sentences on people. In many cases we need interventions, but we do not want to risk someone going to prison at that point, so I hope we can come back to that at a later stage.
I also thank the Minister for her very detailed response, and for the fruitful meeting that she had with USDAW representatives and myself recently. I think she accepted that they made their case very well, that they know what they are talking about in representing their members, and that they understand the world of retail.
It is important that we get this right. I accept the point that there will be a call for evidence. That will be a second call for me, because I am going to keep pursuing the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, about the rogue landlords database, and I am also pursuing the noble Baroness about the protection of shop workers, and asking when we are going to get legislation on that subject. These are two important matters, and I shall carry on with them, because we cannot let such things be forgotten. We need to ensure that people going about their lawful business and earning a living are protected. Unfortunately, many shop workers—we heard that it is 280 a day—get assaulted in the UK. That is utterly disgraceful, and I hope the evidence that comes in will support the need for legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, made an important point about sentencing guidelines and the Sentencing Council, and there may be something we can do that would not need legislation.
I am not going to test the opinion of the House. I am tempted to, but I have listened to the debate and decided, in view of the way the Minister has engaged with us, to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barran
“(5) In this section—(a) in subsection (1)—(i) in paragraph (b), for “Scotland, Northern Ireland or a member State other than the United Kingdom” substitute “Scotland or Northern Ireland”,(ii) at the end of paragraph (c) insert “or”, and(iii) omit paragraph (e) and the “or” preceding that paragraph, and(b) in subsection (3)—(i) for the definition of “civilian offence” substitute—““civilian offence” means an offence other than an offence under an enactment mentioned in subsection (1)(c) or (d);”,(ii) in the definition of “conviction”, in paragraph (b) omit “and a member State service offence”, and(iii) omit the definition of “member State service offence”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment inserts a provision to Clause 9 which would not need to be commenced at the same time as the rest of that Clause but which would, on being commenced, amend it to take account of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, as we have previously debated, the Bill includes provision for mandatory minimum sentences where a person has been convicted of having a corrosive substance in a public place and has a previous relevant conviction. The definition of a relevant conviction seeks to capture certain offences committed in EU member states other than the United Kingdom. As the Bill may well be enacted after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, we cannot in those circumstances use the powers in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act to modify these provisions post Brexit. This amendment therefore includes a prospective repeal of provisions relating to member states. I beg to move.
“PART 1AKNIFE CRIME PREVENTION ORDERSKnife crime prevention orders made otherwise than on convictionKnife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction
(1) A court may make a knife crime prevention order under this section in respect of a person aged 12 or over (the “defendant”) if the following conditions are met.(2) The first condition is that a person has, by complaint to the court, applied for a knife crime prevention order under this section in accordance with section (Requirements for application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction)).(3) The second condition is that the court is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that, on at least two occasions in the relevant period, the defendant had a bladed article with them without good reason or lawful authority—(a) in a public place in England and Wales,(b) on school premises, or(c) on further education premises.(4) In subsection (3) “the relevant period” means the period of two years ending with the day on which the order is made; but an event may be taken into account for the purposes of that subsection only if it occurred after the coming into force of this section.(5) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3), a person has good reason for having a bladed article with them in a place mentioned in that subsection if the person has the article with them in that place—(a) for use at work,(b) for educational purposes,(c) for religious reasons, or(d) as part of any national costume.(6) The third condition is that the court thinks that it is necessary to make the order—(a) to protect the public in England and Wales from the risk of harm involving a bladed article,(b) to protect any particular members of the public in England and Wales (including the defendant) from such risk, or(c) to prevent the defendant from committing an offence involving a bladed article. (7) A knife crime prevention order under this section is an order which, for a purpose mentioned in subsection (6)—(a) requires the defendant to do anything described in the order;(b) prohibits the defendant from doing anything described in the order.(8) See also—(a) section (Provisions of knife crime prevention order) (which makes further provision about the requirements and prohibitions which may be imposed by a knife crime prevention order under this section),(b) section (Requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes further provision about the inclusion of requirements in a knife crime prevention order under this section), and(c) section (Duration of knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes provision about the duration of a knife crime prevention order under this section).(9) Section 127 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 (time limits) does not apply to a complaint under this section.(10) In this section—“court”—(a) in the case of a defendant who is under the age of 18, means a magistrates’ court which is a youth court, and(b) in any other case, means a magistrates’ court which is not a youth court;“further education premises” means land used solely for the purposes of—(a) an institution within the further education sector (within the meaning of section 91 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992), or(b) a 16 to 19 Academy (within the meaning of section 1B of the Academies Act 2010),excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution or the 16 to 19 Academy;“public place” includes any place to which, at the time in question, the public have or are permitted access, whether on payment or otherwise;“school premises” means any land used for the purposes of a school, excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the school; and “school” has the meaning given by section 4 of the Education Act 1996.”Member’s explanatory statement
This Clause and the other amendments of the Minister to insert new Clauses after Clause 13 would make provision for knife crime prevention orders and interim knife crime prevention orders imposing requirements and prohibitions on defendants and subjecting them to certain notification requirements.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the government amendments in this group introduce knife crime prevention orders. Noble Lords will recall that these amendments were debated in Grand Committee on 6 February but were withdrawn because it was clear that they did not attract universal support, as the procedural rules in Grand Committee require. The government amendments before us today are the same as those debated in Grand Committee. Given that we have already had a substantial debate on these new civil orders, I do not intend to go through every aspect of them. However, it is worth stating again why the Government have brought forward these measures and to summarise how they will work.
All noble Lords will appreciate that we face a significant increase in knife crime at present, particularly in London but also in other major cities and across the country. It is sad to say that hardly a day goes by without further horrific examples of the devastation that such crimes cause, not only to individual families but to entire communities. We must do everything we can to stop this increase in violent crime.
The latest police recorded crime figures published by the Office for National Statistics in January for the year ending September 2018 show that there have been close to 40,000 knife-related offences. This is an 8% increase compared to the previous year. The number of homicides where a knife or sharp instrument has been used has increased by 10% in the last year to 276 offences. Of all recorded homicides in the latest data, more than four in 10 involved a knife or a sharp instrument. Police-recorded offences involving the possession of an article with a blade or point rose by 18% to approaching 20,000 offences in the year ending September 2018. This rise was consistent with increases seen over the past five years and is the highest figure since the series began in March 2009.
It is vital that the police have the powers they need to prevent knife crime and protect the public from the devastating effects of violent crime on our streets. When we prosecute young people for knife crime, it is already too late for families when their sons and daughters are lying in hospital or dead on the street. This is tearing some of our communities apart and if there are measures available that might help to tackle this issue, then we must not hesitate to put them in place.
These new civil prevention orders will enable the police to more effectively manage those at risk of being drawn into trouble and help steer them away from crime, and the Government make no apologies for bringing them forward. The orders are aimed at three groups of people: young people who have been carrying a knife; habitual knife carriers of any age; and those who have been convicted of violent offences involving knives.
In the case of young people, the police may have intelligence that a young person routinely carries a knife but for a variety of reasons they have been unable to charge them with a possession offence. Before risky behaviour escalates, a KCPO, as they are called, could be in place to divert the person away from a life of prolific offending.
As I have indicated, people who the police deem to be habitual knife carriers could also be subject to a KCPO. This would include people who may have previous convictions for knife crime or where the police have intelligence that they regularly carry knives. The KCPO would enable the police to manage the risk of future offending in the community. This is the cohort that the police see as their main target for these orders. They estimate that there are about 3,000 habitual knife carriers across England and Wales, although that is not to say that all that cohort would be made subject to a KCPO.
It may be helpful if I explain briefly how the orders will work. An application for a KCPO can be made by a relevant chief officer of police to a magistrates’ court or, in the case of young people, the youth court. A court may make an order only if it is satisfied that the defendant had a bladed article without good reason in a public place or education premises on at least two occasions in the preceding two years, and that the order is necessary to protect the public or prevent the defendant committing an offence involving knives. A KCPO can also be made on conviction where the defendant is convicted of a relevant offence and, again, the court thinks the order is necessary to protect the public or prevent the defendant committing an offence involving knives.
A KCPO may require a defendant to do anything described in the order and/or prohibit the defendant doing anything described in the order. The KCPO can include any reasonable prohibition or requirement which the court is satisfied is necessary, proportionate and enforceable. An order could therefore include things such as curfews or restrictions on going to a particular place.
A KCPO can also include positive requirements, and we think these are particularly important. A positive requirement could be attending some form of knife awareness training or a programme to move young people away from knife crime. Some of these programmes are already being funded under the serious violence strategy, and we are keen to build on the excellent work that is already under way to help divert young people from violent crime and is often provided by groups which have first-hand experience of dealing with knife crime in their communities. Where a KCPO imposes such a requirement it must specify a person who is responsible for supervising compliance with the requirement. For instance, if the requirement is attendance at a knife awareness intervention, the person designated to supervise compliance may be the youth worker providing the intervention.
KCPOs will have a maximum duration of two years and must be reviewed by the courts after 12 months. KCPOs issued to under-18s will be expected to be subject to more regular reviews, an issue which we will address in guidance. There are provisions for variation, renewal or discharge of KCPOs on application by the defendant or the police. There are also provisions for appeal against the order. Breach of the order, without reasonable excuse, is a criminal offence subject to a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.
Young people are clearly an area of great concern to a number of noble Lords. The police tell us that the age at which people carry knives is getting lower. We also know from hospital data and from the police that younger and younger children are involved in knife crime as both victims and perpetrators. If we are serious about tackling the epidemic of knife crime on our streets, the measures we take must apply to young people.
I must point out that the civil orders available for dealing with sex offending apply to children as young as 10 and last for up to five years rather than the maximum of two years available under KCPOs. Likewise, the maximum penalties are up to five years in prison rather than the two years we have with KCPOs. I know that noble Lords might argue that sex offending is different and somehow more serious. I am not sure that argument is true given the number of knife-related deaths that we are now witnessing in our cities.
I know that noble Lords will also argue that it would be better to go the anti-social behaviour injunction route, which of course applies to children as young as 10. The argument here is that having contempt of court rather than a criminal offence for breach would make the orders more palatable because it would mean that children would not get a criminal record. The advice that we have had from police, some of which we heard yesterday at the round table, is I think advice that we should listen to very carefully. It is that making it a criminal offence to breach an order is important if we want the order to be taken seriously. I do, however, understand concerns about the application of these orders to young people. That is why we set the minimum age of 12, and that is why youth offender teams will need to be consulted on any orders against defendants under the age of 18. It is why we have said we will consult publicly on the guidance with community groups and youth organisations and others before these orders are brought into force.
This Government are determined to do all they can to protect the public and keep people safe. We must seize every opportunity to end the senseless cycle of violent crime that is corroding our streets. Knife crime prevention orders are not the complete answer to violent crime, but they most certainly will help. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I said a lot about knife crime prevention orders in Committee. Tonight I am going to focus on pre-conviction knife crime prevention orders. Despite the Government’s claims to the contrary, they will result in many young people being criminalised instead of being diverted away from the criminal justice system. How can we be so sure? Because they are almost a carbon copy of anti-social behaviour orders, which did exactly that—criminalised swathes of young people for breaching a civil order imposed on them on the balance of probabilities but where a breach of the order was a criminal offence, exactly the same as these provisions.
A court has to be satisfied only on the balance of probabilities that, on at least two occasions, the defendant had a bladed article with them without good reason or lawful authority in a public place on school or further education premises. If they were caught in possession of a knife, they could be prosecuted. This is not about young people being stopped and searched and being found with a knife. This is about hearsay evidence, information from informants, the police being tipped off that someone is a knife carrier. An interim order can even be imposed without the defendant’s having the chance to put his side of the story. Imposed on the balance of probabilities, a breach of the conditions can result in a criminal record and up to two years in prison.
These are anti-social behaviour orders reinvented. They are primarily aimed at young people, as young as 12. It may have been a long time ago, but we were all young once. Young people make mistakes; they can be reckless, forgetful, mischievous. The orders would impose, on people who are more chaotic than responsible adults, conditions such as: being at a particular place between particular times on particular days; being at a particular place between particular times on any day; presenting themselves to a particular person at a place where they are required to be; participating in particular activities between particular times on particular days; prohibiting them from being in a particular place with particular people; participating in particular activities; using particular articles or having those articles with them. An order that imposes prohibitions can include exemptions to those prohibitions. They have to tell the police within three days if they use a name which has not previously been notified to the police, or they decide to live away from their home address for more than a month. What does,
“uses a name which has not previously been notified to the police”,
even mean? What if their schoolmates give them a nickname that they have become known by? Do they breach the order if they use that name? The young person is going to need a PA and carry a list of conditions with them at all times which they have to constantly refer to, to make sure that they do not breach the order.
Children are children. These orders can be imposed on young people who have never been in trouble with the police and have never been convicted of a criminal offence, and they could be sentenced to custody because they did not turn up for football practice as the order required them to do or because they were told not to associate with certain people but those people kept following them around. It would be easy for me or other noble Lords, let alone a child, to breach some of these conditions if they were imposed on us, and these orders would last a minimum of six months and up to two years.
Lord Hogan-Howe
My Lords, I also spoke in Committee. I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, as he is aware. I come from a similar background and do not have the same experience of anti-social behaviour orders. They were introduced by a Labour Government and, at the time, I think they had an effect. We had a moral panic, and we also had a problem with anti-social behaviour. They were intended to address repeat offenders, repeat locations and, sadly, repeat victims. They did have an effect. They probably went on a bit too long and eventually outlived their usefulness, but the principle was valid and addressed the order to people’s offending. People had the choice to address their offending pattern or have a criminal sanction, and some chose not to address their offending pattern.
The point that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made—that it seems to intervene with young people who may not be able to remember all of the conditions placed on them—is not unreasonable. However, generally, this order’s aim is to replace the parental care that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to earlier. When some of these kids do not have someone who cares enough to say, “That’s a line—don’t cross it”, this is one way to give them some advice. I do not think that it means that a 12 year-old will always end up with a prison sentence or even a criminal conviction, but someone needs to intervene in that pattern. Why are they getting involved with gangs and, frankly, mixing with people who are not helping them? Someone needs to advise them where they should not go, who they should not see and about the types of behaviour that are causing them problems. This is one way of doing it. I accept that there may be others, but I do not think that it is unreasonable to give that type of advice.
I broadly support these orders, mainly because we have a serious problem. The Minister went through the number of people who have been hurt and arrested carrying knives, and we clearly have a cultural problem at the moment. We have had it in previous years—this is not the first time. People in this Chamber will remember tens of years ago, when various groups who carried knives ended up competing with each other, often to sell drugs or for any other form of territory where a weapon became the means of establishing it. We have to intervene now and send a message.
I will contest one final point from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about whether community officers are there to arrest people. They are not, but in my view they are not there just to smile and be nice to people. They have powers. It does not help the community they serve if they ignore offences and leave someone else to make the arrest. They are there to exercise the powers that allow people to trust that it is worth telling them when an offence has been committed.
I would ask the Government still to consider two areas for the future. I agree with the point about pilots. At one time, the Ministry of Justice had so many pilots that we thought it was starting an airline. The danger is that, after a while, it becomes confusing. It also becomes quite difficult to evaluate the success of multiple pilots; so, I worry about pilots generically.
The second point, which the Minister quietly mentioned earlier, is that some people are released from prison to areas other than those where they were convicted. Also, offenders move from where they live to other areas around the country, which means that officers in areas where a pilot may not be in place would have to understand what the powers are; frankly, that could get pretty confusing. This House and the other place generate a huge amount of legislation; officers are expected to remember and act on it fairly. The more legislation there is, the harder it is to enforce when it is partial and fragmented. I worry about pilots for that reason too.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, if we accept that there is a need for this legislation—as I do, and I am prepared to support it—deciding to implement it partially seems an odd conclusion, since we have agreed that nationally there is a problem. We need to implement legislation in a uniform rather than a fragmented, incremental way.
Finally, I repeat a point that I made in Committee: this Bill does not give a power of search. The Minister said in Committee that existing powers of search were sufficient. I honestly do not believe they are. Section 1 of the Bill gives a power to search—anybody at any time—on reasonable suspicion, but these orders are for people who have already gone through a court process, probably at least twice, and have been found to be at risk of carrying knives. It seems not unreasonable to support the police in the relatively few cases concerned, as mentioned by the Minister; I am sure that far fewer than 3,000 of these orders will be implemented. It would not be an incredible burden for the legislature to support the police by saying that a power of search goes with this power, without the “reasonable cause” that Section 1 requires; it would not be unreasonable to support the police in that way. The officers described by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who proposed this power—which is generally supported by the police—had requested that the power of search went with it. They were disappointed when they saw that this request had not been accepted in the legislation.
I support the amendments but I suggest to the Minister that the Government consider the two issues I have mentioned: piloting and the power of search.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I rise to respond to the government amendments in this group, as well as Amendments 55 to 60 in relation to the proposed pilots of the new KCPOs. I thank the Minister for meeting me to discuss my considerable concerns about these knife crime prevention orders. Amendment 52 could provide some reassurance, but that would depend very much on how those pilots are undertaken and reported upon.
In view of the Government’s claim that these orders were wanted by the police, I asked Ron Hogg, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Durham—which is one of the top-performing constabularies in the country, according to the inspectorate—whether he and his chief constable, Mike Barton, would find KCPOs a helpful contribution to policing and dealing with knife crime. His considered response—given at some length—amounted to a resounding no.
I would be grateful if the Minister could inform the House how many police services want knife crime prevention orders and how many would prefer not to have them. Police and Crime Commissioner Hogg reiterated many of the concerns that I raised in Committee; in particular, that there is a body of evidence to show that criminalising and punitive civil deterrents have not had a significant impact on reducing youth violence. These policies, as others have mentioned, have included ASBOs, dispersal orders and criminal behaviour orders. Can the Minister confirm—this is very important—that the KCPO pilots will specifically assess, and report on, their impact on the criminalisation of children, and the impact on knife crime in the areas involved? It is no good having pilots if they do not nail down what the orders are achieving in the crucial areas.
Does the Minister accept that in the light of recent swingeing cuts to local authority youth services, and drug services in particular, it will be important to boost these services and restore those cuts in the pilot areas, with a view to rolling out that restoration of funding across the country? Only if these prevention orders really do lead to children and young people accessing the services and treatment they need will criminalisation be avoided and positive outcomes achieved.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am speaking partly as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am not going to read all the letters that the committee has written to the Minister, and I know that she will respond to the committee, but I thought it appropriate to let the House know that the committee has raised concerns, having identified seven rights that are engaged by these proposals. As one might expect, the concerns are about the possible criminalisation of children who have no previous criminal convictions, for breaching requirements which could be imposed in ways which prevent them conducting a normal life.
The committee also asked whether the regime for gang injunctions, which the noble Baroness has just mentioned, might be applied in a similar fashion. They can be applied only to persons aged 14 and over, and a breach is a civil contempt of court, not a criminal offence. For those under 18, breaches are dealt with by way of a separate statutory scheme, with a maximum length of detention of three months. Therefore, the committee has asked the Government to explain why a similar regime has not been proposed to tackle knife crime. The committee has also asked for early sight of the proposed guidance, so that it can be scrutinised when the Bill returns to the Commons.
The amendments on piloting—which are amendments to government Amendment 52—were tabled before yesterday’s round-table meeting with the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, which has been referred to, to probe how the pilot proposed by the Government will operate. What is “purpose” in this context? The pilots are to be for a specified purpose, and one needs to understand “purpose” before one asks about specified purpose. I would have assumed that it is to prevent knife crime, but there must be more than that. In Amendment 56, we take a shot at this issue by listing various categories of order.
We are also seeking to obtain assurances that the objective of the pilot is to evaluate, learn and adjust, so in Amendment 57 we refer to the criteria to be used in evaluating and collecting the data about numbers, including age and ethnicity; data about the conditions applied by the court, since it is important to know in practice what happens; and, of course, data about consultation. We have also raised the issue of areas, although since tabling this amendment I understand that it is not proposed that the pilot—or the first pilot, maybe—will necessarily be a whole-force area; for instance, within the Met it may be two or three boroughs and if we are to have these orders, that seems to be right for the purposes of comparison.
In Amendment 107, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has been far more straightforward than my rather convoluted attempt at ensuring that the regulations will be made through an affirmative SI—not just the initial pilot but the full rollout. I hope that the Minister will not analyse my drafting but confirm that that is what is intended.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak against the Government’s proposals. I remind the House that I sit as a magistrate in London. In fact, earlier today I was dealing with knife-related offences at Highbury magistrates’ court. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, summarised very fully the case that I was going to put forward so I will try to put forward different points, which were covered earlier in Committee.
The Government’s case is that the KCPO is aimed at filling a gap which is not covered by existing preventive measures, such as gang injunctions and criminal behaviour orders. The Minister has argued forcefully that the potential benefit of preventing knife crime through KCPOs outweighs the potential disbenefit of criminalising children who breach such an order. In essence, that is the argument which we have had a number of times over the last few weeks. She will be aware that many groups have advocated against these KCPOs, for the reasons that we have heard this evening.
Yesterday, I too attended the round-table meeting with the Minister in the Commons, Victoria Atkins. When I asked her for the difference between a KCPO and a conditional caution, I got a better answer than I was expecting because she said that the KCPO would provide a wraparound approach. I was a bit surprised by her words. Earlier this evening we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about hoping to replace inadequate parenting with a more caring—I think that was the word—approach, so that parental care may be approached somehow through these KCPOs. That is absolutely great and I would support it as a good thing, but the reality is that there is no new money available. As far as I can see, the only difference between a KCPO and a conditional caution is at the level of entry into either the order or the caution.
As we have heard, the KCPO has a lower requirement. It is a civil standard, based on the suspicion of a police officer. I remind the House what the requirements for a youth conditional caution are. First, there may be a clear admission of guilt. That is one option but there is a second which is not normally remembered and where there does not need to be any admission of guilt. If the officer believes that there is sufficient evidence against the young person, they can choose to place a conditional caution even when there is no admission of guilt. Of course, all the conditions, as far as I can see, can be exactly the same either in the KCPO or the conditional caution. I do not see how the laudable aspiration of providing wraparound care or some form of parental guidance—or however one chooses to phrase it—would be better met with a KCPO than with a conditional caution.
There is the other effect, the one that we have been talking about, of net-widening when having the lower standard of proof. The people who have advised me are confident that that will bring more young people into being criminalised, which I would regret.
The Minister gave a very strong speech earlier this evening, but the reality is that there is no more money available. That is much more important than however many pieces of legislation that this House chooses to pass. I hope that the Minister will say something encouraging about putting more money into youth services for young people, because that is the true answer to this problem.
Lord Ramsbotham
I rise to oppose the KCPO proposal, as I did in Grand Committee. I shall not repeat all the arguments that I raised then, because other noble Lords have already mentioned them. However, I ask the Minister: who dreamed up these KCPOs? Were they a Home Office invention? It appears that the Youth Justice Board, the Children’s Commissioner and local government services were not consulted. The Magistrates’ Association, the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers, the Local Government Association, The Children’s Society and the knife crime APPG are all opposed to it. We hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that the police and crime commissioner in Durham is also opposed to it.
I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, mentioned the cost, because there is no reckoning or details of the cost available to Members of this House. I question the pilot and am also worried about Amendment 63, because that seems to click in only if the KCPOs are approved. I hope that the House will not approve them.
The Earl of Listowel
I express my deep concerns about what the Government are proposing. I also felt that the Minister made a very strong speech, making it really clear to us again, sitting in this place, that this is about young people, usually on housing estates, being stabbed, bleeding out, dying and losing all that potential in their lives. This is a very grave situation.
That does not mean we should do anything that comes to mind to respond; we need to make an effective response. I am particularly concerned, as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers, about the criminalising of young people in care. My noble friend Lord Laming’s report two years ago focused on work to reduce the criminalisation of these children, who are so overrepresented in our prisons. The police have recently created a protocol for working with children’s homes to lower the rates of criminalisation. However, I feel certain that if this KCPO is introduced, we will see more children from children’s homes ending up in the criminal justice system. I strongly oppose what is being proposed.
We were recently briefed on county lines. Your Lordships will be aware that drug dealers are grooming children to send far and wide across the country to provide new markets for their drugs. The Children’s Society commented that it will often be children in poverty, from children’s homes, and in difficult circumstances, who are sent away to deal drugs. They will often be supplied with knives or will get them from doing this work. These are the kinds of children who get drawn into this.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, knife crime prevention orders are an attempt by the Government to deal with the horror of knife crime. Hardly a week goes by without a report of a young life lost. We see parents on our television screens in the depths of unimaginable despair as they try to understand what has happened to their child. These are things that no one should have to experience: a child, a loved one, murdered. It is also clear that the perpetrators of these crimes destroy their own lives when they are caught and punished. We must ask ourselves: have we as a society failed these children and young people as well?
Teaching right from wrong starts in the home, of course, but other agencies also play their part as children go to school and interact with the world around them. The destruction of Sure Start by the Government was a huge mistake—it was destroyed at the altar of austerity. Services for young people have been devastated. There are no youth clubs, no youth workers in any great numbers. Where children are not in loving homes and no one is there to help them, who becomes their family? The risk is that it will be the drug dealer, the gangs, and the people who exploit and abuse them, who become their family. You are part of a gang; there are people who are in other gangs. You have your territory and they have theirs. I was horrified to learn recently that there are young people living in Camberwell, an area of Southwark where I went to school, who are too scared to cross Camberwell New Road and walk into Lambeth. I could not believe it but it is true: they have never been into the borough of Lambeth. That is another gang’s territory and if they go there they risk being stabbed and killed.
When we debated this in Grand Committee, I asked why COBRA has not been convened to deal with this national emergency. If there is a flood, or other emergency, it is convened, so why not to stop this appalling loss of life and destruction of young lives and families? Why not try to deal with this as a national emergency? You could get the police, the Local Government Association, the Home Office and every other relevant agency around the table to look at solutions to these tragic, devastating incidents. I do not think it is over the top to stop young people losing their lives.
I accept that there is support for these orders. I think I am correct in saying that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police supports them, as does the Mayor of London. However, concerns have also been raised about the criminalising of children. That concern has been expressed tonight by the noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Ramsbotham, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby and other noble Lords. If these orders are to come into force, we need a proper pilot scheme, with proper evaluation, and then, having considered the report, a vote in both Houses of Parliament on whether to either roll them out fully or not continue with them. This is the subject of Amendment 55 in my name. Amendment 63, which I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for supporting, sets out the report to be laid before Parliament before these come into effect.
There are legitimate concerns about the way this proposal has been introduced so late in the day, the lack of consultations with relevant organisations and the lack of scrutiny in the other place where there was none at all because it was introduced after the Bill had left that House. Although I believe we do scrutiny better in this House, the elected House should have had its opportunity and the fact that it has not is regrettable. Getting a series of Lords amendments to debate in the other place is not the same as a Bill Committee, with evidence being taken and the other place going through its proper parliamentary procedures. I think this proposal deserves that.
A number of key points have been raised by noble Lords around the House. The Minister needs to respond carefully before we decide whether to vote on these matters.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his point about responding carefully—I certainly shall, because this is a very serious issue.
Before I respond to the amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Paddick, and other points raised in the debate, I want to emphasise again that the purpose of these orders is not to punish those who have been carrying knives but to divert them away from that behaviour and to put in place measures that will stop them being drawn into more serious violent offending. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, quoted my honourable friend Vicky Atkins, who said that they are there to provide that wraparound care. That is precisely their intention—not to draw children into criminality. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said that a public health approach is needed, and I absolutely agree with him. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary precisely outlined his intention to pursue a public health approach to this issue.
The other important thing to note about these orders is that they should not be seen in isolation, and they will not in and of themselves provide all the answers. They need to be seen in the context of the comprehensive programme of action set out in our Serious Violence Strategy, which we published last year.
We must try and stop the journey that leads young people from carrying a knife for self-protection to serious violence. We should not focus on picking up the pieces but do all we can to stop those lives being broken in the first place. I am sure noble Lords will agree that prosecution for young children is not always the most appropriate response, and we do not want them drawn into the criminal justice system if we can possibly help it. KCPOs will enable the police and others to address the underlying issues and steer young people away from knife crime through positive interventions.
The amendments contain important safeguards to ensure that KCPOs are not used inappropriately against young people under the age of 18. In particular, the amendments require the police to consult the relevant youth offending team before an order is made and, once made, an order must be reviewed by the courts after 12 months. We fully expect that the courts will provide for more regular reviews where a KCPO is issued to a person under the age of 18. But we remain of the view that the breach of an order should be a criminal offence if these orders are to be effective. This will mean that those on orders understand how important it is to comply with the restrictions or requirements imposed by the court.
I turn now to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. These amendments tie into government Amendment 52 which provides for, and indeed mandates, the piloting of KCPOs. That these orders should be the subject of a pilot before they are rolled out nationally is clearly a sensible approach, although I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan- Howe, who would just like to see them rolled out. But these are new orders and it is important that we get them right. Piloting will mean that the police can try out the orders in a few areas, and that they can build experience and learn lessons from operating them for an initial period before they are made available to other police forces. I would expect the pilot areas to include one or more London boroughs, but they might also include other cities with high knife crime. By their nature, the pilot areas will be limited and I hope that assurance deals with Amendment 60 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick.
Amendment 52 further requires a report to be laid before Parliament on the outcome of the pilot. This will allow Parliament to consider whether these orders are effective and whether they are likely to deliver the intended benefits. It is important that this report is as comprehensive as possible and I am sure that it will include at least some of the information specified in Amendments 57 and 63. By its nature, the report required by Amendment 52 will be a one-off, but I fully expect that once rolled out, KCPOs will be the subject of ongoing scrutiny. There are existing mechanisms for this, such as parliamentary Questions and debates, an inquiry by the Home Affairs Select Committee and the normal process of post-legislative review. I am therefore not persuaded that the new orders should be subject to an annual reporting requirement, as set out in Amendment 63.
Amendment 55 would require the national rollout of KCPOs to be subject to the approval of both Houses of Parliament. I think it is the intention of Amendment 107 to require that regulations provided for the pilots should also be subject to prior parliamentary approval. Again, I am not persuaded of the case for this. The government amendments adopt the standard approach of providing for KCPO provisions, including the pilots, to be brought into force by regulations made by the Home Secretary. In the usual way, such regulations are not subject to parliamentary procedure and I see no reason to adopt a different approach here. Once Parliament has approved the principle of the provisions by enacting them, commencement is then properly a matter for the Executive.
Amendment 52 enables the piloting of the provisions for one or more specified purposes as well as in one or more specified areas. Our intention is to have area-based pilots rather than purpose-based pilots, but we might need some combination of the two. As I have said, our intention is to pilot these provisions principally in part of the Metropolitan Police area, but potentially also in one or two other police force areas. In doing so, it might be necessary to commence certain provisions more widely.
The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, asked about the situation where an application on conviction is made in the pilot area, but the subject of the order then moves to another part of the country. To cater for such circumstances, it might be necessary to give all courts in England and Wales jurisdiction to vary or discharge, but not to make, an order.
Turning to other issues raised in this group, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked about a consultation that is going to be done as part of the pilot. He also asked about someone who is not guilty of a crime but is given a KCPO. KCPOs are available on application by the police where they have evidence that the individual has carried a knife on two occasions in the preceding two years. If an individual is acquitted but there is evidence that they have carried a knife, an application can be made. It will be for the magistrate or youth court to determine whether the test is met and whether a KCPO is necessary to prevent knife offending or to protect the public.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, asked how many police forces wanted KCPOs and how many do not, which is a reasonable question. The National Police Chiefs’ Council, which represents all 43 police forces in England and Wales, supports KCPOs. In addition, Assistant Commissioner Duncan Ball, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said he welcomed the new powers announced by the Home Office, and the APCC chair likewise.
The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, asked why we have not given a search power. We did not consider the power of stop and search without reasonable grounds necessary because there are existing powers to stop and search individuals where there are reasonable grounds to suspect them of carrying a knife. We think it appropriate for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 protection to continue to apply to the subjects of these orders.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, will the Minister ensure that in any pilots, an assessment will be made of the impact of KCPOs on young people in care who are looked after by their local authority and care leavers?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Earl is right to point out that children in care are the most vulnerable people in all the areas we look at. Of course, they will be a prime consideration because they are the most likely to be vulnerable to the sorts of things we are talking about. Local authorities, as their corporate parents, are responsible for them.
Finally, the Government do not pretend for one moment that KCPOs are the magic wand to answer all the problems of knife crime. I emphasise that they are one tool, but an important one, to end the scourge affecting young people, communities and their families. With that, I beg to move.
“Requirements for application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction)
(1) An application for a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) may be made only by—(a) a relevant chief officer of police,(b) the chief constable of the British Transport Police Force, or(c) the chief constable of the Ministry of Defence Police.(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)(a) a chief officer of police is a relevant chief officer of police in relation to an application for a knife crime prevention order in respect of a defendant if—(a) the defendant lives in the chief officer’s police area, or(b) the chief officer believes that the defendant is in, or is intending to come to, the chief officer’s police area.(3) An application for a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) made by a chief officer of police for a police area may be made only to a court acting for a local justice area that includes any part of that police area.(4) Subsections (5) and (6) apply if a person proposes to apply for a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) in respect of a defendant who—(a) is under the age of 18, and(b) will be under that age when the application is made.(5) Before making the application the person must consult the youth offending team established under section 39 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 in whose area it appears to the person that the defendant lives.(6) If it appears to the person that the defendant lives in the area of two or more youth offending teams, the obligation in subsection (5) is to consult such of those teams as the person thinks appropriate.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Application without notice
(1) An application for a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) may be made without the applicant giving notice to the defendant. (2) Section (Requirements for application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction))(4) to (6) (consultation requirements) does not apply to an application made without notice.(3) If an application is made without notice the court must—(a) adjourn the proceedings and make an interim knife crime prevention order under section (Interim knife crime prevention order: application without notice),(b) adjourn the proceedings without making an interim knife crime prevention order under that section, or(c) dismiss the application.(4) If the court acts under subsection (3)(a) or (b), the applicant must comply with section (Requirements for application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction))(4) to (6) before the date of the first full hearing.(5) In this section “full hearing” means a hearing of which notice has been given to the applicant and the defendant in accordance with rules of court.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Interim knife crime prevention ordersInterim knife crime prevention order: application without notice
(1) Where an application for a knife crime prevention order in respect of a defendant is made without notice by virtue of section (Application without notice), the court may make an interim knife crime prevention order under this section in respect of the defendant if the first and second conditions are met.(2) The first condition is that the proceedings on the knife crime prevention order are adjourned (otherwise than at a full hearing within the meaning of section (Application without notice)).(3) The second condition is that the court thinks that it is necessary to make an interim knife crime prevention order under this section.(4) An interim knife crime prevention order under this section is an order which imposes on the defendant such of the prohibitions that may be imposed by a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) as the court thinks are required in relation to the defendant.(5) An interim knife crime prevention order under this section may not impose on the defendant any of the requirements that may be imposed by a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction).(6) See also—(a) section (Provisions of knife crime prevention order) (which makes further provision about the prohibitions which may be imposed by an interim knife crime prevention order under this section), and(b) section (Duration of knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes provision about the duration of an interim knife crime prevention order under this section).”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Interim knife crime prevention order: application not determined
(1) This section applies if— (a) an application is made to a court for a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) in respect of a defendant,(b) the defendant is notified of the application in accordance with rules of court, and(c) the application is adjourned.(2) The court may make an interim knife crime prevention order in respect of the defendant if—(a) the first or second condition is met, and(b) the third condition is met.(3) The first condition is that, by the complaint by which the application mentioned in subsection (1) is made, the applicant also applies for an interim knife crime prevention order in respect of the defendant.(4) The second condition is that, by complaint to the court, the applicant for the order mentioned in subsection (1) subsequently applies for an interim knife crime prevention order in respect of the defendant.(5) The third condition is that the court thinks that it is just to make the order.(6) An interim knife crime prevention order under this section is an order which—(a) imposes on the defendant such of the requirements that may be imposed by a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) as the court thinks appropriate;(b) imposes on the defendant such of the prohibitions that may be imposed by a knife crime prevention order under that section as the court thinks appropriate.(7) See also—(a) section (Provisions of knife crime prevention order) (which makes further provision about the requirements and prohibitions that may be imposed by an interim knife crime prevention order under this section),(b) section (Requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes further provision about the inclusion of requirements in an interim knife crime prevention order under this section), and(c) section (Duration of knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes provision about the duration of an interim knife crime prevention order under this section).(8) Section 127 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 (time limits) does not apply to a complaint under this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Knife crime prevention orders made on convictionKnife crime prevention order made on conviction
(1) This section applies where—(a) a person aged 12 or over (the “defendant”) is convicted of an offence which was committed after the coming into force of this section, and(b) a court dealing with the defendant in respect of the offence is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the offence is a relevant offence.(2) The court may make a knife crime prevention order under this section in respect of the defendant if the following conditions are met.(3) The first condition is that the prosecution applies for a knife crime prevention order to be made under this section.(4) The second condition is that the court thinks that it is necessary to make the order— (a) to protect the public in England and Wales from the risk of harm involving a bladed article,(b) to protect any particular members of the public in England and Wales (including the defendant) from such risk, or(c) to prevent the defendant from committing an offence involving a bladed article.(5) A knife crime prevention order under this section is an order which, for a purpose mentioned in subsection (4)—(a) requires the defendant to do anything described in the order;(b) prohibits the defendant from doing anything described in the order.(6) See also—(a) section (Provisions of knife crime prevention order) (which makes further provision about the requirements and prohibitions that may be imposed by a knife crime prevention order under this section),(b) section (Requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes further provision about the inclusion of requirements in a knife crime prevention order under this section), and(c) section (Duration of knife crime prevention order etc) (which makes provision about the duration of a knife crime prevention order under this section).(7) The court may make a knife crime prevention order under this section in respect of the defendant only if it is made in addition to—(a) a sentence imposed in respect of the offence, or(b) an order discharging the offender conditionally.(8) For the purposes of deciding whether to make a knife crime prevention order under this section the court may consider evidence led by the prosecution and evidence led by the defendant.(9) It does not matter whether the evidence would have been admissible in the proceedings in which the defendant was convicted.(10) For the purposes of this section an offence is a relevant offence if—(a) the offence involved violence,(b) a bladed article was used, by the defendant or any other person, in the commission of the offence, or(c) the defendant or another person who committed the offence had a bladed article with them when the offence was committed.(11) In subsection (10) “violence” includes a threat of violence.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Requirement to consult on application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction)
(1) This section applies if the prosecution proposes to apply for a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction) in respect of a defendant who—(a) is under the age of 18, and(b) will be under that age when the application is made.(2) Before making the application, the prosecution must consult the youth offending team established under section 39 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 in whose area it appears to the prosecution that the defendant lives.(3) If it appears to the prosecution that the defendant lives in the area of two or more youth offending teams, the obligation in subsection (2) is to consult such of those teams as the prosecution thinks appropriate.” Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Provisions of knife crime prevention orderProvisions of knife crime prevention order
(1) The only requirements and prohibitions that may be imposed on a defendant by a knife crime prevention order are those which the court making the order thinks are necessary—(a) to protect the public in England and Wales from the risk of harm involving a bladed article,(b) to protect any particular members of the public in England and Wales (including the defendant) from such risk, or(c) to prevent the defendant from committing an offence involving a bladed article.(2) The requirements imposed by a knife crime prevention order on a defendant may, in particular, have the effect of requiring the defendant to—(a) be at a particular place between particular times on particular days;(b) be at a particular place between particular times on any day;(c) present themselves to a particular person at a place where they are required to be between particular times on particular days;(d) participate in particular activities between particular times on particular days.(3) Section (Requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc) makes further provision about the inclusion of requirements in a knife crime prevention order.(4) The prohibitions imposed by a knife crime prevention order on a defendant may, in particular, have the effect of prohibiting the defendant from—(a) being in a particular place;(b) being with particular persons;(c) participating in particular activities;(d) using particular articles or having particular articles with them;(e) using the internet to facilitate or encourage crime involving bladed articles.(5) References in subsection (4) to a particular place or particular persons, activities or articles include a place, persons, activities or articles of a particular description.(6) A knife crime prevention order which imposes prohibitions on a defendant may include exceptions from those prohibitions.(7) Nothing in subsections (2) to (6) affects the generality of section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction)(7) or section (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction)(5).(8) The requirements or prohibitions which are imposed on the defendant by a knife crime prevention order must, so far as practicable, be such as to avoid—(a) any conflict with the defendant’s religious beliefs, and(b) any interference with the times, if any, at which the defendant normally works or attends any educational establishment.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc
(1) A knife crime prevention order or interim knife crime prevention order which imposes a requirement on a defendant must specify a person who is to be responsible for supervising compliance with the requirement.(2) That person may be an individual or an organisation.(3) Before including a requirement, the court must receive evidence about its suitability and enforceability from—(a) the individual to be specified under subsection (1), if an individual is to be specified;(b) an individual representing the organisation to be specified under subsection (1), if an organisation is to be specified.(4) Before including two or more requirements, the court must consider their compatibility with each other.(5) It is the duty of a person specified under subsection (1)—(a) to make any necessary arrangements in connection with the requirements for which the person has responsibility (the “relevant requirements”);(b) to promote the defendant’s compliance with the relevant requirements;(c) if the person considers that the defendant—(i) has complied with all of the relevant requirements, or(ii) has failed to comply with a relevant requirement,to inform the appropriate chief officer of police.(6) In subsection (5)(c) “the appropriate chief officer of police” means—(a) the chief officer of police for the police area in which it appears to the person specified under subsection (1) that the defendant lives, or(b) if it appears to that person that the defendant lives in more than one police area, whichever of the chief officers of police of those areas the person thinks it is most appropriate to inform.(7) A defendant subject to a requirement in a knife crime prevention order or interim knife crime prevention order must—(a) keep in touch with the person specified under subsection (1) in relation to that requirement, in accordance with any instructions given by that person from time to time, and(b) notify that person of any change of the defendant’s home address.(8) The obligations mentioned in subsection (7) have effect as if they were requirements imposed on the defendant by the order.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Duration of knife crime prevention order etc
(1) A knife crime prevention order or an interim knife crime prevention order under section (Interim knife crime prevention order: application not determined) takes effect on the day on which it is made, subject to subsections (6) and (7).(2) An interim knife crime prevention order under section (Interim knife crime prevention order: application without notice) takes effect when it is served on the defendant, subject to subsections (6) and (7).(3) A knife crime prevention order must specify the period for which it has effect, which must be a fixed period of at least 6 months, and not more than 2 years, beginning with the day on which it takes effect.(4) An interim knife crime prevention order under section (Interim knife crime prevention order: application without notice) has effect until the determination of the application mentioned in subsection (1) of that section, subject to section (Variation, renewal or discharge of knife crime prevention order etc) (variation, renewal or discharge).(5) An interim knife crime prevention order under section (Interim knife crime prevention order: application not determined) has effect until the determination of the application mentioned in subsection (1) of that section, subject to section (Variation, renewal or discharge of knife crime prevention order etc).(6) Subsection (7) applies if a knife crime prevention order or an interim knife crime prevention order is made in respect of—(a) a defendant who has been remanded in or committed to custody by an order of a court,(b) a defendant on whom a custodial sentence has been imposed or who is serving or otherwise subject to such a sentence, or(c) a defendant who is on licence for part of the term of a custodial sentence.(7) The order may provide that it does not take effect until—(a) the defendant is released from custody,(b) the defendant ceases to be subject to a custodial sentence, or(c) the defendant ceases to be on licence.(8) A knife crime prevention order or an interim knife crime prevention order may specify periods for which particular prohibitions or requirements have effect.(9) Where a court makes a knife crime prevention order or an interim knife crime prevention order in respect of a defendant who is already subject to such an order, the earlier order ceases to have effect.(10) In this section “custodial sentence” means—(a) a sentence of imprisonment or any other sentence or order mentioned in section 76(1) of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2003, or(b) a sentence or order which corresponds to a sentence or order within paragraph (a) and which was imposed or made under an earlier enactment.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Notification requirementsNotification requirements
(1) Subsection (2) applies if—(a) a knife crime prevention order is made in respect of a defendant (other than an order which replaces an interim knife crime prevention order), or(b) an interim knife crime prevention order is made in respect of a defendant.(2) The defendant must notify the information mentioned in subsection (3) to the police within the period of 3 days beginning with the day on which the order takes effect.(3) That information is—(a) the defendant’s name on the day on which the notification is given and, where the defendant uses one or more other names on that day, each of those names, and(b) the defendant’s home address on that day.(4) Subsection (5) applies to a defendant who is subject to—(a) a knife crime prevention order, or(b) an interim knife crime prevention order.(5) The defendant must notify the information mentioned in subsection (6) to the police within the period of 3 days beginning with the day on which the defendant— (a) uses a name which has not previously been notified to the police under subsection (2) or this paragraph,(b) changes their home address, or(c) decides to live for a period of one month or more at any premises the address of which has not been notified to the police under subsection (2) or this paragraph.(6) That information is—(a) in a case within subsection (5)(a), the name which has not previously been notified;(b) in a case within subsection (5)(b), the new home address;(c) in a case within subsection (5)(c), the address at which the defendant has decided to live.(7) A defendant gives a notification under subsection (2) or (5) by—(a) attending at a police station in a police area in which the defendant lives, and(b) giving an oral notification to a police officer, or to any person authorised for the purpose by the officer in charge of the station.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Offences relating to notification
(1) A person commits an offence if the person—(a) fails, without reasonable excuse, to comply with section (Notification requirements)(2) or (5), or(b) notifies to the police, in purported compliance with section (Notification requirements)(2) or (5), any information which the person knows to be false.(2) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, to a fine or to both;(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, to a fine or to both.(3) In relation to an offence committed before the coming into force of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (maximum sentence that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way) the reference in section (2)(a) to 12 months is to be read as a reference to 6 months.(4) A person commits an offence under subsection (1)(a) on the day on which the person first fails, without reasonable excuse, to comply with section (Notification requirements)(2) or (5).(5) The person continues to commit the offence throughout any period during which the failure continues.(6) But the person may not be prosecuted more than once in respect of the same offence.(7) Proceedings for an offence under this section may be commenced in any court having jurisdiction in any place where the person charged with the offence lives or is found.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Supplementary provisionsReview of knife crime prevention order
(1) This section applies where a court has made a knife crime prevention order in respect of a defendant.(2) The court may order the applicant and the defendant to attend one or more review hearings on a specified date or dates. (3) Subsection (4) applies if any requirement or prohibition imposed by the knife crime prevention order is to have effect after the end of the period of 1 year beginning with the day on which the order takes effect.(4) The court must order the applicant and the defendant to attend a review hearing on a specified date within the last 4 weeks of the 1 year period (whether or not the court orders them to attend any other review hearings).(5) A review hearing under this section is a hearing held for the purpose of considering whether the knife crime prevention order should be varied or discharged.(6) Subsections (7) to (9) of section (Variation, renewal or discharge of knife crime prevention order etc) (variation, renewal or discharge) apply to the variation of a knife crime prevention order under this section as they apply to the variation of an order under that section.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Variation, renewal or discharge of knife crime prevention order etc
“(1) A person within subsection (2) may apply to the appropriate court for—(a) an order varying, renewing or discharging a knife crime prevention order, or(b) an order varying or discharging an interim knife crime prevention order.(2) Those persons are—(a) the defendant;(b) the chief officer of police for a police area in which the defendant lives;(c) a chief officer of police who believes that the defendant is in, or is intending to come to, the chief officer’s police area;(d) if the application for the order was made by a chief officer of police other than one within paragraph (b) or (c), the chief officer by whom the application was made;(e) if the order was made on an application by the chief constable of the British Transport Police Force, that chief constable;(f) if the order was made on an application by the chief constable of the Ministry of Defence Police, that chief constable.(3) An application under subsection (1) may be made—(a) where the appropriate court is the Crown Court, in accordance with rules of court;(b) in any other case, by complaint.(4) Before a person other than the defendant makes an application under subsection (1), the person must notify the persons consulted under section (Requirements for application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction))(5) or section (Requirement to consult on application for order under section (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction))(2).(5) Before making a decision on an application under subsection (1), the court must hear—(a) the person making the application, and(b) any other person within subsection (2) who wishes to be heard.(6) Subject as follows, on an application under subsection (1)—(a) the court may make such order varying or discharging the order as it thinks appropriate; (b) in the case of an application under paragraph (a) of that subsection, the court may make such order renewing the order as it thinks appropriate.(7) The court may renew a knife crime prevention order, or vary such an order or an interim knife crime prevention order so as to impose an additional prohibition or requirement on a defendant, only if it is satisfied that it is necessary to do so—(a) to protect the public in England and Wales from the risk of harm involving a bladed article,(b) to protect any particular members of the public in England and Wales (including the defendant) from such risk, or(c) to prevent the defendant from committing an offence involving a bladed article.(8) The provisions mentioned in subsection (9) have effect in relation to the renewal of a knife crime prevention order, or the variation of a knife crime prevention order or interim knife prevention order so as to impose a new requirement or prohibition, as they have effect in relation to the making of such an order.(9) Those provisions are—(a) section (Provisions of knife crime prevention order) (provisions of knife crime prevention order),(b) section (Requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc) (requirements included in knife crime prevention order etc), and(c) section (Duration of knife crime prevention order etc) (duration of knife crime prevention order etc).(10) The court may not discharge a knife crime prevention order before the end of the period of 6 months beginning with the day on which the order takes effect without the consent of the defendant and—(a) where the application under this section is made by a chief officer of police, that chief officer,(b) if paragraph (a) does not apply but the application for the order was made by a chief officer of police, that chief officer and (if different) each chief officer of police for an area in which the defendant lives or(c) in any other case, each chief officer of police for an area in which the defendant lives.(11) In this section the “appropriate court” means—(a) where the Crown Court or the Court of Appeal made the knife crime prevention order or the interim knife crime prevention order, the Crown Court;(b) where an adult magistrates’ court made the order, that court, an adult magistrates’ court for the area in which the defendant lives or, where the application is made by a chief officer of police, any adult magistrates’ court acting for a local justice area that includes any part of the chief officer’s police area;(c) where a youth court made the order and the defendant is under the age of 18, that court, a youth court for the area in which the defendant lives or, where the application is made by a chief officer of police, any youth court acting for a local justice area that includes any part of the chief officer’s police area;(d) where a youth court made the order and the defendant is aged 18 or over, an adult magistrates’ court for the area in which the defendant lives or, where the application is made by a chief officer of police, any adult magistrates’ court acting for a local justice area that includes any part of the chief officer’s police area.(12) In subsection (11) “adult magistrates’ court” means a magistrates’ court that is not a youth court.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Appeal against knife crime prevention order etc
(1) A defendant may appeal to the Crown Court against—(a) the making of a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) (order made otherwise than on conviction), or(b) the making of an interim knife crime prevention order.(2) A person who applied for a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) or an interim knife crime prevention order may appeal to the Crown Court against a refusal to make the order.(3) A defendant may appeal against the making of a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction) (order made on conviction) as if the order were a sentence passed on the defendant for the offence.(4) Where an application is made for an order under section (Variation, renewal or discharge of knife crime prevention order etc) (variation, renewal or discharge)—(a) the person who made the application may appeal against a refusal to make an order under that section;(b) the defendant may appeal against the making of an order under that section which was made on the application of a person other than the defendant;(c) a person within subsection (2) of that section other than the defendant may appeal against the making of an order under that section which was made on the application of the defendant.(5) An appeal under subsection (4)—(a) is to be made to the Court of Appeal if the application for the order under section (Variation, renewal or discharge of knife crime prevention order etc) was made to the Crown Court;(b) is to be made to the Crown Court in any other case.(6) On an appeal under subsection (1) or (2), or an appeal under subsection (4) to which subsection (5)(b) applies, the Crown Court may make—(a) such orders as may be necessary to give effect to its determination of the appeal, and(b) such incidental and consequential orders as appear to it to be appropriate.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Offence of breaching knife crime prevention order etc
(1) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, the person breaches a knife crime prevention order or an interim knife crime prevention order.(2) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, to a fine or to both;(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, to a fine or to both.(3) In relation to an offence committed before the coming into force of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (maximum sentence that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way) the reference in subsection (2)(a) to 12 months is to be read as a reference to 6 months. (4) Where a person is convicted of an offence under this section, it is not open to the court by or before which the person is convicted to make, in respect of the offence, an order for conditional discharge.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may from time to time issue guidance relating to the exercise by a relevant person of functions in relation to knife crime prevention orders and interim knife crime prevention orders.(2) In this section “relevant person” means a person who is capable of making an application for a knife crime prevention order or an interim knife crime prevention order.(3) A relevant person must have regard to any guidance issued under subsection (1) when exercising a function to which the guidance relates.(4) The Secretary of State must arrange for any guidance issued under this section to be published in such manner as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Piloting
(1) The Secretary of State may exercise the power in section 46(1) so as to bring all of the provisions of this Part into force for all purposes and in relation to the whole of England and Wales only if the following conditions are met.(2) The first condition is that the Secretary of State has brought some or all of the provisions of this Part into force only—(a) for one or more specified purposes, or(b) in relation to one or more specified areas in England and Wales.(3) The second condition is that the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a report on the operation of some or all of the provisions of this Part—(a) for one or more of those purposes, or(b) in relation to one or more of those areas.(4) Regulations under section 46(1) which bring any provision of this Part into force only for a specified purpose or in relation to a specified area may—(a) provide for that provision to be in force for that purpose or in relation to that area for a specified period,(b) make transitional or saving provision in relation to that provision ceasing to be in force at the end of the specified period.(5) Regulations containing provision by virtue of subsection (4)(a) may be amended by subsequent regulations under section 46(1) so as to continue any provision of this Part in force for the specified purpose or in relation to the specified area for a further specified period.(6) In this section “specified” means specified in regulations under section 46(1). (7) References in this section to this Part do not include section (Guidance) or this section (which by virtue of section 46(5)(za) and (zb) come into force on the day on which this Act is passed).”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Consequential amendments
(1) In section 3(2) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (functions of the Director of Public Prosecutions) after paragraph (ff) insert—“(fg) to have the conduct of applications for orders under section (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 (knife crime prevention orders made on conviction);”.(2) In the Criminal Legal Aid (General) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/9), in regulation 9 (criminal proceedings) after paragraph (ub) insert—“(uc) proceedings under Part 5 of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 in relation to a knife crime prevention order or an interim knife crime prevention order;”.(3) The amendment made by subsection (2) is without prejudice to any power to make an order or regulations amending or revoking the regulations mentioned in that subsection.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
“Interpretation of Part
(1) In this Part—“applicant” means an applicant for a knife crime prevention order;“bladed article” means an article to which section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies;“defendant”—(a) in relation to a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) (order made otherwise than on conviction), has the meaning given by subsection (1) of that section;(b) in relation to a knife crime prevention order under section (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction) (order made on conviction), has the meaning given by subsection (1) of that section;“harm” includes physical and psychological harm;“home address”, in relation to a defendant, means—(a) the address of the defendant’s sole or main residence, or(b) if the defendant has no such residence, the address or location of a place where the defendant can regularly be found and, if there is more than one such place, such one of those places as the defendant may select.(2) A reference in this Part to a knife crime prevention order which is not expressed as a reference to an order under section (Knife crime prevention order made otherwise than on conviction) or (Knife crime prevention order made on conviction) is a reference to an order under either of those sections. (3) A reference in this Part to an interim knife crime prevention order which is not expressed as a reference to an order under section (Interim knife crime prevention order: application without notice) or (Interim knife crime prevention order: application not determined) is a reference to an order under either of those sections.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment to insert the first new Clause after Clause 13.
Lord Paddick
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to probe the effect of labelling a package as containing a knife on the likelihood of the package being stolen during delivery.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am moving this amendment on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and at his request. Part of the defence to the sale and delivery of knives to under-18s is that the package containing a knife is clearly marked to indicate its contents. The amendment is intended to probe the effect of labelling a package as containing a knife on the likelihood of the package being stolen during delivery. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for explaining the amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lucas, because it gives us the opportunity to consider the requirements that remote sellers need to meet if they are to rely on the defence that they have taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid selling bladed articles to a person under 18.
Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes it an offence to sell a bladed article to a person under 18. It is a defence that the seller took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence—for example, that they had asked to see proof of a person’s age.
Clause 15 provides that, in relation to remote sales—for example, online sales—of bladed articles, the seller can rely on the defence only if they can prove they have met certain conditions. These conditions are: that they have systems in place at the point of sale for verifying the age of buyers; that they clearly mark the package containing the article when it is dispatched, and have taken steps to ensure that the package is finally delivered is delivered to someone over 18; and that they did not arrange for the article to be delivered to a locker.
The amendment concerns the second of those conditions, which is that that when the package is dispatched it must be clearly marked to indicate that it contains a bladed or sharply pointed article, and that when finally delivered it should be into the hands of someone over 18. The amendment would remove the first part of this condition, so the package would need to be labelled to say that it must be handed to a person over 18, but it would not need to say it contained a bladed or sharply pointed article.
Before I turn to the amendment itself, it might be worth saying a bit about the purpose of Clause 15, which is to drive a change in behaviour by remote sellers. It sets out the minimum requirements we would expect sellers to meet if they wanted to be confident that they were not selling to under-18s, but it is mainly aimed at individual transactions—young people trying to buy knives online—rather than large business transactions. It is not aimed, for example, at a seller of kitchenware that deals exclusively with restaurants and hotels.
The requirements under Clause 15 are therefore the minimum requirements that a seller has to meet if they want to rely on the defence that they have taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence, should they ever be prosecuted for selling to an under-18. Where a seller knows their customers, they may decide not to comply with the conditions under Clause 15 because they are sure they will never be prosecuted. Examples would be: where a seller sells only to a wholesaler; where a seller has traded with the same customer for years; or where a seller knows the individual they are selling to—for instance, where they make hand-made items for particular customers, they will know the buyer is over 18 and may decide that complying with the conditions is unnecessary.
Turning to the amendment, our discussions with delivery companies and those who provide collection point services indicate that they want any packages that they are going to handle to be clearly marked by the seller so that the risk that they inadvertently hand them over to a person aged under 18 is reduced. You cannot expect staff working for a delivery company or at a collection point to ensure that the package is handed over to an adult unless it is clear from the packaging what it contains and what the restriction is on delivery. It makes sense that those working for delivery companies and at collection points know what they are handling. This will enable them to treat the package with due caution. This is particularly the case where the package contains sharp objects or corrosive substances.
Finally, the amendment applies only to Clause 15 and not to Clauses 16 and 17, which deal with the same matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland, or to Clause 2, which sets the same conditions in relation to corrosive products where these are sold remotely.
I hope I have provided the noble Lord with sufficient explanation around the purpose of Clause 15 and the labelling requirement and that he will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, perhaps my noble friend can clarify on the record to what extent an article is regarded as pointed. I am afraid I am the one who is always raising the virtually impossible but it would be possible to extend this provision to a packet of screws or an order of nails—which are not all that sharp but they are sharply pointed articles—and anything else of that nature.
Baroness Barran
I will write to my noble friend with an accurate answer on that. I am confident that there is a tight definition of this but at this hour I cannot recall it exactly.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her explanation. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, wanted the Government’s response to the amendment on the record and that is what we have achieved. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Monday 4th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 160-II Second marshalled list for Report (PDF) - (28 Feb 2019)
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“(aa) the seller is not a trusted trader of bladed products, and”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would create a trusted trader status for those selling bladed products.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, Amendments 74 and 77 in my name seek to establish a “trusted trader” scheme to enable bladed products to be delivered to home addresses. This is an issue that I raised in Committee. The Bill as drafted prohibits the delivery of bladed objects to residential properties, and there are serious concerns among small and medium-sized knife manufacturers and retailers that this will have a detrimental impact on their businesses.
As more sales move online, consumers expect to be able to receive deliveries directly to their home. I fully support the aims of the Bill but I think this is a legislative sledgehammer that will affect small and medium-sized businesses based in the UK while having little impact on knife crime. There is no evidence that these high-quality knives sold online are being bought with criminal intent; if there were any evidence, it would have already been presented. I think we all accept that if you bought a knife online with criminal intent, you would be creating a very easy evidence trail for the police to follow.
We all want to achieve the objective of the Bill, which is to reduce knife crime, but at the same time we do not want to destroy UK-based businesses. There is a need for greater enforcement of existing legislation prohibiting the sale of knives to under-18s and the carrying of a knife without good reason, and these amendments would enable a trusted trader scheme to come into force. All that I am seeking to achieve is protection for British businesses, whether with the scheme in these amendments, with the scheme suggested last week by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, or with some other form of approved deliverer scheme, which we discussed when we had a very positive meeting last week with the noble Baronesses, Lady Williams of Trafford and Lady Barran, and representatives of the business community from Sheffield—who, in my opinion, put a very convincing case to the Minister—along with the honourable Members for Sheffield Central and Sheffield South East.
I am aware that a trusted trader scheme has been ruled out by the Home Office, which claims that it would add more bureaucracy and would cost businesses to establish, but I point out that the scheme is being suggested by the very businesses that would be affected. I make clear that I am not fixed on any scheme; I just want to find a solution for what I think the Minister accepts is a real issue that could have damaging consequences for British businesses. I know that is not the Government’s intention—in fact, I support their actual intentions—but we have a problem here. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, that this legislation is seriously to the detriment of UK companies versus overseas companies, in that if you order a bladed instrument or knife from an overseas company or website it can be delivered to your home, but if you order one from a UK company it cannot. However, I am not sure the trusted trader scheme that he has outlined in the amendments is the answer. Obviously, overseas companies would not have to be members of a trusted trader scheme and therefore the bureaucracy, expense, fees payable and so forth would still disadvantage UK companies.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for mentioning that I have already suggested a solution to this problem: to extend to UK companies the age-verification scheme at handover on the doorstep, which the Government have set out in the legislation and which currently applies only to overseas companies. I believe that is the solution to this problem, rather than the trusted trader scheme that the noble Lord suggested.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I add to this unanimity of voice. I entirely agree with what both noble Lords have said. The scheme that the Bill sets out enables people to buy knives from foreign websites. A lot of the time you will not know that it is foreign website as it will appear to be in the UK and it will deal in sterling; it is just posted from France, the Netherlands or wherever it might be. It comes through the post in an unmarked packet and is delivered to whoever ordered it. We apparently think this is a reasonable thing to do and that people should be allowed to do this. This is a way in which your average 16 year-old can obtain a knife quite legally under the Bill.
We are imposing much more stringent arrangements on our own internet traders, which will appear exactly the same to customers. All it means is that we will be disadvantaging our own traders to the advantage of overseas traders and we are not achieving anything in terms of safety. I absolutely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said. I support the aims of the Bill. We want to prevent knives getting into the hands of people under 18. Let us have an effective way of doing it that does not disadvantage our own people. Several alternatives have been offered. I very much hope my noble friend will indicate that she is prepared to pick up one of them.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I support everything the three noble Lords have said. I completely concur with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said. He is absolutely on the nail.
Just for fun, today I put on a tie that shows a mouse eating a chunk of cheese. I do not know whether noble Lords remember that there was a book some time ago called Who Moved My Cheese?, in which mice run around a maze and get to eat cheese at the end. One day the cheese was moved. One mouse explored and found where the new cheese had been moved to and therefore survived. The other one kept revisiting the old place and died. I recommend this book to the Home Office. The world has changed—the cheese has moved—yet we are legislating as if we did not have an online world and methods of verifying age, and as if people did not have smartphones that they can link to biometrics. We are living in the past. I cannot believe we are passing a piece of legislation such as this. I concur with everything that has been said. I do not mind what scheme is done so long as it is more sensible than the one proposed in the Bill.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for these amendments. I am particularly grateful to him and the Sheffield knife manufacturers for coming to meet me the other week for what I thought was a very helpful and constructive meeting.
We are returning to something we debated in Committee: whether trusted traders should be exempt from the prohibition in the Bill of arranging delivery of bladed products to residential premises or a locker. When we considered these amendments previously, I said that test purchases continue to show that a significant number of online sellers fail to undertake adequate checks to ensure that knives are not sold to under-18s. The most recent test purchases of online retailers, conducted in late 2018, showed that 42% of the retailers sampled failed the test and sold knives to persons under 18.
As the noble Lord has explained, his amendments seek to address this problem by saying that where we know someone is a responsible retailer they should be able to continue to send their products to a person’s home address or a locker. This would apply only to the dispatch of bladed products under Clause 18 and not to the sending of corrosive products to a residential premise under Clause 3—presumably on the basis that the noble Lord is content that corrosives should not be sent to a person’s home.
These amendments would transfer the responsibility for complying with the legislation, and for ensuring that all sales are handled properly, from the seller to the Government. They would do this by requiring the Government to set out the details of the proposed trusted trader scheme, which would then allow for the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. A trusted trader scheme would require sellers to demonstrate that their age-verification systems and procedures, from the point when they receive the order to the point that their designated delivery company hands the item over, are robust and that they can guarantee that the knife will not be handed over to a person under 18.
The Government are not persuaded, in the light of the results of recent test purchase operations, that sellers can provide such reassurance in a systematic and consistent way. Only by requiring age verification at the point where the item is physically handed to a person at a dedicated collection point is it possible to guarantee that a bladed product will not be handed over to a person under 18. Setting up, administering and overseeing a trusted trader scheme would create a further burden on the Government or local authorities, with inevitable cost implications. Simply being part of a scheme, or being in possession of a seal of approval as a trusted trader, does not guarantee compliance with the conditions of the scheme. Many of us know this to our cost, having hired a plumber or builder accredited by a trusted trader scheme. Such a scheme would impose regulatory burdens on participating businesses. In addition, it would need to be administered by an independent regulatory body or by local authorities, albeit with the expectation that participating businesses would be required to meet the cost of running it.
I hope that I have provided a clear explanation of why the Government do not consider that the noble Lord’s amendments would provide the necessary assurance that young people under 18 cannot get hold of knives using online sellers. In coming to this view, I have reflected on the recent helpful meeting with Sheffield knife retailers—which I am very grateful to the noble Lord for arranging—in which something was said about Amazon’s view on the issues this amendment raises. He knows that I cannot promise anything, and we are yet to have a definitive statement on it, but I hope that this being the case, he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Paddick
Before the noble Baroness sits down, could she just qualify what she said about the test purchase results? Was this a failure in age verification at the point of purchase or at the point of handover?
The noble Baroness also talked about a burden on the Government to design an age verification scheme, but is that not exactly what this Bill does with knives that are bought overseas and that are handed over at residential premises?
Thirdly, could the Minister again tell me why age verification at handover point is likely to be better than age verification on the doorstep?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Such a scheme would impose an additional burden. The noble Lord talks about other burdens; I am not denying that there will be burdens on various people from the introduction of whatever scheme comes in, but this would very much pass on that burden to local government.
As I understand it, the failures in online test purchases have lain at the point of sale.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I put this provision forward, but I am not stuck on this or any other particular scheme, and I hope I made that clear in my remarks. I am generally very grateful to the Minister for the way she met with the traders—they were very impressed with the interest she took.
All I want to do is to stop us putting on the statute book something which harms British business—nothing else. The Minister has confirmed that discussions are still going on, so will she allow me to bring the issue back at Third Reading? If so, I would be very happy to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I cannot commit to bringing it back at Third Reading, but I know the noble Lord will bring it back at Third Reading. By then, I hope that I will have further information for him.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Just to clarify, is the Minister happy for me to bring it back at Third Reading? I do not want any disputes with the clerks afterwards about this situation.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I do not think there will be any disputes with the clerks.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, in that case, that is all clear and correct. I am delighted to withdraw the amendment.
The Duke of Montrose
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would allow a seller to deliver bladed agricultural or forestry equipment to residential premises.
The Duke of Montrose (Con)
My Lords, I rise to move this amendment and speak to others standing in my name—namely, Amendments 80, 83, 84 and 85. For those of us who have not had the good fortune to spend our days looking at the wording of the various Acts introduced since 1953 to control unruly public behaviour, I must express my gratitude to Mark Wilcox for giving general access to the Keeling schedule he produced following our amendments in Committee. I am sure this was aimed at Members of your Lordships’ House who are much more familiar with these documents than I am, but it provided some enlightening weekend reading for me, such as what is currently defined as a public place and how this legislation will affect sharply pointed articles—it explained that this is limited to those,
“made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person”,
as stated in Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
There are other provisions which might answer some of my concerns as well, but I wish to enlarge on the problem which my amendments focus on; this looks at what we have just been discussing from the other end—the purchases end. As I have mentioned before, I approach this legislation as someone who has had to carry on a variety of businesses in a rural context, where many sharp instruments and corrosive substances are involved—an area which has been subject to immense changes, both in its purpose and in how it is envisaged. A current complication arises in that there are fewer and fewer people available and there is less access to public transport and other essential services. The strong message we get is that the Government expect us to carry on most of our business digitally and online. As the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, pointed out, it appears that this has not been thought through from the point of view that this Bill could limit the effect of that.
I again declare my remaining interest as the recent president of the National Sheep Association.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, on this issue but again suggest that the answer is to have a system of age verification at handover, as there is for overseas sellers.
On the issue of whether a business is carried out at a residential address, the Government accept that overseas companies cannot be expected to know whether that is the case. Again, UK companies are being disadvantaged compared with overseas companies.
I do not know whether the noble Duke can explain why Amendment 75 talks about a product that,
“is for an agricultural or forestry management purpose”,
Amendment 80,
“exclusively designed for an agricultural or forestry management purpose”,
Amendment 83,
“specifically to be used for agricultural or forestry management purposes”,
and if those differences are deliberate and explicable.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, as he raises valid points. Again, we do not want anything in the Bill that disadvantages UK business.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I rise to support the amendments as well. A lot of effort is going into preserving hill farming and small farming. There is a lot of focus on that area, yet along comes the Home Office, without consulting Defra, Natural England or anyone else, and it could wipe out all the good that has been done elsewhere. We need to start looking at this approach.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, which runs through the whole thing, this is about disadvantaging UK against foreign business. There is no logical reason to do that. I say to the Minister that, just because this amendment is aimed at knives because it is in this part of the Bill, that does not mean you would not logically continue that through to corrosive liquids. I cannot think how to describe the argument that says that it does not cover that as well, when we have moved on to this part of the Bill. The intransigence of the Home Office has been evident throughout this, and I do not think that is a good argument against sensible amendments later.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his amendments, which return us to the proposed prohibition on the dispatch of bladed products to residential premises and lockers.
I hope I can quickly provide my noble friend with some reassurance on the point he has raised but, before I do so, I would like to answer the point he raised on Report, on 26 February, about the definition of “pointed articles” and whether it includes things like screws carried in someone’s pocket. Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes it an offence to possess in public,
“any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed”,
without,
“good reason or lawful authority”.
Section 141A of the same Act prohibits the sale to under-18s of articles with a sharp point that are,
“made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person”.
The wording “sharply pointed” is used in various parts of the Bill, including Clauses 15 to 17 and Clause 31.
The new offence of arranging delivery to residential premises or a locker is limited to “bladed products”—that is an article which is, or has, a blade and which is capable of causing serious injury by cutting the skin, so does not include pointed articles. It will be for the courts to decide whether an article is sharply pointed, or has a sharp point, in each specific case, but the legislation was clearly never intended to include screws, which are not generally considered to be offensive weapons and which have not been made or adapted for the purposes of causing injury. We are not aware that the definition of pointed articles has caused any problems with the operation of existing offences over the past 30 years.
The amendments in this group would enable bladed products that are used for agricultural or forestry management purposes to be sent by the seller to a solely residential premise. Some agricultural and forestry management items will be caught by the definition of bladed product, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that they will no longer be able to be sent to solely residential premises or a locker. However, the definition of residential premise is limited to those premises that are used solely for residential purposes. My noble friend eloquently set out a number of ways that one could demonstrate whether something was also a business address. It will be a matter for the seller of a bladed product to satisfy themselves that the delivery address is not used solely for residential purposes.
This means that bladed products will still be able to be sent to business premises and this includes, importantly, where a business is run from a residential premise. Therefore, bladed products could be sent to a farm, an agricultural supplier or a forestry centre. They could be sent to the home of a person who runs a self-employed forestry business from their home. We have been clear from the outset that deliveries to farms will not be prohibited under the Bill and, in most cases, agricultural and forestry tools will be related to business activities and should not be affected.
Clause 19 also includes a regulation-making power which will enable further defences to be added by secondary legislation if it becomes clear that the prohibition on home delivery is having a particularly negative impact on certain types of business or not-for-profit activities. A defence for agricultural and forestry equipment could therefore be provided if it becomes clear that there is a detrimental impact on this type of trade or activity. However, for the reasons I have set out, we do not currently think that this is necessary.
I hope I have given my noble friend sufficient reassurance that the deliveries of agricultural and forestry equipment should be largely unaffected by the measures in the Bill. On that basis, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for all her efforts in answering the questions which I have raised from time to time. What she has said has been much more reassuring. It sounds as if a letter to your supplier is critical to whether or not you have a registered business. It does not have to be certified in any way; you can just say to your supplier: “This is my business address”. Maybe that situation is adequate, though there are obviously loopholes.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made an interesting point. The amendments were attached to different parts of the Bill. I thought the wording was a little more appropriate in each case, but I would not stand by it terribly much.
I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. We are in a happier position, for those who require blades and pointed instruments, than we were when it started. I beg leave to withdraw.
Lord Lucas
( ) The Secretary of State must, before the coming into force of sections 18 and 19, publish guidance as to how the definition in subsection (1) may be interpreted.Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, following the Minister's remarks at Committee stage (28 January, HL Deb, col 160GC), is intended to ensure that guidance will be issued, so that those responsible for designing and carrying out sales and dispatch procedures will be able to judge whether a particular item (for instance, a food processor) falls under it.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for substituting for me in my absence on the first day on Report. She obtained for me a very useful answer to the question that underlies this amendment, which is: how is someone going to know? I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister would make it clear that the Government understand how important it is to get this guidance clear. Big retailers are going to have to decide whether something is a bladed product or not: they need to be able to take that decision with certainty. A reputable UK retailer does not want to find itself on the wrong side of this legislation. It will have to make these decisions every day in relation to items of kitchen equipment which they might ship, and they need to do it properly. It is really up to the Government to get this right. I would be grateful for an assurance that the Government understand this and will use the provisions in Amendment 106 to achieve that effect. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, is not really possible to substitute for the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, but I was happy to introduce some of his amendments, as my noble friend did, on our first day on Report. We have Amendments 82 and 86 in this group. Amendment 86 also requests guidance on articles that are not bladed products for the purposes of the Bill—in other words, a negative approach. Amendment 82 would provide that the term does not,
“include a product intended for domestic use which incorporates a blade if the product does not function without the blade”.
I could go off down a separate avenue about the range of experiences that we draw on in this Chamber: I could not have begun to talk about sheep shearing; the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, might want to talk about food processors—I do not know. Clause 20 defines “bladed product” for the purpose of the clauses dealing with delivery to residential premises. Of course, I am not taking issue with the overall approach of my noble friend, but, as the Government have been resisting, this is to look at the detail.
The definition excludes all sorts of things, some of which I have never heard of: flick-knives, gravity knives, knuckle-dusters, death stars and other weapons whose sale and importation is already prohibited, as well as items excluded from the prohibition on the sale of bladed articles to those under 18. I think it is appropriate to pause here, while thanking the Government for providing Keeling schedules, to say that it is really not immediately obvious what is within Clause 18—in other words, what products it will be an offence to deliver to residential premises. There was a degree of confusion when this was debated in the Public Bill Committee in the Commons. We have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, about the distinction between a pointed article and an article with a cutting edge, but it seems to me that that must depend on how the items are used. Surely, with something that is pointed, if you pull it down against somebody’s skin it is likely to cut the skin.
In our view, it ought to be clear which items make delivery to residential premises an offence. Apart from its substance, the clause’s complexity and its dependence on orders made under other legislation—more accurately, the exclusion of items that are the subject of such orders—is not in the tradition of well-written Acts of Parliament. One cannot employ the defence of reasonable precautions and all due diligence when there is an issue with the definition.
I have occasionally bought art materials online for delivery at home. Go on to any art materials website and you will find a range of palette knives and craft knives, some of which would fall foul of the definition. Not everyone paints, does craft work or shears sheep—but everybody eats, which is why I picked domestic kitchen items. They are relevant to many people’s lives, as they buy them either for themselves or for others, for instance from a wedding gift list.
Other noble Lords may have received a letter from John Lewis representatives—whom the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and I met a couple of weeks ago—who expressed concern that the definition would prohibit them selling and delivering to a residential address a wide range of everyday kitchen products containing blades, such as food processors and scissors. They described to us the careful age-verification steps they take in respect of sales in store, but said:
“Online sales at John Lewis and partners are a key part of our business strategy and account for over 40% of our total sales … Around 50% of these online sales are delivered direct to customers’ homes. Any restriction on our ability to continue to sell and deliver products, such as food processors, online would negatively … impact our business. We do not believe this is the intention of the Government”—
nor do I—
“and nor do we believe that this would do anything to help address the issue of knife crime”.
We agree. This amendment is not intended as a plug for John Lewis; rather, it seeks clarity and a common-sense outcome in which businesses do not regard more items than is necessary as outlawed from home delivery.
The British Retail Consortium supports the three amendments in this group. In Committee and earlier on Report, we sought to address the issue through the amendments to which my noble friend referred. I appreciate that Amendment 82 only scrapes the surface of the issue, but I wanted to highlight the point.
As we know, under government amendment 106, the Secretary of State “may”—that is the term used—issue guidance. The amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, says “must”; Amendment 86, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Paddick, says “shall”. No doubt we will be told that “may” means “will”, or other close synonyms, but guidance cannot override legislation, so it is essential to get that right. Of course, guidance will be produced by the Executive without parliamentary approval and it can be changed without approval. So at least we should hear from the Dispatch Box—I look forward to the Minister’s explanation—what consultation on the guidance the Government intend to undertake. Clearly, it should be thorough. I suspect that the Government have also had a bit of difficulty in pinning down a definition—otherwise we would have one. That simply demonstrates how important this issue is.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, we having been discussing this issue in the Digital Policy Alliance’s age verification and internet safety working group. Being clear on definitions is absolutely essential.
The Minister said in the previous debate about pointed items that it will be up to the courts to decide. Who can afford that? How can people afford to go that far? That is the trouble. The natural reaction of business will be to be overly cautious. That will close down entire avenues of business and inhibit normal people’s ability to carry on with their normal lives. A lack of clarity will cause so much trouble and you will get an awful lot of flak in the papers. I suggest that this group of amendments be taken together so that we can sort something out and produce absolutely clear guidance. We are trying to legislate for only a few outrageous incidents. The trouble is that regulations never prevent what they seek to prohibit. You cannot stop all of this by regulation. Let us make reasonable regulations, which allow normal people to continue with their normal lives. Given that, clarity in the definitions is absolutely essential.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has raised the question of pointed articles possibly being used by troubled people to cause injury. I should like further confirmation of my reading of the Keeling schedule that we were offered. I took great comfort from that. The part of the 1988 Act to do with supplying knives and blades to people aged under 18 refers to,
“a blade which is sharply pointed and which is made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person”.
That, to my mind, rules out an ordinary pointed article. You would have to prove that it had been used or adapted to cause injury.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for these amendments. My noble friend has been clever about weaving back into last week’s debate on statutory guidance and the one that we have just had on the trusted trader scheme.
I can see that Amendments 81 and 82 attempt to provide further clarity for manufacturers and suppliers of kitchen utensils and to limit the impact of Clause 18 on such companies. As noble Lords will know, I met representatives of some knife manufacturers in Sheffield and I heard at first hand their concerns about this provision. Amendment 81 seeks to assist manufacturers, retailers and others by providing for statutory guidance on which items are covered by the definition of a bladed product. Amendment 82 clearly goes further and excludes from that definition any product “intended for domestic use” that requires a blade to function. As I understand it, the intention is that items such as food processors, and perhaps bread knives and steak knives, could be sent to residential premises if they have been sold remotely. Food processors and similar items are clearly not the sort of things that can be used as offensive weapons and it is not intended that they will be covered by the prohibition on arranging delivery to a residential premises or a locker. Products such as table knives are also excluded from the definition of bladed products because they are not capable of causing serious injury by cutting a person’s skin.
I turn to the wording of Amendment 82. The term “intended for domestic use” perhaps lacks clarity. Although most people would accept that kitchen knives are intended for domestic use, there may be some doubt as to whether hobby knives, camping knives and DIY tools can also be said to be intended for domestic use. I worry that amending the definition in this way could lead to sellers of fairly nasty knives marketing them as purely for domestic use to get around the delivery prohibition. That said, if a prosecution was brought for this offence, it would be for the seller to show that the product did not fall within the scope of the offence as it was intended for domestic use. The approach in Amendment 82 is therefore not without risks and there may be issues around defining what is meant by “domestic purposes”. However, I agree with my noble friend that this is certainly an area where guidance for retailers and others will be beneficial and it is our intention to provide such guidance, exercising the power conferred by Amendment 106, which we debated last week.
Lord Pannick (CB)
Why is it thought that guidance is less likely to lead people to seek to evade the purposes of this legislation than putting a definition in the scope of the Bill itself?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
If I understand the noble Lord’s question, he is asking whether guidance is less likely to make people abide by the law and why we do not just put it in the Bill. I am struggling to answer that question.
Lord Pannick
The Minister has expressed concern—she may well be right—that, if the Bill were amended to make clear what is and is not covered, there is a risk that sellers would seek to use that definition to try to get around the contents of the Bill. Given that she says that these matters will be dealt with by guidance, is there not the same risk? Would it not be better to define in the Bill what the Bill covers and does not cover, not least because guidance will not bind the courts? It is for the courts to interpret. The problems of uncertainty will inevitably arise if the Government rely purely on guidance. That is the point.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I stick by the point that people will use the list in the Bill to try to get around the law, and therefore guidance is helpful. It is helpful both to the retailers who will be selling items but also to the courts in interpreting the legislation. Of course, the difficulty in this legislation is that knives have myriad uses, which in many ways is why this has been quite a difficult Bill to take through.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, given the problems with the Bill itself, I make a point so that at least Hansard is accurate on this. The Minister talked about using terminology such as I have used to allow retailers to sell knives online and deliver them to domestic premises—she talked about bread knives and steak knives. This wording would require the product to function only with a blade. That clearly would not apply to a bread knife; if it does, every knife can function only with a blade. I am not suggesting that the precise detail of this amendment be included in the Bill, but this all goes to show that if we resist being specific here, we risk causing more problems, not fewer. If I did not say so before, nothing I have said seeks to undermine in any way what my noble friend Lord Paddick said about his overarching approach, which we should be following.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
It comes back to the noble Baroness’s point about consultation. In developing the guidance, we must and will engage with business and organisations such as the BRC. The intention is that it will be developed with them. We could have a circular argument here about whether things should be directly specified in the Bill or how helpful the guidance will be in helping retailers and the criminal justice system, but guidance generally will help the Government keep pace with developments.
Amendment 86 is similar to Amendment 81 and again seeks to require the Secretary of State to issue guidance. We have already debated government Amendment 106, which will enable the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland Justice Department to issue statutory guidance on certain parts of the Bill, including those dealing with offences of remote sale and delivery of knives. We intend that there should be guidance to retailers on what items are prohibited from dispatch to residential premises or a locker under Clause 18. I think the government amendment is adequate to cover this.
Lord Paddick
I apologise for persisting but the Minister referred to table knives being excluded from this prohibition. The table knife that I was given to eat my roast beef with in a restaurant yesterday could cause serious harm to an individual by cutting. Is it or is it not therefore a table knife? This will inevitably lead to a decision by major retailers such as John Lewis not to deliver any knife of any description to residential premises for fear, as the Minister said, that if there is a prosecution the supplier will have to provide a defence in court to the offence. Not many suppliers will be prepared to take that risk.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I do not think that John Lewis currently delivers table knives or any type of bladed products to residential premises. As it stands, John Lewis does not deliver knives; people have to pick them up or buy them in the shop.
I appreciate the noble Lord’s point about table knives. That is why this legislation is difficult. In many ways it will be for the courts to determine in what context the knife is being used. I am not denying what the noble Lord says.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
When this discussion is over I invite the Minister to read Hansard and to reflect on the debate—it is distressing. We are talking about table knives, steak knives and knives to shear sheep and so on when we have a serious problem on our hands in this country with knife crime. This Bill completely misses the point. People have been murdered over the weekend and it is frustrating that this legislation completely misses the point.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, we are not missing the point: we are trying to get a balance between people selling products which can be used for perfectly legitimate purposes and those seeking to abuse these products in order to do harm to people. One of the attacks at the weekend took place round the corner from me. I fully have in mind the danger that knives can cause but we are trying to get the balance right.
Lord Lucas
I appreciate the difficulties the Government are having in trying to get this clause right. I go back to the first amendment we debated today and the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and I that we are disadvantaging British sellers relative to overseas sellers for no advantage to the peace of the realm. If someone wants to get a knife, all they have to do is order it from Holland and then it can be delivered to their house. It really matters whether we focus this prohibition on British sellers widely or narrowly, and the way the clause is drawn at the moment is capable of wide interpretation.
The guidance will have to be good and clear. I agree that it will not have the force of the law but it will have an effect on police officers, I hope, in deciding whether to launch a complaint or a prosecution. It will have an effect on the CPS, and it will certainly have an effect if it is reported in a newspaper that there has been a prosecution. It will be the prosecution that is laughed at, rather than the retailer condemned, if the guidance makes it clear that something should be allowed. It matters in relation to large items such as food processors; if they and all the rest of one’s wedding gifts cannot be delivered to one’s home address, people will go somewhere else, which would be abroad. It is a big enough item to make such a decision about and it is not obvious why it should be prohibited, whereas we can all accept that we should have to jump through a few hoops when obtaining a knife because they are dangerous and we must behave ourselves. I hope that the Government will draft the guidance with the interests of British traders at heart.
I am grateful for my noble friend’s reply and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
“Powers to confiscate bladed articles
If bladed articles are detected in transit from overseas to a UK residential address, other than under arrangements as described in section 21(1)(c), and without the requirement for age verification on delivery being clearly evident on the outside of the packaging, they may be handed in to the police for destruction without compensation.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to address issues discussed in Committee as to how to deal with bladed articles coming in from abroad, using generic carriers such as Royal Mail, without arrangements as described in 21(1)(c).
Lord Lucas
My Lords, if we are going to have this arrangement whereby overseas sellers are advantaged, at least we need to make it effective. At the moment, if I was to go on to a foreign website and order a flick knife that was then dropped into the post, it could come straight to me. Such a prohibited weapon could come to me if I was 14 years old. Nothing in the process would allow it to be intercepted. There is an arrangement in the Bill for overseas sellers who choose to use a contracted delivery arrangement in the UK, which would presumably apply to Amazon fulfilment or a similar arrangement, whereby age verification would take place on the doorstep. However, we are allowing an enormous hole to appear: if someone uses a common carrier such as the Post Office, there is nothing to stop a product ordered overseas being delivered straight to a minor at a residential address. If there is to be this enormous disadvantage on British businesses, let us at least have effective controls on overseas websites.
When goods come into this country, they are, by and large, inspected. We are concerned about people shipping pistols into this country and keep an eye out for such packages. The same techniques will be effective against bladed products. However, if someone involved in that process discovers a bladed product in a standard, unmarked pack, it is currently unclear whether they have a right to do anything about it. If we are to allow knives to arrive in unmarked standard postal packages, it would defeat the whole purpose of a great chunk of the Bill. To stop that happening it should be clear that when something is identified as a bladed product, and the arrangements for making sure that it will be signed for by an adult on delivery have not been complied with, the authorities must be able to confiscate that product, or the Bill does not work. I beg to move.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I support the amendment, which is eminently sensible. Why should one have something that does not work? This should be part of the armoury to stop bladed products getting into the wrong hands and I cannot see how else it could be done.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for returning us to this difficult issue about what we do in relation to overseas sellers of knives. Noble Lords will recall that the issue is that while we can place requirements, such as those under Clause 18, on remote sellers based in the UK, we cannot do the same in relation to overseas sellers. This is because we cannot practically take extraterritorial jurisdiction over sellers based abroad. We have tried to address this through the provisions in Clause 21. These provisions make it an offence for delivery companies in the UK, which are operating under specific arrangements to deliver bladed articles on behalf of overseas sellers, to deliver those articles into the hands of a person under the age of 18.
We accept that this is not the complete answer to the problem because overseas sellers can simply send the items unmarked through the international mail. This is exactly the situation that my noble friend’s amendment seeks to address. It would provide a power to confiscate bladed articles that are sent from overseas to a UK residential address and which are, first, not subject to specific arrangements between the delivery company in the UK and the overseas seller and, secondly, not labelled to show that age must be verified on delivery.
Although it is not clear from the amendment, the power is presumably to be exercised by Border Force because the amendments refer to detecting the articles in transit from overseas. The amendment would mean, in effect, that only bladed articles sold overseas which are subject to specific delivery arrangements in the UK would be allowed. I can therefore sympathise with the intention behind this amendment.
However, there are a number of problems with the amendment. At present, Border Force can seize two types of bladed articles. It can seize weapons prohibited under Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, such as zombie knives and death stars, and Section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, which covers flick knives and gravity knives, because the importation of these weapons is banned. It can also seize any weapon which it believes is evidence in relation to a criminal offence.
This amendment would mean that Border Force would have a power to seize items which are not prohibited by law and where they are not evidence in relation to a criminal offence. This would mean that a wide range of items which are going to a residential address in the UK from overseas could be seized and handed to the police to be destroyed. The amendment is not limited to overseas sales, so it would mean that bladed articles sent from a relative overseas to someone in the UK could also be seized. It would mean that someone bringing back a bladed article from their holiday, such as a souvenir, could have it seized or that a fencer returning from a competition overseas with their swords could have them confiscated by Border Force. It would mean that articles which have been legally sold overseas and legally bought by someone in the UK could be seized.
Secondly, the amendment assumes that there is some way of detecting such articles. Not all items coming into the UK are scanned, so unless Border Force happens to come across bladed articles as part of routine searches, they are unlikely to be detected. Even if such items were detected, Border Force would need to ascertain whether they were being sent to a residential address. For example, it would need to decide whether 12 High Street is a residential or business address. Finally, it would need to establish whether they were subject to specific arrangements between a delivery company and the overseas seller. It would then have to have arrangements for handing the articles to the police for destruction. This would all have significant resource implications for Border Force. It is for all these reasons that I am afraid I cannot support my noble friend’s amendment. I hope that in these circumstances he will withdraw it.
Lord Paddick
Before the Minister sits down, will she explain why the Government cannot exert extraterritorial jurisdiction over foreign websites when they are doing exactly that when it comes to online pornography on overseas websites? In that case the BBFC, acting on behalf of the Government, gets in touch with the online pornography website and threatens them that unless and until they have approved age verification on their sites, BBFC will instruct UK internet service providers to block access to those websites from the UK. Why cannot a similar system be used to block overseas companies which are known to be selling prohibited weapons to the UK?
The Earl of Erroll
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is absolutely correct, as Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act provides. In her response, the Minister said that the sender would not know whether they were sending to a residential address. A UK business has exactly the same problem, yet she was using this to justify blocking UK sales. I do not see how she can apply one rule to UK companies and another to foreign companies. We need to be even-handed.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, in an ideal world, we would have the same systems for overseas and domestic sales. We cannot exercise ETJ—
Baroness Williams of Trafford
As I understand it, we cannot. We have had the example of pornography. The system I am referring to relates to online sales. Am I right in thinking that the system referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, relates to streaming? He will correct me if I am wrong.
Lord Paddick
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness. These are paid-for websites. People are paying for a service—there is an exchange. There is another option—I am grateful to the Minister for reminding me. Most financial transactions involving foreign websites are processed by UK credit card companies and so forth. The other way of ensuring that these transactions do not take place even though the company is beyond the UK’s jurisdiction is to ask UK card companies not to process payments to those particular companies. That is the second string to the BBFC bow in order to stop under-18s in the UK from, effectively, buying pornography from overseas websites. Similarly, the Government could put pressure on UK card companies to not process payments to overseas companies which are selling prohibited weapons to under-18s in the UK.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord will agree that not all their sales would be of prohibited items.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, surely that is not an answer. We want to stop the whole thing.
The Earl of Erroll
I will try to help the Minister. The Government or the regulator would be deciding whether a foreign supplier was breaching the terms before informing the credit card agency. You would not go and inform the credit card companies about a foreign supplier that was not selling weapons to underage buyers. It would be triggered by the Government deciding whether a foreign supplier was breaching the rules.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, that would require a global trawl of every company in the world selling knives, prohibited or otherwise.
The Earl of Erroll
This has been covered widely in the pornography provisions of the Digital Economy Act, which the good online suppliers of adult content are helping to police. All the systems for online age verification and everything else are in there. Some co-operation and consultation with DCMS and BBFC could be very helpful to the Home Office, because there is an exact parallel. You could almost translate the whole thing over to offensive weapons, which is why we are discussing how this could be done in external groups.
Lord Pannick
I suggest to the Minister that the point is not about a trawl of all foreign sellers. If I understand the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the point is that, if the Home Office realises that specific overseas sellers are breaching the principles in the Bill, the Secretary of State ought to enjoy some power to take action to prevent such a company continuing to supply into this country. Using the methods adopted in relation to pornography, either to prevent the website communicating or through the payment methods, seems a real possibility. Will the Minister and the Home Office give further thought to this important matter before Third Reading to see whether some progress can be made?
Lord Paddick
To assist the Minister further, I can assure her that there are more websites worldwide providing pornography than there are providing offensive weapons, yet that has not prevented the Government taking action.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for his intervention. I was not making a glib comment about a trawl; regarding the examples of card companies and delivery companies, we are taking action where we can, but I acknowledge, as I have all the way through the Bill, that we are trying to find the right balance. It is not absolutely perfect, but we are using everything in our armoury to help us guard against the sale of knives to those aged under 18.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I entirely accept the strictures that the Minister has discussed concerning the wording and theme of my amendment but, as has been shown in this discussion, its substance remains. If we allow the Bill through as it is, it will quickly become known that there are one or two sites, not far away, across a little bit of water, to which anyone with criminal intent can go in complete safety, buy any knife they want, and have it delivered to them at home. Therefore, anyone intent on getting a knife for criminal purposes will be able to do so with total disregard for the rest of the Bill. All we will have succeeded in doing is disadvantaging British sellers; the Bill will have no other effect.
We do not need to achieve perfection; we just need to make dangerous the process of illegally ordering a knife overseas, or of ordering a knife overseas and having it delivered to someone underage. We need to make it something that might well go wrong: either the knife might be confiscated, or the people involved in selling it—who presumably have a lot of legitimate business as well as supplying to criminals—might lose everything through being put on the Home Office blacklist. As has been suggested by several noble Lords, this is proving an effective system in pornography. Those we allow to dominate the market in the UK, because they do proper age-verification, want to keep others out, so they become an effective police force that we do not have to pay for. There are other routes to getting there, which make the whole business of buying from an overseas supplier more difficult and chancy.
If we want an effective Bill—I join the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in saying that we absolutely do—we must urge the Government to use the time between Report and Third Reading to talk to their colleagues in DCMS and look again at whether this is a loophole they can close. Without that, we will have a Bill that is much less effective at achieving what we want it to achieve. But I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Lucas
“(8) It shall be a defence for any person charged in respect of any conduct of that person relating to a weapon to which this section applies—(a) with an offence under subsection (1) or (1A), or(b) with an offence under section 50(2) or (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 (improper importation),to show that the conduct was only for the purposes of functions carried out on behalf of the Crown or of a visiting force.(9) In this section “visiting force” means any body, contingent or detachment of the forces of a country—(a) mentioned in subsection (1)(a) of section 1 of the Visiting Forces Act 1952, or(b) designated for the purposes of any provision of that Act by Order in Council under subsection (2) of that section,which is present in the United Kingdom (including United Kingdom territorial waters) or in any place to which subsection (10) below applies on the invitation of Her Majesty’s Government.(10) This subsection applies to any place on, under or above an installation in a designated area within the meaning of section 1(7) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964 or any waters within 500 metres of such an installation.(11) It shall be a defence for a person charged in respect of conduct of that person relating to a weapon to which this section applies—(a) with an offence under subsection (1) or (1A) above, or(b) with an offence under section 50(2) or (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979,to show that the conduct was only for the purposes of functions carried out as the operator of, or as a person acting for, a specialist licensed armoury company holding an authority to possess prohibited weapons granted by the Secretary of State under section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968 for one or more of the purposes specified in subsection (12) and subject to all the conditions in subsection (13).(12) Those purposes are—(a) the purposes of theatrical performances and of rehearsals for such performances,(b) the production of films (within the meaning of Part 1 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 – see section 5B of that Act),(c) the production of television programmes (within the meaning of the Communications Act 2003 – see section 405(1) of that Act).(13) Those conditions are—(a) the weapon is accompanied by a supervising armourer or handler in attendance throughout the production,(b) disposal of the weapon by sale or gift is only permitted to another similar specialist licensed armoury company or a museum or by export to another state or country where the laws of that state or country permit import of the weapon.(14) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) or (1A) to show that the weapon in question is antique.(15) For the purposes of subsection (14) a weapon is an antique if it was manufactured in or before 1945.(16) For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown a matter specified in subsection (3), (4), (5), (8), (11) or (14) if— (a) sufficient evidence of that matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and(b) the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would introduce a series of defences in respect of activities (1) of non-public museums operated by the Ministry of Defence or police forces, (2) of visiting forces, (3) of the film, theatre and television industries and (4) in relation to antiques.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I shall speak at the same time to Amendment 90. I am very grateful to the Home Office for bringing a large and intelligent team to listen to representations concerning in particular the use of weapons in film and antique weapons. I am grateful for the time that we were given. I have not received any feedback since those meetings so I have tabled these amendments as a way of receiving that feedback.
There are three sections here. The first concerns an exemption for the Crown Forces. The Government have said they do not think it is required, but as a matter of routine overseas forces issue their personnel with gravity knives and flick-knives and it is said that our own Special Forces use them from time to time. Some members of our Armed Forces are being picked up and persecuted for crimes when they thought that they were acting in the line of duty, and we should not expose them to attack for having a weapon that was required and legal at the time. We should give them some protection.
Secondly, there is the question of film. We make a lot of money out of making films in this country. By and large, film directors want their close-up shots to be authentic in terms of the look, sound and heft of real weapons. Clearly, these things have to be used in secure conditions, but we allow heavy machine guns, assault rifles and similar items to be used in films made in this country under conditions of strict control. There are licensed armourers who supply such weapons for dramatic performances and films. It does not seem to me that people who are trusted with such weapons should not be trusted with the weapons prohibited under the Bill. To have a film of “Mack the Knife” without a flick-knife would seem a bit odd. I cannot see that by allowing an exemption for film and performance, we are doing anything more dangerous than we allow for other weapons at the moment. This is a direction in which we should feel comfortable about moving.
Thirdly, the same applies to antique weapons. At least in this House, many of our parents were heavily involved in the Second World War. There are many items used in that war that were issued to members of civil defence or captured from German troops that are very properly considered collectible and part of our national history, but are not so unique that the British Museum would want to end up with a large collection of them. We ought to allow these items, as we allow other weapons, to be part of collections. We allow old swords and other very dangerous weapons to be collected. Why not the weapons that we are prohibiting under the Bill, as long as they are antique?
I think 1945 is a convenient time to end the definition of “antique”, mostly because shortly thereafter steel became contaminated with radioactive elements from the aerial atom bomb tests, so you can distinguish old steel from new. Also, designs changed a good deal after the war, and there was a long period when some countries did not produce. So 1945 is a convenient cut-off: you can tell what is pre-1945 and what is later, and that is also where the intense history ends. It would be sensible to allow us all to possess the mementos from the last great war and to prohibit weapons produced after it. Apart from anything else, these antique weapons go for a considerable price and are very unlikely to be bought by someone who just wants to use them in a crime and then throw them away.
I very much hope that my noble friends will be bearing me at least a semblance of an olive branch on this amendment, and that we will be able to look in a constructive way at these three potential exemptions. I am not holding out for any of the detailed wording in the amendments, but I hope this is an area that my noble friends will feel able to smile on. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran
I am grateful to my noble friend, Lord Lucas, for these amendments. As he mentioned, we had a very useful discussion on the issues covered by them on 13 February that went through in detail the concerns of collectors and theatrical suppliers.
These amendments would create new defences for the supply and possession of weapons covered by Section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, namely flick-knives and gravity knives. The amendments would provide defences for Crown functions and visiting armed forces, for theatrical, film and television production purposes, and for flick-knives and gravity knives made before 1945. As I set out in Committee, Section 1 of the 1959 Act makes it a criminal offence to manufacture, sell, hire or lend a flick-knife or gravity knife and prohibits their importation. Clause 23 extends that prohibition to cover the possession of flick-knives and gravity knives.
I turn first to the proposed defence for Crown functions and visiting armed forces. I am afraid we are not persuaded that a defence is needed in this area. The supply, including importation, of flick-knives and gravity knives has been prohibited for a long time and the Ministry of Defence has advised that there is no need to provide defences for this purpose. We are also not aware of any Crown function that would use flick-knives or gravity knives, unlike under Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act where curved swords may be an issue. In any event, the general principle in law is that statutes do not bind the Crown unless by express provision or necessary implication. Where acting as agents or servants of the Crown, the military will benefit from the Crown exemption. The Government are therefore not persuaded that any defence for the Crown or visiting armed forces is needed.
On a defence for the purpose of theatrical performance or filming, it was clear at the meeting that the supply of flick-knives and gravity knives for such purposes has not been an issue in the past 60 years, despite their supply being banned. The supplier at the meeting suggested that most of the items used for these purposes are blunt, so it is doubtful they meet the knife definition in the 1959 Act. Given this, again, we are not persuaded that any defence is needed for flick-knives and gravity knives for theatre and film purposes.
I have more sympathy for the proposed defence for flick-knives and gravity knives made before 1945. We are aware that there are collectors of these weapons and we also know that families sometimes inherit them from relatives who fought in the war. Possession of the weapons will be banned under the Bill, so collectors and families will need to surrender any weapons they own and claim compensation, or gift them to a museum where they are of historic importance.
Our concern in accepting a defence for pre-1945 weapons is that it will be difficult to operate on the ground. In contrast to what my noble friend suggested, the police will not know with any certainty which knives had been made before 1945 and which are more modern. I appreciate this is not the answer that my noble friend would like to hear, but given that the supply of the weapons has been banned in this country since 1959 we remain of the view that there is no good reason why anyone should possess them.
The Duke of Montrose
Can the noble Baroness reassure me on a question that I raised at Second Reading? Does the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen’s bodyguard in Scotland, qualify for the Crown’s exemption on weapons? I also asked about a rather shady area, which the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, is probably more familiar with than I am. Are the Atholl Highlanders taken to be doing historical re-enactments, or are they likely at some point to take up weapons as a legal army?
The Earl of Erroll
Given that they are the only private army, but are sanctioned by Her Majesty, after Queen Victoria, I find it a very interesting question.
Baroness Barran
I can reassure the noble Lord on both questions, and I will write to him to clarify the details.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, naturally I am very saddened to hear my noble friend’s answers, but I see no point in trying to pursue this further, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Kirpans
(1) The Criminal Justice Act 1988 is amended as follows.(2) After section 141A, insert—“141B KirpansFor the purposes of section 139, 139A, 141 or 141A it shall be lawful for a person to possess a Kirpan for religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that the Kirpan, a mandatory article of faith for a Sikh, possessed for religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons is exempt from provisions relating to the possession of offensive weapons under the relevant sections of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendment 91, tabled in my name and with the support of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, seeks to place on the face of the Bill a provision to exempt the kirpan from the provisions relating to the possession of offences weapons under the Criminal Justice Act 1988. I raised this issue in Committee, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for meeting me and a number of other noble Lords from all sides of the House, along with representatives of the Sikh community, including the noble Lord, Lord Singh. It was very much appreciated by everybody present.
There is no question but that the Sikh community is fully behind the intention of the Bill to tighten the law on offensive weapons. We are all appalled by the toll that knife crime is taking on young lives; even today we are seeing more tragic events on the news. The Government have responded to the very reasonable requests of the Sikh community on an issue in the Commons, but my intention with this amendment is to go further. The noble Lord, Lord Singh, raised the issue at Second Reading, and I supported him. It came up again in Committee, and many noble Lords spoke then.
For practising Sikhs, observance of their faith requires adherence to the “five Ks”, one of which is to wear a kirpan. Larger kirpans are used on many religious occasions, such as Sikh wedding ceremonies. I think it is fair to say that noble Lords in all parties, and on the Cross Benches, would be concerned if restrictions in this Bill had unintended consequences for the Sikh community as they observe and practise their faith, or caused upset or concern when a member of the community used a kirpan for ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons. The status quo is not adequate, as it provides a defence of religious reasons only if a person is charged with a criminal offence. It does not cover other reasons such as ceremonial, historical or sporting events, where kirpans are offered as gifts to dignitaries.
The status quo provides a defence only if a person is charged. My amendment will provide an exemption for the possession of a kirpan. It will provide a specific reference in the law, which Sikhs have been calling for. Sikhs are members of a law-abiding community that makes a wonderful contribution to the United Kingdom. The community still faces difficulties in workplaces, education and leisure with the issue of kirpans. This amendment will provide great assistance to Sikhs and will educate all of us about the kirpan. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment, which I fully support. One of the Minister’s main arguments against granting exemption to the Sikh community was that the Government could not single out one particular community—the Sikhs—for an exemption. In that case, I ask the Minister: what other communities have made representations to the Home Office for exemption under the Act?
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, Sikhs are asking for nothing more than respect for their religious and cultural practices and requirements. The main majority of the community is catered for in this Bill—regarding sporting activities, films, television, historical enactments and so on.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, the description of the kirpan given by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, was absolutely correct: it is a religious requirement which has been known to British Governments and the British people since the two World Wars. In the Army, there was a Sikh batch of religious people who used to have a ceremonial sword in front of the holy book. There is nothing wrong with that; it is used purely for religious purposes and I think would be good if this amendment were accepted.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his amendment. It deals with an issue which we discussed at length in Committee and which was the subject of a very productive round table on 13 February, attended by members of the Sikh community, the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy, Lord Paddick and Lord Singh, and my noble friend Lord Suri. I was also grateful to have a separate discussion with my noble friend Lady Verma. I have provided a fact sheet to noble Lords, setting out the current position under the offensive weapons legislation in relation to kirpans, and I would happily place a copy in the Library of the House.
The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, seeks to ensure that Sikhs are not prosecuted for possessing a kirpan and to allow the gifting of large kirpans by Sikhs to non-Sikhs. The amendment would therefore exempt kirpans from the offences of possessing a bladed or sharply pointed article in a public place or school and further education premises, and from the offence of possessing an offensive weapon under Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. I believe that the intention is also to exempt kirpans from the offence of supplying an offensive weapon under Section 141 of the 1988 Act—albeit the current amendment only references possession. The exemption would apply where the kirpan is possessed for,
“religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons”.
My main issue with the amendment is that it refers to kirpans but does not define them. Kirpans vary considerably in size and shape, the only common factor being their association with the Sikh faith. This is why the existing defences of possession and supply for “religious reasons” work so well—they define by reference to purpose. It would not be workable to have an exemption for kirpans without saying what they are, otherwise everyone caught in possession of a knife or sword could claim that it was a kirpan and that they possessed it for,
“religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons”.
The police and the CPS would have to prove otherwise, in effect having to prove that the item was not a kirpan, the person was not a Sikh, or that the person was not possessing it for sporting, ceremonial or other reasons, rather than the defendant proving or showing that they have a defence for possessing the weapon.
I appreciate that the intent behind the amendment is to deal with the issue of the gifting of kirpans, because there is already a defence for religious reasons under Sections 139, 139A, 141 and 141A of the 1988 Act, and there is already a defence for sporting purposes under Sections 141 and 141A of that Act. The Government are sympathetic to the need to find a solution to the issue of the Sikh cultural practice of gifting a kirpan. Within government, we are continuing to look actively at this issue and to meet the noble Lord, Lord Singh, and others to make sure that we come to the right solution. I am very hopeful that something can be done in this area and that it will be possible to bring forward a suitable government-drafted amendment at Third Reading.
I also note that as drafted, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, does not render the supply of a kirpan—that is, the act of gifting—lawful; it exempts only possession. This is one issue which we will need to consider further, ahead of the next stage. In the usual way, noble Lords will understand that I cannot give a cast-iron guarantee that the Government will be able to support a more targeted amendment at Third Reading. However, we will make our intentions clear in advance so that, if necessary, the noble Lord can bring back this amendment or some variant of it. But on the basis—
Baroness Williams of Trafford
May I just finish before the noble Lord comes in? On the basis that we want to work with noble Lords to find an equitable solution, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment at this stage. The answer to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about what other communities came forward, is: none.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon
My Lords, much is being made of the definition of a kirpan. It was said in a meeting with Home Office people that a kirpan is simply a Punjabi word for a sword, and that there is no other need for a definition as it is nothing very different. This has been said again and again, yet the definition is being used as a reason for delay and further consideration, which completely confuses me.
The Duke of Montrose
Before my noble friend the Minister sits down, can she give us any examples of how the current legislation allowing for religious reasons has worked out? Have there been cases where it has been cited, and was it effective?
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, following exactly from that point, the Minister has relied on the wording “for religious reasons”, which would be substituted in the Bill by “in religious ceremonies”. By saying that the Government will continue to work on this, is she in fact suggesting that that is inadequate? While I understand the concerns, it seems to me that there is a lot in support of what she has been saying about the use of that phrase.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am trying to say that we are trying to come to a workable solution, particularly for the Sikh community. On the question of other legislation, what immediately springs to my mind is that there was of course the exemption for Sikhs on mopeds who were wearing a turban. So we are, I hope, trying to reach a solution that will work for the Sikh community.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for that response. All through this debate, she has always engaged positively with all sides of the House and with the Sikh community, whose members I know are very grateful for that. I am delighted at this stage to withdraw the amendment and I look forward to the solution which I hope will be brought back at Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barran
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove a surplus word from Clause 28(11)(b).
Baroness Barran
My Lords, Clauses 28 and 37 to 39 make provision for payments to be made to owners of offensive weapons, firearms, bump stocks and ancillary equipment, who will be required to surrender these items to the police by virtue of them being prohibited by the Bill. The purpose of Amendments 93, 98, 100 and 102 is to widen the regulation-making powers as drafted in these clauses so as to allow the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland Department of Justice, as the case may be, to set the amount of compensation that will be paid to each claimant. This will be necessary for claims to be settled, given that the amount paid out will be based on the evidence of the value of the weapon provided by the claimant.
We believe that this is the right approach, given that the value of individual surrendered items will vary greatly and it would not, therefore, be equitable to the owners or in the interests of the public purse for the regulations to specify a fixed amount of compensation for each type of item made unlawful by the Bill. I remind noble Lords that the compensation regulations, which we have published in draft, are subject to the affirmative procedure. Accordingly, they will need to be debated and approved by both Houses before they can come into force. Amendments 92, 97, 99 and 101 are minor drafting amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am sorry to prolong this a little. As the Minister said, the amendments allow for discretion, both as to whether to make a payment and as to the amount under the provisions relating to the surrender of weapons. The Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers and the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland must make regulations and may make regulations restricting eligibility and the procedure to be followed, which is understandable. So we have an overall mandatory context but a discretion both as to whether to make a payment and its amount. How can that operate justly and fairly?
The Minister said that the arrangements must be equitable, and I agree, but the draft regulations include provisions about eligibility for compensation and determining the amount of compensation,
“taking account of the valuation evidence supplied”.
They also provide for no compensation if the Secretary of State is not satisfied that, under the regulations, compensation is payable. Is what I have just quoted a discretion? It does not seem so to me. The term “discretion” in the amendments suggests there is a distinction for people who surrender weapons in an arbitrary fashion. I cannot believe that is what the Government intend but, given that we already have provision for valuing the weapons, why is discretion needed on top of secondary legislation that provides for the valuation?
Baroness Barran
If I have followed the noble Baroness’s question correctly, there are two elements to this. First, there is an element of discretion around the need for the individual who is surrendering weapons to show documentary evidence that they are the legal owner, and that the weapons have been lawfully acquired. Secondly, there is a range of valuations that could be provided, including from an auction house or for insurance. My understanding is that there is an element of discretion in judging the validity of those.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I understand why the Secretary of State or whoever has the final say in that, but I do not think that that is the same as discretion. I will not pursue the matter any further now.
Baroness Barran
“(c) provision enabling a person to exercise a discretion in determining—(i) whether to make a payment in response to a claim, and(ii) the amount of such a payment.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would confirm that regulations under Clause 28 providing for compensation for surrendered offensive weapons may allow a person determining an amount of compensation to exercise a discretion in doing so.
Lord Paddick
“Penalty for affray
(1) Section 3 of the Public Order Act 1986 is amended as follows.(2) Insert at the beginning of subsection (7) “Subject to subsection 8,”.(3) After subsection (7) insert—“(8) A person guilty of affray in which a corrosive substance or a bladed article has been used is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years or a fine or both, or on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment achieves the same end as the Government's approach by adding provisions relating to corrosives and bladed articles to the existing offence of affray.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, we return to the argument that the Bill is full of unnecessary new legislation that has clearly not been thought through and which is already adequately covered by existing legislation. The Bill is being used simply to send a message that the Government are taking the issues of knife crime and corrosive liquids seriously, instead of investing in those things that really make a difference, such as youth services and community policing.
In Committee I raised the fact that the offence of affray was almost identical to the proposed changes to the existing offences of threatening with an article with a blade, a pointed article or an offensive weapon. Section 1A(1) of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 states that:
“A person is guilty of an offence if that person … has an offensive weapon with him or her in a public place … unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person with the weapon, and … does so in such a way that there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm to that other person”.
Subsection (2) says:
“For the purposes of this section physical harm is serious if it amounts to grievous bodily harm for the purposes of the Offences against the Person Act 1861”.
Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 states:
“A person is guilty of an offence if that person … has an article to which this section applies with him or her in a public place or on school premises … unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person with the article, and … does so in such a way that there is an immediate risk of serious physical harm to that other person”.
Again, serious physical harm means grievous bodily harm under the Offences against the Person Act 1861.
The main differences proposed by the Bill concern the nature of the risk, which is changed from,
“immediate risk of serious physical harm”—
GBH—
to the person threatened, to a much wider definition of,
“a reasonable person (“B”) who was exposed to the same threat as A”,
that is, the person being threatened,
“would think that there was an immediate risk of physical harm to B”,
that is, the reasonable person.
So we go from an immediate risk of GBH to the person being threatened to a much vaguer concept of a reasonable person—is that a reasonable martial arts expert or a reasonable old-age pensioner—thinking that there was an immediate risk of physical harm. Does that mean common assault, ABH or GBH?
In Committee, the Minister and I engaged in an intellectual and legalistic argument over the technical differences between the offence of affray—in Section 3 of the Public Order Act 1986—and the proposed new offences. That section states:
“A person is guilty of affray if he uses or threatens unlawful violence towards another and his conduct is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety”.
So in affray we have,
“uses or threatens unlawful violence towards another”,
instead of,
“unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person”.
In affray we have,
“his conduct is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety”,
instead of,
“a reasonable person (“B”) who was exposed to the same threat as A would think there was an immediate risk of physical harm to B”.
Can the Minister really tell the House that there is a practical difference between a “person of reasonable firmness” fearing for their personal safety and a “reasonable person” thinking there was an immediate risk of physical harm? I would be grateful for an example. Indeed, the affray definition does not rely on the extremely vague concept of a “reasonable person” but instead refers to,
“a person of reasonable firmness”—
not a reasonable martial arts expert or a reasonable old-age pensioner but what we are really talking about: a person of reasonable firmness.
This legislation also adds further education premises to school premises in the 1988 offence, but affray can be committed in private as well as in public, so all premises are covered. Therefore, the only substantive difference between affray and the new offences is the maximum sentence on indictment: three years for affray and four years for the 1988 offence. This amendment addresses the one outstanding issue by increasing the maximum penalty for affray to four years for an offence in which a corrosive substance or bladed article has been used. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran
My Lords, this amendment returns, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, just said, to an issue that he raised in Committee about the differences between the revised offence of threatening with an offensive weapon in public in Clause 29 of the Bill and the offence of affray under Section 3 of the Public Order Act 1986. I wrote to him on this matter on 21 February. I will try to clarify the difference to your Lordships’ satisfaction and give an example of how it will work in practice. The difference between the two offences is not simply a matter of different maximum penalties, as Amendment 94 implies.
The offence of affray deals with circumstances where a bystander observes someone threatening another person and where the bystander feels threatened. The offences of threatening with an offensive weapon in public under Section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 and of threatening with an article with a blade or point or offensive weapons under Section 139AA of the Criminal Justice Act 1998 deal with circumstances where a person is themselves being threatened. Indeed, in practice it is possible to commit both offences at the same time, as the noble Lord will be aware and as the CPS charging advice sets out. An example would be where someone is holding person A by the throat in the road, screaming and shouting, but also waving a knife around in the air so that person B thinks that the defendant might also come for them—that would be an offence of affray—or someone might start a fight in a pub in such a way that people nearby think that the person might also start on them, as opposed to cases where there is not that perception that a bystander would be affected. Case law examples include driving a car at another occupied vehicle or setting dogs on the police with the words, “Go on! Go on!”—only in case law does such language get used.
Therefore, affray concerns a reasonable bystander who witnesses someone else being threatened and fears for their own personal safety. This is a different test from that under the offences amended by the Bill, which ask whether a reasonable person exposed to the same threat as the victim would think that there is an immediate risk of physical harm to that victim. Under the offences in the Bill it is therefore what a reasonable person in the victim’s shoes would be likely to feel when threatened, rather than whether a person witnessing a threat against someone else also feels threatened. Amendment 94 therefore fails to address the fact that these offences deal with different things. As I have indicated, it is not just about penalties, although I fully accept that I highlighted this as a key difference in Committee. Affray is a public order offence and therefore focuses on the weapon and the threat to the wider public, rather than the impact on the victim. The offences of threatening in public deal with the victim being threatened.
I hope, in the light of this further explanation, that the noble Lord is persuaded that we are not creating unnecessary duplication in the criminal law and, on that basis, will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her explanation. I do not think that it does away with my general comments about the legislation as a whole but on this occasion, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Prohibition of certain firearms etc: England and Wales and Scotland
(1) The Firearms Act 1968 is amended as follows.(2) In section 5 (weapons subject to general prohibition), in subsection (1), after paragraph (af) insert—“(ag) any rifle from which a shot, bullet or other missile, with kinetic energy of more than 13,600 joules at the muzzle of the weapon, can be discharged;(ah) any rifle with a chamber from which empty cartridge cases are extracted using—(i) energy from propellant gas, or (ii) energy imparted to a spring or other energy storage device by propellant gas, other than a rifle which is chambered for .22 rim-fire cartridges;”.(3) In section 5(1), for the “and” at the end of paragraph (b) substitute—“(ba) any device (commonly known as a bump stock) which is designed or adapted so that—(i) it is capable of forming part of or being added to a self loading lethal barrelled weapon (as defined in section 57(1B) and (2A)), and(ii) if it forms part of or is added to such a weapon, it increases the rate of fire of the weapon by using the recoil from the weapon to generate repeated pressure on the trigger; and”.(4) In section 5(2), after “including,” insert “in the case of weapons, any devices falling within subsection (1)(ba) of this section and,”.(5) In section 5(2A)(a), after “weapon” insert “, device”.(6) In section 51A(1)(a) (minimum sentences for certain offences under section 5), in each of sub-paragraphs (i) and (iii), after “(af)” insert “, (ag), (ah), (ba)”.(7) In Schedule 6 (prosecution and punishment of offences), in Part 1 (table of punishments)—(a) in the entry for section 5(1)(a), (ab), (aba), (ac), (ad), (ae), (af) or (c), in the first column, after “(af)” insert “, (ag), (ah), (ba)”,(b) in the entry for section 19, in the third column, for “or (af)” substitute “, (af), (ag), (ah) or (ba)”, and(c) in the entry for section 20(1), in the third column, for “or (af)” substitute “, (af), (ag), (ah) or (ba)”.(8) The amendments made by subsection (6) apply only in relation to—(a) an offence under section 5(1)(ag), (ah) or (ba) of the Firearms Act 1968 which is committed after the coming into force of subsection (6), and(b) an offence under a provision listed in section 51A(1A) of that Act in respect of a firearm specified in section 5(1)(ag), (ah) or (ba) of that Act which is committed after the coming into force of subsection (6).”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would return the prohibition of high-powered firearms in England, Scotland and Wales to the Bill, which was removed during the Bill's passage through the Commons.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, in my nine years in your Lordships’ House, I have never had to come to the Dispatch Box and speak to two amendments that were originally in the government Bill. I am proposing a government clause here. I suppose we all have to do new things at some point, but it is a strange situation when the opposition spokesperson moves to add two clauses on these matters that were in the Bill in the other place.
I shall read out a couple of quotes that may interest the House. First:
“There is concern about the availability of .50 calibre and rapid-fire Manually Actuated Release System (MARS) rifles being available to some civilian firearms licence holders. The range and penetrative power of .50 calibre rifles makes them more dangerous than other common firearms and were they to be used in criminal or terrorist activities would present a serious threat to the public and would be uniquely difficult for the police to control. Due to the rate of discharge MARS rifles pose a comparable risk to the public and police as other self-loading weapons already banned in the UK. The Government need to intervene to ensure the purchase, ownership or possession is illegal”.
That is the opening statement of the Government’s impact assessment.
Moving on, at Second Reading in the House of Commons, the Secretary of State said:
“We based those measures on evidence that we received from intelligence sources, police and other security experts … According to the information that we have, weapons of this type have, sadly, been used in the troubles in Northern Ireland, and, according to intelligence provided by police and security services, have been possessed by criminals who have clearly intended to use them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; cols. 918-19.]
What happened? What persuaded the Government to do a complete about-turn by Third Reading? I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response. Apparently, these weapons can immobilise a truck or hit a person over a mile away. I am surprised by the about-turn between Second Reading and Third Reading. We raised this issue in Grand Committee and have still had no explanation. I seek to put two government clauses back into the Bill. I look forward to the debate and I beg to move.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, for returning us to the issue of high muzzle energy—HME—rifles with an explanation of his amendment. I want to point out that I have never opposed the proposed ban on MARS or lever-release rifles, as I am sure the noble Lord will recognise, although I have eased back on my opposition to the compensation arrangements for them.
Amendments 103A, 103B, 107A, 107B, 108A, 110A, 113A, 116 and 117 in this group are in my name. The first two are substantive; the rest are consequential. In Committee, my noble friend Lord Lucas and I suggested that we did not need to put these high muzzle energy, .50 calibre target rifles in Section 5 and thus prohibit them from general use. However, we need to make certain that they cannot fall into the wrong hands. We can achieve that by requiring the same levels of security currently applied to Section 5 firearms—those with no legitimate civilian use, such as self-loading rifles and automatic weapons, among others. My noble friend Lord Lucas mentioned level 3 security in his amendment while mine sought to give an order-making power to the Secretary of State to achieve much the same. In addition, my amendment provided for transport conditions.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
My Lords, I think we are all agreed that this is an important issue which needs to be debated. As my noble friend said, he is simply moving in his amendment what the Government put in their original legislation, so one would have thought that it would be uncontroversial. My noble friend has read out what the Home Secretary said in the debate at Second Reading in the other place. I think it is legitimate for us to ask the question and be given an answer as to why the Home Secretary has chosen to ignore the advice of the agencies concerned when he withdrew the amendment to the Bill. However, having said that, the Government have promised a consultation on this matter, which is an important statement on their part, and therefore it would be wise not to press the amendment to a vote today.
In the consultation that is to take place, I expect that the agencies quoted by the Home Secretary will want to tell Members of both Houses what their view is of the dangers of these weapons. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has outlined, officials have given a view about these pretty dreadful weapons. A .50 calibre rifle sounds almost innocuous, but they are basically sniper rifles that can take out a vehicle and human beings at a mile’s distance. These are formidable weapons in war. They are highly prized and valued in conflict given their accuracy and lethality.
I recall as Defence Secretary going to Bosnia and watching Operation Harvest involving members of the Royal Highland Fusiliers in Banja Luka. One of them, with a broad Glasgow accent, came back from one of the houses in the village with a sniper rifle. Since he did not have an interpreter with him, I wondered how he had managed to persuade the individual in the house to hand over such a prized instrument of the conflict. I think it was the nature of his accent that persuaded the inhabitant of the house that he was not a friendly force and they should therefore hand it over. It was regarded as enormously significant that day that he had managed to persuade them to hand over what was regarded as one of the key instruments of the conflict there.
It is quite legitimate for Members of the House to listen to the words of the Home Secretary read out by my noble friend. The Home Secretary said that he based these measures on,
“evidence that we received from intelligence sources, police and other security experts”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; col. 918.]
That is pretty all-embracing. This is not just a handful of individuals putting this forward. We are talking here about representatives of 43 police forces in the United Kingdom, the Secret Intelligence Service, the Security Service, GCHQ and the National Crime Agency. Their distilled view and wisdom was that if these weapons were to fall into the hands of criminals or others with malign intent, they would have particularly dangerous effects. The Home Secretary did not underestimate it. He said:
“According to the information that we have, weapons of this type have, sadly, been used in the troubles in Northern Ireland”—
the noble Earl said they had never been used in the United Kingdom, but we are told by the Home Secretary that they have—
“and, according to intelligence provided by police and security services, have been possessed by criminals who have clearly intended to use them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/18; col. 919.]
We have had a discussion about knife crime, a huge issue affecting us at present. One can only imagine what would happen if the Home Secretary were right and criminal elements got their hands on .50 calibre rifles, and what damage they could do.
The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, poured scorn on advice given by officials. I was a Secretary of State and had officials who gave me advice in NATO as well. It is the role of Ministers to listen to advice and to make decisions, but the Home Secretary presumably would not come to Parliament not having given careful attention to the advice offered to him on that occasion. There must have been something pretty radical to change his mind—not just the assembled Members of Parliament who argued vociferously against it.
I went through the great debate about handguns in 1997-98, and I have heard all the arguments before. Yes, they will be safe if we have safeguards and the police are satisfied. I remember the number of people who had these handguns, some of them large numbers of handguns, and being assured that they were all safe—yet we saw the two major incidents in Hungerford and Dunblane caused by the private ownership of handguns.
I am not reassured by some of the statements that have been made. I would prefer to follow the course of action laid down by the Home Secretary in his opening speech at Second Reading. I hope that during the consultation we will be able to make that case and that the Home Secretary will return to his original view.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I understand why the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, are saying what they say. I am not as surprised as the noble Lords, in that my experience is that Governments argue until they are blue in the face that they could not possibly adopt an opposition amendment, only to adopt it at the next stage. Such a change of view is not without precedent when it comes to these matters.
I am more warmly disposed to the calls of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for a compromise, if you will, of increased security. However, I hope to be even more convinced by the Minister that the right way forward is further consultation.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I join this debate for a couple of reasons, having listened to it in Grand Committee in the Moses Room. I was disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, did not try to copy the accent of the HLI Jock. Your Lordships would have understood why the rifle was handed over.
I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will solve an argument that I had at the weekend about how easy it is to modify a rifle that is constructed above 13,600 joules to below 13,600 joules. If that could be on the record it would be helpful. Also, could he not introduce the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Attlee under Section 63 of the 1968 Act?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, the answer to the noble Earl’s question about the energy of the rifle is that there is a huge gap between the next lowest powered rifle and the .50 calibre rifle.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, people have spoken to me about this and, from what I understand, these weapons are only used now in international competition. If I am right, it would be sad if we were to lose our ability to take part in them. I cannot see what the problem is, given that these weapons have not been used in terrorist incidents. I also understand that it is hard to get hold of armour-piercing and dangerous ammunition, which is not used in international target competition. You have to find a terrorist source, effectively, to get that; a casual thief would not be able to handle it. The additional security proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, would be satisfactory and enable Britain to take part in international competition.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has indicated, Amendments 95 and 96 would restore the prohibition on civilian access to high muzzle energy rifles, which was a feature of the Bill on its first introduction in the House of Commons. These rifles are currently available for civilian use or ownership under general firearms licensing arrangements administered by the police.
We discussed these amendments in Grand Committee, and the question of whether these particular rifles should be prohibited also received much scrutiny in the House of Commons. I hope therefore it will not be necessary for me to repeat all that I said in Grand Committee but, in the light of the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, it may assist your Lordships if I briefly reiterate the Government’s position.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the Minister for his contribution. This has been an interesting debate. I am proposing the position the Government took only a few months ago in the other place. They are now opposing that position. I suppose we live in interesting times.
I was very clear at Second Reading that I fully support the Home Secretary. I am just disappointed that the Government have changed their mind. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for his amendments. They go some way towards allaying my fears. I am very pleased to learn from the Minister that the Government will support them. That is progress, and I thank the noble Lord for tabling the amendments today.
I also welcome the government consultation. I hope everyone involved and interested will contribute to it. My concern is that we will have the consultation and get the results many months after this Bill has passed into law. If the Government decide to ban these weapons, I will be asking how they are going do so and when there will be legislation. That has happened before. Noble Lords know that I am going to mention the rogue landlords database in the dreaded Housing and Planning Act. We wanted it to be made public, but the Government opposed us all the way. We won at least two votes, but the Government would not have it, so the public cannot access the database. The Government have now changed their mind, but when I ask about it, they say, “You’re absolutely right, Lord Kennedy, but we cannot find a bit of legislation to make it public yet”. That is the frustration with these consultations. The Government look at things, change their mind, but we cannot get changes.
I am not going to test the opinion of the House. I am tempted to see whether the Government vote against their original position, but I shall not do that today. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
Lord Lucas
My Lords, in Grand Committee my noble friend and I had a discussion on this subject and he said that he would do his best to find me the evidence that the Government were working on that rifles that are targeted in this part of the Bill are capable of a higher rate of fire than ordinary target rifles. I have not received, as far as I can find out, anything from my noble friend.
My amendment is not intended to look at the process. After all, targeting only where the energy source is the gas from the firing of the previous cartridge leaves the possibility that a similar mechanism might be powered by electricity or clockwork. I think that the Government are saying that they do not want in common use rifles that are capable of a higher rate of fire than a standard bolt-action rifle. That seems reasonable, and if that is what the Government want to achieve, let us have legislation that achieves that and does not go at just the particular way a higher rate of fire—if there is indeed a higher rate of fire—is being achieved. That will allow us to develop a weapon that can be conveniently used by disabled people but which will be acceptable to the Government in the long term. That was very much why these weapons came into being. They were perfectly legally created but were adapted to the needs of particular shooters.
Let us have out in the clear, in legislation, that the basic thing that the Government want to avoid is fast-firing rifles. Let us ban them. Then something that does not have a higher rate of fire, in the Secretary of State’s opinion, can be allowed and created to meet need of these particular target shooters.
Under this subsection we are looking at a compensation payment of around £15 million, as far as I can discover, which is not enormous on the Grayling scale but is nevertheless a serious amount of money for the Government to focus on whether this is a justified expenditure or not. I would like to be sure that the rifles are being banned because they exceed a rate of fire that the Government find acceptable. If we are going to do it by the mechanism in this Bill because we have not got time to change anything else, let us at least see the evidence. What measurement of the rate of fire of these rifles have the Government made to justify spending £15 million? If that evidence is not immediately forthcoming, let us refocus on the underlying concern—the rate of fire. Let us make that the prohibited thing. That way, we can adapt to changes in technology as they come along and make sure that this bit of the Bill continues to achieve its intended effect into the future, and not just until someone finds another technological workaround. I beg to move.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I support this amendment. I find it very sad that we wish to discriminate in legislation against people who cannot handle certain equipment in general—that is a general principle in life—and in this case rifles for competition. Some of them develop great skill. It gives them something to achieve and excel at. It is highly discriminatory and very sad that we have to discriminate against disabled because of a few concerns and an inability to think this through properly. I therefore support the amendment and really think we should put something like it through.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I am sorry to disappoint my noble friend, especially in light of my success with the amendments that I will be moving formally a little later. I am afraid that these MARS and lever-action rifles are self-loading. The mechanism inside them works in exactly the same way as the automatic rifles that I used in Her Majesty’s service. I do not support these. I thought that we had banned them post Hungerford. At the time of Hungerford, I was surprised that you could privately own a self-loading rifle—a 7.62 military-specification rifle.
Going back to the point by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, I did not realise that, post Dunblane, there was a so-called sporting discipline of combat shooting. Noble Lords will recall the noble Lord, Lord Howard, talking about those who don the trappings of combat. I was unhappy that people could do combat shooting—in other words, changing fire positions and, most importantly, changing magazines. That is the edge that the security forces have over a private person: they train to make sure that they do not pull the trigger and find that they have an empty magazine.
So I am afraid that I do not support retaining the civilian ownership of MARS or lever-action rifles. They are self-loading rifles, and I thought we had banned them a long time ago.
Earl Howe
My Lords, although this amendment refers to Clause 34, I have assumed for the purposes of my reply to my noble friend that he would like to apply the additional wording to Clause 33 as well, for consistency.
These clauses will prohibit civilian access to certain types of rapid-firing rifles, defined as,
“any rifle with a chamber from which empty cartridge cases are extracted using … energy from propellant gas, or … energy imparted to a spring or other energy storage device by propellant gas”.
As has been made clear during previous stages of this Bill, the Government are concerned about the potential risk to public safety if these rifles were to fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals. At present, these rifles are available to target shooters who have obtained a firearms certificate from the police, for which they have been vetted. However, the police and National Crime Agency are concerned about the rate of fire of these rifles and consider that stricter controls are needed.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I would like to suggest something to the Minister that has just occurred to me: how about including them with the rifles covered by the amendments of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, is another possibility for disabled shooters to use .22 self-loading rifles, which are still available?
Earl Howe
I am grateful to my noble friend. I am sure that that point will be taken on board by the clubs concerned and those who assist disabled shooters.
I do not think we can escape the fact that, were they to get hold of them, criminals or terrorists could cause more harm with this type of rifle than they ever could with a conventional one—acknowledging, of course, that all firearms are lethal and should be controlled. The Government are already satisfied, for the reasons that I have given, that these rapid-firing rifles meet the criteria that the amendment seeks to impose. For that reason, we think the additional wording is not required. I hope that on that basis my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, yes, of course I am going to withdraw my amendment but before I do, I again urge the Government to look at the harm that they are focused on rather than the mechanism by which that harm is delivered. If, as I think is entirely reasonable, the Government do not want rapid-firing rifles, why does the Bill not say that? Just because the energy from firing the previous shot is conveniently available—that is the way that these rifles work at present—does not mean that you could not create a rifle that worked off previously stored compressed gas, batteries, a wind-up clockwork mechanism or some other means of storing energy that would allow a round to be automatically loaded, or loaded with an interrupt mechanism, after the previous round had been fired.
In this legislation we seem to be dealing with the mechanism rather than the underlying problem. Surely, if we deal with the underlying problem, we will not get the situation arising again where a couple of designs of rifle have been allowed to be created—they have not grown up without permission—and have been sold, when, fundamentally, as my noble friend Lord Attlee has pointed out, we feel uncomfortable about self-loading rifles. We are not banning self-loading rifles here; we are banning one particular mechanism of self-loading. That seems short-sighted and not the best way of tackling the problem.
I would be really grateful if my noble friend the Minister could share the evidence that these particular rifles are in fact faster-loading than a bolt-action rifle, not so much because I am concerned about this particular case but because I would like to know that when it comes to making this sort of judgment in future we can look at and understand the basis on which the decision has been taken.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I would be immensely grateful if my noble friend could point it out to me because no one else has been able to. That would certainly be helpful. As my noble friend has requested, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove a surplus word from Clause 37(8)(b).
“(c) provision enabling a person to exercise a discretion in determining—(i) whether to make a payment in response to a claim, and(ii) the amount of such a payment.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would confirm that regulations under Clause 37 providing for compensation for surrendered firearms may allow a person determining an amount of compensation to exercise a discretion in doing so.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove a surplus word from Clause 38(9)(b).
“(c) provision enabling a person to exercise a discretion in determining—(i) whether to make a payment in response to a claim, and(ii) the amount of such a payment.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would confirm that regulations under Clause 38 providing for compensation for surrendered bump stocks may allow a person determining an amount of compensation to exercise a discretion in doing so.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove a surplus word from Clause 39(7)(b).
“(c) provision enabling a person to exercise a discretion in determining—(i) whether to make a payment in response to a claim, and(ii) the amount of such a payment.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would confirm that regulations under Clause 39 providing for compensation for ancillary equipment which has been surrendered or disposed of may allow a person determining an amount of compensation to exercise a discretion in doing so.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
“Statutory firearms licensing guidance
(1) The Secretary of State must, within the period of three months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, publish a policy statement setting out proposals for the introduction of statutory firearms licensing guidance under section 55A of the Firearms Act 1968.(2) The Secretary of State must, within the period of three months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, open a public consultation on the proposals set out in subsection (1).”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to open a public consultation on proposals for the introduction of statutory firearms licensing guidance within three months of the passing of this Act.
The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register. The purpose of Amendment 103 is to place a duty on the Secretary of State to open a public discussion on proposals for the introduction of statutory firearms licensing guidance within three months of the Bill becoming an Act. I spoke about this matter at length at Second Reading and in Grand Committee, where I found considerable sympathy with my proposals, in particular the medical aspects of firearms licensing guidance. I do not intend to repeat those arguments, save to say that my proposals have widespread support from the police, the British Shooting Sports Council and the APPG for Shooting and Conservation. I understand that the suggestions agreed with the Home Office by these bodies some two years ago also have the Home Office’s support.
However noble its intentions, the Home Office is the cause of much frustration in the ranks of various stakeholders through its constant delaying—the answer to the introduction of the promised consultation varying between “soon”, “shortly”, and, indeed, “as soon as possible”, as stated in my noble friend’s response to me in Grand Committee:
“I have a partial answer for my noble friend. The consultation will be launched after Royal Assent, but I am sure that the spirit of that undertaking is as soon as possible after Royal Assent”.—[Official Report, 6/2/19; col. GC 418.]
I and many in the shooting organisations believe that the continuing delay is because the Home Office simply has yet to get its ducks in a row. Further delay is neither fair nor good enough. The amendment serves to enhance the safety of the public. I believe I have cross-party support on it. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment in Committee, but when I came to put my name to it on Report I found that three others had already done so. I hope my noble friend is impressed that support for the amendment is from not only the Cross Benches but the Back Benches of the Labour Party.
This is a hugely important amendment. I will not repeat what I said in Grand Committee, but I hope my noble friend will understand that the amendment is designed to enhance public safety. If it had been enacted before Dunblane I think some of the problems there would not have happened. Anybody who has access to the shotgun or rifle cabinet must be properly scrutinised. As my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury said, the Home Office is dragging its feet on this. We want it to hurry up. I hope my noble friend will ensure that my former department gets a move on and does this consultation extremely quickly.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, while I support my noble friend’s amendment, which I am sure is a good idea, I return to the issue of the old Firearms Consultative Committee, which fell into disuse. If that was still in operation, we would not have had the MARS lever action release problem and we would have saved £15 million in compensation, because I am sure that that committee would have nipped its development in the bud and saved an awful lot of money.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this issue and for the opportunity to discuss it with him at a meeting last week. As he explained, his amendment would place a duty on the Secretary of State to open a public consultation on statutory firearms licensing guidance within three months of Royal Assent.
The Policing and Crime Act 2017 introduced a power, contained in Section 55A of the Firearms Act 1968, for the Secretary of State to issue statutory guidance to chief officers that will apply to issues such as background checks, medical suitability, and other criteria to protect public safety. This will help ensure high standards and consistency of approach for police firearms licensing. We have said that there will be a public consultation on the draft guidance before it is promulgated.
My noble friend has indicated that he is particularly interested in the medical aspects of the guidance, for understandable reasons. He and other noble Lords wish to see the consultation launched as soon as possible, as a further step towards improving the operation of the medical arrangements. There is a need for strong information-sharing arrangements between GPs and police, to ensure that those in possession of a firearm or shotgun certificate are medically fit and do not pose a risk to themselves or others. But the Government recognise that there is variation in how GPs are responding to police requests for information, and in the fees being charged to applicants, and that following this, the police are not always responding in a consistent way if they do not receive the medical information they require. In addition to holding a public consultation on the introduction of the statutory guidance, the Government will continue to engage with shooting representatives, the police and the medical profession to ensure that the system operates as effectively as possible.
The Earl of Shrewsbury
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his words. I am quite happy to withdraw the amendment, on his undertaking. Would he be prepared to put that in a letter in the Library?
The Earl of Shrewsbury
Ten points for trying again, my Lords. With that, I beg leave to withdraw.
Earl Attlee
“Conditions applying to certain firearms: England and Wales and Scotland
(1) The Firearms Act 1968 is amended as follows.(2) After section 27 insert—“27A Conditions for storage etc of certain firearms(1) This section applies to a firearm if it is a rifle from which a shot, bullet or other missile, with kinetic energy of more than 13,600 joules at the muzzle of the weapon, can be discharged.(2) The Secretary of State must by rules under section 53 prescribe conditions—(a) subject to which a firearm certificate relating to a firearm to which this section applies must be granted or renewed, and(b) which impose requirements as to the storage of a firearm to which this section applies and as to the security measures to be taken when such a firearm is in transit.(3) Before making rules under section 53 which prescribe conditions of the kind mentioned in subsection (2) the Secretary of State must consult such persons likely to be affected by the rules as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.”(3) In section 53 (rules for implementing the Act)—(a) the existing text becomes subsection (1), and(b) at the end of that subsection insert—“(2) A statutory instrument containing (whether alone or with other provision) rules under this section which prescribe conditions of the kind mentioned in section 27A(2) (conditions for storage etc of certain firearms) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to prescribe conditions which must apply to firearm certificates relating to certain high muzzle energy rifles and which relate to the storage and secure transit of such rifles.
“Conditions applying to certain firearms: Northern Ireland
(1) The Firearms (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 (SI 2004/702 (NI 3)) is amended as follows.(2) In Article 6 (conditions), after paragraph (3) insert—“(3A) Paragraphs (1) and (2) are subject to Article 6A (conditions for storage etc of certain firearms) and regulations under that Article.”(3) After Article 6 insert—“6A Conditions for storage etc of certain firearms(1) This Article applies to a firearm if it is a rifle from which a shot, bullet or other missile, with kinetic energy of more than 13,600 joules at the muzzle of the weapon, can be discharged.(2) The Department of Justice must by regulations prescribe conditions—(a) subject to which a firearm certificate relating to a firearm to which this Article applies must be granted, and(b) which impose requirements as to the storage of a firearm to which this Article applies and as to the security measures to be taken when such a firearm is in transit.(3) If a firearm certificate is granted subject to conditions prescribed under paragraph (2), that certificate may not be varied so as to vary or revoke those conditions.(4) Before making regulations under paragraph (2) the Department of Justice must consult such persons likely to be affected by the regulations as the Department considers appropriate.”(4) In Article 11 (variation of firearm certificate), after paragraph (1) insert—“(1A) Paragraph (1) is subject to Article 6A (conditions for storage etc of certain firearms) and regulations under that Article.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to prescribe conditions which must apply to firearm certificates relating to certain high muzzle energy rifles and which relate to the storage and secure transit of such rifles.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the Minister’s amendment at page 38, line 28 would convert references to certain Clauses of the Bill relating to firearms into references to a Part of the Bill.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister’s amendment at page 38, line 25.
“Guidance on offences relating to offensive weapons etc
(1) The Secretary of State may from time to time issue guidance about—(a) section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 (prohibition of the carrying of offensive weapons without lawful authority or reasonable excuse),(b) section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 (penalties for offences in connection with dangerous weapons) as it has effect in relation to—(i) England and Wales, or(ii) the importation of a knife to which that section applies into any other part of the United Kingdom,(c) section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offence of having article with blade or point in public place) as it has effect in relation to England and Wales,(d) section 139A of that Act (offence of having article with blade or point (or offensive weapon) on educational premises) as it has effect in relation to England and Wales,(e) section 141 of that Act (offensive weapons) as it has effect in relation to England and Wales,(f) section 141A of that Act (sale of bladed articles to persons under 18) as it has effect in relation to England and Wales,(g) section 141B of that Act (limitations on defence to offence under section 141A: England and Wales),(h) any of sections 1 to 4 of this Act (sale and delivery of corrosive products) as they have effect in relation to England and Wales or Scotland,(i) section 6 of this Act (offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place) as it has effect in relation to England and Wales, or(j) any of sections 18 to 21 of this Act (sale and delivery of knives etc) as they have effect in relation to England and Wales.(2) The Scottish Ministers may from time to time issue guidance about—(a) section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 as it has effect in relation to Scotland and other than in relation to the importation of a knife to which that section applies,(b) section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 as it has effect in relation to Scotland,(c) section 141A of that Act as it has effect in relation to Scotland,(d) section 141C of that Act (defence to offence under section 141A where remote sale or letting on hire: Scotland),(e) section 6 of this Act as it has effect in relation to Scotland, or(f) any of sections 18 to 21 of this Act as they have effect in relation to Scotland.(3) The Department of Justice in Northern Ireland may from time to time issue guidance about—(a) Article 22 of the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 (SI 1987/463 (NI 7)) (carrying of offensive weapon in public place),(b) section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 as it has effect in relation to Northern Ireland,(c) section 139A of that Act as it has effect in relation to Northern Ireland, (d) section 141 of that Act as it has effect in relation to Northern Ireland,(e) Article 53 of the Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (SI 1996/3160 (NI 24)) (manufacture or sale of certain knives),(f) Article 54 or 54A of that Order (sale of bladed articles to persons under 18),(g) any of sections 1 to 4 of this Act as they have effect in relation to Northern Ireland,(h) section 6 of this Act as it has effect in relation to Northern Ireland, or(i) any of sections 18 to 21 of this Act as they have effect in relation to Northern Ireland.(4) A national authority who issues guidance under this section may from time to time revise it.(5) Subsection (6) applies if a national authority proposes to issue guidance under this section—(a) on a matter on which the authority has not previously issued such guidance, or(b) which the authority considers to be substantially different from guidance previously issued under this section.(6) Before the national authority issues the guidance, the authority must consult such persons likely to be affected by it as the authority considers appropriate.(7) A national authority must arrange for any guidance issued by the authority under this section to be published in such manner as the authority thinks appropriate.(8) This section does not permit a national authority to give guidance to a court or tribunal.(9) In this section “national authority” means—(a) the Secretary of State,(b) the Scottish Ministers, or(c) the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.(10) Until the coming into force of the repeal of section 141(4) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (ban on importation of weapons) by paragraph 119(2) of Schedule 7 to the Policing and Crime Act 2009, this section has effect as if—(a) subsection (1)(e) referred to section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 as it has effect in relation to—(i) England and Wales, or(ii) the importation of a weapon to which that section applies into any other part of the United Kingdom;(b) subsection (2)(b) referred to that section as it has effect in relation to Scotland and other than in relation to the importation of a weapon to which that section applies, and(c) subsection (3)(d) referred to that section as it has effect in relation to Northern Ireland and other than in relation to the importation of a weapon to which that section applies.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would permit the Secretary of State, the Scottish Ministers or the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to issue guidance about the operation of offences relating to offensive weapons.
Earl Attlee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments to insert new Clauses after Clause 39.
“(ja) section 40;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments to insert new Clauses after Clause 39.
“(la) section (Guidance on offences relating to offensive weapons etc);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause before Clause 43.
Earl Attlee
“(da) section (Conditions applying to certain firearms: England and Wales and Scotland);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to insert the first of two new Clauses after Clause 39.
“(ba) Part 1A;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a series of new Clauses after Clause 13.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would convert references to the Clauses of the Bill relating to threatening with an offensive weapon into a reference to Part 4 of the Bill.
Earl Attlee
“(ha) section (Conditions applying to certain firearms: Northern Ireland);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to insert the second of two new Clauses after Clause 39.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause on piloting relating to knife crime prevention orders etc as one of a series of new Clauses to appear after Clause 13.
“(i) section (Guidance on offences relating to offensive weapons etc) so far as it confers functions on the Scottish Ministers.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause before Clause 43.
“(ha) section (Guidance on offences relating to offensive weapons etc) so far as it confers functions on the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause before Clause 43.
Earl Attlee
“(hb) section (Conditions applying to certain firearms: Northern Ireland);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to insert the second of two new Clauses after Clause 39.
“(za) section (Guidance);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause on guidance relating to knife crime prevention orders etc as one of a series of new Clauses to appear after Clause 13.
“(zb) section (Piloting);”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister’s amendment to insert a new Clause on piloting relating to knife crime prevention orders etc as one of a series of new Clauses to appear after Clause 13.
Earl Attlee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to insert new Clauses after Clause 39.
“(ka) section 40;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendments to insert new Clauses after Clause 39.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Tuesday 19th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 162-I Marshalled list for Third Reading (PDF) - (18 Mar 2019)
15:50 - Division on Amendment 8 - Ayes: 234 / Noes: 213 - Amendment 8 agreed.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“(aa) the delivery is not made by a trusted courier of bladed products, and”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and the amendment at page 32, line 37, would allow for the Government to create a “trusted courier” scheme, and to exempt sales using “trusted couriers” from restrictions in this section. This follows the Minister’s undertaking on 4 March (HL Deb, column 448).
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, Amendment 8 in my name would enable bladed products to still be delivered to home addresses by establishing a scheme whereby the product is delivered by a trusted courier. This is an issue that I have raised in all the Bill’s stages in this noble House. Initially, I thought a trusted trader scheme would be the best option but I concluded that this trusted courier scheme is a better way forward.
The Bill would prohibit the delivery of bladed objects to residential properties, and the concern of small and medium-sized knife manufacturers and retailers is about the detrimental impact this ban will have on their businesses. As more and more sales move online, consumers expect to be able to receive deliveries directly to their home.
I have said at each stage that I support the aims of the Bill but I am concerned that it is a legislative sledgehammer that will affect small and medium-sized businesses based in the UK while having no impact on knife crime whatever. There is no shred of evidence that these high-quality knives being sold online are being bought for criminal intent. If there were, it would have been presented.
I think we all accept that if you bought a knife online with the intent to stab someone, you would create a very easy evidence trail for the police to follow. We all want to achieve the Bill’s objective and reduce knife crime, but at the same time not destroy or damage UK-based businesses. All I seek is to achieve protection for British business in the form of an approved deliverer.
Representatives of the industry met me, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, a few weeks ago, when the industry put what I thought was a very convincing case to the Minister, along with the honourable Members for Sheffield Central and Sheffield South East. I want to find a solution that does not harm business, and I think this is the way forward. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, in principle, although I have concerns about it. Noble Lords will recall that the Bill as drafted would mean that someone could order a knife from an overseas website and have it delivered to their home address, but could not order the same knife from a UK supplier and have it delivered to their home address. The noble Lord is attempting to remedy that situation. The difficulty I have with it—perhaps he can assist the House in this degree—is that the Bill also covers delivery to a locker. Would his amendment enable a trusted courier to deliver a bladed product to a locker as well as to residential premises, which in my view would be undesirable?
The second issue is that the amendment does not apply to Clause 41, which relates to the delivery of a bladed product to someone under 18 from an overseas website. The legislation sets down rules whereby, if the courier knows that the consignment contains a bladed product, they have to verify the age of the person to whom the bladed product is being delivered. I wonder whether it would be sensible, were the Government to accept that a trusted courier system is necessary, to extend that to Clause 41. Having said that, were the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, to divide the House, we would support his amendment.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend will know how unhappy I am with the state of the Bill as it is. We are greatly disadvantaging British sellers of knives and doing almost nothing to control foreign sellers of knives. If we are after stopping knives getting into the hands of young people, sending them down a domestic route, where we know the person who has sold them and the courier who has delivered them and everything has been done in the open and properly, must be better than encouraging anyone buying knives to buy them abroad—indeed, making it almost essential—because only that way can they have them delivered to their homes.
If we were achieving something by the Bill as it is—if it was actually going to make things safer—I and, I suspect, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, would support the Government. But, as it is, we are just disadvantaging British business without making anything safer for anyone. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is a step in the right direction—I am sure the drafting will be improved—but the main thing is that I would really like to see the Government accept that they need to improve the Bill in this area and to undertake to do so in the course of ping-pong.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I agree with everything the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has said. I also support this amendment, because it is a move in the right direction. To my mind, it does not go far enough because we are disadvantaging all UK distributors against all foreign ones. It just leaves a huge loophole—and personally I think the Government will be massacred in the press once what they are passing here comes to light—so I recommend they put at least this in.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his amendments, because they enable us to return to whether or not the Bill should provide exemptions to the prohibition on arranging delivery of bladed products to residential premises or a locker. I am grateful to him and to the Sheffield knife manufacturers for the time they spent in discussion with me on this.
The noble Lord tabled an amendment on Report on whether trusted traders should be exempt from the prohibitions in the Bill on arranging delivery of bladed products to residential premises or a locker. In response, I said we would look to have further discussions with delivery companies on the issue. We have discussed this with a number of companies that provide delivery services. It is difficult for delivery companies to give a firm view on how they might operate in this sphere in future, and it will depend to a large extent on whether the criminal liability falls on the seller, as it does in the Bill in relation to the UK, or on the deliverer, as it does in relation to overseas sellers under Clauses 38 and 41.
Whether deliverers would be willing to take on the criminal liability—and with it the risk of an unlimited fine—for the offence of handing over items to a person under 18 is likely to depend on the specific circumstances in each case; for example, where a major retailer is involved, a delivery company may be prepared to take on the criminal liability because the commercial benefits of the contract outweigh the risks, but a small retailer may decide not to take on the liability. Placing the liability on deliverers could therefore work against small manufacturers and retailers, meaning that big firms can still have their products delivered to a person’s home but small ones need to use a collection point. This would be a perverse outcome that would put small businesses at a commercial disadvantage to larger firms.
I turn now to the amendments. When we considered the trusted trader amendments previously, I expressed concerns that their effect would be to transfer the responsibility for complying with the legislation and for ensuring that all bladed products are handled properly from the seller to the Government. I have similar concerns about a scheme that would exempt sellers using a trusted courier from the prohibition on the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. A trusted courier scheme would require the Government to set out the details of the proposed scheme, which would then allow for the delivery of bladed products to residential premises.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke in the debate. I want to address a couple of the points that were raised. On delivery to lockers, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that that would not be a good thing. I hope that Amendment 9, which calls for regulations, would deal with that point. The noble Lord made another good point about deliveries from abroad. We will potentially stop UK companies delivering products to home addresses, but a company based in Germany, France or anywhere else in the world can carry on doing it. That is just not fair and, again, is a disadvantage to business. For me, that highlights why this amendment should be agreed today.
If the amendment is passed by this House, it will be sent to the Commons and we will ask the Commons to look at the matter. I am sure that, as part of the ping-pong process, they will decide that my wording is not quite as good as it could be. But if the Government decide to accept this or something like it, I am sure the draftsperson will come back with a suggested amendment.
Again, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Lucas, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for their support today. I thank the Minister for her contribution as well. But I am not prepared to withdraw the amendment and would like to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“( ) The Secretary of State may by regulations determine the conditions of being designated a trusted courier of bladed products in England and Wales for the purposes of section 38(1)(aa).( ) Scottish Ministers may by regulations determine the conditions of being designated a trusted courier of bladed products in Scotland for the purposes of section 38(1)(aa).( ) The Department of Justice in Northern Ireland may by regulations determine the conditions of being designated a trusted courier of bladed products in Northern Ireland for the purposes of section 38(1)(aa).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and the amendment at page 32, line 32, would allow for the Government to create a "trusted courier" scheme, and to exempt sales using "trusted couriers" from restrictions in this section. This follows the Minister's undertaking on 4 March (HL Deb, column 448).
“(14A) After subsection (12) insert— “(12A) An order under this section which has the effect that possession in private of a weapon of a particular description is, or is to become, an offence under subsection (1A) may make provision—(a) enabling arrangements to be made for the surrender of weapons of that description;(b) as to the procedure to be followed in relation to the surrender of such weapons;(c) for the payment of compensation in respect of weapons surrendered in accordance with the arrangements;(d) as to the requirements that must be met by a person making a claim for compensation;(e) as to the procedure to be followed in respect of a claim and for the determination of a claim;(f) enabling a person to exercise a discretion in determining whether to make a payment in response to a claim and the amount of such a payment.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would mean that, where weapons are brought within the prohibition on possession in section 141(1A) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 by order, the order can provide for compensation if required to do so by Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (but need not make this provision if not required to do so).
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I will now speak to the amendments regarding kirpans, and in doing so express my gratitude to the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Singh, and my noble friend Lady Verma. They have all been tireless in their promotion of this issue; I hope that the amendments will provide an outcome satisfactory to everyone. In particular, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for his advice and to the organisation Sikhs in Politics, which has engaged positively with officials on the development of these amendments.
As noble Lords will recall, we held a round table on the issue of kirpans following the debate on these clauses in Grand Committee. This identified a gap in the current defences in that the cultural practice of gifting large ceremonial kirpans by Sikhs to eminent non-Sikhs was not covered by the “religious reasons” defence. These amendments will therefore create a defence for a person of Sikh faith to present another person with a curved sword in a religious ceremony or other ceremonial event, as covered by Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
These amendments will also create a defence for Sikhs of possessing such swords for the purposes of presenting them to others at a ceremony and for the recipients of such a gift to possess swords that have been presented to them. The amendments also ensure a defence is available for the ancillary acts, such as manufacture, sale, hire or importation, where those acts are for the purpose only of making the sword available for such presentation. Finally, the amendments enable the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to commence the provision in relation to Northern Ireland, other than in relation to importation, which is a reserved matter.
As noble Lords will be aware, the amendments do not mention the word “kirpan”. Kirpans vary considerably in their size and shape, with the only common factor being their association with the Sikh faith. It would not be possible to include a defence for kirpans without defining them legally. However, we are clear that these defences are specifically aimed at kirpans and we will include a reference to kirpans in the final Explanatory Notes for the Bill. We will also make it clear in the statutory guidance that defences of “religious reasons” and gifting by ceremonial presentation include, in particular, the possession, supply and gifting of kirpans for those purposes. We will certainly continue to engage with Sikh organisations, including Sikhs in Politics, when we develop the statutory guidance. I hope that, given what I have said, noble Lords will be able to support these amendments. I forgot to mention the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in my thanks, so I do that now.
I turn to the amendments on compensation arrangements. Amendment 10 will amend Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, so that any future order made under this section which has the effect of banning possession in private of an offensive weapon may also make provision for the surrender and payment of compensation for such weapons. This amendment therefore provides statutory authority to introduce surrender and compensation arrangements for any future orders bringing additional offensive weapons into full prohibition. Without this amendment and the authority it provides, there could be doubt as to whether compensation could be paid for any future prohibited offensive weapons.
I should point out that this amendment differs slightly from the existing provisions found under Clause 48, which allow for compensation payments to be made for offensive weapons which the Bill prohibits private possession of. Clause 48 requires the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers or the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to provide for such payments by regulations. However, this amendment provides that the Secretary of State, Scottish Ministers or the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland may make provision for surrender arrangements and the subsequent payment of compensation.
This is an important difference as it allows the authority discretion in deciding whether or not to pay compensation for future items that become prohibited by way of an order. There may be exceptional circumstances in which it is considered that payment is not required under Article 1 of the Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, it is anticipated that in most circumstances, a payment would be appropriate, as is the case for weapons the possession of which is prohibited under this Bill. None the less, providing this discretion to pay or not to pay compensation for future items is important.
Amendments 14 to 19 will ensure that cyclone knives fall within the compensation and surrender arrangements as they stand in the Bill. Noble Lords will recall that cyclone knives were prohibited by virtue of the Bill through a government amendment in Committee in this House. This minor amendment will allow for compensation to be paid to owners of these knives, in the same way that the compensation arrangements apply to the other offensive weapons which the Bill provides private possession of.
Amendment 20 then amends the date by which a person needed to have owned or contracted to acquire a cyclone knife in order to claim compensation. The date, 20 June 2018, is already set out in the Bill, and continues to apply to these weapons, private possession of which was prohibited by the Bill on introduction. The date of 22 January 2019 will apply to cyclone knives. This will allow anyone who owned or contracted to acquire a cyclone knife, up until the date that the government amendment prohibiting them was introduced, to claim for compensation.
Amendments 21 and 22 are consequential. Amendments 26 and 27 relate to Northern Ireland. Clauses 47 and 48 will come into force upon Royal Assent. However, these amendments allow the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland to commence these provisions locally.
I remind noble Lords that the compensation regulations which we have published in draft are subject to the affirmative procedure following assent to the Bill. Accordingly, they will need to be debated and approved by both Houses before they can come into force. I beg to move.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the amendments relating to kirpans—even though the legislation does not refer to kirpans as such—because of the importance to the Sikh community of presenting the ceremonial curved sword as a mark of esteem.
Representatives from the Sikh community have also pointed out the difficulties that some Sikhs have in carrying a kirpan on their person as part of their religious observance. Although it is accepted that it has not been a problem in terms of prosecution, the fact that possession of a bladed article or pointed instrument is an offence—without the need for any criminal intent—has created difficulties for Sikhs when visiting attractions such as Madame Tussauds and the London Eye. Sikhs have been barred from going into those attractions because of having a kirpan on them. The security guards are working on the basis that the law states that possession of a pointed instrument or a bladed article is an offence, and therefore a person is not allowed to bring it in. I do not know whether there is any scope here. The Minister has already mentioned the Explanatory Notes for the final legislation, including instructions about what is and is not a kirpan. Could anything be mentioned in those notes regarding the issue that some Sikhs have with regard to entry to those sorts of premises?
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, before I begin, I refer to the discussion in Grand Committee when I referred to the Network of Sikh Organisations, the NSO. I should have mentioned that I am a member of the NSO. I make it clear that in the discussions on this Bill, and indeed, in all my contributions in this House, I speak as a member of the wider Sikh community. On behalf of all Sikhs, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the Government for moving this amendment, and the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Tunnicliffe, for initiating an earlier amendment, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, with wider cross- party support.
I have heard it asked whether there is such a thing as an inoffensive weapon. The Sikh kirpan comes close, in that its use is limited to defence and the protection of the vulnerable. Again, I thank all in this House and in the other place for recognising and supporting the religious and cultural significance of the kirpan.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I am very content with the amendments in respect of compensation and devolved matters. My remarks will be on the issue of the kirpan. First, however, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, very much. We had a very useful round-table meeting. The noble Baroness and the Government have listened, and we are grateful to them for that. The noble Lord, Lord Singh, explained that this is a very important issue for the Sikh community, and it is good that the Government listened. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made a wider point about people not understanding what the kirpan is and the difficulties experienced by Sikhs in going about their daily business. I am not going to get into the issue about the fact that they have the kirpan on their person, but I hope that this will go some way to help people understand more about different faiths, including the Sikh faith, and why people carry the kirpan. I am very happy with the amendment and very pleased that the Government listened, for which I thank them very much.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the Minister's amendments at page 43, line 43 and page 43, line 44 would create defences to the offences in section 141(1) and (1A) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and section 50(2) and (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 relating to the presentation of Sikh kirpans. This follows the Minister's undertaking on 4 March (HL Deb, column 470).
“(7A) After paragraph 5A insert—“5B(1) Sub-paragraph (2) applies to—(a) a person charged with an offence under section 141(1) or (1A) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 in respect of any conduct of the person relating to a curved sword, and(b) a person charged with an offence under section 50(2) or (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 in respect of any conduct of the person relating to a curved sword.(2) It is a defence for the person to show that the person’s conduct was for the purpose only of making the sword available for presentation by a Sikh to another person at a religious ceremony or other ceremonial event.(3) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under section 141(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 of giving a curved sword to another person to show that the person’s conduct consisted of the presentation of the sword by a Sikh to another person at a religious ceremony or other ceremonial event.(4) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under section 141(1A) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 of possession of a curved sword in private to show that—(a) the person was a Sikh at the time the offence is alleged to have been committed and possessed the sword for the purpose only of presenting it to another person at a religious ceremony or other ceremonial event, or(b) the sword was presented to the person by a Sikh at a religious ceremony or other ceremonial event.(5) In this paragraph—“curved sword” means a weapon to which section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies by virtue of paragraph 1(r);“Sikh” means a follower of the Sikh religion.”(7B) In paragraph 6, for “and 5A” substitute “, 5A and 5B”.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 43, line 3.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 43, line 3.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the Minister's other amendments to this Clause and Clause 48 would ensure that the provisions for surrender and compensation in this Clause and Clause 48 cover weapons which are brought within section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 by virtue of Clause 46(2), (3) or (10).
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 44, line 20.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 44, line 20.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 44, line 20.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 44, line 20.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 44, line 20.
“(12) In this section “the relevant date”—(a) in relation to a weapon to which section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 is to apply by virtue of section 46(3) or (10) of this Act, means 22nd January 2019;(b) in any other case, means 20th June 2018.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's amendment at page 44, line 20.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister's amendment at page 42, line 19.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister's amendment at page 42, line 19.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the Minister's amendment at page 43, line 43.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the Minister's second amendment at page 61, line 42 would mean that the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland could bring Clause 46 into force only so far as it does not make provision about the unlawful importation of weapons.
“(ha) section 46 except so far as it makes provision in relation to a defence for a person charged with an offence under section 50(2) or (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979;”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's first amendment at page 61, line 42.
“(hb) sections 47 and 48 so far as they confer functions on the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland or the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and the Minister's amendment at page 62, line 6 would provide for the Department of Justice to bring Clauses 47 and 48 into force so far as they confer functions on the Department or the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanation of the Minister's third amendment at page 61, line 42.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, on moving this Motion, I take the opportunity to say a few words of thanks to those who have contributed to the Bill’s passage through your Lordships’ House. I thank my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Howe for undertaking some of the heavy lifting in Committee and on Report. Among all the Bills that I have dealt with this has not been the easiest, so I thank them very much. I also thank my noble friend Lady Manzoor for acting as the Government Whip on the Bill, and, on the opposition Benches, the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy, Lord Rosser, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—and my noble friend Lord Attlee for his well-drafted amendment on the storage of certain firearms.
I cannot, of course, omit the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for his constructive assistance in the drafting of the amendment on the kirpan. In fact, I thank all the Sikh organisations with which we have engaged during the Bill’s passage. I thank all noble Lords across the House who have contributed in various ways to the Bill. None of us could do it without officials from the Home Office, who have supported me and my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Howe throughout the its passage.
The Bill has taken some funny twists and turns but has not lost sight of our ultimate aim, which is to end the scourge of this terrible crime on our streets and in our communities. I am pleased to have been able to reach a position of broad consensus on all but two of the Bill’s provisions, namely the introduction of KCPOs and the delivery of bladed articles. We are, however, continuing to reflect on these issues in advance of the Bill going to and returning from the House of Commons. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Baroness for the way she has conducted the Bill through the House. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe. I appreciate the constructive way they have engaged with the House, as they always do. I also place on record my thanks to my noble friends Lord Rosser and Lord Tunnicliffe for the help that they have given me, as well as to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I was grateful, too, for the contributions of many other noble Lords from around the House, particularly those of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Singh, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll.
We are certainly sending the Bill back in a better state than that in which it arrived. I am not sure that it will quite achieve all the things that it wants to do, but I certainly support its aims. We have done a good job. I also thank the Bill team at the Home Office, who have always been very courteous and happy to engage with me and other colleagues. I also put on record my thanks to Ben Wood, who works in the Opposition office here in the House of Lords and has kept me armed with briefing notes, amendments and everything else.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I add my thanks to those expressed to the noble Baronesses, Lady Williams of Trafford and Lady Barran, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for the way they have conducted the Bill. As the noble Baroness mentioned, there has not really been a consensus on knife crime prevention orders and delivery of bladed articles. I think that my colleagues in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime will discuss knife crime prevention orders with their colleagues before the Commons has an opportunity to consider the amendments put forward by the Government that place knife crime prevention orders in the Bill. I hope that the Government will reflect on the delivery of bladed articles in the light of the amendment passed today. I am grateful to officials and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, for the co-operation that we have had during the passage of the Bill.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friends for the help that I have had in the course of the Bill and for the time that the Bill team have given me. I regret some of the decisions that we have taken. I think that we have hurt people needlessly and let ourselves in for compensation that we need not have paid, but there we are.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Tuesday 26th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 26 March 2019 - (26 Mar 2019)
16:35 - divided: - Ayes: 249 / Noes: 308 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is involved in Lords amendments 27, 28, 35, 43 to 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 57, 62, 63, 65, 66, 69, 73, 88 and 93. If the House agrees to any of these amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal.
I must also remind the House that certain of the motions relating to Lords amendments are certified as relating exclusively to England and Wales as set out on the selection paper. If the House divides on any certified motion, a double majority will be required for the motion to be passed. I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected all the amendments as provided on the relevant papers.
Clause 17
Delivery of bladed products to residential premises etc
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 27.
Mr Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government motion to disagree with Lords amendment 28.
Government amendments (a) to (k) in lieu of Lords amendments 27 and 28.
Lords amendments 1 to 6.
Lords amendment 7, and amendments (a) to (d) thereto.
Lords amendment 8.
Lords amendment 9, and amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendment 10, and amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendment 11.
Lords amendment 12, and amendments (a) to (c) thereto.
Lords amendment 13.
Lords amendment 14, and amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendments 15 to 22.
Lords amendment 23, and amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendments 24 to 26.
Lords amendments 29 to 61.
Lords amendment 62, and Government amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendment 63, and Government amendment (a) thereto.
Lords amendments 64 to 95.
Victoria Atkins
I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for what I know to be quite a complicated bit of procedure. I hope that I deal with the procedure correctly, and I am very grateful to your learned Clerks for advising me on the wording. I shall be speaking to amendments 27 and 28, Government amendments (a) to (k) which are laid in lieu, and Lords amendments 1 to 26 and 29 to 95. I may not be able to speak to the details of some of those later amendments, but, obviously, I will be very happy to take interventions.
The Offensive Weapons Bill is an important piece of legislation. It is just one of the measures that the Government are taking to tackle serious violence in the serious violence strategy. The Bill has enjoyed a collaborative approach across the House, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Members and noble lords who have helped with the passage of the Bill thus far. I am sure that this afternoon will continue in that spirit.
I will first address Lords amendments 27 and 28, which were moved by Lord Kennedy in the other place. I am grateful to him for his assistance on this part of the Bill. We have laid amendments in lieu, because the Government cannot agree with the trusted courier amendments as they sit, but I very much hope that the amendments that we have laid in lieu will meet with the House’s approval.
The trusted courier scheme would have practical difficulties in its bureaucracy and regulation. It risks making it more difficult to determine whether a delivery company can be trusted to provide reassurances that a bladed product will not be handed to a person aged under 18, and it is not clear, for example, how this scheme would apply to self-employed delivery drivers working on a casual basis for some of the larger firms. We are also concerned that simply being part of a scheme, or being in possession of a seal of approval as a trusted courier, does not guarantee compliance with the conditions in the scheme. We note that no responsibility is placed on the courier or company, and therefore there does not appear to be any consequence for the courier company if it fails to comply with the requirement not to hand a bladed product to a person aged under 18. One can envisage a courier in a rush, for example, pushing a package through a letterbox without conducting checks. It is this lack of liability for age checks in the scheme that we believe risks undermining the purpose of the Bill, which means that we must, I am afraid, disagree with it at this stage.
The Government have, however, given considerable thought to the views expressed on the sale-of-knives provisions throughout the passage of the Bill by Members both in this place and the other place and, importantly, by representatives of the business community, particularly those in small and medium-sized businesses in the capital of knife and steel manufacturing in Sheffield. I am very grateful to the hon. Members for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) for their assistance in this. We have tabled amendments (a) to (k) in lieu of Lords amendments 27 and 28, which I hope address their concerns. In short, these amendments in lieu would enable a remote seller to deliver a bladed product to residential premises where they have arrangements in place with a deliverer not to hand them over to a person aged under 18. This approach mirrors, largely, the clause already in the Bill regarding delivery companies relating to overseas sales, although it is limited to bladed products and to deliveries to residential premises. Regulations on overseas sales by contrast apply to deliveries to all premises and to all bladed articles.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, and I hope that she will show me where I am wrong, but I always understood that delivery companies, particularly those delivering post and packages, have an X-ray procedure to see what the contents are.
Victoria Atkins
I am not sure whether I am in a position to answer that. Of course, every company will have its own security arrangements. The hon. Gentleman will know that what we have inserted through this Bill are further conditions on sellers to ensure that their packages, if they contain bladed products, are labelled very clearly so that anyone handling that package understands what is inside it. We appreciate that perhaps not everyone has access to those facilities.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for the huge amount of work that she has done on this very important Bill and on this particular issue as well, which will make it much more difficult for people, especially young people, to buy knives online. Last week, I was very interested to hear that Asda will no longer sell individual knives, and I wondered whether she might like to comment on that.
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. She has taken a keen interest in this matter both as a constituency MP and in her contributions to this place. She is absolutely right to raise the example of Asda. Asda and other major retailers are signed up to our voluntary commitments when it comes to the sale of knives online, and we believe that that is another way in which we can ensure that retailers are doing what they should be doing in terms of selling bladed products and sharp knives responsibly. I am delighted that Asda has taken that decision of its own volition. I know that other retailers are doing great things in this space as well, but we all want to ensure that those standards are met not just by the large retailers, but by smaller ones, too.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for meeting my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and me and I also thank her colleague in the House of Lords for doing the same. I also thank them both for listening. What clause 17 does is recognise the importance of making sure that knives are not sold to young people, but here it establishes a procedure for proving that young people are 18, as they are checked at the point of sale and at the point of delivery. The measure also protects small businesses such as Taylor’s Eye Witness, which manufactures knives in my constituency, from the effects of the original legislation. I also want to say that the real thanks go to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central and his assistant Paula who have done an incredible amount of work on this. They, along with Lord Kennedy in the House of Lords, deserve particular thanks for getting this far.
Victoria Atkins
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his words and for that meeting I had with him. He is absolutely right that we wanted to listen on this. As I said at the beginning, this Bill has been, I hope, a good example of collaborative work across the House and I am extremely grateful to hon. Members for that.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
My concern about retailers has always been not with the Asdas or John Lewises, whom one would expect to do the right thing—they have a public image as well—but with the disreputable merchants. Will my hon. Friend at least keep this matter on watch, so that if it turns out that those not following the code are seen to be doing wrong, we can review the amendment that was discussed the last time we considered the Bill?
Victoria Atkins
Yes, and I thank my hon. Friend, who has been particularly persistent about locking away bladed products or sharp knives. We absolutely keep that point under review. We have had a good response from the retail industry thus far, but we will of course keep the pressure up, and I am extremely grateful to him for his contribution to that.
Liability under our amendments in lieu attaches only to companies that enter into arrangements to deliver bladed products. A delivery company could choose simply not to do so. Our amendments therefore provide the flexibility that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East described, so that if a seller does not enter into an arrangement with a delivery company, the provisions in the Bill that prohibit delivery to residential premises of a bladed product will still apply. A seller in those circumstances will not be able to send a bladed product to residential premises and the product will have to be collected in person at a collection point, which at least gives small and medium-sized businesses the choice over how to conduct their business. We believe that these amendments will help to address the concern behind the Bill and achieve the aim of stopping young people and those under 18 having access to these products through online sales when they should not have such access. I very much hope that our amendment will meet the approval of the House.
Let me turn to knife crime prevention orders. It is vital that the police have the powers they need to prevent knife crime and to protect the public from the devastating effects of violent crime on our streets. It is frankly already too late when we prosecute young people for knife crime. If measures are available that might help to steer children and young people away from carrying or using a knife, we should not hesitate to put them in place. That is why the Government have introduced, in short order, knife crime prevention orders in the Bill. The police made that request of us at the very end of the summer last year, and we were pleased to insert the provision into the Bill in the House of Lords. These are civil orders aimed at young people at risk of engaging in knife crime, people whom the police call habitual knife carriers of any age and those who have been convicted of a violent offence or an offence involving knives.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that although these are civil orders, if they are breached they become criminal, and that 12-year-old children could end up in prison for two years? Will she also confirm that not a single organisation, from the magistrates and local government to charities, lawyers and anybody involved in youth offending teams, supports this change? They all think that we are acting too quickly and need to take more time looking at the implications before introducing it.
Victoria Atkins
I am about to come to the framework for these orders, because I am conscious that in an ideal world we would have had the measure in the Bill when it was first laid before the House in the early summer last year. However, the police came to their view and alerted us to their thinking at the end of summer, and although we have frankly acted pretty quickly, we could not by definition have put the measure in the Bill before the police asked us to. We are doing this in response to the express wish of the police; in fact, the Mayor of London wrote to the Home Secretary in December asking that the orders be inserted in the Bill.
I do not know whether the hon. Lady has had a chance to speak to the Mayor of London, but the reason we are introducing these orders is that we want to try to help local communities to tackle knife crime. They are one measure. We do not pretend that they will solve all knife crime, but they are about preventing young people from getting ensnared in criminal gangs or getting into a situation where they think that carrying a knife will protect them. This is about trying to wrap services around those children before they become criminalised.
I know that concerns have been raised about the age at which the orders can be imposed. The orders apply from the age of 12 upwards because the police tell us that the age at which people carry knives is getting younger. We also know from hospital data that younger children are victims and perpetrators. That is why we have chosen that age. If we are serious about tackling knife crime on our streets, the measures that we take must apply to young people and children.
Sir Edward Davey
I think the whole House is with the Minister in the determination to tackle knife crime and to try to prevent young people from getting into it, but can she tell the House what other mechanisms, orders or contracts the Government looked at before concluding that this was the right way forward? I have spoken to her privately about antisocial behaviour orders, which in the past did not work, whereas acceptable behaviour contracts, which worked with the young person, did work. Have the Government looked at those?
Victoria Atkins
I think the right hon. Gentleman and I talked about that last week. As I have said to him, I will happily look into those. We looked at whether gang injunctions are appropriate, but as Members across the House will know, not every child carrying a knife is a member of a gang. We also looked at criminal behaviour orders, but both those measures are contingent on a child being convicted of a criminal offence. With knife crime prevention orders, we want to try to reach those children before they are convicted of carrying a knife. The orders are also available upon conviction, because we want to wrap services around children if they are convicted and serve a detention training order. We wanted an extra structure around children to try to tackle the issue.
Victoria Atkins
If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I must make some progress.
The order may impose such requirements or prohibitions on a person as a court considers necessary to protect any person from risk of harm or to prevent the commission of an offence involving a bladed article. A KCPO that imposes a requirement must specify a person who is responsible for supervising compliance with that requirement. Again, I emphasise that this is about protection and prevention. It is not about criminalising children. The order is a civil order. We do, however, accept that the breach of an order is, in itself, a criminal matter. I know that some have argued that it would be better to go down the antisocial behaviour injunction route, which applies to children as young as 10. The argument is that having a contempt of court rather than a criminal offence for a breach would make the orders more palatable, because it would mean that children did not get a criminal record. The advice from the police—it is advice that we must listen to very carefully—is that making it a criminal offence to breach an order is important if we want these orders to be taken seriously.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
May I congratulate my hon. Friend most sincerely on producing a much needed Bill? Acid, knives and certain firearms are issues that we absolutely need to crack down on. Does she agree that knife prevention orders are a good mechanism? It is becoming de rigueur in some of our cities for people to carry knives in self-defence, in case they might want to use them, which is totally the wrong culture. With these orders, the police will be able to warn youngsters that if they carry knives again, they will be subject to an order and could be subject to a criminal penalty if they breach it.
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend summarises the orders succinctly, and I thank him for all his work on the Bill. The point of the orders is to try to reach those children before they are in the criminal justice system. They include, for example, the ability to prohibit a child from accessing social media or entering certain postcodes, because we know the tensions arising on the streets from particular groups of young people in certain parts of our large cities. This is not about criminalising those young people; it is about trying to reach them.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
In the Minister’s discussions with the police about programmes that work and the investment that they want to see, has she considered expanding Prevent, a programme with proven successes, or early intervention measures such as investing in our youth services? What the police keep saying, and what Ministers keep quoting, is that we cannot just police our way out. If that is the case, we need to invest in all those programmes that support our young people, so I would be grateful if the Minister said something about Prevent in particular.
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Lady again for all the work that she does through the Youth Violence Commission. She is absolutely right. As I said at the beginning of the debate, the Offensive Weapons Bill is but one measure within the serious violence strategy, and these orders are but one measure within the Bill. We do not for one moment claim that the orders are going to solve everything, but we hope that they will be a path to reaching some of the children who are currently so difficult to reach, as the hon. Lady knows. These measures come on top of all the early intervention and the youth endowment fund, through which we are investing £200 million over the next 10 years to give certainty to the organisations that win bids. All those measures are really important.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
As I have stated previously in the Chamber, the Offensive Weapons Bill has been a cause of serious concern within the British Sikh community, with a feeling that the centuries-old religious requirement of wearing a kirpan, a Sikh sword, could be unintentionally criminalised and that even the tradition of honouring a non-Sikh within a gurdwara, a place of worship, by bestowing them with a kirpan could be deemed illegal. However, thanks to the strong leadership of the noble Lord Roy Kennedy and others in the House of Lords, with excellent assistance from Lord Singh, Lord Paddick, Baroness Verma, the organisation Sikhs in Politics and others, amendments were tabled. As Lord Tunnicliffe and Baroness Williams said, those amendments were passed with unanimity. Although I am extremely grateful to the Minister for the courtesy that she extended to me during our recent meeting to seek my views on the matter, for the record—and to assuage community concerns—can she confirm that the Government wholeheartedly support those amendments and will incorporate them into the Bill?
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Gentleman has jumped right to the end of my speech. However, I will respond now because I am conscious that it is such an excellent intervention. I will then return to KCPOs.
Let me put on record my thanks to the hon. Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and many noble lords in the other place for their work to ensure that this Bill reaches the issues in knife possession that we really want to tackle, and it does not inadvertently and completely mistakenly in any way affect the gifting, use or possession of Sikh kirpans, which was never the Government’s intention. I am grateful to all hon. Members, as well as to the many Sikh organisations that have been involved in this process, for helping us to clarify and improve the law.
I can confirm that the amendments will create defences to sections 141(1) and 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and section 50(2) and (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979 relating to the custom of gifting kirpans by ceremonial presentation. The amendments will create a defence for a person of the Sikh faith to present another person with a curved sword in
“a religious ceremony or other ceremonial event.”
They will also provide a defence for possessing such swords for the purposes of presenting them to others at a ceremony, and for the recipients of such a gift to possess swords that have been presented to them. It was never the intention of the Bill to affect this custom, and I am extremely grateful to hon. Members for their work on these measures.
Victoria Atkins
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I must move on because I am conscious that others wish to speak.
Let me return to KCPOs. I know that the shadow Minister has tabled some amendments, and I will deal with them in a moment. On the question of age and the concern that youth offending teams must be consulted, we have included in the Bill a requirement that youth offending teams must be consulted on any orders for people under the age of 18. We have also said that we will consult publicly on the guidance with community groups, youth organisations and others before these orders are brought into force.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
Before the Minister finishes discussing prevention orders, will she tell the House a little bit more about the pilots? How many pilots are there going to be, when are they going to start and how long will they last? Given the urgency of implementing this legislation and the concerns that have been raised, will the Government report back to the House on how the pilots have operated, so that we have a further opportunity to amend and adapt the measures if necessary?
Victoria Atkins
Yes. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the pilots. Some of the concerns raised today were also raised in the other place, so their lordships saw fit to insert an amendment regarding piloting. I hope that it gives some comfort to the House that we will pilot the provisions in one or more specified areas in England and Wales. We have not yet determined which forces will have the privilege of starting these pilots. The second condition of piloting is that the Secretary of State will lay before Parliament
“a report on the operation of some or all of the provisions”
relating to KCPOs, so the House will be fully updated on the progress. I am sorry that I cannot give the hon. Gentleman more details regarding the operational aspects of the pilots at this precise moment in time, but I want to deal with the amendments tabled by the shadow Minister.
Amendments (b) and (c) to Lords amendment 7, and amendment (a) to Lords amendment 14, would make it a requirement for the police to obtain—and, by implication, for the youth offending team to produce—a pre-injunction report, including an assessment of the defendant, before making an application on conviction, or otherwise than on conviction if the defendant is under the age of 18, and to provide that report to the court as part of their application. It follows from this proposed amendment that the outcome of the consultation should be available to the court. The requirement to consult is an important safeguard to ensure that the youth offending team has a chance to influence the process, and we expect the YOT’s view to be before the court when it is considering the application. We will state in guidance that we expect the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to share with the court the outcome of the consultation with the youth offending team, and we will reinforce the message during the pilots that the applicant police force should share the outcome of the YOT consultation with the court.
Amendment (c) to Lords amendment 12 would also set down a requirement in relation to a pre-injunction report. Again, we believe that the requirement to consult the youth offending team addresses this, and I am not persuaded that it would be appropriate to include a requirement to consult the youth offending team if an application without notice were made, given the urgency of such applications. However, the consultation requirement must be fulfilled before the full hearing takes place.
Amendment (d) to Lords amendment 7 is not needed. The Bill already provides a power for the court to require evidence from the individual responsible for promoting, supporting and monitoring compliance with any requirement included in the order. That individual could be the youth offending team, but it could also be a community group or a charity, for example. Let me remind the House that the police fully support the provisions in the Bill as they stand in the Lords amendments that we have tabled in the Home Secretary’s name. There are already safeguards in the Bill to ensure that the orders are proportionate and that the views of the youth offending teams are taken into account during the application process. I therefore ask the shadow Home Secretary and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) not to press their amendments.
Amendment (a) to Lords amendment 23 requires a report to be laid before Parliament on the outcome of the pilots. I would expect that, as has already been set out in our amendment, a report will be laid before Parliament about the success or otherwise of the pilots, and that KCPOs will be the subject of ongoing scrutiny.
Vicky Foxcroft
Will the Minister confirm that when that report is laid before Parliament, there will not be a further roll-out of the KCPOs without our seeing it in Parliament first?
Victoria Atkins
I think the hon. Lady is talking about the amendment tabled by the shadow Minister. We do not agree with that amendment. We believe that piloting and then the Secretary of State laying a report before the House is a perfectly proportionate way of assessing the pilots’ success. Let us not forget that we are talking about youth courts and magistrates courts using civil orders, with all the safeguards that are in the regime. This regime mirrors similar regimes used in, for example, gang injunctions. We should have trust in our youth courts and others that they will be able to meet the expectations of the House in terms of ensuring the wellbeing and the welfare of the young people they are looking after. The aim of these orders is to protect young people and also the wider community. On the proposal that a full report should be laid out, I am afraid that, in the usual way, such regulations are not subject to any parliamentary procedure, and the Government see no reason to adopt a different approach in this case.
There are of course other provisions that I have not even begun to address, although I may well have a chance do so at the end. However, I hope that my focusing on the three main issues arising during the passage of the Bill meets with colleagues’ approval. I very much look forward to hearing their contributions in the rest of the debate.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I thank those in the other place for their careful consideration of this Bill, which is certainly in better shape than when it left this Chamber.
As the Minister has outlined, we have offered our sincere and constructive support throughout the passage of the Bill for the Government’s attempts to respond to the surge in violent crime. We offered our support in Committee, on Report and at Third Reading. We have fought to enhance protections on the sale of knives, to close dangerous loopholes in our gun laws, to force the Home Office to release evidence on the consequences of cuts to vital services for levels of serious violence, to force the Government to assess whether the police have the resources they need to tackle violence involving offensive weapons and to put the rights of victims of crime on a statutory footing—rights that have been neglected despite repeated manifesto promises by the Conservative party.
Let us not forget the absolutely farcical spectacle of the Home Secretary and the Minister, on Second Reading and in Committee, making the case for a ban on high-powered rifles—guns that have an effective range of 6 km—and then coming back to the Chamber on Report and making the exact opposite case in the face of Back-Bench rebellion. Our gun laws are in need of updating, and it is a sad reflection on the Government that all the passage of this Bill has done is weaken the provisions on firearms and kick the can down the road once again in pushing the issue to consultation. Furthermore, the Bill as it stands still ignores much of the key evidence contained in a leaked Home Office report on the drivers of serious violence. This included compelling evidence that violence was, in part, being driven by a precarious and vulnerable youth cohort shorn of the support, early intervention and prevention work necessary to stop those vulnerable people falling into a spiral of serious violence.
Turning to the amendments, I am grateful for the work of the noble Lord Kennedy, and that of my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who have managed to find a consensus on the delivery of knives to residential premises that protects children while not unduly hampering specialist knife manufacturers and businesses. We are therefore happy to support the amendment in the name of the Home Secretary whereby businesses will need to prove they have taken all necessary measures to ensure that a knife is delivered into the hands of an adult or will feel the full weight of the law.
On kirpans and Sikh ceremonial swords, I again congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Mr Dhesi) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on their work. We understood the concerns raised across the House, and I am pleased that the Labour Lords amendment has been accepted that will allow Sikhs to practice their religion freely without fear of criminalisation.
But undoubtedly the biggest change has been the introduction of knife crime prevention orders, and that is what I wish to focus my remarks on. It is important when making any changes to the suite of police powers that Parliament has the fullest opportunity to consider the evidence and implications. That is why we are extremely concerned about both the way in which these proposed orders have been brought forward and some of their content. Our concerns are threefold, and I will address each in turn. As the Minister said, our amendments to the Lords amendments speak to those concerns.
Victoria Atkins
To correct the record, these orders have been discussed in the serious violence taskforce, which is attended by the Children’s Commissioner and many of the others that the hon. Lady mentioned. This is action that the police required of us. We turned it around as quickly as we could to get it into the Bill, in order to protect children. We are doing it on the advice of the police.
Louise Haigh
I would respectfully suggest that putting before Parliament orders that would criminalise children for up to two years requires more than discussion at a meeting. It requires full consultation and full parliamentary scrutiny, and none of that has happened.
Before Parliament approves any roll-out, the Government should release a report giving an explanation of what guidance has been given to authorities on the burden on proof, which is a civil standard, the impact of orders on the rights of children and the impact on different racial groups as defined in section 9 of the Equality Act 2010.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Does the hon. Lady not think it is a bit rich that she is complaining on the one hand about the Government introducing a full consultation on a whole range of firearms issues enshrined in statute under the Bill, and on the other hand that the Government have not consulted enough on knife crime prevention orders, which are suggested by the police and are a much-needed part of the armoury in the fight against knife crime?
Louise Haigh
The Government consulted on the ban on weapons ahead of the Bill and concluded, on the basis of evidence from the most senior counter-terror police in the country, that it was right to ban assault rifles. It was only in response to a Back-Bench rebellion led by the hon. Gentleman that the Government caved and made the exact opposite case to the one that they made on Second Reading.
These are very basic requests for what is, in truth, information that Parliament should already have when being asked to pass legislation. The parliamentary lock we are seeking to add to the orders should not be necessary, but we know the damage that can result from a lack of joined-up thinking in youth justice, and our communities simply cannot afford another misstep. That is why it is only right that parliamentarians are given the full facts before being asked to approve a further roll-out.
Turning to the content of the orders themselves, all of us in this place are united in our mission to do everything in our power to bear down on the terrible scourge of knife crime, but we must be wary of taking action for the sake of action. Interventions must be evidence-based, have a clear purpose and fill a gap in the existing legislation. The police already have a substantial suite of powers for those they suspect of possessing a knife. The issue is, and has been for several years, the ability and capacity of the police to enforce those powers. As the chair of the Police Federation has said,
“How the Home Secretary thinks we have the officers available to monitor teenagers’ social media use or check they are at home at 10pm when we are struggling to answer 999 calls is beyond me.”
This Government have taken 21,000 police officers off our streets. Response times have rocketed, and in some force areas residential burglaries are rarely attended. The police’s capacity to respond to crime has been extremely diminished, so it is beyond doubt that they do not have the capacity to place orders on people who have not actually committed a crime, and then to monitor and implement those orders effectively. There has been no impact assessment of the resource implications for the police or any of the other services that may be brought in by these orders. We are concerned, and this is what our amendments speak to, that in trying to establish so-called wraparound care for young people, these orders will inevitably end up focusing on the restrictive elements such as curfews, social media bans and prohibitions, rather than the potential for positive, rehabilitative action.
I think we have now reached consensus in this place that, to combat youth violence effectively, a whole-system, cross-governmental public health approach is required. These orders could have been an attempt to bridge such a divide, but instead they place sole responsibility on the police as the only authority that can apply for an order, which risks narrowing the focus of the suite of options available. The fact that there is no statutory requirement to assess the needs of a child, establish their circumstances and consider the safeguarding implications of an order or their family history prior to an order being granted should be fatal for a legislative proposal that the Government have styled as a route to access wraparound services. It simply does not do what is required. That is why our amendments would establish a statutory requirement to consult with the YOT to produce a pre-sentence report. However, we are satisfied with the Minister’s commitment that this will be made clear in guidance.
Furthermore, I wonder whether the Government, in using the example of a youth worker as someone to be responsible for the delivery of an order, recognise the bind they would be putting such an individual in if they were responsible for reporting any breaches to the police. Central to a public health approach is a consistent, constant adult in vulnerable young people’s lives. This could provide an opportunity for that, but it cannot do so if such individuals are then forced to report them to the criminal justice system every time they do not abide by the conditions laid down in their order.
I will round off with a number of questions to which I hope the Minister will respond when she speaks again. The civil burden of proof is concerning, so what sort of intelligence does the Minister envisage would be sufficient for a court to grant an order? Will the police use the gangs matrix to target individuals? Will association with known offenders be sufficient for an order to be placed? Will past offending be sufficient, as the Minister in the other place appeared to suggest?
Does the Minister share the concerns of Members across the House that we risk criminalising children as young as 12 who have not actually committed a criminal offence? Does she really believe that a two-year custodial sentence is proportionate to a breach of a civil order, and can she give an example of when such a sentence would be appropriate? What exactly can KCPOs require or prohibit? Will guidance be brought forward on what measures are effective in tackling knife crime, or will it be anything that the court deems necessary, proportionate and enforceable?
Finally, who will be required or allowed to know that a child has an order, and what action will their school or alternative provider be expected to take when one has been granted? The implications for alternative provision are potentially severe, as some providers refuse to take children who have knife convictions, leaving them completely out of education and therefore much more vulnerable to becoming involved in violence. What consideration has been given to this?
I do not think that the Minister has satisfactorily answered the concerns raised by the Opposition in our amendments or those of expert organisations that work on these issues every single day, such as the Magistrates Association and the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers. We will therefore divide the House on our amendment (a) to Lords amendment 23 in relation to the parliamentary lock, as the report that the Home Secretary brings forward must be voted on before the pilots can be rolled out.
I conclude by thanking and congratulating my right hon. and hon. Friends who have significantly improved the Bill and subjected it to scrutiny during its passage, especially my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Central, for Sheffield South East, for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), for Birmingham, Edgbaston and for Slough. The amendments in our names have sought to strengthen and improve the weak legislation before us today. They have sought an evidence-based response to the long-term trend of violence that we are witnessing as a result of this Government’s austerity agenda. We hope that the Government will accept that much more needs to be done if we are to prevent any more young lives from being needlessly taken, and we hope that the Government will accept the amendments in our names today.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh).
I should like to focus on knife crime prevention orders. If we are to reduce knife crime, we need to address the issue of drug usage. So many of the young people dying in our communities are dying as a result of the drugs trade—particularly cocaine. We need to consider increasing the costs attached to the usage of drugs, because drugs are historically extremely cheap at the moment; and if we want to attack usage, we have to increase the costs attached to recreational possession. The Minister said that she had looked at dealing with gangs—she had looked at knife crime prevention orders—but I think we need to look at drug prevention orders.
I think it is appalling that the chattering classes, wherever we may find them, whatever their politics, are wringing their hands about the deaths of mostly young men and children on our streets and then, moments later, too many of them are shoving a line of cocaine up their noses. That is not a line of white powder; that is a line of blood, and users of cocaine have blood on their hands—the lives of many, many young people and children.
So I say this to the Minister. Let us not build more prisons. Let us not lock more recreational users up—but let us hit them in the pocket. If they are caught in possession of cocaine, if they are responsible for the deaths on our streets, they should be fined accordingly. Let us say that you are a City trader on £300,000 a year, Minister: you should be fined a third of your income—a third of your income—if you are caught in recreational possession. Then users might start to think. If they do not care about the young lives being lost on the streets, they might start thinking about the consequences to themselves and their finances.
It may be a City trader. It may be a Member of Parliament. It may be a doctor. It may be a teacher. But if they are using cocaine, they are responsible for the tragedies that are happening daily, and I think they should pay—pay for recreational usage. They should pay by being fined a significant amount of their income the first time they are caught in possession, 50% the second time and 100% the third time. When we introduce laws like that, Minister, people may start taking this matter seriously, and we may actually start to address the mayhem, destruction and tragedy that is afflicting so many of our communities.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I start by confirming that the SNP has supported the Bill from the outset. As I previously acknowledged, the Government here have worked closely with the Scottish Government on many of its provisions, given that the Bill’s subject matter covers a range of both devolved and reserved competences. We remain of the view that the Bill will help tackle crimes involving corrosive substances, knives and certain firearms, so it continues to enjoy our support. However, we took—and continue to take—the view that more important tools include police funding, police numbers, cross-government working and a genuine switch to a public health approach to knife crime.
For today, though, the 95 amendments passed in the Lords focus on three specific areas. One set of changes proposed in the Lords does not convince us at all. One set of changes appears absolutely reasonable to us. Another group of amendments is welcome but still falls short of what was in the Bill at the outset. We are far from convinced on the knife crime prevention orders. As we have heard, things have moved very quickly, essentially closing down time for proper consideration, scrutiny and consultation. It is fair to recall, however, that this morning the Metropolitan Police Commissioner defended the proposals robustly before the Home Affairs Committee. I absolutely respect the fact that they are well-intentioned. I question, however, whether the reasoning behind them and the form they now take are well-founded. The all-party group on knife crime, excellently chaired by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), heard evidence from a series of groups who have significant concerns about the impact they will have. As we have heard, concerns have been raised by magistrates, local government, the Children’s Society, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, the Prison Reform Trust and the Police Federation.
Huw Merriman
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), whose constituency I will not even try to pronounce correctly. He always speaks with such eloquence. I attended the same meeting of groups hosted by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) and listened to the arguments about knife crime prevention orders. It was hard not to be persuaded by some of those arguments, but I want to explain why I think introducing those orders is the right thing to do.
The Government are absolutely right to follow a public health approach to knife crime. It is time to look holistically at all our agencies in delivering both a health-based solution and a criminal justice solution. We have the youth endowment fund and the review of drugs policy, and we should recognise that prison sentences for knife crime have increased: 85% of people convicted serve at least three months, compared with 53% only 10 years ago. The courts are putting in place a whole range of tougher measures, and the Government and local authorities are looking to introduce wraparound support, yet the reality is that knife crime is endemic and will not be solved in the short term with those measures alone. I therefore absolutely support knife crime prevention orders.
What makes this issue so stark for me is the number of recorded knife crime offences in the 12 months to September 2018. There were 40,000—an increase of two thirds since March 2014. Those figures are appalling. In the context of overall violence having fallen by a quarter since 2013, it is clear that we have an issue specific to the carrying of knives. I was struck by a recent survey by the Centre for Social Justice, in which 6% of Londoners polled confessed to having carried a knife in the past 12 months. There is a contagion effect. Young people carry knives to protect themselves, because they do not feel confident, but we all know that someone is more likely to die when they are carrying a knife than when they are not. We must make some kind of intervention to tackle that.
The Mayor of London was absolutely right in his letter to the Home Secretary in December. He was critical because nothing had yet been inserted into the Bill. He said that he was
“concerned to note that despite requests from the police…no amendments have yet been tabled”.
Now they have, which is to be welcomed. He went on to say that the introduction of the orders would
“enable better protection for the community, particularly those working with vulnerable and high-risk young people,”
and added:
“At the same time, they will enable the police and partner agencies to intervene and prevent future crime.”
They will prevent future tragedies, too.
Last month, I heard from senior officers in the Met who have asked for knife crime prevention orders to be introduced. Again, it was hard not to be impressed by what they had to say. Absolutely, introducing the orders is a slight roll of the dice—they are new and innovative—but it is important that we do so.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I think the main point is that if someone is on a knife crime prevention order, people around them will realise that they are and may concentrate more on looking after them and stopping them doing something wrong again. That is very important, too.
Huw Merriman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this is about that care and intervention as well as having a deterrent. Of course there has to be a deterrent.
We must not overlook the fact that applications will have to be made by either the Crown Prosecution Service or a chief officer of police, and that the court will have to be satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that on at least two occasions in the previous two years the defendant had a bladed article in a public place or a place of education. That is not enough, either: if there has been a big conversion, that can be demonstrated, and the magistrates court must think it is necessary to make the order to protect the public from harm from a bladed article or, indeed, to protect the respondent from committing an offence.
We talk about locks; there is a series of locks in the magistrates courts, and we must trust our magistrates to look fairly and objectively at the evidence before putting in place an order, which I say will deter young people from causing a tragedy to themselves or other people. Only if that order is breached will we be talking about a custodial sentence. Orders will be reviewed if they are longer than 12 months, and they can be varied, too. To me, they make absolute sense.
I will conclude by explaining why I feel so passionately about this issue. We can talk about long-term interventions, but the reality for young people who carry knives is that one mistake leads to loss of life—either theirs or others’. The impacts of that are dramatic. In 2007, the number of knife crime-related homicides was high—it was 272. We —both Labour and Conservative Governments—brought it down to 186 in 2015. It has now risen to 285 killings in the last year, which is the highest since records began in 1946. Something has to be done, and done now.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I want to back up what my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) just said. In addition to the safeguards my hon. Friend has ably set out, there is the provision for under-18s that, before an order can be granted, a youth offending team has to be consulted, meaning they can be helped by experts not to reoffend.
Huw Merriman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; YOTs will be consulted. I do not agree with the idea of having a more specific order, because that would tie the whole process up in knots, whereas this needs to be a fluid process. YOTs would indeed be consulted, and then appropriate adults—youth workers—would supervise any requirements under the order.
These interventions can help people turn their lives around. I spent five years working in a youth organisation that was trying to turn young people’s lives around and stop them making these mistakes. We helped with their education and encouraged them to put their energy into sports, performing arts, environmental projects, and so on—something that could turn them away from a life of crime and give them something more interesting, exciting and exacting to work on. That said, we have now regressed. Far too many young people are being attracted by gangs and carrying knives either because of the glamour or as protection. We need to do something now to turn that around and save lives.
Sir Edward Davey
The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) speaks with authority as a former youth worker, and one listens to him with great attention, but I disagree with his conclusion that the proposal before the House is the best way forward. I want to suggest alternatives that I hope he will consider.
There is no doubt that action on knife crime is needed—that fact unites us all—and a lot of the action will involve spending money, whether on policing, including community policing, or on youth workers. There may have been a lot of youth workers when the hon. Gentleman was active, but when I look around communities today I do not see many youth workers or community police officers, but we will need them to implement these orders. We will need to spend money if we are to have the people in place to give those young people alternatives and protect them. We as a Parliament have to recognise that the public health approach is not a cheap option.
Do we need another legal power? The Government argue that, despite the panoply of powers already on the statute book, we need a new one, which is why the House is right to scrutinise the proposal; I only wish it had more time. Will the proposal work? We have some evidence from the past. As you will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, we have had many debates in this House, in previous Parliaments, on how to tackle antisocial behaviour, and we have seen policies such as antisocial behaviour orders, on which, I believe, these knife crime prevention orders are modelled. My noble Friend Lord Paddick in the other place has pointed out some of the major problems with ASBOs that we believe knife crime prevention orders will also have.
I want to be constructive, however, and to support the Minister in her work to tackle knife crime. I hope that she will agree to meet me to discuss the Liberal Democrats’ proposal for what I have named anti-blade contracts—linked to the ABCs, or acceptable behaviour contracts, of the past—which could be far more effective in preventing young people from carrying knives in the first place. I would also make the case for other similar initiatives, such as what I call knife crime prevention injunctions, which would have the benefit of not resulting in criminal records for young people.
First, though, I will make the case against the Government’s proposal. The fundamental problem is that these will be pre-conviction orders—as opposed to on-conviction orders—which means that young people as young as 12 could be handed a court order on the grounds that, on the balance of probability, they may have carried a knife. That ought to alarm every colleague. Guilty before anything has been proven—that is a shocking legal principle. I am surprised that a lawyer as distinguished as the Minister feels comfortable about young people getting court orders even when it has not been proved that they committed a crime.
The Minister’s mitigation is that this is a civil offence, but if the order’s conditions are breached, it becomes a criminal offence. A condition may, for instance, be a requirement to notify. A young person who fails to notify the police of a change of address within three days will be in breach of the order, and could be imprisoned.
This legislation has no link to real life—to the chaotic lives that some of these young people lead. The idea that they will remember to notify a police officer within three days that they have changed their address because they have moved from one parent or carer to another, thus avoiding a prison sentence, is total nonsense. Why do we need to criminalise young people who have not committed a crime? Where is the evidence that that will tackle knife crime? Prisons are overcrowded, and there are high levels of self-harm. Is this really a sensible approach?
Victoria Atkins
The point of the orders is that there is information suggesting that these children have been carrying a knife on two or more occasions. The criminality, if we are talking in those terms, would be in the fact of the possession, and a magistrates court or a youth court would consider that very carefully. A child who is carrying a knife may well get into terrible trouble with the police because he or she has used it against someone, and we are trying to get to children before that happens.
Sir Edward Davey
There I have sympathy with the Minister, and I want to propose an alternative which addresses that very point. However, she was beginning to suggest—I am not sure that she meant to—that a criminal test had to be passed, and that is not what is in the Bill. It is not a criminal test that must be passed; it is a civil test, which could then result in a criminal record. I think that the House should think very carefully before going down that road.
Let me say a little about the alternative model that I want the Minister to consider. I am proposing what I have called anti-blade contracts. The idea is that a police officer, along with the parents or a carer, or possibly a youth officer, would sit down with a young person and require them to sign a contract saying that they should not carry a knife and that there would be consequences—for instance, fines or community sentences —if they were caught doing so. Crucially, however, linked with the public health or prevention approach would be positive elements. Young people could, for example, contact a named youth worker or police officer if they were concerned about their safety. There could also be a package of other support, which might involve access to youth services.
That is the way to change behaviour. That is the way to prevent a young person from ending up on the pathway to more crime. People who go to prison often see it as a college of crime, and we must try to avoid that. The approach that I am suggesting would do what the Minister wants: it would meet her objectives, but without the cost and without the potentially damaging impact that her orders would have.
Bob Stewart
Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that all young people should sign such contracts? That has a certain appeal to me—the idea that everyone at school, say, is given a lesson and then signs a contract, so that they understand what they are doing. Is that what the right hon. Gentleman is proposing?
Sir Edward Davey
Not in the first place. The idea—and this goes alongside the Government’s proposal—is not that every young person would be open to the process, but that it could be offered to young people who were thought to be in danger. I am not sure whether we would want it to be applied to every young person, although it could go further and be part of an educative process as well. Given the lack of resources in the police and youth services, I think that we should target those who are most at risk in the first instance.
The crucial part of my argument is that I am putting forward something that is based on evidence. The evidence from the Home Office, in its reports on the difference between antisocial behaviour orders and acceptable behaviour contracts back in 2004, and the evidence from the National Audit Office in a 2006 report, suggested that ABCs were far more effective in changing young people’s behaviour, which is what we want to do. More important—or, at least, as important—was the fact that they were cheaper. They took less time. Orders that need to go to court require considerable police resources, and we do not have those resources. They also take up the time of magistrates, which is already rather stretched, so we are putting forward something that goes against the evidence from the past and that we know is going to be more expensive and more time consuming. This is an urgent problem, and our proposal based on evidence does not need even this place to legislate. We could get on with it; we could issue guidance. Why on earth are we doing this? The situation is far more urgent than the Government seem to think. The Minister’s proposal would take so much time and money when we know that is not available.
I implore the Minister: I am pleased that she has nodded from a sedentary position to indicate that she is prepared to meet me to discuss our proposal—
Sir Edward Davey
I am very grateful to the Minister for doing that, but I hope she will reflect on this.
I will be supporting the Labour amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) tonight, which are well tailored. The Labour proposal requiring this House to vote on a report on the evidence from the pilot is a good compromise; it is an example of this Parliament working together to make sure that what we do is evidence-based. The good thing the Minister could do if she goes down my route is proceed with my anti-blade contracts while those pilots are going on, because an anti-blade contract does not need to bother this legislature.
Sarah Jones
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) and I agree with much of what he said. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) put his finger on it when he said that these knife crime prevention orders are a roll of the dice. That is absolutely the point we all want to make, and while I completely disagree with the conclusion he has come to, this is what we are doing in this House: we are rolling a dice and there might be unintended consequences that we do not know yet. That is what I want to speak about today. I shall speak to the amendments I added my name to: 7, 9, 10, 12 and 23.
I chair the all-party group on knife crime, and yesterday we hosted an event on knife crime prevention orders. We heard evidence from the Magistrates Association, lawyers, academics, charities and youth offending teams who work with children and young people involved in knife crime. There was resounding agreement: they all want to stop knife crime and protect young people, but they all believe that these orders are not the answer. I think they are a knee-jerk reaction to a moral panic and they risk exacerbating, not diminishing, the problem. Lawyers, magistrates and youth offending teams are all in agreement that, far from being preventive, as the name of the orders suggests, the orders will have unintended consequences that could criminalise a generation of young people and actively work against the Government’s stated aim of reducing knife crime.
This final stage of the Offensive Weapons Bill is the first opportunity MPs have had to have our say on whether or not these orders should become law. This is indicative of the Government’s approach of late: rushing through ill-thought-out plans so they can appear to be doing something without actually listening or engaging with experts or allowing parliamentary scrutiny. No real consultation took place other than some rushed consultation within the police—although we heard yesterday that even the senior police representative for children and young people was not asked about these knife crime prevention orders.
As far as we can tell, the orders are the result of a few behind closed doors conversations between the Home Office and a few senior Met police. They have not comprehensively been thought out, and they were not a part of the Government’s own serious violence strategy. This is not the proper way for the Government to create laws, and it is an example of how bad, ineffective policy is created.
As we have heard, these are civil orders that would be placed on children as young as 12 who are suspected of carrying a knife. They could place severe, lengthy and potentially unlimited requirements and restrictions on the person subject to the order. If the requirements are not all met, a breach will be punishable by up to two years in prison. We have a situation in which somebody—a child—who may never have carried a knife and never have broken the law will end up with a criminal record and potentially a prison sentence for an order placed on them just on the basis of probability, rather than a criminal standard of proof. This leaves room for subjective decisions being made and for many young people to feel unfairly targeted.
The Government should be seeking to draw people away from the criminal justice system, not pushing children into it. And for solutions to be effective, they need to target the underlying cause of the behaviour. Sending children to custody does not work and is not an appropriate or proportionate response. Vulnerable young people must have access to education and employment so that they have routes away from drug gangs and the like. Criminal records and other criminal sanctions will disrupt lives and further marginalise young people, locking them out of mainstream society and exacerbating the root causes of violence. Children and young people have told our all-party parliamentary group many times that many are picking up knives out of fear. They feel that it is a necessary form of self-protection because everyone else has one and the police are not there to help them. Knife crime prevention orders will not deter children from picking up knives. They would rather be in prison for carrying a knife than be stabbed to death.
Another thing that was clear from our meeting yesterday was that the orders are neither necessary nor new. Magistrates and lawyers who are involved in children’s sentences have not called for more sentencing options. There are already intervention options available that could be promoted and developed. Many youth offending teams have programmes to address knife carrying, and if they had the money to do more outreach, they could help more children in this way. Conditional cautions can place requirements on children and young people, such as having to see their youth offending team and attend education programmes. These have lower reoffending rates than other more punitive responses, and they deal with behaviour outside the court system. Likewise, there is the triage system, where a young person who is arrested in a police station can be directed to appropriate intervention without being unnecessarily over-criminalised.
The similarities between knife crime prevention orders and the old antisocial behaviour orders are clear. The author of the Youth Justice Board report on ASBOs told us yesterday that they were disproportionately used on children and that they were breached in over two thirds of those cases. The use of ASBOs petered out over time because the courts and other agencies became increasingly concerned that they were counterproductive. Children had come to view them almost as a badge of honour and to define their identity around them. ASBOs were actually encouraging the behaviour they were designed to discourage. Over a nine-year period, more than 5,500 children were sent to prison for breaching their order. The bottom line was that they were not effective, because the kids kept coming back.
A number of other concerns have highlighted how little time has been given to the detail of these orders. Who will monitor them? Who will be responsible for reporting breaches? It seems that charities running programmes with young people would be expected to tell on their young people if they did not turn up. That would betray all the trust those organisations had carefully built up and would undoubtedly affect engagement. If the orders are imposed on the basis of probability, will not the victims of crime be more resistant to going to the police in case they get an order slapped on them, too? If school exclusions are already a big problem and a driver of young people becoming involved in violence, what impact do the Government expect the orders to have on access to education? A school will not want to take on a child who has been issued with a knife crime prevention order.
Finally, young black boys are already disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, and there are real problems with trust and community relationships with the police. The imposition of restrictive orders such as these, especially when someone is only suspected of carrying a knife, will feed into those young boys feeling disproportionately targeted or harassed by police, their feelings of marginalisation and alienation, and their feeling that they are being treated less fairly than others by the justice system. This will be a major setback.
In 2010, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), described ASBOs as a
“top-down, bureaucratic, gimmick-laden approach”.
She said that they were
“too complex and bureaucratic…they were too time consuming and expensive and they too often criminalised young people unnecessarily, acting as a conveyor belt to serious crime and prison.”
The Government should listen to that now. They should also listen to the wide coalition of professional bodies and organisations that have come out against these orders. They should listen to concerns raised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and to the Justice Secretary himself, who has highlighted a lack of evidence that the orders will be effective. They should also look at the evidence of what works to tackle violent crime. They should consult, and they should work out the actual impact of the policy before imposing it.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones). On behalf of the all-party parliamentary group for British Sikhs, I want to thank Members across the House for their support for the amendment that we tabled in this House and for their subsequent support for removing the unintended consequences for the Sikh community that the Bill would have had in its previous form. Unamended, the Bill would have meant that Sikhs who possessed a 50 cm kirpan in the home would be committing a criminal act and subject to a year’s imprisonment, so I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention to amend the justification for a Sikh possessing a kirpan from the narrow “religious ceremonies” to “religious reasons”. This was a fundamental change to protect the rights of Sikhs to purchase and possess a kirpan.
The Lords has made a further amendment on the gifting of the kirpan to others at a ceremony, and I thank Lord Kennedy and Lord Paddick for their work. I also pay tribute not only to the work done behind the scenes, especially by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), but to the Offensive Weapons Bill team in the Home Office.
With this amendment, the Sikh community have been given a clear commitment by the Government that they will not be penalised, and I hope that that approach will be taken by all other Departments. The APPG would like to work with the Minister on developing the statutory guidance surrounding the amendment, and I hope that she will continue to work with us to protect the Sikh community from any further discrimination.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I will speak briefly about the Government’s response to Lords amendments 27 and 28. The Minister talked about the collaborative approach that has been adopted in relation to many aspects of the Bill, and I want to thank her for her engagement and also thank her colleague Baroness Williams. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and I had two constructive meetings where we brought knife manufacturers to meet the Minister and Baroness Williams, and we were pleased with how the Minister engaged with the concerns that were raised. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East, who is no longer in his place, for his generous comments and—there is a bit of a Sheffield theme here—the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh)—[Interruption.] Sheffield is the centre of the world, depending on where you start from.
The point on which we all agree relates to the deep concern within all our communities that are affected by knife crime in some of the most horrific ways. We all want effective action to tackle the problem, and the emphasis should be on effective action. We need the right laws to tackle the problem without unintended consequences. I was concerned about the original proposals, which would not have addressed the problem and would have caused unnecessary damage to the knife manufacturing sector and to small businesses in particular, to which the Minister referred in her opening remarks.
It was for that reason that I proposed a trusted trader scheme on Report simply to open up the debate, and that discussion developed in the Lords into the proposals for a trusted courier scheme. I pay tribute to Lord Kennedy for taking up the issue effectively, brokering some of the meetings and engaging productively with Ministers. Although the proposals that we have from the Government today offer a different approach, they nevertheless address our concerns and are probably better than my original amendment on Report.
I have consulted with the local businesses who joined us at the meetings, and I pay particular tribute to James Goodwin from Egginton Bros Ltd for first raising the issue with me, and also to Alastair Fisher from Taylor’s Eye Witness. They welcomed the Government’s proposals in response to the Lords amendments. More widely, the knife manufacturing sector and retailers, who also had a lot at stake in ensuring that we got things right, will also welcome the proposals. With that, I join other hon. Members in endorsing the Government’s proposals.
Lords amendment 27 disagreed to.
Lords amendment 28 disagreed to.
Government amendments (a) to (k) made in lieu of Lords amendments 27 and 28.
Lords amendments 1 to 22 agreed to.
Amendment (a) proposed to Lords amendment 23.—(Louise Haigh.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I remind the House that the motion relates exclusively to England and Wales. A double majority is therefore required.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019
Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) Act 2019
Healthcare (European Economic Area and Switzerland Arrangements) Act 2019.
Offensive Weapons Bill
Wednesday 10th April 2019
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Offensive Weapons Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 170-I Marshalled list for consideration of Commons amendments (PDF) - (9 Apr 2019)
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That this House do not insist on its Amendments 27 and 28, to which the Commons have disagreed, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 27A to 27K in lieu.
“Delivery of bladed products to persons under 18
(1) This section applies if—
(a) a person (“the seller”) sells a bladed product to another person (“the buyer”),
(b) the seller and the buyer are not in each other’s presence at the time of the sale and the seller is within the United Kingdom at that time,
(c) before the sale, the seller entered into an arrangement with a person who is a body corporate by which the person agreed to deliver bladed products for the seller,
(d) that person was aware when they entered into the arrangement that it covered the delivery of bladed products, and
(e) that person delivers the bladed product to residential premises pursuant to that arrangement.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)(b) a person (“A”) is not in the presence of another person (“B”) at any time if—
(a) where A is an individual, A or a person acting on behalf of A is not in the presence of B at that time;
(b) where A is not an individual, a person acting on behalf of A is not in the presence of B at that time.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (1)(b) a person other than an individual is within the United Kingdom at any time if the person carries on a business of selling articles of any kind from premises in any part of the United Kingdom at that time.
(4) In subsection (1)(e) “residential premises” means premises used solely for residential purposes.
(5) The circumstances where premises are not residential premises for the purposes of subsection (1)(e) include, in particular, where a person carries on a business from the premises.
(6) The person mentioned in subsection (1)(e) commits an offence if, when they deliver the bladed product, they do not deliver it into the hands of a person aged 18 or over.
(7) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (6) is liable—
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to a fine;
(b) on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.
(8) This section is subject to section 18 (defences).”
“(1A) It is a defence for a person (“the seller”) charged with an offence under section 17(2) of delivering a bladed product to residential premises to prove that—
(a) at the time the offence is alleged to have been committed, the seller had procedures in place which were likely to ensure that any bladed product delivered by the seller to residential premises would be delivered into the hands of a person aged 18 or over, and
(b) the seller took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to ensure that the product to which the charge relates would be delivered into the hands of a person aged 18 or over.
(1B) It is a defence for a person (“the seller”) charged with an offence under section 17(2) of arranging for the delivery of a bladed product to residential premises to prove that—
(a) the arrangement required the person with whom it was made to have procedures in place which were likely to ensure that any bladed products delivered to residential premises pursuant to the arrangement would be delivered into the hands of a person aged 18 or over, and
(b) the seller took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to ensure that the product to which the charge relates would be delivered into the hands of a person aged 18 or over.”
“(4A) It is a defence for a person charged in England and Wales or Northern Ireland with an offence under section (Delivery of bladed products to persons under 18) to prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence.
(4B) It is a defence for a person (“the accused”) charged in Scotland with an offence under section (Delivery of bladed products to persons under 18) to show that—
(a) the accused believed the person into whose hands the bladed product was delivered to be aged 18 or over, and
(b) either the accused had taken reasonable steps to establish the person’s age or no reasonable person could have suspected from the person’s appearance that the person was under the age of 18.
(4C) For the purposes of subsection (4B)(b), the accused is to be treated as having taken reasonable steps to establish the person’s age if and only if—
(a) the accused was shown any of the documents mentioned in subsection (4D), and
(b) the document would have convinced a reasonable person.
(4D) Those documents are any document bearing to be— (a) a passport,
(b) a European Union photocard driving licence, or
(c) such other document, or a document of such other description, as the Scottish Ministers may prescribe by order.”
““residential premises” has the same meaning as in section 17.”
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the Commons amendments we are considering today follow on from debate on the Bill in this House at Third Reading in respect of the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for a trusted courier scheme. During that debate I set out the reasons why the Government could not support the proposition of a trusted courier scheme. In summary, I undertook that the Government would continue to reflect on the issue in respect of the delivery of bladed products in advance of the Bill going to, and returning from, the House of Commons. This we have now done and, accordingly, I trust that the amendment we have tabled in lieu, and that we are about to consider today, will have the support of noble Lords across this House.
We have given considerable consideration to the views expressed by Members in both Houses and business on the provisions relating to the sale of knives and the prohibitions on residential delivery throughout the passage of this Bill. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and to the Sheffield knife manufacturers for the time they spent in discussion with me on this matter. They and the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, were very helpful to me.
Following this further consideration, the Government have tabled Amendments 27A to 27K. These amendments allow a remote seller to deliver a bladed product to a residential premises by providing a defence where they have arrangements in place with a deliverer not to hand them over to a person under the age of 18 or, if the seller is delivering the item themselves, that the seller has procedures in place that are likely to ensure that any bladed product delivered to residential premises would be delivered into the hands of a person aged 18 or over. The seller must also have taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to ensure that the bladed product would be delivered into the hands of a person aged 18 or over.
The amendments also place a criminal liability, which is corporate and not individual, on the delivery company that enters into such an arrangement with a seller. The delivery company will commit an offence if it does not deliver the bladed product into the hands of a person aged over 18.
The amendment is similar in effect to the existing offence in the Bill on delivery companies relating to overseas sales, although this new offence is limited to bladed products—products that have a blade and are capable of causing serious injury by cutting the skin—and to deliveries to residential premises, whereas the measures in the Bill relating to overseas sales apply to deliveries to all premises and to all bladed articles, which are articles with a point or blade. For UK sales, the Bill already permits the delivery of bladed articles that do not meet the definition of a “bladed product” to residential premises. These amendments have addressed the concerns that have been raised by businesses within the UK.
The liability attaches only to delivery companies that enter into arrangements to deliver bladed products; a delivery company could simply choose not to do so. This new offence is subject to the defences set out in Clause 39 of the Bill. The amendments that we have made ensure that an individual’s age is verified at the point of delivery irrespective of whether the seller delivers themselves or uses an external delivery company. Should a seller decide not to enter into an arrangement with a delivery company, or put the necessary procedures in place to enable them to deliver bladed products themselves, the provisions in the Bill that prohibit delivery to residential premises of a bladed product will still apply: that is, the seller will not be able to send a bladed product to residential premises and the bladed product will still have to be collected in person at a collection point.
Amendments 62A and 63A are both consequential to Amendments 62 and 63, which already form part of the Bill as a result of Amendments 27A to 27K. Amendment 62A adds to Amendment 62 in the Bill the new offence of delivery of bladed products to persons under 18. Amendment 62 provides trading standards with a power to enforce various existing and new offences relating to the sale and delivery of bladed articles, offensive weapons and corrosive products. It also confers on trading standards investigatory powers under Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015—the CRA, as it is known—for the purpose of enforcing these offences.
Amendment 63A is another consequential amendment to Amendment 63 and is similar in purpose to Amendment 62A as it adds the new offence of delivery of bladed products to persons under 18. Amendment 63 in the Bill enables businesses to enter into partnerships with a local authority that will act as the primary authority for that business in relation to an area of regulation. This will enable the primary authority to provide advice and guidance on compliance to the business in areas of regulation covered by the partnership, on which the business can rely.
In summary, these amendments will ensure that bladed products can be delivered to residential premises, while at the same time addressing the risk that the product ends up in the hands of a person under 18 because the delivery company has not verified age or has simply pushed the bladed product through the letterbox. I again thank the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Paddick, and I hope that the House will feel able to support the amendments. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to support the Motions before the House today in the name of the Minister.
This is an issue that I raised at Second Reading and which I persisted with throughout the passage of the Bill through your Lordships’ House. As I have said many times before, I support the general aims of the Bill, but the proposals to prevent British businesses in all circumstances from selling and sending their knives and other bladed products to UK home addresses was just damaging to business while contributing nothing to dealing with the terrible incidences of knife crime.
I am grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, engaged so positively with me, the Members for Sheffield Central and Sheffield South East in the other place and representatives of the knife manufacturing industry, including James Goodwin and Alastair Fisher.
To get this concession, we had to win a vote here in the House of Lords, and I am grateful to noble Lords from my own Benches, the Liberal Democrat Benches, the Cross Benches and the Conservative Benches who supported my amendment. I am also grateful to those Conservative Peers who told me they were with me and then very kindly abstained on the vote. It all helped to show the other place that we had a lot of support for this sensible proposal, and it means we are able to support British businesses and the jobs they provide.
I am particularly grateful to my noble friends Lord Rosser and Lord Tunnicliffe, the noble Lords, Lord Paddick, Lord Scriven and Lord Lucas, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, as I am to the noble Baronesses, Lady Williams of Trafford and Lady Barran. That brings me to the end of my contributions on this Bill.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for explaining these amendments. I was going to say that, from the first day of this Bill, I pointed out that treating UK companies differently from overseas companies on delivery of bladed articles to residential premises was not sustainable. However, it was not on the first day but on the first day in Committee that I first raised the issue—and on the first day of Report and at Third Reading. Finally, the message has got through.
We supported the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, relating to the trusted courier scheme to ensure that the Government thought again about this issue. I am glad that, at last, they have agreed that it was not fair to say that overseas companies could deliver knives to residential premises but UK companies could not. These amendments address this issue and we therefore support them.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I have spoken on this before, so I just want to say how much I welcome the movement by the Government on this Bill. It is very sensible and will go a long way. I make only two little points.
First, it is a pity we do not treat all items in this way. This could be a template for the delivery to a home of any age-restricted items. They may be age-restricted at various different levels: for some, the age restriction is 16; for others, it is 18. We could have had a template in a law somewhere which could be used and referred to by all other Acts of Parliament which place an age restriction on goods. It is a good opportunity. From that point of view, it seems a bit funny that we have this provision for knives, but not corrosive liquids, but that is as it is. I do not think corrosive liquids are such a big problem, because they tend to be delivered to commercial premises, as they are not household goods on the whole. This is very much to be welcomed. I think it is a good start.
Secondly, I am not sure whether to feel sorry for the Scots. The defence in England is worded generally enough that it could cover electronic means if, for instance, they complied with the British standard specification PAS 1296. That would be a good defence in court that you had verified things properly. However, I see that in Scotland it has to be a document, and I do not know whether that includes something electronic or not. I am not worried about that at the moment; it is a point for the future. I am not quite sure whether the Scots are being a little old-fashioned about it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 62A.
“Enforcement of offences relating to sale etc of offensive weapons
(1) A local weights and measures authority may enforce within its area a provision listed in subsection (2).
(2) The provisions mentioned in subsection (1) are—
(a) section 1(1) of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 (penalties for offences in connection with dangerous weapons),
(b) section 1 of the Crossbows Act 1987 (sale etc of crossbows to persons under 18),
(c) section 141(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offensive weapons), (d) section 141A of that Act (sale etc of bladed articles to persons under 18),
(e) section 1 of the Knives Act 1997 (unlawful marketing of knives),
(f) section 2 of that Act (publication of unlawful marketing material relating to knives),
(g) section 1 of this Act (sale of corrosive products to persons under 18), (h) section 3 of this Act (delivery of corrosive products to residential premises etc),
(i) section 4 of this Act (delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18),
(j) section 17 of this Act (delivery of bladed products to residential premises etc), and
(k) section 20 of this Act (delivery of bladed articles to persons under 18).
(3) For the investigatory powers available to a local weights and measures authority for the purposes of enforcing a provision listed in subsection (2), see Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
(4) Nothing in this section is to be construed as authorising a local weights and measures authority to bring proceedings in Scotland for an offence.
(5) In paragraph 10 of Schedule 5 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (duties and powers to which Schedule 5 applies), at the appropriate place insert “section (Enforcement of offences relating to sale etc of offensive weapons) of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019.””
Commons Agreement and Amendment to the Lords Amendment
The Commons agree with the Lords in their Amendment 62 and propose Amendment 62A as an amendment thereto—
“(ja) section (Delivery of bladed products to persons under 18) of this Act (delivery of bladed products to persons under 18),”
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 63A.
“Application of Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008
In Schedule 3 to the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 (relevant enactments for the purposes of relevant functions to which Parts 1 and 2 of that Act apply) at the appropriate places insert—
“Criminal Justice Act 1988, sections 141(1) and 141A”;
“Offensive Weapons Act 2019, sections 1, 3, 4, 17 and 20”; “Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959, section 1(1)”.”
Commons Agreement and Amendment to the Lords Amendment
The Commons agree with the Lords in their Amendment 63 and propose Amendment 63A as an amendment thereto—
Royal Assent
Thursday 16th May 2019
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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