House of Commons
Prayers
09:34 - The House having divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 69 - Question accordingly negatived.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I beg to move, That the House sit in private.
Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163).
The House proceeded to a Division.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.
Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill
Friday 27th April 2018
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 View all Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 27 April 2018 - (27 Apr 2018)
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
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 2—Assaults on police constables (No. 2)—
“In section 89(1) of the Police Act 1996, leave out from ‘offence’ to end of subsection (1) and insert—
‘and liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to a fine, or to both;
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 24 months, or to a fine, or to both.’”
This new clause would make assaults specifically on police constables carry greater penalties than are currently available to match the new offence and also to ensure that Crown courts have greater powers of sentence for the offence than magistrates’ courts.
New clause 4—Assaults in prison—
“In section 243A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—
‘(2A) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in Section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a sentence of less than 12 months who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.
New clause 5—Assaults in prison (No. 2)—
“In section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (1A) insert—
‘(1B) Subsection (1) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in Section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.
New clause 6—Assaults in prison (No. 3)—
“In section 246 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (4)(i) insert—
‘(j) the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in Section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for early release.
New clause 8—Assaults in prison (No. 5)—
“In section 247 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—
‘(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving an extended sentence under sections 227 and 228 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 who assaulted an emergency worker during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release after the requisite period.
New clause 9—Assaults in prison (No. 6)—
“In section 243A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—
‘(2A) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a sentence of less than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.
New clause 10—Assaults in prison (No. 7)—
“In section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (1A) insert—
‘(1B) Subsection (1) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.
New clause 11—Assaults in prison (No. 8)—
“In section 246 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (4)(i) insert—
‘(j) the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for early release.
New clause 13—Assaults in prison (No. 10)—
“In section 247 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—
‘(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted any person listed in section 3(d), (e) or (f) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving an extended sentence under sections 227 and 228 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 who assaulted a prison officer or anyone carrying out the same functions as a prison officer or a prison custody officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release after the requisite period.
New clause 14—Assaults in prison (No. 11)—
“In section 243A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—
‘(2A) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a sentence of less than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.
New clause 15—Assaults in prison (No. 12)—
“In section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (1A) insert—
‘(1B) Subsection (1) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release.
New clause 16—Assaults in prison (No. 13)—
“In section 246 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (4)(i) insert—
‘(j) the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving a fixed term sentence of more than 12 months who assaulted a prison officer during that sentence would not be eligible for early release.
New clause 18—Assaults in prison (No. 15)—
“In section 247 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, after subsection (2) insert—
‘(3) Subsection (2) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted a prison officer during the course of their sentence.’”
This new clause would mean that a prisoner serving an extended sentence under sections 227 and 228 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 who assaulted a prison during that sentence would not be eligible for automatic release after the requisite period.
Amendment 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, after “battery” insert “including spitting”.
This makes explicit that this section applies to incidents of assault or battery that are spitting.
Amendment 9, page 1, line 10, leave out “12” and insert “24”.
This amendment would increase the sentence for the new offence from 12 to 24 months in Crown courts to allow for longer sentences and to ensure Crown courts have greater powers of sentence for the offence than magistrates’ courts.
Amendment 3, in clause 2, page 2, line 39, at end insert—
“(aa) an offence under section 3 (sexual assault) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003”.
This causes the fact that the victim was an emergency worker to be an aggravating factor in cases of sexual assault.
Philip Davies
I am delighted to support the Bill today—a Bill that I have supported from the outset. I am pleased to be one of its sponsors. May I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on getting his Bill to this point and on using his customary charm to do so? I also congratulate the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who has played an invaluable role in supporting the hon. Gentleman in getting the Bill to where it is today. As we all know, she is a doughty supporter of the police, and I know that they appreciate her support greatly. While I am at it, may I thank the Minister, who has played a crucial role in ensuring that the Bill has got to this stage? We are all very grateful for the constructive way in which Ministers have engaged with the process.
My amendments begin with new clauses 1 and 2. I have quite a few to go through, but I will rattle through them as quickly as possible. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Well, everything is relative. I will also ensure that I do my amendments justice.
New clause 1 would make assaults on police constables carry the same penalty as the new offence in the Bill, not just the six months currently available to the courts. New clause 2, which I will discuss together with new clause 1, would make assaults on police constables carry a greater penalty than the new offence and ensure that Crown courts had greater powers of sentencing for the offence than magistrates courts. The two new clauses are alternatives—people may consider which one they think would do the job. I would be perfectly content with either.
In an ideal world, I would like to see the highest sentences possible given for offences against the police. Assaulting a police officer is currently a summary only offence that cannot usually be dealt with by the Crown court, and certainly no more than a six-month sentence can be given. I appreciate that assaults against police officers can be charged as other non-police offences of violence, but that is another story. It is relevant to the new clauses, but not something I want to dwell on. I believe that if we have an offence of assault against a police officer, it should attract a robust sentence, because in reality a lot of assaults against the police will be charged in this way.
I have been helpfully informed by the West Yorkshire Police Federation of the number of such assaults in West Yorkshire. Perhaps, in passing, I might praise Nick Smart from the West Yorkshire Police Federation, who does a fantastic job of representing the interests of his members. He is absolutely first class and has done a brilliant job in helping with this Bill. He gave me the Home Office figures that had been collated for April 2016 to March 2017, which showed that there were 1,240 recorded assaults on West Yorkshire police officers in one year. Those figures are not deemed 100% accurate, but they certainly give an idea of the number of assaults going on. The West Yorkshire police figures, based on recorded crime, show that there were 1,729 recorded assaults on police officers from April 2017 to March 2018.
I am sure everybody would appreciate that those are very high figures. They mean that nearly five West Yorkshire police officers are assaulted every day. To me, that is completely and utterly unacceptable, and it is one reason why the Bill is so worthy and important.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman talks about recorded cases, but does he accept that in their normal line of duty, there is an acceptance that police officers are roughed up and pushed around? Much of that is not even taken into account.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The official figures and the recorded figures are likely to be the tip of an iceberg. Many instances will go unreported and unrecorded. Even though the figures are extremely high, they almost certainly understate the issue.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Are the five assaults a day generally carried out by five separate people or by the same people? If the Bill comes into law and the people committing the offences are imprisoned, will that be a relatively small number of frequent offenders or a large number of people who have done it once?
Philip Davies
As always, my hon. Friend raises a very good point. I hope later to deal with part of that issue, because there are persistent offenders who assault police officers time and time again. Even when they are found to have done it time and time again, the sentences that are imposed can be derisory. If there is more robust sentencing, it is blindingly obvious that the more criminals there are behind bars, the fewer criminals there are out on the streets committing crimes. That would certainly apply here. The more of these characters we can send to prison, the less chance there will be of police officers being assaulted. My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point.
New clause 1 mirrors the Bill with 12-month sentencing powers in magistrates courts and Crown courts. Of course, magistrates do not yet have 12-month sentencing powers for one offence. In reality, they would be left with just the six months they have now. I hope that one day that will change so that magistrates can sentence people to up to 12 months for all the offences we are talking about today.
I say to the Minister that we have promised magistrates for many years that we will increase their sentencing powers to 12 months. The law has been passed; it just has not been brought into effect. The Government have promised magistrates those extra powers for many years, and the Select Committee on Justice has reported on that and said that it should be done straight away. It would certainly help in relation to this Bill. I hope the Minister will reflect on the fact that we need to give magistrates those additional sentencing powers, not least because it is much cheaper to prosecute offences in the magistrates court than to take them to the Crown court.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I seek a small clarification. When the hon. Gentleman says that “we” have promised magistrates an extension of their sentencing powers for some time, does he mean we the Conservative party, we the Conservative Government, we the coalition Government or we collectively as a Parliament?
Philip Davies
All of the above. Labour introduced this power in legislation, but did not enforce it. The Conservative party has promised it in manifestos and still has not delivered. The previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, promised it to the Magistrates Association personally and still did not deliver it. I hope that at some point somebody, whichever side of the House they are on, keeps the promise they have made to magistrates, because both parties are guilty of promising something and not delivering it.
New clause 2 would—
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
Before my hon. Friend moves on to new clause 2, I want to raise a query about new clause 1. My reading of the Bill, particularly clause 3, is that it would cover an assault on a police officer. Does he not believe that prosecutors would look to charge under this Bill? Why is it necessary to amend the old legislation if the Bill will be available to a prosecutor in an appropriate case?
Philip Davies
Because the Police Act 1996 will still be on the statute book, so it will still be possible for people to be prosecuted under that Act. All that I am asking for is a common-sense new clause to even up the law. If we got this Bill, which says that the sentence should be up to 12 months, in statute, why on earth would we keep in law an Act that says that the maximum sentence for assaulting a police officer is six months? It makes no sense at all. My new clause would simply ensure that the law is tidied up. It is an inevitable consequence of passing this Bill, and I would hope that it is not particularly controversial, because it is simply about ensuring that the law is sensible. Otherwise we would have two separate laws, both supposedly dealing with the same thing and carrying different maximum sentences, which is the sort of thing that brings the law into disrepute.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I just want to clarify something. When my hon. Friend talks about an under-charging issue, does he mean that, in the example of an officer’s finger being severed, a more serious charge could have been brought—grievous bodily harm, I would imagine—that would have attracted a much higher sentence? Therefore, it may not be primary legislation that needs to be changed, but simply the charging practices of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Philip Davies
That is all very well in theory, and I am pretty sure that that would do the trick in an academic dissertation, but the problem is what we see in the real world time and again. I would be astonished if any Member could not think of an example of a criminal who had committed a serious offence being under-charged and prosecuted for a lesser offence. The reasons for that are numerous, but the biggest one is as follows.
This country supposedly does not have the American system of plea bargaining, but we do in reality. No matter how much the criminal justice system would deny it, we do have that system. The CPS will say that it is going to charge somebody with a serious offence, and the person will say, “I am going to plead not guilty to that.” The defence solicitor or barrister will no doubt then say, “I’ll tell you what, if you charge them with a lesser offence, my client will plead guilty.” So to avoid a trial or to save time or whatever, the CPS, which often feels overstretched, will say, “Oh, go on then. We will charge them for the lesser offence. It will not be the actual offence that they committed, but it will get them a criminal record and get us a guilty plea. It will tidy up our figures, and we will be able to say that we have brought somebody to justice.” The CPS will then consider that a great success. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the victim of the crime, who presumably is barely even considered in this box-ticking, target-driven agenda, sees the person who committed the offence against them being given a derisory sentence. That is what we see time after time. Anybody who thinks that we do not is not living in the real world, because it happens on a daily basis in the criminal justice system.
Although my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) is right that the responsibility clearly lies with the CPS to charge people appropriately for the offence they have committed—nobody disagrees with that principle—we know that that does not happen in practice. Therefore, even if the CPS does what it seems to do on a regular basis and charges people for a lesser offence, it is beholden upon us to ensure that the judge or magistrate has an appropriate sentence to give out when the most egregious cases come before the courts. In the example that I just gave, a police officer actually lost a finger but the defendant was charged with assaulting a police officer, and we cannot let it stand that the sentence can be just six months, or even just 12 months.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
In that example, my hon. Friend shines a light on the potential issue here. Under the circumstances that he has indicated, there is no doubt that the defendant should be charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. If, under my hon. Friend’s new clause, a defendant is charged with the maximum penalty of 12 months and pleads guilty, they will be entitled to a third off the sentence and would serve only half. In any event, the penalty would therefore be far less than he desires. The real issue here is whether the proper charging decision is made, because that is what makes the material difference to the sentence. This is about the difference between whether someone spends two months or three months in custody.
Philip Davies
I am delighted that my hon. Friend seems to be agreeing with amendment 9 and that he thinks that the sentence in the Bill should be more than 12 months, perhaps 24 months. I will take that as support, but I am unsure whether I have accurately deciphered what he was trying to say. However, he is right that the CPS should charge people for the appropriate offence, but the point is that it does not, and I can assure the House that things will be the same after this Bill comes into effect. The CPS will still prosecute people for offences that it knows will get a conviction. When someone goes before the courts for a particular offence, we must ensure that the judge or magistrate has the appropriate sentencing powers to make sure that justice is done properly and is seen to be done properly. At the moment, however, that is not the case.
I wish that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) was right. I wish that the utopia he describes, in which the CPS accurately prosecutes people for the serious offences that they have committed every single time, was the reality. If that were the case, there would probably be no need for this Bill, but the fact is that the CPS does not do that. We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be. My hon. Friend has much more expertise in the criminal justice system than me—[Interruption.] On the right side of it, obviously. I respect my hon. Friend’s opinion, but debates in this House on justice issues can often resemble a lawyer’s dinner party. Things can be very interesting, but most people in the real world do not really give a stuff about that. They want to know about what is happening on the ground, rather than what the legal profession would like us to think is happening, which are two very different things.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says about the reality of the prosecution system and how it operates on the ground, but this Bill is about a little more than just the legal mechanisms we want the Crown Prosecution Service to follow. It is about the signal we send out. It is about trying to change the culture. Right now, we have a situation in this country in which many people think it is okay to engage in this behaviour. Yes, we need to change the technicalities of the law, but we must send out a stronger signal on what is acceptable in society. There must be a change in culture, as well as in practice.
Philip Davies
I am not sure I agree. To be perfectly frank, I get rather tired of people passing legislation on Fridays just to send a signal. We could send a signal just by saying something, but we are in the business here of passing law. It would be a rather wasted opportunity if all we achieve today is sending a signal from this House that assaulting police officers and other emergency workers is a terrible thing. I do not want us just to send a signal; I want to see people who are guilty of these offences spend longer in prison. That is what I want to see: not a signal but a real, tangible difference. I am not sure that sending a signal will do the job. We will have achieved something when some of these terrible people end up with longer prison sentences, and that is what my amendments are designed to do.
In the case of the woman who caused a police officer to lose her finger, the maximum sentence on a guilty plea, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham intimated, is actually four months, even given the number of offences of assaulting other police officers. Of course, a maximum of only half the sentence would be served. So, actually, two months in prison is the maximum that person could face for assaulting numerous police officers, leading one of them to lose their finger. In this country we should be ashamed that that is the maximum sentence a court can impose on that person. In my opinion, and for many people in this country, that is a sick joke.
Again, as my hon. Friend said, two years is probably too little, but two years is certainly better than six months. Should the Crown Prosecution Service do what it does day in, day out and undercharge people, surely we must all agree that giving the courts the opportunity to sentence a person to two years in prison is better than the current situation. The purpose of my new clauses is to make sure we can guarantee that, by whichever route a person ends up in court for this offence, a more appropriate sentence can be handed out.
Another more recent example of why the amendments could be helpful is the case of Leroy Parry, who was convicted this week of biting a police officer. He was sentenced to 22 weeks in prison, despite having six previous convictions for assaulting police officers among his 42 previous offences. The police officer, who apparently needed blood tests and antibiotics after being bitten, said that the level of violence exhibited by Parry was the worst he had seen in more than 14 years in the police force.
Increasing the sentencing options for this offence would ensure that magistrates and judges can take the offence more seriously, and much bigger sentences could then quite rightly be handed down by the courts. We would no longer be tying the hands of magistrates and judges, who I am sure also feel frustrated when they cannot pass the sentence they would want to pass. It would mean the seriousness of Parliament to ensure higher sentences for those who assault the police would be recognised, and hopefully sentences, overall, would be higher as a consequence.
This is necessary because the figures are incredible. I asked several years ago how many previous convictions for assaulting a police officer someone had managed to rack up without being sent to prison for doing it again, and the answer showed that, in one year, a person with 36 previous convictions for assaulting a police officer had assaulted at least one more officer and still avoided being sent to prison altogether. By anyone’s standards, surely that is completely unbelievable and completely unacceptable. That is what we should aim to tackle with this Bill.
Such sentences do nothing to help the police, do nothing to deter criminals and do nothing to make our streets safer. If one of my amendments were to be accepted, it would at least assist in increasing the likely consequences of assaulting a police officer, which would hopefully deter some people or, at the very least, keep the culprits off our streets for longer.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Michael Tomlinson
I made exactly this point on Second Reading and in Committee. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have not been able to find a single other offence in which the sentence in a magistrates court is exactly the same as the sentence in the Crown court, and I hope to develop that point in due course if I am given the opportunity to make a speech.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As I said, he is an expert in this field. The fact that someone with his expertise cannot think of another offence that carries the same penalty in both courts says a great deal, so why would we do it in this Bill?
I hope the Minister is making profuse notes, because I feel I am scoring some runs here. I do not think many people would disagree if he were to say he is prepared to accept these new clauses. I do not think there would be many Divisions on them. That raises a question: if he will not do that, why does he think that this offence should be unique in the criminal justice system by carrying the same penalty in both the magistrates court and the Crown court, and why does he not believe that the Crown court should have powers for harsher sentencing, which happens, as we have just heard, in respect of every other offence we can think of? I hope the Minister will reflect on that during the debate and perhaps give us a positive response. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) said he mentioned this on Second Reading and the hon. Member for Rhondda said he hoped we would come back to this point on Report, so my amendment seeks to make sure that we do that.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
I am interested in this fascinating speech. Perhaps to prefigure some of the arguments that will be made from the Dispatch Box, let me say that one issue about increasing the sentence to 24 months is that we would, in effect, be saying that somebody who assaults an emergency worker or police officer receives not twice but four times the maximum sentence that would be received were the attack to be on an “ordinary” victim. Is there not a question of proportionality in terms of the relationship between the equality of citizens in general and their right to be protected as victims, and the special status of a uniformed officer, if it is suggested that an increment of four is better than that of two?
Philip Davies
The Minister makes a reasonable point, but he is working on the basis that the existing general sentencing for assault is right and should be the benchmark by which we judge everything else. My argument is that most people would consider that maximum sentence to be derisory, so we would at least be making this one appropriate. If the Minister wants to follow through on his point, he could then increase the maximum sentence for assaults on everybody else. He would be happy, because the approach would be proportionate, and I would be happy because we would have some tougher sentences on the statute book—everyone would be a winner. I hope that he is moving in the right direction. If we passed my new clauses and amendment today and then changed the other sentences, I would be doing cartwheels.
I shall discuss new clauses 4 to 6, 8 to 11, 13 to 16 and 18 together—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I can sense the disappointment in the Chamber; can you, Madam Deputy Speaker?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Just for clarification, no, I cannot sense the disappointment. The hon. Gentleman has just made a very wise statement and he has the House with him.
Philip Davies
As usual, Madam Deputy Speaker.
As I have said until I am blue in the face, I would like all sentences handed down by the courts to be served in full. At the very least, however, offenders should not automatically be released halfway through their sentence. That was a scandal—
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
I understand why the hon. Gentleman has tabled these measures, and particularly new clause 4, because figures released yesterday show that prisoners attacked officers 2,327 times in the last quarter of 2017 alone. A guard is being hit every hour in our prisons.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to this catastrophe in our prisons. It is appalling that our prison officers have to face that on an almost daily basis. We in this country and in this House should be ashamed of that. We should be ashamed that the people who commit those assaults on prison officers are not properly punished for doing so. When the last Labour Government introduced the law that automatically released every prisoner halfway through their sentence, it was a scandal. You were here then, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you probably recall that the then Conservative Opposition were apoplectic, as they should have been, about the Labour Government introducing automatic release for people who were halfway through their prison sentence.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), the then shadow Justice Secretary, made that particularly clear on Second Reading of the Bill that became the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. He said:
“We have said that there should be a policy of honesty in sentencing. The fight against crime depends on integrity in the criminal justice system and on courts that deliver swift, effective justice, with punishments appropriate to the crime and the criminal. In the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the Government introduced automatic release on licence halfway through the sentence for all determinate sentences of longer than 12 months. Combined with the early release scheme, this means that an offender sentenced to a year in jail is usually out after little more than five months. The policy amounts to a deliberate dishonesty. It damages the trust that victims and wider society place in the courts, and it encourages criminals to hold the system in contempt.”
If this were our Bill, we would introduce provisions to restore honesty in sentencing…We would ensure that convicted criminals served the full sentence handed down to them by the judge.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 79.]
That was magnificent, but since we got into government, there has been absolutely nothing.
We are still presiding over a system in which people who are sent to prison are automatically released halfway through their sentence, irrespective of whether they have assaulted a prison officer or not, of whether they have misbehaved in prison or not, and of whether they are still a threat to the public or not. They have to be released halfway through the sentence and that is an absolute disgrace. It defies belief that we in this House can sit here and allow that to continue. If any Member believes our constituents think that is an acceptable state of affairs, they are in cloud cuckoo land. People need to get out more if they think that that is what the public expect from the criminal justice system—it is an absolute scandal. We should be ashamed of the fact that the House is not doing anything about it. It is a recipe for disaster if early release is not linked to behaviour in our prisons, and it is wrong in principle to let everyone out early, regardless of their behaviour or concerns about their likely reoffending.
Perhaps the Government are not with me on that, despite having stood for this belief in the past, but my proposals would mean that prisoners who assaulted a prison officer would not be eligible for automatic release. That would be a minor consolation prize to offset the joke of our sentencing regime, and it would link release back to behaviour in prison in a small way.
To build on the point made by the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), I should point out that the House of Commons Library stated last year:
“There were 6,430 assaults on prison staff, 761 of which were serious. This was an 82% rise on the number of assaults on prison staff in 2006 and was a 40% increase from 2015.”
Even more worryingly, the Ministry of Justice’s most recent figures show:
“There were 7,828 assaults on staff, up 22% from the previous year. Serious assaults on staff reached 787 in the 12 months to September 2017, up 3% on the previous period. Assaults on staff in the latest quarter increased by 11%”,
as the hon. Gentleman said. According to the Ministry of Justice, in June 2017, there were 43,403 staff in Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service. Not all of them will have even come into contact with prisoners, and 8,758 were in the national probation service, but even taking the staffing figure at its highest, we still see a staggeringly high rate of assaults. The numbers have massively increased in the past 10 years, which coincides with people being automatically released halfway through their sentence irrespective of how badly they behave in prison. Someone does not need to be a rocket scientist to realise that if a criminal sees that they can get away with such behaviour yet still be released halfway through their sentence, it is not surprising that lots of people behave badly in prison.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend see this through the prism of the fact that consideration for early release should be seen as a privilege and that, if someone abuses it, the bottom line is that they should lose it?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. I am perhaps a bit more hardline—[Hon. Members: “No!”] When I was at school, those who behaved would be let out on time, but those who misbehaved would be kept in for longer. It seems to me that our prison system should reflect that. We should expect prisoners to behave well in prison. Those who do should serve the sentence handed out by the courts, but those who misbehave should serve longer. That is what I would like to see and, I think, what most of the public would like to see.
I certainly take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). If we are to allow people to be released early, that should be conditional on good behaviour in prison, rather than the automatic right that it is at the moment. That automatic right—the figures and the correlation are perfectly clear—is part of the reason behind the increasing number of assaults on prison officers, because there is no consequence for the prisoner.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
I know that my hon. Friend thinks that I am a bit of a lefty on many things, so he might be surprised to hear that I have a great deal of sympathy with many of his points, particularly his last one. Long Lartin Prison is in my constituency. When we say that we want to be tough on prisoners, we are really saying not that we need to be unreasonably tough, but that we are treating them how they should expect to be treated in the light of their behaviour. My hon. Friend is making some valid points.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend; this is a red letter day.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
The one issue that the hon. Gentleman missed out is the lack of prison officers. As the POA will tell him, the numbers are insufficient and they are going down because of the problems in our jails. We need to recruit more prison officers.
Philip Davies
Madam Deputy Speaker, you would rightly start to pull me up if I were to go down the rabbit hole that the hon. Gentleman is trying to take me down, as that would not be relevant, particularly to these measures. However, I think that everybody has accepted that there is a shortage of prison officers. To be fair to the Government, they have done a pretty good job of recruiting quite a lot of additional officers over a fairly short timescale. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I would say that his point is one with which everyone agrees, which is why the Government have done something to increase the numbers. Whether or not that is enough is a different question, but we should give the Government credit where it is due.
There are 21 assaults on prison staff each and every day, two of which are serious. Prison officers have a hard and dangerous job, and I am sick of hearing about the pathetic additions to sentences for prisoners who assault them. Members might be as shocked as I was to learn that, in 2015, the average number of extra days given to prisoners who assaulted prison staff was 16— absolutely ridiculous! I believe that if someone assaults a prison officer, they should immediately lose their right to automatic release. Let the message go out that the Government are on the side of prison officers, and that those who assault them can expect to be properly punished, not just given the derisory slap on the wrist that they are given at the moment.
I have spoken to the Minister about this, so I know that he is passionate about protecting our prison officers. If he wants to do something tangible to stop assaults on prison officers, he should accept my proposal, because that will make the biggest single difference to reduce the number of such assaults. It would make an enormous difference if criminals knew that they would no longer be allowed automatic early release.
My new clauses in this group relate to three categories of people. The first set—new clauses 4 to 6 and 8—relates to prisoners assaulting all emergency workers, as defined in the Bill. The second set—new clauses 9 to 11 and 13—relates to all prison officers and those acting in a similar capacity in prisons. The third, which is new clauses 14 to 16 and 18, relates just to prison officers. The measures were designed to give the House the maximum range to choose from so that we could select the most appropriate route. The provisions would stop prisoners from being released automatically or early from various types of prison sentences if they assaulted a relevant person during their sentences.
I think that new clauses 4 to 6 and 8, which cover all emergency workers, fit best with the Bill because, of course, prisoners can come into contact with health professionals and other emergency workers, such as police officers investigating subsequent offences. It seems to me that an assault on those people should also be covered. If Members feel that only assaults on prison staff should be covered, however, they can pick alternative new clauses, and if they think that only assaults on prison officers should be covered, new clauses 14 to 16 and 18 are available.
Any of those approaches would be better than the status quo. They would mean that prisoners serving sentences of less than 12 months in prison could not be released automatically after six months or less if they had perpetrated an assault while in prison against any of the people I have mentioned. Prisoners serving fixed-term sentences of more than 12 months would also not be eligible for automatic release following an assault. Finally, the proposals would stop those who assault a relevant person from being eligible for early release.
In an ideal world, this would all be happening anyway—it would just be a matter of common sense—but I fear that common sense was thrown out of our criminal justice system an awfully long time ago. I understand that those serving life sentences and indeterminate sentences for public protection will already have any assaults and the like considered by the Parole Board before their release. I certainly hope that assaults are treated as a good reason not to release anybody, and that they would be a bar to people being released as early as would otherwise be the case. Otherwise, Parole Board hearings would be a farce, although some might argue that many already are.
If somebody has assaulted a person inside prison, they are perfectly capable of doing so outside prison, which is another thing that the Parole Board must bear in mind before release, and another reason why we should not automatically release such people early. At a time when assaults seem to be on the increase, we need much tougher action to protect those who come into contact with prisoners. Prisoners are clearly in prison for a reason. It is quite hard to be sent to prison these days, so those who are there, especially if they are serving long sentences, either have already committed a significant crime, or are repeat offenders. That is the only way to get incarcerated these days. If such people thought that they would have to serve their full sentence, rather than just a derisory extra 16 days in prison, they might well think twice about assaulting those who work in prisons to look after them and keep order. Anything that would reduce the number of assaults would surely be welcomed, and this would be a very effective deterrent.
I do not intend to speak to the two amendments in the group that were tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda, as I am sure that he will do an excellent job of doing so, but I have added my name to them. They relate to spitting and sexual assault. I think we can all agree that spitting is absolutely disgusting and incredible dangerous, particularly to the emergency workers who face it. I appreciate that spitting already constitutes an assault, but I certainly see no harm in highlighting it separately, as the hon. Gentleman has. The West Yorkshire police federation says that spitting affected 21% of all police officers in the latest year, so the Minister should not underestimate how big a problem it is. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that sexual assault should be covered by the Bill—it would be perverse if it was not. Any assault, including sexual assault, should not be tolerated at all, and making this an aggravating factor is a welcome move. I hope that the Government will accept both the hon. Gentleman’s amendments.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I thought that I was going to follow him a little earlier, not least because he told me on the phone the other night that he was going to speak for 15 minutes, but we have loved every minute of it and inflation—[Interruption.] Yes, we were given a rather longer sentence than we anticipated. He is in favour of longer sentences—and paragraphs, clearly.
I will not go into the whole meaning of the Bill, as we are here today to discuss specific amendments. We are, after all, on Report. Before I go any further, I want to pay tribute to a significant number of Members on both sides of the House, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). I feel as if I am carrying the baton over the next stage, because this Bill very much started with her, so I want to pay tribute to her. In fact, there are Members in all parties in the House who support the legislation in broad terms. I hope that, by the end of today, we will have a Bill that is eminently suitable to go to the House of Lords and to be on statute book by the end of this year, preferably by the autumn so that the courts can start taking these matters more seriously. I will pay much fuller tribute later to the Ministers concerned depending on how they behave this morning. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Shipley for referring to my charm earlier; I am not sure whether he entirely carried the whole House at that point.
I want to speak to two amendments in my name. Amendment 2 adds the words, “including spitting” as a way of helping to define the concept of common assault or battery, which is in clause 1. There are three different types of spitting to which the law might refer. The first is at or on a person. The second is at or on property, such as on clothing. This matter has often come before the courts, but the outcomes of such cases tend not to be very satisfactory. None the less, there are instances where spitting on property could constitute criminal damage. The third category is spitting in the street, which was, until 1990, an offence carrying a £5 fine. Incidentally, the local authority in Waltham Forest and one other in, I think, Enfield now have £80 fines for spitting in the street—this is not spitting at anybody, but just spitting in the street. Interestingly, at the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese authorities were very keen to try to prevent this as a matter of good manners, and I think that we would all agree that it would be good to stop that here. However, that is not what this amendment is about. This is about spitting at a person.
It is interesting that the deliberate act of spitting at someone, for instance at a football match, is deemed a threat of further violence, demeaning the sport, and bringing the sport into disrepute. FIFA, for instance, counts it as violent behaviour, which can lead to a player being sent off. The Football Association in the UK expressly includes it as a sending-off offence. Indeed, the West Ham player, Arthur Masuaku, has only just finished a six-month ban for spitting. If Members watch the incident in that match, they will see that it was particularly disgusting and despicable. I think that every supporter of football would agree that the ban was wholly appropriate.
Section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 includes the statutory reference to common assault or battery, but it has no specific definition of what constitutes common assault. It is an old common law offence, which has been brought into statute law. In one sense, that is good, because it means that the courts can take cognisance of precedence and that they can look at a whole variety of different issues, but it does also mean that while the vast majority of people in this country would presume that deliberately spitting at another person constitutes assault, and there might have been some other physical element, which might be battery, it does not expressly say so in law.
By introducing a new offence of common assault or battery on an emergency worker, including all the emergency workers who are later defined in the Bill, we have effectively tried to bring that concept of common assault or battery from the Criminal Justice Act to apply to all spitting at emergency workers. The problem is that, as the statute does not expressly define spitting as being part of the offence of common assault or battery, there is anxiety in some circles that prosecuting authorities do not take the matter very seriously.
The truth is that there is a growing incidence of spitting at emergency workers. The West Midlands police, for instance, reported that in just one year—2016—there were 231 cases of police officers being spat at. Some of the instances are quite horrific. A few years ago, I was supporting legislation to ban foxhunting. There was a fundraising dinner in Cardiff for the Labour party, and many people who opposed foxhunting decided to come and protest outside. When they saw me arrive, from about 300 yards away, they decided to chase me down the street. The police bundled me into the back of a blacked-out van to protect me, and they locked the door. The slightly unfortunate thing was that they forgot that I was in the van and, four hours later, I was not able to get back out of the van. It felt as if I had been given a longer sentence than many others.
Dr Drew
I think I am correct in saying that these were supporters of foxhunting, rather than people who objected to foxhunting. Does my hon. Friend accept that one problem at the moment is the lack of clarity over spit hoods? Some forces have introduced them; others have not. This does not help the situation when arrests are being made. Does he agree with that?
Chris Bryant
Yes, clearly there is an issue. It is entirely appropriate that different police forces should have autonomous powers to be able to take these issues in the direction that they want. Different police forces face different challenges at particular times, then there is the issue of resources as well.
It is absolutely true that this is a growing issue. One problem is that, because police officers may sort of have got used to this behaviour, other emergency workers are now being treated in exactly the same way. Let me read one case from the east midlands last November:
“A man spat at a newly recruited police woman 24 times while under arrest in the back of an ambulance. The handcuffed man laughs as he spits at the officer who warned him he was being recorded on her body camera. He repeatedly targets her face as he sat on the bed next to a paramedic. The police woman was in her first year on the job when she became a victim of the vile attack.”
I think that every single one of us wants to send out an absolutely clear, unambiguous message from this House—I know that the hon. Member for Shipley does not like sending out messages, but sometimes declaratory legislation has an effect as well—that spitting at emergency workers is not on and that the full force of the law should be used against those who do it.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman: that is exactly what we do want to send from this House today. If he will forgive me, there has to be a slight torsion if I am to get in the point that I want to make, but it does follow the point that he has just made. I had an officer in my constituency who was giving first aid to someone whom he had to arrest, and he was spat at repeatedly while doing so—similar to the circumstances faced by the person to which the hon. Gentleman referred. When the case finally got to court, it was deemed that the officer had not been acting in his capacity as a police officer when he was applying first aid—that was beyond his remit—which seems to be an extraordinary situation to be in. As courts can look at our proceedings, may I invite the hon. Gentleman, as the proposer of this Bill, to confirm for the record that, in clause 2(b), we are seeking a wide interpretation of an emergency worker acting in the exercise of their functions as such a worker, as it is ridiculous that a court could rule on such a basis.
Chris Bryant
To be honest, when the law behaves in such a pernickety way as to be able to provide a ludicrous—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who has some legal expertise, is laughing at the idea of lawyers being pernickety. I know that that is sort of their job, but when we end up with loopholes being abused in such a way, the law ends up looking like an ass. It is therefore incumbent on us sometimes to draw legislation as widely as possible to ensure that all such offences are caught. That has been the deliberate intention of the Bill.
Incidentally, I hope that in drafting the Bill, with the assistance of Government draftspeople and ministerial help, we have managed to land on a piece of legislation that is more effective than the parallel legislation that exists in Scotland. Scotland may, in fact, want to look at our legislation and reshape its own law to reflect this.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the Bill is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the instances where a court can find that aggravating circumstances apply? The last thing that we want is for a court to say that an incident is not covered by the Bill and therefore cannot find it to be an aggravated offence, because the perpetrator might then receive a lesser sentence than they would now.
Chris Bryant
There are two aspects to the Bill. The first is the offence of common assault, which I think is now drawn in such a way that the courts will be able to circumvent some of the arguments that have thus far been used to prevent any kind of successful prosecution. The second aspect relates to the aggravated offence, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we have not included every single offence in the world. If amendment 3 is accepted this morning, I think that we will have included all offences that could relate to emergency workers.
The Minister was right to say that it is important that we take cognisance of the fact that, with this Bill, we are saying that emergency workers are going to be treated slightly differently in law from the rest of the wider public. It is not that I want to create great hierarchies in society, with some people being more important than others; it is that emergency workers are suffering these attacks and assaults because they are emergency workers, and that places a greater onus on us to ensure that they have the protections that they need.
I return to amendment 2 and the question of whether spitting is common assault. The Sentencing Council has in recent years looked at whether spitting increases the culpability and seriousness of the offence, and it removed spitting from each of those categories in 2012. Quite a lot of magistrates and judges have now started to say that this is one of the primary reasons that there has been a deflation in the number of successful prosecutions and in the sentences that are handed down. I regret the fact that spitting was removed by the Sentencing Council and hope that it will revisit that decision in the near future. I hope that the Minister might also be able to say something about how we can ensure that the courts take spitting seriously as a part of common assault offences.
There is an argument that putting the words “including spitting” in the Bill could mean that there is a danger that the courts in other incidents of common assault might say, “Well, it doesn’t include those words, so Parliament intends that not to include spitting.” I am guessing that the Minister may make that argument. If so, I am quite happy to listen to his point. It may well be that we will not need to divide the House on this, but I want to ensure that the courts are clear that common assault could involve merely spitting.
Alex Chalk
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, in which he is rightly drawing attention to the heinous act of spitting, which is upsetting and completely unacceptable. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service already can and does charge people with spitting under the offence of common assault. I have prosecuted it myself, and I am aware that there is a case—not ancient—where someone was jailed for 21 weeks for exactly that. We should not gull ourselves into thinking that we do not have that scope already. The key thing is to ensure that this offence is properly prosecuted when it should be.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is always a delight to have a lawyer in the House, but not too many, eh? [Interruption.] I think I have carried the House with that one.
The hon. Gentleman does, however, make a serious point. I tabled the amendment simply so that we could have this debate and the message goes out completely unambiguously from the House that merely spitting—I use the word “merely” legalistically; in other words, spitting alone—can constitute a common assault. That is true of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, and spitting at an emergency worker of any kind should constitute an assault under this Bill.
My other amendment—amendment 3—relates to sexual assault. The major part of the Bill introduces an aggravated offence; that is to say that the Bill lists a series of different offences that, when perpetrated against an emergency worker, will be considered to be aggravated. When I drew up the Bill, I was primarily thinking of physical violence towards emergency workers. But the truth is that, since I have been working on the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax and I have received lots of representations, particularly from health service workers, about the sexual assault of ambulance workers, nurses, mental health nurses, doctors and others. One difficulty, both for the Government and for us, has been that these statistics have never been gathered by NHS Protect, which no longer exists anyway. However, the numbers of such incidents reported by the trade unions working on this matter are quite dramatic, particularly given that the figures show increases.
Since 2012, such incidents are up 143% in the East of England ambulance service; up 40% in London; up 133% in the North West ambulance service; and up 1500% in Northern Ireland. Incidents have increased by 400% in South Central ambulance service since 2013; by 100% in the South East Coast ambulance service since 2015; by 400% in Yorkshire ambulance service since 2013; and by 500% in the West Midlands ambulance service since 2012. I wanted to say that it is true that these are not large numbers, but there have been 238 reported cases of sexual assaults on ambulance workers in the East of England ambulance service. Parliament has to take cognisance of such figures and we have to act.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point. This also happens to female police officers, as graphically described to the all-party parliamentary group on alcohol harm, which did a report on the issue. One senior officer said to us, “If I take a team through a club at night, by the time we have gone from one end of the club to the other, the female officer will have been felt up several times.” That is totally unacceptable.
Chris Bryant
It is totally unacceptable; more than that, think about the effect that it has on emergency workers. It destroys their sense of self-worth, and means that they have to summon up courage when they go to work and often live in fear when they are at work. It also means that additional resources may be needed. Of course we have to deal with this issue.
I have a wider set of concerns around alcoholism. My mother was alcoholic and it killed her in the end. I worry that we sometimes use legislation too readily to deal with such issues. It is depressing that, in 100 years, the only thing that we have really come up with to deal with alcoholism is the 12-step process, which does not work for a lot of people who find it difficult to believe in another being above and beyond them. I hope that we will one day have far, far more significant research into what causes alcoholism and how we help people out of it, but the truth is that we will continually have to address the role of alcohol in fuelling violence and sexual violence, particularly against young women.
Fiona Bruce
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that, because it is correct that alcohol plays a large part in assaults on emergency workers. Does he agree, therefore, that, while welcoming this Bill, we need to look further to address the issue of cheap alcohol as an underlying key cause of many of these assaults?
Chris Bryant
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. All too often, in some of our towns and villages, it is far too easy to get very cheap alcohol, and vast quantities of it. Under-age people are growing up with the expectation that they will able not just to get half a pint of cider on a Friday night but to get a whole bottle of vodka, doing themselves irreparable damage. I have been doing a bit of work on traumatic brain injury of late, and in particular how it affects the criminal justice system. It is depressing that people who get violent after alcohol will often take enormous risks with their own personal safety or will get violent with others. The brain injuries that can result from alcohol develop especially between the ages of 14 and 21, when the executive function of the brain, which sits largely at the front of it, has not yet fully developed. The damage that is done is then seen in the criminal justice system, because we have thousands and thousands of people in our prisons who have brain injuries that were never properly looked at by medics and dealt with.
As the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, it would be bizarre not to include sexual assault when we are looking at other areas of assault. I know that the Government have been reluctant about this and have said that we want to treat sexual assault differently, but I think it is better for us to treat it in the same terms. Alcohol Concern recently said that between a third and a half of all emergency service people who responded to their research had suffered sexual harassment or abuse at the hands of intoxicated members of the public. Over half of ambulance service workers reported that they had been the victim of intoxicated sexual harassment or assault, and 41% of police had been sexually harassed by drunken people.
I do not want to pretend that legislation, of itself, solves a problem. That is true of the whole Bill, and I will say a little more about that when we get to Third Reading. After all, if legislation, of itself, ended offending behaviour, we would have no murder, no theft and so on. However, we need to send out a clear message that trying to touch up emergency workers, make inappropriate advances to them, or make even more advanced forms of sexual approach is wholly inappropriate behaviour. It prevents emergency workers from doing their job properly, undermines morale, and makes it more difficult for us to lead a safe life. That is why I very much hope that the Government will signify, first, on amendment 2, that they accept that spitting is part of common assault or battery; and, secondly, that sexual assault should be included as an aggravated offence.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Let the lawyers’ dinner party commence! It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—I will say a few words about him in a moment—but an even greater pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I fear that he credits me with greater expertise than I possess, but there are real experts in this area in the Chamber—other lawyers. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Witney (Robert Courts) and for Torbay (Kevin Foster). There may well be others I have not named who have expertise. [Interruption.]
With regard to the hon. Member for Rhondda, who has just shouted across the Chamber from a sedentary position, it is a great pleasure to speak on his Bill. I congratulate him on the work that he has done, as has the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). I myself piloted a private Member’s Bill that fell at the final hurdle, Third Reading, so I know how difficult it is to get the balance right in order to ensure that such proposals become law. I therefore pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for all his work behind the scenes and in this place. He put me on the Bill Committee—I think I was a last-minute substitute, or perhaps just the last person to fill a space, but it was a great pleasure to have served on that Committee.
I will not speak at great length, but I want to elaborate on the points that I made on Second Reading and in Committee. In particular, I will speak to new clause 2 and amendment 9. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, because I had tabled an amendment framed in almost identical terms to his in relation to extending the sentence in Crown court from 12 months to 24 months. Very bravely, two weeks later I withdrew that amendment, so I am delighted that he has tabled it and that we have the opportunity to debate it today.
As I said on Second Reading and in Committee, under clause 1(2), a person guilty of an offence could potentially be sentenced to the same amount of custody whether the case is tried in the magistrates court or in the Crown court. The clause says:
“A person guilty of an offence to which this section applied is liable…on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months”
and “on conviction on indictment”—that is, in a trial in a Crown court in front of a judge and jury—is also subject
“to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months”.
That is odd, which is why I raised it. I have done some research into this—my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley teed me up—and I cannot find a single example of another Bill that sets out exactly the same sentence for an offence tried in the magistrates courts as in the Crown court. We are breaking new ground, and it is therefore worth questioning whether that is appropriate.
I have challenged myself to find another offence against the person—assault-type—offence where the sentence in the Crown court is only 12 months. This where the expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham comes in. What do we as parliamentarians do when we come into the House of Commons first thing? We go and have a cup of coffee or a cup of tea in the Tea Room, and there I met my hon. Friend and challenged him to come up with another similar offence where the sentence in the Crown court was one of 12 months, and he too could not find one. I found two examples that may be relevant.
Rory Stewart
We have returned to the subject that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) raised. Fundamental to this is not the question of the precedent in the Crown court but the relationship between the maximum sentence that can be imposed for an assault on an ordinary member of the public, who has equal status as a victim, and the maximum sentence that can be imposed for an assault on an emergency worker. At the moment, the Bill proposes that somebody who assaulted an emergency worker could receive a maximum sentence of double the one that would be given in relation to an ordinary victim. Is my hon. Friend really proposing that it is appropriate that somebody should be punished four times as much for assaulting an emergency worker as an ordinary member of the public?
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention, which gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to both him and the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, who have engaged in this legislation and spoken personally to me about this issue.
No, I am not saying that. I am not proposing to press the amendment to a vote or say that the Bill should fall, or fail, merely because it states that the sentence should be 12 months rather than 24 months, 36 months or any other period. I am merely saying that the Bill is breaking new ground. It struck me as curious that we are passing legislation that has a sentence of only 12 months in the Crown court. I welcome the Minister’s intervention and understand entirely what he is saying. He has worked tirelessly to ensure that the Bill passes through this place, and the last thing I would want to do is to put that in jeopardy. That is why I have been determined not to press the amendment. However, it is right to air the matter and debate it on the Floor of the House.
Chris Bryant
Let me explain briefly why we ended up with this process. If we had included only the aggravated offence element of the Bill, then there would have been no greater sentence for common assault. It seems to me that two years for common assault where there has been no lasting physical damage to the person might be thought by many people to be excessive. That is why we ended up with two tools for prosecuting authorities. I am sure that they would usually go for the second where they wanted to get a sentence of more than 12 months.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. People who know me know that I do not want sentence inflation. In fact, I disagree fundamentally with the approach of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. I do not think we should be locking up ever more people, and that is where I agree fundamentally with Ministers and the hon. Member for Rhondda; I see entirely his thought process. Locking ever more people up is counterproductive. I want to see more people rehabilitated and fewer people committing crimes in the first place. That will help the very victims whom my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley passionately wants to defend.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
My hon. Friend echoes my thoughts exactly on the sentencing of prisoners. It might be helpful for him to look at the marvellous report prepared by the Justice Committee last year on the position of magistrates. I wonder whether magistrates should be given greater sentencing powers and whether we should worry less about differences between different types of court, and instead focus on what the offender has actually done.
Michael Tomlinson
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, as she always does. I look forward to her speech.
Michael Tomlinson
If she is not going to make a speech, I am very disappointed. I look forward to her further interventions and certainly to her further work in the area of justice, because she speaks powerfully for it and is absolutely right in this case.
There are other examples of sentences in the Crown court where there is no penalty of imprisonment, but those fall into a different category. They are generally regulatory offences—exciting offences such as Town and Country Planning Act offences and the like, which get lawyers very excited and passionate, but perhaps no one else. In my research I could find no other equivalent, so it is worth pausing and reflecting on the fact that the Bill breaks new ground in that respect. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham came up with one other example of where there is a sentence of two years—he will probably dwell on that in greater length and with greater expertise than I ever could—in relation to contempt of court and the like, but again, that is slightly different.
We are breaking new ground in the Bill by having the same sentence for the magistrates court and the Crown court. However, in case anyone has not been following closely, I add that clause 1(4) clarifies that until section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is brought into force, the sentence will be six months rather than 12 months in the magistrates court. I am sure that that is part of the reason for the difference in sentences.
That brings me neatly on to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) made and to new clause 3 and amendment 11. I welcome the opportunity to touch briefly on both. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and I disagree fundamentally on many things about criminal justice and the criminal justice system, but he is right to say that there should be honesty in sentencing—we probably believe that for equal and opposite reasons, to be clear. He is also right to point out that the sections of the 2003 Act that would give magistrates this sentencing power have not been commenced.
One of two things should happen. Either we in this place should say that we want magistrates courts still to have the power to give sentences of six months and no more, or we should say that it is absolutely right to extend magistrates’ sentencing powers from six months to 12 months. If that is the position—from the earlier exchange, I think that respective Governments have held that view—we should get on and do it. I know that some Members in the Chamber who have sat or currently sit on the Justice Committee have looked at that issue, and I want to hear from them in greater detail. New clause 3 is also attractive for that reason, because it draws attention once again to the fact that the law supposedly passed in 2003 is not yet on the statute book. If we think it is the right thing to do, we should get on and do it.
Philip Davies
Does my hon. Friend agree that it seems rather bizarre and pointless for the Government to agree to a piece of legislation that gives magistrates the power to send someone to prison for 12 months for a particular offence and then not give magistrates the power to send someone to prison for 12 months?
Michael Tomlinson
My hon. Friend comes back to his point, I suspect, about being honest and straightforward. We either think it is the right thing to do, in which case we should do it, or we do not, in which case we should say so, not do it and stick with the system we currently have.
I do not want to obstruct the safe passage of the Bill, but I thought it important to raise those issues and potential anomalies, and to acknowledge the fact that this Bill is breaking new ground.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Report stage of this Bill. It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), who has been a friend of this campaign from the very start. He raised a number of interesting points, and I look forward to hearing Ministers’ response. We have greatly benefited from his legal expertise throughout this process, and I am grateful to him for that. I am grateful to Members across the House who have recognised the role that I have played in initiating this campaign, but it has been a tremendous team effort, and I will thank a number of people on Third Reading.
I rise specifically to speak in support of amendment 3, which would add sexual assault to the list of assault charges in clause 2, so that it would become an aggravating factor within sentencing if sexual assault were inflicted on an emergency service worker. Having started this campaign with the Police Federation following the experience I had with a single-crewed police officer—a tale I have shared in the Chamber on several occasions—one of the deciding factors in broadening the campaign to cover more emergency service workers was having met female paramedics who had been subject to sexual assaults while on duty. That is why I am so keen to see this addition made to the Bill.
A very clear pattern emerged of female paramedics having to deal with male patients who are often under the influence of drugs or alcohol, as we have heard, in towns and city centres and predominantly on Friday and Saturday nights. I am grateful to Stacey Booth, an organiser with GMB—which I must declare is my trade union—from West Yorkshire who introduced me to a number of paramedics who recounted their experiences, which were worryingly similar.
One of those women was Sarah Kelly, who I am delighted has joined us in Parliament this morning, after taking the brave decision to share her story in the hope that it would help us to fix the broken system that has let her down. On some occasions, it was a combination of the patient being under the influence of drugs, alcohol or both, with a diminished capacity to determine right from wrong, and they took advantage of the situation, sexually assaulting a lone female paramedic in the back of an ambulance. On other occasions it was even more sinister: sexual predators, who have fine-tuned this approach, engineer a situation where they are alone in an ambulance with a female paramedic, with the specific aim of sexually assaulting them.
The risk to ambulance staff is heightened because, unlike the police, who have access to a certain degree of information about a person’s previous criminal history prior to attending an incident, the ambulance service does not. I have met female paramedics who have been dispatched to the address of someone who has only recently sexually assaulted them, pending a court appearance, which must be against all safeguarding and legal advice.
Sarah has led the way in Yorkshire, seeking to work with her trade union and her employer, the Yorkshire ambulance service, to implement the necessary changes from a grassroots level—to accurately report and record such attacks, follow up with support and advice in order to secure a conviction and to build up the data required to put protections in place so that unnecessary risks do not have to be taken in future. I commend her efforts. As we have reflected on many times over the course of the Bill’s journey, the reason why we have to go that bit further on protections for emergency service workers is that we are the ones who ask them to run towards danger and persevere with individuals who seek to do them harm, because they simply cannot walk away.
Like other paramedics, Sarah, having been sexually assaulted by the perpetrator, had to continue to persevere with him in the back of the ambulance until they arrived at hospital, first and foremost because he needed medical attention, and she could not walk away or escape him. We owe it to Sarah to make this amendment a reality in law. She is not alone in her experience as a paramedic, nor are paramedics the only emergency service workers to be exposed to this particularly vile manifestation of assault, so I urge all colleagues to lend their support to amendment 3 and add it to the Bill.
I also support amendment 2, to which I have added my name, and I will return more specifically to the hideous act of spitting when I speak to amendments 4, 5 and 6. I am also sympathetic to a great deal of the work done by the hon. Member for Shipley, and I agree with a number of the points that he outlined in his new clauses. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the debate.
Alex Chalk
It is such a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). She is a truly passionate defender of the interests of police officers, and she does that with great skill. I pay tribute to her and to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).
I have a few observations, building on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. In his powerful submission he said that it is important that police officers—I know there are some in the Public Gallery—receive justice, and that that justice is not “a sick joke”. However, we must also ensure that we do not inadvertently replace one sick joke with another.
In my experience as a prosecutor, the biggest injustice for police officers was along the following lines. A police officer attends the scene of a serious robbery, for example, and he or she makes an arrest. During the course of that arrest, the defendant spits at the police officer, in an extremely upsetting and unpleasant incident. The defendant is taken to the police station, where he is subsequently charged with robbery and with assaulting a police constable in the execution of his duty. The case then comes to court, and the defendant says to the prosecutor, through his solicitor, “Alright. I will plead guilty to the robbery”—that is technically a more serious offence and punishable with life imprisonment—“but do me a favour and drop the offence of assaulting a PC.” A lazy prosecutor—this point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley—might say, “Oh for goodness’ sake. Let us carve this up. He is going to get a custodial sentence of two to three years for this unpleasant robbery. Is it really worth proceeding with the charge of assaulting a PC?”
What should happen in those circumstances? A conscientious and decent prosecutor would speak to the officer and say, “This is what is being proposed. What are your thoughts about it?” If in those circumstances the officer says, “I want justice to be done. I want this individual to have on their record not just that they are a robber, but that they have assaulted a police officer”, it would be wrong for the prosecution not to proceed with that charge and for justice not to be done. A prosecutor should already take into account the feelings of the victims, and I suggest that it would be in breach of their duty as a prosecutor not to proceed in such circumstances, and it would be a failed assessment of the public interest. In my experience, where those decisions have gone wrong and a case has been dropped, police officers rightly feel that their interests have not been taken into account.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is speaking specifically about police officers, but there is already an existing offence regarding police officers in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861—a rather elderly piece of legislation. However, there is no similar provision for other emergency workers.
Alex Chalk
That is absolutely right. I was using that example to make a point, but whether we are talking about a police officer or an emergency worker, if this Bill becomes an Act—I would entirely support that—the principal potential for injustice is not the absence of legislation used to arrest, prosecute and convict an individual; it is where a prosecutor might make the wrong decision to drop a charge because, in an erroneous assessment of the public interest, he or she decides that it is not worth the candle. That is critical.
The second potential area of injustice is wrongful or erroneous charging. The example given was of a police officer who attends the scene of an alleged crime and her finger is bitten off. An offence for that already exists—causing grievous bodily harm with intent—and the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. If the defendant was convicted, Sentencing Council guidelines suggest that he or she should receive between nine and 16 years’ imprisonment.
Why do I make that point? Let us suppose the defendant is inexplicably charged with assaulting a PC—maximum sentence six months. Under the current position, the defendant would plead guilty and those six months would be reduced to four, because a third of the sentence would be docked. He would then serve half that sentence, which is two months. That is the maximum penalty. It is vanishingly rare that anyone ever gets the maximum penalty, but let us suppose someone does in this case and receives two months. Under the new regime, he would have a maximum sentence of 12 months, but we take off four because of the guilty plea, so the sentence is down to eight months. He will then serve four months, which is a bit more.
The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley would make the maximum sentence 24 months, but let us look at what would happen in practice. If the defendant pleads guilty, 24 months is reduced to 16 months, and he will then serve half of that. We must be careful about this. The net effect is simply that the sentence would go from a maximum of two months in custody to eight months, even with my hon. Friend’s amendment. The true area of injustice is not the absence of the offence; it is when a prosecutor makes the daft decision not to charge someone with the appropriate offence. Of course I support the Bill, but we must keep our eye on the real areas of injustice, which are upstream.
Finally, in my experience, police officers, and perhaps, in future, emergency workers, will take umbrage at the fact that if a defendant is convicted of , for example, a robbery, even if the court says, “Right. That’s it. Two years for the robbery and four months for assaulting a PC”, those sentences will invariably run concurrently, and a police officer could be left thinking, “What on earth was the point of that?”
Chris Bryant
That is another reason for structuring the Bill in this way. All too often, the courts might have borne in mind the fact that an offence was against an emergency worker when sentencing, but that might be completely unknown to the emergency worker. The mere fact that, because of the Bill that aggravating factor must be stated in court, will be of some comfort to the victims.
Alex Chalk
That is why I am prepared to support the Bill. It sends an important signal that I hope police and emergency workers will welcome. It is right that such an offence should be on that person’s record. My simple note of caution is that, in my experience, the areas of injustice come from wrong charging decisions and the wrongful exercise of discretion on the doorsteps of court.
Michael Tomlinson
At the start of his speech my hon. Friend mentioned the disgrace of sentencing, which he said was a joke or a scandal or whatever. I want to ask about honesty in sentencing—he is coming on to that point. Can we have honesty in sentencing without having ever more inflation in the sentences that are handed down? My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) might be right in saying that we should have honesty in sentencing, but the net result need not be that people are locked up for an ever longer time. We need better communication about what happens with the examples given of a third of a sentence being knocked off and then another half. If the public understood that, they might well get behind such a measure and support it.
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, and we must ensure credibility, understanding of, and basic confidence in the criminal justice system. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley makes a pertinent point about what people feel if someone gets an eight-year sentence but are out in four years, and probably less. I accept that that causes concern, but it cannot seriously be suggested that we in this country are soft on imprisonment. In the United Kingdom we imprison around 95,000 people, but in Germany the figure is closer to 60,000, as it is in France. Of course there is an issue of perception, but it would be a great mistake for the message to go out from this debate that we are soft on imprisonment because nothing could be further from the truth. The UK imprisons more per capita than any other western European country.
The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) raised a point about sexual offences, and it is appalling to think that an ambulance technician or paramedic who goes to a nightclub, for example, to try to give first-aid to somebody who has been assaulted on a dance floor, might be sexually assaulted. If she has been sexually assaulted—let us be honest, it is probably a “she”—there is an offence under section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 that has a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. It would be a very curious case if I, as a prosecutor, were faced with those facts—if a defendant put his hand up an ambulance worker’s skirt in a context where she is trying to provide first aid to an individual—and the CPS then said, “Do you know, we have this new offence, so we are not going to bother with the Sexual Offences Act, section 3, which carries the maximum penalty?” There is a risk that that ambulance worker would say, “What on earth is going on here? Why are they going for the easy option?”
Chris Bryant
However, the truth is that now, large numbers of ambulance workers never bother to report an incident because they feel that it will not be taken seriously. All too often, they have a sort of message from society, the law and prosecuting authorities that somehow or other, this is sort of part of their job. That is why it is important that we say, very firmly, “It is not part of their job and there should be prosecutions.”
Alex Chalk
We should say it firmly, and if I may say, no one can say it more firmly and eloquently than the hon. Gentleman. That is great, but we have to be chary of using legislation to send a message. I do not have any difficulty with doing it—we are doing that and it is absolutely fine—but there is a risk of one sick joke being replaced by another. I would feel very aggrieved if my daughter, say, was an ambulance worker, and a defendant was charged with what might be perceived to be an easier and lesser offence in circumstances where if the same thing happened, for the sake of argument, to one of the nightclub’s patrons who was not an emergency worker, the defendant might be charged under section 3 of the Sexual Offences Act. We rely on prosecutors using their judgment, and I am sure that they will continue to do so, but my simple point is that this has the greatest scope for injustice, and it should not be allowed to happen.
Kevin Foster
I am finding my hon. Friend’s speech very interesting and thought-provoking. Does he agree that Parliament can make its intentions clear on this subject by making this an aggravating factor in the offences that he refers to, and not by looking to incorporate it as such into this offence? Of course, the intention may well be common assault, but this is about making it an aggravating factor in existing sexual offences and not about saying to prosecutors, “You went for this offence when you should have gone for the offence under the 2003 legislation.”
Alex Chalk
I take that point entirely.
My final point is about the issue of grievous bodily harm with intent, which most right-thinking people would think is the appropriate offence to charge someone with who had bitten a police officer’s finger, but a middle ground exists between grievous bodily harm with intent and common assault, which currently has a maximum sentence of six months—that is, assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Why do I mention that? As has been intimated, common assault is for offences that leave no mark at all. If any offence leaves a mark that, in the language of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, is more than merely transient or trifling—in plain English, that is reddening of the skin—the defendant can be charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, whether the victim is an emergency worker or not, with a maximum penalty of five years. That would mean, once the discount for an early guilty plea is taken off, that someone could be inside for 20 months maximum.
This is my central point: let us support this Bill and let us send out the message that attacks on our emergency workers are heinous, that they are not to be tolerated and that the law should come down like a ton of bricks. However, let us also not forget that getting justice means selecting the offence so that the punishment will fit the crime—
Alex Chalk
Just before I finish my peroration, I give way to the hon. Lady.
Holly Lynch
The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly powerful speech and raising some really interesting issues. For me, when we are looking at how we can make a difference in this area, our role as legislators means that we are in some ways limited in how we intervene in the other areas of injustice that he has raised. My question to him, using his legal background and expertise, is this: once we have done our bit by amending the legislation—that will go some way to addressing this problem—how do we appropriately intervene to address the other areas of injustice that he also outlined?
Alex Chalk
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. It would be a very dark day indeed if Members of Parliament in this place were effectively directing independent prosecutors how to exercise their discretion—I know she is not suggesting that for a second—so we have to tread extremely carefully. Ultimately, when a prosecutor decides which charge to choose, they will have to weigh two things: first, sufficiency of evidence—is there sufficient evidence to make it more likely than not that a jury properly directed would convict?—and secondly, is it in the public interest? They have to weigh certain factors in considering the public interest, ranging from the likely sentence at the end of a conviction to protection of the public, and all sorts of things. What we say in this Chamber, however, is capable of forming part of that public interest. If we send the message out that we expect condign punishment, to use a faintly pretentious expression, to be visited on those who assault our emergency workers, that factor can properly be weighed into the mix when prosecutors decide—in the circumstances of the emergency worker who attends the nightclub or the police officer who has their finger bitten off—what offence to choose. The message will ring out from this Chamber that we expect our protectors to be protected.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
It is a great honour to speak in this important debate and it has been nice to hear legal experts making some very important points.
In March, I received a letter from the Bedfordshire police and crime commissioner explaining why the Bill is so important to protect our emergency workers. In Bedfordshire, a police officer who has been assaulted is contacted by a member of the senior team within 72 hours of the assault. Sadly, such calls are a weekly event. Some 24,000 police officers were assaulted in 2016-17, as were more than 70,000 NHS workers and staff in England alone. Assaults on emergency workers should not be viewed as an occupational hazard. While some judges will add an additional penalty if an assault on an officer is proven in court, that is not automatic. CPS judges have historically viewed an assault in the course of arrest as to some extent just part of the job. We must not tolerate that any longer.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very good speech and important points. He is right that some people seem to accept the situation, so as well as this being a matter for legislation, do we not also need to change the whole culture?
Mohammad Yasin
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need to change the culture in this country because it is currently not acceptable.
We must put legislation in place to guarantee that a tough line will be taken on anyone who assaults an emergency worker. This must extend to spitting—a disgusting and aggressive attack—and sexual assault. The regional Crown prosecutor for Bedfordshire advises officers and staff to give the same amount of attention to their own witness statements as to those of other victims, and to provide personal impact statements to the court. The chief constable of Bedfordshire police has agreed to supply a supplementary personal statement in the event of any serious assault, detailing its impact on the force and colleagues, to add weight to the argument for the maximum penalty. However, such good practice is weakened if there is not legislation to back it up. That is why this Bill is so important and why I support it.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this very important debate and to follow so many knowledgeable and impassioned speeches. I join every other Member in paying tribute to the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who have campaigned for so long to bring forward this Bill, which I entirely support.
I will in due course speak to some of the amendments and new clauses, but I wonder whether I might be permitted to say a few words about my general support for the Bill, simply because I have not yet had the opportunity to address this matter. I simply would like to say—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has explicitly told the House what he is about to say. He would probably have got away with it if he had not been so explicit—since we are in this dinner party of lawyers atmosphere, I had better be careful, too, to live up to the name of lawyer. He cannot be general at the moment—he can be so on Third Reading—but this group does, of course, cover an enormous range of matters, and I am quite sure he will be in order in addressing them.
Robert Courts
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you rightly said, had I simply said what I intended to say—that we all owe a debt of gratitude to our emergency workers in the police, the ambulance service and everywhere else, and that it is important that they have the full weight of the law behind them—without preannouncing it, I would perhaps have finished that part of my speech by now.
As others have pointed out, there are some anomalies in the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) said, its sentencing provisions are unusual. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), I have prosecuted these offences and others like it, and it is strange to have the same sentence on indictment as for summary offences. Broadly put, anyone charged with an either-way offence can choose between a summary trial, which is quicker and relatively straightforward and carries the prospect of a lesser sentence, and a jury trial in a Crown court, which takes longer, with the trade-off being that if they are convicted, they face the prospect of a greater sentence. There is therefore an important tactical consideration for those who advise clients and defendants but, strangely, the Bill entirely removes that.
As I understand the Bill, it contains little to compel anybody to opt for trial on summary jurisdiction—everybody would go for trial by jury. That is fine, in that trial by jury is the gold standard—we are rightly proud of trial by jury in this country—but the difficulty is that there is a big backlog of such cases. The vast majority of cases in this country are dealt with on summary jurisdiction, and if we encourage people to opt for trial by jury, we will simply increase the backlog. I therefore have some difficulty with how the Bill is phrased.
I understand the reasons behind new clause 1, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and the basis for the Government’s opposition, as I understand it, to his new clauses generally—it would be disproportionate to increase the maximum sentence on indictment by so much—but as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said, we ought to consider this anomaly, because it militates against the tactical concern that any lawyer will have when advising a client. There would be nothing to lose by going for a trial on indictment in front of a jury, which seems strange. It is also anomalous to have a 12-month sentence in a magistrates court, when, absent section 154 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 being brought into force, most other offences brought before a magistrates court carry a six-month sentence. That is odd. As I say, I support the Bill, so I take nothing away from what it seeks to achieve, but those points ought to be made quite clear.
It is important that we are clear about what we are seeking to do in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham made an excellent point that I would like to emphasise. There is a danger of legislating for the sake of doing something. We have had innumerable criminal justice Acts over the last few years. For those of us who have practised in the magistrates and Crown courts, it can be very difficult to keep up to date with the latest criminal justice sentencing Acts, in particular, and with the guidelines, which keep changing. There is a danger that in seeking to address a wrong, we legislate to do so, rather than simply insisting that the correct charging decisions are made, which is the point that my hon. Friend made. I understand the point about how we do that, which the hon. Member for Halifax made. There is no quick, easy answer. It is partly a matter of criminal justice guidelines being toughened in appropriate circumstances, and partly of the CPS working with its lawyers and training them to ensure that the correct decisions are made. It would be peculiar if, in the example given, when a police officer’s finger was bitten off, that was not charged as a GBH offence, which it clearly is.
Robert Courts
I am not familiar with the background of the case. Perhaps there was a good reason; perhaps there was not. I simply make the point that we need to be careful not to complicate the statute book by introducing offences that cover every precise situation, rather than simply using the more serious offences that already exist. Such a point was also well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham with regard to the Sexual Offences Act.
Kevin Foster
My hon. Friend is making an interesting and thought-provoking speech. He says that this is about sending out a message, but does he agree that this is actually about giving prosecutors an extra tool in their box by way of a new offence to deal with the problem? That offence could be enhanced by the measure on spitting.
Robert Courts
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I am grateful to him for making that point. I was simply seeking to make it clear that while an offence that carries a greater sentence might exist for some cases, we should still have this offence, because it sends a message. As he said, an offence does not already exist for some cases, so it is right that we address that.
I wish to make a few comments about spitting, on which the hon. Member for Rhondda has tabled his amendment 1, with which I entirely agree. Spitting is a revolting act that I have both prosecuted and defended innumerable times. It seems to have become more prevalent over the past few years and is now a greater part of people’s behaviour when they are faced with emergency workers. It is disgusting, and people who work in the police force or the ambulance service, for example, ought not to have to put up with it.
That is quite right, but it is more important than that, because spitting is deliberately intended to cause worry and to add a psychological wound to one that otherwise is relatively short-lived, because it is not a physical injury. It is right that we mark that because, as I have seen at first hand several times, the act causes immense worry to those in the emergency services, who are understandably extremely distressed far beyond the duration of the relatively short-lived incident. The worry about any contamination that might occur as a result of spitting lasts for weeks and sometimes months. That is what we are seeking to address, which is why I wholeheartedly support amendment 1.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to this debate on dealing with assaults on emergency workers. Hon. Members might be pleased to know that I stand here not as a lawyer. I have been listening to the lawyers with great interest, because they put such a different perspective on things that I perhaps do not see, and I hope that I have learned a bit from them today. I wholeheartedly congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on stewarding the Bill to this stage. I should also like to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on the work she has done on protecting police officers, even before the Bill was introduced. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on his diligence and his commitment to this important Bill. He has taken a great deal of time to look into the details and to table a range of new clauses. I welcome the spirit of his new clauses 1 and 2 in particular, and his focus on police officers, but all Members will recognise the wide range of emergency workers whom we have a duty to protect through legislation to ensure that appropriate sentencing is applied for everyone. That is where I have some issues with the new clauses, in that I think they might be segmenting out certain emergency workers.
I have also listened to the arguments for the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda, and to the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who demonstrated great insight into the Bill as it stands and the possible impact of the new clauses. I will take those views into account, along with the responses of the Minister, when considering what will really work in practice. What we want from the Bill is legislation that really works. We have a duty to our emergency workers to ensure that we have a really practical Bill that will lead to fantastic results. I will expand on my arguments about the new clauses in due course.
I am delighted to stand with emergency workers in Erewash and across the whole United Kingdom as we unite in the Chamber today in condemning those who attack our brave emergency workers, many of whom are regularly prepared to put their own lives at risk so that we can go about our daily lives in a safe and peaceful manner. I pay particular tribute to the emergency workers in my constituency, including the great team of police officers whom I meet on a regular basis. Just last Friday, I visited one of my acute hospitals, the Royal Derby Hospital, where I met people in A&E and saw all the different aspects of their work. I met the ambulance people who work in conjunction with them, and I also went to the pathology department, but one of the great delights of my visit was to stand on the helipad on top of the hospital and look out all around Derbyshire. That was an amazing experience. We must also take account of emergency workers who go out in helicopters as we must ensure that we protect everybody.
I also have Ilkeston Community Hospital in my constituency. Tomorrow it is organising a bed-push to raise funds through its league of friends. That bed-push will be on the high street, but the high street is on a hill, so once again our emergency workers are going above and beyond. There will be teams from the fire service, the ambulance service, Rotary, the Co-op and Tesco, as well as a team from the hospital itself. Nurses will be giving up their free time to help to raise extra funds. All our emergency workers, whether on or off duty, are very committed, and we have a duty to protect them in whatever way we can.
With the support of the Government—in particular the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice—and the support of the whole House, I am certain that following today’s debate and the Bill’s safe passage through the other place, we will have achieved a practical piece of legislation that will afford our emergency workers the legal protection they so rightly deserve. However, while I commend the scope and principle of the Bill, once it receives Royal Assent, as I fully expect that it will, we should not view this simply as “job done”. Instead, the Bill should become a catalyst for wider public debate—perhaps leading to further legislation—about how we best protect all those in public-facing roles who provide vital services to society.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley for standing up for police officers through the tabling of his new clauses, but we need to consider emergency workers, and indeed all public-facing workers, as a whole. Many of the offences under the Bill are already criminal offences in existing law, as the lawyers among us have explained. This Bill differs by giving specific protections to emergency workers. I know that the hon. Member for Rhondda explored this earlier, but I must ask how I am supposed to console other public service workers in my constituency, such as the train conductor, the social worker, the teacher or even my own caseworker, whose contributions to society are just as vital but will not be afforded the same status or protection that emergency workers will receive under the Bill. That is something that we need to look at, and this is why I have some concerns about the new clauses.
I have spoken to countless people who carry out such public roles, and I am sure that all other Members have also done so in their time, both as MPs and during their previous careers. We know that they face many challenges from people who engage in unacceptable and abusive behaviour. All too often they find themselves in potentially dangerous situations, but they will be without the protection that the Bill gives to the emergency workers that it specifies. I think that we need to ensure that the Bill covers all those who have put themselves forward as public servants. The House should acknowledge that, and examine the issue more closely to establish whether further action, including further legislation, is required. A failure to do so would leave us open to the accusation that we have prioritised the safety and the protection of one group of public workers over another.
This long-overdue piece of legislation will serve to protect our protectors. When emergency personnel have been attacked, we as politicians have been all too quick to respond with kind words and the promise of action, but no one has ever been comforted—or, for that matter, convicted—by rhetoric alone. Today we can finally deliver on that promise of action by passing practical measures that will make a real difference to our fantastic emergency workers on the ground, while also signalling the extent of our respect, support and admiration for the vital work that they all do.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I rise to speak very briefly in support of the efforts of my hon. Friends the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) in introducing the Bill and piloting it through Committee. It is clear from all the evidence that has been presented by many Members on both sides of the House over the past two and a half hours or so that it has the overwhelming support of the whole House, although Ministers may question some of the nuances and some of the amendments.
As Members will know, I spent 23 years in the London fire brigade. There are several former firefighters in the House: the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), and me. The fire service has not featured much in the statistics that we have heard this morning, but that is because it is a much smaller service than the others, so there are fewer incidences of assaults. It has, to an extent, a different culture. None the less, firefighters have been victims of assault on a number of occasions.
More than 20 years ago in Shadwell, which is in my constituency, malicious youths were setting fires or issuing malicious false alarms to get the fire crews to turn out, then took great delight in attacking them. As a result, the local fire station introduced an intervention scheme whereby young people, including some troublemakers, attended a five-day intensive course to enhance their skills and confidence. The young people were referred to the scheme by the police, the local authority referral service and others. Over the past 20 years we have seen fire and police cadets adding to the great work done by the sea, air and Army cadets. It is important that the service has that interventionist arm to prevent kids from going down the wrong road and getting into trouble. However, the purpose of the Bill is to deal with circumstances in which people cross that line.
Spitting is one of the problems. East London has been a tuberculosis hotspot for many years, and at one point during the past 20 years it was the ninth highest TB hotspot in the world—a stunning statistic. Airborne diseases can be transmitted in that way, and aerial transmission of TB is a considerable risk. In Tower Hamlets and Newham, “No Spitting” signs have been introduced in recent years. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda referred to London councils that have reintroduced penalty charges to act as a deterrent. He also mentioned Masuaku, a member of the football team that I support, who incurred a six-match ban—not a six-month ban—for spitting. That demonstrates how seriously the football authorities take it, because such a ban is one of the heaviest punishments that can be meted out against professional footballers. The behaviour was completely unacceptable, and was deprecated by all concerned.
The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda that we do not want to send signals; we want action. I think he was being a little churlish, because he knows how important signalling is and how important signalling our intention is. However, he is right that it has to be backed up by action.
Tom Pursglove
It is always a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who brings an awful lot of experience to the debate from his time employed in the fire service. I was interested to hear what he had to say.
I, too, put on the record my thanks and appreciation to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). He is an effective and tenacious campaigner in this House and has pursued this issue with great vigour, alongside the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). They have done their constituents and the country proud by bringing the Bill forward and getting it to this stage, and by working constructively with Ministers to get it right and reach agreement.
I was delighted to serve on the Bill Committee, where we managed to get through the Bill reasonably rapidly, because there is such support for it across the House. I will not repeat the points that I made on Second Reading, even though they are relevant to the amendments we are considering.
I would argue that a number of the points my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made about his amendments—and I have heard all the scholarly and learned arguments that have been made by esteemed colleagues—were underpinned by quite a big dollop of common sense. I welcome much of the sentiment he has expressed through his amendments.
I would certainly support extending more opportunities and powers to magistrates, because that is something we have pledged to do as a Government. Not only is it right to empower magistrates and dispense justice as close to the people as possible; it is a cost-effective way of delivering justice and of doing so speedily. In Northamptonshire, we have had issues over the past few years with the streamlining of the magistrates bench. I therefore think that magistrates in Corby and east Northamptonshire would be very pleased to have additional opportunities and powers extended to them, so that they can uphold justice in our community effectively.
I know that all Members of the House have significant concerns about assaults, particularly on prison officers. This is a pressing issue. A very close family friend of mine is a prison officer, and he and his family are very concerned about this issue. I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley to make the point that, whatever one thinks about the rights and wrongs of early release, it must be seen through the prism of early release being a privilege, not a right. I think that if someone assaults a prison officer, they should lose that privilege. It is as simple as that. My hon. Friend made the case for that robustly. I think the case speaks for itself, because there is no starker deterrent for a prisoner than knowing that if they do it, there will be consequences. That should be the bottom line.
If the public were polled on that proposition, I know what the numbers would look like. Opinion polls can be taken with a pinch of salt, but the vast majority of people in this country would think that that was right and proper. We should send the clear message that assaults on prison officers will not be tolerated. Finally, it is my view that it is right to be really clear about sexual assault. It is right to amend the Bill along the lines that the hon. Member for Rhondda has set out. It should be an aggravating factor, and amendment 3 would deliver that.
I made a point on Second Reading that relates to these amendments and new clauses and which was about the racial or verbal abuse of, for example, a police officer within a home. There is nothing that can be done about that at the moment, which worries me greatly. A dedicated officer in Corby, Candy Liverpool, was verbally abused in somebody’s house, but nothing could be done about it. I am grateful to the Policing Minister for the interest that he has shown in the issue. He is willing to consider where the law could be tightened up to deal with that, which is the right thing to do. I would be interested to hear whether he will touch on that in his summing up to let us know how he is getting on.
In conclusion, it is important that this House sends a message, it is important that those who are prosecuting take the necessary steps, and it is right that the law takes such matters seriously. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) said, that is not the end of the story, and we must continue to keep matters under review. We have to send a clear signal not just from this House, but as a society that we will not tolerate the abuse of the people who are ultimately trying to keep us safe.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) and, indeed, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). He and I are members of a cross-party group on the IRA-Libyan terrorist issue, which I became my involved in because I have a constituent whose sister was a WPC who was murdered in the Harrods bombing many years ago, and I am always struck by the thought of anyone who is cut down in the line of duty after being called out. The crimes that relate to new clause 2, which is what I will address, are far less serious than that, but the principle is that we should support those who are serving us on the frontline and are attacked, abused, spat at or assaulted in the process. Like everyone else, I the support the Bill’s principle. This is the first time I have spoken on it, and I commend the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for his efforts and thank the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). Indeed, when I met representatives of the Suffolk Police Federation, they specifically wanted me to pass on my best wishes to her for the “Protect the Protectors” campaign.
This debate is timely for me, and the reason why I wanted to refer to the clauses that relate specifically to the constabulary is that, while we are concerned about assaults on anybody and on all emergency staff, Suffolk has seen a great spike in assaults on police officers of late. In fact, the number of incidents increased from 193 in 2016 to 281 in 2017, and there has been a 265% increase over the past few years. Assaults with injury reported to Suffolk constabulary’s health and safety department involving broken bones, cuts, deep lacerations and black eyes more than tripled from 34 in 2014 to 124 last year. Those significant increases have caused a great deal of concern in the county and in my constituency.
I said that this debate is timely, and the headline in today’s East Anglian Daily Times is “Concern over sharp rise in violent crime”. We have seen a 29% increase in violent crime in Suffolk. We are talking about assaults on police officers, and I have been worried by an obvious, at least anecdotally, increase in violent crime, which has now been confirmed by the statistics. There were many ram raids in my constituency over the winter, particularly targeting Co-ops and other similar village shops. We had two ram raids on cashpoints in the same week in the historic village of Lavenham, and people are unsettled because many such attacks have occurred in the rural villages of my constituency. I mention that to add some context, because it seems to me that we may be entering more violent times.
The amendments and new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) are effectively deterrents. In any policy that is seeking to tighten up sentencing, deterrents should be the priority. We do not want to prosecute people for offences; we want to deter people from carrying them out in the first place. Suffolk Police Federation told me that it wants the Bill to contain greater deterrents, so that the message sent out is not just that we quite rightly condemn such attacks, but that if people commit such offences, they will suffer the appropriate penalty and will not get off lightly for serious offences.
It comes down to causality. We talk about deterrence because if criminals think they can get away with it, they will continue to carry out these offences. I have looked at this issue to try to understand why we are seeing more offences—we do not yet have any academic studies or other expertise—and I asked local police whether there is a link with the growth in county lines: the drugs traffic coming out of London that is starting to hit rural areas. As hon. Members know, when the drugs trade becomes more competitive it becomes more violent. As drug gangs fight for territory, they tend to mark their territory with the greater use of force and a battle for who is, to be blunt, scarier. We have to increase deterrence in response.
Inspector Danny Cooper, who is in charge of Sudbury police, told me he cannot say for certain whether there is a link with the growth in county lines, although the most recent assault of a police officer in Sudbury, two days ago, was by a drug dealer. What assessment have Ministers made of the causes of what is happening? Is it linked to the drugs trade? Is it because of an increase in intoxication?
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke about alcohol. The East Anglian Daily Times ran a story about the spate of police assaults over the Christmas period in Suffolk, with eight police officers being injured. One of the most serious incidents followed a robbery, and when the officer concerned was asked why he thought there were more assaults on officers, he said that intoxication was certainly one of the key factors. We know more people drink during the Christmas period.
When we talk about crime, I always want to try to understand the trends. Obviously there are people who make political points, which may be valid, about funding, police numbers and so on, although I cannot help but feel that, when crime was falling sharply some years ago, police numbers were also falling. We have to try to understand why that was the case.
When I was first elected, I asked the then deputy chief constable what was responsible for the trend. Obviously we would like to take great political credit, but he pointed to certain societal trends, such as fewer people going out to pubs after the crash. There was therefore less violence and disorder at clubs and nightspots, and more crimes arising in the home and online, and so on, as people were spending more time at home.
My priority is to find out why this is happening so we can try to deal with it. I support the Bill, and I have only one modest concern. We heard earlier about the great dinner party conversation of our scholarly and learned friends. I am proud to sit with many people who have real-world experience they can bring to bear in adding value to these debates. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) said that we need to understand that there are other offences that cover serious crimes against emergency service workers. We have to be sure that the message we send is not purely a gesture but is meaningful in law and adds to the array of punishments and tools that can be used so that we tighten up the available punishments and send a message of deterrence.
I do not say that politically. Our police and crime commissioner is coming to Westminster next week to meet Suffolk MPs. He is doing all he can and is going to increase his precept to provide more resources to the frontline, but these are worrying times in Suffolk and there is no point beating round the bush. We are seeing an increase in violent crime and we are seeing more assaults on police officers. I want to understand why, then I want to see the Government take effective action. If they need stronger legislation and stronger sentencing, I will be one of the first to support them. In principle, I support this Bill and I congratulate all the hon. Members who have helped its passage.
Nigel Huddleston
If I may use the phraseology of my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), let me say that it is a pleasure to follow the dollop of common sense that is my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge). [Interruption.] It is a positive thing. I also wish to congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is far from being a dollop in any way imaginable, on introducing the Bill and, most importantly, on the constructive tone he has taken in advancing it, working on a cross-party basis. That speaks volumes about his approach and the degree of respect in which he is held across the whole House.
Jeremy Quin
I am delighted to hear what my hon. Friend is saying about his local PCC. I have spoken about this Bill to my PCC, the excellent Katy Bourne, and I know that both she and the local police federation are keen to see it progress and be put on the statute book. Like in his area of rural Worcestershire, in my district we think of ourselves as being in a very law-abiding and civilised place, but we had 28 assaults on police officers in 2016-17. He is highlighting that this is not just an urban concern; there are concerns about the safety of emergency workers right across the UK. Obviously the Bill does not deal with the whole of the UK, but it covers England and Wales, and I very much hope that he will continue to support the Bill and that we will get it on to the statute book in due course.
Nigel Huddleston
I agree completely with my hon. Friend. One challenge we face in this place is that sometimes those of us who represent the more rural areas are perceived as representing some sort of rural idyll, where there are no problems and no concerns. That is far from the case, and we need to make sure rural areas are covered adequately too.
I will not try your patience much longer, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to say in conclusion that it is my hope and that of many others in this House that the passage of the Bill will send a clear message to emergency service workers about how deeply they are valued, and provide some reassurance that they do not need to tolerate abuse and assault while carrying out their duties. I hope too that the Bill’s passage will send a message to the public that emergency service workers are protected by legislation and that those who are violent towards them will face the full force of the law.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I am delighted to speak in this debate, and I thank all Members who have contributed, particularly those who have tabled amendments. I have listened carefully, and I sympathise with many of the points that have been raised, particularly on extra support for police officers and the issue of spitting. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
I am sure that we all agree that assault on anyone in any situation is awful, but to attack someone who is trying to help another person in an emergency is callous, heinous and totally unacceptable. Punishment for such assaults on emergency workers should fit the crime, and I believe that it is right and fair to give a judge the ability to take them into consideration as an aggravating factor in determining a sentence.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on introducing the Bill and add my support for amendment 3, which is a sensible addition. I also thank all the other Members who have put work into the Bill, particularly the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). As we have heard, it takes quite a bit of work to get a Bill to this stage, and this is an important Bill.
Emergency workers are courageous and dedicated. Moreover, they are selfless in their endeavour to help people. There can be few more noble callings and no more worthwhile purpose. I see that clearly during my regular visits to the George Eliot Hospital, which serves my community in North Warwickshire and Bedworth and the surrounding area so well. I see it each time I meet local police across the constituency, never more so than recently when they responded professionally and decisively to the case of a hostage situation at a bowling alley. I have seen it when I had the pleasure to meet the North Warwickshire community first responders, volunteers ably led by Samantha Hall who give up their time because they want to help save lives. I know North Warwickshire is particularly proud of them, as am I. Samantha got married to her partner Graham a few weeks ago, and I pass on my congratulations to them, and I am sure that colleagues here today will join me in wishing them the very best for the future—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
The responders are volunteer members of our community, trained by the ambulance service to respond to emergency calls through the 999 system. They provide immediate care to patients and are mobilised by ambulance control. They are a part of their local community, serving an area of approximately 3 miles in radius from their base, which can be their home or place of work, so they can attend the scene of a medical emergency in a very short time, often arriving within a few minutes of the call and sometimes while the caller is still on the phone.
The team are trained to provide emergency life support and to treat patients suffering from a range of conditions. On the arrival of an ambulance, they form part of the team treating the patient. It is my understanding that the Bill will protect emergency workers including volunteers such as the North Warwickshire community first responders, as they are contracted to provide a service by the NHS, but I would be grateful if clarity can be provided on that point, as they certainly deserve the additional protection that this Bill will give to emergency workers.
It is repulsive to imagine any emergency service worker being attacked in the line of duty while saving and protecting, as their name makes clear, those most in need. However, this happens on an all too regular basis across the country. I was shocked to learn that NHS staff—those who are treating sick or injured people—recorded more than 70,000 physical assaults during the year 2015-16. It is worth dwelling on that figure for a moment, as it is the equivalent of 53 assaults per 1,000 members of staff. I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members will agree that that is 53 assaults too many.
In our prisons, officer assaults have risen by more than 30% to more than 7,000 in the past year. However, I am encouraged by the fact that the Government are taking action to increase the number of prison officers. They have recruited 3,100 new officers, many of whom will be in place by the summer, which will help to reduce the figure. None the less, I can see the sense in new clauses 4 and 9 in providing greater protection for prison officers. As I said, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that.
The Police Federation states that the latest welfare survey data
“suggest that there were potentially more than two million…unarmed physical assaults on officers over a 12 month period, and a further 302,842 assaults using a deadly weapon during the same period.”
It estimates that an assault on a police officer happens every four minutes. Those statistics are shocking and make it clear that action needs to be taken.
This crucial change in the law will send a clear message that attacks on emergency workers will not be tolerated. I welcome the cross-party work that is being done to ensure that those who are violent face the full force of the law. I draw parallels here with our armed forces, and I have previously said in this House that, to enable them to do their job and, more importantly, to give them our backing, we cannot allow spurious legal cases to linger in their minds, as that can reduce recruitment, morale and retention, and, critically, prevent them from doing the job that they have been so highly trained to do.
Similarly, we must guarantee that our emergency workers—those who are in the frontline of responding to life or death situations, or upholding the law—have full protection while carrying out their duties. Those personnel, from ambulance paramedics who are first on the scene to dedicated nurses who care for the sick and firefighters who run into burning buildings, have called for greater protection, and it is right that we deliver it for them. In February 2017, the Police Federation’s campaign “Protect the Protectors” called for a change in legislation leading to tougher sentences for those who assault emergency service workers and more welfare support.
As I said at the start of my remarks, there is no excuse for assault of any kind, but an assault on an emergency worker, who is acting in the line of duty, simply cannot be tolerated. Shamefully, such occurrences are not uncommon and are happening every single day while people are performing their duties in protecting and saving our constituents.
This Bill may not deter every criminal from assaulting an emergency worker who is carrying out their duty, but the new offence will provide increased protection under the law for emergency workers who are assaulted in the course of their day-to-day work. Encouragingly, that increased protection will also extend to situations where an emergency worker is not at work, but is acting as if he or she were—for example, when an off-duty firefighter rescues someone from a burning building. I warmly support the reasoning behind the Bill and the improvements that it will bring in protecting those who dedicate their careers and lives to helping and protecting us.
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
It is a delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey). I echo the gratitude that has been expressed to the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for all their sterling work on the Bill and their work with the Government to get us here today, and I hope that the whole House will support them.
I support the Bill, and I also support amendment 3 in particular, which I will talk about later. I also echo the support of some Members for the sentiment expressed my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). He raised some very good points regarding automatic release, but that is a broader debate that we should have in a wider realm, as it would have many ramifications. We should look at that matter separately, rather than diluting and potentially destroying the Bill. Without these amendments and new clauses, the Bill will send a strong message to emergency workers that the actions we are discussing will not be tolerated, and it will give prosecutors powerful tools. That is the message that has come from the emergency workers across my own constituency. They have spoken to me about their own ordeals and about how they recognise the importance of our passing the Bill today.
It is true that attacking a person serving the public is already an aggravating factor in sentencing guidelines, but this Bill will put on a statutory basis a specific requirement to consider assault on emergency workers as aggravated. We have heard many stories today in the Chamber of heroes and heroines whose brave acts to protect us have basically been a part of their everyday jobs and lives, yet they have faced assaults for simply trying to do their job of helping others. That has happened in the Chippenham constituency, but it also happens up and down the country every year. It is only right that we stand up for our emergency service workers in the way they stand up for us. I hope that the Bill will help us to do that. The fact that it has cross-party support sends a message to emergency workers that we are supporting them and standing up for them. It is time for us to protect the protectors—a phrase used throughout the debate today—and ensure that they have the full protection of the law in carrying out their duties. The Police Federation used that apt phrase when it launched its own campaign.
Maggie Throup
I am aware of incidents where police officers have been attacked and those attacks have not just affected them for five years; their career has been curtailed completely. Such incidents have a huge impact on emergency workers’ ambitions and family life.
Michelle Donelan
Indeed. The other point that I was going to make is that these incidents can encourage people to leave their profession, because they are so distressed and every day is a dark reminder of the ordeal that they have been through. That is dreadful, because we need our emergency workers. If we continue to lose them because of these incidents, it will only lead to further shortages of people who play an invaluable role in society. Time is also lost when emergency workers are in hospital or when they take respite leave after an incident. Attacks on police officers between 2016 and 2017 were estimated to have caused six days of lost time on average.
Assaults on emergency workers also create an additional cost for the taxpayer. The annual estimated cost to the NHS of healthcare-related violence is £69 million, which is equivalent to the salary of 4,500 nurses. We could do a lot more with this money. A survey by the Royal College of Nursing found that 47% of its members who had been physically assaulted would not recommend a nursing career. That is the last thing we need when we are looking to recruit more nurses and doctors. A survey of violence against frontline NHS staff reported that 2% of workers a year in England hand in their notice or change their job because they have been physically assaulted.
I congratulate the Bill Committee on its work and the amendments it made, which broadened the scope of who is considered to be an emergency worker. I am delighted by that, because for too long we have forgotten or overlooked people who are on the frontline and are serving to protect and assist us every day. The provisions will now cover prison escort services and those working on the NHS frontline, and staff and volunteers will protected by the Bill if assaulted while providing a service under contract from the NHS. As we have heard, the Bill will also cover those who are working off duty but are performing their roles. A firefighter is still a firefighter if they are assisting in a fire but not actually doing their day job.
We owe a debt of gratitude and respect to our emergency workers for the courage, commitment and dedication that they demonstrate in carrying out their duties. I am proud to support the Bill and amendment 3. Together, they will ensure that we stand up for those who stand up and protect us.
Kevin Foster
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) in getting this Bill to Report stage. Having taken a private Member’s Bill through the House myself, I know that, even when the wind is fairly behind it, it is still quite a challenge to make sure that one gets something that can enjoy wider support.
It has been interesting to listen to the thoughtful speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) and for Witney (Robert Courts), who applied their usual level of legal analysis to the Bill and helped to shape my understanding of some of the amendments.
It was particularly interesting, though, to sit through the, as always, robust speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who brought his own sense of common sense to this debate and to his new clauses and amendments. Sadly, however, I will have to express queries and concerns about one or two of his proposals. I will be interested to hear what the Minister says in response to them.
In my intervention on my hon. Friend on his new clause 1, I said that this Bill creates a new offence that we would expect prosecutors to look to in prosecuting common assault on emergency services workers. I accept that the thrust of the new clause is the idea of having different sentencing regimes for an older offence dating from 1996 as opposed to the new offence created by the Bill. I am not persuaded that it is the best idea to alter the old piece of legislation as well, because that gets us into a debate about whether we should be reviewing or removing certain provisions. It would be more useful to see what happens when the new offence comes in. We would rightly expect prosecutors to see the intention of Parliament in passing this specific new offence that covers assaults on emergency workers and look to use it rather than the old one. I would be tempted to look to see whether the old offence becomes redundant in future. Rightly, prosecutors will look to give the courts the sentencing powers available for this offence and consider the fact that Parliament has passed a new and more up-to-date piece of legislation. I was not persuaded by the arguments on new clause 1, but I will be interested to hear the Minister’s comments.
Philip Davies
We have heard from some of our learned colleagues about how the Crown Prosecution Service sometimes makes mistakes when charging people. Would it not be absurd if it were to charge somebody under the wrong offence—the old offence of 1996 and not this one—and when it went before the court, the court could not give the person the appropriate sentence that this House thinks they should get because it will be working to an old piece of legislation? Surely it would make sense to even up the sentence for both, and then whichever offence they were charged with, the judge or the magistrate could do the job.
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his, as always, interesting intervention. I think it would make sense to see how the new law works out in practice. It would be quite bizarre if we saw a trend towards charging under the old offence rather than the new one. This is not about removing the ability to charge more serious offences. We need to be clear that this is about giving prosecutors an additional tool to deal with these issues. It is not about removing other offences. If someone attempts to murder a police offer, they clearly should be charged with attempted murder. If someone commits a serious assault on a police officer, they should be charged with ABH or GBH. This is about covering those who behave in a completely unacceptable manner towards an emergency services worker but do not trigger those types of offence, and we must be clear that Parliament’s intent is not for this to become a catch-all offence.
Perhaps in future there will be an appropriate time for a review. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will, as always, dutifully pursue the statistics on the use of this new offence, to ensure that prosecutors and courts have the powers to deal with those involved.
I sympathise with the call to up the sentence to a maximum of two years. I was interested to hear the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole on that point, and particularly on the issue of either-way offences. Normally, trial on indictment in the Crown court carries a higher penalty than a summary trial in the magistrates court.
The only thing I did not find particularly persuasive was the reference my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley made to the proposed five-year sentence for animal cruelty. It is worth saying that that is the only charge available if someone has exhibited violence to an animal. We think of cases where animals have literally been tortured to death. At the moment, the effective maximum is about six months in jail, whereas this is not a catch-all offence. We are looking for more serious offences to sit alongside less serious ones.
I know from my experience last year of supporting Bills on that issue that my hon. Friend is a very strong supporter of appropriate sentences for animal cruelty. A sick thug who tortures a living creature to death should not be walking out of a court a free person; they should be heading down to the cells for a significant period of imprisonment. I just feel it appropriate to be clear that our intention is not for this to become a catch-all for a range of offences. For animal cruelty, that is the offence someone is charged with, and the court then reflects the seriousness of that offence in the sentencing.
Kevin Foster
I see my hon. Friend nodding his head.
New clause 3 suggests a review after two years. I am interested to hear from the Minister what proposals the Government have to monitor this new offence and its use once it comes into effect. I am rarely persuaded that putting a requirement for a specific review into legislation is the best thing to do, not least given the abilities of Members of the House to question Ministers, have debates, look for information and commission research from the Library. I am interested to hear how the Government propose to deal with that.
On new clauses 4 to 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, I am probably more of the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan); there is a debate to be had around the early release scheme. I certainly sympathise with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) that this should not be seen as a right, but should be based on the fact that someone has behaved appropriately. Similarly, if someone comes out of prison on licence, it should be a licence on their behaviour, and if they breach the terms of that licence, the remainder of their sentence awaits them back in prison.
The one slight concern I have is what supervision and requirements there are of people after they are released, having gone back to complete their full sentence or having completed their full sentence in prison. That was highlighted to me recently in a case in my constituency where someone had been released from jail on licence and had then breached the terms of that licence. They were recalled to prison to complete their sentence, and once they had done so, probation had no role on release. There is very little restriction on what they do, unless they are on the sex offenders register, which has certain restrictions. Likewise, some of the support mechanisms and things that are available to those on licence are, ironically, not available to those who have been required to complete their whole sentence.
Philip Davies
It was very lucky that the person concerned went back to serve their whole sentence, because we now have fixed-term recalls, as my hon. Friend will know. Usually, when someone commits an offence when they have been released halfway through the sentence, they do not serve the remainder of their sentence; they serve only 28 days or sometimes 14 days of the sentence. Not only are they being automatically released halfway through, but if they breach the terms of their licence, they go back in for only 14 or 28 days. The whole thing is a scandal.
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his thoughtful intervention. I agree that if someone who has been sent to prison for an offence breaches the terms of their parole, that is a good indication that they are unlikely to be taking seriously their responsibility as a citizen to follow the law. My example is of a person who came to the end of their sentence and was released, but found that no support was available. It was a bizarre situation. They were trying to access some support and found it difficult, but had they not breached their licence, support and monitoring to keep them from offending would have been in place. Perhaps this discussion is not for today, as it would require more fundamental changes to how we operate the recall to prison system, licensing, and what we do with those completing their whole sentence. Nevertheless, it flagged up to me a requirement to ensure at least a minimum period of monitoring after someone comes out of prison, whether they have been released on licence or because they have completed their whole sentence.
I welcome the inclusion of spitting in amendment 2, but it is important to send the message that Parliament does not intend to exclude spitting from the traditional offence of common assault. The amendment is to clarify that spitting is included in the initial offence. I am clear that in my constituency the use of spit hoods is a matter for the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, and if he believes that that is the right way to protect his officers, he should take that approach. I take the same view on issuing firearms and other protections to officers—it is for the chief constable to make an operational decision on the basis of the needs of policing and the safety of his officers. It should not be a political policy decision. Including spitting in the Bill gives a clear legal basis for an offence that carries up to a year in jail, but that can be prevented by the use of a spit hood. If someone is busy spitting at a police officer, that offence already carries a year’s imprisonment. There is a strong basis, beyond the protection of officers, for why it is right and proportionate to use a spit hood if someone is trying to spit at an officer, using the last way they can attack that officer once they have been restrained by other means.
I am conscious of time, Mr Deputy Speaker, and since I support the Bill I have no intention of trying to talk it out. I also welcome making a sexual assault on an emergency worker an aggravating factor in other sexual offences. We must be clear that Parliament’s intention—certainly my intention, and I see other hon. Members nodding—is not to say, “This is the offence to use for a serious sexual assault”. Someone who sexually assaults an emergency worker would still be charged under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, particularly given the things that come with that, such as registration and monitoring, which are so vital when dealing with this issue. The amendment would mean that a court will consider that someone has abused the good will and position of someone who came to their aid, particularly medical staff in the NHS, and that is an abuse of trust. The amendment is therefore perfectly sensible, as it makes it clear that such an offence is an aggravating factor, not a replacement offence.
I am conscious that we want to hear the Minister’s response so I will draw my remarks to a close. As always, I welcome the dogged determination of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley to ensure that wrongdoers get their just desserts, that the Bill receives the scrutiny it rightly deserves, and that our courts and prosecutors know exactly what Parliament intended in passing this Bill today—intentions that I completely support.
Rory Stewart
It has been a great pleasure to sit on the Benches during this debate, and I begin by paying tribute to the extraordinary contributions that we have heard. This has been a very high-quality debate, with perhaps even more vigour and more interest than Second Reading.
I pay tribute to the strenuous, challenging empiricism of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies); the precision, energy and charm—to return to the word “charm”—of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); the imagination, sincerity and courage of the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch); the precision and learning of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson); the rigour, eloquence and intelligence of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who is no longer in his seat; the empathy of the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin); the principled application of my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts); the emphasis on widening the circle of compassion from my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup); the emphasis on the medical and epidemiological aspects of the case from the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick); the emphasis that my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) put on the symbolic charge of the Bill; the emphasis that my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) put on the broader themes of violence in society; the pragmatism and hard-won experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston); the focus from my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) on the particular obligations that we owe public servants; the compassion and indeed, the concern for public finances that was expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan); and finally, the courtesy to other colleagues and dignity displayed by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster).
This is a powerful Bill and we in the Government agree strongly with the principles underlying it. Nearly 20 separate amendments and new clauses have been proposed. Having listened carefully to the debate, we will be accepting one of those amendments but respectfully requesting that the other new clauses and amendments are withdrawn or not moved. That is not because we disagree in any way with the Bill’s underlying principles, which should be clear to the whole House. They are that an assault on any individual or citizen in our society is a terrible thing, but that an assault on an emergency worker is an assault on us all. These people are our constituted representatives. They protect society and deliver services on our behalf. Therefore, an attack on them is an attack on us and on the state, and it should be punished more severely than an attack simply on an individual victim.
There is also strong agreement with the spirit underlying the new clauses and amendments. It should be absolutely clear that spitting is included within common assault —it is a particularly disgusting form of common assault. It should also be entirely clear that it is completely unacceptable to attack a police officer, a fire service officer, an ambulance worker, a prison officer or anybody in the emergency services—or indeed, any emergency worker as defined in the Bill—and that sexual assault should be included in the Bill. That is the amendment that we propose to accept, having listened carefully to the debate. It has been pushed very hard by Opposition Members and should be included as one of the things for which an assault on an emergency worker should be considered an aggravating offence.
Let me move specifically and relatively rapidly through the almost 20 new clauses and amendments that have been proposed to explain why the Government believe that it would be better to withdraw some amendments and new clauses to leave the Bill in a state more similar to that from which it emerged from Committee. I will take them in turn. Essentially, these new clauses and amendments try to do three things. They try to make the offence of common assault more specific—to specify the ingredients of common assault—or they attempt to further increase the penalty for common assault on an emergency worker, or finally, they attempt to widen the scope of the things that are dealt with through the Bill. I will deal with them in that sequence.
Amendment 2 seeks to make the offence of common assault more specific by putting on the face of the Bill that spitting should be included under common assault. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham made clear in his learned speech, we can already prosecute spitting under common assault. This month, in fact, there was a successful prosecution of 23 weeks for an individual who spat at a police officer. Including it in the Bill, although an admirable intention, runs the risk of casting doubt on other cases of common assault. An ingenious lawyer might argue that the House of Commons, by saying that common assault on an emergency worker includes spitting, is implying that common assault on somebody else should not be considered to include spitting, and that therefore someone spitting on an ordinary member of the public could not be charged with common assault.
Chris Bryant
I hate the idea of an ingenious lawyer, but the Minister is right—I accept that there is a danger of that. Are there other things that the Government could do to ensure that the prosecuting authorities take spitting as common assault very seriously?
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. In return for the hon. Gentleman’s sense and solidarity in not pressing the amendment, we will focus on making sure that the relevant authorities, particularly the CPS, are clearly instructed to consider spitting as included under common assault. I hope that in a small way this speech in the House of Commons will re-emphasise, in case anyone is in any doubt, that it is Parliament’s intention that spitting should always be included within the offence of common assault.
That brings us to the amendment and various new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, which would further increase the penalty for assaulting emergency workers, police officers and prison officers. This is a complex set of new clauses. New clauses 1 and 2 relate to the existing law—in particular the Police Act 1996, as it relates to a police officer in the execution of their duty—and seek to do two things. The first is to increase the maximum penalty from six months to 12 months. On that, we respectfully argue that if the Bill passes today, we will have already increased to 12 months the maximum penalty for such an assault on a police officer in the exercise of their functions. It would therefore be unnecessary to further amend the Police Act.
The aim of new clause 2 and amendment 9 is to double the maximum penalty from 12 months to 24 months either by amending the Police Act or dealing with the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The Government wish to resist this approach because we have to weigh up two principles. On the one hand, we believe very strongly that emergency workers are entitled to a particular form of respect and protection because they work on our behalf—they provide services to us; they represent us. The police officer courageously confronting the criminal and the prison officer courageously confronting an offender in a prison are both acting on our behalf, and an assault on them is an assault on us. On those grounds, it is absolutely valid that the maximum penalty for such an assault be doubled. This is an important moment in English law.
There is, however, a second important principle in English common law: we are all equal, and victims are equal. The victim of sexual assault should be remembered above all as a victim of sexual assault, not on the basis of their profession or occupation, or of the function they were engaged in at the moment of the assault. That is why we believe that the proper indication of our respect for public servants should be to double the maximum penalty, but to move beyond that and quadruple it would begin to create the kind of situation that exists in Russia, which I hope will never exist in the UK, whereby uniformed officers become a caste apart and go into a category of a superior form of human being with an entitlement to a quite separate form of protection. On those grounds, we think that moderation and proportionality would require us to stick at 12 months, not 24, and we courteously request that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley withdraws new clause 1, and does not press new clause 2 and amendment 9.
Jeremy Quin
I realise that this is a sensitive point. I have spoken to police officers who would like to have a higher tariff in these circumstances, but what the Minister is saying has pith, because there are other people—be they council workers, social workers or clergy—who go out of their way as part of their duty to do things in our communities that put them in a vulnerable situation. We would be sending the wrong message if we were to draw too big a distinction between our valued emergency workers and other members of society who also conduct incredibly valuable tasks.
Rory Stewart
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many people who do things on behalf of the public in their daily lives are entitled to protection, but not all of them are covered by the Bill. There is a more fundamental point that relates particularly to sexual assault. We want to make it absolutely clear that what really matters in such circumstances is the brutal, undignified nature of that assault on anyone, regardless of their profession. That is why we have to get the balance right in sentencing.
This brings me to new clauses 4 to 18, which relate to assaults on prison officers. As a Justice Minister, I have strong empathy with the intention behind the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. Prison officers operate in an environment that the public are rarely allowed into. They have a dangerous and stressful job—I will touch on that a little more in my closing speech—and are entitled to a much higher degree of protection, but too often they do not receive it. We therefore think it absolutely right for them to be included among the emergency workers and for the maximum penalty for an assault on a prison officer to be increased from six months to 12 months. Beyond that, we want to do more to protect prison officers, including through the use of protective equipment and the devices they carry. We want to encourage the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to bring more prosecutions for assaults on prison officers. However, for two reasons, we do not think that this particular ingenious proposal—that someone assaulting a prison officer should have to serve twice the length of the sentence currently set out under the Criminal Justice Act 2003—represents an appropriate response.
The first reason, which is philosophical, is that if an individual has been put in prison for their original offence, they should be punished for that offence, with a subsequent offence judged and punished separately. For example, if an individual has been put in jail for 12 years for the importation of a class A drug, their punishment has been designed to fit that crime. If they then assault a prison officer, they need to be punished for assaulting a prison officer. Their initial crime of importing class A drugs should not be used to punish them for assaulting a prison officer.
The second reason, which is practical rather than philosophical, is that under the new clauses, someone who has been put in jail for 12 years would automatically get a further six years in jail if they assaulted a prison officer. However, someone who had been put in jail for six months would, under my hon. Friend’s proposals, get a further three months in jail, yet the assault that those two individuals had committed would be exactly the same.
Philip Davies
I think that the Minister might have slightly misunderstood my proposal, or perhaps he is not doing it justice. Much as I would like people to serve the whole of the rest of their sentence in full, that is not the actual proposal. I propose that they should not get automatic release halfway through their sentence, but it does not necessarily follow that they would have to serve their whole sentence. They just would not be automatically released halfway through their sentence, so they would have to spend a bit longer in prison, but that length of time would be determined by the Parole Board. I am not proposing that they would have to serve the whole of the remainder of their sentence, as the Minister seems to suggest.
Rory Stewart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. Nevertheless, the fundamental point remains that the individual committing an assault should be punished for that common assault. They should be prosecuted, judged and sentenced in accordance with that assault. They should not be punished for that crime by the extension of a sentence designed for a separate crime.
That brings me back to the question of widening the scope of the Bill to take account of sexual assault, as is proposed in amendment 3. We have resisted such an amendment in the past because of our concern to have an emphasis on the sexual assault and the equality of all victims of sexual assault, regardless of the functions they were undertaking. However, having listened carefully to the arguments advanced, in particular by the hon. Members for Rhondda and for Halifax, both today and over the preceding weeks, we as a Government are now convinced that it would be correct to insert sexual assault into the parts of the Bill that deal with cases in which an offence against an emergency worker would be an aggravating factor, especially given the astonishing increase in the number of sexual assaults on emergency workers. As the hon. Member for Rhondda pointed out, between a third and half of all emergency workers currently appear to be reporting such assaults. On those grounds, while respectfully requesting Members not to press the other amendments and new clauses, the Government are willing to accept amendment 3.
Let me end by paying a huge tribute to everyone who has spoken today for the statement that they have made to a wider culture, as public representatives—representatives of us as a Parliament, us as the public, and us as the state.
Philip Davies
This very good debate has featured a great deal of expertise, which I have welcomed.
I am delighted that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) persuaded the Minister of his case in relation to sexual assault. He also spoke about spitting, as did the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). When my dad—remarkably, unbelievably—became the elected Mayor of Doncaster, he introduced a penalty for spitting, and I should like to think that more local authorities would do the same. I am sorry that we could not persuade the Minister on that issue, but an acceptance rate of 50% for the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda is certainly better than my track record. The rule is, I think, that those who want the Government to agree to something should come at it from a left-wing perspective, as that usually gives them a better chance of success than the approach of coming from a more conservative perspective. That is something I have learned over many years.
I was grateful for the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) about the sentencing powers of magistrates, and for what he said about our breaking new ground and the possibility that, as I argued, the Crown courts should be given bigger sentencing options. I commend the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for her support for my new clauses: she proved herself, again, to be a doughty supporter of police officers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) made an excellent speech, although he let himself down somewhat by saying that we in the UK send lots of people to prison, which is a myth that is constantly propagated by the liberal elite. Just for the record, the fact is that for every 1,000 crimes committed in this country, we send 17 people to prison. That is one of the lowest ratios anywhere in the world. I challenge my hon. Friends to find any country that sends fewer than 17 people per 1,000 crimes committed to prison. They will struggle to find many, although there are some— [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) is part of the liberal metropolitan elite. I repeat the fact—it came from the House of Commons Library, so I am sure she will not deny it— that for every 1,000 crimes committed, we send 17 people to prison. That is a fact. My hon. Friend may think that the proportion is too high; I rather think that it is too low.
Philip Davies
No, because I think we want to press on.
I was also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts), who made the same point about the sentencing powers of Crown courts and magistrates. The Minister did not really explain why we are giving them the same powers.
Rory Stewart
I will answer that point very briefly. The process-led point that is being made about the difference between the magistrates and Crown courts is concealing the bigger issue, which is that we do not believe the sentence in respect of emergency workers should be quadruple that in respect of other citizens. It is the quadrupling rather than doubling that leads us to reject that argument.
Philip Davies
I do the Minister a disservice—he did make that point and I apologise.
As well as talking about spitting, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse mentioned the fire service. I was pleased that he did, because that allows us not only to thank him for the service he gave for many years in the fire service, but to highlight the number of assaults that firefighters face, which he rightly spoke about. That number is massively on the increase in West Yorkshire, which is appalling. His contribution allows us to highlight the fact that firefighters are included in this legislation, and rightly so.
I was heartened by the support I received from my colleagues, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Corby (Tom Pursglove), for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey), for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) and for Torbay (Kevin Foster), on my point about automatic early release, even if they did not all think that we should deal with it here and now in the Bill. I fear that the Minister has been slightly got at regarding this point either by his officials at the Ministry of Justice—they never want to send anyone to prison from what I can see, and certainly do not want any more people in prison—or by the Treasury. I cannot work out which, and perhaps it is both, but I hope, in all seriousness, that he will look at the issue again.
The Minister ought to be able to detect that there is widespread support in the House for not allowing people who assault prison officers to get automatic early release. If he will not do something about it as a Government Minister, I will certainly do what I did when the Prisons and Courts Bill was passing through the House before the last election and table an amendment to that effect. The Labour party kindly indicated that it would have supported that amendment, but we never got to it because of the election. The SNP kindly said that they would support that amendment to protect prison officers. I suspect that if the Government do not act on this, they will find themselves defeated if any such amendment is tabled to future legislation. I hope they will reflect on the strength of feeling that has been shown on both sides of the House to say that people should not be released from prison early if they assault prison officers. I hope he will go away and look at that issue again.
Finally, on new clause 1, which I am formally obliged to either press or withdraw, I am disappointed that the Minister has decided to leave on the statute book two pieces of law that have the same effect but carry two different sentences. He says there is no need for the new clause, but there is certainly no reason not to make the change to put both pieces of legislation in line and tidy up the law. I am sorry that he resisted such a modest proposal. Like other Members, however, I do not want to do anything to undermine the chances of the Bill getting through. It is a fantastic piece of legislation that I support wholeheartedly. With those reservations, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2
Aggravating factor
Amendment made: 3, page 2, line 39, at end insert—
“(aa) an offence under section 3 (sexual assault) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003”.—(Chris Bryant.)
This causes the fact that the victim was an emergency worker to be an aggravating factor in cases of sexual assault.
Clause 4
Taking of samples under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984
Chris Bryant
I beg to move amendment 4, page 4, line 23, leave out clause 4.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 5, page 6, line 6, leave out clause 5.
Amendment 6, page 8, line 14, leave out clause 6.
Amendment 7, in clause 7, page 9, line 37, leave out from “only,” to end of line 38.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 5.
Amendment 8, in title, line 3, leave out from “duty;” to “and” in line 6.
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 4 to 6.
Chris Bryant
I will not delay the House long on these amendments, but I should explain why I tabled them. They would take three clauses out of the Bill, which I am fairly confident will have the support of the whole House.
Although these clauses are about the taking of samples, in particular when an emergency worker is in danger of contracting an infectious disease by virtue of being spat at or through some other means, the aim of the Bill was never to take samples. The aim of the Bill was always to stop spitting. Thanks to the Minister’s earlier interventions, and to today’s debate more generally, I think we have had a clear statement from Parliament that spitting is included as part of common assault or battery.
Holly Lynch
I will rattle through my speech, as I know we are pushed for time. I entirely appreciate and sympathise with amendments 4 to 6 and, following our discussions with Ministers, I understand the practical challenges of clauses 4 to 6, but I want to push a little further. If we remove these clauses, what else can we do to mitigate some of the outstanding anxieties that will still persist?
As the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has outlined, spitting makes up 21% of all assaults on police officers in West Yorkshire. For that reason, it is important we get this right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, certain organisations advocate vaccination as one option to protect against some communicable diseases. Although I endorse that as part of the solution, there are two problems with it. First, I am uncomfortable that vaccination removes responsibility from the spitter not to spit in the first place, and on to the 999 responder to take precautions in preparation for being spat at. That is part of the reason why I am so supportive of amendment 2, which I am pleased was fully discussed in the previous group of amendments.
My second problem is that, as the Minister will know, most forces have an immunisation programme to vaccinate against hepatitis B. However, due to the global shortage of hepatitis B vaccines, forces have had to follow Government advice to suspend those programmes, which means people in roles identified as at increased risk, such as police officers, special constables, detention officers, PCSOs and crime scene investigators, are already going without this level of cover.
I am pleased that stocks of the vaccine are starting to become available again, but there is a backlog of immunisations. Some officers are particularly vulnerable during this window, making the types of mitigation we are now exploring all the more pertinent if we are to abandon clauses 4 to 6.
I also have concerns that the support and advice received by emergency service workers who have been spat at varies greatly. I would like the advice and support to be standardised for all those defined as emergency service workers, as per the definition in the Bill, so they can access the very best specialist medical advice within hours, allowing them to make informed decisions. That will restore the power balance and their dignity, which the spitter has sought to take from them.
Another criticism of these clauses is that the rates of transmission, and therefore the risks, are so low that there simply is not the evidence to warrant testing in the first place, yet we know that is not what is happening in practice. On Second Reading I told the story of PC Mike Bruce and PC Alan O’Shea of West Midlands police, who both had blood spat in their face as they tried to arrest a violent offender. They both received medical advice recommending that they undergo antiviral treatments, and they faced a six-month wait to find out whether the treatment had been successful.
As I explained on Second Reading and repeat now to reinforce the point, during that time PC O’Shea’s brother was undergoing treatment for cancer. Because medical professionals deemed that the risk of passing on an infection was too high, should he have contracted a disease, PC O’Shea was advised not to see his brother throughout the intervening period. He was also advised not to see his parents, because they were in such regular contact with his brother. PC Bruce had a false positive result for hepatitis B and his young family were also then tested and faced a six-month wait for conclusive test results, which confirmed that they all had the all-clear.
Although those experiences are two of the most anxious and prolonged I have come across, they are not uncommon. I need to be able to look those two officers in the eye and say to them that we have not given up on making sure that no officer has to go through the same experience, rather that we are simply taking another approach. I look to the Government to work with us on making that happen, beyond the Bill, if we are to remove clauses 4 to 6.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. Does she agree that the clauses on spitting were some of the most popular measures in the Bill, as originally drafted, when we discussed it with constituents who are emergency workers, so if we are going to drop them, we need a strong statement from Ministers today on what more can be done to tackle this problem, which she clearly highlights?
Holly Lynch
I agree entirely with that point, and I am reassured by what the Minister said about seeking to toughen up deterrence in respect of the language contained in an earlier provision in the Bill. In the event that spitting does not cease with immediate effect, we will still have to ensure that we offer those protections relating to dealing with those anxieties, and offering clarity and support. The right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) is quite right: that is what I am looking to see from Ministers today.
Alex Chalk
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, just at this last moment. What was striking about the point she made was that in the instance that she cited a police officer was given medical advice that there was a risk, yet that medical advice appears, statistically, to run entirely counter to the statistics that were provided by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). So part of resolving this, and giving clear protection and advice to officers, is about ensuring that consistent medical advice is given—does the hon. Lady agree?
Holly Lynch
I entirely agree. That goes back to the earlier point that we cannot fix everything through legislation. I agree entirely that where there are shortcomings with this legislative approach, even if we withdraw it, we will not fix the problem. So what alternatives—the hon. Gentleman has rightly reflected on those—do we need to put in place? I am open to any and all suggestions—but without that legislation I am looking for alternatives.
Rory Stewart
First, I very much welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has proposed that these clauses be removed from the Bill. To answer directly the case made by the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), let me say that at the core of this problem is a problem of anxiety. The individual who is spitting blood at the police officer is exploiting a myth—they are exploiting something that simply is not true. Public Health England is absolutely clear that the chances of contracting a blood-borne disease through somebody spitting at you is close to zero. This is unbelievably important, because the most significant way we can prevent this epidemic of spitting, is by making it clear to the people doing the spitting that the terror they are trying to communicate is a joke—it is absurd. These people are, in the traditional sense of the word, “terrorists”; their intention is to spread terror. What they are trying to do is psychological.
Putting into the Bill something that reconfirms the psychological fallacy that someone can communicate a blood-borne disease through spitting will simply encourage these people to spit even more. What they are trying to do by spitting, in some deranged way, is to make a death threat. They are trying to say, “By spitting at you with blood, I am giving you a terminal disease”, but they cannot do that. The best response to someone who is attempting to produce a fiction or magic, and is trying to intimidate you through magic, is to say, “This is nonsense. What you have done to me is disgusting. I’ve got a gob load of spit on me, but there is absolutely no way you’ve harmed my health by doing this.”
That needs to be made absolutely clear, because there are two separate problems involved in this. One relates to the risk of transmission and the second relates to the nature of these tests. The risk of transmission of a blood-borne disease through spitting is, as Public Health England says, close to zero. The second problem is with these tests. The hon. Member for Halifax gave an example of a false positive, but there are also many examples of false negatives, and these tests are not timely—they cannot communicate an early transmission. Consequently, the only way in which a medical professional should respond to these cases is by focusing not on a test result, which is irrelevant because it is not reliable, but on the mode of transmission. In other words, if somebody has been spat at there should not be any post-exposure prophylaxis treatment given, regardless of an apparent result of a test.
If, on the other hand, someone has been injected with a needle, in almost every case PEP should be allocated, again regardless of the result of the test as that result might show up too late for the PEP to be effective. The proper medical procedure is therefore to focus on the mode, not the test. That means that in this case it would not be of significant use to test somebody, it would not be strictly necessary, and it would not be proportionate in balancing the benefit and the cost. The right to know would therefore not trump the right to privacy in this case.
Chris Bryant
As the Minister has mentioned, there are many fallacies and the biggest area of fallacy is that surrounding HIV infection. I think many people still have in their mind the images of tombstones and the advertising campaign run by the then Government way back when, and they fail to recognise that today HIV is a very different disease. Nowadays, the viral load of the vast majority of people who have had an HIV positive test will be so low because of the good medication that they will not be infectious at all. We need to abolish the stigma, as I said on Second Reading, so I hope that all hon. Members will be happy to remove the clauses from the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Amendment 4 agreed to.
Clause 5
Taking of samples under the Terrorism Act 2000
Amendment made: 5, page 6, line 6, leave out Clause 5.—(Chris Bryant.)
Clause 6
Taking of samples: related amendments
Amendment made: 6, page 8, line 14, leave out Clause 6.—(Chris Bryant.)
Clause 7
Extent, commencement and short title
Amendment made: 7, page 9, line 37, leave out from “only,” to end of line 38.—(Chris Bryant.)
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 5.
Title
Amendment made: 8, in line 3, leave out from “duty;” to “and” in line 6.—(Chris Bryant.)
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 4 to 6.
Third Reading
Chris Bryant
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I was in Morrisons in Porth in the Rhondda last Wednesday, and the chap behind me in the queue was saying “Shouldn’t you be in Westminster?” I said no, that there were no votes and so I was in the constituency, and then I started packing up my stuff, having paid, and I overheard the woman on the checkout say to the man behind me, “So, who is he? Is he someone important?” He said, “That’s Chris Bryant, he’s the MP for the Rhondda,” and she said, “Oh, not very important then.”
For the most part, we are not very important, but we do have an important power as MPs, which is to introduce legislation. I am and have been conscious in introducing this Bill that introducing a new offence should only be done after long and serious consideration. We do not want to fill up the statute book endlessly with new bits and pieces of offences, and when new offences are unnecessary one should not proceed.
I am very conscious that there have been an awful lot of lawyers in the Chamber today, and it is only a sadness that Henry IV’s injunction from 1404 that no members of the law should be allowed to come to Parliament has not been maintained ever since—[Interruption.] I think the lawyers called it the Parliament of Dunces, so perhaps we would be dunces without the lawyers. I am genuinely grateful to those who have spoken today.
Yesterday, the Minister tweeted:
“1870 Declaration of the National Prison Association of the United States…‘It is the judgment of this congress, that repeated short sentences for minor criminals are worse than useless; that, in fact, they rather stimulate than repress transgression.’”
I completely agree with him, and several hon. Members have made similar points today. The aim of this Bill is not primarily to send lots more minor criminals to prison for short periods. What we want to do is send out a very clear message that assaulting an emergency worker is not a minor offence but a serious offence, and that we in Parliament take it seriously and expect the prosecuting authorities to take it equally seriously.
Why? Well, apart from anything else, there has been a very significant rise in the number of assaults in recent years. When there is a rising tide, the people’s representatives should take cognisance of that and take action. Too often, magistrates I have heard tell of have said, or implied, that somehow policing involves a bit of rough and tumble and that police officers should just get over it. That is not the view of this House, and it should not be the view of our magistrates or our judges. That kind of mentality has all too often in recent years infected people’s understanding for other emergency workers as well. There is a sort of assumption that a mental health nurse should put up with a certain amount of physical violence. I simply do not accept that.
I was in the mental health unit of the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, Llantrisant, last month. Staff told me that they had had quite a few assaults recently where the police had refused to take any kind of action, even though a doctor had certified that the person concerned—the perpetrator of the assault—knew perfectly well the distinction between right and wrong and that there was no issue of mental incapacity. We want the whole of the criminal justice system to take these issues seriously.
I fully understand that just changing the law will not change the situation overnight. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) made very clear, there are real issues around the decisions that are made at the point of charge, and subsequently when it comes to discussions between either side just before coming to court. If passing a law, or creating a new offence, stopped offensive and offending behaviour, then the world would see no murders or thefts.
However, this Bill will have a tangible effect: the courts will give more appropriate sentences; the prosecuting authorities will have another tool in their box to deal with this issue; and the victims—the emergency workers themselves—will hear in court that the fact that they are an emergency worker has made a difference to the sentence that is passed down.
Of course we have to do more. Understaffing in some of our emergency services certainly does not help. When those services are under excessive pressure, it makes it more difficult to protect staff. We will have to keep a very close watch on the statistics as they develop, because, with NHS Protect having disappeared, it will be more difficult to ensure that the work that we have done has some effect.
I wish to thank some hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch). I have spent so much time with her over the past few years that I feel as if I am sort of married to her. I do not think that she wants to marry me. [Interruption.] I am a practising homosexual—one day I will be quite good at it! Well, my husband hopes so anyway.
I also thank the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I have his telephone number now, so I expect that we will be co-operating—[Interruption.] I will not tell my husband that. Obviously, we will be co-operating on more pieces of legislation. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), because he has been a very strong supporter of this Bill. I am only sorry that he is somewhat incapacitated today; he is too old to be playing rugby now and he should stop. I pay tribute, too, to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), who has played a really important part in making sure that the Labour party is fully behind the measures in this Bill.
There are many organisations that I wish to thank, including Alcohol Concern, the GMB, which is my trade union, Unison, Unite, the Police Federation, and the British Medical Association. I also wish to thank the Welsh Assembly for bringing forward the legislative consent motion in plenty of time for this Bill to have full effect in Wales as it will in England.
I also thank the Ministers, particularly the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, who is an admirably splendid chap. I know that he wants to do his best by the police, and that he has had many conversations with the Police Federation about how we can make sure that some of the things in this Bill are fully implemented. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), who is not now the Minister in charge of this legislation, was very helpful in getting the Bill to Second Reading and through the Committee stages, and I am grateful for that.
I also pay tribute to the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). We have disagreed in meetings on occasions, but we have managed to come to a very good accommodation today. I hope that this Bill is now in a state that means it will be able to go through the House of Lords at some speed, and I am grateful for all the support that he has provided through his officials. I also thank the Clerks of the House, who of course are always magnificent.
I could not finish without mentioning Erasure—a popular beat combo, m’lud, from your youth. “A Little Respect” was a great song, but more importantly, a little respect goes a long way in politics. All we are seeking to achieve with this Bill is a little respect for our emergency workers. It has also been a delight for us to be able to show a little respect for those on different sides of the House. I think that our constituents would, on the whole, prefer it if we were able to develop common solutions to common problems through legislation and other means, rather than by always shouting at one another. But I am not going to get too pious about that, because I do quite like shouting at Government Members.
This Bill is about saying to every single police constable, prison officer, custody officer, paramedic, nurse, fire officer, doctor, A&E consultant, lifeboat officer, A&E porter, ambulance driver and mines rescue officer, “We stand with you. We will protect our protectors.”
David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)
It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in the closing stages of this important and significant Bill.
We are also coming towards the closing stages of the parliamentary day. Hon. Members will be scurrying back to their many and various constituencies, and we will turn ourselves from parliamentary thoughts to constituency matters. Later tonight and over the weekend, Members up and down the country will no doubt be running around their patch and connecting with real people who do real jobs. I am sure there is not a single Member who does not, from time to time, meet those whose mission it is to put themselves in harm’s way or to intervene in a crisis, including our ambulance service, nurses, NHS staff, police and firefighters. These emergency workers are exactly that: the people who turn up and are on hand when there is an emergency.
I cannot speak for others, but I have to say that when I meet such people on a regular basis, I am filled with what can only be described as a deep sense of personal unworthiness. That is not just because my day job is pretty insignificant—squalid even—but because I really do not think that I could do what they do. People who run towards, rather than away from, an emergency are special. We need them, and we need to protect them.
I have been delighted to watch the progress of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, and I join others in paying tribute to him and the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for bringing it forward. The House will know the hon. Gentleman as an experienced, astute, often entertaining and charming—I heard him called that today—parliamentarian. I have no doubt that those skills will allow him to take this Bill through Parliament and on to the statute book.
The issue is far larger than we might expect. Whichever figures we use—Police Federation or Home Office figures, or somewhere in between—it is true that an astounding number of assaults on police officers take place every year. There may be hundreds or more each day. Every day also sees something like 20 assaults—one an hour, we heard today—on prison staff and nearly 200 assaults on NHS staff. That is indeed shocking. Although we have to tackle and drill down into the reasons why such appalling behaviour exists towards those who are working in difficult conditions to help us, it is essential that there is a clear message that this is not something that our society is prepared to tolerate. In fact, the Bill will not only send a message; it will have a tangible effect on anyone wanting to test the limits of acceptable behaviour. It will mean that they can expect some increase in the sentence they are likely to get.
I am delighted to see genuine cross-party support for the Bill; it is always a joy to see that. We are showing a unanimous front for those who protect us. Raising the bar in the way that the Bill will is nothing less than a step towards a greater civilising of us all. Recognising the special place inhabited by emergency workers can set the balance a little more in the right direction—a little more in their favour.
I am sad to say that this year, because of rising incident numbers, Avon and Somerset police introduced spit guards for trained officers for use in situations where someone has already spat, is going to spit, or has threatened to spit at an officer. We have heard about a lot of incidents like that. It is, to me, utterly shocking behaviour, not just because of the particularly distressing and disgusting nature of the act itself, but because of what is implied by the act about the relationship between the aggressor and people who are there to support and protect—and also, most shockingly, because it is sometimes used by those who know they are infected, or affect to be infected, as a weapon to frighten people. Barbarism of this sort cannot be accepted, even though, as we have heard, its effects are minimal or infinitesimal—almost non-existent. I cannot find words to describe how I feel about it, other than to say that there really must be a greater deterrent and more consequences.
With regard to assaults on NHS staff, again, words fail me. I am sure that many if not most of the attacks come from people who are a little over-refreshed, but that is not any kind of excuse and certainly no justification. Again, the police and the courts must be provided with the powers they need to deal properly with such incidents. While courts currently have the option to consider attacking an emergency worker to be an aggravating factor in sentencing, the Bill will put that on a statutory basis, making it a specific requirement to consider such assaults to be aggravated. Similarly, by extension, those thinking about assaulting an emergency worker might currently consider the fact that their target is an emergency worker, but should this Bill succeed, they will have no option but to consider that fact when they are looking down the barrel of the sentence they will receive.
There is no debate to be had about the debt we all owe to those who work to protect us. As Members of this House, we all meet our local NHS staff, our local police and our firefighters—all those who put themselves on the frontline when the chips are down—and we are all in awe of the work they do for the rest of us. We must give them our support and our protection. That is, after all, nothing more than they give us every day: their support and their protection.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for his work on the Bill so far, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch).
I know that time is short, but I wanted to share with the House my own experience. Last year, I joined West Yorkshire fire and rescue service and West Yorkshire police the night before bonfire night, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax and the chair of West Yorkshire fire and rescue service, Councillor Judith Hughes. I was first placed in a pump and then moved to a fire car. The fire car is the unit that responds first to reports of incidents so that those attending can judge whether a pump is needed. We were also checking that bonfires on public land were not causing a hazard. We received many reports over the evening and checked quite a number of neighbourhood bonfires, where we were welcomed.
But there were two incidents where I saw at first hand the danger from attack that our firefighters and police officers face. The first such incident was when we were called to a fire where a mattress had been set alight against the wall of an end-terrace house. The house was down a narrow back road, with access restricted to a single line of traffic, and row after row of houses criss-crossed by unlit back alleys. Attending the incident, I saw the professionalism of our firefighters in assessing the situation. I also saw, when we were on our way back to the car, an officer shine his torch down a dark alley where a number of masked people were moving towards us with what I can only describe as malicious intent. It is not uncommon for a fire to be set with the intention of luring firefighters and police officers into dangerous situations in order to ambush them. That appalling fact will shock us all, and it is a vivid reminder of just how necessary the Bill is.
The second incident occurred when we attended a neighbourhood bonfire. Instead of a bonfire, we found what can only be described as a community burning of rubbish that coincided with bonfire night. There were mattresses, plastic sofas and other hazardous items all set on fire. Stood around the fire were about 20 young people. We were chatting to them, and then when someone threw a firework into the fire, I was promptly ordered back into the car. While we were walking away, we were fired at with rockets placed in plastic tubing. The officer I was with sustained burn injuries across his head. The rockets continued to be launched at us in the car. We escaped without any further injuries, but the situation could have been so much worse.
I was shocked and scared, but that is an everyday occurrence for our firefighters, police officers and emergency workers. In West Yorkshire alone, there were 95 attacks on operational fire crews last year, up from 65 the year before—a shocking 50% increase. West Yorkshire police recorded nearly 2,000 assaults on employees, and there were 840 incidents of verbal and physical abuse against Yorkshire ambulance service staff.
One firefighter told me that his wife never sleeps when he works nights. I asked him what the worst thing that had ever been thrown at him was, and he told me he had once been attacked by youths throwing excrement in glass jars at him and the crew. These, I remind the House, are firefighters—firefighters who have no power of arrest; who time after time run into danger to save lives and protect the public; and who, as the campaign is aptly named, are more than a uniform and deserve our utmost respect and the full protection of our laws. These laws need to be strengthened so that our firefighters and all other emergency workers are properly protected from the attacks they face in the course of their duties, and so that those responsible are brought to justice. I am proud to support the Bill.
Stephen Crabb
Thank you for letting me make this speech from a sedentary position, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will not keep the House long, and I am sorry that I was not able to participate in the earlier proceedings as fully as I wanted to.
As a sponsor of the Bill, I want to put on record how pleased I am to see it reach this point. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is a good friend and a great parliamentarian. When he took on the task of bringing this issue back to the House to put it on the statute book, building on the excellent foundational work of the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), I was never in any doubt that he would be successful, because he would be working with the spirit of Back Benchers on both sides of the House. We knew from when the hon. Member for Halifax brought the issue to this place that there was a lot of support on both sides of the House for increasing penalties and seeing our emergency workers get the respect on the statute book that they deserve.
I would like to commend and congratulate the Ministers, without whom we would not be at this stage. Right from the very start, they were committed to seeing the Bill get through the House successfully. They have worked with the hon. Member for Rhondda and others across the House in an intelligent and pragmatic way, and they deserve an awful lot of credit for bringing the Bill to this point.
My constituency, Preseli Pembrokeshire, is in the Dyfed-Powys police force area, which is geographically the largest police force area in England and Wales. Statistically it is also the safest part of the United Kingdom in terms of crime rates. Nevertheless, I have been staggered over the last six to nine months, since we embarked on the passage of the Bill, by the number of personal testimonies that I have received from serving police officers in the Dyfed-Powys police force area, PCSOs, firefighters and others about their experiences while they are out there serving their communities on the frontline as emergency workers.
A number of colleagues have made the point that the Bill is not perfect. It will not answer the totality of the issue of the assaults that these workers face, the personal trauma they go through and the psychological impact on them and their families—of course it will not, but it is a really significant step forward.
Probably the biggest thing I have learned from conversations with police officers and PCSOs, and from emails I have read, is the enormous psychological impact of incidents such as these on an emergency worker. Just because a police officer or firefighter is tough and strong does not mean that the impact on their mental health and emotional wellbeing is any less—quite the opposite on occasion.
The Bill sends a powerful message and signal. On Report my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said that he wants legislation to do more than just send a signal, and I agree. We do not just pass symbolic legislation in this place, and the Bill will be more than symbolic. Yes, it will send out a powerful statement, but it will make a solid practical contribution to a better statute book for our emergency workers. It makes it clear that assaults, whether violent physical assaults, verbal assaults or the disgusting act of spitting, are not acceptable in our society. Our emergency workers deserve every bit of credit, respect and esteem that we can give them, and supporting this Bill is a practical way of showing that.
Holly Lynch
It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb). He has been a fantastic supporter of this campaign from the start, which I and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) have appreciated.
I start by paying tribute to my partner in crime fighting, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, for his work in getting us here today. He is always incredibly generous in crediting me with starting this campaign, but the truth is that without his tenacity, his leadership, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of how this place works, we simply would not have made it this far. I know that blue-light responders, NHS workers, and prison officers all over the country are truly grateful to him.
For all our political differences in this place, and what can often seem like the glacial pace of delivering change in Westminster, to go from a harrowing experience in my constituency when out with West Yorkshire police in summer 2016, to being here today, just two years later, at Third Reading for a Bill that will create a new offence of assaulting an emergency service worker, is a showcase of Parliament at its best. That does not mean that getting here was easy, and unusually the journey between Committee stage and Report was the most trying period of the Bill’s passage. It is not entirely the Bill that I hoped it would be for the reasons we explored on Report, but it is a massive step in the right direction.
We know that only a package of measures—legislative and otherwise—will bring about the societal change we want. That will involve working with the Crown Prosecution Service, the judiciary, employers, offenders, and emergency service workers to promote the reporting of such acts, ensure that appropriate support is provided, and that the consequences that follow reflect the seriousness of the crime.
It would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to PC Craig Gallant, the single-crewed officer who I shadowed on that fateful evening in Halifax. Not only did he narrowly escape potentially serious or even life-threatening injuries at the hands of an angry mob, but nothing quite prepared him for the trauma of me thrusting him into the spotlight as the face of a national campaign to protect emergency service workers, and the merciless ribbing that he took from his colleagues as a result. Thank you PC Gallant for allowing me to tell that story. I know that your colleagues understand and appreciate that they will be better protected in future because of it.
I also thank Lambeth police because, ironically and infuriatingly, during Second Reading my flat in London was broken into and robbed. When the police came to investigate, they told me that they would normally ask for more information about my whereabouts during the time the robbery took place, but that they knew exactly where I was because they had been following the debate. Fingers crossed that my flat is still intact when I return to it this evening. If not I will be joining the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and revisiting sentencing guidelines across the board.
My biggest regret is that we could not agree on more concrete proposals to address the fears and anxieties of a 999 responder who has been spat at by an offender. I understand the practical problems with the clauses as originally drafted, and the limitations of testing, yet unless we establish evidence-based best practice that extends to all those covered by the Bill, I fear that the problems we are trying to overcome will persist. I want to ensure that those who have had either blood or saliva spat at them receive the best possible medical advice from a specialist, within hours of the incident. I am hopeful of that becoming a reality, based on earlier conversations and the contribution from the Minister at the Dispatch Box, and I hope for firmer proposals before the Bill completes its journey through both Houses. I am grateful to the trade unions representing emergency service workers that have been with us all the way on this journey—Unison, the GMB, the Prison Officers Association and the Police Federation. Again, I join the hon. Member for Shipley in paying particular tribute to Chief Inspector Nick Smart, the chair of the West Yorkshire Police Federation. He has been incredibly important in helping us to turn one incident into a national campaign for change.
We have had a good, constructive dialogue with the Government throughout this process. While we have encountered practical challenges and differences of opinion, I am pleased that we have been able to work through the vast majority of those in as collaborative a way as possible. I am grateful to both the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, the right hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) for that relationship. I also thank the shadow Policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), who has made a series of speeches on the Bill from the Dispatch Box. Characteristically, she always got the tone and content absolutely right.
I say to all who have shared their stories with me, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and other MPs who have supported the Bill, often when there was a difficult tale to tell, that those experiences have assisted with the shaping and fine-tuning of these law changes, and emergency service workers, NHS workers and prison officers, now and in the future, will be better protected because of it.
Jeremy Quin
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who has done so much to push this cause over the last two years. I congratulate her on that and wish her well on her return to her flat—I trust it will be in good order when she gets back.
It was also a pleasure to hear the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), on Third Reading. He speculated about whether he was important to his constituents, but he is certainly important to this place, and he has done important work today. It is a pleasure to be here to support him, as it was to support him on Second Reading back on 20 October. In replying to the debate, the hon. Gentleman regaled the House with his story of being locked in a police van for his own protection by the police, who then unaccountably forgot about him. All I can assume is that no policeman will ever be so remiss again following the work done by him, the Ministers and all the House in helping to progress the Bill on to the statute book.
I am delighted that the Bill has made so much progress. The measure is supported firmly by my local police federation and by my excellent police and crime commissioner, Katy Bourne. Earlier, I did my district an injustice when I said that there had been 28 assaults on police officers in Horsham in 2016-17—there were 21. However, even one assault is one too many and we are sending a clear message this afternoon.
My interest in this issue was sparked before the debate came to this House by a constituent—a police officer—who wrote to me. He had responded to a call from a man who had been stabbed. On locating him, he found him with stab injuries in the neck, face and head. My constituent provided life-saving first aid, and while he was administering it, he was spat at, as was his colleague. My constituent was in full uniform—it was clear that he was a police officer—and he wrote to me, saying that due to the man’s
“aggressive nature and the risk of injury he had to be handcuffed so we could…administer first aid.”
It is a disgrace that anyone has to go through that, and we are sending a message today that such behaviour is never, ever acceptable.
I thought it was iniquitous that after that assault, although the assailant could go home from hospital, my constituent had to wait for weeks for tests to be taken and results to come in. I was sorry that clause 6 had to be withdrawn, but I understand why the hon. Member for Rhondda said that that was the case. I urge the Government to do all they can with education or vaccines to ease the situation for all our emergency workers who face these circumstances, but with that one proviso, I wish the Bill Godspeed.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
This is the first time that I have spoken in today’s debate, not because of a lack of support for the Bill, but to make sure that it receives its speedy passage through the House of Commons. I reiterate my thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who have run an absolutely fantastic, speedy campaign since my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax first introduced this through a ten-minute rule Bill last year. In that time, she has brought together the House of Commons, and the shadow Minister and Ministers, which is rarely done, in supporting this legislation. Hopefully today we will see the Bill pass through—amended, but all the better for it.
We have had a fantastic debate today, conducted in a comradely and collegiate spirit, with some real expertise on all elements of the criminal justice system. All have been united in the objective of getting this right and delivering protection for the people who go out every day and risk their lives to keep all of us safe.
Throughout the passage of the Bill, the most common comment I have heard from countless police officers and emergency service workers, to whom we have all spoken, is that over the years assault and sexual assault have come to be accepted and seen as the norm within the police and NHS. While this debate has been going on, the assistant chief constable of Devon and Cornwall police, Jim Colwell, has tweeted that overnight there were 10 assaults on the officers under his care, including kicks, punches, headbutts and spitting. He asks, how the public feel about this and whether they accept it. The House is saying today that it is absolutely unacceptable. It is not part of the job that he and his colleagues do. We as parliamentarians are saying that society has zero tolerance for anyone who assaults our emergency service workers.
The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has made some important points, particularly about early release and behaviour, but in all his examples, as explained by colleagues, the CPS made the wrong charging decision. I accept the principle behind his amendments, but, as we have heard today, the CPS needs to be more accountable for what the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) described as lazy prosecutorial decisions, and that applies equally when the CPS decides to charge someone when it should not have. A constituent of mine was recently charged and taken to court, but the magistrates threw the case out immediately because the decision to take it forward had been so ridiculous. The CPS should be held responsible and accountable for that decision, just as the police are held accountable, and rightly so, for the decisions they make that have serious consequences for the people they protect or charge. That is another point the House has made today. I hope the Minister will say how we can hold the CPS and prosecutors to account for their charging decisions.
I must comment briefly on the strain that our emergency services are under and which has played a part in the rise in the number of assaults. Very rarely have our police and emergency services been under more pressure. The job is getting harder, and for those on the frontline it is becoming overwhelming. Our emergency services are increasingly relied upon not just as the service of last resort but as the service of first resort, as the gaps between the services that make up our social safety net and on which our communities rely get wider. The NHS is under unbelievable pressure and is struggling to cope with limited resources. Waiting times for A&E are up. Ambulance services across the country simply cannot meet demand. The police are increasingly single-crewed or inappropriately dispatched—for example, female officers being dispatched to incidents of serious and violent sexual assault. Our emergency services are increasingly dealing with people suffering from mental health issues unable to access the services they need.
In that climate, nobody would suggest that the Bill is a panacea for our emergency services. The strain, stress and complex range of factors behind this increasingly difficult climate will not be solved easily, but the Bill is important, and it is vital that it be passed today, because the right to go to work and feel safe is a right that has been too easily cast aside. Our emergency services are increasingly finding themselves in vulnerable situations, and all too often security at work is far from a reality. The offences and examples we have heard today are, as the Minister said, not just crimes against the person but crimes against our society. We ask these dedicated individuals to go out and serve our communities on our behalf, and the least we can do is afford them the protection that makes it clear that society views their being assaulted in the course of their duties with the utmost seriousness.
In conclusion, I again thank and congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda and for Halifax. The Opposition are delighted to support the Bill and to see it pass safely through its Third Reading today.
Philip Davies
I will be brief, because I think we all want the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) to be able to speak to her Bill. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on bringing forward this Bill and on the way he has gone about achieving success with it. I must say in passing that if anyone is thinking of bringing forward a private Member’s Bill, I would advise them to go and speak to the hon. Gentleman, because he has produced a perfect template for how such a Bill should be brought forward in such a way as to ensure that we have a good piece of legislation on the statute book, rather than simply producing a good idea that ends up being bad legislation. This has been a first-class example of that.
The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) deserves equal praise, because she has shown that she is a doughty supporter of all the emergency services but particularly of the police, not just in word but in deed, and I know how much they appreciate that. I also want to thank the two Ministers, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). They might not have gone as far as I would have liked—they seldom do—but without their constructive approach to the Bill, we would not be here today. We should not underestimate the role that they have played in ensuring that that has happened. I should also like to praise my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris). He does an awful lot of work in ensuring that Bills such as these get to this stage. He usually works under the radar and he does not get the credit he deserves, but I know that he does an awful lot to ensure that these Bills get through.
Our emergency services are incredibly important to all of us. They put themselves in harm’s way every single day, and we are all troubled by the rising tide of assaults that they face as they carry out their jobs. This legislation sends a signal that we support them, but it does more than that. I will celebrate every time a criminal who assaults an emergency worker gets a longer prison sentence as a result of this Bill. That is the reality of how this legislation will benefit people. It will ensure a longer prison sentence for those criminals who deserve to go to prison for longer, and that is a great outcome. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda on the way in which he has brought about this legislation.
Robert Courts
At this very moment, in all our constituencies, the emergency services are working hard to protect us. We owe them our gratitude, and we also have a duty to protect them. I have seen for myself the excellent work that the police do when I have been out on the streets of west Oxfordshire following them on the beat and visiting hospitals. On the late night shifts, I have seen some of the people they have to deal with, some of whom are drunk or violent. It is simply unacceptable that our emergency services should be treated with anything less than the highest respect.
In 2015, there were 800 assaults on NHS staff in Oxfordshire, with a conviction rate of only approximately 1%. We in this House cannot automatically control violence, but we can control some of the legislation that relates to it. It is important that we should provide that little extra protection to ensure that our emergency services know that they are being treated with the highest respect.
Kevin Foster
This is a welcome Bill, and it will make a difference. The tweet that was referred to by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) is absolutely right. The assistant chief constable, Jim Colwell, has highlighted the assaults that officers in Devon and Cornwall are facing today. I hope that each of those officers will see, through their ACC highlighting that and it being mentioned today, that their experience has made some difference to changing the law to deal with those who think our emergency services workers are their target rather than people they should respect. This is a fantastic Bill and I look forward to it passing its Third Reading.
Rory Stewart
I have very limited time—less than seven minutes—and I hope that hon. Members will take the comments that I made on Report as a proper tribute to the extraordinary work that has been done by the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch). Wonderful speeches have also been made by other Members today. I hope that all members of the emergency services feel strongly the passion and support in this House for their work. In this limited time, I will be unable to pay as full a tribute as I would like to the extraordinary work that is done day in and day out by the police, the fire service, our NHS workers and other members of the emergency services. I would, however, like to focus on one service that has not received as much attention as it might have done in this debate, and I refer of course to the Prison Service.
Prison officers operate out of sight of society. They have the most extraordinarily challenging profession. It requires unbelievable resilience for a prison officer to walk into a cell knowing that, on many days, the individual in that cell might have self-harmed or even killed themselves. It takes astonishing courage for a prison officer to confront a prisoner who is coming at them with a broken broom or with a toothbrush in which are embedded nine blades. It takes astonishing decisiveness day in, day out, for a prison officer to deal with the crises and emergencies that happen in our prisons. It also takes great moral authority to act as a mentor, a teacher and in some ways a friend to help prisoners on the path to reformation. Yet these people are now being attacked more than 8,000 times a year. Their jaws are being broken, and they are being sent to hospital. They must be protected. That is why we welcome the Bill on behalf of all the other emergency services, but particularly on behalf of prison officers.
Let me say this, in the few minutes that I have left. An attack on a prison officer is an attack on the state. An attack on a prison officer is an attack on us. When an individual is attacked, it affects the entire operation of the prison. It affects that individual’s willingness to take risks—to unlock a prison door, and to allow prisoners to engage in education or purposeful activity.
The response that we now have to such attacks, as a society, is much more limited than it once was. In the past, prison officers were able to depend on penalties that we would no longer want to introduce, for very good reasons. Corporal punishment has, of course, been removed. Solitary confinement has been removed. Restrictions on family visits have now been removed. The only serious sanction that remains when a prisoner assaults a prison officer is the law that we are discussing today, which is why we want to encourage the police to work with us to prosecute prisoners who assault prison officers. We have heard today that very successful cases are being brought against people who spit at police officers, but almost no cases are being brought against prisoners who spit at prison officers. Too often, I am afraid, those in other parts of the criminal justice system seem to think it acceptable to assault a prison officer, although they would not think it acceptable to be assaulted themselves.
Let the House therefore be clear that we respect prison officers for their courage, for their decisiveness and for their moral example. Let the House be clear that all our progressive liberal instincts on reforming prisoners must be accompanied by respect for basic order and discipline. We should not be ashamed to say that prison officers ought to be able to exercise order and control, and that we will need a whole package of measures if our actions are to lead to purposeful activity. That package will include proper searches at the prison gates to ensure that drugs and weapons are not getting into the prisons, and a clean and decent environment in which the windows are not broken and the floors are kept clean.
We must make it absolutely clear that we respect the safety of prison officers, through the measures that we are taking in terms of protective equipment, the right kind of restraints, and the piloting of pelargonic acid vanillylamide and pepper spray. Everyone must understand that safety, security and decency do not get in the way of education or purposeful activity, but constitute the foundation without which purposeful activity cannot take place.
If we are to work with prisoners and if we are to reduce reoffending, we must ensure that, through this legislation, we show that we respect the honour and dignity of prison officers and members of other emergency services as public servants, and appreciate the service that they provide on our behalf; that we express the deep gratitude that we feel for everything that they do; and that we demonstrate through every single action that we take—this important Bill will double the maximum sentence for an attack on our emergency service officers—that an attack on them is an attack on us. That applies to an attack on the police, an attack on members of the fire service, an attack on health workers and, above all, an attack on prison officers, whose service is all too often forgotten but who do such extraordinary work on behalf of the public.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Employment and Workers’ Rights Bill
Friday 27th April 2018
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Employment and Workers' Rights Bill 2017-19 View all Employment and Workers' Rights Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As a former officer of the GMB trade union, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
It is no secret that our economy and the jobs that people do have changed rapidly over recent years, particularly in my constituency of Barnsley East. Coal once provided jobs for more than 30,000 people, but the economic landscape is now very different. We have seen a substantial increase in precarious work practices, such as zero-hours contracts, the gig economy and fake self-employment, where the guarantees of secure and well-paid work that people once enjoyed are no more.
Agency work has boomed, from retail and distribution through to the teachers and nurses filling the staff shortages in our public services. It is estimated that the number of agency workers will reach 1 million by 2020. Agency workers are some of the most exploited workers in our economy, and this employment practice is simply too one-sided in favour of those who hire them.
My Bill takes steps to change that. It will close the loophole that allows agency workers to be paid less than permanent members of staff undertaking the same role for the same company. After three months, agency workers will be able to request a contract of employment and the hirer will have a duty to assess it. After two years, agency workers will have the right to become a permanent employee.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I welcome this Bill. I read clause 5 with great interest, as it seems to give an agency worker the right to become directly employed by the hirer after two years except in exceptional circumstances. Such a measure is long overdue. Will my hon. Friend clarify that it is her intention that workers would have continuous service from the date they started work with the hirer and would therefore have rights against unfair dismissal from the moment they reached two years, rather than the clock starting again?
Stephanie Peacock
My hon. Friend is right that these measures are long overdue. She is also right about the intention of clause 5.
I would like to share some examples with the House, particularly the case of agency workers in BT call centres, including the one near my constituency in south Yorkshire, and others who take 999 calls. The majority of them are kept on continuous assignments, working for years in the same role. In practice, they are nothing less than permanent staff, but they have no job security and are on lower pay than other workers. The nature of their contracts means that the equal pay exemption can be exploited. On average, they are paid about £500 a month less than their colleagues on permanent contracts. Some do not even take annual leave, because they simply cannot afford to do so.
There is the case of the lorry driver who has worked for the same national supermarket for the best part of 20 years but could be sacked by the hirer without notice, reason or redundancy pay. They would be left with no legal recourse against the hirer to claim unfair dismissal. Take the warehouse worker in Barnsley who works up to 20 hours a day on their feet, but is constantly threatened with immediate dismissal if they do not hit their target. It even happens in the public sector. As a former teacher, I have heard of too many cases of agency teachers being paid less than those they teach alongside. It is simply unfair.
Financial security has been lost as hard-working people in my community live week to week, rota to rota, and pay packet to pay packet. Proper working rights, pay and conditions that truly benefit employees have been sacrificed in the name of flexibility for unscrupulous bosses.
The Bill is founded on the important premise that two people working in the same role, or doing the same job for the same company, should be entitled to the same fair and equal rights. It will simply level the playing field for agency workers in Barnsley East and across the country in the face of unfair working practices, and provide them with the proper workplace rights and pay that they are overdue.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. Employment rights have always been close to my heart. For example, it was a genuine honour to sit on the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Public Bill Committee earlier this year. Ensuring that parents have the time to grieve the loss of a child without the pressure to return to work is vital and will make a real difference, and I remain indebted to my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for their work in bringing that Bill forward.
As the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) made clear, her Bill has two main elements. First, it would ensure equal treatment for agency workers by ending the equal pay exemption in the Agency Workers Regulations 2010, also known as the Swedish derogation. Secondly, the latter part of the Bill would tackle the exploitation of agency workers who are used by employers effectively as permanent staff to avoid the legal obligations afforded to normal employees.
According to the independent Taylor review, which was published last July and which I recommend to Members who have not already read it, robust data on the number of agency workers in the UK is sadly lacking. It is estimated that there are between 800,000 and 1.2 million such workers. The review made clear:
“Agency work has an important part to play in a vibrant, flexible labour market and many choose to work in this way. However, there is increasing evidence that some companies are relying on temporary workers to fill longer term positions, with the same agency worker doing the same job for years. This works for some people. They have the freedom to leave whenever they want with no notice whatsoever but for many, this level of uncertainty, not knowing whether work will be terminated and having no security of income, does not work. What is more, individuals in this situation can find it hard to seek work elsewhere, especially if they fear taking time off from the current contract may count against them in future allocations of work.”
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Does the hon. Lady believe it is correct that more than 120,000 agency workers have been on an agency contract for over five years?
Victoria Prentis
I was beginning to expound my argument that we do not have sufficient information about exactly what agency workers do and what sort of contracts they are on in order for us to make decisions.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
One of the great disappointments of the Taylor review—there were many—was that it could have referred to the use of the ministerial power in section 23 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, meaning that we would not need the excellent Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock). Why will the Government not support the implementation of that section?
Victoria Prentis
Of course I do not speak for the Government, but they are keen to gather further information before they take the necessary steps to implement the “Good Work” plan, about which they feel so strongly.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we do not have comprehensive research or assessments from across the country, but all Members will have been made aware of shocking examples. In my constituency, a man was forced to return to work as a lorry driver in the afternoon following an eye operation, which was dangerous not only for him, but for everyone else on the road. Are such examples not good enough for the Government and the rest of us to unite and take action now?
Victoria Prentis
The hon. Lady raises an extremely serious case. It is of course important that the Government collate and evaluate the information. It is vital that people work safely, both for their own health and for the health of the rest of us.
I will now quote further from the Taylor review, because it is important to note that it
“does not want to stop companies using agency staff but we propose to address situations in which companies use agency workers over a longer period of time as a substitute for effective workforce management. As such, we believe as well as a right to equal pay (discussed later in this report), agency workers should have the right to request a direct employment contract with the hirer when they have been engaged with the same hirer for 12 months.”
That does seem a reasonable expectation after 12 months, which takes us back to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens).
In the months since the Taylor review, the Government published their “Good Work” plan, which actually goes beyond many of the review’s recommendations. In seeking to set the direction for employment over decades to come, it is important that we get this absolutely right. It was for that reason that the Government launched the consultation on agency workers at the beginning of February 2018. The consultation will continue until 9 May, so all hon. Members have an opportunity to make their views known, as does everyone else. It is hoped that, in gauging the views of the industry, businesses and workers themselves—
Business without Debate
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
House of Lords (Exclusion of Hereditary Peers) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
PRIVATE LANDLORDS (REGISTRATION) BILL
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Workers (Definition and Rights) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 26 October.
Automatic electoral registration (no. 2) bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 26 October.
Tyres (Buses and Coaches) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 15 June.
BBC Licence Fee (Civil Penalty) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
International Development Assistance (Definition) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Benefits And Public Services (Restriction) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Electronic Cigarettes (Regulation) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
British Indian Ocean Territory (Citizenship) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 26 October.
Pedicabs (London) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Voter registration (no. 2) bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 2) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Rivers Authorities and Land Drainage Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Wild Animals in Circuses Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May.
Forensic Science Regulator Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Dagenham Diesel Engine Production
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)
It is good to see you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I rise to make the case for modern diesel engine production at the Ford Dagenham plant and to support the men and women who work there. The Dagenham plant has a proud history. It was built in 1929 and proved vital to our war effort. The factory was turned over to producing Bren gun carriers, vans, Army trucks and winches. It produced 34,000 Merlin aero engines and 95% of British tractors.
Post-war employment at the plant peaked at some 40,000 workers in 1953. The plant doubled its capacity in 1959, becoming the biggest factory in Europe. Unfortunately, vehicle assembly stopped in 2002, by which point nearly 11 million cars, trucks and tractors had been built at the plant. The decision was made to diversify into diesel technology—this move was very much in line with Government industrial and environmental strategy at the time. The Dagenham Diesel Centre, where the engines are both designed and manufactured, was opened by Tony Blair in 2003. Today, Dagenham produces 1 million engines annually, which is more than 50% of Ford’s global diesel requirement. The engine plant and the diesel centre cover some 2.5 million square feet. We have nearly 1,800 engine plant employees, plus 650 in transport operations and 600 other contractors —this makes more than 3,000 in total.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate, and what he is saying rings a bell. In Solihull, we have just lost 1,000 diesel engine jobs. Does he agree that cleaner diesels are much less polluting than petrols and that the potential targeting of these vehicles by some councils with so-called “pollution charges” is wrong-headed?
Jon Cruddas
I support precisely what the hon. Gentleman has said; indeed, I was going to mention those 1,000 job losses and cover some of the issues he has raised in my remarks.
The number of 3,000 at the Dagenham plant sits alongside 1,500 UK engineers dedicated to the development of Ford’s latest and future clean powertrain technology. The total turnover stands at some £1.75 billion. Dagenham is a strong export story for this country, as 89% of these engines leave our shores, and customers include Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot, Citroen and Fiat. In 2014, Ford invested £490 million in the next generation of clean diesel engines, specifically designed to meet the new Euro 6 emissions standards. The engines will also satisfy Transport for London’s ultra-low emissions zone. All Dagenham diesel engines will comply with the next phase of Euro 6 emissions standards—these will include “real driving emissions” requirements, not factory-based testing. Put simply, the plant is at the cutting edge of diesel technology and produces engines that comply with the most stringent emissions standards on the planet.
Today, however, there is a crisis of confidence in diesel vehicles and diesel technology, with many arguing that we are witnessing the demonisation of the technology. In the current climate, there is little or no separation between old and new diesel technology: between dirty engines and state-of-the-art diesel technology. If this is allowed to continue, it will have disastrous consequences. Yesterday, it was widely reported that the number of cars built in UK factories in March fell by some 13%. The current debate—or, rather, panic—lacks both facts and nuance. The danger is that this will lead to unfair criticism of the engines built in Dagenham; will threaten many thousands of high-quality jobs in my constituency, and in others across our economy and our country; and will undermine the managed transition to 2040 and a world beyond the combustion engine.
So today I speak up on behalf of Dagenham diesel engine production. Over the past months, I have been in talks with the company, the unions the Mayor’s office and council leaders, and we all stand united on the need for new arguments for modern diesel—to push back against some of the current hostility to this technology—and to make the case for the Dagenham plant and the managed transition to 2040. This is not about defending the indefensible in terms of the older engines, which, paradoxically, the present debate might simply ensure stay on our roads for longer; it is about arguing for the most efficient modern diesel technology. Today I am just asking the Government to join this new partnership to push back against the demonisation of diesel.
In truth, Volkswagen has not done us many favours. Diesel appears to have become a dirty word since it emerged that Volkswagen had cheated regulators and misled customers by using software to suppress nitrogen oxide emissions during testing. In 2015, VW admitted it had fitted “defeat devices” in some 11 million of its cars worldwide, with about 1.2 million of those being in the UK. This cost Volkswagen £22.5 billion. What worries me is the collateral damage now being played out across the whole sector.
Today, there is a real danger that Britain’s auto industry is on a cliff edge, with collapsing sales of diesel and the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs and dealerships. Consumer confidence is vital and Government have a key role to play in that. In Dagenham, for example, plans to recruit for 150 new jobs in 2017-18 were shelved due to the fall in demand. Over the past few weeks we have heard more bad news, with Vauxhall revealing plans to slash UK dealerships, Nissan preparing to cut hundreds of jobs due to falling demand, and, as we have heard, Jaguar Land Rover cutting 1,000 jobs as it seeks to offset falling diesel sales. European diesel share continues to decline, now at 33% of sales compared with 50% in 2011.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, which is very relevant to me. In my constituency, we have a large company called Delphi Diesel Systems, and we will lose 500 jobs in Sudbury. It points to precisely what he is talking about—the forecast falling demand in Europe because of the much tougher measures that are being introduced. To an extent, I accept some of that, but my concern is that if that is going to happen, we need to see the strongest possible strategy from the Government—much of which we will see, I think—to support the new technology and ensure that investment goes into plants such as his and mine and those all around the UK.
Jon Cruddas
That shows the cross-party agreement on some of the points I am making today. The trouble is that in the UK, Germany, France and Spain—the markets where anti-diesel rhetoric is highest—diesel consumption is declining fastest. Sales of diesel cars have slumped as regulators and politicians announce plans for bans, levies and additional taxes in many cities.
In truth, we in Dagenham fear that diesel has become a bit of a political football. In 2001, Gordon Brown introduced a new system of car tax aimed at protecting the environment—a sliding scale to make it cheaper for cars with lower CO2 emissions. That helped stimulate a dash for diesel after its introduction in 2001 and its extension in subsequent years. There are now some 12 million diesel cars on British roads, while back in 2000 there were only 3 million.
In recent years, diesel has accounted for around half of the new car market. In 2000, by comparison, only one in seven new cars was a diesel model, yet following a 2017 BBC report on the dangers of diesel, the Environment Secretary jumped into the debate to make political capital:
“The dash for diesel was pursued under a Labour government…This is yet another example of a Conservative government having to clean up Labour’s mess…We are taking action…ending the sale of new diesel and petrol cars and vans by 2040.”
Political game playing should have no role, given the challenges facing the sector, as reflected in the comments made by colleagues across the House today.
Since the 2015 VW revelations, cities have taken the lead over national Governments. Berlin banned the oldest, highest-polluting diesel cars from its centre, Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have said they plan to ban diesel vehicles from city centres by 2025, and Sadiq Khan ordered the replacement of the capital’s diesel bus fleet and enforced a £10 toxicity charge, or T-charge, on the highest-polluting cars as of October. The measures are part of a wider plan to create an ultra-low emissions zone in central London from April 2019. I do not dispute the push back against older diesel vehicles—it has to be the right way to proceed—but the danger is that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and fail to challenge the wholesale demonisation of the technology.
Julian Knight
The hon. Gentleman is being very kind in giving way. He talks about older diesel, but actually this is about very recent diesel—my own diesel, for instance, is from 2013. It has fallen in value by 70%, which will probably mean that it is more sensible to run it into the ground, effectively meaning that a more polluting car will stay on the road.
Jon Cruddas
That is precisely the point that I will make, and I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman about the paradoxes that create incentives to retain older, dirtier diesel technology on our roads, resulting in great harm to our economy, possibly to our future consumers, and to British workforces.
Given all this, what do we actually know? Overall, the CO2 emissions of a diesel car tend to be lower, diesel fuel contains more energy per litre than petrol and diesel engines are more efficient than petrol engines, especially in rural environments. Modern Euro 6 diesel cars are the cleanest in history: they capture 99% of particulates and emit 84% fewer NOx emissions than in 2000. So, we know that new diesels do not compare to the older ones.
We also know from data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders that average CO2 emissions from cars sold in 2017 were higher than in 2016, reversing a near 20-year decline. They blame that increase on the demonisation of diesel since 2015, which means that we cannot take for granted the progress made in reducing CO2 emissions since 2000. We are heading in the wrong direction, as diesel sales have fallen by 37% since last year.
Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, criticised the autumn Budget, which increased taxes on sales of new diesels. He commented that people were concerned about these tax increases and were
“holding off buying new diesel cars because of the confusion and that means older, dirtier diesels are staying on the roads.”
That is precisely the point made by the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight).
Nick Molden, chief executive of testing company Emissions Analytics, agreed that, rather than impose higher taxes on new cars, the oldest cars and dirtiest diesel cars should be targeted instead. His company’s real-world driving tests has shown that some of the newest diesels produced less pollution overall than petrol vehicles. He said:
“The most efficient diesel engines continue to improve while some of the worst remain on the market, meaning the confusion for consumers increases rather than diminishes. Diesel sales are falling as a result, and this may lead to cities and governments over-compensating and restricting diesels more than is justified by our evidence. The danger is that motorists who bought genuinely clean diesels—together with the manufacturers who made them—suffer the consequences of the general confusion and loss of confidence.”
I know that the Government recognise the need to act quickly to improve the UK’s air quality, but they must also accept that we cannot do so at the expense of increasing our carbon dioxide emissions. Surely, therefore, the most effective way to achieve both aims is by encouraging consumers to adopt new technologies or to update to the cleanest specifications. Clearly modern diesel has a role to play here, and, with help, we can get the old diesels off the road. For example, Ford’s “new for old” scrappage scheme enables drivers to trade in any passenger car or commercial vehicle registered before 1 January 2011. It guarantees to take every pre-2011 vehicle off the road permanently by scrapping them.
Modern Euro 6 diesel cars are the cleanest in history, and the latest generation of diesel engines have a crucial role to play in improving air quality and reducing CO2 emissions, particularly in the commercial vehicle market. London is facing a challenge in its air quality, and it is here in London that we make the latest Euro 6 diesel engines—just down the road in Dagenham. These engines comply with the world’s toughest ever real driving emissions standards. Recent correspondence with the Mayor of London has confirmed that he gets this and that he supports the modern case for Dagenham.
Dagenham-built engines are powering the UK’s best-selling and cleanest ever Transit commercial vehicles and developing the next generation of commercial vehicles. Today I make the case for Dagenham modern diesel technology. We have to push back against the demonisation of diesel. As have I said, the Mayor of London is responding positively, and I ask for the Government’s support in making the case for Dagenham diesel. To date they have been too quiet, thereby endangering the country’s industrial performance and the lives of my constituents. This is about planning for the future. The combustion engine will not last forever. I want to help transition the Dagenham plant to embrace future technologies, but to do so we require stability today and in the near future, and that has to be based around the most efficient diesel technology ever produced.
Speaking of the future, Ford has announced a global investment of some $11 billion to produce 40 different types of electrified vehicle by 2022. We all need to secure Dagenham’s future by transitioning into new technologies—a future beyond both petrol and diesel. To do that, we need to resist the wholesale demonisation of technologies and make the case for modern diesel.
Let me put this simply. We have made significant progress recently in reducing CO2 emissions. The danger is that, in the current climate, we will panic, hit the rewind button, ignore the facts, harm our economic base and undermine a successful transition to the technologies of the future. Dagenham has as much of a role to play in our industrial future as it has in our past, and the Government have a role in helping to secure that future. I ask for their help today.
The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)
May I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) on securing a really important debate, the subject of which is very much front and centre of the discussions that we are having with industry and with colleagues across the parties? We are all trying to deal with the conundrum of how we move to a lower-emission, cleaner-air future without causing harm to an industry that, as we know, has been hugely successful.
I share in and amplify the tribute that the hon. Gentleman paid to the men and women of the Dagenham plant. The industry employs 170,000 people, who have delivered a highly productive sector and good industrial relations. Its exports in 2016 were the highest we have ever seen, and of course we absolutely want that to continue. As the hon. Gentleman said, Ford has been a good partner to the UK through times of peace and war, and remains an absolute cornerstone of our automotive landscape.
I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who spoke up for his constituency, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), with whom I have discussed this issue many times, and my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) who cannot speak here, yet speaks up so eloquently for his constituents in Daventry. A really important group of people have come together today.
I want to provide some reassurances and a sense of where we are going in the future. This is a concerning time. Auto companies right across the country ask us, “What does this future transition look like?” Of course, the engines made at the plant in the constituency of the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham are almost all destined for export; they go into Transits that I believe are assembled in Turkey. There is a Europe-wide question about the future.
It is right that we are working really closely with the industry through the Automotive Council and the company. The Secretary of State and the Prime Minister have met senior management regularly to understand the future strategic direction that the company sees itself taking in the UK. We want to reassure the company that, as well as the technical transition that I will discuss later, the Government are really working with the industry in a way we have never seen before, through the industry strategy. We are co-investing with industry through, for example, the Faraday challenge to ensure that we take a leadership position in new technology. We are also working out what more we can do on a research and development basis to go forward together.
Ford has demonstrated time and again its commitment to manufacturing in Britain by regularly upgrading its investment. It is quite right that we use opportunities such as this debate to reassure the company and the hon. Gentleman’s constituents that we understand this transition and that we are not trying to demonise diesel. I will explain that a little more later.
We have set out our aspirations in the clean growth strategy for a lower-carbon future and in the clean air proposals that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is bringing forward, because it is clear that we have to tackle this problem in a sensible way. The dash for diesel that the hon. Gentleman mentioned was encouraged by the scientific evidence at the time, but it has resulted in some consequences, particularly in the least well-off parts of the country, where there are unacceptable air quality issues in playgrounds and gardens and on balconies. It is absolutely right that we work out how to create cleaner air for our families and children, and the hon. Gentleman mentioned work that is being led locally on that.
It is right that the Government continue to be on the front foot in their support for ultra-low emissions vehicles. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Budget, in which the Chancellor announced the plug-in car grant, investments in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and the £246 million that the Government are making available over four years to co-invest with industry so that we can own and create the best manufacturing base for where the world is going, which is towards having a fleet of ultra-low emissions vehicles. This country does not want to be making the last diesel engine ever sold in Europe. We want the men and women of the Dagenham plants and plants around the country to have the investment and skills to lead the manufacturing of a new generation of cars. Of course, we already make one in five electric vehicles sold in Europe.[Official Report, 2 May 2018, Vol. 640, c. 3MC.]
The 2040 target—to have no new vehicles on the roads that are not ultra-low emissions vehicles—was carefully discussed and delivered with the industry to give it sufficient time to adapt and to make the transition calmly. We have committed substantial funds to future technology, but we are equally committing funds to the current technology. For example, we have committed more than £1 billion to the Advanced Propulsion Centre over 10 years. As the hon. Gentleman says—he may be a right hon. Gentleman, so I hope he will forgive me if I have got that wrong—this is about how we adapt to the diesel engines of today. [Interruption.] Well, perhaps he will be a right hon. Gentleman one day.
This is about how we invest, within the guidelines that the EU has rightly brought forward, to create the next generation of much cleaner diesel. The point was made that this needs to be tested in a real-world environment. My concern is that consumers have lost confidence in diesel because they sometimes feel that the companies have not been straight with them about emissions. It is right that we have a medium-term investment strategy to create the lowest possible emissions from diesel engines, but we must also work with the industry to migrate these engines in the future.
Since we put in place the 2040 target and made it clear what we think the direction of travel is, we have had a whole series of positive announcements from auto companies in the UK that are reaffirming their commitment to manufacture here. PSA-Vauxhall said two weeks ago that it is going to reinvest in the Luton plant to build the Vivaro from 2019. Toyota announced in February that it is going to build the next-generation Auris at the Burniston plant. Nissan says that it is going to spend half a billion pounds in Sunderland to secure the future of the factory there. BMW has chosen Oxford as the place where it is going to manufacture its electric Mini.
We have seen a very big and ongoing increase in automotive investment. From working with the industry and representatives of the Automotive Council, it is clear that these companies understand, both in Europe and globally, that the world is going towards a much more low-emissions future, as is absolutely right. I would submit that we are probably one of the most front-footed Governments in working with industry to drive this transition. Again, I refer to the investments we have made through the Faraday challenge and in the Advanced Propulsion Centre.
To give the hon. Gentleman some reassurance, there is no demonising of diesel. There is a calm reflection that ultimately we have to phase out polluting fossil fuels over several decades, giving companies time to plan their models and invest in their production lines. He is right to pay tribute to the workforce—the men and women who work so hard in these factories and have delivered a superb success for British manufacturing —and I join him in doing so. People who say we do not make things here should go and visit the auto plants in his constituency, or the plants in Swindon near mine, to see what the workforce has delivered. We want those jobs to be maintained. We want this investment to continue. Ultimately, we all want that to result in cleaner air for our children and our grandchildren in future.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
ECOFIN
(6 years ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)
An informal meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) will be held in Sofia on 27-28 April 2018. The Council will discuss the following:
Working Lunch - Deepening of the economic and monetary union
Based on a presidency issues note, the Council will exchange views on the ECOFIN Council roadmap of June 2016 on completing the banking union. This will be followed by an update from the Eurogroup president on reform of the European stability mechanism.
Working Session I
The Council will then be joined by Central Bank Governors for the first working session.
a) Convergence in the EU - Inside and outside the euro area
Following a presentation from the Centre for European Policy Studies, the Council will discuss the possibilities to increase convergence in the EU among both euro area and non-euro area member states
b) Further reducing fragmentation within the capital markets union
Following a presentation from Bruegel on deepening the capital markets union, the Council will discuss measures to further reduce capital markets fragmentation.
The Council will then be debriefed on the outcomes of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting on 19 -20 April.
Working Session II - Improving revenue collection and fighting tax fraud in the single market
The Council will exchange views on improving revenue collection and fighting tax fraud in the single market.
Working Session III - Corporate taxation and tax challenges of the digital economy
Following the recent publication of Commission proposals regarding fair taxation of the digital economy, the Council will exchange views on the approach to corporate taxation in the single market and the tax challenges arising from digitalisation of the economy.
[HCWS652]
Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill: EVEL
(6 years ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
I am pleased to announce the publication of our analysis of English votes for English laws in relation to Government amendments tabled to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill for consideration at Report stage.
The English votes for English laws process applies to public Bills in the House of Commons. To support the process, the Government have agreed that they will provide information to assist the Speaker in considering whether to certify that Bill or any of its provisions for the purposes of English votes for English laws. Bill provisions that relate exclusively to England or to England and Wales, and which have a subject matter within the legislative competence of one or more of the devolved legislatures, can be certified.
The memorandum provides an assessment of Government amendments tabled to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, for the purposes of English votes for English laws, ahead of its Report stage in the House of Commons. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s assessment is that the amendments do not change the territorial application of the Bill, for the purpose of Standing Order No. 83L of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons.
This analysis reflects the position should all the Government amendments be accepted.
The memorandum will be published on the Bill documents page of the Parliament website and I will place a copy in the Library of the House.
[HCWS651]
Syria: UK Response and Brussels Conference
(6 years ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for International Development (Penny Mordaunt)
The Syrian regime’s continued and systematic blatant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law has resulted in an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Medical facilities, schools and aid workers appear to have been deliberately targeted, aid has been blocked to starve communities into submission, and rape and sexual violence have been deployed as routine weapons of war.
13.1 million people are now in need of humanitarian assistance, including 5.6 million with acute needs. In addition, over half of Syria’s population has been displaced by the violence, with 5.6 million seeking refuge in neighbouring countries.
Since the conflict began seven years ago, the UK has been at the forefront of the international response. We are the second largest bilateral donor to the crisis. Our support to Syria and the region since 2012 has provided humanitarian assistance to 17 million people, including over 27,000,000 monthly food rations and over 10,000,000 vaccines, and helped over 7.1 million children gain a decent education.
But now, in the eighth year of the conflict, the humanitarian needs of the Syrian people remain as grave as they have ever been. It is clear that the regime has no intention of ending its people’s suffering. The barbaric chemical weapons attack in Douma on innocent civilians, including young children, was yet another example of the regime’s flagrant disregard for its responsibility to protect civilians.
We must not turn our backs on their suffering. That is why at this week’s Brussels conference for Syria and the region, I announced that the UK will provide at least £450 million this year, and £300 million next year to alleviate the extreme suffering in Syria and provide vital support in neighbouring countries. We have now committed £2.71 billion to the Syria crisis since 2012, our largest ever response to a single humanitarian crisis.
Our pledge will help keep medical facilities open so doctors and nurses can save lives, and will help support the millions of Syrian refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries.
Our friends in the region, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey in particular, continue to demonstrate extraordinary generosity in opening their doors and communities to millions fleeing the conflict in Syria.
We must continue to offer them our fullest support. Not least because as the trajectory of the Syrian war has worsened, our collective interests in a stable and prosperous region have increased. Jordan’s resilience and prosperity are critical to the long-run interests of the region. That is why, in addition to the support to the region provided in our pledge, I announced that the UK will host an international conference with Jordan in London later this year: to showcase Jordan’s economic reform plans, its aspiration to build/enable a thriving private sector, and to mobilise support from international investors and donors.
But money alone is not enough. We continue to support the UN-mediated process as the surest path to peace. But while we work towards a political solution in the future that can end this suffering once and for all, we must not give up on improving conditions in the present. In this spirit, I called upon those present at the conference to join the UK in calling for concrete actions to enable greater protection for civilians and aid workers now. That means an immediate ceasefire and immediate safe access so that brave aid workers and medical staff can do their jobs and help the most vulnerable and the most desperate without fear of attack.
The UK is a global leader within the Syria response. I am proud that at this week’s conference, we demonstrated clearly that we will not turn away from the suffering of the Syrian people—we will continue to lead the response in working with others to call out atrocities, mobilise funding, demand access for aid, protect civilians and ultimately, work towards a solution that can put Syria on a path to peace.
[HCWS654]
Ministerial Correction
(6 years ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)
I wish to inform the House that an error has been identified in the closing speech of the end-of-day debate on Thameslink upgrades across the south-east. [Official Report, 18 April 2018; Vol. 639, c.431]. The correct information should have been:
“As part of this upgrade, a fourth track and other improvements are being built north of Bedford, which will provide space for an additional train path from December 2020. Unfortunately, until these works take place, some difficult decisions have to be taken. East Midlands Trains’ fast peak-time services will not call at Bedford or Luton from May 2018 to December 2020.”
[HCWS650]
Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit
(6 years ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Ms Esther McVey)
I can today announce that we will extend the existing support within universal credit and child tax credit for children who would otherwise be likely to be in local authority care, including children who are adopted or looked after by non-parental carers, also known as kinship carers.
The policy to provide support in child tax credit and universal credit for a maximum of two children ensures parents in receipt of benefits face the same choices as those supporting themselves solely through work.
We recognise that not all parents are able to make the same choices about the number of children in their family. That is why exceptions have been put in place to protect certain groups. Exceptions apply to third and subsequent children who are part of a multiple birth; adopted or in non-parental caring arrangements when they would otherwise be in local authority care; or likely to have been born as a result of non-consensual conception.
For children who would otherwise be likely to be in local authority care, these exceptions will be applied regardless of the order in which they joined a household.
The Government recognise the immense value of the care that non-parental carers and adoptive parents provide. The role that those parents and carers play in helping to bring children up who could otherwise find themselves in local authority care is vital. It is for this reason that we are ensuring that they are supported by enabling them to access benefit entitlement in the same way as birth parents.
Since becoming Secretary of State, I have been reviewing this issue carefully to ensure that the exceptions, as they apply to non-parental carers and adoptive parents, provide the right level of support.
Last week, I welcomed the High Court ruling that the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children was lawful overall. I have considered the part of the judgment that pertains to non-parental carers alongside internal reviews that the Department for Work and Pensions carried out in parallel to the legal case, and I consider that it is right that this change should be extended, not just to those in non-parental caring arrangements, but to include children who are adopted who would otherwise be in local authority care.
This change will reassure those non-parental carers and parents who adopt and are eligible for this child support, that it will be available to them regardless of the order in which their children joined the household.
[HCWS653]
Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]
Friday 27th April 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] 2017-19 View all Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 11-I(Rev) Revised marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 80KB) - (26 Apr 2018)
Lord Lucas
“436AA Duty of local authorities to collect and share information where the proprietor of a school has received written notification from parents that a pupil is receiving elective home education.(1) A local authority must make a return to the Department for Education in such form and at such intervals as may be specified on children removed from roll at each school in its area where the proprietor has received written notification from parents that one or more pupils are receiving elective home education.(2) A return made under subsection (1) must include information as to whether the children concerned have Education and Health Care Plans.(3) A local authority must record and keep up to date the names and addresses of all such children and of their parents.(4) When so requested by the Department for Education or on their behalf, a local authority must write to some or all of such parents as are specified in subsection (3) in such form as the Department may specify.”
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, there has been considerable noise in the press and elsewhere about off-rolling: the idea that schools are pushing the parents of troublesome pupils into home education. Looking at the statistics for Northamptonshire, which I happen to have, there does appear to be some evidence of a move in that direction. During the 2016-17 academic year, 1,182 pupils in Northamptonshire were known to be home educated, and by the end of the year it was 784, which is double the rate of two years previously. The pattern of home education in that county is a level of about 60 pupils per national curriculum year—that is, from the beginning, so those are presumably the dedicated home educators. Then, from year 4 to year 10, the rate of home education picks up rapidly. By the time you get to year 10, 180 pupils are being home educated. A chunk of those—about an eighth—had exclusion problems before being home educated and about one-third are children who have had some contact with social services. The analysis by school shows that some schools are notably excluding very few pupils relative to others and sending a lot to home education. There seems to be evidence that some schools are making it a practice to tip children into home education.
That is not, in itself, a wrong thing. In the circumstances of an individual child, family and school, home education may be the best alternative. Some children who have been suffering in school will flourish in home education. You just do not know, without going into the details, whether this is malpractice or good practice. In too many places in this country, the alternative to home education is exclusion, and the pathway from exclusion is into desolation. We ought to provide, but do not, a strong system of alternative education for children who are persistently excluded.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, does the noble Lord think that a better solution might be if schools did not exclude pupils in the first place?
Lord Adonis
Does the noble Lord think that, rather than parents being obliged to home educate their children because of the danger of exclusion, a better solution would be to be much more restrictive about exclusions in the first place and not to allow them except in extremis? In that way, we would not have this huge extension of home education that is taking place at the moment, which is a covert form of excluding pupils from school.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, that is quite possible, but schools and parents can deal only with the circumstances in which they find themselves. It is the parents’ duty, in particular, to make the best of what they can. I agree that we ought to emphasise much more looking after those children who find school hard to deal with and bringing them through to success. There is a lot to do in that area and, as the noble Lord and I know from our long careers in this place, it has proved difficult to successive Governments. But that does not mean that we should not try. I believe that we are having another go at it and I commend the Government for that. In the local circumstances of an individual school, it may be best to encourage home education.
Home education is something that we should be prepared to support. It seems to me very strange that the Government’s attitude to children who have had such difficulty with the state schools they have access to that their parents have been forced to take them home is to immediately cut off funding and support. That seems a weird way of treating those who are finding life hardest in school. Throughout today, I shall be urging the Government to look at this from the point of view of supporting home education. Why, when a child moves into home education, does the money just disappear? Why does it not move to the local authority, or at least a decent proportion of it, so that the local authority can continue to support the education of that child, particularly in circumstances where it is clear that this is a matter not of some middle-class choice but of the best interest of the child?
The amendment is pretty technical. It is aimed at making sure there is a flow of information to Ofsted that will enable it, when it inspects a school, to understand what the school is doing, and whether the moves to home education have been well advised or whether they are a covert form of exclusion. Ofsted tells me that it currently cannot get at the data. When it visits a school, it knows that children have moved into home education, but it has no way of finding out why that has happened. There is no record, information or contact with the parents involved. It just has to accept the school’s explanation. I would like to see circumstances where Ofsted has access to proper information so it can properly evaluate what a school is doing.
I particularly commend to the House the practice of the Magnus Church of England Academy in Newark. Its attitude to pupils who get into trouble is that it retains ownership of them. Even if they end up in the local PRU, Magnus keeps them on roll. It accepts the responsibility for the rest of their education. It accepts that they have gone to the PRU because that is the best choice for the child and that the results they achieve through that method will belong to the school. We should impose that attitude on all schools. I do not think that we should allow schools, whether by way of exclusion or off-rolling, to throw children away, to absolve themselves of responsibility for them. Children should stay on schools’ registers for the purposes of performance tables until the next point of measurement —key stage 2, 4 or 5—so that the decision the school takes about where a child goes, if they leave the school, is one for which the school will be held accountable. That would be the right way to move in this direction to produce data and evidence so that we can watch how these decisions are taken. That seems vital.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and his amendment, primarily because this is the first chance we will get to dig out some detail here. Many of the questions I have about this are directed at the Government Front Bench, because the Government’s attitude is crucial. There is undoubtedly a problem with home education, with the fact that it is totally unregulated and we do not really know what is going on. That is the nub of it.
Everybody who comes to see me over this reckons that they are doing a pretty good job in producing something. We on these Benches had as a party group a meeting with some home educators. The interesting thing was that, within about 20 minutes, they were arguing among themselves as to what was the true essence of home education in quite a heated way. The only consensus we got was when I asked them whether they agreed that a child has a right to an education that equips them for adult life afterwards. That was the only degree of agreement we got.
Most of this is dictated by people talking about things such as the rights of the parent. The rights of the child are there. The essence of keeping a record of those who are being home educated is fine. I do not think that there is anybody who would disagree with that. However, I am afraid that I have quite a lot of problems with the detail on this. I am not sure how it will work. There is far too much undiscussed government regulation that will be relied on afterwards and so on.
If the Government are paying attention to this, it is largely as a result of some classic cases of neglect or cruelty where a person has been hidden away. Throughout the communities I have spoken to about this, everyone agrees that there are cases where there are seven or so children and they just cannot be bothered to deal with them, so they home educate them and nothing happens. That example has literally been said to me. I was not given any dates, times or names, but I was given that example. What do the Government intend to do to find out what is being done there?
Then, when it comes to regulation, you start to get into very muddy waters. I have had briefings from the local government authority which say, “This is great, but we do not have any power to enter a home”. I do not know whether or not that is right. Does the Minister have an answer to that technical question? All the powers for registration and assessment do not matter if you cannot get into the home. I suspect that is wrong and that other legislation could be used, but you will need a mechanism to identify and cross-reference. Is that not fun? Is it not easy to do? It would be asking a bit much of a Private Member’s Bill to get anywhere near that. Can we have some answers from the Government about what they are prepared to do on this? If we do not, we will not know what the intention is on whether there will be the back-up and authority to go through with this.
Following on from what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, we should remember that many people are home educating because they feel the system has failed them. I do not often make an intervention in an education debate without mentioning dyslexia, and I draw the Committee’s attention to my interests in that field. It may have been more common in the past, but it still happens now that people may go into the system without an early enough identification of their special educational needs. They have a bad experience and the school gets into a series of appeals about what used to be statements and are now plans. A conflict situation develops with the education establishment, and some people say “Enough is enough” and pull out.
As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, also said, the state then seems to more or less wash its hands of the pupils and many home-educating parents ask, “What is the state’s duty to ensure that we have some assistance?”. If children become school phobic because they have failed or have special educational needs—for example, if they have been overloaded with inappropriate maths and English tuition and help which dyslexics cannot absorb and makes life a living hell for them—what is the state going to do? Dyslexia is a difficulty with short-term memory and an inability to sequence, which anyone who has tried to organise my diary will know manifests itself in me on occasion. If they have to go through this, what is the role of the state to support them? It is a complicated issue. The question of resources also arises. Will we do this? If help is made compulsory, this would lead to a situation in the current world where home-educated pupils would get more assistance than they would do in the school system. It gets more and more complicated.
Can the Minister say what the Government think should happen now? What is their thinking on this? It is clear that the noble Lord, Lord Solely, has enjoined a process of kicking the Government into action, but what are they doing? That will be covered in the rest of this discussion. Is this Bill merely a footnote, a forlorn hope or a part of the process? We need to know because that will colour everything that happens in the rest of today, the future of the Bill and on this issue over the next couple of years. If we are to get this legislation through, it must be fit for purpose.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I agree mostly with what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said about home education and I commend my noble friend Lord Soley on his Bill.
I would like to direct the attention of the House and the Minister to the issue of school exclusions, which is getting more and more serious in communities up and down the country and directly relates to home education. Yesterday in Gateshead—having addressed the north-east chamber of commerce, ably led by the son of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who I am delighted to see in his place—I met social workers and school leaders to discuss the big challenges they face. The single biggest issue that they raised with me was the problem of school exclusions, pupil referral units and what they call “off-rolling”—a term which, even as a former education Minister, I had not come across before. Off-rolling is managing people off school rolls into pupil referral units or into no provision whatever and often calling it home education. This is simply to get pupils off the rolls so that they do not engage in disruption in school—disruption which, frankly, the schools for the most part should be managing—and do not count in performance and league tables which are published for schools at the end of each academic year.
This is a big issue. To give a concrete example of what is happening in Gateshead at the moment, one of the social workers at the meeting said that the pupil referral unit in Newcastle, where many of the students from Gateshead are referred, until recently had nearly 400 pupils in it, which is almost the size of a small secondary school. Of those pupils, only 80 to 90 were formally part of the pupil referral unit; all the others had been “off-rolled” or managed into it. For the most part, they did not turn up. They were lucky if they were there for an hour a week. Indeed, it was said to me that if they did all turn up there would not be provision for them.
This is a huge social crisis which is taking place in this country at the moment. It is at the root of many of our problems, including in educational underperformance and in the criminal justice system. Many of these children, particularly adolescent boys, are basically not playing any part in schools and are being managed out of them by the age of 14 or 15. They do not get any qualifications or into a culture of learning or work—and we all know what happens to them thereafter.
The relationship with home education is problematic. As a former Minister, I was constantly being told by home educators that it was an essential social right that people should be able to home educate. I believe in principle that that is the case for people who have philosophical views on how education should be conducted—noble Lords will know of people for whom that is true—but for most people home education has nothing whatever to do with philosophical preferences about the style of education but everything to do with failure at and rejection by schools, which often happens. In some communities, particularly Traveller communities, people often do not want their kids to go to local schools because their relationship with the local schools is so poor, and the cultural issues and alienation are so great, that by the time they come, particularly, to secondary level, they do not want to play any part in the local schools.
We all change our views over time. When I was a Minister, I was worried about seeking to limit the power of schools on exclusions. This is a deeply difficult issue because nothing holds back schools and pupils more than disruptive children, and getting the balance right is difficult. My view now, after engaging in this issue for many years, is that Parliament needs to adopt a much more robust approach and that temporary exclusions should be banned. There are hundreds of thousands of temporary exclusions a year. The idea that the punishment awarded for low-level disruption in schools should be chucking kids on to the street for a day or two—as if somehow that would be an incentive for them not to misbehave in future—is one of the biggest misconceptions in the way we handle discipline in schools.
However, for serious disruption, my view is that schools should not be allowed to permanently exclude pupils unless there are issues of violence at stake which simply cannot be managed inside the school. That is not to say that seriously disruptive pupils should be able to disrupt classes. Rather like the way in which we handle special needs, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, schools should have additional resources for managing challenging behaviour. It may be that in some cases the provision should be outside the classroom —although, again, this should be managed properly—but getting pupils off the rolls of schools so that no one has responsibility for them at all, which is happening at the moment, is an absolute derogation of our duty as parliamentarians to see that all young people are educated. To put the euphemistic label of home education on it is to betray a generation of young people who then, in very large measure, end up on the streets, underemployed, unemployed or in the criminal justice system.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
Perhaps I may put a question to my noble friend. Is he aware that 70% of youngsters excluded from schools in England and Wales have learning difficulties, which often lead to mental health problems? We are creating a social underclass totally disconnected from society.
Lord Adonis
My noble friend makes a good point, but I want to remain constructive. Great though my admiration for my noble friend Lord Soley is, fundamental changes in the law rarely take place by means of Private Members’ Bills. My noble friend is working on it and this Bill may be the harbinger of great change thereafter. We are extremely hopeful and there is no one better at producing those changes than my noble friend.
I want to ask the Minister a specific question. This is clearly a steadily growing social crisis. Would he meet me and other Peers who have a keen interest in this to discuss what should be done about the specific issue of school exclusions? I see that my noble friend Lady Morgan is in her place. She played a big part in the academies movement. I hope that we can meet leaders of the academies—indeed the Minister is himself an academy sponsor—to understand the need to reconcile school autonomy in academies with responsible behaviour and ensuring that we do not throw children on to the scrapheap. If the noble Lord would agree to that meeting, I would be very grateful.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, on the noble Lord’s reference to philosophical preferences, my recollection, as a Member of Parliament some years ago, was that in a number of cases one wanted to support home education, but there were deep concerns about the motivation of the parents in seeking such an arrangement. Does he not think that a wider approach that allows for preferences is harmful to many children who are deprived of the association with others that they need? Are we not moving towards a form of designer education, which would be utterly undesirable?
Lord Adonis
I understand what the noble Lord is saying, but it is quite difficult for the state to start making judgments about the philosophical preferences of parents when it comes to home education. The point I seek to make to the Committee is that while there are some forms of home education of which I personally strongly disapprove, I do not believe that is the big social issue facing the country. The major issue is home education that means no education, not home education that means better education. It is about getting at the fundamental problem of home education that means no education and throwing children on to the scrapheap that we have to deal with.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
Does my noble friend agree that part of the problem is the weakening of local authorities and their diminishing control over schools in their area? They are unable to take an overview of the needs of the area. That break-up is one of the most significant disadvantages of the development of schools policy in recent years.
Lord Adonis
My noble friend and I could debate academies over a good deal of time, and indeed we have done over the years. I do not believe there is any inconsistency between strong and autonomously-led schools and social responsibility. That has always been at the heart of the reforms that I and others have promoted over the past 20 years. Schools should be free to succeed, not free to fail their children. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made a number of very good points about the important role that Ofsted should play in this process. When it inspects schools, Ofsted should pay much more attention to what is happening to children who are basically off the register and being treated very badly.
Lord Bird (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading—please forgive me. I have to declare an interest, and here I address my remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I was a child who was excluded from school, which meant that I had an incredibly impoverished education. When I brought up my own children, I started by putting them through the system where they failed and fell because they had inherited many of the problems I had. Poverty and crime and all these things can be passed on to many generations. They do not just fall off the map because you change your postal code.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis: my problem is that we fail 37% of our children in schools. When the noble Lord was the Schools Minister, he was a part of that failure in the same way as Justine Greening was, who reminded me that the failure rate is not 30% but 37%. Let us not do what I think is being done today, which is to bring together two considerations. The first is this. I have home schooled my children. If you meet them, you will find that they are the most socialised people I know. My grandchildren have also been home schooled, and I can swear on the lives of them all that their dignity, their citizenship and their quality of life have been increased incredibly by the beautiful opportunity we have to give parents and children a choice.
I am in love with that system, but I am aware that we cannot leave it to become a free for all. I have spoken to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, about this. However, I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, please not to bring two things together here. Social exclusion from school is a killer. I must have been one of the first pupils whose headmaster said, “You don’t have to come to school, Tony Bird. We will tick you off”. He did not call it home education; he sent me out shoplifting. It was a good Catholic school just down the road in Sloane Square—a lovely and beautiful school. They do not do that now.
The point I am trying to make is that we should not conflate these issues. The Bill drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is interesting because what it means is this: let us make sure that there are no perversities. However, school exclusion is a separate argument. I will be 100% with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as an example of a person who was violated by an education system created after the Second World War. They set up an underclass through the secondary modern school system, where all we were was being lined up to do jobs that had disappeared in the 1930s. That is one of the problems.
My problem is that I do not agree with the pedagogy in the school system today. It is preparing our children for 1972 while we have the fourth industrial revolution coming down the road. We should be preparing them for that, but I will leave that issue for another debate.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, before I turn to the amendment, I want to say that of course no one wants to see pupils being excluded, but I have to tell noble Lords that all the meetings in the world with the Minister will not change things unless we are prepared to put in the resources to support special educational needs and to deal with all the other things that cause children to get into trouble in our schools. Teachers have a right to teach and pupils have a right to learn. A disruptive pupil can often destroy a classroom and a school. We want to change that system, and I agree that we should not have exclusions, but it is about resources.
I support the amendment. It is absolutely bizarre that, as a society, we do not have a clue how many children go missing from the education system or how many are being home educated. We have responsibilities towards children. There are very good home educators. I have been looking at the guidance for parents on home education. It is a charter to do exactly what you want.
What is the legal position of parents? You can decide from an early age that there are no requirements. What is full-time education? There is no legal definition; you are not required to do this and you are not required to do that. If your son or daughter is enrolled in a school and you decide to take them on holiday in term time, guess what. You end up in court. But there are no legal requirements on parents teaching their children at home to do anything. On the curriculum, we had a long, anxious and worrying debate about British values. If you are home educating, you do not have to teach those values at all. The guidance to home educators, which we proudly say is the full guidance on what has to be done, is a charter to do absolutely nothing.
What should we be doing as a minimum? First, it is right that we should ensure that local authorities have to record those pupils who are being educated at home. Parents should have to register that fact. But there are other issues linked to that, one of which is resources. When there is a problem, we often blame local authorities, but when there is a difficulty, we often ask local authorities to do something about it. If we are going to ask local authorities to do this work, there have to be the resources for them. You cannot just say, “Right, we’ll pile this pressure on local authorities”. Local authorities that do this work will need additional resources.
Again, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was right when he said in passing, “You know what, every pupil is worth a sum of money”. When that pupil is taken out of school and home educated, that money is lost to the education system; it goes back to the Treasury. Would it not be nice if that sum of money were used in some way, perhaps to support young people and excluded children or to give some resource to local authorities to ensure that this area is monitored properly? I support the amendment.
Viscount Falkland (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak in your Lordships’ debate with some trepidation because education is not my subject and never has been.
First, I follow my noble friend Lord Bird in apologising for not having spoken at Second Reading. I followed that debate quite closely and I think the best words I can use to cover my feelings about it are those of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, in debate on the withdrawal Bill: noble Lords must “get real” if they think that home education is the way to deal with excluded children. I say that because my third daughter—a video editor by profession—went to her local authority in a fairly poor part of north London one day and said, “I really want to do something. Seeing the number of excluded children in this authority, I’d like to offer my services because, having been a freelance video editor, usually working on film sets, I may be able to help these children in some way”. She has done so; over a number of years, I can safely say that she has been of some help. If they are willing and she has spotted them as being possibly suitable for this kind of experience, she has met children who have been excluded for violent behaviour, come from very poor backgrounds and have not co-operated at school at all, for whom exclusion is an option—although I deplore it. Like the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—if I understood him correctly —I think exclusion is an absolute disgrace. My daughter thought she could see something that came within her field in the children she had spotted. She said she would encourage them to come up with an idea, either fictional or from their experience, and give them the opportunity to learn how to create a story and put it in visual terms—in others words, they were going to film it together and produce four to five-minute films. She has been doing this for three years and shown a number of examples of her work with these children, including in your Lordships’ House.
I would say, as would noble Lords who have seen some of it, that her work tells one something about excluded children: they generally come from very poor backgrounds and bad homes, so it cannot be said automatically that if school does not suit a child, they should be educated at home. The kind of homes that the children taught by my daughter come from would not be interested. That is why those children are what they are and have imaginations that have turned negative —which she tries to turn positive and creative again—so it would not work. Now a raft of pupils has passed through her hands and some of the films have been quite brilliant. Those children, who would hardly speak to anybody and found it difficult not to resort to violent behaviour, have found being encouraged to use their imaginations and being taught to turn that into a film an enormous success. I say that without exaggeration and without exception. First of all, the children generally get praise for what they do. When you begin to use your imagination as a child, it shuts out all kinds of resentments that you might have following a poor home background and a lack of success at school.
Lord Warner (CB)
The noble Lord is making a very interesting discourse but can he explain how it has any connection to the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Soley?
Viscount Falkland
Absolutely. The connection, which may upset people, is that I think the Bill is total nonsense in the way it is being followed through. I do not think that the teachers of this nation, most of whom are very dedicated people, are meeting the requirements—which they could do if they “get real”, to use the phrase of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, again. My daughter, through what she does, has put around 100 young people into a new frame of mind, having lost all their instincts for violent reaction and such things. That is the way forward.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)
My Lords, those of us who were present at Second Reading were clear about the importance of keeping things simple in the Bill. When there has not been an education Bill for a long time, there is always a tendency for all sorts of things to be raised. Those of us who have taken part in this debate over months, if not years, are clear that there is a precise need to start to move forward on this issue, which we will do by moving forward on registration. There is a time and place for wider conversations and today is not it.
Viscount Falkland
I take the noble Baroness’s hint. I shall wind up my discourse by saying this. If we are to see in children of the background that I have described a change in their behaviour, their mood and, one hopes, their enjoyment of life, the best way to bring it about is to get people such as my daughter who are volunteers to do the work in the home, because the parents will not be any good at doing it. As is often the case in this country, the voluntary sector needs to be involved. I have much more faith in the voluntary sector than in the teaching profession and education generally. On that rather contentious note, I will now allow the House, with apologies, to continue in its normal vein.
Lord Bird
Please can we stop bringing things into the debate, as the noble Baroness said? Why do we need to deface the brilliant dedication of our teachers? This is not an anti-teacher movement. I am sorry that I missed the Second Reading. I could probably have said some brilliant things then, so I will try to do so now. Please, let us concentrate on the very sensible Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, which is about making sure that we do not send our children into a hinterland of non-education.
Lord Soley (Lab)
I am grateful for that last-minute intervention. Anybody who believed that home education could not produce some pretty emotional responses should have listened to this opening debate or been involved with me in the many meetings and discussions that I have had, including one via Skype for Business, with people all over the country. I think that I have been able to allay some of the fears that people have.
Before I turn briefly to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, let me put all this in context. This Bill is about creating a register. We need to know what is happening and to be able to help. It is a helpful Bill; it is a Bill which we can build on. I commend the Government and the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Addington, to whom I talked yesterday, who are working with me to try to get it right. More needs to be done on it, but we need the Bill because we have no idea where some children are. I have said for many years that some people who home educate do it extremely well and the results are very good. One of my frustrations is that there is virtually no research in this area, and we need some—I have asked some universities to think about that.
A second and bigger group are people who need help in home educating. Precisely as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, children who have been pushed out of school sometimes need help because their parents might want to home educate but cannot, or there may be others who do it but find it a struggle or have difficulty accessing the resources they need—access to laboratories, for example, or access to exams and to having them paid for.
Then there is a small group who have always worried me deeply: those who are taken out of school to be home schooled when in fact it is about radicalisation, trafficking and abuse. Anybody who ignores that is ignoring something very serious.
I agree with the amendment and with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that we need to look at this. Following my conversation with him yesterday, I think that I need to look at another area where I may be able to help him, because I know that he has a particular concern which will perhaps come up on a later amendment. I also want to thank the Government for having embarked as a result of this Bill on a wide-ranging consultation which enables us to take into account many aspects of the amendments that have been put to the House. I also thank my own Front Bench and my noble friend Lord Watson, who has been incredibly helpful to someone who does not know that much about education in the round but knows a lot about the problems of children caught in impossible situations, not least in trafficking, abuse and radicalisation. The House has to take that very seriously.
I have no problem with the amendment but, if we spend as much time on all the other amendments as we have on this, this Bill will fail. I do not want to discourage people from speaking, but I say to noble Lords that it would be helpful if we could focus on the amendment and keep it brief because, otherwise, there will be no Bill and the Government, whom I commend for working closely with me on this, will be not be able to get through the consultation process that we need to build a Bill that is more fit for purpose than my present one—I believe myself, of course, that it is almost perfect, but I will accept significant changes. I think that we can do that, and it will be to the benefit of home educators who are doing it well and, above all, to children who are at the moment getting a pretty raw deal.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as patron of an organisation called SkillForce, which is probably doing more than any other organisation in the country to help those excluded. It had its genesis when a Territorial regiment in Northumberland was declared redundant. The commanding officer went to the local head of education and asked, “Can you use my NCOs in any way helpful?” He said, “They would be most valuable going round the difficult schools in the north Tyne area and persuading the potential excludees to come back into the school system”. It started under the MoD and it is now an independent charity. It uses ex-military to go into schools to persuade people not to be excluded. When I went into a school in Slough which was at the bottom of the pack, I was told by the headmistress that SkillForce had been responsible for turning her school round, not least because it had persuaded some potential excludees to join the right way.
One reason for my supporting the amendment is the register, because what SkillForce has to do might well benefit some of those being home educated. At the moment, there is no way of connecting the two. I also support my noble friend Lord Falkland, whose daughter’s films I have had the privilege of seeing. They are a remarkable tribute.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I note my noble friend Lord Soley’s request to be mindful of time constraints and will say that this is the only time that I intend to speak today. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I recognise the amount of time and effort that he has put into framing the amendment. We support it, although I would not wish it in any way to detract from the key aim of the Bill, which, as my noble friends Lord Soley and Lady Morgan said, is ensuring a form of registration.
I shall repeat what I said at Second Reading, in so far as we support the Bill and are concerned about the situation regarding children in non-school settings. Elective home education is a right established under the Education Act 1996. I am certain that in the clear majority of instances, such a decision is right for the children involved and is supported by parents who have an understanding of the educational needs of their children and the ability to ensure that they are met. Many work well with their local authority to ensure that a good education is provided. In those cases, home schooling is appropriate and such out-of-school settings do not present cause for concern. I say to noble Lords that these are not the people at whom this Bill is primarily aimed, nor is it aimed at the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and his family, because nothing in the Bill would have prevented the rich home education that his children and grandchildren clearly had.
The problem that must be addressed is that many children who are either never presented to school or subsequently withdrawn do not enjoy such a benign experience. For the few parents who abuse their children, home schooling offers the perfect environment to keep that abuse and those children hidden. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, the question of exclusions is a further concern in this regard. I listened with great interest to the comments of my noble friend Lord Adonis, particularly informed by his visit to Gateshead yesterday. Pupil referral units, which I mentioned at Second Reading, are often very much part of the problem and very rarely part of the solution.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, on 24 November at Second Reading I made it clear that we understood the concerns that have led the noble Lord, Lord Soley, to bring this Bill forward. That remains the position. We are interested in it and welcome the debate it has engendered in this House and elsewhere, but the position remains that the Government are not formally supporting it. I made a commitment to consult on drafts of revised departmental guidance, and that consultation started on 10 April. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, the guidance looks at specific issues such as the role of safeguarding by local authorities and whether that extends to this area.
We know that there are concerns about the efficacy of the current framework and the lack of hard information about numbers to address the actual needs of children being educated at home. Indeed, at Second Reading noble Lords spoke about the need for more evidence. We know that involved in this is the potential of increasing exclusions or, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, referred to it, “off-rolling”. I would welcome a meeting with him and other noble Peers on that subject, but we should not get it too tangled up in the simpler issue of the Soley Private Member’s Bill. This is why we published a call for evidence on 10 April. This seeks information and comment about a wide range of issues within the broad headings of registration, monitoring and support for home education.
I take this opportunity to reassure my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Lord, Lord Bird, that we support home education that is done well. We want to find ways to support families that are achieving this. I am very conscious of the amount of work needed to educate a child properly at home. It is entirely consistent with our aim of ensuring that every child has a good education within a diverse system that allows for maximum parental choice. We should aim to help good home education, but also to ensure that poor home education is dealt with quickly. To address the queries of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about the Government’s position, the consultation is open until 2 July and we hope for responses from a wide spectrum of families, local authorities and others. This will give us a much firmer basis for considering whether any changes are needed. In the meantime, I shall listen to today’s proceedings with interest and note the points raised. It is of course open to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, not to progress his Bill further until the Government’s consultation has concluded.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very encouraged by that reply from my noble friend, particularly his last sentence. I very much hope that the Government are thinking of taking advantage of the Bill to take forward the results of the consultation when they are available. In that context, I think the noble Lord, Lord Soley, need not worry about the Bill failing if we run out of time today. Today is about talking to the Government, even though they do not answer much: it is about getting them to listen to us, as an input to the consultation and to inform their intentions for the future of the Bill more generally. I very much hope that if we run out of time today we may find space on a subsequent Friday to complete its passage before the Government have to let us know their opinions, which will presumably, with luck, be in September or October. Without government support, the Bill will fail; with government support there will not be any problems, so I hope that although we will not waste time today, we will none the less make sure that the Government have heard our opinion on things.
On the interesting suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I think Skillforce would find very good relationships, certainly in some areas, between local authorities and home educators, which would give wide access to the home educating community. It is not true in every area, but there are some where you will get pretty complete coverage from what is there already.
I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, is a Member of this House. Every time I listen to him, he adds to my understanding of the world. I am just an observer of home education; I honour him as someone who has done it. I do not think I would ever have the strength of character and energy to finish that. I am entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in tackling this problem in the round and very happy to line up behind him in any meeting or effort. These children are our children; they are part of our community and we absolutely ought to treat them that way. It hurts us all that we do not. I am going to pursue the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, on the matter of his daughter. I have a project running in Eastbourne which would benefit from her advice.
There is much to be done here but, generally, I am delighted by the reaction to this amendment. I hope the Government will see it as an example of how the Bill might be used to address the wider problems. It trespasses into the whole area of safeguarding, trafficking, abuse and radicalisation, which concern us all so much. That is not the same as home education but the two get mixed up. There are educational concerns but enforcing educational orthodoxy ought not to be seen as a way of tackling safeguarding concerns. They are separate. Both need to be addressed but we need to think of them separately, particularly in the context of home education. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Soley
Lord Soley
I hope this will be very brief as it is a simple amendment. It would change “monitor” to “assess”, and I propose that because in conversations with home educators, there was some concern that the current word was too heavy. I am told by various legal experts and others that there is not much difference between the two words in such a Bill. However, there was a preference among those who spoke to me for using “assess”, so this is a recognition of their concerns. I simply ask the Committee to agree this quickly and, in effect, change “monitor” to “assess” as in Amendment 2 and the associated group of amendments. I beg to move.
Lord Soley
Lord Soley
Lord Soley
This amendment is slightly more complicated but it has the same sort of background. When I wrote the Bill some considerable time ago, I put “physical and emotional” in among the things to be assessed. That was partly because of my concerns about radicalisation, abuse and so on but, having thought it through, it is very difficult to do that. Additional resources would have to be put in.
One thing that various expert bodies pointed out to me was that if a teacher or an education welfare officer goes in to assess in the normal way, they will be good enough to spot when there is serious abuse. If the child is just not there or, as the Minister will know can happen, they are but there is some concern about them being sent to an illegal school at times and then brought back, in effect you need a power for the local authority to continue to visit and, if necessary, trigger additional support from health or other services to make sure that the emotional and other safeguards for the children are there. On that basis, I think there is no real disagreement on this and I know that many home educators will be pleased to see these words go. I am very happy to move that Amendment 4 and the group associated with it be accepted by the Committee.
Lord Lucas
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the function of the amendments in this group is, I hope, to demonstrate to the Government that they can use the Bill to clear up some of the uncertainties that have bedevilled the administration of home education regulation for local authorities. You get so many different interpretations and understandings of what particular terms mean because they are not defined in legislation and not well-defined in practice. If we are to get consistent and good practice across the nation, people need to understand what we are talking about. What is home education and how do we define “full-time”? These things matter and I hope that, as a result of the Government’s consultation, we can move towards a system where everybody is clear what we are talking about.
Local authorities tend to be understaffed and the staff in this area are often inexperienced or subsidiary to quite fierce people in the enforcement and safeguarding divisions. It can be difficult for them to maintain things that, when they are brought back to government, are absolutely clear. My noble friend Lord Agnew has made it clear in his consultation, which has been a great help. But clarity is to be aimed for and I have tabled these amendments just to show that the clerks would allow them, and that the Bill would accommodate them.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
My Lords, if Amendment 27 is agreed to in this group, I cannot accept Amendment 28 by reasons of pre-emption.
Lord Soley
I am quite interested in the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has put. We have had a number of discussions on areas such as this and he has been extremely helpful. The only point that I have had made to me is that there is a problem with the definition of full-time and part-time. However, the noble Lord has made the point that this is something the Minister’s consultations and discussions should take into account. That would be helpful and I have no objection to it in principle, although there may be difficulties about definition.
Lord Warner
I hesitate to stop progress and I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading because I was otherwise detained then. As the Minister knows, for some time my concern has been—I think this was a concern of previous Ministers in the department—the overlap between home education used inappropriately, unregistered schools and unregulated madrassas. I am normally an enthusiast for definitions in legislation because they introduce clarity. On this, I am a bit less certain. I am not clear—I would very much welcome the views of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Soley, here—about whether this set of amendments, excluding Amendment 28, would make it easier for someone who had a child who was flitting between home education, an unregistered school and a madrassa to use this definition to carry on doing that, because they did not meet the requirement of the length for “home education”. I wonder whether there would be an escape route for people doing that if we accepted this precise definition, but I would very much welcome the views of the noble Lords on that issue.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, these definitions are by way of illustration only, and I entirely accept the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, asked.
The group of amendments that includes Amendment 12 takes another look at this. I am very much in favour of the Government taking advantage of the Bill to make clear their power to stick their nose into any and all educational situations and arrangements that might give them safeguarding or radicalisation concerns. There should not be any hesitation by local authorities in getting to know what is going on somewhere where they do not know what is going on. I would very much like the final version of the Bill to deal with that, but I will come on to that more under Amendment 12. I utterly support what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said.
Lord Soley
“( ) Local authorities have a duty to provide advice and information to a parent of a child receiving elective home education if that parent requests such advice or information in relation to their obligations under this section.”
Lord Soley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for putting his name to this amendment. This is the only other amendment I have put down, which shows how perfect my Bill was in the first instance. Mind you, what I have been writing at home is another matter. This amendment relates to an important issue. It goes to the heart of what I have been saying for some time, which is that we do not offer enough support to people who are home educating, whether they are doing it very well, not so well or, in some cases, very badly. This amendment places a duty upon the local authority,
“to provide advice and information to a parent of a child receiving elective home education if that parent requests such advice or information in relation to their obligations under this section”.
I was tempted to put in the word “support” as well. I have used “advice and information” largely because in a Private Member’s Bill there would be all sorts of problems about financing that and where the money came from, and there is a problem of local authority resources generally. However, I emphasise that this is a direction in which we have to move. If we are serious about helping people who are home educating and the children in that group, we need to put some money, resources and thought into it. At the moment, that is not there. Imagine, for example, a parent who is doing a remarkably good job home educating generally, but who suddenly spots that the child is quite good at, for example, chemistry but has very little access to a chemistry lab. If advice and information was available, it could enable that parent to be directed to an area where they might be able to get it. In the long run, I would like to make that option much more possible. There are many other examples—music, mathematics or whatever—where children have a particular skill that the parent cannot meet in home education.
That is my reason for this amendment, but there is another reason, which is very important. When I launched this Bill, inevitably I got attacked from all sides, as one does, but particularly from home educators who thought I was intent on destroying the family. They referred to me as Mao Tse-Tung in drag. I am not Mao Tse-Tung in drag and I am not about destroying the family, although sometimes I feel like destroying various families, but we will not go into that in any great detail. That is my background as an MP in certain areas, I guess. There is real concern among some parents who are doing this that there is a constant attempt to take away the right to home educate. It has never been my view that we should do that. I have always made it clear that I regard it as a right. It is a complex area where you have to balance the rights of the parent with the rights of the child, which is an area which causes parents concern.
By putting this wording into the Bill, it says to parents who are anxious about this that they have a legal right to home educate. It recognises in a legislative form that there is a right to home educate. I do that because of the concern of some people who are determined to believe at almost any cost that there is a killer on the loose about to devastate every family in the land. I am not. It is working quite well. If people want to see some of the discussion on this, the interviews I did around the country last week on Skype for Business are now on the Lords of the Blog site. They are all there, and many parents were worried about this.
So I ask the House to accept this amendment for two reasons. First, it requires advice and information to be given by local authorities to parents who request it and opens the door to longer-term support. I hope that in the consultation period and the discussions with the Government we will build up a proper support system for parents who are home educating. Secondly, it puts in legislative form the right to home educate. I beg to move.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I support this amendment. I understand the limitations of a Private Member’s Bill. The noble Lord has done extremely well to stretch it as far as he can to get here. I say to the Minister that we really must look at proper support. To return to what I said on the first amendment, looking at the data from Northamptonshire, by the end of schooling three-quarters of children being home educated have got there not through the initial choice of their parents but because they have failed out of school. Our reaction to children for whom schooling has proved impossible to maintain for whatever reason—depriving them of all funding—is, frankly, perverse and wrong. We really ought to look at saying that these parents have taken on the burden, but they need help and we can provide it. It is probably a great deal cheaper.
From talking to home educators, I think we could probably manage special needs provision on about one-quarter of the budget that it takes to provide it through the state because the parents are doing so much of what needs to be done, but they need outside help. Even if it is fairly straightforward—just behavioural issues, not some abstruse special educational need—parents need help. They may not be good enough at teaching mathematics. They may know that. They might really like to drop their child into maths classes or literacy classes or give them a chance to play games with other children, not just with home-educated children, or get them access to the swimming pool, the library or the other things that happen occasionally in good local authorities. They should be there and be supportive.
I urge the Government to consider the idea that a budget should be given to local authorities to provide educational assistance to home-educated children. The Government are saving so much by these children coming out of school: £5,000 per year per child. The Government should not pocket the whole of that. There is no reason to. The Government should recognise that they have a continuing duty actively to support these children.
Having that fund and local authorities having that duty would produce a supportive attitude and a real reason for parents to engage with the local authority. It means that, rather than being hidden from sight, the vast majority of these children will be seen because they will be engaging in an activity sponsored by the local authority. They will be seen by independent professionals in doing that. There will be very good visibility and the whole problem of how we know that these children are being properly educated becomes easy to solve. It is solved as a side effect of educating them. That surely must be the best way to approach this.
Supportive means actively supporting their education, not just directing what it should be. There is a wide range of good practice out there that we could borrow from and, with good funding, produce something that results in a very large proportion of home-educating parents actively wishing to register. Most of them are not state phobic. Most of them just think the state has done a very bad job for them, and they do not trust some of the individuals involved. If we get to a position where the state is providing a range of helpful services, and there is a decent budget behind that, we would solve most of the problems covered in the Bill.
Lord Storey
My Lords, we very much support the amendment. It is a huge decision when you decide to teach your child or children at home. Yes, there is a very large home-school movement in this country. They network together, work together and support each other. In fact they have an annual five-day festival every year of home educators from all over the country. I have been invited to attend this year’s event and perhaps other noble Lords might like to come along and see them at work. However, they are on their own. There is no support and no advice. What happens during the period of exams? Where do the pupils sit their exams? They need help and support in that direction. What happens when they might actually want to use some of the facilities of a local school? Maybe the local school will be anxious to oblige, and the local authority can provide a brokering role. So I think advice and support are really important.
I suspect that the issue of resources is crucial. You cannot do this properly and make those provisions unless those resources are available. I shuddered slightly when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned special educational needs, because already in mainstream schools there is a major funding issue over SEN. I do not know how we could make those resources available in the home education system; we should do, but it is quite a complex area. So this is an important amendment to support.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton
Personally, my Lords, I think we need to be a bit careful with this. Given the conversation on Amendment 1, when we were talking about one of the problems being large numbers of pupils who are now excluded from schools in a way that most of us feel very uneasy about, I would hate us to end up producing something in this Bill that said it was okay because there was a fund that did a little bit to help children who are being home educated. I accept that it is important to have the legal right to home educate but, again, the more that we keep this simple and have the wider conversation about support in the discussion that the Minister has offered on exclusions, the more helpful that would be.
Lord Bird
I think it is really interesting that we are talking about the legitimacy of home education. The way I see it is that schools and individual parents who are choosing that route should be going in the same direction. It is about the child, and that is really wonderful. My own children, who, like me, have problems around dyslexia, have used a wonderful system on the computer called Easyread. I would like that to be available to all our children, especially those who have dyslexia. Unfortunately, the chap has to pay for it. I would love it if our schools could get together on this because it is a brilliant method. It took my son from a very low reading age to a very high one in the space of a year.
Lord Soley
To sum this up, if I may, I very much welcome those remarks. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, again makes an important point about the involvement of the people doing this job with local authorities so that we can break down some of the barriers of distrust and build up confidence-building methods. There are implications about support and what that would involve in terms of finance and other resources, which is why I did not put the word in there, but the rest of the words stand. The key point here, which I think the Minister accepts, is that we need to consult rather widely on this.
Lord Lucas
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to enable some discussion on the subject of registration. I am entirely comfortable with the idea that local authorities, with all their responsibilities, should know where the children that they are responsible for are—where they can reach them and how they can begin to establish that they are, within the duties of the local authority, well looked after.
If we are going to do that, we really ought to have a system that is comprehensive. We do not really have a grip on children who are registered with an independent school. They are not part of the national pupil census. Why not? What is happening in the whole of alternative education? What is happening with children who are just told to stay home, who are held at home waiting for the school of their choice, who are moving between this country and another one that they have a connection with, or are in some other way adrift from the ordinary ways of a local authority keeping tabs on children? If we think it is important that there is a register—various noble Lords have made the case that it is, and I agree with them—then it should be a register of children. Some of that is done already because we know that they are at schools within the local authority or connected with it so that the local authority can get data about them, but it ought to be a comprehensive exercise.
We should not just pick on home education—or, rather, those parents who choose to declare themselves as home educators—because the people who will register are probably not the ones who are causing us trouble. The ones who might cause us trouble are the ones who are not registered, or the ones that schools have chosen to abandon and their parents are really not capable of picking up. I do not think registration just for home education answers the case. I hope the Minister, in all that he is thinking through, when he comes to registration will look at the wider question of how local authorities are supposed to have proper information on which children they are supposed to be paying attention to.
There are data sources that we should be making good use of. Most children, one way or another, will be registered with medical authorities. Many of them will have other contacts with the state through child allowances and so on. There ought to be an integration of that information so that the local authority has a picture of who is there. There has to be a sensible way of dealing with parents moving from one place to another without making it immensely difficult, uncertain and bureaucratic. I do not think there is any sign that that has yet been thought through.
We have a good pupil census that operates in schools, which might well provide the basis for a complete child census. It might give us a very interesting picture on children who go missing. I have not seen anything that I know to be an accurate number, but there appears to be quite a high number of such children and we ought to be paying attention to them. They are children who are really at risk, in capitals, but we do not seem to have good enough systems for picking up on that and being able to investigate where they last were and what has happened.
We want to produce a system that is good value for money. I come back to what I said on the last amendment: all this works much better if we give parents a real incentive to sign up, and all justice says that that is what we should be doing anyway. We as a country should be part of educating these children. It is not like sending your child away to prep school, nor is it just choosing a school outside the state system; this is choosing to educate them yourself and taking on that burden. The state has every right and duty to offer assistance in that, and I hope that will be a consequence of the review that my noble friend is undertaking. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I must inform the Committee that if Amendment 7 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 7A or 7B by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I strongly oppose the amendment. I do so because the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seems to be arguing that because we cannot have the perfect system, we should not take a few steps along the road towards such a system. There have been long-standing problems in the whole area of vulnerable children, which the Children’s Commissioner has identified, which would be helped a great deal if the Government could press on with a common identifier for children. The Minister has heard me banging on about this from time to time—I never miss an opportunity to bang on about it—but there is an issue of how the state joins up information about children who may be vulnerable in a number of ways.
Anyone who has been involved in public policy and seen the growth in the number of children claiming to be home educated would be worried whether there was abuse in that system. The sheer growth in numbers and its rapidity should make you anxious as a public policy person, whatever your politics, whoever the Government in power are. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, is trying to address that issue. He may not be solving all the problems of childkind, if I may put it that way, but he is trying in a practical way to tackle one element of the area of vulnerable children. We should not handcuff him in that effort by supporting the amendment.
Lord Storey
This is an opportunity to, and I hope the Government will, consider the points made. It is shocking that we have hundreds of thousands—well, not hundreds of thousands, but thousands—of children missing from our education system and no idea where they are. No society should allow that to happen. When teaching started, there were school rolls. A pupil’s name was put on the school roll, there was an annual census, the local education authority collected all the details and they were submitted to the then Department of Education.
During the Labour Administration, there was concern about missing children, so they brought in what was called the unique pupil number. The idea was that when each pupil started schooling, they would have a number which would follow them through the education system so you would know where they were, they would not go missing, they would not fall off the cliff. I was quite comfortable with that and thought what a good idea it was, but it did not work in practice. I recall from my final years as a headteacher a particular issue with a pupil and a family. The family took the pupil out of the school, went to see the local authority, did not get the school they wanted, so moved to a different authority. I wanted to find out what had happened to this pupil. There was information about his progress, special educational needs—a host of information that the receiving school should get. Nobody had a clue where he had gone. It was a legal requirement that a receiving school had to use that unique pupil number, but he just vanished and was never heard of again in the education system.
I did not realise that if a pupil went to an independent school, that number does not go with them either. There is a whole area here that we need to understand. I am not suggesting a Big Brother or Big Sister, but we need to ensure as a society that we know that our children are safe, not being put in vulnerable positions, and part of that safety is understanding the progress of their education and where they go.
Lord Soley
I am of the view that it would be better if we had a system where, when a child becomes of school age, they have to be registered at a school of some type, so I support what the noble Lord says, but I cannot possibly do that in a Private Member’s Bill. It is a matter for thought and discussion in government as to whether we consider that further down the line. It would help home educators, who feel a bit pilloried because they are singled out as doing something different, which we do not do if a child is going to a private school, or whatever, so I have that long-term preference, but it does not fit in the Bill, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, recognises. It is part of the discussion with government.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 8 in my name I shall be brief, because it is really a matter of common sense and practicality. I know that the Minister is in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation. He knows that it is particularly relevant to a large proportion of Gypsy and Traveller children, among others. The purpose of the amendment is further to strengthen the excellent system of registration proposed by my noble friend.
I shall first talk briefly about Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children. This information comes from the casework of the Traveller Movement, one of the largest NGOs in the area. It says:
“we have noticed that parents often aren’t aware of the details”,
of elective home education,
“therefore making them more aware would allow them to make an informed decision. We come in to contact with a lot of parents who think twice about home educating once they’re told you that don’t get provided with a tutor or financial support, for example”.
The proposal is that local authorities must fully inform parents—not, “if requested”, they must. That is because there are many parents who do not know what to ask for, or whether there is anything to ask for. The reason we propose that it should be via a short, standardised film is because a fair number of these parents are not very literate, sometimes not at all literate themselves. This does not apply only to Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people. A film is a completely different way to understand advice, and that is why we recommend it.
The amendment states that the local authority must inform them of their responsibilities concerning home education. It is fair to say that some parents do not grasp that their task is to see that their children are properly educated, and that brings with it the support available.
At this point, I refer to two non-Gypsy, Traveller or Roma families. One educates their four children extremely well. The children thrive and are well educated. That mother would have no difficulty complying with any of the requirements in my noble friend’s Bill. In the other, the father took umbrage when a teacher rebuked his child and he withdrew him. However, he did not bother trying to undertake the education himself; it was left to the mother, who has a part-time job and is not terribly well educated. However, she is very conscientious. She got hold of the national curriculum. She tries. That child, whom I know quite well, is really not well-educated. Were the mother to have more support, more information, I am sure that that child would benefit.
The third duty which the local authority would have is to set out the circumstances in which home education is not suitable. Here I refer to the kind of circumstances which my noble friend Lord Adonis described. There are schools where the teachers ought to be doing better. Those schools are where pressure can be brought so that the child can be returned to school. There are circumstances where too much damage has been done to a child, where they are alienated, where the school has not properly coped with bullying. In those cases, properly supported home education is entirely suitable, with support.
The other advantage of the film is that it would ensure that the quality of information across local authorities would be consistent. There would be no postcode short straw in this system.
I suggest to your Lordships that the interests of the majority of the children who are home educated would be better served if this amendment were incorporated. It would help to deliver a proper education for them.
Lord Addington
Very briefly, just to comment on the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, it would be interesting to get some feedback either now or later on why other mediums of passing on information are used. I work in a world where I am not comfortable with information coming in paper form—or, indeed, with any written text—but I have found coping strategies to deal with it. However, a film does not have the stigma of something scary. You can open it up and it is a very good way forward; it can contain quite a lot of information. No matter what else we do, I suggest that somebody takes that idea and keeps it in mind. You should use this medium more often, because it is a great way of getting across the essence of what you are doing. I hope that other people will use it more, and the Government will do it and find ways to explain that it is available. The most disastrous situation is that you get a series of texts telling you where on the web you can find the film explaining the text. It happens.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very attracted by the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. It is a very good approach. I urge on my noble friend the Minister, if they are going down this road, that they should make at least the core of it a national film—because why do we want widely different practice towards home educators and attitudes towards home education across the country? I do not think that we do. It is a common problem and there will always be a local gloss on it—particular local facilities and local people and services that need to be drawn attention to. But the basic message that the noble Baroness outlines ought to be something we deliver consistently and across the country, and it should link through to the obligation to provide advice, which the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, addressed. That is obviously important. We are dealing with particular sets of circumstances—we are dealing with parents who are not expert in the system. Absolutely, they need showing the way through.
Something we might well combine with this educational, supportive attitude to people who are entering into home education is keeping their place open at the school they are thinking of leaving. That can be a really difficult thing. It seals them into home education and seals them off from ways back into the state system if, by coming off-roll in the school and entering into home education, they lose their right to get back into that school. I really do not think it should be such a cliff edge; we should provide a continuing right of the parent to get back. After all, in most cases, the school will still receive funding for the balance of the year for their place, and it absolutely should not be closed off to them. We need time to allow parents to make an informed decision. Many will already have satisfied themselves that they want to do it, but others this is happening to rather willy-nilly, and they ought to have available to them advice, support and time for proper consideration.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for touching on the subject of flexi-schooling in his amendment. That is a very interesting way forward. I was encouraged by what the Government said in their consultation, in that it seemed to open up the idea that they might support it. There are some necessary changes to be made, and it ought to be easy for a school to indicate in their returns that a child is being flexi-schooled. At the moment, there is no code that they can use for that purpose; in one way or another, they have to tell an untruth—either they have to say that a child is full time or that the child is absent with leave, whatever else the case might be. There ought to be a way. It signals, as the earlier amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Solely, signalled, the acceptability of flexi-schooling if the Government make provision for it in their coding systems. We shall come on to my views on that in a later amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Warner, says that we absolutely need registration. I think that we need registration if it is going to achieve something. In all the collection of children whom we do not know about, the children who are being home educated are probably the least vulnerable. By singling them out we are saying, “In some way we think you are the worst—in some way we think you require special attention. In some way, we do not trust you above all others. You are much worse than those who have just been left to wander the streets”.
Lord Warner
Can I just explain my position on this? I speak as someone who spent six years as a director of social services safeguarding children, and I came to an eternal truth at the end of that. The more that children are outside any kind of supervision, the more vulnerable they are to abuse. It is actually a truth that has been validated in many hundreds if not thousands of cases. We know nothing about the children who are in home education, but the fact is that those numbers have grown very rapidly over the last few years. I am not making any kind of allegation that children who are home schooled are being abused, but in those circumstances, we need to get a better fix on this subject —not just for educational reasons but, I would suggest, for safeguarding reasons as well. That is not the purpose of the Bill, but it is an assistance in the safeguarding area as well. That is why it ought to be a very clear statutory requirement to register home education, which the Bill as drafted provides for.
Lord Bird
Maybe this is not the place to broaden the discussion about home education, but it is so interesting. The late Tony Benn put his children through a wonderful school called Holland Park comprehensive, and the moment they left school they were then ferried to extra maths, extra history and extra this and that, and were taken to their grandfather’s at the weekend to read all his books. There is a concept that we are all involved in the home education of our children, if we follow Tony Benn—and we have a duty. I am a bit worried that we are narrowing down home education to just this period, and I would like it to be broadened out. As far as I am concerned, when you are a parent, you are an educator, and you should be given the chance to create as many opportunities as possible.
The noble Lord talked about what happens when children are let outside of control, but the problem is that sometimes when they are in control they are abused—they are not developed properly. One reason why people like me back home education is that it gives you the chance to bring out of your children things that would never come out, even in the best school in the country.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, to pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, a local authority that has a decent history of being collaborative with home education knows a great deal about people who home educate because it interacts with them, provides facilities and services to them and talks to them—not to everybody, but the core of home education will be known. The local authorities that have trouble are generally those which have adopted bullying attitudes to home education and then get widely mistrusted.
The solution to this problem lies mainly in institutionalising an attitude of support and providing the funding to enable that support to be good and consistent. Under those circumstances, if you are really offering something—not just the possibility of being criticised and attacked and having people trying to remove your right to home educate—then registration serves a purpose. It serves a much better purpose, however, if it is part of a consistent attempt by government to keep in touch with everybody, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, says, those who are least cared about and least supervised, of whom the home educators are at the best behaved end.
Lord Lucas
“( ) An assessment under subsection (3) shall not require or imply a requirement for any particular curriculum, method of teaching or order of educational development.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, assessment is a serious problem if it is overemphasised in this context. Of the population of children who are home educated, those who have been taken out of school are, almost by definition, divergent. If they were ordinary mainstream children behaving in a mainstream way, there would probably have never arisen any impetus to get them out of school. They come out of school because some problem has arisen; it usually means that there is something—it can be any of a whole range of things—about the child that puts them at the fringes of the national distribution. Those who have come out into home education or are in it for philosophical reasons develop divergence, because they are no longer constrained by the needs of a curriculum that is designed to make schooling possible.
There are all sorts of things about the way we choose to school children that are dictated by the need to have schools that can run with a curriculum that broadly keeps pace with itself across different schools and with a way of doing things that enables a school to understand where it is supposed to be and for us to judge whether it is doing well. There are all sorts of restrictions that do not need to apply to a home-educated child. You will often find children who are streets ahead in some particular area of interests—at age nine or 10 they are doing an Open University course in astrophysics, or whatever it might be. You will also find children who have entirely neglected some aspect of their education until they find a need for it and then they catch up. It becomes a very divergent, varied pattern of achievement.
There is not any sensible way to assess this in a light-touch way by some sort of standard assessment. Assessments are designed to evaluate what is happening in school, where there are a lot of children and statistics are in your favour; the oddities even out and you get some sort of pattern emerging that tells you how the school is doing as a whole. Even then, there are problems, as we have with Progress 8 at the moment, where the system means that the outliers have far too much influence on the average. If you draw Progress 8 out as a bell graph, however, you can see where the weight of a school is and can make a reasonable judgment on the quality of education being provided there. You cannot do that when looking at an individual child, not simply and not just by putting them through a SATs test. You need far more information. If a parent gets to a point where they are arguing with a local authority about a school attendance order and getting the independent advice needed to establish where their child is and what they have achieved, that could cost a couple of thousand quid. This is an immense resource to apply just to check where a child is. It is entirely pointless and destructive to emphasise assessment carried out by those sorts of means.
The assessment to aim for is of professionals having contact with the child—a good school teacher or someone with a decent level of experience who can say, “Yes, I can see how this child is getting on; I can see that they are well educated and that their attitudes are right. I don’t have any problem”. Much the most effective way of organising assessment is to promote contact between professionals and the home-educated children, and to do that by offering all sorts of support so that home-educating parents will find a need for at least some of it. That way, you do not incur much additional cost on assessment; you are providing money for education. To run this sort of assessment process in a way that is fair to the children and the parents would cost a vast amount of money and all it would be spent on is assessment. To run an assessment system that costs much less risks, because you are dealing with children who are way off centre, a vast amount of unfairness for children and parents. It really does not work as a standard assessment system, and I do not think that we should pretend that it does. Good local authorities employ professional people and trust their judgment; that is what we should be looking at. Local authorities that perform less well hire inexperienced people who do not feel confident in their own judgment and therefore run standard forms of assessment. They have no business drawing conclusions from it, but do anyway and then harry the parents as a result. We have to be really careful about what we are asking for by way of assessment.
There is a quite a good exposition of this in the draft guidance that the Government have produced. They do not require any detailed form of assessment. We need to move to a position, however, where we are quite clearly, and in words that local authorities can trust, supporting their professional judgment. Yes, they will get it wrong sometimes—everybody does, including all professionals. But that is fundamentally the best and most sensible thing we can do, and we should make that level of support the default in everything we do.
In assessment we should provide the means to deal with children who have been traumatised by school or who are otherwise emotionally damaged. One should not just take it as read; if it is said that a child will be scarred by meeting a stranger from the local authority, that is not satisfactory evidence on its own. However, we ought to recognise that there are such children, and there ought to be an easy mechanism for a parent to establish that theirs is one such. Frankly, it ought to be part of the support given to them by the National Health Service; if a child has got itself into that sort of position, there ought to be professionals who can back up that judgment. It certainly should not be a local authority’s unfettered right to send some relatively untrained person—certainly untrained in mental health—barging into a delicate situation. However, we need to provide for such situations in what we do.
We ought to take into account in assessment specific respect for parents’ wishes, not as an absolute but as a matter of ordinary courtesy. There are different ways of doing these things, and we ought to adapt to the parents’ way of doing things if we can. The attitude ought to be that it is a collaborative effort, not an imposed effort. We should recognise that assessment is a reflection of the duties imposed on parents by the founding Act and that we ought to tie things into that explicitly and directly. We ought to make sure that where parents are subject to assessment by other agencies, particularly with regard to things like special needs, that assessment can serve both purposes, and should make sure that it is not duplicated.
We also need to understand that in making an assessment, the local authority may need access to information which is sensitive in the family context. There may be absent parents who still have rights of care and access, who should not be able to see things that fall outside their rights and responsibilities. They should not automatically have rights to see all the data that is accumulated as a result of an assessment. This needs to be handled within context.
I feel that we need to look at assessment carefully and that we should not, as the Bill does at the moment, say that you should have “supervised instruction” in numeracy and literacy. Things do not work that way in home education, and they do not have to. What matters is the outcome and not the process, and that we should base our assessments on professional judgment, obtained in the best possible circumstances, and reserving methods of compulsion and intrusion for instances where the local authority has got to the point where it has real concerns. I beg to move.
Lord Addington
My Lords, I have a degree of sympathy with this set of amendments. As the noble Lord suggested, some of the problems I see with Clause 2 might be addressed here in some way.
The noble Lord spoke about different types or facets of assessment getting in the way of each other, and that happens. Somebody who has failed at school because of a special educational need often acquires psychological problems—the two of them fit into each other. There is usually not just one thing—it is a package or a spiral, although whether it goes up depends on what is happening. Therefore they have to be taken into account together.
It is essential that we do not get overly prescriptive about people with different learning patterns or needs. If you are to deal with people whose learning patterns and possibilities are different, they will need a different approach, and unless that is taken on board, you will guarantee a degree of failure. The unfortunate thing about schools at the moment is that they are slightly overregulated, which means that you make the possibility —indeed, the probability—of failure higher in certain cases. I therefore hope that the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Soley, are careful to take this on board. If you get prescriptive, you will get it wrong, because you are guaranteeing that your prescription does not fit.
Lord Bird
I add to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that there are many ways to skin a rabbit or a fish, or whatever. It is about how we use education, and I welcome the idea that we do not tie it all down. We have a load of educational experts in the country: teachers. Other people are educational philosophers and developers. In Brazil, for instance, you can go to a school where they do not teach you anything at the age of seven except how to make a bike. In the course of the first term, the children come together to make a bike, in the process learning teamwork and other things. Whether you are dyslexic or not is entirely secondary, and it brings everybody together. I therefore believe it would be very wrong to tie home education down to a system chosen by practitioners. Practitioners have to get on with practising their art, which is teaching, and the philosophers, educationalists and psychologists have to look at where we will take our education in 10 or 20 years’ time. That is not the job of a practitioner.
Lord Storey
My Lords, briefly, on safeguarding, many home educators bring in people from outside to teach in particular subject areas, and it is absolutely important that we make sure that all the adults are checked by the Disclosure and Barring Service, which is what my amendment seeks to do.
Lord Soley
I do not wish to take up the House’s time on this, because I am conscious that there is another Bill to follow this one, and time is tight. I hear the arguments of the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Addington, on this. I talked yesterday at some length to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about it, and I understand the problem of being too prescriptive. After our talk, I remembered that some months ago I looked at the possibility of having an appeal system for when things go wrong between home-educating parents with their child and a school or educational authority that is challenging the way they are doing it. I would not rule that out. However, again, that is too complicated to go in a Private Member’s Bill. I know the Minister is in listening mode on this, and perhaps this is one of those areas to which we ought to pay some serious attention. Although it is not a matter for the Bill, it needs serious consideration.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 16A and 19A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. We cannot ignore the risks associated with this, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, which is why Amendment 16A is important. It is also important that, if there is evidence that a child is going to an unregistered school, someone should be notified of that so that action can be taken.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, to pick up on the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, it seems sensible that a local authority should be able to know whether a parent who is home educating would pass the DBS test. However, we have to recognise that we let these people be parents. There is no bar on somebody who has committed one of these crimes having children and bringing them up. So far as I know, local authorities have no special responsibility to supervise their activities at home as parents or to otherwise inspect them. Would the noble Lord feel comfortable if we were to impose, as a matter of course, a requirement that everyone who has a conviction that might bar them from working with children should be inspected before they are allowed to have children?
At what point does being comfortable with them bringing up their own children make one uncomfortable with them educating their own children? Why does that give the noble Lord cause for concern? If these children are seen as a matter of course in the way that they would be at school because the local authority provides a proper level of support and is therefore content that the education is proceeding happily—
Lord Storey
Does the noble Lord not accept that anybody working closely or intimately with children, whether in a school setting, a semi-school setting, a youth club, the Scouts or the Brownies, should be safeguard-checked?
Lord Lucas
I am entirely comfortable with that and I have been through the process myself in the context of working with children. However, we do not require this of parents. As the noble Lord, Lord Bird, pointed out, parents do a lot of educating outside school hours anyway. I do not see—
Lord Warner
Perhaps I may clarify that. Amendment 16A refers to “other adults”; it does not say “the parent”. I gently suggest to the noble Lord that if you leave your child unsupervised with a childminder for a number of hours in the day, the sensible thing is to check whether the childminder has been safeguard-checked. I suggest to the noble Lord that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, is simply saying that, if in home education you find another adult who does some teaching, probably in an unsupervised way either in the home or elsewhere, they should be safeguard-checked. That seems a sensible arrangement that many thousands of parents go through all the time when their children are looked after by somebody else.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I appreciate that we are near a borderline and that this is a matter for discussion, but a lot of the people whom a home educator leaves their children with are other home educators, as it is a way of sharing the burden. On many occasions I have sent my child off to spend a play day or night in the company of a friend’s child without having the parents checked to see whether they have any relevant convictions. One should be conscious that this is an area where we are quite comfortable to rely on personal judgment. It tends to be when you are putting your child in the company of strangers that you want to know that they have been properly checked, particularly those who are part of an institution where they might expect to deal with children on a regular basis. I am very comfortable with that system but I do not think we should start letting that intrude into personal decisions about with which of one’s friends one should let one’s child spend time overnight in their house or spend time with their children being educated by the parent.
A border seems to be being drawn here on the basis that in some way home educators are worse or more risky than the rest of us. Not only is there no evidence for that but it is entirely unjustified to say it. I keep feeling that people say it because they are different: “They are not people like us and therefore we’re suspicious”. I hope that in many aspects that is something that we can educate ourselves out of—we should not allow ourselves to slip in that direction. Therefore, I feel that the noble Lord’s amendment goes too far, although I understand what he says about it. However, I do not think that it fits with the general pattern of home education.
We will come to the subject of unregistered schools in a later group, and that seems a substantial problem to address. Effectively there are institutions run by strangers that purport to provide education. Children are dropped off and collected later and, because the institutions are not registered or formally classified as schools or other institutions, there may be no DBS or any other checks on them. That is a problem that the Department for Education needs to deal with. We know that there are a lot of such places and that they need attention, but we do not seem to have given ourselves the tools to deal with them.
However, I do not think we should trespass on the privately run institutions, where parents are permitted to drop their children off with friends and acquaintances to receive a bit of education. We all do that at the weekend but we do not for a moment consider that formal checks have to be made. We should recognise the difference between the need to check in the public realm and there being no need to check in the private realm. We should draw a rational and natural division between the two and not let the checks of the public realm bleed into the private. I do not think that that would work. We should trust parents to educate children in the same way as we trust them to bring them up outside school hours and we should be comfortable with the processes around that.
Coming back to the main amendment, I am comforted by what the Minister effectively says in the draft guidance that he has published about how a local authority should establish whether a parent is providing a proper education for their children. I again urge him to accept that this will all work much better if he can find a way of providing a proper level of support. Then, in almost all cases, that assessment can be carried out in the natural way—in the same way as it is carried out by a teacher, observing a child over a period of time and forming a professional judgment.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, the noble Lord has made some very valid points but I am concerned by the length at which he is speaking. The Committee would much appreciate being able to finish Committee stage today. If he could possibly curtail his remarks, the Committee would very much appreciate that.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I do not think that with the point that we have got to there is any great danger of running over the time. I am taking a bit of time on this group because it is the last important and substantive group. There is only one other point that I wish to make at length and that is on flexi-schooling, but I will not speak about that at great length and I do not think that it is contentious. However, I believe that the whole business of assessment is a point of great concern for home educators. Many of them undertake education in their own way. Helping them with that—giving them support, direction and information so that they do it better—seems to be an entirely good idea. However, trying to corral them into a system of education which has largely evolved to make schools work but which is not followed in many schools of which we approve, as well as a lot of schools abroad, seems to be entirely inappropriate. Therefore, if we are to have something that works, and if we are to support and accept home education, we have to be very careful what we say on assessment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Soley
Lord Lucas
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the amendments in this group are an attempt to show the Government that this is a Bill they can use to get a grip on settings in which education is provided. We seem to have a considerable range of problems, particularly with regard to radicalisation and the failure to educate people fully and in citizenship in some of the settings that our young people are allowed to attend. It seems that we do not have the power or the ability to deal with that effectively. This group of amendments is very much directed at showing the Government that this is a Bill they can use to achieve that. I will leave it at that. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, if Amendment 12 is agreed to, there will be consequential arrangements in respect of Amendment 13.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I think we are a long way short of having time problems—we have 45 minutes for the last group.
Lord Soley
My Lords, these are complicated amendments that need to be considered in the process that we have been talking about. However, there is a bit of a time problem, and if you talk to the people who are involved in the Bill that is coming up next, they will tell you that there is definitely a time problem. I understand what the noble Lord is saying in these amendments but, again, they are too complex for a Private Member’s Bill. I know where the noble Lord is coming from: it is about having the discussion and asking the Government to consider and consult on it. I am confident they will do so, as we all need to do. This is a complex, important area, but not one for a Private Member’s Bill.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, if there was a time pressure, my noble friend Lord Cormack would be in his place. If the Whips are concerned about time pressure, perhaps someone might scurry out and get him, otherwise we will have to adjourn before the next debate.
I agree that this group is more directed at showing the Minister what is possible than for discussion today. It is a subject that goes wider than that of the Bill and I am happy to beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Addington
Lord Addington
My Lords, Clause 2, and in particular subsection (2), caused me considerable disquiet when first I saw it. Subsection (2) starts with setting out the minimum requirement for home education, which must include,
“reading, writing and numeracy, which takes into account the child’s age”.
Okay, there are some caveats, but my concern is quite simple. I am dyslexic. If you were to put me in a system where I was tested on, for instance, my spelling, I would still be being home educated now. My brain is constructed so that I do not store knowledge easily and cannot deal with it. If you put extra work on to a dyslexic, they will forget more. Problems with short-term memory and recall processes, which allow you to do this, mean they cannot do it. Children with other special educational needs will have other problems, all of them requiring some change in the learning pattern. Subsection (2) mentions “ability” and “aptitude”, but what does that mean here? You would need a complicated assessment to find out.
Special educational needs are mentioned at the end of subsection (2). As I have said before, far too much attention has been paid to education, health and care plans. Noble Lords should remember that they are designed to deal only with those at the extreme end of the spectrum. Most people with a special educational need do not qualify for one and should not. A child could have a fairly minor problem and end up in home education because of an unsympathetic teacher or because something has gone wrong—that can happen, and a child can end up in the wrong place. Dyslexics make up about 10% of the population, and if we include those with other special educational needs, it goes up to around 20%. If we put these requirements on children who need different learning patterns, we will be in trouble. That is especially true for those who do not qualify for assessment or who have not been assessed and where there is an emotional need that gets in the way of that assessment. That is why I do not want this included here. We have spoken already in a previous group about what is going on here and that assessments should be more flexible.
When discussing this with my wife, she pointed out to me, “Oh! If it is just reading and writing, there could be one text”. Let us start with a text that is not too scary: the King James Bible. How many books you would get through before you get to Mein Kampf, I am not sure, but it is a process. Reading, writing and arithmetic are regarded as the bedrock of education, but they can be merely tools to acquire an education. A couple of weekends ago, I was at a conference at which we spoke about dyslexia. The main thrust was that more people can learn to read books than can understand what is inside them. I do not think that that is a very controversial point. These are tools for education. If you are obsessed with these tools and their acquisition, you will get in the way of learning.
Are you allowed, for instance, to have a book read to you by the numerous bits of technology we have? I must declare an interest: the firm that I am chairman of, Microlink, provides such packages. If we are going down this route, with technology that turns text to voice and voice to text, which is a perfectly normal way of dealing with certain things—the way that the blind deal with these things is a very related technology—all of it would be under threat if we have this wording in the Bill.
Overloading somebody who does not respond well to these pressures is almost a guarantee of educational failure. Indeed, that is why many people might be removed from that system and I know have been in the past—a teacher says, “He’s dyslexic. Let’s give him extra spelling”, but they just reinforce failure and make a child more resistant. They have made the problem just that bit worse and they will do it again the next day and the day after that.
This wording cannot be in the Bill. Something that suggests an education would be fine; trying to put down an education that is appropriate, having taken advice, is okay. I am fine with that. But the minute you get these caveats and absolutes you are guaranteeing failure for fairly large groups, even with the best tuition in the world. You do not deal with this problem by doing this. Autistics and dyspraxics have another variation on this. Dyscalculics—that is not an officially recognised term, but that is a battle for another day—will have a problem with numeracy. We need to have a great deal more flexibility than we have now. These words cannot be in the Bill if it is to mean anything and it is not to damage these groups.
I do not want to have to stop this and call a Division. At the moment, I think that this would probably be something that we would look forward to on Report. However, I will do unless there is some way of getting this wording out. If we get this into law, we will create more and worse problems. I beg to move.
Lord Soley
I discussed this with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I understand his strength of feeling about it. He brings a special knowledge to this, which is important, but I think his fears are overstated. I will explain why again. For a start, the beginning of Clause 2(2) says that,
“the Secretary of State must have regard”.
As he and other Members in the House will know, “must” does not carry the same legislative power as “shall”. Straightaway there is an ability for the Secretary of State or Minister to exercise some restraint.
Very importantly, this is not as absolute as the noble Lord is reading it. He said that there was a difficulty in understanding or interpreting the meaning of words such as “ability”. I put to him that there is not. The clause says,
“reading, writing and numeracy, which takes into account the child’s age”.
That is where he freezes on it and gets quite concerned, but the following matters are really important. They are,
“ability, aptitude and any special educational needs and disabilities”.
Things such as aptitude have to be considered here. Aptitude matters and we know what it means. If a child has school phobia that is an aptitude we have to consider. You could call it a disability if you like, but a phobia is not quite that.
The clause also deals with “any special educational needs” and “ability”. It is now many years since I worked in a hospital for what were then called educationally subnormal children. We would not call them that now; it was very different. The treatment at that time, because we had less knowledge and less use of drugs, was pretty awful but we always made attempts to help those children, who had far greater problems than almost anyone in this House can imagine. We tried to teach them to have some basic understanding of numbers, reading and, where possible, although it was very rare, writing. We can do it. The reason for putting the wording in the Bill is to try to meet the noble Lord’s concerns.
I understand this, though. As I said in an earlier intervention, one of the things that we ought to consider that might give the noble Lord added reassurance on this is to look at the possibility of an appeals system to an independent or totally separate educational body, or even an individual with special knowledge and special skills. If a local authority or an individual welfare officer is doing what the noble Lord most fears, it might be that in the final Bill there should be an appeals mechanism. I ask him to think about that.
The problem with taking out this clause, which is what the noble Lord would do, is that it would leave a lot of other children vulnerable. In trying to protect that group that he is rightly concerned about he would put others at risk. We need children who do not have special problems to be able to read, write and be numerate. We know that in some situations of home education, often for children who have been pushed out of a school, they are not getting that information. The noble Lord is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He wants specific attention paid to a small group of children who are very important, but there is a much larger group of children who need to be able to read, write and be numerate. They are often among those people who have been pushed into home education where children are not getting these skills.
I ask the noble Lord to look again at the clause and read it as a whole. It is not an absolute requirement that the Secretary of State is obliged to enforce. It is also true that the Secretary of State has the power to say to the local authority, “You must take these other factors into account, not only age”. You cannot do it just on age, which is what the noble Lord was worried about at first but now feels that this is not enough.
Finally, you have to agree with the parents and the child—that is the second part of it. Clause 2(2)(b) states that,
“the views of children and parents who elect home education”,
must be taken into account. That is why I ask the noble Lord whether he would take away the idea of an independent appeals system. If parents and children felt that it could not work for them, which is what he is worried about, and if, for example, he is right about the case he identified, you will need an appeal mechanism, but you do not want a mechanism which does not allow the provision to happen for other children.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
I apologise to the Committee. I should have made it clear that if Amendment 23, which is currently being debated, is agreed to, I will not be able to call the following three amendments, Amendments 24, 25 and 26, by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Addington
Perhaps I may respond to that. Although I am severely tempted, I shall not call a Division now. If we put in “an appropriate education” we will cover these points. It will be a building block. If we put it in as an absolute—“must”, “shall”, “will”, whatever you want—we will be dancing on the head of a pin. It depends on the context in which you take it. We know that because we have all done it. I have had 30 years of playing with those words. If we do that and keep in the age-related provision—even if we put caveats after it—we will still have the initial provision, which means you will have to have discussions on it.
The Minister is studiously looking at a piece of paper but perhaps I may ask him whether we have a legal definition of ability and—I am looking for the Bill; it is nice to know that long sight comes to rival dyslexia in my life—aptitude. He says that they are important but I do not think aptitude can come in if you have not had a proper assessment in the first place. You cannot assess aptitude if you do not have the right range of environment to find out what it is.
There are all sorts of problems here. If you have another form of words you do not need those three provisions in the clause because the number of people affected by it—20% of the population have special educational needs but you can probably double that for this group to 40%, or maybe only 30%—is enough to colour this legislation’s effectiveness unless there is something in there to say that you are not going to place this stress on them. Dyslexics are the biggest although not the only group—they are not the only pattern but they are the most commonly occurring pattern—and, unless we deal with this issue, the legislation will fail a large group of its clientele. We cannot have that. Other forms of words can go in such as an “appropriate education”.
If there is an appeal, the group that will have the most problems dealing with it will probably be the dyslexics and—guess what?—it runs in families. We will be creating more problems than we need. Just change that and make sure that it is done. I hope the Minister will give us guidance that the Government will not look unfavourably on this. If we do not change this it will create more problems than we need to have. Perhaps the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Soley, will have something more positive to say on that comment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, perhaps I may speak briefly to my amendments in this group. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and hope that the noble Lord, Lord Soley, and my noble friend the Minister will agree to suspend the Bill between Committee and Report until we have the results of the consultation. We will then be able to see in context what this Bill says because this clause in particular will work much better when we have a more expansive sight of the full-blown draft guidance to go with it. As it is, I have real concerns and I would definitely join the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on Report. To allow legislation like this to go forward beyond Report would be a great mistake because we need to know much more.
In particular, in Amendment 24 I seek to leave out the words “supervised instruction”. It is just not appropriate for many of these children. It is not the way it is done or the way they learn. They may well be learning entirely by themselves, but what matters is that they are learning. Numeracy, literacy and writing are absolutely core and we should not let children come out of home education illiterate, but we ought not to be prescribing the process; we ought to be prescribing the outcome.
In framing the guidance we must have regard to the whole range of support. The fact that support is available makes much clearer guidance possible because we are not trying to push parents back into taking up patently unsatisfactory school provision; rather, we would be giving them a clear and supportive alternative. Under those circumstances, it is reasonable to make demands of them, but it very much depends on that.
Lastly, I want to draw attention to flexi-schooling, which is one of the possible answers to this issue. I had a helpful conversation with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely. The Church of England is willing to be extremely supportive of this proposal. It has a lot of small rural schools and many of them would really like to become involved in the provision of flexi-schooling, which would suit them well. They are small enough to be flexible and they can provide an environment with space and freedom which will suit many children who feel oppressed by a more restricted city school environment. Also, not many of those schools, in particular the good ones, have the time and space available to do things slightly differently for home-educated children. It also fits well with the provision that these rural schools are already making for Travellers and others for whom a non-traditional education pattern works well.
I would really encourage my noble friend the Minister to talk seriously with the Church of England to see what can be done to establish a pattern for the support of flexi-schooling. Indeed, I do not think that much is needed other than the comfort of knowing that it is a form of education of which the Government approve. Frankly, if a child is receiving flexi-schooling for a couple of days a week, all the worries about whether that child is visible would disappear along with knowing about the quality of their education because they would be closely and properly observed by educational professionals. It is a very good solution to many of the problems that this Bill sets out to tackle. It will not apply in every case, but it is a facility that we should encourage.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, it may be helpful if I offer to have a meeting with the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Soley, and indeed with my noble friend Lord Lucas to discuss Amendment 23 in particular. I consider this to be part of our broader call for evidence and feedback on the draft guidance that we have issued.
Lord Soley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that helpful intervention and I welcome it.
Lord Addington
My Lords, given that assurance and the fact that we are going to take a look at this issue, I shall reserve my position to take action at a later point. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Soley
Bat Habitats Regulation Bill [HL]
Friday 27th April 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Bat Habitats Regulation Bill [HL] 2017-19 View all Bat Habitats Regulation Bill [HL] 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I suppose I should begin with a brief word of thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Soley. I congratulate him on getting his Bill to Committee stage rather earlier than I had feared and I wish him well.
It is some 46 years since I introduced my first Private Member’s Bill, the Historic Churches Preservation Bill, in another place. It led to state aid—later, through English Heritage—being made available for historic churches in use. I introduced that Bill and wrote my book, Heritage in Danger, a couple of years later because I was deeply concerned about the state of our parish churches and the dangers that face them. I will not say that we have come full circle, but the Bill I am asking your Lordships to give a Second Reading to today was introduced because of dangers that were not very real then but now face 6,000 of the 12,000 listed parish churches in the care of the Church of England.
I begin by making it abundantly plain to your Lordships that this is not an anti-bat Bill. I have often taken delight in them, particularly when my wife and I used to sit in the garden of our house in my constituency and delight in watching the bats. They are amazing creatures and I am glad that there are 18 species of them in this country. It is right that they should be adequately protected. However, it is right too that churches should be protected from incursions that threaten their condition and purpose. As I said, we have some 12,000 listed churches—the Church of England is responsible for 16,000 plus in all—over 50% of which have a bat problem.
I hope that I do not have to convince any of your Lordships of the importance of the parish church—indeed, most of our churches—to the history of this land. It is through our great churches and even greater cathedrals that we come closest to the soul of the nation and understanding its history. They are buildings of enormous importance and consequence. Earlier this week, I talked to someone who made the point that when their church was threatened with closure, the whole village was up in arms. Even those who rarely, if ever, darkened its doors did not want to see it closed or be declared “redundant”—a rather horrible term in this context. In all our most solemn and joyful moments, both national and personal, we tend to gather in our churches. Week by week, day by day, they perform a very special purpose. They are not only havens of peace, but centres of the communities in which they are situated. Moreover, many of them are great treasure houses of the most important art in our country. Almost all medieval sculpture is in our churches. One goes beyond that: brasses recording the illustrious, and sometimes not so illustrious, citizens of the locality; alabaster monuments; painted screens; murals; amazing wall-paintings, sometimes dating from the 12th century; textiles; floors, and furnishings. All of this and the cycle of worship is at risk. It has been at risk since I first introduced the Bill to which I referred some 46 years ago. I want to give your Lordships some examples.
I first became acutely aware of this problem shortly after we moved back to my native county of Lincolnshire some seven years ago. I went to a church that I knew well as a boy and a young man, the great collegiate church of Tattershall, which some of your Lordships may know and which stands hard by Tattershall Castle, one of the finest brick-built medieval buildings in the country. The church itself is a wonderful example of perpendicular architecture: soaring columns, full of light and full of some of the most extraordinary brasses and monuments, and with a fine, original 500 year-old door which the church authorities are not allowed to repair, much as it needs it, because, in repairing it, they may block one of the access routes for the 900 or so bats of several species which have colonised the church.
It was very sad indeed to see those brasses, which I remembered well from earlier years, covered over, but when one removed the covers, one saw them pitted: the urine and the droppings of the bats were corroding them in a way that they could not be repaired. There are many other examples, of which I shall give just a few. Stanford-on-Avon in Northamptonshire has some of the most wonderful alabaster and marble monuments. Deene in the same county has brasses and monuments. All Saints, Braunston-in-Rutland, has a colony of 500 bats; again, there are some marvellous monuments. The same goes for St Andrews, Holme Hale, in the diocese of Norwich—I am glad and grateful that the right reverend Prelate has put down his name to speak in this debate; we much look forward to hearing what he has to say. I would go on and on, but I do not want to weary your Lordships; I merely want to underline that this is not a local problem but a national problem, a problem that is particularly acute in those dioceses such as Norwich and Lincoln which have an abundance of wonderful places of worship.
We should take this carefully on board. I want to pay tribute to one individual, Dr Jean Wilson—she is just about to give up after completing her term as president of the Church Monuments Society—because she more than any other individual has drawn attention to this problem and to the haemorrhaging of the cultural assets that our churches contain. Churches make an enormous contribution to our tourism revenue. The people who flock to Beverley in Hull go to see the Minster and St Mary’s. Were they not there, would they go? The same can be said of course of many other places. They are, as I said earlier, community centres of great importance, but first and foremost they are places of worship.
I shall quote from one or two letters that I have received. This comes from Norfolk:
“The warden spends an hour almost every day of the week sweeping up droppings. Because of the droppings it is difficult to raise money from exhibitions and choral entertainment, so the community of the church is interfered with”.
This comes from Sleaford in Lincolnshire:
“Those who clean the church have a constant battle trying to remove bat droppings and urine from every surface. Even if the church is cleaned on Saturday it still needs attention before a Sunday service. Prayer books and hymn books cannot be left out as they would be ruined by bat urine and there is also a danger to health. It is very unpleasant. The church has part of a medieval wall painting and a 13th century effigy which have been affected by the bats. An active craft group in the village has produced kneelers, involving many hours of work; they are also affected by the bats. Last year at the end of a service a bat fell onto the head of an eight year-old girl, causing much distress. Not surprisingly, she was reluctant to return to church”.
I have an even more graphic example from a wonderful church in the Golden Valley of Hereford where a parishioner and his wife were kneeling to receive holy communion from their woman vicar. Bat droppings descended during the most sombre part of that ceremony, the administration of the host, which went into the vicar’s hair and the hands of those who were about to receive. I am sorry to dwell on those examples, but it helps:
“To point a moral, or adorn a tale”,
as someone would have said.
Of course, churches are used at the most solemn and joyful moments of individual lives. Some now find it difficult to conduct weddings, or even to persuade people to have their weddings in the church. Many a stalwart of the local community has had a funeral in a church where the stench is overcoming. And there is a hygiene risk. It is customary in the Church of England to serve refreshments after the main Sunday service and particularly after special festivals and the like. Very few people are tempted to eat if they can smell and see evidence of bats. Professor Wilson sent me a paper from the American journal Microbe, written by several eminent scientists and entitled Bats Prove to be Rich Reservoirs for Emerging Viruses. These are things we cannot just disregard.
I want briefly to go through the Bill and what it seeks to do: I think it gives a balanced approach. I draw from the admirable briefing that the House of Lords Library has produced for us all—how grateful we are on so many occasions for what it produces. The Bill has four clauses. Clause 1(1) provides:
“No new building shall be constructed on a previously undeveloped site unless prior to its construction a local bat survey has been conducted and it has been established whether or not a bat habitat is located in the vicinity”.
Clause 1(2) states that if a survey,
“concludes that a bat habitat is located in the vicinity of the site of a proposed building, the building shall not be occupied unless or until the developer of that building has provided a bat box or artificial roost for each species of bat”.
Clause 1(3) states that the term “building” would also include wind turbines, therefore no wind turbines requiring planning permission could be constructed unless there was compliance with the provisions of this clause.
Clause 2 would set out that,
“the European Communities Act 1972, the provisions of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 shall not apply to bats or bat roosts located inside a building used for public worship unless it has been established that the presence of such bats or bat roosts has no significant adverse impact”—
and sometimes it does not. Clause 3 would require the Secretary of State to specify by statutory instrument,
“the criteria to be used in a local bat survey”,
and,
“the meaning of … terms such as ‘in the vicinity of a building site’”.
It is a modest Bill and it is not, as I said at the beginning, anti-bat.
I have had a number of very useful and helpful conversations with Andrew Sells, the chairman of Natural England, and Sir Laurie Magnus, the chairman of Historic England. I welcome the initiative that they are taking, working together to see what can be done to tackle the problem in churches, which they both fully acknowledge, but there are one or two problems with their “Bats and churches” project. First, there is the speed with which it is being conducted. Sir Laurie has written to me to say that they have had some lottery funding to set up the pilot projects, but they really need more if they are to roll it out over the nation in a reasonable time. I hope that his plea will be heeded by the Heritage Lottery Fund but there are other worries. One is that Natural England subcontracts the enforcement of bat protection legislation to the Bat Conservation Trust. As someone remarked slightly mischievously in a letter to Professor Wilson, that is a bit like putting the National Rifle Association in charge of firearms legislation in the United States. We need to have balance and impartiality.
There really is a sense of urgency. Over this weekend, tens of thousands of bats will defecate and urinate in over 6,000 churches. We must achieve a balance between the way we protect bats and preserve churches. Nothing less than one of the most important parts of our heritage is at risk because once destroyed, great works of art created centuries ago cannot be replaced. A replica never suffices.
We all have cause to be thankful for the rich heritage that we enjoy. We all have a common duty to ensure that it is preserved, not only for the current generation but for those to come to enjoy. Whether they go to worship because they are believing Christians or, as so many do, just to look and admire—to be inspired by what they see and come away with a greater sense of local and national patriotism and a love of history—we want them to be able to continue to go, and enjoy what they see, without seeing it destroyed before their eyes or with a stench in their nostrils. I beg to move.
Lord Redesdale (LD)
My Lords, I have the honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, whose dedication to the historical environment should not be overlooked. Through many years, I have followed the work he has undertaken. I also have a great love of the archaeology in this country and helped to found the all-party archaeology group. I understand the issues faced by many churches throughout the country.
In preparation for this debate, I thought first that, as we are discussing churches and places of worship, I would look at how the Bible deals with bats. There are three mentions of bats in the Bible: in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which say you cannot eat them, and in Isaiah, which has a particularly fine reference stating that you should take gold and silver idols and throw them to moles and bats. I am sure the right reverend Prelate will have some views on the essence of that teaching. I will leave that to him.
I know quite a lot about how the process around bats takes place because I had to replace the roof on my house two years ago, and there are bats in most of the houses on the estate. I had to call in the Bat Conservation Trust, which was particularly helpful and did a bat survey in the roof. You listen out for the ultrasonic sounds of the bats. You can listen to them when the frequency of the device is lowered. I was keen to see whether there were any bats in that roof, but the bat survey officer said that it was so damp they would probably have drowned, which was the reason for replacing the roof in the first place. When I replaced the roof, I made sure that there were three bat entrances so it could be recolonised, not just because I think that bats are wonderful creatures but because a small bat will eat more than 1 million midges in its lifetime, and if you live in the wilds of Northumberland, anything that eats midges has to be a good thing.
One of the issues I had is that work has been carried out on the estate on roofs where we know there have been bats. Clause 1 talks about mitigation measures, such as putting up bat boxes. I have put more than 30 bat boxes up with an ecological group that works in some woodland I have, but so far we have not seen any evidence that they have been used. This is a real issue that should be taken forward when we talk about bat conservation. So much of the legislation we look at says that we can replace a habitat quite easily by putting up bat boxes or roosts. That is simply not the case. This raises a fundamental issue about bats, which is that we have destroyed the habitat of ancient woodland, there are no caves left, everything else is paved over and new buildings do not have the same crevices or even roof felting, which bats quite like. That means churches are one of the last sanctuaries for bat species in that area. That is a real issue because if we remove that roost it does not mean that the bats will move somewhere locally; it could mean that the bats leave the area altogether.
I am quite involved in the conservation of our local churches, Holy Trinity at Horsley and St Cuthbert’s at Elsdon, an 11th century church with a mass of history. They both have bats, but they do not have the problems that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned because most bat droppings, unless there is a concentration, are very dry because they are made up of the exoskeleton of insects and crumble into dust. Obviously the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right that the concentration can have an effect, but for most species of bat and most churches, it will not have the major effect set out. While I understand the real danger to much of the heritage in churches, I am rather wary of this Bill because Clause 2 states,
“the provisions of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 shall not apply to bats or bat roosts located inside a building used for public worship”.
That is probably the wrong way round. Should we not look at the damage being done in certain churches and then have an exemption if it is of particular note rather than excluding all places of worship, which would include mosques and temples? That would be a more proportionate approach to the Bill rather than a blanket ban, which I think is draconian. It also raises the fundamental problem that we have at the moment, which is that development and species conservation often cause major problems. I have not come across a congregation that cannot find reasons to disagree with itself on certain issues, and I am sure that bats in roofs is particularly one of those.
So while I understand the need to conserve churches, I hope that the work of the Heritage Alliance, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, should have heritage funding from the lottery, is taken forward so that worshippers in church can look at the most effective ways of mitigating the problems of bats rather than the removal of bats. For centuries, churches have been seen as a place of sanctuary. Because of the way we have destroyed the habitat of bats, churches are some of the last refuges in the countryside for many species of bat.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Cormack for introducing the Bill, which raises an important issue, and I look forward to hearing the other contributions today. I should say at the outset that I very much support legislation designed to protect wildlife, including bats. That legislation has made a major contribution to the preservation and support of our biodiversity in the UK.
If the House would humour me for a moment, I have some bat credentials to declare. I am a trustee of a UK charity that supports the management of a small national park in Africa, where I used to live as a young man. Every year in November it provides the backdrop for what is thought to be, by numbers, the largest single gathering of mammals anywhere in the world. Some 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats—the eidolon helvum—gather in a small area of primary swamp forest known locally as “Mishutu”, which is a quite extraordinary spectacle, particularly because the eidolon is a very large bat; it has a wingspan of around 75 centimetres and weighs in the region of 300 grams. If my mathematics are correct, this equates to a total of some 3,000 tonnes of airborne biomass visiting a very small area of woodland for a few weeks in November. It could perhaps be thought of as the equivalent weight of 600 male African elephants. The problems in my noble friend’s church might be put into perspective in one way by that allusion.
To return to the Bill and the matter in hand, I think my noble friend has made an important point and given the House an opportunity to consider the inherent proportionality here, which is essentially part of the deal in any legislation for the conservation of wildlife and the conservation of our wonderful national heritage, of which churches are clearly such an important part.
My remarks perhaps go rather broader than purely related to churches. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, in the issue of bat surveys, which are referred to in Clause 1. My experience of that is only as someone who has sought and secured planning permission for an old house and some former farm buildings, but these issues are very common in rural areas where a bat survey is required in order to give information about what species may be present. That seems a very reasonable proposition, but every time an application is submitted, even if it is closely related to another application regarding the same building or cluster of buildings, then a fresh survey is required. If the renewal of planning permission is sought after the three-year expiry, the process is repeated all over again.
Each of those surveys costs many hundreds of pounds, and bat specialists come out at night with highly sophisticated equipment. In the course of evaluating and securing planning permission for the development of perhaps a farmhouse or former farm buildings, multiple surveys may be required over time and that could be at the cost of many thousands of pounds. I fully support the need to have a bat survey and find out what species are there. However, does my noble friend feel that due consideration has been given to a more flexible, targeted and intelligence-led scheme, where information has already been gleaned about bat populations? Bat surveys that I have seen in my, admittedly narrow, experience—I have commissioned half a dozen or so—have said almost exactly the same thing each time. The same species are present in broadly the same numbers. Broadly the same mitigating factors should be taken into account and broadly the same timing consideration for the development should be undertaken —it should be undertaken at a particular time of year.
That has caused me to think about the total number of bat surveys that must be commissioned across the UK annually. It would be interesting to know that figure; clearly, I do not expect an answer now. If one then looked at the total cost, it may be worth considering whether what I suspect is a large figure could be better targeted towards conservation of the most important bat species, gathering intelligence on what measures could be taken to support those populations.
I leave the House with that thought. In any area of law where the public are asked to spend considerable sums, they must feel that they are getting value and that it is not just a tick-box exercise, as I feel that it may be at the moment. We have great expertise in the bat field across the UK—the Bat Conservation Trust and others have been mentioned. I plead for a little more flexibility for local authorities, national park planning authorities and so forth to take an intelligence-led, flexible and proportionate approach, which may be to the value of conservation of both wildlife and buildings.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for the Bill. He has pursued a subject which I think can too easily be treated with mirth, but is not at all funny for those congregations in churches where bats sometimes rule the roost. It is reckoned that about 60% of all 16th-century or earlier churches have bat roosts. It is as significant as that. It is the nature of access to the roofs of medieval churches, I think, which causes the bats to go there, rather than their appreciation of our great, historic heritage. In a diocese such as mine, with 640 churches, of which 550 are medieval, there are places where the bat population outnumbers not simply the congregation but our total number of parishioners.
I used to recommend the regular use of incense, partly because I am very high church and love incense, and bats appear to be very Protestant, as they normally departed where incense was used. But even that is not now guaranteed to do the trick. Clearly, bats have gone up the candle in their churchmanship. I will disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, because that is as far as my theological disquisition will reach: I have not done my biblical homework as well as he has.
Of course bats should be adequately protected, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said. We agree on that, and bats and human beings can get on, as they do in many of our churches. Of that 60% of medieval churches where bat roosts are found, many situations are tolerable, but in some churches very large roosts prevent the church operating effectively for its primary purpose as a place of worship, a house of God and a place to gather and build community. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, pointed out, altars, monuments, pews and fonts can all be adversely affected by bat droppings. But it is the impact on what a house of God should be and do that is the most important.
All over Norfolk there are barns once used by bats that have been turned into beautiful homes for human beings, and their new owners do not want to share their property with them—so the bats have moved to medieval churches, as the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, pointed out. There seems to be an assumption among some that churches are barns rather than houses. I am fairly sure that if bats started to roost above us in this Chamber or, perhaps, deposited their droppings daily on the green Benches in another place, they would not remain there for long. I have often thought that that may be the thing to arrange to manage the situation. It is a testimony to the uncomplaining generosity of so many Church of England congregations that they seek to manage the presence of bats in their churches as well as they do. But I know of churches where people have come to the end of their tether and where a glorious building has become increasingly unusable for worship or any other community purpose. That cannot be what we would desire and cannot be the best way in which to enable bat conservation.
I have a great deal of sympathy for this Bill. I do not see why places of worship should be different to the Houses of Parliament or a barn converted into a habitation for human beings. I sometimes think that we tolerate that because we think that houses of God are not inhabited, but they are—and not only by God. They are inhabited by people, as well as past benefactors and worshippers who are part of the communion of saints, and they deserve some respect, too.
Church volunteers who cover and uncover monuments and clean on a daily basis need all the help that they can get, and they sometimes feel very frustrated by the bureaucracy surrounding this issue and are distressed and depressed by the financial burden. While bat deposits are common enough, they do not normally take monetary form or come via a standing order or direct debit, yet they add very considerably to maintenance and restoration costs.
It is a tribute to our congregations that they are engaging with the bats and churches project, in which the Church of England is partnering with Natural England, Historic England, the Bat Conservation Trust and the Churches Conservation Trust. It is a five-year project intended to work with some of the most severely affected churches, finding ways in which to protect church buildings without harming bat habitats. One challenge is to recruit hundreds of volunteers who will help to care for these churches as well as the bats that live in them. However, I know in my case in Norwich that some of the churches affected are in very sparsely populated rural areas, so quite where hundreds of volunteers will come from, when there are not even hundreds of people living within a 10-mile radius, I am not sure.
It is certainly true that there are practical solutions and there is much to be discovered, as we have heard, about the environments that bats prefer. Three churches, including one in my own diocese, All Saints, Swanton Morley, just outside Dereham, have been involved in an initial pilot. If the Heritage Lottery Fund provides the money, it is expected to run for five years from this autumn. I wish the project well—I hope that it will have success—but much has been tried in this area without fully solving the basic problem.
I am now in my 19th year as Bishop of Norwich, and bat roosts in churches have become more problematic with every succeeding year. I am hoping that the bats and churches project will provide some solutions, but it is not incompatible with the aims of the Bill, which is a reminder in itself just how serious this problem is—and I pay tribute to the noble Lord for pursuing this vexed matter so assiduously.
Baroness Hooper (Con)
My Lords, as this debate goes on, I become more and more fascinated by the subject of bats and their habitats. Like the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, I am not alarmed by having bats in my attic on the assumption that they are attacking the midges, but I have no idea which of the 18 species they represent and can only speculate that some species are rarer than others. I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Goschen in his suggestion that a particular survey should be done in that respect.
I support my noble friend Lord Cormack in his efforts to solve the problems, which he has outlined so thoroughly. They are side-effects, probably completely unintended and unanticipated, of the measures for the conservation and protection of bats, which clearly we all agree are welcome and necessary. I thank my noble friend for his explanations and his customary clarity in introducing the Bill.
I am certainly no expert on bats, but I take an interest in wildlife in general and in historic buildings and our heritage. I believe our heritage comes to light nowhere more than in small, country churches. My noble friend Lord Cormack gave some extremely good examples of that. It was in attending a wildlife event in Parliament just a few weeks ago that I met and spoke to the representative of the Church Monuments Society, Professor Jean Wilson, and saw the extent of the damage that can be caused by colonies in some churches, where they live relatively undisturbed. When you see the illustrations, the extent of the damage is really alarming. The Church Monuments Society, a tiny organisation, should be congratulated on raising, and continuing to raise, awareness of this issue.
Perhaps one thing that comes out of this debate is the need to use our churches more regularly. I have noted the remarks of the right reverend Prelate, who spoke about this. The worst damage is clearly caused in small churches with small congregations, which are not in regular use and cannot, therefore, be used for other community events for the reasons already given. In a sense, it is a vicious circle that needs to be broken, because the more a church is used the less of a problem there is—at least according to the evidence that I have seen. I would like to know—my noble friend the Minister will possibly be able to tell us—about the outcome of the local pilot studies and initiatives carried out by Defra and other voluntary organisations in 2013, following the review of the European Union’s habitats directive. I hope my noble friend can help us on that, because it will give us some more concrete evidence on what does and does not work and may be useful in making modifications to the proposals from my noble friend Lord Cormack in his Bill, which could obviously be discussed at its later stages. Meanwhile, I reiterate my support for the modest proposals contained in the Bill, because something clearly needs to be done.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on introducing this Bill. It has enabled us to have a really interesting debate, so far, on the pros and cons of what one might loosely call “bats versus humans”. I suppose I am a late convert to interest in bats; my wife is in fact the chairman of the Isles of Scilly Bat Group and I have been taken out on a number of tours to see them and listen to them. I find them very interesting. I sponsored a bat evening in Committee Room G a few months ago and some noble Lords came to stroke the bats—I think they found it very interesting.
I am also on record criticising some of the costs associated with bats. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, and I have had many conversations about this in connection with HS2, where a new type of bat was allegedly found on the centre line. It cost, I think, £15 million and the committee was told to move them. Therefore, costs are a problem, but that has to be balanced by the fact that the available habitats for bats, which do not include bat boxes on pylons, are declining, and the number of bats are declining. I love churches and love the history and artefacts, and this is a classic debate about balancing the environment with human beings. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has done us a service by issuing a wake-up call. I know that he says that he has been doing it for 47 years, but that is good. Many noble Lords have tenacity with regard to certain issues and projects, and I commend the work he has done. I could give the House a long description of what bats do and how they live, but that is not necessary today, because all noble Lords who have spoken have demonstrated a great knowledge of bats, whether they think the present legislation is right or not.
However, I will say a word or two about the question of bat numbers, because there are some clear examples, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, of colonies which are possibly growing and causing trouble in churches—I will come back to that. A very interesting survey was carried out by the Bat Conservation Trust and others, The State of the UK’s Bats 2017, which noted the increase in some species, put that in the context of the historic decline and emphasised the importance of protection. The decline has nothing to do with churches but, as other noble Lords have said, everything to do with the lack of suitable habitats in newer buildings. There is therefore still a strong argument for keeping at least the present legislation, which we have had since 1981, and accepting that churches are an important sanctuary for bats as well as humans—although for humans they are not, as they are for bats, maternity roosts and places for hibernation.
Although the Bill is a wake-up call, many of its parts are probably unnecessary, and they fail to take into account some of the complex nature of bat ecology. For example, why include wind turbines in Clause 1? I am not a bat, so I do not know whether I would be attracted to a wind turbine—I do not think I would be. However, specifying in legislation that bat boxes must be fitted to the bottom of turbines seems a bit odd if we are not to have bat boxes on every telegraph pole and pylon in the country. We should encourage other habitats. We should probably look at mobile phone masts as well.
We need to continue the survey to record the growth or decline of the different types of bat, but the key issue is probably dealt with in Clause 2, which seeks to remove some of the protection in churches. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has told us about the legislation that is still there, and which in my view should continue to be there. There seemed to be a bit of debate about the number of churches affected; the right reverend Prelate mentioned different figures. My information is that, according to the only nationwide systematic survey of bats in churches, of 30,500 churches and chapels of all denominations in England—I emphasise that they are of all denominations and ages, before someone picks me up on it—6,398 could be used by bats. Within that latter number are the examples referred to by the right reverend Prelate, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper. Churches are important places for bats to roost in. I accept that bats cause trouble in a small number, and if it is your church that is affected, it is no good people down the road saying that that is all right. Things have to be right for the small or large number of bats and the small number of humans who deal with the problem.
I believe that there has to be a flexible solution to this which, one hopes, will build on the Bats in Churches project, which other noble Lords have mentioned. Those involved in the project have been working very hard on this. There are lots of details on websites about what they are doing and I think that the outcome is due in the next month or two. The conclusions are particularly important because they have to aim to find practical, tailored solutions for the churches that are most affected.
Yesterday I had a very interesting meeting with the chief executive of the Bat Conservation Trust at which I asked what the solutions are. The trust has not announced them yet—it is still working on them—but I asked whether there are any. Other noble Lords have more experience in this area than I have but two solutions seem worthy of being taken forward. One is what you might call ultrasonic barriers, which I am told work in some instances. The other is to try to restrict the areas in a church where the bats can roost to places where they do not, for whatever reason, cause damage to the people underneath. I believe that this could be done without legislation. It would need some more funding, which the people involved in the project hope to get from the Heritage Lottery Fund. If they can create a network of volunteers who are able to provide help and support, and, in the process, come up with solutions that are within the funding capabilities of those who live or work there or have access to funding, I am sure that that is the answer.
Therefore, I am not very happy with the Bill as presented to the House today. I will be very interested to hear what the Minister says in response and I look forward to an interesting Committee stage if the time for it is allowed.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Cormack and I support the Bill. I also congratulate him on securing this Second Reading today. I think that we all care about bats but, as a number of noble Lords have said, it is a case of live and let live.
I declare my interests: I sit on the Rural Affairs Group of the Church of England, and for five years I had the privilege of chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place.
My interest in bats started in 2011, as I shall explain in a moment, but at a younger age I had a rather regrettable incident when a bat entered the bedroom where I was sleeping as a little girl, with a second bat trying to follow closely behind. Fortunately, that close encounter ended without harm to either the bat or me.
In Danish and German the bat is called a “flying mouse”. Of course, we associate mice with a risk to health, particularly from their droppings and urine, whereas bats are deemed to be cuddly little creatures. It would be interesting to explore why that is the case.
In 2001, a small number of bats literally took over the church of St Hilda in Ellerburn. It is a rather beautiful church in Ryedale. It is a small church but with a persistent and supportive congregation. I pay especial tribute to Liz Cowley, who at the time was churchwarden and campaigned to reclaim the use of the church as a place of worship. I will quote what she said to the Telegraph in August 2011:
“The smell is appalling … it’s a combination of ammonia from the urine and a musty smell from the droppings that catches at the back of the throat”.
She went on to say that the roosting bats had soiled the interior, damaging the furnishings, including the altar:
“You can see the urine marks on the altar; they won’t go away”.
It was discovered that this was the Natterer’s species of bat, which is in plentiful supply and not remotely close to extinction. The result was that the bats took over the church and the congregation was not allowed to worship there. A number of us raised questions at the time in the other place to our then honourable friend Tony Baldry, as second Church Commissioner. It was only when I intervened with Natural England—I knew the chairman at the time extremely well; like me, Poul Christensen is half Danish—that we reached a compromise whereby the congregation could reclaim the church and the bats were protected in the upper part of the loft.
That experience scarred me and showed me the cost of not being able to worship, as my noble friend so eloquently set out. Noble Lords should recall that churches were the only places that many farmers felt they could go at the time of foot and mouth disease in the early 2000s. Rural churches take on a special significance in sparsely populated areas.
I turn now to the Bill itself. I wonder whether my noble friend would be minded to agree to a wider power and insert a new paragraph to Clause 3(1) that would look at keeping all individual protected species— bats, newts, badgers and all sorts—under regular review so that the status of their protection could be updated. To look briefly at one example, badger baiting was unspeakably cruel and should never have been allowed, but we now have a situation where, I believe, we are the only country in the European Union that protects badgers. They are in plentiful supply, to such an extent that, as a carrier of TB, they spread disease through their urine to herds of cattle, which then have to be culled at considerable expense. Will my noble friend consider—and indeed the Minister; it could equally be a government amendment—such a review of these protected species, including bats? As my noble friend Lady Hooper said, until a survey is undertaken, we do not know what the species of bat might be. But once the numbers of that species have been restored, why do they continue to enjoy an almost permanent level of protection? This should be reviewed and, for the purposes of today, let us start with bats.
We must not gold-plate the regulations to the prejudice of people in favour of bats. My noble friend Lady Hooper may well have been in the European Parliament at the time that the habitats directive was passed—I had the honour to work with her in the humble capacity of adviser from 1982. Surely the habitats directive must not be gold-plated by any of the directives and regulations that we transpose in this country. I urge the Minister to be sure to seek a balance between humans and bats in the use of churches and, as my noble friend Lord Goschen said, other historic buildings.
I would like to consider for a moment the cost of the surveys that my noble friend Lord Goschen, the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and others have spoken to. In the case of St Hilda’s, £30,000 was the cost of the survey alone to conclude that this species was very common and not at all under threat of extinction. Over and above that, the population spent tens of thousands of pounds of their own money. As my noble friend Lord Cormack will know, it is very costly for church repairs to be undertaken. It places a heavy burden on what can be small but significant populations in rural areas, carrying the additional charge of 20% VAT on top. This is an additional burden, protecting species that are in plentiful supply and not in danger of extinction. Why should bats be singled out to have this special protected status?
I would like the Minister to give the House an assurance that, post Brexit, when we are told we will have a very high level of protection for mammal species, this enhanced level will not be to the detriment of common sense prevailing—that in the wider picture, whether it is bats, newts, badgers or other endangered species such as red squirrels, we must seek a balance between humans and these other species. This is a timely debate, given the fact we will have hundreds of statutory instruments coming through, transposing many more protections that currently have not yet reached the statute book. When we leave the European Union we might face higher levels of protection. I urge my noble friend to persist with the Bill. He will have my support. I hope he will look favourably on the little amendment I proposed. I hope the Minister will ensure that his department will seek to reach a balance between humans and other species in this regard.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for successfully getting the Bill to Second Reading. I know this is a subject dear to his heart and one on which he has tried previously to secure a Second Reading. All the activities that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has described are taking part in churches up and down the country, especially fellowship over refreshment after the service has finished. We have had an interesting and very informed debate. I am not, as I expect noble Lords will have anticipated, an expert on bats or bat behaviour. I think it only right that I should tell your Lordships that I have no sense of smell, so if there were bats in my church the smell would pass me by.
My experience is limited to having a lady from the Bat Conservation Trust visit us at home some 30 years ago when we first moved in to check for bats prior to woodworm treatment commencing. She duly climbed into the roof—not an easy task given the lack of space and her age—and pronounced that although there were signs of bats it was obvious that this was a nursery site and we could proceed as it was not the time of year for the relevant bats to be reproducing. Over the years, the bats returned irregularly and it was a joy, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, described, to sit on top of the bank in the garden in the twilight and watch the bats streaming out for the evening, foraging for food.
There were also a couple of occasions where juvenile bats found their way into the house, once when a tiny pipistrelle was curled up in the plug hole in the bath, and another when one flew up and down the landing until we managed to catch it in a tea towel. On both occasions we hung the bats on the wall below the opening to their roost where their mothers could collect them later.
As has been described by other speakers, the village church is an important landmark in any community, regardless of whether it is medieval or modern. It is a visual focal point, if not an essential meeting point. I have listened carefully to the arguments from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others, and I fear that I am unable to support him in limiting protection for bats in buildings used for public worship. Like others in this debate, we have bats in the church where we as a family have worshipped over the years. Unlike those that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke about, they are not a nuisance but provide a fascination for those in the congregation who have only seen pictures of bats in books and are keen to view the real thing. There are many other churches up and down the land where bats are something of a tourist attraction, as are the churches themselves.
I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for reminding your Lordships that churches are not just barns but homes for the worshipping community. I can understand that a large number of bats roosting in a church where there are priceless artefacts and relics can be a nuisance and that a remedy is needed to prevent both damage and unpleasant smells. Some sort of solution needs to be found to enable both congregations to coexist more harmoniously. I do not believe that this is an insurmountable problem but it needs flexibility and innovation. Solutions can be found, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.
Like others, I was extremely interested to read that in February 2017 the Heritage Lottery Fund approved the initial five-year funding for the project Bats in Churches. This partnership, as has been said, includes Natural England, the Church of England, the Bat Conservation Trust, Historic England and the Churches Conservation Trust. This is a £3.8 million project to trial new techniques to enable bats and congregations to live together, which I believe is the sole purpose of the Bill and the debate we are having today.
Although it sounds like a large sum of money, it is not likely to stretch over many churches. While it is extremely important that the fabric of churches is preserved for future generations, I and my fellow churchgoers have many scars from skirmishes with Historic England over what it will or will not allow in the way of upgrading facilities for the worshippers of the 21st century. I will be interested to know how this project is progressing and to what extent physical measures within churches have been allowed to mitigate the impact of the bat droppings that are affecting the fabric, the interior and the congregation.
I was interested in the contribution of the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, on the cost of the bat surveys in relation to planning. As a local authority councillor, I would certainly support a proportionate streamlining of this process and increased flexibility. The cost of £30,000 for a bat survey is ridiculous and we need to find ways of bringing that cost down.
The briefing from the Bat Conservation Trust was extremely useful, especially in respect of the number of bat species we have in the UK. As the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said, bats are insectivorous and devour large numbers of midges, mosquitoes and other pests. There is a delicate ecosystem which survives around different species of animals, insects and grubs. I fear we would disturb the ecosystem at our peril. Should we expel bats from some of their traditional and habitual roosts, resulting in a drop in their numbers, we could well find that we have an explosion of mosquitoes and moths, followed by hordes of caterpillars and grubs marching across our gardens and countryside, leaving a trail of devastation behind them. We would be wise to be cautious of the way forward and how we seek to limit the range and lifestyle of bats.
The Bill is a step forward and I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, on Clause 2: the emphasis should be reversed so that it is not a blanket ban. I regret that I am unable to support the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in his endeavours, especially as he has spoken so eloquently on the subject, which is obviously an emotive one for him. For worship to take place, some building may be necessary but it is not essential, as Wesley demonstrated. Perhaps some of the priceless treasures should be relocated if they are at serious risk of damage. Our church community relocated to the village hall while the decoration of the church took place, and that did not result in a reduction in the number of people who attended.
I am sorry that I am not able to support this Bill in its current form and I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for introducing his Bill today and for giving us the chance once again to consider the dichotomy of on the one hand trying to defend a precious and declining species and on the other hand preserving beautiful and historic places of worship. Along with other noble Lords, I also fully acknowledge the considerable contribution that the noble Lord makes to our church preservation and heritage. He speaks, understandably, with enormous authority and passion on this issue. But of course he will know, because he has tabled similar Private Member’s Bills in the past, that the solution is not quite as simple as his Bill would have us believe. There is a balance that needs to be struck between conserving our natural and cultural heritage, and sadly I do not think that the Bill in its current form achieves that balance.
As the noble Lord has recognised, under the habitats directive all bats are listed as protected species and as a result, in the UK all bat species and their roosts are protected. This was found to be necessary because of the widespread bat population decline. As several noble Lords have pointed out, most of the 18 species of bat found in the UK evolved to live, breed and forage in or around trees and caves. However, many have been forced to adapt to roost in buildings, including barns, houses, churches, tunnels and bridges because of the loss of their natural roosting sites. Artificial roosting sites are now essential to the survival of many bat species, although I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that bat boxes and other artificial mechanisms do not always work in the way they were designed to do. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Berkeley for his statistics, but as I understand it, since the legislation has been in place, national monitoring data suggests that bat populations have been stable or increasing, although that is not a reliable calculation in itself because we cannot ignore the fact that there is a continuing decline in suitable roosting sites as barns and older buildings continue to be demolished or converted, as other noble Lords have said.
We recognise that this decline in alternative suitable sites is putting increased pressure on churches as a resource for bats. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has spelled out the damage that can be done by bats roosting in churches and we fully acknowledge both the financial and hygiene issues. For example, bat droppings can cause significant damage to historical artefacts and items of cultural value, as well as being a disruption to worship and other community functions. We fully acknowledge those issues. However, we do not believe that the Bill before us is the answer to those challenges.
Clause 1 proposes that surveys must be undertaken before any new buildings are built to assess the presence of bats in the area, and where they exist, would require bat boxes to be provided. However, this requirement already exists. Local planning authorities have a duty to consider biodiversity and the requirements of the habitats directive when considering new developments. The duty includes provision for bat boxes and artificial roosts to be made available. In addition, bats do not require just bat boxes, as we have been discussing, but suitable habitats in which to feed which are not covered in the noble Lord’s Bill. This clause also includes wind turbines in the definition of a building. There is evidence that wind turbines have an adverse impact on bats, with evidence that they kill around 200 a month. However, guidance on surveying for bats at proposed wind turbine sites has been in place since 2009 and the Bat Conservation Trust has been tasked with updating the guidance with the aim of reducing the impact of wind turbines on bats in a collaborative way.
Clause 2 sets out that the relevant EU legislation, including the habitats regulations, should not protect bats inside a building used for public worship unless it has been established that their presence has no significant adverse impact on the users of the building. I agree with several noble Lords who have said that the noble Lord has got that the wrong way round. Moreover, this would be extremely difficult to define and prove, and would mean that bats would no longer have access to large numbers of churches which they increasingly depend upon for protection and safety.
We believe that the solution lies in a new coexistence between our cultural and natural heritage. I say to the right reverend Prelate that I believe there are indeed bats in the Palace, so there is evidence that we can coexist if the arrangements are properly managed. Defra has already been involved in research projects to support initiatives in churches and other historic buildings; I am sure the Minister can spell out the details. It is important that we manage this properly without unduly affecting the welfare of bats. I am sure that more can be done to address this challenge. I agree with a number of noble Lords that there is a case for a more flexible approach.
In the meantime, as has been said, the Bats in Churches Partnership Project—funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund—brings together wildlife and heritage conservationists on a wide scale. We very much welcome that initiative. So far, £3.8 million has been devoted to the project, which involves a number of groups such as Natural England, the Church of England, the Bat Conservation Trust, Historic England and the Churches Conservation Trust. The aim is to develop new techniques and build up professional and volunteer skills so that best practice and a shared understanding can enable bats and church congregations to coexist, which I think has been the theme of a number of noble Lords. The project still has some time to go and I take the point that it may need more funding; again, that case has been made. We believe that such initiatives are the right way to tackle this problem in a sympathetic way, rather than the heavy-handed approach that the Bill, in its current form, represents. We therefore hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has heard the concerns of a number of noble Lords and does not feel that he has to pursue the Bill, in its current form, at this time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, I join your Lordships in thanking my noble friend Lord Cormack for the opportunity to respond and contribute to the Second Reading of the Bill and hear many passionate contributions. I have no personal declarations to make, but I did build a new outbuilding some years ago; within a year, there was an extraordinary arrival of bats. Like many of your Lordships, I was very pleased by their arrival.
As said by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, most of the 18 species of bats found in the UK evolved to live, breed and forage in or around trees and caves but have adapted over the centuries to roost in buildings—an adaptation accelerated by modern development, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. These building roosts are now essential to the survival of many bat species, including the Natterer’s bat, a species for which the UK’s population is of international importance. Churches play a vital role in the survival of bats. I was also interested to hear, in the extraordinary contribution from my noble friend Lord Goschen, about what is happening in the natural landscape of a part of Africa and how bats play an extraordinary part in ecosystems across the globe.
However, the Government and I recognise that bats in some churches give rise to both distress for congregations and damage to our cultural heritage. I obviously agree with what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich said about his experiences. Indeed, I endorse the work of the Church Monuments Society, to which my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lady Hooper referred in particular. We are taking this problem seriously. We take responsibility for our obligations to heritage, community and worship. That is why we are working with Historic England, Natural England and the Heritage Lottery Fund to alleviate the problem.
My noble friend Lady Hooper asked about progress with research and pilot schemes. Following a research project and a pilot with three churches, Natural England has engaged with 20 individual churches and worked at diocesan level to develop plans and proposals to manage the issues. This approach will be rolled out to a further 80 churches. They are learning from the pilot, training hundreds of volunteers and professional ecologists, and sharing the approaches with a wider network of 700 churches. I say in this connection that many volunteers will be from the Bat Conservation Trust. Bat helpline volunteers, who advise the public and churches, are employed and trained by Natural England and follow Natural England policy guidelines. We have found no evidence that they are overzealous or over-precautionary, and customer satisfaction with the service is high—that was borne out by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. In fact, I have here a figure of 97% for those who said that the service was excellent, and none was dissatisfied.
The solutions include ultrasound-emitting devices to deter bats from using specific areas of a church, excluding bats from the interior of churches, and the provision of alternative access points and artificial roosting opportunities. Radio-tagging is used both to identify the species and where it is entering, and to monitor success.
All species of bat are subject to protection under the EU habitats directive, which will continue under UK law through the withdrawal Bill. It is a criminal offence deliberately to kill, injure, take or disturb bats. Bat species are also protected from disturbance in their place of rest or the deliberate obstruction of such locations.
The Bill put forward today by my noble friend proposes that bats be excluded from a building used for public worship unless it has been demonstrated that their presence would not have a significant adverse impact on the users of such a place. Such a blanket prohibition does not take account of the importance of some churches to some of our most vulnerable bat populations, or of the considerable steps that the Government in collaboration with others are already taking to alleviate and mitigate the impacts in such places where bats are causing nuisance or distress.
A recent three-year project led by Defra and undertaken by Bristol University researched and developed techniques to assist churches in developing mitigation strategies for bat-related problems. This led to a pilot project led by Historic England to implement some of the identified solutions. As a number of your Lordships have said, last year, Natural England, with the Church of England, Historic England, the Churches Conservation Trust and the Bat Conservation Trust, successfully bid for £415,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop further some of these solutions and put them in place in badly affected churches across the country.
I can report that 100 of the worst-affected churches have been surveyed. In the three most severely affected, All Saints at Braunston-in-Rutland, All Saints Swanton Morley—to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich referred, and which is in his own diocese—and Holy Trinity, Tattershall, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Cormack, trial solutions have been agreed and detailed, costed plans will be now be put in place. These churches host sizeable colonies of bats, including, at Tattershall, breeding populations of seven species of bats. The approaches include restricting access to certain parts of the building and the provision of alternative, artificial roosts nearby. In the case of All Saints, Braunston, this artificial roost will have a webcam to allow activity to be viewed, and the project is working with the community to offer opportunities to witness the spectacle of hundreds of bats emerging at dusk. At Holy Trinity, Tattershall, the congregation has embraced the presence of the bats, including them as part of their visitor attraction. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, is right that the challenge is how to find a solution whereby bats and ourselves coexist in harmony. Indeed, an application for a further £3.8 million for stage 2 of the project will be submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund in June of this year to enable such solutions to be put in place for more affected churches. I am sure that noble Lords will join me in wishing the bid well.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering referred to the church in Ellerburn, about which I have a quite substantial note. There again, Defra and Historic England collaborated with Natural England—Natural England taking the lead—to find an acceptable solution at St Hilda’s. Of course, I endorse all that my noble friend did to ensure the progress that was made. Again, a solution was found and after the exclusion operation was complete, successive years of monitoring showed that the bats were able to continue roosting under the tiles and in the walls but were no longer able to gain access to the interior of the church. Since the work took place the congregation has been able to use the church for worship once again.
Lord Berkeley
I am very grateful for the Minister’s response. His description of phase 1 of this joint study and the budget for phase 2, and what is contained in it, seemed to me incredibly good value compared to some of the projects we come across. Is he confident that the solution that could be applied to the many churches that have been described this afternoon, and others where there is a problem, can be done at a cost that is affordable for local congregations and other small funds? Or is there going to be a big shortage of funding for anything useful to happen?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, as we all know, funding is always extremely tight, but the point about the next bid is that we want to see what solutions and understanding we can get. As I will explain further, the collaborative approach works best, particularly bespoke approaches, which can be varied and address the complex problems. As of today, it is difficult to judge what the costs of each solution would be, but I think that the best opportunity we have is now, to find those solutions. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, we need to find solutions that have the flexibility to have the prospect of continued and unhindered use of churches, at the same time fulfilling our obligations to protect and preserve important bat populations. My noble friend highlighted the problems: if what I have before me is right, at Ellerburn they have found a solution whereby the tiles and the walls are used by bats but the congregation is unhindered. I think that is an example of a solution working.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned that my noble friend’s Bill, in proposing the blanket removal of protection for bats in places of worship would, we believe—and we have taken advice—directly contravene our obligations under the habitats directive and our international commitments under the Berne convention. My noble friend Lord Goschen mentioned surveys. The first thing to say is that bat surveys are required under regulations—the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 —where a proposed development is likely to affect bats. They are carried out by qualified ecologists licensed by Natural England. I say to my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that we are working with Natural England on strategic reforms to species licensing to streamline implementation. Natural England has recently introduced an innovative and strategic approach for another protected species, the great crested newt. On costs, I will ask Natural England and the Bat Conservation Trust if it is possible to compile figures for the total costs of bat surveys commissioned.
My noble friend’s Bill also proposes that surveys must be undertaken before any construction to assess the presence of bats and, if bats are present, it should proceed only if bat boxes and other artificial roosts are provided. The requirement to be aware of the existence of bats and to consider the impacts of any construction on them, however, already exists. Local planning authorities have a duty to consider biodiversity and the requirements of the habitats directive when considering any building development. Where mitigation of damage caused to bat roosts and their resting places is required, the provision of bat boxes and other artificial roosts are only two of a range of possible measures. Furthermore, bats require not just roost sites but suitable habitat in which to feed; the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned some of their diet. I believe that the Bill proposed by my noble friend does not take full account of this.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, raised the issue of the placing of wind turbines. Again, bat surveys are already undertaken at potential wind turbine sites. Defra commissioned an extensive report on the impact of wind turbines on bats, which was published in September 2016. The report showed that of the 46 onshore wind farms across Great Britain that were surveyed, one-third of sites had no bat casualties, one-third had one or two bat casualties, and one-third had higher numbers, estimated as up to five casualties per turbine over four months. These casualty rates are similar to those observed in other parts of Europe. Guidance to help developers and local authorities better assess the risk to bat populations ahead of wind turbine construction is now in the final stages of development.
Also, Natural England has now developed a new type of licence, the bats in churches class licence, specifically to address the complex physical and social issues caused by large bat populations in medieval churches. This new licence uses the findings of our research to balance better the conservation needs of bats with the needs of people, and the requirements of church buildings concerned, to reach outcomes suitable for all. We believe that these licence changes and the other mitigation strategies I have outlined allow us to address fully the problems caused by protected species such as bats, and thus properly balance the legitimate interests of people in a way that avoids harming wildlife without the need to change the law.
A number of points were made and I think there was one about the review from my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering. As your Lordships know, we have transposed the protections under the EU habitats directive into our own domestic regulations. These protections will remain when we leave the EU. Over time, we will of course be able to review protections to ensure that they remain appropriate but there are no current plans to review the list of species protected under these regulations.
Whatever our views, we in this country have a long history of environmental protection and this Government are committed to safeguard and improve on this record. We remain committed to upholding all our obligations under international environmental treaties. As I have said, the withdrawal Bill will ensure that the whole body of existing EU environmental law continues to have effect in UK law, while Defra’s 25-year environment plan is key to setting out how we will improve our environment as we leave the EU.
I well understand the issues that my noble friend Lord Cormack and others have raised today. The Government recognise the concerns expressed but, for the reasons I have outlined, we do not support this Bill. Many of your Lordships used the word “balance”; that is the approach the Government seek to take with all interested parties. I am very pleased, as I know the right reverend Prelate will be for the Church of England, that the Churches Conservation Trust is in partnership with Natural England, Historic England and the Bat Conservation Trust. This seems to me the sort of collaboration that will get us a bespoke approach for all those churches that have been outlined.
I would be interested in the numbers and how we can clarify this and approach these solutions individually, although we are working at diocesan level. We have wonderful churches which are some of the glories of this land, but we need to ensure that we know where these problems are most evident and how best we approach them. Rather like the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I understand that we are talking about some churches. I think the right reverend Prelate said “some churches”. We need to prioritise. We are seeking to understand better from those severely affected and achieve solutions and work on the hundreds of others where this is a problem. That is the better way of doing this.
I know my noble friend will be disappointed, but the Front Benches of all the political parties represented here have concerns about the Bill and I am not in a position to support it. However, I assure him and all noble Lords that whatever position has been taken, we are seeking a resolution so that we fulfil our domestic and international obligations and enable communities to conserve these glorious churches for worship, community use and heritage, built and natural.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who has taken part in this interesting debate. My noble friend referred to the three Front Benches. Looking back on my 40 years’ membership of another place, whenever the three Front Benches were in accord, I always smelt a rat, if not a bat. Therefore I will persist in the campaign of which this Bill is a part because although I am very glad that there were some unifying themes in the debate, we are all keen on our obligations to the environment and to wildlife, we all recognise the fascination and the importance of bats and we all seem to recognise that the glorious—my noble friend used that adjective correctly—churches of this country not only belong to us all but are the responsibility of us all. It goes far beyond the Church of England. I was particularly grateful to the right reverend Prelate for the experience he brought to the debate.
I am not persuaded that we have got the balance right between the protection of wildlife and the preservation of heritage. Although of course I welcome the various initiatives to which the Minister referred, he used the word “balance”, and I do not think we have the balance right. A number of points were made which illustrate that. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was accurate in his figure of 30,000 churches, but the Bill is essentially about the priceless heritage of medieval architecture, which is a small proportion of that figure, so although he is in one sense right, I do not think that figure should sway the debate.
I enjoyed the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, but she said that churches are not just barns. I say to her very gently that they are not barns at all. One of the reasons why this was not a particular problem when I introduced my Bill in other place some 46 years ago is that since then we have had so many barn conversions, which have been referred to. Unlike in France, there are very few vernacular buildings in our countryside that have not been converted to commercial use, human habitation or whatever. That is something that we all have to take on board.
Churches are churches. They are places of worship. In many cases, the parish church is the focal point of the community and is used by the community. My noble friend Lady Hooper seemed to suggest that it was only those that were not used that often that had the problem but that is not necessarily the case; many of those that are used a great deal have a problem too. When we have a situation where the parish church’s use is endangered, we have a duty—and I accept that this is recognised—not only to act but to do so with a greater degree of expedition than present plans allow. We are dealing with relatively small overall sums. The £3.8 million that has been used for the pilot is of course welcome and is a tiny sum in the context of the national Budget. The churches that are concerning me are not only irreplaceable but priceless. It is important, as I said in my opening remarks, that they are there to be used, enjoyed and appreciated by future generations, and they must not be despoiled in the way that many of them are being.
I would be the last person ever to claim that a Private Member’s Bill was perfect. I have introduced many; I have been responsible for getting three or four on to the statue book over the last 48 years, and many I have not. I suspect this will be in the latter category, but I believe it is important that we continue to address the subject. When we come to Committee, if we do, I promise my noble friend Lady McIntosh—she seems to have disappeared, but she had warned me that she had to get back to Yorkshire so I completely understand —that if amendments are moved they will be very carefully considered.
We have had quite a long day. I am most grateful to all those who have taken part, and I hope we have advanced the cause a little way and can continue to do so.