Committee (3rd Day) (Continued)
20:18
Amendment 216A
Moved by
20:30
I asked the guard what he was playing at, and he said they were trained not to intervene and that he just had to let them get away with it. Why should the innocent public pay for useless dodos who are told by the shops just to ignore shop thieves? My proposed new clause would make a difference, giving them the security to arrest and detain, provided they complied with all my provisions to do it properly and legitimately.
Finally, I turn to conspiracy to steal, and to steal a lot. We are talking here about organised crime gangs. Bicester Village Outlet was and still is a favourite target for organised criminal theft gangs. Thames Valley Police has had some success, but it is a constant battle.
I congratulate the Home Office on increasing funding for Operation Opal, which has had considerable success in tackling organised crime in shops. It is no surprise that the majority are eastern European-run gangs, bringing in women illegally as prostitutes and filling the van on the way back home with high-value stolen goods.
Opal has identified 23 highly organised gangs with over 200 professional and violent criminals operating. One Romanian thief called Dima was caught with £60,000 worth of goods stolen from Boots. Perhaps he was the guy I chased—but I think not, this was down in Pontypridd. He got four years as an individual thief. However, he was part of an organised gang. My proposed new clause would have permitted a sentence of up to 10 years where five or more persons were acting in concert or conspiracy.
We cannot wipe out organised and massive crime gangs thieving from our shops with the current law on shoplifting and shoplifting penalties, when we have real, massive shop theft. Big crime deserves big sentences.
In conclusion, I know that the Government want to do more to tackle shop crime, and I am pleased at the steps they are taking, and the steps the previous Government took, to tackle shop crime and violence against shop workers. I support all of that, but we need to go further. Shop theft is absolutely massive, and it is way out of control. That is not the fault of the Government. Only exemplary measures, as in my proposed new clauses, have a hope of slowing it down and possibly reducing it. I beg to move.
20:45
The noble Lord’s Amendment 216B relates to the powers of shop security staff to arrest and detain persons suspected of shop theft under Section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. That already allows any person, including a security guard, to make a citizen’s arrest of anyone they have reasonable grounds to suspect has committed or is in the process of committing an indictable offence. The power of arrest is subject to certain necessary criteria but essentially, that power of arrest, in addition to Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967, allows also for reasonable force in the prevention of crime or effecting or assisting a lawful arrest.
We have put in place the Security Industry Authority, which is the regulator for the private security industry. It is setting training standards for licence-linked qualifications and as part of that training, security guards learn physical intervention skills, how to perform a citizen’s arrest, the law on use of force, and how to de-escalate areas of conflict. Individual businesses can and do determine their own policy on the arrest of shoplifters by licensed security guards, in compliance with UK law, but it is a valuable area of work, and giving security guards wider powers of arrest would create potential difficulties. It would require even more specialist training and oversight of the use of detention powers. As described in the amendment, it would entail significant training requirements and a significant cost to business, and it would open up issues of public accountability for the exercise of coercive powers.
Amendment 216A withdrawn.
Amendments 216B and 216C not moved.
Clause 40: Child criminal exploitation
Amendment 217
Moved by
21:00
21:15
I think Charles Dickens and Charles Booth would recognise the same forms of criminality and the same ability of some adults to use childhood as a training ground for extending their criminal activities in a way that is unconscionable but, when done efficiently, I suspect is highly profitable. The fact that it has a potentially lifelong effect on the children who are being drawn into this is, for the perpetrators, completely and utterly irrelevant.
Thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, some of us were able to attend a meeting in your Lordships’ House organised by Action for Children, and Professor Jay herself was there. It is perhaps important for the Government and Minister to understand that, in the case of the amendments the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, has spoken to and which we will talk about in future groups, Professor Jay herself has said how important she thinks they are. They deal with parts of the review that she went into in detail. From her point of view, while she and I think all of us are extremely pleased and grateful for the Government taking on board so much of what Professor Jay was trying to illustrate needed to be done, there are some tidying-up bits around the edge, and it is felt by those who have the most knowledge of this form of criminality that it will be extremely important to try to make this legislation as effective and watertight as it can be. For those reasons, I fully support those amendments.
Amendment 217 agreed.
21:30
Amendments 218 and 219 not moved.
Amendments 220 and 221
Moved by
Amendments 220 and 221 agreed.
Amendments 222 and 222A not moved.
Amendments 223 and 224
Moved by
Amendments 223 and 224 agreed.
Clause 40, as amended, agreed.
Clause 41: Proving an offence under section 40
Amendments 225 to 231
Moved by
21:45
Similarly, Amendments 232A and 262A from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, seek to provide a statutory defence for victims of child criminal exploitation and cuckooing who are compelled into committing offences. We support the principle that the law should distinguish between those who willingly commit crimes and those who do so under coercion or fear. These amendments raise legitimate questions about how the proposed law will operate in practice and whether vulnerable individuals are adequately protected. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for bringing these issues before the Committee and again we look forward to hearing the Minister’s reflections.
Amendment 263 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, probes whether the Modern Slavery Act definition of exploitation should explicitly incorporate defences relating to child criminal exploitation and cuckooing. That proposal has clear merit in principle. We understand the concerns that the law must evolve to meet new forms of organised criminality. We hope that the Government will give this careful and serious consideration.
Amendment 232 withdrawn.
Amendment 232A not moved.
House resumed.