Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I am chairing a Select Committee. I will come back for the rest of the debate, but I have to come back from Millbank, and I am not as fast as I used to be.

I want to be brief, but I return to an issue that I have consistently raised with the Minister over several Bills: the position of girls and women who are being sexually exploited, abused and subjected to violence. I want to help the Government to get out of the hole they are digging themselves into, where they are losing what they learned during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill about coercive control and about what happens to women who have been traumatised by this sort of behaviour. I want them to think about that in relation to my amendment on these very difficult serious violence reduction orders. I am not going to intervene in the rest, because I will support them if there is a vote at Third Reading, but this is a very specific amendment.

I realise the pressure on the Minister. I hope she has had a chance to look at the very short video that I sent her of a young woman from Newcastle—so the Minister should recognise the accent—telling of her inability to tell anyone of the activity of the perpetrator who was grooming and abusing her until she had been sentenced for something ridiculously small that was technically nothing to do with her abuse. Once she got to see a probation officer, she really felt that she had to say something about why she had been involved in criminal activity, and she was then referred to the charity Changing Lives; I ought to say that I still mentor the person who deals with women in that charity. The young woman from Newcastle was then able to talk about the abuse that she had suffered, the effects of what the perpetrator had done to her, and why this had led her to behave in the way she did.

It does not take much imagination to recognise that women who have been trafficked, groomed and subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse are not going to say what they know about the criminal activity of their abusers without themselves being supported and protected by those who understand trauma and what has happened to them. This amendment seeks to remove the “ought to have known” provision that will mean that women and girls who are judged that they “ought to have known” that someone in their company was in possession of a bladed article or offensive weapon could face two years’ imprisonment for a breach of the order’s terms. This simply criminalises women who are already being subjected to appalling criminal abuse. I do not believe that that is what the Government want to do. We know how we can change women’s life chances in these circumstances. We can do it. I work with people who do it, but this is not the way. This will not help them into a more stable and secure life. This will drive them into more criminal behaviour and into entrenching their problems.

I gather that this is seen as an extension of the joint-enterprise laws. The problem the Government have is that these laws have brought women into the criminal justice system when they had no involvement in the alleged offence. Research has found that in 90% of joint-enterprise cases against women, they had engaged in no violence at all, and in half of the cases they were not even present at the scene. We also know from research that more women and girls from BAME backgrounds are likely to be picked up under this sort of provision, and the Government really need to think about that, too.

This provision was not included in the consultation on these orders. I really do think that the Government did not have the opportunity to think the provision through in relation to the women and girls I am talking about. They have the opportunity to quietly drop it now before Report, and I hope and trust that they will.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Paddick will speak from the Front Bench for my party on this group, but he has quite a lot to say and, in view of the time, he has asked me to speak now, so with your Lordships’ permission or agreement, I shall address a number of points where serious violence reduction orders—SVROs for short—offend against cardinal principles of justice that our criminal law generally holds to be of the greatest importance.

I say at the outset that we should be in no doubt that an SVRO is to be a criminal sanction. That is, first, because of the requirements and prohibitions it imposes on an offender who is made subject or is to be made subject to such an order. It is, secondly, by reason of the draconian powers exercisable by the police in respect of an offender who is to be made subject to such an order, which are the equivalent of a criminal sanction on that subject. It is, thirdly, because the exposure of an offender subject to an SVRO to further criminal sanctions for the breach of any conditions attached to it amounts to a criminal sanction in its imposition.

Against that background, my first objection of principle is that it is wrong that a criminal sanction should be imposed independently of any criminal offence. Amendment 225, in the names of my noble friend Lord Paddick and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is addressed to the novel and unwarranted approach to carrying a bladed article in the proposed new subsections 342A(3)(b) and (4)(b). As their explanatory statement makes clear, carrying a knife is not of itself a criminal offence, yet these provisions would render an offender liable to be made subject to an SVRO if either the offender or a joint offender with that offender had a knife with them, for whatever reason, whether the carrying of that knife was an offence or not. These orders as proposed would impose criminal sanctions for conduct which did not amount to an offence known to the law. That is contrary to principle in a profound and unacceptable way.

My second objection is that our criminal law generally insists on proof of guilt to the criminal standard, beyond reasonable doubt, before any criminal sanction can be imposed. Certainly, the civil standard of proof has its place in the criminal law, but that is generally when the law imposes a burden of proof upon the defendant to establish the facts of a defence which, if proved, would justify conduct that would otherwise be criminal. However, what is proposed here is that a criminal sanction can be imposed on the basis of proof, to the civil standard only, of the primary facts giving rise to that sanction. Again, that is contrary to principle and is calculated to water down, even to undermine, one of the most fundamental principles of our criminal law—one that I venture to suggest is probably the best known of any of those principles among the general public.

My third point concerns the unwarranted extension of the law relating to joint enterprise embodied in the proposed new subsection 342A(4). That is why I have added my name to Amendments 226A and 226B just spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top. I do not understand how it can be contended that an offender should be subject to criminal sanction if that offender did not know that a bladed article or offensive weapon would be used by a joint offender in the commission of an offence on the basis that he merely “ought to have known” that fact. That is proposed new subsection 342A(4)(a).

Proposed new subsection 342A(4)(b) is even worse: an offender is to be subject to the criminal sanction of an SVRO because a joint offender had a bladed article or offensive weapon with him at the time of the offence, even if the offender did not know that, simply on the basis that he “ought to have known”. And all this to be proved to the civil standard only, notwithstanding that possession of a knife is, of itself, not a criminal offence.

That is not all. I shall be supporting the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, in opposing Clause 140 standing part of the Bill because, in addition to all that I have said so far, SVROs are to be imposed without any right to trial by jury; they are to be imposed by a judge alone, following conviction. As for the evidence to be adduced to support their imposition, in the words of proposed new subsection 342A(8), it is not to matter

“whether the evidence would have been admissible in the proceedings in which the offender was convicted.”

That anomaly is the subject of Amendment 231, in the name of my noble friend Lord Paddick. I simply ask, in connection with these SVROs, where are we heading. It is in the wrong direction for our criminal justice system.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, the arguments on this issue have already been well developed today by other noble Lords who have spoken, as well as at earlier stages of the Bill. I do not propose to develop the position that I have taken earlier in the Bill’s passage.

We all know that the reason for this House’s amendment was that the virtually unanimous professional evidence is to the effect that it would be unsatisfactory to place a small number of girls and younger boys in a secure college with a very large number of older boys. The pathfinder college at Glen Parva in Leicestershire is proposed to hold about 320 young people. There are currently only about 45 girls and 40 offenders under 15 in custody throughout the secure estate. Even adopting for Glen Parva a very wide catchment policy—which would itself be undesirable because of the distances these children would be from their homes, although I accept that that is not always a negative—it is highly unlikely that more than about 15 girls and 15 boys under 15 could be placed in Glen Parva. In my view, that is entirely unacceptable. It would be intimidating and unsafe for either group to be in this tiny minority in this very large secure college.

The Government say that they will not put boys under 15 or girls into Glen Parva at its opening. In a sense that concedes the case. They nevertheless say that they wish to be free to put boys under 15 and/or girls in Glen Parva or other secure colleges in the future. They propose to go ahead with the building of the two houses for these groups at Glen Parva. The design for Glen Parva has those two houses for girls and younger boys cut off from the main site, but the children held in them would share the main health and education block and access to the main site with a very large number of older boys.

My noble friend says that the Government will not use secure colleges in this way until they lay a report before Parliament. However, originally they did not say who would write that report. It now appears from what my noble friend said that it is the Secretary of State who will do the consulting and therefore, presumably, the Secretary of State who will prepare and approve the report. However, it is the Secretary of State’s own plan to use Glen Parva. The Minister does not say whether it will be incumbent upon this or any future Government to follow the recommendations in a report, nor has he offered any effective form of parliamentary scrutiny. An offer of a chance for Parliament to debate the report, with no right to stop a proposal proceeding, is no safeguard.

I have made it clear to my noble friend that I would want to agree a compromise on this issue if it were possible to do so. In particular, I accept that there is no definition in the Bill of what is meant by “secure colleges” or what size they should be. They could be smaller colleges than Glen Parva and more specialist, so that an educational environment that was mixed in gender and age might not be so inappropriate. However, that is not what is proposed at the moment. If the Government were to offer not to put under-15 year-olds or girls into secure colleges without parliamentary approval, that would offer Parliament a chance to consider and vote on any new circumstances that might be said to justify the detention of these groups in secure colleges. However, when my noble friend Lord Willis asked the Government for such an assurance, he was categorically refused it. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, says that he was naive to ask for it. I do not believe that it is a naive request; it is a justified and justifiable one, and the Government’s position can be sustained only if they accede to it.

To date, no opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny has been offered. In these circumstances, while I have listened very carefully to what the Minister has to say, I find it impossible to support the Government’s position.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, largely because since this House last discussed secure training colleges, two secure training centres have been given notice of closure by the Youth Justice Board. One of those, Hassockfield, was in my constituency. What lessons have the Government learnt from the introduction of secure training centres? My recollection is that I opposed them when we were in opposition when the legislation went through in, I think, 1996. My Government said that they had to carry that through because the contracts had been signed. When Hassockfield opened, I was contacted virtually daily by the police who said, “The children in here are too young. They do not understand what it means to be in a secure establishment. We are being called every day and they’re ending up in police cells”. Indeed, they wrecked the place. So the initial contract, which was given to an American company, then went to Serco. Someone from the Youth Justice Board had to be in there full-time to sort out the regime, and since then Hassockfield and, I understand, the other secure training centres have not taken many children under 15 because the regime in a secure centre, even with what Ofsted says is now very good education, is not suitable for young children.

The other issue is about being near home. There was a tragedy at Hassockfield. I discussed it at great length with a whole range of people, and one of the reasons for that young boy taking his life, although by no means the only one, was his distance from home and his contact with home and his own community.

The Government are taking enormous risks with the safety—and the ability to change and handle their lives—of children in incredibly complex difficulties. In relation both to having one centre in the middle, to which children have to travel a long way, and to the issues of the age group and including girls, the Government need to learn the lessons of their own history in setting up secure training colleges. They should think about this again and look at the language used when the colleges were introduced. It was very similar to the language that Ministers used in this House today and in the Commons last week. If they do so they will recognise that they are making a mistake and that they really do need to rethink this policy.