Serious Crime Bill [Lords]

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and John Bercow

Monday 23rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

All of a sudden, a sprouting. I call Nicola Blackwood.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

There is much to debate in this group of amendments and I particularly welcome new clauses 8 and 9, but for the sake of brevity I will stick to my new clause 27 and the associated clauses, which seek to resolve the much debated problem of child abduction warning notices applying unequally to children in care and those out of care.

New clause 27 is a probing amendment, so I shall not press it to a vote, but I would like to emphasise my disappointment that the Government have not found a way to resolve the problem. There has been plenty of time to do so and the issue has been debated extensively at all stages. It is a relatively contained problem. The fact that police can only use CAWNs to protect victims up to the age of 16 if they are living at home, and not those up to the age of 18 if they are in care, is a real-world problem created by the fact that these administrative orders are reliant on two separate pieces of legislation. It should be perfectly possible to resolve the situation if we put our minds to it.

A number of solutions have been proposed to the Government during the Bill’s progress, including putting CAWNs on a statutory basis, which would also create a penalty on breach, as suggested by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion); amending the offence of child abduction so that it applies to children up to the age of 18; and my new clause 27, which would create a secondary offence, under the Child Abduction Act 1984, of abducting a child aged 16 to 18. All of those proposals have been rejected by the Government because they say that they are unnecessary, that they would create additional bureaucracy and that they would risk creating unintended consequences for prosecutors in relation to consent.

The first point has no merit. The reforms have been requested directly by serving police officers, social workers and parents who are battling child sexual exploitation on the front line and who have found that the inability to use CAWNs to protect children aged 16 to 18 living at home is a gap in their armoury as they wage an already incredibly challenging battle against abusers.

Ministers have said that the new risk of sexual harm orders will address that gap, but they will not. As the MP who led the campaign to reform the old civil prevention orders and replace them with the current orders under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, I welcome them wholeheartedly, but for police to obtain a ROSHO they must prove the sexual element of risk to a criminal standard of evidence in court. As administrative orders, CAWNs do not require either that evidential threshold or the proving of the sexual element. Police officers and others have told me that that is precisely why CAWNs are so successful in disrupting child sexual exploitation where the sexual abuser may not be the individual who is transporting or controlling the victim and therefore sexual risk may be indirect.

It is unquestionably true that ROSHOs, gang injunctions and trafficking orders have significant roles to play in disrupting grooming, but, as statutory orders that require judicial oversight, none of those can replace the CAWN in the architecture of powers available to police for disrupting CSE. They simply do not have the immediacy or the simplicity I have described.

For that reason, I am not convinced that putting the orders on a statutory footing is the best solution. The Government have said that that would create additional bureaucracy, which is not the best turn of phrase, because it sounds like there would just be a bit more paperwork. That is not the concern that has been raised with me by senior police officers. If CAWNs were put on a statutory footing, they would become a civil order, like the ROSHO, which, rightly, has an evidentiary threshold and judicial oversight. That very process of having to apply through the courts and gather increased evidence risks creating an inappropriate situation not only of fewer CAWNs being sought, but of the CAWN losing its unique place in the policing toolbox as a quick response tool that can be applied as a deterrent and disruption device that is also valuable in establishing association and bad character in prosecution.

Although I understand that the value of introducing a statutory basis would be to bring in a penalty on breach, that aspect is already covered by the statutory civil prevention orders—from ROSHOs to trafficking orders—which all involve penalties on breach. Of course, most of those orders, in their current form, are new and I urge the Government and the College of Policing to develop guidance on how they should operate as a progressive and interrelated set of powers now available to police to deter, disrupt and prevent serious organised crime against children in particular. However, if filling in the gap in CAWNs is necessary but making CAWNs statutory is not the answer, then what is?

As we have heard, CAWNs for children living at home have their legislative basis in section 2(1) of the Child Abduction Act 1984. The Government object to changing the age limit for that offence of abduction from the legal age of consent of 16 to 18 on the grounds that it would risk the victims, even those under the age of 16, being challenged by defence barristers on questions of consent. I accept that we have fought too many battles to improve protections for vulnerable witnesses against aggressive cross-examination in court to want to do anything to weaken a prosecutor’s arm, especially on questions of consent, and that is why I tabled new clause 27, proposing a secondary offence, with a higher threshold, of abduction of 16 to 18-year-olds.

I do not believe that would compromise the integrity of the current child abduction offence for under 16-year-olds, but it would offer a legislative basis to close the current gap in CAWNs and give the police the power to intervene quickly and effectively to protect 16 to 18-year-olds who we know remain at high risk of child sexual exploitation where grooming gangs are operating, whether they happen to be living at home or not.

Inherited Social Housing Tenancies

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and John Bercow

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

I was surprised to read today in my local paper, The Oxford Times, that Oxford city council has spent only two thirds of its discretionary housing funds for 2013-14, leaving £200,000 meant for the most vulnerable unspent. May I therefore ask for the Minister’s guidance on how this fund can be better applied to inherited social housing tenancies and others?

[Mr Speaker]

An exceptionally interesting question, but its relationship with the urgent question tabled is, to put it kindly, tangential. However, let us hear the Minister as the product of her grey cells may prove me wrong.

Ellison Review

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and John Bercow

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just say to the House that we have so far had four questions in 14 minutes? We have had questions from Members with very close personal experience of these matters either as constituency representatives or holders of ministerial office. I think that the House will agree that I have therefore very properly allowed latitude, because these matters need to be treated seriously, but we have a lot of other very pressing business. I am afraid that I must now insist on short questions and short answers so that we can proceed expeditiously. I know that I will be helped supremely in this matter by Nicola Blackwood.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

The findings could not be more serious, and they cannot help but undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system. This is far from the first time that the competency of the Independent Police Complaints Commission has been put in question. I welcome the steps that have been taken to strengthen the IPCC and the oversight of undercover operations, but I urge the Home Secretary to go further with the reforms so that the public can have confidence in the oversight mechanisms, and so that those mechanisms are sufficiently robust and sufficiently funded to root out police failings wherever they may be found, not just to put right past wrongs, but to prevent future wrongs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and John Bercow

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Far too many noisy private conversations are taking place in the Chamber. Let us have a bit of order for Nicola Blackwood.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

T6. I am sure that the Minister will join me in applauding the work of the Archway Foundation, which for 30 years has been combating loneliness in my constituency. Like many charities, it is struggling increasingly with excessive regulation. What steps is he taking to combat red tape to let charities do what they do best, which is to help those who are most in need in our communities?

Business of the House

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and John Bercow

Thursday 27th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. A great many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, and I should like to accommodate them all. Single, short questions and the characteristically pithy replies of the Leader of the House will be essential if I am to have a reasonable chance of doing so.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

My constituents in Oxford West and Abingdon value their library services greatly, not just for lending, but for the role that they play in their communities. I have received hundreds of letters and e-mails about the proposals to close the Summertown, Botley and Kennington libraries in my constituency. The recent Westminster Hall debate showed that there is interest in this subject from both sides of the House. Will the Leader of the House provide Government time for a debate not only on the cultural and community value of libraries, but on how we can continue to support them in the difficult economic climate bequeathed to us by the previous Government’s irresponsible fiscal policies?