Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord and the Government on their efforts on forced marriage—particularly the Minister for having taken the trouble to go and see the Forced Marriage Unit, with which I am sure he was impressed. I also thank the Government for listening so carefully to what has been said on this side of the House about this offence, which all of us understand can be of the most heinous nature, particularly when it involves those who lack capacity.

What guidance on implementation, which the Minister spoke about, will prosecutors receive on how to prosecute the offence of forced marriage? The noble Lord will remember that in Committee I raised a number of issues regarding how the prosecutions would take place. I regret that I was not here on Report to continue those questions, but perhaps the Minister could answer some of my questions today—not least because I have now had the advantage of receiving a note on prosecutions which was kindly sent to me. The note simply outlines how any prosecution may be undertaken. It would first go to the police; the police would then refer it to the prosecutor who would apply the two prosecutorial tests, et cetera. I absolutely understand the generality of prosecution, but perhaps the noble Lord will allow us a greater degree of specificity about how this offence will be prosecuted. I know that that is very much awaited among many of the NGOs and others, which are still worried and perplexed. They are concerned not only that the prosecution of these offences will entail the proof of the substantive offence—which would amount to coercion, violence or threats—but that there would be the additional barrier of forced marriage with a lesser offence. I know that the Government take that very seriously.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as chairman of a forced marriage commission I thank the Government very much and congratulate them on adding this provision. We have been very concerned, from some of the evidence we have received, about the position of vulnerable people, adults as well as children. This is a good step forward. I also add my congratulations to the Forced Marriage Unit, which has over the years done some extremely good work, some of which I happen to know about. I hope that it will continue to get a great deal of support for the work it is doing.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I add my appreciation of the work that the Minister has done with the Scottish Government to provide an amendment which is compatible with Scots law. Having read it carefully, I think that it is a very valuable addition to the armoury in Scots law to deal with this very difficult and obnoxious problem.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

If your Lordships will permit a latecomer—almost an interloper—to ask just one question, would my noble friend be kind enough to tell me what exactly is the definition of the members of a household? I take it that it includes anybody who has been given or lent a room at the time. Would it include anybody who is paying the tenant for a room? It would obviously not include anybody who was paying the landlord for a room. In other words, is there any necessity for there to be a familial or emotional connection, or any other close connection, with the other members of the household?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I regret that I was not able to be present for the Committee stage of the Bill. As the House knows, there were various clashes of other important Bills at the same time, so I come new to this issue. It seems to me that what the Government are trying to do here is to give an additional power to the courts. That point has not yet been made by anyone, other than the Minister. It is of course a matter entirely for the court whether or not such an order is made. I see that Clause 91(1) refers to,

“grounds on which court may order possession … if it considers it reasonable”.

It seems to me that if a university student, who is almost certainly over 18, goes AWOL and behaves extremely badly in university precincts but has a mother and three young siblings living in the house, the mother will have absolutely no control over the young man at university. She probably does not even have any financial control these days. The court would be certain to look at the hardship of the situation and this would be a circuit judge in the county court. I am not particularly keen on this addition to the powers of the court but I would find it difficult to believe that a court would act other than justly and with mercy in situations that would require it.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

Before the noble and learned Baroness sits down, does she accept that the research which I quoted suggests that the courts have perhaps not always been reasonable in their application of anti-social behaviour legislation and that lone mothers, in particular, have been evicted because of the behaviour of men in their household who they simply were unable to control?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I understand the point and I would hope that there would be an appeal system so that at some stage this issue would come before the Court of Appeal, which would deal with it appropriately.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for accepting the amendment suggested by my noble friend Lady Hamwee which excludes offences committed by young people and excludes minor offences as well. However, I share other noble Lords’ concerns about this additional sanction. As I said in Committee, in the aftermath of the riots a couple of years ago, the courts clearly showed how seriously they took offences committed during a riot—far more seriously than if those offences had been committed at some other time. It does not appear to be necessary to have a further sanction in order to deter rioters. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said that this is a power given to the courts. I am a great believer in the courts and in the fact that they will make the right decisions. But I fail to see why we need this power. I cannot think of circumstances where a court would allow such an order to be made. Therefore, I see this power as being superfluous.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

As far as I am concerned, if I go into discussions between now and Third Reading, all the aspects that the noble Lord has related in his speech, and those expressed by other noble Lords around the House, will be on the table. I do not want to prejudge the outcome of those discussions. All that I can say is that I wish to make sure that when we come back to Third Reading we have a House that can unite behind legislation on this issue. I do not think that that is an unreasonable expectation, and I believe that it represents the sentiment in which this debate has taken place this afternoon.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I have listened with great care to this debate, and I was undecided when I came into this Chamber as to what I would do. What I have not yet heard from the Minister, to my understanding, is what is wrong with the amendment and why it will not actually meet what needs to be done.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I was asked a parallel question by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. We are trying to simplify the legislation so that we make it easier for practitioners, no matter in what circumstances they are dealing with the application for an IPNA, to have a test that is capable of being applied in all areas.

I have listened to this debate. There may be ways in which the noble Lord’s amendment can be modified to advantage. It is important to recognise that he has made a very valid contribution to this debate, and I would like to have the opportunity to consider further what he is proposing in his amendment.

Drugs

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lady Meacher, not just for the debate but particularly for her tireless work on drugs. With any luck, she will make some progress.

I will highlight a matter which has not so far been raised by this House: the connection between drug dealing and human trafficking. There is a clear example in the report Drugs: Breaking the Cycle, at paragraph 52 on page 21:

“In 2011, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre published a report on people trafficking in which the largest identified trend was the trafficking of Vietnamese children into the UK—37 of the 58 children identified were trafficked into the UK to work in cannabis farms”.

I have said in the Chamber on several occasions how many cannabis farms there are in this country: something in excess of 7,500, of which about 4,000 are in London. They are in rented accommodation. I warn noble Lords who happen to own rented accommodation to be very careful to whom they let it. The traffickers are taking rented houses, pulling them to pieces, subverting the electricity and the water and creating large, successful cannabis farms which are in fact almost entirely run by Vietnamese children. Until recently, those children were treated as offenders when the police raided these farms, and not as victims. It is hugely to the credit of the Court of Appeal criminal division that in a decision in July it was seen and made clear that these Vietnamese children were to be treated as victims and no longer prosecuted. Indeed, the judge who presided over that court was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who is in his place today.

Something good has happened there but, of course, if we had a rethink of cannabis it might not be necessary to have all these cannabis farms. I wonder how much cannabis is being imported into this country now, because so much is being grown here. I was interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, was saying about the really horrifying way in which drugs are successful in prisons, and how those who are taking drugs are really not tested on this system. It was an appalling story, and I have no doubt that it was accurate. I wonder whether the Home Office should not think again and much more carefully about looking at addicts who commit relatively minor crimes, but which are of sufficient importance to send them to prison. Should they not be going to residential clinics, which have a short-term cost but a long-term benefit? If they are weaned off drugs they will not be reoffending to fund their drug addiction. It would save a huge amount of money on the costs of keeping individual prisoners.

I finish my brief comments by saying that it is perfectly obvious that there has to be a rethink on drugs in this country. It clearly is not working and the Government should be brave enough to think about how it could be improved.

Visas: Foreign Domestic Workers

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

We are bound by the Vienna convention in terms of the employment of staff at embassies, so the extension of British employment law in that regard is not possible. I think that this Question focuses, legitimately, on those who come here under the new six-month visitor domestic service agreements, which is a different arrangement.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking. One of the great problems is that if these women who have been trafficked—and I suspect that there is a substantial minority about whom we do not know—cannot get another job, they will be sent home and may be re-trafficked. The Government need to recognise that this is a real problem.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I have tried to make it clear that these people are not casually trafficked. They must be in the employment of the employer for 12 months before they come to this country. It is designed for people accompanying overseas visitors, who I think this country seeks to encourage. However, I do not think that the scenario that the noble and learned Baroness points out actually exists. There is the national referral mechanism. Any information on trafficking represents a criminal offence, and we would not hesitate to prosecute.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

The noble Lord is quite right. However, it is not only the Speaker who gets advice from the clerks; as I said, the Chairman of Ways and Means and the chairmen of committees do as well. It is done on the basis that of course, as the noble Baroness said, a matter can be given an airing. A Speaker can put forward an amendment as a safety valve for the House, to allow the matter to get an airing, while possibly knowing that the amendment will be defeated. However, as one noble Lord said, there is no way that a Speaker or his advisers would allow a situation where the guts were taken away from a piece of legislation that had previously been passed. If we pass this amendment, we are allowing someone to say, “I wasn’t happy with the last piece of legislation, so I will create an amendment and look for a near kindred piece of legislation to latch it on to”. That is not a good way to run a Parliament.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords—

[Lord Wills]

My Lords—

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am not a lawyer but I am, I hope, filled with common sense. It strikes me as being quite nonsensical to allow an individual back into this country to pursue an appeal against exclusion. The exclusion decision, if I may say so, is taken on grounds that the noble Lord has admitted may well include protecting national security. Indeed, criminality and protecting national security are the only grounds on which high-harm individuals may be pursued. Their right of appeal is not removed. The question is whether they should be readmitted to this country to pursue that appeal. I suggest that is nonsensical and I cannot accept the noble Lord’s position on the matter.

I was explaining that for many of these cases the primary objective is to protect the public from individuals where credible evidence suggests involvement in terrorist-related activity or serious criminality. In other cases, it is to protect the public from individuals intent on inciting others to commit crime or on creating divisions between communities. Therefore, the legislative proposal is designed to target the highest-harm cases, and it is proportionate, for the protection of the public, to ensure that any appeal for which a full-merits appeal right still exists is from outside the United Kingdom.

Amendment 118C would potentially provide every individual refused under this provision with an in-country right of appeal as they would simply need to raise human rights or asylum grounds in their appeal. That cannot be right and for that reason we are unable to support the amendment. I hope that, in the light of my remarks, my noble friend Lord Avebury will understand the drivers behind this clause and why the Government have to ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I have been listening to this debate without any particularly strong views either way. However, perhaps the Minister can assist with this question. On the assumption that a stateless person, for instance, or indeed anyone else who has been refused a return, is outside the country somewhere, how on earth does he or she actually continue an appeal?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, the process of appeal is open to anybody and the circumstances in which they have found themselves is a matter for them. This country and its Government have decided that their presence in this country is not conducive to the public good, which I think is a reasonable decision for the Government to make. It is open to challenge through the judicial process and that individual still has a right of appeal. It is not for me to suggest the details of ways in which that appeal should be processed.

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[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

I rise briefly in support of the masterly way in which the noble Lord, Lord Dear, has introduced and covered every aspect of this amendment. I just want to say three things. First, freedom of speech is essential. There is always a tendency for there to be well intended restrictions, and then there are unintended consequences. This is what has happened in this particular sphere.

Secondly, it is crucial that the Director of Public Prosecutions has changed his mind. I have a great respect —having been the Attorney-General and responsible for the Director of Public Prosecutions—for the experience and wisdom of the director, whoever he happens to be. In this case, he has said—and I repeat what has already been said,

“we are unable to identify a case in which the alleged behaviour leading to conviction could not properly be characterised as ‘abusive’ as well as ‘insulting’”.

He said the word “insulting” could “safely be removed”. I think we should pay regard to that opinion. The correspondence we have heard of and received describes excess of zeal by a particular officer, which has led to the distress of those who have been prosecuted. The last example given by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, concerned the causing of distress to a pair of Labradors by saying “woof woof” in the hearing of a policeman. That is true; it happened, it was prosecuted and the person was convicted and fined £50. Fortunately, that conviction was quashed on appeal. I will not go on; I think the case is proved.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, like many other people, I received a large number of e-mails and letters all going one way in support of the noble Lord’s amendment. I would just like to tell the House about one letter I received. In my very untidy desk, I have lost it, but it was about a lay preacher who preaches on the street and preaches on Sundays in church. He happens to subscribe to a literal form of the Old Testament with which I do not agree, but he was preaching on his literal interpretation in the street. Someone complained to the police, and he was arrested and spent seven hours in the police station. He was placed on police bail on the order that he was not allowed to preach. If that is not an abuse of the freedom of speech, I do not know what is. I cannot understand why the Minister and the Government are not supporting this amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I was hoping that my noble friend Lord Macdonald would be in his place as he was a little earlier. I hope he is not stuck in a lift or something. I want to put on record on his behalf, on my behalf and on behalf a number of people who are becoming quite vocal, my wholehearted support for this amendment, and I speak for a number of colleagues. I put my name to the equivalent amendment at the previous stage and, as I recall it, the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, said, “For heaven’s sake, even the Liberal Democrats have this as party policy”. Well, we do; we would have gone further, but we are happy to go as far as is before us tonight.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I agree with the conclusions of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, that the abolition of the NPIA is hasty, ill thought out and potentially extremely damaging. I want to build on a question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, about training. What is the future plan for Bramshill House? There it sits, a grade 1 listed building, a place at which I was present when one of the Minister’s friends, Kenneth Clarke, was Home Secretary. He arrived late for a meeting, having just been appointed, to say that he was sorry he was late but he had stopped in the driveway to ring the Prime Minister to tell him that he had found a very suitable residence for the Home Secretary.

Bramshill provides two things of vital importance. First, it provides the strategic training for the most senior officers of the police service. Secondly, it is a centre of excellence for international and European police training. Are there plans for what will happen to Bramshill when the NPIA is abolished?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, just said. I had the great privilege of being invited to Bramshill on several occasions to speak to different groups of police about family issues. The time I particularly remember was being left with the most senior group being trained, who I understood were destined for high office. I was introduced in two sentences and the door was shut, and I was facing about 50 men—as it happened the group was made up entirely of men—many of whom were not from United Kingdom police forces. Having somehow or other got my way through that, I learnt, when going to lunch, how enormously valuable it is for the police forces round the world to have the opportunity to go to Bramshill. It is a wonderful institution and I hope, as the noble Lord, Lord Blair said, that it will be given the greatest possible respect and encouragement to remain doing what it does so well at the moment.

[Lord Henley]

I will start at the end of the debate and deal with questions relating to both Bramshill and Harperley Hall. I ought to declare an interest in relation to Bramshill House. A branch of the Henley family lived there many years ago. That was not my own branch but a branch to which I am connected. It might be that they built it and lived there for a couple of hundred years. Later on it became a police college. I must declare that interest. As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, knows, I also have—as she does—a hereditary interest in Durham. My family comes from there. As I said, if possible I will visit Harperley Hall and see what it does. I agree with her that its work is very important.

I want to get over the message that no decision has been made on either of these sites, particularly on Bramshill, but that we will be making a decision fairly soon. I should stress—all noble Lords should be aware—that Bramshill is a very expensive property. It costs something of the order of £5 million a year merely to maintain it. That is before one has thought about its actual function as a police training college. I also understand how important it is to the entire police service. I was a Minister many years ago in the MoD at about the time that we were thinking of disposing of Greenwich. I understood the importance of that to the Navy. I understand that Bramshill plays a similar role for the police service so any decisions on that will obviously be difficult to make. I hope that all noble Lords will accept that they will have to be made in due course. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary will update both Houses in due course with her thoughts on these matters.

I want to try to answer the various questions on the abolition of the National Policing Improvement Agency that were put by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and echoed by other noble Lords. She wanted to know about our rationale. She wanted an estimate of the savings and to know where the functions are going, whether the abolition will increase the funding burden on other police forces, whether it would lead to a loss of expertise, what the police professional body is going to do, what is its likely shape and what is the timing.

The most important thing is to get over the rationale behind the changes. I hope that in doing so I will answer some of the questions that have been put by other noble Lords. I was grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, in posing his group of questions on this, which were slightly different from those of the noble Baroness, although they come to the same point, accepted that the agency is not working as well as it might—I think those were his words—so this is not a decision that we want to get wrong.

All our reforms of the policing landscape must be underpinned by clarity of responsibility and appropriate governance arrangements to support an effective and efficient law enforcement response. We accept that the National Policing Improvement Agency has done much to bring about welcome changes to policing but now, in the context of these reforms, is the time to review its role and contribution. The closure of NPIA is a crucial element in a wider programme of reform that is reshaping the way that our policing is delivered and supported to provide a service better equipped to meet the challenges of the future.

Since the agency was established in 2007, its mission has grown considerably. It has operated and managed the development of the police service’s most critical national services, provided specialist operational services to police forces, helped to improve policing practice and developed national learning, leadership and people strategy products. We believe that that is a broad agenda for one agency to deliver and that the agency has collected too diverse a range of functions and responsibilities to retain strategic coherence. Put very simply, we think it has grown like Topsy. Despite some achievements, the agency’s mission is now too unfocused to deliver efficiently and effectively the level of professionalism that we need to see in policing. In these challenging times, we cannot afford to support organisations that are unfocused or unclear about their priorities and accountabilities. To support our wider policing reforms, we need focus and attention at the national level in priority areas. Closure of the agency provides a timely opportunity to ensure that key functions are given greater priority in successor bodies.

If I wanted, I could go through the areas where all the different bits are going and say which bits are going to the National Crime Agency, which are going to the Home Office and which will go to the new professional policing body. I do not know whether it would assist the Committee if I went through all those in detail or whether it would be easier to write a letter in due course and put a copy in the Library.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

How the new National Crime Agency is formed and functions will impact the prevention and policing of human trafficking offences and the protection of victims. I fully appreciate that the Government intend for the NCA to have responsibility in the area of trafficking. Mindful of this, they should have no difficulty in setting out this commitment in statute, as does my amendment. Such a commitment would also have the benefit of providing security in the event that a future Minister may not see the current implicit statutory responsibility of the NCA or the UKHTC quite as clearly as the Minister does today. I beg to move.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I strongly support these amendments and Amendment 22, to which I assume the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, will speak in a moment. Two All-Party Groups have today published their Report from the Joint Inquiry into Children who go Missing from Care—I am relieved that it came out today so that I can refer to it. In doing so, I need to declare an interest. At least I hope that it is an interest, because I should at this moment be at the annual general meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking, where I hope the group will decide to retain me as co-chair. However, I thought that it was more important that I should be present here to speak to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McColl.

The report from the joint inquiry makes some extremely important and worrying comments and recommendations in relation to trafficked children, many of whom are foreign children trafficked into this country. It has found from having heard a lot of evidence that it is estimated from,

“the patchy and incomplete data that is available on trafficked children”—

which is one of the most worrying aspects of this report—

“that 60% of suspected child victims of trafficking in local authority care go missing”.

The noble Lord, Lord McColl, referred particularly to sexual exploitation, but the finding of the parliamentary groups is that:

“Being exploited for labour is the most common form of exploitation for trafficked children, followed by sexual exploitation, cannabis cultivation, domestic servitude, benefit fraud, street crime and forced marriage. Many of the victims are subject to multiple forms of exploitation”.

Among their key recommendations is:

“A completely new system of reporting incidents of children going missing from care, which combines data from both the police and local authorities”.

Although the Minister might be wondering why on earth I am talking about what he might think is a matter for the Department for Education, this issue affects the NCA just as much it affects local authorities through the Department for Education. One of the major problems is that the police are not given information about children going missing from care homes where they have been placed, either because the local authority does not have that information or because the children are in another local authority which is not the local authority concerned with the children. It is a crying scandal that nobody knows anything about large numbers of missing children in this country except the place from where they went. Those data are not passed to the police. The police must be proactive in finding out what is happening to children.

The figures that local authorities give are peanuts compared with the figures that the police give. Local authorities say that it is about 900; the police think that it is probably about 10,000. Some of those children are trafficked children. I am very concerned that the United Kingdom HTC at Birmingham, which is doing sterling work, does not receive all the relevant data. One of the great problems here is the lack of a national rapporteur, or an equivalent mechanism under Article 19 of the directive. No organisation, even the UKHTC, seems to be given all the relevant information about children and adults who are the victims of trafficking. Data are crucial. The Dutch rapporteur has come to this country from time to time explaining how, in Holland, she is responsible for all the data, which she can give to the relevant police authorities. That is an extremely important aspect.

Amendments 3A and 3B—and, indeed, Amendment 22—would remind the NCA of an overriding obligation to deal with one of the most important and worrying crimes in this country, which is the receipt of foreign people who are trafficked and the internal trafficking of our own children. The police need to be proactive. The NCA needs to make sure that police, right down the scale, are aware, so that if they see a child in an odd situation, they should find out whether that child is missing from a care home or foster home or, perhaps more importantly, wonder whether the child is a trafficked child.

The point made by the parliamentary group is that most child victims go missing within one week of being in care, often before being registered; and almost two-thirds of trafficked children are never found. One reason that the non-British trafficked children go missing from care is that they have been groomed by their traffickers not to let anybody in this country know about it, either because they are frightened of the police or, much more likely, because they have been threatened with what may happen to their families. They are not immediately obvious, but that does not mean that we do not have, and that the NCA should not have, an absolute obligation to seek out those children and adults who are in a similar position—in particular, if I may come back to it, to deal with the inadequate and patchy data. That is something that the NCA should have responsibility for in passing all the information it has to the UKHTC in Birmingham, if that is the best place.

I wonder whether the Government should rethink where national data should be placed to ensure that they are all produced—what CEOP, the NRM and everyone else, in particular local authorities which may end up with information about the children they take, have. The Department for Education should be working much more closely with the Ministry of Justice, police and local authorities. I believe that the only way in which it will work more closely is if it is stated in primary legislation what should be done.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, regarding Amendment 22, I am concerned at the failure of the Bill to deal adequately with the problems of child trafficking. I was also concerned at Second Reading that the Minister’s only reference to child-related crime was a mention of the exploitation of children for sexual purposes. This is not the same as child trafficking; the two are separate issues and dealing with one does not necessarily deal with the other.

Because the Bill is silent on child trafficking, it is unclear where responsibility is going to lie. Will it be with CEOP or the new operational command for border policing and immigration crime, or will it be divided between the two? I very much agree with the comments made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that the difficulty is we really need something that deals exclusively with children. The ideal solution would be the establishment of a child-focused operational command within the NCA that could deal with all problems pertaining to child-related crime, including all forms of child trafficking and child exploitation.

Amendment 22 would not force the NCA to establish such an operational command since that is clearly a policy decision. However putting the words “child trafficking” on the face of the Bill would make it abundantly clear that this was a prime duty that the NCA had to address.

From the official statistics, which are woefully inadequate, we know for certain that in the past two years more than 600 children were trafficked into the UK. However, this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg because it is almost impossible to get the real figures. One reason for this is because trafficking legislation requires evidence sometimes called double intent, which means that it is necessary to prove both an intent to transport and an intent to exploit. Often, evidence exists of one or the other, but seldom both. For example, trafficking legislation cannot be used if a child arrives in UK with an adult but there is no evidence to prove that the same adult will exploit the child during its time in the UK. Such cases are usually prosecuted under immigration legislation. They are then not recorded as child trafficking, they do not go into the official statistics, and the official figures therefore hugely underestimate the problem.

The types of child exploitation are varied. Domestic servitude is a major issue and always has been, but looking after cannabis plants—I think it is called “cultivation”—is a major issue for children, particularly those brought in from Vietnam. Vietnam has consistently ranked in the top two countries for child referrals since 2009 when the national referral mechanism began. Despite this, there has not been a single prosecution under UK law for the trafficking of children for forced labour in cultivating cannabis, although Vietnamese children are regularly arrested and prosecuted in the UK for drug-related offences.

I urge the Committee to support this amendment. If we can get the words “child trafficking” on the face of the Bill, it will elevate the problem to a major responsibility of the NCA and something that has to be taken very seriously, that cannot be split between different operational commands and cannot just be pushed to one side. This is a very serious problem and it needs to be seriously addressed.

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Within the NCA, CEOP will have full access to the entire range of operational tools that will be at the agency’s disposal to prevent harm to children in the UK and abroad, and to disrupt the activities of those who wish to abuse or exploit them. CEOP will also benefit from the relationships that will be developed with partners from the police service and the wider law enforcement community through tasking, co-ordination and mutual assistance. Indeed, we believe that the need to protect children from exploitation, trafficking and abuse will drive many aspects of the NCA’s work, and the whole agency will therefore be brought under the new statutory duty.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. Will there be any reference, in any documentation such as the framework or anything else of significance for the NCA, to human trafficking?

[Lord Henley]

I refer the noble and learned Baroness, as I did at the beginning, to Clause 8 and its reference to the Children Act, which does not refer to trafficking but makes quite clear that the interests of children should be taken very seriously. That said, I do not believe that it is necessary—this is what I have been trying to explain to the noble and learned Baroness and to the rest of the House—to refer to it specifically in the Bill in the manner she suggests. Further, I take her back to the references that have been made to the EU directive. We believe that we will be compliant with that and it is very important that that is also there.

I see that I must give way again to the noble and learned Baroness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I apologise to the Minister, but it is just possible that he misunderstood me. I was asking whether, if these amendments were not accepted, there would be anything—not in primary or indeed in secondary legislation but at least in either the framework or other instructions to the NCA—to make very clear the importance of dealing with the trafficking of children and adults and the other points that we have made so that it was known in writing rather than being a general admonition.

[Lord Henley]

I take the noble and learned Baroness’s point and I will certainly consider a specific reference when it comes to the framework documents. I was dealing with what was in the Bill, which I think is very important due to the reason that I set out—the changing nature of crime. For example, 10 or 15 years ago we had never heard of cybercrime. Now we have. Things change and move on and the danger of listing things in primary legislation in the manner that she suggests is that it may confine us unnecessarily and is not the best way of dealing with these matters.

I hope that those assurances are sufficient for my noble friend to feel able to withdraw his amendment. We might want to have further words and noble Lords and noble Baronesses might want to see more in due course, but for the moment I hope that he is satisfied. I await what he has to say with interest.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

I believe that we all recognise that counterterrorism policing structures work effectively now and we do not wish to undermine or disrupt those arrangements by creating any uncertainty, particularly in the coming months. It is right and proper that we do not rush decisions on a possible role for the National Crime Agency in relation to counterterrorism for the future, so we do not want to rule out the ability to make those decisions in the future. I hope that those assurances are sufficient for the noble Lord. I appreciate that there are concerns about this matter, but I hope that he will feel able not to press his opposition to Clause 2 standing part.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I am sorry to say that I have been rather slow on the uptake and have only just read the report of the Constitution Committee. Since this is Committee stage, I believe that I am permitted to speak even though it is after the Minister.

I support what the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has proposed. I can see that there may well be great advantages in the National Crime Agency one day taking over the role of the Metropolitan Police. Nevertheless, as I understand it from what the Minister said, there will be a review as to whether this is the appropriate way to do it. I cannot see why the Government could not deal with this in one of two ways—I speak, of course, as a novice in the procedures of this House compared with the Minister and, indeed, with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. If the Government are fairly clear that this is what they want to do, I cannot see why they cannot put it firmly in Clause 2 that they will transfer to the NCA from the Metropolitan Police, but not until 2013 or 2014 so that it does not come into force until after the Olympics and the Paralympics. Alternatively, if they do not know for certain that this is what they want to do, why on earth can they not just put in a very short Bill to deal with counterterrorism? That should not take an enormous amount of time going through both Houses, if it does not have added to it all the stuff that tends to be added to almost every Bill by any Government. It is possible to pare it down to just this point.

I share with diffidence, but none the less quite firmly, the concerns of the Constitution Committee set out in the first part of its report. Since the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is not here, I thought it was important that a Cross-Bencher should express a view so that it is not seen just as a party political manoeuvre of any sort.

I think that there are a number of disadvantages to using the super-affirmative procedure. First, although it is perhaps at the highest ranking of subordinate legislation, it is not primary legislation. Perhaps more importantly, if anything is wrong with the drafting—drafting is not always perfect—we cannot tease it out in debate. It stands or falls in its entirety. We can have amendments to primary legislation that we cannot have when using the super-affirmative procedure, even as I would understand it.

I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, but I particularly share the concerns of the Constitution Committee. I just wonder whether the Government are right to try to proceed this way on what seems to be a clear Henry VIII clause. Perhaps it is almost time that Henry VIII was put to bed.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I like the notion of Henry VIII being put to bed. He used to say that of others, did he not?

It will be clear to the House from my amendment before the dinner break that I am merely an ordinary lawyer. I am probably what my noble friend Lord Roper calls a “cooking solicitor”, the analogy being cooking sherry. I am glad to have understood a little better how these things work.

I did not want to come in before the Minister spoke, because I wanted to hear what he had to say. Like the noble and learned Baroness, I am a little confused about the rationale for postponing this measure when we know that this Bill will still be in Committee in this House—it will not even have reached the other House—after the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Like her, I am not sure why that is the case, unless the Government have some reason to feel that it would undermine the authority of the Metropolitan Police during the Games. I cannot see it, given that somebody who is being dealt with under some terrorism charge is not going to thumb their nose and say, “Yoohoo, you’re not going to have this function for much longer”. That is not life, is it? So I remain confused about that.

Like the noble and learned Baroness, I feel that although the super-affirmative procedure clearly gives more opportunity for debate and response than the simpler secondary legislation procedures, the response to what the Minister proposes is almost a nuclear option, because it would mean the whole order being rejected rather than dealing with small parts of it. On such a serious matter, which I know that the Government have thought about very seriously, I am reluctant to say—but I do say it—that I am not convinced. I expected the Minister to tell the Committee that legislative time was short, and so on. I do not think that he has prayed that in aid, but had he done so I would have said that this was so important an issue that time needs to be made for it.