Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose Amendment 157 and speak to Amendment 164 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. I am currently drinking only small amounts of alcohol, so I have no personal interest in this matter.

I have listened carefully to the arguments in support of Amendment 157, but I still do not believe it will have the effect desired. I think that all noble Lords in the Committee will agree that any consumption of alcohol will lead to a deterioration in driving standards and increase the risk of an accident. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked where the current limit comes from. The Grand Rapids study of 1964 showed that the risk of having an accident rapidly increased at a blood alcohol concentration—BAC—of 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood or the equivalent. That is why our current limit is set at that level, and I think that is the correct level.

My understanding is that compliant drivers feel uncomfortable driving with a BAC of more than 30 milligrams. My feeling is that the majority of drivers adhere strictly to a limit of 50 milligrams in any case, and when they are caught driving at more than 80 milligrams, it is often a stupid, but criminal, mistake which can arise for a variety of reasons which I will not weary the Committee with. The evidence for this contention is that when the 50-milligram limit was introduced in Scotland, the initial compliance improved by only 12% and I suggest that when a contravention occurred and was detected, it was often the kind of “mistake” I referred to. In this country, we rightly have severe penalties for exceeding the current limit; it is also socially unacceptable. Other countries, as observed by noble Lords, have a limit of 50, but without the severe penalties, at that BAC, that we have.

After the Scottish Government lowered their BAC limit, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and I were very keen to see the data, but, I suspect, for slightly different reasons. I was worried that I might be wrong. If that had turned out to be case, I would be supporting Amendment 157. The Scottish Government commissioned research to measure the effect of their changes to the BAC limit. The conclusions were that the change made no detectable difference to the accident rate in Scotland. I never expected it to, and I will explain why in a moment. The Committee will have been grateful for the frankness of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, when he touched on this point.

The proponents of Amendment 157 will have to explain to the Committee why they think the results in England and Wales would be any different from those in Scotland. According to 2019 DfT statistics, of a sample size of 243 dead drivers, 34% had a BAC of 10 or more, so had been drinking, 25% had a BAC of 51 or more, 23% of 81 or more, 22% of 101 or more, 16% of 151 or more, and 5% were at 200. What these figures show is that most non-compliant drivers are not just slightly over the limit, but far over the limit.

I have argued from the government Dispatch Box that there is a cohort of drivers who are unregulated drinkers. They are clinically dependent upon alcohol, they do not know how much they have been drinking, and they pay absolutely no attention whatever to the legal limits—thus, changing the limit will have no effect on them. The police do not find it very difficult to detect drunk drivers who have made the criminal mistake I have already referred to. They tend to overcompensate and drive too cautiously, and so give themselves away, and thus can be legally stopped by the police. Unfortunately, an unregulated driver is much more difficult to detect. They will drive fluidly for relatively short distances, and therefore with a lower chance of even being seen by the police, let alone being caught.

As proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, the only way of dealing with and detecting these very dangerous drivers who are unregulated drinkers is for the police to undertake operations where they stop every driver to check that they have not been drinking. I accept that the amendment might not be perfectly drafted, and that some civil rights precautions may have to be put in. However, not only would the police detect more of these very dangerous drivers but the deterrent effect would be considerable. Although it may be imperfect, Amendment 164 achieves this.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Road Danger Reduction Forum. I support both these amendments. It is absolutely ridiculous that we have such high alcohol limits, and we really ought to bring them down. We should say that no alcohol is permitted when you are driving—when you are in charge of a tonne of metal.

I want to make a small point, but it is something that road safety campaigners care very much about. We have heard the word “accident” used a lot. Road safety campaigners ask that we do not use the word “accident”, because that presupposes that it was accidental. It prejudges the situation, and that is clearly not right when something might come to court. They ask instead that we use the words “incident”, “collision” or even “crash”, but not “accident”. There is also an argument for saying that we should not use the words “road safety”, because that is the solution to the problem; the problem itself is “road danger”. We have to get our head around these differences, because it changes the way we perceive such situations.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not repeat what I said earlier about my own mother having been killed because of a drunk driver—though I did not mention at the time that I also lost my brother-in-law in a different accident. The people who did this were not dependent, unregulated drinkers at all; they were perfectly normal people, who got behind the wheel of a car when they had been drinking. As the noble Baroness just said, this is not accidental. It is deliberate: these people have a drink and then get into a car.

But things have altered in those 60 years. I mentioned seatbelts earlier, and there has obviously been the breathalyser. When I first started campaigning on this, the Government’s Christmas campaign that year was “Stay Low”—it was not even “Don’t Drink”. So we have made enormous progress, and we should not forget that. But it is a journey, and we have not got there yet. We ought to continue on that journey.

Listening to some of the earlier debate, I heard the argument that the way to solve this is not to use sentencing or to send more people to prison. I have a lot of sympathy with this. I think there are times when prison is right, but what we actually want is prevention: we want to stop people getting in a car after they have had a drink.

Just like the changes I have mentioned, we also have to celebrate the fact that the Government and industry have done a lot. There has been a really good dialogue. There is now zero-alcohol beer—my fridge at home is full of it—that tastes very good. It is not like the early stuff; it is very good. There has been a big investment by industry to make that available—you can now get my favourite tipple, Guinness, with zero alcohol. There is the acceptability of water with meals, and a number of pubs serve coffee. We have to accept that this has been a whole-society move, but, as I say, we should not just stop where we have got to; we need to continue on the journey.

Just as the industry has been very good, we should acknowledge what the Government did in the Budget, when they moved to what a number of us have been asking for—oh, for lots of years: that the tax on alcohol should correlate with the strength of the alcohol in the drink. The Government have done that. It will take time for it to be implemented, but we are moving in the direction of understanding that. All of those are great things. It means that there is a much greater choice of drinks, either in the pub or while drinking at home.

However, there is still a problem: people are getting into cars when they have been drinking. I find it extraordinary, even at 50 milligrams. I do not drink at all when I am driving because I know that my foot would simply not hit the brake as fast, even after one drink. I know it would not, so I do not do it at all. Driving round London at the moment, even at 20 miles an hour, I see some cyclists—and I am a cyclist—going round without lights on and wearing dark clothes; you often have to hit the brake very fast. We may need to continue to move that way.

Therefore, I really favour this drop to 50 milligrams. It works very well in France, where much more is done, with proper random breath tests—closing off a road and checking everyone going through. That is what I would like to see. You do not have to do it very often, by the way, just every now and again.

The other possibility—I know we have discussed it in earlier debates—is whether we could move at least to 50 milligrams for new drivers; say, in the first five years of being qualified. My guess is that, once they get used to driving without drinking at all, they would continue that through life. I think some thought and creativity could be given to that.

We need to go further. I hope the Government do not say that they are doing everything they can, that they have an advertising campaign, that everything is brilliant and that we do not need to move any further. While sometimes they have come through Private Members’ Bills, often the changes we have had have been from the Government, whether through Barbara Castle or others. There is a responsibility on the Government to take it a bit further. Therefore, I hope that the response we get will be “Yes, it is time to do more”. And these may be just the two amendments that we need.

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[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Baroness. My only complaint is that I do not think it is aggressive enough. I have driven for several decades. I have driven for hundreds of thousands of miles. Touch wood, I have never been prosecuted for a moving traffic offence. The penalty points system is a good system. If I picked up three points for speeding, or for some minor offence, I would be extremely careful not to reoffend. So I do not understand why, if people get a few points, they cannot take the lesson and be compliant. I strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and actually agree with him for a change. The wording is not strong enough, so well done to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for putting this amendment forward.

As the noble Baroness said, at the moment, “exceptional hardship” is anything but exceptional. I cite the case of a person who was exempted from a ban because he said that he had to walk his dog and drive to the nearest park, which was a mile away. I find that absolutely extraordinary; it leads me to think that magistrates ought to get a bit more tuition.

Essentially, points on a licence and the threat of losing that licence are an important part of ensuring that people drive safely and take care of other road users. Around 8,800 people are still driving despite having 12 or more points on their licence, and there is a whole industry of solicitors advising drivers on how to work the system in this way. It is very frustrating for the traffic police who care about enforcing the law and find themselves working hard to bring people to justice and get them convicted, only to see those people allowed to drive home after the case.

There are times when hardship may be truly exceptional, for example if an offender is the sole carer of a person with a disability who would suffer if the offender were unable to drive. Even then, it is a failure of the state if the only way a person with a disability can survive is by getting lifts from a person who is such a dangerous driver that they should not be allowed on the road.

Amendment 158 would ensure that “exceptional hardship” is a true exception rather than just a plea of convenience. Our current road traffic laws, as I started to say earlier, are based far too much on the convenience of drivers rather than justice and safety for other road users. This amendment would ensure that the very worst drivers on the roads do not have a convenient excuse to keep driving.

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on Amendment 165 in my name and in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. We are grouped together with Amendment 159 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. I think we are both looking for the same thing, which is a review of road traffic offences, which we discussed a little earlier this evening. It seems that the time has come to put a time limit on this. We suggest two years from the date of the Bill’s enactment.

As I mentioned earlier, this started in 2014. In 2015-16, the Commons Transport Committee reported with an inquiry on road traffic law enforcement, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking reported in 2017, with an inquiry on cycling and the justice system, and in 2018 there was a Westminster Hall debate on road justice and the legal framework, which revealed a cross-party consensus on the need for wide-ranging reforms. Many of the amendments we have discussed tonight demonstrate the need for reform but also the very wide range, scope and potential, and to some extent the differing opinions, which is of course quite normal.

In addition to the groups I have mentioned, there needs to be discussion not just with road safety and road user groups but with representatives of the police, the legal professions and local authorities. It is interesting to reflect that, seven years on from 2014, we could have had that debate by now and we could be passing laws that would save lives by taking the most dangerous drivers off the road.

I hope I can persuade Ministers that there is time for such a review now. I suspect we will be told that there are no current plans. However, the amendments which we and other people have tabled to Part 5 indicate that a review is needed. I suggest that it is time to address the awful additional pain and deaths that so many people have suffered as a result of the failure to review and change the law, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I think we have made the point that there is a huge inconsistency between road traffic offences and other offences causing injury and death. The penalties are simply not similar in any way.

Many years ago, when I first started getting interested in traffic crime, I went out several times with the traffic police and saw a number of investigations and crashes. At the time, I was told about some incidents that had happened and the sentences that the drivers had got, and these were horrific crashes. A police sergeant working there said to me that if he wanted to kill somebody, he would use his car. He would either get off scot free or would get a minimal sentence because, finally, you can always claim that it is an accident.

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[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, if the Committee will forgive me, I was not quick enough off the mark in the previous group when we were considering exceptional hardship. The Minister said that the Government opposed the amendment because it limited judicial discretion. As we will see in upcoming clauses, clause after clause of this Bill limits judicial discretion by means of primary legislation. I will remind the Government of what the Minister said in relation to that previous amendment when we come to those clauses.

I move Amendment 160 in my name and, in so doing, express my thanks to the Police Federation for raising this issue and for its assistance in drafting the amendment. Section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 gives powers to the police to stop vehicles, which goes back to the previous group where we were discussing drink-driving. Section 163(1) says:

“A person driving a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road must stop the vehicle on being required to do so by a constable in uniform or a traffic officer.”


Section 163(3) says:

“If a person fails to comply with this section he is guilty of an offence.”


Similarly, Section 164 provides the power to require the driver to produce their driving licence. This poses several real dangers and unnecessary risks to our front-line police officers while dealing with such driver checks. The problem with the current legal framework is that an officer has to leave the relative safety of their own vehicle to make any request or to examine the driving licence. The driver of the stopped vehicle is under no obligation to get out of the vehicle or to switch off their engine.

The current law places officers in a vulnerable position in relation to the driver and occupants of the vehicle. They are permitted to remain in the vehicle to either flee when the officer is most vulnerable or even to use the vehicle as a weapon, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said in an earlier amendment. This is a common occurrence, even in my professional experience, where drivers try to flee after you have got out of the police vehicle and spoken to them. The risk to the officer would be minimised by creating an obligation for the driver of the stopped vehicle to leave the vehicle, but it is also important to ensure others who may be present in the vehicle are not able to then drive the vehicle away, or at the officer, after the original driver has got out.

This amendment is intended to highlight this gap in the law, although I accept that it is not suitable as drafted. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Randerson for pointing out that electric cars, for example, do not have an engine that can be switched off in the traditional sense of the words and that other vehicles do not require a set of keys to be in the ignition to start the engine. However, noble Lords will see exactly what the problem is and how, potentially, the risk to police officers could be minimised if, for example, the driver was required to immobilise the vehicle and get out of the car, unless there was a reasonable excuse for not doing so, for example if the driver was disabled. I look forward to a sympathetic response from the Minister, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am sorry, but I am going to speak on this if the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is not going to.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

No.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I feel very strongly about this. It offends my sense of justice that people who do hit and runs never pay for their crime. They are a menace to society, with only six months’ maximum sentence for leaving someone for dead having hit them with a car and, of course, the figures are going up year after year—

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I think the noble Baroness may be speaking to the next group rather than this group.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am. Sorry, ignore that. Strike that from the record. I will come back to that.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I was interested in the explanation of this amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. As he rightly said, there are all sorts of potential issues—one can think of electric cars—and reasons this may not be workable as it has been drafted. Nevertheless, the noble Lord made the point about the vulnerability of police officers when they are in this situation, and of course the vast majority of cars do use conventional engines at the moment.

The other point made by the noble Lord is that a driver is under no obligation to get out of the vehicle. I have to say that, in the current circumstances, if there was a lone woman in the vehicle and a lone police officer asked her to step outside, that may be problematic. Nevertheless, that is not the burden of the noble Lord’s amendment. He has raised an interesting point; we want to protect police officers in vulnerable situations, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

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[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 161 is in my name, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—as we already know. I am grateful to Living Streets, British Cycling, RoadPeace, Cycling UK, and the Road Danger Reduction Forum for their joint briefing and suggested amendment on this issue.

Currently, the maximum penalty for the offence of failing to stop to report accidents is a six-month custodial sentence. This may be appropriate in cases where someone has simply driven off after scratching the paintwork of someone else’s parked car, but not when someone has been left for dead by the roadside.

The briefing provided by two noble Lords cites the case of Scott Walker, who was struck and killed by a driver who was driving without insurance, failed to stop at the scene of the collision, failed to report the incident and then tried to conceal his involvement by having his car repaired to cover the damage. The sheriff who heard the case said that the maximum sentence of imprisonment

“would not adequately reflect the gravity of the offence.”

The parliamentary petition calling for tougher laws when someone dies and the driver fails to stop attracted more than 104,000 signatures.

Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 as amended requires:

“where, owing to the presence of a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place, an accident occurs by which … personal injury is caused to a person other than the driver of that mechanically propelled vehicle … The driver of the mechanically propelled vehicle must stop and, if required to do so by any person having reasonable grounds for so requiring, give his name and address and also the name and address of the owner and the identification marks of the vehicle … If for any reason the driver of the mechanically propelled vehicle does not give his name and address under subsection (2) above, he must report the accident … A person who fails to comply with subsection (2) or (3) above is guilty of an offence.”

The amendment would add a new subsection creating a new offence, where the driver knew or ought reasonably to have realised that the accident had caused serious or fatal personal injury, with a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment. As with the previous group, this amendment is intended to highlight the inadequacy of existing legislation.

Again, I accept that the wording may not be right; for example, the Road Traffic Act would need to be amended throughout, as other noble Lords have said, replacing the word “accident” with “collision” or “incident”, as some of these incidents involve deliberate acts, rather than being accidents, and the 14-year term may not be the right one. But the law is inadequate when someone fails to stop after a collision involving death or serious injury. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, as I said before, I support this amendment very strongly because hit-and-runs are a menace.

One of the problems is that the families who suffer from having somebody killed or injured rarely feel they get justice. That seems completely wrong. This amendment would mean that a judge has available the range of sentences necessary to reflect the severity of the offence. Sometimes the existing six months might be enough, and other times 14 years in custody would be the only option that can punish the wrongdoing and deter others from driving away from a serious collision. I am not big on increasing prison sentences, because I think we have far too many people in prison already, and many of them are there for the wrong reasons. But in this case, when you deliberately harm a person, prison is the place for that sort of violent person.

Judges should have the option of a lifetime ban for people who hit and run. There is no excuse for fleeing the scene—it is trying to escape justice. People should not be back on the road once they have done that. Hit-and-run is a cowardly thing; it is an attempt to escape and to not admit that you have done something wrong. Quite often, it can mean the difference between life and death for the person you have hit. This is a valuable amendment and will mean justice, not only for victims but their families and friends.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the president of the Road Danger Reduction Forum. I point out that our road traffic laws are quite outdated these days. The laws and the penalties have been patched together over the past few decades and the review is long overdue. I hope that Ministers will take that back.

At some point in history, it became acceptable for people to be killed by cars—pedestrians and cyclists. Other drivers just became collateral damage for our car-obsessed culture. I simply do not understand that.

I support all these amendments and am grateful to have worked with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the NGOs which put so much effort into pulling them together. There seems to be a horrific gap between the penalties for killing someone with your car and killing someone in any other way. Personally, I would like to see mandatory lifetime driving bans brought in for many road traffic offences. At the moment, you can be found guilty of killing someone with a car and be allowed to drive yourself home from the court—it is absolutely unbelievable.

We talk so often about “accidents”, which is completely wrong, because that pre-supposes the outcome of any investigation of a collision. If you are saying it was an “accident”, you are saying, “Oops, sorry, couldn’t help it”, but there is always a cause for such incidents. During my time on the Met police authority, I got the Met police to change its designation of those events from “road traffic accidents” to “road traffic incidents”. We cannot prejudge why it happened.

There is also a huge amount of victim blaming. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned the case of the person who accelerated away. When I was knocked off my bike by a motorist, I was on a green light and the motorist was not. He just did not look. I had life-changing injuries from that. I did not do anything about it or follow it through because I think he genuinely just did not look properly, and what is there to do about that? At the same time, we accept such incidents far too often, and we cannot blame the victims all the time; we have to, at some point, start blaming the person who is driving a tonne of metal and who is extremely well protected in the case of any collision.

Let us please replace these patched-up, ancient laws with something that fits today’s circumstances, especially when we are trying to encourage more people to get out of their cars and get on bikes, walk home or get on buses. This really needs to change.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was very happy to put my name to all these amendments. As you will be aware, the Cross Benches do not suffer from having Whips to tell us what to do, but when a call comes from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking, which I have the privilege of being an officer of, that is as near to a three-line Whip as a Cross-Bencher would recognise.

I was a head-hunter for 30 years, so, during that time, one met a range of human beings, many of whom had a particularly high view of the value of their own contribution in a variety of ways. One learned that there were three things in particular that the male of the species thought they were extraordinarily talented at. One of them was making love—I will leave it to noble Lords and noble Baronesses to decide whether the males of their acquaintance meet that hurdle.

The second is that, when interviewing someone, most men, particularly senior businessmen, think that they are extraordinarily talented at telling—within about 30 seconds—whether they are any good. The evidence suggests that they are 100% wrong all the time.

The third thing that many men think they are extraordinarily talented at is driving. Most of us tend to think that we are pretty good drivers—above average—and while, like most human beings, we occasionally make a mistake or forget one or two things that we should not forget, we are pretty relaxed and generous towards ourselves.

In researching this group of amendments and others that follow, the most clear and consistent factor across the whole range of road traffic offences and behaviour is that they are dealt with in an almost entirely inconsistent manner. The inconsistencies jump out at you, because many of the terminologies used are open to interpretation. Many of these terminologies were created and put into statute or guidance in the 20th century—and we are now, in case noble Lords had not noticed, in the 21st century. In the last two decades, the influence of technology has increased hugely, as all of us who drive are very aware.

I, perhaps, have a high danger capability, but I have bicycled in London for 40 years, on and off, and I drive. When I drive, like most people I have at least one device working in my car. One such device cleverly tells you when there are speed traps coming up, or policemen lurking by the side of the road—or whether there’s been an accident ahead. Equally, however, one is often listening or talking, or, even worse, texting. When I bicycle, I have nothing in my ears and I have all my senses about me. What I see, day in, day out, is pretty egregious behaviour, whether by motorists, cyclists or people on e-scooters—including e-scooters ridden by parents taking their four to five year-old children to school, standing in front of them with neither of them wearing a helmet, something that I find fairly alarming. I see this all around: it has become normal.

Until and unless we are more consistent and clearer about how we define acceptable behaviour when driving, or using any form of transport, and what is unacceptable—what is legal, what is illegal, and the gradations between them—we will continue to have an unacceptable level of inconsistency and more heart-rendingly tragic stories. My goodness, you find a lot of them if you do your research.

It is difficult to find rhyme or reason for such inconsistency. The Minister, as a lawyer, is well aware of the dangers that arise when there is inconsistency in how the law is understood. The Minister will also be aware, as are many lawyers, of the many opportunities that inconsistency affords lawyers. When there is inconsistency, or lack of clarity, in the law, it benefits a huge and very profitable industry in this country consisting of law firms that specialise in enabling people to escape, in a variety of ingenious ways, what are almost certainly the right penalties. That industry exists because of these inconsistencies.

These are clearly all probing amendments, but my plea to the noble Lord is that there is real reason and logic behind them, which is that a lack of clarity leads to inconsistency and stories of human tragedy.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I point out that he is arguing for the status quo when we have already said that there is no rationale behind it. There is no rationale behind two years or three years. The fact that he thinks it sounds reasonable is really not good enough. It is urgent to get this review together. Which organisations have the Government taken advice from on this, before bringing in these new penalties? Who did they take advice from? It sounds as if they did not take it from people who understand the situation as it is on the roads.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I am afraid that, with respect, the noble Baroness is wrong on both points. There are provisions in the Bill which change the law considerably; there are quite a few in this area. I am certainly not arguing for the status quo but rather for the provisions we have put in the Bill. I have sought to explain why, if we are going to change other parts of our road traffic offences, we need to do so carefully and make sure that there are no unintended consequences. I hoped my explanation of the new test for dangerous driving based on breaches of the Highway Code and the consequences that brings with it was a good example of that.

As to who we have consulted, I assure the noble Baroness that my department and the Department for Transport speak frequently to a range of stakeholders. Perhaps I can write to her with a list, exhaustive or possibly non-exhaustive, of the people we have spoken to.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I also point out that when the Minister demonstrated the Dutch reach, he did so from the point of view of a Dutch car rather than an English one. Perhaps he would like to practise that at home.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as farmer and landowner, as set out in the register, and as someone who has been directly and indirectly affected by hare coursing on more than one occasion.

I am pleased to add my name to Amendments 124 and 128 tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. They concern the Game Laws (Amendment) Act 1960, the Night Poaching Act 1828, and the Game Act 1831, none of which are very recent, nor do they take account of developments, particularly in modern illegal hare coursing. Instead, these amendments take account of modern access to land in 4x4 vehicles, the high-value gambling with dogs and the easy facility of the organisation of these activities through social media. Sites such as dragondriving.co.uk, the Facebook group “Let the Jackers See the Hare with Coreys” and biglink are used to advertise meetings, suitable vehicles and such like.

The right reverend Prelate has given details of the NFU survey. I will not repeat those figures, but they are pretty concerning. Hare coursing has existed for many years, but more recently there has also been an increase in deer coursing, which has also been referred to. The main drivers of these activities have been the ready access to and retreat from land by 4x4 vehicles, the high stakes in illegal betting, and social media. The consequences have not been difficult to see. They include violence and intimidation to anyone who has tried to intervene, and severe damage to standing crops, hedges, gateways, and anything else that gets in the way of hare coursers. Existing laws and sentencing are dealt with by the amendments.

A Private Member’s Bill received wide support. and an amendment was tabled in the other place on this Bill. The response by the Minister was that Defra was aware and dealing with the issue. Nothing further has been heard yet. This lack of action is regrettable, and I very much hope that the Minister will now accept this amendment, or at least come up with his own proposals. Failure to move on this issue is likely to lead to people taking matters into their own hands, with all the dangerous consequences that this involves.

A farm manager local to me has experienced threats to his life by phone calls, slashed tyres, windows catapulted and a stone landing on his sofa where his wife was sitting, catapulted windscreens, intimidation on foot and by vehicle, the revving of engines, the shooting of a dog, and so on. Others, whether gamekeepers, wardens or just neighbours doing their duty, have had similar experiences. This must stop. The police do their best, but are often too late or constrained by the evidence.

At a case at Boston Magistrates’ Court in Lincolnshire in September, the farmer who brought in the police arrived at the court and was kept safely away from those charged with the offence of hunting a wild animal with dogs. The Crown Prosecution Service thanked him for his bravery and support in the case and commiserated on the damage to his crops and livelihood but explained that, due to an administrative problem regarding helicopter CCTV footage, they had to stop the charges faced by the defendants. Imagine the alarm and distress caused to, and still experienced by, the farmer, as he was directly confronted with the defendants as they left the court as free men.

A more successful ending to such an episode that did not involve the police and was told to me by the farmer concerned was when some Travellers, or tinkers, had stolen the farmer’s dog. Bravely, and with others, he entered the Travellers’ camp and removed a dog, which happened to be a greyhound. Stalemate ensued, until it became apparent that the greyhound was a champion and very highly valued. Negotiations took place between farmer and Traveller, resulting in a meeting in a layby where the dogs would be exchanged. At the layby, deadlock ensued while the order of release was agreed as to which dog would be released first. The farmer prevailed and his spaniel was duly released. The Traveller waited expectantly for the return of the greyhound, which duly happened, but instead of a fit champion, a very happy and overfed greyhound was released, to the laughs of the farmer and his friends.

Obviously, the forfeiture of an animal, as long as it is accompanied by the ability to recover expenses, particularly that of food, works well. I therefore urge the Minister to accept these amendments so that the countryside can be rid of this awful and damaging activity to communities, individuals, dogs and wildlife.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am very happy and pleased to support these amendments, which would improve the powers for police and courts to tackle wildlife crime such as illegal hare coursing. Wildlife crime is by its nature difficult to police. When I was on the London Police Authority, I asked the Met police to start logging crimes committed on farms, which they did not do at the time. The problem is that the crimes are often committed far from police stations—especially so since the Conservative Government have closed quite a lot of those police stations. They are also seen as less of a priority than burglary and even traffic offences. There is some exciting new technology that the police can use to overcome these difficulties of geography and resources, but you need the right powers and the power of sentencing.

I have a friend who culls a deer herd for a local farmer. He was out, I think last week, and all of a sudden, two police cars turned up—this was in the middle of nowhere—with their blues and twos going. The police thought that he was a poacher. As he was standing there with a gun, a knife and a dead deer it was a quite difficult argument to make, but they did finally understand and managed to speak to the farmer. My friend takes responsibility for culling deer that have been harmed by poachers and then left to die in pain.

These amendments have practical solutions so that offenders can be perhaps deterred, but certainly punished and prevented from causing further suffering. They are amendments that the Government should accept in full.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the right reverend Prelate. It might surprise your Lordships to know some of the numbers. I am grateful to the Suffolk Constabulary for the figures of incidents of illegal hare coursing. These were the incidents reported—so not necessarily all the incidents—between 1 September 2019 and 31 March 2020. There were 139 incidents reported in 230 days. That means there was more than one incident a day for the police to deal with. The penalties for this illegal behaviour are not sufficient. That is why the right reverend Prelate’s amendments must be agreed.

I want to talk a little about hares, because they have been on the Biodiversity Action Plan list almost since its formation, in 1995. I am hugely grateful, as we all are, for the work done by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, which has been monitoring hares for many years and scientifically working out what their best habitat is. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, gave us a graphic description of the horrors that farmers have to face, but, if one looks at it from the hare’s point of view, they too would like these amendments.

If the farmer has too many hares on his property—particularly on the eastern side of the country, where the illegal poaching and coursing takes place, because that is where most of the hares are—the farmer will be tempted to reduce the number of hares to discourage poachers. If the laws are not strong enough and the police cannot keep the situation under control, the only sensible option for the farmer is to legally reduce the number of hares to such that it is not attractive for these people to come and drive over their land, smash their gates and cause intimidation. I am sure that, from the hare’s perspective—as I said, they are on the Biodiversity Action Plan, and numbers have been reducing since 2010—they would welcome the strengthening of the law.

I hope that my noble friend will not bat this away by saying that Defra is going to produce something. I think we are all a bit fed up of waiting for Defra to produce things—we need action now. By accepting these amendments, there is nothing here that will cut across what Defra might or might not produce in the fullness of time.

--- Later in debate ---

The cost-benefit analysis of Section 60 is negative. The reason for its enactment rarely, if ever, occurs. Therefore, Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 should be repealed. That is the intention of Amendment 276. I beg to move Amendment 129.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in tabling this amendment, and it is the reason that we first met. When I heard about this commander down in Brixton who had an innovative way of dealing with cannabis possession, I went down there very quickly to meet him and find out exactly what he was doing, and I was very impressed.

He has laid out the rationale behind the amendment extremely thoroughly and with great insider knowledge, but I will throw in what the Green Party has been saying for the past 50 years. Our drugs policy is to create a regulated drug and alcohol market that is focused on safety and harm reduction, which our current policy is clearly not. In the interim, decriminalisation is important, but it will never be as effective at reducing crime and improving health outcomes as a fully regulated system.

Many police forces have de facto decriminalised cannabis. They have seen that it just does not work to keep on with this targeted racist behaviour. The amendment would be a very welcome step. At the moment, it is a gateway power which allows the state to interfere with people and search them for something that should not even be illegal. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said very clearly, it alienates communities at the very point at which you need those communities to help the police with intelligence. I have been out with quite a few stop and search teams. I have seen it done well, but that was the exception. I have seen it done okay and done extremely badly. It is an issue of training as well as for the law itself, and it is used in discriminatory ways. This is a brilliant amendment. Well done to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for tabling it.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 276, to which I have added my name. Suspicionless stop and search is a significant problem for community relations in this country. It is a significant problem for trust in the police. In recent days, we have rightly given a great deal of time and attention on all sides of your Lordships’ House, including in this Committee, to trust and confidence on the part of women, and young women in particular, but we must not forget other aspects of broader trust and confidence, including the issue of young black men and policing.

Decades after the Lawrence inquiry, we still need to keep returning to this issue. No power or set of powers has probably done more to weigh against the strides made by the late Sir William Macpherson and by everyone across politics, including former Prime Minister, Theresa May, to try to address problems with stop and search. No power has been more problematic than that of suspicionless stop and search in general and Section 60 in particular.

This is really not a partisan issue. Your Lordships know that, long before I came to this House, I was a civil liberties campaigner and not popular with Governments of either stripe in relation to powers such as these. In my view, there has been an authoritarian arms race about law and order in this country for too long. No Government are perfect. No Opposition are perfect. This is a good moment to look at stop and search. There is no better parliamentarian to be leading us in this conversation than the noble Lord, Lord Paddick.

The problem with suspicionless stop and search is this. No human is perfect; therefore, no police officer is perfect. Stop and search, conducted by humans of other humans, even with reasonable suspicion, is problematic, but there is no choice if we want to combat crime and investigate offences that have happened or that might yet take place. We have to have powers to stop and search. They are problematic, even when based on reasonable suspicion because what is reasonable suspicion? Who do we think is going equipped? Who do we think meets the profile of somebody who committed an offence a few hours ago? Of course, it is hard for any citizen, including constables, to rid themselves of all the baggage that comes with being in this—or any—society. Those problems are so compounded when reasonable suspicion is taken out of the equation.

Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act gives the power—which is triggered by a senior police officer, but a police officer none the less—effectively to change the criminal law in an area for the period in which that power is triggered. In that particular part of town, there is effectively a suspicionless stop and search zone. We are often talking about urban areas, and areas with a very high density of people from certain communities. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, can correct me if I am wrong. Within that area, young black men in particular know that that is a stop and search zone. Their first encounters with the police service are often very negative.

Because of the rise of the internet, mobile phone use and videos of incidents, this material is now there to be viewed. I have seen some very disturbing scenes of quite young boys being stopped and searched, without suspicion, on streets not many miles from here. These young boys and men do not have the protections that they have post-arrest in the police station. Arrest is based on reasonable suspicion. Officers usually stop a young man. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, gave the statistics. If you are a young black man you are many more times likely to be stopped and searched than if you are a young white woman, let alone a middle-aged woman like me.

Sometimes officers will be situated in a particular place. I understand their reasons. They are worried about knife use, for example. Some young men are being stopped on a routine basis. Sometimes big, burly officers make a human wall around a boy of perhaps 13 or 14 years-old. I have seen the pictures. People in that community—bystanders, if it happens in the daytime—will be trying to remonstrate with the officers. They will be held back. This young man—13, 14 or 15 years-old —is having his first encounter with the authorities. He is frightened. He is behind this human wall of big, burly officers. There is not even reasonable suspicion that he has done something wrong.

It seems to me that this is very dangerous—and it is not an occasion where I can even blame the police. It is an occasion when I have to look to the statute book itself, because this is about legislators, not police officers. I have been critical in other debates, and I am afraid that I will have to be critical about some decisions that the police have made. But this is a legislative problem, because legislators from both major parties have allowed this regime to be triggered for suspicionless stop and search, and it has created problems over many years. It really is time to address this.

This seems like a radical probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, but if Section 60 were removed from the statute book, what would be the consequence? There would still be ordinary, democratic, rule of law-based powers to stop and search with reasonable suspicion. That is a fairly low threshold in any event, I would argue, but this ability and power to designate particular areas—everybody knows where those areas are and who is affected in them—would go. I cannot think of a more positive signal and progressive step for any Government, any party and any legislator who cares about race relations in this country, and cares about rebuilding trust in policing and the rule of law.

So once more I find myself thanking the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I feel that I will do so again a few more times in this Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Lib Dem and Labour Front Benches on tabling these amendments. I had to laugh when I saw them, because you sort of assume you can expect duty of candour; it really should not have to be emphasised in the way that it has been here.

I have had a number of clashes—perhaps I should say experiences—with the police not exercising candour in situations where they really ought to have done. Examples include freedom of information requests, subject action requests, legal proceedings, police complaints and the Independent Office for Police Conduct. The end result of all these processes, which others have gone through as well, has been a great deal of frustration and anger and very little progress. I trusted the police less; I am sure most people would find this to be their experience. Rather than feeling that wrongdoing had been put right and the truth exposed, I felt there were cover-ups.

Obviously, if we pass this amendment, we ought to expect candour in the other place as well, but I feel that would be a step too far. I am afraid that the Government are not very honest—in fact, they are duplicitous. The Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson—talked earlier about what they have done today as being morally right, but I think that is absolutely wrong. It is wrong of him even to say that; it was not morally right. Coming back to the amendment, I say that a duty of candour is something we ought to expect from our Government, but we absolutely cannot. Therefore I am not very optimistic about these amendments, but the Government really should put them in the Bill.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am more optimistic about these amendments than the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and want to help her find some optimism. However, I first pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I feel that his speech is historic and will be remembered in this country for a very long time. It must have been so hard to make; we all know that it is hard to speak out of turn in general, but it is particularly hard when you are speaking about your own profession, service, career and friends. I hope that Members across this Committee will share that tribute to him.

I hope the noble Lord will forgive me—he has trailed this already—that in terms of these amendments we have to prefer that tabled by my noble friend Lord Rosser. I congratulate my noble friend on not just his speech but this amendment, which was no doubt prepared with his colleagues and team. This is why I am optimistic. I do not believe that the Minister—the noble Baroness, Lady Williams—is unsympathetic on this issue. There is not really a problem with something like the amendment proposed by my noble friend, not least because he anticipates the potential challenges that might come the other way. For example, there is of course a need to protect privacy, data protection and national security. Any duty of candour would have to be subject to those things, but my noble friend has already done so much of the thinking. The Minister also has the considerable resources and expertise of government, the government legal service and parliamentary counsel at her disposal, but I remind her that the Daniel Morgan review was commissioned by a Conservative Home Secretary, who had been and gone as Prime Minister before the review was published, with its excoriating comments, some of which I repeated on Monday evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, we support my noble friend Lord Dholakia in wanting to protect small shopkeepers by calling on the police and CPS to take low-level shoplifting more seriously. Repeated low-level theft adds up and, as my noble friend has just said, when the profit margins are typically around only 8%, you need to sell a lot of goods to make up for those losses. This is particularly a problem if perpetrators do not believe that the police and courts will take effective action. I would welcome a response from the Minister to reassure small shopkeepers that the Government take this issue seriously—and that includes what action they will take in response to my noble friend’s amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am not sure that this requires a change in the law; I think the problem lies elsewhere. Section 176 should have been an improvement; low-value shoplifting offences should have been dealt with much more quickly and efficiently.

The Home Office guidance for implementing Section 176 is very clear. It sets out, for example, that repeat offenders, organised criminals and people going equipped should all be referred to the CPS for prosecution, rather than using the simplified procedures. I am interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts.

Something has gone wrong. I am going to guess that it is a consequence of 11 years of austerity inflicted on police forces. Rather than being a legal problem, it is a simple operational matter of the police not having the resources to deal with the problem—they cannot respond, investigate or prosecute. I think the solution lies in policing and not the law.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, we too want to protect shopkeepers. I endorse the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, backed up by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, made an interesting point when she said it was not necessarily a mistake of law but in the application of the law that this problem has emerged.

I too received the briefing from the British Independent Retailers Association; its figures are stark. I also have the previous statements by Kit Malthouse, the relevant Minister. He has said that he is happy to look at the data to see what it tells us about the operation of the policy, now that we are four or five years in. I do not think there is any problem with us reviewing the data internally, deciding whether the policy is working and then promulgating some kind of best practice. However, in January 2021, in response to a Written Question on when the Government was planning to review the operation of Section 176, the Minister said that it would be part of a wider, post-legislative review of the Act but that no date had yet been set.

The point I want to make to the Minister is that there is some urgency on this. The system does not seem to be working very well. From my own experience as a magistrate sitting in London, I cannot remember the last time I saw a youth come to court for shoplifting—they never come to court for shoplifting; we see them for much more serious offences. I am not saying that they should be brought to court for shoplifting but that they are being dealt with in another way and it is questionable whether that alternative is appropriate. We do see low-level shoplifting in adult magistrates’ courts, but it tends to be by multiple, repeat offenders, who are part of a gang. We see that element of shoplifting, but we do not see occasional, low-level shoplifters in court very much. They are being dealt with in other ways, and this may be part of the problem.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Monday 1st November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I enthusiastically endorse these amendments and thank the noble Lords, Lord Moylan, Lord Pannick, Lord Macdonald and Lord Sandhurst, for raising this crucial issue. The issue of non-crime incidents has been of concern to a number of us for some years and it is good that it is getting some parliamentary attention at last. I particularly credit those organisations and publications that have persistently raised it in the public realm and whose research informed my remarks, especially the Free Speech Union, of which I am on the advisory council, the anti-racist campaign Don’t Divide Us, and Spiked online.

Too many avoid the issue because it is rather tricky and contentious. One of the reasons it is difficult to raise is because nobody wants to look as though they are being soft on hate incidents. However, I am concerned that this in itself has led to a degree of chilling self-censorship and allowed some confusion to arise about what is and is not a crime when the police are involved.

When the public hear the phrases “hate”, “hate crime” or “hate incident”, they instinctively think of, for example, someone being beaten up because of their skin colour or being harassed in the street because they are gay, and they are appalled and shocked. We assume the worst kind of bigotry and our instinct is that something must be done. However, it is not so clear cut. According to the hate crime operational guidance issued by the College of Policing, hate crime is often an entirely subjective category, based on the perception of the alleged victim; I will come back to this.

What is extraordinary about the guidance on hate crime is what the police consider to be successfully tackling hate crime. The guidance says:

“Targets that see success as reducing hate crime are not appropriate”.


That completely befuddled me. The guidance says instead that the measure of success for the police is

“to increase the opportunities for victims to report”.

I fear that, in this act of enthusiasm to get more people to report hate, the police have muddied any clear distinction between what is criminal and what is not.

The focus on reporting initiatives led earlier this year to rainbow-coloured hate crime police cars patrolling local areas, with the aim of giving communities the confidence to come forward and report hate crime. However well-meaning, such awareness-raising initiatives often encourage people to come forward and report things that are not crimes at all. In fact, earlier this year, a police digital ad van trawled around the Wirral, warning that

“being offensive is an offence”.

Actually, being offensive is not a criminal offence. After a backlash, local police clarified that this was an error. Why did the police get it so wrong in terms of what is a crime?

This is not an isolated incident. A few years ago, Greater Glasgow Police tweeted an ominous warning:

“Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this weekend.”


This was posted alongside a graphic that warned social media users to consider whether their treats were true, hurtful, unkind, necessary and then, right at the end, illegal. Then there was the South Yorkshire Police Hate Hurts campaign, which asked people to report any “offensive or insulting” social media posts to police officers. None of these is a crime and, in relation to a Bill named the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, it is a concern if the police do not know what is or is not a hate crime, so much so that Cheshire Constabulary recently admitted to conflating crime and non-crime in its hate crime statistics.

This amendment can potentially start unpicking this muddle, because the source of the confusion about what is or is not a crime lies in the creation of the category of non-crime hate incident. As we have heard, this category was established by the College of Policing and its guidance encourages police officers to overreach and police non-crimes. It is worth telling noble Lords how this is posed in the guidance. The NCHI guidance states:

“Where it is established that a criminal offence has not taken place, but the victim or any other person perceives that the incident was motivated wholly or partially by hostility, it should be recorded and flagged as a non-crime hate incident.”


Note the use of the word “victim” to describe the reporter or accuser, when no evidence exists that any crime has been perpetrated against him or her. The victim has to claim only that some action or speech was

“motivated wholly or partially by hostility”.

“Hostility” itself is a vague and subjective term. The guidance continues:

“The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception.”


Furthermore, any other person’s perception can be the basis for this, which is even further removed from any real incident, let alone crime.

Finally, the guidance notes:

“Police officers may also identify a non-crime hate incident, even where the victim or others do not.”


Why? It is because:

“Victims … may not be aware that they are a victim of a non-crime hate incident, even though this is clear to others.”


I find this a kind of dystopian, Orwellian, nightmare world. Imagine untangling your way through that; your name, unknown to you, can appear on a database intended for recording details of criminal offences and be subject to checks by vetting officers when you apply for jobs, as we have heard from noble Lords.

I hope noble Lords can see the dangers here. The subjective nature of the NCHI guidelines creates a real possibility of abuse of the system by people acting in bad faith. The NCHI guidance means that unfounded, spurious and malicious reports can be filed and never tested, let alone the fact that this data gathering distracts the police from pursuing real criminals. I was contacted by one person ahead of this debate, who said, “I had a visit from the police because a member of staff offended another member of staff, who works for me. No crime was reported. The police spoke to me for 40 minutes. In the meantime, the 200 pallets that I reported stolen the week before did not generate a phone call or visit.” Then there is the chilling effect of NCHIs on free speech, as other noble Lords have vividly spelled out. NCHIs can act as a threat, a kind of surveillance of free speech, by people who say it will eventually lead to crime. Anyone who is following the fate of gender-critical feminists, who are constantly accused of hate by a particular brand of trans activist, will understand just how damaging that is to free speech.

This Government tell us all the time that they are keen to oppose cancel culture. I fear that these NCHIs inadvertently contribute to that censorious climate of denunciation and the toxic climate of hate, which we are all keen to combat. I therefore urge the Government to consider these amendments carefully and remove this contradictory anomaly, which, I fear, brings the police and criminal law into disrepute.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak on this, because there are much bigger issues coming up later, but I had seen this in a reverse way. It is not completely clear, if you do not have a QC’s training or legal training of any sort, whether this amendment is trying to help or hinder the collection and retention of data.

To me, this seems like a good opportunity to talk about misogyny and other abusive behaviour that falls short of a criminal offence but none the less should be recorded on a person’s police record. The biggest benefit of retaining that data is that it might help in the future investigation of criminal offences. For example, if someone is a notorious misogynist but it has never reached the threshold of criminality, this will help the police’s line of inquiry if said person is later a suspect in a violent attack against a woman. As we all know, the justice system is biased very strongly against women committing crimes.

What I did agree with from all those offering support for the amendment is that proper oversight is absolutely necessary. There should be some regulation about this, because some of the anecdotes mentioned seem ridiculous. I still have not decided whether I support this; it would depend on how it dealt with proper oversight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this is slightly more complex than one might have thought. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beith, for laying out the nonsensical way in which at the moment we exclude all the other categories. I do recognise the value of what the Government are trying to achieve in Clause 45: it is important that we stop predators from abusing positions of trust to prey on children and vulnerable people.

I also note, as no doubt the Minister will point us to, that this clause includes a Henry VIII power to add to or remove positions of power from the specified list. I normally loathe Henry VIII powers—I think they are extremely dangerous—but obviously I am weakening on this one.

It is also important not to cast the net of this offence too broadly or to define it too narrowly. I find it much more complex than when I first signed the amendment. There must be a level playing field, and a sports instructor should not be held to a higher standard or treated as a greater offender than, say, a dance tutor, because abuse of children is abuse and that is what we are trying to deal with here. I hope the Minister will work with your Lordships’ House to put together an amendment with which we are all happy.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, my task in this debate is easy: all I have to do is to support the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and say that I have rarely heard an amendment moved more comprehensively than he just did.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 113 in my name I shall speak also to the other amendments in this group. I declare an interest as a Liberal Democrat and someone generally against sentence inflation, but I have specific points to make on this clause.

Clause 46 effectively increases the maximum penalty for “destroying or damaging” anything by fire, or for any offence involving damage to a memorial, which means something “erected or installed”, or

“a garden or any other thing planted or grown which has a commemorative purpose”,

whether it is the statue of a national hero or a slave trader, a person’s grave or a pet cemetery. The clause does this by removing the financial limit on when the case can be tried at, or sent to, the Crown Court for sentence. Magistrates’ courts cannot send someone to prison, I believe, for more than a maximum of 12 months, but a Crown Court judge can send someone to prison for criminal damage where there is no threat to life for a maximum of 10 years.

To put this into context, Clause 2 of this Bill, as drafted, increases the maximum penalty for assaulting an emergency worker from one year to two years, while this part of the Bill increases the penalty for damaging a memorial from one year to 10 years. It is clear where the Government’s priorities lie; it is more important to protect a statue of Churchill than it is to protect our brave men and women police officers.

It gets worse. New subsection (11B) of Section 22 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, inserted by Clause 46, includes

“any moveable thing (such as a bunch of flowers)”

left in or on a memorial, as part of the memorial—so, a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for damaging a bunch of flowers. Pick up a bunch of flowers placed at the feet of Churchill’s statue and hit a police officer round the face with it, and you can get up to 10 years in prison for damaging the flowers but only two years for assaulting the police officer. Amendment 113 is designed to probe the proportionality of subsection (11B). Amendment 114 is consequential.

In fact, bearing in mind that the limit for a summary-only trial—at least in the original Bill, and I cannot find any amendment to it—is £200-worth of damage, to replace, repair or restore the property damaged, it is unlikely that anything other than minor superficial damage would be below this value. There may well be a case to treat graves as a special case, where it can be deeply distressing if the burial plot is disturbed, but, aside from that, I am yet to be convinced that Clause 46 should stand part of the Bill, at least in its current form.

There is far more merit in protecting the living, as Amendment 115 proposes to do, than in protecting the memorials of the dead. Damaging life-saving equipment is a very serious matter, and there is far more merit in this amendment than in Clause 46.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to support these amendments. We are now getting into the stuff that I will fight tooth and nail over. As an archaeologist and activist, I feel that I have a little bit of insight into this whole situation and perhaps into the ridiculous law that the Government are trying to introduce here. Instead of debating and discussing it and coming to a sensible resolution, this is part of a battle in a culture war, which is absolutely ludicrous.

History is important, but it is not fixed. People like to think that we all know what it is and it is in all the books, but, actually, as an archaeologist, I know that we reinterpret it all the time and are constantly making new discoveries. Just in the last week or so, we found Roman statues in a totally unexpected place. This is what happens: we change our minds about history and it gets rewritten.

The problem is that we have some very ugly history, which is littered with powerful and wealthy white men who, behind a thin veneer of toffish respectability, did some quite nasty things and were responsible for atrocities such as the enslavement of millions of people, genocides, war crimes and the grabbing of wealth from some of the many nations that we now call “developing nations”. Our statues ignore this history and pretend that it was benign and that these were good guys, which is simply not true: they were slavers and pillagers, and we ought to recognise that. Having their so-called heroism set in stone is actually quite offensive. There is no hint in many of these statues that they did some evil deeds.

People—many members of the public—do not like this, and they are showing their dissatisfaction with celebrating people who really should not be celebrated. They raped and pillaged, and the fact that they then spent a lot of money on universities, libraries or parks does not really make it all all right. So the question of what we should do with these monuments is important, but not easy. It should force us to confront the evils within our history and reflect on how they carry through to the social and economic conditions of our present.

Instead of leading on this quite important dialogue, the Government simply storm in with a new criminal offence, which I find so ludicrous that I feel I ought to go and speak directly to the Home Secretary about it. They are trying to put their fingers in their ears, sing “Rule Britannia” and pretend that all of this did not happen and that it was all okay—but it was not. Councils all over the country and the Government have to realise that statues are not something that we cannot change or remove. The fact is that some of these statues celebrate evil deeds, and the Government should recognise that.

I have more to say, if noble Lords wish.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

I apologise for not standing up promptly—I was expecting the noble Baroness to say more. I will deal with two issues in relation to this group. First, I will deal with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in relation to what is in effect an increase in the penalty for certain sorts of criminal damage. We on this side completely understand that certain sorts of criminal damage—for example, to the gravestone of a much-revered and loved person—that cause very little financial damage nevertheless absolutely cut to the heart of a community or an individual. Our view is that it should be possible, in certain circumstances, for that to be dealt with somewhere other than a magistrates’ court.

This absolutely over-the-top provision is not necessary to ensure that something like that, which does merit a Crown Court trial, should be dealt with in the Crown Court. I would have thought that a much more targeted amendment could have dealt with that, but this, which deals with absolutely every sort of thing, is unnecessary. You do need a provision to make sure that protection is provided in relation to things that are deeply offensive, such as the desecration of a grave—but, beyond that, the law works, by and large.

I also agree that a lot of thought has gone into this, but there is practically nothing in the Bill—except for one or two increases in sentences for violence—that deals with the protection of women and girls. Instead, there has been this very complicated provision. But, as I say, we accept that it will be appropriate in certain cases to allow for a trial in the Crown Court.

Our Amendment 115, which comes after Clause 46, is designed to deal with a practical issue in relation to criminal damage: the effect of vandalism on safety equipment. This amendment was moved in the other place by Sarah Champion MP, and it reflects a campaign that has been run by Simon and Gaynor Haycock, whose son, Sam Haycock, went swimming in Ulley reservoir in Rotherham in May 2021, on the very day that he finished school, aged 16. He went to help a friend who was in trouble. At the reservoir, a throw line that has a safety belt on it, which you can throw into the water to try to assist someone, is behind a locked cupboard. You can access the throw line only by ringing 999 and getting a PIN number from the police in order to get the line out. The delay in getting the throw line out may well have had tragic consequences on this occasion. The reason that it is behind a locked door with a PIN number is because of the vandalism of safety equipment. I wonder whether the Government could spend their time focusing on something that has a practical effect, rather than engaging in rather divisive culture wars. I very much hope that the Minister will feel able to say something to help Simon and Gaynor Haycock in their campaign.

The amendment proposes that it is made a specific offence to intend

“to destroy or damage any property which is considered life-saving equipment, including life-belts, life jackets, or defibrillators.”

Of course, it would already be an offence to do that, but it matters a lot to indicate that this is something that the law regards with particular hostility because it costs lives, including the life of Sam Haycock. I very much hope that the Haycock family will hear good news from the Minister tonight.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard part one
Wednesday 20th October 2021 Lords Chamber

I know from bitter personal experience how devastating prolonged periods under misconduct investigation can be, and the impact it can have on your career, your health and your loved ones—even more so when you know that you have done nothing wrong. This amendment simply gives independent oversight of misconduct proceedings by legally qualified, experienced misconduct hearing chairs to hold the police and the IOPC to account to ensure that these matters are concluded without unreasonable delay. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it has been fascinating and very moving to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, but I am coming at this from a completely different direction. Although I am partly thinking about the police officers involved, I am also thinking about people who bring complaints against police officers. I have seen the police complaints system at first hand. At some point in the past, a Met Police sergeant came to me and told me that he had seen a few officers deleting files that the Met held on me. These were files that I had asked to see and had been told did not exist—so I saw the police complaints system at first hand. I took a complaint to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, a vastly underresourced organisation trying to do its best on very difficult work. This was not an emotional issue for me—it was a professional, work issue—but that Met Police sergeant suffered PTSD and was essentially hounded out of the Met Police because he had come to me as somebody who wanted the truth exposed, and so was in a whistleblowing situation. I could not do anything for him, but I persisted with my complaint.

There is a saying that justice delayed is justice denied, and it is true on both sides—perhaps more when people are emotionally involved in the complaint they are making, which as I say did not really apply to me. In a way it is doubly true for complaints against the police, because there is a power imbalance. The police are seen to retain their positions, authority, power and legitimacy while complaints are ongoing, and this can be extremely upsetting.

This issue has come to light because of the allegations against the murderer of Sarah Everard. It is staggering, and truly terrifying, that the police had within their ranks somebody they knew, jokingly perhaps, as “The Rapist”. A noble Lord from this House, a previous Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who is not in his place today, said in an interview on the radio that it was not true that he was called “The Rapist”—but he is the only person I have heard saying that was not true. Perhaps another ex-Metropolitan Police Commissioner here might know better.

So it is time to cut the delays that everybody on both sides experiences in police complaints and disciplinary hearings and, most importantly, to give the independent watchdog the resources it needs to do the job. I have complained in the past about the number of police officers it employs, because it seems to me that you do not necessarily set a police officer to catch a police officer—but in fact it is so underresourced that I feel it would benefit from almost anybody if it increased its staff. So this is something that the Government have to deal with.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. The basic problem around IOPC investigations is one of timeliness and quality. I am afraid it has gone on an awful long time. To be fair, from time to time it concerns police investigations under other bodies, but it has persisted, despite the fact that the organisation has changed over the years from the IPCC to now the IOPC. This particularly affected groups of officers such as firearms officers, some of whom have been under investigation for in excess of 10 years. That cannot be for anyone’s good.

We talked earlier about the trauma suffered by individual officers, and that is one of the major causes of such trauma. I therefore think that some time kind of time limit would be helpful. Even in a criminal case such as murder, the point from commitment to arriving at Crown Court is expected to be of the order of 100 days. If such a complex case can be taken so quickly, it seems to me that these cases are surely susceptible to travelling far more quickly and then being decided in the hearing far more quickly, too.

There are some peculiarities around the police misconduct process which have to be understood and, I think, given some sympathy—but these things can be changed. For example, when a complaint is made, particularly where a criminal allegation is alleged, there is a transmission of the case, first from the force to the IOPC, then it may go to the CPS, and then it may go back to the IOPC and then it may go to the force. This merry-go-round goes on for months. It is not at all unusual for these cases to go for at least one year and usually more, and for there still to be no outcome.

There is a further level of complication when, for example, special evidence needs to be given in a court case. It is difficult to talk about this in public, but essentially, when intelligence is gathered by the police that cannot be shared in court and cannot be shared in a coroner’s court, a public inquiry has to be held in front of a qualified judge. All this does is lengthen the whole process. It particularly affects firearms officers when they have to justify why they shot someone and they are unable to explain the intelligence they received. It means that the whole process goes round this rigmarole again.

There are various remedies to try to resolve this. One is a simple time limit. The difficulty with a time limit is that it can be hard-line and does not fit every case. Sometimes you need some discretion. I would argue that the decision-making between the IOPC, the CPS and the force should be done in parallel and not in sequence. The consequence of it being done in sequence is that it keeps going on and on and they keep referring it back to each other. Surely, they could consider the same case in parallel and therefore reduce the time. It would be a good idea to have a legally qualified chair seriously examining the timeline and whether or not it is justified. If it is not justified, the chair should be able to intervene. If it is justified, of course the case should continue.

My final point may be to one side of the amendment, but it is important because it goes to the point about timeliness and quality. One of the challenges faced by the IOPC is that it does not always send its most experienced investigators to deal with the most complex cases. The equivalent for the police service would be that you never send your shoplifting squad to deal with a murder—that would not be very sensible. Officers build their experience in the shoplifting squad and may go on to do more complex things.

The reason may be, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, that the IOPC has insufficient resources. I think it also has insufficient specialism and does not build up its expertise. When a serious case comes in—someone loses their life or it is a serious allegation—they should dispatch the A team, not the people who happen to be available. I do not think that does anyone any good when they have to deal with serious matters which the families want straight answers to and the officers want to believe that the investigators have some maturity of judgment. It is not a matter of age but a matter of experience. For those reasons, the IOPC should consider this. It is not exactly pertinent to the amendment, but it is relevant to the discussion about quality that we can fairly have about IOPC investigations at the moment.

Criminal Justice System: Equal Treatment of Deaths and Injuries

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the criminal justice system treats deaths and injuries caused by motorists equally to those not caused by motorists.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)]

My Lords, where there is evidence of an intention to kill or cause serious injury, offences committed by motorists will be prosecuted in the same way as other homicides or assaults. However, in the context of driving it is often difficult to ascertain the driver’s state of mind or intentions. That is why the law contains additional road traffic offences that consider an objective test of the standard of driving, rather than the driver’s subjective intent.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

In 2014, a man travelling at 80 to 88 miles per hour in his car drove straight at the traffic officer who tried to flag him down to stop him. The killer made no attempt to swerve or to slow and he threw PC Duncan into the air like a ragdoll, leaving him with fatal injuries. The starting point for murdering a police officer with a knife or an iron bar is 30 years; this driver got an eight and a half year sentence. Is that justice?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, first, I acknowledge the gravity of that incident and we should pay our respects to the police officer’s family, remembering the work that police officers do, day in and day out. However, one has to distinguish the road traffic offence from the consequences. In that case, if there were sufficient evidence to prosecute for murder or manslaughter, that prosecution should have been brought. I know that the CPS does bring those charges when there is evidence to support them and sufficient likelihood of a guilty verdict.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Fullbrook, and I hope that she enjoys her time in the House as much as I do. I listened with great interest to the Minister, who delivered, in his usual emollient way, all these incredibly nasty pieces of legislation that the Government are bringing in. Although I will try to stay coherent as I speak, I am actually spitting with fury, so I ask for that to be taken into account.

We have to understand that there are a lot of Bills in this Queen’s Speech, and, given that this is the third Speech of the Prime Minister in two years and that most of the legislation that he has announced has not actually happened—sometimes it is on its third, fourth or even fifth iteration—I am staggered that there are so many Bills in it. Again and again, the really important stuff, like the Environment Bill, gets put off, which will be very embarrassing when we come to COP 26.

However, of course, the Government always find time for the really nasty bits of legislation, like the spy cops Bill and the overseas operations Bill. I worry about this trend of the Government, which is why I have chosen to speak today, on the topics of crime and justice and home affairs, because this is where the Government do some of their worst work.

Much of the proposed legislation is designed to fight political proxy wars, rather than trying to improve people’s lives and create a better future, which is probably what the Government’s job is. For example, the electoral integrity Bill is an excuse to make it harder for people—particular people, not just any old people—to vote, while giving the Conservative Party more power in an attempt to extend the life of this Government, possibly for decades.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill seeks to put financial penalties on universities and student unions for not wanting to listen to speakers with fundamentally stupid ideas. I do not understand it, and it gets a bit confusing when the Government, apparently so concerned about free speech, are also bringing in a Bill designed to criminalise and ban free speech and the right to protest—because protest is free speech. As such, we are being asked to crack down on free speech in one Bill but to force people to listen to speakers whom they fundamentally disagree with in another. It will be very interesting to see, over time, just how this plays out in court and how these two pieces of legislation interact.

Next up on the nasty list are the Government’s plans to make it harder for people to claim asylum and refuge, which are horrendous and plain cruel at a time of such global instability—much of which we have caused —especially because global migration will increase. We will carry on trashing the planet and will make huge areas uninhabitable, and, as we continue to sell weapons to tyrant regimes and war criminals, there will be more political instability in all sorts of countries. We are responsible for a huge number of the people who come to this country seeking refuge, and we should accept that and that it is our duty to make them welcome.

There are some important pieces of legislation tucked into the Speech, but I feel that those are the ones that will fall through the cracks and that we will probably not get around to. This is very distressing because it will be the most regressive laws that come through and that the Government support. This is really appealing to the darkest parts of human nature and it is not good for our collective psyche, not just here in the House but in the wider society. As such, I promise you strong and relentless opposition.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester [V]]

My Lords, I support this amendment, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. In Committee and on Report, I spoke in favour of amendments to this Bill that proposed a statutory defence of domestic abuse, recognising the significant number of women coming into contact with the criminal justice system who have experienced domestic abuse and previous trauma, and how that becomes a driver for their offending. I do not want to repeat all that the noble Baroness has said, but I will highlight again the statistic of almost 60% of women supervised in the community or in custody who have an assessment have experienced domestic abuse—and the true figure is likely to be much higher.

Regrettably, these amendments have not been included in the Bill, and I therefore strongly support the call to hold an independent review of the effectiveness of existing defences, as proposed by this amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I had a few calm sentences worked out in response to this Motion, and completely scrapped them once I read the Commons disagreement amendments in lieu and reasons, because the reasons that the Commons have given for rejecting our amendments are absolutely pathetic.

I disagree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, of whom I am very fond, when he says that non-lawyers should not get involved in lawyerly debates. Here in your Lordships’ House I see lawyers arguing ferociously about tiny issues on opposite sides of the Chamber. Lawyers often do not agree, and therefore at times we have to have some common sense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I asked about a date.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 24th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, in the seven-plus years I have been in your Lordships’ House, I have been involved in a lot of Bills but this is the first of its kind. There was never one like this, because it has been special. The Bill was universally welcomed but then attracted about 200 amendments, which were fiercely argued. The Government suffered nine defeats in votes and made many concessions. There are still gaps. Other noble Lords have listed them but, for example, there is the Istanbul convention. However, the process has turned a good Bill into a very good Bill.

For me, making misogyny a crime was a priority. I am deeply sad we have not done that but we have moved towards it, and it is a step in the right direction by the Government which we can use to test the process. The Minister said something about this showing your Lordships’ House at its best, but I would argue the Bill shows the Government at their best as well. I wish this were the pattern with all Bills—that this House does its stuff and the Government listen. That would mean we produced much better legislation every time. On behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and myself, I thank the Ministers for all their hard work and co-operation. I say a big thank you to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, and the noble Lords, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. It has been an experience, and I think it has worked wonders.

Independent Office for Police Conduct

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater. No? I call the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, in my activist world I hear a lot of complaints against the IOPC and its previous incarnation. I am curious about the fact that a lot of former police officers work there as investigators. It has been suggested that the IOPC does not investigate as thoroughly as it might because it has too many former police officers. Has the Home Office paid any attention to that?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, one must have a balance. If you are going to investigate the police, you need some people in your organisation who have the skill set to know how the police operate. The figures are these. Overall, 23% of IOPC staff are former police officers—that is 28% in operations. However, first, they do not investigate their former force; and secondly, most senior decision-makers are not former police officers. By law, the director-general cannot be a former police officer, and the current director-general has put in place a practice that the two deputies are also not former police officers.