(2 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberHMPO’s staffing numbers have increased by 500 since last April, and it is in the process of recruiting a further 700 people. In total, as of 1 April this year, there were more than 4,000 staff in passport production roles.
First, I am reassured. The reason I knew it was six months—I will point out another wrinkle in this—is that I was going abroad in March, so I anticipated this issue and sent my application off early. It was very efficient and I got my passport back really quite quickly. The only problem was that the courier kept trying to deliver it to the wrong address because of the postcode—but do not worry about that. There was no way of putting in an extra message for the delivery driver saying, “Please go to the gate at something or other”—because I live in the countryside. Anyway, leaving that aside, the process was very efficient.
But there is another wrinkle. Normally, when you renew early in the UK—I realise that this particularly concerns us Scots, who worry about money—that extra period is put on to your passport. The expiry date is taken from when the current passport expires. The EU counts it from when it arrives—that is, the renewal date—so be careful, because you lose that bit that you used to get credited with on your passport under the old British system. Personally, I think that it is unfair. I am delighted that the passport can just put it on, but you do need to warn travellers that they might need to add a bit more on.
The thing I really want to ask, though, is this: what plans are there to deal with the extra 1,200 staff who have been specially recruited to deal with the problem? That is quite a swelling of the Civil Service at a time when I thought we were trying to economise and cut back. Are these people full-time staff that the Civil Service will have to retain for ever and somehow find other employment for—or what plans have we for downsizing again when the crisis is over?
Again, the noble Lord makes a good point. I will inquire as to whether we have recruited permanent staff or agency staff. If they are permanent full-time staff, they can of course be flexible to meet the needs of other parts of the Civil Service.
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberOn the back of all the discussions we have been having today, it is written in statute that within 56 days the Mayor of London and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police will have to respond with an action plan to deal with all the issues we have talked about today. There will be an expectation that the recommendations be carried out within 12 months. In fact, the Home Secretary has made it clear that such is the seriousness of this that she hopes that some of that action plan will be taken forward within the 56 days.
My Lords, I will say a couple of things as a techie. First, RFID chips do not transmit on to any remote system—they work only in proximity, so they are checked only when you go through something. Therefore, you cannot track people through an RFID chip on a card. It is simply presented to a device, so you cannot track people around the place. It sounds like a great idea but it does not totally work; you would need to track people’s mobile phones, for example.
The next problem is the DBS check, which tells you only if someone has not been caught yet; it does not tell you what they are up to now. Another problem is the definition of a criminal offence. Not having a television licence gives you a criminal record, as does fishing without a licence. A lot of things give you a criminal record which really should not be there, so it is a tricky having a blanket thing saying that if people fail a DBS check, they should not be there. We should probably look at that system and have two different categories: one for the serious things where you really need to worry about whether you employ people, and another for the things which, to be honest, are trivial—they are almost statutory offences but yet they are still criminal offences. There should be a review of that.
I take the points the noble Earl makes about the various technological solutions. Of course, we will consider any recommendations made by the Angiolini inquiry in this space. I would also say to the noble Earl that police vetting is a lot more thorough than DBS checks. However, there is definitely more to come on this, and I look forward to some of these things being addressed both in the short term and within the next year.
(4 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe noble Lord asks a question which I do not think I can answer in terms of the level, but I can get back to him. I would be making it up if I were to give an answer.
My Lords, one of the problems of the European arrest warrant was that, if there was a crime in the country that was trying to extradite but not in the country that the person was being demanded from, we used to have difficulty. I seem to remember there being an issue over xenophobia in one of the European countries and there was also a problem with plane spotters who took photographs of airplanes. Presumably, these issues will disappear under the new negotiations.
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe noble Lord makes a very good point about the new technologies that the police and airports are using. I heard about the trial of facial imagery at Heathrow Airport. Now, every time you go through a gate at an airport, a machine recognises you by your face. However, he is absolutely right that the governance of the use of facial imagery, fingerprints and the new emerging technologies has to be looked at very carefully.
Does the noble Baroness’s department have a corporate memory of the fact that during the war we had identity cards for three purposes? Soon after the war, these were extended to around 50 purposes. As a result, we had a bonfire of ID cards in about 1952, for very good reasons. We are not a country that likes being controlled by various authoritarian people.
The noble Earl is absolutely right, and that was at the heart of our reason, in the coalition years, for resisting the idea of ID cards. He will of course know that I do not remember the war.
(5 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I agree with everything the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has said. I also support this amendment, because it is a move in the right direction. To my mind, it does not go far enough because we are disadvantaging all UK distributors against all foreign ones. It just leaves a huge loophole—and personally I think the Government will be massacred in the press once what they are passing here comes to light—so I recommend they put at least this in.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his amendments, because they enable us to return to whether or not the Bill should provide exemptions to the prohibition on arranging delivery of bladed products to residential premises or a locker. I am grateful to him and to the Sheffield knife manufacturers for the time they spent in discussion with me on this.
The noble Lord tabled an amendment on Report on whether trusted traders should be exempt from the prohibitions in the Bill on arranging delivery of bladed products to residential premises or a locker. In response, I said we would look to have further discussions with delivery companies on the issue. We have discussed this with a number of companies that provide delivery services. It is difficult for delivery companies to give a firm view on how they might operate in this sphere in future, and it will depend to a large extent on whether the criminal liability falls on the seller, as it does in the Bill in relation to the UK, or on the deliverer, as it does in relation to overseas sellers under Clauses 38 and 41.
Whether deliverers would be willing to take on the criminal liability—and with it the risk of an unlimited fine—for the offence of handing over items to a person under 18 is likely to depend on the specific circumstances in each case; for example, where a major retailer is involved, a delivery company may be prepared to take on the criminal liability because the commercial benefits of the contract outweigh the risks, but a small retailer may decide not to take on the liability. Placing the liability on deliverers could therefore work against small manufacturers and retailers, meaning that big firms can still have their products delivered to a person’s home but small ones need to use a collection point. This would be a perverse outcome that would put small businesses at a commercial disadvantage to larger firms.
I turn now to the amendments. When we considered the trusted trader amendments previously, I expressed concerns that their effect would be to transfer the responsibility for complying with the legislation and for ensuring that all bladed products are handled properly from the seller to the Government. I have similar concerns about a scheme that would exempt sellers using a trusted courier from the prohibition on the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. A trusted courier scheme would require the Government to set out the details of the proposed scheme, which would then allow for the delivery of bladed products to residential premises.
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I support everything the three noble Lords have said. I completely concur with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said. He is absolutely on the nail.
Just for fun, today I put on a tie that shows a mouse eating a chunk of cheese. I do not know whether noble Lords remember that there was a book some time ago called Who Moved My Cheese?, in which mice run around a maze and get to eat cheese at the end. One day the cheese was moved. One mouse explored and found where the new cheese had been moved to and therefore survived. The other one kept revisiting the old place and died. I recommend this book to the Home Office. The world has changed—the cheese has moved—yet we are legislating as if we did not have an online world and methods of verifying age, and as if people did not have smartphones that they can link to biometrics. We are living in the past. I cannot believe we are passing a piece of legislation such as this. I concur with everything that has been said. I do not mind what scheme is done so long as it is more sensible than the one proposed in the Bill.
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for these amendments. I am particularly grateful to him and the Sheffield knife manufacturers for coming to meet me the other week for what I thought was a very helpful and constructive meeting.
We are returning to something we debated in Committee: whether trusted traders should be exempt from the prohibition in the Bill of arranging delivery of bladed products to residential premises or a locker. When we considered these amendments previously, I said that test purchases continue to show that a significant number of online sellers fail to undertake adequate checks to ensure that knives are not sold to under-18s. The most recent test purchases of online retailers, conducted in late 2018, showed that 42% of the retailers sampled failed the test and sold knives to persons under 18.
As the noble Lord has explained, his amendments seek to address this problem by saying that where we know someone is a responsible retailer they should be able to continue to send their products to a person’s home address or a locker. This would apply only to the dispatch of bladed products under Clause 18 and not to the sending of corrosive products to a residential premise under Clause 3—presumably on the basis that the noble Lord is content that corrosives should not be sent to a person’s home.
These amendments would transfer the responsibility for complying with the legislation, and for ensuring that all sales are handled properly, from the seller to the Government. They would do this by requiring the Government to set out the details of the proposed trusted trader scheme, which would then allow for the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. A trusted trader scheme would require sellers to demonstrate that their age-verification systems and procedures, from the point when they receive the order to the point that their designated delivery company hands the item over, are robust and that they can guarantee that the knife will not be handed over to a person under 18.
The Government are not persuaded, in the light of the results of recent test purchase operations, that sellers can provide such reassurance in a systematic and consistent way. Only by requiring age verification at the point where the item is physically handed to a person at a dedicated collection point is it possible to guarantee that a bladed product will not be handed over to a person under 18. Setting up, administering and overseeing a trusted trader scheme would create a further burden on the Government or local authorities, with inevitable cost implications. Simply being part of a scheme, or being in possession of a seal of approval as a trusted trader, does not guarantee compliance with the conditions of the scheme. Many of us know this to our cost, having hired a plumber or builder accredited by a trusted trader scheme. Such a scheme would impose regulatory burdens on participating businesses. In addition, it would need to be administered by an independent regulatory body or by local authorities, albeit with the expectation that participating businesses would be required to meet the cost of running it.
I hope that I have provided a clear explanation of why the Government do not consider that the noble Lord’s amendments would provide the necessary assurance that young people under 18 cannot get hold of knives using online sellers. In coming to this view, I have reflected on the recent helpful meeting with Sheffield knife retailers—which I am very grateful to the noble Lord for arranging—in which something was said about Amazon’s view on the issues this amendment raises. He knows that I cannot promise anything, and we are yet to have a definitive statement on it, but I hope that this being the case, he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Before the Minister sits down, will she explain why the Government cannot exert extraterritorial jurisdiction over foreign websites when they are doing exactly that when it comes to online pornography on overseas websites? In that case the BBFC, acting on behalf of the Government, gets in touch with the online pornography website and threatens them that unless and until they have approved age verification on their sites, BBFC will instruct UK internet service providers to block access to those websites from the UK. Why cannot a similar system be used to block overseas companies which are known to be selling prohibited weapons to the UK?
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is absolutely correct, as Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act provides. In her response, the Minister said that the sender would not know whether they were sending to a residential address. A UK business has exactly the same problem, yet she was using this to justify blocking UK sales. I do not see how she can apply one rule to UK companies and another to foreign companies. We need to be even-handed.
My Lords, in an ideal world, we would have the same systems for overseas and domestic sales. We cannot exercise ETJ—
As I understand it, we cannot. We have had the example of pornography. The system I am referring to relates to online sales. Am I right in thinking that the system referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, relates to streaming? He will correct me if I am wrong.
I will try to help the Minister. The Government or the regulator would be deciding whether a foreign supplier was breaching the terms before informing the credit card agency. You would not go and inform the credit card companies about a foreign supplier that was not selling weapons to underage buyers. It would be triggered by the Government deciding whether a foreign supplier was breaching the rules.
My Lords, that would require a global trawl of every company in the world selling knives, prohibited or otherwise.
This has been covered widely in the pornography provisions of the Digital Economy Act, which the good online suppliers of adult content are helping to police. All the systems for online age verification and everything else are in there. Some co-operation and consultation with DCMS and BBFC could be very helpful to the Home Office, because there is an exact parallel. You could almost translate the whole thing over to offensive weapons, which is why we are discussing how this could be done in external groups.
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I think that a bit of certainty here is essential. One of the problems that exist elsewhere is uncertainty surrounding what is going to be required. It is very difficult for traders if they do not know what part they are going to play. However, when we come to the next amendment I will say something about that which I think will be helpful.
I thank noble Lords for their comments. I agree that, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, pointed out, people have to understand their responsibilities. In Committee there was much debate about the need for guidance, particularly for retailers, manufacturers, delivery companies and the like, about the operation of the provisions in the Bill relating to the sale and delivery of corrosive products and offensive weapons.
In response to the debate in Committee, I said that it was our intention to issue appropriate guidance. A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Lucas, wanted to see that commitment reflected in the Bill, and government Amendment 106 does just that. It enables the Home Secretary, Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland Department of Justice, as the case may be, to issue guidance about the provisions in the Bill, and the existing law as amended by the Bill, relating to corrosives and offensive weapons.
Importantly, the amendment also sets out that, before guidance is published, the relevant national authority must consult,
“such persons likely to be affected by it as the authority considers appropriate”.
We would, for example, expect to consult organisations representing both small and large retailers of knives and corrosive products. This would ensure that those directly impacted by these measures have a hand in developing the guidance that is most useful to them. That is an important part of the Bill.
Were he in his place, I hope that my noble friend Lord Lucas would agree that government Amendment 106 covers similar ground to his Amendments 3 and 81 and, indeed, provides a more comprehensive list of the provisions where it might be appropriate to issue guidance. Government Amendments 108, 112 and 113 are consequential to Amendment 106. I hope that on that basis the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw Amendment 3 and support the government amendments.
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Grand CommitteeMy Lords, I am sorry to have missed a bit; the Committee may have dealt with this. On overseas and online sales, on Monday I mentioned Amazon. I have confirmed that Amazon is an international seller. It is headquartered in Ireland and qualifies as such, but the delivery mechanism is within the UK. Apparently, that is a clear ruling from elsewhere so there is a big problem, as the noble Baroness has just said. I was also told, because I was chairing a meeting on the subject, that retailers are now dropping the sale of ordinary kitchen knives and such things. It is just too difficult. They will drop all sorts of other household products if they think they might fall under the Act. It will just cause great inconvenience for UK households.
I thank the noble Baroness for outlining her amendment. I understand that its purpose is to probe the meaning of Clause 20(3). Obviously, we will have a discussion before Report and I am happy to discuss the unwillingness of companies, but I go back to the first group of amendments, where I outlined the failing in the system of test purchases.
Clause 20(3) sets out when a seller, other than an individual seller, is to be regarded as outside the UK. Where an overseas seller is an individual, it is relatively easy to establish that they are based overseas, but where a seller is a company it might not be so obvious where they are based. For example, the company might operate mainly from China, where its headquarters are based, but might also have offices and shops in the UK.
The provision is constructed so that a company selling bladed articles is considered to be based outside the UK only when the business is not conducted from premises in any part of the UK—that is, where the company is based solely overseas and does not sell articles in this country. If the seller conducts the business in any part of the UK, it would be subject to the provisions in Clause 17 and prohibited from dispatching bladed articles to a residential premises or locker. I hope that that explanation helps the noble Baroness.
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Grand CommitteeThis might have been dealt with before and I apologise if it has, but is a farmhouse a residential address? Farmers would certainly receive all sorts of corrosive products.
I apologise for my earlier intervention that should have come under this clause. I can see that it is dealt with in Clause 3(6) about farmhouses, and so my earlier intervention was irrelevant. However, the noble Lord has a very good point about why we are banning delivery to residential premises if there is someone there who can prove that they are over 18. The ban is actually not about whether the substance goes to residential premises. There are many reasons why you might want something delivered. For instance, if you are cooking and things like that—I know that is a later section. There are cleaning products and stuff like that. I cannot see the purpose of the ban if the delivery is being accepted by someone who is over 18. As I said in my earlier intervention, it is easy to do now with modern technology; we can now age-verify people extremely accurately.
My Lords, as we have discussed, Clause 3 makes it an offence, where a sale is carried out remotely, for a seller to deliver, or arrange for the delivery of, a corrosive product to residential premises or to a locker. Given the concerns over the use of corrosive substances in violent attacks and other criminal acts, to restrict access effectively we believe that it is necessary to stop delivery to private residential addresses. This does not mean that corrosive products cannot be purchased online in the future, merely that individuals will be expected to collect the product from a collection point where their age can be verified before the product is handed over to them. This provision is important as it will ensure that checks are made and that the purchaser will need to prove that they are 18 or over in order to be able to purchase and collect a corrosive product. If the purchaser cannot collect the corrosive product in person, they would have to be able to send a representative who is also over the age of 18.
We have also included an exemption within the provision to ensure that deliveries to businesses that are run from home—such as a farm—would not be affected by the prohibition on delivery to a residential address, for example, where corrosive products are ordered by small family-run businesses, such as metal working, soap making or even farms, in the case of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. We have also provided defences that are available in cases where the individual has taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, questioned why both Clause 3 and Clause 4 are needed. Clause 3 relates to the dispatch of corrosive products bought online in the UK to a residential premises or locker in the UK. We cannot apply the same restrictions on sellers who are based overseas without taking extraterritorial jurisdiction for this offence. Such a step would be inappropriate for a sales offence such as this and, in any event, there would be practical difficulties mounting a prosecution given that an overseas seller would not be within the jurisdiction of the UK courts. Clause 3 is therefore supported by Clause 4, which makes it a criminal offence for a delivery company in the UK to deliver a corrosive product to a person under the age of 18 where that corrosive product has been bought from a seller overseas and where the delivery company knows what it is delivering. The purpose of Clause 4 is to try to stop overseas sellers selling corrosives to under-18s in the UK and having them delivered to a person under the age of 18. There is no overlap between Clauses 3 and 4; we think that both are needed. Clause 3 deals with UK online sales and Clause 4 deals with online sales from overseas sellers.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, again brought up the use of home as a business, which he has mentioned to me before. It will be a matter for the seller under Clause 3 to satisfy themselves that the delivery address is being used for a purpose other than residential purposes. If they cannot satisfy themselves, they should not deliver to that address. Again, it is something that we can deal with in the planned guidance. He also mentioned to me previously his concerns about Amazon’s terms of trade in relation to the sale of alcohol. We are clear from evidence of test purchases of knives that we cannot rely on such terms of business to ensure that the law on age-related restrictions is properly adhered to in the case of online sales.
That depends entirely on whether the seller is a UK seller or an overseas seller.
I think the contract is with Amazon, because you pay Amazon for the product. I therefore think Amazon is technically the seller. The website could well be hosted abroad and Amazon has its headquarters abroad. Therefore, your contract is with someone in a foreign country, but the delivery agent may be someone in the UK who happens to have the product and is remunerated by Amazon for it. I am not at all clear. Because this is so obscure, it seems that aligning the two clauses would be sensible—remove the residential bit from Clause 3 and insist on proper age verification of the person receiving the goods, whether the address is residential or business.
My Lords, if you buy from Amazon, you are buying from Amazon UK.
(7 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, is the Minister concerned that if you increase the price of alcohol, it makes other dangerous drugs relatively cheaper, and therefore what happens is that you switch people to another drug? Is she also concerned that addiction, and treating it, is the real problem, and that is what we should be doing?
The Government’s ultimate aim is to deal with all types of addiction. It is not that we are not making a decision; we will do so in due course.
(7 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I know nothing about this but a question suddenly occurred to me. If this is a statutory duty that these services are undertaking, will this help them secure funding to do it properly?
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I recognise the sterling work and professionalism of the fire and rescue authorities in providing a brilliant service to the various communities during the significant number of flooding incidents, especially in December and January. The noble Lord talked about the Greater Manchester FRA, to which I pay full tribute. When I visited some of the affected areas, such as Rochdale, Salford and Bury over the new-year period, there was clearly effort from not just the community and police but the fire and rescue service. It provided fantastic input into what was a very successful operation in clearing up various areas.
It is clearly important that a timely and co-ordinated response is provided at these critical incidents. A number of agencies are involved generally in rescuing people from floods, particularly in coastal areas, including the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, as well as fire and rescue authorities and the local charitable organisations that play a vital part in many communities. However, direction rests with local resilience forums for local responders to work out the arrangements that work best in their area. Often, this will be the fire and rescue authority but there may be many valid reasons—as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, outlined—why they might choose a different responder in different circumstances and if that works locally. We do not want to reduce this flexibility with a one-size-fits-all approach as there may be good reasons why, in some areas and on some occasions, it makes more sense for a different responder to take the lead. The fact that two noble Lords have slightly different views on how that might be is proof of that.
I will give an example. During and in the direct aftermath of serious flooding, it has been vital for other agencies including voluntary groups to provide services to protect people from serious harm and to distribute clean water to those affected. Depending on the extent of the incident, it may be necessary for the Royal Air Force to take a major role, as with the flooding in 2007 when it deployed Sea King helicopters from as far afield as Cornwall, Anglesey and Yorkshire for the rescue of 120 people. There are advantages to a permissive, multi-agency regime where responders have broad powers and local discretion rather than a prescriptive duty for flooding or indeed any other type of critical incident we can identify. There is no question that fire and rescue authorities have the power they need to respond to floods. They have responded to all major flooding events and usually provide the most resources.
I welcome the scrutiny that this amendment provided of the arrangements for the emergency services’ response to flooding. To answer the brief question from the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, in terms of something being on a statutory footing, yes, it would necessitate a funding stream. However, for the reasons I have given and from the experiences I have had, I believe that the existing regime with broad, permissive powers gives both fire and rescue authorities and local resilience forums the flexibility they all need. On that note, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.