Tackling Spiking
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
Today will see the publication of the Government statutory report on the nature and prevalence of spiking in accordance with section 71(1) of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This report has been laid before both Houses today and will be made available on gov.uk.
The report sets out the development of the Government understanding of spiking, the steps taken to provide better support for victims, the legislative measures we will be taking and the non-legislative action that Government, law enforcement and others will be taking to support its implementation.
I would like to thank all those who engaged with the Government as part of the development of this report, including the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and especially those who have shared their stories with us to help shape the response, and bring this practice to an end.
The publication of the report is a pivotal step in understanding the extent of this insidious offence, the context in which it occurs and the comprehensive approach the Government intend to take towards tackling it.
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Tackling Spiking
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
With permission, I will make a statement about the Government’s action to tackle spiking. Spiking is an insidious act with potentially life-threatening consequences. We know it constitutes a danger to people, particularly women, in nightclubs, bars, on student campuses, at festivals or in any social setting. No one should have to worry that a substance has been put into their drink or that they could be targeted with a needle. More than 5,000 cases were reported last year, and that is perhaps only the tip of the iceberg.
These offences have potentially devastating effects. First, there are the immediate physical effects, which can include struggling to speak or to stand up, loss of consciousness and hospitalisation, to name just a few. Secondly, there is the psychological trauma, which can manifest itself in a number of ways, including anxiety or, most acutely, shame about what happened and what may have ensued. The impact can last for months, years or a lifetime. Some will be victims of secondary offending, which they may struggle to recall, that may well be of a sexual nature. Thames Valley police told the Home Secretary and me just last Friday that spiking is the hallmark of the sexual predator. Anyone who has read the harrowing accounts of victims will understand why it is vital that we crack down on these crimes. We owe it to all of them to redouble our efforts, and that is precisely what this Government are doing.
As Members will be aware, the Government were required, under section 71 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, to produce a report on the nature and prevalence of spiking and the action we intend to take. Publication has been delayed, and I understand why the hold-up has been a source of frustration, but that delay has enabled the Home Secretary and I—both new in post—to take a step back and consider how best we can focus our efforts to address this crime.
We want the law to be crystal clear and for individuals to have no doubt as to their rights and remedies. We have concluded that there is a case for a legislative change to capture the modern and insidious nature of this crime. I can therefore confirm to the House that the Government intend to bring forward amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill that modernise the language of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. This will remove any ambiguity and make it clear that the offence covers spiking in every form, be that via food or drink, vape or by needle. We hope that this step will improve public awareness but, most importantly, encourage victims to come forward.
I will add two points. It has been said, and we of course accept, that the existing laws already cover the range of behaviours that incorporate spiking. While it is not in dispute that that is the case, we recognise that some of the existing offences on which we rely are not readily seen to cover spiking. We give the illustration of sections 22 to 24 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which use the language of poisoning for nefarious purposes, which we believe we can clarify through this change.
By their very nature, spiking cases are complex. The work we have done tells us that there are particular challenges in identifying perpetrators and gathering evidence. To bolster our legislative plans, we have developed a package of practical measures to improve public safety. The police have already developed a rapid, lab-based urine testing capability, but we want to go further. First, the Home Office will be funding efforts to research the capability and reliability of existing rapid drink testing kits. There are never any guarantees with this sort of work, and we are only at the beginning, but to understand what is possible, we have to gather evidence on testing efficacy, and that is what we will be doing in the months ahead.
Secondly, additional funding will be provided to the police to run several spiking “intensification weeks”, which we have seen successfully deployed for other types of criminality, including county lines and knife crime. Thirdly, the Security Industry Authority, the regulator of the UK’s private security industry, has committed to introduce spiking training for door supervisors as part of its existing licence-linked qualifications. This will enable them to better and more quickly identify victims onsite.
Fourthly, we will support the police to roll out their spiking reporting and advice tool, to improve the quality of data. This enables the public to report cases of spiking quickly and simply, including anonymously if they so wish. It has been successfully rolled out across 20 forces as part of a pilot programme in England and Wales, and will be expanded to the remaining 23 forces shortly. Several other measures are detailed in the statutory report, but I am conscious of the time, so I will simply add that the report is available on the gov.uk website and emphasise that we are strengthening our response across the board.
Before I conclude, I take this opportunity to urge the public to remain vigilant, particularly over Christmas. If anybody believes that they or someone around them has been spiked, they should report the incident to the venue and the police. I also want to offer my thanks to the campaign group Stamp Out Spiking and Members on both sides of the House. I will not mention them all, but I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), my right hon. Friends the Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Witham (Priti Patel), my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies) and the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), who have campaigned so assiduously on this issue. Their insight and commitment have been instrumental, and they will no doubt continue to provide support and scrutiny as our work progresses.
Spiking is an appalling, predatory crime that ruins lives. As we have shown time and again, this Government will do everything in their power to protect the public and reduce violence against women. I commend this statement to the House.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. Once again, I welcome her to her role. She has been a long-standing advocate for action on tackling violence against women and girls, and I am confident that there will be opportunities to work together to make progress on these incredibly important issues.
Let us be clear: Labour completely welcomes today’s announcement on spiking, although action to crack down on this dangerous and devastating crime is long overdue. The scale of the problem, as the Minister well knows, is vast. As the Government’s own report makes clear, between May 2022 and April 2023 the police received 6,732 reports of spiking. Of those, just four—0.05%—resulted in a charge. On average, we had 561 reports a month, with the majority coming from females who believe their drink was spiked, although spiking can affect anyone. Some 957 of the more than 6,000 reports included needle spiking.
Spiking is a dangerous and invasive crime that creates both immediate physical danger for victims and long-term psychological impacts. The words in the statement are all well and good, and the Minister knows she has my full support, but we must also recognise that this Government’s record on issues relating to violence against women and girls has been one of dither and delay. Stronger action is always welcome, but why has it taken the Government so long to act? The Home Affairs Committee published its report on spiking in April 2022, which is more than a year and a half ago.
Labour has repeatedly called for action on spiking, including the creation of a stand-alone criminal offence that would make it easier to prosecute, easier to raise awareness, and easier for people to come forward to report what has happened and point to crystal-clear breaches of the law. There has been years of campaigning and advocacy about the epidemic of spiking here in the UK but, once again, the Government have sadly dragged their feet. Since the Select Committee published its report, there have been two freshers weeks, two years of festive parties and two years of music festivals. During that period, more victims have been left vulnerable to this awful crime.
Where is the urgency when it comes to tackling violence against women and girls? The Government’s response has been pitifully slow. The report published by the Government today on the nature and prevalence of spiking, which is required as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, was originally due to be published on 28 April—nine months ago—but has been delayed time and again. That simply is not good enough. In the months of delay, dangerous criminals will have been let off, and victims have been consistently let down.
While it is positive that the Government are now bringing forward legislative changes to create more clarity about the criminality of spiking, it has taken too long for them to accept the significance of the problem. Last year, the National Police Chiefs’ Council told the Home Affairs Committee that poor data quality and the absence of a clear criminal offence presented a challenge in policing spiking. It said:
“A more defined standalone offence of spiking would help understand the scale of the problem”
and
“enable a far more accurate picture to be realised”
than through the current approach. Chief constables told the Committee that a defined offence for spiking would also allow enhanced support for victims, but last December, in response to the Committee’s report, the then safeguarding Minister, the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), said
“we have concluded that there is no gap in the existing law which a new offence would fill”
and that introducing a new specific spiking offence
“would not increase the likelihood of charging or prosecuting an offender for spiking offences.”
Yet we now understand that there will be legislative amendments to update and modernise existing offences to make the offence explicit and capture the modern-day nature of the threat. The Minister has acknowledged:
“Whilst the offence is nominally covered by existing laws, this comprises a patchwork of different laws—some now well over a hundred years old—which were drafted to cover other kinds of offending.”
That is a clear admission that the current legal framework is not fit for purpose, but it has taken the Government more than 18 months to accept and put forward changes to rectify that.
The Minister has made a personal commitment in her new role to go further than her predecessors, and I commend her for that, but Labour remains concerned that these tweaks to existing laws will fall short of doing the right thing of creating a stand-alone spiking offence. We fear that the Government’s approach simply will not go far enough and will not provide the clarity and focus required for all involved. That being said, we will eagerly await the detail of any amendments and will scrutinise the proposed legislative changes in Committee.
The Government are right to say in their report that night-time economy venues are areas of opportunity for safeguarding and prosecutorial support, and that the early collection of evidence, identification of perpetrators and the ability to support customers are key. There is no doubt that as well as getting the criminal justice system to take spiking more seriously, we need much more prevention work in clubs, bars and pubs and joint working between premises and the police to catch perpetrators. The Government’s new training plan sounds like a step in the right direction, but we are concerned about the small scale of the new programme. The announcement talks about training hundreds more door staff, but we know that there are tens of thousands of venues up and down the UK where these crimes are being committed regularly. How on earth does the Minister expect even to scratch the surface of the issue with those numbers?
We urgently need to see more detail to understand how impactful the changes will be. For example, can the Minister set out exactly how the new training will work, including how many venues will receive training, whether it will be voluntary or mandatory, and what happens if venues fail to engage or repeatedly ignore spiking incidents at their premises? We need a robust and comprehensive approach across the country; this should not be opt-in. We also need a proper national strategy for dealing with this abhorrent crime, which would include looking at the licensing arrangements for late-night venues where these crimes take place.
Tackling spiking at its root is a huge challenge. The Government have had 13 years to get it right, but the simple truth is that the Tories have been too focused on their own in-fighting rather than tackling issues such as spiking, which pose a genuine risk to women up and down the country. I urge the Minister to be bold in her commitments—I know that she will be—and I sincerely hope that she will work hard to rebuild the trust that women and girls have lost over the last decade when it comes to feeling safe in our communities.
Laura Farris
I will come back on two or three of the hon. Lady’s points.
First, on the hon. Lady’s observation that few such cases result in a charge, if I may correctly her gently, the principal reasons the police have given for that are: too few people coming forward in the first place, which we hope this legislative change will address; the narrow window of time in which a urine sample can be accurately tested, which is one reason why we are funding further research into rapid, on-site testing; and the difficulty in establishing who is doing the spiking. Simply, the difficulties that we have identified and spoken to the police about come at every level in the process. We are changing the law to make spiking crystal clear so that public confidence is improved and victims feel encouraged to come forward, because that is the first bit of the jigsaw.
Secondly, on the scale of our response, from the bouncer on the door of the club in the small town to the statute book, we want to change the response to spiking at every level. Whether it is a question of a friend reporting an incident, a victim coming forward, a test being done more rapidly, or the police having any doubt about which of the provisions under statute apply, it will be crystal clear.
Thirdly, the hon. Lady talked about developing an accurate picture of where spiking takes place and how we develop the response accordingly. That is the focus of the reporting tool, which a member of the public can use to report an incident of spiking even if they are not affected and it appears to have happened to someone at a table on the other side of the room. The tool will enable the police to develop an accurate picture—some of which we already know, some we are less clear about—to see the extent of it, where it happens and how we can focus resources.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
My hon. Friend will know that last week there was a debate in Westminster Hall on this subject. Afterwards, I spoke to Dawn Dines at Stamp Out Spiking and had an email from Colin Mackie of Spike Aware, who made the point that none of us had mentioned vape spiking. That was our omission, and I am pleased that this afternoon it has not been the Minister’s, as she included it. We need a 21st century solution to 21st century crime.
Could the Minister expand a little about perpetrators? We know that spiking is done for a variety of reasons: perhaps to effect a sexual assault, physical assault or robbery; or just for entertainment, particularly to humiliate individuals. What other steps are the Government taking alongside this legislative clarity—which I welcome—to ensure that those people who still think it is okay to humiliate, embarrass and assault women get a clear message that it is culturally unacceptable?
Laura Farris
I thank my right hon. Friend for her typically wise question. She is right to mention the vape issue, which I was not previously aware of. That proves the point that whatever legislative changes we make will have to be fit for the future and envisage how the crime might evolve and develop over time. She makes a good point about perpetrators. That was exactly what Thames Valley police told the Home Secretary and me on Friday: a critical part of the VAWG strategy that it and the police nationally focus on is perpetrator behaviour. As part of licensing conditions, the police increasingly work with bar staff, who make a note to establish who is behaving in a certain way in the bar, and who is often on their own or looking to isolate people. Using CCTV can be a critical first step in the police identifying the perpetrators, where they are working, which locations they frequent and who poses the greatest risk to women in a local community.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I welcome today’s statement and pay tribute to all those who have campaigned for changes in spiking law. But it is almost 20 months since the Home Affairs Committee produced our report, and more than seven months since the statutory deadline for the Government to publish their own report on the issue was missed. The report tells us that the Government are still considering many of the Committee’s recommendations, including the gathering of vital data on crime recording and perpetrators, options for the delivery of a training programme for the night-time economy and options for joint communications on spiking, including working with festivals ahead of summer events and engaging with universities over freshers week. As the report is late, can the Minister explain why it has not accepted the clear, full recommendations on all these points, and why there is still consideration going on in the Home Office?
Laura Farris
I pay tribute to all the right hon. Lady’s work individually and as part of the Home Affairs Committee. I do not want her to be left with the impression that there is a lack of complete commitment on this issue. As I hinted at in the statement, and for the purpose of brevity, some training happens already for bar staff. There is probably a gap with how much those working on the doors know, and they are critical first responders to these cases, which is why I mentioned them. She should not interpret anything in this report as evidence of a lack of ambition by the Government. My statement today is to assure her that we have given this issue our full commitment.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Chelmsford is home to a vibrant night-time economy, with lots of very popular bars, clubs and restaurants. We also have a really strong reputation for being a safe place to enjoy a night out, but from time to time even in Chelmsford stories of spiking come to light. I therefore warmly welcome this package of initiatives, in particular the promise to modernise the law to make it crystal clear that spiking, whether in a drink, through a needle or via a vape, is illegal. It is very timely, as the Criminal Justice Bill is going through Parliament right now and we can put it into law quickly. Does the Minister agree with me and very many campaigners that clarifying the law will act as a strong deterrent to perpetrators and thus help keep women safe?
Laura Farris
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend and thank her for her question. First, as I said, the purpose of clarifying the law is to empower more people to be clear on their rights and to come forward. But it is also the case that by having a clear offence in which spiking is defined, the police will be able to use the data of people who come forward and report a spiking incident. That will allow us to build a much more accurate picture, through the criminal justice system, of the extent to which this offence occurs.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for the statement. I welcome any measures to tackle this awful crime of spiking, so I look forward to the Government’s amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill. The National Police Chiefs’ Council has stated that a stand-alone offence would help it to understand the scale of the problem, enable a more accurate picture to be realised and allow enhanced support for victims. Will she outline her reasons for ignoring the NPCC’s concerns and missing a clear opportunity to create a stand-alone offence of spiking? It is welcome news that, as she has just stated, hundreds of door staff will be trained to change the response to spiking at every single level, but I am at a loss as to the logic for why the Government have not included training for staff at outdoor music festivals, where tens of thousands of under 18-year-olds attend, often camping out, and where private security firms are tasked with their safety. Will the Minister extend the training to outdoor music festival staff in order to protect our young people?
Laura Farris
I thank the hon. Lady for her question and for all her work on this issue. I think we are arguing on two sides of the same coin. We agree, without reservation, that there is a need to define spiking in law and that is what we are committing to do. Effectively, it could be viewed as an offence, which will enable people to report clearly and the police to record data in the way that I have suggested. Essentially, there is no particular difference between where the NPCC is and where we are on this issue. I hope that will satisfy her. I encourage her to have a look at the report itself. The ambition is very much to work with staff at every level. We are in no doubt about who the frontline responders are. Yes, festivals are a primary location, as are student campuses. Of course bar staff come into this. The direction of travel is absolutely to further their work in recognising and—ultimately, if our research goes further—perhaps playing a role in testing and supporting the police effort on this particular crime.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
This is the best early Christmas present for thousands of our constituents who have been spiked and the many tens of thousands who worry that they may be spiked. It is testimony to the new safeguarding Minister that in my hon. Friend’s first statement to the House she has announced the updating and modernising of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which so many of us who have been campaigning on this issue believe is overdue. She has done this in the presence of both the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor, both of whose unwavering support on this matter I much appreciate. Will my hon. Friend tell the House when she believes it might be possible to start the process of training, when we might be able to expand the roll-out of the police reporting pilot project, and when we might expect to get an early report back on the results of the drink testing kit, which is so important to a successful implementation?
Laura Farris
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the exceptional work that he has done in driving this forward, working with Ministers and explaining to us issues that we may not have considered previously. I think that was one of the best examples of MPs and, I hope, Government working together—along with other MPs, of course.
My hon. Friend asked, very properly, questions about the reporting and the timeframe. I do not have an answer for him, but I will take his questions back to my officials and see whether we can set a sensible timetable for when he and others can expect some report from the Home Office on what is being done, how effective it is, and what difference it will make. On the question of updating legislation, everyone who has read the published report will be aware that there was a difference of opinion, with some police officers expressing the belief that existing law covered this offence. However, in the life of the current Parliament there have been other important ways in which we have changed the law when some would have said that an offence was already covered. One example is non-fatal strangulation. I have spoken to criminal barristers who say they are securing convictions for that offence in circumstances in which they would not have necessarily done so in the past, and I hope that we will see the same difference in this instance.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I welcome some of what the Minister has announced. When the National Police Chiefs’ Council ran a data collection for spiking incidents at festivals and other events last year, they found that the average age of a spiking victim was just 21, with some victims, shockingly, as young as 14. We know that spiking victims are disproportionately young women, and it is therefore vital that we tackle sexist attitudes early. I am proud that some of the schools in my constituency are taking innovative approaches, but may I ask the Minister to commit to working with her colleagues in the Department for Education to improve and strengthen the sex and relationships education curriculum? In particular, will they look at the recommendations from Women’s Aid for reform of the curriculum so that it directly addresses misogyny and violence against women?
Laura Farris
I am glad that the hon. Lady has asked me that question, because I have had discussions with Women’s Aid and Ministers in the Department for Education very recently to discuss exactly that. I have formed the view that there is a strong imperative for us to look carefully at how we teach children about relationships and about attitudes on these subjects at the start of secondary school, and even, I think, at the end of primary school. Once these issues develop, they are much more difficult to shift, and the key is to prevent them from developing in the first place. There are some good precedents for that being highly effective in other areas, which is what I am exploring at the moment.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
I warmly welcome my hon. Friend to the Dispatch Box for what I believe is her first statement—the first of many, I am certain. I was alarmed to hear in the statement that the 5,000 cases reported last year were
“perhaps only the tip of the iceberg”.
Will the reporting tool enable anonymised cases to be reported, so that we can have a better sense of the scale of this crime?
Laura Farris
I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind words. Yes, absolutely; that is a key feature of the reporting tool. The purpose is partly to address some of the issues that prevent people coming forward: they do not think they will be believed, or they think that they made a fool of themselves, or they cannot really remember what happened on the night. The ability to report the incident using an anonymous tool without having to go through the entire criminal justice process—if that is not what the victim wishes to do—is an important element. It has been piloted very successfully in 20 forces so far. We hope that it will encourage people to come forward, and will also help us to develop an accurate picture of what is happening across the country.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I have to say that I was surprised by the rapid onslaught of both the spiking of drinks and the use of needles. I do not know many young women who do not put their the hand over their glass when they are out. I hope that I am not being pedantic, but I want to press the Minister: will spiking be a stand-alone offence? She has talked about its being effectively seen as an offence, and about modernising the language, but it is extremely important for it to be a stand-alone offence. Can she please commit herself to that?
Laura Farris
Let me be completely clear about this. We will be amending the Offences against the Person Act 1861 so that the language of an existing statutory provision will capture the modern offence of spiking in all its forms, because we recognise that the language in that Act, although it nominally covers the offence of spiking, will not be clear to a member of the public.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her statement. Very serious and worrying cases have been raised with me locally, but I know that this is a widespread, national problem, so I strongly welcome these measures, and I pay tribute to the Minister and all who have campaigned on the issue. May I return to the answer she gave on the ability to report anonymously? Does she agree that that is critical both to gaining a better understanding of what is going on and the scale of the problem, and to making it easier for people to come forward and report?
Laura Farris
I do indeed think that the ability to report anonymously is a critical part of this. I hope the use of that tool on a national basis will mean that people become accustomed to being able to report these incidents, and that as a result they are reported more widely. I hope that today’s statement will generate publicity, and that we will collectively make this an offence that people will feel much more ready to come forward and report.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Minister’s statement. Brighton has a thriving night-time and entertainment economy—that is what we are based on—but far too many people I know personally have been spiked, predominantly women. When they try to get a test via the health services, very often the pathways are closed to them. Will the Minister ensure that pathways to testing are available not just through the criminal justice system but through the health system, and that it will be a licensing requirement for venues to direct people to the right place—to safety, and then the criminal justice system? Will she also ensure that licensing rules are focused on people’s safety? I hear many reports that licensing rules prevent people from taking a glass out of a venue to get some air, so they leave the glass inside and leave themselves open to danger. Some of this needs to be changed, but outdated licensing rules prevent that from happening and end up putting people at risk.
Laura Farris
The hon. Gentleman has made three excellent suggestions. I will take them all back and write to him.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
These measures will be welcomed by the police, who have been calling for them for many years. When I was Policing Minister, they were starting to inquire about this. Most important, however, is the fact that we worry about our loved ones when they go out. My daughter lives in Sydney, Australia, and spiking is rife there too. I heard an alarm bell ring when the Minister spoke about testing. I am a former Roads Minister as well as a former Policing Minister. When I first introduced the concept of drug-driving, the response was, “Oh, this is very difficult and technical, because there are so many different drugs.” There was discussion of urine testing and how that could be done. The saliva test leads to the prosecution of most drink-drivers and drug-drivers who are stopped. The type approval that the Home Office is looking for needs to be very open-minded. The industries will come forward with the technology. The Minister will be told that it is very expensive—tough; the more we use it, the more the price will come down.
Laura Farris
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his wise observations. I hope that he was able to infer from my statement that what currently exists is a urine test that the police can roll out. On more than one occasion, the police have told me that they are sometimes inhibited by the fact that even if they do the test, it is not within the window when the drug is still in the bloodstream, so they do not obtain an accurate reading. The reason the Home Office is funding research on rapid drink testing tests—it is still at an early stage—is that, hopefully, it will be possible to test the drink on site. If someone reports symptoms, the venue will be able to work out very quickly what might have happened, using a kit, and the path to redress for the victim can begin on the night itself.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her statement but urge her to go much further in tackling this terrible crime. In particular, I ask her to look again at further work at music festivals. Thousands of vulnerable young people attend the Reading festival in my constituency, many of them teenagers. It would be good to hear that work is under way to protect them and other young people at such festivals.
Laura Farris
I would like to write to the hon. Gentleman —I have said the same to others—about what we are doing in relation to festivals, but the Reading festival resonates, and not just because my constituency is nearby. When I spoke to Thames Valley police about this issue recently, they said that the Reading festival was not just a festival where they saw spiking, but the festival where they saw the highest correlation with a secondary offence—namely, a sexual offence that was perpetrated afterwards. The hon. Gentleman does not need to impress on me the urgent need for us to look specifically at festivals as a particular danger zone for this type of crime.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s statement and her clear determination to stamp down on this evil crime. She mentioned the police intensification weeks, which I suspect will be very successful, largely down to the use of police power to stop and search in venues in order to find spiking paraphernalia on the perpetrators. However, in the long term there will be a need for training of door staff and bar staff, as she mentioned. Can she give a commitment that if further powers need to be handed down in a very limited scope to door staff—be it at a music festival, a nightclub or a late-night venue—she will not rule that out, to ensure that these crimes can be prevented in the first place?
Laura Farris
My hon. Friend is quite right. Spiking intensification is a form of training that develops how the police think about this issue, but it is likely that it will have to be complemented by what happens among door staff and bar staff, as I mentioned in my statement. We have had feedback from the police that additional powers in both regards would be helpful to them, and we are giving serious consideration to that.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Spiking is such a degrading crime. I remember the sense of shame felt by the victims I dealt with when I was taking down the reports of the offences as a sexual offences operational police officer. We need to change the culture in the longer term so that perpetrators do not even think about committing such offences, and I commend the University of St Andrews in my constituency for its consent module in that vein. We need to look at how we can actively prevent these offences, and I welcome the proposals for door staff training. Will the Minister give consideration to the amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) on mandatory training for certain police officers and the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to violence against women and girls?
Laura Farris
The hon. Lady is right to say that spiking is a form of violence against women. The data is irrefutable: the principal victims are young and predominantly women. It is a classic gateway offence by somebody who is at risk of going on to commit a much more serious form of offending, so this is not just about stamping out the crime; it is about making it impossible for perpetrators to behave in this way in the first place. The hon. Lady talked about the police training, and I want to provide her with some reassurance. I hope I am answering her question when I say that we now have 2,000 police officers in England and Wales who are undergoing specific rape and serious sexual offence—RASO—training. I met some of them on a visit to Bristol recently and I am due to see more in the new year. I would be happy to update her on how that is going and how effectively I think it is being rolled out across forces in this country.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
I want to put on record my thanks to the new Minister for her rapid work in this area and to colleagues who have worked so hard to secure these changes to our spiking laws. Will she join me in thanking Braunton Councillor Pru Maskell and Barnstaple’s Soroptimists for their campaigning to tackle spiking and their promoting the use of Spikey bottle tops and stop-tops for glasses in North Devon?
Laura Farris
What a brilliant idea! Of course I thank the local organisations that my hon. Friend mentions. This has been a collective effort. Perhaps representing Parliament is at its best when so many MPs have worked with their local authorities or local charities, or have heard the voices of victims who have come to see them in their surgeries, and relayed all that into Government. We have drawn all that information together and got to where we are today but, honestly, without the testimony and hard work of so many local groups such as the ones she mentions, we probably would not be here now.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister very much for the second good news story that we have heard today in this Chamber. We are very pleased to have that. Can I also thank the hon. Members for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and others in this House who have contributed to this potential legislation? It is great to hear these announcements on tackling spiking, especially as we approach the Christmas period when so many young people—and elderly people as well—are attending Christmas parties and events across the whole of the United Kingdom. As I understand it, the changes to the legislation will apply to the 43 police forces in England and Wales. The Minister referred to 5,000 cases on the UK mainland. Just to give her an idea of the impact in Northern Ireland, we had 120 cases there in one month. Will she ensure that discussions take place with the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the relevant Government Departments to ensure that we in Northern Ireland can adopt this same legislation and keep our people safe as well?
Laura Farris
I am rapidly doing the maths, and it looks as though the scale of the problem in Northern Ireland is at the same level as it is everywhere else in the country. I will make a note that we undertake to work carefully with that force and ensure that there is standardisation across the United Kingdom.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on tackling this issue and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on his persistence in bringing it to her attention. Sussex police actively helps to prevent spiking by providing anti-spiking drinks covers and stop-tops and by using a drone in Brighton, where there are four universities, to act as a mobile form of CCTV. Can the Minister provide further details on how the Home Office will work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to target key weeks when spiking tends to be more prevalent, in order to crack down on the number of incidents and to ensure that police forces share best practice to avoid a postcode lottery?
Laura Farris
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has been really vocal on this issue and deserves credit for everything she has done on it. She made two excellent points. The first was about whether the Home Office would respond to flashpoint time periods such as freshers’ week. I think that that is absolutely within our purview and it is set out in the spiking report, which I hope she has had an opportunity to read. The second was about best practice, and that is an excellent point on which I hope to update the House over the course of next year. We can create as many new offences or practices as possible in this House, but unless they are being applied evenly across every force, we cannot be sure that they are working as well as they should be. I hope my hon. Friend will continue to scrutinise the Government on that issue in the months ahead.
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
I hugely welcome this statement from the Minister and thank the Government for taking strong, positive action on tackling the horrific crime of spiking, which affects young and older people, including students and non-students, and hugely negatively impacts public safety. Can my hon. Friend reassure the House and the public at large that the police and hospitality businesses will be supported to better detect this crime and so ultimately bring these perpetrators to justice?
Laura Farris
I can provide my hon. Friend with that reassurance. The critical part of our response today is that we are working at every single level from the barman to the bouncer to the statute book. We recognise it as critical that people are protected when they are out at night and if they have cause to go to the police the following day. Our objective is to stamp out spiking.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I would like to thank the Minister for her statement and for responding to questions for over 40 minutes. I am now going to seamlessly hand over to Sir Roger Gale.
Bill Presented
General Medical Council (Fitness to Practise) Rules (Amendment) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Daisy Cooper presented a Bill to provide that an allegation concerning a medical practitioner’s fitness to practise may be considered by the General Medical Council irrespective of when the most recent events giving rise to the allegation occurred; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the first time; to be read a second time on Friday 26 April 2024, and to be printed (Bill 142).
Criminal Justice Bill (Fourth sitting)
Laura Farris ExcerptsThursday 14th December 2023
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 View all Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 14 December 2023 - (14 Dec 2023)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Laura Farris)
Q
Kennedy Talbot: No, neither am I. I am just here for clause 32 and schedule 4, and that is in schedule 5. However, I can say that I acted for a bank in a case in the High Court last year, which was effectively part 5 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 being used to recover all the funds that were in suspended accounts, so it is possible to do it without new law, but I have not looked at the provisions of schedule 5 in any detail to be able to help with that; I am sorry.
Laura Farris
Q
Kennedy Talbot: Do you mean as they stand?
Laura Farris
In the Bill.
Kennedy Talbot: I think that the good things about the Bill include the statutory process to reach settlements immediately after a defendant is convicted. It is abbreviated to EROC, early resolution of confiscation, where the court can direct the parties to meet and seek to reach a settlement. I think that is a good idea. In my view, it needs some tinkering with, because at the moment the convicted defendant has no incentive to co-operate, and most defendants want to put off for as long as possible the day when their assets are confiscated, as you might expect. Unless we can work in some incentives, I do not think that will work as well as it might.
Laura Farris
Q
Kennedy Talbot: It might be difficult for the court to be able to ameliorate the sentence that the defendant might suffer. It may be possible to reduce slightly his confiscation liability—to give a reduction, as one gives a reduction to defendants who plead guilty—but by that stage, when we come to confiscation, most defendants are serving prison sentences, and their prison conditions are the most important thing to them, so prison privileges and categorisation might be the way to incentivise without damaging the public interest and people getting reductions in their sentences unjustifiably.
The Chair
Do any other Members have questions for this witness? No. In that case, thank you very much, Mr Talbot, for your time and for assisting the Committee in the way you have.
Kennedy Talbot: It has been a pleasure and a privilege. Thank you for inviting me.
Examination of Witnesses
Paddy Lillis, Paul Gerrard and Helen Dickinson OBE gave evidence.
Laura Farris
Q
We all know that you are, of course, supportive of the clause 24 provision, which mirrors what you recommended, but I wanted to ask you about some of the things that you have just said. You said in your report that you found that coercive control underpins all domestic abuse. I think that you also made reference to the fact that there is now a consultation happening on minimum sentences in two regards. The first is in relation to whether any killing—any domestic homicide, to use your language—where there has been coercive control should attract a minimum sentence. I think that that goes a bit wider than anything that you put in your review. I will ask you about that first, and then I will go on to the second part.
Clare Wade: My view about setting minimum sentences in stone is quite strong. I am actually not a fan of minimum terms and starting points because I think that it takes away quite a lot of judicial discretion. Even though they are only starting points, we often get stuck with them. There is an argument that schedule 21 is probably not fit for purpose. As I say in the paper, it is frozen in 2003 and it comes with the problem that there is always this issue of, “Do we add another starting point in?” I think that the 25-year minimum terms has done nothing but cause problems.
Laura Farris
Q
Clare Wade: Yes, it was.
Laura Farris
Q
Clare Wade: Yes, that is one of the problems, I think. There are two issues. First, it creates legal anomalies anyway, because once you delineate a starting point for something like that, you have all sorts of problems about, “When is it taking something to the scene?” and you then have laws saying that taking a knife to the doorstep is taking it to the scene but taking a knife to another room is not taking it to the scene. That just reduces confidence in the law, I think; it just causes anomalies.
Secondly, as it stands, it does not fit with the other sorts of categories of harm within schedule 21 because, as I say in the report, it does not consider the vulnerability of the victim. It has one harm at purpose. That has caused all sorts of issues in terms of an obvious disparity, and we identified that disparity in the review. There is a disparity of six and a half years on average.
So it causes problems, and yes, you are absolutely right: it obfuscates the real issues because, by looking at the cases that we have looked at, looking at the literature and looking at our experience and the experiences of frontline responders and so forth, we know that the real issues are about what is now being identified as overkill or gratuitous excessive violence. The real issues are about, “Why do we not have a proper forensic approach to domestic abuse?” We do not have that. The whole idea of placing controlling and coercive behaviour and the model that I have identified at the forefront of the thinking is to achieve a proper forensic approach. We will not have this woolly attitude and people saying, “That’s not proper abuse,” and basing stuff on myths and so forth.
Laura Farris
Q
Clare Wade: First of all, there were only two cases in the actual sample that came within the “rough sex” category: gross negligence manslaughter and unlawful act manslaughter. In one of those cases, culpability was levelled at category C, so around the middle, and in the other at category B, so higher culpability.
I said that those cases should always involve higher culpability, because the risks of some of the behaviour, in particular with strangulation—while that was not apparent in the cases that we looked at—are high. At the moment, the law distinguishes between “obvious” and “high”, and my view is that this is just a legal nicety when you are talking about strangling or choking somebody. All the experts will say—
Laura Farris
Q
Clare Wade: No, it is not. The court is always constrained in terms of section 36 applications and referrals. They are always constrained by what evidence was before the sentencing court. There was found to be this distinction between “obvious” and “high”, and I am not sure that can exist.
My view is that we need to look at everything, and look at society as a victim. We need to dismantle the cultural scaffolding that goes with some of this offending, if we are really going to tackle domestic homicide. There is such a resonance with other harms. Even the harm of overkill, which is about obliterating women’s bodies because of anger and the motivation to kill and so forth, is apparent in strangulation. It was very important to look at that.
Laura Farris
Q
Clare Wade: It is a source of tension. The Sentencing Council has also said that the cases are decided on their own facts. I would agree that a real tension is there. In only one of the cases that we looked at did the sentencing judge find that it was high culpability.
Laura Farris
Q
Clare Wade: Yes, there was another one that was category C—given that there were two cases, 50% of them were category C.
The review is probably the first document that brings into consideration the current thinking of academics, campaigners, specialists and doctors. There has been a lot of research done, for example, by Dr Cath White on strangulation. It brings it all into play, and we are trying to have a coherent approach. The beauty—if I can call it that—of using the coercive control model, is that it gives us that. As I said before, ultimately we want a proper forensic approach to domestic abuse in criminal law.
My view is that that approach is lacking at the moment, and that is why we struggle. That is why there is seeming injustice, for example, when a minority of women kill their abusive partners. They do not always get justice, as some of the research shows. Only by having that proper forensic approach across the board will we be able to change things. That is important.
The other point is that the Sentencing Council is conducting its own review—I have not seen all the cases it looked at—and what applies to that applies to my review as well: sentencing comments in themselves are an imperfect way of measuring everything that underpins these cases.
Laura Farris
Q
Clare Wade: The victim cannot give evidence. If you are looking at sentencing comments, you are not looking at the evidence in the case. Take the two cases with which we started the review, those of Ellie Gould and, in particular, Poppy Devey Waterhouse—the review was initiated by the campaign on those cases. I was able to look at the prosecution case files and see that some of the factors we were able to identify in looking at the evidence were apparent in those cases.
In one of the cases, there was some stalking; in both cases, the killing happened at the end of the relationship where the victim wanted to leave the relationship; there was a little bit of violence. We found those factors, but they were not necessarily apparent from the sentencing remarks—one had to look at the papers through the coercive control prism to be able to identify them. Looking only at sentencing remarks is an imperfect way of looking at all these cases. That is why I welcome the Law Commission looking at the issue of defences.
Alex Cunningham
Q
Clare Wade: I would obviously welcome that. We have had some very high-profile cases where police officers have committed dreadful offences. Public confidence, particularly the confidence of women, needs to be restored in policing, so I would welcome that transparency.
I suppose there is an underlying cohesion in some of what we say. For example, one of the questions that we wanted to answer in the review is how domestic homicides sit and fit with misogynistic killings of women generally. I hope that by identifying the real harms and placing them at the forefront of the law, we are able to show that. That goes back to some of the things we were saying a moment ago, namely that strangulation is a particular harm. It is pertinent to domestic killings, as we identified in the review, but it is also something that happens in other misogynistic killings of women. It is important to not just be able to isolate domestic killings of women, but have a policy that encompasses the misogyny that underpins some of the awful offences we have seen in the last few years.
Criminal Justice Bill (Third sitting)
Laura Farris ExcerptsThursday 14th December 2023
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 View all Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 12 December 2023 - (12 Dec 2023)
Alex Norris
Q
Nick Smart: The purpose of vetting is to make sure that the right people get into the organisation. There is certainly a reputational risk in having the wrong officers in the organisation; we have seen the damage it can do to trust and confidence in the police service. I believe that the measures that the College of Policing will instigate for licence and vetting units are a positive step to make sure that they adhere to a certain standard.
Having His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary review vetting units as part of its inspections is a sensible way of safeguarding and making sure that they are working effectively. As with any issue, if you want to enhance the vetting it will mean more staff, which will cost more. The current budgets are set, so if you put more people and resources into more robust vetting, which is a sensible idea, something at the other end will have to give, because there is no endless money pit for the police budget.
Yes, we welcome it and we believe that it is the right thing to do. As an observation, an officer is vetted at the time of joining, but you could have repeat vetting at some point during their service, to make sure that they still have the appropriate vetting. Also, when you get promoted to superintendent level, for example, you go to management-level vetting, which is slightly more intrusive. If you are a counter-terrorism officer, you may get some even more enhanced and developed vetting that takes more time and resources. We would welcome more robust vetting, and I think most chief constables would welcome it, but it is a question of resourcing and staffing to make sure that the process is fit for purpose.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Laura Farris)
Q
Nick Smart: In terms of the appeals process?
Laura Farris
In terms of the two things. Do you think that that is the range of tools that they need in order to better manage?
Nick Smart: In terms of the appeals process, having a JR is really expensive and takes time. If the officer is to be dismissed, a JR prolongs the period unnecessarily. An appeals tribunal should be swifter, so if the officer is dismissed the process is more satisfactory for everybody concerned. We believe that this is an appropriate tool for chief constables.
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: It plugs a gap. Previously, officers who were lawfully on premises could not seize knives that were essentially held there—we all have knives in our house—but there are examples of domestic situations in which a knife could be used to commit a heinous offence. This provision allows us to seize that knife if there are reasonable grounds to believe that a criminal act will be committed. We would support this.
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: Basically, yes. There are examples of officers who have attended various incidents, perhaps with people with mental health problems, in domestic situations where knives had been lawfully bought but could be used in a criminal act, and the officers have not been able to seize them properly. Again, where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a criminal act may be committed with a bladed article—a weapon—it is entirely appropriate that we have the power to seize it and stop that from happening.
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: I think it is a reasonable belief rather than a suspicion. Giving that power to our officers is welcome. It comes with the caveat that there is a legitimacy angle. Officers not having to obtain warrants to enter premises presents a big trust and confidence issue for the public, and rightly so. That is where the quality of policing comes in with respect to officers’ guidance, understanding and application, and with respect to His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary making sure that those powers are used appropriately and that there is accountability.
It plugs a gap. For example, we all have an iPhone, and we all have Find My Friends on it. If somebody has lost a bit of tech and the app can pinpoint an address, that, along with other reasonable lines of inquiry, gives the officer the reasonable belief to enter the premises and recover the property. That seems appropriate.
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: Yes, I do. On the scale of reasonable suspicion to reasonable belief, you have to have virtually no doubt that the item is in that property before you enter it. Rather than reasonable suspicion, where you can just have a hunch, there have to be active lines of inquiry based on intelligence to justify a reasonable belief, but if it is there, it is entirely appropriate for an officer to enter and recover a member of the public’s stolen property.
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: I think it gives us the flexibility and dynamism we need to address issues that occur, fight crime, deter crime and reassure the public. In my force, West Yorkshire, public spaces protection orders have been used against nuisance vehicles where individuals have been wolf-whistling at females, so they link to the violence against women and girls agenda and they have been used quite successfully. Our power to create PSPOs is entirely appropriate in the circumstances and is very welcome.
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: Again, it relates to the accountability for everybody’s actions. It is not just older people who commit antisocial behaviour; it is often youth-related and it is linked to families. We welcome the provision allowing social housing providers to remove nuisance tenants, but we understand that they have an obligation to rehouse them, so it is not just about moving them from one place to another and the same behaviour happening. There has to be community safety partnership work to ensure that there is the health, education and social care provision to change their behaviour. Otherwise, you are just displacing the problem from one area to another.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Q
Nick Smart: On the powers, possession with intent is a really useful operational tool for officers. It is similar to firearms legislation, in which there is an offence of possession of firearms with intent to endanger life. Having an offence for knives with a similar intent is welcome. We have seen gangs taunting each other with knives on social media, on podcasts and things like that. Possession with intent is a welcome operational tool, used in line with intelligence and obviously monitored with the usual safeguards. Operationally it is very welcome, and if it saves lives we are all for it.
The Chair
Q
Nick Smart: If I may, there is one item—the powers of entry—which I think you alluded to. An issue that we looked at was that of immediacy. Section 18 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 allows the police to search after arrest, and that requires an inspector’s authority. In certain circumstances, if the inspector is not available or there is a policing need, the constable can go in and get retrospective authority.
In the circumstances outlined in the Bill’s powers of entry, nothing in there regards that immediacy. If the officer at the time needs to go in to recover the property but cannot get hold of the inspector—for example, if the inspector is in custody dealing with a review, or they are dealing with a complaint or a critical incident, and because they need to review what is going on and then give that authority—it would be helpful to have that provision in so that the officer can seek that respective authority from the inspector as per section 18 of PACE. The precedent is there, but a provision would tackle immediacy—
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: Absolutely. I think in 99% of the cases the inspector’s authority would be granted.
Laura Farris
Q
Nick Smart: There is always the potential when you go through somebody’s door without a warrant for that. I think Andy Cooke from HMIC said that mistakes will be made. However, if there is a genuine belief that you are at a property, you have somebody with a mobile phone, they have seen you and you think that they will run out the back door of the property, or try to hide or destroy that property, you must wait for the inspector to give you the authority. That gives the individual time to act and potentially lose, damage, alter or destroy that property, so that when you go through the door you do not find it for whatever reason. It is an observation; we are not saying that it should be in there, but it is a consideration. As I say, the precedent is there in section 18 of PACE, which I think certainly we, and HMIC, would say has not been abused over time.
The Chair
Thank you for your evidence. If there is anything you would like to add or that you feel you have missed when you go back on the tube, you can always write to the Clerk.
Examination of Witnesses
Councillor Sue Woolley, Emily Spurrell and David Lloyd gave evidence.
Alex Norris
Q
Emily Spurrell: From my point of view, if the system was working as it should—again, I am reflecting on my own experience in Merseyside—you should all be talking about the same things anyway. When I look at my CSPs in Merseyside, if they are not all talking about serious organised crime, something has gone wrong. They are all talking about it, because it is an issue in all their areas. There will be some really specific issues that I think CSPs need to be able to look at but, generally speaking, if they are not talking about those issues, something else has gone wrong further upstream. It could be helpful to put this in because then, as David says, there is a reminder that you need that connection. The reality is that if they are not really talking about those things, there are bigger issues at play, in terms of why those same priorities are not being picked up.
Councillor Sue Woolley: I think that if at all possible, when you have partners around a table and they are equal partners, that is a conducive way to good practice and working. I am quite sure that works really well in some places. In my own area, that works particularly well. All partners are equal around the table; everybody works together. I am quite sure that in other areas, that bond may not be as strong. Rather than just legislating for something, I would suggest that, if at all possible, there could be something around a duty to work together. You will know the language better than me.
Emily Spurrell: That actually already exists for PCCs. It is within our duty to work in partnership as well.
Laura Farris
Q
David Lloyd: We of course hold the chief constable to account in a variety of ways and in different places. Realising that there is a duty of candour is another part of the armoury, because it is something that we can push back. I know that this was very much part of the post-Hillsborough legacy. Clearly, that whole lack of candour was one of the things that went wrong. We are good at holding the chiefs to account, and it should happen locally. With this extra duty there, it is something that we will need to be reminded about—it is helpful for us to be reminded that there is a duty of candour—but we can then ask those questions as well.
Laura Farris
Q
David Lloyd: Clearly, there are people who are homeless, who are also almost aggressively begging; there are people on the streets who are aggressively begging, and are almost aggressively homeless, if that does not sound like a strange thing to say. However, I think we do need a great deal of care. I suspect that the vast majority of people who are homeless on the streets would not be seen as committing a criminal offence by any court, police officer or PCC. They require care and a way of ensuring that any drug and alcohol addiction or mental health issues are supported. It is a difficult area.
Laura Farris
Q
David Lloyd: I think there is a distinction. We have heard evidence, and I am sure that you have heard evidence, of people sleeping in doorways who cannot be moved on by the local authority and there is nothing that can be done.
I suppose my real concern within this is that, especially as budgets get tighter and tighter, the duty around homelessness may change from being a duty on the local authority to a police issue. I do not think that that would be overly helpful if it were not structured in the right way—that it is seen that the principal duty is on the local authority rather than it being a policing issue. I think that there is a real danger of getting to the point that the police need to pick this up. Clearly, policing is not going to be able to deal with anything other than the very sharp and focused bit about this moment; there is far more to it than just this moment.
Laura Farris
Councillor Woolley, given your role, do you have a view on that?
Councillor Sue Woolley: I think we have to be very careful that we do not unnecessarily criminalise rough sleeping. As you are probably aware, through their various services, councils work very closely with those people that might be rough sleeping. There is a combination of rough sleeping and begging.
If we go down the road of criminalising something, then we run the risk of not being able to support those people and the one thing that we do want to do as a society is to support those people. I would just play back that, during covid, we got those people off the street. When we got them off the street, we were able to put services in for them and work with them. I would love to see that happen again. However, we do have a cohort of those who engage in nuisance begging, and we also have a situation of organised gangs sitting behind those who are begging. It is not a black and white answer at all.
Laura Farris
Q
Emily Spurrell: I think it would be useful. We obviously already have the community trigger process in place at the minute, where if someone is dissatisfied with the response from the local authority, they can ask for a review from the PCC’s office to check whether the process was followed sufficiently. I think there are challenges around that in terms of public awareness; I do not think we are seeing huge numbers of that in some areas because much of the public are not aware that that is an option.
It comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning: it is not about the PCC trying to instruct or direct; it is about being able to have the powers to question, challenge and say, “As a partnership, are we doing enough to tackle this issue?” There will be times when actually it will be the police that need to step up in that response, but there will also be times when the local authority have not made a good enough response to that particular incident. It is about having someone who has the power to take another look and say, “Actually, I think we have missed something here. How do we put that right?” and then giving reassurance and saying, “Actually, the local authority or the partnership have done everything possible and there is no more that we can do.” It is a helpful check, and it probably is just an expansion of what we already do at the minute around the community trigger.
Laura Farris
Q
Emily Spurrell: It is a step in the right direction, yes. It is useful just to ensure that those victims of ASB are not dismissed as low level and are considered. We do see incidents where, if victims of ASB are not taken seriously at that first stage, things can escalate and become quite serious, so it is important that victims feel as though they have been heard and that everyone is working towards trying to find a solution, which is not always the case.
The Chair
Q
David Lloyd: I am broadly supportive of the Bill. I am particularly interested in suspending short custodial sentences. I think that makes a great deal of sense and I would highly recommend that. I have covered the piece on nuisance begging and rough sleeping that I was interested in. As a real victims champion and someone who has pushed hard on violence against women and girls since 2012, the aggravating factor for murder at the end of a relationship and MAPPA for controlling and coercive behaviour is something that, again, I highly commend and think that we need to do.
The other thing I picked up from the earlier session was the question around vetting. We need to just consider whether we need to, in many ways, vet to values. We are clearly doing it more and more in our recruitment process, but it strikes me that there are very few officers who have met the criminal threshold and therefore are likely to have on their file a criminal conviction. That does not mean to say that we do not have misogynists or racists or homophobes within the organisations. We have much to do around that. We need to just think about what else we might be able to do to vet to values, so that we make sure we have police forces that are fit for the public. I think that the very vast majority are fit, by the way—I am not suggesting for one moment that they are anything other than that—but we might want to look at that quite closely.
Emily Spurrell: I echo some of what David said there about some of those challenges. To go back to the begging point, which is a wider issue and I know that it is linked with what is going through to the Sentencing Bill, there is a real emphasis and a real push to try to reduce the number of short-term sentences and we want more people in the community. I worry whether some of the provisions for the Criminal Justice Bill, such as the aggressive begging provisions, will actually see an increase in that, which is not what we want, and the two will work counter to each other. I would just say to be mindful around that.
As for some of the bits that David alluded to around vetting and some of the work that is under way to try and increase trust and confidence, there is probably scope to go further. I know there is work being done. The Mayor of London has been quite keen to push some of that and I think he has been working with Harriet Harman on an additional level of scrutiny around the ability to dismiss officers who have been convicted of serious criminal offences and more flexibility around pension forfeiture, for example. There is more scope to do more around that building of trust and confidence within policing in terms of that scrutiny.
Around the vetting, there is work under way. I am aware that there is a national project to try and increase vetting. Echoing what the superintendent said in the previous session, trying to make sure that there is that regular touch base, particularly when officers are crossing forces, is really helpful.
The only other thing I will say around that is that the big challenge we face is around how long these things are taking. It would not matter so much that people were going through a process if it was resolved quickly. Instead, we see some of the examples the superintendent was referring to, where officers accused of gross misconduct sit for years waiting for an outcome and then it gets an NFA or gets downgraded. There is a real challenge here around capacity in the system, both internally in professional standards and with the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and how we can speed up those processes so that we have a robust system that is not taking up so much time and taking officers off the streets.
My only other comment would be in relation to the introduction of the express power for the courts to direct prisoners to attend their sentencing hearings. You will obviously be aware that this came up quite strongly after Olivia was murdered on Merseyside and her family have been very clear about the insult to her mum and her family when the offender did not turn up to hear the victim’s personal statement. I really welcome this, notwithstanding some of the logistical challenges, because it is a really welcome change: offenders should be expected to listen to the impact of their crimes on their victims and their families.
Councillor Sue Woolley: Very briefly, and following on from the point that Emily just made, I would just make a point about the capacity issue, particularly around child sexual abuse reporting. We must be very careful that justice needs to be seen to be swift. What has been shown with various reports on child sexual abuse is that reports have been made but it is taking too long for those individuals—those young people—to be supported when they have then been taken through a process.
Therefore, although it is laudable and the right thing to do to ensure that reports are made in a timely fashion, let us make sure that we have the capacity at the other end to be able to support those young people.
Laura Farris
Q
Mark Fairhurst: Judges have always had the discretion to order a defendant into the dock. When we used to run a court in the ’90s, there was many a time that we would have used force on a prisoner to get them in front of a judge. That discretion has always been there. It is the right way to do things—we are best suited to decide when it is appropriate and proportionate to use force.
I would like to see dialogue between the staff in the courts and the judge because, if the prisoner is being extremely violent or aggressive, I do not think sitting them in front of a judge is the right way to do things. Maybe we could do it remotely, in a secure room, so the victim still has the opportunity to read out their impact statement, rather than proceedings being disrupted—when you do things remotely, you have the ability to mute. We could still force the prisoner to address those victims, and the victims would feel as if they were getting some sort of justice.
Laura Farris
Q
Mark Fairhurst: Yes, there have been some really high-profile cases over the past couple of months in particular. It does seem to be a trend, because there is no deterrent. If you are already getting a lengthy sentence, then really, in your eyes, as the perpetrator of the crime, you are untouchable.
As well as sentencing people for failing to appear, maybe we need to look at what we can do when they are serving their sentence. What privileges can we take off them? Can we stop them getting face-to-face visits from family and friends, or force them to do the visits remotely, as a consequence of their actions? Let’s take some privileges off them while they are serving their sentence so it really hits them hard, and so that people think that justice is actually being served—“You are not untouchable, and we are going to affect the way you serve your sentence.”
The Chair
Q
Mark Fairhurst: There is just one concern in particular with this Bill, where you are forcing serious offenders —particularly sexual offenders—to serve their entire sentence.
Laura Farris
That is in the Sentencing Bill.
Mark Fairhurst: Usually, they get released at the two-thirds point for good behaviour. If there is no incentive to behave in prison, that could have a knock-on effect on staff. Also, if you force someone to serve their entire sentence, we must remember that they are no longer subject to a licence in the community, so there is no supervision for them when they are released after serving their entire sentence. That is another consideration.
The Chair
Thank you very much for your contribution, and have a good day.
Mark Fairhurst: Thank you very much, everyone.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Scott Mann.)
Criminal Justice Bill (Second sitting)
Laura Farris ExcerptsTuesday 12th December 2023
(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Alex Norris
Q
Rebecca Bryant: Yes. I would like to bust a few myths, if that is possible while giving evidence. There is a perception in the media and the community that young people are the main perpetrators of antisocial behaviour when, in fact, they are not: the vast majority of antisocial behaviour is perpetrated by adults.
In focusing on young people, we should be thinking about how they are impacted by antisocial behaviour. They are often victims. You will have seen terrible films on TikTok and social media outlets of fights, violence and aggression. That means that those young people are victims rather than perpetrators as a whole. We certainly need to recognise that if we can get in early and use the early intervention and prevention tools available to us to stop the antisocial behaviour or stop those young people becoming antisocial, we will be able to reduce antisocial behaviour as a whole.
Antisocial behaviour is often a precursor to more serious crime, so if we can use our opportunity—I call it a “golden moment”—to intervene with a young person, perhaps with an alternative trusted adult from outside the home, and work with them to understand the impact of the behaviour that they may be perpetrating, that in itself does not fall into the idea that we should be reducing the CPN to the age of 10.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Laura Farris)
Q
Harvey Redgrave: I am in favour of this measure. I think it was used relatively effectively under the last Labour Government in relation to prolific offenders. [Interruption.] Sorry, do I need to speak a bit louder?
The Chair
Please try to speak up a bit.
Harvey Redgrave: I am in favour of the measure. It is right to test more offenders, particularly prolific offenders, many of whom are driven by addiction. The more we can divert offenders into treatment to address their offending behaviour, the better. I think there needs to be a broader look at how we deal with prolific offenders who recycle around the system sometimes tens or hundreds of times before they stop their offending. There used to be something called the prolific and other priority offenders programme, which was disbanded along with the whole infrastructure around it.
There is a need to place this drug-testing measure within a broader set of interventions that look at how we grip prolific offenders, how judges are able to defer sentencing, and how offenders are able to be rehabilitated and dealt with much earlier on rather than them serving short sentences, coming out, reoffending and going back in at great expense to the taxpayer.
Laura Farris
Q
The other question I wanted to ask is about Crest Advisory’s role in Baroness Casey’s review—again, if you were not personally involved in that, you can correct me. I think Crest Advisory played some role in supporting her review into the misconduct issues in the Met police, and there are two provisions in this Bill that at least partially respond to that. I would like to look at clause 73, which is on ethical policing and the duty of candour. In the light of your work with Baroness Casey, do you think it is important, and if so why? What does it answer in relation to her findings about failings in the Metropolitan police?
Harvey Redgrave: To clarify, some of my team at Crest Advisory were seconded in to support Baroness Casey on her review, but obviously she led the review and wrote it herself. It is really important that we look at the ethics and systems around misconduct within policing. There is a crisis of public confidence in policing at the moment, particularly among women. The Commissioner of the Met has spoken repeatedly about wanting to have more say and control over getting rid of officers when there are cases of misconduct, and I think the Government have acted on some of that.
I support the measure, but I would argue that there is a case for going even further and looking at the whole system around vetting and how that takes place within policing, and the system of who really upholds the professional standards within policing. Which body do we hold responsible—the College of Policing, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, or the Home Office? It feels to me like there is a slight lack of clarity at the moment about where the buck stops on some of this at a national level, with each force able to adopt slightly different practices.
Laura Farris
Q
Harvey Redgrave: I think that it is helpful and is a welcome step, but I am not sure that, in isolation, it will be enough to bring about the kind of culture change that Baroness Casey believes is necessary, within not just the Met but policing as a whole.
Laura Farris
Q
Harvey Redgrave: It comes back to the question of whether the chief constable should have more discretion over being able to hire and fire people, and to be able to get rid of people they are unhappy with. We have created systems and processes over the last 20 or 30 years that have taken some of that discretion away. It is a balance, and we need proper professional standards to be upheld by the College of Policing. In general, I think it a good thing for there to be greater discretion for chief constables to be able to act when they believe there is misconduct within their force.
Laura Farris
Q
We heard from the Crown Prosecution Service this morning, and it said that it did not think such an offence was necessary because the mechanics of an assault charge apply anyway—obviously, with actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm, if that should arise. There is also a statutory aggravating factor for assaulting a retail worker. Do you have a view on this? If you do, could you set out what it is and why?
Harvey Redgrave: Shoplifting is a real concern and we need some deterrents in the system, but I am not sure that we get those deterrents through harsher sentencing. A bigger problem is whether we are catching offenders, charging them, and convicting them. All the evidence shows that for this type of offending, it is swiftness and certainty that deter rather than severity. Not many shoplifters are thinking about aggravating factors or how long they are going to spend in prison.
Laura Farris
Q
Harvey Redgrave: In general, the Bill probably focuses too much on sentence lengths and not enough on what is happening at the front end, around the police’s ability to catch, detain and bring offenders to justice. That is where I think the real gap is.
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
Q
Rebecca, thank you for joining us this afternoon. In response to the shadow Minister, you raised questions about reducing the minimum age for community protection notices from 16 to 10, which is enclosed within clause 67 of the Bill. Do you agree that bringing 10 to 15-year-olds into the scope of CPNs provides an opportunity to halt a path into criminality that might otherwise occur? Combined with that, there is an opportunity to make other interventions to try to prevent the young person from getting into crime.
Rebecca Bryant: It is using a hammer to crack a nut. For 10 and 11-year-olds in particular who are on the cusp of causing antisocial behaviour, there are many other tools available to partners. I am not necessarily thinking about fining parents, because a lot of the young people who are involved in antisocial behaviour come from more deprived backgrounds, and breaching and fining is not going to enable change.
What we are looking for is a change of behaviour in the longer term. Yes, we are looking to prevent in the first instance, but then we look for change. Being able to engage with a young person and their parents by putting in positive mentoring and other youth interventions would surely have longer term success than a community protection notice would have. Also, there is a community protection warning before a notice; that kind of warning and discussion between a parent, a child and the authorities, which could be the housing provider, the local authority or the police, has much more impact when you are offering a positive intervention.
Laura Farris
Q
Andy Marsh: To explain the process, when a complaint is raised, internally and externally, the chief constable will have a delegated appropriate authority, which tends to be the deputy chief constable. They will have a pretty much weekly meeting, but sometimes it is a real-time daily meeting if something crops up that they need to consider.
The first thing that would happen is that a complaint would reach a threshold of gross misconduct or, indeed, criminal. Once it has reached that threshold, the deputy chief constable—the delegated appropriate authority—needs to make a decision about what should happen to that person. Should they be suspended? Can they continue with their duties? Should they engage in some degree of protected-type duty? What I can say, from my experience of working with police forces across England and Wales, is that the threshold and the tolerance before suspension has dropped substantially.
Laura Farris
Q
Andy Marsh: No, I am not expressing it clearly, because if it would appear to be a substantial complaint—a complaint which would undermine the trust and confidence of the public should that officer remain serving—then they should be suspended. Actually, I can reassure you, in all the cases that I am aware of and that I look at where there are allegations of violence against women and girls, I see a very low threshold for suspension, so if I have misled you at all, I am sorry.
Laura Farris
Q
Andy Marsh: Then they are very likely to be suspended, and I am really happy to write to the Committee and share the guidance and information—
Laura Farris
Q
Andy Marsh: It is very low. If I was accused of any form of domestic abuse, verbal or physical, or coercive control, I can guarantee you that I would be suspended.
Alex Cunningham
Q
Andy Marsh: In explaining this, I am in no way seeking to justify a lack of attention, but when a call is made to a police control room, they will triage it and they will use something called a threat, harm and risk matrix. If the offender has left the scene and no one is at immediate risk, that is unlikely to secure an immediate deployment. There is more likely to be a follow-up investigation. The retail crime action plan and guidance on our website, and all the focus on the use of images and facial recognition and on persistent offenders, is bringing a much sharper focus to an area of standards and police response that has slipped to an unacceptably low level.
Alex Cunningham
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I think they probably need to be strengthened quite a lot. I do not think there is anything in there that could criminalise somebody who provided a means for doing it as opposed to encouraging it. So if someone provides—I do not know—a knife or some drugs, I am not sure there is provision for that, and I think that is a big miss. This is a really worrying area and we need to legislate, and that is one of the good things in the Bill.
Laura Farris
Q
In that context, coercive control is making its way through in different forms. I have a narrow question about what you thought about the use of MAPPA—multi-agency public protection arrangements—in relation to the management of a serious coercive control offence.
Dame Vera Baird: I think it is good to state that formally. I am sure that it happens now quite a lot.
Laura Farris
Q
Dame Vera Baird: It is a strict regime and it is very carefully managed. The probation service is aware of the high level of risk. It is definitely beneficial for dangerous offenders, and the probation service has recognised domestic abusers. Even when they have not committed domestic abuse offences, it still recognised them as presenting that danger, if they are already in MAPPA. I am sure that the most coercively controlling offenders already go into MAPPA. It is not a closed box that you can only fight your way into through these five categories of offending. It is much wider than that, but let’s do it—fine.
Laura Farris
Q
Dame Vera Baird: That is a very interesting question, but they are better and they have positive bits to them, don’t they?
Laura Farris
A DAPO does allow GPS monitoring, for example.
Dame Vera Baird: That is an improvement on the current model. There will have to be close working between those who apply for the DAPOs and those who are running MAPPA to make sure that there is no overlap or missing bits and so forth. This cross-boundary working is going to be particularly important with that. But they are both good steps. I do think MAPPA is slightly redundant, but let us do it, and the DAPOs and those positive requirements are definitely a big step forward. What you said about the statutory instrument is really interesting—
Laura Farris
Lord Bellamy, today in the Lords—
Dame Vera Baird: Yes, that is really good to hear, but these are going into statute. Why is the protection for women only going into a statutory instrument, which frankly fewer people will ever get to know about? Why is it being done in that way? Why is it not in here with these?
Laura Farris
I will have to revert to the Committee on the answer to that, because I actually do not know.
Dame Vera Baird: Anyway, I am not supposed to ask you questions—[Laughter.]
Laura Farris
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I think it is bound to, yes. I have felt since their inception that DAPOs, because of those positive requirements, were likelier to be more effective than just the negative nature of whatever they were called—I forget what they are called currently.
MAPPA is an effective mechanism. You raise very interesting questions about how they will interact, and I just think it is about cross-working, really, between police and probation in particular. They have to work in IOM anyway, so they must have ways of working together that ought to be reasonably effective. But I hope that you will, as it were, as a Government draw to their attention the need for an understanding of how those mechanisms will work together, because that would be an important way to point out that it needs to be done effectively.
Alex Cunningham
Q
Jonathan Hall: No, I do not think so at the moment. I am in constant contact with counter-terrorism police and the Home Office. I am not aware that the Government are looking for yet further types of measure; if they were, I think they would have sought to bring them in within this Criminal Justice Bill. All that this particular measure does is allow an existing measure, polygraphs, to be applied to a wider range of people. My beef with that is that it allows it to be applied to people who have never been convicted of terrorism, without it going in front of a judge. So I think that the answer is no.
Laura Farris
Q
Jonathan Hall: I was in favour of polygraph measures after Fishmongers’ Hall. It was partly on the back of one of my recommendations that polygraph measures were brought in. They always, or at least for a long time, existed for sex offenders. You will recall Usman Khan, who was clearly a very deceptive man. My view was that polygraph measures could be useful.
Laura Farris
Q
Jonathan Hall: Let us say that someone is in the community. They could be asked about their daily routine. The most likely outcome is that someone who is subject to a polygraph measure would feel that they have to tell the truth, and the evidence is that people who are subject to polygraphs make admissions. You could say, “Are you in touch with the well-known terrorist Jonathan Hall?”, and the effect of polygraphs tends to be that people go, “Actually, I am,” because they are worried about giving it away through the polygraph measure. That would give counter-terrorism police an amazing source of information to show that, contrary to what that person had been telling his probation officer, he was still in touch with the dangerous terrorist Jonathan Hall. That would allow new licence conditions, for example: if Jonathan Hall lived in a certain part of Birmingham, a licence condition could be imposed that prevented that person from going there.
Laura Farris
Q
Jonathan Hall: Yes. You are completely right. This is not about extracting evidence that can be used in a criminal trial; it is about extracting information that is relevant to the management of offenders. If you think about a released terrorist offender who is now serving their sentence in the community, what you want to know is what their pattern of life is, who they are meeting, where they are going and what their objectives are. Are they visiting shops that sell knives, for example? Usman Khan must have gone to a shop to buy knives and tape to create the weapons used to kill two people. There are lots of factual matters that they can be asked about.
One of the benefits of the polygraph, I suppose, is that ultimately it is not covert. While MI5 and the police may have covert monitoring, it would be quite hard for them to put that information to the suspect. If the suspect has made an admission—“Yes, I am going to meet Jonathan Hall, the well-known terrorist,” or “Yes, I am going to visit knife shops”—that can be put to the offender, and you can work on rehabilitating the offender.
The Chair
As there are no further questions, I would like to thank the witness for giving evidence.
Criminal Justice Bill (First sitting)
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Chair
Apologies to Vicky: I understand that you could not hear me, down at the bottom. If any Members cannot hear, please raise your hand to let me know and I will endeavour to speak up.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Laura Farris)
Q
Graeme Biggar: No, but let me write to you and the Committee about that.
Vicky Ford
Q
Baljit Ubhey: I think it could be helpful in communicating very specifically. At the moment, there is a specific offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. In addition, there is the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which is old legislation although we still use it for a wide variety of criminality. I take the point, however, that the language of some of the offences under that Act may not be as explicit. We can prosecute spiking, whether it is related to sexual offences or otherwise, but modernising may be helpful.
Laura Farris
Q
Nicole Jacobs: Because it is a multi-agency arrangement and intelligence is brought into that process, it is extremely important that you have monitoring and supervision of an offender. The nature of that is much more active because you have prison parole and the police working together. We have a long-standing view that more offenders of domestic abuse should be monitored and overseen in that way. The last report from His Majesty’s inspectorate of probation showed that about 75,000 people who have committed domestic abuse are supervised in that way, and it probably could be more, considering our numbers.
As I commented earlier, because conviction rates of coercion and controlling behaviour are relatively low, the provisions are welcome and will add people to that list, but it is not the only way in which we are monitoring and overseeing perpetrators in the community. It is very important, but I suppose it is not everything. If it is in legislation, there is a real case to be made for more consistency force by force about arrangements where people are not meeting thresholds of MAPPA, but equally are posing risk to victims who would not be meeting those thresholds or levels. That needs a lot more focus and attention.
Some forces use something called MATAC—multi-agency tasking and co-ordination—where they bring information in not just from the police but all sorts of places. It was pioneered in Northumbria, and several forces’ areas have adopted that. Other force areas will implement something called the Drive Project, which is quite similar. It is essentially recognising that so many perpetrators of domestic abuse will not have even touched the criminal justice system. Only one in five victims will ever even disclose to the police, yet there are people who cause quite high harm.
Those arrangements are taking in wider information from a variety of sources and deciding their resourcing and tasking. Whether or not that is addressed in legislation, we have a real need in general in England and Wales to have a much more uniform and clear approach as to how that is addressed. We often hear people say, “I want to see a perpetrator register.” Well, what people mean by that is this aim to have proper oversight of perpetrators, and it is not quite as simple as putting someone on a list; it really means undertaking these more meaningful multi-agency exercises. We do not have a very consistent approach just yet. There is obviously excellent practice, but we need to see a more comprehensive practice.
Laura Farris
Q
Nicole Jacobs: To some degree—they certainly would catch the ones who are known to the system. We need to do more to ensure that police are confident in the way that they are investigating coercion and controlling behaviour, and we would want to see that. The Government have certainly made efforts to train police forces. I would think most people would agree that that offence is fairly underutilised at the current time. As that grows, and as improvements are made, you will find more people subject to MAPPA.
The more comprehensive win will be having a consistent approach across all forces so that there are other multi-agency arrangements in place for people who have not had convictions and are not subject to MAPPA but represent a huge risk for victims of domestic abuse. We should distinguish between perpetrators who are well known to the system, in relation to conviction, against whom the powers of MAPPA can be used, and people who are lesser known, for whom there are other ways to mitigate risk. For example, Northumbria has MATAC—multi-agency tasking and co-ordination—and it has said that the majority of the people it is tasking and putting resource into do not have convictions and yet are understood by multi-agency partners to pose high risk. That perhaps just means that they are so good at their perpetration and the fear they impose that there has not been support for prosecution and other things. I suppose what I am trying to get across is that conviction is not the only risk factor to keep in mind; there are many, many more.
Laura Farris
Q
Nicole Jacobs: In cases where the chief constable overrules something, the important thing for me is that provision is in place to ensure it is independent. I understand that it would be irregular, but you must consider the background and history of how police misconduct has been mishandled. The Home Affairs Committee, the Casey review and many other people have laid that out; I am obviously not the only one saying that.
There is a lot of evidence that the way these things have been handled over time, including through the vetting of the misconduct itself, has been far from ideal, and has been deprioritised to the point where many victims of domestic abuse are starting to lose faith in the criminal justice system. I find that very troubling. The police should be the first port of call, and yet the fact that there are so many instances of misconduct leads to a deterioration of our confidence in policing. Certainly, that is the case for victims.
Anything you can do to strengthen that would be helpful. Considering the removal of warrant cards is really important. We can see from many sources that that would be effective. Refuge did a freedom of information request that showed that that happens only about 25% of the time in police forces. There should also be suspension from duties for domestic abuse and sexual violence-related offences. One of the most common reasons for police officers to be called to the attention of the Independent Office for Police Conduct is that it has used its powers to pursue sexual misconduct and sexual violence. There are chronic problems, and we have to be more assertive in this Bill about warrant cards and in specifying offences that constitute gross misconduct if there is a conviction. That seems quite reasonable to me.
The vetting needs so much more care and attention. I think right now it is at 10 years; I would say that it needs to be five years, and certainly it should be every time a police officer changes forces. There are things that we can do that we know will fix the chronic problems. I am less comfortable with the idea of a police and crime commissioner getting involved, in relation to a chief constable. I think it should be a more independent body, such as the IOPC, or the inspectorate, just because police and crime commissioners are elected. That was the discomfort I talked about earlier.
Laura Farris
Q
“Reviews of responses to complaints about anti-social behaviour”.
It is that package of measures. Given your work on that, what could you say about that providing adequate coverage of some of the issues that victims have reported to you in the past?
Baroness Newlove: In an antisocial behaviour case review, first and foremost, we have to ensure the victim understands what an antisocial behaviour case review is. However, for those who sit forward to do the review and appeal through the PCC, there should ideally be a chair who is independent. If the notion now is that the review is merely a tick-box exercise and it feels to that victim that they are not involved—as I just said, there is no victim impact statement—an independent person should look at the overall evidence to come to a better conclusion.
It feels like there is an incestuous ring of people making a decision, who, in the first place, do not get the impact of antisocial behaviour. That is the problem with antisocial behaviour; nobody really gets the impact. I welcome anything that makes victims’ lives better, but you can have as many powers as you want, yet if you do not understand the impact on that victim and on that community, they really do not help the victim get through better in life. It ends up being them investigating their own powers.
Laura Farris
Q
Baroness Newlove: I think it is better, but again, it has to be shown that it is independent. More importantly, it has to have the victim’s voice in there. If you do not listen, you do not have that victim’s voice right through the file, or whatever they call it. It ends up being that you really do not understand the impact on the victim. How can you make a decision when you do not have the victim’s voice in there? That feels very much like you are looking at legislation, how you can tick a box or how the powers that be are using the powers. Most importantly, however, you have to bring the victim along and have that voice in there. Then, you really can make a true decision on how you can absolutely solve the problem.
Laura Farris
Q
Baroness Newlove: I have not specifically looked at that. Looking at all the reviews I have done, I have said outside this role that parenting is the most difficult job anybody can do, but you have to be accountable for the actions.
I have concerns: yes, the age is 10, but there could be other areas in which that person is suffering, such as dyslexia or autism. Also, the parents could be suffering domestic abuse. How do you make them pay that fine, at the end of the day? If you go back to that, we had that kind of language in the riots, where we were going to get the parents and take them out of their homes. For me, there has to be accountability, but how would you get that parent, who is probably suffering from domestic abuse or may have mental health and addiction issues, to fully understand the impact that their child is having? They may need support to rectify that. Also, that child could have other issues.
I can see where you are going from that. I welcome anything, but I am just stepping back a little to consider how that would have an impact on the rest of the family to make sure we can get a better solution.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: Well, according to the Office for National Statistics, it is 2.3 million.
Town Centre Safety
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
I am glad to have this opportunity to speak and hope to set the record straight. Forgive me if I do not recognise the counsel of despair emanating from the Opposition Benches. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) invites us to believe that there has been a catalogue of failure and that everything is getting worse, but the facts tell us something different. I do not pretend that everything is perfect—of course we need to protect our town centres and the people who use them, and I will come to all that in a moment—but for all the noise that these debates can generate, we do the public a disservice if we seek to distil everything into a row across the Dispatch Box without sometimes acknowledging the merits of the other side and the meaningful progress they have sometimes made.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
On that conciliatory note, could we all just pay tribute to what the police do, because they are the focus of the debate? They put on the uniform in the morning and say goodbye to their loved ones not knowing how their day is going to turn out. As we argue about where things should go in future, perhaps we can all agree that they do such an important job for our society and that we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
Laura Farris
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I accept without reservation that there is considerable courage and selflessness in being a first responder whose job and duty is to run towards danger when everybody else is running away from it.
Let me begin with the simplest facts. Since 2010, neighbourhood crime—the crimes that undermine the fabric of communities and make people feel unsafe in their homes and on their local streets—has fallen. The crime survey for England and Wales, which the Office for National Statistics described as
“the best estimate of long-term trends in crimes against the household population”,
shows that since 2010 overall crime levels are down by more than 50%. Violent crimes as a whole, which include crimes that involve any form of offensive weapon, are down by 52%. Theft overall, which includes domestic burglary and the theft of a vehicle—some of the most invasive thefts that go directly to a person’s sense of personal security—has almost halved since we came into office. Domestic burglary currently stands at its lowest ever level.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister accept that the workplace is a personal place for those who work there? The Co-op Group has reported that in the year to date some 300,000 incidents of abuse and violence have taken place in shops up and down the country. Employees who are just there to sell to the public in their community are the victims of abuse and, in some cases, violence, but the police do not even turn up to 76% of reports, so how can people feel safe going to work?
Laura Farris
I will come specifically to shop workers. I have no difference of opinion with the Opposition on the points about the role of shop workers and some of the issues that affect them personally, and I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I will come to that.
There are today more police officers in England and Wales than at any other point in our nation’s history—
Laura Farris
If I could just finish my sentence, I will of course give way to the hon. Lady. The most recent figures we have are from March 2023, when the figure for police offices in England and Wales was 149,566. It has never been higher. With that, I give way.
Jess Phillips
I wonder whether the Minister can provide the per capita of population figures.
Laura Farris
I do not have that figure, so I will have to write to the hon. Lady.
It is right that decisions about how police resources are deployed, including the number and composition of people in neighbourhood and local policing roles, are for the determination of chief constables, who know their beat better than anyone and are accountable to democratically elected police and crime commissioners. Nevertheless, the numbers have a broader significance, and I want to draw the Opposition’s attention to four points.
First, due to the investment in the police uplift programme, the number of police officers in local policing roles is the highest since comparable data began to be collected, with an increase of 6.5% in the 12 months to 31 March. We have more female officers and more officers from minority ethnic backgrounds than ever before—something that I hope the hon. Member for Nottingham North will agree is consistent with some of the conclusions that were certainly implied, if not made explicit, on the nature of representation in Baroness Casey’s report into conduct in the Metropolitan police.
We have more officers receiving specialist training for specific categories of crime. I will give the House one example, because yesterday I visited Avon and Somerset Police, the pioneering force conducting Operation Soteria Bluestone in the investigation of rape. They made it perfectly clear to me that the increase in numbers that they have seen locally has facilitated a huge increase in the number of specialist trained rape and serious sexual offences police officers. In fact, there are 2,000 nationwide. I noted that the hon. Gentleman said that we were setting the police up to fail. That could not be more different from the information that that force gave me yesterday—and if they are incorrect, I would appreciate it if he would explain why when he closes.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I put on record my support for the police, particularly Thames Valley Police—like the Minister, I represent a constituency in Berkshire. Can she update the House on the proportion of new officers who are still in training? It seems to be a very serious issue in Reading and the surrounding areas that, while officers have been recruited, they are still in training, as opposed to the fully trained and experienced officers who were lost through austerity.
Laura Farris
The hon. Gentleman asks a fair question, and I will have to get back to him on that. I know that the number in my part of the Thames Valley is quite low, but that may not extend to Reading. He deserves an answer on that, and I will get one to him.
The Government have also ensured that the police have the resources they need. This year they received record funding of above £17.2 billion. That is an extra £550 million for frontline policing compared with last year. I gently remind those on the Opposition Benches that they voted against our police funding settlements every single year between 2016 and 2019.
I want to draw our attention down to community level and make a few observations. We have had a commitment from the National Police Chiefs’ Council—it was announced in August, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North will recall—that the police will follow up on all reasonable lines of inquiry and that there is no offence too small. That commitment is intended to offer huge reassurance to the public. It was also this Government who introduced the safer streets fund, which has been in receipt of £120 million already, for 270 projects covering all 43 police forces in England and Wales, and which is complemented by the StreetSafe app.
All that kind of thing can seem quite microscopic, as though it only affects individual streets or individual parks, reporting a broken light or a dark and dangerous corner of a popular area for jogging. The point is that people can report the area and action will be taken, and all that contributes to improving the fabric of communities up and down the United Kingdom.
I want to spend a moment on retail crime, which I will deal with in two parts: first I will cover shoplifting itself, and then I will move on to assault on retail workers. I take issue, very respectfully, with the suggestion that somehow the Government are being complacent in shoplifting. The Government are clear that we expect the police to take a zero-tolerance approach to shoplifting and violence towards shop workers. I want to disabuse anyone of the notion that somehow we have decriminalised shoplifting offences below £200.
I gently draw the shadow Minister’s attention to the following. In 2020, the National Business Crime Centre surveyed police forces in England and Wales, asking whether they had a policy of not responding to shoplifting if the goods were worth less than £200. Not one force in England and Wales said that it had such a policy. He will know as well as I do that the National Police Chiefs’ Council recently produced a retail crime action plan, which included a commitment to prioritise police attendance at the scene where violence had been used against shop staff.
Jim McMahon
I accept the explanation that it is not a written policy, but how does the Minister explain that in 76% of the 300,000 sample cases, the police did not turn up?
Laura Farris
It is difficult for me to identify every single complaint and whether somebody has attended, but one thing I think is relevant is that the increase in shoplifting that we have regrettably seen over the past 12 months has been met by a corresponding and equivalent increase in the volume of charges for shoplifting offences. Charges are up by 29% in the past 12 months. I gently draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to that.
I want to talk specifically about offences against retail workers. I invite the hon. Member for Nottingham North to answer this point when he closes—it is not put in an aggressive way, because I recognise the role that retail workers perform and it is completely unacceptable that they should be subject to violence in the line of their duties, but it is already unlawful to commit an act of assault. It is criminalised under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Offences against the Person Act 1861.
The hon. Gentleman knows, because we have already had this discussion, that there is a statutory obligation to treat the fact that an individual is a retail worker as an aggravating factor. He has identified the fact that the trade unions support a new law, but I say very respectfully that the judges do not, the Crown Prosecution Service does not and the police forces I have spoken to do not. The practitioners in this area of the law do not support a new law. Even though he has made that point, he has not identified any case where he considers there to have been a miscarriage of justice because the laws were not sufficient to offer protection. It is not enough simply to assert that we need new laws without setting out clearly why the existing statutory protection does not succeed.
Let me now turn to the issue of antisocial behaviour—it is not minor or trivial, and I make no bones about that. It is probably the principal crime that all MPs hear about, irrespective of the constituencies we represent. I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we have taken a range of legislative and non-legislative action. A new antisocial behaviour action plan was introduced earlier this year, backed by £160 million of funding to ensure that our commitments have real teeth. He will be aware of the hotspot patrolling pilot that has been conducted across 10 police forces and is about to be rolled out on a national basis because of its success.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the £2.4 million given to South Yorkshire Police for antisocial behaviour hotspots, including in Maltby and Dinnington, areas in my constituency that are plagued by antisocial behaviour. When I met the police and the police and crime commissioner, they said that that money is making a real difference to getting boots on the ground and on patrols. I thank the Minister for the extra funds to clamp down on antisocial behaviour in Rother Valley.
Laura Farris
It is very heartening to hear that those funds are making a real difference in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
I also draw the shadow Minister’s attention to some of the new teeth, if I may call them that, in the Criminal Justice Bill. He will be aware that we have lowered the minimum age at which a community protection notice can be ordered to 10 years old. That is not just to achieve consistency with other aspects of criminal justice, but because we recognise that in reality quite a lot of antisocial behaviour is committed by those in the age 10 to 16 bracket. That is a common complaint that many in this House will be familiar with.
We have extended police powers to implement a public spaces protection order. I mention that simply because I could not differentiate between that and the respect order that the hon. Gentleman was describing, but it gives the police greater powers for a rapid response. We have also expanded the minimum exclusion period by 50%, from 48 hours to 72 hours, to give authorities more powers to implement dispersal arrangements.
Moving on to our Criminal Justice Bill, I think I noted the shadow Minister’s qualified agreement with at least some of its contents, and certainly those on the Opposition Benches did not vote against it on Second Reading. We respectfully say that the Bill takes the fight to the criminals, introducing new powers to enter premises and seize stolen goods—the example given repeatedly during the debate was of stolen mobile phones, the everyday theft that people endure. It contains new powers on knife crime to seize, retain and destroy a bladed article found on private property, without evidence that it has been used in conjunction with a criminal offence, but where there is a reasonable belief that it may be, and new laws on possession of a knife with intent.
I would add one or two other measures that are just as important to community safety. This Bill, for the first time, recognises coercive control as the cancer of a crime that it is, by putting those convicted of a serious offence in that regard under the multi-agency public protection arrangements and then putting them on the violent and sex offender register.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North was critical of the Criminal Justice Bill, but he neglected to say anything about the Sentencing Bill, which has its Second Reading tomorrow. That Bill will put some of the worst offenders away for longer, so some of the men who maraud on our streets to carry out the most grotesque offences against women—we all know their names—can anticipate a whole-life order without the possibility of parole, even if theirs was a one-off offence. Rapists, who under the last Labour Government served just 50% of their sentence behind bars under section 44 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, can now look forward to spending the entirety of their sentence in custody without the possibility of parole.
Mr Sheerman
I am not sure that I like the language of “taking the fight to the criminals.” The fact of the matter is that we want to deal with criminals in the right way. If only the Minister would look at the injustices of joint enterprise, under which almost 1,000 young people are in prison with long sentences for crimes in which they did not actually physically take the fight to anyone.
Laura Farris
The hon. Gentleman has been a compassionate campaigner on the issue of joint enterprise, and I have listened to him a lot over the years. I know that the matter was considered by the Court of Appeal, and its decision was not consistent with some of his remarks, but that conversation should be continued because it is a developing area of the law.
I will conclude with a quotation from a non-political figure. His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, Andy Cooke, said recently:
“England and Wales are arguably safer than they have ever been.”
I make no apology for ending where I began: neighbourhood crime has fallen by 50% since 2010, and I am proud of that. Of course, we can go further, and we are building and developing police powers, new laws and community measures so that we can get there, protecting the law-abiding majority and cherishing the town centres in our communities by keeping them safe.
Digital Devices: Search Powers at the UK Border
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on securing the debate. I compliment her on her steadfast commitment to the rights of children, and protecting them from sexual exploitation in a range of ways.
I will start with some preliminary observations. First, my hon. Friend presents a compelling case, which I undertake to take back to ministerial colleagues and discuss further. The opportunity represented by inspecting digital devices at the border to increase our ability to tackle and prevent sexual abuse is one that we should take seriously, and it is a key priority for the Government.
I will go through the scale of child sexual abuse, with which she is familiar. The Office for National Statistics estimates that perhaps as many as 7.5% of children in this country will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 16. That is the equivalent of just over 3 million people across England and Wales. Reports from the Internet Watch Foundation show that the fastest-growing age group appearing in online child sexual abuse imagery is seven to 10-year-olds, and the prevalence of the most severe forms has more than doubled since 2010. Not only are children being abused, but these moments of their lives are being captured, uploaded on to the internet and essentially frozen in perpetuity. For them, it is a never-ending cycle of abuse from which they will never escape. The files are not even hidden in hard-to-reach parts of the internet; many can be accessed in just three clicks.
My hon. Friend knows how seriously we take child sexual exploitation in this country. We are the Government who implemented the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. It had a historical focus, but it none the less informs our continuing work.
We also recognise the unique vulnerability of children online. We have tackled that to some extent through the Online Safety Act 2023, which brings companies in scope under legal duties to proactively combat the threat of child sexual abuse on their platforms and to identify, report and remove material. We are now working with the independent regulator Ofcom and the National Crime Agency to implement and operationalise those new powers and duties. However, I do not want to duck my hon. Friend’s wider point, which is that the border provides an important opportunity to apprehend and arrest perpetrators. On occasion, there will be important probative material that would lead a member of Border Force to reasonably suspect that an individual has images on their device that suggest serious criminality and that would give an opportunity for interception.
When people enter or leave our country, we can see where they are going and where they have been. We can create risk profiles based on their movements and note when someone has travelled to multiple locations that are well known for child sex tourism. Under our existing customs powers, Border Force can, without the requirement for reasonable suspicion, check the baggage of people entering and leaving the country. That baggage may include obscene or indecent materials. Notable examples include child and baby-like dolls, which sometime have purpose-built internal sex organs. Specialist Border Force teams are trained to capture this key information, seize materials and arrest where appropriate.
Mrs Latham
I recognise what the Minister is saying, but the gap exists and Border Force needs these powers. It can search bags and pockets, and strip-search individuals, but it cannot look at their phones or devices. That is where the gap lies and if we do not close it, there will be even more children being abused on a regular basis.
Laura Farris
My hon. Friend has accurately pointed out what looks like a lacuna in the law—where physical objects that may be identified in someone’s baggage indicate something, Border Force simply does not have the power to search devices. I have already undertaken to go back to Ministers and discuss that with them.
I reassure my hon. Friend that the Government remain firmly committed to exploring and exercising all potential levers that can be used to safeguard children and bring offenders to justice. We will continue to work across the whole system to ensure that we are doing all we can to tackle this abhorrent crime, and I thank my hon. Friend again for securing this important debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Criminal Justice Bill
Laura Farris ExcerptsTuesday 28th November 2023
(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 View all Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
It is a pleasure to close this important debate on the Second Reading of the Criminal Justice Bill, a Bill that puts public protection and community confidence at its core. It has a strong empirical basis, building on the detailed work undertaken by the Law Commission, by Baroness Casey into misconduct in the Metropolitan police, by Clare Wade KC into domestic homicide and coercive control, and by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
It consolidates the significant progress this Government have made since 2010 and it was disappointing to hear the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, only rely on the statistics from police recorded crime when she knows as well as I do that the Office for National Statistics says that the correct measure is the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which provides—
Laura Farris
I will not because I have little time. That survey provides a more reliable measure of long-term trends than police recorded data.
Laura Farris
If we use the correct measure, the regrettable conclusion for the Opposition is that like-for-like crime is down by 56%.
Laura Farris
Violent crime is down from where it was in 2010 by 52%, and domestic burglaries are down by 57%. If we compare—[Interruption.] If we compare where we were in 2019 to today—
Laura Farris
Domestic abuse, a sensitive category of crime, has fallen between 2019, before the pandemic, to today by 16%. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. Even the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has to understand that the Minister is not giving way.
Yvette Cooper
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister will know that the time is not limited. We do have time and she has named me. I do understand that she has the right not to take an intervention but she will also know that, having named me, as a courtesy to the House, she would normally do so.
Mr Deputy Speaker
That is not strictly a point of order for the Chair. The right hon. Lady understands the procedures extremely well.
Laura Farris
The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) said that this Government have failed in their duty to keep citizens safe. It is regrettable that His Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, Andy Cooke, takes a different view. He has said:
“England and Wales are arguably safer than they have ever been.”
In the limited time I have available, I will address some of the points that came up today. I will respond in writing to those whose speeches I cannot address. Under this Bill, we are taking the fight to serious organised criminals, cutting off their capacity to churn out new firearms, mass-produce illegal drugs and perpetrate fraud with devices using multiple SIM cards. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) elegantly put it, we are designing crime out. We are cracking down on some of the most pernicious harms, which are often hidden from view. We are developing recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, and we are developing the package of measures announced by the Prime Minister in April by creating an obligation in law to treat grooming as an aggravating factor in sentencing.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on the name change measure. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on that issue. I will just pick up on the point about mandatory reporting, which the House will know was the subject of a principal finding and recommendation of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. I hope that the hon. Member for Rotherham agrees that the measure is a good step forward.
I will briefly address two other issues. Making murder at the end of a relationship an aggravating factor, recognising that the moment of maximum danger for many victims is when they tell him finally that they are leaving, is not the only thing we are doing in that space. Yesterday, the Ministry of Justice announced a consultation on whether coercive and controlling behaviour or the use of a knife or weapon that is already on the scene should become aggravating features in any murder case. I pay tribute to Carole Gould and Julie Devey for their campaign on that.
Finally, I will address the point that was raised about whether the measures we are taking adequately answer the findings of Baroness Casey in her report into misconduct in the Metropolitan police and our handling of it. The measures in the Bill are not the only ones we are taking. We are also acting to ensure that any officer who cannot hold appropriate vetting clearance can be removed from office and that a finding of gross misconduct will automatically result in summary dismissal, and we are giving chief constables the right of appeal following a misconduct hearing if the conclusion is that one of their subordinates has not been subject to an adequate sanction.
The depth and breadth of this debate highlights the need to stay ahead of criminal ingenuity through enhanced supervision, interception and disruption, and by cutting criminals off from the tools of their trade. We are developing legal principles that find their roots in the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Online Safety Act 2023. We are cracking down on crime at every level. From antisocial behaviour all the way to serious organised crime, it blights our communities and targets the most vulnerable. I therefore commend this Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Criminal Justice Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Criminal Justice Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on 30 January 2024.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No.83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Scott Mann.)
Question agreed to.
Criminal Justice Bill (Money)
King’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Criminal Justice Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:
(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by a Minister of the Crown, and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Scott Mann.)
Question agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
In the last three years we have passed comprehensive new laws covering everything from domestic abuse and street harassment to online safety. Last year the Government added violence against women to the strategic policing requirement, placing it on equivalent footing to terrorism, and the Home Office’s award-winning Enough campaign is now entering its final phase with a firm focus on tackling perpetrator behaviour being rolled out across colleges and universities.
Julie Marson
I welcome my hon. Friend to her place. I pay tribute to Sandra Conte and her team at Future Living in Hertford for everything they do to support victims of domestic abuse. As a magistrate, I specialised in domestic abuse courts and I am utterly convinced of their value, both for justice and for victims. Will my hon. Friend share her assessment of the initiatives to increase specialisation in court processes for sexual offending and sexual violence?
Laura Farris
The specialist sexual violence support project is now under way in Crown courts in Leeds, Newcastle and Snaresbrook. It is at an early stage but is due to report in early 2025. However, my hon. Friend should be aware that any victim of rape or sexual assault may now take advantage of section 28 procedures, which have been rolled out nationwide to allow people to give their evidence privately and ahead of trial. We are also engaging close to 1,000 independent sexual violence advisers in the system to accompany victims every step of the way through the criminal justice system. As a result, rape prosecutions are higher today than they were in 2010 and sentences are approximately 50% longer.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
Can the Minister tell me how many forces are still not providing domestic abuse training to their officers?
Laura Farris
I do not have that answer. I will have to go back to the Home Office and write to the hon. Member.
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is a privilege to take on this important role. I pass on my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her dedication and commitment. I am looking forward to getting to work.
A shocking new study has found that domestic abusers are controlling the finances of more than 5 million women in the UK. This cannot be allowed to continue. The Government have turned a blind eye to this issue for more than a decade, so what steps is the Minister taking today to tackle economic abuse?
Laura Farris
The hon. Lady and I have worked together a lot on domestic abuse since we were elected. She will know that economic abuse is basically a derivative of coercive control, which Clare Wade KC, in her review of domestic homicide, says underpins almost all domestic abuse. Tomorrow the Criminal Justice Bill has its Second Reading in the House. The Bill will see serious coercive control offences placed under the multi-agency public protection arrangements and offenders placed on the violent sexual and terrorist offender register.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)