Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Lord Sentamu

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I rise to support in particular Amendments 90H, 90J, 90K and 90L. As has been said, they are critical to ensuring that more vulnerable women are not drawn into the criminal justice system through the de facto joint enterprise element of SVROs. Probably like other noble Lords, I was shocked to read the briefing from Agenda, which states that analysis of

“109 joint enterprise cases involving women and girls”

shows that

“there was not a single case in which women and girls had handled a weapon; in 90% of cases they engaged in no violence at all; and in half of the cases they were not even present at the scene of the crime.”

As we have heard, SVROs will mean that women can be given an order based on a single judgment that, on the balance of probability, they “ought to have known” that someone in their company was in possession of a knife. That key phrase, “ought to have known”, is really troubling. Will the Minister consider how this fits in with wider policy, including the female offenders strategy, to limit the number of women serving short sentences and prevent reoffending?

We have a duty to limit unintended consequences. These amendments would do just that.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 90G, 90H and 90J, but I will concentrate on Amendment 90G. I declare an interest: when I was a vicar in Tulse Hill, south London—I was there for 14 years—I was stopped and searched a number of times. I asked the police why, particularly when I did not have my dog collar on because I had gone to B&Q to get some paint to decorate our house. They said that they wanted to make sure that the tins of paint had not been stolen. I had to produce a receipt. I was then let go, but there were other occasions; it was not just a one-off.

I then became the Bishop of Stepney. I had been there for only about 18 months when, one evening, having taken my wife to a selection conference, on my way back, at about 10 pm, on that wonderful hill in London, I was stopped and searched. The man wanted me to open my boot, which I did. As I stood up, he suddenly saw my dog collar and purple shirt and said, “Whoops”.

I was an adviser to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. By the way, it was not the Macpherson inquiry, as people tend to call it. If you look at the book, you will see that it was the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, chaired by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, who died last year.