Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I signed and spoke to related amendments in Committee. I also take a perhaps rare opportunity to congratulate the Minister on a comprehensive and fair Amendment 84 that really addresses the concerns of workers who are particularly low paid and insufficiently respected.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, I note that this demonstrates a hashtag I use often: #campaigningworks. USDAW has done so much work on this over so many years, as has the Institute of Customer Service and its Service with Respect campaign.

I want to ask the Minister two detailed questions. Does this also apply to people providing services over the phone or remotely? I am thinking particularly of Section 16 and threats to kill. It would appear that would also potentially be covered under this. If the Minister wants to write to me later that is fine. I also want to confirm—I think I know the answer but it is worth confirming for the record—that this is an offence committed against a person providing a public service. Will volunteers also be covered under these provisions? Many volunteers provide all kinds of public services and I think that is an important issue.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak in this debate. I declare an interest as a member of USDAW and the Co-operative Party—I wanted to make sure that I did not forget to do that.

I know that it is quite late in the evening, but it is worth us spending a few minutes on something that impacts on millions of people across this country, in every single area of this country, from the smallest and most impoverished communities to the wealthiest. This directly impacts on all of them.

The Minister is quite right in saying that her amendment supersedes mine, and I welcome government Amendment 84. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, will speak to her amendment, and we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. On my amendment, I thank my noble friend Lord Kennedy for pointing out that it is the first time in my life that my comrade has praised the Conservatives for tabling a better amendment than me. On this occasion, he is absolutely right; it is a far superior amendment to the one that I tabled. It is a great tribute to the Minister, who has listened.

We often say that Ministers should listen and need to take account of something. This Minister has actually acted on that and changed the legislation—she has talked to her civil servants. I say this as an example to other Ministers in both Houses: sometimes a Minister has to stand up and say, “This is what the public, the House and the Chamber demands, and this is what common sense says—so change the law and do what people think is right”. Millions of people across the country will see this as something that has taken years of campaigning by people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, my noble friend Lord Kennedy and others. People on all sides have demanded this change.

One thing that we need to emphasise in the amendment that the noble Baroness has put before us is really important. Rightly, much of the emphasis has been on retail workers, and I want to emphasise some of the facts. We have emphasised the fact that the trade union and large retailers of all sorts have come together. But this amendment talks about assaults on those providing a public service; that is a huge expansion of the categories of worker that can be taken into account by those in court, using the aggravating factors before us. That is something that we should reflect on as a Chamber; it is a key change and a massive extension of the number of those workers who will be protected from abuse.

As we sit here in this Chamber at 9.23 pm, there will be people in the remotest part of Cornwall in a village shop, someone collecting tickets on a railway station in a different part of the country—a rural part of Northumberland, for example. There may be somebody on Walworth Road or in Manchester, who will at this time be facing the sort of abuse that we all deplore. We can say to those people that not only have we deplored and understand how horrific it is, we also recognise the responsibility that we have with the other place in legislating to do something about it.

The Minister was right to say that this sends a signal. Of course it does, and that is really important—but it also gives the magistrates and courts the power to say to people who think that they can act with impunity, whether it is in a village shop or a railway station or on a bus, “We are going to use that as an aggravating factor and you are going to receive a stiffer punishment than you otherwise would have done.” That should give people pause.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, was quite right in some of the points he made. However, the important thing for us now—the Minister will know this, and I think the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Bennett mentioned it—is how we ensure that we make this legislation work. How do we give the confidence to somebody, who is often on their own and sometimes not in the first flush of youth, to come forward and report that crime to the police so that those people get taken to court? Often those people will be their own witness. They have to go to the police to report that crime and say, “I’ll go to court” or whatever the process will be. As we move forward with this incredibly welcome piece of legislation, we need to understand how we build that confidence among people. That was one of the things that members of various trade unions as well as USDAW have raised with me. It is about building people’s confidence so that they come forward, are their own witness and report the crime. We must get to a point when the new powers that courts have can be used, because we understand the intimidation.

The Government could do with some good publicity at the moment. I would be ringing this out across the country, not to benefit a Conservative Government but to show that the Government of our country, responding to people across the Chamber, have turned around and said, “We are changing the law and we want people to be aware of the law.” Not only do we want those who act in a criminal way to understand that there is now a punishment that courts can use to deal with them, but, as I say, we want to give confidence to people to come forward.

Many other things could be said but it is important for all of us who have come together as we have to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and to say a big thank you to her again for the changes she and her colleagues have made and the way in which she put that meeting together. This is a strengthening of the law which reflects the seriousness with which the state views these assaults. We will not tolerate it, and the law is saying to people across this country, “We’re going to act, because these people deserve better protection than they’ve had so far.”

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, in my time as a Minister I have had a to-do list in my mind, and included on it was tackling assaults on retail workers and the historic disregards. I am very pleased that in the Bill we will be able to do both, so tonight is a very good night.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for bringing back his amendment and for his obvious commitment to support business owners in areas affected by high crime rates, in particular business owners from diverse communities. In Committee my noble friend Lord Sharpe made it clear that shoplifting offences involving the theft of goods of up to £200 can and should be dealt with by the police as a criminal offence. Section 176 has no bearing on the ability of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute a person for theft from a shop or on the court’s powers to punish offenders.

My noble friend also spoke about a survey conducted by the National Business Crime Centre to ask police forces about the reporting of retail crime. I will repeat what he said, because it is important. He stated that the survey asked

“whether forces had a policy where the monetary value of shop theft determined whether the crime was investigated. Thirty-four out of 43 forces responded … the survey found that no forces used a £200 threshold for making decisions about responding to shoplifting offences.”—[Official Report, 3/11/21; col. 1272.]

I have heard what the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, said today and I understand the concerns about the prevalence of shop theft. I understand in particular the concerns from owners of small businesses, such as small independent shops operating in areas with high crime rates. If the noble Lord is amenable, I would like to meet further with him to discuss it.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Kennedy, for their fulsome support of the government amendment and for repeating the point that we are sending a very strong signal about how seriously we treat this issue. There is more that we are doing. As my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said, prolific shoplifters often have a drug or alcohol dependency, and shoplifting funds this addiction. We need to have the right interventions in place, and the Government’s 10-year drugs strategy, published last week, sets out the Government’s intention to invest in substance misuse treatment, including clear referral pathways for offenders into treatment to reduce the risk of reoffending and help reduce acquisitive crime, including shop theft.