Migrant Crossings: Naval Assets

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to point out that as we approach Brexit we should be mindful of some of the events that might happen around it. We will shortly have a director in post at JMOCC, which I hope gives him some comfort. The nature of a crisis would determine the co-ordination response.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will have seen a report in the Sunday Times that the Government have reduced a promised £22 million towards a public health approach to tackling knife crime to £17 million. Is that where the Home Office found the money to pay the Ministry of Defence? If so, can she explain why the Government see keeping desperate refugees out of the UK a priority over saving the lives of British youngsters on our streets?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, when I saw the article in the Sunday Times, I realised it was wrong. The noble Lord is absolutely right to state that £22 million was committed. It still is committed; £17 million of it has already been allocated. That is not to say that the additional £5 million will not be forthcoming, because it will. In terms of desperate refugees, I think he might be referring to the PNQ that he is about to ask, but these are serious criminals.

Deportation: Jamaica

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Paddick]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to reports that five foreign nationals who were due to be deported to Jamaica have since been reprieved.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases, particularly those subject to ongoing legal proceedings. It may be helpful to know that a number of factors impact on a person’s planned removal from the UK. This does not mean that the original decision to remove the individual was incorrect. If barriers to their removal are resolved and they are not granted a form of leave, the person remains subject to deportation as required under the UK Borders Act 2007.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. Yet, lawyers representing some of those due to be deported say that the reprieve is permanent. Yesterday, I asked the Minister how the Government could be sure that those they intended to deport as foreign national offenders were actually foreign nationals, bearing in mind the mistakes that had been made with the Windrush generation. The Minister said that she had been assured that all those being deported were foreign nationals. Yesterday, in the other place, the Home Secretary said that the law required him to deport foreign nationals convicted of serious offences and that if he did not deport them, he would be breaking the law. As I say, overnight it has been reported that five of those due to be deported are no longer going to be deported. Can the Minister explain: did the Government mislead the House, or has the Home Secretary broken the law?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I have not misled the House, nor has the Home Secretary broken the law. I thought I had made clear in my original Answer that the original decision to remove an individual is not incorrect, but there may be factors that need to be resolved, such as fresh asylum claims and other reasons why a fresh appeal might be lodged, which might mean that someone is not deported but might ultimately be deported. Therefore, neither is true.

Westminster: Security

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord raises an important point in the light of the various anti-Semitic incidents that have taken place recently. Ministers have agreed to fund security measures on an exceptional basis, as part of the Westminster ceremonial streetscape project. I am not entirely certain whether that project extends down to the Victoria Tower Gardens, but I shall find out for him. However, it is important that such places are fully protected. Assessments of the threat in and around Westminster are of course carried out every day.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, we have all seen the ugly scenes outside Parliament of parliamentarians being subject to abuse. The worrying thing about the enhanced security in the vicinity of Parliament is the number of officers who are being taken away from policing their local communities, or having yet more days off cancelled, to provide the security necessary because of the mishandling of Brexit by this Government. Will the Home Office reimburse the Metropolitan Police for dealing with these problems, which the Government have created?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I think that is a bit of a low blow. It is certainly understood that any protective measures needed will have to be paid for by the authorities which commission them. If the Metropolitan Police is needed, its time and effort will therefore have to be paid for. I have seen many demonstrations outside the Houses of Parliament on a range of issues and I thank the police, who stand ready to protect the public and Members of Parliament from them.

Windrush Scheme

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Viscount for his clarification. Certainly, the approach that we took post Windrush was that the task force took not a lenient but a generous view when people came forward to try to prove their status and right to remain in this country. There was not a culture of saying no, but of saying yes when people tried to get that documentation approved.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the Home Secretary insisted in the other place that the planned charter flights to deport people from the UK to Jamaica would involve only foreign national offenders, and the Minister has just talked about the sorts of individuals involved. But how can the Government be sure that they are foreign nationals, bearing in mind that hundreds of the Windrush generation who were entitled to live in the UK have been wrongly deported, made unemployed and denied benefits? How can the Government give British citizenship to those brought to this country as infants or children and pay compensation to those wrongly denied work and benefits but at the same time deport offenders who have similarly lived all their adult lives in the UK and have no memory of living anywhere else?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord asked how we can prove that everyone who is the subject of the debate today is a foreign national offender. I am reliably informed—and I have asked repeatedly—that all the people who will be deported are foreign national offenders. The answer is yes. They are not only foreign national offenders but serious criminals. On the subject of people who came here as infants or children, obviously someone who was here before 1973 would have an assumed status, but just because you came here as an infant or child does not exempt you from the provisions in the UK Borders Act 2007, which the Labour Government rightly brought in to ensure that people convicted and sentenced to 12 months or more should be deported.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th January 2019 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

40A: Clause 14, page 14, line 8, leave out from beginning to “they” in line 10 and insert “The seller is to be regarded as having taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence if”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would provide for a statutory basis, in addition to police and CPS discretion, to rely on reasonable precautions and diligence before the seller is charged.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

In moving Amendment 40A in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, I shall also speak to the other amendments in the group.

Amendment 40A is simply about the wording of the legislation, somewhat contrary to the Member’s explanatory statement. The other amendments are similar to those in our debate on Monday. Amendment 40A questions the way in which proposed new subsection (3) of new Section 141B is worded. It currently states:

“The seller is not to be regarded as having proved that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence unless, as a minimum, they prove that the following conditions are met”.


Surely it would be better to say that the seller is to be regarded as having taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence if, as a minimum, they prove that the following conditions are met. That is effectively putting it positively rather than negatively.

Amendments 42A, 43F, 57B and 57C again turn the offences of delivering a bladed article to residential premises and delivery of bladed articles to persons under 18 from those for which there is an offence if charged into offences where, if the accused has taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence, they do not commit an offence. We debated this way of legislating at our last sitting. In criminal law, there are two elements—actus reus and mens rea: the guilty act and the guilty mind. The offences in this Bill are completely without any examination of the mens rea until after someone has been arrested, detained and potentially charged. As this legislation is drafted, only after arrest and charge is it necessary to consider the mens rea; it is a defence for a person charged with an offence to prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said on Monday,

“we should stick to the normal principles that have worked well for us: you are not guilty of anything and have not committed an offence unless your mental state was simultaneously as criminal as the actions you committed … This way of legislating for criminal justice is inappropriate and we should avoid it. We should certainly be very careful not to allow it to happen without us spotting it and stopping it”.—[Official Report, 28/1/19; GC 153.]

My Lords, we spotted it and we are trying to stop it. I beg to move.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I agree—particularly with the last observation made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, says, these amendments return us to the debate we had on Monday about the proper construction of the offences in the Bill. We had a good discussion on Monday, and I will not cover the ground in the same detail as I did then.

Amendment 40A would alter the defence provided in relation to the sale of bladed articles. Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 provides that it is an offence to sell, with some exceptions, articles with a blade or point to persons under the age of 18. It is a defence for a person charged with an offence to prove that he or she took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence. Clause 14 modifies the operation of the defence in relation to remote sales to include a number of conditions that must be met as a minimum. Amendment 40A removes the post-charge element of the defence and instead requires the enforcing agency to make a judgment whether the seller took all reasonable precautions before a charge is made.

I understand the noble Lord’s intention, but the defence provided in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 has been in place for quite some time. I am not aware of any problems or concerns with how the police, prosecutors and the courts apply the legislation. It has been in place for over 30 years, so it cannot be said that we are introducing a new construct into the criminal law.

Amendments 42A and 43F provide that failure to take all reasonable precaution in relation to the offence of delivering a bladed product to a residential address would be criteria to be taken into account before a person is charged. This is in contrast to the defence provided under Clause 18, which can be invoked when a person is charged with the offence.

Amendments 57B and 57C apply the same principles to Clause 20, which is concerned with the delivery of bladed articles sold by sellers based outside the UK. Clause 20 applies to delivery companies that have entered into an arrangement with a seller based abroad and provides that it is a criminal offence for a delivery company to deliver a bladed article into the hands of a person under 18. It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under Clause 20 to prove that he or she took all reasonable precautions and exercised due diligence to avoid committing the offence.

In practice, the enforcing agency—the police, the CPS or local authorities—will always consider whether the seller or the person who delivers the article has taken reasonable steps and exercised due diligence before bringing a charge. It would not be in the public interest to bring a prosecution if the enforcing agency considers that it is very likely the court will find that the seller had taken all reasonable precautions to avoid committing the offence. As I said before, this type of defence has been in place for some considerable time in relation to the sale of articles with a blade or point, and we are not aware of any issues in its operation.

In short, the approach taken in the Bill both in relation to knives and corrosives is well precedented. The existing law has operated for 30 years without difficulties, and it would further complicate the law and lead to confusion if we now adopted a different approach in the Bill. I suspect—as in the discussion on Monday—noble Lords will want to return to this issue, but for now I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for his brief intervention and to the Minister for her response.

The fact that the defence is similar to that in the Criminal Justice Act 1988, but contrary to almost every other piece of legislation on the statute book, including the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 which specifically deals with offensive weapons—that is, you are not guilty if you have a reasonable excuse for your actions—does not persuade me, I am afraid, that the Government are right in this case and that we are wrong. The Minister mentioned that the prosecuting authorities would not bring a prosecution if the person had taken all reasonable steps, but that does not stop the person being arrested and detained before that charging decision is made. The problem is still there. It is contrary to most criminal law on the statute book and it is the current legislation, rather than the amendment, that adds to the confusion. We will return to this on Report, but at this juncture I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 40A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, Amendments 41 and 43 in the name of my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe are intended to enable a trusted trader scheme and status to be set up for sellers of knives and other bladed products in the UK. As drafted, the Bill will prohibit the delivery of bladed objects and products to residential properties. The concern is that this will have a detrimental impact on the business of small and medium-sized knife manufacturers and retailers here in the UK. As more and more sales move online, consumers normally expect to receive their deliveries at home. My colleagues in the Opposition fully support the aims of the Bill, but have concerns that this is a legislative sledgehammer that will affect small and medium-sized businesses here in the UK, while having very little impact on knife crime. To achieve the objectives we all want to see delivered—a reduction in knife crime and violence, but at the same time not damaging or destroying businesses—I suggest that we need a greater enforcement of existing legislation that prohibits the sale of knives to under-18s and the carrying of a knife without good reason. The amendments we are debating will seek to enable good, well-run businesses to operate in a trusted trader scheme, while not causing difficulties or putting their businesses at risk.

I understand that the Home Office carried out a consultation between October and December 2017 on these issues, with more than 10,500 responses. On 25 July, the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, Victoria Atkins MP, wrote to my friend the Member for Sheffield Central in the other place, Mr Paul Blomfield MP. In her response, the Minister indicated that there were concerns over the delivery of knives purchased to residential premises, and concerns about the sale of knives online to under-18s—which, of course, is already illegal—but that some sellers were not doing enough to stop children buying knives.

My friend Paul Blomfield, Clive Betts and some Sheffield knife manufacturers met the Minister on 15 January. The department had looked at the trusted trader scheme, but seemed to rule it out on the basis that it would add more bureaucracy and burden to the businesses. They looked at placing the burden on delivery companies, and the measures in this Bill.

It is an offence under the Criminal Justice Act, as we know, to sell knives and other bladed products to a person under the age of 18. But there is a defence if the person can prove that they took steps to make all reasonable precautions and exercise due diligence to avoid committing an offence. The sellers will have to meet these conditions to rely upon that defence but the industry also agrees with the objectives of the Bill: to reduce knife crime and make it more difficult for people under the age of 18 to order knives. Many businesses already exercise robust age-verification checks and label their packets accordingly. Their concern is that the Bill’s prohibition on selling bladed products to residential premises will cause them particular damage.

This is about the damage to small and medium-sized businesses, with its knock-on effect on UK manufacturers. The larger retailers and a lot of companies often buy their knives from overseas, so there is really no issue for them. But these small producers are selling niche and often highly priced products, which are not sold anywhere by the large companies. The industry would like some evidence. What is the evidence of people purchasing knives online to commit crime? Apparently, there are roughly 424 million knives in the UK at the moment and there is little or no evidence that people buy knives online to go out and commit a crime. There are plenty of knives around everywhere. The Metropolitan Police and the Cutlery and Allied Trades Research Association have suggested that most knives used in violent crime are old knives, which people can get their hands on from a variety of sources.

The trusted trader scheme would in effect mirror what is presently in place for the delivery of alcohol. Such a scheme would help to drive up standards across the board while providing protection for responsible businesses. Coupled with better enforcement of existing legislation, the scheme would help and not impede small and medium-sized enterprises. The industry wants this, so the objection from the Government that it would mean more bureaucracy does not really hold water for me. If there is a choice between a ban—not being able to sell your products for delivery to homes—and having a scheme which ensured that you verify who you are selling to, this would be better for them. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, while I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is trying to do with his amendment, if he is quoting the Government correctly then I agree that it would be an expensive, bureaucratic scheme and difficult to enforce. It would be impossible to enforce in relation to sellers outside the United Kingdom. It would be to the benefit of large retailers. Perhaps the amendment is trying to appeal to the Home Office’s usual approach to these things by saying that it should be self-financing. Membership of the scheme would clearly involve a fee; large retailers would easily find the money for that, whereas it would disadvantage small businesses.

As we discussed previously in relation to corrosive substances, we are again heading for a situation where UK sellers of bladed articles are unable to sell such products for delivery to residential premises, whereas overseas sellers will be able to sell bladed articles for delivery to home addresses. In the case of overseas sellers, the courier has to ensure age verification at handover but UK sellers are unable to use this scheme. The real solution to the problem that the noble Lord is trying to solve is to allow age verification at the handover of bladed articles at residential premises for all sellers, both UK and overseas, so that both corrosive substances and bladed products can be delivered to people’s homes.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has just asked, what evidence is there that gang members, for example, are ordering ordinary kitchen knives, such as carving knives, online in order to use them in crime? I am not talking about prohibited knives, such as zombie knives or the type of knife that the Government seek to ban in the Bill. The evidence from the police is that most people carrying knives have got them from the kitchen where they live because they are there already. Why would a criminal who is looking to commit knife crime create an evidential trail by ordering online rather than going to a shop and paying cash to get their hands on a weapon? I seek the Government’s explanation as to why this provision is necessary.

We discussed on Monday whether a residential premises is used for carrying on business. I have had a communication from a company that deals with the sale of bladed items online. It says:

“Our information after consulting Royal Mail and UPS is that there are no means to quickly and robustly identify tradesmen who operate from home as opposed to individuals who might pose as tradesmen. These so-called defences are wish fulfilment from the Home Office and are unworkable in the real world”.


I agree.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I sympathise with the request made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for some information from the Minister on why this clause will make anything better. I have been unable to find any evidence that knives delivered in this way are a measurable, let alone a serious, source of supply for knives used in offences. It seems entirely wrong to penalise ordinary people, particularly British traders, when no good will come out of it; it is mere virtue signalling by the Home Office. If this is a real danger, let us deal with it properly—my next group of amendments seeks to do that—but none of this is justified if it is not real. We have allowed age verification for sulphuric acid to be at the gate. What is the difference between that and a kitchen knife? They are equally dangerous items; it is exactly the same process that one is asked to go through, and you get a system that is completely sensible and useable by British traders. One can see the reasonableness of it. In other words, it is a small addition to the bureaucracy that people go through for a small addition to safety. I do not see that the Government have produced any evidence to justify the approach that they are taking in this clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for explaining the trusted trader scheme. I hope to set out the context of the provisions of the Bill. I agree with the Committee that evidence is important to this end.

It is already an offence to sell a knife to somebody under the age of 18, but we know that some sellers are not doing enough to stop children buying knives online. Evidence from online test purchase operations shows that a worrying number of online sellers sampled failed to have effective age-verification procedures in place. Trading standards conducted two online test purchase operations in 2008 and 2009. A test purchase operation commissioned by the Home Office conducted in 2014 showed that 69% of the retailers sampled failed the test. This was a slight improvement on the exercise five years previously but showed that a large majority of online test purchases failed and retailers were breaking the law.

A further test purchase operation was carried out in December 2016. The results showed that 72% of retailers tested failed to verify the age of the purchaser at the point of accepting the order and only 19% went on to require further evidence of age and refuse the sale when the evidence was not produced. Recent test purchases targeting online retailers conducted in late 2018 under the Government’s new prosecution fund show that 42% of the retailers sampled failed the test and sold knives to persons under the age of 18. We have evidence that online retailers are selling to people under the age of 18.

[Lord Paddick]

Can the Government give any evidence about how many under-18s are buying knives online other than those people masquerading as being under 18 and carrying out test purchase operations?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

All the information I have is the test purchases. If test purchases show a failure in the system, that suggests to me that there is an ongoing failure in the system. It does not matter whether the person is actually 18 or is pretending to be; if the system is failing, the system is failing. If an online seller is selling to someone who says they are under 18, the system is failing and the Government are concerned by that. We know that test purchases show that under-18s are being sold knives. In most cases, it is not possible to determine whether the knife purchased is being used in crime, but we have evidence that young people say that buying a knife online is easy. That information was obtained when we were researching the knife-free campaign.

We know through the test purchases that the sellers are breaking the law and we hear the evidence from young people. With the provisions in the Bill, we are sending a clear signal to online sellers that their age- verification processes must improve. The fact that there is still a high rate of failure should be a matter of concern to noble Lords and tell us that the provisions in the Bill are needed. It is not enough for retailers selling remotely simply to ask the purchaser to tick a box to say that they are over 18. It is unacceptable when it comes to delivering the article simply to hand it over to a person without verifying their age or, worse, simply to push the package through the letter box or leave it on the doorstep without any checks about the age of the recipient. We know the tragic consequences of not having strong checks in place to prevent under-18s buying knives online, from the beginning of the transaction through to the end of the sale process.

I utterly understand the thinking behind the noble Lord’s amendment, but it would in effect transfer the responsibility for complying with the legislation and responsible sales from the seller to the Government, by requiring the Government to set out the details of the proposed trusted trader scheme, which would then allow for the delivery of bladed products to residential addresses. The scheme would require sellers to demonstrate that their age-verification systems and procedures, from the point when they receive the order to when their designated delivery company hands the item over at the point of delivery, are robust and that it is not possible that a knife will be handed to a person under 18. In the light of the results of recent test purchase operations, however, we are not persuaded that sellers can provide such reassurance in a systematic and consistent way. We believe that only by requiring age verification at the point where the item is physically handed to a person, at a dedicated collection point, is it possible to guarantee that a bladed product will not be handed over to a person under 18.

There is another point. Setting up, administering and overseeing a trusted trader scheme would create burdens of its own, although I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that it could be self-funding.

[Lord Paddick]

That is not what I said.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am sorry—well, I would have accepted the point. In addition, simply being part of a scheme or being in possession of a seal of approval as a trusted trader does not guarantee compliance with the conditions in the scheme. I hope that I have been able to set out the Government’s explanations—

[Lord Paddick]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. She repeated something that she mentioned on Monday, which I questioned but did not receive a response on. Why is age verification at the point of handover at a delivery point likely to be more thorough or more successful than age verification at the point of handover at the front door of a residential premises? The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggested a scheme whereby the delivery agent would take a photograph of the driving licence or passport to show proof of age at the front door. I accept from what the noble Baroness has said that the age-verification process that online retailers put in place must be thorough and rigorous and that there must be penalties for those who fail to comply, but I do not understand the blanket ban on delivery to residential premises when people have carte blanche to order online and collect from what could be a local newsagent. Last week, I ordered something from Amazon and collected it from a convenient store where the people are very busy. I do not see what advantage there is, when it comes to age verification, for such an article to be handed over at a collection point rather than at the front door of a residential premises.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to be unhelpful to my noble friend the Minister, but can she point to any cases involving knife crime where the knife was acquired online?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hope that I have outlined what the Government have found through these test purchase failings. They have improved over recent years, but there is undoubtedly a basic failure in the system of the online purchase. Regarding the sanction for current failures in the system, it is a criminal offence, although it has been shown not to be a terribly compliant environment. It is far easier to have robust arrangements in place at a central delivery point rather than on each and every doorstep. That is the thinking behind the delivery point rather than the residential address.

[Lord Paddick]

I am grateful to the Minister. There is no such thing as a central delivery point. When you ask for these articles to be delivered to a delivery point, they are all over the place. There are five within a mile of where I live—corner shops are the places where these items are being delivered. In support of that, does the Minister have any information on these test purchase operations? Specifically, how many of these knives were successfully delivered to somebody who appeared to be under the age of 18 at a residential premises, and in how many of the offences were the knives delivered to a collection point? This might provide the evidence that the Government seem to have that it is much safer for it to be delivered to a collection point than to the front door of a home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am still at a loss as to why we have two systems in this Bill—Clause 4 and Clause 17 —applying to products which the Government say are equally dangerous. If we need Clause 17—prohibition of delivery to residential premises for knives—why are we not asking for that with corrosive products? What is the difference?

[Lord Paddick]

I think I may be able to help the Committee. The noble Lord is right that we are in a parallel situation, but you cannot order online from a UK company and have corrosive substances delivered to your home address. You can order corrosive substances from a company that is outside the UK and have them delivered to your home address. The parallel situation also applies with knives, which shows how absolutely ridiculous this whole thing is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 42 I will also speak to Amendments 54 and 57. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for educating me in the course of the last amendment. I apologise for my misreading of the Bill.

If we are going to take online purchase and delivery so seriously, we must deal with overseas purchases. While the noble Lord was speaking, I managed successfully to order a pretty nasty-looking knife online. There was no hint of age verification. It appeared to be a British company that I was ordering from but, actually, I happen to know that this company is based in Holland. The knife will be shipped from Holland by ordinary post. How will this be prevented? The company is a big, well-known retailer of knives online. It is an ordinary place that a lot of people know; it carries a good variety of knives and other things. Nothing in this Bill, as it is at the moment, prevents someone ordering in that way.

I am not saying that my amendments have any particular merit in the mechanisms they propose. But if the Government are serious about this, we need to tackle things that are obviously going to happen and make it possible for us to prevent—since the Government are convinced that this needs preventing—the delivery of knives that are ordered with great ease and facility from overseas suppliers.

First, we should deal with fulfilment in this country. Amazon has a very large fulfilment business. You appear to be purchasing goods from an overseas supplier, but actually they are sitting in an Amazon warehouse, where the instruction comes through and they dispatch. There are a number of independent people in the fulfilment business too; they know exactly what they are sending out. They are the ones who do the packing, and must be caught by this legislation. We cannot allow that obvious loophole—that is my purpose in Amendment 42.

When we are dealing with standard imports by post, we have systems to prevent people sending in guns. It is a fairly obvious thing, to make sure that if guns are coming in postal packages, you intercept them. People who are shipping them in bulk in engine blocks are a different kettle of fish, but wrapping one up and sending it as a parcel is something which we believe there are mechanisms to deal with. Those mechanisms will work for knives, but we need to empower the border authorities when they come to their notice to open the packages, confiscate the knives and not compensate anyone. It needs to be easy for our border security people to do, in the same way that it is not easy for someone to send guns through the post. That is what I am trying to do in Amendment 54: to replicate or allow for the replication of the system that we have for controlling guns sent through the post, and extend that to blades sent through the post.

In Amendment 57, I am merely trying to strengthen the contractual obligation that people are under when they are delivering these things; they cannot pretend, like the three monkeys, that they did not know that they should have taken sensible steps to know that they are dealing with a seller who deals in bladed products, and therefore need to take care. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

I see what the noble Lord is trying to do with Amendment 42, but again I am not sure it is a practical solution. He talked about buying a knife from a company in Holland where it is going to be delivered by ordinary post. How does the post office know what is in the parcel? One can think of circumstances where they would not know what is being delivered.

In relation to Amendment 54, I understand that there is a scheme for firearms and you need a licence before you can import them. But if you order a set of cutlery to use for Sunday lunch from a German manufacturer, which includes knives, do you need an import licence in order to buy it and have it delivered to your home? The problem here is that firearms are a very narrow type of good, whereas knives cover a whole spectrum—I think we get on to palette knives and butter knives later—through to zombie knives and very dangerous items.

I come back to the issue that if it is a foreign seller, the Bill has to provide that age verification has to happen at the front door of residential premises. If the Government are placing so much weight on preventing under-18s getting hold of knives generally, why that age verification at the front door of a residential premises can … not also apply to UK sellers as it does to overseas sellers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Does the noble Lord agree that the Committee generally agrees with the laudable aims of the Bill but on all sides we are highlighting the large holes in it? It is easy to make a mockery of what is being set out here. I hope that the Government will listen carefully to this. We want to have discussions between now and Report so that we can get this legislation right. Where we are at the moment is honestly ridiculous. The more discussions I hear now, the worse things seem to me.

[Lord Paddick]

I echo the noble Lord’s comments. We want to do whatever it takes to reduce the availability of knives for use in knife crime. I hope that, in all our discussions, it has not gone unnoticed that we oppose this group of amendments and the previous group.

I will probably be disciplined by my party for saying so but, presumably, if you are buying from a supplier outside the customs union, there needs to be a customs declaration on the package as to what is contained in it. That is a legal requirement. It is not about trying to get a foreign supplier to comply with British law; rather, it is internationally accepted that you need to put a customs label on a package describing what is inside. I do not know whether that applies if the supplier is within the European Union, but certainly if you buy something from the United States of America, for example, there has to be a visible customs declaration on the outside to say what the product inside the parcel is. That would enable whoever is delivering the parcel to the end delivery point to take the appropriate action in accordance with Clause 20, if the label describes that it is a bladed product.

[The Duke of Montrose]

If noble Lords will allow me, rather than pointing out what might be missed by this legislation, I want to draw to the attention of the Committee places where people will be caught. One that strikes me, given my background of having been responsible for the sheep industry, is this. In the clipping of sheep, we use largely foreign clippers, often from New Zealand. They come here and stay in bed and breakfasts. As they move around, their blades have to be sharpened and replaced. I am sure that, in the current system, they just ask the company to supply it by post, but they do not have a residential address. They could probably work their way round it, but I want to highlight the problems that people will have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I will also speak to the other amendments in this group. Most of the amendments were tabled just to give me an opportunity to listen to the Minister on why the Bill contains two definitions of bladed items: “bladed article”, which is the current definition in legislation, and “bladed product”, which is introduced just for the purposes of Clauses 17 and 18. I would like to know the reason for the choice of application and the need for two definitions.

On the definition in Clause 19, why does a pointed article appear to be excluded? If I was to wander about the streets wanting to do people harm, a sharpened knitting needle would be a pretty good thing to take with me. It would be easy to shove through clothing and it has a nice little button on one end, so that it does not go into me. Under the clause as drafted, it appears to be exempt. Why is that?

If we are going to use such a wide definition, we need to help people who are in the business of selling products to understand that it has a wide application. As I read it, it would apply to a helicopter—not that many helicopters get delivered to residential premises—as a helicopter is a bladed article. It would also apply to fans, if not to Mr Dyson’s fans, and it would apply to lawnmowers and various other things that have blades. It ought to be clear to people who have to obey this law whether they will be caught by it. I do not object to how widely the Government draw it, but its extent should be made clear, as it should in respect of which items people are likely to have to apply it. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I too look forward to the Government’s explanation of the difference between “bladed product” and “bladed article”, and of why there is a distinction between the offence of delivering of a bladed product to residential premises and that of delivering a bladed article to persons under 18. I thought the whole point—no pun intended—of banning delivery to residential premises was to prevent under-18s getting their hands on it. Why does it need to be a bladed article in one part and a bladed product in another?

In relation to Amendment 45, I agree with the noble Lord and would go further. In the course of my duties as a police officer, I have seen daggers with very sharp points, but with blades not necessarily sharp enough to cut—the dagger is specifically designed to stab people, but is not capable of cutting. It would be exempt from the definition as written in the Bill. I am not sure whether it is necessary to list examples of what are and are not bladed products, but we certainly need a much better idea of what we are trying to do here.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I was not intending to come in on this item, but the more I sit here listening to this Bill, the more concerned and confused I get. I support the intentions of the Government in trying to deal with knife crime and violence—they are absolutely right there—but, listening to this, I am not convinced we are on the right track.

Is the Minister aware of the Better Regulation Executive? It is part of BIS, or whatever the department is called now, and is in charge of regulatory reform across the British Government. Its policy is described in these terms:

“Some regulations are ineffective and unnecessary. Complying with them costs businesses time and money, and can restrict economic growth … Governments generally attempt to ensure regulations are fair and effective. The Better Regulation Executive's purpose is to effectively strike the right balance between protecting people’s rights, health and safety and freeing them from unnecessary bureaucracy”.


If it has not gone there already, the Bill needs to go there straightaway. Clearly, there is a lot of mess in this Bill. I say it should go there because we are affecting lots of British businesses and putting them at a competitive disadvantage to other businesses in Europe and around the world. We need to get our businesses up and working well, and I do not see how this is helping. Maybe it has gone there already and been improved by it. If it has not, I hope we can get the Bill off to it and maybe get something back before Report.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, would the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, agree that perhaps his trusted traders scheme would also need to go through that process?

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I certainly would. I would be delighted for it to go through the process, because the scheme I have been keen we talk about has come not from me, but from the industry. They want the scheme, so I would be delighted for it to go there, since they are the people who make these niche products and are worried that the Government are putting them at a competitive disadvantage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, this amendment in the name of my noble friend seeks to insert a new clause after Clause 20 to prohibit the display of bladed products in shops. The honourable Member for Lewisham Deptford, Vicky Foxcroft, the chair of the Youth Violence Commission, has done some excellent work on this matter. Members from all sides in the other place, along with academics, practitioners, youth service workers, the police and experts connected with youth violence have been very involved in the work of the commission. I commend the commission’s report, which was recently published—it should be read by all noble Lords. One of its important recommendations is the prohibition of knife displays in shops. During consideration in the other place, USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—was asked whether it believed that putting knives behind displays would be helpful. Doug Russell, representing USDAW, said:

“It would be. Obviously, now big retailers are increasingly going down the route of making it more difficult for customers to get their hand on the product until they have been age-checked”,—[Official Report, Commons, Offensive Weapons Bill Committee, 19/7/18; col. 98.]


and they have assured themselves that a transaction is safe. I want people’s ages to be checked properly when they seek to purchase knives.

We must also protect against the theft of knives. There are several restrictions in law relating to other products, most obviously the extremely restrictive provisions for the sale of tobacco, which prohibit the display of tobacco products in relevant shops and businesses in England. The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 refers specifically to under-18s, so the principle already exists in law to protect under-18s from harm by prohibiting the open display of goods. I see no reason why this should not be extended to bladed products. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, if I understand this amendment correctly, I do not feel I can support it. Clearly bladed products should be displayed in a way that ensures they are safe and cannot easily be stolen, but I cannot agree with the suggestion that they need to be hidden in case they lead people into being tempted to use them for criminal purposes, if that is what the noble Lord is saying. The noble Lord mentioned cigarettes. They are now hidden from view and advertising them has been banned because they are always and in every circumstance bad for your health and addictive, but the same cannot be said for knives. We do not conceal alcohol or glue as they have legitimate uses, and we do not believe it is necessary to conceal knives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sheikh (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by saying that I agree with Amendment 70. The amendment seeks to protect the tradition of the kirpan and those who possess it. It permits individuals to possess the kirpan for,

“religious, ceremonial, sporting or historical reasons”.

There is disquiet among those in the Sikh community, who feel that their right to possess a kirpan is being threatened, and they need assurances to be able to do so. There needs to be a comprehensive solution which is acceptable to the Sikh community.

I was born and brought up in east Africa, where there were people of different religions and racial backgrounds. I learned to speak several languages and developed an understanding and respect for all religions. I am actively involved in promoting harmony and peace between various racial and religious groups. Although I am a Muslim, I am a patron of non-Muslim associations, including the Sikh Forum and the British Sikh Association. I am also the chairman of Guru Nanak Worldwide, which promotes the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of the Sikh religion.

I have a strong connection with the Sikhs and have visited their temples, which are called gurdwaras, on numerous occasions. I have studied Sikhism and have written a book on the life and times of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In this book, I have included some principles of the Sikh religion and also mentioned the teachings of the 10 Sikh gurus. The 10th and last human guru was Guru Gobind Singh Ji, who transformed the Sikh faith. In 1699, he created the Khalsa, a community of the faithful who wore visible symbols of his faith and trained as warriors. Today, the Khalsa community comprises a significant proportion of the Sikh community. As has been mentioned, Guru Gobind Singh Ji also proclaimed five kakars, which were kacha, karha, kesh, kanga and kirpan.

Sikhs are proud of the five Ks and therefore comply with what has been proclaimed. The kirpan represents the values of the Sikh faith and is an essential article of faith for the Khalsa Sikhs. The kirpan is curved, contained in a sheath. It is often made of steel or iron and can be of varying sizes. It is normally worn in a strap, which is called a gatra. In the Sikh community, the kirpan is used for ceremonial and cultural practices such as during weddings and processions. It is also used in martial arts and can be given as a gift. In fact, I was presented with a kirpan in Amritsar when I visited the Golden Temple. My family’s connection with Amritsar goes back nearly 200 years, so I was privileged to be presented with a kirpan, among other items, in the Golden Temple.

The UK as a whole has a long history with the Sikhs, stemming from colonial India and the World Wars. We recently celebrated the centenary of the Armistice ending the First World War, and I have spoken in your Lordships’ House on the contribution of the soldiers from the sub-continent of India. India raised an army of over 1 million soldiers, 20% of whom were Sikhs. We owe gratitude to the Sikhs for the sacrifices they have made to preserve our way of life. This amendment is an opportunity to provide a specific defence for those who possess—I emphasise “possess”, as they do not necessarily wear it—the kirpan.

I cannot recall any occasion where a Sikh possessing the kirpan has used it as an offensive weapon and caused physical harm to anyone. This afternoon, in fact, I spoke to an ex-commander of the Metropolitan Police who verified what I say; it has not been used as an offensive weapon by the Sikhs. I therefore feel that a kirpan should not be deemed an offensive weapon and provision must be made for that in this legislation. As has been mentioned, the Sikhs are law-abiding people. The kirpan needs to be exempted from the relevant sections of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I support this amendment, which is why I added my name to it. There is little that I can usefully add because, as members of the Sikh community, the noble Lord, Lord Singh, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, have already articulated exactly why this amendment should be accepted. I hope that the Government can accept it.

[Baroness Barran]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for setting out the case for exempting all kirpans from the relevant provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. I can reassure him from the outset that both I and my noble friend Lady Williams would be delighted to meet representatives of the Sikh Council UK and other noble Lords as the noble Lord sees fit to discuss their concerns.

Before I go on, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, and my noble friend—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

This takes me back to those heady days when we had a Labour Government and I was a lowly Whip. That sounds like a very Treasury counterargument. One day when I was handling a particular clause, I was told that it was impossible to frame the legislation to meet the need. I said, from my lowly position in the massive meeting, “You’d better try because otherwise you will get the words that are in the amendment because it will pass at the next stage”. At that, there was a great writing of things and, lo and behold, the Government managed to find an amendment which was satisfactory. I strongly recommend that the Government make an intense effort to frame an amendment of their own which meets the across-the-board support for the spirit of this amendment.

[Lord Paddick]

Before the noble Lord withdraws his amendment, it should be said that concerns are being expressed at the impression being given by the Government of there being no room for negotiation on this issue. I hope that they will at least approach that meeting with an open mind rather than giving the impression, as might be inferred from what the Minister has said from the Dispatch Box, that there is no room for manoeuvre.

[Baroness Barran]

I can reassure the noble Lord that the Government will approach the meeting with an open mind. I tried to be clear that the key issue is achieving a specific definition for a kirpan, which we will obviously make every effort to work with. We will see whether that is possible.

Brexit: Security

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, Cressida Dick, has said that the way in which we currently quickly extradite and arrest people will have to be replaced, but it will be more costly and slower and will potentially put the public at risk. Does the Minister agree? Will the Government admit that the UK will be less secure outside the European Union, deal or no deal?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I do not necessarily agree with the second statement, but one thing I can say to the noble Lord is that the way to avoid no deal is for the House of Commons, which is currently deliberating on it, to agree to a deal.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 28th January 2019 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, at end insert “without, in the case of a person charged in England and Wales or Northern Ireland (subject to section 2), having taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, alongside the amendment to page 1, line 5, would make a failure to take precautions or exercise diligence criteria for the offence, as distinct from defences which would come into play only after the person had been charged.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I will speak to the other amendments in the group in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. These amendments seek to change the offences in the Bill from those where there is a reasonable excuse defence only when charged to ones where, if someone has a reasonable excuse, they do not commit an offence. They seek consistency in approach between legislation where no offence is committed if someone has an offensive weapon in a public place because they have a reasonable excuse and legislation where, in exactly the same circumstances, a person does commit an offence and has to rely on a defence only once they have been charged. The amendments also seek consistency between offences where the burden lies on the prosecution to disprove a reasonable excuse defence and offences where the burden lies on the accused to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a reasonable excuse.

We return to an issue that I raised in discussion of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill and which is applicable here; namely, creating offences where a completely innocent person commits an offence and has to rely on a defence once charged, rather than someone with a reasonable excuse for his actions not being guilty of an offence in the first place. In the context of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, the Government acknowledged this problem in relation to the designated areas offence. In that Bill, the Government accepted that, rather than a person entering a designated area and having a defence once charged if they had good reason to be there, if they entered or remained in a designated area involuntarily or for a range of other reasons stipulated in the Bill, they did not commit an offence. The Government accepted that there could be legitimate reasons for visiting or remaining in a designated area and that it was more sensible to say that no offence was committed if they had good reason, rather than that they committed an offence but had a defence once charged.

In one part of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, the person does not commit an offence if they had good reason yet, in another part, a person has a defence once charged—a different approach in different parts of the same Bill. It is still a Bill, I think, and has not yet received Royal Assent—I am getting nods from the back, so that is good.

In Clause 1 of this Bill, a person commits an offence if they sell a corrosive product to a person who is under the age of 18. They have a defence, if charged, by proving that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence, rather than it saying, “They do not commit an offence if they act reasonably”. In Clause 3, a person commits an offence if he delivers the corrosive product or arranges its delivery to residential premises. They too have a defence, if charged, if they prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence, rather than it saying that if they act reasonably, they do not commit an offence. There is also an issue with Clause 4, but it slipped through the net and therefore there is no amendment in this group to address it.

In Clause 6, however, a person commits an offence if they have a corrosive substance with them in a public place. It is a defensive charge if they prove that they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place, rather than the provision being that if they had good reason or lawful authority, they do not commit an offence. It will perhaps be clearer if I concentrate on the latter of these three offences.

If a 19-year-old young man has a corrosive substance with them in a public place with the intention of using it to attack someone else, they commit an offence under the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 of having an offensive weapon with them in a public place with the intention of causing injury to someone. It is an intended offensive weapon. However, if they have been sent out by their mother to buy drain cleaner in a squeezable bottle to unblock the kitchen sink—I speak with some experience having recently cleared one of my drains; drain cleaner does come in squeezable bottles—they do not commit an offence under the 1953 Act. They have a corrosive liquid with them in a public place, in a squeezable bottle that could be used to cause injury to someone, but have a reasonable excuse for possessing it. Were the police to stop and search the youngster, a quick phone call to the mother could establish the reasonable excuse.

Under the Bill, the 19 year-old running the errand for his mother commits a criminal offence because, under Clause 6(1):

“A person commits an offence if they have a corrosive substance with them in a public place”.


Under Clause 6(2), it is a defence for the youngster charged with an offence under subsection (1) to,

“prove that they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place”,

but a police officer would be justified in arresting the youngster, because he is clearly committing a criminal offence.

When discussing the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, we also debated the principle of necessity in relation to arrests. One of the circumstances included in the reasons why an arrest might be necessary under Section 110 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 is to allow,

“the prompt and effective investigation of the offence or of the conduct of the person in question”.

It would be quite easy for a police officer to reason that the quickest and easiest way to determine whether the young man has a blocked drain is to arrest him and take him to his home address, to see whether the kitchen sink is blocked.

I am sure that the Minister will say that of course the police will act reasonably, but the police do not always act reasonably. Believe me, from 30 years’ experience in the police service, including four years as a bobby on the beat, I can say that sometimes police officers look for any reason to arrest someone. For those who might argue that my experience is not current, I point out that if you own a drone, live within a short distance of Gatwick Airport and have suspicious neighbours, apparently you can end up being arrested even when you can easily prove that you were miles away at work at the time the offence was committed.

There is another anomaly. In the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, in offences that remain of the “defence when charged” type, the burden is on the prosecution to disprove the reasonable excuse defence put forward by the accused, and to do so beyond reasonable doubt. Section 118 of the Terrorism Act 2000 states:

“If the person adduces evidence which is sufficient to raise an issue with respect to the matter the court or jury shall assume that the defence is satisfied unless the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is not”.


Indeed, in Clause 3(10) of this Bill we find a similar provision, except that it applies only in Scotland. South of the border, not only is it only a defence once charged—as in subsection (8)—but the person charged has to,

“prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”,

presumably beyond reasonable doubt. Noble Lords will recall that Section 118 of the Terrorism Act saved the Government from the accusation of reversing the burden of proof but, in these offences, the burden of proof is on the accused, presumably to the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt, that they have a reasonable excuse. Why is the burden of proof reversed in this Bill, except in Scotland, but not in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, which passed through this House only recently?

Sending a message to the police that an offence is not committed if someone has lawful authority or reasonable excuse is preferable to saying that an offence is committed and that there is a defence once charged. Sending a message that you have nothing to fear by buying corrosive substances for illegitimate purposes and carrying the substance home through the streets or to a place of work is preferable to saying: “You are committing an offence and have to prove to a jury beyond reasonable doubt that you did so innocently”. The principle adopted in Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, which deals with offensive weapons, is that you are innocent if you have a reasonable excuse. That legislation has not been repealed, nor have the Government sought to amend it. That is the principle adopted by the Government in recent weeks in relation to an offence under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, and it is the principle that the Government should adopt in this Bill. I beg to move—

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

Not being familiar with police procedures, to me the essence of the argument seems to be about when the defence is deployed. Can the noble Lord explain what that means in practical terms?

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, when the police are told that the offence is not committed if somebody has a reasonable excuse, the clear message sent to them is that they need to investigate the matter there and then to establish whether that reasonable excuse exists. If a Bill, as in this case, says that somebody who carries a corrosive substance in a public place commits an offence, it sends a message to the police that investigation of any reasonable excuse that the person may have can wait until later because, according to the legislation, the defence is available only once the person has been charged.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I support the Bill. The issue of the misuse of corrosive substances and all other kinds of offensive weapons is too obviously something that has to be addressed. However, I want to raise an issue which is troublesome in the context of the amendment.

Unless an offence is absolute—and we take a strong stand against absolute offences—it is a long-standing principle of criminal justice that you are liable to conviction and sentence, or to go back earlier, to be arrested and charged if you have done something or acted in a way prohibited by the law. Fine—but the proviso to that is, “Provided that simultaneously your state of mind was itself similarly criminal”. You may have done it intentionally or recklessly. There are all sorts of ways in which your state of mind can be identified as criminal but it is of the essence that these two concepts stand or fall together.

This statute asserts that, where certain facts are proved, you have committed an offence—full stop. Without reference to your state of mind or any other circumstance, the offence is established and you are therefore liable to be arrested. It then says, “We shall graciously allow that, in certain circumstances, you may have a defence”, and if you prove them you would have a defence. Perhaps the most gracious of all the circumstances is to be found in Clause 2(6) to (9), where a whole series of them have to be established. You then have a defence, but you have been arrested and may have been charged. Nobody has to examine these two concepts together and say, “The evidence shows that he had a guilty mind”, or “He was reckless”, or whatever it might be.

What I really want to raise in Committee is that we should stick to the normal principles that have worked well for us: you are not guilty of anything and have not committed an offence unless your mental state was simultaneously as criminal as the actions you committed. That is what we believe. I do not want to be overportentous; I cannot see the Minister making any concessions about this. However, I would like to put down a marker. This way of legislating for criminal justice is inappropriate and we should avoid it. We should certainly be very careful not to allow it to happen without us spotting it and stopping it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Erroll]

So which is it for the purposes of the Bill?

[Lord Paddick]

Could I assist the Committee? We will return to the problems of not allowing corrosive substances to be delivered to any residential address in an upcoming group. It might be more appropriate to discuss that matter then, if that assists the noble Earl.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Thank you. Sorry, I had not noticed that.

[Lord Paddick]

Not at all.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. It is interesting that the Minister seems to have ignored the inconsistency in approach between the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Bill. In the Prevention of Crime Act, which is a piece of legislation specifically dealing with offensive weapons, you do not commit an offence if you have a reasonable excuse, which is inconsistent with the Criminal Justice Act and the Bill. The Minister says, “We worded it this way for things to be consistent”. It is not consistent.

On the point from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, I do not want to get into the disproportionality of stop and search. What I would say is that I envisage certain circumstances where a 19-year-old young man who has a corrosive substance in their pocket, because that is the only thing they were sent out to the shop for, is stopped by the police very easily leading to arrest if the offence is worded in the way it is, whereas a police officer might be given cause to think twice if it were worded in the way I suggested it should be changed. The Minister and her officials are on slightly dodgy ground in suggesting to me what makes a practical difference to a police officer on the street or not about the way they implement the law.

That will give an indication that we are likely to return to this matter at the next stage. However, at this juncture, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 13, 14 and 15 in this group. I do not put any particular weight on the drafting of these amendments. What concerns me is that we are putting a lot of weight in this Bill on the shoulders of people whose occupations we consider so lowly that we will not let them be the subject of apprenticeships. You cannot get an apprenticeship as a shop worker or as a delivery driver. There is no established pattern of training for these people, but we are putting them in a situation where something that they sold is used very quickly in a horrific crime and all the weight of the media and public opinion comes down on their shoulders as to whether they erred in their action or not. The whole machinery of justice is impelled towards convicting them because it wants some victim to compensate for the crime that has been committed. This is all too regular and humiliating, and we owe it to these people to put them in a situation where they can have a set of rules and know that if they follow this set of rules they will be safe.

It is not satisfactory to have that set of rules be just invented by the small shopkeeper who happens to employ them. There has to be some way in which their employers can establish that what they are doing is proof against whatever accusations might come their way. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, the burden of proof rests on their shoulders: they have to show that they did what was necessary to avoid the liability in this Bill. The other side of that coin is that we have to do what is necessary to enable them to do that and to enable them to be sure that they have done that. There are plenty of available recording devices around: you can take a picture of the document that you saw or the person himself, but then you are running straight into GDPR. We cannot start doing that without there being a clear set of permissions and expectations at the back of it. We want this to happen: we want a delivery driver, turning up on a wet Sunday and poking something through a gate that somebody might not see too well in the early morning light or in the evening, knowing that what they are doing is right and sufficient. I do not mind what it is, but we must do something. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group in principle, but I will make one or two comments about them. First, there is an apparent contradiction between the pair of Amendments 3 and 13 on the one hand and the pair of Amendments 14 and 15 on the other. The first pair suggests that the police should design a scheme to ensure that corrosive substances are not delivered into the hands of those under 18. The second pair dictate to the police, at least in part, what that scheme should be. However, I understand the principle behind what the noble Lord is saying.

It is currently possible to order age-restricted products online and there are schemes in place designed to prevent age-restricted products being delivered to those under 18. Amazon’s instructions to the buyer say:

“By placing an order for one of these items you are declaring that you are 18 years of age or over. These items must be used responsibly and appropriately.


Delivery of age restricted items can only be delivered to the address on the shipping label, but this can include the reception of a commercial building. A signature of the recipient will be required upon delivery. Amazon adopts a ‘Challenge 25’ approach to delivery of age restricted products. Photo identification will be required if a person appears under 25, to prove that they are over 18 years old. An age restricted item can be delivered to another adult over the age of 18 at the same address. Delivery to a neighbour or nominated safe place location is not available for these items. If an adult over the age of 18 is not available at the address, or if an adult has not been able to show valid photo identification under the Challenge 25 approach, the item will be returned to Amazon”.


The acceptable photo identification is a passport or driving licence.

Would this scheme or something like it be sufficient to restrict the sale and delivery of corrosive substances—and knives for that matter—to those under 18, obviating the need for banning the delivery of such items to residential addresses?

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is absolutely on the right lines. One of the troubles is knowing what is permissible and what is not. In speaking to the amendments in his name, I will suggest something which takes it a bit further. I declare an interest as chair of the Digital Policy Alliance, which, among other things, worked for several years on age verification for the Digital Economy Act. This Bill has exactly the same problem as Section 3 of that Act: what systems are adequate for proving the age of someone in an online sale? We worked on such systems and if noble Lords want to see that it can be done properly and securely I recommend they go to the web portal dpatechgateway.co.uk, where there are several to play with. The challenge is that there is no official certification scheme in place, but those systems are compliant with BSI publicly available specification 1296. I chaired the steering group that produced that standard and it had a lot of different people on it—people from the industry, academics, legislators, lawyers, et cetera. It shows that it can be done securely.

This goes one stage further than the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that the police can certify. Here is a system that you could trust. The technology also enables it to be on a mobile, so you can do point-of-delivery verification. You have got the person there: you can compare them with the device. Amendment 13 goes some way to solving the quandary for a seller, but what is “adequate”? Someone in the industry has suggested to me that it might be better to insert a new paragraph (c) after line 22 saying that: “The Secretary of State may lay regulations as to which bodies are recognised to provide standards against which age-verification schemes can be assessed”. In that way, a certification system could be set up. The BBFC and DCMS have been struggling with this for some time. They are getting there, but there is a lot to be learned from the fallout from that which could be imported into this Bill. Giving the Secretary of State the power to say what schemes can be certified against would go a long way to making life far simpler. We are moving into an online age. We cannot do all this offline and we should not pretend we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

This is something we talked about earlier. If we are to put “all” in, it is not unreasonable to have some sort of guidance in the Bill to protect people, otherwise people are just left hanging.

[Lord Paddick]

Would it help the Committee to suggest that the Government have put in Clause 4 exactly the sort of things the delivery courier should be looking at to take reasonable precautions?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, that is where the guidance comes in. All roads are leading back to the guidance. I hope I can leave it there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

I support the words of my noble friend Lady Newlove. Much of what the Committee has heard this afternoon about corrosive substances has referred to the appalling use of them by young people. Statistics on this are more difficult to find than on some of the other offences that we will be discussing later. I have serious concerns about the connection with drugs. The threat of acid attack is regularly used on young people involved in county lines.

One thing we have not mentioned this afternoon is the terrible situation of violence against individuals in domestic abuse situations, which is less frequent and not often reported. Surely short-term sentences will not deal with that. This is not the same as the pressures on young people to conform to gangs and so on. This is something quite different and I would like to think that there are very serious responses to that in our system.

[Lord Paddick]

If I could assist the Committee at this stage, these amendments relate to the offences of selling and delivering to young people, not to the possession of corrosive substances by young people. We are talking about sending the owner of the corner shop or the Amazon delivery man to prison for delivering these substances into the hands of people who are under 18. I want to ensure that noble Lords are aware that that is what we are talking about in this group of amendments.

[Lord Judge]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. Views have been expressed here which I respect but do not share. The seller will be, or is likely to be, an adult, and certainly will not be a vulnerable child. The purchaser, or the person to whom the product is sold, may be a very young child. It may be a 17 year-old who lives in an area where there is an awful lot of violence and who has a bad record which is known to the seller. We have to be careful. I am implacably opposed to minimum terms—we may come to that at some stage—because minimum terms do not do justice. However, a person who sells to a vulnerable child, or to somebody who leads a gang or who has been given a community sentence first time round, with a condition that he is prohibited from selling corrosive products but continues to do so, merits a prison sentence as punishment. Prison is not just about rehabilitation. Short sentences do not do much good; indeed, the evidence suggests that some of them do a lot of harm. However, some short sentences do some good because they punish the offender. Therefore, I cannot support these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

I believe that we have to allow such online ordering to occur, with delivery to residential addresses, and to increase, provided it is safe to do so. I hope I have shown that it is possible in these cases. Were we not to allow it, I have to remind the Minister that there are about 1.2 million motorcycle users, taking up far less space on the roads than others, who might need to change their batteries every two or three years. This is as well as those other categories I have just mentioned, not least electric wheelchair users. For very many of them, especially in rural areas, not to be able to replace their batteries by online means and have them delivered to residential addresses would be more than an inconvenience or disadvantage. The Government would not want to shoulder the blame, especially among what are probably mainly youngish voters, for blighting their lives and effectively discouraging motorcycling. I believe that these amendments can sit safely alongside the laudable purposes of the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the noble Viscount. This is an example of how complex this ban on delivering corrosive substances to residential premises is. That is an issue that I will return to in group 7; I shall keep my powder dry until then.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I also rise briefly to support this amendment from my noble friend. He is absolutely right. It is not just cars and motorcycles; things such as uninterruptable power supplies for computers, in which I have a particular interest, have them and I do not know whether the fact that the battery is inside another bit of kit which can be unscrewed matters or not. If you have a heavy-duty burglar alarm panel, that will probably have a lead-acid battery behind it. There are lots of reasons why you might want to get replacement batteries. I personally find it very inconvenient, except for the fact that I am married to a farmer. If I was living in a normal place—like my son for instance, who lives in London—I would not be able to buy batteries like that. They are a damned sight cheaper online, I can tell you that.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

9: Clause 1, page 2, line 28, after “may” insert “, following consultation with representatives of persons likely to be affected,”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require consultation before any amendment of Schedule 1 (corrosive products).

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, Amendment 9 is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I shall speak also to my Amendments 10A and 10B, which are also in this group. I apologise to the Committee for the late arrival of those amendments.

Amendment 9 simply suggests that if the appropriate national authority amends Schedule 1—the list of corrosive products—for the purposes of Clause 1 by regulation, it should consult representatives of those likely to be affected. Amendments 10A and 10B probe the necessity for including 3% or more nitric acid and 15% or more sulphuric acid in Schedule 1 when they are already regulated explosives precursors listed in Schedule 1A to the Poisons Act 1972 as amended by the Deregulation Act 2015. These substances are already restricted for sale to the general public. If a member of the public wants to buy these substances, they need to apply to the Home Office for a licence to acquire, possess and use these substances. Will the Minister explain why these substances therefore need to be included in Schedule 1 to the Bill and why the existing restrictions are not sufficient? For those who are amazed at the depth of my knowledge of these issues, I am very grateful to the House of Lords Library for its excellent briefing on the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, Amendment 10 simply asks why not just list all these substances, since we know what they are and the list will not change. Substances have been left off, such as slaked lime, which are seriously corrosive to skin, might be used and are very easy to obtain, and there are others on the list that would be very difficult to obtain. None the less, if we are going to have a list, since the list is not going to grow over time but is a small collection of basic inorganic chemicals, why not have the lot? It really does not add a lot of weight to the Bill to complete the list.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that, with these assurances and the commitment to consider Amendment 9 further, I have been able to satisfy my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and that he will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and commend her on her mind-reading ability. Although Amendment 9 is in my name, she correctly identified its author. My noble friend and I are both grateful that the Government are considering their response to the amendment. I am still not quite clear why we need to ban the sale to under-18s and delivery to residential premises of nitric acid and sulphuric acid in the concentrations specified in Schedule 1. The point of the question was that people cannot acquire these substances unless they have a Home Office licence under the Poisons Act, so they are very unlikely to be sold to somebody aged under 18 or delivered to a residential address. The Government are normally keen not to have unnecessary legislation, and including those two substances in Schedule 1 to this Bill appears to be unnecessary, bearing in mind that they are listed in Schedule 1A to the Poisons Act 1972. We may come back to that at a later date, but at this point I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

This notice is to probe the relationship between Clause 3 and Clause 4.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, the purpose of opposing the Question that Clause 3 stand part of the Bill is to raise issues around the practicality of the operation of the clause and to ask the Minister why the scheme suggested in Clause 4—Delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18—cannot be extended to sellers inside the United Kingdom as well as outside, thus obviating the need to ban delivery to residential premises. The practicality of Clause 3 arises out of subsection (6) where premises are not considered residential premises when a person carries on a business from the premises. How does a courier know that the house he is delivering to is also used to conduct a business from? For example, I could be registered as a sole trader with Revenue & Customs, as I used to be before my introduction to your Lordships’ House. I was registered as a writer and public speaker and carried on my business from my home. Unless the courier was able to access— presumably confidential—information held by Revenue & Customs, how would he know? In any event, why should being a writer and public speaker carrying on a business from my home allow me to have corrosive substances delivered there, whereas now I cannot? The noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, gave another practical example about the delivery of acid batteries.

Clause 4 applies to the sale of corrosive substances where the seller is outside the United Kingdom. It applies where the seller enters into an arrangement with a courier to deliver the substance. The courier commits an offence if they do not deliver the substance into the hands of a person aged 18 or over. The courier is deemed to have taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of an offence if he is shown a passport, a photocard driving licence or other document specified by Scottish Ministers or something that looked like one of those documents and would have convinced a reasonable person that it was genuine. This seems to me to be the proof-of-age system that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was looking for in Amendment 3. Why can this system not be modified or added to so that UK sellers can not only age verify as far as possible at the point of sale but, if they are delivering the substance, age verify at the point of hand-over? If there is age verification at hand-over, as set out in Clause 4, why does there need to be a total ban on the delivery of corrosive substances to residential addresses, assuming that that ban is designed to prevent under-18s getting their hands on corrosive substances?

[The Earl of Erroll]

I apologise for my earlier intervention that should have come under this clause. I can see that it is dealt with in Clause 3(6) about farmhouses, and so my earlier intervention was irrelevant. However, the noble Lord has a very good point about why we are banning delivery to residential premises if there is someone there who can prove that they are over 18. The ban is actually not about whether the substance goes to residential premises. There are many reasons why you might want something delivered. For instance, if you are cooking and things like that—I know that is a later section. There are cleaning products and stuff like that. I cannot see the purpose of the ban if the delivery is being accepted by someone who is over 18. As I said in my earlier intervention, it is easy to do now with modern technology; we can now age-verify people extremely accurately.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as we have discussed, Clause 3 makes it an offence, where a sale is carried out remotely, for a seller to deliver, or arrange for the delivery of, a corrosive product to residential premises or to a locker. Given the concerns over the use of corrosive substances in violent attacks and other criminal acts, to restrict access effectively we believe that it is necessary to stop delivery to private residential addresses. This does not mean that corrosive products cannot be purchased online in the future, merely that individuals will be expected to collect the product from a collection point where their age can be verified before the product is handed over to them. This provision is important as it will ensure that checks are made and that the purchaser will need to prove that they are 18 or over in order to be able to purchase and collect a corrosive product. If the purchaser cannot collect the corrosive product in person, they would have to be able to send a representative who is also over the age of 18.

We have also included an exemption within the provision to ensure that deliveries to businesses that are run from home—such as a farm—would not be affected by the prohibition on delivery to a residential address, for example, where corrosive products are ordered by small family-run businesses, such as metal working, soap making or even farms, in the case of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. We have also provided defences that are available in cases where the individual has taken all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, questioned why both Clause 3 and Clause 4 are needed. Clause 3 relates to the dispatch of corrosive products bought online in the UK to a residential premises or locker in the UK. We cannot apply the same restrictions on sellers who are based overseas without taking extraterritorial jurisdiction for this offence. Such a step would be inappropriate for a sales offence such as this and, in any event, there would be practical difficulties mounting a prosecution given that an overseas seller would not be within the jurisdiction of the UK courts. Clause 3 is therefore supported by Clause 4, which makes it a criminal offence for a delivery company in the UK to deliver a corrosive product to a person under the age of 18 where that corrosive product has been bought from a seller overseas and where the delivery company knows what it is delivering. The purpose of Clause 4 is to try to stop overseas sellers selling corrosives to under-18s in the UK and having them delivered to a person under the age of 18. There is no overlap between Clauses 3 and 4; we think that both are needed. Clause 3 deals with UK online sales and Clause 4 deals with online sales from overseas sellers.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, again brought up the use of home as a business, which he has mentioned to me before. It will be a matter for the seller under Clause 3 to satisfy themselves that the delivery address is being used for a purpose other than residential purposes. If they cannot satisfy themselves, they should not deliver to that address. Again, it is something that we can deal with in the planned guidance. He also mentioned to me previously his concerns about Amazon’s terms of trade in relation to the sale of alcohol. We are clear from evidence of test purchases of knives that we cannot rely on such terms of business to ensure that the law on age-related restrictions is properly adhered to in the case of online sales.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I have to confess to being even more confused than I was before. Is the Minister saying that you can purchase corrosive substances from a seller overseas and have them delivered to your residential premises, but you cannot get corrosive substances delivered to your residential address if you order them from a UK seller? That appears to be the effect of Clauses 3 and 4.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Yes, I am.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Erroll]

I will put in an order now.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I think the point still stands. If you order online from an overseas supplier, you can have your corrosive substance delivered to your residential address and the courier, under Clause 4, is obliged to check the age of the person who it is handed over to, to ensure it is not delivered to somebody under the age of 18. Why on earth—

[Lord Lucas]

How can the courier know that there is a corrosive substance in the package? It will just say Amazon on the outside.

[Lord Paddick]

It says so in the clause, to be fair.

[Lord Lucas]

But this is an overseas seller. It is not subject to this law. It just sends a plain package.

[Lord Paddick]

Clause 4 says that if the courier knows it is a corrosive substance, they have to take these precautions. That is what Clause 4 says. It makes no sense to me at all. If age verification at the point of handover is effective in preventing under-18 year-olds getting hold of substances in the case of overseas sellers, why cannot age verification at the point of handover be effective in preventing them getting hold of corrosive substances delivered to residential premises from a UK supplier? It seems to make absolutely no sense whatever.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Paddick]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for reminding me of that but I am even more confused. She seems to be saying that, in the case of a UK online sale, somebody can pick up the substance from a pick-up point, where their age will be verified. What is the difference between that and a person at the front door of a residential premises having to prove to the courier that they are over the age of 18? I do not understand how picking up the substance at a collection point or picking it up at your front door makes a difference to the ability of the person handing it over to ensure that the person is over the age of 18.

[The Earl of Erroll]

I can see that this will also get more complicated because you can order a product from a supermarket located just across the channel and have it delivered to your residential premises, which presumably means that it is an international transaction. A particular supermarket was mentioned earlier. I do not think that any supermarkets want to lose their trade to people located just across the channel, but a ban is suddenly going to be put on a lot of local supermarket deliveries.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

24: After Clause 5, in the title, leave out “under section 1”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment to insert reference to section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 in subsection (1) of this amendment.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have Amendments 24 and 25 in this group. These amendments are designed to have the effect of extending the scope of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, to cover the sale of knives as well as sale of corrosive substances—or, should I say, to prevent the sale of these items to those under 18.

We had an Oral Question last week on this issue, and I suggested that shop workers were acting as law enforcers in the circumstances. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, suggested that shopkeepers were simply obeying the law in not selling age-restricted items and that we all have a duty to obey the law. I disagree. The circumstances in which this offence would take place are those where someone underage tries to buy an age-restricted item and is prevented from doing so by a shop worker, who in these circumstances is enforcing the law. They are compelling observance of or compliance with the law, which is the definition of “enforce”. As such, they deserve the protection of the law in carrying out this duty. I support Amendment 23.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judge]

We are devising a system which will impose considerable burdens on sellers. The arguments in favour of this amendment are absolutely obvious. May I make a completely separate point, though? The amendment is brilliant legislation too, unlike the rest of the Bill. Here we have a clear statement of what act you have committed—obstructing the seller—and simultaneously the state of mind you are in: you are acting intentionally. Intention to obstruct is a perfectly clear, simple piece of legislation that anybody could understand. There is an argument that there are various ways those who work in shops can be protected, against violence and so on, but this is very limited in what it is seeking to address: obstructing somebody. In these circumstances, when the burden is so heavy on the seller, they ought to be protected.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lord, if I may have a second go, until very recently I did not support particular protections for shop workers. Being from a policing background, I know we have taken the steps in the law to protect law enforcers, and recently there has been a Bill to protect all emergency workers in this way. But here we are talking about people who are intent on violence; they are looking to get their hands on knives or corrosive substances to commit violence. That is the sort of person that these shop workers are likely to confront, and that is why I am now convinced that this is the right thing to do.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said I would say that there is no problem. I am not going to say that, but I am very grateful to him for explaining his amendment. He attaches particular importance to affording greater protection for retail staff, and his noble kinsman, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, raised this question last week. It was a very good opportunity to discuss the issue, which is of great concern. I understand the concerns of retailers and their staff about being threatened or attacked in the course of their duties, including as part of verifying a person’s age when selling a corrosive product. As my noble friend Lord Deben said, it may be those very people who want to buy these things who will be those who mete out the abuse on retail workers. Nobody should have to experience this sort of behaviour at their place of work, especially when providing a service to members of the public.

As I said at Second Reading, the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability held a roundtable on 11 December with David Hanson MP, Richard Graham MP and representatives from the retail sector, including USDAW and the British Retail Consortium, to discuss what more we can do ensure greater protection for shop workers. Last week, I met USDAW to see what more we can do to ensure these greater protections. Following the discussion at the roundtable I am very happy to update the Committee. We will be taking forward the following actions: first, the call for evidence, which I spoke about last week and is intended to help us ensure that we fully understand this issue and look at all the options for addressing it; secondly, that we provide funding to the sector to run targeted communications activity to raise awareness of the existing legislation that is in place to protect shop workers; and thirdly, we are refreshing the work of the National Retail Crime Steering Group, co-chaired by the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability and the British Retail Consortium. An extraordinary meeting of the group, focused exclusively on violence and abuse towards shop workers, will take place on 7 February. That discussion will help to shape the call for evidence.

In addition, the Sentencing Council is reviewing its guidelines on assault. A consultation on a revised guideline is anticipated to commence this summer. These measures are intended to complement existing work under way to tackle this issue. For example, the Home Office is providing funding of £1 million for the National Business Crime Centre over three years between 2016 and 2019. The centre was launched by the National Police Chiefs’ Council in October 2017 to improve communication between police forces on business crime, promote training and advice, and help to identify national and local trends.

In addition, through the national retail crime steering group, which includes representatives from across the retail sector, the police and others, we are taking forward a range of work to strengthen the collective response to these crimes, including: the creation of a “crib sheet” for retailers to use when reporting violent incidents to the police so that they get the information they need to support a timely and appropriate response; exploring options for improving consistency in the recording of business crime by the police, which will include a short pilot analysis of forces applying business crime flags; and the development of guidance on impact statements for businesses to increase their use. These statements give businesses the opportunity to set out the impact a crime has had and are taken into account by courts when determining sentences.

I know that there are concerns about the adequacy of the existing legislation for protecting those selling age-restricted products. The call for evidence is intended to help us understand better how the existing law is being applied and whether there is a case for reform, including in the context of the sale of age-restricted products. However, I want to provide some reassurance about the legislation we have in place, without dismissing noble Lords’ points. A wide range of offences may be used to address unacceptable behaviour towards shop staff—including those who sell age-restricted items—covering the full spectrum of unacceptable behaviour, from using abusive language to the most serious and violent crimes.

Some of the existing offences available include behaviour that causes another to fear the immediate infliction of unlawful violence, which is already an offence of common assault under Section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Where shop workers are threatened or experience abusive language, this may be captured by the offences under the Public Order Act 1986. There is also the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which means that assaults against shop workers could be considered as assault occasioning actual bodily harm under Section 47 of that Act. In addition, courts have a statutory duty to follow sentencing guidelines when considering any penalty to be imposed further to criminal conviction, unless it is not in the interests of justice to do so. In all cases, the fact that an offence has been committed against a person serving the public may be considered an aggravating factor for the purpose of passing sentence.

In answer to my noble friend Lord Deben and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the specific offence in Amendment 3 could be counterproductive and encourage prosecutions for the new obstruction offence with a maximum penalty of a fine—I think that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, made that point as well—rather than a more serious offence, such as assault, which carries a higher penalty. That said, and going through the list of offences that this may capture, we understand retailers’ concerns about the risk of their staff being threatened or attacked—particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, for smaller retailers, such as corner shops. The call for evidence is intended to improve our understanding of the issue and identify potential solutions. We will seek to issue the call for evidence as soon as is practically possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked whether shop workers were law enforcers. It is a moot point on which I think we will agree to differ. I was trying to make the point that they are not policemen but they have to uphold the law. With that, I hope that I have given the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, enough to help him to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

25: After Clause 5, in subsection (1), at end insert “and under section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (sale of bladed articles to persons under 18).”
Member’s explanatory statement
This would extend Lord Kennedy of Southwark's amendment so it would also be an offence to obstruct retail staff in their responsibilities in preventing the sale of knives to persons under 18.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

27: Clause 6, page 7, line 4, at end insert “with intent to cause injury”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would make it an offence to have a corrosive substance in a public place only with the intent to cause injury to someone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, the amendment is in my name and in those of my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. We are back to group 1 and the issue of completely innocent people having to prove their innocence beyond reasonable doubt.

We discussed this at considerable length on group 1 and I do not intend to rehearse those arguments again, save to say that people acting completely innocently commit an offence as the legislation is drafted, hence the need for the amendment. That having been said, if someone has a corrosive substance with them in a public place with the intention of causing injury to someone, they commit an offence under Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, which defines an offensive weapon as:

“any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him”.

If they have a corrosive substance in a water pistol or a washing-up liquid bottle capable of squirting the corrosive liquid at someone, it is an article adapted for causing injury. If they have a corrosive liquid in the bottle it was sold in, intending to pour it over someone, it is intended by the person to cause injury, and an offence under the Prevention of Crime Act.

To quote from the briefing on the Bill from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice and the Prison Reform Trust, the clause,

“creates a very loose and ill-defined offence, that fails to satisfy the requirements of legal clarity and will lead to unjust prosecutions and custodial sentences”.

It continues:

“New legislation is unnecessary. Currently, someone found in possession of corrosive substances, where there is intent to cause injury, could clearly be prosecuted under existing offensive weapons legislation … Prosecutors should be required to prove intent to cause harm …The new offence puts the onus on the child”—


or adult—

“to show they have good reason for carrying the corrosive substance … Proving such a defence may be difficult”.

I beg to move.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment purely to be consistent with what I said at Second Reading. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has pointed out, it could be that children are sent to collect corrosive substances from shops. They do not know that the substance is corrosive, as defined by the Act, and could be caught in possession by stop and search techniques, resulting in thoroughly unfortunate imprisonment.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for explaining the rationale behind this amendment which would, as he has acknowledged, fundamentally change the nature of the offence provided for in Clause 6. As the noble Lord pointed out, we return in part to the arguments that he put forward in the first group of amendments. I appreciate the noble Lord’s concerns, but I will set out the reasons why we are seeking to introduce this new possession offence.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made reference at Second Reading to the existing legislation in this area, and I will explain why it is not sufficient to tackle the problem of individuals carrying corrosive substances in public. Under Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, it is already the case that anyone who is in possession of a corrosive substance can be prosecuted for the offence of possession of an offensive weapon. However, for the accused to be guilty of the Section 1 offence, it is necessary to prove that they are carrying the corrosive substance with the intention of causing injury. Such intent can be proved, for example, in cases where an individual has decanted the corrosive substance into a different container for the purposes of making it easier to squirt or throw at another person and also to conceal it from the police. However, the intention of Clause 6 is to strengthen the powers available to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. We want to remove the burden on the police and the prosecution to prove that the person was carrying the corrosive substance with the intention to cause injury.

This approach is not novel; it is consistent with the possession offence for knives and bladed articles. We have modelled the new offence on existing legislation in place for the possession of knives under Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. There is also a similar offence in place in Scotland. We have put in place suitable defences for members of the public to prove that they had good reason or lawful authority to be carrying the corrosive substance in a public place. These defences are also modelled on existing legislation for the possession of knives.

I know that noble Lords may be concerned about law-abiding members of the public being stopped by the police as they leave their local supermarket or tradespeople being stopped. However, I reiterate the points that my noble friend made at Second Reading about how we envisage the new offence being used by the police. This is not about the police criminalising tradespeople, children sent on an errand or law-abiding members of the public. We would fully expect the police to use this new offence in response to information or intelligence from the local community that someone was carrying a corrosive substance in public.

Furthermore, as my noble friend also indicated at Second Reading, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, we have jointly commissioned the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory to develop a testing kit for the police to use to be able to identify corrosive substances in suspect containers. This work is well under way, and we want to have a testing kit in place before commencing the new possession offence.

We need to strengthen the law to tackle the abhorrent use of corrosive substances as weapons. This amendment would effectively leave the criminal law as it currently is. I hope that, in these circumstances, the noble Lord is persuaded of the case for the new offence as currently formulated and would be content on reflection to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I seek clarification, however, on Section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, about which the noble Earl said that in order for somebody to be guilty of an offence under that Act, intent had to be proved. However, if the person is in possession of a made offensive weapon—an offensive weapon that has no other purpose than to cause injury: a dagger, for example—then my understanding is that no intent is required. Indeed, if the article that the person has with them is adapted to cause injury—for example, a water pistol filled with a corrosive liquid—again, there is no need to prove intent. That would make the existing offence even stronger than this offence as amended by this amendment.

The noble Earl talks about consistency with Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 regarding bladed and pointed instruments. I accept that the offence as drafted is consistent with that Act, but, in my view, two wrongs do not make a right. The noble Earl and the noble Baroness earlier talked about how the Government envisage that the police will use this legislation. They fully expect the police to use it in response to intelligence. I go back to what I said on the first group: having been an operational police officer for more than 30 years, I do not share the confidence that the Government have about how, in every case, the police are going to use this legislation. This is the source not only of my concern but, as I have said, of the concern of the organisations I mentioned in proposing the amendment.

As far as the testing kit is concerned, that is something that we will return to in a successive group later on. However, having made those points, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 27 withdrawn.

Shop Workers: Protection

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I am very happy to meet USDAW, which I fully expected might be one of the things I would do during the passage of the Offensive Weapons Bill. The noble Baroness will know that attacking a person serving the public is already an aggravating factor in sentencing guidelines. The Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability will be discussing the way forward on the call for evidence with the national retail crime steering group. We do not have a closed mind on a way forward and I look forward to meeting USDAW and hearing its concerns about this serious matter.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, when shop workers enforce the law—for example, on the sale of age-restricted items—they are acting as law-enforcement officers. Does the Minister think that when shop workers perform these duties, they should have similar legal protections to those afforded to other law enforcers?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I do not agree that they are acting as law-enforcement officers. One could take that to its ultimate conclusion and say that everyone who upholds the law is acting as a law-enforcement officer. They are simply saying that, for example, the sale of alcohol, tobacco and, in future, corrosive substances, to underage people is against the law. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, the call for evidence will bottom out exactly what is needed in the future. Nobody wants to see shop workers or any workers who deal with the public being abused in any way. I look forward to a constructive way forward on this.

Homophobic Hate Crime

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord raises one of the most important things: a trend in hate crime that we are seeing is the perceived anonymity of online hate crime. Particularly for children who are bullied, which the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, was about, that is carried with them all day because they bring their phones home, and that can produce some dark thoughts in their minds. The online harms White Paper is due shortly, and I very much look forward to working with the noble Lord on the legislation.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain why 23% of recorded homophobic hate crimes resulted in a charge in 2014, but only 13% resulted in a charge in 2017? What impact does the Minister think these statistics will have on the confidence of the perpetrators of homophobic hate crime and the fear felt by victims?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Like the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, the noble Lord raises an important question. In general, the changes in the charge rates are likely to be the result of improved crime recording by the police, and of forces taking on more complex crimes, such as sexual offences, which of course take longer. We welcome the fact that more victims are coming forward and reporting crimes to the police. However, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, the CPS and the police are working together to look at this disparity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, there are certain aggravated offences in the hate crime area. We absolutely accept that the things the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, was talking about are hate crimes, but they do not currently carry the aggravated offence.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, there was a commitment in the Conservative Party manifesto to make homophobic hate crime an aggravated offence. Are the Government going to fulfil the promise they made in their manifesto or not?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Yes, my Lords, but the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, was talking about a different type of aggravated offence.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 7th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister mentioned the tragic stabbing to death of a father on a suburban train last week, and of course our thoughts are with all those affected by such a tragedy. However, the fact is that young people in our inner cities are dying from knife crime almost every day of the week, and that is the real tragedy that the Government should be highlighting.

This Bill has a familiar ring to it. Again, the Government, wanting to be seen to be responding to the crisis of violence on our streets, resort to legislation and imprisonment rather than investing to tackle violent crime, investing to bring about long-term changes in behaviour and taking immediate steps to save young people’s lives by properly investing in policing. And the reason? To avoid raising the taxes of those who can most afford to make a contribution.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. Violence stems from inequality and poverty, from failing to invest in children and young people, from creating a vacuum that used to be occupied by community policing and youth services and has now been filled by criminal gangs. The Government’s serious violence plan—it does not deserve the title “strategy”—is in fact a patchwork of unco-ordinated and underfunded initiatives, however well intentioned, that lack the real money and real leadership that could really make a difference, and this legislation is yet another piece of that inadequate and ineffective patchwork.

A very good piece of legislation that deals with offensive weapons is already on the statute book. The Prevention of Crime Act 1953 states:

“Any person who without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, the proof whereof shall lie on him, has with him in any public place any offensive weapon shall be guilty of an offence”.


This was the staple of my days as a constable on the beat. There were two types of offensive weapon. There were items such as daggers that were made to cause injury to people—made offensive weapons—but the majority had more than one use; for example, a kitchen knife which, when carried to a fight, was an intended offensive weapon. It was therefore straightforward. The chef on his way to work did not commit an offence when carrying a kitchen knife, whereas the gang member on his way to confront a rival gang did.

In 1988, Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act shifted the burden against the innocent, introducing an offence of having in a public place any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed. From what I can see, this is the origin of the shift that we discussed at some length in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill: a shift away from whether someone commits an offence, subject to whether they have lawful authority or reasonable excuse, to an absolute offence where,

“it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence to prove that he had good reason or lawful authority”.

This Bill creates new offences of, for example: selling a corrosive product to a person under the age of 18, having a corrosive substance in a public place and delivering a bladed product to residential premises or a locker—no matter whether every precaution has been taken to ensure dangerous items do not get into the hands of children. It is a defence for someone charged with any of these offences to prove that they took all reasonable steps to avoid this happening. However, unlike the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, there is no reference to Section 118 of the Terrorism Act, which noble Lords will recall places the burden of proof on the prosecution and says:

“If the person adduces evidence which is sufficient to raise an issue with respect to the matter, the court or jury shall assume that the defence is satisfied unless the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is not”.


Presumably, this means that the man carrying his drain-unblocking fluid home from the supermarket commits an offence, for which he has a defence if charged; it is only then that he will have the opportunity to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he has a blocked drain at home. I do not want to get into arguments at this stage of the Bill around necessity and proportionality when the police use their powers of arrest. Suffice to say that I will again challenge this type of approach, particularly when we are confronted with cases such as that of the couple arrested over the recent drone incident at Gatwick Airport. Legislation should be worded so that, if someone has lawful authority or reasonable excuse, as in the 1953 Act, they do not commit an offence—not that they have a defence once they have been charged.

I understand that Acid Survivors Trust International blames lack of tight controls on acid sales or,

“legislation specific to acid attacks”,

for the rise in the number of attacks, but this needs to be put into perspective. Acid attacks have increased from 228 recorded crimes in 2012 to 601 attacks in 2016. In 2017 there were 39,598 offences involving a knife or pointed instrument; the number of acid-related offences is tiny. Corrosive substances carried with the intention of causing injury, for example in a spray or a squeezable washing-up liquid bottle, are offensive weapons under the 1953 Act and causing an injury using acid is clearly a serious assault. Notwithstanding ASTI’s concerns, one has to ask whether the Government are doing something that will be effective by introducing this legislation, or whether they just want to be seen to be doing something. In many other areas, the Government claim that self-regulation is preferable, that legislation is unnecessary, and one has to ask these questions here.

The Bill potentially puts further strain on an overcrowded and therefore ineffective prison service. Underage selling of corrosive products potentially carries a sentence of 51 weeks in prison, possession in a public place carries up to 12 months on a first offence and a compulsory four-month or six-month sentence for a second offence, removing the discretion of judges once again. There is only one thing worse than unnecessarily adding to an overcrowded prison system and that is short sentences that destroy social ties, take away people’s jobs and are not long enough to allow education, training and rehabilitation.

What happened in the other place? The only change, under pressure from Conservative Back-Benchers, was that the Government went against the advice of the police and caved in to the wealthy and privileged who wanted to keep their high-powered rifles.

We acknowledge that criminalising the sale of corrosive substances, making it a specific offence to carry corrosive substances in public and restricting online sales of knives sends a message, but messaging is the argument that the Government usually use to oppose the creation of new offences, not to create them. We on these Benches need a lot of convincing that this legislation as drafted has a useful part to play in containing the epidemic of violence on our streets. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has said, the Bill is a missed opportunity.