Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Bethell

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

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 39. I thank noble Lords for returning and doing me the courtesy of hearing this out. I really appreciate it and I will be very quick. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, put it very well—I wish she were still in her place—but I also feel very passionate about the victims of acid attacks and corrosive substance crime. I am a trustee of the Scar Free Foundation and I have met a lot of the victims, and I have been blown away by how these crimes have seemingly come out of nowhere and become a very big deal: there were nearly 1,000 attacks last year. I am very much aware of how innovative criminals have quickly become, to get around the law and invent new crimes. I am aware that our responses have got to be very quick as well. I applaud the speed with which the Home Office has reacted to this crime wave. I will not go through the list, but it is an impressive list and I completely endorse the approach.

We owe it to ourselves to recognise that this is an experimental approach: international data suggests that legislation on acid attacks is very difficult. It does not always work, so we should keep track of how this legislation proceeds and whether it is worth analysing its effectiveness and what is happening with the arrests that come out of it. That is why I suggested these two amendments: so that in two or three years’ time, we are not left worrying whether we have been on the right track and so that we have the right data to be able to fine-tune and make any changes to our approach.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, in this, because so many things that were alleged about the inefficiency of various measures are unproven. For example, short sentences are said to be no deterrent. We do not know for certain, and therefore I support entirely a continuous review. We must have more data to be able to be more precise in the measures that we take.