Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill
Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani, and to introduce this Bill on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan), who cannot be here today. I thank Lorraine O’Shea from my right hon. Friend’s office, who has been invaluable in bringing this private Member’s Bill together.
Clause 1 allows Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to test prisoners for all psychoactive substances, including any new compounds that emerge. It also allows prisoners to be tested for any controlled drug, pharmacy medicine and prescription-only medicine. It achieves that by using the definitions for those substances and medicines already set out in legislation, including the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 and the Human Medicines Regulations 2012.
It is a feature of psychoactive substances that new substances appear regularly, with slight alterations to the chemical mixture. When that occurs, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service has not been able to test for these new compounds until they have been added to the Prison Rules 1999 and the Young Offender Institution Rules 2000. The most recent example was scopolamine, a psychoactive substance added to the rules in October.
This clause will allow the drug-testing framework to respond quickly to test for new psychoactive substances, or any prescription-only or pharmacy medicines, without first having to amend the rules. Prisons and young offender institutions will be able to better plan for treatment services, identify those who should use them and, where appropriate, impose sanctions.
Amendments may still be made to the rules through statutory instruments to allow testing for substances that are regarded as harmful and which fall outside existing statutory definitions of controlled drugs, pharmacy medicines, prescription-only medicines and psychoactive substances. These are defined as “specified substances” in clause 1. Clause 2 amends the Prison Act 1952 to ensure that a substance cannot be listed as a “specified substance” in rules if it already falls within the statutory definitions of controlled drug, pharmacy medicine, prescription only medicine or psychoactive substance.
Clause 1(4) makes provision for the anonymised prevalence testing for medicinal products as well as controlled drugs, psychoactive substances and specified substances. “Medicinal products” is a wider category of substances than “prescription only medicines” and “pharmacy medicines” and is defined by reference to regulation 2 of the Human Medicines Act 2012. Having an express statutory basis for prevalence testing will provide a useful insight into trends in drug use and support healthcare providers in planning their services and tailoring their treatment programs in prisons and young offender institutions over time.
Clause 2 also sets out consequential amendments following the changes in clause 1. Clause 2 will allow the Secretary of State to make any necessary changes to the Prison Act 1952 in the event of any future changes in the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 or other legislation relating to human medicines. For example, if a substance definition that our Bill refers to were to be revoked in future, we could amend the Prison Act 1952 to include the definition or refer to alternative legislation and avoid any impact to Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s drug testing framework.
As we have discussed, the Bill adopts a general definition of psychoactive substances. That allows HM Prison and Probation Service to test for any psychoactive substances. In the past, substances considered psychoactive have been listed in the rules as specified drugs, in order to allow for testing. That is no longer required. It is therefore necessary for the Bill to remove the existing lists added to the Prison Rules 1999 and the Young Offender Rules 2000, as per our amendment. It is better for the statute book explicitly to remove statutory instruments that would otherwise have no effect. That is why we tabled the amendment, which is a minor and technical amendment, specifically in reference to scopolamine.
Scopolamine was added to the prescribed drugs list by statutory instrument in February, so that HM Prison and Probation Service could test prisoners for a psychoactive substance that had come into recent illicit use in our prisons. Were the Bill to become part of the statute book, scopolamine would be covered by the new definition of psychoactive substances inserted into the Prison Act 1952 by clause 1 of the Bill. The SI laid in October would therefore become redundant, so the amendment removes it from the statute book.
Clause 3 confirms the short title of the Bill and makes provision for its coming into force. The clause also provides that the Bill extends to England and Wales only, as prisons are devolved in both Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. What an honour to be considering a private Member’s Bill this morning. It is a shame that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham is not with us, but I know that the hon. Member for North West Durham will continue to take the Bill through the House most ably. He demonstrated his skill on Second Reading. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham chose wisely.
The Bill is an important one, and Labour supports its core goal to improve the testing regime for harmful substances in prisons. Substance misuse in prisons is rife, and we are told that it fuels violence and health problems and remains a real barrier to rehabilitation. The physical and mental impact on prison staff, including those who work to provide healthcare and education, can be truly awful.
As the hon. Member for North West Durham said, the current system for enabling substances to be tested within our prisons is just not responsive enough. The drugs that are being produced change rapidly, as do the methods of smuggling them into our prisons. Removing the necessity to introduce secondary legislation every single time a new substance needs to be added to the testing regime is a necessary and proportionate change, which is of a piece with the broader changes made several years ago by the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016.
I served on the Committee for the 2016 Act. If we are being frank, we probably should have provided for this issue in that measure. However, it is very welcome to have a statutory basis for anonymous prevalence testing, so that prisons and healthcare staff, prison leaders and the Government can deliver a faster, more precise and more accurate understanding of what the problems with drugs are, and where they are within the prison system.
I have two brief questions about the drafting of the Bill, which I assume the Minister will be able to answer. I raised them quickly on Second Reading, but understandably at that point I did not receive a full response. As hon. Members will know, there are occasionally issues with the interpretation of the core definition of a psychoactive substance in the 2016 Act. This Bill would copy that definition into the Prison Act 1952. Are the Government confident that the definition is robust enough? Is there a risk that the general power to specify substances to be tested for in clause 47 (3A) of the Prison Act 1952 will still need to be used if these definitions fail? I have noticed that the consequential amendment 1 opts for amending the general power that I just mentioned, so that all controlled drugs—pharmacy medicine, prescription-only medicine, and psychoactive substances—are excluded.
An alternative step would be to repeal subsection (3A) entirely. It might be that the decision to amend it, rather than repeal it, reflects a judgement that the definition of a psychoactive substance could turn out to be inadequate, and that a power to set out specific substances to be tested will still be needed. However, if that amended power in subsection (3A) were ever used in the future, it would still have to make use of an amendment to the prison rules through secondary legislation. That process would be no faster than the one that currently exists. I do not say so to oppose a general power to specify substances remaining in legislation after this Bill hopefully becomes law. However, I would welcome further explanation. Is the general power simply there in case the other definitions drawn from the 2016 Act and the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 fail, or is it there for another purpose? Is another purpose envisaged? I am quite happy to take a note on this, electronically or otherwise, after the sitting. I have no intention of causing any difficulties, but these are issues that have been flagged to us, and we would be grateful for an explanation.
Two of the largest issues where we need greater clarity about the Government’s approach in response to this Bill are addressed by the new clauses that I will come on to introduce. I can see that I am likely to have a majority when I press them to a vote. Before we come on to those new clauses, I want to raise a few other questions and issues which it would be helpful for the Minister to address. The most important question for the Government in relation to this Bill is what are they going to use it for? Once the Bill has provided the power to rectify the problems with the testing regime for Spice and other novel psychoactive substances—as it is very early in the morning and I am a bit tired, I hope Members will accept that I will say “NPS” from now on—how are the Government going to use that power to create a healthier, more therapeutic, and more rehabilitative environment in our prisons?
Something that could result from more accurate testing is more widespread use of punishment for people found to have misused drugs in custody. As I said on Second Reading, this is a difficult issue, because sometimes the punishments that are used could make it harder for people to stop using drugs, rather than easier. Would the Minister tell us more about Government’s understanding of this? Has there been, or could there be, a review of the impact that different types of disciplinary intervention have had on people who are found to be misusing drugs in custody?
The Minister—rightly, in my view— has been looking keenly at the different ways that our courts can respond to offending in the community in a way that solves problems and does not make problems that clearly exist worse. I hear that next year we are going to be considering some of those welcome changes in the sentencing White Paper. In my view, it should be no different when people break the rules in prison. People in prison have had their liberty taken away as a punishment appropriate to their crime and, given the added challenges of living in prison and all that that brings, it is more, not less, important that the disciplinary actions taken solve problems and create the conditions for rehabilitation, not reoffending. The punishments announced in 2015 by the then Justice Secretary included bans on family visits, 21 days confined to cells, removal of TV access and more. We know that the use of drugs in prison can be, or is often thought to be, caused by inactivity, loss of hope and complete and utter desperation.
I worry that greater use of at least some of those punishments might inadvertently lead to people wanting to take more drugs to get themselves mentally out of the situation—even temporarily—that they find themselves in. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be locked up. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be locked in a cell—I am completely claustrophobic and antisocial—with someone I did not like for 23 hours a day. I could imagine in those circumstances, if I were a little bit different, wanting to get out of there in my head, at least temporarily.
Ms Brown
Can I just finish this, because it is not written down and otherwise I will lose my train of thought? This is something where some of us use alcohol. If we have had a rubbish day—not that it ever happens in this place, obviously—we go home for a very large gin and tonic. That in and of itself is almost a way of trying to come down from the stresses we have had and cope with them. Some people use alcohol in much worse ways than that and do not have it under control. All I am trying to say is that we should try and walk for a few minutes in the moccasins of those who find themselves imprisoned and are struggling mentally with all that being in prison means—being separated from their families and children and having their liberty constrained.
Rob Butler
Out of an abundance of caution, I declare that prior to my election I was a non-executive director of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. Notwithstanding what the hon. Lady has just said, does she accept that there is a real scourge of drugs in our prisons and that we must clamp down on them and not do anything to encourage their use? I entirely agree that rehabilitation is the right way to proceed but, equally, nothing must be done to encourage those who seek to bring drugs into prison, create an illicit economy and make the problem much worse.
Ms Brown
I absolutely agree and I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, especially with the knowledge that he has, for giving me the opportunity of making myself abundantly clear. Those who bring the trade into prisons, who put at risk the lives and wellbeing of our prison staff and prisoners should feel the full penalty of the law. I have no doubt about that at all.
What I was trying and obviously failing to do was to get us to put ourselves in the mind of the prisoner who is taking this stuff and understand that in many ways it is logical to want to free oneself mentally, even just for a few hours, from some of the stresses that people have to endure when there are in prison. The hon. Member for Aylesbury is absolutely right that the full weight of the law should be felt by those who are peddling this insidious, evil stuff in our prisons and taking advantage of those who are most vulnerable. They are completely and utterly despicable. I do not think I could make myself clearer.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
I had the pleasure of visiting HMP Cardiff a couple of years ago with the Welsh Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee. That prison was getting prisoners from Bristol visiting them who were under different regimes—under a different nation’s schemes. That had an impact on the prisoners from Bristol and other areas. Does my hon. Friend agree that there needs to be a more joined-up approach in dealing with this?
Ms Brown
I absolutely do. It is quite clear that once someone is on a treatment programme it needs to continue seamlessly, because we all want people, when they leave prison and go back into our communities, to be able to do so free from drugs and addiction, and to start a fresh life. My hon. Friend is right, and I am grateful to him for bringing that to our attention.
I gently suggest that the statistics, and Government policy more broadly, might be improved if we stop pretending that prisoners do not start taking drugs while in prison, rather than always going into prison with an addiction. That is the truth of it. The whole system at the moment seems to be geared to discovering who has a pre-existing dependence on drugs and ensuring that they are in treatment, which is good. Do not get me wrong, that is essential, but for drugs such as spice, which has been very common in prisons, it is not the whole story.
There is a third pathway to treatment that we need to ensure is available: a pathway for those people who did not have a drug problem when they entered prison but who, tragically and unacceptably, acquired one while inside. They are the people the system is failing most—the people for whom the boredom and difficulties of prison life are alleviated by short oblivion through illicit drugs obtained inside. I am genuinely hopeful that the Bill will enable treatment for those people. If it does, that will be a massive benefit to communities and families.
I will quickly explore one other issue. The transition between custody and community is often a revolving door, especially for those with drug abuse problems. It may be especially important for spice users. It is very evident that spice is disproportionately used by two populations: prisoners and rough sleepers. We know from last week’s Public Health England substance misuse statistics that in 2019 almost half of those entering treatment for misuse of an NPS had a housing problem—the highest proportion for any category of substances. I suspect that if we accounted for those who use spice but who are not in treatment as well as for those who are, the proportion with a housing problem would be even higher. It is incredibly difficult to hold down a job, maintain positive relationships and a family life, and to keep the mind and body healthy while living on the street. That contributes to higher levels of imprisonment among those who sleep rough.
Homelessness for prison leavers, and what the charity Nacro calls cell, street, repeat, is a priority for us, and I am led to believe that it will be a priority for the Government to reduce reoffending rates in coming years. However, we need to understand how these issues are connected; how many people come into prison with a history of rough sleeping and associated use of spice in a year; how many receive treatment for substance misuse while inside; how many are still accessing spice or other harmful substances while they are inside; how many of these people, when released, go straight back to rough sleeping; and how many are going straight back to spice use if they managed to get clean inside. I hope the Minister will offer to take this issue away and consider whether there is a need for further research, which the Ministry could commission, and how it might best be achieved.
The other important transition is when people leave prison. We need to ensure that leaving prison means starting a new, changed life. It is good for the whole of our community that prisoners, when released, do not come out and reoffend. It is also important for the prisoner that they get a true second chance. Substance misuse treatment is a massive part of ensuring that that can happen. We need to ensure that information about people’s needs travels with them as they leave prison and that treatment is immediate and consistent when they arrive in the community.
There is, unfortunately, little point in people getting clean or stable inside prison if they immediately relapse when they are out, without enough support, in the chaos and confusion of the outside world again. In fact, as we know, after release is the most dangerous time for those using illicit drugs, with appalling proportions of overdose deaths occurring in the first few days after leaving prison, just when we are wanting people to have a sense of hope and rebirth. A Norwegian study found that 85% of all deaths in prison leavers in the first week after release were due to overdoses. A US study found that the risk of an overdose death was 12.7 times higher for a prison leaver in the first two weeks after release from the general population.
Most of these deaths after leaving prison are the result of opiate use—heroin, or even more, drugs such as fentanyl—rather than an NPS. People in prison with an opiate dependence are generally on a regulated dose of a replacement drug as a medication, but when they come out, if they do not have immediate access to continue that treatment, they turn to the black market. At that point, much higher and less reliable doses are sold, which can quickly overwhelm the body, and people die. So getting transitions from custody to community right is a matter of life and death for some, and an essential part of treatment.
A few weeks ago, I met with some amazing NHS staff who work with armed services veterans in custody at HMP Wandsworth. I was delighted to hear that the staff in the substance misuse team leave the prison when those in their care are released, and go with them to their first appointment for community treatment. That is exactly the kind of integrated working that we need, but we all know that it is far from universal.
Can the Minister tell us more about what the Government are doing to improve treatment through the gate, following the recommendations in the report from the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs on custody to community transitions last year? I fully appreciate that she is unlikely to have detailed answers to all my questions at her fingertips, but I think that we, as parliamentarians, could do with them to help to design and monitor effective policy on issues that mean enough to us that we are sat here this morning.
This is an excellent Bill, whose purpose we support, but if it is not accompanied by effective, well-resourced Government policy its benefits will be limited. I am fairly certain that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham would not be impressed by that at all. I will say more when we come to the new clauses.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)
It is such a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I will not detain the Committee long on the main points, but I will respond to the points that the hon. Member for West Ham raised. I, like others, give my wholehearted support to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham for introducing this very important Bill, and to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham for acting as its sponsor on her behalf. I commend the excellent work that my right hon. Friend has done in preparation for the Bill, notwithstanding that she has been unable to participate in these proceedings.
Having the privilege of being the Minister responsible for prisons, probation and rehabilitation, I am acutely aware of how necessary the Bill’s provisions are. As the hon. Member for West Ham said, drugs fuel crime both in and outside prison. Moreover, new drugs are constantly emerging on to the market in prison, and criminals are tweaking the chemical compounds of existing psychoactive substances to avoid detection. The Bill ensures that drug tests are responsive to the latest challenges in prisons and young offenders institutions.
The Bill will future-proof the drug-testing framework by adopting the broader definition of psychoactive substances, prescription-only medicines and pharmacy medicines, and it will enable our prisons to start testing more immediately for new drugs substances. More than that, it will enable us to identify new and emerging trends and therefore react quickly to changes in drug use by adjusting the relevant security measures to find specific drug types or the appropriate medical response during an emergency.
There is also the issue of identifying prisoners or young offenders with ongoing drug problems. The provisions in the Bill will enable Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons to have a better understanding of which individuals are misusing drugs and therefore to ensure that they get the appropriate treatment, as well as providing evidence of what is possible in terms of prevention.
We have a multifaceted approach to tackling drugs, and the Bill will enable us to continue to enhance our ability to tackle the scourge of drugs in prisons. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham for taking the Bill through the House, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham for introducing it.
I will deal with a few of the points that the hon. Member for West Ham raised. She put forward a range of issues, and I will deal with the largest ones. She asked whether we were satisfied with the definition of psychoactive substances. I would like to assure her that we are content that the Psychoactive Substances Act provides HMPPS with a sufficiently broad definition to allow for testing of any new or existing psychoactive substances that may be used in prisons now or in the future. Of course, it is theoretically possible that a substance will fall outwith the definition in the future, so the Bill is drafted to future-proof drug testing in the case of any such eventually. However, that is not an eventuality that we anticipate at this time.
Mr Holden
I thank hon. Members who have taken part today, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, who tried to introduce the measure in a previous Session as a ten-minute rule Bill. It did not quite reach Committee stage, but we are rocking on. I hope we can keep it going today. I thank the hon. Members for West Ham and for Enfield, Southgate.
Mr Holden
I will wait until later to heap praise on the hon. Lady.
Some important points have been raised by Members of different parties, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, who has brought his expertise to bear today. I know he does not often speak outside Prime Minister’s questions, but I am glad he could grace us with his presence.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Consequential amendments
Amendment made: 1, in clause 2, page 3, line 35, at end insert—
“(7) In the Prison and Young Offender Institution (Coronavirus, etc) (Amendment) (No. 3) Rules 2020 (S.I. 2020/1077)—
(a) omit rule 2(3), and
(b) omit rule 3(3).”—(Mr Richard Holden.)
S.I. 2020/1077 added a new substance to the list of “specified drugs” in the Prison and YOI Rules. That list is no longer needed because of the changes made by the Bill and so this amendment revokes the S.I.
Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 1
Assessment of the effects and value for money of this Act
“(1) The Secretary of State must prepare an assessment of the value for money of the provisions of this Act in achieving their objectives.
(2) That assessment must consider—
(a) the extent to which the Act is achieving its objectives;
(b) the number of tests conducted;
(c) the number of positive results;
(d) the number of novel psychoactive substances found;
(e) the number of prescription-only substances found;
(f) the timeliness of updates to the testing regime when new substances are introduced into prisons;
(g) the amount spent on testing;
(h) the net effects on expenditure on the treatment of substance misuse;
(i) the effects of this Act on value for money in substance testing in prisons.
(3) A report on the assessment must be laid before Parliament no later than one year after the Act comes into force.”—(Ms Brown.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 2—Reports by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs—
“(1) The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs must make biannual reports to Parliament on substance testing in prisons.
(2) Each report under this section must include assessments of—
(a) the number of substances that have been tested for;
(b) which substances have newly appeared in prisons, and in what quantities;
(c) the speed at which novel substances are being accounted for by the testing regime;
(d) the effects of the provisions of this Act on the health of prisoners, including any effects on numbers of suicides or serious self-harm events in prisons.
(3) Any report under this section may contain recommendations for action they might have for healthcare providers in prisons, HM Prisons Service or any other public body relating to substance testing in prisons.”
Ms Brown
New clause 1 would require the Government to publish an assessment of the impact and value for money of the Bill within a year of its coming into force. I hope the Bill will increase the speed at which new psychoactive substances are identified in the prison system, and I hope the system will be able to identify quickly where medicines are being misused before that leads to harm. I hope that more people who need treatment for their drug problems will be identified, and that access to treatment will therefore improve. I hope the performance and value for money of the testing provider will improve, because it has a new, clearer mission and renewed scrutiny from the Ministry and Parliament.
We all hope there are results, but whether the benefits of the Bill are realised will depend on policy decisions and their implementation by both the Prison Service and the outsourced testing provider. I hope the Minister will say something about that, particularly about the value for money of the existing contract and what is happening to ensure that the testing service provided will be fit for purpose by the time the Bill comes into force. For me, the most important aspect of this is ensuring that treatment improves, because we know there are currently failures in the system.
The most recent data show that 11% of people receiving substance misuse treatment in prison said they had a problem with NPSs. For many, they will not be the only substances they are misusing. That proportion has been rising; it was just 5% in 2015-16, but, given the very high estimates for use in some prisons, it is probably reasonable to expect that the numbers of NPS users in treatment will need to increase further.
Lucy Frazer
I absolutely join my hon. Friend in that. He makes an important point: at HMPPS, the governors, prison officers and all the staff in the service have done such a remarkable job through extremely challenging times. The statistics show that we were looking at a significant number of deaths—2,500 to 3,500 deaths—and in the first wave, the death count was in the mid-20s. Although all those deaths are, of course, very sad, that figure is a credit to the joined-up working at every level, including with the POA. Again, I put on the record my thanks to them for the constructive way that they have engaged; I know that they are tired and that it is difficult.
I am very pleased with this morning’s news about the vaccine, because we can see some light at the end of the tunnel of this very difficult period. While many people will be celebrating Christmas, many of our prison officers will still be on the wings doing their work. I pay tribute to them for all the work that they have already done and for the work that I know that they will do, unrelentingly, over the next three months. May I say that I do not find that my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury only does PMQs? He is a regular participant in all justice matters, and it is a pleasure to see him serving on the Committee.
I make one last point to the hon. Member for West Ham. She made some important points about who we will give the information to and how it will be used. Like her, I agree that once we collect information, we should use it to our best advantage. We will look very closely at her suggestion that the information be widely shared and see what we can do to share that data within prisons.
My understanding is that we do currently share some of the prevalence data with the POA for substances that have already been tested for. Of course, we need to ensure that we respect security and that we do the right thing in terms of policy making, but that is something that I am very happy to look at further. She also mentioned sharing data with the NHS. We will, of course, be sharing our insights with healthcare providers so that they can quicker adapt their services.
I am always happy to engage with the hon. Lady, as she knows, on these and any other matters, but I ask her to withdraw the new clause.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lucy Frazer
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for highlighting the measures we put in place during the last wave; as I said, we are very conscious of the impact on reduced liberties in prison. We did make available 1,200 handsets and £5 extra phone credit, and, as she mentioned, we rolled out video calling. Of course, we will continue to consider whether those are appropriate in the next phase of this pandemic.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) [V]
Between today and Christmas, thousands of people will be released from prison, many of whom will have spent the past six months locked in cells for 23 hours a day, with education impossible, rehabilitation disrupted and mental health problems rising. They will be released with no job, money or second chance and an increased risk of reoffending. So, Minister, when will we have an action plan, learning the lessons from past months and providing prisoners with support, which, in turn, keeps our communities safer?
Lucy Frazer
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question, but I would like to challenge her position, because we already have an action plan. We have had the roll-out of a national framework to position 3—many prisons are already operating that. It rolls out the lifting of a number of restrictions, so that we have increased social visits across the estate, as well as offender management and a number of other measures. We are, of course, now reassessing the position and we will be having an action plan, following the imposition of further national restrictions on Thursday.
Prisons (Substance Testing) Bill
Baroness Brown of Silvertown ExcerptsFriday 16th October 2020
(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Prisons (Substance Testing) Act 2021 View all Prisons (Substance Testing) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am grateful to you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker—I love Fridays.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) on bringing forward her Bill. I know that she will have done so because she wants to make a real difference for the most vulnerable in society, just as she did with her Autism Act 2009. This Bill has Labour support. I am looking forward to serving with the right hon. Lady on the Bill Committee, and I hope that the Government will ensure that the Bill has a smooth passage today and through all its parliamentary stages.
As the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) rightly said, substance misuse is an extremely important issue for our criminal justice system, our prisons and our communities. Sadly, this week, drug-related deaths hit an all-time high. Drug dependence and abuse is a massive factor in many people’s offending and, indeed, reoffending. This year, the Black review found that about a third of prisoners are in prison for reasons connected to drug use. Of that third, 40% are actually in prison for drugs offences, so 60% are there for other crimes, such as theft or robbery, which they often commit to pay for the devastating financial cost of an addiction.
As we know, the cost of an addiction is not just financial. Many psychoactive drugs, including novel psychoactive substances—I will call them NPS so that I do not have to say those words throughout my speech—such as Spice, can take a terrible toll on physical and mental health. In prison, as in the outside world, many people take drugs to escape the bewildering, scary or miserable circumstances of their lives. Unfortunately, the substances taken to experience fleeting moments of distraction or numbness make the problems of chaotic lives so much worse.
Drug misuse, just like alcoholism, is a medical problem, and healing it requires well funded, long-term, holistic medical and social intervention. We know that substance abuse treatment works to reduce reoffending. Analysis by the Ministry of Justice suggests that being in treatment cuts reoffending by 44%, and that the number of repeat offences committed is cut by about 33%. It is likely that if treatment were better funded, larger reductions would result.
Over the last 10 years, responsibility for drug treatment has been transferred to councils, and the ring-fenced budget has been removed and reduced. Local government grants and public health funding were both cut. Many of those who are in our prisons today might not have been there if they had got help earlier—if society and the state had had the resources to step in and stop a downward spiral before it started—but to quote the American President, we are where we are. Now, we have to do everything in our power with those who are in prison to ensure that the conditions are there for good health, effective treatment, decent living conditions and a seamless transition to treatment in the community upon release. Without those things, I do not believe that somebody who has done wrong and is in prison will get a second chance to turn their life around.
The interventions made in individual prisons, and the policy for prisons across England and Wales a whole, can be made more effective if prison governors and the Prison Service have knowledge of what is happening with drugs inside. This Bill is intended to help with just that, and Labour Members support that essential purpose, just as we supported by Psychoactive Substances Act 2016—I should know, because I was the shadow Minister on that Bill. During its passage I learned lots. In particular, I learned that Spice and other new and initially unregulated psychoactive substances can have a devastating effect on people, and that their use in prison has had some terrible impacts on prison safety and stability.
Spice use can cause prisoners to behave extremely unpredictably and in ways that are out of character, and it has led to violent attacks on prison staff and on other prisoners. That primarily affects prison officers and workers. Like the hon. Member for North West Durham, I have been told by the POA that its people have been faced with the utter horror of someone they have known for a long time—perhaps a young man who has been in the revolving door and been in and out of prison without ever being a problem—taking Spice and being turned into “an utter lunatic who wants to kill you and who feels no pain.”
When a batch of Spice manages to get into a prison and is distributed widely across the population there can be a wave of problems, with people physically collapsing, having a mental health crisis or becoming violent. It is clearly in the interests of vulnerable prisoners, staff and our communities for the system to be able to respond more quickly to changing recipes, new symptoms, new routes in and new users, which is why this Bill is so welcome.
May I gently point out, however, that there is evidence to suggest that a disproportionate number of Spice users may not be in treatment? The Forward Trust has estimated that between 60% and 90% of the prison population have used an NPS at some point, yet in 2018-19 only 11% of prisoners in treatment had NPS use noted as one of their problems, so there is a huge disparity there. Most prisoners on a treatment programme went into it immediately upon entering prison. I know we will agree that picking up on the substance abuse immediately is an important thing, but it does not account for those who start misusing a drug while in custody. Such people may have had no other history of this. So I would be grateful to hear a little from the Government—or they can write to me—about what they are doing to improve treatment provision, alongside getting the more accurate testing that we need and that this Bill provides for. Public Health England estimates that every £1 spent on drug treatment has a fourfold return, and that has to be worth looking into.
I am told that when somebody uses Spice it is obvious, so there is a bit of a concern that the powers in this Bill will be used for the purposes of punishment, rather than for making an effective order of treatment. It would be a great pity if that is all that happens as a result of this Bill, with prisoners subject to greater punishment rather than getting treatment, because then it will not improve rehabilitation, and it will not make our prisons safer or more stable in the way that we want to see. At the end of the day, Spice is used primarily by very vulnerable populations, particularly rough sleepers and those in prisons. It is used by those whose days are filled with a lethal mixture of boredom and despair. Despite the risk of losing all control and having a terrible time, Spice promises an escape from reality, and the uncomfortable truth is that many of the punishments used in prisons, such as taking away TV privileges or limiting time outside cells, can make that boredom and despair deeper.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I am wondering, with Spice, if there is an animal—a dog—that can sniff it, and how the heck do we trace it? There are people in prison who come in with a problem and there are people who are infected, in a way, with drugs in prison, but the key is to try to find where the drug is located. I am sure the hon. Lady knows that much better than I do, not that she has experience.
Ms Brown
No, trust me, I have no experience. That is why I found the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 rather an exciting piece of legislation to be responsible for. The hon. Gentleman is right and there are many ways, sadly, that Spice can be taken into a prison. For instance, I was told that Spice can permeate a piece of paper. In a four-page letter, one of those pages might have the substance. It can then be torn into little strips and submerged in water, and the compound can be extracted from that. There are many ways that this can happen, and that is one of the reasons why this is so dangerous and why we really do need to be doing all we can to bring some semblance of control over the substances in our prisons and our prison estates.
If we want to tackle Spice in our prisons, as well as shutting down the routes in and ensuring that those who exploit it are stopped, we have to ensure that fewer people actually want to take it. That requires treatment by professionals, a productive and active prisons regime, and the creation of a therapeutic culture in which it is normal to want to be well, to have opportunities and support to be well, and to see oneself leaving prison and leading a productive life.
I am told that the test for psychoactive substances available currently can identify only six elements within the broad category of NPSs, and that updating that test can take as long as a year. I wonder if the Minister can tell us how many more chemical elements the Government think will need to be added in the near future to make that test more effective. I know she might not have that at her fingertips, and I would be grateful for a letter. I would also be grateful for any estimates she might have made as to how these changes will allow testing revisions to be speeded up and new forms of dangerous drugs identified.
Can I also ask the Minister: who will get access to the studies of the prevalence of different substance misuse in prisons in future? She will know that the Prison Officers Association has requested access to these studies so that its members have basic information about which substances are in circulation in their prisons, but it tells me that it does not get a response. Currently, the contract for prison testing is outsourced and held by just one company, Abbott Toxicology. It would be worth while if, during the progress of the Bill, the Government would make available an assessment of the performance of that contract. Is the service this company is providing adequate and is it value for money? Will there be a new contract to reflect the wider range of substances that need to be tested for?
As hon. Members will know, there are occasionally issues with the interpretation of the definition in the Psychoactive Substances Act, which this Bill would copy into the Prison Act 1952. Are the Government confident that the definition in the Bill is robust enough?
What purpose will be left for section 47(3A) of the Prisons Act 1952 after the Bill has amended it? Currently, the section allows the Government to make special rules enabling samples to be required for tests of substances that are not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. However, it now will not be possible, or presumably necessary, to use those powers to enable testing for new psychoactive substances, so what could it be used for? Is there still a point to having that general power in legislation?
The Bill extends the testing regime to cover prescribed and pharmacy medicines, many of which can be misused and cause serious damage in our prisons. They include drugs such as gabapentinoids and prescribed opioids for pain relief, which may be sold or shared with others outside the prescription given by the NHS. This is a welcome change, but close collaboration will be needed to ensure that prisoners who test positive are not mistakenly and unfairly penalised when they have a prescription and a genuine medical need. I note that there are a few points about that in paragraph 40 of the explanatory notes to the Bill, but I ask the Minister to expand on that, either in this debate or when we consider the Bill in Committee, as I hope we will.
It is essential that the testing regime will be the same across each prison and between prisons: from the new entrants in reception, to those in treatment areas, to those in a different prison, to a prison to which the prisoner might be transferred next week or next month. Otherwise, damaging disparities could arise between the results given by a test used in reception and one used by NHS staff in the treatment centre. What reassurances can the Government offer that that will be absolutely guaranteed?
Better testing can do very little when the treatment provision and the healthy rehabilitative regimes and cultures are not there in our prisons. I would be interested to see in the near future an analysis by the Government of how much an expansion of testing would cost. However well intentioned the Bill is—I think it is well intentioned—we need to make a considered assessment of whether additional money might be better spent on more staffing in prison, better access to drug treatment and through-the-gate support, or more rehabilitative prison regimes.
We need to make our prisons free of this poison, which continues to wreck lives. On the face of it, the lockdown in prisons should have made a big difference. There are only a number of possible routes that banned substances can take to get into prisons and two of the main routes have been heavily restricted. Visits to prisons were banned for many months and even now they have restarted they are occurring at a much lower capacity. During that same time, new entrants to the prison system from our courts have slowed to a trickle as a result of court closures and mounting backlogs. I hope the Minister can tell us whether there has, or has not, been a big decrease in access to substances in prisons over the past months, as that should be able to inform us about the routes being used to bring substances in. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us what lessons have been learned.
What impact has the lockdown had on the quality and accessibility of treatment in prisons? We know that access to prescriptions has, thankfully, continued with relatively little disruption through the pandemic, but what has happened to the other elements of treatment? Group-based discussions and therapy are always an important part of treatment. Are the Government considering how a wider range of treatment options could be restarted safely, bearing in mind that the risk from the pandemic may continue for many months to come?
I am happy to say that Labour welcomes and supports the Bill, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham again on bringing it to the House. The Bill will create greater consistency across policies and make a change that perhaps should have been made when the Psychoactive Substances Bill went through the House four years ago. I will be delighted to support it today.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) on taking the initial steps in bringing forward this important Bill. She has done a great deal in her political career, and this is only one of the many measures that I hope she will put on the statute book. I am so disappointed that she is not with us today to take the Bill forward, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) for taking it forward on her behalf and making the case so articulately. I hope to see the Bill complete its journey so that we can put this law on the statute book.
The Bill is critical to ensuring that we can react quickly to stop the distribution of drugs in our prisons, because we know that the trafficking and use of drugs in prisons and young offenders institutions can have a significant impact on the physical and mental wellbeing of individuals in both the short and long term, and it undermines an offender’s ability to engage in rehabilitation. It is not restricted to the harm of the use of drugs; we have also heard about the violence that it can cause. My hon. Friends the Members for North West Durham and for West Dorset (Chris Loder) talked about the scale of the problem.
The Bill does two things: it will enable us to have a robust drug testing framework that will be responsive as new drugs emerge, and it will also put prevalence testing on a firmer statutory footing. That will allow us to gather information to better identify new and emerging trends, so that we can react to them quickly. These measures, combined with others, will help us to tackle the use of drugs in prison. It is a pleasure to see the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) in her place.
Lucy Frazer
Indeed. We have had many opportunities to correspond digitally, so it is delightful to see the hon. Lady in person. She rightly referred to the importance of substance treatment and the fact that it works. I am delighted to tell her that 53,193 adults accessed drug and alcohol treatment services within prisons and the secure estate between April 2018 and March 2019. We continue to see those services as a beneficial source of treatment. She will have seen in our sentencing White Paper that we want to further use community treatment orders, so that people do not go to prison at all, and we can treat them in the community.
The hon. Lady referred to the importance of decent living conditions. She will know that we, too, are committed to ensuring that prisoners can live in decent conditions. That is why we have a £2.5 billion prison building programme, with £156 million spent on maintenance this year. She asked what else the Government are doing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) mentioned, the Government are putting extensive funds into tackling drugs.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) talked about the importance of expenditure in this area. I hope Members will be pleased to know that we are spending £100 million on boosting security to crack down on crime behind bars. That is not just about testing. It is about introducing airport-style security—in fact, it is better than that—with X-ray body scanners at 50 sites. It is about stopping devices such as illicit mobile phones working through phone-blocking technology. It is about strengthening staff resilience by enhancing our counter-corruption unit, and it is about increased disruptions against high-harm, serious and organised crime through a multi-agency team and enhanced intelligence capabilities.
Domestic Abuse Bill
Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Robert Buckland
Mr Speaker, I think I have been very generous. I respect all hon. Members, and I will give way to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) now.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I echo your words, Mr Speaker. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) is an extraordinarily brave woman. It takes the most enormous courage to stand up in this place and say what she has said. If any of us needed a reminder of why we are here today—why it is so important that we unite across the Chamber to take this action today—she has provided it. She will have given so much hope to so many people across the country. Knowing that it can happen to someone so beautiful, brave, strong and successful—successful enough to get to sit on these Benches—will give them the confidence, self-belief and self-worth to take action and break free from the torture she had to endure. I would like to thank her, as I am sure would everyone in the Chamber and listening at home, for being so brave as to do what she has done today. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
In the few minutes remaining, I want to raise one or two things that I would like the Minister to think about. This is an extremely good Bill. As we have heard, many Members across the House, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, have spent a huge amount of time on pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill and as a result it is already in really good shape.
As has been mentioned, at the heart of the Bill is culture change. The Bill starts in the right place because it talks about how we need to change our attitude towards relationships so that everybody knows what a good relationship is. That must start with every child in every school being given extremely good education about what makes a good relationship.
Lyn Brown
Does the hon. Lady agree that, as well as educating every child, we need to support children who have specific difficulties as a result of witnessing violence in their homes, and that child and adolescent mental health services need beefing up and proper funding in order to do so?
Sarah Newton
I completely agree with the hon. Lady that, in addition to education, every child must be supported. We know, as has been said today, that when children grow up in a home where there is controlling or coercive behaviour, economic control or any sort of abuse, including physical abuse, they will be affected by it. Boys and girls will think, “That’s what love looks like.” Is it any wonder that so many of those affected go on to become perpetrators or victims themselves? Of course, we need to help those perpetrators understand that this behaviour is totally unacceptable, and to help those victims understand that they can be survivors and that their lives need not follow this cycle. We need to make sure that every adult who comes into contact with children understands what domestic abuse is. That means statutory training for all people in the public sector who will come into contact with children, so that they can support them to get what they need to break that cycle.
There is a group of people who are often neglected in this debate, namely older people and people with disabilities. The briefing given to us by Age UK highlights work that is replicated—I have seen it at first hand—in my constituency. I recently attended a meeting with the excellent women’s centre, which does absolutely fantastic work in my constituency, as does an organisation called SEEDS—Survivors Empowering and Educating Domestic Abuse Services. So many older women are the subject of domestic abuse, but they are the least likely to speak out about it or to have access to services. The same goes for disabled people.
Although I very much agree with the definition in the Bill, I ask the Minister to consider gathering an evidence base of the prevalence of undisclosed domestic abuse of people with disabilities, particularly learning disabilities, as well as of those with physical disabilities and older people, to make sure that we have got the definition absolutely right. I know from the homicide reviews conducted in Cornwall that there are many more examples than any of us would like to think of family members financially, economically and physically abusing and even killing an older member of their family. Clearly, much more needs to be done to recognise those families who are at risk and really struggling, so that we can prevent those avoidable deaths.
It is not just family members; it can be people who deliberately befriend vulnerable people, including those with disabilities or older people. They can work their way into people’s affections with the sole purpose of abusing them. Often it is economic abuse. The definition really matters. I would like the Minister to consider the prevalence of undisclosed abuse. If it is the case, as I feel it is, that there are people beyond the family who become close and trusted friends of vulnerable people and commit this abuse, those perpetrators’ activities should come within the purview of the Bill.
In conclusion, people are right to say that victims and survivors have waited a long time for us to have this debate. They have been campaigning vigorously to get to this point. It is now down to all of us to take really important action through this Bill, so that we can prevent the avoidable deaths and the terrible suffering that go with domestic abuse, and make sure that we consign this appalling behaviour to the history books.
Assisted Dying
Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Nick Boles
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. It is incredibly important to understand all the concerns raised, perhaps especially those from such groups. What I think drives that very understandable concern is the fear that although a law might start off tightly constrained, there will be what people refer to as “the slippery slope”, and it might then be abused somehow: there might be situations in which people come under pressure to take their own lives when, in fact, they do not want to do so at all.
All I would say to the hon. Lady—I am happy to have further conversations with her about this—is that in jurisdictions such as Oregon, where for 20 years now there has been a law of the kind that was proposed here, there is no evidence of that slippery slope argument leading to people being put under pressure. If ever there were to be such a change of the law here, it would of course be essential to have safeguards that would prevent that and ensure that disabled people knew they had the same right to life as any of us, for as long as they wanted.
Nick Boles
I will give way to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) first.
Lyn Brown
This is an incredibly difficult debate for many of us; most of us will have personal stuff that informs our judgments about it. My mum died suddenly, riddled with cancer. I know that had this law been passed at that time, she would have spent her last months consumed by guilt and anxiety about when she should press that button. She would have worried about the pressure on me and my sister, about the cost of her care, and that people would have thought she was consuming resources that she should not consume. Sometimes when we have this debate, we do not consider collectively the pressure we would put on people by giving them that choice.
Nick Boles
The hon. Lady makes a very good point. All I would say is that the law could operate only with independent assessment—both by doctors and by a High Court judge, under the proposal in the most recent Bill—that would be clear that the person could not show any signs of coming to a decision under pressure or because they felt they were a burden.
Interestingly, talking to the Whaleys about Dignitas, I heard how the Dignitas doctors explained that if at any point Geoff had said anything like, “I think it is time to go. My family wants me to go; they are ready, we are here,” they would have sent them home. On no account would they allow somebody to go through with it if there was any indication that they might have changed their mind or that they might be prioritising other people’s feelings.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I have been engaged in this issue since the very early days when I arrived in this Parliament in 1997, guided, along with many other right hon. and hon. Members, by the experience within my own wider family.
By 2040, nearly one in seven people is projected to be aged over 75, so we will be engaged in supporting an ageing population who will lead fuller lives, working longer, by adapting the workplace and ensuring that individuals can reskill throughout their life. But people will be living with chronic conditions, and multiple morbidities and cognitive impairments will become more common within our population. I have no doubt that our innovative and caring society will solve, or certainly ameliorate, these conditions, but the hard truth is that more of us will have to grapple with surviving with the pain and indignity of crippling progressive infirmity in later life.
If we do not change the law, even more people than the current one every eight days may travel to Switzerland for an assisted death—and, of course, there are all those people who do not have the means to travel and all those travelling to Switzerland early so that they can exercise the autonomy available to them there. I do appreciate the views not only of right hon. and hon. Members but of the public who express concerns over assisted dying. It is of course a controversial subject. However, the injustice and the tyranny of having no escape from pain and indignity that our law continues to impose on a growing number of our fellow citizens will not go away until we address it. In Oregon, since 1997, a total of 1,127 patients have died from ingesting these medications. Not only does the yearly figure barely rise above the 0.003% mark, but only 64% of those who have received prescriptions for the medications since 1997 have actually taken them.
When we discuss this emotional topic, the most grotesque characteristics of greedy, overbearing relatives are conjured up in some hypothetical dark fantasy, but these arguments about a slippery slope or the vulnerability of people simply ignore the fact that this applies only to terminally ill people. When the Assisted Dying Bill came to this House in 2015, its terms would require two doctors to sign off on the fact that the person would be dead within six months and the process to be overseen by a High Court judge. How many more measures would opponents of this principle want to satisfy them? The difficult truth is that for many, it is none. This is about the imposition of a faith-based view of the sanctity of life overriding any sensible application of personal autonomy for people in dreadful and terminal strife.
Crispin Blunt
No, I will not. I might want to pick up on the example the hon. Lady gave later in my remarks.
That personal autonomy on any individual application of universal human rights includes the freedom to control and direct one’s own life and, in this case, death. Yet again, despite a poll in March of more than 5,000 people showing that 84% of Britons wanted a change in the law on assisted dying, they have to contend with the moral certainties of those who are not suffering extreme pain and who are taking these decisions on their behalf—us. We have a responsibility to discuss this issue in an honest, compassionate and evidence-based manner, and we have a swathe of evidence available to us.
The whole Oregon experience entirely supports that this is a practical, sensible, humane and decent measure. Over two decades later, the opinion of the people has not changed one iota. This Parliament, in not facing up to its responsibilities, is party to increasing tyranny, pain and despair.
Ultimately, this is about potential control. Just as people exercise control over how they live, they should be able to exercise control over how they die. In reality, the vast majority of people will never take this choice, even when faced with it. With strong safeguards, Oregon, Washington state, Montana and Vermont have had no documented reported cases of abuse. Why, when the evidence is clear, do we deny everyone the comfort of some personal control over the end of their life?
To return to the point made by the hon. Lady, I wonder what her mother’s view was, because under the law, she could not exercise her autonomy. I am utterly certain that the hon. Lady would have wanted, with all the generosity in the world, to ensure that her mother had the full support available to her. Well, that just might not have been the view of her mother, in the pain and difficulty that she was facing. Why was she not allowed the opportunity to make that decision?
Lyn Brown
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; she would have argued that she should have had the right to take her own life, but let me put one statistic to him. He mentioned Washington state—51% of the people who took the tablets there said that their reason for doing so was that they were a burden to the people they loved. That is the exact reason that my mother would have done the same. We must weigh the evidence properly.
Crispin Blunt
The evidence is there to be weighed by two doctors and a High Court judge, and the hon. Lady’s mother and other people in those circumstances would have had the right to exercise their autonomy. It is that autonomy and that control that we are choosing to suppress. Sadly, for now, it remains that we have a cruel, outdated law that forces people to die earlier by traveling to Switzerland while they are fit enough to travel, or to suffer pain, indignity and degradation that we would never impose on a suffering animal.
Martin Vickers
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and acknowledge that that is a deeply held view for him and many others, but I am afraid it is not one that I share.
Lyn Brown
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way because, counter to that, there is the issue of vulnerability, which we have not really come to in this debate. On Friday an elderly couple came to me, terrified for their daughter, who was in a very expensive care facility. Their grandsons, who they love dearly, wanted to take that woman out of that expensive care facility because it was costing too much of their inheritance. We cannot have this debate in a vacuum; we need to understand people’s vulnerabilities—the vulnerabilities of my constituents’ daughter, the vulnerabilities of my mum, and the vulnerabilities of the constituent of whom the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) spoke, who ended her life. We must understand that this issue is a reality, and not just dodge the subject.
Martin Vickers
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. As I mentioned earlier, every situation is different and I think the complexity of framing a law that covers everything is beyond us, to be honest.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
I do not plan to take the full six minutes, not least because we have heard so many really eloquent and brilliant speeches today. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) for their incredibly moving and powerful contributions.
I supported changing the law in 2015, and I would do so again. I pay tribute to the Members who came to this debate with an open mind and said that they have changed their minds for having the bravery and open-mindedness to do so. I still support changing the law because I believe that it is not working. I want to emphasise three areas where is not. First, there is the unfairness of the current situation. We have already heard that roughly one person a week goes to Switzerland. However, people go to Switzerland if they have the financial resource, practical resource, and, very often, emotional support to do so. We should not be condemning those without the financial resources to an end that is not of their choosing while other people can afford to go abroad. Even that, I would argue, would not be their first choice and is not the ideal situation, but at least they have the financial means and support to be able to make a choice of some kind. We should be giving that choice to everybody who needs it.
Secondly, the current law results in perverse outcomes. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central and the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) pointed out that it results in people dying sooner than they should. I am not going to repeat those remarks because they put it far better than I could. I pay tribute to them for their speeches.
Thirdly, I want to touch on the issue of palliative care. This debate is often framed as a choice between good palliative care and the right to choose how to die, but that should not be the case. Of course we need to invest in good palliative care—we need the best that we can get—but even with the best palliative care, we cannot stop all suffering at the end of life. A person should have the opportunity to choose their way of dying in addition to the availability of great palliative care.
I also want to respond briefly to three points from the debate. First, I agree very strongly with the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford in his request for a call for evidence to study the experience of Oregon and Canada. I do not share the pessimism of others that we cannot frame legislation that works for the people who need it to work, and gathering that evidence and learning from those examples will, I believe, allow us to do so.
I strongly disagree with the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who said that introducing assisted dying will lessen the value we put on human life. If we value human life and if we value people, we should allow them to live the life they choose, and that includes the death they choose.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) quoted a statistic about the number of people in Oregon who gave being a burden as their reason for choosing assisted dying. That only tells part of the story, because people who request assisted dying in Oregon give several reasons—
Jeff Smith
People in Oregon and Washington give several reasons. In both those states, the most frequently given reason for requesting to die—by over 90% of people—is a loss of autonomy. Being less able to enjoy life is chosen by around 88%, and a loss of dignity is chosen by around 74%. It is important to tell the whole story with the statistics.
Lyn Brown
I really regret not putting myself down to speak in the debate, because I think there is an absence of understanding about just how difficult it is for many people in this country and elsewhere to withstand the pressures of family who might feel that they are a burden. We are tripping gently into a hellish nightmare for many people. I urge my hon. Friend to listen properly to what people say.
Jeff Smith
I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I accept that there is real concern, but I think we can create a legislative framework that takes account of those concerns and allows safeguards to be put in place to ameliorate those concerns.
In the end, it comes down to one key question: if faced with a terminal illness and a painful end, would we want the death of our choosing for ourselves and for our family? If the answer is yes, as I believe it would be, we should allow that choice for everyone.
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill
Baroness Brown of Silvertown ExcerptsFriday 6th July 2018
(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2018 View all Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed), who has done great work on his private Member’s Bill.
I am grateful to Members from across the House for giving clear cross-party support to this Bill, which is small but nevertheless important. There are a number of people I would like to thank. I particularly want to thank the Clerks of the Public Bill Office, who have helped me through every stage of the process to get the Bill to Third Reading. As we know, it can be difficult to get a private Member’s Bill to this stage, and their support has been so helpful. I would also like to thank the Ministry of Justice team for all their support and information, and all Members of the House, particularly those from the Opposition, who have supported the Bill and who recognise the important difference that this will make in prisons up and down the country. In particular, the Bill will make a great difference for prison officers, who do such sterling work under very difficult circumstances.
Members may know that I inherited this Bill, so I want to put on record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Ms McVey) for her previous work in championing the Bill and for trusting me with the responsibility of ensuring its safe passage. I hope I have repaid her confidence. I also want to acknowledge the groundbreaking work of my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) in steering the original Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2012 through Parliament. It could be argued that because we are revisiting the 2012 Act only six years later, it was in some way deficient, but nothing could be further from the truth. The 2012 Act was an important and far-sighted contribution to the fight against the scourge of illicit mobile phones in prisons. The reason it has proved necessary to legislate again so soon is the sheer speed of technological change and the sheer scale of the problem posed by illicit mobile phones in our prisons.
Figures provide a stark illustration of the scale of the problem. In 2011, just a year before the 2012 Act was introduced, about 7,000 illicit mobile phones and SIM cards were found in prisons in England and Wales. By 2016, that figure was nearly 20,000. Last year, it had risen to 23,656 mobile phones and SIM cards.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on how far the Bill has progressed so far. Last night I was talking to some mums whose young people had been caught up in crime, and they were horrified to tell me that people are using mobile phones to continue criminal activities in jail, and to continue to hold in their thrall the young people they have groomed. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that that is allowed to continue?
Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill
Baroness Brown of Silvertown ExcerptsFriday 20th October 2017
(8 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 View all Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jim Fitzpatrick
Well, there we are—that is the secret. I was going to poke some fun at my hon. Friend and say that his constituents must be proud of him, but of course having heard that he canvassed his constituents I am sure that they are actually very proud to see him introducing the Bill today.
I should declare that which a number of colleagues know: I was a member of London fire brigade for 23 years before being elected to this place. During my 13 years as an operational firefighter, the great anomaly was that on 364 days of the year there were always those, young and old, who wanted to come into the station to see the fire engines, but on 5 November we were not always that popular. In my day, there were many fewer organised bonfires and firework displays, and sometimes they needed fire attention and dousing for public protection. In the approach to fireworks season, whether Diwali, which is on now, or Guy Fawkes night, I hope we have a safe period for all celebrating. We have heard too often of fireworks being used as weapons against police, fire and ambulance workers.
I am grateful to the House of Commons Library, the Fire Brigades Union and London fire brigade for their briefings on this debate. The House of Commons Library briefing says, “Prime Minister Nick Hurd”—[Interruption.] Sorry, I meant to say Policing Minister, although some of us see the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) as a future Prime Minister—and the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) has also been mentioned as a prospective future Prime Minister. The House of Commons Library briefing cites the Policing Minister as saying that
“the Government supports the spirit and principle of the Bill, but that ‘there will be detail to work through’.”
Of course that is great news for the whole House, where we have heard positive speeches from Members on both sides indicating that the Bill will pass Second Reading. The briefing goes on to list the number of assaults and attacks, saying that the Home Office estimated that there were 24,000 assaults on police officers in 2016-17 and that the latest bulletin from the Ministry of Justice on safety in prisons in England and Wales says that there were more than 7,000 assaults on prison staff.
On the subject of NHS staff, NHS Protect—which my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda mentioned as being under threat—states that, according to the figures it has collected, more than 70,000 staff were affected in 2015-16.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I was in Moorfields hospital the other day, having had an eye haemorrhage, and as I sat there during the afternoon, three instances came up on the screen of someone being assaulted in one of the cubicles. I think that numbers such as those are grossly under-reported. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Jim Fitzpatrick
My hon. Friend quotes from personal experience, and we have heard anecdotes in other contributions in the Chamber this morning that officers and hospital staff are reluctant to report incidents other than the most serious. Clearly, there seem to be barriers preventing all the assaults that appear to be taking place from being put on record. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and I am sure that the Minister will want to comment on it. I am also grateful to her because she gives me the opportunity to mention West Ham. Just as an aside, we need three points against Brighton this evening.
In an intervention on the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), I mentioned that there were no data on attacks against firefighters. Dr Paul Hampton from the Fire Brigades Union has written to me:
“You probably know that data on attacks on firefighters is not published by the Home Office for England (figures are published in Scotland by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service).”
The right hon. Gentleman indicated that there are figures for Wales, and other hon. Members have made that same point. Dr Hampton continues:
“So I think you can make the points about the lack of central government monitoring and under-reporting in the debate.”
That supports the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), and I would be grateful if the Minister commented in his winding-up speech on the absence of data on firefighter assaults in England.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, made this point:
“It is never acceptable for anyone to go to work and have to put up with verbal abuse or physical assault. Yet that is what fire crews are now facing on a daily basis in some areas of the United Kingdom.”
That was written 10 years ago, and sadly it is still true today.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who brings an awful lot of professional experience to the debate, given his career in the fire service. I was particularly interested to hear what he had to say. It would also be remiss of me not to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is undoubtedly a canny parliamentarian. He has introduced his Bill with great skill. In my experience, he has always been happy-go-lucky, so I am not at all surprised that he was successful in the ballot. In bringing forward his Bill, he has made sure that he gets the maximum bang for his buck. We have to get the Bill on the statute book.
The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) has also contributed a lot to the debate and championed this work in the House. For her, and for me, there is a personal dimension to all this. Both my parents were police officers. My dad did 30 years’ service and my mum was a frontline officer until she had me, at which point she gave that up and went to work on the administrative side of the police service. I cannot imagine how I would have felt, when I was growing up, if my mum or dad had come home and told me that they had been assaulted at work. I cannot imagine the sense of anger, upset, bemusement and concern that I would have felt if we had had that discussion at the dinner table on an evening while I was growing up.
Tom Pursglove
It is just horrendous that anybody should feel that they have to go home after work and try to cover up what has happened so that their children will not be concerned about what mummy or daddy does at work every day.
Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc) Bill
Baroness Brown of Silvertown Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kevin Foster
With respect to the Minister, anyone could go around making a claim that they had been pardoned for an offence; it is the position in the criminal records that makes the key difference.
Kevin Foster
I will take one more intervention but I am very conscious of time.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I have 12 more speakers and the Front Benchers to get in as well.
Philip Davies
I was not aware that the hon. Gentleman’s Bill applied only to people who had been chemically castrated and tortured. Is he now saying that that is the case? The point that he is making is a complete nonsense, and he must know that. I was responding to an intervention from the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), who asked whether there were any examples of victimless crimes committed by people who had a criminal record and had not been pardoned, and I gave him a perfectly good example. Moreover, he was nodding in agreement when I gave him that example. [Interruption.] The Scottish National party has become so dominant in Scotland that SNP Members are not used to hearing alternative opinions. I am sorry that they are so intolerant of anyone who holds a different opinion from theirs. It does not reflect well on them.
My point is this. I think that the Bill would have been easier to justify if it had included all past offences and all past convictions for crimes which are no longer crimes, and which were victimless. That would have been a perfectly logical thing to do. I think it is very difficult to pick out only certain crimes to justify the Bill, rather than including all convictions for offences of that kind.
Lyn Brown
I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. At the beginning of his speech, he informed us that we might not be listening to one of his lengthy contributions, and said that he would sit down shortly in order to enable the Front Benchers to present their arguments. May I ask how long he thinks he might be? I ask simply because I want to put on record, very forcefully, the support of the Opposition Front Bench for the Bill, and I am worried that I shall not be able to get to my feet in order to do so.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I had written a much longer and obviously well-crafted speech, full of pearls of wisdom and eloquence, but as I want to give the Minister an opportunity not only to be heard but, I hope, even at this late stage to accept this Bill or at the very least indicate that he will go from this House today and engage in genuine discussions about amendments to the Bill that will make it acceptable to the Government, I shall not speak for as long as I had intended. I and so many more people in the House and elsewhere will be disappointed if the Government do not show themselves to understand what is being spoken about today and make a genuine effort to meet those concerns.
Roughly 75,000 men were prosecuted for gross indecency between 1885 and the partial legalisation of homosexuality in 1967. Thousands more had to live their lives in secrecy and fear, and to hide who they were, for risk of prosecution. It was inhumane and unjust. The pain caused by these indecency laws can never be undone, and the relationships and lives that were lost can never be recovered, but this Bill does what we can do, which is to partly correct a grave injustice. The Bill grants a pardon to those convicted of sexual offences for acts that are no longer criminalised. It is our way of recognising that we made a mistake, that we caused trauma among innocents, and that we ruined lives. Inadequate though it may be, it is our only way of saying sorry.
We have heard many moving tributes today to Alan Turing and others whom the laws drove to their death, and it is rightly a source of national shame, but Alan Turing was just one wronged gay man among thousands. The British state owes an apology and a pardon to the ordinary men who were criminalised for being who they were, just as much as it owed an apology to Alan Turing. After all, we apologised to Turing not only because he is a national hero, though he clearly is, but because he patently did nothing wrong.
To be fair to the Government, in the past they have recognised that these convictions were wrong. They not only granted the pardon to Turing, but in 2012 they passed the Protection of Freedoms Act. That Act allowed those with convictions under these indecency laws to apply for their conviction to be disregarded and effectively expunged from the record, so long as their application is approved by the Secretary of State. The disregard scheme was a welcome development, particularly as it allowed those prosecuted under these uncivilised laws to apply for work without the blight of a criminal record, but it does not go far enough.
The disregard scheme relies upon the victims of injustice making an application themselves. Relatives of the deceased cannot make applications on behalf of their family member, nor, obviously, can the deceased apply for a disregard themselves. It is therefore of no use to the families of the approximately 50,000 men who were prosecuted for gross indecency and who are now deceased. The Minister must know of the pain that exists in families long after the event, and that families sometimes need the closure that this Bill would allow.
The disregard scheme puts the onus on those who are living to go out and apply for their conviction to be disregarded. I want to stress that, for many, going through the disregard process opens up so many old wounds, and reminds them of a time in their life that they may well wish to put behind them. I imagine that at this point in their life they do not wish to rake up all that old hurt, pain, humiliation and fear. It must be enormously stressful. The onus should be on the legislators to take action, because it is the law that was wrong.
The Bill before us deals with these problems. Clause 2 automatically grants a pardon to all those convicted of a list of sexual offences that have since been repealed. It is really important that the Minister grasps that point. Clause 3 will allow family members of the deceased to apply for a disregard. If the Bill is enacted, all those convicted under those laws would be pardoned whether they were living or deceased and all could go through the disregard process if a family member wished to pursue that.
On Wednesday, the Government signed an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill in the Lords that would achieve most, but not all, those things. Lord Sharkey’s amendment would grant a pardon to all the deceased who had been charged under the relevant offences, but not—and this is crucial—to the living. The living would have to apply for a disregard and only then would they be granted a pardon. The onus would be placed right back on the victims of injustice, which, I worry, rather reduces the quality of the apology being offered.
The Minister explained the Government’s approach to the press. He said:
“A blanket pardon, without the detailed investigations carried out by the Home Office under the disregard process, could see people guilty of an offence which is still a crime today claiming to be pardoned. This would cause an extraordinary and unnecessary amount of distress to victims”.
None in this House would want there to be a pardon for anyone guilty of serious sexual offences, but I am a little confused by the Government’s reasoning. The private Member’s Bill, as drafted, relies on a list of sexual offences for which someone is granted a pardon, none of which is a crime any longer. It also contains a separate clause that clearly states:
“Nothing in this Act is to be interpreted as pardoning, disregarding or in any other way affecting cautions, convictions, sentences or any other consequences of convictions or cautions for conduct or behaviour that is unlawful on the date that the Act comes into force.”
Given those safeguards, it is not clear to me how the Bill would lead to pardons for those guilty of an offence that is still a crime today—unless the Minister merely means that people will be able falsely and deceptively to claim to have been pardoned when they have not been.
Craig Whittaker
Something is not clear to me. If someone has previously been committed of having under-age sex, for example, how can we today determine whether such a previous conviction is still a crime? Anyone having sex with a minor today is committing a crime. However, that would not be clear from past criminal activity.
Lyn Brown
I will not give way again; I am coming to a conclusion and I genuinely think we should hear from the Minister. However, I say to the hon. Gentleman that the issue is not sufficient to warrant rejection of the Bill. We should be taking the Bill through Committee. If there are genuine problems of wording, it can be amended. If what the hon. Gentleman raises remains an issue, the Bill can be amended. That is what the Committee and Report stages are for—it is what we do here all the time.
If the Bill is imperfect, let us perfect it in Committee. That is where we do things such as this. Why is this Bill any different? None of us disagrees with the principles behind the Bill. The Minister is worried about unintended consequences. That can be dealt with. Let us take the Bill to Committee, change it and make it fit for purpose. I urge the Minister, even at this very last moment, to allow the Bill into Committee, where we can change it if necessary and bring it back for this House to pass.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Gentleman makes my point about why a disregard step is essential in this process—[Interruption.] May I respond to the hon. Gentleman’s point? The disregard process means that there will not be a situation where someone has been ostensibly pardoned but the criminal record has not been expunged. The disregard process ensures that the criminal record is expunged and the person gets a statutory pardon. I am sure that Members will agree that such a process provides a meaningful avenue for individuals convicted or cautioned for sexual activity that is no longer regarded as an offence.
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady has had her time. The process allows people to move on with their lives in a meaningful way.
A disregard is a much more powerful and useful remedy for someone living than just a pardon. We recognise the force of the symbol of being pardoned, which is why we propose to pardon all of those who are living and were convicted of relevant offences once they have received a disregard. I would urge any individuals who believe that they are eligible for the disregard process to apply through the Home Office to have their records properly assessed. I hope that today’s debate has helped to raise the profile of this process so that those who are not aware can take steps to secure the justice that they deserve.
Of course, I support the intentions behind the Bill; the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire and I share the same objectives. The proposed blanket pardon would not provide for robust checks to ensure that only those who clearly meet the criteria can claim to be pardoned. It could lead in some cases to people claiming to be cleared of offences that are still crimes—including sex with a minor and non-consensual sexual activity. Under the disregard process, for example, the Home Office has rejected several applications where the activity was non-consensual and others where the other party was under 16 years old. Those offences were captured under offences such as “gross indecency” at the time, but are still crimes today. It is important that a pardon for the living takes place only after due process to verify—[Interruption.]
Policing and Crime Bill
Baroness Brown of Silvertown ExcerptsTuesday 26th April 2016
(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 13 June 2016 - (13 Jun 2016)
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 21, in clause 2, page 3, line 14, at end insert—
‘(8) For the purposes of this Bill, when considering whether a collaboration agreement would improve the effectiveness and efficiency of one or more emergency services that shall include the effectiveness and efficiency with which the emergency service is able to meet its duties under the mental health care concordant.”
This amendment would explicitly enable a collaboration agreement to cover duties placed on emergency services by the mental health care concordant.
Amendment 3, page 6, line 3, leave out clause 6.
This amendment, along with amendment 4, would prevent Police and Crime Commissioners from taking over the functions of Fire and Rescue Authorities.
Amendment 5, page 11, line 1, leave out clause 8.
This amendment would prevent combined authority mayors from combing their fire and rescue service and police force under a single employer.
Amendment 4, page 144, line 2, leave out schedule 1.
This amendment, along with amendment 3, would prevent Police and Crime Commissioners from taking over the functions of Fire and Rescue Authorities.
Amendment 2, in schedule 1, page 145, line 16, at end insert—
“4AA Power to change title of police and crime commissioner
(1) This section applies if the Secretary of State makes an order under section 4A.
(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument change the title of a police and crime commissioner appointed as a fire and rescue authority.”
This would enable the Secretary of State to change the name of police and crime commissioners to reflect their new additional responsibility for the fire service. The Secretary of State would have the power to make such a direction in secondary legislation at some point in the future.
Amendment 20, page 145, line 16, at end insert—
‘(7) No order can be made under this section until the Secretary of State has conducted a review assessing the funding required by the fire and rescue service to secure the minimum level of cover needed to secure public safety and maintain fire resilience.
(8) The review carried out under section (7) must assess the impact of the level of cover on—
(a) fire related fatalities;
(b) non-fatal fire related casualties;
(c) the number of dwelling fires and other fires;
(d) the number of incidents responded to, and
(e) the strength and speed of response to incidents.”
This amendment would require the Home Secretary to conduct a review on the level of funding the FRS requires in order to secure public safety before she may make allows police and crime commissioner to be a fire and rescue authority.
Amendment 6, page 157, line 33, at end insert—
‘(4) An order under section 4A, whether modified or not by the Secretary of State, may only be made with either: consent of all of the relevant local authorities and relevant fire and rescue authority, or a majority vote by local people through referendum.”
This amendment would ensure that a PCC can only take over a Fire and Rescue Service with the approval of local people or their local representatives.
Lyn Brown
I am delighted to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We oppose the Government’s proposals to allow police and crime commissioners to take over fire and rescue services, and amendments 3, 4 and 5 would delete the provisions in the Bill that would enable them to do so. We have also tabled amendments to mitigate the risks if the Government’s proposals are enacted.
Amendment 6 would ensure that a PCC could take over a fire and rescue service only with local support expressed either by elected councillors, with the unanimous agreement of all the local authorities affected, or directly through a referendum. Amendment 20 would require the Home Secretary to review the level of funding the fire service needed to secure public safety. New clause 20 would give fire services in England a statutory responsibility to deal with flooding. The Minister said in Committee that he was minded to consider that particular provision. He has not jumped to his feet to say he wants to take it as a Government new clause, but I live in hope.
When the Minister responds, I hope he will set out what benefits he believes PCCs will bring to the fire and rescue service. What skills and expertise do they have that our fire and rescue authorities do not? How will they help the fire service to cope with the new challenges it faces when dealing with major incidents such as flooding and terrorist attacks? What indication is there that the governance of the fire service is broken or substandard and needs replacing? The Government have not even begun to answer these questions or to make a case for the reforms.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the reason that the governance of the fire service needs to be changed is that very few of our constituents would know the name of every person on the local authority fire panel? Given her involvement with the Bill, could she herself name every person on her local authority fire panel?
Lyn Brown
My fire service is provided through the Greater London Authority, and I know that should I want to talk to anybody about London’s fire service, I could talk to those elected GLA Members—and I do know their names—or to the Mayor. When people in my local authority want to have an impact on a local service, they tend to approach their local councillors, which I think is not a bad route, but the reforms would change that. People would not be able to go to their town hall to talk about services that have an impact on them. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) heckles me gently in a low voice and says, “They would be elected.” I know that Newham might be unusual but its councillors are elected too, and certainly the councillors at the GLA are elected.
James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)
But they are not elected to a specific responsibility, as PCCs are. People who vote for PCCs know they can hold them to account specifically for policing, and that will now be extended to the fire service.
Lyn Brown
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the turnout last time for PCC elections was dismal. I hope it will be significantly better this time, but when I was on the doorsteps last year, in parts of the country other than my own little patch in London I did not find that people knew who their PCC was. I say gently to him that our constituents do not know that when they go to the polls next week they will be electing a PCC who might be taking over their fire service. The Bill will not have been enacted by then.
I think that the timing and, as I will explain, the way we have done this has been wrong. The consultation preceding the Bill did not seek the views of experts and specialists on the substance of the proposals. It set out how a PCC could assume control of a fire and rescue service and then asked consultees what they thought of the process. It did not ask them what they thought of the proposals themselves, and it did not ask whether the proposals would increase public safety or lead to better governance.
It is not in the impact assessment—that very thin impact assessment, which I am sure that the Members who sat on the Bill Committee will have read—but the Knight review of the future of the fire service recommended that PCC takeovers be attempted only if a rigorous pilot could identify tangible and “clearly set out benefits”. The Government chose to ignore this key recommendation and are instead proceeding before any evidence has been gathered about the likely benefits, costs and threats to the plan. It is utterly reckless. The impact assessment is threadbare. The only rationale offered for this intervention is the Government’s belief that there needs to be greater collaboration between emergency services. No one thinks otherwise, but the Government have not provided any justification of why it is more likely to occur under PCCs or any analysis of the current barriers to collaboration. It is policy without evidence or clear rationale.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I agree with everything my hon. Friend is saying. She knows—and surely the Government know—how much co-operation already goes on. It does not have to be prescribed in this top-down way; it works organically and it works really well.
Lyn Brown
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is really good collaboration now between all parts of our public services—between fire and police, fire and ambulance, and fire, ambulance and police—and I understand the Government’s wanting to move that agenda further and encourage more collaboration, but this bit of the Bill does not do it. As I will explain, I believe it will in fact deter some boundary and border merges, which would be a massive problem.
The Government’s cavalier approach to this public service upheaval is completely indefensible, given the significant risks that the proposals represent to the fire and rescue service. PCCs are still a nascent institution. The Home Affairs Select Committee has said:
“It is too early to say whether the introduction of police and crime commissioners has been a success.”
We do not know whether they have succeeded in their core duties, so why are the Government proposing to expand their portfolios by giving them control of the fire service too? I think the Government want to bolster the powers and budgets of PCCs to help them through their difficult inception and that the proposals are a step towards PCCs becoming mini mayors. A vital public service, such as fire, should not be pawned off to save struggling Whitehall inventions or to overturn a public vote against the creation of a mayor. Unlike mayors in combined authorities, the PCCs will be completely free from the democratic scrutiny provided by local government, and the creation of the extended office will not have been approved by local people.
The most serious risk, however, is that fire, with its much smaller budgets and less media attention than policing, will become an unloved, secondary concern of its new management—a Cinderella service. I have raised this point repeatedly with the Minister in Committee and in other debates, but he has not indicated what he might do to mitigate the risk. I am not the only one who thinks this: Peter Murphy, the director of public policy research at Nottingham Business School, has argued that if the fire service were to slip into the status of a Cinderella service, it would only repeat what happened the last time fire had to share an agenda with policing. I will quote him in full, because it gets to the heart of the matter:
“If the proposals ore implemented, there is a very strong chance that the fire and rescue services would go back to the ‘benign neglect’ that characterised the service from 1974 to 2001 when the Home Office was last responsible for fire services. Police, civil disobedience, immigration and criminal justice dominated the Home Office agenda, as well as its time and resources. If the fire service becomes the lesser partner in a merged service, the long-term implications will include smaller fire crews with fewer appliances and older equipment arriving at incidents. Prevention and protection work, already significantly falling”—
he is so right about that—
“will result in fewer school visits and fire alarm checks for the elderly”.
What a chilling vision for the future of our fire service!
The Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
I listened carefully to the quotations, and I would be chilled if any part of what was said were factually true. If there were an attempt to combine the emergency services, fire and police, we would have moved to one funding stream. I categorically ruled that out, so this sort of scaremongering—not from the shadow Minister but from others—is flawed. There is a separate funding stream in the precept for the police. The only bit that is going to be amalgamated, should the PCCs be like the Metro Mayors in this respect, would relate to the back office and the administrative side.
Lyn Brown
But should a PCC take over the fire service, we would have a person in charge whose main attention was on policing and all that policing involved. The media focus much more on policing than they do on the fire service. The fire service will be secondary. Although the Minister rightly says—I do not doubt him—that the two funding streams will be different, I do not know how long that will last, and in truth, neither does he, because things move on. We had police and crime commissioners under the last Government; this Government are now proposing police, crime and fire commissioners. What will happen in a couple of years’ time? I do not know. There might be accounting efficiencies in order to save costs, and the budgets might well be merged. I do not think that these proposals make any sense.
A further risk is that these proposals will make mergers of fire services more difficult, which would be a real setback, as inter-fire mergers increase resilience and achieve significant savings. The 2007 merger of the Devon and Somerset fire services was supposed to deliver £3 million of savings in the first five years. It actually bettered that target by £600,000.
The Minister will know that Martyn Underhill, the Independent PCC for Dorset—I am trying to keep this politically neutral—has said that he has no interest in running the fire service. Why? It is because Dorset and Wiltshire fire service has undergone a merger that proposes to bring significant savings and increase the resilience in that area. He does not want to interfere with the process, and he is really wary about his office having responsibility for Wiltshire. I admire this decision, made by Commissioner Underhill, but how many potential mergers of fire services will not even be considered as a result of PCC takeovers and the need for coterminosity? I remind the Minister that until a few months ago, this Government trumpeted mergers as a key to the future of the fire service; yet they are now, sadly, going to slip off the agenda.
I know that the Minister has little sympathy with the particular argument I am about to make, but I am a brave soul. A large proportion of the work carried out by the fire service is preventive. There is a danger that these proposals will make this preventive work a little more difficult. It is a humanitarian service. We need to be honest: the police service is not a humanitarian service. The two services are seen differently by some communities, and these proposals could make the fire service’s preventive work more difficult.
There are some people who would not welcome a policeman into their home without a warrant. Police officers turning up at the door can be a scary experience. Firefighters go into people’s homes and work spaces, and check that smoke alarms and electrical appliances are safe. They fit sprinklers and even look for worrying signs that might concern other services, such as the NHS and council care services. This preventive work is not an add-on to the fire service’s work; it is at the core of what it does—keeping people safe, so that they do not have to be rescued further down the line.
Mike Penning
I do not quite understand—perhaps I do, but I do not think it is fair—why the shadow Minister is conflating operational work that the police do with operational work that the fire service does. Of course, a lot of work is done together, particularly at road traffic collisions, but there is nothing in the Bill that would conflate the two in the way that the shadow Minister suggests.
Lyn Brown
First, they will not be equal partners, because we are talking about a big service and a small service. Secondly, in the minds of some of our communities, the police and the fire service will become one and the same. They will have one boss, and there will be an anxiety that someone coming through the door to fix a smoke alarm might have a different agenda.
Mike Penning
The hon. Lady’s constituency is in London, where there is a Mayor, and the mayoral system will take over fire. Is there the same concern in London and in Manchester? Actually, the Labour candidate in Manchester wants the powers as a Metro Mayor.
Lyn Brown
In London, the service is run by a Mayor and elected councillors. It is not run by an individual whose other job is to be the police commissioner. I think there is a difference, and I believe that our communities will think there is a difference. We cannot prescribe how people think and what they worry about, but this concern has been raised with me.
James Berry
Does the hon. Lady not accept that her comments could be interpreted by the police as quite insulting? They do a lot of preventive and humanitarian work. As she knows, the hon. Lady’s submission comes right out of the Fire Brigades Union’s consultation document, which I also thought was quite insulting to the great work that our police officers do in the very areas that she highlighted.
Lyn Brown
The police I meet on my doorsteps and streets are dead pragmatic souls. They understand the sensitivities that some communities have: they treat some of my refugee communities with extraordinary sensitivity to overcome the natural barrier that is there. What I am saying to the hon. Gentleman is that there is a natural barrier. That is no slur on our police force; our police force are an enforcement agency, and not really a humanitarian service. The police are there to implement the law. Let us move on.
The Minister is not passing over a service that does not have some difficulties. The fire and rescue service has been subject to a cumulative cash cut of £236 million or 12.5% since 2010—and, of course, there is more to come. [Interruption.] Is the Government Whip trying to engage me? Does he want to intervene? It seems not. I just thought I would give him a chance.
Mike Penning
I believe that what one of my colleagues was trying to say from a sedentary position is that we should not wash over the debacle and the huge costs of the regional fire control centres that the previous Labour Administration forced on the fire service. [Interruption.]
Lyn Brown
Is that right? When I was a Whip, I was taught that I should be seen and not heard. I am sure that the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) did not want to intervene on me at all. The issue of regional fire control centres has been well thrashed out in this Chamber. There were a myriad reasons why they did not work, and I accept that they did not.
Let us return to what the Government have been doing. Here we are in 2016, and it feels as though they have been here forever. The fire and rescue service has been subject to a cumulative cash cut of £236 million, or 12.5%, since 2010, and, of course, there is more to come. We know from the local government funding settlement that fire and rescue services are expected to cut spending by a further £135 million by the end of the Parliament. A stretched service will be squeezed even further.
As a result of these cuts, 7,600 firefighters have already been lost, and the Government have repeatedly ignored warnings that the cuts may be putting services at risk. Their proposals will not protect a single firefighter’s job, or put a single firefighter back in service. I have been told by fire chiefs that their services will “not be viable” under the Government’s proposed spending plans, and I am sure that they have told the Minister exactly the same thing.
The National Audit Office has calculated that there was a 30% reduction in the amount of time spent on home fire checks and audits over the last Parliament. That is a huge reduction. The NAO has said that the Government have “no idea” of the impact of that on public safety. It has also said that, as the Government refuse to model the risk of cuts, they may only know that a service has been cut too long after the fact—that is, after public safety and the lives of the public have been put at risk.
I was not surprised, although I was dismayed, by the latest English fire statistics, which cover the period between April and September 2015. They show that there were 139 fire-related fatalities during that time, 31 more than occurred during the same period in 2014. There were 1,685 non-fatal fire casualties that resulted in hospital treatment, a 10% increase on 2014. Fire and rescue services attended about 93,200 fires, 7% more than in 2014.
The Government have cut the fire service, cut firefighters, and overseen a massive reduction in the amount of preventive work undertaken. I know that we are talking about a spike over just a couple of quarters, but there are statistical signs that the service may be feeling the awful effects of the cuts that have been made. So what do the Government do? Do they stop the cuts while they undertake a proper risk assessment? Do they begin to develop minimum standards for the number of stations and firefighters, and for preventive work? No. The Government want to pass on the responsibility to police and crime commissioners, who have had to deal with similar cuts in police budgets, and who have lost 12,000 front-line police officers. They are not even assessing the level of funding that PCCs would need to maintain resilience and keep the public safe.
This is a good line. By passing the buck without the bucks, the Government could be asking PCCs, who will be new to the fire service and its complexity, to undertake further potentially dangerous cuts. The PCCs will not know what the risks are, because the Government refuse to model them. That is why we tabled amendment 20, which would require the Home Secretary to carry out an assessment of the level of funding that fire services need to keep the public safe.
Our fire and rescue authorities are trusted experts on the fire service. The councillors who serve on them often have years of experience, and have gained a genuinely deep knowledge and judgment from overseeing the strategic direction of fire services in their areas. Given the trust and respect that local fire authorities have, allowing PCCs to take over a fire and rescue service without their support poses the clear risk that employees, and the public, will perceive newly empowered PCCs as an unwelcome central imposition. Our amendment 6 would ensure that a PCC who does take over a fire and rescue service can do so only with the approval of the locally elected representatives on the relevant councils, or, alternatively, of local people through a referendum.
Jake Berry
The hon. Lady has raised the interesting issue of a local referendum. I wonder whether she can tell the House—so that we can consider her amendment properly—what the cost of such a referendum would be for each fire and rescue authority, and also who would pay. She has expressed concern about the removal of budgets from fire and rescue authorities. Perhaps if they were the ones who paid, more firefighters would be removed from the front line.
Lyn Brown
The referendum would take place on the same day as any local council election. We would not want an election to be prohibited by costs. As for where the costs should lie, I think that they should lie with the Government, because, after all, it is they who have proposed these changes. If the hon. Gentleman wants someone else to pay, perhaps it should be the Government’s arm, the PCCs. As he has rightly pointed out, their budgets are larger than those of any fire authority.
Jake Berry
First, will the hon. Lady tell us what her amendment would do, and who would pay for it? Secondly, will she tell us what estimate she has made of the cost?
Lyn Brown
One of the joys of being in opposition is that we have to do our own work ourselves; we do not have a phalanx of willing employees to do it for us. Once the House had passed the amendment, I would need to rely on the Government and their civil servants to help us to work out the cost. If the cost became prohibitive, I could suggest that the Government drop this silly idea altogether, and save loads of money.
James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)
I have sat patiently while, on a number of occasions, the hon. Lady has referred to elected councillors being elected to fire authorities. Can she clarify, for the edification of the House and the public, that no elected councillors are elected to the fire authority in London—which covers her constituency—or, indeed, to the vast majority of fire authorities in the country?
Lyn Brown
I wonder what kind of interaction Conservative Members have with their local councillors, but I can only imagine that it ain’t good, because every time I raise this issue, anxiety is expressed about the genuine nature of locally elected members.
I can only say that I have a much better relationship not only with Newham councillors, but with GLA councillors. They are elected. They face the electorate. They are elected to a body which then places them on another body that is responsible for fire, just as they are given responsibilities for social services, education, leisure services, and so forth. It is the same process. I support democracy and I support my democratically elected councillors, who are doing a jolly good job in very difficult times to keep services going. Conservative Members should not denigrate their local councillors quite so much.
James Cleverly
I assume that this is entirely my mistake; I probably did not make my question clear enough, and I take full responsibility for that. I will have another crack at this. Can the hon. Lady name any local councillor or London Assembly member who has been elected by the people of Newham to sit on the fire authority?
Lyn Brown
In London, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the people of Newham elect a GLA councillor and the GLA councillors then determine which parts of the work they will undertake for the GLA. I do not see that that is a problem. The same thing happens in Newham. When we elect 60 Labour councillors—and zero councillors from any other party—we then give them jobs looking after social services, education, recreation and so on. I can tell the hon. Gentleman the name of the councillor who has the fire remit in my council. He is Councillor Bryan Collier and he is a wonderful bloke. He has been doing the job for decades and he has lots of knowledge.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
Speaking as someone who was a councillor until this time last month, I bow to no one in my appreciation of the importance of local government. However, the shadow Minister demonstrates a strange understanding of democracy given that she seems to prefer the patronage of local council group leaders to the direct mandate involved in being elected on to a body by voters.
Lyn Brown
I am bemused by the contempt that Conservative Members are showing for local councils. I hope for the hon. Gentleman’s own sake that he does not have a Tory-led local authority waiting for him when he goes back home on Thursday. Frankly, if I were a member of his council, I would be sitting on his doorstep waiting to have a word, because that is really not on. [Interruption.] Oh, really? That is such a shock! The chuntering from the Government Back Benches is outrageous. I don’t even know where I got to in my speech.
If the Government do not trust local authorities—and it seems clear that they do not—perhaps they will be pleased to accept our amendment, which would allow the decision on whether to place PCCs in control of fire services to go directly to the electorate. The Government’s reforms are fundamentally about the transfer of power from the collective democratic representation of local councils to a single individual, and the creation of mini mayors across England. The Minister knows this to be true, and he knows there is no democratic mandate for it—none at all. If he accepted our amendments, he could right that wrong and ensure that each local community could decide for itself what was in the best interests of its fire and rescue service. That would be a real localism agenda.
New clause 20 would give fire services in England a statutory responsibility to deal with flooding, as is already the case for their Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts. In December, much of the north of England was devastated by flooding. Many homes were flooded, bridges connecting communities were washed away, major roads were blocked and, in Lancaster, a sub-station was flooded leaving tens of thousands of homes without power. In December alone, firefighters responded to more than 1,400 flood incidents across the north-west, and on Boxing day, 1,000 people were rescued in Greater Manchester. The work of our firefighters was brilliant during those difficult days. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House would agree on that, if on nothing else.
However, fire services have expressed concern that they were not properly equipped to deal with that situation and that they lacked basic kit such as boats and dry suits. Frankly, that is not good enough. I believe that this stems from the fact that it is unclear who holds the primary responsibility for responding to floods.
When flooding is not formally the responsibility of any service, it will not be given the priority it deserves in budgeting and planning. If we are going to continue to ask fire services to deal with major incidents such as flooding, we should say so in this place so that proper provision can be made and they can prepare comprehensively for incidents. Stories of volunteers and the Army mucking in might be heart-warming, but that is simply no substitute for a properly organised and funded rescue service.
Before I finish, I would like to touch on the issue of privatisation. The Minister gave us categorical assurances that there would be no changes or movement in that regard, and that is why we have tabled no amendments on privatisation. I am going to hold the Minister to his word, but I am sure that those in the other place will want to do a bit of digging to ensure that I am right and he is right, and that there can be no privatisation of our fire services under this legislation.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
I would like to speak to amendment 2, which is in my name and those of several right hon. and hon. Members across the House. Part 1 of the Bill sets out the measures to encourage greater collaboration between emergency services, a topic that I have spoken about several times in the House. Clauses 6 and 7 will give police and crime commissioners the opportunity to extend their responsibilities to include fire and rescue services. I have been calling for that extension for some time now, and I secured a Westminster Hall debate on the topic last year. As I said on Second Reading, I welcome the inclusion of those clauses in the Bill.
The introduction of police and crime commissioners in 2012 created greater transparency and democratic accountability in policing, with PCCs replacing unelected and unaccountable police authorities. Extending the responsibilities of PCCs to include fire and rescue authorities will mirror those benefits. As we have been hearing, fire and rescue authorities are made up of elected councillors, but they are not directly accountable to the public for those specific roles, as they are appointed to those positions. As I have said before, that is very different from, and should not be confused with, democratic accountability.
The introduction of directly elected PCCs means that the public can scrutinise their performance, precept and priorities, and exercise their approval—or, indeed, disapproval—at the ballot box. The public will get their chance to decide on the performance of the first tranche of PCCs in a couple of weeks’ time, on 5 May. It is absolutely right that the guardianship of the fire and rescue services should also be directly accountable to the public, and given the synergies between the two services, it is logical that PCCs should take on that responsibility, too.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend share my incredulity at the Labour party’s talk about cuts, given that, if I am not mistaken, it was the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who went on the record calling for 10% cuts in the police budget? Perhaps my hon. Friend will reflect on that for a moment—
James Cleverly
My view is that we judge people by what they say. I know that there will be indignation from Labour Members, but as we have seen when the Labour party was in government the quality of the delivery of public services is not always totally interwoven with the budgets allocated to them. Indeed, there are massive opportunities to get more for less, and surely that should be the acme of performance.
Lyn Brown
May I say to the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who has just taken his place in this Chamber, that, frankly, this has been a better debate than that? His unreasonable slur on the Opposition is about our stance on the police services rather than on the fire services. It would be really good if he read the Whips’ report more carefully before he intervenes next time.
May I say to the hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), to whom I have been listening, that his points are interesting and have some validity, but London is rather different from areas outside London? Over decades, London has got used to having a single seat of government—even though there was an interregnum when the Greater London Council was disbanded. The reality is that when our constituents do not know where to go to complain about a service or to bring up an issue, they end up at the door of our town halls. It does not matter whether we are talking about Newham or Newcastle, that is where they go.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Just before we proceed, may I say with great respect to the hon. Lady that, although she has many points to make which the House should hear, interventions must be short.
Policing and Crime Bill (Sixth sitting)
Baroness Brown of Silvertown ExcerptsTuesday 12th April 2016
(9 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 12 April 2016 - (12 Apr 2016)
Mr Kevan Jones
As I said, my amendments are probing amendments. I thank the Minister for the full way in which she has responded to them. I know, and I want to put it on the record, that she, too, has a genuine interest in this subject and wants to do the best for individuals who suffer mental health problems.
I welcome the Minister’s response to new clause 11. The data are going to be very important, because they will attest to whether the changes are working. By comparing areas with one another, local scrutiny will allow areas to improve their situations and to learn from best practice. As she said in response to an intervention, what happens in one area can be transferred to another.
I hear what the Minister says about new clause 12. I accept her point that this situation is very different from being sectioned under section 2 of the Mental Health Act, but for people to be detained without any right to advocacy is unique. Like her, I do not want to overburden or inhibit the system, but there needs to be a basic right for individuals to have access to information. Given her commitment to further discussions on new clause 12, I shall not press it to a vote, but we may come back to it on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 60 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 61 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 62
Application of maritime enforcement powers: general
Amendment made: 214, in clause 62, page 71, line 29, at end insert—
“( ) a National Crime Agency officer having the powers and privileges of a constable in England and Wales under the Crime and Courts Act 2013, or”.—(Karen Bradley.)
This amendment makes express provision for National Crime Agency officers to come within the definition of law enforcement officer that applies for the purposes of Chapter 4 of Part 4.
Clause 62, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 63 to 76 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 77
Firearms Act 1968: meaning of “firearm” etc.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 227, in clause 77, page 81, line 7, leave out subsection (5).
This amendment would remove the exception for airsoft guns from the definition of a lethal barrelled weapon.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I, too, hope that you had a really happy holiday—I am learning from the Minister how to do these things.
The amendment would remove the exemption for airsoft guns from the definition of a lethal barrelled weapon from the Bill. It has been tabled as a probing amendment to understand why the Government have allowed an exemption in this case.
Lyn Brown
Oh heavens!
The Bill exempts airsoft weapons from the 1 J limit. If we pass the Bill without making the amendment, airsoft weapons will be allowed to exceed that limit; instead, they will not be able legally to exceed 1.3 J, or 2.5 J for a single-shot weapon. Why has the exemption for airsoft weapons been put in place? If the Home Office is of the view that a 1 J threshold successfully identifies a lethal weapon in other instances, why are airsoft weapons any different?
Deputy Chief Constable Andy Marsh has cited evidence from the Forensic Science Service that the 1.3 J and 2.5 J thresholds would not be lethal for airsoft weapons, as was noted by the Law Commission, but that research is from 2001 and therefore more than 14 years old. There must surely be something more recent. If there is not, why is that? Why have we not commissioned something?
Mike Penning
Unless my information is wrong, that research was done in 2011.
Lyn Brown
Well, my research tells me it was in 2001. We will wait for some inspiration on that.
There is some dispute about whether airsoft guns can be converted into weapons that can shoot lethal ammunition. I am told that numerous YouTube videos exist in which enthusiasts claim that they can do exactly that. It was revealed by a 2013 freedom of information request that the American Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives believes that some airsoft weapons can be converted. Given that, the Minister needs to explain the rationale behind the exemption of airsoft weapons from the standard 1 J limit. If 1 J is the definition of lethality and airsoft weapons can, as we understand, be converted to be lethal, it seems to me that they should comply with the 1 J limit and not be allowed a 1.3 J limit.
I accept that the Minister might well talk about the fun he has on his holidays playing these weird games.
The Chair
Order. The Committee will be fascinated to hear about the Minister’s holiday activities, provided that they are germane to the Bill.
Lyn Brown
Absolutely, Mr Howarth. My mind is boggling. I think I need to get back to the issue at hand.
The Minister may argue that the 1.3 J threshold is necessary to protect the airsoft industry, but the truth is that airsoft weapons could still be produced and carried without a firearms licence without this exemption; they would just have to be below the 1 J threshold of lethality. If airsoft guns are toys and not weapons, I do not see the problem with them being less powerful than lethal weapons. If airsoft enthusiasts still wish to have a powerful airsoft gun over the 1 J threshold, they could still do so without the exemption; they would just have to apply for the same licence and subject themselves to the same checks that we would expect for any other weapon that powerful. It does not seem to be too onerous a set of regulations to comply with.
Britain rightly prides itself on having among the most stringent gun control laws in the world. We see the public and their safety as the primary clients of gun control legislation. Elsewhere in the world, the so-called rights of gun owners are given preference, with tragic consequences. In this context, the Committee will be interested to know that Japan—where airsoft was invented and is profoundly popular—imposes a single 0.98 J limit on all guns, including airsoft weapons. Japanese manufacturers of airsoft weapons were happy to sign up to those regulations so, again, I do not see the need to exempt airsoft.
There must be a case for saying that a single power limit for all weapons, without exemptions or loopholes, would be legally preferable and more enforceable. That is what our amendment would achieve, and I know it is something for which the Gun Control Network, which was founded in the aftermath of the Dunblane tragedy, has campaigned. I look forward with interest to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Before I finish, I will talk about the use of airsoft weapons as realistic imitation firearms. These weapons are designed to look almost exactly like real firearms, and are only exempt from laws against the manufacture of realistic imitation firearms because of a set of defences provided in the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. In other countries, such as Canada, airsoft weapons are treated as realistic replica weapons and regulated as such.
On seeing these guns, I was immediately worried that they could easily be used to threaten and intimidate. There is no doubt that the owners and manufacturers of these weapons pride themselves on their guns looking exactly like the most deadly of weapons. I urge members of the Committee to go online and look for themselves. Websites such as Patrol Base sell guns that look exactly like military assault rifles.
I was not surprised to read that a cache of airsoft weapons was seized in December from an ISIS terror cell in Belgium. Two men were arrested and military fatigues, airsoft weapons and ISIS propaganda were found in their property. Brussels’s main new year’s eve fireworks display was cancelled as a result of the find.
Let’s face it: if a terrorist walked down Whitehall with one of these guns and threatened to shoot us, we would fear for our lives and comply with the instructions given by the bearer of the gun if we were unable to run for our lives. Even if these weapons are not lethal, they can certainly bring fear and terror. I ask the Minister whether any thought has been given to reviewing the exemption for airsoft guns from the laws against realistic imitation firearms in the light of the incident in Belgium. If not, I strongly urge him to think about it.
I feel so passionately about this matter that if the Minister is unable to help us today, I would be happy if he would consider it further, write to me and perhaps come back to it on Report.
Mike Penning
As the shadow Minister indicated, we have some of the toughest firearms laws in the world. That is how it should be, and we will continue to strengthen and tighten the laws, providing clarity for the police and the public. I have looked at several aspects related to this matter.
I have two girls and I used to see toy guns when I went to toy shops with them when they were very young. Even as an ex-military man, I would not know the damn difference, from a distance, if someone came down Whitehall with one. Nevertheless, we are not going to ban all children’s toy guns. It is an offence to use a toy gun, or any other kind of replica, in that way. There are powers on the statute book.
I should declare that I have never used an airsoft weapon and I have never been to one of the play sites, but nearly 50,000 people do have the kind of fun that I have not enjoyed. Given the days I spent with real weapons, I would not fancy taking up such an invitation, but plenty of people do.
We looked carefully at proportionality and whether or not the 1 J limit recommended in the Law Commission’s report would have an adverse effect on the public’s enjoyment. We looked carefully at whether the police or the National Ballistics Intelligence Service had reported any instances of airsoft guns causing serious injuries, and they had not. We had to look at whether the effect would be proportionate on people who were enjoying an activity against which there was no evidence whatever. The Law Commission itself discussed in its report whether changing the limit would be proportionate. We have looked into the matter and can find no evidence of injuries.
We already have restrictions. I accept that other countries have made different legal decisions. I lived in Canada for a short time. Interestingly, hunting rifles and other weapons are freely available there, yet the velocity of airsoft weapons is restricted. We think that the existing legislation is proportionate. If someone wants to adapt one of these guns, other legislation is immediately triggered. For example, if it becomes a weapon and they are unlicensed, the sanction is five years or a fine. If someone creates a weapon from something that is not designed to be one and it becomes a firearm, that is captured by a completely different piece of legislation. If someone comes wandering down the street with a toy gun, let alone one of the weapons we are discussing, it is an offence if they use it inappropriately or in a threatening manner.
We do not want to prevent 50,000-odd people from enjoying themselves, even if they are enjoying themselves in ways that are slightly different from how the shadow Minister and I enjoy ourselves.
Mike Penning
We looked at the evidence from the police and the National Ballistics Intelligence Service. Yes, there have been injuries, in which there might have been other factors, but the police have not reported any instances of serious injuries.
I understand the shadow Minister’s concern about something that neither of us are likely ever to enjoy, but 50,000-odd people do and I do not want to prevent them from doing so. I hope she will withdraw her amendment.
Lyn Brown
I hear what the Minister says, but I have not heard an explanation of why an airsoft weapon could not be 1 J or less than 1 J, as is the case in Japan. No evidence has been put forward today to suggest that that would stop the enjoyment of people who want to run through forests waving firearms. The other point that I do not understand is why it would spoil their enjoyment if airsoft weapons were a different colour—pink, red or green—so that they did not look as realistic as they do at the moment.
Mike Penning
I have finished. I am sorry, but I do not agree.
Amendment 227 negatived.
Clause 77 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 78 and 79 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 80
Applications under the Firearms Acts: fees
Lyn Brown
I beg to move amendment 228, in clause 80, page 83, line 31, leave out
“the amount of any fee that may be charged”
and insert
“that the fee charged must be equal to the full cost to the tax payer of issuing a licence.”.
This amendment would ensure that the firearms licensing system achieves full cost recovery.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 229, in clause 80, page 84, line 7, leave out
“the amount of any fee that may be charged”
and insert
“that the fee charged must be equal to the full cost to the tax payer of issuing a licence.”.
This amendment would ensure that the firearms licensing system achieves full cost recovery.
Amendment 230, in clause 80, page 84, line 27, leave out
“the amount of any fee that may be charged”
and insert
“that the fee charged must be equal to the full cost to the tax payer of issuing a licence.”.
This amendment would ensure that the firearms licensing system achieves full cost recovery.
Lyn Brown
These amendments would be a first step towards ending state subsidy of gun ownership. They would achieve that goal by ensuring that the full costs of licensing prohibited weapons, pistol clubs and museums are recovered.
Full cost recovery was a Labour manifesto pledge. It is a key objective of the Gun Control Network, and it is even stated as a policy goal in the explanatory notes accompanying the Bill. It would therefore appear that we are all united in wanting to achieve the same end. However, the Bill would bring the licensing fee regime of prohibited weapons, pistol clubs and museums in line with the fees regime that exists for standard section 1 firearms. That is a problem. I do not believe that the fees regime for section 1 firearms provides for full cost recovery, so I do not have the confidence that these proposals will achieve full cost recovery for the licences that they control.
The Bill deals with relatively narrow issues around licensing fees. At the moment, there is no system to recover costs from the licensing of prohibited weapons. Subsection (1) will allow authorities to set fees for very powerful, prohibited weapons, such as rocket launchers, which can only be obtained with the permission of the UK Defence Council. The fee will be variable and set by the Secretary of State by regulations, just as is presently the case for ordinary section 1 firearms.
Subsections (2) and (3) deal with the licensing of pistol clubs and museums respectively. At the moment, such fees are fixed under the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, and the Secretary of State does not have the power to change them by secondary legislation. The Bill will bring the licensing system for those institutions in line with the licensing system for individual firearm owners by granting the Secretary of State the power to change the fees by regulation and by allowing variable fees. The Bill does not actually propose any change in the fees for pistol clubs or museums, and as a result the amount of money that these proposals involve is relatively small.
The Government estimate that these changes will bring in £570,000 a year for the Home Office, £78,000 for the English and Welsh police, £42,000 for the Scottish Government and £6,000 for Police Scotland. As it is said, every little helps. That increased revenue is welcome, as is the capacity for the Secretary of State to change the fees when the costs of licensing increase; but however welcome these changes are, the unfortunate truth is that these proposals will only make a small dent in the gun ownership subsidy that still persists in this country.
In the previous Parliament, the Labour party campaigned on full cost recovery. Fees for section 1 firearms had remained frozen for too long, and as a result the taxpayer was subsidising gun ownership to the tune of £17 million a year. That is insane. The police estimated that the cost of licensing a firearm was £196, yet the fee was stuck at £50. The taxpayer was paying three quarters of the cost of a gun owner getting a licence.
To be fair to the coalition Government, they did respond to the pressure. A working group was set up by the Home Office, the police and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation to consider the matter. After negotiations, it proposed that an £88 fee would be mutually acceptable to the police and shooters. The £88 fee was considerably short of the £196 that the police had independently estimated to be the true cost of licensing guns, but it was still a welcome increase. The £88 fee was finally introduced just before the general election. However, the fee was frozen for 14 years before it was finally increased. The £88 fee was arrived at only after negotiations with BASC and was not imposed following independent estimates.
Our amendments to the Bill would mandate the Secretary of State to set the cost of a licence for prohibited weapons, pistol clubs and museums at the full cost to the taxpayer. A legal requirement that the fee match the full cost would take some of the politics out of the process. The fee decisions would be based on an evidential analysis, conducted by the Home Office, of the true cost to the taxpayer. If the process proved to be successful for prohibited weapons, pistol clubs and museums, the Minister could consider extending it to section 1 firearms. This legislation could be a first step to true full cost recovery.
I will be interested to hear the Minister’s views on the issue. I urge him to accept amendments 228, 229 and 230. The taxpayer should not have to subsidise gun ownership, as it currently does. Our amendments would be a first step to bringing that unfairness to an end once and for all. Labour pushed hard for full cost recovery in the previous Parliament, and we have seen some movement from the Government on the issue. I urge the Minister to work with us, both by accepting our amendments today and by looking at the issue of section 1 licences in the future, to achieve what seems to be a realistic and realisable common goal.
Mike Penning
We are as one on the fact that the taxpayer should not subsidise licensing. The Bill, which is about Home Office licences, will not have an effect on police fees. However, given that the shadow Minister referred to police licence fees, I will respond to that as well. I completely agree that this should have been done years and years ago, under several Administrations. I will therefore look at police licence fees, which the Bill does not do, but which the hon. Lady was referring to.
The legislation has been changed. As from April 2015, police licence fees increased by between 23% and 76%, depending on the certificate type. That is the first increase since 2001. Once the new police online system, eCommerce, is introduced, fees will recover the full costs of licensing. That is specific: it is in the legislation. I had problems myself with the coalition Government, along with several of my colleagues.
Let us look briefly at the Home Office licence fees. I completely agree that it is wrong that the taxpayer is subsidising other organisations. Currently, combined, the authorisation and licensing of prohibited weapons, shooting clubs and museums costs the taxpayer an estimated £700,000 a year. I do not feel that the amendment is necessary: I will explain why. Clause 80 will create a consistent set of charging powers across all Home Office firearms licences and authorities. The Government’s intention is that licence holders, and not the taxpayer, should pay the full cost. The Government will set fees at the appropriate level, based on clause 80, but with agreement from the Treasury. Fees will be set out in a public consultation later this year, which will give affected organisations the chance to raise any issues. Final fee amounts will be introduced via regulations subject to the negative procedure.
Lyn Brown
What is the need for consultation on this? If the Home Office is going to impose the full cost of the licence fee on the person who is applying for the licence, what are we consulting about? If the consultation comes back with some interested group saying, “We can’t afford this—we only really want 50% or 30%,” might the Government be minded to agree with that, rather than impose the full 100% of the cost?
Mike Penning
There are frustrations in being a Minister, as former Ministers know. Consultation is a requirement, because we are likely to be challenged in law. That is why we consult. We will say what we want to do and then consult. One area where there may be real concern is the cost to museums. That is right. Other organisations may want to put their four pennyworth in, as often happens in consultations. We would not want to have a massively adverse effect on museums, though, so we will need to look at that. When proposing changes to legislation or to use delegated powers, it is always best to consult.
Lyn Brown
I am grateful to the Minister for making my day—that is a great birthday present for tomorrow. I look forward to receiving his letter, which will provide clarification. I will bring this back on Report if everything is not as hunky-dory as we think. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 80 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 81
Guidance to police officers in respect of firearms
Amendment made: 215, in clause 81, page 85, line 20, leave out from “must” to end of line 22 and insert
“have regard to any guidance issued under section 55A that is relevant to the appeal.”.—(Mike Penning.)
This amendment requires a court or sheriff hearing an appeal against a decision by the police under the Firearms Act 1968 to have regard to any guidance issued to chief officers of police under the new section 55A of that Act inserted by clause 81.
Clause 81, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 82 to 90 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 91
Power to impose monetary penalties
Lyn Brown
I beg to move amendment 231, in clause 91, page 94, line 37, leave out “50%” and insert “200%”.
This amendment would increase the maximum civil penalty for breaking financial sanctions from half the value of the funds or resources involved to double the value.
The Opposition support the measures in the Bill that will toughen up the enforcement of financial sanctions. We appreciate that financial sanctions are an important diplomatic and strategic power, but we are concerned that the penalties proposed are too light and may not deter an individual from taking a calculated risk.
I am sure we all welcome the news that in recent weeks ISIS has been in retreat in parts and has lost the ancient city of Palmyra. I have no doubt that the financial sanctions that the UK and other countries have placed on 258 individuals and 75 entities that support ISIS have played their part, but, as the executive director of the Iraq Energy Institute told the Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee last month, ISIS’s spending patterns suggest that it must still be receiving substantial donations and outside financial assistance. That is an important reminder that those who break financial sanctions can be a serious threat to national security and to British interests. Those people must be stopped and punished.
The Bill introduces sensible and welcome measures on enforcing financial sanctions, which we support. For example, we support the changes in clause 89, which will allow the Secretary of State to increase the penalty for breaking EU financial sanctions to seven years’ imprisonment. That matches the maximum penalty for breaking an asset freeze under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010. Given the severity of the crime, that is a far more fitting penalty than the two years currently provided for.
Clauses 97 and 98 address the gap in time between the UN passing a financial sanction resolution and our Government adopting the EU regulations needed to implement it. The Bill will allow the Treasury to enforce United Nations financial sanction resolutions immediately by introducing temporary sanctions as an interim measure. This sort of interim measure seems entirely reasonable, given the importance of financial sanctions to national security. It was, indeed, recommended by Lord Rodger in the Supreme Court when reviewing the case of Mohammed Jabar Ahmed.
Although I support the general thrust of the measures on financial sanctions, there are a few areas in the Bill where I seek assurances from the Minister. In particular, I am concerned that the civil penalties introduced by clause 91 might be perceived as a mere slap on the wrist by those contemplating illegal business activity: that the civil penalties might be light enough that breaking sanctions might be considered to be a risk worth taking. Clause 91(3) states that the maximum civil penalty for breaking financial sanctions is either £1 million or
“50% of the estimated value of the funds or resources”,
if that is more than £1 million. I wonder whether this is insufficient.
I know that £1 million sounds a lot—it is for me—but imagine an individual selling a property in the London property market with a value well in excess of £1 million to a foreign buyer who is subject to financial sanctions. Members of the Committee may have seen last year’s Channel 4 documentary that showed a buyer posing as a Russian official who told the vendors of London properties that his funds were embezzled. Those dealing with him seemed completely and utterly unperturbed. We were not told by the journalists that they were subsequently contacted by any of the vendors to withdraw their interest in the sale, in reconsideration of the fact that the funds were embezzled.
Of the Mossack Fonseca companies tied up in the Panama papers leak, 2,800 appear on the UK Land Registry list of overseas property owners and have assets worth more than £7 billion. It is little wonder that Donald Toon of the National Crime Agency has said that
“the London property market has been skewed by laundered money.”
There is little doubt that London property is seen as a safe haven for both legitimate and illegitimate investors. So my contention is that the threat of being fined 50% of the value of the property might not be sufficient deterrent to stop an individual seller undertaking a sale. As I understand the Bill, the vendor would still be able to keep 50% of the proceeds of a sale even if they are caught. That, if they received it in cash, might be more valuable to them than alternative revenue streams they could have received from the property. I would be grateful if the Minister let me know whether my reading of the Bill is correct. If it is, I would be grateful if she explained why she thinks that that is reasonable. If we want to discourage people who are contemplating engaging with an illegal business, the civil penalties need to be stronger.
I accept that the Minister—getting all my arguments in at once—may stand up and say that these are only civil sanctions and that anyone engaging in illegal business activity will still be subject to criminal sanctions, which include custodial punishments. That may well be the case, but the civil standard of proof of “the balance of probabilities” is a lot easier to meet than the criminal standard of “beyond reasonable doubt”. That is particularly true with regards to financial crime, where the complexities of the financial system have seen calls for fraud cases to sit outside the jury system. That is not a call I agree with, as an individual, but it has been considered and debated in the recent past.
There is a danger that the new Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, run by the Treasury, will rely on civil punishments rather than on the more difficult to achieve criminal punishments. If that is the case, the low level of civil penalties might actually only make the problem worse. Financial sanctions are an important diplomatic and strategic power. Individuals or companies breaking financial sanctions are a serious threat to the national interest and must be stopped.