Criminal Justice Bill

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Hon. Members may be shocked to learn that some forms of pimping are still legal in this country. One of the most significant examples is pimping websites, which are dedicated to advertising people for prostitution. They function like online brothels, making it as easy to order a woman to sexually exploit as it is to order a takeaway.

Despite it being an offence to place a prostitution advert on land, for example in a phone box, our laws have failed to keep up with technology, meaning that those same adverts can be placed legally, for a fee, on pimping websites. That represents a win for the website owners, some of whom are generating millions of pounds in profit every year, and for sex traffickers, who can easily and quickly advertise people for prostitution and connect with a wide customer base across the UK, but certainly not for the victims—the people who have been advertised and sold for sex and who have no legal protection from their perpetrators.

As a member of the Home Affairs Committee, I have heard harrowing evidence on the dangers of these sites. Shockingly, one pimping website admitted to the Committee that it allows single individuals to advertise multiple women for prostitution at the same time on its site, as well as allowing the same contact number to be used across multiple different adverts. Those are both red flags for sex trafficking. The Committee also heard of a trafficking gang that spent £25,000 advertising a group of young Romanian women. Rather than alerting the authorities, the website owners allocated them an account manager to help them to spend more money, showing a total disregard for the women’s welfare. It is quite clear that these pimping websites are now a key component of the business model for sex trafficking, and they must be stopped.

The provisions in the Online Safety Act 2023 do not close the legislative gap that allows online pimping. That is why the Home Affairs Committee recommended a new offence of enabling or profiting from the prostitution of others, which I have tabled as new clause 8. New clause 8 would make it illegal to advertise another person for prostitution, regardless of whether it takes place online or offline.

I am delighted to have cross-party support for the new clause, including from the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson); the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation, the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan); the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith); and my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). It is an absolute scandal that pimping websites are allowed to operate in plain sight. I urge the Government to support my new clause.

New clause 29 is also designed to combat human trafficking. The definition of “human trafficking” in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 is out of line with the internationally agreed definition, and traffickers are benefiting from that. The United Nations protocol on trafficking, the Palermo protocol, does not require victims to have been physically transported from one place to another for an activity to be recognised as trafficking, but our Modern Slavery Act does. Essentially, that means that an exploiter who forces a woman into prostitution, advertises her on a pimping website, controls how many men she has to have sex with each day, and takes her money from her could get a substantially lower penalty simply by virtue of not physically having transported her.

The maximum penalty for controlling prostitution for gain is seven years’ imprisonment. For trafficking, it is life. It is vital that we send a message to all traffickers that there are no get-out clauses for that offence, and that we say: “If you trade in human beings, if you profit from women being raped and abused, the absence of a car journey or a flight should not exempt you from punishment.” New clause 29 would bring the UK definition of human trafficking in line with international standards and remove the opportunity for perpetrators of such crime to play the system. That, too, was a recommendation of the Home Affairs Committee.

Again, I urge the Government to support the new clauses.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I restrict my interest today to new clause 55, which I tabled. It would set up the offence of child criminal exploitation—in other words, it is Fagin’s law. The essence of the name Fagin explains the new clause. In simple terms, if an individual—whether an adult or a child—approached a child with the intention of persuading that child to engage in criminal activity, that in itself would be a crime. That would apply whether or not the child ultimately engaged in the criminal act.

I am delighted to see the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire on the Front Bench, because I blame him for my dealing with this. We discussed it in a meeting, and I put it to him that we really ought to adapt the grooming legislation or bring forward new legislation to deal with the criminal exploitation of children. Like a normal Minister, he said, “Can you go away and sort it out, and come up with something for me?”, which I have done. He might now refuse it this evening, but I hope that he does not, because I will keep on coming back.

The most obvious crimes to target are county lines, organised shoplifting, independent shoplifting, pickpocketing, carrying goods from pickpocketing, carrying weapons or the proceeds of crime on behalf of another—usually an adult who has groomed the child—prostitution and sex activities, of which there has been quite some mention, as there always is, and, finally and horrifically, the grooming of a child for terrorist purposes. They wrap the child in a bomb, send them off to wherever they need to go, and press the button—absolutely horrific.

I have had considerable discussions with a few very senior, very knowledgeable police officers. They are—unlike what the Minister may feel—very enthusiastic about this tiny bit of legislation going through. One of the senior officers, who targets county lines, explained to me that they rely mostly on trying to fit the Modern Slavery Act to that particular problem, but it is a poor fit.

It has been pointed out to me that this approach has already been covered in section 44 of the Serious Crime Act 2007. In answer to a recent parliamentary question of mine, I was informed that section 44 was used 93 times in 2021-22 and 60 times in 2022-23, which is pathetic. Those figures are further diminished when we look at them a little more closely: they relate to the number of offences, not to the number of individual defendants, and I am not sure whether some or any of them involve a child.

A second, even more senior, police officer who I have worked with has a special interest in child protection—that is his job. He has made it clear that he is enthusiastic about this move, and I am sure he will thank the Policing Minister if we nod it through today. He has made the point to me that while there are provisions in the Serious Crime Act—which I have just mentioned—as well as in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and other Acts that the police can try to make fit, they are a poor fit. It does not work, because that legislation is not specific to children.

In essence, senior police officers point out to me that those pieces of legislation are rarely used to stop child criminalisation. They also make the point that if the legislation were adapted ever so slightly to refer to a child, that would make a difference. Any Members present who are parents or have had care of children will know that children—not all of them, but most of them—are persuadable.

One of my villages, Bookham, has a petrol station on the A246 with a shop attached to it. That shop is big, well known and open 24 hours. Late one evening, the single man who was in there looking after the customers noticed that there was a single person in the shop, an eight-year-old child in a dressing gown. She was helping herself, and was obviously going to zip out the door with what she had pilfered. When he approached her, she said, “If you come any closer, I’ll open my dressing gown, and I’ve got nothing on underneath.” She would not have thought of that. She could not have thought of it—she was only eight. She was quite clearly doing that for somebody else, who was probably sitting outside with a camera. That is the sort of thing that we should be stopping. Of course, I am going to find out in due course whether I am persuading the Minister.

As I have said, the opinion of that child protection officer is that the legislation we have does not fit. He and many other senior police officers working in this area want further legislation to specifically equate grooming through criminal exploitation with what is contained in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, targeted at child protection. All the officers who have an interest in the protection of children with whom I have discussed this matter have pointed out that the key difference between my new clause 55 and section 44 of the Serious Crime Act is that my new clause is specifically targeted at the child. From my discussions with police officers, I have been impressed by the deterrent effect on criminals who may be prosecuted for a child offence. That, I understand, tends to make life in jail even more difficult than it might otherwise be.

As a number of senior lawyers—including Members of this House—have pointed out to me, there is overlap and duplication within British law. I am no lawyer, but many lawyers have said that to me. If my new clause 55 became law, the tariff applied to the crime would be that which would apply to the crime that the culprit was attempting to persuade the child to commit. If it was murder, the tariff would be life; if it was just pilfering from a shop, it would be very much less. As many Members will be aware, for many years, I have been pushing for improvement in legislation for the protection of children. I have also worked—particularly as a councillor—in the inner cities, so I know they are vulnerable. If my new clause is accepted, it would make a huge change to the protection of children against a life of crime.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

There have been some excellent speeches on this first day on Report on the Criminal Justice Bill, and I support many of the amendments that have been spoken to. In my remarks, I particularly want to focus on amendments tabled by hon. and right hon. Members that the Home Affairs Committee has recommended in a number of our inquiries.

I will start with new clause 8, on pimping websites, which seeks to establish an offence of enabling or profiting from prostitution. It was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), and I commend her for her speech and for setting out so clearly why this is important. The Home Affairs Committee has recommended this change, and we concluded that it is imperative that the Government make it a criminal offence to enable or profit from the prostitution of another person to reduce and deter trafficking for sexual exploitation.

Change of Name by Registered Sex Offenders

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I must congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) for putting the case extremely well yesterday and today. I was also fascinated by what the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) had to say based on her experience—and for people dealing with these individuals, it is some experience.

I will not repeat the exercise of describing the problem, or come up with any sort of solutions, but the United Kingdom has probably led the way on legislation dealing with the protection of children. We started that with a proactive approach—rather than a reactive one—which I think is the right way to do it. If it is possible, we get the offender before the offender has got the child. That is the thinking, in a way, behind what we are talking about today.

I went on a parliamentary police course with the Metropolitan police in the early 2000s, which included a session with the Met police paedophile unit. Most people read about cases on the front pages—or some other page—but they do not really know; they do not really have a feel of what it was like. That session with the unit was an enormous shock to me—an absolutely mind-boggling shock. It is unbelievable what some people will do to children.

I asked the then DCI Bob McLachlan, who was head of the unit—a relatively small one, which was a fraction of what it is now—a stupid question. I asked him if he could give me a wild guess about how many active paedophiles there were in England. This was 20 years ago, before the internet really got hold of it, and he said that there were enough active paedophiles in this country to have one for every street. He also said that 20% of them were female. Half of that 20% were females working with males, but the other 10% were females working without males. That has since changed—not the percentages, necessarily, but the numbers—because of the internet.

The biggest basic ground-level step, along the lines of protecting children proactively, was the 2003 anti-grooming legislation. It was a big step; we were the first country to do it, and it has been mimicked across the world.

I know a senior barrister who has worked on a considerable number of high-profile child-protection cases, both as a prosecutor and defender. She said to me, after a glass of wine, that these individuals are the slipperiest, most devious liars she has ever met. It must be expected that what is colloquially known as the “sex offenders list”—there is no actual list that we can look at, but that is the way that the papers put it—means that these individuals will try to get around the system.

They take jobs because the job is secondary to the primary thing they want to do, which is to abuse children. Many have tried to change addresses, and we had to change the law several times to overcome that difficulty. Many of them have got around, for a while, the attempts by the police or probation officers to inspect, but we changed that loophole.

Today, we are looking at another loophole that we can change. If the Minister, for whatever reason, is not going to take forward the ten-minute rule Bill, he can do what happened before we brought in the legislation on grooming. He can put together a small team to look at the problem and come forward, quickly, with legislation that is acceptable to the Department, and to us, to close that loophole. That is what David Blunkett did.

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend was one of the first Members to speak to me about the risks that paedophiles, in particular, present to society. Does he agree that the biggest flaw in the legislation around changing names by deed poll is that it is entirely based on the honour and honesty of the sex offender to give the correct details to the current scheme? That is the loophole that we have to close.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I completely agree. Putting honesty and these individuals together is an almighty clash; they do not match.

David Blunkett set up a small team in the Home Office to look at the child protection legislation in 2003, and he asked me to join that small team, along with a man called DCI Dave Marshall. As we were starting to look at this, there was a terrible case in which an individual in London had rung a telephone number advertised in Texas. He asked, when the phone was answered, if they could provide him with a five-year-old child for sex. The Texan said, “Come on over; sure we can.” The individual said, “I can’t come over. Can you give me the number of somebody in London?” The Texan cop—because it was a sting—said, “Yes,” and gave the number of the Met police paedophile unit, fortunately.

When the individual rang there, the unit said, “Yes, we’ll provide you with a five-year-old child,” and, of course, when he knocked on the door, expecting a five-year-old child, he got a 6-foot-something police officer, who arrested him. But, the big problem was that they did not know for sure what legislation could be used to prosecute the individual, because he had not seen a child, had not touched a child, and so on. That is where we went back and came up with the grooming legislation.

There is now an opportunity for a loophole, and the paedophiles will constantly look for loopholes, but a loophole can be changed. I hope that, if the ten-minute rule Bill is not acceptable, the Minister will set up a small team of competent people, with both sides of the House represented, as well as police, officials and lawyers, to come up with something quickly to shut down the loophole, because it will be abused. I suspect that—as I have found when dealing with this type of legislation—the people who will avidly read the Hansard report of the debate will be paedophiles, and that some who had not thought of changing their names will now think of doing so and of using and abusing the loophole. Our children are too precious; we have to look after them. I want my grandchildren to be safe.

Computer Misuse Act 1990

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Before I begin, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and in particular to my stakeholding in a firm that has offered digital forensic services in the past, but which I understand does not plan to offer such services at least for the next three to five years.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Mark. I am grateful to have secured this important debate of national security significance, especially considering this morning’s headlines about the potential spyware attack on No. 10. The need for this debate has become more urgent of late, especially considering the barbaric and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which has placed a spotlight on the pressing requirement to strengthen the UK’s cyber-security.

The UK Government have achieved a great deal in developing our cyber-capabilities, spearheading the creation of the National Cyber Force and putting aside a total of £2.6 billion for cyber and IT, which is a significant funding increase on previous years. I strongly welcome the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport working more closely with cyber-security firms, through £850,000 of funding to support the establishment and activities of the UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration.

Given this Government’s strong record developing our cyber-capabilities, it is surprising that 32 years after its introduction as a private Member’s Bill, the Computer Misuse Act 1990 remains the primary piece of legislation covering cyber-crime in the UK. I am sure we all agree that the technological landscape has altered drastically over the last 30 years. Our existing legislation must urgently be updated to reflect those monumental changes. When the 1990 Act came into law, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, the first website was yet to be published and I was just a toddler.

The CMA was brought into law to criminalise unauthorised access to computers. In other words, hacking without permission became illegal, irrespective of motive or intent. However, the CMA came into force before the modern cyber-security industry, which now employs more than 52,000 people across 1,800 firms. In 2022, the methods used by cyber criminals and cyber-security professionals are often very similar—sometimes the same. Individuals who work in cyber-security are frequently required to perform actions for which explicit authorisation is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.

Contemporary defensive cyber research into computer system vulnerabilities and threat intelligence often involves the scanning and examination of compromised victims and criminal systems to lessen the impact of future attacks—pre-empting what such a hack might resemble to prevent its success. It strikes me as woefully naive to think that criminals will explicitly authorise access to their systems. To do so would be akin to a policeman asking permission to arrest an individual.

British cyber-security professionals are at risk of being taken to court for obtaining actionable intelligence, which means that as a country we are dissuading vital research from being conducted at a time when countries such as Russia and China are increasingly deploying hostile technologies against us and our allies. Consequently, even though the CMA has been amended several times since 1990, its major flaw is that it fails to allay fear of arrest and/or prosecution among cyber-security professionals as they carry out essential threat intelligence research against cyber criminals and agents of rogue states.

We find ourselves in a perverse situation where industry specialists who are acting in the public interest—often dealing with issues that are critical to our national security infrastructure—are at risk of being designated a criminal. Even with responsible policing, the CMA can still be used by non-state bodies to pursue individuals through the civil courts, causing considerable financial and emotional injury to well-intentioned professionals. If situations such as these remain possible, future generations of cyber professionals could be deterred from pursuing a highly rewarding career, precisely at a time when we should aspire for Britain to continue its reputation as a global cyber leader.

In urging for reform of the CMA, I have worked closely with the CyberUp campaign, which argues for updating the law and makes the case that failure to reform is holding back our cyber defences and preventing the upskilling of our workforce. In the “Time for reform?” report published by the CyberUp campaign and techUK in November 2020, analysis of a survey showed that the industry overwhelmingly suggested that the CMA was not fit for purpose. More than nine in 10 respondents said that they

“did not believe that the Computer Misuse Act represented a world leading example of 21st century cyber crime legislation.”

With Russia frequently targeting infrastructure through cyber-attacks, it is becoming increasingly urgent that we resolve the contradictions in the CMA. We need only look at the 2017 Russian state-sponsored NotPetya virus, which caused billions of pounds-worth of damage, to appreciate how devastating such attacks can be. At the epicentre of this digital hydrogen bomb in Ukraine, national transport infrastructure ground to a halt, people were unable to withdraw money from ATMs and even the radiation monitoring system at Chernobyl went offline. The current situation is an immense security risk.

The national cyber strategy, which was published in December 2021, sets out a commitment to improving our resilience to cyber-threats, but currently the strategy is clearly hamstrung because of the CMA. I have spoken to threat intelligence researchers from leading UK cyber-security companies, who have stated that they come up against CMA-related barriers three times a week on average. In those situations, researchers must seek guidance on whether they can investigate without breaching the provisions of the Act. In 80% of such cases, investigations cannot be undertaken. Where investigations can go forward, there is a significant benefit, with the average number of victims who can be identified, and thus warned and supported, varying between a handful and often up to hundreds per investigation.

We can extrapolate the figures to try to develop a national picture of what is going on. Using data obtained in the DCMS sectoral analysis 2022, the list of CREST threat intelligence providers and statistics from the DCMS cyber breaches survey 2021, we can surmise that the CMA is an active consideration in relation to at least a hundred, but potentially up to 3,000 investigations, each week across the UK in cyber-threat intelligence firms; that is, of course, assuming that all the other firms are similarly conscientious about staying on the right side of the law. That means that up to 2,400 investigations could be abandoned due to sensitivities around the CMA, which in turn could mean that up to 1 million victims remain unidentified and thus under threat from cyber criminals. Financially, it is estimated that the outdated CMA is costing our economy at least £30 million a week.

Our digital economy is being held back by a law that came into existence when less than half a percent of the population used the internet. We need to make the case that Britain, with its impressive track record in computing, networking and cyber, is a fantastic place to invest, create jobs and upskill our workforce. As it stands, we risk losing out to global competitors with more liberal legislative regulations, such as France, Israel and the United States.

What practical changes need to be made to the CMA for it to be well placed to rise to the challenges of 2022 and beyond? Industry representatives have directly conveyed to me a strong desire to see the inclusion of a statutory defence for cyber-security professionals who are acting in the public interest. Although I understand the need to ensure an effective balance between protecting legitimate cyber-activity and being able to prosecute genuine criminals effectively, one thing that struck me in my meetings with industry representatives was that even among those who felt relatively at ease about the prospect of prosecution, there remained a strong and genuine fear of arrest, which would involve the seizure of their work devices—the tools of their trade—and cause significant stress to individuals who are proud of their contributions to keeping Britain safe.

Currently, the only protections in the Act, beyond a few cases where a warrant is obtained, are extendable only to actions undertaken with explicit authorisation. Consequently, for the law to work for 21st-century Britain and its need to defend itself from cyber-attacks, reform should include a legal mechanism and clarify legal ambiguities in order to put professionals at ease.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I apologise for not being here at the very beginning. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about a statutory defence, but I understand that that could be achieved without changing the current legislation, particularly if it were done in co-ordination with the Crown Prosecution Service.

[Dr Wallis]

It is important that we respond directly to the concerns of the cyber-security professionals; this is what they have asked for. Meaningful engagement with them will lead to a potential compromise. There is also a need to balance how we act against genuine cyber criminals, and I think that meaningful engagement and working with them will be the way to find that suitable compromise.

Updating the CMA has widespread cross-party support, with the all-party parliamentary internet group first calling for reform of the CMA in 2004—18 years ago. Since then, the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report has recommended that the CMA should be updated in response to the heightened risk of malignant Russian cyber-activities.

Although cyber professionals across the country and I greatly appreciate the announcement by the Home Secretary last year of a review looking at the CMA, progress has seemingly been slow. Some 66% of respondents to the Government’s call for information had concerns over the existing legal protections of the CMA, so I hope that the Minister will update us as to whether the review is being expedited, especially considering that there has been an increase in hostile cyber-actions undertaken by rogue states and given this morning’s headlines on potential spyware attacks on No. 10. I would also be grateful if the Minister would meet myself and others from the campaign to discuss the matter further. I look forward to hearing contributions from hon. and right hon. Members.

Points-based Immigration System

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate that the Home Secretary is providing full answers to very serious questions, but the House will have to forgive her if she gives quicker answers, and not criticise her for not providing full explanations; otherwise, everyone will not get a chance to speak—they will probably not get a chance to speak anyway.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I welcome the move that is being promoted today. As an ethnic minority immigrant who came here to work in the national health service, that is to be expected. After I arrived here, the system changed. There are now opportunities for all Commonwealth English-speaking—well, sort of English-speaking—people from the top universities in the old Commonwealth. Should we not be campaigning to bring them here especially for our national health service?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are two points to make here. We continue to train people domestically for our NHS, but the world is changing. We have friends and partners in the Commonwealth, and it is right that we apply the system equally rather than discriminating in favour of EU nationals. We need to apply a system that is fair across all nations in the world.

Mental Health Act: Section 136

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

The subject of this debate is section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, but I am discussing only a tiny aspect of it. As a Minister from the Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), is responding, I am dodging all leaflets, letters and things that I have received from Mind and all the rest of it, and just narrowly looking at one little thing.

This evening, there is a dinner for the parliamentary police graduates; those of us who have been on the course with the police are going. The great advantage of the course, as with similar courses, is that people on it learn what it is like to be a police officer, both on and behind the frontline. Many of us come back from it wishing to make legal changes, because we have seen what it is like to face the problems that police officers face day in, day out. I have often used this route to address issues to do with child protection cases—I think I have 12 or 13 of them. There is one that I have nagged on for some considerable time. It comes from an experience that I had when out in a patrol car with a couple of uniformed cops in Wandsworth. I have raised this matter several times, but some of the answers that I have received—I hesitate to say this to Minister—were not very clever.

Section 136 gives the police the power to remove a person from a public place to a place of safety when that person appears to be suffering from mental disorder. The person will need to be deemed by the police to be in immediate need of care and control as their behaviour is of concern. They are detained, not arrested. From 2018 to 2019, some 50,000 people were detained under the Mental Health Act; about 18,000 or 19,000 people were detained under section 136. It is a little piece of a big Act that has a big effect, and most of it is positive—including, ultimately, for the people detained.

As I say, a person will be deemed by the police to be in immediate need of care and control because their behaviour is of concern. Frequently, this is when the police are trying to stop the individual committing suicide. There have been tragic misinterpretations, and because of a civil quirk I will touch on, the police have had to release the person detained without taking them into a place of care. Ultimately, that person has gone home, or to a relative, and committed suicide. I want this tiny change so that that cannot happen.

As I have said, it is important to point out that the person is not under arrest. When a decision is made to remove them, they are being removed for their own care to a place of safety. The police power is to facilitate the assessment of their health and wellbeing, as well as to provide safety for the people around them. That is excellent, as far as it goes. My primary focus is on the fact that this applies fully only if the individual is in what is deemed to be a public place.

My interest comes from my personal involvement in one case, as I have said, plus from considerable discussions with frontline police officers over the years—predominantly from the Metropolitan police and the Surrey police—and with Professor Rix, who has just retired as a psychiatric consultant, and who was so upset about what was happening that he has been campaigning with the police. There are also a few senior police officers up and down the country who are so concerned that they are campaigning on this as well.

A few years ago, I joined two young uniformed police officers in their response car in Wandsworth. We attended a call with the blues and twos on. It was quite spectacular for me, sitting in the back seat. The officers were excellent drivers; how we missed hitting people on the way there was quite remarkable. We dashed to a residential council tower block, of which Wandsworth has quite a number, and went up to the 14th floor, where a very nervous lady—the mother of the household—let us in.

When we walked in, we saw the woman’s 22-year-old daughter standing on the windowsill of the open window, about to jump. The moment she saw us, she moved further towards the edge, so we moved back out and tried as best we could to persuade her to come down from that precarious position. We quickly established that she had a history of genuine suicide attempts, so this was for real. We pulled back to some degree because she clearly did not like the sight of uniformed police, but fortunately we were joined by two plain clothes officers. One was a very quick and clever lady officer, who entered the flat and managed to persuade the girl to come down from the windowsill and sit on the bed. She saw the pills that the girl planned to take for the suicide if she was not able to jump out of the window, pushed them to one side, gradually removed them and calmed the girl down. The girl clearly needed to go to a place of safety for psychiatric and medical help, but she vehemently refused and became very agitated the moment that was mentioned. She made a number of attempts to go back to the window, and had to be caught and brought back to the bed.

In the meantime, we made contact with the nearby St George’s Hospital psychiatric unit, seeking urgent assistance and someone of professional standing, as required under section 136, effectively to commit her so that she could be taken away to safety. The unit was busy, and it was some considerable time before a healthcare official finally turned up, with an ambulance and a crew. Many healthcare professionals say that it is better to have an ambulance than a police car in such circumstances, but it had completely the opposite effect for that young lady. When she saw the ambulance coming, she was off for the window again, and we had to get her back. The healthcare professional asked her to come quietly into care. That made matters even worse, and we had a tremendous struggle, but in due course the sad young lady was transported to the unit at St George’s, which is designed to be a place of safety. A life was saved—eventually.

The whole pantomime in that 14th-floor flat had occupied five officers and three NHS staff for about four hours. I am not counting myself, as a bystander. I warn any Members who go on such trips that it is par for the course that the police do not like us to get involved. I was trying to help in another case when there was a bit of a fight, and a very large police sergeant told me to keep out of the way, because “We don’t want a” dot-dot-dot “by-election”; that was really caring of him.

It was obvious from the beginning that the police themselves could quite simply have taken care of the young lady quickly and gently. They were very competent, and could have sorted it out and taken her to care. Admittedly, they would have taken her in a police car, but it could have been a plain police car—not an ambulance. Immediate action would have meant that she was transferred to safe care and would have met the required time limit for assessment, which I think is 24 hours. It would have been very quick, and would have reduced the continuing risk over the period in which we saw her attempts to leap out of the window. It was a huge waste of time, except for the end result, for the police and the national health service professional; that is aside from the up-and-down agitation for the young lady.

Under section 136 of the Mental Health Act, if this pantomime had taken place in a public place—if we had managed to persuade the young lady to go outside the flat’s front door and place herself on the landing—the police would have been able to take her into detention and take her to the hospital. We would not have had to wait for a mental health professional, and she would have gone into the care of St George’s.

When I raised this in a debate in 2017, the then Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department assured me that there was a triage system under a new, innovative policy, so that

“most police officers will be deployed alongside mental health professionals, so if a call comes into the centre that somebody is experiencing a problem of the type we have heard about, mental health professionals will be sent along with the police officers as they respond.”—[Official Report, 11 July 2017; Vol. 627, c. 269.]

I liked the Minister. She was very earnest, and she clearly believed everything she was saying to me. I was polite, and I did not look for pigs flying around the Chamber, as I could have done. On hearing her remarks, Professor Rix and police officers who were campaigning on the issue—Professor Rix was here this evening—were absolutely astonished. The politer comments were, “Get real”, and, “Yeah, right.”

There are throughout the United Kingdom large numbers of frontline police officers who respond to all sorts of emergencies, including events like this one. There are not the same number of mental health professionals waiting around, driving around, going out with the police or waiting for a call, so that they can meet the police when they are on patrol to deal with a situation like this.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point. When I speak to the police service in Greater Manchester, they tell me what an enormous proportion of their time is spent dealing with people in mental health crisis. There are a number of aspects to this; I will not comment on his individual case. This surely points to the need for much greater investment in mental health crisis care and mental health community services. I hope that he will go on to mention that, and that the Minister will respond. While I am on my feet, perhaps I can ask the Minister when the Government plan to bring forward the White Paper in response to the Wessely review.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I suspected that I might get that question. That is why, as I very carefully explained, I asked for a Home Office Minister, not a Department of Health Minister. I suspect it would be better if the hon. Gentleman asked a written question, rather than asking my poor hon. Friend on the Front Bench something that he cannot possibly answer because he is not expecting it.

I found the reality of going out with the police to be completely different from what my very lovely Under-Secretary of State lady told me. The system just does not work. I am therefore suggesting a change that has been requested by the police. When I have put this to the police, the enthusiasm has been emphatic. They have been quite clear about it. One of them, who has had to deal with a lot of these cases, again in central London, commented, “Whoever puts this through will be a hero as far as we’re concerned.” But also, unwittingly, they will be a hero for those mentally ill people who are in distress, who need help and who may well commit suicide.

I am requesting a simple change, effectively removing the restrictive reference to a public place. It is quite simple to do. I have a small ten-minute rule Bill that would have fitted the purpose, but I pulled it because the Department of Health said that it had a review, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) suggested. It does have a review, and there is a lot to be reviewed. This is a simple change to make life just that little bit easier for our battered policemen when they are dealing sympathetically—I have always found them sympathetic in these cases—with people who are mentally ill, and who are threatening to damage other people or themselves.

As I said, it has been enthusiastically supported by police officers and by Professor Rix, who has almost made it his psychiatric gift to the nation to undertake this campaign for a number of years.

Experience tells me that the Minister will, in the nicest possible way, probably say, “Thank you, but no thank you,” or, “We’re reviewing this”; I can see by his smile that the temptation is there. Having been a Minister in similar debates, I can assure him that it is possible—I have done it myself—to see the words that you have been given to read out and deviate from them. If the answer that I got before is the answer that he is going to give me, can he stall it? Instead, will he genuinely look at this and meet me, Professor Rix and one or two of the police officers who are deeply into this, to see whether we can do something positive to make it much easier for police officers in these circumstances to deal with individuals, particularly those who are either going to hurt somebody else or hurt themselves? I have a string of cases from the police and Professor Rix that I could go through with him.

As I said, something like 19,000 people were detained under section 136 in 2018-19. That is not known by most people, but it is certainly known by the police officers who are helping people in desperate circumstances to keep themselves alive or not hurt other people. This is a plea to the Minister to be positive this time.