Riot Compensation Bill

Debate between Rupa Huq and Simon Hoare

Friday 4th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq]

That is an excellent point. There were the headline cases that got all the attention and went viral, but I believe that the proprietors of many small Asian shops in the London road have been waiting a long time to be compensated. I am not sure whether they have received any compensation yet. We may focus on the headline cases, but these are all tragic stories.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I understand that local authorities have discretion to deem domestic and commercial properties exempt from council tax and/or business rates in the event of, for instance, floods, fires or riots. Authorities are aware of those powers, and should use them to help people.

[Dr Huq]

I believe that the hon. Gentleman is right, but local authorities live in ever more straitened circumstances, and are trying to do more and more with less and less. I am surprised that the Bill does not mention that, and I should be interested to hear from the Minister what provision will be made for it in future legislation.

Helen also referred to

“just the amount of time it took and the amount of paperwork to submit.”

I understand that the Bill would simplify such processes. Claims can, of course, be made online nowadays, although that was obviously not a possibility in 1886. The Kinghan report, to which the hon. Member for Dudley South referred earlier, recommended that the processes should be speeded up, observing that

“none of the police authorities had any experience of claims handling”

or of the demands,

“or the resources to meet it. They also had to cope with legislation written 125 years previously”.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) mentioned language difficulties. Those difficulties are compounded by the archaic language to be found in a lexicon that was used in 1886.

The Ealing report commented that the public had been reassured by the fact that shops and businesses remained open—that it was business as usual. I remember passing a hairdresser’s shop where all the glass had been blown out. Presumably the clients were being given blow dries “au naturel”! However, although that “business as usual” spirit was reassuring, we need to help businesses to get back on their feet more quickly.

The Bill contains much that is of merit. Clause 4 creates a new body, the riot claims bureau, which the Minister can direct to delegate decisions on claims that are taken to it by local police authorities. While the hon. Member for Dudley South was speaking, however, it occurred to me that if the police are to decide these matters in the first instance and are also to be liable, it is possible that those roles are too close to each other. The Association of British Insurers has referred to a direct conflict of interests, and, although it may have misunderstood the position, the police certainly should not be both judge and jury. The hon. Gentleman did say, however, that if a case straddled two separate police authorities, the Secretary of State would make the ultimate decision.

The highest bill was run up in London, where policing is devolved, and I believe that the Sony warehouse claim is still being contested. The London Assembly welcomed the Bill in its pre-general election version as recently as March; in 2012, it had produced a report entitled “Picking up the pieces”, which recommended an overhaul of the current Victorian legislation.

The 1886 Act was instituted after the Trafalgar square riots, at a time when there was no provision for motor vehicles. I did a Google search to find out how many people in the country owned cars in 1886, and discovered that it was the year in which Benz trialled the first petrol engine, which had just been invented. The Act places the onus on the police, but as early as 9 August 2011, Rob Garnham, chair of the Association of Police Authorities, warned that

“in a context of cuts the public will see little sense in a shrinking police fund being diverted to pay for criminal damage.”

Touch wood, God forbid, let us hope and pray the frightening disturbances of 2011 never happen again, but we do have a duty to learn from precedent and we need to bring the law on these subjects into the 21st century. We need to defend and protect small businesses. I am a child of small business—that is what my dad did. Small business owners sometimes take enormous risks: they sometimes do not eat to put food on the table for their kids and do not take holidays. They are not even SMEs; they are microbusinesses, and people such as Stuart and Helen, whom I described, and Ravi and Amrit need our support as they are key drivers of regional economies and pillars of our local communities.

It was not just the glass at the Bang & Olufsen franchise in Ealing that shattered; it was also the notion of suburban calm in our area. It shocked me and many other long-standing residents. This Bill is a good start, but there are still little bits and pieces that could be improved, such as the issues of leaving small businesses out of pocket when cash flow is difficult and the speed at which claims can be processed.

Riots in this country are, thankfully, pretty rare. I remember them in my lifetime two or three times. In 1981 it was Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side; then in 2001 it was Bradford, Burnley and Oldham, where we had a very good result for the Labour party last night; and then in 2011 it was Ealing, where I was and where I always thought it would never happen, and other compass points in London—Croydon in the south, Tottenham in the north—and Manchester and Birmingham as well. So we do not know when they are going to happen, but there is a likelihood they will. There is a more than zero probability that in the next 130 years we will see some sort of urban, or suburban, disorder again, so we must never say never.

The 2011 riots were noteworthy for various reasons. Some of the commentary talked about the role and function of social media, and the issues of youth justice and the sentencing process were also raised. Some people saw the looting and violence as spelling the end of society as we know it, while others saw it as solidifying social bonds because of the “broom armies”—the community-led clean-ups that happened the day after. Some of the points that arose are addressed by the legislation: the motives of the perpetrators; whether it was a riot or not; whether it was a consumer orgy or a shopping spree. There is a new definition of riot in this Bill, which I am pleased to see is based on the Public Order Act 1986.

There are still bits and pieces that my residents and businesses would like to see addressed, and I could mention many more such businesses: the Red Lion pub, Santa Maria Pizza, the Hare and Tortoise, Visage Hair, and the Baby Boutique, whose proprietor went on television a lot in the heat of the moment blaming “feral youths”. It has since closed its doors and is now an online business only. Most of the measures they would like to see are here, but one or two could be added at a later stage.

In conclusion, this Bill is a vast improvement on the existing provisions, but if history repeats itself and this little known piece of legislation does have to be dusted down in the next 129 years, we might as well get it right now. On the whole, however, I commend it, and the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) for bringing it to the House today.