Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Sarah Jones

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Yes, and I thank my hon. Friend, who has been particularly persistent about locking away bladed products or sharp knives. We absolutely keep that point under review. We have had a good response from the retail industry thus far, but we will of course keep the pressure up, and I am extremely grateful to him for his contribution to that.

Liability under our amendments in lieu attaches only to companies that enter into arrangements to deliver bladed products. A delivery company could choose simply not to do so. Our amendments therefore provide the flexibility that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East described, so that if a seller does not enter into an arrangement with a delivery company, the provisions in the Bill that prohibit delivery to residential premises of a bladed product will still apply. A seller in those circumstances will not be able to send a bladed product to residential premises and the product will have to be collected in person at a collection point, which at least gives small and medium-sized businesses the choice over how to conduct their business. We believe that these amendments will help to address the concern behind the Bill and achieve the aim of stopping young people and those under 18 having access to these products through online sales when they should not have such access. I very much hope that our amendment will meet the approval of the House.

Let me turn to knife crime prevention orders. It is vital that the police have the powers they need to prevent knife crime and to protect the public from the devastating effects of violent crime on our streets. It is frankly already too late when we prosecute young people for knife crime. If measures are available that might help to steer children and young people away from carrying or using a knife, we should not hesitate to put them in place. That is why the Government have introduced, in short order, knife crime prevention orders in the Bill. The police made that request of us at the very end of the summer last year, and we were pleased to insert the provision into the Bill in the House of Lords. These are civil orders aimed at young people at risk of engaging in knife crime, people whom the police call habitual knife carriers of any age and those who have been convicted of a violent offence or an offence involving knives.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that although these are civil orders, if they are breached they become criminal, and that 12-year-old children could end up in prison for two years? Will she also confirm that not a single organisation, from the magistrates and local government to charities, lawyers and anybody involved in youth offending teams, supports this change? They all think that we are acting too quickly and need to take more time looking at the implications before introducing it.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am about to come to the framework for these orders, because I am conscious that in an ideal world we would have had the measure in the Bill when it was first laid before the House in the early summer last year. However, the police came to their view and alerted us to their thinking at the end of summer, and although we have frankly acted pretty quickly, we could not by definition have put the measure in the Bill before the police asked us to. We are doing this in response to the express wish of the police; in fact, the Mayor of London wrote to the Home Secretary in December asking that the orders be inserted in the Bill.

I do not know whether the hon. Lady has had a chance to speak to the Mayor of London, but the reason we are introducing these orders is that we want to try to help local communities to tackle knife crime. They are one measure. We do not pretend that they will solve all knife crime, but they are about preventing young people from getting ensnared in criminal gangs or getting into a situation where they think that carrying a knife will protect them. This is about trying to wrap services around those children before they become criminalised.

I know that concerns have been raised about the age at which the orders can be imposed. The orders apply from the age of 12 upwards because the police tell us that the age at which people carry knives is getting younger. We also know from hospital data that younger children are victims and perpetrators. That is why we have chosen that age. If we are serious about tackling knife crime on our streets, the measures that we take must apply to young people and children.

Public Health Model to Reduce Youth Violence

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Sarah Jones

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I always enjoy the company of my colleagues on the Treasury Bench. In fairness, those Ministers may not be here today, but they are there at meetings of the serious violence taskforce, the inter-ministerial group on serious violence and the inter-ministerial group on the first two years of life. There is a great deal of Whitehall involvement, and there has to be, because we have to ensure that all relevant Government Departments, at both national and local level, are involved if we are to provide a wrap-around approach to tackling violence.

The trends and analysis show that this violence is based around male-on-male offending, alongside a shift to younger offenders. Young black men are disproportionately represented as both victims and perpetrators, and although the rise in violence is national, particular communities are being disproportionately hurt by this terrible violence. The strategy is clear that a range of factors are likely to be driving the rise in serious violence, but the most notable driver is the drugs market.

Crack cocaine markets have strong links to serious violence, supported by the growth in county lines, which is also strongly linked to violence. The latest evidence suggests that crack use is rising in England and Wales and that county lines drug dealing, which is associated with hard class A drugs, has spread.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the work she is doing and for always being available when we want to speak to her, which is appreciated.

It is true that the increase in drug use is driving some of these issues, but at least three quarters of knife crime is not gang-related in that way. People are carrying knives and getting involved in knife crime for completely different reasons, and it is important that we bear that in mind as we look at the evidence.

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady, who has done so much work in her constituency and in the House on knife crime, not least through chairing the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, is absolutely right. Sadly, we know that more young people are carrying knives because they think, wrongly, that it will offer them protection. That is where education is critical.



I am extremely grateful for the work the APPG and the associated charities are doing to try to educate young people. One has only to visit the Ben Kinsella Trust, for example, to see the powerful message it delivers, as one makes one’s way around the exhibition, that carrying a knife simply does not offer such protection. Indeed, many young people are killed by their own knives. That is very much part of the early intervention work, which I will outline in detail.

Social media is a driving force in serious violence and in escalating gang violence, due to the reaction of young people to supposed signs of disrespect or, indeed, encouragements to commit violence. A range of risk factors can affect a person’s vulnerability and susceptibility to becoming a victim or perpetrator of serious violence through a range of adverse childhood experiences, such as domestic abuse, truancy and exclusion. The strategy also sets out the evidence and support for targeted interventions that can help to mitigate, and protect children and young people from, these factors.

I will talk first about tackling county lines and the misuse of drugs, because county lines is the first of the four key areas of action set out in our strategy. County lines is a horrific form of child criminal exploitation, and it involves high levels of violence. I am grateful to colleagues on both sides of the House for raising awareness of county lines. Sadly, in the last year or so, we have all become familiar with county lines, and it is precisely because of the questions posed in debates in this place, as well as a very informed campaign by the police and others, that the public are now much more aware of this type of crime.

We have a cross-Government programme of action to tackle county lines, which includes investing £3.6 million to establish a new national county lines co-ordination centre to enhance our intelligence capability and to support cross-border working to disrupt county lines criminality, while also ensuring that vulnerable children and young people are identified and safeguarded.

The new centre became fully operational in September, and it carried out its first week of intensification, to use the police terminology, in October, which resulted in 505 arrests and 320 individuals being safeguarded. That is an extraordinary amount of work in one week, and it shows the scale of the challenge to policing and social services colleagues. The serious violence strategy sets out further measures we will take to enhance our response to drugs, building on the drugs strategy of 2017 and providing further support in targeted areas, such as through heroin and cocaine action areas.

As has already been mentioned, the evidence to support early intervention is set out in our strategy, and a focus on early intervention and prevention is at the heart of a public health approach. That is why we have already delivered on our early intervention youth fund, allocating £17.7 million to 29 projects that will focus on diverting vulnerable young people and those who have already offended away from crime. The projects, supported by police and crime commissioners across England and Wales, will work with young people who are already involved in criminality or who have already offended, and with organisations safeguarding those at risk of gang exploitation and county lines, to deliver interventions to help them into positive life choices. Earlier this year, we also launched a major social media advertising campaign aimed at teenagers, #knifefree, to raise awareness of the consequences of knife crime and discourage young people from carrying knives. That has been supported with the creation of a #knifefree lesson plan and resources for teachers to use in schools.

As I have said previously, a multi-agency approach and local partnerships are vital. That is why we placed PCCs at the heart of our early intervention youth fund and why we are running a series of engagement events for interested and relevant agencies and partners across England and Wales. The aim of the events is to increase awareness of the strategy’s key messages and actions, and understand what action is being taken locally. The events allow partners to share good practice and feedback on further support and what further action needs to be taken. Three events have already taken place in London, Luton and Bristol, and at least 10 further events will take place next year. I have attended one of them and they are very powerful programmes, allowing people to give good advice and to ask questions to improve their local response. We have also made available funding of £1.5 million for 68 projects from the anti-knife crime community fund. The funding supports communities to tackle knife crime, including through early intervention and education, as well as mentoring and outreach work. I hope hon. Members have received letters from me informing them of local projects that have received those donations.

Finally, the strategy sets out further action we will take to enhance the law enforcement and criminal justice response, including tackling social media and continued targeted action on knife crime. On 17 June, the Home Secretary announced funding of £1.4 million to support a new national police capability to tackle gang-related activity on social media. This new police “hub” will be fully operational early next year and will focus on disrupting gang criminality online, as well as identifying and referring more content to social media companies to be removed. In addition, we are taking action to ensure the police have all the powers they need to tackle violent crime. We have introduced a new Offensive Weapons Bill to strengthen our legislation on knives, corrosive substances and firearms. The Bill has completed its passage through this House and had its First Reading in the House of Lords on 29 November. We have continued to encourage police forces to undertake a series of co-ordinated national weeks of action against knife crime under Operation Sceptre. The last operation was in September, when all 43 forces in England and Wales took part, as well as British Transport police. Our newly published serious and organised crime strategy also sets out a framework for how we will use our national, regional and local capabilities to disrupt and target serious violence activity through county lines, for example.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I was grateful for the particular interest he took in the Offensive Weapons Bill. I am not familiar with the case he has raised, but if he provides me with the details, I will certainly look into it. When the police ask us for powers we do our level best to provide them, but I, too, would like to see those powers used sensibly when they are provided.

[Sarah Jones]

I want to caution against being too flippant when it comes to social media. There are big issues to address, but a lot of music that is online, drill music and stuff on YouTube, in particular, is an expression of an environment in which people find themselves, not an expression of intent. That is where the difference lies and that is what the police have to tackle. Someone expressing what is around in their community, what they see and their lived experience is very different from someone expressing intent to do something—that is the difference.

[Victoria Atkins]

I listen to and consider that with great care, but I must make the point that I would like to support our young people and give them the reassurance that if they do not want to be listening to or watching videos that are incredibly violent—as I say, I am not familiar with the example my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) provided—we can take a stand and say, “Actually, we don’t want to see those levels of violence online, because it helps feed a narrative and a very negative atmosphere for our young people.” This is one of the debates we will continue to have, not least through the introduction of the online harms White Paper, and in the context of not just serious violence, but depictions of women in music videos. This is one of the big debates of our time, but I would not want our young people to think that we feel it is okay for music videos to be targeting them with images of extreme violence, with foul language and with foul depictions. We should be doing a bit better than that for our young people.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Sarah Jones

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 6. I was pleased to serve on the Public Bill Committee, and I am glad to see the Bill finally coming back to the Floor of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) spoke passionately about why new clause 6 is so important. Simply put, it says that the Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament on the causes of youth violence with offensive weapons. We are trying to fix a problem, and we have to understand what that problem is before we can fix it.

I want to make two points. The first is about data. We do not know where the people who commit these offences get their knives from. We do not know at what exact time of day these knife crimes are committed, although we have some evidence. We do not know how many people are involved in gangs who commit knife offences. That is really important, because a very small number—somewhere between 3% and 25%, depending on what we measure—of people who commit knife offences are in gangs. There is a lot that we do not understand about what is going on in this situation that we are trying to fix.

The second important part of the new clause relates to evidence. There is a growing consensus that there is an epidemic of violence—the Secretary of State has said it, and the Minister said it today. It is spreading out across the country. Violence breeds violence. There is evidence that can fix this growing national problem. We know from what has worked in other areas how effective interventions can be when they are evidence-based. I think of my friend, Tessa Jowell, whose memorial service you and I attended recently, Mr Speaker. Her interventions in introducing Sure Start and the teenage pregnancy reduction strategy were evidence-based and had a real impact. That is what we need to seek to do.

My final point is that when we look at the evidence, we need to look at the increasing number of children who are being excluded and finding themselves lost to the system. If we are trying to fix this national problem, why on earth would anyone want to vote against this new clause?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank all Members for a most interesting and informative debate. I want to clarify a point made by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) about the applicability of measures on corrosive substances in Northern Ireland. Those measures are within scope for Northern Ireland. It is possible for them to extend to Northern Ireland, and I will ask officials to look into that with their Northern Irish colleagues.

I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for his contribution on new clause 23. Anyone who sells or hires, offers for sale or hire, exposes or has in his possession for the purpose of sale or hire anything contained in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988 is guilty of an offence. That applies to not only people but bodies corporate. Where the user of a website places advertisements for anything contained in the order on that website, the website service provider may be able to rely on the defence under regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. Whether regulation 19 applies will depend on the facts of the case. There may well be jurisdictional issues if the service provider is based overseas. Regulation 19 does not apply where the provider of the website is offering the items for sale directly and where the provider had actual knowledge of the unlawful activity. We therefore consider that the provider of a website who sells items on it directly would be likely to be caught under the wording of the legislation. Where the provider of the website is enabling advertisements to be placed by others, the defence under regulation 19 may be available. That is an awful lot of legalese, but this discussion is timely, as the Government prepare the online harms White Paper.

I turn to amendments 8, 9 and 10, tabled by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). Age verification checks cannot be done only at the point when the seller is processing the sale and preparing the item to be dispatched. Checks also need to be done when the item is handed to the purchaser. That is why we are stopping bladed products—namely, articles with a blade capable of causing serious injury—from being delivered to residential addresses. The amendments would undermine what the Bill is trying to achieve and seem to introduce some sort of validation scheme by the Government to enable certain online sellers—those awarded trusted seller status—to deliver bladed products to residential addresses. That goes against what the Bill seeks.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Sarah Jones

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham on his new clauses, which I support. They would resolve a major failing in the Bill that has the potential to undermine any benefits of the legislation by allowing breaches of it to go unpunished. As he said, there is no point passing Bills if they cannot be properly enforced. The Bill rightly places greater responsibility on retailers and delivery companies, but does not give the relevant authority—trading standards—the statutory powers to investigate breaches properly.

I recently represented the Opposition on the Tenant Fees Bill Committee, where we had a similar problem with the Government not seeming to understand the importance of the role played by trading standards; they had set out a very small amount of funding for a very significant increase in workload. In this Bill, the Government have not given trading standards teams legal powers to enforce the new laws.

The role that trading standards can play in enforcing the Bill, if they are given the powers to do so, is illustrated by the leading work being done by Croydon Council. For years, Croydon Council and Croydon trading standards have been at the forefront of work with retailers to improve their understanding of the law around knife sales through training, to encourage them to go further than required by law through greater responsible retailer agreements and by catching traders willing to break the law on underage sales using test purchasers, both in person and online. Croydon trading standards now has 145 retailers signed up to their responsible retailer agreements. They ran eight “Do you pass?” training sessions with retailers over the past year, encouraging additional measures such as Challenge 25 and the responsible display of knives in stores. The training sessions are a good indicator of which retailers are keen to work responsibly and which might not be. Finally, they have carried out 61 test purchases of knives in the past year to identify those retailers who are not complying with the law.

As Croydon’s trading standards manager pointed out to us in evidence, without statutory powers, much of their work on this area will be reliant

“on retailers’ good will and common sense.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 26, Q42.]

The Committee also heard from trading standards that the additional responsibilities will create

“a large resource issue that will no doubt have an impact.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 26, Q46.]

As with the Tenant Fees Bill, I hope the Minister can look at providing trading standards with adequate resources to enforce the provisions of the Bill. I recognise that the serious violence strategy released by the Home Office contained the promise of a prosecution fund for trading standards—a fund for two years to support targeted prosecution activity against online and instore retailers in breach of the laws on sales of knives to the under age—but the strategy is not clear about how much funding will be made available, and it gives no clarity to trading standards about support two years down the line.

The pressure on trading standards is increasing at a time when budgets are stretched to an unprecedented degree. As well as the Tenant Fees Bill and the new requirements in this Bill, there is a new burden on trading standards regarding the use of wood burners and the Government’s clean air strategy. Meanwhile, the budget for trading standards teams has been cut by half since 2009, from more than £200 million to barely £100 million. The number of trading standards officers has fallen by 56% in the same period.

As Labour’s communities and local government team pointed out in a recent local government health check on trading standards, those cuts have led to the downgrading of the protections that consumers depend on, and the tradition of routine inspections and sampling work has given way to a system based on consumer complaints. Relying on such a system is not an effective way to enforce laws, particularly those related to the purchase of knives or corrosives, which, by their nature, are unlikely to result in a complaint from buyer or seller. I end with a plea to the Minister not to allow this important piece of legislation to be nothing more than words in the statute book because it cannot, in the end, be enforced.

[Victoria Atkins]

As always, I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham for tabling these new clauses. It is important to note that it is possible for the legislation to be enforced by the police and that the Crown Prosecution Service can prosecute retailers who have breached the law if appropriate. On several occasions in my previous career, there were joint prosecutions—not necessarily just with the CPS, but with the Health and Safety Executive and local councils—and in the old days, prosecutions on housing benefit fraud. There are already powers in law to enable that to happen; the Bill can be enforced through those measures.

It might be helpful briefly to explain how trading standards officers and local authorities enforce the legislation on the age-restricted sale of knives. Local authorities have taken action in the past, and prosecute the sale of knives using the general powers in section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972. Section 222 provides powers to local authorities in England and Wales to prosecute or defend legal proceedings

“Where a local authority consider it expedient for the promotion or protection of the interests of the inhabitants of their area”.

Those powers have been used to prosecute retailers in this context. Between 2013 and 2017, there were 71 prosecutions of sellers who sold knives to persons under 18. Although it is not possible to identify from the records whether the prosecution was brought by a local authority or the CPS, because the organisations do not maintain a central database that can run a report by specific offence, we understand that it is likely that the majority were brought by trading standards. Indeed, National Trading Standards has agreed to manage the prosecution fund that was introduced as part of the serious violence strategy, and it will work with local authorities in areas hit by knife crime to conduct test purchase operations and prosecute retailers if appropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley for raising those important points. The issue of the display of knives was raised by the British Retail Consortium and the British Independent Retailers Association during the Committee’s oral evidence sessions. We note their concern about the potential cost implications for small retailers of having to operate the secure displays and install the fixtures and layouts in their stores. The voluntary agreement with retailers, including larger retailers already sets out a requirement in relation to the display of bladed articles.

[Sarah Jones]

A couple of months ago someone in Croydon tweeted me, because Poundland, which has signed up to the voluntary code, had a large display of knives in its shop window. I wrote to Poundland and it removed the display, apologised and said it should never have happened—but it did happen. The fear with the voluntary code is that we can never be sure that people are doing what they say they will do.

[Victoria Atkins]

I was not aware of that specific example, but I appreciate the concerns. I am told that we would have to have a full public consultation on such a measure. That is certainly something about which I would like to think further, to see what can be achieved within the realm of the public consultation and so on. I would like us to keep the pressure up on those retailers that are already signed up to the voluntary agreement. I will consider this point in further detail.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Sarah Jones

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Jones]

The Minister has talked to education experts. Does she agree that the increase in exclusions is driving some of the youth violence problems we are seeing?

[Victoria Atkins]

It concerns me greatly. Edward Timpson, a former Minister of State for Vulnerable Children and Families at the Department for Education, is doing a big piece of work. He is conducting a review of alternative provision and the vulnerabilities that may be posed by children being in PRUs. We are very much looking into it just as we are supporting the work of charities such as Redthread and getting youth workers into A&E departments in the major hospitals—they are seeing an increase in young people coming in with serious stab wounds. They get those youth workers into the A&E department to act as a friend to those children at the teachable moment, as they call it, as well as staying with them while they are in hospital recovering from what often turns out, sadly, to be major surgery. We help children through knife crime through the anti-knife crime community fund, and support many charities, including larger ones such as the St Giles Trust, that have specific projects dealing with the issues in specific parts of the country.

I was most concerned to hear the concerns of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley about inconsistencies in delivery and policing. We introduced the system of police and crime commissioners in the coalition Government to try and draw accountability for policing closer to the communities served by police officers. The title is deliberate. Although policing is an important part of the brief, the “and crime” part is also an important part of their responsibilities—the prevention of crime, how they help victims in their locality and so on. If there are concerns about the consistency of delivery of services, I hope that we would all go to the police and crime commissioners and ask them what they are doing. It is our role as parliamentarians to hold them to account, just as they hold us to account.

The College of Policing has been a major step forward in terms of professionalising policing and giving it the status it deserves. These are public servants who often put their lives at risk to serve the public. We want to give them the recognition and status that their day-to-day activities deserve. The purpose of the College of Policing is to achieve that, but also to help spread best practice. The hon. Lady will know that a great deal of work is being done on, for example, county lines. We set up the National County Lines Coordination Centre because we recognise that, while major urban centres may have experience of gang activity, rural areas probably do not. We want to tackle that new phenomenon by helping the police draw together all their experience and intelligence, and ease the lines of investigation between forces.