Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Siobhan Baillie

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous]

[Siobhan Baillie]

[Bambos Charalambous]

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Siobhan Baillie

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous]

I entirely agree with the hon. Member’s comments. He is right: this measure is targeting a particular group for criminalisation, and that has to be totally wrong. As one respondent to the Petitions Committee’s survey on criminalisation of trespass put it:

“The criminalisation of trespass will simply exacerbate an already fraught relationship. Travellers will still camp but there’ll be more prosecutions, more distrust, more public money spent on legalities”.

Other people with nomadic lifestyles have told me that they feel that they will no longer be able to live on the road in the way that has been seen in this country since the 16th century, and that the Bill risks criminalising their way of life. At a recent meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, we heard from the community about what might happen to them if these clauses become law. It was absolutely heartbreaking to hear from those people that they fear that their whole way of life will be taken from them if the clauses become law.

Can the Minister tell the House this? Under the provisions in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, what will happen to a Traveller family in a single vehicle who are residing on a highway and have nowhere else to go? Failure to comply with a police direction to leave land occupied as part of an unauthorised encampment is already a criminal offence, but the proposals create a new offence of residing on land without consent in or with a vehicle. The broad way in which it is drafted seems to capture the intention to do that as well as actually doing it, with penalties of imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to £2,500, or both. The loose drafting of this legislation invites problems with its interpretation, and it is simply not fair to put that on to the police.

The Opposition’s major concern about this aspect of the Bill is that it is clearly targeted at Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and the criminalisation would potentially breach the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010. When the powers in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 were first debated in Parliament, it was stated that the powers were intended to deal with “mass trespass”. However, under the Bill even a single Gypsy or Traveller travelling in a single vehicle will be caught by this offence.

These measures to increase police powers in relation to unauthorised encampments are not even backed by the police. When Friends, Families & Travellers researched the consultation responses that the Government had received, it found that 84% of the police responses did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments. Senior police are telling us that the changes in the Bill that relate to unauthorised encampments would only make matters worse: they would add considerable extra cost for the already overstretched police and risk breaching the Human Rights Act.

The views of the National Police Chiefs’ Council were clearly put in its submission to the 2018 Government consultation. It wrote:

“Trespass is a civil offence and our view is that it should remain so. The possibility of creating a new criminal offence of ‘intentional trespass’…has been raised at various times over the years but the NPCC position has been—and remains—that no new criminal trespass offence is required.

The co-ordinated use of the powers already available under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allows for a proportionate response to encampments based on the behaviour of the trespassers.”

At an evidence session of this Bill Committee, Martin Hewitt said on behalf of the NPCC that the group

“strongly believes that the fundamental problem is insufficient provision of sites for Gypsy Travellers to occupy, and that that causes the relatively small percentage of unlawful encampments, which obviously create real challenges for the people who are responsible for that land and for those living around… The view of our group is that the existing legislation is sufficient to allow that to be dealt with, and we have some concerns about the additional power and the new criminal provision and how that will draw policing further into that situation.”—[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 15, Q20.]

[Siobhan Baillie]

I have been listening to evidence about whether the existing powers are sufficient, which I challenge. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that if they were sufficient, we would not also have heard evidence about the tens of thousands of pounds that the case in Dartmoor cost. That was a huge cost to the council, thus making the taxpayer pay twice in having to deal with the issues beside them and through the public purse. We also heard countless other examples of what has been happening in communities. Does the shadow Minister think that our current legislation is truly sufficient? I think we need to look again, which is what the Bill is doing.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Civil remedies would still be available for people who engage in antisocial behaviour, fly-tipping and so on. All we would be doing is criminalising a particular group of people. In my view, the civil remedies would still be there and the cost to the council would still be there if proper facilities were not provided. To me, just criminalising a particular group of people is wrong.

To continue, the NPCC witness said:

“Really, our point fundamentally as the NPCC group is that the issue here is the lack of provision that theoretically should be made, which means that we have this percentage of Travellers who are on unlawful spaces and you end up in the situations that we end up with. Our view is that the current legislation is sufficient to deal with that issue.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 15, Q20.]

We have to ask: why are the Government determined to lock up Gypsies and Travellers, even against the advice of their own police? As Martin Hewitt clearly stated, existing legislation on police powers and unauthorised encampments is enough to tackle the problem. The police already have extensive powers to move on unauthorised encampments in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, and as of January 2020, just 3% of Gypsy and Traveller caravans—694—in England were in unauthorised encampments. Of those, 419 were on sites not tolerated and 275 were on tolerated sites. The police and campaigners tell us the evidence is not there that the new powers are necessary and that many more authorised encampment sites should be provided instead.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Siobhan Baillie

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous]

Q More generally, what are your thoughts on the length of sentences for children set out in part 7 of the Bill?

Stephanie Roberts-Bibby: We strongly believe that when the offence was committed as a child, that should be reflected in the length of the sentence, so they should be sentenced accordingly. We appreciate the logic for some of the tapering proposed in the Bill, but we feel that it fails to recognise that all children, who were under 18 at the time of the offence, had a distinct set of rights and vulnerabilities, and that the nature and length of time with which children and young people’s development takes place needs to be reflected. Indeed, evidence points firmly to brain development continuing up until the age of 25.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q Do you support the introduction of secure schools?

Stephanie Roberts-Bibby: We wholeheartedly support the introduction of secure schools. We very much welcome the Government’s proposal to open the first secure school at Medway and we look forward to a further secure school as part of the Government’s commitment to an alternative to secure accommodation for children. We have been working closely with Oasis, which was announced as the provider of the first secure school. It is a very strong academy trust and will offer a different operating model from the secure environments that currently exist. While there is some great practice that takes place across the secure estate, we know from the data about the outcomes for children who have been in the current secure estate that those outcomes are poor and that further offending continues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

Q Some witnesses such as child witnesses and people who are particularly vulnerable take part remotely in hearings. What are your thoughts on the technology currently in place in courts to enable that to happen? What dangers do you see in hearings with remote witnesses and the impression that juries may form of them when they are not physically in court?

Derek Sweeting QC: I think the first part of the question is: what technology have we got in place at the moment?

When the pandemic struck, and once we got back in particular to jury trials in the Crown court, we did see the roll-out of CVP—Cloud Video Platform—which very few of us knew was under development at the time. That was vital to allowing work to resume in many jurisdictions. We have also got a new system on the way, so the technology is improving all the time.

The second part of the question is really about how satisfactory is remote participation by the witness or others in court proceedings, and I think it really prompts the question, if we can do it, whether we should. That is the point—that fact that we can is not really a reason for necessarily doing it. I think it is absolutely clear that proceedings in future will probably involve a hybrid, with some witnesses attending remotely where that is appropriate. That has to be judicially managed. I think for some hearings it is pretty clear that everything could be done remotely, particularly administrative hearings. But in hearings that are serious in their nature because they will result in the final disposition of a case and so on, there is a much greater argument for ensuring that all of the participants and all of the evidence start on the basis that if evidence can be given in person, it should be. Thought should then be given to what is unnecessary to have in person and what could be dealt with remotely.

It is an area where we are finding our way. The Bar Council has just issued a statement with the Bars of the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and of course England and Wales, which I represent, which actually makes that point. It says that there are many aspects of a remote hearing that are not satisfactory, in the sense that they are not as good as having everybody in the room—the old model, where you get two teams together with a referee and you have an adversarial contest. But that model anyway is something that we need to think about as we go forward.

There is plainly a use for more remote, but I think the profession would like some guidance as to what the parameters are for when we should be remote, what the starting position is and when it is appropriate, and only appropriate, to be in person.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q I will be brief. There has been some suggestion this afternoon that there is no need for changes to the law, because protests should be managed in part by winning hearts and minds. What we know from the public, and what we have heard from the police, is that especially when windows are smashed, paint poured over people and in really disruptive protests, it is very difficult to be winning hearts and minds first in those circumstances. Do you agree that the nature of protests and the antics of protesters that we are seeing now results in and rewards a change and an update of the legislation that we have in place?

Derek Sweeting QC: The two types of conduct that you have just described are in themselves likely to be criminal offences, so there is nothing new about that. Has protest changed in its nature? I think we have certainly heard some evidence that, particularly with social media, the way in which protests can be arranged makes it much more difficult for them to be managed. I think there is some public concern about that. The measures contained in the Bill, particularly in relation to noise levels and serious disruption to and impact on persons in the vicinity, raise a legitimate question about whether it goes a bit too far, particularly in relation to what “significant” means and who has to take that decision on the ground. You ask whether things have changed, and I think you might look at this and say that almost every suffragette protest would have been caught by the proposed legislation.