Offensive Weapons Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th January 2019 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Meacher]

63: Clause 22, page 21, line 35, at end insert—
“(1AA) A person charged with an offence under subsection (1A) who is certified by the relevant police force as being addicted to drugs must be referred for treatment to an addiction rehabilitation service, and, if they comply with their treatment, must not be referred to court.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require those charged with the offence of carrying a flick or gravity knife who are also certified by the relevant police force as being addicted to drugs to be referred to a rehabilitation service for treatment before attending court. Charges would be dropped if they complied with their treatment.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I must first apologise to the Committee that I have been horribly absent, but there was an event in the other place that I had to attend—I will not bore your Lordships with the explanation, but there really was no option.

Amendment 63 aims to ensure that vulnerable children or young people found with an offensive weapon in a public place are assessed for addiction. So many of these vulnerable children and young people are addicted to drugs. If they are found to be so addicted, they should not be processed through the criminal justice system; rather, they should be referred to a rehabilitation service for help with their addiction and related problems. Many of them are homeless and have all sorts of mental health problems and so forth. The Government have recognised that short-term prison sentences are generally unhelpful. Re-offending rates following such sentences are very high. In the case of drug addicts, a prison sentence will generally achieve—I really mean this—absolutely nothing positive, but it is very likely to increase the vulnerability and addiction, and therefore the criminal activity of these young people.

Several noble Lords attended an interesting meeting yesterday where senior police officers and a police and crime commissioner from the West Midlands explained this. I quote one of the officers, “The police cannot reduce the illegal drugs market, however many drug dealers we arrest and imprison”. That is a powerful statement on behalf of men on the front line who deal with these things day in, day out. Those people spend their lives that way. Neil Woods, who has written two books about his time as an undercover officer arresting drug dealers over many years, explained that he came to realise that he was not achieving any reduction in the availability of drugs. He was completely wasting his life away, so he changed to a very different view about how these things should be dealt with.

The police officers also talked about how much more effective alternatives to punishment are in persuading young people to back away from the illegal drugs market. Ronnie Cowan MP talked about the work in Glasgow where young people are diverted from the criminal justice system and helped to return to a normal life. Perhaps the Minister will tell the Committee whether she is familiar with the work in Glasgow. If she is not, it may be worth her looking into it before Report.

This amendment is really important from the pure efficiency point of view on reducing addiction and crime in this context, but let us also look at it from the point of view of the children and young people involved. As I said at the beginning, a very high proportion of children found carrying a knife or another offensive weapon in a public place will be vulnerable children, who have become addicted to drugs or been targeted by the drug gangs. The Children’s Commissioner estimates that at least 46,000 children in England are involved in gang activity. It is estimated that about 4,000 teenagers in London alone are being exploited through child criminal exploitation in what has come to be known as county lines. These vulnerable children should be seen as victims of trafficking and exploitation rather than as criminals.

Gangs are deliberately targeting vulnerable children. They watch for a child walking home from school day after day alone, head down, looking miserable. These children are unsafe, unloved or unable to cope for one reason or another. Gangs take advantage of their vulnerability. They threaten or trick children into trafficking their drugs for them. They may threaten a young person physically or threaten a family member. They often offer food, which the child or family may desperately need, alcohol or clothing to the child or their family in return for co-operation.

Once children have received gifts, they feel indebted to the gang. They quickly feel they have no option but to continue. As many noble Lords will know perfectly well, the gangs use these vulnerable children to store their drugs and to move cash proceeds or the drugs themselves. No doubt they give them a knife or something else to protect themselves with. The county lines groups use high levels of violence, including the ready use of firearms, knives and other offensive weapons, to intimidate and control members of the group and its vulnerable victims. The victims are exposed to varying levels of exploitation including physical, mental and sexual harm. Some of the young people are trafficked into remote markets to work. Others are falsely imprisoned in their own homes, which have been taken over using force or coercion. I must say that I had not heard of that until I read it rather recently.

The National Crime Agency report County Lines Violence, Exploitation & Drug Supply 2017 analysed the exploitation of vulnerable people, including those with mental health or physical health problems. Sixty-five per cent of police services reported that county lines activity was linked to the exploitation of children. The police know perfectly well that we are dealing with victims here. Once involved, victims may want to get out of their situation but do not want to involve the police for fear of self-incrimination or retribution by the perpetrators. They are really caught in the middle. These victims may carry a knife or other weapon for self-protection, as I have mentioned. The real question is whether they are really criminals for carrying that knife for self-protection. Other noble Lords talked about what is in the mind. These children have got a knife not to attack others, but to protect themselves. That surely makes all the difference to one’s approach to dealing with these children.

This is a very complex problem but the courts and the prison system are not the right vehicles for dealing with victims. Yes, send the gang leaders to prison, though retraining and psychological treatment will be essential for them, too, if they are not to spend their time in prison, come out of it later and then start all over again, with just a little more bitterness added to what they already had. I hope we can have a discussion—a serious discussion—before Report about drug issues in relation to the Bill. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and I beg to move.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment because it advocates one public health approach, along the lines advocated in the serious violence strategy. The sad fact is, however, that too many of the intervention and preventive measures outlined in the strategy are not sufficiently resourced and may not materialise.

Last week, the drugs, alcohol and justice cross-party group that I co-chair heard about an initiative from Thames Valley Police, about which I immediately wrote to the Home Secretary, encouraging him to take an interest in it. It is a diversion scheme—modelled on the mental health diversion scheme so successfully introduced after the report by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley—requiring those found to be in possession of drugs to attend for voluntary treatment. The interesting thing was that the constables on duty in the Thames Valley streets reported that they found it extremely simple and clear to use.

As many other noble Lords have pointed out, knife carrying is a symptom of wider social issues. Many young people carry them because they fear for their lives. However, in confirmation of my warning that too many of the intervention and preventive measures outlined in the serious violence strategy are not sufficiently resourced, the Institute of Mental Health in Nottingham —I declare an interest as a member of its external advisory board—has found that only 18% of the community commissioning groups recognise that they have any responsibility for funding probation, which includes mental health and drug treatment. This emphasises the need for this significant programme of work—words used by the Home Secretary to describe the strategy—to involve a wide range of government departments, including liaison between the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Health on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for affording us the opportunity to discuss her amendment and to outline the Government’s approach to tackling that combined problem of drug misuse and knives. Noble Lords will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talking about the link between knives and the growth of the drugs market. It is absolutely right that she has tabled this amendment. I pay tribute to all the work that she has done in this area and to the work done by the charity of the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, to divert vulnerable women from prison.

Clause 22 prohibits the possession in public and private of flick-knives and gravity knives. A person guilty of this offence is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months’ imprisonment, a fine or both. However, under this amendment, a person who is dependent on drugs would have charges dropped if the police refer the person to treatment and the person complies with the rehabilitation treatment. It is worth noting that Clause 25 prohibits the possession in private—the possession in public is already a criminal offence—of offensive weapons to which Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies, for example push daggers and zombie knives.

The aim of this amendment is that a person who is addicted to drugs would have charges for possession of a flick-knife or gravity knife, but not any other prohibited knife, dropped if the police refer such a person to treatment and the person complies with the rehabilitation treatment.

I know the noble Baroness and others are keen, as we all are, to deal with the underlying issue where offenders have a substance misuse problem. We will not break the cycle of offending unless we do just that. She and other noble Lords said that. I assure the noble Baroness that the Government are already taking action to address the links between drug misuse and offending. A key aim of the Government’s Drug Strategy 2017 is to take a much smarter approach to drug-related offending to address the drivers behind the crime and prevent further substance misuse and offending.

The police have a range of powers at their disposal to deal with drug-related offences in a way that is proportionate to the circumstances of the offender and the public interest. This includes the appropriate use of out-of-court disposals. We continue to encourage wider use of drug testing on arrest to support police forces in monitoring new patterns around drugs.

[Baroness Meacher]

The West Midlands police and crime commissioner made the point that the police do things almost outside the law, if you like, but it is quite uncomfortable. They want a change in the law to make it clear that the right thing for the police to do is to get drug-addicted young people into really good services that will move them on and get them right away from the illegal drug market. I do not think it is okay to say that the police are doing things—even though they are—because they are not really happy about it. They want the Government to lead.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

We have to get the balance right between protecting vulnerable people from becoming further involved in drugs or crime generally and criminalising some of the people who caused them to get into that life in the first place, which may involve drug abuse.

I shall outline some of the things the Government are doing, which go right to the heart of what the noble Baroness is talking about—early prevention, intervention and treatment. Noble Lords will have heard me talking about the Home Secretary’s commitment to a public health approach to drugs, taking into account all the resources that different agencies have at their disposal to tackle such problems. The noble Baroness was talking about the work in Scotland, which is very effective and very good in terms of intervention.

NHS England is rolling out liaison and diversion services across the country. They operate at police stations and courts to identify and assess people with vulnerabilities, substance misuse and mental health problems and criminality, which are quite often interlinked. They refer them into appropriate services and, where appropriate, away from the justice system altogether. If we went back 10 years, the noble Baroness could talk about the police operating aside from the law, but there is much more understanding now that early intervention and diversion are the way forward. The schemes that the NHS is currently running cover around 80% of the population in England, and we are looking to full coverage by 2021.

The Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice are working with NHS England and Public Health England to develop the community sentence treatment requirement protocol. The protocol aims to increase the use of community sentences with drug, alcohol and mental health treatment requirements as an alternative to custody, to improve health outcomes and reduce reoffending. It sets out what is expected from all involved agencies to ensure improved access to mental health and substance misuse treatment for offenders who need it. The Department of Health is currently leading an evaluation of the implementation of the protocol across five test-bed sites to inform further development.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, also talked about funding. I do not know whether he knows, but a youth endowment fund of £200 million is being introduced—quite a substantial amount of money. It will run for 10 years, so it is not a short-term approach. The fund will open shortly, so I hope that alongside some of the things we are doing, it will help us in our endeavours to tackle some of the root causes with early interventions and diversions from that type of activity. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I shall briefly raise a matter I should have raised before. I thank the Minister for her reply, for the tone of what she said and for her recognition of the need to get to the underlying problems. I omitted to develop the concern about children and young people in care and care leavers. As the Minister will know, there is a long-standing concern about the criminalisation of young people in care and care leavers. Very few arrive into care because of criminal activity, but far too many are represented in our prisons, both as children and as adults. My noble friend Lord Laming led an inquiry into reducing the criminalisation of children, and he is concerned to see all agencies working together to keep young people—both those who have left care and those who are in it—out of the criminal justice system. What the Minister and the noble Baroness have said is helpful in this regard. But there is also a new strengthening duty on the corporate parenting responsibilities of all agencies to support young people leaving care. These are important matters to relate to this particular issue, and I thank the noble Baroness for allowing me to make those points.

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank the Minister very much for her thoughtful response, but she did not respond to my reference to Report stage or to whether we could do something to align this Bill with the Government’s thinking on people addicted to drugs who get into these awful situations with gangs. Does the Minister feel able to say something about what we might do between now and Report?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness. She and I have had many discussions on this subject—we have not had one for a while, so perhaps it would be worth having another. Early intervention and prevention, and a multi-agency approach to assist in diverting people away from the criminal justice system, need to be balanced with the fact that there are quite hardened criminals out there involved with drugs and gangs who we need to capture via the legislation. We need to run both in parallel.

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank the Minister, and could not agree with her more. In my little remarks, I also made the point that there are such hardened criminals who are turning these young people into victims. It would be good to discuss all that before Report. On that basis, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 63 withdrawn.