Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill [HL]

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Randerson]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out from “journey,” to end of line 6 and insert “or
(b) the person shines or directs a laser beam at a building used to control vehicle traffic.”

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group all tackle the need to include aircraft control towers within the ambit of the Bill. This is something that I raised at Second Reading. Control towers obviously play a vital part in ensuring the safety of planes, and I am glad that when I and other noble Lords raised this at Second Reading the Minister appeared to take our concerns to heart.

This issue is of serious concern to BALPA, and with good reason: since May 2013, 13 laser attacks on control towers in Britain have been recorded under the mandatory occurrence reporting scheme. In the year 2013 alone there were eight incidents. These attacks are widespread: two in Liverpool, one in Coventry, two in Manchester, two in Luton, one in Jersey, one at Heathrow, one in Bristol, one in Cardiff, one in Edinburgh and one in Birmingham. It is worth noting that one case, at East Midlands Airport, was so severe that it led to the air traffic controller concerned having to take an unplanned break. Noble Lords familiar with rostering in control towers will realise that that is disruptive and could undermine safety, as controllers have carefully timed breaks to ensure that they are always fully attentive and alert. Someone having to cover an extra unexpected shift might already be tired.

Your Lordships will note from the list that I read out that, unlike drone incidents, laser incidents are not concentrated largely in London. Smaller airports are equally affected, maybe because control towers are more easily visible and accessible than that, for example, at Heathrow.

Amendments 2, 6 and 8 widen the Bill to include a building to control vehicle traffic, and Amendment 2 removes from the Bill the stipulation that the laser must dazzle or distract, or be likely to dazzle or distract. This may still be difficult to prove. I have taken on board information from the police, who have found it difficult to enforce the current legislation, and sought to widen the provision as much as possible. I notice that the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Monks, cover much the same issues.

I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give us a positive response on both these issues: the inclusion of control towers and simplifying and broadening the offence so that shining the beam at a control tower is sufficient to be considered an offence. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Palmer of Childs Hill) (LD)]

I need at this stage to mention that I cannot call Amendments 3 or 4 because of pre-emption if this amendment is agreed.

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I hope noble Lords will be assured that we are listening to the important points that they have raised and that we are actively looking to find the most sensible solution to deal with this issue, but it is important that this is considered carefully and that we get it right. I hope noble Lords will be reassured and will not press their amendments at this stage.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for what is overall a very positive response. However, I make one further point about removing a reference to “dazzle or distract”. I understand the viewpoint, but the reality is that lasers are so frequently mislabelled that those using them to shine them at control towers cannot have any real idea about how strong the beam is and, therefore, how dangerous it is. I say that because, in pursuit of more information for this Bill, I trolled through online records for various countries and there is a shockingly high level of mislabelling. Some studies in Australia showed that well over 50% of lasers are wrongly labelled. That is an issue that I shall come back to later. The point is that someone standing near a control tower and shining a beam at it has to my mind at the least an intention of some sort of mischief, and really has no sure knowledge how dangerous the laser that they are holding is likely to be. I urge the Minister to think on that.

Having said that, I welcome the wide consultation that she is undertaking in relation to these amendments. In view of that, I shall certainly not press them. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 2.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

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[Lord Monks]

My Lords, I tabled this amendment because we know from the evidence that we have been able to discern in this area that many of the perpetrators of the misuse of laser pointers are children and young people. They have seen “Star Wars” and lots of other sci-fi blockbusters; they have played computer games where lasers of one form or another are the weapons of choice of many of the protagonists; and they are fascinated by the power of the new technology. Items such as these, although still quite pricey, come to hand relatively easily and are getting cheaper and are more readily available.

Picking on vehicle drivers, especially pilots, seems to be the fashion at the moment. With this amendment, I seek to stress the responsibility of parents and other adults who buy laser pointers as presents for their children, and to send a message that it is not acceptable to then allow them to proceed unsupervised around the neighbourhood. Lasers are very dangerous for children to have and very dangerous to pilots and other vehicle drivers, such as train drivers.

I raise this issue in the context of the Bill to send a firm message to adults that they have responsibilities. I know that the question of the extent to which children or their parents are responsible for things is a tangled area, but it seems to me that I have the balance about right. The amendment proposes to set out that parents have responsibilities in this area and that they cannot wash their hands of incidents involving children for whom they are responsible.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name in support of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Monks. As he said, the age profile of offenders tends to be quite young and the amendment reflects the fact that young people are often unaware of the danger and gravity of what they are doing. I made the point earlier today that the fact that lasers are often mislabelled emphasises that it is difficult for people to know the strength of the laser they are using.

The Minister wrote to me in response to points I raised at Second Reading and pointed out that lasers are often bought by young people and children on holiday abroad, and that this is frequently the way in which they come into the country. This emphasises the importance of the underlying points the amendment seeks to make—the issue of parental responsibility and the importance of educating parents in the dangers of lasers. In that way we will educate generations of young children.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

While I have some sympathy with the general direction of the amendment, it touches on a massive subject—the extent to which parents are responsible for the criminal activities of their children. I worry about such a difficult concept being part of this Bill. If there is a problem here, I hope the Government will take this issue away, look at the generality of the relationship between parents and the criminal behaviour of their children and solve it in a wider context than this Bill. I await further discussion on Report before we take a final view.

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Moved by

[Baroness Randerson]

16: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Report on laser misuse following the passing of this Act
(1) The Secretary of State must carry out an assessment of the misuse of lasers with regard to vehicles in the year following this Act coming into force.(2) This assessment must make reference to the following—(a) whether the number of instances of a person shining or directing a laser beam at a vehicle has significantly decreased in the year following this Act coming into force; and(b) what steps could be taken to further reduce the danger that the misuse of lasers poses to vehicles.(3) The Secretary of State must lay a report of the assessment under this section before both Houses of Parliament one year after this Act comes into force.”

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, this Bill is remarkably narrow in its scope—very much more so than its predecessor, the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, which fell at the time of the general election. I regard this as a great pity as the Government are missing an opportunity to take a comprehensive look at this issue. Instead, they are making two discrete stabs in the right direction, here in this Bill and in their proposals in the Trade Bill, to limit the sale of the most powerful lasers. This amendment is designed to highlight the opportunity that the Government have missed to take a number of additional steps to reduce the danger that lasers pose not only to vehicle users but to the wider safety of the general public.

At Second Reading a number of possible measures were suggested by noble Lords, including restricting the sale of lasers, introducing a licensing system, classing lasers as offensive weapons in certain circumstances as we do with knives, and imposing penalties for mislabelling. All of these would make it harder for individuals to acquire, knowingly or unknowingly, potentially dangerous lasers. I thank the Minister for her letter explaining why she believes that licensing, for example, would not work. She states specifically:

“When licensing systems were established in New Zealand and Australia the evidence gathered showed that licensing regime has not reduced laser attacks”.


I find that rather surprising because the statistics for Australia show that the number of laser incidents between 2013 and 2015 actually fell from 667 to 502. That is not an amazing reduction, but the Minister herself said in her speech at Second Reading that in the UK in 2008 there were only 200 incidents while in 2017 there were 1,200. That is a vast increase in the number of incidents in Britain while they are being contained and even trimmed a little in Australia. At a time when lasers are becoming increasingly available and increasingly powerful, I would argue that controlling the growth in the number of incidents is in itself a sign of success.

Australia has the most stringent control system in the world and it illustrates how complex the problem is and how multifaceted the Government’s response needs to be. Disappointingly, if I may use a rather inappropriate metaphor, there seems to be only one arrow in the Government’s quiver in this Bill. The Australian experience shows that labelling requirements are flouted very frequently. I have already mentioned one study which showed that more than 50% of the lasers labelled as 1 milliwatt or less were in fact more powerful. In one case, the laser was 127 times more powerful. Increasing the likelihood of examination and detection as these lasers are imported into the country is therefore very important indeed.

At Second Reading I questioned the Minister about the support being planned for local authority ports and border teams as well as trading standards officers, to enable them to detect mislabelled lasers. The Minister responded to this in her letter to me and referred to government co-ordination but made absolutely no reference to the extra money or resources which are so badly needed by these hard-pressed teams. We also discussed advertising. The Minister pointed out in her letter that in the UK there is little in the way of actual advertising for lasers, but I would urge her to consider another sort of advertising; that is, the need for the Government themselves to issue public information advertisements, probably aimed primarily at parents, to raise awareness of the danger of lasers. I am disappointed that the Government yet again seem to be relying on the market to rule and ignoring the need for a comprehensive package of measures.

I tried to draft several amendments to tackle the issues I have raised. They were all ruled to be out of scope because the Bill is very narrow. I have fallen back, unashamedly, on the need for the Government to report on the effectiveness of the measures in the Bill within a year of it passing to force the Government to take a more comprehensive look if the measures in the Bill do not prove effective in creating a considerable reduction in the incidence of laser attacks. I beg to move.

[Lord Trefgarne]

My Lords, I am slightly surprised that the noble Baroness got this one past the clerks. Be that as it may, the advice of the clerks is the advice of the clerks and that is that. She did get it past them, but this sort of thing seems outside the scope of the Bill and the Long Title as I read it. I hope that she will not press it.

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, the Government keep safety across all modes of transport under constant review and, along with industry, are always looking at ways in which we can mitigate risks to safety. The risk posed by the misuse of lasers is no exception. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that we will continue to work with the police, regulators and other stakeholders, including the UK Laser Working Group, to monitor the number of instances of a person shining or directing a laser beam at a vehicle and look at what other steps can be taken, including raising public awareness and using evolving technology, to mitigate the impact that a laser attack has on a person in control of vehicles.

In addition to what we are proposing in the Bill, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has announced new measures to tackle the sale of unsafe laser pointers, which I hope will reduce the number of instances of laser misuse on transport. Much of this will be a matter for the newly created Office for Product Safety and Standards to consider. Announced on Sunday, it will be a national body to further enhance the UK’s product safety system and provide support at a local level. I have already mentioned the education programme. We believe that the very introduction of the Bill will raise awareness of the dangers that lasers pose. The noble Baroness points out that the Bill’s scope is very narrow. That is indeed the case. As I said, BEIS has recently published its response to its call for evidence. The new Office for Product Safety and Standards should help.

We will follow the usual post-legislative scrutiny guidance and submit a memorandum, published as a Command Paper, to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee within five years after Royal Assent. The memorandum will include a preliminary assessment of how the Act has worked in practice. The one year that the noble Baroness proposes in her amendment may not be enough time to properly assess the full impact of a new criminal offence and the other measures I have mentioned. As I said, we will of course be keeping this under constant review. I hope that my reassurances will satisfy the noble Baroness and that she will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Randerson]

I thank the Minister for that. For the sake of clarity for the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, I thought I had indicated—possibly it is because I am trying to use as few words as possible today—that I understand entirely why my proposed amendments were ruled out of order. It is because the Bill is very narrowly drafted. However, I did discuss the issue in order to see whether it is possible to have this discussion in some other way. I was reassured to hear that the Minister is consulting widely on the issues associated with the Bill, as well as by the creation of the Office for Product Safety and Standards and the five-year review. I am satisfied that she has taken on board and will continue to take on board the issues I have raised and with that I am content to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 16 withdrawn.