Chris Philp
Main Page: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)Department Debates - View all Chris Philp's debates with the Home Office
Criminal Justice Bill (Second sitting)
Chris Philp ExcerptsTuesday 12th December 2023
(1 year, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 View all Criminal Justice Bill 2023-24 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 12 December 2023 - (12 Dec 2023)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
Q
Rebecca, thank you for joining us this afternoon. In response to the shadow Minister, you raised questions about reducing the minimum age for community protection notices from 16 to 10, which is enclosed within clause 67 of the Bill. Do you agree that bringing 10 to 15-year-olds into the scope of CPNs provides an opportunity to halt a path into criminality that might otherwise occur? Combined with that, there is an opportunity to make other interventions to try to prevent the young person from getting into crime.
Rebecca Bryant: It is using a hammer to crack a nut. For 10 and 11-year-olds in particular who are on the cusp of causing antisocial behaviour, there are many other tools available to partners. I am not necessarily thinking about fining parents, because a lot of the young people who are involved in antisocial behaviour come from more deprived backgrounds, and breaching and fining is not going to enable change.
What we are looking for is a change of behaviour in the longer term. Yes, we are looking to prevent in the first instance, but then we look for change. Being able to engage with a young person and their parents by putting in positive mentoring and other youth interventions would surely have longer term success than a community protection notice would have. Also, there is a community protection warning before a notice; that kind of warning and discussion between a parent, a child and the authorities, which could be the housing provider, the local authority or the police, has much more impact when you are offering a positive intervention.
Chris Philp
Q
Rebecca Bryant: More extreme antisocial behaviour is often a criminal offence, so potentially there would be criminality and therefore a charge. That may be welcome in some cases, but not a blanket reduction to say that anybody from the age of 10 could have a CPN, which could then lead to breach and fine. As I say, from our members’ perspective, that seems too young.
Chris Philp
Q
Rebecca Bryant: First, our members absolutely welcome the repeal of the Vagrancy Act. It is outdated and clunky, and has not been fit for purpose for many years. The replacement powers suggested in the Bill are generally welcomed by our members. I think there is some movement around more community rehabilitation. The people we are talking about here are particularly vulnerable members of society who have been through significant trauma or who have significant mental health problems, drugs and alcohol addiction, and their behaviours and rough sleeping are due to those underlying facts. Thinking about community rehabilitation and support to change is as important as moving people on and creating the powers to do that.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Q
Harvey Redgrave: No, it needs to be attached to more resourcing.
Chris Philp
Q
Andy Marsh, can I continue the line of questioning about the warrantless power of entry where it is necessary to recover stolen goods when there is no time to get a warrant? Andy Cooke just mentioned that the inspectorate would keep a close eye on whether that power, if granted by Parliament, is being exercised properly. Could you confirm for the Committee’s benefit whether you would in due course, if this were passed, produce some authorised professional practice to make sure that police forces exercise the power in a way that is responsible?
Andy Marsh: Minister Philp, as you are aware I am strongly supportive of police officers conducting all reasonable lines of inquiry to catch criminals and keep communities safe. It caused me great frustration as a chief if ever a letter landed on my desk to say, “My bike’s on sale on eBay, my daughter’s phone is in a house and you said you couldn’t do anything”.
We have already started our plans to hardwire this new power into our guidance, our training and our standard setting to do our very best, along with working in partnership with His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services to ensure that we use this power consistently in two respects. I do not want to see circumstances where the power should be used, where it is not and people could be caught and property returned; and I certainly do not want it to be used in such a way that would undermine confidence in policing. As in many things in policing, we need to get this just right. The College has a fundamental role in achieving consistency and getting it just right.
Chris Philp
Q
Andy Marsh: I do.
Chris Philp
Q
Andy Marsh: I am.
Chris Philp
Q
Andy Marsh: It should be a very significant moment in policing. The first code of ethics was put in place in 2014. I could explain to the Committee why we think we are able to improve on that, but we have to talk about why it is going to make a big difference. The College is able to put a code of practice in place which requires a chief constable to have due regard.
We wanted to make that code of practice as strong as possible around a duty of candour, but there were many other things in it—for example, a duty on a chief constable to ensure ethical behaviour in a force, through their processes, policies, reward recognition, promotion, application of the victims code, challenging unprofessional behaviour, looking after staff welfare, dealing with misconduct and vetting properly.
Even before we get to the duty of candour, which is very strong, this is the strongest lever the College of Policing can pull in order to bring about cultural change around standards in policing. We will be working with the launch of the second two parts of the code in January, which is different from the legal code. We will be working on supporting policing over a change programme to secure that cultural change, over many months—possibly years.
Chris Philp
Q
As you know, we made assaulting a public-facing worker a statutory aggravating factor for other assault offences in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. We have already created a separate offence of assaulting emergency workers. Some people now say that we should have a separate offence for assaulting a retail worker, to give it more prominence. Others say, “Well, where do you draw the line?” You could have an offence for assaulting a teacher, a local councillor—and so it might go on. What is your opinion about whether there is any use in creating that separate, stand-alone offence?
Andy Cooke: I think I am right in saying it is an offence in Scotland, but I do not know how much that has resulted in a change in offending behaviour. I have not particularly looked at that point. It is a question of where you draw the line. The key issue is not whether a new offence should be constructed for assaulting a shop worker. It is more about how well, or not, policing is dealing with assaults, full stop; and how well police officers are dealing with the offence of shoplifting and the ancillary offences that sometimes go with that. I am aware that the National Police Chiefs’ Council is doing an awful lot of work around this at the moment, working with the PCC for Sussex and yourself, Minister.
Certainly, there has been a large reduction in the number of positive outcomes or detections for shoplifting over the last five or six years. That is not acceptable. It is in line with an awful lot of the other core charge and outcome rates that we have seen across policing. This is more about ensuring that the police across England and Wales treat this more seriously, particularly where there are aggravated offences alongside, such as assault. That is what Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman is attempting to do on behalf of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Rather long-windedly, to come back to your initial question, without seeing the evidence for how that reduces offences or increases detections, I would not necessarily be in favour of a separate offence.
Chris Philp
Q
Andy Cooke: All those issues will be captured by the police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy inspections that we do every two years on every police force across England and Wales. We will look at reasonable lines of inquiry particularly and at the overall outcome rates—not just charge rates, because the out-of-court disposals are important as well, as it is whatever is the best sanction to fit the individual and the community at the end of the day. We look right across that to ensure that policing is doing what it should be doing, as we do every week of the year, and will continue to do so.
This is a really important issue for me, because these are crimes that strike at the heart of communities and neighbourhoods. It is really important that policing gets confidence and trust back. Whether that is the confidence and trust of shop workers or across neighbourhoods and communities, whichever way it is, a large part of getting that confidence and trust back is by the police showing themselves to be effective in what they do. The police need to increase their efforts to do so.
Chris Philp
Q
Andy Marsh: The College is supporting policing with guidance around dealing with retail crime, particularly persistent offenders. I agree with everything that has been said: much more needs to be done in order to deal with this crime type.
In relation to the specific offence, I can see that there are two purposes to it. The first is that it might well act as a deterrent. The College of Policing holds the evidence base for policing. We cannot categorically tell you there is an evidence base for deterrence, but that would be one of the reasons for putting it in place. I think the second, more important reason is for Parliament to signal its concern about a particularly disruptive crime that damages the fabric of our communities and society. This sends out a signal that the police need to do better. I am supportive of the proposal.
Chris Philp
Q
Moving on to a proposal contained in clause 21, which relates to giving police access to driver licence records—particularly the photograph—which currently are only readily accessible for road traffic purposes. The idea is that they can be used for facial recognition searches, where an image is retrieved from a crime scene from CCTV. That might include a shoplifting offence. This would make the DVLA driving licence database searchable by the police, in the same way that other databases are, including for facial recognition purposes. In your view, both Andy Marsh and Andy Cooke, would that assist the police in investigations? Is that a measure you would support?
Andy Marsh: I am supportive.
Andy Cooke: Yes, I support it. What goes alongside that is ensuring that the actions of the police on facial recognition are ethical and lawful. I am a big supporter of facial recognition used in the right way, and I think that opening up that database would benefit the detection of crime.
Chris Philp
Q
Do you agree with the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, in saying that this measure will help chief constables better to manage their workforce and root out officers guilty of misconduct where appropriate and where necessary?
Andy Cooke: It would certainly help in relation to that. At the moment, the only recourse is judicial review, which as we know can be exceptionally expensive and difficult, so I see no problem at all in having that right of appeal for a chief constable.
Andy Marsh: The code of ethics, which we have just been talking about, puts a responsibility—in fact, a duty—on a chief constable to discharge their responsibilities around standards, conduct and behaviour; and I have been in a position, as a chief, where I have not been able to do that because ultimately I haven’t had the decision on who I ultimately have serving alongside me as a police officer. They are not employees—they are servants of the Crown. I have found that to be a deeply unsatisfactory position, so I am supportive of this.
Jess Phillips
Q
Andy Marsh: Yes, I do. That is a periodic hard stop, let us say, where there is a full review, but there should be a number of different control measures, both automated data searches and a duty—a responsibility to report and self-report—that will occur in real time between those vetting periods.
Alex Cunningham
Q
Professor Lewis: I am afraid that is not something that we have looked at.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Lewis: Many paragraphs of the schedule do implement our recommendations. We are extremely pleased to see our recommendations implemented extremely swiftly. This project only reported over a year ago. We obviously do think that the changes we recommended would make a difference in the ways I mentioned earlier, which included improving enforcement and the ability to seize offenders’ assets, limiting unrealistic and in some cases unfair orders, and allowing victims to receive compensation more promptly.
We estimated at the time that the reforms could lead to an extra £8 million in funds being retrieved from criminals in England and Wales every year. That obviously helps to return more money that can be used on public services, for instance. I am happy to talk in more detail about specific recommendations if that would be helpful.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Lewis: One of the things we thought was most important, in addition to trying to make the system more efficient, was to balance it with also making it more fair. In terms of efficiency, we recommended things like expediting the setting of a confiscation timetable, which is in paragraph 12, and creating a settlement process, which already happens informally—we call it EROC, which stands for early resolution of confiscation. That has been implemented in paragraph 13. We note also that better enforcement will improve the recovery of funds.
There have been several recommendations that have been implemented in order to improve enforcement. Enforcement plans, which largely implement our recommendations for contingent orders, are in paragraph 16; and allowing enforcement to take place in the Crown court as well as the magistrates court is in paragraph 17. We think that those will make the system much more efficient and will radically improve enforcement.
In terms of fairness, it is really important that orders accurately deflect a defendant’s benefit from crime. There are two ways in which we have recommended, and the Government have introduced clauses to implement, improving the fairness of confiscation orders. One concerns where someone has made only a temporary gain—for example, a money launderer who allows their bank account to be used to transfer £1,000,000 but gets paid £10,000 for doing that. When the gain is only temporary their benefit from crime is not really £1,000,000, given that they do not get to keep that. At the moment, orders can be made in the amount of the temporary gain and that recommendation has been taken up. I will find the paragraph for you in a moment.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Lewis: I am happy to address that. The temporary gain issue is in paragraph 8. The other improvement to the calculation of benefit is in circumstances where the defendant has already disgorged some of the proceeds of their crime—so, for example, that may have been forfeited or seized by the state already. That should not be double counted, so that the defendant then has to pay back something that has already been seized by the state. That is in paragraph 5. We are very pleased to see those fairness recommendations, as well as the efficiency gains.
In terms of deadlines, ultimately there is a deadline: it is called the default term of imprisonment. When a confiscation order is made against a defendant, a term of imprisonment in default is set. The defendant may end up serving this period of imprisonment if it is activated by the court, on the basis that the defendant has demonstrated either wilful refusal to pay the confiscation order or culpable neglect in failing to pay it. The defendant can of course secure release from the default term by paying the confiscation debt. In the consultation paper we cite a case where, as the person is being taken off to prison, finally the confiscation debt is settled. So, we do know that that does work—at least, anecdotally.
In the consultation paper we provisionally proposed something that would be even more stringent than that. At the moment the defendant is released halfway through the default term. After that, there is no more threat of imprisonment. We provisionally proposed that the defendant should be released only on licence, similar to the way in which life prisoners are released, for example. I think that was probably our most controversial proposal. There were some people who were in favour of that, but lots of people thought it extremely draconian; another sector thought that it really would not work, and within that was His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. In other words, probation is not really designed to get people to pay their confiscation orders; it has another purpose. It has a rehabilitative purpose.
Ultimately, we decided that there are better ways to try to ensure enforcement. So, yes, there is the default term that remains, and that is a real threat to defendants. However, we also recommended confiscation assistance orders, requiring the defendant to attend enforcement hearings after the default term has been served and requiring the provision of financial information with penalties for non-compliance or providing false information. The first two of those—assistance orders and requiring the defendant to attend enforcement hearings after serving the default term—are both in schedule 4.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Lewis: Again, we do not have a view; it is not something that we have looked at. Obviously, in our hate crime project we looked at circumstances where sentences were aggravated because of hostility towards a protected characteristic, and we recommended equalising the protection that the various protected characteristics carry so that every protected characteristic would have aggravated offences, as well as enhanced sentencing for those offences that do not have aggravated versions. However, we have not looked specifically at the individually aggravated offences such as the ones for assaulting a police officer and so on, I am afraid.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Lewis: We do not have a corporate view, because we have not done work on it. You are right to worry that one is drawing very fine lines, and once one has added one offence, there is another group of people who are not included in the bespoke offences. One ends up with a proliferation of bespoke offences for different categories of function.
Chris Philp
Q
Professor Lewis: I do not think that I would go further than that. I think that concern should be considered, but I do not think that I am in a position to have a personal view, having not looked at it in any depth.
The Chair