Chris Philp
Main Page: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)Department Debates - View all Chris Philp's debates with the Home Office
(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Chief Constable Stephens: Last week, we held the chief constables’ council in Edinburgh—that is, the gathering of all chief constables. One of the topics on the agenda was the financial resilience of policing. Our current estimate is that there is somewhere in the region of a £300-billion cash deficit in policing, which requires some difficult and careful choices about resourcing priorities. Where new provisions come forward—indeed, this was a recommendation in the recent productivity review of policing—they should be costed. Whereas we welcome many, if not all, provisions in the Bill—I am sure we will come on to talk about some of the caveats—there are no costings with them, and we will need to work through, in a very detailed fashion, what the additional burdens on policing will be.
Good morning, Gavin. Let me start by putting on record my thanks to you, as chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and to all your colleagues in policing for the work that you and officers up and down the country do daily. You put yourselves in the line of danger to protect the rest of us, and I am sure that I speak for the whole Committee and the whole House when I put on record our thanks to you and to police officers up and down the country for the work that you do daily to keep the rest of us safe.
Chief Constable Stephens: Thank you, Minister.
Q
Chief Constable Stephens: Clearly, at local level, the work of community safety partnerships is really important to this. In different localities, they take different forms, but generally, in most borough and district areas, for example, there will be a meeting that talks about places that need particular attention from a range of partners.
If rough sleeping was causing a nuisance, we would not see that as an issue for policing solely, but we would take part in any joint problem-solving plans in order to address concerns. The issue for us would be if, for example, it was a place where criminality was being orchestrated or where people were particularly vulnerable to becoming victims of crime themselves. Clearly, there is a policing interest in that. We would support local partners, but what we would not want to see is a position where communities turn to policing in order to address the issue of rough sleeping on the streets. There needs to be something more than that that we would want to address in partnership with others.
Q
Chief Constable Stephens: Absolutely, yes. My experience in many years of policing is that communities often do not make a distinction between criminality and antisocial behaviour. If things are affecting their day-to-day lives, they often consider some of those things to be a crime, even if they are not on the statute book, and expect action against them. In this particular instance, we just need to be cautious that we are not using policing powers in order to address a wider social problem—particularly, for example, where it might be due to mental ill health and other complex factors.
Q
Would you agree that the warrantless powers of entry contained in the Bill, to enter premises to recover stolen goods where there is no other quick way of doing that and where there is a reasonable suspicion that the stolen goods are on the premises, will help the police to recover stolen goods and to arrest thieves who might otherwise go undetected and unpunished?
Chief Constable Stephens: Such a provision would be supportive to operational policing if implemented carefully and thoughtfully, and in conjunction with the other powers that currently exist. One of the topics about stolen property that has led to this provision is the theft of mobile devices that might emit a signal as to where they currently are. It is the view of police that those systems are not currently accurate enough to give a precise location on every occasion.
Clearly, there will be a significant difference between a rural area with dispersed properties and a dense urban environment where you might have maisonettes and blocks of flats when it comes to being able to precisely locate a stolen item. There are available to us under other legislation very intrusive techniques, to be used covertly, whereby we can accurately pinpoint devices, but that is not what is envisaged, I believe, in this particular provision, and we would need to exercise the powers carefully.
Such a provision needs some level of authority. The Bill mentions an inspector authority, which would be commensurate with other search powers following arrest, for example. That would need to be used in conjunction with additional intelligence, bearing in mind that that power could be used at premises where we might not suspect the people inside to have anything to do with the crime. If we suspected that they did, other powers are available to us, such as power of arrest, power of search following arrest and inspector authority to search the premises. The powers contained in the Bill around searching the premises would not cover searching people within those premises, or, again, multiple occupancy.
The general tenet is, yes, this would be very operationally useful. There would need to be careful consideration about the interfacing with existing policing powers and the level of authority needed to exercise the powers. Fundamentally, in exercising those powers, we would need to maintain the consent of communities that they are being used proportionately, lawfully and only where absolutely necessary.
Thank you, Gavin. I have one more question. As you know, we have been debating retail crime a great deal. The retail crime action plan, which Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman, in consultation with the Government, published just a few weeks ago, was extremely welcome. One thing that we have debated in Parliament, including during the passage of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which the hon. Member for Stockton South—I mean the hon. Member for Stockton North; we have to be very careful when referring to Stockton these days—and I remember very fondly was whether we needed a separate offence of assaulting a retail worker.
In that piece of legislation, we ended up not creating a separate offence and instead making it a statutory aggravating factor where the victim is a retail worker. From a policing point of view, do you consider that that provides adequate protection for retail workers? Do you think that there would be any benefit in creating a separate offence of assaulting a retail worker, or would you be concerned that, if you did that, you could then ask, “What about teachers? What about local councillors? What about minors?” and so on?
Chief Constable Stephens: On additional offences, we have provisions relating to emergency service workers, which is right and proper. In relation to retail crime, the important thing for policing is that we get a grip on the scale of the emerging problem, hence the action plan that you mentioned, Minster.
Police received over a quarter of a million reports of retail theft in the financial year 2022-23, and there has been a 29% rise in the number of arrests. We are clearly taking action, but there is much more to do. I would be concerned if we started adding to a list of additional assault categories, because where is the limit? People who provide vital public services—I would say that retail is a vital public service, and it is important to the vibrancy of local communities and so on—are worthy of particular consideration, but it is a question of where the limits would be.
Before I bring Jess in, four further Members have caught my eye. You have nine minutes between you, so bear that in mind.
Q
Gregor McGill: It is fair to say that resources are tight at the moment, so any new offences coming into the system will affect not only the CPS but other parts of the criminal justice system—the courts and the prisons—so that will have to be factored in. We are in the process of talking with the Treasury about resources, but that is a relevant factor. We do not know how many cases this will involve. What I can say is that our corporate position is that these will be useful offences to be able to work closely with our colleagues in the National Crime Agency and wider policing to affect criminality, but you are quite right that we will have to keep our eye on the resource implications of them and come back to Ministers if we find that there are issues.
Graeme Biggar: May I just add a comment? For a lot of these particular offences, it will shortcut our investigations, because at the moment we are finding 3D-printed firearms or concealments, but we have to do a whole bunch of extra work to be able to reach the criminal threshold for an actual charge, so in some senses this will actually make things easier for us.
Q
Graeme Biggar: The drafting for those items does everything I think we need to see regarding both possession and supply. There are other issues that, over time, we will want to think about adding. It is very helpful to see that the Bill allows a mechanism for secondary legislation to be brought forward in order to add other items. One issue that we are looking at currently is childlike sexual abuse dolls. We can seize them, as it is an offence to bring them across the border, but it is not an offence to possess one in the UK. That is an issue we would want to look at adding to that section.
Q
Graeme Biggar: Yes, it would. It is really important for us to be able to use facial recognition more. I know that is an issue you have been championing. We use it within the NCA, but there is more we need to be doing within the NCA and across police forces in the round.
Q
Baljit Ubhey: I think it is probably unnecessary. I would echo what Gavin has said about building confidence with the retail community. In the code for Crown prosecutors, it is a public interest factor in favour of prosecuting—where the crime is committed against someone who is conducting a public service—so we already treat that more seriously, and obviously there are a range of offences that cover a range of different assaults.
Q
Baljit Ubhey: I do not think it is necessary.
Q
My next question is again for the CPS. In relation to the knife crime provisions, some of them are in this Bill and others are being taken forward via secondary legislation, of course; I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for her campaigning on this issue. Do you feel that the new offence being created, of possession of a weapon with intent to use unlawful violence, is a helpful addition to the statute book and might enable those who intend to use serious violence but have not yet committed it to be given longer sentences?
Baljit Ubhey: We recognise that this bridges the gap between simple possession and the different circumstances where violence is threatened, so we think it is a helpful addition.
Gregor McGill: It mirrors the offence in the Firearms Act 2023, which prosecutors use a lot and which is a very useful tool, so there is no reason to think that this would not be an equally useful tool.
Q
Gregor McGill: Yes.
Q
Gregor McGill: They are used relatively frequently now; we use them a lot with our NCA colleagues. They are probably not used as much as they could be with National Police Chiefs’ Council forces, so we could use them more there.
I was part of the group that negotiated introducing these orders in 2007. The limitation then was that they were not to be used as an alternative to prosecution, so I think that sometimes a rather restrictive view was taken about their use. They have been used a lot after a conviction in a Crown court trial, but they have not been used a lot as a stand-alone measure in the High Court, so there is more that we can do in consultation with our law enforcement colleagues to make sure that we use these measures more frequently.
There are some risks in using them in the High Court. As you know, costs follow the event in the High Court and cost orders can be high. Also, although the standard of proof is said to be on the balance of probabilities and the civil standards, we are seeing that what is required to obtain an order inch up in the High Court to close to the criminal standard. Therefore, by the time you have gone through all that and you are up near the criminal standard, if you have got the evidence, often you can prosecute rather than going for the civil sanction, and that is part of the problem.
However, I do not think any of this is not resolvable with proper communication between ourselves and our law enforcement colleagues. But these orders are a useful tool.
Q
Gregor McGill: On the whole, I think there have been some concerns because you are putting limitations on people’s ability to do things without them being convicted of a criminal offence. There is always a nervousness about that and a request for really quite strong evidence before that is done. I understand that, but it is an issue sometimes.
Q
If I have time to do so, I would just like to ask a question to the NCA and to the CPS about the confiscation regime and the changes to that regime proposed in this Bill. I think that the Committee would be interested in hearing your assessment of the likely impact of the changes proposed in the Bill, particularly in clause 32.
Graeme Biggar: We really support these changes. There has been a detailed Law Commission review that has underpinned them. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 has been transformative for law enforcement, but it is also quite complex, and we have evolved ways of making it work.
All the provisions that are in the Bill, and there are obviously an awful lot, will simplify and codify some of what is current practice. It will take some of the work out of doing things; it will enable us to get to resolutions more quickly. It is an awful lot of individual measures, so it is quite hard to put a figure on how much more we will seize or how much less effort we will put into seizing, but we expect to be able to get to more. How much more? It is quite lumpy, as you will know, Minister. Some very large seizures of tens or hundreds of millions can change how much we get each year, but we expect it to make it easier for us, and expect to seize more as a result.
Q
Graeme Biggar: Yes and yes, and we fed a lot into the Law Commission review. We looked closely at what they came up with, and we fed into the Government consultation. Yes, we are content.
Q
Graeme Biggar: Yes, we are happy. You did not direct the question to me on SCPOs, so unbelievably quickly on that, two things that will be easier as a result are our ability in the NCA or the police to put an SCPO directly to the court—in consultation with the CPS, rather than putting the burden on to the CPS—and the standard set of conditions. At the moment, we have to set out and justify every single one; in the future, we will be able to draw on the standard set of conditions, which will also reduce the bureaucracy. That should ease the burden on SCPOs as well.
Q
Gregor McGill: We had full consultation with the Law Commission. These proposals have been lifted out almost entirely from the Law Commission proposals, and we worked with the commission and supported the proposals, so we support them. I cannot say whether it will lead to more—we will have to see—but what it will do is to make the process more transparent and better for victims.
What we are particularly pleased with is the idea that you can go back to court to increase a confiscation order, which I think is better for victims. At the moment, we have a workaround, where we can go back to raise a confiscation order, but if the perpetrator is prepared to pay money direct to the victims, we will allow that money to go to victims, rather than towards the confiscation order. Putting this on a statutory footing, putting hidden assets on a statutory footing, and being able to be realistic where it is clear that some orders will never be enforced will improve transparency and the whole system.
Q
Gregor McGill: I have not personally, but my specialist proceeds of crime team in the CPS tell me that they have.
And they are happy?
Gregor McGill: And they are happy.
Graeme Biggar: The Minister gave me a last chance to come in, and I said no, but there was one other thing we would appreciate. At the moment, people who are subject to these orders will sometimes stall, they do not meet their deadlines and the process can drag on for years—we have just concluded a case in which the conviction was in 2018 and we only got the order last month—so amendments to the Bill that would require people to meet the deadlines, giving them a penalty if they did not, would be helpful.
That is a very good point, which we will undertake to take away to look at. It sounds like a very fair request. I will get on to it now.
Q
Graeme Biggar: We are getting to definitions of the different tech companies. The social media companies are not often the ones that have the IP addresses and so on. We absolutely support this measure, and we have argued for it in the consultations on both this Bill and the Computer Misuse Act.
By and large, the organisations in the UK—the registers here of IP addresses—do act when we put a request in to take down, but not in every single case. Internationally, that happens less often. This would give us that ability—we absolutely would go for voluntary first, and we should stick with that process, because it largely works, but if that does not work, we would then be able to compel the suspension of the domain or the IP address. That would help.
Internationally, we have less success. The very existence of a court order that most other countries have and then companies act on would be really help. It would still be hard to implement in some countries, but it would still increase the amount of positive action taken on the basis of our requests.