Policing and Crime Bill

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I look forward to seeing the terms of the review, and I trust the Minister when he says it is going to be useful, but right now constituents in rural and urban areas are very distressed at the way in which face masks are used to terrify and to hide the identity of criminals. The sooner this matter is debated—with reasonable time to conclude it—on the Floor of this House or in the other place—

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am one of the co-signatories of my right hon. and learned Friend’s new clause. The problem with the situation at the moment is that the constable on duty may require a face covering to be removed but he does then require post-authorisation from a senior officer on duty. In the Blackpool case and in my own case on the badger culls, where someone was parked in a car late at night for several nights with masks on deliberately to intimidate the residents inside the nearest farmhouse, I am not sure whether the constables on duty knew whether they would or would not get that prior authorisation or post-authorisation, and my right hon. and learned Friend’s new clause will make this crystal clear if it becomes part of the Bill.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support, and I hope our new clause will make it easier for the police to do what the public require them to do, which is arrest frightening people who are intent on doing criminal things.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Lamb]

I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention, and I understand that we have to balance all these things. I am trying to ensure that legislation puts pressure on agencies to provide sufficient resource to meet a clear need. That is not the case at the moment.

I conclude by saying that the amendments and new clauses in this group are all designed to improve the rights of people with mental ill health, who are too often let down by the system at the moment.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I wish to address new clause 23 and take the Minister on a very short metaphorical journey with me, although perhaps nowhere near as far as new clause 23 seeks to go. I am sorry if I am trying the patience of the Minister and the House, because the Minister has been exceptionally courteous today, as he has been to me on previous aspects of the Bill.

Let me explain the mischief of face coverings, with which the House is well acquainted. In my intervention on my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), I mentioned two events: the Conservative party conference in Manchester, and an incident in my constituency in which, during the badger cull, two people in masks parked outside a farmhouse several evenings in a row as it was getting dark, deliberately intending to intimidate. A similar thing happened at the Blackpool conference. I was there when people, women in particular, were intimidated by people in masks. If only the police had been able to ask those people to take off the masks, I think the intimidation would have stopped almost on the spot. I suspect that in those two incidents, the mere act of the constable on duty asking those people to take off the masks would have stopped the mischief there and then.

That is the journey on which I want to take my right hon. Friend the Minister. It is perhaps not the entirety of new clause 23, but let us simply look at section 60AA of the Public Order Act 1994, which requires a constable on duty to obtain prior written consent before a mask is taken off—[Interruption.] The Minister is going to intervene. May I just explain where I am coming from on this? Very often, a constable will get on the radio and obtain verbal consent, and the written consent is given afterwards. Technically, a crime is being committed because they have not got prior written consent.

Let us do away with the whole issue of written consent. We train our constables to a very high level, and we put a great deal of trust in them. Let us trust them in individual situations. If they think that face masks are a problem, we should give them the power to demand that the face masks be removed immediately. It may even be possible to do this by secondary legislation. Section 60AA—[Interruption.] Does my right hon. Friend the Minister want me to give way? If he does as I suggest, I think we will achieve what we want to achieve.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I want to speak to new clause 24, which stands in my name and those of several of my hon. Friends. I will also refer to the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).

The hon. Member for Broxbourne raised the fact that the state’s power to deprive someone of their liberty is one of the most draconian acts at its disposal. As the right hon. Member for North Norfolk said, someone who is detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, other than under sections 135 or 136, is entitled to a mental health advocate. If they are detained under sections 135 or 136 of that Act, they are not. The only way in which they could access legal advice, as I think the hon. Member for Broxbourne said, is if they are detained at a police station.

Quite rightly, the Government want to prevent people from being taken to police stations in the first place—I give them credit for this—because a police cell is clearly not the correct place for someone who is in mental health crisis. The important thing is that such individuals need some advocacy. At the moment, if an individual is not taken to a police cell or a police station, they will not have access to independent legal advice or any type of advocacy. New clause 24 is designed to get some parity with the rest of the 1983 Act, in which people do have advocacy. I am pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), who responded to a similar amendment in Committee, has just taken her seat. She has promised to look at this issue.

I do not intend to press the new clause to a vote, but it is important that we put in place a system under which people who are detained under sections 135 and 136 of the 1983 Act can, at least, access some advice. I agree with the point made by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk in new clause 59, which is designed to do a similar thing by ensuring that individuals have access to an adult who could speak or advocate on their behalf. I have had discussions with the Minister, and she has given undertakings to look at how that could be done.

I agree with the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) that many of the things in the Bill are not necessarily the responsibility of the police. They have stepped up to the mark, in many cases, to fill a gap created by a lack of funding or support. In some cases, because of the disjunction between mental health services, local authorities and others, the police are seen as the last resort. He is right to highlight that.

That brings me on to new clause 26, which has been tabled by the hon. Member for Broxbourne, and which I welcome. There is good practice already in many police forces, which undergo mental health training—in Durham, the chief constable has instigated a whole force review to make sure that people have access to mental health training—but it is important that we have consistency. Police forces will be empowered and given greater expertise if they know how to use not just sections 136 and 137 of the 1983 Act, but other sections. I pay tribute to police forces up and down the country, because there is some good practice.

In Committee, we referred to the concordat, which is a good move forward in ensuring that there is a joined-up approach at local level between police forces, local authorities and the health service. I tabled an amendment in Committee to put that concordat into some sort of statutory framework. I know that the Minister is exploring with colleagues at the Department of Health how we can get some agreement, or some sort of reporting, on what is happening at a local level.

The right hon. Member for North Norfolk has the done the House a great service by tabling new clause 40 because it concerns a subject that is not being talked about. I totally agree with him; I can envisage no circumstances in which it would be necessary to use a Taser on a mental health ward. The right hon. Gentleman praised Black Mental Health UK, which has done a lot of work on the issue. When I met Black Mental Health UK, I was struck by the stark fact that something has to be done. I know that the Home Secretary and the Minister have looked at the figures, and the only mathematical conclusion we can reach is that people from black and Afro-Caribbean communities are being detained under the 1983 Act disproportionately compared with any other section of the community. Those figures cannot just be the result of chance. I urge the Government to look seriously at the matter and think about how we can put mechanisms in place to ensure that that is not the case.

On new clause 43, I agree with the hon. Member for Broxbourne that if the use of Tasers is not going to be prohibited, we should at least have statistics to show when and where they are being used. New clause 58 is similar to an amendment that I tabled in Committee. I give credit to the Government for their efforts to ensure that people in mental health crisis do not end up in a police cell, but unless we have very close monitoring and reporting, we might end up in the de facto position that the right hon. Member for North Norfolk has just mentioned in relation to sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act.