Crime and Policing Bill (Second sitting)

Harriet Cross Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. I do not think we are going to have time to allow every panel member to answer every question, so if Members could be kind enough to try to direct their questions, that would probably be helpful for everybody.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

Q I would just like to ask a bit more about the Scottish Act. We have mentioned that delivery drivers are included, but is there anything else in the Scottish equivalent that you think is working particularly well that is missing from this Bill and would be a good thing if it was replicated?

Graham Wynn: Was that to me?

[Harriet Cross]

All or any of you.

Graham Wynn: The other thing about the Scottish Act that is different is that abuse is covered. It is not clear whether that has actively been used—I believe it has a bit. Our concern is to focus on delivery drivers, because abuse is difficult to prove and to get the level right, other than with protected characteristics—there are special laws on that, as we all know.

Christopher Morris: One more thing: in the Scottish Act, there is an aggravating factor. When an incident happens as a result of a retail worker enforcing the law, that would be treated as an aggravating factor when it comes to sentencing, which gives retail workers additional protections for enforcing law, which is important. In the abuse area, if you look at the figures—I cannot find them on my piece of paper just now—there is significant evidence that abuse and threats incidents have been recorded and reported under the Scottish Act as well, so it would be good to get those covered at the same time.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

Q I will direct my question to Paul—thanks for coming in. I want to pick up on what Christopher said about the impact that shoplifting has had and why removing this £200 is so important. To put it into context, I am grateful for the visit that the Co-operative enabled for me in my constituency. I was able to go to see a Co-op store. I was taken to a room at the back where I was shown CD after CD of footage of regular shoplifting by the same offenders, and yet very little had been done about it. What impact has that had on your profits over the years, and also on your staff’s morale?

Paul Gerrard: I will do the second bit first, because I think it is the most important. Not long ago, the Retail Trust published some data that said that 37% of people in retail are looking to leave retail because of violence and threats of abuse, and 49% are scared going to work. According to USDAW’s figures, and those of the Association of Convenience Stores and the Retail Trust, 90% have been abused.

The impact on colleagues is enormous. If they are not being attacked themselves, they see their colleagues attacked. They see what happens and they have seen a lack of a police response. Also—I will just say this—a colleague of mine who was barged out of the way last weekend by a shoplifter has broken her femur. Her husband had to come and collect her. He did not wish her off to work that morning thinking he was going to have to collect her and take her to hospital to have an operation on a broken femur. The impact on colleagues is huge, and I do not think we should underestimate that.

Financially, for the Co-op last year, it was about £75 million in cost, in terms of product. For about the past six years, we have also spent £40 million—we spend three times the sector average—on preventive measures, guarding and IT. Financially, it is a significant hit—absolutely as Chris said. We have not done it yet, but I know some retailers have, and some stores are right on the edge of being viable. There is a huge impact on us, and on our colleagues. Our colleagues go to work to serve the communities that they very often live in; they do not go to work to get abuse, threats and violence. [Interruption.]

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[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q I have a quick question for you, Baroness Newlove, on the measures in the Bill around the offence of taking intimate images. Do you agree that the base offence, which has no requirement to prove intent, will allow better protection of victims who have intimate images taken of them without their consent?

Baroness Newlove: Yes, I do. I think it is a really big issue. I was working on the Online Safety Act 2023 and heard about other social media problems. I agree on intent; that is important, because it means people cannot then just skew-whiff it the other way. I welcome what is in the Bill for this. We could do more, but at least it is a start. I agree.

[Harriet Cross]

Q This question is probably best for Suky to answer. Do you consider that the provisions in the Bill and the Acts to which it relates, such as the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, are sufficient to cover all forms of stalking? For example, are they sufficient to cover online stalking, which is obviously becoming more prevalent? In 1997, the internet was a very different beast from what it is now.

Suky Bhaker: There are certainly elements within the current legislation that do not draw enough attention to the impact, the alarm and distress that victims experience. There are challenges when victims themselves do not know that they are being stalked and might not see the extent of what is online; that is not captured to its full extent in the legislation. There is certainly room for development, but I think it is important that we are not too prescriptive with the behaviours, because we do not want to allow perpetrators to work outside that. By allowing it to be vague to some extent, we future-proof the legislation.

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[The Chair]

Are there any further questions? We have a couple of minutes left.

[Harriet Cross]

Q Regarding nudifying technology and other online tools that demean mainly women and girls, though they affect others as well, what do you think we can do to look at this further? Are there parts of the Bill where it should be addressed? In general, are we tackling this area sufficiently?

Baroness Newlove: To be honest, I have not really looked into the detail, but when it comes to the House of Lords I will be very vocal anyway, in that sense. However, we must educate. I have seen too many vulnerable victims, and I know that the Government have been looking at this in their violence against women and girls strategy. We had a roundtable with Jess Phillips and it is amazing what technology is out there. But we need to educate people of all ages about technology to prevent them from being a domestic abuse victim.

Tech companies need to be more responsible as well—when something really does harm a person, there must be accountability. We have to bring them to the table, but unfortunately, we all work in silos. We have this AI coming out, and look at what damage that can do—we are already seeing that. That is why I welcome what is in the Bill, but I think that while we have this, they are 50 steps ahead, and down the line other things will come up. We need to be alert and aware and we need to want to understand and make things secure for people.

[The Chair]

Ms Bhaker, you were nodding furiously—do you have anything to add?

Suky Bhaker: I absolutely agree with Baroness Newlove. For us, it is about having that conversation with those tech companies. Their products need to be safe by design, yet all too often they are hitting the market and are misused by perpetrators in ever-innovative ways. We are always behind in that conversation, and we need to be at the forefront. Those specialist services need to be at the table with those tech companies to be ahead of that.

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[Keir Mather (Selby) (Lab)]

Q Thank you both for your evidence. Councillor Garratt, you remarked earlier about public order measures, protests and the concerns you have, quite rightly, about some of the protests we have seen in London. Can you speak to some of the specific provisions in the Bill, particularly those that create new criminal offences of concealing your identity at a protest, of climbing on specified war memorials, and of wearing or displaying articles in support of prescribed organisations? How do you think the practical application of some of these measures in London will help to deal with the public order concerns you mentioned?

Councillor Garratt: I welcome all the provisions you just listed, which are all positive. I think I might have seen them somewhere before, in fact.

When we at the Assembly press the police on how they police protests, there are two sets of problems: one is the issue around powers—what they can or cannot do—which I spoke about earlier. The courts have decided that they cannot remove somebody for simply sitting in a road if it is a protest.

On the other hand, there is a practical problem in the sense that if you have a very large protest—for example, the ones we have seen on Saturday mornings—with a very large group of people and a limited number of police officers, the practical ability to carry out what you might think of as a snatch operation comes down to a risk-based decision that the senior officer on the site has to make. One of the ways in which the new provisions may not necessarily make much difference is if the police judge that it is difficult for them in practice. For example, if you have a crowd of a thousand people all wearing face masks, what exactly is the practical step that the police would be able to take?

I welcome the provisions. It is a good idea to have them for people who climb on wall memorials and wear face masks. In particular, although being unpleasant is not against the law, I am very on board with the provisions for those who appear to be supporting terrorist organisations, or inciting violence against groups of people. The question mark I have in my mind is whether the police have either the resources or, on balance, the willingness to go into a large crowd of people, who probably will not welcome their arrival, to actually enforce those provisions.

Councillor Conway: We think the measures are broadly welcome. We will obviously have to see how they go in practice, but something fundamental is needed, as has been shown over the past year or so, in respect of the way you balance the very legitimate right to protest, which we have to enshrine, and people feeling intimated. There is a wider discussion than just this Bill in terms of how it is possible to disagree agreeably—we had this conversation last week. Some of this, in respect of the face masks and so on, sets a basic code for how you engage in public life and public space.

[Harriet Cross]

Q I would like to look at the requirement to report where there is reasonable suspicion of child sexual abuse to, among others, local authorities. From your point of view, how do you think local authorities are set up to receive such reports? Do you think local authorities should get involved in that?

Councillor Conway: I will read this is out, if that is okay, because—not that this is not all important—this really is an important issue. Child sexual abuse is obviously a horrific crime, and the LGA supports the mandatory reporting duty. We do, however, have several things to say that would make it more effective.

We believe there should be training and support for those who work with children. Multiple reports, including by Ofsted and the Home Office, have identified a lack of skills and confidence among professionals in responding to child sexual abuse. A duty must not be placed on professionals without the accompanying training that will enable them to identify and respond to child sexual abuse effectively.

We also believe that there needs to be support for victims, and that there can be a shortfall in dedicated support for boys, children from ethnic minority backgrounds and disabled children. If this duty identified more victims of sexual abuse, obviously it would also be imperative that services are in place to provide appropriate support.

On that, I would also highlight the pressure on children’s social care. The duty may result in an increase in referrals to children’s social care, as has occurred in other areas where mandatory reporting has been introduced, such as parts of Australia and America. Obviously this is in a context where spending on children’s social care has already increased by 11% in the last financial year to £14.2 billion. We believe it is absolutely vital that children’s social care is adequately resourced, to ensure that all referrals can be fully investigated, with the best possible support provided, including where children obviously need to be brought into care for their own protection.

On safe spaces, we would add that there is a very fine line between creating a space of trust and then a space of reporting. Obviously local government sits at the heart of that.

Councillor Garratt: I broadly welcome the duty to report. There are two concerns that I will raise. First, there does not seem to be—apologies if I have missed it—any sanction on anyone who does not carry out that duty. I question what kind of a duty it is if you can simply choose not to do it, with no ramification. Connected to that, if you think about the way this might happen in an organisation, the person who is making the report might in effect be in a whistleblower position, so what thought is given to any duty on the employer not to treat that employee adversely as a result of in effect blowing the whistle against things that the employer may wish not to have come to light?

My third thing perhaps is a question. To what extent would this duty apply to voluntary or religious organisations? We have seen, unfortunately, more than one example of child abuse occurring in religious settings, where often there is trust and there is sometimes difficulty with anybody coming forward because of a sense of mutual solidarity that makes it difficult for people to want to step away and blow the whistle.

Those are my three areas of concern. Is there a sanction for not carrying out this duty? Is there an obligation on employers to do something to protect the person? And would the duty apply to religious settings?

[Dr Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham) (Lab)]

Q I declare an interest: I am still a Kent county councillor, although I have resigned from Gravesham borough council.

With a council hat on, I want to look at fly-tipping. Gravesham borough council has issued 386 community protection warnings and about 50 fly-tipping fines, so there is definitely a growing issue with fly-tipping. Could I ask your advice? What do you think about some guidance, perhaps to courts, about recovery costs? We know that fly-tipping largely is organised crime, and there are costs in collecting the rubbish, often for private landowners; they are left to bear the brunt of the burden. Would guidance for courts—magistrates courts in particular—on recovering the costs of the crime be welcome?

Councillor Garratt: Possibly. I would not add much to what I said before about the fly-tipping provisions in the Bill, which seem to boil down to reminding local authorities of what their responsibilities are. I do think that they already know what they are. To echo Councillor Conway, I think they probably would just say the word “resources” again and again.

Councillor Conway: That is always a welcome echo. I will just add that the LGA wants to work with the Government and the Sentencing Council to review court guidance—so, yes, what you are talking about—to ensure stringent fines for the worst offenders and provide adequate funding for councils to investigate and prosecute fly-tippers. As I am sure you will be aware locally, councils face financial challenges in prosecuting fly-tippers, with the fines issued by the courts often lower than civil penalties. It is essential for courts to properly prosecute to deter repeat offences as well. There is a financial bit and then the deterrent effect.

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[Louise Jones]

Q In my constituency of North East Derbyshire, we have real issues with car theft, and in this Bill we have a couple of clauses affecting signal jammers. I am interested to hear your thoughts on how that will have a practical impact on preventing car theft.

Roger Hirst: Car theft has been growing across the country, but it has been particularly spectacular in Essex. Last year, in one area of our county, it rose by 80%, which is dreadful. Jammers are undoubtedly a help. The technology is available to stop the passive entry system, but the criminals are very inventive, and are currently buying in quite expensive bits of kit from Poland, which they can bring in legally. As Mr Barber said earlier, we really need to have the legislation to mean that owning those things is a crime. They are good only for one purpose, but at the moment buying them is perfectly legal. Using them is a crime; having them should be illegal as well.

I have been to see and talk to Jaguar Land Rover, because it was one of the companies particularly hard hit by theft in our area—I think Essex has a good reputation for being good buyers of Range Rovers. It responded very well, and committed to retrofitting security to its vehicles to change the risks of passive vehicle entry, which is basically where you have a key that you do not have to press a button on, and there is a dialogue and signal between your vehicle and your key. That is possible for a criminal to read very easily, because there is no single instance where you are pressing the button. Jaguar Land Rover has made that much more difficult to intercept.

To ban the equipment that could do that would be really helpful. At the moment you have to pay for it, but it is readily available over the internet. It is possible for the car manufacturers to make that more difficult—I think they are always working on it, but they will, however, always have to run ahead of the inventiveness of the criminal. Whatever can be done about the ownership of the bits of equipment that criminals need to be able to break into vehicles that easily would be extremely helpful.

Matthew Barber: What will be key here is the secondary legislation—from memory, I think it is clause 78 or 79 that allows the Secretary of State to make additional secondary legislation. That will be critical in years to come. As Mr Hirst said, that technology is constantly changing. A definition in legislation now around signal jammers will no doubt be out of date—possibly even before the Bill gets Royal Assent. It will be critical for the Home Office to keep that list of prohibited equipment under review.

[Harriet Cross]

Q I want to reflect quickly on knife crime, and the Bill’s provisions on that. First, what are your comments on the clause to make it an offence to possess with the intent to cause unlawful violence? Do you think that is practically workable? How will that be enforced? More generally on tackling knife crime, what have you seen in your areas that has been good, bad or indifferent? Is there anything in particular missing from the Bill?

Matthew Barber: An awful lot of focus in legislation goes on the type of knife being used—the talk about zombie knives and so on. Although I would not oppose the legislation that has been put in place to prohibit the use or ownership of those weapons, the reality is that the vast majority of knife-enabled incidents—whether that is robbery, theft or injury—are caused by kitchen knives, which we cannot realistically outlaw in our society.

I think the use of intent and the ability to seize within private dwellings is really important. The police may be dealing with a suspect for an unrelated offence around drug possession, for example, and while they are in that property, they may see a stash of knives that are clearly likely to be used for criminal purposes—not for someone cutting their salad—yet they would currently be powerless to do anything about that, because they are being legally held in private premises. This is one of the things that I would put in that category of tying up some of the loopholes in legislation, which will not actually cost policing anything. At the moment we have police officers in situations where they cannot use current legislation to protect the public.

More broadly, where we have seen success, certainly in Thames Valley and across the country where it has been done, it is that focus on the possession of knives that is absolutely vital. It is about a good use of stop and search, and making sure that we are focusing not just on the people who are already committing the dangerous offences of robbery and assault, but on getting the knives off the streets in the first place, recognising that possession itself is critical to enabling others to commit further offences.

Roger Hirst: I very much agree with that. It has always been a difficult area, but I have never really understood why the previous legislation, and perhaps therefore this legislation, could not simply ban all bladed instruments that do not have a legitimate use in the environment in which they are found.

We had a machete battle on Southend seafront last summer, which was extraordinary. None of those young people had any reason to be carrying a two-foot bladed instrument. In fact, why on earth were they allowed to buy them in the first place? The provisions around purchase over the internet need to be enforceable. It must be the case that people have to produce ID when they order it, and when it is delivered, to prove that they are over 18. But also, why are things like that available over the internet at all? Having talked to agricultural and nature groups, I know there is nothing that you can do with a machete that you cannot do with a billhook, and you are not going to take a billhook to a battle, so why not just ban machetes? That would really help.

Also, with the way the Bill is phrased at the moment, the defence of saying, “I’m only carrying it for self-defence,” would effectively still work, because the implication is that you need to be going out with the intent to cause harm. I think if you are carrying it for self-defence, you are prepared to use it. I would ask the legal brains to think about a way of phrasing it to mean that the plea of, “I am only carrying it to defend myself,” is equally an offence, because that is something you can carry into a street fight.

Emily Spurrell: On Merseyside, notwithstanding some really tragic incidents, we have actually seen knife crime going down. We have seen about a 7% reduction in serious violence, and particularly knife crime incidents. I think there are two reasons for that. First, there has been a huge amount of proactivity. We were the first force to pilot serious violence reduction orders, which have made a difference in terms of identifying the individuals who are routinely carrying knives and posing the threat that has been described. It has been helpful to monitor that. There was a previous question about prolific offenders; we have seen some good success with that.

The flip side of that is public education and engagement, particularly with young people. We work with KnifeSavers to educate about the dangers of carrying a knife, and the fact that you are more likely to be a victim of a stabbing if you carry a knife yourself, even if you are doing it for protection. Through our violence reduction partnership, we have done some work to educate young people and help them to understand how they can get into that situation and what the alternatives are. There is a huge amount of work on education and prevention, which has to go hand in hand with all the enforcement activity.

[Matt Bishop]

Q I want briefly to touch on the police appeals tribunal. Police and crime commissioners up and down the country represent the public in holding forces and chief constables to account. In the context of public confidence in policing, how important is it that PCCs have an equivalent right of appeal to the police appeals tribunal?

Emily Spurrell: Very important. It was a gap in previous legislation, so in our view, this measure seeks to correct an error. As you say, we are responsible for holding chief constables to account. We are very focused on improving the trust and confidence that the public have in the police, so it is important to have that right of appeal if we feel standards have not been met, rather than having to go through a lengthy judicial review process.

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[The Chair]

Dr Newport, I do apologise for the lighting effects.

Dr Newport: It is okay. It is like stadium lighting— I like it.

[Harriet Cross]

Q I want to ask about respect orders and the fact that they are pitched to come in at age 18 and over. Given how much antisocial behaviour is by juveniles, what would your view be on reducing that age to 16, or whatever level you might think? Or do you think 18 is pitched about right?

Dr Newport: There is good reason to consider it for 16 and above. That is because, exactly as you said, a lot of antisocial behaviour does happen at 16 or 17, and actually so does quite a bit of crime. There is good reason at least to look at the impact of doing that, and at whether it would help prevent people from going down the pathway to becoming career criminals.

[Keir Mather]

Q Thank you very much for your evidence, Dr Newport. I want to look back to something that you said at the beginning of your remarks about encouraging citizens to use CCTV in their homes to better allow the police to prosecute crimes. One issue that does recur, even when CCTV is available in people’s homes and they can say to the police, “Look, I’ve got this here for you to be able to use to catch who perpetrated this burglary”, or whatever else, is that the CCTV is not always used in the way people would like. I wonder if you could speak to that.

I think there is also a bit of a regional inequality point. In my part of Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, there is live access to CCTV in York. That can be important in allowing people to deal with crimes in the moment, as they find them, and to direct police forces to the right spot. In Selby, however, our CCTV looks like it comes out of the 1970s; it is too blurry and grainy to use half the time, and it poses major challenges for the police. Can you point to how those practical realities affect your earlier remarks?

Dr Newport: That is why home CCTV is so useful. Cameras now are vastly cheaper than they were even 20 years ago when a lot of this infrastructure was put in place. You can get high definition cameras now on your doorbell in a way that 20 years ago would have been obscenely expensive. For the price of £30, homeowners with one of those cameras can probably outcompete, in a lot of ways, the national infrastructure or otherwise that was put in a long time ago.

I completely agree that it is extremely frustrating that a lot of the time, even when there is CCTV, it is not being looked at or used. There are several ways of encouraging that and making it easier. One is that there should be clauses on the procurement of artificial intelligence systems that could scan that footage. It is extremely likely that current systems can do that, and future systems will certainly be able to do it. Give a system indications of what to look for, and it can highlight that to officers within seconds. We should have that, and the fact that it is not used at all is astounding.

It should also be the case that officers have training so that they look at footage in the most time-efficient way. For example, with binary searches, rather than viewing the whole footage on fast forward to see an incident, if you are looking for a bike missing, for instance, you watch the bike. You check in halfway through the footage—is it there or not? If it is, you check at 75%—is it there or not? You keep doing that in halves, and you can do an extremely fast search. It might take you minutes, when otherwise it would take you hours to go through footage. Some officers are still going through hours and hours of footage rather than simply using methods that we know work extremely well.

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[Louise Jones]

Q Farmers in my constituency of North East Derbyshire tell me that they have a frustrating issue with off-road bikes often being used across their land. Do you think the Bill goes far enough with the new powers to seize those vehicles?

Sam Durham: I think it does. That power to seize vehicles that are being used in an antisocial manner is key. We think of farming in rural areas, but the urban fringe area is key to where vehicles—bikes, quad bikes or even off-road vehicles—are used in an antisocial manner. Many farmers flag it to me that those people are out there, and the measures in the Bill look positive on that side.

[Harriet Cross]

Q Missing from the Bill is anything to do with livestock theft or worrying. Do you consider those to be covered sufficiently in other legislation, or would you like to see something included in the Bill to recognise that that is a huge issue for farmers and rural landowners? I do not want to diminish theft from a shop in any way, but the value of a cow or sheep is significant. Should that be better represented in the Bill?

Sam Durham: On the livestock worrying issue, there is a private Member’s Bill progressing at the moment—the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill—that I believe the Government have said they will support. A lot of the measures in it have appeared at other times in legislation but then been dropped. We have worked quite closely with National Police Chiefs’ Council and others, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Kennel Club, and we would support a lot of those measures to give the police more powers to investigate, seize dogs and take samples to link dogs to attacked animals. I think that that Bill, if it progresses, will cover that issue.

Livestock theft is a complicated issue, because you need the skills to handle livestock in order to steal livestock, but it is a concern, because there are routes for livestock to enter the food chain, and if animals are being stolen and processed in a different way, there are potential food hygiene issues. The picture on livestock theft is not clear at the moment. The National Rural Crime Unit now has a livestock theft co-ordinator, who is doing a lot of research into how livestock theft is recorded by the police. At the moment, there is not a clear picture of how it is recorded by each force, so there is not a national picture on livestock theft. Again, we have the issue of how it is reported by our farming members. There are not measures in the Bill on livestock theft, but, potentially as a result of the research that the National Rural Crime Unit is doing, there could be scope for future legislation on it.

[Keir Mather]

Q I want to ask about the confidence that individual farmers will have in these measures. We are in an unenviable situation at the moment. Farmers in my constituency deal with criminality frequently, and they have to step up themselves and put themselves in danger. I was speaking to a farmer in Brotherton the other month who had chased a gang of people on off-road bikes across his farm, putting himself at personal risk and danger. Do you think that, if implemented correctly, these measures will provide individual farmers with reassurance that they will not have to put themselves in similar danger in the future?

Sam Durham: I hope so. In general, the rural community and farmers have a good relationship with the police. They recognise the challenges the police have with low numbers, but where forces have a rural crime team, they build a link with the local community and the farming community. When I go to meetings around the country, I hear that rural crime is a big issue, but they support the police; they just want to give the police the tools to deal with the criminality they are having to deal with themselves.

Certainly, the link to organised criminality is worth investigating as well. The theft of a quad bike from a farm may seem a low-level crime, but it is potentially funding bigger networks. On the fly-tipping side, there is evidence that waste crime is linked to organised criminal activity as well.

Putting the picture together—I have given you a long answer—I think farmers will be reassured that the Government are taking this issue seriously. Alongside some of the other legislation, on equipment theft and livestock worrying, the Bill shows that rural crime is being taken seriously.

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[Matt Bishop]

Q Minister Johnson, could you briefly explain the Government’s rationale and thinking in not making it a criminal offence for a person in regulated activity to fail to report child sexual abuse?

Dame Diana Johnson: We heard from witnesses today who talked about this, and we are very conscious that regulated activity does not just include the people you would expect—perhaps social workers or teachers—but it can include, for example, taxi drivers who are taking children to school on the taxi run in the morning. It can also include volunteers who run the football club on a Saturday. It can include all sorts of people who volunteer their time to help out and work with young people, and to give back to their community.

We were very conscious that the recommendations that came out of Alexis Jay’s inquiry were not about criminalising those individuals. We want to make sure that individuals report to local authorities and the police when they hear really disturbing things from children and young people about sexual abuse—of course we do—but we did not think that it was appropriate to criminalise in that way. What we were very clear about—again, I think that Alexis Jay’s inquiry made this point—is that if anybody tries to interfere with or stop that reporting, that is the criminal offence. That is the bit that we think is important to have in the Bill. Alex has probably got something else to say on that.

Alex Davies-Jones: I just wanted to briefly come in to counteract some of the evidence that we received from Councillor Garratt earlier today. He was incorrect. There are sanctions in the Bill—professional sanctions—for those who fail to report. That also covers anyone working voluntarily or professionally with children in a religious setting. I just wanted to put that on the record.

Dame Diana Johnson: That is absolutely right. If you are a social worker and you do not report to the local authority or the police, there will be repercussions through your regulatory body and also through the Disclosure and Barring Service.

[Harriet Cross]

Q Thank you both. On retail crime, we heard in panel 4 that in Scotland, delivery drivers are included in provisions relating to the abuse, and so on, of retail workers. What work was done alongside the Scottish Act, or looking at Scotland, to reach the decision that they would not be included in this Bill?

Secondly, on respect orders, we have discussed reducing the age from 18. Why was 18 chosen? After the evidence that we have heard today, would any consideration be given to reducing the age, given who is responsible for most, or a lot, of antisocial behaviour?

Dame Diana Johnson: On the point about antisocial behaviour and why respect orders apply at 18 and above, that is because we are really clear that we do not want to criminalise young people. We do not think that it is appropriate to reduce the age limit to 16. Of course, civil injunctions are already in place to deal with young people under 18 who engage in antisocial behaviour. I think they will be called youth injunctions. They will carry on. We are also committed to prevention partnerships, which means identifying those young people who are getting themselves into difficulty, antisocial behaviour or other criminal activity, and trying to work with them early on. I think that keeping young people and children out of the criminal justice system as much as we can and diverting them is key to this. That is why the respect order is post 18.

On retail crime, it was a manifesto promise in the Labour manifesto last summer that we would introduce this particular measure. That was specifically about the fact that some retail workers are carrying out a public service duty. For sales of alcohol, they have to check the age of the individual, and they do so in many other instances as well. For sales of knives, you have to check. That is why we wanted to have a specific offence dealing with assaults on retail workers carrying out that particular role.

[Harriet Cross]

Q With respect, a delivery driver would be delivering such products as well.

Dame Diana Johnson: What we have said is that we are very conscious that we want to look at this. Again, it goes back to poor data. Because at the moment assaults on retail workers are treated just as assaults and not separated out, we are very keen to get the data to see what is actually happening with retail workers. I am very happy to look at suggestions that the Committee might have, but our proposal at the moment is to be very clear: we want to bring this particular measure in for assaults on retail workers because of what I have just described—the public service duty that they have. But I did hear the evidence earlier, and I heard what was said about Scotland as well. I am very happy to consider that and to look at it.

[Mr Barros-Curtis]

Q I want to follow on from that point about assault on a retail worker. In relation to what you said, Minister Davies-Jones, and what we heard in evidence about equivalence with the emergency worker assault provision when that was introduced, I used to serve on the Justice Committee, and because of the shocking court backlog—one of the inheritances from the last Government—the chance of getting a prosecution for that and getting through to a conviction at the Crown court was very, very slim. What cross-Government working will the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and so on be doing to try to tackle that so that the equivalent does not happen with the provision for assault on a retail worker?

On police accountability, we have had some very public examples of PCCs and chief constables falling out, and the fall-out affects confidence in policing and has a pecuniary impact on the taxpayer. What confidence do you have, Minister Johnson, that these measures will not cement that but will help to restore confidence and ensure that there is adequate confidence in our policing, and that they will not lead to further fracturing in that relationship?

Alex Davies-Jones: Shall I take the courts point first? Of course, conversations have been happening incredibly closely—hence why we have two Departments represented on the Bill Committee—on the court impact from this. As I said, all the impact assessments have been published on the gov.uk website, but we have also taken measures to free up capacity in the Crown court system by allowing magistrates bigger sentencing powers. We also have the independent review being done by Sir Brian Leveson to look at what other steps we could take to address the issue in our court system. We have also funded, in the next financial year, the Crown courts to sit to their highest ever capacity, in terms of what we can give as a Department. We are making sure that for the court sitting days that are available, we fund them to the highest level that they have ever been at.

Dame Diana Johnson: On the point about PCCs, chief constables and restoring confidence in the police, one reason why we have a White Paper coming down the track later in the spring is that we do need to do some work around the relationships between PCCs and chief constables. We think that there is work to do there. We also think there is still more work to do around vetting. We said, as one of our manifesto commitments, that we would bring in mandatory vetting standards for police officers—for when they come into police forces. There is a whole range of things we need to do alongside the restoring of police officers in all our communities. We have those 13,000 officers in our high streets, villages and communities because, again, that visible presence is how you start to restore confidence generally.