Crime and Policing Bill (Second sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Sorry about the lighting—we are just trying to see if we can find a shilling for the meter.

Graham Wynn: I do not have much to add. Paul said all that needs saying. Not only shop workers see the violence, but the customers—they are affected also. They do not expect to see violence and abuse in their store. Paul has described it very well.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Q This is directed at any one of you on the panel. To take you back, an area where I think you all share the same opinion is that, under clause 16, theft from a shop should be triable either way, regardless of the value of goods—so below £200. I think the suggestion is that the police do not seem to be as responsive or as interested if it is a summary-only offence. I suggest that that is a policing issue and that the unintended consequence of removing the threshold could be to put low-value offences into the Crown court system, which is more expensive and with a longer backlog, and you might find the system is gamed another way. I am just inviting an opinion on whether a police policy issue might be the problem in terms of where they respond. A summary-only offence is still a crime.

Christopher Morris: This is not necessarily my speciality; I think Paul is more experienced in this area.

Paul Gerrard: I have a couple of points. I understand the point you are making. Less than £200 is still a significant sum of product—as I said, you could get 20 bottles of wine or the entire meat section—so I would not underplay that. The second point is that there is something here about making it clear that walking into stores to take whatever you want is not acceptable. That is a message that this place should send. Helping the police to understand that is really important.

In terms of how the criminal justice system then handles that, I take your point absolutely. But it is not okay for someone to walk in, make some threats, steal whatever they want and walk out again. At the minute, because the police do not, in general, look at things under £200, unless there are aggravating factors like violence, that is what happens.

[Joe Robertson]

Q Just to clarify, I agree with you on that point. My problem is this idea that a summary-only offence is not really an offence at all so the police do not need to attend. I think we are all agreed on that: it is plainly an offence. My worry is that pushing things into the Crown court creates a whole load of other problems.

[The Chair]

Mr Wynn, do you want to comment?

Graham Wynn: Not specifically. It is an attitude that has grown up. The police have to make judgments as to whether they go or not; with limited resources, they have clearly come to the conclusion that if it is under £200, Parliament did not mean them to worry too much. That has perhaps grown up as the culture, if you like, and these measures will hopefully help stop that, simply because it could be an either-way offence, and that will make a difference.

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[Louise Jones]

Q The Bill introduces a new offence of cuckooing, and I am particularly interested in your opinion because, unfortunately, a lot of cuckooing takes place in council properties. Having lived on a street where cuckooing was going on, I have seen at first hand the impact on the wider neighbourhood as well. I am interested to get your views on how welcome the provision is and how effective it will be.

Councillor Garratt: I welcome the provision. Again, there is a hint of déjà vu about it. This is serious. We talk about county lines-type crime. Often London is the originator of that, and therefore we are dealing with the holders of those lines. This type of crime, where people take over a vulnerable individual’s property, often in quite unpleasant ways, is currently quite difficult. There are a number of provisions that connect to it, including some of the modern slavery provisions, but I welcome wholeheartedly a specific offence for that type of crime, which is definitely prevalent and definitely needs tackling.

Councillor Conway: We are echoing each other a bit here, which is good. To echo that, we very much welcome the provision. I note that case studies from councils were actually used to argue for the provisions in the Bill. The LGA’s modern slavery network will be publishing further case studies. Obviously there has to be a link between the strategies for modern slavery and for violence against women and girls; it all has to talk to each other.

I have signed closure orders on behalf of residents to stop issues—everything that comes with this, not just in the property itself, but for a local authority or the residents in the area. I cannot help but reference Clear, Hold, Build, because it has fundamentally changed the way things are happening locally, together with a proactive approach by our local police. It has fostered that more collaborative approach, and the more residents are able to speak up and feel that they are heard and that authorities will listen and recognise the problem on the ground, the more effective we can all be. This one has been a long time coming.

[Joe Robertson]

Q To the extent that it is relevant, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in that I am a serving Isle of Wight councillor.

I want to take the panel back to clause 45(2) and the duty to report. I note that the police and local authorities are treated as interchangeable in the provision about who a person must report to. I invite any thoughts about that idea that the police and local authorities are somehow interchangeable and have similar skillsets. Councillor Conway referred to the training that would be needed with local authorities, but clearly there are so many different ways you could report. Although the police are used to reporting of criminal activity, the council does not routinely receive reports in that way. I invite either of you to comment on that slightly unexpected and unusual interchangeability of police and local authorities.

Councillor Conway: Again, we would be happy to write with more detail on that. Where that relationship works effectively, I understand the interchangeability. I think it probably needs looking at. There are effective systems on the ground that do enable that, but maybe it needs looking at more closely. We can send you more information.

Councillor Garratt: If we are dealing with criminal behaviour, which I think we are in this circumstance, the obvious place to report it is the police. I do not know whether there is a provision for reporting to the council if someone is already involved with a social worker, for example; that might be deemed to be an adequate way to report it. But if the purpose of the provision is to make sure that these crimes are investigated and prosecuted, then the obvious place to report that to would be the police.

[David Burton-Sampson]

Q My questions have been answered, but I will ask another while I have the floor. The Bill provides the ability to extend community safety accreditation schemes, basically allowing councils to take on more powers that would normally be available only to the police. Do you think that is a good thing for your local authorities?

Councillor Conway: The general point about all that is that additional funding is needed to increase community safety partnerships’ capacity to deliver things on the ground. Reforming the duty and partnership landscape to ensure that the partnerships are equipped with the powers and partners to deliver would be very important.

Councillor Garratt: On the ground, in practical terms, dealing with crime and connected behaviour very often does involve partnership between the local council and the police—and other bodies, such as the Probation Service and so on. It is therefore quite normal—in fact, it is good practice—for there to be collaborative working. If you have a process of collaborative working that is working well, as I think we have in Croydon and in Sutton, it seems to make little sense not to be able to extend it.

Councillor Conway: It is important to focus on the preventive aspect as well. Just before this meeting, I was in a meeting of London’s violence reduction unit with the safer partnership chairs, and I am aware that the Government’s new provision around preventive partnerships is evolving. I think that runs alongside this and is an important step forward.

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[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.

[Joe Robertson]

Q Solving a set of issues in a given day depends on well-worded law that is targeted at the problem it is trying to solve. Can you share your views on backing that up with the appropriate resources, be it money or technology, for the police to be able to deliver on the law? Over the last decades, we have seen more and more criminal law come into being without necessarily the resource to back it up. Can you comment on the interplay between well-worded law and the resources for police to be able to act on it?

Dr Newport: On the resources point, some of my ideas here have been around CCTV procurement and AI. I think those things would help to reduce police time and costs. It should also be ensured that the public can see the effects of these things—that they are transparent and we are able to check on them, which at the moment we do not seem to be able to do. The fact that I have to try to ask an MP to ask a question in Parliament about the Connect system and still cannot get a response—there is still no way of checking—is completely and utterly unacceptable.

It is also the case that the British public, in survey after survey, put healthcare as the thing that they want to see the most funding to. Education and criminal justice are joint second and third. Government funding is nowhere near the public’s priorities on this. That is what I would point to on the funding question.

[The Chair]

Any further questions? No. In that case, Dr Newport, thank you very much indeed for finding the time to talk to us. We are grateful for your evidence.

Examination of Witness

Sam Durham gave evidence.

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[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.

[Joe Robertson]

Q May I take you back to fly-tipping? We heard earlier how it is a problem for local authorities, but they are clearly more resourced than private landowners, who often own the sites where rubbish is dumped. Is there any opportunity missed in the Bill to try to tackle fly-tipping, particularly for people who, through no fault of their own, have waste dumped on their private property?

Sam Durham: The guidance to local authorities is key, and there are some really good examples of local authorities that are bringing all the agencies—the Environment Agency, the police and so on—together and having a co-ordinated approach to tipping. That means that members of the public know who to go to when they see an incident. There is not a general approach to that across the country, so if there is any way of legislating for that approach, or putting it in the local authority guidance, to make that happen, that would be key.

For the victim—the landowner—it is about knowing where to report, so having a single reporting mechanism that gets to the right people. They cannot view a tip and say, “That’s hazardous waste; that’s the Environment Agency’s responsibility”, “That’s the local authority’s responsibility” or, “That’s just rubbish thrown out of the back of a car.” They cannot judge that. A single reporting system that allowed them to log it and then found the right person to deal with it is something we would be campaigning for.

[The Chair]

Mr Durham, thank you for joining us and for so ably expressing the concerns of the National Farmers Union of England and Wales. We are most grateful to you.

Examination of Witness

Venita Yeung gave evidence.

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[Anna Sabine]

Q I think you are doing really well, Ms Yeung; thank you for coming in. Just a quick question, although I probably know the answer: can I assume that your concerns about face coverings would also apply to the use of live facial recognition technology for protests?

Venita Yeung: Yes.

[Joe Robertson]

Q I appreciate that this is not a debate between elected Members, but I am not entirely sure from that exchange with the Minister whether the witness got the idea that face coverings would be banned only if there was a suspicion of a crime. There is a defence here for using face coverings to protect someone’s health or for “religious observance”. Perhaps Ms Yeung is looking for another type of defence whereby if someone believes they are under political threat—perhaps from a Government or organisation abroad—that would be a fair defence for wanting to protect their identity. I wonder whether she might comment on that possibility.

Venita Yeung: Um. Yes, I think—

[The Chair]

It is quite all right; take your time.

[Joe Robertson]

Can I reword that, to be helpful? In the Bill, there is a defence to allow people to wear a face covering. One of the examples is if it is for their health, so I imagine there might be a health reason why someone might need to wear a mask. Another example is that if someone has a face covering because of a religious belief, they should not have to remove it in a protest. If there was another defence—I am not advocating for it, but I am suggesting it—whereby someone could say that they are under threat from a foreign Government or organisation and they fear for their personal safety, would that satisfy your concern for people from Hong Kong, for example, but also other places?

Venita Yeung: Yes. I think this is a very proportionate defence to add to the Bill. This would definitely safeguard communities against their fear of being spied on by their peers or state-aligned actors—for example, the state-aligned Chinese international students who violently attacked Hong Kong protesters in the Southampton protests in 2023.

[The Chair]

Q Ms Yeung, I suspect that there are probably a number of things that you wish to say to the Committee that you have not really had the opportunity to express. Please feel free to write to the Committee through the secretariat, and your views will be given the proper attention. Feel free to put any other comments that you have in writing. I suspect that it may have taken you a fairly considerable amount of courage to come here this afternoon; we really are most grateful.

Venita Yeung: Thank you. I just want to add another point here before I finish. For many of these people—for many members of my community—I think it is really important to strike a balance, because these protests are not just a way for them to express their dissenting voices, but part of their identity and part of the community cohesion. It is also the reason why over 200,000 Hongkongers are now in the UK. It is the reason why they are here. I hope the Committee will take account of that factor when considering the Bill, and view these clauses with that lens.

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[The Chair]

I call Joe Robertson for a 15-second question, to be followed by a 15-second answer.

[Joe Robertson]

Q If I may say so, from the evidence we have heard today there appears to be a loophole on spiking, in that somebody has to intend to annoy, but we have heard there can be reckless activity around a prank. Will the Minister go away and consider whether gross negligence around pranking could be captured under the spiking law?

Alex Davies-Jones: I heard that evidence, as did the officials, and we have clarified that under the current legislation, pranking would be covered; it is explicitly covered by this as well.

[Joe Robertson]

I invite the Minister just to look at and explore the wording. I am not convinced on the wording, but thank you.

[The Chair]

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this panel, so on behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence. It also brings us to the end of today’s sitting. When the Committee sits again, it will begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Keir Mather.)