Offensive Weapons Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Karin Smyth and Louise Haigh

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

I rise to support new clause 1, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, and to speak to new clause 25, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford.

One small example of why my right hon. Friend’s new clause is so important relates to our debate on the kits available for acid testing and the offence under clause 5 of acid possession. The Sun reported this weekend that officers will be given acid detection kits to help them detect substances that present a danger to the public. The Sun reported that the kits are being manufactured at the Porton Down laboratory, as we heard last week. However, as we know from last week’s discussions, the workability of those possession offences are still a concern. Given the information provided in The Sun, will the Minister now be able to furnish the Committee with the details—on the operationalisation of the Bill in relation to those kits—that she was unable to provide us with last week?

Our discussion last week assumed that the kits will be rationed, which is completely reasonable, but without adequate information for forces and the Home Office—which my right hon. Friend’s new clause would provide—about attack locations, the substances used and anything else that is pertinent, it will be difficult to prioritise such corrosive substance packs for officers, or for policy makers to understand how many might need to be available. It is perfectly obvious that officers in Newham, Walthamstow, Camden and Islington will need them, but is it obvious from existing Home Office data that Avon and Somerset, for example, might require such kits? My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn discussed that last week.

Disaggregating the data should be perfectly easy; it is not a good enough excuse to say that the Home Office does not collect the data and that it cannot be disaggregated. On the police national computer it should be perfectly easy to tag information on corrosive substances, as is done for a host of other incidents or vulnerabilities. Data is a real issue, in particular for bringing policy to bear. The new clause would help to inform parliamentarians, the Government and the public on the location of attacks and, crucially, on what type of substances are used.

To make policy truly effective, partnership would be required across health services, local authorities and law enforcement. The detailed forensic work done on the type of substances that have been used tends to take place in a healthcare setting, rather than a criminal justice one, so I wonder what discussions the Minister has held to ensure that such detail is routinely fed to the police, in particular in cases where the victim refuses to co-operate—sadly, as we know, that occurs in many such instances, whether they involve corrosive substances or bladed articles.

My hon. Friends have already made a compelling case for new clause 25, which relates to the laying of a report on the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons. I appreciate what the Minister said in discussion of clause 40—that the Bill is intended to focus on the control and prohibition of offensive weapons—but we cannot have that debate in a vacuum. There are reasons why younger, or indeed older, people carry offensive weapons, and questions about how they access them.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend, coming as she does from Sheffield, will agree with me, from another city outside London, that what has been happening in London over recent years and the lessons that have been learned through the commission and the all-party group should inform good policy for the rest of the country. We already know some measures that could be put in place.

It is important to highlight the fact that, although London has particular problems, the rest of the country is also seeing many of the same issues, and we need to prevent them from developing further. New clause 25 would help policy makers to ensure that that happens.

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I find it seriously frustrating that so much of the debate focuses on London. As she rightly says, many communities and constituencies outside London have experienced significant increases in youth and serious violence.

Only last night, I was at the launch in Sheffield of Operation Fortify, a multi-agency response to tackle youth violence led by the police—yes, it is located in a South Yorkshire police office, but it will include the local authority, education representatives and agencies from across the spectrum, all of which have responsibility for community safety under a groundbreaking piece of legislation introduced under the previous Labour Government: the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. That Act made it clear that everyone has the job of ensuring community safety.

The point made about ensuring that best practice is rolled out is important. As shadow police Minister, I find it frustrating to go around the country and see so many forces reinventing the wheel time and again—inventing their own pieces of technology when just over the border the police have a completely different system, and the two do not talk to each other. Police are inventing their own responses to issues such as violent crime when just over the border they already have tried and tested methods.

The report proposed in new clause 25 would help to iron out those problems and deliver a level of consistency and the same efficient and effective service to victims, whether in Camden or Cumbria, and, yes, to offenders, whether arrested in Camden or Cumbria. At the moment, there are significant inconsistencies in our criminal justice system and in the service the police are able to deliver. That is our failing, and a failure of the Home Office. The National Audit Office report published today—the most damning report that I have ever read by the NAO—has shown that the Home Office has effectively passed the buck on funding and, in its words, has no idea whether police forces are able to respond to levels of demand locally and nationally because of the way it has approached police funding.

I have been well behaved in this Committee. I have not discussed police officer numbers or police funding at all, because we have had those arguments many times in Committee and the Minister and I are on very different pages. However, given that in this debate the issue is perfectly in scope, and given today’s report by the NAO, will the Minister take the opportunity to respond to that report and perhaps signal a change in the Home Office’s approach when it comes to the delusion that it has been operating under—that police officer numbers bear no relation at all to violent crime?

Serious violence is threatening to overwhelm our communities. As I said, last night I was in Sheffield for the launch of Operation Fortify, where we heard from mothers, wives, children and grandparents who have lost their loved ones to the scourge of knife crime. I was born and bred in the city and it has always been considered very safe, so it is tragic to see so many of our communities there succumb to the contagion of knife and gun crime. Their heartbreaking stories should spur us all into action.

Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have committed the majority of their time in Parliament to tackling the issue, but the numbers that we are faced with are truly horrifying. The number of children aged between 10 and 15 being treated for stab wounds has increased by 69% since 2013. The Children’s Commissioner, who gave evidence to the Committee before the summer recess, has shown that up to 70,000 young people aged up to 25 are feared to be part of a gang network and that 2 million children in need of state support are vulnerable to being exploited by criminal gangs. That means too many young lives wasted, too many families destroyed and too many victims throughout communities as those crimes are committed.

As we have said many times, the conclusion is unavoidable: the structures and safety nets designed to protect a growing, precarious and highly vulnerable cohort of children are failing all at once: it is the perfect storm that we have long feared and warned about. Behind the tragic spate of violence is a story of opportunities to intervene missed as services have retreated; of children without a place to call home being shunted between temporary accommodation with their parents, at the mercy of private landlords; and of expulsions—as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central has mentioned—and truancy ignored until crisis hits. The current surge in serious violence is a textbook definition of whole-system failure, and the only response can be a whole-system one.

These children are the precarious products of austerity and rising poverty—the Home Office’s internal report said as much. It is telling that Ministers still refuse to confirm whether they have had the report that underpinned their serious violence strategy. Some 120,000 children are homeless in this country, and more than 70,000 are in the care system. The Home Office’s report said that those children are more at risk of being exploited by gangs and entering into violent crime.

Many thousands are excluded from school; there has been a sharp rise in exclusions in the last few years. A secondary academy in my constituency has excluded at least a third of its students at least once. Another academy in the same academy chain in Ormesby has excluded 41% of its pupils at least once. The pupil referral unit in Sheffield has 120 spaces. Last year, it received 350 children. As we have heard, criminal gangs exploit pupil referral units. They know that those children, who are in desperate need of help and support, do not have the resources to keep them safe. They know that they can go to those places and find children ready and available to conduct their vicious, pernicious and despicable business needs.

As the Children’s Commissioner has noted, the pursuit of young children is now a

“systematic and well-rehearsed business model”.

We now find ourselves in this state of affairs. These are the problems and complex issues that I freely admit we are trying to tackle—not just with the legislation before us, but as a Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

I am not suggesting for a second that this is a simple issue—indeed, I believe I said explicitly a few minutes ago that these are very complex issues. No one is suggesting that a simple rise in police officer numbers will stem the surge in serious violence. That is why new clause 25 covers such a wide variety of the issues identified by the Home Office in relation to the rise in serious violence.

[Karin Smyth]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham and, from the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley are making a plea for the use of evidence and learning, not just from now but from the past. My constituency of Bristol South was blighted by drug offences throughout the 1990s, but through concerted efforts at learning by my predecessor and many other people in the community, including mothers who set up groups to support the young people who had been exploited, we learned a great deal. That influenced the legislation under the next Government. The plea from my colleagues is that we learn from the past, understand how young people are exploited and come together. That is not simple, but the learning has to be taken very seriously.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The last national research on why young people carry knives was in 2006. Therefore we do not know the implications of social media, of drill music, which is often blamed in the media and by some politicians, or of austerity, because there has been no research. We are asking the Government to underpin their measures and legislation with evidence—not to pass legislation for the sake of headlines or just to be able to say, “We are doing something about the problem,” but to pass legislation and introduce measures that will tackle the problem.

I hope the Minister accepts the new clauses in the spirit in which they are intended to get to the root of the problems we see in every single one of our communities. Too many of us on both sides of the House have had to speak to families or witnessed the aftermath of the completely avoidable deaths of young people who would have had wonderful lives ahead of them had it not been for the whole-system failure that we are currently experiencing. Therefore, as I said, I hope the Minister accepts the new clauses in the spirit in which they are intended, so that we can get to the root of the issues.