Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Keith Vaz and Charles Walker

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I am delighted that my concerns have received such close attention from Ministers and will continue to receive attention. I look forward to further updates. The Government are working very closely with Black Mental Health UK and its director Matilda MacAttram, and I hope that those conversations will continue.

I said that I would try to speak for only five minutes, but I might have to stray a little bit over that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

New clause 29 relates to access to legal advice before someone is detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. I know that the Opposition have tabled new clause 24, on advocacy, but mine is a probing new clause. The removal of someone’s liberty should never happen lightly. Again, there is great concern among the African-Caribbean community and Black Mental Health UK that a young black male is more likely than other people to have their liberty removed. New clause 29 is a genuine request to address a genuine concern, but I am not sure whether it is deliverable.

At the point of sectioning, the situation is almost always highly stressed. The needs of the individual who is ill should be central to that sectioning. There is very real concern about this situation. I am interested in the Opposition’s new clause 24 in relation to advocacy. Advocacy is often talked about but has not been delivered in the way that it should be. Again, my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are aware of that issue.

New clauses 42 and 43 relate to the deployment of police officers on wards and the use of Tasers. I am well aware that the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) will be speaking to new clause 40 on Tasers. I cannot be absolutist in my approach. I know that Black Mental Health UK never wants to see police officers used on mental health wards, and I share that view, but there will always be occasions where that possibility remains. When police officers are deployed to mental health wards, there should be an almost immediate notification to the police and crime commissioner and the Independent Police Complaints Commission that that deployment has taken place. I know that Home Office Ministers are working closely with the Department of Health on collating better statistics about the use of force and restraint, but we cannot wait 365 days before receiving that information. When police are deployed on mental health wards, that information needs to be made available immediately. Again I have received assurances from Ministers that work will be done on that matter. I know that time is short, but when the Minister sums up, I hope that he will again reassure me and Matilda MacAttram that that work will be done.

Finally, I turn to the use of Tasers on mental health wards. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk will argue, with great justification and passion, that Tasers should never be used on mental health wards. My heart is with him, but my head says that there may be some highly charged situations where a Taser needs to be used. Right now, we know that Tasers are being used, but we are not collating or collecting the information, and there is no way for the House to know what is going on, or for concerned individuals to find out what is going on. When a Taser is used—I hope that they will never be used—a report needs to be made within a week to the police and crime commissioner and the IPCC. I am not suggesting for a minute that any police officer will take the action of using a Taser lightly, but we must remember that we are talking about Tasers and force being used in safe hospital environments. Again, I have received assurances from Ministers in relation to the issue, and I hope that the Minister will refer to those assurances in responding to the debate.

Finally, I draw the Minister’s attention to a trial in Los Angeles, where Tasers are linked to body cameras by Bluetooth, so that the camera starts recording immediately when a Taser is drawn. It does not need to be manually started by the police officer. Perhaps the Home Office would like to look at that.

I apologise for having spoken for a little longer than I said I would, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Keith Vaz]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who has raised so many important issues. He and the House have insufficient time to discuss all these issues, so I want to confine my remarks to just a couple of aspects of this group of amendments, the first of which relates to the Government’s decision to accept the recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee to place an initial 28-day limit on pre-charge bail.

I am sorry that the Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims has left the Chamber, because I wanted to pay tribute to him for being one of the very few Ministers we have encountered who writes back to the Committee and says that the Government will adopt some of our recommendations. He did so in respect of a 28-day limit on pre-charge bail, an issue that we have raised on a number of occasions. Most recently, in our report on police bail, we considered the case of Mr Paul Gambaccini and the need to prevent police bail from going on and on without limit. The limit is very welcome and very important.

I want to concentrate next on new clause 22, which relates to the surrender of travel documentation. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) will speak to that new clause when he makes his winding-up speech, but I support it very strongly. It will go a long way towards addressing in the law our concern about terrorist suspects who can leave the country because they have not given up their passports or even been asked for them.

In the Home Affairs Committee’s review of counter-terrorism, we took interesting evidence from the sister of Siddhartha Dhar. Mr Dhar fled the United Kingdom while on police bail and despite being asked politely by the police to send in his passport. In fact, he never received the polite letter that the Metropolitan police sent to him asking him to hand in his passport, because he left the country when he was released from custody. He was already in Syria when that letter was sent.

What the Government propose in the Bill is welcome, but new clause 22 goes a little further. I very much hope that the Government will change their mind and accept it, because it is in keeping with the evidence given to us by the head of counter-terrorism, Mark Rowley, who said that when someone surrenders a passport immediately, the police and the security services know where that passport is and that, if someone breaches that requirement —in other words, if they do not hand over their passport—they should be in breach of their bail conditions.