Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 7th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill and will talk about the provisions relating to corrosive substances and acid attacks. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Scar Free Foundation, a medical research charity that seeks to find a cure for scarring. Through this work, I have had first-hand experience of talking to victims of acid attacks, the effects of which are utterly devastating and very often a severe, lifelong sentence. Victims may suffer blinding, permanent scarring of the body and face, and acute social and psychological difficulties from the disfigurement and pain. It is worthwhile that the Bill puts such a significant focus on dealing with this issue. It is absolutely shocking that the UK has one of the world’s highest rates of recorded acid attacks per capita. According to Acid Survivors Trust International, there were 228 attacks in 2012, rising to 941 in 2017.

This issue deserves our attention and I pay tribute to the Home Secretary and the Home Office for moving quickly. However, there is a fear that simply toughening sentences and strengthening legal definitions is not enough to make a change on this issue, and could be distracting. Acid attacks happen all over the world, and there is a pattern of behaviour by Governments in different countries. Parliaments instinctively reach for the rulebook to address these horrendous crimes, but the story of legislation on acid attacks around the world is not encouraging. In the national and regional legislatures of the countries that are most affected, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Cambodia, you will see passionate politicians trying to make a difference by introducing frightening-sounding new laws. But these have little effect on the cultural and social causes of the problem. The police and the judges seem incapable of stopping this crime, and the suffering continues.

I do not deny that there is a huge amount of support for the measures in the Bill, and they certainly have my support. However, there is a concern that we could make the same mistakes as Parliaments in other countries. If noble Lords think that Britain is in some way exceptional, I will give a couple of examples of what I mean. A recent FOI request to the Civil Nuclear Constabulary revealed that, to date, not one individual had been caught in possession of a corrosive substance as a suspected offensive weapon.

Of the 2,078 acid attacks recorded in the UK between 2011 and 2016, only 414 resulted in a charge being brought. The Bill will do much to close loopholes, but if we are to have any chance of reducing these horrible crimes, we cannot stop at legislation. We need to see acid attacks in the context of street theft, gang retribution, hate crime, domestic abuse and so-called honour-based violence. Each of these has complex causes and solutions. Having a more sophisticated approach to dealing with them was the subject of the excellent crime debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, in November, which supported the use of a sophisticated, multiagency, public health-style approach to crime prevention. I recommend that these be applied here.

I have two questions for the Minister. First, how can we be sure that that the charges and measures introduced by the Bill are anything more than virtue signalling and will actually generate prosecutions? For instance, there are the costs of implementing an inspection regime or the forensic challenges of establishing a provable audit trail back to the retailer. How does the Minister envisage measuring how the selling of corrosive substances will actually lead to convictions? I appeal to the Minister not to allow the Home Office and all the relevant agencies of the state to be distracted by this useful legislation from the bigger battle to reduce this horrific crime wave.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 28th January 2019 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Bethell]

38: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of sections 1 to 12 and 31
The Secretary of State must each year, for the period of three years beginning with the year in which the last of the provisions in sections 1 to 12 and 31 of this Act come into force, lay before both Houses of Parliament a report reviewing the effectiveness of the measures contained in those sections.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish a report each year for three years after the Bill comes into force reviewing the effectiveness of the provisions relating to corrosive substances.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 39. I thank noble Lords for returning and doing me the courtesy of hearing this out. I really appreciate it and I will be very quick. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, put it very well—I wish she were still in her place—but I also feel very passionate about the victims of acid attacks and corrosive substance crime. I am a trustee of the Scar Free Foundation and I have met a lot of the victims, and I have been blown away by how these crimes have seemingly come out of nowhere and become a very big deal: there were nearly 1,000 attacks last year. I am very much aware of how innovative criminals have quickly become, to get around the law and invent new crimes. I am aware that our responses have got to be very quick as well. I applaud the speed with which the Home Office has reacted to this crime wave. I will not go through the list, but it is an impressive list and I completely endorse the approach.

We owe it to ourselves to recognise that this is an experimental approach: international data suggests that legislation on acid attacks is very difficult. It does not always work, so we should keep track of how this legislation proceeds and whether it is worth analysing its effectiveness and what is happening with the arrests that come out of it. That is why I suggested these two amendments: so that in two or three years’ time, we are not left worrying whether we have been on the right track and so that we have the right data to be able to fine-tune and make any changes to our approach.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, in this, because so many things that were alleged about the inefficiency of various measures are unproven. For example, short sentences are said to be no deterrent. We do not know for certain, and therefore I support entirely a continuous review. We must have more data to be able to be more precise in the measures that we take.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Bethell for setting out the rationale for these amendments. I understand his intention, but I hope to persuade him that there will be adequate reporting of the use of the new powers in the Bill relating to corrosive substances without the need for statutory provisions such as this. Once the offences in this Bill are brought into force, the collection of data regarding corrosives offences will be much more accessible for police forces and will allow for a much clearer picture to be presented on the extent of corrosive attacks and the corresponding law enforcement response.

My noble friend may be aware that we are already working with the police to improve how offences involving corrosives can be better captured in police data to help understand the scale of attacks. We have submitted a joint application, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, to the police data requirements group to establish a new data collection requirement with respect to corrosive attacks as part of the annual data requirement on all forces in England and Wales. Subject to agreement, these would allow for regular publication as part of the Office for National Statistics quarterly crime statistics.

In relation to Amendment 38, I simply point out to my noble friend that all government legislation such as this is subject to post-legislative review five years after Royal Assent. In the intervening period, there are the usual arrangements for scrutinising government policies and the operating of new powers such as contained in this Bill. For example, it will be open to my noble friend to table periodic Written Questions or initiate a debate.

Given these established methods, I am not persuaded that we need a bespoke duty to report annually on aspects of this Bill. I fully accept that this is a serious issue, but I hope I have provided my noble friend with sufficient reassurance on the action that we are taking to address it and that, accordingly, he will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Bethell]

My Lords, the Minister puts it very persuasively and I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 38 withdrawn.