Queen’s Speech

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, in his wonderful speech, the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, talked about being wide-ranging. I will literally be wide-ranging, because I am talking about the creative industries. Culture is the subject for debate tomorrow, but unfortunately I am not able to be present.

We are a creative nation—always have been—and the creative industries are of huge benefit to the economy. Indeed, according to a report published by the Office for National Statistics a couple of weeks ago, we did not go into recession in the last quarter in large and significant part because of our creative industries.

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities starts:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.


If I had more time I would quote more, because the opening of that novel is so pertinent. That is how I feel at the moment. We live in a golden age of British art and creativity, but Brexit, attacks on our essential PSBs from streaming services and, I am afraid, our own Government are lurking. Cuts to cultural funding, particularly at local level, are happening. There are other reasons for concern, such as a leaking talent pipeline that will lead to problems if not addressed.

Arts and culture lead to urban regeneration, as I have seen at first hand as a trustee of the Lowry in Salford. They offer a platform that reflects the diversity of the people of the UK. Participation promotes well-being and aids both physical and mental health, so supporting and protecting this vital, vibrant sector is of paramount importance. This starts with education.

I am sure the Minister will agree with the Durham commission report published this week on creativity in education, which said that creative thinking should run through all school life. However, the report confirms a 28% decline in the uptake of creative subjects since 2014—a decline that we on these Benches have been drawing attention to, and the Department for Education denying, for a long time.

The fact is that the introduction of the EBacc has had a significant negative impact on the offer of arts and culture in schools, resulting, as the report says, in,

“a serious imbalance in the all-round education of students”.

No less a person than Andrew Lloyd Webber castigated the Government a couple of weeks ago for cutting arts and music budgets in schools. He said the cuts are,

“the stupidest thing that could ever have happened”.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

May I just remind noble Lords about the subject of today’s debate? We would be very grateful if noble Lords could stick to that, please.

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.

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.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Minutes of Proceedings - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to start by saying what a memorable pair of maiden speeches they were. I am a newcomer, so I can say—quite literally—they were the best I have ever heard, a real showcase of two great parliamentary careers, and I welcome them both. I would also like to thank the Minister, who did an excellent job of capturing the essence of the dilemma facing us. How do we protect public security while simultaneously safeguarding civil liberties, and at a time when technology is changing very quickly?

My noble friend Lady Warsi and the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed expressed very well the challenge to the Muslim community in the UK and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talked very interestingly about the strategic challenge the police face. I want to come at it from a different direction and declare an interest. I am a founder of a campaign against neo-Nazi fascist and racist extremism, sometimes called far-right extremism, but we will be careful about that epithet. I would like to give the perspective of someone who has worked as a volunteer on the front line against the threat of that kind of extremism, against the kind of people who spend their time online trying to recruit, foster hate and agitate for violence. I ran a campaign 10 years ago to challenge the distasteful and disruptive politics of that kind of extremism. It brought me face to face with supremacists, neo-Nazis and agitators for terror. I spent a lot of time personally rebutting and challenging these keyboard warriors, and have some first-hand experience of how that kind of online extremist propaganda is deliberately calculated to foment civic rage and acts of violence. I came to realise that from a legal and technical point of view, we are really struggling to keep up. Many of the activists of the extreme far-right are thoughtful, systematic strategists who study the law, network technology and human psychology deliberately to create turmoil in our society and to groom individuals into their ideology and potentially into acts of criminality.

I went into this enterprise keen to preserve democratic values and free speech, but came to understand that our laws need to be updated. With some regret, I realised it was necessary to prosecute those who, through their words, images and videos, were spreading hate, and to counter the advantage they had through modern technology. I wrote a report 10 years ago, A Shadow over Democracy, which projected a lot of our fears at the time. I am concerned that those predictions have come true. I remember earlier this year Mark Rowley, the outgoing Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, warning about four foiled right-wing terrorist attacks, the potency of leaders like Tommy Robinson, 24% of Channel panel referrals earlier this year being from extremist groups at the neo-Nazi end of the scale, and this awful interdependent ratchet between Islamist terrorism and far-right terrorism that we need to try to break. The internet has played a central role in these developments. It has provided these groups with a network to spread their hate, to leap borders, to raise money to recruit people and to circumvent the societal norms and laws around incitement to hate and violence. I keep a watchful eye on what is happening in Europe and America, and fear we may be looking at an increase in this area. It is for that reason I welcome this Bill, and in particular Clause 1, which makes reckless statements of support for proscribed organisations illegal. I took on board what the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said—I thought he put it very well—but from my experience, it feels like we need to tighten up the law in this area.

I welcome Clause 3, which tightens up the law around streaming and downloading materials useful to committing or preparing an act of terrorism. I have seen how individuals have been inspired by words and videos to perform acts of violence. However, I was one of those researchers who clicked on these videos a lot, and I do not want to be captured by this law. Therefore, I urge the Minister to stretch every sinew to reassure people like me that we have a reasonable excuse and that this measure will not somehow be lost because of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made very good points on that.

Lastly, I welcome Clause 5, which strengthens the Terrorism Act 2006 and measures concerning the dissemination of material that might encourage people to commit acts of terrorism. Ten years ago, we were warning that self-radicalised, lone wolf, white-supremacist terrorists were a big threat, but it seemed distant and unlikely. However, since then, we have seen Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist, Darren Osborne, the Finsbury Park mosque attacker, and Thomas Mair, the far-right terrorist who killed Jo Cox. In that context, Clause 5 seems both proportionate and timely.

The one nudge I would give the Minister concerns the culpability of the distribution network—the tech giants who own the networks. It is obviously beyond the ambit of this Bill to cover that, but I know that the DCMS is looking at its White Paper and at potential legislation in this area. I urge the Minister please to look at that. A lot has been done, I know, but a lot more needs to be done.