Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 103 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I intervene very briefly on this to thank the Government for including this clause in the Bill. It will have the effect of ending the present ludicrous and anomalous situation where British Transport Police officers can be selected and trained in the use of firearms, but then have to apply individually for firearms certificates, adding enormously to the bureaucracy through which they have to go and delaying the recruitment of trained officers to serve the British Transport Police. This is a subject I raised first during scrutiny of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill in July 2011 and because nothing had happened by the start of this Session, I introduced a Private Member’s Bill which would have produced this effect. I am delighted to say that I got a letter from the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on 21 May saying that my Private Member’s Bill was not necessary because the Government were going to include this provision. Indeed, the words in this new clause exactly follow the words I had in the Private Member’s Bill, so this is my opportunity to say thank you.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Condon]

I hear what the noble Lord says but I do not find myself in total agreement with his arguments. He mentioned the experience of Scotland. That was a very laser-like, focused new offence on emergency workers only. I am genuinely sympathetic to the motivation behind this amendment but it is such a broad category of workers, across such a huge range of situations. Apart from the important symbolism of saying, “Here is a new offence”, I fear it would not add practically to improving the situation overall, and I say that with hesitation. The example the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, gave of a licensed worker having their hair pulled out is clearly at least an assault occasioning actual, if not grievous, bodily harm. If there was no action, it is a dire condemnation of the police involved in that particular offence. I am very sympathetic to the motivation but the real mischief is in getting more action carried out, rather than adding more offences.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I am afraid I do not take the same view as the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and support very much what my noble friend Lord Foulkes and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, have said. I am particularly pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, has talked about public transport workers, who are some of the most vulnerable public servants. They face members of the public, often on their own, in very difficult circumstances.

I declare an interest as a member of the First Great Western stakeholder board and I can say to the Committee that all of us were very proud of the staff depicted in the television programme to which the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, referred. We, too, were horrified at the thought that women would be in charge of trains, on their own, late at night, travelling to far-flung parts of the United Kingdom and being subjected to the sort of treatment he described. It is unacceptable. The situation might be easier if the trains were policed by officers from the British Transport Police—not armed officers; I spoke about them a moment ago. Just the presence of British Transport Police on the trains has a very significant effect. However, the force is not large enough to be able to police all the trains so there has to be a measure of self-restraint and adequate penalties for people who behave in an unacceptable and violent way towards public servants doing their job properly.

All too often one finds that members of the public do not want to know when they see these things going on. When fellow passengers have behaved in an anti-social manner on the Underground or the Croydon tram, I have always felt a little nervous about trying to intervene. One of my colleagues on the Great Western board attempted to intervene on the District line at Westminster when a man was racially abusing another passenger. The man was completely off his head on drink or drugs. No one came to my colleague’s aid and, when he got off the train, the drunk got off with him and then assaulted him on the platform. As far as I know, no follow-up action has been taken. This is not acceptable. Noble Lords have done the Committee a great service in bringing this amendment before it. I hope that the Minister will take what has been said very seriously.