Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

Perhaps I may respond to that point. The Government are determined to try to stamp out smoking as a habit, particularly among young people, so they are being proactive. However, what I am saying on this particular issue and this particular amendment is that the advocates of proxy purchasing as an offence—the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, drew attention to the wide number of people who are, and I said it myself in my speech—will be helped in their advocacy if they can provide the Government with the information they need to make sure that if at a future date they choose to implement such a policy through legislation, they will have the information on which to base that decision.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a point about the evidence. It may be my fault, but I am not entirely clear what evidence the Minister is looking for. It is quite difficult, until such a measure is in force, to know whether it will be effective. Of course the Scottish experience is there as an example, and it may be that the noble Lord is relying on that, but the fact is that until the measure is actually put on to the statute book, you cannot be absolutely certain one way or the other that it will be effective. On the other hand, there is certainly evidence, which has been referred to, that people with knowledge of the way these things work are asking for the measure. Is that not evidence to justify putting the measure on to the statute book, taking the view that it may do some good and would certainly do no harm?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I have always been cautious about taking the latter point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has made. I always appreciate the noble and learned Lord’s contributions, but just putting something on the statute book because it might work is probably not a particularly good way of going about things.

Having said that, the Government are serious about evaluating this issue. We know that it has been rather disappointing in Scotland—I think the noble and learned Lord would know that from his own experience—and I gave some illustration of that. It may not be the solution, but it is certainly a possible solution, and I urge the House to allow the Government to evaluate that in a proper fashion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Coity (Lab)]

My Lords, I spent 28 years representing people in the retail sector and I support this amendment. In the main, the people we are talking about are women and girls under the age of 18. They are the ones who face up to the criminals who enter the stores and do damage to individuals, who are frightened to death doing their job. As I said, in the main we are talking about young girls and women in the retail sector in this country. We are not talking about big, bruising men who can handle the situation but women and young women who are frightened to death in carrying out their work. I expect the Government to do as the amendment suggests and protect the people who are being damaged by villains and criminals who enter stores up and down the country.

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was kind enough to mention me, and perhaps I may add a footnote to what he said about Scotland and the measure that deals with emergency workers. Of course, an assault, in both the law of Scotland and the law of England, is a crime, and in a sense you could say that it was not necessary to pass that measure at all because any court when presented with evidence of an assault would pass an appropriate sentence if the individual was convicted.

However, the value of the measure, which got a lot of publicity, was its deterrent effect. After all, the last thing that one wants is to have the assault committed. The Government in Scotland were trying to reduce the very unfortunate crescendo of assaults on emergency workers—firemen, ambulance people and so on—and to some extent the measure appears to have had that effect. Therefore, the deterrent effect is as valuable as any sentencing. As I said, in an ideal world, if something was a crime, the individual tempted to do the act described as criminal would refrain from doing it. It is because of the deterrent effect that I think there is a good deal of force behind the amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I thought that at the previous stage the noble Lord, Lord Condon, had it right when he said he feared that,

“the real mischief they and we might seek to address is not the absence of suitable offences but the absence of action”.—[Official Report, 4/12/13; col. 255.]

I asked questions of my noble friend about sentencing, the aggravating nature of that type of offence and so on, and I am afraid that I have not changed my mind about those two aspects.

I am interested in the definition of “worker” in the noble Lord’s amendment. One qualifies, as it were—that is not quite the right term but he will know what I mean—only if one is “physically present”. Reading that, I wondered how that works with his requirement for malice in subsection (2) of the proposed new clause. When I saw the word “malice”, I thought that he had in mind, for example, someone who—possibly for very personal reasons—does not like people who work in jobcentres but then discovers that his neighbour works in a jobcentre. Is that malice towards all such people for that sort of reason or are we talking about something very personal? Does it mean being in the workplace or in the sort of situation that I have suggested, hanging around until one’s neighbour comes out of the house and having a go at him for that reason?

I was also interested in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause. If I remember rightly—I have not gone back to check—I think that on the previous occasion the noble Lord talked about “evidence from a single source”. That seems to be a matter for the courts. We should not tell the courts how to assess evidence. If he is saying that there is some restriction on the way they are working at the moment, it may be a different matter—but, again, that made me wonder where the noble Lord was going with this.

On the aggravating nature of the offence, we have to be careful not to devalue the importance of that approach to sentencing. This, of course, is not the only aggravating factor for the courts, but the Sentencing Council does a very important job in identifying appropriate aggravating factors.