Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Paddick and Earl Attlee

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I oppose these amendments. I attended the meeting yesterday with my noble friend Lady Berridge and other noble Lords. We all agree that any alcohol in the blood will adversely affect someone’s driving. There is no doubt about that. As regards Amendment 175 about young drivers, this is not a matter for my noble friend the Minister in the Home Office but I was very disappointed that the Government wimped out on graduated driving licences, but of course that is another matter.

I am far from convinced that the experiment of lowering the blood alcohol level in Scotland will have the desired effect. I worry that it may even have a negative effect. We will have to wait and see. Next year we will get the statistics from Scotland and have them analysed carefully and we will know for certain which side of this debate is right and which is wrong. If I am wrong, I will be perfectly happy to say, “I was wrong”. The wise course of action will be to wait and see and get those results from Scotland and, if necessary, put pressure on the Government to make sure that those results are analysed skilfully and quickly.

I will say a word about the rural economy. If this change is the right change in terms of road safety, we should do it. In this ongoing debate, I have not heard any new arguments in the past few years. If the Opposition want to support these amendments, they will have to explain what has changed. The party opposite, when in government, had at least two excellent Ministers for Road Safety and the very same arguments that have been presented today were presented to those Ministers but they did not make the change. If the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, supports the amendment, I would love to know what has made his party change its position.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, in response to similar amendments in Committee, the Minister pointed out that reduced drink-drive limits in other countries did not necessarily result in fewer drink-drive-related deaths. She went on to highlight the importance of penalties, which are harsh in the UK: enforcement, although this is likely to be less with the cuts in recent years to roads policing in the light of cuts to police budgets generally; and hard-hitting campaigns that have successfully made drink-driving socially unacceptable in a way that it is not in other countries. But these are not alternatives to a reduction in the drink-drive limit; they would still apply.

Reducing the opportunities to evade prosecution and carrying out medical tests to ensure that offenders are not dependent on alcohol before they get their licences back are also very good steps. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, made some very powerful points. She said that the number of drink-drive-related deaths had been static over recent years. My understanding is that the overall number of deaths on the roads has been reducing over the years because of improved safety. If it is true that the number of drink-drive related deaths is not reducing in line with that, it is an increasing problem, not a static one.

A wide range of organisations—motoring organisations, the police and others—supports a reduction in drink-drive limits. Although I found the arguments around the different limits in Scotland and in England and Wales a little complex—rather like a whodunit—clearly there is an anomaly there. The plain and simple issue is that current drink-drive limits enable people to take the risk of having a drink and driving. The proposed limits would deter people from drinking anything before they got into a car. Surely that would be safer. On balance, and having discussed this with our transport spokesperson, we support the amendments.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Paddick and Earl Attlee

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, to which my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have added our names. My argument is quite simple: when we were discussing the Immigration Act, the Government proposed a philosophy of full cost recovery for visa applications and the Immigration Service generally. On 18 March this year, they increased the fees for visa applications, in some cases by 25%. Family and spouse visas are now £1,195, adult dependent relative visas are £2,676, and settlement applications have increased to £1,875. British citizen naturalisation certificates are now £1,156 for adults and £936 for children.

There is currently a government consultation on immigration appeal fees, which proposes an even greater increase to ensure full cost recovery. The consultation suggests a fee for an appeal on the papers to the First-tier Tribunal should increase from £80 to £490, and from £140 to £800 for an oral hearing. If the Minister is not going to agree with these amendments to ensure full cost recovery for the issuing of firearms certificates, will she explain why a different approach is being taken to the principle of full cost recovery when it comes to immigration? In particular, can she refute the obvious allegation that the Government are discriminating against foreign nationals as set against those who go hunting with guns for sport?

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have some sympathy for the position articulated by noble Lords opposite. However, it needs to be remembered that shooters have to buy their guns, ammunition and facilities and that they pay value added tax at 20%. There is actually huge government revenue from the shooting fraternity, as 20% of everything they spend on shooting comes back to the Government. I can see the noble Lord, Lord Harris, getting very excited. It must be a very powerful argument. I have expressed sympathy for the noble Lords’ position but I give a note of caution: we should not forget the tax revenues from shooting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, although perhaps not quite in the terms he suggested. This is a very serious problem. Any firearm that is lost or stolen will almost inevitably find its way into the hands of criminals, whether terrorists or not. It is an extremely serious problem. Because we have world-class controls on firearms, stealing firearms is one of the few ways in which criminals or terrorists can arm themselves. Clearly, there would have to be some investigation to establish whether negligence was involved or not. I understand that, at the moment, when a firearms licence is up for renewal the police will consider what the security arrangements are to store firearms and, indeed, whether any firearms have been lost or stolen by that certificate holder. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Harris, that this is not taken seriously enough at the moment, that there are very serious potential consequences and that this definitely needs further consideration.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, while I am grateful to the noble Lord for moving this amendment, I am curious about what he means by “negligence”. He talked about the problem of firearms being stolen. If a gun owner has properly kept his firearms in the storage facilities that have already been approved by the police and a burglar comes in and successfully and quite quickly gets into the gun cabinet and steals the firearms, has the firearms owner been negligent or not?

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Paddick and Earl Attlee

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. Any alcohol whatever will to some extent cause a reduction in driving capability and increase the risk of having an accident. I am saying that we need to be careful and take advantage of a full range of statistics from the Scottish experience. I was disappointed with the Department for Transport because it could not tell me at what point it thought it would get useful statistics from Scotland.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am generally supportive of the amendments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. From my recollection of what she said, there was evidence of people involved in accidents who were not above the current legal limit but were above the proposed limit, and therefore there was some evidence that reducing the drink-driving limit would be beneficial. Am I wrong?

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Paddick and Earl Attlee

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, although I have sympathy for everything that has been said in this debate, I support those noble Lords who oppose Amendment 194. We need to consider the position of a police officer who has to deal with an exceptionally violent situation. If this amendment were agreed, the police officer would have to get much closer to someone who is extremely violent. We have technology that we can use and strict controls on how it is used, and we should not deny the police the ability to use Tasers in these circumstances.

[Lord Paddick]

In her response, could the noble Baroness tell the Committee whether there is any information on the effectiveness of the Tasers used in those situations? Anecdotally and from my own experience, the mental state of some people means that Tasers have no impact. Perhaps she may be able to help the Committee on that point as well.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Paddick and Earl Attlee

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. I hope that the Minister will also remind us why we are changing the name at all. Legislation could be used to change the function, composition or governance of the body, but I would like to be reminded why we are changing the name at all. The general public are used to the term “IPCC” and they know what it does —and now we are changing it.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I added my name to the three amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and say to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that the IPCC has an uphill task because, necessarily, it has to rely to a large extent on former police officers as investigators. It does not do itself any favours by appointing, as it has done at least at some point in its history, a former staff officer to a Commissioner of the Met as its head of investigations—that hardly inspires confidence in those looking at it subjectively from the outside or conveys the message that it is completely independent.

Cynics might say that removing “Independent” from the title of the organisation is an outbreak of honesty in the Government. But that is not the direction that we should be moving in. This should not be seen simply as a cosmetic change; it needs to have some substance behind it. To call it the Office for Police Conduct, without “Independent” in there, is manna from heaven to those who want to criticise the new body as not being independent at all. For those reasons, I strongly support these amendments.