Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 27th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, first, I have absolutely no doubt about the Minister’s commitment to dealing with the sorts of offences we are talking about today, particularly violence against women and girls. I also have absolutely no doubt about the Government’s commitment to tackling those issues. This makes the Bill even more puzzling. We support all the amendments in this group, but I want to look at this from a slightly different angle.

This group of amendments is intended to ensure that certain categories of crime are always included in the serious violence duty. It raises the wider issue of what this whole chapter of the Bill is about. Crime and disorder partnerships—noble Lords will know from previous debates that I am quite keen on these—have for many years been responsible for a multiagency approach to preventing and tackling crime and disorder in their areas, including serious violence. They have the advantage of being able to assess what local needs are and prioritise the crime and disorder that is a particular problem in their areas.

In light of these well-established existing partnerships, one must ask why there is a need for an additional serious violence duty. There has been much concern about knife crime in recent years and Scotland has demonstrated how successful a public health approach to the problem can be, where police enforcement is just part of a multiagency, multipronged approach to tackling knife crime. There may be characteristics of the knife crime problem in Scotland and solutions tailored to tackle them there that may not be completely transferrable to other parts of the UK, but the general principle is sound: law enforcement is only one of many approaches that need to be brought to bear on a problem.

If the Government were focusing solely on this type of serious violence, one could understand, in the face of the growing public concern, that a public health approach to knife crime might be mandated—but that is not what the Bill says. However, there are clues in other parts of the Bill that that is what the Government were initially thinking. For example, we will shortly come on to offensive weapon homicide reviews and serious violence prevention orders, which are all about knife crime.

The Bill talks about serious violence generally, including threats of serious violence but excluding terrorism. It goes on to talk—in Clause 12(4)—about a list of factors that must be taken into account, such as: the maximum penalty that a court could impose; the impact on the victim; the prevalence of the violence in the area, and the impact on the community. Presumably, other factors could be considered when the local area is considering its own serious violence. This effectively makes any violence serious—for example, hate crime. Hate crime should be considered serious violence because, by definition, it has a serious impact on the victim.

Amendment 55, from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, says that domestic abuse, domestic homicides and sexual offences should always be included in the serious violence duty. As the noble Lord, Lord Polak, said, how can any of these offences not be considered serious violence? If the Government do not accept this amendment, can the Minister say what types of domestic abuse, domestic murder or sexual offence are not serious, or in what areas they are not far too prevalent? Amendment 56 also includes stalking, for the reasons that my noble friend Lady Brinton so powerfully argued.

Amendment 57, from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, includes all violence that results in emergency hospital treatment, or GBH—for very good reasons. As I mentioned in discussion on an earlier group, as the noble Lord did just now, the Cardiff model—that of sharing depersonalised accident and emergency information on knife and gun crime with the police—has proved invaluable. Furthermore, as the definition of serious violence includes threats of serious violence, my noble friend Lady Hamwee is quite right to point out that social media and other electronic communication—the impact of which may go beyond the geographic area for which the authorities that have a serious violence duty have responsibility—require a duty that goes beyond a single area.

In defining serious violence in such a wide way, the Government must either accept that all violence has the potential to be serious, or risk being accused of saying that violence associated with hate crime, violence against women and girls, domestic violence, and almost any other form of violence, is not serious, or should not be treated as serious in every police area.

What the Government should have done, and what they should do now, is go back and look at crime and disorder partnerships, which are already established and responsible for preventing and tackling all forms of crime and disorder—as their consultation on this issue said they should. They should look at where crime and disorder partnerships need to be strengthened —whether, perhaps, to include partners not currently involved—or where legislation needs to be changed to facilitate co-operation and the exchange of information, instead of mandating others to provide information to the police to enable a police-led enforcement approach to tackling serious violence—whatever that means. Of course, we will support all the amendments in this group for as long as the Government continue with such a broad definition of serious violence.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords I await with interest the Government’s response to all the amendments in this group. My name also appears on Amendment 55, which, at the beginning of this debate, was so ably and comprehensively moved, as we knew it would be, by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. This issue was raised by the shadow Minister for Policing in the House of Commons, and I only hope it receives a more enthusiastic hearing from the Government in this House, given that it is being presented with such strong cross-party support across the House.

The serious violence duty introduced by this Bill, as we know, requires local authorities, the police, fire and rescue authorities, specified criminal justice agencies and health authorities to work together to formulate an evidence-based analysis of the problems associated with serious violence in a local area and then produce and implement a strategy detailing how they will respond to those particular issues. Prison, youth custody and education authorities may also need to work with these core partners.

As more than one noble Lord has said, the amendment is clear and straightforward in its intention, which is to make clear in the Bill that the definition of serious violence for the purpose of the serious violence prevention duty includes domestic abuse, domestic homicide and sexual offences. That begs the question of why this amendment is necessary. As the noble Lord, Lord Polak, said, and he was not the only one, is it not obvious that domestic abuse, homicide and sexual offences must come within the definition of serious violence? Apparently it is not. Despite domestic abuse representing one-third of violent crime recorded by the police and despite 20% of all adult homicides and 50% of adult homicides where the victim is female being domestic homicides, the Government’s serious violence strategy does not recognise domestic abuse and sexual violence as forms of serious violence.

No doubt, that is one explanation why between April 2014 and March 2020 the annual number of domestic abuse-flagged cases referred to the Crown Prosecution Service by the police fell by 37%, with similar declines in prosecutions and convictions. No doubt, it is also one explanation why over the same period of time the annual number of prosecutions in rape-flagged cases fell by 55% and the annual number of convictions fell by 44%. No doubt, also, it is one explanation why in the year ended March 2020 only 9% of domestic abuse-related crimes and 1.4% of rape-flagged cases recorded by the police led to a charge or summons.

This Bill’s proposed serious violence prevention duty places a requirement on public authorities to collate and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence. While Clause 12 explicitly includes some named forms of violence, such as violence against property and threats of violence, to ensure that they are regarded as a form of violent crime across the board, violence against women and girls is not put in the same category, even though rates of domestic abuse and sexual violence, as so many other noble Lords have said, are consistent across England and Wales and do not vary greatly from one area to another.

Instead, intended Home Office guidance simply says that local areas can consider violence against women and girls as part of the new duty if they choose to and not that it is expected. Clearly, the Home Office is not too fussed one way or the other what areas decide on this very serious issue. There are attacks on statutes, and the Home Office gets very troubled. There are violent domestic attacks on human beings, particularly women, and the Home Office, however different the reality may be, appears so laid back that it wants to leave it to other people to make their own decisions on whether to regard these attacks as serious violence. It appears to want to leave it to other people to decide whether these dreadful attacks come within the scope of the serious violence prevention duty and the requirement on a range of public bodies, including local statutory agencies and the police, to work together to prevent and tackle serious violence with the aim of reducing the numbers of victims and perpetrators of such dreadful crimes.

Explicitly including domestic abuse, domestic homicide and sexual violence in the sexual violence reduction duty and its multi-agency approach would send a clear message to the police, prosecutors and a range of statutory agencies, including local agencies, that violence against women and girls is just not acceptable and that they all have to play a crucial role in tackling it.

At the moment there appears to be a distinction within the criminal justice system so that violence that takes place in the home or at the hands of an intimate partner is regarded as less serious than violence perpetrated in the public sphere. Only around one-half of police forces, as I understand it, have opted to take up Women’s Aid’s Domestic Abuse Matters specialised training on domestic abuse. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, said, only eight of the 18 violence reduction units established in police force areas, which are funded by the Home Office and considered forerunners to the new violence prevention duty, name domestic abuse in their strategies.

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[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for this stand part debate. If the Committee will forgive me, I will say, as quickly as I can, a word or two about how I perceive the role of police and crime commissioners up until now.

Clause 13 is clearly an important element in establishing, from the Government’s point of view, a serious violence reduction duty on a more statutory basis—if I can put it that way—than exists presently. This obviously involves police and crime commissioners in particular. It is important to remember—I think this is what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was getting at, in part—that police and crime commissioners have, in their nine-year existence, voluntarily worked hard to establish partnership working and commission partnership services. In many cases, they have taken a lead in those partnerships.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding—not, I am sure, in this Committee—that, somehow, the only real role for police and crime commissioners is to hold their police force, and the chief constable in particular, to account. That is a crucial part of their duties, but I point out—the Committee does not need this pointing out—that they are not just police commissioners but crime commissioners as well. At the very least, they should have a significant duty to find ways to prevent crime and its effects on victims and society, working alongside partners, of course.

This is not about dealing with crime that has taken place, whether it is antisocial behaviour or serious violence. It means dealing with what has become a hackneyed phrase but is crucial here: the causes of crime, going back to early childhood development and early intervention. It is always about poverty and its effect on crime. It is about bad and lousy living conditions, and it always involves looking after the vulnerable, whoever they may be—we are all vulnerable at some stage or other in our lives. Above all, it is about preventing lives being thrown away, whether they are those of victims or perpetrators. I have to confess—noble Lords may have already realised that this is what I am about to say—that this kind of work or duty, as I call it, gave me and many other police and crime commissioners the greatest buzz of all.

It was crucial to achieving anything that one worked with partners, local and national, very much including government. To their credit, the Government set up violence reduction units, changed their support—I do not mean that in any bad way—and became very keen on the public health approach to dealing with these matters. That was a huge and important change, and many of us were convinced by the work that we did and seeing what happened in Scotland that this was the right course to take.

Where I was police and crime commissioner, we have what we call a violence reduction network, rather than a unit. I argue that it has achieved quite a large amount already, with great projects. My predecessor as police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire ran and started an office of the police and crime commissioner-run strategic partnership board, or SPB, which, by the time I left office, included all—I mean all—of the main public services in the area covered by the force, from local government to health, education, the police, fire and ambulance services and more.

The other example I give is that I was the chairman of the East Midlands criminal justice board. Other police and crime commissioners were chairs of their local boards or whatever they chose to call it. Clearly, if Clause 13 and other parts of this chapter pass into law, there will be—I am guessing that this is how the Government will put it—more statutory backing for this way of approaching the serious violence reduction duty. I am not against that in principle, but my one concern is that, in my experience, police and crime commissioners are a little bit like elected mayors: if they are good, they are very good, and they can make a huge difference, but if they are not so good, they can make a huge difference the other way.

I was lucky in that I had a brilliant team working for me in my office. As it happens, it has been decimated by my successor, but that is for another day, certainly not for today. Also, when I was there, other police and crime commissioners, whatever their party politics or lack of it, seemed to me to be able people who wanted to do the right thing and were very committed. As the noble Baroness and the Committee will know, many new police and crime commissioners were elected in May this year, which is no doubt a good thing, and many more of them were women—it is about time, too. It is too early to say whether they will grab these extra opportunities, but I hope that they will.

There are two big issues as far as the future is concerned in the real world. One, of course, is data sharing, which the Bill is very concerned about, and so it should be. So often, people of good will get together on behalf of organisations that are not prepared to share data. That has to change in this area, otherwise there will be no achievement. The second issue—I hate to mention it but it is the usual one—is funding. If we are going to fund all these exciting proposals, it will require government to take a leading step in that.

I am grateful to the Committee for listening to my speech. I thought it might be useful in terms of this clause.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her explanation of government Amendment 59. She said it makes a minor clarifying change, and we have no concerns to raise on it. However, I look forward to the Minister’s replies on the questions and issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and my noble friend Lord Bach. I am not sure whether I have fully understood this issue, and if what I am going to say now indicates that I have not, I apologise in advance.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, indicated in his explanatory statement, which he repeated, that he has tabled the Clause 13 stand part Motion so that he can

“probe how the provisions of this Bill and the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 will work in practice; and the relationship between Crime and Disorder Partnership and Police and Crime Commissioners.”

As I understand it, Clause 13 provides that local policing bodies, such as PCCs and the Mayor of London, may assist authorities in delivering the serious violence duty, monitor how authorities are exercising their duties, report back on their findings to the Secretary of State and be given authority by the Secretary of State to assist the duty in specific ways, such as providing funding or convening meetings on the duty. It also provides that authorities must co-operate with local policing bodies. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 created community safety partnerships, and that raises the issue of how this duty will interact with the existing duties on CSPs.

The Government have published draft guidance on the serious violence duty. It says:

“In order to comply with the duty it is not necessary to create a new partnership, instead the specified authorities should use existing partnerships where possible and with appropriate modifications.”


It goes on to say:

“The Duty is an opportunity to simplify and add focus to existing partnership arrangements rather than add any additional complexity to the current multi-agency landscape.”