Offensive Weapons Bill (Fifth sitting)

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Before we begin our detailed line-by-line consideration of the Bill, it might be helpful, particularly for one or two Members who might not have sat on a Bill Committee before, if I ran through the way we tend to operate. Broadly speaking, all rules of procedure, address and behaviour are very similar to those in the main Chamber. Amendments have been tabled, and although we seem to be short of the lists of amendments to be debated, we have sent off urgently for a further supply, which will soon be available in the room and online.

The selection list shows how the amendments have been grouped. Broadly speaking, the Chair, advised by the learned Clerks, groups together amendments that cover similar subjects so that they can be discussed in one debate. The Member who puts their name to the first amendment in a group is called to speak first. Other Members can then catch my eye in the normal way. The Member who tabled the amendment is then called to wind up at the end of the debate. Before that Member sits down, he or she should tell me whether they intend to seek to withdraw the amendment or put it to a vote. It is important to remember to do that. I add to that the presumption that the Minister will seek a decision on any amendment that the Government have tabled.

It is worth noting, for those who do not know, that decisions on amendments are taken not in the order they were tabled, but in the order they appear in the Bill. Therefore, a vote on an amendment may well come not after the debate on that amendment, but at a later stage of consideration. At the end of the consideration of amendments to each clause, there may or may not be a debate on whether the clause should stand part of the Bill. The Opposition may ask for such a debate if they wish, but if there has been a fairly substantial debate on the amendments to the clause, then by and large we tend not to have a stand part debate and there will be a vote. I hope that is reasonably clear. The Committee met in July and agreed a programme motion. It is printed on the amendment paper and lays out the order in which we intend to consider the Bill.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Gray. I do not believe you were in the Chair for our first evidence session, but I raised a point of order because we had not seen the consultation responses to the Bill. The Minister promised to publish them, but we are yet to receive them two months after that request. I made the case then, and believe it still to be the case, that it is difficult to scrutinise a piece of legislation if we have not seen all the published evidence around it, so I seek your guidance on that.

[The Chair]

Although that is not technically a point of order, the hon. Lady makes a particularly good point about how the Committee will be better informed by having the Government’s response to the consultation. I therefore hope that the Minister has heard what the hon. Lady had to say, and she will no doubt wish to bring forward the Government’s response in due course—she might even wish to raise a point of order about it.

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[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 42, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, after “sell” insert “or supply”

This is a probing amendment to debate whether the scope of the offence is broad enough or should be extended to include supply without payment.

Thank you, Mr Gray, for your whistle-stop tour of the procedure to be followed during these proceedings, and I apologise in advance if I get something wrong. I hope that you and all hon. Members feel suitably refreshed after our summer recess. At the outset, may I reiterate the Scottish National party’s support for this Bill? I know there has been significant and close working between the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments on this issue, which covers a mixture of devolved and reserved competencies. We have tabled some probing amendments to allow for discussion on one or two issues that arose during our evidence sessions, and I will keep an open mind about the other amendments tabled by the Opposition, to see whether they can improve the Bill.

We support the creation of the offence in clause 1, and the thrust of Government amendments 13 and 14. We are sympathetic to amendment 51, although we suggest that the drafting might need some work. For example, it is not clear to me whether approval of both Houses is the right mechanism in cases where Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice is the appropriate national authority. Perhaps there should also be a role for Police Scotland alongside the National Police Chiefs Council.

I turn to my amendment 42. In the evidence that the Committee heard on this issue, one witness expressed the view that supply as well as sale should be an offence. On the other hand, we received evidence from another witness that it should not. The concern of that particular officer was about the risk of making supply an offence where there was a perfectly reasonable domestic circumstance—for example, a parent giving a cleaning product to their child. Obviously my amendment would not resolve the issues highlighted by the second witness. However, it cannot be beyond the wit of Government to create an offence that excluded such domestic circumstances, but nevertheless covered circumstances where corrosive substances were supplied for free rather than simply sold.

My concern is about, for example, where person A, aged 20, gets together with person B, aged 16, in their house, B says he is going to attack person C, and person A then supplies him with a corrosive substance. It is not clear to me whether A’s actions in supplying that substance in advance of the attack are adequately covered by the criminal law. I simply seek an assurance that they are covered by other offences or that the Government will give further consideration to whether supply without consideration should be an offence.

[Louise Haigh]

I welcome all members back to the Committee after the recess. I apologise if my hair is blinding anyone under these lights; it is a little brighter than I anticipated. I rise to speak to amendment 42, tabled by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East—I apologise that I am unable to pronounce his constituency properly, so he will be the hon. Member for the SNP for the purposes of this debate.

The Opposition have also grappled with this important issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham raised it on Second Reading and we believe it requires clarification from the Minister. First, it is as well to state clearly the problem raised by the amendment that needs to be solved. The widespread use of corrosive substances, in attacks where other offensive weapons would previously have been used, is a relatively new phenomenon. It has been horrifying to see their continued use and the spread of attacks beyond certain gangs to which they were first limited. For that reason, under law, it is clear that a high residual tolerance to them remains, even after public and Parliamentary tolerance has waned.

That is partly because such substances are used for perfectly innocuous purposes, such as household cleaning, or in industrial products. The same cannot be said, for example, of firearms. However, in recent years the climate has changed. I dare say we will hear further discussion on that throughout the debate on clauses 1 and 2. The first and most apparent reason is that the use of such substances in life-shattering attacks has increased. The most recent evidence suggests an increase of 400 attacks since 2012, from around 200 to over 600. The UK now has the highest rate of per capita acid attacks in the world.

The tragic attacks include reports of an attack on a three-year-old child and an incident where an attacker used corrosive substances in a nightclub, injuring 20. Corrosive substances are becoming a favoured weapon in muggings and thefts. It cannot be ignored as a factor that for many years now there has been a high level of parliamentary tolerance towards such corrosive substances. The most recent changes to the Poisons Act 1972, made by the Deregulation Act 2015, even watered down the existing controls, despite the fact they are clearly not strict enough. That is why amendments such as this are important in testing the law around supply. While the amendment is important in its own right, it also speaks to the broader legal architecture around corrosive substances, where we are now playing catch up.

This probing amendment raises a two-fold issue. In the first scenario, a gang member supplies an offensive weapon with the explicit intention that an individual would use it to carry out an attack. Would that be an offence? In the second scenario, an individual supplies a corrosive substance to a person under the age of 18 who has no lawful purpose for having it, but not knowingly with the intention that an individual would use it to carry out an attack. Would that be considered an offence?

I believe that the answer is yes in the first scenario and no in the second, but I would be grateful for guidance from the Minister. The guidance we have been given is that the first offence—the supply of an offensive weapon with the intention that it be used to carry out an attack—is not covered by specific legislation for corrosive substances. However, in this example it would be considered an offence under general law, given that person A knowingly supplies person B with a corrosive substance, where person B intends to carry out an attack on person C. Such conduct, involving assisting or encouraging another person to commit a crime, could be prosecuted using either the general criminal law concept of secondary liability or the inchoate offences such as conspiracy.

The Crown Prosecution Service has clear guidance on secondary liability that explains the general concept, which would be relevant to this specific type of offence. A principal is one who carries out the substantive offence; a secondary is one who aids, abets, counsels or procures the principal to commit the substantive offence. The example that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) gave on Second Reading would already be covered in general law.

There is a difficulty with the second scenario: can a person be guilty of supplying a corrosive substance to an under-18 that turns out to be an offensive weapon if they do not know that the individual will commit an offence? In other words, why would it be illegal to sell corrosive substances listed under schedule 1 to an under-18, but not to supply any corrosive substance to an under-18?

The crux of the issue is that, without intent, corrosive substances exist under law as innocuous substances rather than as dangerous weapons. The weak Deregulation Act 2015 and Poisons Act 1972 allow any non-regulated substance to be supplied to a child, an under-21, an under-18 or any individual with a criminal record. In fact, under law it is perfectly acceptable for a criminal convicted of using a corrosive substance in an attack to hold a reportable substance. If that substance was ammonia, for instance, which is responsible for many of the attacks in which a corrosive substance is used, it would be perfectly legal for them to possess it or for any individual to supply it to them.

We do not think that there would be public tolerance for criminalisation of the supply of acid, which could have unintended consequences—for instance, criminalising a mother or father in the home who supplies a household cleaning substance to a child. However, there must be scope to broaden the architecture of legislation around corrosive substances and under-18s, as the Government prefer—or under-21s, as we prefer—and to prevent convicted criminals from possessing such substances.

Aside from possession and sale, the Bill does not suggest any further criminal offences or controls for corrosive substances, despite clear evidence that such substances are becoming the weapon of choice for individuals as a direct result of the ease with which they can be obtained. There is an entire architecture for more traditional offensive weapons that would allow for such control and for the CPS to select charges for that array of offences. I hope the Minister will consider that and say why the Home Office has not considered them.

As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East mentioned, one option would be to consider supply to be a general offence. As mentioned, that could have a range of unintended consequences, but if we are to ban the sale of corrosive substances to under-18s, it seems inconsistent that it would still be perfectly legitimate for an individual to supply a corrosive substance to a minor for the same purposes.

The Home Secretary was clear on Second Reading about the intention behind clause 1:

“of course it is wrong that young people can buy substances that can be used to cause severe pain and to radically alter someone’s face, body and life. There is no reason why industrial-strength acids should be sold to young people, and the Bill will stop that happening.”—[Official Report, 27 June 2018; Vol. 643, c. 924.]

The evidence we have seen shows that the real issue is about young people getting their hands on this acid. We have seen examples of them getting hold of it and separating it into two mineral water bottles, then carrying it around and using it to devastating effect. These measures, alongside the measures on possession of acid in a public place, will combine to make a big difference to the situation we find ourselves in. However, as the Bill stands, it will still be possible for young people to, in the words of the Home Secretary, get their hands on such substances. Anybody—a parent or a friend over the age of 18—could purchase or have in their home a regulated substance or a substance listed under schedule 1 and it would not be an offence for that person to supply acid to the under-18.

It is clear that the Bill does not do what the Home Secretary thinks it does. Should the Government fail to put this right and create a specific offence of supplying such a substance, we will have to return to this issue on Third Reading. We therefore fully support the amendment, which seeks to test the law on the availability of corrosive substances. It is clear that the law is inadequate. It would be welcome to hear from the Minister whether she is open to further measures.

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There is a strong case, and the evidence points clearly at the assertion that 18 is too low a limit in the present case. I therefore ask the Committee to support amendments 1 to 9.

[Louise Haigh]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham on his amendments and on a compelling speech about why the Government and the Committee should accept them. I fully support amendments 1 to 9, which, as he said, cover in this context the elements that my amendment 53 deals with in relation to knives. I commend my right hon. Friend for his work on acids in the past year, ever since the horrendous attack in his constituency. He has been tireless in pushing for some of the measures in the Bill, and that is a testament to his fantastic work in his constituency.

The fear in the community, which my right hon. Friend spoke about, is real. I saw that when I was out with Operation Venice, the Metropolitan police team tasked with tackling moped crime in Camden and Islington. There was real fear on the streets there; people did not feel they could walk down the street to the local shop or pub for fear of being attacked. Assurances from the police that the attacks are targeted and not random—which I hear in my constituency in relation to violent crime—do not seem relevant to people when they happen on their doorsteps. That is one of the consequences of the attacks that the Bill and amendments are intended to tackle.

It is as well to explore the reasons for the use of acid, and then to examine whether a simple ban on under-18 sales is sufficient. A study from the Royal College of Psychiatrists found that acid

“can be thrown from a distance towards a victim, from a moving vehicle (such as a moped…) or even blindly through a window, so the perpetrator does not even have to see the effect”

of their crime. The document states:

“Studies have shown that people judge harm resulting from physical contact as morally worse than harm resulting from no physical contact. This may explain the use of acid in robberies, where the primary goal is theft of goods rather than desire to hurt the victim—the perpetrator may judge the use of acid as less morally wrong than using their bare fists”

or weapons, even if the effects of acid are undeniably far more severe.

Gangs concentrated in inner-city areas may account for why most acid attacks in the UK occur in London. Gangs are thought to be responsible for half of all shootings and a fifth of serious crime, of which acid attacks are a component, in London. Violence is commonly associated with gangs and can be deemed necessary to retain their members’ honour or social standing. The prevalence of such violence may be due to people with psychiatric problems, such as antisocial personality disorder, joining gangs to exercise their violent tendencies.

Studies have shown that gang violence has a contagion effect, with gangs committing more serious and more visible crimes than other gangs to assert their dominance. That is clearly what we have seen with acid attacks, particularly those concentrated in the east end of London. With acid attacks being highly publicised and the victims suffering visible deformity or disability, it is perhaps no surprise that they are becoming popular among gangs.

Gangs also rely on theft to support themselves and may use acid as a weapon in their crimes. With recent efforts in London to reduce knife crime, clear acid carried in a water bottle is a much more discreet weapon to carry on the street. Using acid as weapon may therefore be a pragmatic decision for some perpetrators. It carries lower sentences than crimes involving a weapon such as a knife and is usually charged as grievous bodily harm, whereas knife crimes often carry the more serious charges of attempted murder or wounding with intent.

The Opposition believe that the evidence is clear. Generally speaking, there are two types of acid crime: those where the perpetrator is likely to know the victim, done to cause irreparable harm or disfigurement—acts of revenge in most cases—and the increasing phenomenon in our major cities of the use of acid as a weapon of choice in, for example, robbery. Is it therefore wise to limit the age control on purchase to just 18 if the purpose is to prevent organised crime gangs from using acid as a weapon in crime?

According to the Metropolitan police, 75% of suspected attackers and around 60% of victims are between the ages of 10 and 29. Unlike in much of the rest of the world, the majority of victims in the UK are men—roughly 2:1. The Metropolitan police have been clear that they attribute the increasing use of acid to gang-related incidents.

As well as the FOI response that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham received for his borough, the Government have conducted an impact assessment that shows that just one in five acid attacks are carried out by under-18s. Extrapolated to the latest available figures, for illustrative purposes only, that would mean that 1,663 of just over 2,000 attacks were carried out by over-18s. As my right hon. Friend made clear, although restricting the sale of acid to under-18s would help, it would not make a serious dent in the available figures, based on the Government’s assessment.

If we look more broadly at evidence of young people’s involvement in organised crime, the picture is consistent. Although those recruited into organised crime tend to be under 18—recruited from local schools, inclusion centres, and from among homeless and looked-after children, as Home Office analysis has shown—members of organised crime groups and their associates are generally older: between 19 and 25. That suggests that perhaps the restrictions need to apply to those even older than 21. Practitioners report that more than 60% of gang members tend to be between 18 and 24 and a third are between 15 and 17.

If the Government intend to respond to the UK phenomenon of the involvement of acid in street crime, particularly in London, all the evidence suggests that prevention of sales to under-18s will be helpful but nowhere near sufficient. That is why we support my right hon. Friend’s sensible proposals to raise the age limit to 21. That is compelling for several reasons: first, only limited evidence supports the existing proposal of 18, and secondly, my right hon. Friend’s proposal tackles the actual issue rather than attempting to fit it into the parameters of existing law.

I was also particularly struck by the words of Acid Survivors Trust International:

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the attacks are part of gang related activities and that acid is becoming the weapon of choice. The UK does not have tight controls on the sale of acid and nor does it have legislation specific to acid attacks. ASTI has campaigned for tighter controls on the sale of acid and a review of sentencing. In the UK, unlike many countries, men make up the majority of victims.”

The trust fully supports the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend.

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[Victoria Atkins]

The amendments have been tabled following, as I said at the beginning, very good engagement with the Scottish Government, and they reflect the different legal system in Scotland. Amendments 13, 15 and 18 extend the time limits that would otherwise apply for the prosecution of the summary-only offences contained in clauses 1, 3 and 4. Under section 136 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, any summary-only offence in Scottish law is required to be prosecuted within six months of the commission of the offence.

However, that time limit can be changed if express statutory provision is made. The amendments do just that by providing that prosecutions will be required to be brought within 12 months of the commission of the offence, rather than six. That is because forensic testing may well be required to prove the offences in court. That is particularly an issue under Scots law, given that all criminal offences prosecuted in Scotland require corroborated evidence. It is therefore anticipated that forensic testing may become more of a feature in prosecutions in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK, and this extension seeks to reflect that position.

New clauses 5 and 6 are the substantive clauses that create an evidential presumption in Scotland. New clause 5 relates to the offences in clauses 1, 3 and 4 and provides that any substance that is in or was in a container is recognised as being a substance as described on the label for the container. However, that presumption can be rebutted by the person accused of the offence if they give at least seven days’ notice of such an intention prior to trial. New clause 6 provides for a similar presumption for the offence in clause 5. The intention behind the amendments is to make the prosecution of the offences in clauses 1, 3, 4 and 5 more straightforward in Scotland.

If I may, I will speed over the very interesting notes I have on Scottish law, because I suspect I would only be trying to repeat what the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East knows very well. The basis behind the clauses is to assist the implementation and effectiveness of the clauses in Scotland and under its legal system.

[Louise Haigh]

I hope this is in order. As these clauses relate to sentencing, evidential provisions and technical definitions of “defence”, I wanted to seek clarity from the Minister on the different thresholds contained in the clause in relation to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, separate from Scotland. There appear to be small, but significant differences in the wording of “defence” as stipulated in the legislation; clause 1(2) and clause 1(3) contain one example, whose formula is repeated throughout the Bill. The clause states that

“it is a defence for a person charged in England and Wales or Northern Ireland…to prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence.”

Whereas for Scotland, the due diligence and precautions are explicitly included in the Bill.

As regards the sale of corrosive products under clause 1(4),

“the accused is to be treated as having the accused is to be treated as having taken reasonable steps to establish the purchaser’s age if and only if…the accused was shown any of the documents”—

namely, a passport, an EU photocard driving licence or any other document as Scottish Ministers prescribe—

“and…the document would have convinced a reasonable person.”

Will the Minister clarify whether there are different evidential thresholds for the separate jurisdictions? It seems preferable that we would have the same prescriptive threshold in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as in Scotland.

[Victoria Atkins]

The differences are simply to reflect the differences between Scottish law and the law in the rest of the United Kingdom. As I said, Scottish law requires corroborated evidence. We need to ensure that any necessary forensic testing can be undertaken, for example. The reasons behind the defences are to keep things in step with the law that is already the case in Scotland and to enable the defences to be applied appropriately. As I referred to, we have a legislative consent motion from the Scottish Government already, and they are supported by the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service, which will be responsible for prosecuting the offences in Scotland.

Amendment 13 agreed to.

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[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that I can reassure him that this is not, as he fears, a failure to cut and paste and ensure that the Bill is consistent; it is entirely deliberate. In clauses 1 to 4 we have sought to deal with the most harmful corrosive products. We have used the word “products” in clauses 1 to 4, and “substances” in clause 5 and onwards, because those are the products that we want to ensure that retailers have listed, and understand very clearly must not be sold to under-18s. The offence of selling a corrosive product to a person under 18 is defined by clause 1(9) of the Bill as any product that is a substance listed in schedule 1, or that contains a substance with a concentration level higher than the limit listed in the second column of the schedule.

I know that the right hon. Gentleman has noted that we have put hydrofluoric acid down at 0%. There is a certain intellectual, philosophical point about whether something can exist at 0%. The concern of the scientists, and this is all led by scientific evidence, is that that acid is so dangerous that any trace elements of it whatsoever have the potential to do real harm. We have sought to make it as clear as possible to manufacturers and retailers that selling a product that contains any amount of that substance to under-18s falls foul of schedule 1. We understand that manufacturers and retailers need clarity on which products they can and cannot sell to under-18s if they are to avoid committing a criminal offence.

Corrosive substances appear in a vast range of products—everything from vinegar and lemon juice to industrial strength cleaners. The intention in clauses 1 to 4 is to ban the sale of products that contain sufficient amounts of particular corrosives that they are capable of being used in acid attacks, which is the particular harm that we are seeking to address. It is not the intention to ban the sale of corrosives per se—only the ones that can be used as a weapon.

We need to be clear to manufacturers and retailers that the intention is that they will barcode the appropriate products, so that the shop assistant at the till will be alerted to any potentially restricted sales. It will also enable online retailers to be clear about which products can and cannot be sent to a residential address. The approach of setting out particular chemicals and concentration levels mirrors that used in the Poisons Act 1972, which is an approach already understood well by retailers and manufacturers.

I turn to clause 5 onwards, which is the offence of possession in a public place. The right hon. Gentleman asked me whether hydrofluoric acid is included in clause 5; it is. All the substances in schedule 1 are, by definition, there because they could do harm. It follows that they fall into the simpler definition of corrosive substances under clause 5.

[Louise Haigh]

Will the Minister clarify whether all these substances at any concentration will fall under the definition in clause 5?

[Victoria Atkins]

I will return to that point in a moment, if I may.

On clause 5 generally, we have taken a different approach because we want to reflect the operational realities of police officers on the ground trying to deal with situations in which they think a young person or people have potentially decanted corrosive and harmful substances into different containers. They are not chemists and they do not have a laboratory on the street to help them decide whether the exact concentrations set out in schedule 1 have been met, so we wanted to come up with a definition that could be used widely as part of operational policing, based on the effect that the substance could have.

We use “substance” from clause 5 onwards to differentiate it from the schedule 1 substances. The resulting definition captures all the substances listed in schedule 1, all of which are capable of burning human skin, but it might also include other substances that are capable of such burning, by corrosion, for example an acid not currently listed there. It will also help police, subject to the stop-and-search consultation that we have open at the moment, to seize substances they find on the street without having to worry about their specific chemical make-up. We hope, therefore, that by having two separate definitions of corrosives in the Bill we are addressing both the operational needs of the police and the expectations of manufacturers and retailers, while also helping them.

In response to the hon. Lady’s query about lower concentrations, the level could be lower, for example 10% rather than 15%, but for some it is a very low concentration, for example at 0.5% it may no longer burn the skin. The point is to enable officers on the ground to make arrests as they deem appropriate, and in due course the substances will no doubt be examined and the appropriate offence charged, if a charging decision is made.

I hope that I have reassured the right hon. Member for East Ham on his concerns about having two different definitions. Ultimately, they are meant to try to ensure that the most dangerous, harmful substances are caught by schedule 1, while also ensuring that police officers are able to do their job on the ground, day to day, under clause 5.

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[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful for that way of communicating that information. That does sound helpful.

The Minister mentioned vinegar and, presumably, possessing vinegar in a public place will not be an offence. Surely we are talking about things which will do serious damage, which, it seems to me, takes us back to the attractions of the schedule 1 approach.

I made it clear at the start that I am not planning to push this to a vote, but I think there is a danger here that police officers will be given a rather unclear duty and have an unclear obligation imposed on them by this part of the Bill. As we have debated it, the view I suggested at the start has been strengthened. The clarity schedule 1 brings would be helpful in clause 5, as well as in clauses 1 to 4, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Louise Haigh]

I beg to move amendment 49, in clause 1, page 2, line 21, at end insert—

“(c) all substances listed under Schedule 1A of the Poisons Act 1972”.

This amendment would list all of the substances listed under Section 1A of the Poisons Act 1972 “corrosive products”, making it illegal to sell them to a person under the age of eighteen.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 11, in schedule 1, page 36, leave out line 11.

[Louise Haigh]

As we have noted, there has been support from right hon. and hon. Members for the principles behind restricting the sale of acid and for acid possession offences. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham has made a compelling case in many previous debates for restrictions on and licensing of acid, particularly when she spoke about the implications of the bonfire of the quangos in 2015 and the consequences of that deregulation.

We are living with the consequences of changes under that legislation, which meant that a whole band of corrosive substances and poisons were made freely available for sale with little to no real control. We believe that was a big mistake and I hope the discussion today will give the Government cause to rethink, particularly as regards some of the evidence presented in this amendment and in new clause 16, which calls for a much broader rethink of the classification under section 1A to the Poisons Act and the decision to create a sliding scale of regulatory controls on reportable substances and regulated substances, despite evidence of serious harm in both categories. The principle behind that deregulation of poisons and corrosive substances was made in a very different climate to that of today. In 2015, corrosive substances was seen, in the words of the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), as “perfectly innocuous,” rather than the potentially offensive weapons that we are discussing today.

As amendment 49 attempts to address, there are also issues with which poisons would be available for sale to under-18s. In our view, as we heard in discussions of previous amendments, it is much too narrowly drawn. Although it is not perfect, we accept the amendment would at least establish controls on a band of poisons and corrosive substances that were deregulated previously, preventing their sale to under-18s. In reality, we believe that the Government should go much further and look at re-designating many of the reportable substances as regulated substances, in line with the recommendations of the Poisons Board before its abolition.

Schedule 1, which we believe is too narrowly drawn, counts only nine corrosive substances that would be prohibited for sale to a child. We believe that is problematic, as it allows for sale certain poisons that are harmful to health and that can be bought and sold online with ease. I will refer to just a few of the substances, by way of example. They include nitrobenzene, which is toxic if swallowed, can cause acute toxicity if it comes into contact with skin, is toxic if inhaled, is suspected of causing cancer, and may damage the fertility of an unborn child. Although it is a reportable substance under schedule 1A to the Poisons Act, it does not currently feature in schedule 1 to this Bill, meaning that it can be sold to any child who wishes to buy it.

Yesterday, while I was searching for reportable substances, I looked at whether it was possible to purchase pure acetone on eBay. Again, acetone is a reportable substance under schedule 1A to the Poisons Act, but under this Bill any child could buy it. According to the Government’s own website, acetone is toxic following inhalation or ingestion, is an irritant to skin that can cause dermatitis and can lead to corneal damage if it comes into contact with eyes. It is manufactured in large quantities to produce a variety of products, including nail polish and varnish removers, plastics, paint, adhesives and inks, and it is also used to make other chemicals, such as acetylene. In South Africa, pure acetone was used in an acid attack that scarred a woman for life and caused severe burns to her face and body. Pure acetone of a concentration of 99.5% can be bought on eBay for £17.50. In this instance, however, that is not the fault of the platform; it is very clearly the fault of the lack of existing regulation of substances that, in the wrong hands and in high concentrations, can cause serious damage.

Methomyl is perhaps the most troubling. It was originally used as an insecticide for agricultural purposes, before widespread concerns began to emerge about its potential toxicity. Despite that, it is readily available online as we speak and within the UK it is only a reportable substance, meaning that retailers only have to report suspicious transactions. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has said that of methomyl that it is

“a highly poisonous material in humans. It is highly toxic if it is ingested or absorbed through the eyes, moderately poisonous when inhaled, but of lower toxicity with skin, or ‘dermal’, exposure…Methomyl is a highly toxic inhibitor of cholinesterase, an essential nervous system enzyme. Symptoms of anti-cholinesterase activity include weakness, blurred vision, headache…abdominal cramps, chest discomfort, constriction of pupils…muscle tremors, and decreased pulse. If there is severe poisoning…confusion, muscle incoordination, slurred speech, low blood pressure, heart irregularities, and loss of reflexes may also be experienced. Death can result from discontinued breathing, paralysis of muscles…intense constriction of the openings of the lung, or all three”.

We believe that we need a comprehensive approach to restrictions on sale and we are concerned by the measures in schedule 1. The focus on under-18s entirely ignores the evidence and fails to consider the issue in the round. Quite frankly, it is chilling that such poisons, which can cause so much harm in the wrong hands, are freely available online.

The previous regime was not perfect, but the most dangerous substances could only be sold by a pharmacist in a retail pharmacy business and sales had to be recorded on a register. Substances in part 2 of the poisons list could be sold only by retailers that had registered with their local authority. Under the previous system, acids could only be purchased from registered retailers, which were usually hardware or garden stores. According to the Government’s explanatory notes to the Deregulation Act 2015, that Act was intended to

“reduce the burdens on business. The Poisons Act 1972 and the Poison Rules 1982 were highlighted as adding burdens to businesses”.

We also note that during the 2012 review the Government rejected the views of the Poisons Board, which has now been abolished. The board had suggested tighter controls on the sale of corrosive substances, so I ask the Minister if she will now commit to publishing that evidence, which has never entered the public domain.

As I have said, we would like to see the Government to go much further in this area. We need to see wholesale reform of the treatment of individual poisons, so that where there is clear evidence that an acid is capable of causing harm and is toxic to human health, it is designated as a regulated substance, which will bring with it a suite of controls, including on possession and supply. That would include substances such as hydrochloric acid and ammonia, which have no place on general sale. This amendment is a starting point, as it would regulate all poisons and corrosive substances under section 1A to the Poisons Act, preventing them from getting into the hands of children.

[Victoria Atkins]

Amendment 49 seeks to amend schedule 1 to include all substances under schedule 1A of the Poisons Act 1972. The substances covered by the Poisons Act are regulated poisons, regulated explosive precursors, reportable poisons and reportable explosive precursors. The reason we have a separate schedule for the Offensive Weapons Bill, rather than aligning with the provisions in schedule 1A of the Poisons Act, is that the Bill seeks to prohibit the sales of certain corrosive products by retailers to those under the age of 18. There are similarities between the two schedules, and schedule 1 of the Bill contains eight substances that are also included in schedule 1A of the Poisons Act. Those are two regulated explosive precursors—nitric acid and sulphuric acid—and six reportable poisons.

We have based the substances in schedule 1 on scientific advice from DSTL. I hope members of the Committee have had the opportunity to read that evidence. As I have said, the rationale for having a separate list rather than using the substances in the Poisons Act is that the Bill focuses on the harm caused by attacks using corrosive substances.

Substances that could be used in the illicit manufacture of explosives or that are poisonous are already subject to control on sale and supply to members of the public through the Poisons Act. For the schedule of corrosive products in the Bill, we have included those substances, after taking the scientific advice I mentioned, which we know have been used in attacks or which are so corrosive that, if misused, could cause permanent harm and leave someone with life-changing injuries. In order that the schedule continues to reflect the latest intelligence or evidence, there is a power in the Bill that allows the Secretary of State to amend the schedule should anything need to be added, removed or amended.

It should also be stressed that the Poisons Act and the Offensive Weapons Bill, although having a small number of the same substances in their schedules, seek to achieve different legislative controls. We are of the view that it would not be right to combine the two given the very distinct policy aims of each piece of legislation. The Poisons Act is primarily aimed at controlling substances that could be used in the illicit manufacture of explosives or are poisons, which is dealt with through a cohesive licensing and reporting regime, whereas the prohibitions in this Bill are aimed primarily at preventing the retail sale or delivery of products that we know have been used in attacks. We are of the view that having two different legislative rationales and regimes for control of substances in one schedule would lead to burdens on law enforcement, retailers and manufacturers alike.

[Louise Haigh]

Before the Minister concludes her remarks, will she confirm whether the Department received scientific or medical advice specifically on the chemicals I mentioned—nitrobenzene, acetone and methomyl—and in particular acetone, given that there has been an attack using that substance?

[Victoria Atkins]

If I may, I will write to the hon. Lady, because she raises an important point. I emphasise that the Bill has a schedule that reflects its policy intent and not that of other legislation. I ask her to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I fear that my inadequacy in chemistry at school is about to be shown up. I will not try to give expert evidence on the concentration of hydrofluoric acid except to describe what I have been told: that hydrofluoric acid is highly reactive with glass and many metals; that it is apparently used for specialist purposes in stained glass working, glass etching and geology; that it is highly corrosive and readily penetrates intact skin, nails and deep tissue layers; and that skin exposure to any quantity can be dangerous. When the laboratory was asked for safe concentrations, the advice was that it is difficult to set a concentration limit due to the high corrosiveness of this acid.

However, I have heard what the right hon. Gentleman says about his disappointment with the evidence given by the laboratory, and I will ask it to provide him with a more detailed response, since this is obviously of interest to him. The test or threshold that was set was whether the product could cause permanent damage and whether it was available in products that people can buy. I am also happy to commit to write to the Committee on the point he made about borderline products. As for the point about 0.0000001%, I will ask the laboratory specialists to answer it in the correspondence. I appreciate his testing of the inclusion of these substances in the schedule, but we have done that on the basis of the evidence we have been given by scientists, obviously following analysis of the offences committed.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about bleach, which is also known as ammonium hydroxide. Household bleach is not captured by the age restrictions under schedule 1. Sodium hypochlorite is a primary constituent of various household bleaches but is contained within thresholds where it would not cause permanent or life-changing injuries. The threshold for sodium hypochlorite has been set at 10% as that is the threshold beyond which the chemists at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory have advised us permanent damage would be caused. The kind of products captured within that threshold include commercial bleaches, swimming pool disinfectants and oxidation products. I reiterate: if in the future it is thought that further substances should be added, or the schedule amended, we have the power to make changes through statutory instruments made under the affirmative procedure. I hope that I have reassured the right hon. Gentleman, subject of course to the extra information to be provided by the laboratory. I invite him not to press his amendment if he feels able to at this stage.

[Louise Haigh]

I thank the Minister for her as ever thorough response. I look forward to receiving the written representation about the chemicals I mentioned. I understand and accept why the Poisons Act contains a different schedule. I am satisfied that the provisions under subsection (10) will enable sufficient flexibility to allow modification of schedule 1. I hope that all of us, collectively as Parliament, will be able to hold the Government properly to account to ensure a review as and when evidence is forthcoming. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Louise Haigh]

I beg to move amendment 51, in clause 1, page 2, line 24, at end insert—

‘(10A) The appropriate national authority may only modify or remove a reference to a substance under Schedule 1 following the publication of evidence pertaining to that decision by the appropriate authority and subject to approval from both Houses of Parliament.

(10B) In subsection (10A) the “evidence pertaining to that decision” must include—

(a) a report by the National Police Chiefs’ Council on the use of the substance in attacks; and

(b) a report by relevant clinicians on the effect of the substance.’

This limited amendment follows on from our previous discussion, with particular relevance to the Deregulation Act 2015. On the previous amendment, I raised the issue of evidence from the Poisons Board, and I hope that the Minister will consider my request to make public the evidence and advice that the Government received from the board in 2012 in the most recent review of the poisons scheduled under the relevant Act.

Given the enhanced public concern about the use of substances and the reasoning for the Bill, we believe that it would be inappropriate for the Government to amend the definition without appropriate scrutiny and consideration by relevant bodies. The amendment includes, but is not limited to, the police and relevant clinicians, although I heard the comments of the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East about the need for other bodies, such as Police Scotland, to be involved in such a review.

The amendment rests on the data provided by the National Police Chiefs Council being vastly improved. As we have heard, the data about acid attacks is not remotely sufficient. That data would form the basis of the evidence pertaining to the decision to remove or add a substance to schedule 1. The Government, with the NPCC, are looking at the reporting of attacks that use corrosive substances. We would welcome an update on that work.

The amendment also stipulates that

“a report by relevant clinicians on the effect of the substance”

must be provided. That part of the amendment is broadly drawn to allow Ministers to take appropriate advice, but we would expect such a report to contain information on toxicity, respiratory functions, and the effect of ingestion and contact with the eyes. As we heard, focusing simply on whether a product is capable of burning human skin by corrosion is not necessarily appropriate.

We hope that the Government will accept the amendment in the spirit in which it is intended, to allow for a more informed discussion about which poisons are and are not on the list in schedule 1, and which are intended to be in the future.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Paul Maynard.)

Offensive Weapons Bill (Sixth sitting)

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Atkins]

The appropriate national authority will be the Secretary of State in England, Wales and Scotland, and the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland. We will consult the Scottish Government, however, because clauses 1 to 4 deal with matters that are reserved in relation to Scotland.

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about where in the Bill the affirmative procedure is specified. Clause 37(2) requires that regulations be

“approved by a resolution…of each House of Parliament.”

As ever, I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his forensic eye for detail, and I invite the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley to withdraw the amendment.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

As with the previous group of amendments, I thank the Minister for her response. I am satisfied that the legislation referred to in clause 1(10) will fulfil the objective that our amendment was attempting to achieve. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: 14, in clause 1, page 2, line 29, at end insert—

“( ) See section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 1, 3 or 4) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland.”

This amendment and Amendments 16, 19, 20, 31, 33, NC5 and NC6 provide for certain evidential presumptions relating to the nature of substances that are or were in containers to apply in Scotland in relation to an offence under section 1, 3, 4 or 5 involving a corrosive substance or product.—(Victoria Atkins.)

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Louise Haigh]

There is an issue that has not been raised through any amendments, and I hope the Committee will bear with me as I briefly address it. Clause 1(8) relates to the coming into force of section 281(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. We attempted to table an amendment to ensure that this provision is enacted within six months of the Bill coming into force. The subsection was legislated for 15 years ago and is still to come into practice. There is concern that the Government continue to bring forward legislation—as I am sure the previous Labour Government did—that rests on magistrates courts being able to give sentences of up to 12 months.

I understand from previous conversations with the Minister’s colleagues that there are some issues for the Ministry of Justice around enactment but, 15 years on, we need to overcome them. If we cannot, we should not be putting such provisions into new legislation, pretending that we can. I would like the Minister to clarify whether we are likely to see those provisions coming into force. If not, should we not be clear in the legislation that, in reality, the sentencing is six months and not 12 months?

[Victoria Atkins]

I note that the amendment in question was not permitted in the groupings, Mr Gray. With regard to the 2003 Act, the hon. Lady has correctly identified that this is a Ministry of Justice matter, and this small Bill is not the place to introduce a provision that will have ramifications across the whole of the criminal justice system. We keep magistrates’ sentencing powers under review, but there is currently no intention to implement provisions of the 2003 Act in the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Clause 2

Defence to remote sale of corrosive products to persons under 18

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[The Chair]

Just for the information of the Committee, the consultation responses from the Government are now available and in the room, if hon. Members would like to have a look.

[Louise Haigh]

Thank you, Mr Gray, and I thank the Minister for providing those consultation responses. We welcome clause 2 on defence to remote sale. It is an extremely important part of the Bill, because a significant proportion of the purchasing is likely to occur online, as it does at present.

Our concerns relate to the defence to remote sale under condition A, which I referred to earlier:

“that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”.

In subsection (6)(a), a seller is regarded as having taken all due diligence if they

“operated a system for checking that persons who bought corrosive products…were not under the age of 18”.

We know from evidence given to the Committee that there are concerns about what a system for checking persons who bought corrosive products would look like. Would it look like the online age verification controls introduced by the Digital Economy Act 2017? That would present significant difficulties. That legislation was limited to major commercial players, which have the means and capacity to implement age verification controls. However, such controls have proven perilously difficult to implement in a workable form. Has the Home Office considered what standard of age verification software or controls would be acceptable under clause 2?

The British Retail Consortium said:

“Ideally, we would like to see some standards, so we can be sure that online age verification systems developed by businesses such as Yoti and others will be accepted as due diligence by the enforcers.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2018; c. 62, Q154.]

Currently, offline systems are standardised and clearly laid out in the legislation, but it is difficult for retailers to be sure that they are complying with online systems, which is why the Government are banning the delivery of corrosive products and bladed articles to residential premises, to make sure they are complied with. However, I want to press the Minister on what age verification controls the Government have considered and, as we will come to later, why they do not consider them sufficient to prevent the delivery of corrosive products and bladed articles to under-18s.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her speech. We have not set out in the Bill the measures that businesses could take to satisfy themselves that the person to whom they are selling is under 18 because we are conscious that different age verification systems are available, and the technology is developing at a very fast pace, as we have seen in relation to the Digital Economy Act 2017. We did not want to stipulate a specific approach in primary legislation for fear that it would quickly run out of relevance.

However, there are conditions of due diligence under the defence in clause 2. There has been a certain amount of misunderstanding about the conditions in the defence relating to knives—which I will come to in due course—but clause 2 is about ensuring that these dangerous substances are not sold to under-18s. We want sellers of these products to understand from the very beginning that they have a duty of due diligence to determine the age of those to whom they are selling. We know, from experience of other age-controlled items, that businesses will quickly develop these systems. It will be for the seller to show that they have robust age verification systems in place.

[Louise Haigh]

I completely agree, and I would never advocate including technological guidance or prescriptions in primary legislation. However, would it not be advisable to set standards that we expect retailers to comply with, for both corrosive substances and bladed articles, particularly given the very low rates of prosecution by trading standards? Perhaps there is an issue with “due diligence” being too vague for trading standards to be able to bring prosecutions forward.

[Victoria Atkins]

In other statutes—for example, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974—we have the test of “reasonably practicable”. I am anxious that, if a case reaches the court, we do not bind the hands of a magistrate in determining the facts of the case. I will happily consider what I think is the hon. Lady’s point about whether there is scope to provide best practice, guidance and so on, but we are of the view that the defence as it stands should be set out in statute and that it should then be for businesses and retailers to ensure that they comply with the law.

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful for that reply, but a bit concerned that the Home Office had not already planned to issue guidance to online retailers. With something like this, I would have thought that, given that some retailers are not currently subject to age verification legislation at all, the Home Office would automatically issue guidance on what it would expect such age verification to look like—not best practice, but a standard beneath which a retailer would not be able to fall under the legislation. Is that not the case?

[Victoria Atkins]

We will publish guidance when implementing the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3

Delivery of corrosive products to residential premises etc

Amendments made: 15, in clause 3, page 4, line 35, at end insert—

‘(13) In Scotland, proceedings for an offence under this section may be commenced within the period of 12 months beginning with the commission of the offence.

(14) Section 136(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 (date when proceedings deemed to be commenced) applies for the purposes of subsection (13) as it applies for the purposes of that section.”

This amendment provides for proceedings in Scotland for an offence under Clause 3 to be brought within 12 months of the commission of the offence. Under section 136 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 the default period for bringing summary proceedings is 6 months.

Amendment 16, in clause 3, page 4, line 35, at end insert—

‘( ) See section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 1, 3 or 4) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland.” —(Victoria Atkins.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.

Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I rise to speak to new clause 9. It arises from a number of conversations that I had with a man called Mr Raheel Butt, whom I would briefly like to tell the Committee about. He grew up in West Ham, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), rather than in East Ham, and as he would freely acknowledge, he went wrong for several years and served a term in prison. I think he left prison in 2012, and since then he has made it his mission to try to ensure that other young people do not make the same mistakes he made. He set up a community interest company called Community & Rehabilitation Solutions, which works with the Metropolitan police in a number of ways, and he is very concerned about the ease with which people can get hold of very unpleasant weapons and corrosive substances—the new clause covers both corrosive substances and bladed weapons.

I arranged to meet Mr Butt a couple of weeks ago, and he came to Portcullis House to have a conversation with me about this issue. About five minutes after he was due to turn up, I realised that he had not arrived, so I gave him a call on his mobile. He said, “Well, the problem is I don’t know how to get past security with my offensive weapons.” I had not realised that he was planning to bring his offensive weapons with him, but that was indeed his intention. It caused a significant security alert; I actually never got to see the offensive weapons, because they were taken off him before he managed to get through Portcullis House security. I suppose that was reassuring.

The point he wanted to make, however, was that it is extremely easy to buy the most dreadful weapons online extremely cheaply. For example, I am just looking at a product that he pointed out to me—the ones he showed me are all readily available on eBay, and I know there are other websites where they are available as well. “Ultralight Self Defense Tactical Defense Pen Outdoor Glass Breaker Writing Pen” is the name of a product that costs £2.84 on eBay. It is designed to look like a pen, and it does look like a pen, but it is actually a lethal weapon. My worry, which I am sure is also the Minister’s worry, is how to stop these things getting into the hands of people who want to do harm with them, of whom there are sadly far too many at the moment.

Clause 4 covers the delivery of corrosive products to people under 18, and clause 15 covers the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. In both cases, the Bill places requirements on the suppliers. My worry is what happens in a case such as one Mr Butt drew my attention to. That ultra-light product on ebay.co.uk is supplied by a Chinese company called vastfire-luz. My worry is whether this legislation will cover companies such as that one in China, or companies elsewhere, that are sending these very damaging and unpleasant items to people in the UK.

I know that clause 15, on the delivery of bladed products to residential premises, puts in place arrangements to cover the situation where the supplier is outside the UK. An onus is placed on the delivery company; we will no doubt come to that in due course, but it is not clear to me how effective that will be. If a Chinese company posts an item, which could be in a perfectly innocuous small package, to somebody in the UK, will the arrangements in the Bill help us pick up that it is, in fact, a lethal weapon that is being delivered? It might be delivered by the Royal Mail through the post or by a delivery company of some kind. It is difficult to see how the measures in the Bill, although clearly intended to stop that kind of delivery being made, will in practice have that effect for suppliers determined to get around the impediments being put in their way.

That is the reason I have tabled new clause 9, which I accept looks like a rather odd proposition on the face of it, to move that a person

“commits an offence if they knowingly purchase an offensive weapon from a seller located in a country that is not a member of the European Union.”

The Bill is intended to manage sellers and delivery agencies, but I am sceptical whether that will work in practice. Through my new clause, I instead place an onus on the purchaser and, indeed, on people such as eBay who are facilitating these sales, and say to them: “If you are an individual purchasing an offensive weapon from a seller outside the EU, that is an offence.” That would be one way of shifting the onus on to the purchaser. Clearly, it would still be possible for businesses to import items into the UK in the ordinary way. What I am worried about is individuals buying the dreadful implements that are freely on sale at the moment, on eBay and elsewhere and that, as far as I can see, the well-intentioned measures in the Bill will not capture. This proposal would be another way of trying to stop those very damaging things getting into the country.

[Louise Haigh]

I rise briefly to congratulate my right hon. Friend on the ingenious way he has brought forward the new clause to tackle the thorny issue of websites outside the UK and the difficulties that the Government will have in prosecuting those who attempt to sell corrosive substances and, indeed, bladed articles, which are dealt with later in the Bill.

I want particularly to address the issue of platforms. As my right hon. Friend said, platforms such as Wish, eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Amazon proliferate the use of horrendous weapons. In 2016, a teenager killed a young man called Bailey Gwynne in a school in Aberdeen. He was cleared of murder, but convicted of culpable homicide. He had paid £40 on Amazon for a folding knife with an 8.5 cm blade. It is illegal even under the current law—prior to the Bill—to sell a folding knife to a buyer aged under 18 if the blade is more than 3 inches long, but that 16-year-old had been able to get around Amazon’s age-verification checks by pinning a note to his front door rather than accepting delivery in person.

I am sure that large retailers and online providers such as Amazon will comply with this new legislation, but individual sellers who sell through Amazon, Facebook Marketplace, eBay and so on are unlikely to comply, so there has to be a way, if we do not use the exact wording that my right hon. Friend has proposed, for us to crack down on platforms; otherwise, we will leave a gaping hole that will render essentially meaningless the worthy principles that the Bill is designed to implement.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East and the right hon. Member for East Ham for the amendments and the new clause. If I may, I will deal with amendments 43 and 44 first and then move on to new clause 9.

I start by saying that, sadly, it is of course not just in the context of the use of offensive weapons that there are people who do not have the scruples that we do when it comes to crimes and harms; they use online platforms to sell their wares. Indeed, only yesterday my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary gave a powerful speech on his expectations of all members of the tech industry when it comes to addressing the horrific prevalence of child sexual exploitation online. We are discussing here a different form of criminality, but of course we have to work to ensure that criminals do not have a gaping hole open on the internet to sell these horrific weapons.

Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 prohibits the sale, importation and other things of disguised knives. The Bill extends that to cover their possession, so I hope that that addresses the point made about the disguised weapon that Mr Butt—

--- Later in debate ---

Offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place

[Louise Haigh]

I beg to move amendment 52, in clause 5, page 6, line 44, after “otherwise” insert

“, and any place other than premises occupied as a private dwelling (including any stair, passage, garden, yard, garage, outhouse or other appurtenance of such premises which is used in common by the occupants of more than one such dwelling).”

This amendment would extend the definition of public places in relation to England and Wales and Northern Ireland.

This amendment was specifically requested by serving police officers because of concerns about the definition of public place referenced in this clause. I appreciate that it is also referenced in other pieces of legislation, so I fully accept and expect that the Minister will raise concerns about differing definitions of public place, but it is important to have this debate about the clause, given the gravity and extent of the offences that could be committed, and because of the police’s concerns that the definition is too narrow and limits their powers in the event of possession in a communal area of a residential dwelling.

Our intention is to make it absolutely clear that “public place” also refers to any area that is exempt from the definition in the Bill due to its not being a place where any ordinary member of the public has access, but which is still regarded as a public place because it is not within a premise occupied as a private dwelling. Such places include any stair, passage, garden, yard, garage, outhouse or other place of such premises that is used in common by the occupants of more than one dwelling.

The amendment helpfully mirrors legislation in Scotland that gives the police broader powers to ensure the safety of residents in communal areas—clearly because of criminality that has taken place in such areas and in response to the police’s limited powers to take action. The existing definition of “public place” in section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 is

“any highway and any other premises or place to which at the material time the public have or are permitted to have access, whether on payment or otherwise”.

In Scotland, in this Bill and other legislation, it is

“any place other than premises occupied as a private dwelling”,

such as a garden, yard or outhouse. That reflects the existing definition of “public place” in Scottish legislation. The offence of having an offensive weapon, or a bladed or pointed article, in a public place is set out in sections 47 and 49 of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995.

A 2011 report by the Scottish Government explained that the definition was changed to capture locations such as the ones in our amendment. The explanatory note to section 37 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 made it clear that possession in a public place offences

“may be committed by possession of an offensive weapon or a knife on the common parts of shared properties such as common landings in tenement blocks of flats.”

We strongly believe that these measures must be extended to those public places to bring security to residents in those areas and to give the police the power to act if offensive weapons are possessed within them. It is clear that the police need and want this power, and we see no reason why we should not align ourselves with the measures in Scotland.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to Opposition Members for tabling this amendment. It proposes that we extend the definition used in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to bring it closer to the definition used in Scotland, which would be an extension of the current definition and would include private properties. I absolutely understand why the police and others are seeking to close what they perceive to be a gap in the law. It appears that some private properties would not be covered by the offence in clause 5.

Of course, possessing a corrosive substance in a private place is not an offence. It may well be that some of us have an assortment of cleaning products that would qualify as corrosives in our home, so the Bill does not seek to make it illegal to possess a corrosive in a dwelling. There may well be properties that are not homes and have legitimate uses for corrosive substances, some of which we have already discussed during our scrutiny of the Bill. We do not want the Bill to criminalise members of the public who are going about their daily lives or enjoying a hobby outside their home.

The amendment applies solely to the offence of possession. It is worth noting that a number of other criminal offences are available to the police, in relation to threatening with a corrosive. For example, there is the offence of threatening the use of a corrosive substance as an offensive weapon, and it would be possible to charge a person with common assault under the 1998 Act or with a public order offence. I can see that there may be some benefit in expanding the definition to cover possession in all places that are not dwellings. I would be grateful if the Committee would allow me time to consider this matter further with my officials.

[Louise Haigh]

I am very grateful that the Minister is willing to consider the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: 20, in clause 5, page 7, line 4, after “See” insert “—

(a) section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 5) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland;

(b) ”—(Victoria Atkins.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Stephen Timms]

I very much welcome the inclusion of clause 5 in the Bill. It is a very important step forward to make an offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place, in exactly the same way as having a knife in a public place is an offence. I am hopeful that the Bill will address some of the problems we have seen in areas such as mine.

I just want to ask the Minister one question. Subsection (2) makes the point that it is a defence for somebody if they can prove that

“they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place”.

Subsection (3) goes on to say that it is a defence if the person has the corrosive substance with them for work. Will the Minister set out what the courts should expect to regard as a good reason for carrying a corrosive substance in a public place? I think that all of us would rightly accept having it for work to be a perfectly defensible reason. I wonder whether there is a risk of getting into some difficult areas where people come up with a raft of potential excuses for carrying acid in a Lucozade bottle. Has there been any thought about what would count as a good reason or lawful authority for having this substance, to give some guidance to magistrates courts and others who might themselves quite quickly having to make these judgments when cases come before them?

[Louise Haigh]

May I request a couple of clarifications from the Minister? She mentioned testing kits earlier. Are they to be made available to every constable in every police force in the country? If not, to whom will they be made available to enable testing while on the beat, so to speak?

With regard to the definition in clause 5 about not burning human skin. We discussed bleach earlier; household bleach does not corrode skin, so would that not fall under the definition in clause 5, since it does not in schedule 1? Will the Minister give us some examples of products that would match the definition in clause 5 but not come under schedule 1, if that makes sense?

[Victoria Atkins]

I will definitely have to write to the hon. Lady on that last point. That is all about concentrations and how long the substance has to be on the skin to corrode.

In answer to the question that the right hon. Member for East Ham asked about how subsection (2) as a defence adds to subsection (3), which is the specific work defence, it is to cover situations where, for example, someone might have bought a high-strength drain unblocker and are taking it to use at home. In the example he gave of the substance being decanted into a Lucozade or drinks bottle, the act of decanting the substance into another bottle would be a strong aggravating feature, certainly if I were prosecuting and hoping to prove my case on not being able to rely on subsections (2) or (3).

On the clause as a whole, we hope that this new offence will be able to help the police in the important and difficult work they do in tackling these crimes. I heard what the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley said about testing kits. We will have to review the policy of supplying them on the basis of what we know. After all, as the right hon. Member for East Ham said, his borough sadly has the highest incident of acid or corrosive substance attacks, but in other parts of the country they simply do not happen. I do not want to tempt fate or to mention the word “resources,” but we want to ensure that the resources are best deployed where the need is clear, as it is in some parts of London.

I hope that the Committee supports the clause, which will mean that the police can deal with someone carrying around acid for no good reason—

[Louise Haigh]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I shall give way just before I sit down.

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful to the Minister—I appreciate that she was literally about to sit down. I am a bit concerned about how that will work in practice. As a former special constable—I know I mention that often—I struggle to see how I would have implemented this offence without the testing kit being available. If I do not have such a kit and I stop and search someone, perhaps finding a water bottle, what am I meant to do? Obviously I am not going to test it on my own skin, so I would have to take the person to the police station to do forensic tests there, which seems like an unconscionable use of police resources. It is difficult to envisage how the police will implement the legislation if they do not all have the testing kit available, although I completely appreciate the Minister’s point about directing the kits to where the problem is most prevalent.

[Victoria Atkins]

Of course, the police will be leading our knowledge on this with the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs Council, so I do not want to commit to every single constable having a kit in their possession, in case those who know day-to-day policing in and around their force areas say, “Actually, we don’t think we need it in this area.” I do not want to make a promise, only for it not to happen in good faith. If I may, I will leave the Government’s answer as being that we will of course consult the police on the deployment of the testing kits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

I think my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South was asking whether it would be possible for this information to be made available before the Bill returns to the Floor of the House on Report. In particular, although I appreciate that its roll-out will be a decision for chief constables and police and crime commissioners, will it be made clear whether they will be provided by the Home Office or whether police forces will have to pay for them out of their budgets?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am conscious that the project team is being appointed and a work programme is being developed. I will use my best endeavours to bring those answers before the next stage of the Bill, but if I am not able to, that will be because these matters are out of my hands and the laboratory or others may need more time to provide those answers. We want to get the Bill passed as quickly as possible and we want to be able to help officers to use clause 5, where they need it, as quickly as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

Appropriate custodial sentence for conviction under section 5

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Louise Haigh]

As with the entirety of the Bill, we fully support the intention and most of the content of the clause, but we share the concerns of some of those who have given evidence to the Committee and to the Home Office about mandatory minimum sentencing for children. The clause has been lifted from an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, proposed by the former Member Nick de Bois, that introduced a two-strikes sentence, meaning that adults convicted more than once of being in possession of a blade will face a minimum six-month prison sentence and a maximum of four years, and that children aged 16 and 17 will face a minimum four-month detention and training order.

Since that legislation was introduced, there have been multiple media reports that have suggested that those sentencing arrangements are not being carried out for adults or children covered by that clause. Will the Minister provide details of how many offenders have been sentenced under those provisions and whether there has been monitoring of how many offenders do not receive a custodial sentence included in that clause, having been charged and convicted of knife possession on two separate occasions?

For example, the Telegraph reported in March 2016 that provisional data indicated that since the legislation was introduced, only 50% of offenders had been jailed, while another 23% had been given suspended sentences. Of those offenders, 907 were adults and 50% received a custodial sentence with an average sentence length of 6.6 months. It stated that

“The remaining 59 cases were offenders aged 16 or 17, with…46 per cent receiving an immediate custodial sentence.”

Has there been any review by either the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice of whether those reforms in the 2015 Act are being implemented by the courts—and, more importantly, of whether those reforms are effective? Are they improving public protection? Are they acting as a deterrent to children and adult offenders? Are they reducing recidivism? Has there been any review of the measures? If not, would it not have been desirable to conduct such a review before bringing forward the identical measures in this Bill?

Part of the written evidence we received came from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which made a compelling case as the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 passed through Parliament—it restates it here: that mandatory minimum sentences for children do not necessarily act as a deterrent, do not necessarily rehabilitate children who are caught with knives and do not ensure that the public are protected, as opposed to when the judiciary has full discretion.

The Children’s Commissioner said in evidence:

“I want to have a system that can respond to individuals, so my instinct is not to go down the mandatory minimum sentences route but to look at individual cases.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2018; c. 90, Q223.]

I fully acknowledge that during that same evidence session we heard from the Victims’ Commissioner, who said:

“I have to say that victims tell me they want mandatory; only then will it be effective.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 19 July 2018; c. 91, Q223.]

Of course, it is understandable that victims and the public at large should want to see people who commit, or intend to commit, abhorrent criminal offences sent to prison for a reasonable amount of time, but the ultimate objective of custody must be to reduce offending and keep the public more secure. To achieve that, we believe that we have to look at each individual case, especially when it involves children, and the judiciary should have full discretion to respond appropriately.

The Standing Committee for Youth Justice’s evidence is compelling in that regard. On the claim that custody acts as a deterrent, it contests that awareness of second sentencing among children is perceived by frontline practitioners to be low. There are many children in and around the criminal justice system who we would not expect to make rational choices, in the economic, behavioural sense of the word.

As well as that, children carry knives and weapons for numerous and complex reasons, often because of the perception that it is necessary for self-protection. Punitive measures, particularly custodial measures, are unlikely to act as a deterrent, even if the child is aware of the punishment and able to act rationally. In other words, for those children who fear for their safety and their lives, carrying a knife or corrosive substances may be seen as the rational course of action, and the threat they are facing—perceived or real—will be more significant than the threat of a custodial sentence. Research on deterrents has consistently supported that, with studies finding little or no evidence that sentence severity or the threat of custody acts as a deterrent to crime for children.

The statistics on knife-crime offences also support that evidence. Since the introduction of mandatory minimum custodial sentencing in 2015, the number of children convicted of possession or threatening offences involving bladed articles or offences weapons has risen.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I want to add to the sensible speech my hon. Friend is making. In the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, our first meeting was with about 15 young offenders who had been in prison for knife offences. We had a conversation with them about whether prison was a deterrent or not. Some of them said, shockingly, that going to prison was a relief, because it was a break from the streets. They could keep out of trouble and be fed. They were in a secure institution. Their lived experience was so tough that being in prison was not the worst thing in the world, so I endorse everything she is saying about it not necessarily being a deterrent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. She has done amazing work chairing the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime, following the tragic experiences of her young constituents. She brings that evidence and wealth of experience to bear, to show that it is not a deterrent.

The other argument made is around public protection. It seems obvious that if an offender is removed from the streets and detained, the public are better protected. That is undeniably true for many offence types and for prolific offenders, but children in and around the criminal justice system are a relatively transient group. They are quickly replaced by others. They can sometimes—more often than not—go through phases of criminality that they grow out of, so custodial sentencing is unlikely to have a significant impact on public protection.

The reoffending rates for children leaving custody are stubbornly high. Last year, more than 68% of children who left custody reoffended within a year, yet for those who received youth community penalties the figure—still too high—was 58%, which is significantly lower. We know from all the evidence that diverting children away from the formal youth justice system is more effective at reducing offending than any punitive response. I completely accept what my hon. Friend said about custody being a relief, but the evidence also indicates that custody is itself criminogenic: it encourages crime.

I am not for a second saying that offenders under 18 should not serve custodial sentences under any circumstances. Only a couple of weeks ago, a constituent of mine was attacked in the street and stabbed five times—including once in the heart and once in the lungs—by a 15-year-old, and I have urged the Crown Prosecution Service to review the sentence that he received on the grounds of undue leniency. However, that just demonstrates that every case is different.

Clearly, in the vast majority of cases, the carrying of acid for a second time should result in a custodial sentence. However, if the youth justice service and the judge deem that other interventions would be more effective, they should have the full discretion to impose them. I do not believe that subsections (2) or (4) provide for that. Will the Minister furnish the Committee with examples of the use of the sister clause of subsection (2) in the 2015 Act? It would be very helpful for us to understand in what circumstances that

“relate to the offence, the previous offence or the offender”

judges have chosen not to implement the mandatory sentencing otherwise expected in the 2015 Act.

I was interested to hear the Minister mention that one reason why the Government decided not to go above the age of 18 for the sale of corrosive substances and knives is that 18 is the internationally recognised age of the child. She is absolutely right: the UN convention on the rights of the child states that clearly. On that basis, how can we justify delivering mandatory minimum sentences for children, when so much of the evidence suggests that it is not effective or appropriate? The UN convention on the rights of the child states that mandatory sentences remove judicial discretion and the ability of courts to ensure that the penalty best fits the circumstance of the offence. Indeed, our own Sentencing Council in the UK said that a custodial sentence should always be a measure of last resort for children and young people; it seems that the clauses directly contradict the Sentencing Council’s guidance.

The Law Society also backs up those concerns. It said:

“In our view, courts should be trusted to impose the most suitable and just sentence in the unique circumstances of the offence and the offender before them. Sentencing guidelines exist to provide consistency and indicate aggravating factors, such as previous convictions. We accordingly do not support the setting of a minimum sentence for corrosive substance offences for the same reason.”

I appreciate that, even if the Minister agrees with these concerns, there are difficulties, given that we are trying to mirror what is already in legislation. However, I hope the Minister will accept the concerns that have been raised. If she is wedded to going ahead with the clauses, perhaps she will provide us with the evidence base for requiring mandatory minimum sentences for children, particularly relating to reoffending, public protection and deterrence.

[Victoria Atkins]

The clause is being inserted in the context of corrosive substances because we want to mirror the provisions in legislation concerning knives and to send out the clear message that corrosive substances are just as much as an offensive weapon as knives.

On the first occasion when someone comes before the court, the sentencing judge will obviously have all powers and options open to her or him to sentence the person in possession of a corrosive substance or a knife; they will have that power to exercise their discretion. However, as is the case with knives, we want to send out a tough message. Someone who has already been through the court process and stood in front of a judge—who may have given them a community penalty rather than imprisonment if that was deemed appropriate—is then on notice that, if they walk around with a knife or corrosive substance again, a court will have the power to impose an immediate custodial sentence, unless subsections (2) and (4) apply. Subsections (2) and (4) are important, because they allow the court to divert from the mandatory minimum sentence, if it is

“of the opinion that there are particular circumstances”.

Incidentally, a strong lobby of Members in this House want it to be “first strike and you’re out.” A very passionate campaign is being run by the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who had a terrible case involving his constituent. There are different views on the issue, but we believe that subsection (2) and subsection (4), which references the duty under section 44 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, address the circumstances that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley set out, where a court believes that under those provisions it would not be right to impose a custodial sentence on the young person. We want to get the message out to those who think it is okay to carry a corrosive substance as a weapon to throw and attack that we are determined to take the strongest action against them.

[Louise Haigh]

I fully appreciate that there is a wide spectrum of views out there. In regard to the campaign led by the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, I would say that hard cases make for bad law. I made several requests in my speech for the evidence underpinning the clause and the provision in the 2015 Act. Rather than ceding to those siren voices that we routinely hear in this place about increasing sentence lengths—I often add my voice to them too—I would be grateful if the Minister provided us with the evidence that the provision will improve public protection and reduce reoffending.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am so sorry; I have got a note here. I am going to ask the Ministry of Justice and write to the Committee with a response to the questions the hon. Lady asked about figures and statistics and so on. That material is held by the Ministry of Justice, which owns this territory. I hope that assists the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7

Offence under section 5: relevant convictions

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Louise Haigh]

If I may, I want to ask for one quick clarification in relation to subsection (2), which states:

“References in subsection (1) to a conviction for an offence are to a conviction for an offence regardless of when it was committed.”

Will the Minister confirm that that is compliant with the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974? Is subsection (2) the case even if any such conviction is now spent?

[Victoria Atkins]

Those who spend a great deal of time and effort in drafting the provisions of the Bill will no doubt very much have that at the forefront of their mind. It might well be that it is such a nuanced position and topic at 8.18 at night that I might have to write to the hon. Lady.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

Search for corrosive substances: England and Wales

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Louise Haigh]

The Minister made a slight reference earlier—it came as a surprise to me—to the Home Office consulting on stop-and-search powers. I note the consultation that the Home Office released last month, which I believe relates to codes C and H of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. That does not cover stop-and-search, but I note the Home Secretary’s announcement today that he is mulling over increased powers for officers on stop-and-search in relation to corrosive substances. I was confused by that, because clause 8 clearly provides constables with the power, under an amended PACE, to stop and search offenders who they have reasonable grounds to believe have committed, are committing or are going to commit an offence under the Bill.

Can the Minister confirm whether the Home Office is considering additional stop-and-search powers? Is it not convinced that the reformed stop-and-search powers in the Bill are sufficient to tackle the issue of corrosive substances? Does it have further plans to lower the stop-and-search threshold to levels currently associated only with section 60 of PACE, which, as far as I can see, is the only distinction that the Home Secretary could have been making in what he said today? He said that officers would have to have only suspicion, which I assume is a lesser threshold than the current threshold of reasonable grounds. I would be grateful if the Minister clarified exactly what the Home Office is taking further steps on. If it is not convinced that the Bill is sufficient, why is it not tabling amendments at this stage?

[Victoria Atkins]

While existing powers allow a police officer to conduct stop-and-search for a corrosive substance where it is suspected that a person is in possession of a corrosive substance to cause injury, they do not extend to the proposed new offence of possession in a public place. The proposed extension of stop-and-search seeks to address that gap to enable the police to take preventive action. We have to consult on such an extension, so it is clause 8 that we will be consulting on, but the consultation has not opened yet.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 9 and 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 11

Consequential amendments relating to section 5

Offensive Weapons Bill (First sitting)

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

The deadline for amendments to be considered at the first line-by-line sitting of the Committee is Thursday 30 August.

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Victoria Atkins.)

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the publication of written evidence, but the responses to the consultation that was the forerunner to the Bill have not yet been published. A summary of the responses is on the Home Office website, but several of the witnesses who will give evidence today reference their consultation responses in their biographies, and we have not had access to them. Could we at least have the consultation responses from the witnesses who are giving evidence today and on Thursday, if not all the responses?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

Yes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Thank you. May we hear your views on the availability of knives and acids to young people at the moment? We will start with Mr Poynton.

John Poynton: I do not have the precise statistics on what is coming in, but there is no question that there is no place for zombie knives, machetes and large weapons like that. My concern is that a number of young people will come to hospital with all sorts of improvised weapon injuries from screwdrivers and the like. Clearly it is important to make weapons less easy for young people to get hold of, but there will always be a need for education and earlier intervention, to look at how we get young people to understand that certain weapons are tools, and that there are ways to use them. This should not be about finding any sharp implement, be it a screwdriver or something else that has been sharpened, to use. When young people come to hospitals, it is not as clearcut as saying that it is just about zombie knives or kitchen knives.

With regard to availability, a lot of young people talk about the traditional method of ensuring that the public feel safer that weapons are being taken off the streets: we see the traditional use of photos of weapons that have been found or taken, and that helps us to feel that those weapons have been removed. The broader picture—the public health approach to looking at this issue—is that lots of young people will see those same pictures that make us feel safer, but they will perhaps not read all the copy that goes with the picture and they will see those pictures as showing the weapons that are available, and they are somewhat traumatised by the idea that those weapons are available. The availability or lack of availability of certain weapons needs to sit alongside a clear and simple narrative to ensure that the entire community—including young people and us—understands that the community needs to be safe. We all need to have the same perception that the community is safe, and not have this misunderstanding of what they need to do to feel safe.

It was interesting for the police to recognise last year that only 25% of knife crime could be attributed to gangs. My question is about what we do with the 75% of “normal”—for want of a better phrase—non-gang members. How do we really educate them to understand that they do not need to pick up a knife to feel safe on the streets?

Rob Owen: Picking up on John’s point about escalation, it is almost like an arms race. What is happening with county lines in particular is that London gangs are looked up to as the grandfathers of gangs, and regional areas aspire to be more like London gangs, often because of social media. They are saying, “We now need to have weapons, because we need to up our game.” In the old days the drug market in a market or coastal town was safer. Nowadays the kids who are involved in county lines or local drug dealing groups are thinking, “We need to have the next big thing.”

There is definitely an escalation in violence, and there is definitely an escalation outside London of the use or ability to use a weapon. The really sad thing is that a screwdriver is more deadly than a knife. If you talk to a surgeon, they will say that it is more complicated to sort out a stab wound from a screwdriver than from a knife, which I was surprised by. In primary schools, it is about demystifying. On social media, people see that there are safe places to stab each other—this is well documented. Actually, there is no safe place to stab someone, because if you hit an artery, it is pretty much game over.

A public health approach has to be taken. When the police catch a kid with a knife, one of the things that has to happen is that has to be seen as a beacon of need—that that kid needs some support to try to break that cycle. The kid is carrying that knife for a multitude of factors, but we are not going to solve things by taking that knife away or taking the drugs off them—then they would have a drug debt, too—and throwing them in prison. They will come out and have the same problems. It is about putting in that intensive care, even if they are caught with a knife, however unpalatable that is to the Daily Mail or whatever it is. It is about a beacon of need. All these kids who are being targeted by gangs are either in pupil referral units or have been excluded from schools. So 100% of the clients we are working with on county lines who are carrying weapons have been excluded from school. If you ever want a beacon of need for where resources should go, it is kids who have been excluded from school.

Patrick Green: Clear, unambiguous messaging around knives is important in the preventive world. If you are working with young people and there is any ambiguity, you get the “but” argument—“but I know somebody who this didn’t happen to”. You can lose the group. We are working with peer groups in schools, and that is so important.

I believe that it is important that the online world is brought into line with the retail world in terms of sales and the restrictions on sales. I have no figures for you, but from the conversations we have with the young people we deal with—particularly those who admit to carrying a knife or having carried a knife—knives will mostly be got from domestic settings, but shoplifting comes very high up in where they get knives from.

I feel that the voluntary code for e-tailing is not delivering as it should be. That possibly relates to the second part of your sitting today. The open display of knives gives young people an opportunity to take knives that they might use in other places. They are less likely to buy a knife and are more likely to shoplift it. That is why I think the legislation is important. It will help the preventive agenda and our conversations with young people. It will make it clearer to them what they can and cannot do, and that is important at this time.

Jaf Shah: I would echo much of what has been said, particularly around deploying a public health approach to addressing the root causes of this escalation not only in acid attacks, but in violent crime. In the case of acid and the availability of corrosive fluids, many complications clearly arise from the availability of lots of household products that contain high levels of corrosive content. How you regulate access to those types of products is a challenge. What the Bill proposes around licensing for sulphuric acid is an important step, because sulphuric acid at a concentration of 98% causes enormous physical and psychological damage to survivors. That licensing is a vital step, but the passing of legislation in itself is insufficient.

We need to ensure that we deploy a long-term approach to dealing with the root causes. We know that once you reduce the availability of one type of weapon, another weapon becomes available, and I think that is what has happened with the rise of acid attacks. It came at a time when there were greater attempts by law enforcement agencies to control other weapons. Many would-be perpetrators saw loopholes in the existing system that are now being addressed, so they chose to use acid, because it is a lot easier and cheaper to purchase and causes an enormous amount of physical and psychological scarring.

[Louise Haigh]

Q May I echo the Minister’s thanks for coming to give evidence to the Committee today? Your evidence so far already shows the vast experience that you have in this area. You mentioned exclusions and the fact that gangs target pupil referral units. That is certainly the experience in my constituency, where every child who has been murdered so far this year had been permanently excluded from school, and was murdered by another child who had been permanently excluded from school. In your experience of working with schools, are they all willing to co-operate? If not, is there anything that the Government could do to help that co-operation at a local level, with the voluntary sector, the police and local authorities?

Rob Owen: I think it is very varied. We do work on prevention. Through SOS+ we go into quite a few PRUs. They have been fantastically helpful and welcoming. It is really mixed. A lot of schools do not like to admit that there is a gang problem—some primary schools particularly are very worried about admitting that they are becoming targeted.

The gangs are becoming much more sophisticated in the way they recruit. They often do it through siblings. It is not simple. The different county lines are not uniform; they all have their own style and tolerance to violence. They all do it slightly differently, but there is a theme emerging that any child excluded from school becomes a target, because they have become alienated, and are the sort of material that the gangs are looking for.

Sadly, the people we are looking at are 10, 11 and 12-year-olds. It is no longer 16 or 17-year-olds. County lines have been going forever, but it was always older kids doing it. Now the real problems are the level of sophistication in almost brainwashing them into the gang, the levels of violence that are associated with those gangs, and the targeting of kids who have been excluded from school.

Patrick Green: I would echo that. It is really sad. We work with a lot of young people who have been excluded from school. There is no question that they are in a particularly difficult place in terms of the level of intervention and support that they need. I feel that some schools, as you would expect, do that a lot better than others.

I do not think that there is universal engagement at the moment. Things have definitely changed. Certainly, schools listen to Ofsted. We could get far more co-operation from Ofsted in terms of safeguarding, not just in the school itself but in the surrounding area and on the journey that young people make to and from school.

I just think that far too many young people are being excluded from school in the first place. We can probably tell when primary schools come to us and highlight young people whom we are already concerned about, purely from the attitude that we can see in a short two-hour workshop. Far more could be done in terms of safety nets and checks and balances on young people. When they get to being excluded from school, it is really difficult and a tough road back.

John Poynton: There is a real need to not make the schools and the young people feel as if they just have to focus on a lesson on gangs and knife crime. We have all mentioned that knife crime, gangs and county lines are symptoms of much deeper, longer-term root causes. Schools will probably not have any problem recognising that they have children who have had adverse childhood experiences throughout their lives. They have parents who perhaps are not able to support their children in quite the way they need. I suppose I really want to look at how schools are supported to engage the families and the children on those root-cause issues, rather than at trying to talk a headteacher into just having a gangs, knives or county lines lesson plan in their personal, social, health and economic education. I think you need to do both but, again, this is similar to my point about showing weapons that have been taken off the street. In going into schools, my colleagues here obviously do a very good job of ensuring that children are not traumatised. For children who perhaps are not engaging or listening in quite the same way as those who are going to stay on in mainstream education and do well, they might hear that this is normal. There is an element of re-traumatising, or possibly triggering a previous childhood trauma.

For me, it is again about ensuring that schools are better supported to work as early as possible around adverse childhood experience and support the parents through primary school, so that, as Rob pointed out, we are not having to bring the personal, social and health education lessons around county lines and gangs lower and lower, because we should be meeting it at the very beginning.

It is less threatening to teachers and to heads to talk about how we support all children with adverse childhood experience from reception, rather than to try to go backwards in talking about the more worrying subjects. I am not saying it is either/or; it is both.

[Louise Haigh]

Q You have all talked about the multitude of factors that can lead to young people, and indeed adults, carrying knives and acid. I am sure we would all agree that simply taking that weapon off a young person is not going to solve the factors behind this. Do you agree with evidence we have had from the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, which has concerns about the mandatory minimum sentencing for young people in the Bill? It says:

“Children carry weapons for a multitude of…reasons”

and criminal justice measures are unlikely to be effective in tackling this. It also says:

“There is no evidence that the threat of custody deters children.”

Is that a concern that you share?

Rob Owen: I broadly do. I do not think that, for many of our clients that we are working with, that is a factor that stops them carrying a weapon, sadly. A lot of it is to do with the glamorisation on social media, which has been mentioned before. Social media is now explaining to kids the most effective place to stab someone in the heart. How is that possible? Failure rates of surgery are very sensitive, but kids are now being shown on videos the two places if you are going to kill someone.

It is not a simple solution about saying, “You’ll have a mandatory sentence if you get caught with a knife.” It is completely about educating kids to understand the effects it will have longer term and the effects it will have on families. The longer term solution has got to be much more about education than sentences. That is not working; it is not putting people off.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Just to come back on that, the Government would obviously argue that they have a serious violence strategy and that there are measures alongside it. Do you actually oppose mandatory minimum sentences for under-18s?

Rob Owen: There have got to be two things. One is that there have to be regulations and laws, and I completely get that. At the same time, there has also got to be some form of common sense and humanisation about that situation and about what the best thing is for that person to ensure that they do not create another victim.

My experience of parents of victims, sadly, is that what they are most obsessed about is ensuring that no other child suffers and no other parent has to go through what they have gone through. What we are trying to achieve is that the best environment for that to happen is available. But that is often not just about sentencing; that has got to be about a package of support that is put in place.

Patrick Green: It is a difficult one. Certainly, from the victim’s perspective, many of the young people who have been victims of knife crime are often concerned that the perpetrator is back on the streets very quickly, and that heightens their feeling of insecurity. Our view in terms of first-time offences is, yes. Young people carry knives for a range of reasons; some of them may be around protection, and people are just making a mistake. Certainly, when it comes to second offences, there is due concern there about the young person falling into a trend and sentencing really playing a part in helping take that young person off the street.

The key issue is the support from the first offence to the second offence. I am not entirely sure that young people who are caught with a knife are getting the right level of support to help them and deter them from coming back on to the street the second time. The “two strikes and you’re out” should absolutely be the final option, but there should be a range of support. This is about rehabilitation and helping—as somebody said earlier on, if you are carrying a knife, it is almost a cry for help, and we should be doing far more around that.

John Poynton: Earlier this year, with Sarah Jones, we had young people from all around the country attend the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime to talk about their experiences. One of the overriding messages from them was that their experience of prison or the threat of prison was not a clear deterrent to being involved in risky or criminal behaviours. As Rob says, there needs to be a clear package of support. I think it is really important that that strategy is recognised. It is about vulnerability and safeguarding, and we need to look at how we support the young people.

The comment was made that young people are very clever at finding loopholes. We had a number of young women who talked about the fact that they are coerced into carrying weapons so that the young men are not caught carrying them. I am just making the point that the young people carrying the weapons are very possibly not the young people likely to be using them. That is a statement—just to recognise that young women and very vulnerable young children are coerced into behaviours that they would not otherwise deem normal on their own.

You cannot have a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I am very aware that the strategy is not saying that—it is putting a raft of support in to look at how we work with these young people—but my concern would be the classic “cry wolf” issue or the “but what about” point that Patrick made. Young people will always know of someone else who has been stopped twice holding a weapon, who, perhaps quite rightly for a number of reasons, may not have been given a mandatory sentence. The issue is that that will always become the narrative, “In that case, it is not going to happen to me.”

I would push for a really broad package of support for young people and a very simple narrative around the issue, so that young people recognise that they should not be carrying weapons. We also need to look at why these young people are being coerced into carrying weapons or drugs or other things that they would not normally do on their own.

Jaf Shah: May I flip back briefly to an earlier question around engagement with schools? As I mentioned, our engagement in the UK at a programmatic level is embryonic, but what we know from our work overseas in terms of engaging with schools, schoolchildren, teachers and so on, and engaging from a very young age, is that it is a very effective way of engaging with children about the repercussions of a violent act—in particular acid violence. By the very nature of acid attacks, the face is targeted, so you have a very visible form of violence. When survivors go into schools and talk with children, the impact is very strong. They certainly realise that there is a human beyond the facial disfigurement and that they have their own narrative, and that story carries a very strong message.

I was very interested when I visited Scotland and met Dr Christine Goodall from Medics Against Violence. I thought that their work was absolutely brilliant. It is a strand of work that could work particularly well with survivors of acid attacks engaging with school children.

To fast-forward to the most recent question, it is enormously difficult around the mandatory sentencing of under-18s, because there are many complicating factors. I have been hearing locally that young children are actually carrying acid in schools—but as protection, because it has become so commonplace. I think it is a very difficult subject in terms of having an absolute answer. It requires, as everyone else has mentioned, a far more sophisticated package of engagement with groups who might be affected.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Q Mr Owen, I think you mentioned earlier that you are hearing about children as young as 10 or 11 carrying knives. At what age are children actually perpetrating acts of violence or being victims? How young are we talking about?

Rob Owen: Same age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Q The measures on knives are mirrored when it comes to corrosive substances. What are your views on that?

Andrew Penhale: Again, it is important and needed. There is this gap with online provision, and it is really important that that is duplicated from knives. It is exactly the same problem: there needs to be a verification process to ensure that they are delivered to people 18 or over.

Ben Richards: We mirror the importance of this, and we understand that. As Trish has touched on, the issues are within statutory duties and resources to be able to take on duties on top of those already being carried out.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Ms Burls, did you say that the Bill is still missing the statutory powers you need?

Trish Burls: For trading standards officers, yes, it is.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What would those powers look like?

Trish Burls: We have powers within much of the rest of the legislation that we enforce that allow us to do things such as enter premises and seize documentation and goods in relation to an inquiry we are carrying out if we suspect that an offence has taken place. The Bill does not contain any powers for trading standards officers, whereas police powers would obviously come from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you have drafts of amendments that would reflect that, or could you submit that to the Committee?

Trish Burls: We could submit that to the Committee.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Mr Penhale, in the last four years in particular we have seen violent crime rising, but equally the numbers of arrests and prosecutions have fallen. A recent Sunday Times investigation into nearly 1 million crimes in 2017 showed that nearly half of violent and sexual offences were not taken to successful prosecution even when there was an identified culprit. Is the CPS and the criminal justice system sufficiently resourced to deal with the current legislation, let alone more legislation?

Andrew Penhale: Gosh, that is a broader question than I had anticipated. We have resource. I cannot answer the question of whether we have sufficient to do our jobs as a whole; that is a bigger question that I guess the director would have to answer. We are resourced how we are resourced, and we are dealing with the crimes presented to us. We are certainly not not prosecuting because we lack resources to do the job.

We prosecute in accordance with a code, and whether cases meet the code because they are not evidentially sufficient is another matter. We can only prosecute those cases that do meet the right standard. In a very short answer to your question, we are not not prosecuting because we lack the resources to do so.

[Louise Haigh]

Q But there have been increasing numbers of cases and increasing numbers of trials that have collapsed, have there not? This is largely due to a lack of sufficient resources in the wider criminal justice system.

Andrew Penhale: There are a number of cases that collapsed where decisions were made that should not have been made because of a lack of consideration of wider evidence. That is not necessarily a resource issue; that is a decision-making issue.

[The Chair]

Can I gently suggest that we ask questions specifically about the Bill?

[Louise Haigh]

My point, Mr Gapes, is that there is not a lot of point passing new legislation if it is not going to be enforced.

[The Chair]

I understand your point, I am just gently suggesting that we focus on the Bill.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Can I ask, then—we covered it slightly in the first session—about mandatory minimums and whether you have concerns that mandatory minimums, particularly for under 18s, fetter judicial discretion?

Andrew Penhale: By the nature of their being mandatory, there is not a great deal of judicial discretion. In relation to some offences, they are there for a reason that Parliament has decided, which is to signify the importance of dealing with knife crime and firearms robustly. There are other offences where mandatory sentencing is imposed. Essentially, Parliament has made that decision. It is not really for the Crown Prosecution Service to say whether or not that is the right thing; we have got to implement what Parliament requires us to.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Finally, part of the lobbying around this Bill and around serious violence more broadly is around the rights of victims in the criminal justice system. Do you have any thoughts on the Victims’ Commissioner’s suggestions that all victims of serious crime should be entitled to an independent advocate? Do you think that would be welcome to help them to navigate through the criminal justice system? Obviously it is quite a complex environment, and often their rights are quite diminished in the wider system.

Andrew Penhale: First, I think it is really important that the victims’ views in the criminal justice system are taken into account. The Crown Prosecution Service has a victim’s right to review system, which requires us to go back and explain our decisions, but also to review them where the victim disagrees. That process is already well established. Whether there is a place for a separate advocate is, again, for a wider debate rather than for the Crown Prosecution Service.

[Paul Scully]

Q I remember going down Sutton High Street with a couple of anti-knife crime charities last year, walking down some of the big department stores and some of the smaller stores as well, looking at the displays and at how easy it is swipe a knife, frankly. Are there any regulations or recommendations that trading standards is able to use at the moment with shops?

Trish Burls: We have local responsible retailer agreements on knives, which echoes the Home Office’s established voluntary agreement on the storage and sale of knives. These are local; it is not national. There are no regulations that prohibit the way in which a knife is displayed, whether that is via a shop doorway or for open access. We rely very much at the moment on retailers’ good will and common sense.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Second sitting)

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Atkins]

Q There was an incident, sadly, in recent years where we saw the threat posed by bump stocks, was there not?

Gregg Taylor: In the US, yes, with the Las Vegas shooting. I think 12 out of the 14 weapons that were used in, or recovered from, that event had the bump stocks attached. We are all aware of the rate of fire and the number of people who were killed in that event.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Q Can I just confirm something? When you said 129 licences, was that just for the .50, or was that the total number of licences?

Mark Groothuis: It includes two other calibres: 14.5 mm and 20 mm. If the prohibition went ahead at 13,600 J, it would capture not only the .50, but larger and more powerful calibres as well. I believe the 14.5 mm firearms are effectively Soviet anti-tank weapons and the 20 many might be a bespoke-built firearm. Most of them are from a military background.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What percentage of firearms used in violent offences—for example, last year—were firearms that came from the legal to the illegal route?

Mark Groothuis: May I hand over to Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: What I can say, from the statistics we look at, is that the increase in firearms lost or stolen last year, compared with the previous year, was 26%. There were 430 stolen from licensed premises. Because serial numbers and so on get erased, we cannot 100% say what ends up in the criminal market, but when we have looked at firearms recovered from policing, we recover just over 1,000 a year that have not been used in crime or are just recovered. About 30% of those tend to come from licensed premises as the result of a burglary or theft, but it is very difficult to sit and say what is actually used in crime, because the serial numbers and so on are eroded.

[Louise Haigh]

Q But none of the guns that have been stolen so far this year are those that will be prohibited by the Bill?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: The ones we are looking at are shotguns and rifles. The .50 calibre that Mark spoke about earlier was stolen in 2016 and recovered in 2017, and there was evidence that it had been fired and had been stolen at the time that the .308 rifle had been stolen, along with eight others. The .308 had been used to shoot three people and the .50 calibre one was recovered in a bag on wasteland, which is a modus operandi for offenders to store firearms, so they are not caught with them in their properties. That one had not actually been discharged in crime.

[Louise Haigh]

Q And are most firearms stolen from domestic premises, which obviously have licensed conditions attached to them?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: Predominantly, but we do see commercial properties affected; I am aware of one in my own area, from which 40-odd firearms were stolen. But they tend to be domestic premises.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Mostly farms, is it? I mean, how does an offender know that a licensed firearm holder is in a property and that there is a firearm there?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: That is one of the things that we have been working with the shooting community about: making sure of people’s social media; have they got stickers in their vehicles? Do they get regular post deliveries of magazines? Do they go to a club regularly, and can they be identified? There are lots of reasons and obviously it is one of the intelligence pieces that we are trying to work on, to improve our understanding.

[Louise Haigh]

Q You might not be able to answer this, but how did a legal firearm end up in the hands of Thomas Mair?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: From the Jo Cox murder? It was stolen from a vehicle, and it was then cut down and used, with tragic consequences.

[Louise Haigh]

Q The MARS weapon has clearly been designed, as you say, to exploit loopholes in the current legislation. Is there any way that we could draft this legislation more widely to stop further exploitation happening, because—clearly—there will always be enterprising people who want to get round the very specific bans in legislation? Is there a risk that we are still keeping it too tight to allow further exploitation of loopholes?

Assistant Chief Constable Orford: I think the challenge with firearms licensing legislation is that it builds on a lot of previous legislation and some stated cases as well, and our experience of working with this practically is that there will probably already be people looking at this Bill and trying to think of ways round it, unfortunately. There will also be people who possess some of these items who are looking at other parts of legislation, to see if they would provide an exemption for them to still possess the firearm. Very often the proof is actually putting it to test.

We can apply a lot of expertise and, from the firearms licensing perspective, it is quite simple for licensing managers to interpret the legislation and apply it, but very often and for some time afterwards, once legislation hits the ground we still find little cracks and nuances in it. The advantage we have is that there is a national working group, and it covers Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. We try to apply consistency in some of the decisions that are made, and police forces now are a lot more robust in challenging and saying no, and in effect putting a case through the judicial process to determine whether it was appropriate for that decision to be made.

[Louise Haigh]

Q I understand that 30% of the guns used last year in crimes were of obsolete calibre. Is there anything we can do to restrict the availability of decommissioned weapons, and is it of concern to you how available decommissioned weapons are and the ease with which they can be recommissioned?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: When we look at the statistics that we collect nationally, the number of deactivated firearms that have been reactivated is very small; converted and modified is different. That is converted as in Baikal firearms, which get converted from forward-venting gas blank-firing firearms to fire live rounds. The deactivated and reactivated firearms are a small issue, compared with modified and converted firearms.

As for antique firearms and obsolete calibre firearms, last year I think they counted for about 20% of the revolvers used in crime, and at the moment we have information with Ministers to look at the obsolete calibre list, to see what is relevant and what needs to be considered to be removed.

Gregg Taylor: I would just add that antique revolvers have never been decommissioned in any way that has deactivated them, so they are in full working order. Antique weapons are subject to exemption under section 58(2) of the Firearms Act 1968 if they are held as a curiosity or ornament, but obviously the gun itself is in full working order.

[Louise Haigh]

Q So how easy is it to get hold of an antique revolver at the moment?

Gregg Taylor: They are not subject to any licence.

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: Anyone can buy them. As we have seen in recent operations, people can buy them, or multiples of them, and the threat we have from crime now is that people are manufacturing ammunition to fit them.

[Louise Haigh]

Q So how quickly and easily would I find it to purchase an antique revolver and get ammunition to be able to use it?

Gregg Taylor: You could basically buy an antique revolver from your local antiques fair on a Sunday afternoon.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Could I get ammunition that easily as well?

Gregg Taylor: The ammunition is the issue. There are people out there who go to great lengths to make the ammunition to fit these obsolete calibres. As I have said, the gun itself is in full working order but is exempt as an antique under the Firearms Act.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Q These questions are probably more for the detective chief superintendent. Can you give us some idea of the scale of firearms in the UK? How many people have firearms at the moment, and what are the trends? Is this going up; is it going down?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: NABIS collects data only on firearms that have been used in criminal offences. We do not collect data on the firearms that are held. With antique firearms, there are no restrictions, so there is no way of knowing how many people have an antique firearm. We look only at the criminal use of firearms.

In terms of the criminal use of firearms, from 1 April last year to 31 March this year—our performance year—there was a slight decrease in firearms discharges, compared with the previous year. However, from 2012, we are still high compared with previous years. In the last quarter of this performance year, from 1 April to the end of June, we have had 150 discharges, resulting in nine fatalities, compared with three fatalities from January to March, so at the moment we are seeing an increase in firearms offences.

Mark Groothuis: These are the statistics as of 31 March 2018 and as produced by the Home Office. There were 157,581 firearms certificates, covering 577,547 weapons on firearms certificates. There were 567,047 shotgun certificates, covering 1,359,368 shotguns; that is on a shotgun certificate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Q So your concern is about volume as opposed to the act on the shoot of people handing cartridges to each other to help while they’re shooting.

Mark Groothuis: The volume is a concern, yes—the fact that it is just so easy to transfer shotgun ammunition. You shouldn’t be transferring shotgun ammunition to a prohibited person, but how do you know whether the person you are standing next to is prohibited or not? They could be prohibited by virtue of a suspended sentence or a custodial sentence. You would probably know about the custodial sentence if you are a close friend, but there might be someone who has got a suspended sentence, and they may be prohibited. I would also ask how some people who have got suspended sentences know they are prohibited because, as far as I know, there is no mechanism for educating them on that at the moment.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Can just come back to the points about the firearms licensing teams in the police? How big is the team in Durham, for example?

Assistant Chief Constable Orford: We are just over 10 people, and different forces will have different requirements. One thing that surprises a lot of people outside of this world is that the size of the force does not necessarily indicate the amount of work involved. North Yorkshire police is a small force but has a significant amount of firearms licensing and will have a bigger department, commensurably. That very often goes with the rural side of policing. As you have heard from the statistics, shotguns are a lot more prevalent than firearms.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Has that team shrunk in the past few years?

Assistant Chief Constable Orford: Yes.

[Louise Haigh]

Q From what to 10?

Assistant Chief Constable Orford: I could not tell you what it used to be in 2008, but it certainly was subject to a lot of closer scrutiny. Generally, in forces, you will have a mixed economy team between police officers and police staff. That is where a lot of the savings have been made. So you have police staff members rather than warranted officers doing a lot of the inquiries.

We have now seen that start to change in a number of forces, with the work that is being done with NABIS, the National Firearms Centre and the NCA. We are getting better sharing of the criminal intelligence and the indicators that would show whether somebody is not approaching the use of their certificate and their firearms appropriately. That is coming to the fore more with firearms dealers. The same teams are inspecting firearms dealers, and we have the lessons from the Edmunds case. While, again, this is anecdotal—you made the comment about sentencing—there was significant feedback from the Gun Trade Association to me personally that the sentencing in relation to the Edmunds case had sent a ripple around firearms dealers. This is certainly an area where we are now working a lot closer with the operational side of policing and firearms licensing than we ever have done before.

[Louise Haigh]

Q I think it was you, Detective Chief Superintendent, that said that there was already a lot of pressure on these teams. Does that pressure manifest itself just in longer waits for people wanting licences to get those licences? Or is there an increased risk of people who should not have licences retaining their licences or, indeed, of people gaining licences when they should not have them in the first place?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: I think David Orford will answer that. I do not have anything to do with the licensing side—I deal with the criminal side.

Assistant Chief Constable Orford: I would not say that there is increased pressure per se, but the volume does place an increased demand. Forces have to look at the breadth of their information systems and what is proportionate. Some forces have moved to telephone renewals, and in certain circumstances that might be absolutely appropriate. If you have held a shotgun certificate for 30 years and there has been no issue on any of your certification at all—our information systems are a lot better than they were 30 years ago—then it is probably appropriate that you receive a telephone renewal, because you get a better service and you are a more satisfied customer. It means we can move our resources on to the people where we should actually be lifting up a few more stones. Previously, we would apply a one-size-fits-all approach.

When I was a beat officer, I was the one who used to get the firearms inquiries, with no training and no requirements. It was an automatic assumption: “You are a police officer, and therefore you will know.” It would consist of trying to pull the cabinet off the wall. That was the limit of my firearms inquiry knowledge then. Now, we have the College of Policing training programme coming online, we have continuing professional development, and we have closer working with the operational side of policing and much better access to information systems. Forces are having to flex and adapt, but it would be fair to say that the increased volume and numbers in terms of the types of checks has put quite a bit of pressure on them.

[Vicky Foxcroft]

Q In terms of serious violence, we often talk about preventive early intervention and so forth. Are there any early intervention or preventive measures that you think we could put into place that would help reduce the number of firearms in circulation?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: As part of the criminal use of firearms portfolio, we have an independent advisory group. At our last meeting a few weeks ago, there was quite a discussion on serious violence. The members of the independent advisory group feel that there is quite a lot to be done around tackling serious violence—they may be the people we could point you in the direction of for their views. They come from a wide background, whether it is youth work, academia, community safety or working in schools. They have quite a few views and suggestions around the prevention side of things.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Q We obviously want to stop young people using acids in the first place. Are there any emerging thoughts on how we can prevent young people—or anyone—from using corrosive substances in such a vile manner?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: A lot of work has been put into a preventive strategy in the last 12 months, working very closely with the British Retail Consortium, which represents 170 or more retailers across the country. That activity has included voluntary agreements with those retailers to restrict sales to individuals that they have concerns about, communication to young people through education projects, and multi-agency work to emphasise the impact that these attacks can have. I again emphasise that psychological and physical impact, which I believe—based on the research done in recent months—has not been fully understood by a lot of our young people.

One example I want to highlight is Project Diffuse, which has been carried out by the Metropolitan police—working with the Institute of Licensing and the Security Industry Authority—in the context of nightclubs and licensed premises. It engages security personnel in the identification of liquids before they enter an entertainment premises and in taking appropriate action to remove substances that may cause harm. A lot is being done around prevention to address this emerging problem.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What is your analysis of why, particularly over the last four years, we have seen such a rise in knife, gun and acid-related crime? Why is it suddenly so prevalent?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: I will start with knife crime. There are obviously huge challenges in the knife crime picture at the moment. We have seen a 20% increase in knife crime nationally in the last calendar year. It is a hugely complex issue and there are a huge number of contributory factors.

One real issue with younger people coming through at the moment is their frame of reference and how they view knives. It could be argued that there is a social acceptance in some circles of the legitimacy of carrying knives. We can look at, for example, the impact of social media; people being anaesthetised to violence and sexual violence on the internet; pornography, which is readily available to young children; or video games. All those things end up anaesthetising them and with a certain acceptance of that sort of violence, or a predisposition to violent activity. They also play into a potential fear of crime in young people in particular; that is certainly something we hear from young children. We know that a lot of children or young people do not go out carrying a knife specifically to use it, but they will carry it for self-protection. The more that knife crime happens, the greater the risk of young people perceiving that the issue is worse than it is, and therefore going out with a knife and continuing to arm themselves.

There are some challenges with availability of diversion services for young people on knife crime. With austerity in general it is important that money is focused toward the right areas, and we have certainly seen some good initiatives for doing that. More than that, though, we see the rise in knife crime as being quite cyclical. If you look back over the years, it tends to rise and fall, and what is important in stemming that rise is recognising that it requires a whole systems approach.

Everybody has a part to play; it is not enforcement, because realistically, by the time the police get involved and somebody has actually picked up a knife it is perhaps too late. It is a multi-faceted challenge, and the answer is not one particular channel, but all agencies, charities and communities working across the sectors bearing down on that. The way I view knife crime is that every particular stabbing could, but for the skill of a surgeon’s knife, end up in murder and absolute tragedy.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you have anything to add to that, Assistant Chief Constable? In particular, do you believe that neighbourhood policing is an important factor in tackling knife and acid crime?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: From the point of view of corrosive substance attacks, they are an emerging crime and I believe we were previously not fully aware of the extent. Recording practices in the police is one area that I have been concentrating on in the last 12 months. As you are probably aware, there is not a specific offence in the sense of delivering that acid in a form of attack, so it has been recorded as grievous bodily harm. Part of my work is looking into which of those have been a consequence of an acid attack. My data goes back to an increase from 2015, in the region of 400 offences per annum, to 700 nationally across England and Wales. Compared with knife crime, it is significantly smaller.

Taking your question more broadly on the increase in violence as a whole, and talking as somebody who oversees local policing in an area of the UK, when I talk to youngsters there is a decreasing sense of hope. A number of teenagers feel that there is no hope for them. In personal conversations that I have had, mid-teens have said that they have reached a point where it is too late for them. There is almost a sense of hopelessness, which I would relate to the comments previously made by my colleague on diversion activities. The concentration of some of the youth offending schemes has been on mid-teens. I believe there is a requirement for us to look at a younger age range—work that is being undertaken in Suffolk, my home county.

As with all these complex issues, there are a number of impact factors, but the approach to social media and understanding the position of violence, what is acceptable, the impact and the increase, and, from a police perspective, understanding some of the data, are all important in order to be able to take preventive action.

[Louise Haigh]

Q On online sales, I was recently shown some pictures from an app called Wish, which is a platform that enables sales from private sellers. There were prolific sales of items such as bracelets and credit cards that disguised knives. There were lots of different ways to conceal weapons, which were as cheap as 99p. Does the Bill sufficiently cover that app? My concern is that the Bill will wiggle around it, given that it is a platform, and that it will be very difficult to enforce the Bill against those who sell through such platforms.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: We know that sale is made illegal by the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The Bill will bring in a defence around that, which applies particularly to online sales. Where you attribute responsibility or culpability will always be a challenge with those platforms. From an evidential perspective, you will need to prove a sale from the point of delivery all the way back to where there is knowledge, or at least recklessness in terms of people being aware. Such platforms will always present challenges compared with over-the-counter sales, where you have a direct relationship. As I said earlier, the Bill is not the be-all and end-all, but the way I view it is that it is preventive, because sellers may look at it and say, “It’s illegal if I’m not able to rely on that particular defence,” and we will have the opportunity to tackle online retailers, which we did not have before.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Are there any offences that cover concealing a blade as something else—as a credit card or a bracelet, for example—or would that be covered by possession of a bladed article?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: It would be covered by possession of a bladed article. If it is a made offensive weapon, it could fall under the previous legislation too, but clearly you would need the mens rea—the mindset—to prove its intended use as well. My personal view is that they should not be for sale, full stop, because they do not serve a purpose.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Would you support the locking up of knives in retail premises?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: Absolutely. If I may expand on that, the first thing I would say is that we have done a lot of work with retailers. There are a huge number of responsible retailers out there, who take their responsibilities very seriously. They do lock knives in cabinets and put blister packaging around them. The big companies—the ones you would expect—do very well at that. Some of the challenges we have concern some of the smaller independent retailers—but not all of them. My view is that if a young person cannot walk into a shop and get fireworks, why should they be able to walk into a shop and pick up a knife? Look at the relative harm that is caused by knives and fireworks. I just think it is quite disproportionate that there are not opportunities to put knives in a point of sale where they cannot be reached.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

Q Clearly, whenever a person is injured with a gun or a knife or with acid, that is a horrible crime. The rise in acid attacks is shocking, because they tend to be disfiguring crimes—often to the face—that blind people and leave them scarred for life. You mentioned that there was a social acceptance of carrying knives. Is there a social acceptance of carrying acid now, or is that still not as acceptable?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: I actually think we might be seeing a slowing of the escalation, and I believe some of that is a consequence of the social inacceptance of carrying acid. We have talked about trends, and I have talked about the low numbers we have previously seen. There are a number of reasons for the increase. I recognise some of it as a consequence of better reporting by police officers about what they are finding. Another reason is that I have encouraged a lot more victims to come forward to report crimes that occur. However, last year’s figures were in the region of 700 and this year’s—it is difficult to understand whether they are precise—indicate in the region of 800, which is not the escalation seen two years ago.

You ask about social acceptability. I have emphasised through the communications strategy and the prevention strategy the psychological impact as much as the physical impact of some of these offences. Some offenders say—we have received feedback anecdotally—they did not realise it would have quite the effect it did. We are talking about a lot of young people—not all young people—using something they have never seen the impact of and they have never known anybody who has done this before; it is something they have tried out.

Time will tell. A piece of qualitative research is under way by the University of Leicester, talking to offenders about why they used and chose that mode of attack. I hope that when that reports at the end of the summer, I will have a better understanding of some of those reasons why, and we can then form the strategy around that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Q How are you going to work with your members if these voluntary arrangements become statutory?

Vin Vara: We have got a channel of communication—normally it is emailing and texting—but we also have a publication for our members, and we will be sending out guidance from the Home Office to all our members and other retailers on our target list.

Graham Wynn: The main desire is to be clear about exactly what people are supposed to do. That is one reason why we would particularly like to see clause 17 —the requirements there, and what you can and cannot deliver to a residential address—be perhaps a bit more precise, either in guidance or in the Bill itself. That’s knives, of course. We largely represent larger and medium-sized retailers, so they have their own processes for ensuring compliance with the law. Our role is to make sure they understand as far as possible what is required so that they can comply.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you share the concerns of the USDAW trade union about the criminalisation of shop workers and shop owners? Do you agree there should be an offence for attempting to purchase weapons, and what implications will the offence on shop workers and shop owners have for your members?

Graham Wynn: I understand from our surveys that there are probably about 50 offences a week—attacks—on shop workers. That is extrapolated from some research. We do share the USDAW view that carrying out an attack on a shop worker in the course of their employment should be a specific offence: either a generalised offence, or one that relates to age checking, but certainly some sort of specific offence. At the moment, people feel under threat, and that is one reason there is general support for the overall objectives of the Bill.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What about a specific offence for attempting to purchase?

Graham Wynn: We believe that age-restricted sales apply only to alcohol currently. One would think that the attempt to purchase a knife should be classified as more dangerous even than alcohol, because it is a weapon. We certainly believe it would be wise to make attempting to buy an offence because, at the moment, a shop worker who sells is criminalised. They are taken to court and they get a criminal record, but the person who attempts to buy or who does buy goes off—I was going to say scot-free, perhaps I shouldn’t. They go away without a blemish.

[Louise Haigh]

Q In the last session, we heard from a senior police officer that they would welcome the locking away of knives in retail environments. We heard in a session this morning that a significant proportion of knives that end up being used in violent offences come from shoplifting. I assume that shoplifting has increasingly been an issue for your members in recent years. How would you feel about legislation around locking away knives in stores?

Graham Wynn: Generally, members do not want to have to do that. They would rather have other things in place. That is why the voluntary commitment talks about retailers ensuring that knives are displayed and packaged securely as appropriate to minimise risk, including sometimes proportionately restricting accessibility to avoid immediate use. They would prefer not to be required by law to lock them away.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What proportion of your members subscribe to the voluntary agreement?

Graham Wynn: There are about a dozen or so, but sales-wise, they would represent a bigger proportion.

Vin Vara: It is the same with our retailers; it is very difficult to tell them what to do. We have advised our members to put bladed objects behind the counter, but unfortunately, 2,500 members are hardware retailers, and they are arguing with us by saying that it is not just the knives; there are other bladed items in hardware shops that are more offensive.

From our research, in the work that we have done with our members, we found that when things happen, knives are actually stolen from homes and kitchens, rather than bought from shops for a specific offence.

[Louise Haigh]

Q On age verification, you mentioned in your submission that you would prefer some explicit guidance on exactly what kind of age verification tools your members should use online. Do you want to be dictated to about which age verification tools to use, or do you just want guidance about what kind of tests that age verification tool should meet?

Graham Wynn: Ideally, we would like to see some standards, so we can be sure that online age verification systems developed by businesses such as Yoti and others will be accepted as due diligence by the enforcers. Currently, the systems for offline are fairly standard and obvious for face-to-face, but it has always been somewhat difficult to be sure that you are really complying with the online ones. You might think that the credit card companies could have done something about it, but they refuse to put an identifier on their cards to give an indication, so other means are necessary.

Technologically, things are developing, and I understand that, for some things, such as the pornography legislation that has recently gone through, there has to be some online verification. Perhaps that is slightly less dangerous than a knife sale, but nevertheless it would be useful for retailers to be sure that the system they are using meets certain standards. Of course, more will develop over time as technology advances.

[Kevin Foster]

Q Earlier, we were discussing the issue of what age should be set, and 18 was proposed. Do you see any issues for your retailers and members if there was a different age? I think we can say that it would not be under 18, but let us say 21 for the sake of argument.

Graham Wynn: The difficulty is that most age restrictions are at 18, although not all, so in store, people use challenge 25 to try to capture it. Some still use 21, but most use 25, so you can see roughly whether a person is likely to be 18 or not—it gives a margin of error. If you start to have a wider range of ages, it becomes a matter of training for the shop assistant in the store, and training becomes more difficult because there is quite a high turnover of shop assistants. The ideal is to try to keep things roughly in the same area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Today, the Daily Mail published the results of an exclusive survey, which showed that 57% of people say that police officers have surrendered control of our neighbourhoods and criminals have no fear of being caught; a quarter of people do not feel safe going out at night; and more than half of respondents who reported a crime did not have a police officer attend. Does the Minister accept any responsibility for those figures, or does the Home Office still labour under the dangerous delusion that its cuts have not affected community safety?

[Victoria Atkins]

I gently remind the hon. Lady that the Government have provided £460 million in additional funding for the police this year, which I understand she voted against. Again, we have to look at this as a strategy. The problem cannot be solved by police officers alone, vital though they are. Early intervention and tackling young people before they get dragged into criminality are key, and I hope that the Labour party will support the Offensive Weapons Bill, which gives the police the powers they need.

Visit of President Trump: Policing

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department—or another Minister, if they care to turn up—to make a statement on policing during the visit of President Trump.

[Mr Speaker]

Has there been a change of plan or anything?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

Let me first apologise to the hon. Lady for not being in the Chamber when she put the question. I also apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House.

The visit to the UK of any President of the United States of America is, of course, a significant and historic event. I reassure the House that the police have developed robust plans to ensure the safety and security of the visit. The three main forces involved are the Metropolitan Police Service, Thames Valley police and Essex police. Nearly all forces in England and Wales are providing officers and resources to assist with policing plans. This is happening under existing mutual aid arrangements and is being co-ordinated by the National Police Co-ordination Centre.

It is a long-standing tradition in this country that people are free to gather together and demonstrate their views. The police are aware of a number of protests planned across the country and will be working to manage them. The Metropolitan Police Service anticipates protests in London, including two large-scale protests—tomorrow and on Saturday. Proportionate policing plans are in place to support these. This is a significant policing operation and comes, as the House knows, at a time when police resources are also focused on investigating the incidents in Salisbury, protecting us against terrorist attacks and delivering on their own local policing plans. We will consider any request for special grant funding in line with our normal processes.

Let me conclude by stating for the record something I am sure that the whole House feels, which is our appreciation for the incredible hard work that our police officers and their partners are doing to facilitate this visit successfully, coming on top of the work they do every day in every community to protect the public.

[Louise Haigh]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

Last weekend saw areas as disparate as the west midlands and Dorset receiving the highest ever numbers of 999 calls. This weekend, police forces are preparing for one of the biggest mobilisations in their history. Every force in the country is sending officers to protect the President and to safeguard the democratic right to protest, which I hope will be fully respected by the Metropolitan police tomorrow. West Yorkshire police, for example, are sending 296 officers while themselves contending with an English Defence League march in their own force area.

Initially, requests were made for 300 police support units, each comprising an inspector, three sergeants and 18 police constables, but this request had to be negotiated down to 130 because forces simply could not provide 300. Is the Minister assured that the Trump visit will be adequately policed given the significant reduction in the numbers originally asked for? Does he believe that policing needs elsewhere in the country will be met? Is he satisfied that our policing system, having lost over 21,000 officers, is resilient enough to cope with the additional demand this weekend?

The Government have provided a commitment that Police Scotland will receive £5 million to cover the costs of President Trump’s golfing trip, but English and Welsh forces have been told to apply for a special grant, with no guarantee that the additional costs required will be fully met. Will the Minister commit today to fully reimbursing the costs of the visit? What is his estimation of the total cost for all forces?

Rest days for our police officers are now being cancelled at a phenomenal rate, and the number of officers on long-term sick leave is rocketing. It is simply dangerous to keep asking our officers to do more and more without giving them the time they need to recuperate. What measures will the Minister take to assist forces in allowing officers to take back the cancelled rest days that they are experiencing this weekend? This visit will have a huge knock-on effect well into the summer.

It has emerged overnight that officers being accommodated in Essex are sleeping on cots in squash courts, with 100 female officers with four toilets between them likely to be sleeping on mats tonight, and 300 male officers with five toilets between them, no access to power, and no hot running water. In the run-up to these deployments, it was not clear whether these officers would even be paid their overnight allowance. Is it any wonder then that so many forces struggle to fill their requirements through volunteers, or any wonder that many officers are considering ripping up their police support unit ticket?

Tonight, the Minister and I will both be presenting at the national police bravery awards. Surely he cannot agree that this is any way to treat our overstretched officers. The time for warm words is over. The Government must now provide the police with the support they desperately need.

[Mr Hurd]

I thank the hon. Lady for those questions. I will give her some assurances on some of the specifics she raised.

The hon. Lady asked whether the right to peaceful protest will be respected, particularly in London. I can assure her of that, having spoken to the gold commander today specifically on that point. The police have been working closely with the protesters and they resent any suggestion to the contrary in this regard. The right to protest is fundamental for us and it needs to be respected.

The hon. Lady raised concerns about accommodation for officers in Essex. She is right to do so. Those concerns have been raised directly with Essex police and are being managed.

The hon. Lady asked whether there were sufficient police resources to support the security of the visit in an effective way. Again, I have had the assurance from the gold commander in charge of this operation that that is the case. They are extremely comfortable about the situation. In fact, the number of police officers required for this operation has fallen significantly in the past two weeks.

The hon. Lady asked about how exceptional costs will be met. We have the special grant, which we increased in the 2018-19 settlement and is designed specifically to help meet exceptional costs. I signalled in my response to her question that that pot of grant money is open for business in relation to this very significant policing event.

The hon. Lady’s fundamental point was around whether the police have the resources they need under very stretched circumstances. We have had this debate many times, and she knows that I have been extremely candid in my view, shared by the Home Secretary, that the police are very stretched, and they deserve additional support. That is why we took action in the last funding settlement to increase public investment in our police system by £460 million this year—a funding settlement that her party opposed.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Louise Haigh Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is important to begin on a note of agreement. The Opposition pledged in this House that the Government would have our support if they came forward with measures on acid sale and possession and further measures to combat knife crime, so we will support the limited but necessary measures in the Bill. Throughout the Committee stage, we will take a constructive approach in areas in which we believe it needs strengthening.

In and of themselves, the measures cannot bear down on a violent surge that has left communities reeling. That will require a much more comprehensive change. It is as well to look at the context of the Bill. Knife crime offences reached record levels in the year to December 2017. Homicides involving knives increased by 22%, and violent crime overall has more than doubled in the past five years to a record level. The senseless murder of 15-year-old Jordan Douherty, who was stabbed after a birthday party in Romford community centre over the weekend, brought the number of murder investigations to over 80 in London alone this year.

As we have heard, the problem is far from being just a London one. In my home city of Sheffield, which historically and until very recently was considered to be one of the safest cities in the UK, there was a 51% increase in violent crime last year on a 62% increase the year before. That is not a spike or a blip, but a trend enveloping a generation of young people and it requires immediate national action.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that what is omitted is of far greater consequence than what has made it into the Government’s serious violence strategy and their legislative response today. First, it must be said that unveiling a strategy that made no mention of police numbers was a serious mistake that reinforced the perception that tiptoeing around the Prime Minister’s legacy at the Home Office matters more than community safety. The Home Secretary might not want today’s debate to be about police numbers, because a dangerous delusion took hold of his predecessors that police numbers do not make the blindest bit of difference to the rise in serious violence, but that view is not widely shared. The Met Commissioner Cressida Dick has said she is “certain” that police cuts have contributed to serious violence. Home Office experts have said it is likely that police cuts have contributed too. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary said in March that the police were under such strain that the lives of vulnerable people were being put at risk, with forces so stretched that they cannot respond to emergency calls.

Charge rates for serious violence have fallen as the detective crisis continues, undermining the deterrent effect, but still Ministers pretend that a staggering reduction of more than 21,000 police officers since 2010 has had no impact whatsoever.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

In the west midlands, the Labour police and crime commissioner has been able to raise additional funds through an increase in the precept, yet he has chosen to put no extra police on the beat, particularly in my constituency. Regardless of how much money is available, we have to get over the obstacle that police and crime commissioners might decide to spend it differently.

[Louise Haigh]

Recruitment is a matter for chief constables. My understanding is that West Midlands police are undergoing a recruitment drive. Obviously, I cannot speak to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but how chief constables spend the money the precept raises is up to them. The issue we have with using the precept to raise funds for the police—the House has rehearsed this time and again—is that a 2% increase in council tax in areas such as the west midlands will raise significantly less than in other areas of the country such as Surrey or Suffolk. That is why we opposed that fundamentally unfair way to increase funding for our police forces.

The reduction in the number of officers has reduced the ability of the police to perform hotspot proactive policing and targeted interventions that gather intelligence and build relationships with communities, These not only help the police to respond to crime but help them to prevent it from happening in the first place. That is the bedrock of policing in our country. Community policing enables policing by consent, but has been decimated over the past eight years. That has contributed not only to the rise in serious violence but to the corresponding fall in successful prosecutions. Not only are more people committing serious violent offences, but more are getting away with it.

[Stephen Doughty]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. She will be aware that I have long campaigned for Cardiff to get additional resources because of the challenges it has as a capital city. I am glad that the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service has agreed to meet me, the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner in south Wales to discuss these very real concerns. Does my hon. Friend agree that community policing resources are absolutely crucial? Community police can deal with the grooming that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) described, whether it is to do with knives and violence, drugs or extremism.

[Louise Haigh]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who is a committed campaigner for Cardiff to receive the police resources it needs. That is why the Labour manifesto put neighbourhood policing at its heart. Neighbourhood policing not only enables the police to respond better to crime, but it is an important intelligence-gathering tool for tackling terrorism, more serious crime and organised criminal activity.

The proposals in the Bill to strengthen the law to meet the changing climate are welcome, but, without adequate enforcement, they cannot have the effect we need them to have. The Government must drop their dangerous delusion that cutting the police by more than any other developed country over the past eight years bar Iceland, Lithuania and Bulgaria has not affected community safety. They must make a cast-iron commitment that in the spending review they will give the police the resources they need to restore the strength of neighbourhood policing so recklessly eroded over the past eight years.

[Andrew Rosindell]

One problem in my constituency following the murder on Saturday evening is the feeling that the police do not have enough resources. I agree with the hon. Lady. We cannot keep reducing resources for policing and say it will not have an effect on crime; clearly it will. However, Havering in my area, for example, is part of Greater London, so the resources are allocated by the Mayor of London. Our area gets far less than other parts of London. Yes, let us have more resources, but does the hon. Lady agree that areas like mine need a fairer slice of the cake? If crime is moving out to areas such as Essex, we need resources. We are not inner London—we are completely different—and therefore need a different style of policing and adequate resources to make our communities safe.

[Louise Haigh]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that resources should follow demand. That is why it is a crying shame that the Government have kicked the can down the road on the police funding formula, which has denied resources to areas of the country that are in serious need of police resources. That funding formula should be based on demand.

[Vicky Ford]

Following the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), will the hon. Lady join me in thanking Essex police and congratulating them on the 150 officers they are adding to our force?

[Louise Haigh]

It is welcome when any police force recruits additional police officers. I do not have to hand the number of officers that Essex has lost since 2010, but I imagine that it is significantly more than 150.

Let us look at the Home Office research on the drivers of trends in violent crime. Neighbourhood policing was certainly mentioned; social media was acknowledged to have played a role, as were changes to the drug market, as the Home Secretary mentioned, particularly in respect of the purity of crack cocaine. They are all factors in the spate of recent murders, but one of the most important factors that the analysis showed was that a larger cohort of young people are now particularly vulnerable to involvement in violent crime because of significant increases in the numbers of homeless children, children in care and children excluded from school. Just 2% of the general population have been excluded from school, compared with 49% of the prison population. As much as this Bill is, and should be, about taking offensive weapons off our streets, the issues around serious violent crime are also a story of vulnerability.

The Children’s Commissioner has shown that 70,000 under-25-year-olds are currently feared to be part of gang networks. The unavoidable conclusion is that, for a growing, precarious and highly vulnerable cohort of children, the structures and safety nets that are there to protect them are failing.

Behind this tragic spate of violence is a story of missed opportunities to intervene as services retreat; of children without a place to call home shunted between temporary accommodation, with their parents at the mercy of private landlords; of patterns of truancy and expulsions; and of troubled families ignored until the moment of crisis hits. The most despicable criminals are exploiting the space where well-run and effective early intervention, prevention and diversion strategies once existed.

As the Children’s Commissioner notes, the pursuit of young children is now

“a systematic and well-rehearsed business model.”

The Home Secretary himself highlighted the importance of early intervention in tackling violence when he told “The Andrew Marr Show” that we must deal with the root causes, but the £20 million a year we spend on early intervention and prevention has to be seen in the context of the £387 million cut from youth services, the £1 billion cut from children’s services, and the £2.7 billion cut from school budgets since 2015. For most communities, the funding provided by the serious violence strategy will not make any difference at all. How can it even begin to plug the gap?

We know what happens when early intervention disappears. A groundbreaking report 18 years ago by the Audit Commission described the path of a young boy called James who found himself at the hard end of the criminal justice system before the last Labour Government’s progressive efforts to address the root causes of crime through early intervention:

“Starting at the age of five, his mother persistently requested help in managing his behaviour and addressing his learning difficulties. Despite formal assessments at an early age for special educational needs, no educational help was forthcoming until he reached the age of eight and even then no efforts were made to address his behaviour problems in the home. By the age of ten, he had his first brush with the law but several requests for a learning mentor came to nothing and his attendance at school began to suffer. By now he was falling behind his peers and getting into trouble at school, at home and in his…neighbourhood…

Within a year James was serving an intensive community supervision order and…only then did the authorities acknowledge that the family had multiple problems and needed a full assessment. A meeting of professionals was arranged but no one directly involved with James, other than his Head Teacher, attended, no social worker was allocated and none of the plans that were drawn up to help James were implemented. Within a short space of time, he was sent to a Secure Training Centre and on release…no services were received by James or his family. He was back in custody within a few months.”

How many Jameses have we come across in our constituencies? How many mothers like James’s have we met in our surgeries? The pattern described here could just as well be attributed to a young man I had been seeking to help over the past year but whose life was tragically ended just last month. He was stabbed to death in my constituency, and another 15-year-old charged with his murder.

It very much feels as though we have learned these lessons before and are now repeating the same mistakes.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Given the intelligence we have received that the Mayor of London is doubling his PR budget, what role does the hon. Lady think he can play in trying to address the urgent problem in this city?

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

The Mayor of London has put £150 million into recruiting additional police officers. I appreciate the serious concerns in London but this is a national problem, as I have made clear and as the Home Secretary has acknowledged. This is not a London-only problem. Indeed, the increase in violence in London is actually lower than in other parts of the country, which is why a national solution is required. It is politically easy to pass the blame on to the Mayor of London, but it simply is not the case that that is the only solution.

[Sir Edward Davey]

The hon. Lady is speaking huge common sense, as everyone in this House knows. Anyone who looks at our prison population knows that people in prison are suffering from mental health problems and learning disabilities, all of which could have been dealt with through early intervention. I ask her not to be put off by completely irrelevant interventions.

[Louise Haigh]

The right hon. Gentleman need not worry; I will not be put off at all by interventions from Government Members.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

The hon. Lady mentions that this is not only a London problem, but a lot of it does emanate from London. The county line operations and many other things start in our big cities, so will she join me in encouraging the Metropolitan police to work far more closely with other forces to make sure we break these county lines? The county lines are now heading across the country, but they largely start in London.

[Louise Haigh]

I completely agree that the county lines emanate from many metropolitan areas, and certainly not just London—they originate with organised criminal gangs in Birmingham and on Merseyside, too. I commend the Government’s approach through the national county lines co-ordination centre. Working between police forces is a nut that we really have to crack, because the county lines business model has been developed to exploit the challenges that police forces and other agencies experience in working together.

[Andrew Rosindell]

I agree with much of what the hon. Lady says, but can she envisage how local people in Havering feel? We are part of Essex, yet we are lumped into Greater London. My hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) proudly speaks of 150 new policemen for Essex, but people who come to Romford will realise that we are Essex, rather than London. However, we get so few resources from the Mayor of London—we really are left out. We are getting no extra policemen and far fewer resources than we need.

Will the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) please speak to Sadiq Khan and see whether he will prioritise the London Borough of Havering and give us the resources we need, or whether he will give us the chance to be a unitary authority outside of the Greater London area so we can manage our own resources and keep our communities safe?

[Louise Haigh]

I am sure Chelmsford has received both policemen and policewomen. I am sure the Mayor of London will be watching this debate closely, but I commit to passing the hon. Gentleman’s remarks on to him.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points, and she will recognise that in Wales the Welsh Labour Government have invested in keeping police community support officers in our communities, which has made a huge difference in my own community. Will she also pay tribute to the many voluntary organisations that are working with young people in particular? Tiger Bay and Llanrumney Phoenix amateur boxing clubs in my patch are working with young people who are very much at risk of being groomed or caught up in such things, and they are making a huge impact on those individuals’ lives.

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful for that intervention. Across the country, such community organisations are filling a vacuum that has been created by Government cuts over the past eight years. They are doing sterling work with at-risk young people, and preventing many of them from falling into exploitation and violence.

I take this opportunity to commend the work of the Scottish Government not just through the violence reduction unit, which I am sure we will hear much of in today’s debate, but in their commitment to long-term research on the patterns of youth offending and violence. The last major national study of youth crime in England and Wales was 10 years ago, which means we do not know the impact of social media or, indeed, of austerity. We urge the Government to repeat that survey, to commission research on why young people carry weapons and on the risk factors that lead to violent offending, and to commission an evidence-based analysis of the success of various interventions. That could build on the excellent work led by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who pioneered the Youth Violence Commission.

In Scotland, the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime found that violent offenders are significantly more likely than non-violent young people to be victims of crime and adult harassment, to be engaged in self-harm and para-suicidal behaviour, to be drug users or regular alcohol users and, for girls in particular, to be from a socially deprived background.

Although, of course, I accept wholeheartedly the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) that any young person can be at risk of exploitation, it is in the public good for such vulnerable young people to receive targeted interventions at a young age, rather than to see them fall into the costly criminal justice system and their lives wasted. We hope to see significantly more action from the Government on that.

[Vicky Ford]

I am a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, and we have been looking at the evidence on early intervention. As has been highlighted, there are areas of excellent practice, including Manchester and, I am glad to say, Essex. Will the hon. Lady look at those areas of excellent practice? I reject the suggestion that, somehow, this is linked to cuts. Our good practice in delivering early intervention helps to make the difference.

[Louise Haigh]

I heartily recommend that the hon. Lady reads the Home Office’s own analysis, which suggests that cuts to neighbourhood policing and early intervention have played a part in the rise of serious violence, but of course I accept that some excellent work is going on throughout the country. That is exactly the point I am making: we need a proper evidence-based analysis of that work to make sure that we roll out the successful pilots.

Let me turn to the possession and sale of corrosives. We welcome the move to clarify the law. In March, the Sentencing Council explicitly listed acid as a potentially dangerous weapon, but it is welcome that that is made clear in the legislation. Nevertheless, concerns remain about the lack of controls on reportable substances. We welcome the passing of secondary legislation to designate sulphuric acid as a reportable substance, but the time has come for a broader look at the two classes of poisons to determine which are causing harm and should therefore be subject to stricter controls.

The purpose of the legislation prior to the Deregulation Act 2015 was to allow the sale of commonly used products while protecting the individual from their inherent dangers. The sale of such poisons as hydrochloric, ammonia, hydrofluoric, nitric and phosphoric acids was restricted to retail pharmacies and to businesses whose premises were on local authorities’ lists of sellers. That situation was not perfect, but in considering reform we should note that the Poisons Board preferred a third option, between the previous system and what we have today, which would have designated as regulated all poisons listed as reportable substances, meaning that they could be sold only in registered pharmacies, with buyers required to enter their details.

The Government have conceded the point that some acids that are currently on open sale are dangerous and so should not be sold to under-18s. Schedule 1 lists hydrochloric acid and ammonia as two such examples, but we know that only one in five acid attacks are conducted by under-18s. That means that four in five attackers will be free to purchase reportable substances despite the clear evidence of harm. Of the 408 reported acid attacks, ammonia was used in 69 incidents. In the light of that, will the Government conduct a full review of the designation of reportable substances and bring forward regulations to re-designate those causing clear harm?

We note that the Government have failed to extend to corrosive substances the specific provisions on the possession of knives in schools. There can surely be no justification, beyond a reasonable defence, for the possession of corrosive substances on a school premises. If we are to send a message that the possession of corrosive substances will be treated with the same seriousness as the possession of knives, it should follow that the provisions that apply in respect of knives in schools are extended to acid.

On knife possession, the measures on remote sales and residential premises are important, but a cursory internet search demonstrates the easy availability of a wide range of weapons that are terrifying in their familiarity: knives disguised as credit cards and as bracelets; weapons designed with the explicit purpose to harm and to conceal. With the increasing use of such weapons and the widespread use of machetes in certain parts of the country, we wish to explore with the Government what further action can be taken to bear down on such pernicious weapons, and how apps and platforms on which such weapons are made readily available can be held to account.

As the Bill is considered in Committee, we wish to explore the concerns, mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) earlier, of retailers and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers about the offences imposed on retailers.

[David Hanson]

As the chair of the USDAW group of MPs—I declare that interest—I welcome that commitment. I was greatly encouraged by the fact that the Home Secretary said that he will look into this issue. I hope that we can consider it on a cross-party basis to ensure that shop workers are free from fear and that regulations can be put in place to make sure that we defend those who will have to defend the Bill’s provisions on the frontline, in shops.

[Louise Haigh]

My right hon. Friend is a long-standing campaigner for the rights of shop workers and I echo his point about hoping that we can do this on a cross-party basis.

Concerns remain about the open sale of knives in smaller retail stores, which is an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). Many of the larger stores have taken steps to secure knives in cabinets, but the fact that it is far too easy to steal knives from smaller stores renders much of the control of knife sales ineffective.

It was surprising to see that higher education institutions have been omitted from the extension of possession offences, given that they were considered in the consultation earlier this year. The justification that the Government gave for the proposal then was, I think, right, so I am interested to hear why higher education institutions have been omitted from the Bill.

On firearms, the laws in the UK are among the toughest in the world, but there is concern that restricted supply might be leading to the repurposing of obsolete firearms, meaning that law enforcement must be alive to the changing nature of firearms use. There has been a significant rise in the use of antique guns that have been repurposed to commit serious crime: 30% of the guns used in crime in 2015-16 were of obsolete calibre. The repurposing of handguns designed to fire gas canisters, and of imitation weapons, has grown in the past 10 years. We intend to press the Government on whether the laws surrounding decommissioned firearms, which are not subject to the Firearms Act 1968, need to be strengthened. The availability of firearms has been shown to be increasing through the legal-to-illegal route, so we very much support the Government’s proposals.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, but as someone who has recently renewed their shotgun licence, I should say that that is a very thorough process. I would not want the wrong impression to be given of people who shoot for sport—I shoot only clays; I do not shoot animals—because it is a very responsible sport.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend brings his own personal experience to the debate and makes an important point. I am sure that will be heard in Committee.

Finally, we believe that the Bill is a missed opportunity for victims. The Conservative party manifestos in 2015 and 2017 promised to enshrine in law the rights of victims, a group too often neglected by the criminal justice system. With crime surging and the perpetrators of crime more likely than ever to escape justice, the Bill should have gone further and looked to strengthen the rights of victims of crime.

[Vicky Ford]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way yet again. On the point about repurposing or reactivating deactivated firearms, will she mention for the record that of course the reactivation of a deactivated firearm is in itself a criminal act?

[Louise Haigh]

Yes, and I was not trying to suggest otherwise, but, as I have laid out, the number of crimes using repurposed weapons has increased significantly over the past 10 years, so it is clear that in considering the Bill we should look into how we can restrict the availability of decommissioned weapons.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

On the subject of a victims law, Sharon Fearon is the mother of Shaquan, a young boy who was murdered in my constituency, and there was never a conviction in that case. Sharon and I met Minister after Minister, including the Attorney General, and the one thing we were promised was that there would be a victims law and that their voices would be heard.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend has done sterling work over the past three years on youth violence, and particularly on the rights of victims, and her work is one of the reasons we think it is so important to strengthen the rights of victims through this Bill. I hope that we can do that on a cross-party basis, given the promises that were made in the 2015 and 2017 Conservative manifestos.

We would like to see a recognition that the rights of victims should be paramount, so we want consideration to be given to the introduction of an independent advocate, in line with the recommendations of the Victims’ Commissioner, to help victims of serious crime to navigate the range of services in the aftermath of a serious crime. With fewer than one in five violent crimes resulting in a charge, we will seek to legally entrench a victim’s right to a review of a decision by the police or the Crown Prosecution Service not to bring criminal charges or to discontinue a case. With homicide rates surging, Labour will also seek to provide national standards for the periodic review of homicide cases, because many families are deeply concerned at how cases can often be left to gather dust, with nobody brought to justice.

In the debate around serious violence, it is vital that the rights of victims are not forgotten. The aftermath of such an incident is traumatic and disorienting, with victims who are struggling to deal with their own personal trauma forced to navigate the at times baffling criminal justice system. As the number of victims of serious incidents is growing, now is the time to strengthen their rights.

I confirm again that we support the measures before us and will seek to be as constructive as possible in enhancing them. I hope that as deliberations on the Bill continue, we can have a full debate about adverse childhood experiences and the consequent policy considerations, such as trauma-informed policing and schooling, and about the implications of school exclusions and the increasing number of homeless children and children in care. As a result, I hope that we can improve on the measures in the Bill to begin to tackle the root causes of this growing epidemic. Violent crime is a contagious disease that is infecting communities across our nation. Without concerted political will and sustained Government investment, we will continue to see many more unnecessary tragedies.

Rural Crime and Public Services

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is concerned that the level of rural crime remains high; notes research by the National Famers’ Union that rural crime cost the UK economy £42.5 million in 2015; recognises that delivering public services across large, sparsely populated geographical areas can be more costly and challenging than in urban areas; agrees with the National Rural Crime Network that it is vital that the voice of the countryside is heard; calls on the Government to ensure that the personal, social and economic costs of crime and anti-social behaviour in rural areas are fully understood and acted upon; and further calls on the Government to ensure that rural communities are not disadvantaged in the delivery or quality of public services.

In the public imagination and in international reputation, rural Britain is a place of near meadows, still streams and sleepy villages, but the challenges facing it and its police forces are significant and unique. Although media coverage and our political attention this year has, understandably, focused on metropolitan areas, particularly London, given the horrifying spate of serious violence and of growing crimes associated with mopeds, that is not to say that the crimes experienced by victims in our rural communities do not matter. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges our policing model faces is its ability to provide a consistent service to every victim, and indeed offender, regardless of where they live.

There is perhaps a sense that has crept in, as budget cuts bite, that rural crime is more trivial, but as we will hear today from many Members representing rural constituencies, not only do we face the traditional types of rural crime, but crime is mutating and rural communities are no longer immune to serious crime. In the most recent year for which figures are available, more than 88,000 farm animals were snatched by thieves, amounting to more than £6 million in lost stock to farmers, with the consequential impacts on our rural economy. Last year, Humberside police spent 1,200 hours battling hare coursing, with more than 500 reports of the crime in the 2017-18 season. The pursuit has been illegal since the Hunting Act 2004 and it involves “sighthounds” such as lurchers, greyhounds or salukis being set on hares, often with large sums bet on the outcome. Dealing with this is resource intensive for rural forces but it is necessary to respond, as the practice intimidates local communities and has significant criminal and antisocial behaviours associated with it.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech. County Durham is a large rural area—my constituency comprises 300 square miles—yet our police have been cut by 25%. Is she satisfied that the formula for policing adequately takes account of the difficulties of pursuing policing in a rural area?

[Louise Haigh]

It may not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I am deeply unsatisfied with the resources available for policing and with the funding formula on which we base our police funding at the moment. She makes an important point. On recent visits to forces in the south-west, I was particularly struck by the challenges facing police in huge rural areas, such as those in her constituency.

In the Devon and Cornwall force, not only is the chief constable responsible for an area of almost 4,000 square miles, but he—and in this case it is a he—is also responsible for 500 miles of coastline and for 10 miles out to sea. That is an incredible challenge when we consider that my old force, the Met, has 44 officers per square mile, while Devon and Cornwall has 0.7 officers per square mile. In that context, it is useful to discuss the proposed merger of Devon and Cornwall with Dorset police force and the strong belief of both forces that the move would produce better working, better connectivity and a better presence in communities and that neighbourhood policing would become more of a priority.

I have had similar conversations in Warwickshire and West Mercia. Given how significantly crime is changing, perhaps it is time to look at the structure of policing in this country, particularly at how we can ensure a consistent approach across the country. It has been fantastic to see innovations in forces such as those around drones, the development of tech solutions in forces such as Avon and Somerset, and the use of tri-service officers—officers who are trained as police community support officers, fire officers and paramedics all in one. However, we must ensure that where best practice is evidence-based and effective, it can be rolled out across the country, so that we are not reinventing the wheel time and again.

At the heart of our policing model is, and must always be, community policing, but that is what has been most affected by eight years of austerity. Those rural community policing beats are essential in preventing, detecting and tackling crime in rural areas. Community officers are treasured in all our communities, and yet, in many rural forces, neighbourhood teams have been completely abolished or merged with response teams, which effectively means the same thing.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend is making a really, really powerful speech that will resonate in many of our rural communities. I know that she will want to pay tribute to the great work of organisations such as Farm Watch. Those of us in rural areas are not scared of voluntary action working alongside statutory services, but where we do get angry is when there is not enough neighbourhood policing.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. True community policing and neighbourhood policing work very effectively with Farm Watch, Neighbourhood Watch and other voluntary organisations in our communities. We are not just talking about a police officer walking down the street with his hands in his pockets. True neighbourhood policing requires officers to engage and build relationships with communities and to grow trust in the police. Having grown up in South Yorkshire, I know that the policing of so many communities, particularly the hardest-to-reach communities, requires that approach in order to be able to police by consent. On top of all that, we have seen numerous rural police stations close—the symbol of a rural community’s relationship with its local police service and a symbol of the police’s commitment to those communities. There is strong evidence that they have contributed to the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public. Little wonder then that the National Farmers Union has found two worrying trends: first, that four in 10 people in rural areas fear crime, double that of individuals in urban areas; and secondly, that two thirds think that the local police fail to deal with the problems that matter to them—twice as many as the national average. Those figures show that the ability of the police to interpret and respond to the needs of rural communities is fading away, leaving those communities isolated.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

As always, my hon. Friend is giving a very well-informed and impassioned speech. On this point about rural communities, does she agree that it is also very important that we think of rural communities not just as places such as Somerset, Devon or Cornwall, but as seats such as mine, former heavy industrial areas? For example, the Ogmore and Garw valleys in my constituency no longer have police stations, but what they do have now is high levels of rural crime. They are isolated and cut off because of deindustrialisation. That must be put into the mix of how we see rural crime moving forward.

[Louise Haigh]

I could not agree more. It is exactly the same in my own home force of South Yorkshire. The pernicious and long-term effects of deindustrialisation in communities are often the same issues that other rural forces and areas experience and are affected by.

The feelings of isolation can be strong and overwhelming, particularly for vulnerable individuals in rural areas such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). If police do not have the ability to reach out, they will feel ever more vulnerable. The Conservative party used to be clear on this. A leaked internal communiqué said that

“police-stations are important to local communities and the sheer number of closures is worrying.”

But since that communiqué, closures have rocketed. Nearly 400 police stations have closed in England and Wales, with the number of front counters open to the public falling from over 900 in 2010 to just over 500 today. It is harder to ignore the knock-on effects that sales of police stations and closures of custody suites have had on policing. Particularly in large rural areas, officers now have to drive for long distances to take offenders into custody, taking them off the streets for a considerable period of time.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady actually saying that she would reopen those police stations?

[Louise Haigh]

No. I am saying that we would properly resource the police to be able to do their job, unlike the Conservative party. In reducing the police, as the Conservatives have done, to nothing more than a flashing blue light that only arrives when the absolute worst has happened, not only have they destroyed the police’s ability to prevent crime from happening in the first place; they have rolled back all the progress of the previous generation in building trust with the police in the hardest-to-reach communities. That is the danger of the loss of community officers from rural police forces.

The devastating assault on the strength of our police service as a result of decisions taken by the Conservatives has undermined the fundamental foundations on which policing in this country has been based. Chief among these is the notion that every community matters and every community deserves a police service that is able to respond to the challenges that it deems important. Although the challenges and risks for each community may vary, each is deserving of a community police service, and the priorities of local communities are of equal merit.

The independent inspectorate of constabulary laid bare the breathtaking pressure that the police are now under thanks to the financial constraints imposed on them by the Government and by rising demand. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary said that

“policing is under significant stress. On occasions, that stress stretches some forces to such an extent that they risk being unable to keep people safe in some very important areas of policing.”

Not only have we lost more than 21,000 police officers; thousands of emergency calls are waiting in queues with not enough officers to respond. Some victims facing an emergency get no response at all. The police have yet to assess risk posed by more than 3,000 individuals on the sex offenders register. We do not know whether those individuals are a threat to the public. There is a shortage of more than 5,000 detectives, as unsolved crime rose to 2.1 million crimes last year.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I do not want my hon. Friend to move on from this incredibly important point. It is not only the cuts to resources and the loss of police stations that are important issues that have had a terrible and adverse impact on rural crime; she is also absolutely right to point out the changing nature of the demands made on policing, including trafficking, modern slavery and some of the sex offenders to which she refers. That makes it even more important that police forces across the country are properly resourced.

[Louise Haigh]

I could not agree more. The police have been cut to a level at which they are unable to prevent and respond to crime, and the demand on them is completely unprecedented, not only from new crimes, but as a result of other services being cut.

The police are now unable to respond to the basic task that we ask of them and that the Prime Minister asked them to do at the Police Federation conference eight years ago, which is to prevent and respond to crime—nothing more, nothing less. Police chiefs have warned the Government about the issue time and again. They have warned that local policing is under such strain that the legitimacy of policing is at risk, as the relationship with communities is fading to a point at which prevention, early intervention and core engagement are ineffective. This is a stark warning. Never before have police chiefs, usually incredibly reticent to enter political debate, spoken out so plainly about the risks facing public safety. Only yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, told the Home Affairs Committee that it would be “naive” to dissociate police cuts from rising levels of crime.

While the lack of resources has hampered the police, there is no doubt that crime itself, and the demand on rural police forces, is changing. County lines is a clear and growing threat for rural forces. It has been partly responsible for a serious increase in violent crime in areas that do not traditionally suffer from it. County lines dealers from the cities are exploiting hidden poverty and a cohort of vulnerable youngsters in rural areas. With the numbers of looked-after children and homeless children rising, this is of significant concern. The exploitation of young and vulnerable persons is a common feature in the facilitation of county lines drugs supply, whether for the storage or supply of drugs, the movement of cash, or to secure the use of dwellings held by vulnerable people—commonly referred to as cuckooing.

As the Home Office’s own analysis of the rise in serious violence states, childhood risk factors, including economic stress, mean that interventions with vulnerable young people such as those excluded from school and looked-after children would be successful in reducing violence and drug demand. The Government are aware of this, but so far their response has been muted, and their continued refusal to fund the police properly is felt across the country.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that it is our job as constituency MPs to stay in touch with our local police forces and to address their concerns? That is what I did, and that is how I managed to raise the precept in our local area and increase the police force there.

[Louise Haigh]

Raising the precept in the way that the Government have done is a fundamentally unfair way to fund police forces across this country. [Interruption.] I am sorry—I do not know which police force area the hon. Gentleman represents, but I am almost positive that raising the precept by 2% will result in significantly more in his force area than in my area of South Yorkshire, or in Northumbria, Cleveland, or many metropolitan areas that have significant demand.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

In my own police area of Derbyshire, we have seen a drop of over 400 police officers. Yes, we have raised the police precept, with £12 a year from every resident on top of the 5% increase in council tax for social care, but that will fund 25 officers, while we have lost over 400. There is absolutely no comparison in terms of what can be achieved.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend puts it much better than I did. Last year, the precept was able to raise £270 million. That is a drop in the ocean given that this Government have taken £2.7 billion out of policing over the past eight years. The force in the area of the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) may have been able to increase numbers from their existing point, but I am sure that they will not have been driven up to the levels that we saw in 2010, and will certainly not account for the level of demand or the cuts that we have experienced.

There are other demands on rural forces—if not unique to them, then certainly more pronounced. From cyber-crime to hate crime, from domestic violence to historical child sexual exploitation, the Government keep stating that crime is falling, but the experience of the police on the ground could not be more different. Nowhere is that more obvious than in non-crime demand that falls on the police. Non-crime demand makes up about 83% of calls to command and control centres, and in rural forces that is likely to be higher. Over the past eight years, because of the sparsity of social, mental health and more general health services, rural police forces have taken on an increased role as an auxiliary social and emergency service. I know of one rural county in northern England which, at the weekend, has one social worker on duty for the entirety of its social services, including for children with learning difficulties and those living with dementia. From 5 o’clock on a Friday, the police are the only service available to fill the gap.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there has been a massive increase in the number of calls to 101 that now go unanswered? That just proves how stretched our police forces are.

[Louise Haigh]

There has been the same level of demand from 101 and 999 as, just a few years ago, the police would have experienced only on new year’s eve. As I say, that is coming not only from traditional crime but from the demand on other public services.

This is not only wrong for the police, who are not trained or equipped to deal with the responsibilities of other public services, but, most importantly, wrong for the people struggling with their health needs, who are met with a criminal justice response rather than a health one because the proper provision simply is not available.

The result of all this is that criminals have recognised that our rural communities do not have the protection they need, and they are exploiting that. One reason why we are now hearing calls for all rural police officers to be armed is that the response time is unacceptably high for police and armed officers in significant swathes of the country, but arming all officers fundamentally undermines the principle of policing in this country: to police in communities and by consent.

While all forces experience seasonal variations, the minimum relative to maximum variation, especially for daily crime and antisocial behaviour, is far greater in rural forces with national parks and coastal areas attracting tourism. The seasonality of demand must be recognised, to ensure not only geographic equity but that minimum levels of service can be maintained throughout the year.

Clearly the police funding formula needs to take into account the real picture of demand and pressure facing every police force. We know that the current funding formula is broken. It uses age-old data and does not reflect the needs, demands and pressures on forces, nor the modern demands of policing.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way; I am listening to her with great interest. One of the worst aspects of the centralisation of police services in England and Wales over the last few years has been the centralisation of air support services and the creation of the National Police Air Service. That has removed dedicated helicopters from Dyfed-Powys, for instance, which covers two thirds of Wales. Would it be the Labour party’s policy to scrap NPAS or to keep it?

[Louise Haigh]

The issue with the centralisation of services such as NPAS is that those decisions have been made for all the wrong reasons. They have been made to drive cuts, rather than being genuinely about where provision should be. We would certainly keep NPAS and other services like it under review, but those decisions need to be made on the basis of the efficiency and effectiveness of that service, not solely to drive cuts for ideology’s sake.

The police funding formula cannot be reformed from a position of ever decreasing budgets. We saw what happened when they tried to do that with schools; it just shifted the pain elsewhere. It has to depend on need and take into account all demands for policing services. Though crime levels are important, we know that some rural forces face other unique challenges, such as the cost of policing a huge area, modern slavery and seasonal influxes of tourists. That has to be reflected in the funding formula.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

It felt like the hon. Lady was describing Lincolnshire—a huge, sparsely populated rural area with a huge coastal influx. Given what she says, why did Labour vote against a fairer funding formula that would have benefited Lincolnshire and against £450 million extra for the police? I am still waiting for the bit in her speech where she pays impassioned tribute to the hugely brave work that police officers in Lincolnshire do, in difficult circumstances, when they are battling all the issues that she has raised.

[Louise Haigh]

If the hon. Gentleman had not chosen to interrupt me at that stage of my speech, I would have got on to the bit where I praise police officers. I am a former police officer, as he may well know. We voted against the Government’s unfair funding formula because it did not deliver the funding that our police services so desperately need. As I have already explained, funding our police through the precept is unfair and distributes funding disproportionately away from the areas that need it most.

I would like to close by thanking the NFU for its support in preparing for today’s debate and, of course, the tens of thousands of police officers and staff across our country who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. Our conversations so often in this place cover the pressing challenges of our urban centres, but we can demonstrate how to deliver a consistent policing service for everyone, no matter who they are or where they live. The Government’s reckless and ideological approach to policing has not only left our inner cities rocked by serious violence but has left every single one of our communities exposed to crime. Only a Labour Government will keep the public safe and give the police the resources they need. I commend the motion to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

As my right hon. Friend says, the serious violence strategy balances the need for robust law enforcement with really effective work to support prevention and early intervention. That needs to be evidence-led, otherwise we will waste money. Part of the Home Office’s responsibility is to ensure that commissioners have the best evidence about what works.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The serious violence strategy made no reference at all to falling police numbers, but we have the document that was put together by Home Office officials, which clearly says that rises in serious violence are

“likely to be facilitated by…a shift in police resources meaning less proactive policing…and falls in arrests/charges relating to serious violence”.

So will the Minister explain on what evidential basis he or the Home Secretary removed that reference from the serious violence strategy? Was it a purely political decision to airbrush the strategy and risk our communities in the process?

[Mr Hurd]

I am disappointed that the hon. Lady should focus on that, not least because she was more sensible on the “Today” programme when she said, “We do not say that there is a direct causal factor between the number of officers on the ground and the number of crimes.” In saying that, she joined the Met Commissioner, who was also quite clear that causes of violent crime are complex and cannot simply be reduced down to resourcing. I give the hon. Lady credit for her interview on the “Today” programme because it was a lot more sensible than her question, which was partisan and party political at a time, frankly, when I think the public are sick and tired of politicians chipping away at each other on this issue and want to see us work together to put an end to this dreadful cycle of violence.

Police Funding

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House asserts that the loss of 21,000 police officers, 18,000 police staff and 6,800 police community support officers since 2010 in addition to the reduction in the number of armed officers has damaged community safety and public security; is concerned that central government funding to local police forces will fall in real terms for the eighth consecutive year in 2018-19 and in addition that there will be a £54m shortfall in funding for counter-terror policing; notes with alarm the assessment of the National Police Chiefs Council that this will mean tough choices for policing in the year ahead; supports the conclusion of the UK Statistics Authority that the Prime Minister could have led the public to conclude incorrectly that the Government were providing an additional £450m for police spending in 2018-19; and calls on the Government to take steps to increase officer numbers by 10,000 and to fulfil the full counter-terrorism policing requirements laid out by police chiefs for the year ahead and to report to the House by Oral Statement and written report before 19 April 2018 on what steps it is taking to comply with this resolution.

I want to start by paying tribute to the men and women who serve in our police service. Last week many of us attended services in Westminster in memory of those who were killed or injured on Westminster bridge, as well as PC Keith Palmer who was murdered defending all of us in this House. The grief for his family, friends and colleagues is unimaginable, but I hope that in time they can draw comfort and strength from the bravery and heroism that he showed on that terrible day. I would also like to praise the bravery of Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, whose recovery is ongoing after he attended the attempted murder in Salisbury, and the unnamed police officer from Greater Manchester who was injured in Whalley Range on Sunday by a man wielding a sword. The officer and his colleagues continued to contain the incident, despite their lives clearly being at risk. They are reminders, if ever one were needed, of the dangers that our police face every day to keep us safe.

Last time we debated police funding, the Minister repeatedly accused Labour Members of peddling fake news in saying that the Tory Government were cutting the police. It came as something of a surprise, and indeed a relief, to us and every police officer in the country to hear that policing was no longer being cut, yet last week the independent UK Statistics Authority ruled on those funding claims from the Government. It turns out that it was not fake news after all. Sir David Norgrove said that

“the Prime Minister’s statement…could have led the public to conclude incorrectly that central government is providing an additional £450 million for police spending in 2018/19.”

He has taken the unusual step of writing to the Home Office about the misleading tweets that were put out. Given that the Home Secretary confirmed to the Home Affairs Committee this morning that she would be complying with Sir David’s advice from now on, I hope we do not hear those claims repeated in today’s debate.

Also last week, the independent inspectorate of constabulary laid bare the breathtaking pressure that the police are now under, thanks to the financial constraints imposed on them by the Government and by rising demand. It said that it was still very concerned

“that policing is under significant stress. On occasions, that stress stretches some forces to such an extent that they risk being unable to keep people safe in some very important areas of policing.”

The admission that the police service is at times unable to keep us safe should shock the House and spur the Government to action.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

In the past seven years, Government funding to Cleveland police has fallen in real terms by 39%, resulting in the loss of 450 officers and 50 police community support officers. Does my hon. Friend agree that community safety is suffering because of police cuts?

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the report from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary makes that clear. Not only have we lost officers, but thousands of emergency calls are waiting in queues, with not enough officers to respond. Some victims facing an emergency get no response at all. Police have yet to assess the risk posed by over 3,300 individuals on the sex offender register. We simply do not know whether those individuals are a threat to the public. There is also a shortage of more than 5,000 investigative officers, as unsolved crimes rose to 2.1 million last year.

What is most striking about that assessment is that the problems facing the police are so clearly a result of having too few officers and staff to meet too high a demand.

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I would be very interested to know how the Opposition would make good their policing pledges and how they would fund them.

[Louise Haigh]

If the hon. Gentleman read Labour’s manifesto, he would see that we committed to funding 10,000 neighbourhood officers by reversing the cuts to capital gains tax. That was laid out in our manifesto and forms part of the motion before the House, which we will have a welcome opportunity to vote on.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that crime has a cost? People and businesses are paying the price for the lack of policing to keep them safe in our communities, and it is high time the Government took that seriously.

[Louise Haigh]

Absolutely. If the Government were in opposition they would be crying bloody murder, because there is not only an economic but a human cost to the enormous rise in crime that we have seen as a result of their cuts in police funding.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Does she accept that one of the hidden areas is small shop retail crime? Nowadays when goods have been stolen, it is virtually impossible to get a police officer to go to the scene of the crime, and as a result many smaller shops have gone out of business.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Small businesses are facing huge costs thanks to the cuts in police numbers. Many shoplifting offences are not prosecuted, and often police officers do not attend at all. The same applies to residential burglaries and many other crimes. Offenders are going scot-free because the police simply do not have the resources to attend.

Since the Tories came to power, we have lost 21,000 police officers, 18,000 police staff and 6,800 police community support officers, but I fear that, rather than facing up to this crisis, the Government are determined to try to spin their way out of it. This will be the eighth consecutive year in which Government funding for local forces has fallen.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

We have lost nearly a third of our police strength in Westminster. Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the saddest aspects of the situation is the loss of the safer neighbourhood policing function, which has been critical not only in fighting crime but in building the community cohesion, relationships and crime prevention work that so many of my constituents now want to be rebuilt?

[Louise Haigh]

Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of our policing system, and it has been the greatest loss following the police cuts of the last eight years. I shall say more about that shortly.

Between 2010 and 2015, cuts in policing amounted to £2.3 billion. At least in those days the Government used to admit that they were making cuts. Between 2015 and 2017, funding for local forces fell by a further £400 million in real terms, and in the year ahead central Government funding will fall by more than £100 million in real terms. It is an insult to the public and to the police that Ministers refuse to admit to those cuts.

The Government will know that in the year ahead, any increase in funds for local forces will only come through a hike in the council tax paid by local residents, and those residents will be angry at being asked to pay more and get less thanks to cuts that the Tories have made from Westminster. What is more, that method of funding the police is fundamentally unfair.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I appreciate that I have yet not been in the House for a year, but I am slightly confused. If the money does not come from taxation, where else does the hon. Lady think it comes from?

[Louise Haigh]

In their announcement on police funding, the Government attempted to claim to the public that they were making £450 million available. That is not the case. They are asking people to pay more in tax, and we are asking them to be clear about that. They are forcing local ratepayers to pay more for a lesser service because they are making real-terms cuts in police funding.

As I have said, funding the police through council tax is fundamentally unfair. Last week the chief constable of West Midlands police issued a warning about the aggressive use of council tax to raise funds, because the police forces that have already been forced to make the most cuts will raise the smallest amount of money. West Midlands, which has lost a staggering 2,000 officers since 2010, will be able to raise a little over 2% of its budget from the precept, and will still have to make substantial cuts next year thanks to the unfunded pay rise, pension fund strain and other inflationary pressures. Surrey, which has half the population of the west midlands, will raise almost the equivalent in cash terms.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, as well as the funding issue, there are further demands on our police as a result of the failure of many other Government policies? The number of homeless people, and the failure to deal with mental health issues, to which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition referred earlier today, are putting additional pressures on the police at exactly the time when the Government are cutting the resources that they have.

[Louise Haigh]

That is absolutely right. While the Government have cut police funding to unprecedented levels, the demands on our police have also been unprecedented. Some 83% of calls to command and control centres are not crime related: they relate to vulnerabilities and mental health issues—as well as physical health issues, because the ambulance service is not able to attend. And they relate to missing people.

The police are increasingly unable to respond to the basic tasks that we ask of them, to tackle crime in our communities. Police chiefs have warned the Government about the issue time and again. They have warned that local policing is under such strain that the

“legitimacy of policing is at risk as the relationship with communities…is fading to a point where prevention, early intervention and core engagement…are…ineffective.”

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

When I tried to raise the issue of the 300 police officers lost in Suffolk last year, the Minister thought I had said “Southwark”, and tried to blame it on the Mayor of London. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not the fault of the Mayor of London, the police and crime commissioner for Suffolk or any of the other police and crime commissioners around the country? It is the fault of the Government.

[Louise Haigh]

Absolutely. It is a trick of the Government to blame PCCs for cuts made to policing in their communities; PCCs can only play the hand they have been dealt by Westminster. The choices of the Mayor of London, who receives 70% of his budget from central Government, are few and far between.

As I said, neighbourhood policing is the absolute bedrock of the model of policing in this country. It is almost wholly responsible for building and maintaining relationships with communities and it is the eyes and ears of our counter-terror police. We need sustained and large-scale recruitment of police officers across the country. In the past year, the task has become even more urgent as the proportion of officers assigned to local policing has fallen by a further 10%. Little wonder, then, that crime is soaring: by 14% in the past year alone. Although we accept that police recording has improved, nothing can detract from the horrendous rises in knife and gun crime, at 21% and 20% respectively. People know that the challenges facing the police are many and multifaceted, but they also know that there are simply too few officers to meet too high a demand, and that means that community safety is put at risk.

The year just past has also seen a concerted and sustained increase in Islamist and far-right terrorism.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I put on the record my thanks to Assistant Chief Constable Russ Foster who led some of the work dealing with the “punish a Muslim day” letter at the north-east counter-terrorism unit. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the face of policing is changing. Given the rise of the far right and increased referrals to Prevent, we should be putting more funding into the police force.

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The increased pressure from far right and Islamist terrorism on the police is crippling our local forces. Although the Government have put some money into counter-terrorism, the demand that that then puts on local forces has simply not been covered by the Government’s police settlement. Mark Rowley, the outgoing head of counter-terrorism operations, told the Home Affairs Committee that his organisation has been dealing with a 30% uptick in operations. He warned:

“we have a bigger proportion of our investigations that are at the bottom of the pile and getting little or no work at the moment.”

The report by David Anderson QC on the four fatal attacks of last year drew the same conclusions. Those people know that counter-terrorism policing is under such strain that investigations into individuals of serious concern are being put on hold.

What was the Government’s response? They chose to underfund counter-terror policing to the tune of £54 million. With a terror threat now described by experts as “stratospheric”, it is unconscionable to leave such a black hole in our counter-terror budget.

The Minister has said time and again that he will ensure that the police have the resources they need to do their job. There will not be a chief constable in this country who can tell him they have the resources they need to fully protect the public and provide a professional service in the current climate.

The Government have failed in the most fundamental duty of any Government: to keep their citizens safe and free from harm. Their ideological cuts have left the public exposed to rising crime and a rising terrorism threat and they are letting down millions of victims as crimes go uninvestigated and unsolved. Today, MPs have the chance to put this right—to put community safety and security before ideology. I commend this motion to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wallace]

I do not have time to give way.

We heard a number of contributions in the debate. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) gave the usual off-the-shelf SNP answer, which is that, despite all the powers that we have given the Scottish Parliament, including tax-raising powers, and the above-average spending, England should pay. Somehow that is the SNP’s solution to everything, rather than facing up to the issues.

My hon. Friends the Members for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) and for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) pointed out that part of this debate has to be about recognising whether PCCs are delivering on their freedoms to help to shape policing in their communities. Some are and some are not, irrespective of their parties. The best example that I can give of the power of good leadership is Durham constabulary, Chief Constable Mike Barton and a Labour PCC delivering a force graded as outstanding in England, despite pressure on their budgets and on policing. Their leadership—[Interruption.] “Government cuts”—I love it. It is the old mantra. Labour runs up the debt, we have to fix the economy—and unfortunately ordinary people pay.

The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) made an important point. I am sure he will be pleased to know that we have increased capital funding in south Wales to establish a joint counter-terrorism unit and the regional organised crime unit, as well as in Gwent, to make sure that we are attacking the threat collectively and strongly.

My hon. Friends the Members for Moray (Douglas Ross) and for Angus (Kirstene Hair) made a strong point about counter-terrorism policing, because Labour is incorrect, even at the heart of today’s motion, about the £54 million shortfall in funding for counter-terrorism. If the Opposition are going to put something like that at the heart of their motion, one might think they might get it right. All the money that the police asked for to respond to operational pressures from counter-terrorism was given. They did not ask for £54 million; they did not get. Before Labour Members put that in their motion, I would recommend they seek some accuracy.

[Louise Haigh]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Wallace]

No, I will not. I have a second to finish and the hon. Lady has had her say.

The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) gave a valid and thoughtful speech. The challenges in West Yorkshire are almost unique—that is why it is a Prevent priority area—with serious organised crime and inter-community threats to each other and, indeed, the state. That is why we have increased counter-terrorism across a broad front, not just in local, specialist policing. We have used the full weight of Government, with Prevent, intelligence officers and GCHQ, as well as the regional organised crime units and the National Crime Agency, to ensure that we meet the threat. What was said by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton was inaccurate. There were no swingeing cuts. The bodies that we are using to tackle gun crime—the NCA, GCHQ and the ROCUs—have not been subject to draconian cuts as he claimed, and we are starting to produce some results.

Ultimately, this is a situation that we would not have wished for. However, we have to deal with what we inherited from a Labour Government who were unable to manage the economy, and in the end it is always the public who pay for economic mismanagement. The police are not alone, and my constituents are not alone. No one in the House will be fooled by the leader of the Labour party, who, when I was patrolling the streets with the police in the 1990s, was supporting, voting and fraternising with some of the worst terrorists in the United Kingdom. We will not forget the Leader of the Opposition, and we will not forget what they tried to do to our police and this country.