Offensive Weapons Bill (Fourth sitting)

Paul Scully Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

Q Why would a new offence correct the issues in the criminal justice system around plea bargaining and incorrect charges being applied or magistrates not paying due heed to aggravating circumstances?

Doug Russell: There are three things: it would help to clarify the law, make sentencing a simpler process and hopefully encourage more prosecutions to take place. This is all stuff that would have to be discussed with the Crown Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Justice. If those two work together and we see people getting more of the sentences they deserve for physically attacking or seriously threatening somebody in that situation, I think it would have a deterrent effect in the long run as well.

Tony Dale: There would be a publicity impact as well. If it was a specific offence to assault a shop worker involved in policing age-restricted sales, retailers could advertise that—they could put up zero-tolerance, respect for shop workers posters, notices and so on. While many members of the public think certain people are more protected and should not be abused, quite rightly, such as the police and firefighters, it seems that shop workers are open to abuse—they are fair game.

I think all workers in public-facing businesses should get additional protection. In the context of the Bill there is an opportunity. By widening the range of products that will be subject to age-restricted sales, such as corrosive substances, there will be an opportunity to say, “We will do three things. First, it will be an offence to sell it to someone under 18. Secondly, it should be an offence for somebody under 18 to attempt to buy it. Thirdly, we will give special protection to shop workers who are denying asale to someone under 18.” It seems to me that that is a consistent approach.

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

Q You might duplicate some of what you have just said to Louise Haigh, but I just want to clarify some things. I have your biography here, Tony. You say that the Bill should make it a specific offence to

“Attempt to purchase corrosive substances and knives underage.”

That should be criminalised. You have talked about that, but we heard in evidence this morning and previously concern about criminalising younger people, who are sometimes forced to make decisions that they would not necessarily take by themselves, perhaps by being goaded or pushed into a place. Could you speak to that a little bit?

Doug Russell: I am aware of that argument. It is one that we have had with various people over the years. Part of the problem is that the law in this area is a bit confused and confusing. In England and Wales, if you are under 18 it is illegal to try to purchase alcohol, and it is illegal to purchase a firearm or an air rifle. The latter is of particular relevance to the Offensive Weapons Bill: obviously, the restriction on firearms and air rifles is because they can be used as an offensive weapon. In Scotland, it is also an offence to try to purchase tobacco products if you are under 18, because in Scotland they had that debate and they decided that they wanted to send a clear message out to young people that society considers it wrong to take up smoking. Therefore, they made that a penalty, as well.

It is a question of the messaging you are giving to young people, which is crucially important. It would be better if there was more consistency across more of those age-restricted products, to make it clear that it is an offence to try to buy. Otherwise, as Tony said, you will end up in a situation where a young person intent on buying this stuff for the wrong reasons just goes around and tries it on in various different stores until they find somebody who, for whatever reason, gives in and gives them the product.

[Paul Scully]

Q I should have prefaced my remarks by saying that I do feel for retailers, who are putting themselves in considerable danger, just to make a living, whether we are talking about counterfeiting or other issues with tobacco, alcohol and all these restricted items. Picking up on what you said, Doug, about Scotland, what is the impact of that difference in the laws in Scotland about tobacco?

Doug Russell: If you talk to trading standards people in Scotland, they say the impact has been that the ban on selling and buying cigarettes for under 18s has been more successful in Scotland than in England and Wales. The number of test purchases they have done that have gone wrong has gone down substantially, and they believe that the number of underage people who are buying these products has gone down substantially as well, so they think it has had a positive impact.

[Paul Scully]

Q They think that is partly because underage people underage fear criminalisation.

Doug Russell: They are told it is illegal to buy as well as to sell. That is the crucial thing.

[Paul Scully]

Q On the other two, about intimidating or assaulting a worker enforcing the age restrictions in relation to any sale, I have a point of clarification on the evidence we are receiving. They are clearly criminal offences already. Assault—you used the word assault—is a criminal offence. You can talk about messages, but I am always wary about embedding anything in primary legislation to send a signal, because we have to make the primary legislation work. It has to be enforceable. How would you make it enforceable? How would you differentiate the two? If a police officer was going to be charging someone, how would the CPS then know which offence they will charge someone with and which angle would they go with? You have to make it work, if there is going to be a specific offence.

Doug Russell: It is a question of making it quite clear, which is to do with the seriousness of the offence and the sentencing that would follow from that offence. The emergency workers Bill that is going through Parliament at the moment has got some interesting ideas on how that would work in practice. The point is that if the assault quite clearly happens as a result of somebody trying to enforce the law by asking for ID and refusing a sale to somebody who might be underage, that should attract a stiffer penalty.

[Paul Scully]

Q So you envisage different sentencing.

Doug Russell: Yes.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Q A quick question: notwithstanding your argument in favour of some of the proposals, I was wondering whether training for shop workers and shop staff in dealing with the process of getting the appropriate information out of an individual and dealing with situations that might be confrontational would help in achieving your objective.

Tony Dale: Most of the members we represent work for large retailers, so the training does take place. One of the big problems that we have is that it is an extremely difficult bit of legislation to police. Guessing the age of many young people, and where they stand in the spectrum from 16 to 30 or whatever, can often be extremely difficult. Sometimes just being good at your job or attempting to do your job thoroughly can lead to a reaction from customers. I have been behind people in a queue who have been asked for ID for buying alcohol, and the person reacted quite strongly, saying it was ridiculous, that they were 28, and who on earth would challenge them? That person was just doing their job.

Quite often, those situations are quite difficult to train for. The task facing shop workers is very difficult, because it is not just the task of stopping the sale to people under 18. It is also the more difficult one of identifying who is under 18. I think training has taken place to the extent that it can, but you are talking about quite difficult levels of managing conflict. I think even the best-trained police negotiator would have difficulty sometimes in dealing with those situations.

Doug Russell: One of the findings from the research that we commissioned with the National Federation of Retail Newsagents was that when shop workers were asked what the main reason was that they would be reluctant to ask somebody to provide proof of age when they thought they should be doing so was the fear of violence. They feared that they would get abused or threatened, or even worse, if they challenged somebody. Ironically, that has actually been made more difficult by the training, because the training that is widely implemented now is the Think 25 policy. If you think somebody looks like they might be under 25, you should be asking them for proof of age, because that gives the seller a bit of a buffer to protect them against unintentionally selling to somebody who is under 18. Of course, that means lots of people who you are challenging for ID are going to be old enough to legally buy the product and if they happen not to have ID on them at the time, that is the kind of situation that Tony was describing where they can kick off. Legislation to back up the fact that you have got to do that, and that if it does go wrong, society will look after you, is quite an important message to send to shop workers.

Tony Dale: One other point is that in that sort of conflict situation, we are expecting shop workers to police the situation. They are in a position of authority, and if they sell the product to somebody under 18, they will be committing an offence. We need to do more as a society to say that those shop workers are in a position of authority. Creating a specific offence of attempting to assault a shop worker who is trying to carry out that check would be entirely legitimate.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Q Just following on from the subject of physical attacks with weapons in stores, do you think it would be helpful if we legislated for all knives and sharp instruments to be locked away behind counters, rather than just having the voluntary agreements?

Doug Russell: It would be. Obviously, now big retailers are increasingly going down the route of making it more difficult for customers to get their hand on the product until they have been age-checked and it is a safe transaction. The problem with it, of course, is that all sorts of bladed things are being sold and it is about where you draw the line. Kitchen knives are quite clear, you wouldn’t want somebody to pick a nine-inch blade off the shelf, unpack it from its packaging and then use it as a weapon, which has happened in some of the stores where our members work. However, when it gets down to safety knives, razors and things like that, it does get a bit more complicated. But, yes, we would be in favour of that, certainly.

Tony Dale: That is something the retailers are going towards more often, in the sense of having a range of knives that are behind a counter. Obviously, with the corrosive material there will be a question about other materials, such as bleaches and so on, and we may well need to look at how access to that material is restricted.

However, there is also the issue of the people who are working behind the counters at the cigarette stalls, which would be the age-restricted stalls. That is where an awful lot of abuse takes place. When people are turned away, that is a possible area of conflict as well, and abuse is increasing. Quite often, behind those counters you only have one or two people on their own, isolated from the rest of the store, so that has its own problems as well.

[Paul Scully]

Q There is one question that follows on from that about distribution. I was explaining to another panel that I went down the high street in Sutton, in my constituency, with a couple of anti-knife charities, and different shops were doing different things. There is obviously the voluntary code at the moment, but it was inconsistent. A lot of people were not aware of it. So, regarding display, how is it working at the moment for your retail workers and what would be the effect on those retail workers if things were changed and mandated?

Tony Dale: If it was mandated to be removed into?

[Paul Scully]

Either under lock and key, or behind the counter—whatever.

Tony Dale: I think we would welcome that, because there is an issue that you have dangerous weapons. You could have knives or corrosive materials, and so on, easily available on the store floor, which brings its own problems. I also think that if there are age-restricted products, to have those clearly marked and identified and away from the shop floor brings with it an increased recognition that they are age-restricted products, and sometimes at the moment there is not that recognition.

[Paul Scully]

Q You represent retailers as well as shop workers, do you not?

Doug Russell: No, we represent the workers only.

[Paul Scully]

Just the workers. One of the things I noticed when I went round last year—one of the issues, I suppose, for retailers—is that the more difficult you make it for someone to access the product, to feel the product, or whatever, the less likely they are to buy it. So you have the defence aspect. You want to protect your workers. You want to ensure that people are not just swiping the knives to use them then, which is the whole point of the Bill in the first place, but you do not want to get in the way of businesses selling something because it is on open display. How do you get that balance?

Doug Russell: It would be a different selling relationship, wouldn’t it? A lot of these products—things like knives and bladed weapons, for example—are sold in DIY outlets. It would be a move away from the big B&Q-style warehouse, where everything is out on display and you wander around lost trying to find what you are looking for until you find the right thing, and you can never find an assistant to ask for help when you need it. It would make it much more of a human interaction.

There would have to be somebody there to deal with the customer who wanted it, and you would probably end up with better customer service, because that person would know what they were talking about, and could advise you on the right thing to buy and check that you were legitimately buying it for the right purpose along the way. That would actually be a better exchange. It need not be bad for businesses; a different model of business would just develop if those restrictions were in place.

[Paul Scully]

Q Forgive my ignorance, but the distributive bit—the “D” of USDAW—does that include distributors such as deliverers or anything like that? Do you have an angle or a view on what might happen to distributors?

Doug Russell: Are you talking about delivery to the customer away from the store?

[Paul Scully]

Yes. What might happen to the people who are actually out and what about if there are unintended consequences?

Doug Russell: I don’t see any. Given the rise in e-commerce and e-shopping, it is a very important issue. For our members who work for Tesco, who work for their .com service, for example, it is already the policy that they cannot deliver to somebody who is underage. There has to be an adult in the house when a delivery is made. That should be the kind of principle employed by everybody in that area.

The trouble is that increasingly the partial delivery service is being hived off to a kind of Uber-economy approach, where the last person who does the delivery from the hub to the individual customer is some private individual who is getting paid so many pence per parcel to do it, and is working effectively as a self-employed person in that circumstance. It is very difficult to train and police them, and make sure that that side of the business is looked after. However, for all the big supermarket that do home deliveries, the staff who do that are trained about age-restricted products, and are expected to abide by the same principles now. It is not a particular problem.

[The Chair]

There are no further questions, so thank you Mr Russell and Mr Dale. We will now move on to our final panel of the day.

Examination of Witness

Chief Inspector Emma Burroughs gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Robinson]

Q Is that message getting through?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: It is probably too early to tell. We are working closely with a community safety partnership to understand that we need to get that messaging out. We have a couple of charities in the Reading area for people who self-refer for drug and alcohol abuse, but it has only been since around April, so we cannot gauge the benefits at this time.

[Paul Scully]

Q Coming back to stop-and-search, can you just outline what changes have happened in your stop-and-search over the last two, three or four years? How have you approached it?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: We obviously had the guidance that we had to ensure the grounds were there, but for an area such as Reading that has not had a significant impact, because of the visibility of individuals who meet the profile. We have had clear intelligence that they have come to Reading to deal and we have had information from a phone, so for us, the grounds have been sufficient, but I know there have been concerns over whether we are complying legislatively on stop-and-search. In Reading, we have continued the level of stop-and-search, primarily because it is very evident, but I know that in other areas of Thames Valley police, where it is not, there has been a decline in stop-and-search with confidence.

[Paul Scully]

Q Are there any more changes that could be made, such as regulations or guidance, to tackle what you were just describing to Mary Robinson— tackling them at a wider perimeter, rather than their coming in toward a fight and then you doing the stop-and-search?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: We do a lot of work with education on the preventive element, to ensure that people know the dangers, to try to identify those children that we think are being exploited for that reason, and to put in the interventions on the trauma side of it, as has already been mentioned. Are we seeing any signs? Accessibility is a main factor, but having the intelligence picture to work up that chain and prevent the drugs from coming in in the first place is a huge issue, given that the demand is clearly there from people wanting to buy the drugs.

[Paul Scully]

Q In the briefing we have here, it says you are particularly interested in the new powers that are given to police officers to deal with acid attacks on individuals. In what way are you interested in that?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: In the areas where we have a very stringent approach—what we call the knife arches, the checks and the engagement—the acids would not be picked up. Not that you could detect them in that way, but it is allowing the stop-and-search to identify those issues, seize the substances and have a substantive offence. As we know with many legislative things, our criminals can be one step ahead of us. If there are increased restrictions on knives, what would their next tool be? It will help us to have that very early testing, the ability to seize items that we suspect are acids, and for it to be part of the stop-and-search if they are found in possession of them.

[Paul Scully]

Q You talked about zombie knives. Is there a particular profile of people or groups that are escalating to zombie knives, machetes and the like?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: Not at the moment. We have seen them in all age groups, from the young individuals right up to some of our local street robbers—local criminals—who are arming themselves; those are people in the mid-40s age range. At the moment I would not say there is a clear profile. It is just that a knife that, potentially, we did not see six months ago is now being seized and found in house searches.

[Paul Scully]

Q Finally, you talked about the game “Fortnite”. Are you doing anything about demonstrating the actual consequences, with graphic stuff?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: Very much so—within education, to say, “If you do stab someone, they will be seriously injured.”

[Paul Scully]

“This is what it is like?”

Chief Inspector Burroughs: Yes. It is definitely within education. I know there is a lot going on regarding the impact of the addiction and mental health elements. I know a hospital near us has seen children come through who have been classed as having an addiction, so it is working through from the mental health element. If you mention mental health to parents, it clearly sets different alarm bells ringing when they understand that. We have had conversations with numerous parents over some behaviour issues that we have been called to, which are classed as a domestic, but when you have chatted to them and understood it is because they have asked their child to get off “Fortnite”, then you talk to them about addictions. There is education through a different route.

[Paul Scully]

Q That presumably includes the non-gang stuff. We heard the other day how 75% of the people St Giles Trust was working with are non-gang. Would that include them?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: Yes. What is a normal family? But yes.

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

Q It is clear from the evidence sessions that it is important to liaise not only with the pupil referral units, but generally with schools. Do you think there is more we can do to engage schools, specifically and strategically, through the crime and disorder reduction partnerships?

Chief Inspector Burroughs: On a personal note, in Reading, we have monthly headteacher meetings where this is very much on the agenda. From my personal experience, we have a good partnership working arrangement with schools, because of the trauma approach we take in Reading, but I would not say that is consistent—[Interruption.]