Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Fifth sitting)
Sarah Champion ExcerptsTuesday 25th May 2021
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 May 2021 - (25 May 2021)
The Chair
Good morning. Before we begin line-by-line scrutiny sof the Bill, I have a few preliminary reminders. Please switch electronic devices to silent. No food or drink is permitted during sittings of the Committee except for the water provided. I remind Members to observe physical distancing. Members should sit only in the places that are clearly marked. It is important that Members find their seats and leave the room promptly to avoid delays for other Members and staff—although I do not think that will be a problem for us given that you are all coming back this afternoon. Members should wear face coverings in Committee unless they are speaking or medically exempt. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members emailed their speaking notes to hansardnotes@ parliament.uk.
We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection list for today’s sitting, which shows how selected amendments have been grouped together for debate, is available in the room. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or a similar issue. Please note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order they are debated but in the order they appear on the amendment paper; the selection and grouping list shows order of debate. Decisions on each amendment are taken when we come to the clause to which an amendment relates. Decisions on new clauses will be taken once we have completed consideration of the existing clauses of the Bill. Members wishing to press a grouped amendment or new clause to a Division should indicate when speaking to it that they wish to do so. Here we go!
Clause 1
Police covenant report
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 1, page 2, line 2, after “workforce,”, insert
“including the impact of working with traumatised survivors on officers’ wellbeing and morale,”
This amendment aims to ensure the police covenant report, when addressing the health and well-being of members and formers members of the police workforce, also addresses the specific impact working with traumatised survivors, such as survivors of child sexual abuse, has on officers’ wellbeing and morale.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 77, in clause 1, page 2, line 34, at end insert—
“(8A) The Secretary of State may not lay the police covenant report before Parliament unless it has been reviewed by an oversight board.
(8B) The oversight board referred to in section (8A) must be made up of representatives of the following organisations, appointed in each case by the organisation itself—
(a) the Police Federation,
(b) the Police Superintendents’ Association,
(c) the Chief Police Officers Staff Association,
(d) UNISON,
(e) the National Police Chiefs Council,
(f) the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners,
(g) the Home Office, and
(h) the College of Policing,
and an independent chair appointed by the Secretary of State, and any other person the Secretary of State considers appropriate.”
Amendment 76, in clause 1, page 2, line 41, at end insert—
“(aa) members of the British Transport Police,
(ab) members of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary,
(ac) members of the Ministry of Defence police,”
Clause stand part.
New clause 44—Duty on health service bodies to have due regard to police covenant principles—
“(1) In exercising in relation to England a relevant healthcare function, a person or body specified in subsection (2) must have due regard to—
(a) the obligations of and sacrifices made by members of the police workforce,
(b) the principle that it is desirable to remove any disadvantage for members or former members of the police workforce arising from their membership or former membership, and
(c) the principle that special provision for members or former members of the police workforce may be justified by the effects on such people of membership, or former membership, of that workforce.
(2) The specified persons and bodies are—
(a) the National Health Service Commissioning Board;
(b) a clinical commissioning group;
(c) a National Health Service trust in England;
(d) an NHS foundation trust.”
Sarah Champion
It is a pleasure to speak here today and that the first amendment is on the police covenant, which has support across the House. The amendment would make the covenant as strong and useful as it possibly can be.
It is clear that officers and police staff across the country get variable levels of support. They put themselves at risk in the most extreme circumstances, and the horror and trauma they have had to deal with in the last year has been exceptional. I will speak specifically about trauma, and first let me give some examples. Child sex offences recorded by the police increased by 178% between March 2007 and March 2017 and there has been a 511% increase in the abuse of children through sexual exploitation. Unfortunately, in just that example, different police forces across the country give different levels of support to their officers and frontline staff. We should not be surprised that police officers are exposed to trauma, but I find it quite shocking that there is no standard training as soon as individuals join the force to help them identify what trauma is and how to deal with it. The fact that across police forces there is not a standard level of support to be accessed once an officer feels he has the need for it is really letting our forces down.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on tabling the amendment. Does she agree that one of the problems is that for too long there has been a culture in the police of making do, being tough and toughing through it? That is why it is unaddressed, and that can lead to people not raising the concerns they feel and to the absence of help that should be there.
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend knows the issues intimately and has tried to address them in the past. She speaks with a great deal of experience and she is absolutely right. I was speaking to my district commander about the clause on Friday. He said, “The biggest problem we have is that the culture in the force is basically to deal with it, and we are weak if we try to raise concerns.” My response to him was that in the armed forces, particularly in the last 10 years, they have completely turned that culture around because there was the will and impetus to do that. I am incredibly impressed by the level of self-awareness, recognition and support that the armed forces have when people start to feel the impact of trauma.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Further to what my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood said, the number of police officers who are off sick as a direct result of trauma and related activity demonstrates that the problem is huge. The evidence is there for the change that we propose.
Sarah Champion
This is what I do not understand: throughout my career in Parliament I have tried to focus on prevention, because it is cheaper. The bottom line shows that it is much better at the beginning to teach police officers or back room office staff how to identify trauma, how to deal with it and how to get help. That is why I say to the Minister that, within the covenant and with the opportunities she is given to follow through on her own’s party’s commitment to produce the covenant, we need trauma training and the necessary support in black and white in the police covenant.
Police forces have an organisational responsibility to support the wellbeing of their workforce. The College of Policing published a wellbeing framework, which outlines standards to benchmark their wellbeing services, but that is voluntary. The college has also issued specific guidance on responding to trauma in policing and psychological risk management. Let me offer some more facts and stats—people who know me know that I love a statistic. The 2019 police wellbeing survey identified some really worrying mental health data, finding that 67.1% of police officers responding reported post-traumatic stress symptoms that would warrant an evaluation for post-traumatic stress disorder. That is two thirds of the police. A Police Federation survey of 18,000 members found that
“Attending traumatic and/or distressing incidents”
was one of the top 10 reasons why respondents were having psychological difficulties at work.
Let me pick up on the phrase “psychological difficulties at work”. Such difficulties have an impact on the individual, their colleagues, and the public. I have done an awful lot of work with survivors, predominantly of child abuse but of abuse in general as well. The level of response and empathy that they get from that first police officer tends to dictate how the rest of that process goes and, ultimately, whether they are able to secure the conviction of the perpetrator. If that police officer has undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to access support, what will that first interaction with the victim be? It will be poor. That is not the officer’s fault; it is our fault for not putting the support in place to enable them to identify the issue at the time.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
The hon. Lady certainly lives up to her name by standing up for the victims of abuse and those affected in other ways. The police could perhaps learn lessons in how to deal with some of those problems from GCHQ, many of whose officers, including those working in Scarborough, spend many hours looking at online images of child sexual abuse or terrorism. GCHQ is aware of those problems and is on top of them from the very start. Does she agree that the police could learn from GCHQ?
Sarah Champion
I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. GCHQ has a large footprint in his constituency, so he has seen at first hand that correct identification and the provision of early intervention and support prevent these issues arising. Unfortunately, in the police force that is a voluntary duty. The police covenant gives us the opportunity to put in the Bill that that needs to be addressed. It is simple, it is cheap, and it involves an hour’s training and signposting to existing resources.
Some 23% of respondents to the Police Federation survey had sought help for their feelings of stress, low mood, anxiety and other difficulties. Let us contrast that with the 67% who were recognised as having undiagnosed PTSD: just 23% of the nearly 70% who had those symptoms sought help.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend will remember that when she was questioning Assistant Commissioner Hewitt about the availability of support, he said:
“An issue that we undoubtedly have around wellbeing and the occupational health service provision is the restricted amount of capacity… In all circumstances, where we want to refer officers or staff for support, one of our frustrations is that it often takes quite a while to access that support.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 6, Q3.]
Does she agree that if we had proper training up front, so that people were trained almost to expect traumatic experiences, the pressure on the system when they undergo them would be all the less?
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is what I mean when I talk about recognition, a change of culture and early intervention. Members probably do not know that I trained and qualified as a psychodynamic counsellor. My very first client was a miner who had been buried alive—he was stuck underground. I was in my early 20s and he was in his mid-50s, and we looked at one another and both went, “Oh my God. This is what I have to deal with,” but as it was a post-traumatic stress disorder and he had come very soon after the event had happened, we managed to resolve the issue within four sessions.
With post-traumatic stress disorder, early intervention is key. If it is left for years—decades, in some cases—it becomes so embedded and ingrained in someone’s psychological make-up that it becomes a really big issue that affects every single aspect of life. It is important to recognise the early signs, which could be covered at the very beginning of training; it could even be an hour-long online training course. We need the police to be able to recognise it themselves. That is where we need to get to, and that is what the police covenant could do.
Returning to the survey, of those police officers who sought help 34% reported that they were poorly or very poorly supported by the police service. Of those with line management responsibility, only 21.8% could remember being given any training on how to support the staff in health and wellbeing.
Members of the National Association of Retired Police Officers have supplied me with examples of the sorts of incidents that they have to deal with. I apologise as they are shocking, but not unnecessarily so, I hope. This is the first case study:
“I served as a traffic sergeant. Part of the role was as a road death scene manager. I attended the scene of many deaths on the roads. I then went to a child abuse investigation, where I got promoted to DI. Whilst a temporary DI, my wife’s best friend and our neighbour hanged herself and I cut the body down. I got symptoms in relation to this straight away and things didn’t get better.
Now 11 years down the line, I have chronic PTSD, the side effects of which are severe depression, anxiety attacks and extreme mood swings. Now, it’s always at the back of my mind that if I’d had early intervention when I asked for it, maybe things would have been different.”
The following is case study 2:
“Operational experiences include attending suicides. For example, within my first few weeks of returning from training school, I attended a suicide where the victim lay on the railway tracks and was hit by a train. I assisted in the recovery of the remains of the victim.
Also, a man jumped off a tall office building and landed headfirst. I was the first on the scene to see the massive head trauma he had suffered.
They were all extremely distressing sights and I have difficulty getting them out of my head, even now.
These are just a few examples where I wasn’t offered any psychological support. I wasn’t even asked if I was okay. It was just seen by everybody as part of the job: suck it up and get on to the next thing.
I retired medically in 1999 as a result of injuries received on duty. I have suffered with complex PTSD and health issues ever since. I am currently waiting to receive further treatment from the NHS. I have received nothing from the police by way of support, even at the time of my retirement.”
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I can confirm the efficacy of having support immediately after a traumatic event. In my own experience as a social worker when I was a young man, I discovered someone who had unfortunately committed suicide. The support that I got from my senior colleagues allowed me to resolve the difficulties I had with the experience. It also convinced me that quick intervention can work very effectively and that, conversely, no intervention at all can lead to problems for many decades.
Sarah Champion
I thank the hon. Member for sharing that experience, which reiterates the two points of early intervention and creating a culture in which it is automatic for a manager to ask, “Are you okay?” and to offer support, and to have support in place.
Alex Cunningham
Another example comes from my personal experience. When I worked for the gas industry, I went to a gas explosion to handle the associated public relations. As went towards the building where the explosion had taken place, a fireman coming out the door said to me, “It’s not very pleasant in there.” I went in—I had to find out exactly what had happened—and there was the torso of a woman. That was 30-odd years ago, and it lives with me to this day. I got no support whatsoever—I did not even think about it. Perhaps that is all the more reason why we need to ensure that at least our emergency workers are getting the support they need as soon as possible.
Sarah Champion
Exactly. My hon. Friend used the phrase, “I did not even think about it” and that is what we have to change. The police covenant gives us the opportunity to turn that around and have a culture in which, if someone sees something traumatic, it will be automatic to check in on them to see if they are okay. If they are okay, that is good, and they can move on. Our police are suffering the most extreme trauma day in, day out. They do not know it when they get up in the morning but they have no idea what they will face when they open that door. Think of the stress that puts on their bodies—stress that can be alleviated.
Maria Eagle
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not enough just to ask, “How are you?” in the context of a culture that expects people to be okay, and that, consequently, the Minister can give a lead in how she implements her welcome proposal for the police covenant by emphasising that mental health is as important as physical health? Does my hon. Friend also agree that just having wellbeing in there is not quite enough to change a culture and that the expectation that support is given needs to be clear?
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend puts it far more elegantly than I could; I absolutely agree. The police covenant talks about wellbeing. We need the word “trauma” in there, because that is what we are dealing with. The Minister has the opportunity to put that in black and white and show the leadership that we need. The whole House would support her in that. I really hope that she can take that forward.
In our evidence sessions, Assistant Commissioner Hewitt said that we have an issue with
“the restricted amount of capacity. That is one of our challenges…one of our frustrations is that it often takes quite a while to access that support.”—[Official Report, Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 6, Q3.]
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, early intervention prevents escalation. John Apter, the chair of the Police Federation, spoke about dealing with trauma, saying:
“We have come an awful long way, but we have not gone far enough. One of the frustrations that my colleagues have is the inconsistency within forces…part of that is the lack of ability or willingness to mandate particular aspects of training and support. The covenant gives us a great opportunity to put in place mandated levels of psychological support and training”.—[Official Report, Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 20, Q30.]
Chief Superintendent Griffiths said:
“There has been a 36% increase in inquiries to the police charities compared with the previous year, the vast majority of which are mental health concerns.”
He added that, on trauma,
the exposure for police officers…is quite significant.”—[Official Report, Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 29, Q43.]
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
As I have previously declared, I am a former detective inspector in the Metropolitan police, where I served for 17 years in operational roles. I absolutely relate to the hon. Lady’s description of the lack of support at that time, but chief constables are required, as part of the police retirement process, to write to retiring officers to offer them such support.
Sarah Champion
Yes, but the case study from NARPO shows that that does not always happen. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, but we ought to extend that support to retired officers. That will not have a massive cost implication, but it is our duty to them for all they have done. We have a fantastic veterans covenant in place. The police covenant provides the opportunity to deliver something similar, in recognition of that incredible service that the police have given us. We should do something when they are serving as an officer and once they have left. The fact that it is voluntary and sometimes it happens and is piecemeal is just not good enough. That is not acceptable. We have the opportunity to change that.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful point. We are looking to introduce the covenant now. Now is the perfect time in many ways, because we lost many police—21,000—over the past 10 years, but there is now a period of significant recruitment, so a lot of officers are coming into the force. Does she agree that now is the perfect time to make sure that we do that early intervention and training, so that those thousands of new officers do not go through the same experience as many others in the past?
Sarah Champion
I completely agree. Now is the perfect time for those reasons, and also because hopefully we are coming out of the pandemic. The service that the police gave during the pandemic was exceptional. We should recognise the personal trauma that caused to them, by ensuring that the need for trauma support is recognised in the police covenant. That would be the greatest respect we can show.
Alex Cunningham
When my hon. Friend questioned John Apter, the national chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, she asked whether he supported this measure. He said:
“Absolutely, it needs to be meaningful and tangible, and it needs to have a benefit for those it is there to support—not only officers, but staff, volunteers and retired colleagues.”
He went on to say about training:
“I have had this conversation with the College of Policing, and part of that is the lack of ability or willingness to mandate particular aspects of training and support.”
The most important part of his evidence was:
“The covenant gives us a great opportunity to put in place mandated levels of psychological support and training from the start of somebody’s service to its conclusion and beyond.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 20, Q30.]
I am sure my hon. Friend will welcome the fact that the Police Federation is fully behind the amendment.
Sarah Champion
I do welcome it, but it is not just the Police Federation, NARPO or the College of Policing that are saying that; it is what I hear when I speak to serving officers. I had a long conversation with my district commander about this on Friday, and he cited case after case of officers entering a building, having a traumatic experience, and then him trying to give them support. However, what tends to happen is that the support is not in place, the waiting list is too long and they then go off on long-term sick leave. While off on long-term sick leave, the issue is compounded so it becomes even more of an issue. I paraphrase, but basically he said to me: “When we are able to offer early intervention, the officer comes back and carries on serving. When we are not, we know that they are going to be off for a very long time, if indeed they come back at all.”
I say to the Minister that this amendment is a common-sense courtesy. It is a way for the House and the Minister to make a clear commitment to recognising mental health and trauma, and showing the respect and duty that we have to our police force.
Maria Eagle
I want to make a short contribution based upon my experience before I came into the House, which was a shocking length of time ago. It was 24 years ago, in fact, and now I have put that on the record—oh dear.
Before that time, I was a solicitor practising in civil litigation. I frequently tried to help people who had been traumatised at work and were suing their employer, normally because they had lost their employment. Some of the people I sought to assist in that capacity were serving and former police officers, and others who had encountered traumatic situations in the workplace.
At the time, I thought of myself as a relatively sympathetic ear, and I think I was regarded as such too—Members might be startled to hear that, given the adversarial nature of proceedings in this House over the past 24 years. However, it was tremendously difficult for me to get a good statement out of the people who had been traumatised, because they had put up barriers. I would ask them, “What effect did this have on you?” and they would say, “I’m fine. I’m okay.” Often that was a few years after the incident that led them to the path out of employment, whether they had to retire or they were medically dismissed. They were clearly not okay, yet even when I, as their solicitor, was seeking to take a statement to assist them in getting some support ex post facto, and usually after they had had to leave their employment, they were still almost incapable of telling me how they really felt about what had happened and the impact it had had on them.
I know that if those people had been in a culture that said, “It’s okay to be not okay; we are going to provide you with help; you might not think you need it, but it is here in case you do, and it is perfectly fine to go along to the counsellor and break down in tears; that does not mean you are not a man”—they generally were men, but not only—then my role as a solicitor, trying to get them some compensation for their trauma over the years and their loss of employment, might have been a lot easier.
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend reminds me of another constituent who is no longer a police officer, unfortunately. He went to what he was told was a domestic incident, was let in and found someone on the floor, convulsing—they had taken a large amount of cocaine when they knew he was entering the building. He tried to resuscitate the person, which led to PTSD. He left the force, but this is where the double nub that my hon. Friend spoke about relating to compensation needs to be considered. The police force did not recognise his PTSD, which was the reason he resigned from the force—he could not cope because he could not get the support from them—but the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority did not acknowledge that he was a victim of a crime because of the incident that led to the trauma, so he got no support, no compensation and no job. He actually went to a solicitor three times and challenged it. I am glad to say that he is now an incredible campaigner for police veterans with PTSD and is getting them the recognition that they deserve, but it should not have to be a fight all the time; it should be automatic.
Maria Eagle
I saw that kind of situation many times in my practice as a solicitor. I always felt that it would have been better to have prevented these things from happening. I believe that amendment 2, by making it clear that the covenant can and should seek to address trauma, could be the key to opening up and changing that culture, facets of which we have all, in our various ways, given examples of today.
One thing that is common to all the examples that Members have recalled from their own experience is that they involve an emergency worker—someone who is there to help and benefit society—who in the course of their employment sees the kinds of things that the rest of us in society are shielded from, thankfully, and then they are not supported to overcome that trauma. That is the common thread.
The Government should accept the amendment, because wellbeing equates to mental wellbeing. It is not just about someone making sure they are physically strong enough to be a police officer; mental support is just as important. If inserting “trauma” could be a key to unlocking that kind of support, I believe that the Government could be responsible for leading and promoting a change in culture across our emergency services.
That has already happened in the armed forces, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said. Much progress has been made in what was a very macho workplace, where there was an equal lack of understanding that mental ill health and trauma could lead to serious disability, a lack of operational effectiveness and a requirement to retire far earlier than society would have wished, having invested a lot of money, time and effort into training such specialists. That is also true of our emergency services on the civilian side.
This is an opportunity for the Government to lead what will be a tremendously important change in culture—a signal to those organisations that this is the way forward and this is what matters. This has been missing in our civilian forces and civilian emergency services, and it needs to be there. This could be a really important way of leading that change.
I hope that the Minister will see the importance of that and will ignore what she may have in front of her, which will be from civil servants—who are doing their job absolutely adequately and well, I have no doubt—setting out to try to resist any change to the perfect wording that they have devised. It is not always perfect; it can sometimes be improved. I am not criticising the civil servants—I spent nine years as a Minister, so I know how hard they work—but sometimes a Minister can apply her own common sense to what is in front of her. She is there to do just that. She is there to say to her officials, “That’s all very interesting, but I am applying my political common sense and we are going to accept it.”
If the Minister does that—I hope she will—it could be the beginning of a real change in culture that in future will impact on the nameless people who otherwise might have fallen into the kinds of problems that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham so eloquently set out. All of us who have spoken in this short debate have some experience of coming across aspects of this issue. In the future there might be unnamed people whose health benefits and who do not lose their employment and livelihoods because the Minister was brave enough to lead the change by accepting the amendments. I hope she will think very seriously about doing so.
Sarah Jones
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairman- ship, Sir Charles. As we are debating amendments 2, 77 and 76, clause 1 stand part and new clause 44, I will speak to all the issues in the round. I will start by thanking Sarah Thatcher and Huw Yardley from the Public Bill Office, who have given so much guidance to us all in preparation for the Committee. We start this debate at the end of a difficult and turbulent year, but one in which people across the country have come together and there are many lessons that we can learn. I hope we can apply those lessons to the progress of the Bill. It is a year today since George Floyd was murdered, and I know that the lessons from that will also guide much of what we talk about today.
It is a pleasure to begin our line-by-line consideration of the Bill by debating the introduction of the police covenant, which we all agree with and support. We all probably believe it is long overdue. The tone set by my hon. Friends the Members for Rotherham and for Garston and Halewood shows the nature of our approach and how we want to try to support the changes, but we also want to work to improve them as much as we can.
The Bill creates a statutory duty for forces to support police officers and places a requirement on the Home Secretary to report annually to Parliament. It focuses on protection, health and wellbeing and support for families. It applies—correctly—to serving and former police personnel. It is an appropriate acknowledgement of the sacrifices made by the police service and the need to provide better support. The Police Federation has campaigned for the introduction of a covenant for several years, and I salute it for the campaigning work that it has done. I am pleased that the Government are taking action.
It is appropriate to take a moment to thank, on behalf of the Opposition, the police and all those who have given incredible service working on the frontline through the covid crisis: our police officers, firefighters and other emergency services, health and social care workers, shopworkers and transport workers, who have all shown incredible bravery and dedication. Those who put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe are the very best of us, and we thank them for their service.
We support clause 1. We are pleased that the covenant will focus on
“the health and well-being of members and former members of the police workforce”—
their “physical protection”, and—
“the support required by members of their families”.
Amendment 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, is extremely important. I congratulate her on tabling it and agree with everything she and others have said this morning. It helps to expand on what is an absolutely crucial element of the covenant.
We heard today that a Member of this place has had to take several weeks off because they are suffering from PTSD. The surprise with which we hear that reflects how we do not talk about these issues enough. We do not support people enough who have these conditions, and we are not enabling a lot of different professions to tackle these issues.
In preparation for this debate, I talked to the National Police Chiefs Council, the Police Federation, the Police Superintendents’ Association, and many police across the country who have talked about mental health and how it is a significant and growing issue. Some forces deal with it extremely well and some do not, which is the premise of where we are starting from. Some support out there is absolutely first rate and some really is not. There is no consistency across the country.
Working with traumatised survivors, as my hon. Friend set out, has a huge impact on the wellbeing and morale of police officers and staff, but the impact of running into danger and serving the public goes beyond that. I recall when I first became an MP talking to a police officer who had to stem the blood of a young boy who had been stabbed as he waited for the ambulance to arrive. The trauma of that cannot be underplayed.
I have talked to officers in the custody suite in Croydon where, only last year, Sergeant Matt Ratana, a police officer approaching his retirement after 30 years’ service in the police force, was shot dead in front of his colleagues by somebody who had been brought in for questioning. The impact of that on the entire community of police officers cannot be underplayed. The officers who were there had to intervene and try to help their colleague before the emergency services arrived. All the other people who worked in that area who were his friends and colleagues were also affected. Think also of colleagues in the Independent Office for Police Conduct who did the investigation and had to watch repeatedly the CCTV footage of what happened and see a police officer in that situation again and again. That is real, brutal trauma.
Sarah Champion
I support everything my hon. Friend is saying. The examples that she and I and Members here have given are the big trauma incidents that we recognise as likely to have an impact, but I also think it is important to recognise it might involve going to a domestic abuse case and seeing a child who is the same age as your child. A seemingly small case could have the most profound impact. Putting the provision for support in the police covenant, regardless of the incident, is the key to the amendment. It should be up to the individual to know and recognise when something has an impact and is starting to unravel—to see the early signs, whatever the trigger.
Sarah Jones
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We do not always know what is going to trigger those kinds of responses. I met recently with Sam Smith, who some people will know. He is an ex-police officer who served on the frontline for three years. He said:
“You’re thrown into a job where, within weeks of starting, you’re spat at, fighting people, rolling over dead bodies—your adrenaline levels are so high”.
The job quickly became his life. A chronic shortage of staff meant that Smith did a lot of overtime, spending his time-off sleeping and barely seeing his friends. He started having nightmares. He said:
“I probably wasn’t the nicest to my girlfriend—I became irrational and unreasonable. When I look back now, I’m surprised she stayed with me.”
After two and a half years of service, Sam realised he was suffering from PTSD and did not feel he had the support he needed to stay in the job.
Since leaving the force, Sam has been running a campaign calling for better mental health support for police officers, as he is concerned about inconsistencies in support across the 43 different police forces. He says that at the moment the main mental health welfare service for police officers is a programme called Oscar Kilo. Many would argue that the money provided is not well spent, the provisions are entirely optional and nothing is mandatory for any forces. Because of that, and ever-tightening budgets within the police, the service can be underused, and many officers had never even heard of it.
Sam is calling for us to go further than the Bill and the amendment. He is calling for a national standard of wellbeing support for police officers and hopes that the Government will back his Green Ribbon Policing campaign. I know he would appreciate it if the Minister would look at the campaign for a national standard of wellbeing support, and perhaps she might consider meeting Sam and talking about how those proposals could be taken forward.
There are some aspects of the Bill on which we will inevitably disagree, but I think we can all, across the House, agree on the importance of the mental health of members and former members of the police workforce. In that spirit, I hope the Minister will support amendment 2 and potentially pledge to go further and consider wider reform to wellbeing standards for police officers.
I will move on to amendments 76 and 77 and new clause 44. As I mentioned, the Police Federation has been campaigning for many years for a covenant, through its “Protect the Protectors” campaign. All the police bodies are in favour. It is a good thing. To be the best it can be, we need to make some improvements and make sure that we do not miss this opportunity.
The covenant comes after a year where the police have had to carry out the enormous challenge of policing the draconian emergency covid legislation, with limited guidance, in some cases, or notice when laws would be changed. The police absolutely rose to that challenge and got the balance right overall. The covenant also comes within the context of significant cuts to the police, as well as the nature of crime changing, with violent crime high, terrorism and historic child abuse cases taking up more of police time, and a high proportion of crimes now online. The number of assaults on police officers has rocketed to more than 35,000 assaults in the last year, a subject we will return to in our debate on clause 2.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham mentioned, the number of police officers leaving the service with mental health problems is too high. Research from a team of sociologists at Cambridge University showed that nearly one in five police officers have symptoms consistent with PTSD. It is widely recognised that mental health issues are widespread and under-detected, and a proper response is patchy across police force areas.
Morale is at an all-time low. The Police Federation’s 2020 survey revealed that 86% of respondents said that they did not feel fairly paid in relation to the stresses and strains of the job. Some 65% of respondents reported that the covid-19 crisis has had a negative impact on their morale and 76% felt unfairly paid for the risks and responsibilities of their job during the pandemic.
Sarah Champion
I support the amendment. To be quite honest, if I am on a train and something kicks off, I do not really care what police force the officer comes from. If they are a member of the British Transport police and can sort the incident out, I am just incredibly grateful. They ought to get the same recognition and levels of support as any other police officer.
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is completely right. The fact that those police are the responsibility of another Department is neither here nor there. They should absolutely be front and centre as part of the covenant. We want to ensure that all the wider police family is covered by the police covenant. The amendment would extend the covenant to the British Transport police, the Civil Nuclear Police Federation and the Ministry of Defence police.
The British Transport police are the specialist police force for Britain’s railways, providing a service to rail operators, their staff, and passengers across the country. They respond to and investigate all crimes committed on or related to the railway network, including the most serious. They also have a significant role to play in protecting the many vulnerable people who use the railway network and stations as refuge when in crisis.
The nature of the work of the British Transport police means that officers regularly deal with the most traumatic incidents, and I would like us to reflect on that. Around 300 people take their own lives on the railways every year. British Transport police are the ones who attend and manage all those scenes, so every year, 40% of British Transport police are affected by people taking their own lives on the railways. More than 1,000 staff are affected by two or more cases.
The British Transport police often do incredible work on county lines. The criminals are savvy to that and are increasingly using taxis and recruiting young people in the towns themselves, rather than putting them on trains, as the British Transport police are so good at spotting those vulnerable young people on trains carrying drugs to other towns. There is a lot of knife crime on the transport system because people might be moving from place to place and through transport hubs. Last year, at East Croydon station, which is a major transport hub in my constituency, there was a murder when two lads from different gang networks bumped into one another and one murdered the other, and the British Transport police were there to respond.
I will give one other example. Please forgive me for talking about Croydon—I know I am a Front Bencher, but it is hard not to bring my own examples. Last week was the start of the inquest into the tram crash in Croydon, when seven people died and many more were injured as a tram toppled over after going too fast around a steep corner. The nature of that horrific incident—the windows shattered and people came out of the tram—meant that many bodies could not be identified. Again, it was the British Transport police who were there as the first responders to that crisis.
Sarah Champion
I did not realise until I started working on child abuse that there is an amazing charity called the Railway Children based in Liverpool and in India. The train network is often the first point at which runaway children are identified, and it is the British Transport police who are there to offer them support. My concern is that if an officer is experiencing trauma themselves, it is much more difficult for them to give the necessary sensitivity to a runaway. I agree that it seems bonkers therefore to separate British Transport police and tag it on as an afterthought.
Sarah Jones
I agree. When we consider the severe and significant impact of such crashes and traumas, as well as the day-to-day experience, as my hon. Friend said, of trying to deal with people fleeing county lines or fleeing crisis, we need to ensure that the British Transport police are as strong as they can be in response.
British Transport police officers are often victims of assault when carrying out their duties. On average, 21.5% of British Transport officers and police community support officers—about one in five—are assaulted each year. In the previous year to date, there were 470 assaults on British Transport police officers and community support officers. In the last year, during covid, even though the number of people using the trains went right down, assaults increased marginally. I guess that is understandable given the nature of what those officers are trying to enforce: disputes over wearing face masks or coverings on a train. There have been several incidents resulting in spitting or coughing as a method of aggravation towards either the victim on the train or the British Transport police. The Opposition’s key argument is that the British Transport police’s service is no lesser just because it happens to sit with the Department for Transport. Surely we could bring them in as part of the covenant and give them the same status as those in other police forces.
In the initial conversations about why the British Transport police, the Civil Nuclear constabulary and the Ministry of Defence police were not included, we were told that it was not feasible to put them in the Bill because they sit in different Departments: the Department for Transport, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. However, they are included in other parts of the Bill such as the clauses that refer to police driving standards. If we can include them there, presumably we could include them here.
The key point about the police covenant, which we heard in our evidence last week, is that we do not want it to be just warm words; we want it to make a tangible difference to the experience of those in the police service. It is possible to include all police forces in the Bill, and it is surely the right thing to do. I would be grateful for the Minister to confirm that she has heard and understands that and perhaps will take steps to address it.
I turn to new clause 44. We want our police to have proper mental health support, as we have heard, but we want local health bodies to have due regard to the principles of the covenant, instead of the Secretary of State reporting on these issues and presenting back to police forces. New clause 44 emulates part of what the Government have provided for the military in the Armed Forces Bill, which puts a legal duty on local healthcare bodies. The words, “due regard”, have previously been used in other legislation, such as the public sector equality duty contained in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, which requires public authorities to have due regard to several equality considerations when exercising their functions.
We think it would be good to enshrine these measures into the police covenant and in law, particularly on an issue as crucial as health. By emulating the wording of the relevant section of the Armed Forces Bill, new clause 44 does not specify the outcomes but simply ensures that the principles of the police covenant are followed and that police officers, staff and relevant family members are not at a disadvantage. I am aware that this is one of many issues, but the stark figures that we have all been talking about this morning mean there is not really a reason why adequate healthcare support for police and retired police would not be included in the covenant.
Clause 1(7) says:
“A police covenant report must state whether, in the Secretary of State’s opinion”.
I want to pick up on that, because it is important to remember that the covenant should be about providing the police with support that has a meaningful impact on their situation. Chief Superintendent Griffiths put it well when he said at the evidence session last week that
“a police covenant is almost the sector asking the Government for additional support or assistance, or to rule out any adverse impact on police officers, and for the Government to play their role across all other public agencies to try to level the ground and make sure everything is fair and supportive for policing.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 29, Q44.]
I hope the Minister will consider supporting new clause 44, which I am sure would have the full backing of the House.
Finally, I turn to amendment 77, which is absolutely crucial and goes to the heart of how the covenant should work going forward. The amendment would set up an oversight board for the covenant, with an independent chair and membership of police organisations that would review the annual report before it is laid before Parliament. The amendment would also allow the Secretary of State to appoint other people to the oversight board as they deem appropriate. In essence, the amendment would ensure that the covenant does not have Ministers marking their own homework. The point of the covenant is not for the Home Secretary to decide whether the police are doing what they should be doing; the point is that the police should be working with the Home Secretary to make sure the police are getting the support that they need.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
Thank you, Sir Charles. It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
First, I thank Opposition Members for the constructive tone of the debate so far. I very much take the point that this covenant meets with the approval of all the parties represented here today and, I am sure, others as well. We are all conscious of the terrible incidents that members of the police force and the wider policing family have to endure on a daily basis, but we are also particularly mindful—reference has been made to this—of what they have had to endure and the services that they have had to provide in the past 12 months. It has been a very difficult time for the whole of society, and it is, I hope, no surprise to anyone that members of our policing family have been at the forefront of that and have been protecting us through these very difficult 12 months. I am therefore really pleased by the constructive tone of the debate thus far.
I am particularly grateful to the hon. Members for Rotherham and for Croydon Central for tabling these amendments and explaining their reasons for doing so. As I hope will become clear, we very much understand the motivations behind the amendments and, indeed, we have great sympathy with what they seek to achieve. We may just have different ideas of how to achieve them.
Let me put the clause in context. I am pleased that parliamentary counsel decided to put this clause at the very start of the Bill, because it is a significant Bill—the largest criminal justice Bill that Parliament has considered for some time—and I think it right that the police covenant is at the very start. It sets the tone for the rest of the legislation.
This clause will enshrine in law a duty on the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on the police covenant, which has been introduced with a view to enhancing support for the police workforce and their families—a very significant point. Even in this Committee Room, there are members of the policing family—they are not direct members themselves, but their fathers, mothers and so on have served in the service—and it is right that we include them in our consideration.
Sarah Champion
I appreciate the Minister giving way. She says, “and their families.” She has just done some exemplary work on the Bill that has become the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and knows that a disproportionately high number of cases of domestic violence and abuse happen within the police world. One would hope that, were we able to tackle the root cause of that by addressing the trauma at the very beginning and putting support in place, the knock-on repercussions would be prevented, which I am sure she and I both really want.
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady. She is right: in the course of proceedings on that Bill, we examined the impact that domestic abuse has on members of the wider policing family. She is absolutely right, and I will come on to that point about the trauma, if I may. I do very much acknowledge it.
I will just explain the thinking behind the clause as currently drafted. The covenant takes the form of a declaration and is not set out in the Bill. In particular, the report must address the health and wellbeing of members and former members of the police workforce in England and Wales, their physical protections and support for their families. Over time, the report may deal with other matters addressed under the banner of the police covenant.
The clause is in the Bill because our police put themselves at risk on a daily basis, dealing with some of the most challenging, toughest and most heartbreaking situations—hon. Members have given examples of that during this debate. I will explain how the covenant came into being. We set out a frontline review, inviting police officers, staff and community support officers to share ideas, in order to change and improve policing. The results of that review identified the fact that more must be done to support the wellbeing of those across the policing community. We have therefore announced plans to establish a police covenant, to recognise the bravery, sacrifices and commitment of those who work, or who have worked, in policing. No member of the police workforce should suffer any disadvantage as a result of their role in policing, and the covenant will support that aim.
The examples that hon. Members have provided show, first, the challenges, difficulties and—actually—terror that officers must face on occasion. However, I also hope—I am grasping for silver linings—that some of the stories show the improvements in our collective understanding of the impact of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder on mental health.
The example that the hon. Member for Rotherham gave of the officer who—I think she said that they were not even asked if they were okay, which, as the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood quite rightly said, should be only the beginning of the conversation; of course, much more must flow from that first question. However, the officer to whom the hon. Member for Rotherham referred had to leave the force in 1999. I hope that we all, as a society, have gained a better understanding of the impacts of trauma and so on on mental health since then.
Victoria Atkins
I am developing my argument, if I may. The reason I referred to that particular officer, although other examples were given, is that under the covenant, as it is drafted, that officer—as a former member of the police force—is covered by the covenant, and we very much want it to support not just serving members but those who have served and have since retired, or had to leave.
We now come to the nub of the issue—the inclusion of words in the legal framework, as set out in the Bill. We believe very strongly that the consideration of the impact of working with traumatised survivors on the morale and wellbeing of members and former members of the police force is already within scope of the clause, as currently drafted. It falls within the broad categories of health and wellbeing, as set out in clause 1.
Again, just to give the Committee some comfort and, indeed, I hope confidence in what we intend to do, our initial priorities for year one, which will be overseen and monitored by the police covenant oversight board and the police covenant delivery group, will include working towards ensuring that occupational health standards, including for mental health, are embedded in all forces; holding chiefs to account for providing the right quality and investment in their workforce; further consideration of a new chief medical officer for policing in England and Wales; working on a review to establish what is a good support model for families, drawing on established good practice and research from other sectors and international partners; and once that is agreed forces will be required to implement locally bespoke schemes in their local infrastructure. It will include development training for GPs around the role of the police, similar to the military veterans’ GP training, and development of pre-deployment mental health support provided to the police workforce, particularly in the light of the pandemic and the effect that it will have had on the police workforce.
Rather like the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, whereby in the definition we set out the very broad legal framework, and there were many examples of domestic abuse behaviour in those categories, which were then put into the statutory guidance. The wording, “health and wellbeing”, provides the legal framework. Within that, it is for the board, the delivery group and, ultimately, the Secretary of State, to include those matters in the report.
Sarah Champion
The Minister’s words are giving me a lot of comfort, but could she clarify a little more? What she is talking about is retrospective support once the incident has happened. Is it her intent that there will be preventive action at the very beginning of police training, so people are aware what the trauma is in advance, rather than just focusing on once it has happened?
Victoria Atkins
I am sure that I will give further clarification in due course if it is needed, but I draw comfort from the fact that the wording I have here is the development of “pre-deployment” mental health support. If that requires further explanation, I am sure that I will provide that explanation in due course.
Sarah Champion
For clarity—I am sorry to labour the point, but it is important—will the board be on a formal setting? Is it an actual thing? Is it the same group of organisations that make up the report at present? If the board is an actual thing, my concern is this. To take the Minister’s hypothetical example, a new Home Secretary might not have any interest in mental health and wellbeing, but if the board is on a statutory footing, it still has a duty to push whoever is chairing it in the right direction. Could the Minister clarify whether the board is a formal body?
Victoria Atkins
Of course, and as with other boards, as I have said, the terms are set out and agreed. We want to be open and transparent on that. Its membership will include all the key policing representatives that one would imagine and, what is more, we have tried to go further by giving the Secretary of State the freedom to consult others. If there is a particular charity or organisation that is addressing a particular issue that the board feels is important that year, the Secretary of State has the power to consult that organisation. Again, to provide comfort, we will review the governance arrangements six months after the board is constituted, and we will consider the independence of the board’s chair as part of that.
Amendment 76 is an important amendment. We are exploring how the police covenant, as currently drafted, can apply to police forces and law enforcement organisations that do not fall within the remit of the Home Office, in particular the British Transport police, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, the Ministry of Defence police and the National Crime Agency. We are very much alive to the points made both by organisations and in this debate. With that work ongoing, I trust that the hon. Member for Croydon Central will not press the amendment to a vote.
Finally, new clause 44 would place a duty on specified health service bodies to have due regard to the police covenant principles. I recognise that, in advancing this new clause, the hon. Member for Croydon Central has drawn on the provisions of the Armed Forces Bill 2021 in respect of the armed forces covenant. The difficulty is that the two covenants are at a different stage in their development. The armed forces covenant has been around for some years, and in that context it is right that it should now develop, with the new duty provided for in clause 8 of the Armed Forces Bill. In contrast, we are just getting started with the police covenant. At the moment, we do not think it appropriate to place a requirement on specific public bodies to have due regard to the police covenant. We must gather robust evidence and have careful consideration of the needs and consultation with the relevant health service bodies.
I want to reassure the hon. Lady that, through the reporting requirement that we have set out in the legislation and the governance process, we will be looking at the best way to ensure that our police can access the right care when they need it. In the light of my explanation and my assurance that we are continuing to consider how best to address the report requirement for non-Home Office forces, I hope that the hon. Member for Rotherham will be content to withdraw her amendment.
Sarah Champion
The Minister is clearly in listening mode, and it is deeply appreciated how much time and consideration she has clearly given to the amendment. I am reassured by what she has said. If possible, I would like to have some more of the detail that she was talking about. At this point, I will not push the amendment to a vote, because of the chance to do so at a later date.
Sarah Jones
I thank the Minister for her responses. On amendments 76 and 77, I stress again how keen the police world is that we make some progress on those two issues. I noted that she said on clause 77 that there will be a review in six months that will consider the independence of the chair. I think it makes sense to have an independent chair and believe it is appropriate, given that we are suggesting that the board should review the annual report before it is published. It cannot say what it is—it cannot control that—so having an independent chair would give comfort. However, I heard what she said on that, so I will not push that amendment to a Division. On amendment 76, which she briefly responded to after she got the note that we should hurry up, she said that work is ongoing. I cannot stress enough how strongly the different organisations feel about that. Again, I will not test the view of the Committee on that.
Sarah Champion
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
Nobody wants to press any other amendments to a vote, and new clause 44 will be dealt with later, so we come to the decision on clause 1.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Increase in penalty for assault on emergency worker
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Jones
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It would be good to hear the Minister’s view on that in his response.
To finish my remarks on clause 2, which recognises the bravery of emergency workers and appreciates that there should be increased sentences for those who assault them, the Government could take many other actions that may also reduce the number of assaults against emergency workers. We should not lose sight of them. Being alone on a patrol increases the risk of assault, and that tends to be down to resources. The Government need to tackle that issue. We also have a woefully small amount of evidence as to why assaults are increasing. What is the evidence around what is happening, and why it is happening? What analysis has been done by the Home Office on where these assaults are taking place, and why?
Linked to that is the issue of protective equipment. There has been a big increase in body-worn cameras and spit guards in policing, but what lessons are actually being learned from covid, and from the experience suffered by our police officers and other emergency workers during this time, to ensure that we are doing everything we can to protect them in the future? In conclusion, clause 2 is a welcome step in the right direction.
Sarah Champion
Covid has obviously changed everything, including our definition of “emergency worker”. Several MPs have pointed out that emergency workers are not the only group suffering from frequent violent attacks, and provisions should be extended to all staff in the NHS and social care, as well as to shopworkers. In 2020, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers found that the vast majority of shopworkers—88%—were victims of verbal abuse in 2020. They were largely trying to implement the covid restrictions. Nearly two thirds were threatened, and nearly one in 10 were assaulted. Can the Minister explain what the Government are doing for those workers? They were on the frontline of the pandemic and should be given the same level of protection as emergency workers.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Sixth sitting)
Sarah Champion ExcerptsTuesday 25th May 2021
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 May 2021 - (25 May 2021)
Sarah Jones
The right hon. Gentleman is right; there are many other processes in place for when an accident occurs. As soon as an accident occurred, the IOPC would investigate why it happened. Measures are in place to ensure that the police do not do things that we would not expect of them. The amendment aims to make sure that it is very clear what is expected of them and what is not. When I spoke to the National Police Chiefs Council lead on those issues, it was clear to me that we have to enable the police to do what they need to do without fearing that they will be taken to court. There also need to be checks and balances to ensure that they do not overstep the mark.
The Government review was welcome. The IOPC concluded:
“Any change to legislation must not have the unintended consequence of reducing public safety or undermining the ability to hold the police to account effectively”.
That is very important. The change is welcome; it is not about the police driving without fear of scrutiny, but it is important that police are not prosecuted for doing what they have been trained to do.
It is also important to discuss an issue related to clause 4, which a number of police officers have raised with me. We tried to craft some amendments around this, but it was problematic, so I am just raising the issue. There was a concern that the number of officers who have undertaken the full level of driver training varies between forces, because there are various different levels of driving training, and what officers have will depend on where they are. Officers who do not receive the full training worry that they will be hesitant to do what may be required of them in the circumstances. For instance, if they were on a motorway and needed to ram a vehicle in order to save someone’s life on the road, would an officer take that risk if they could end up subject to a criminal investigation?
The police clearly have to strike a fine balance in the circumstances they are presented with. I have no doubt that, in the main, they will do what is expected of them. Subsection (3) states that
“the designated person is to be regarded as driving dangerously… only if)—
(a) the way the person drives falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful constable who has undertaken the same prescribed training, and
(b) it would be obvious to such a competent and careful constable that driving in that way would be dangerous.”
Can the Minister provide some assurance? If a police officer who has done the basic level of police driver training finds themselves in a situation where they have to respond to an emergency incident that would require higher levels of training, how would they be protected?
On a matter related to clauses 4 to 6, the College of Policing has said that it would be “highly desirable” for police vehicles involved in pursuits always to be fitted with black boxes, which monitor the performance of drivers. Some forces, such as the Metropolitan police, fit all vehicles with those devices, but that is not the case everywhere. Could the Minister look into that? The cost might be prohibitive, but what would it take for all vehicles used in police pursuits to have those black boxes? What safeguards will be in place to protect drivers who have not had the highest level of driver training? Will that lead to more IOPC and court referrals, or can we be comfortable that the clauses as drafted will provide that protection?
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I am broadly supportive of the measures. When I go out with South Yorkshire police, I am always incredibly impressed by the amount of planning and expertise in the force, but I need to raise concerns made by the IOPC, which I hope the Minister will respond to. It, too, is broadly supportive, but it has raised a couple of reservations, including the fact that the lack of detailed information on the number and outcomes of investigations involving police road traffic incidents made it difficult to understand the full context of the proposed legislative change, and therefore how big the current problem is. It also says that any change to legislation must not have the unintended consequence of reducing public safety or undermining the ability to hold the police to account effectively. I wonder whether the Minister could comment on those points.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
On an almost minute-by-minute basis, highly trained police drivers respond to emergency calls on all our behalf. They rush to incidents of danger when others run away. They are highly trained and they deserve the protection afforded by the Bill, and to be judged by the standard of the training they have received, rather than the standard of a normal driver. This may seem a relatively unimportant feature of the Bill, but it is extremely important to the police officers who undertake these dangerous duties. It is a matter of great interest and concern that they should not be treated as criminals when all they are actually doing is performing their duties to the best of their abilities.
Sarah Jones
This is a really important part of the Bill. The Minister knows that I came into this House in 2017 absolutely determined to tackle the scourge of rising levels of serious violence, particularly youth violence, and she knows that I set up and chaired the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime and violence reduction, which relentlessly champions the need to prevent violence through strong policing, of course, but also through prevention. We have been in many debates together, and she has kindly met constituents of mine who have lost family members to knife crime, and she has also spoken to the APPG.
There has been a long conversation in Parliament about bringing organisations together to look at the stories behind the headlines, and to look at the evidence of what causes violence, in order to understand that it is not inevitable and that it is something we can affect. There is plenty of evidence from many places on how to reduce violence. Many other hon. Members across the House have campaigned on this, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who has done so much cross-party work on the issue.
Clauses 7 to 22, which place a duty on local authorities to plan, prevent and reduce serious violence, are welcome. At their core is the new duty on specified authorities to identify the kinds of serious violence that occur in a relevant place; to identify the causes of serious violence in the area; and to prepare and implement a strategy for exercising their functions to prevent and reduce serious violence in an area. That is significant. Although there are many “buts”, which we will come to as we go through the amendments, it is important to recognise that that is a good thing and will make authorities work better together and make them look to prevent as well as reduce violent crime.
Of course prison is absolutely crucial in terms of justice and punishing those who have wronged, but we know that it does not stop overall levels of crime increasing. Although policing is absolutely vital, at the heart of everything we are talking about, we know that an increase in resources and focus leads to a reduction in violent crime, but it goes up again over a couple of years. We can look at how knife crime goes up and down. It goes up, there is a significant intervention from the police, there are more resources, and it goes down. People are locked up, but then a few years later it starts rising again. We know that the real long-term solution is prevention, as evidenced in many parts of Scotland—the example often given—and in other parts of the world as well.
We have talked about this before, but we know that the approach to prevention and tackling violence is more effective when it is tackled in the way that the last Labour Government tackled teenage pregnancies. We had the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe. It was a massive problem and everyone was very concerned about it. There was a moral panic about why so many were getting pregnant. There was a 10-year intervention that looked at the causes of why these things were happening, so it was not just about trying to stop girls having sex; it looked at why on earth their aspirations were so low. Their education and ambitions were not what they could have been. A broad approach, targeted from the centre and delivered locally over a 10-year period, reduced teenage pregnancy by 50%—a huge, long-term reduction that has remained pretty static. It has delivered a societal change because of the nature of the approach.
It is argued that we can do the same thing with violence, as has been done in Scotland. Over a long period of time we can reduce violence, and those levels can become the societal norms. We can shift the norms and reduce violence. That is what many of us have campaigned for, and it is at the heart of this new part of the Bill.
I will give another example. In Croydon, there was a review of 60 cases of serious violence among young people, which involved people who were murdered, people who were imprisoned for murdering other people, and people who had been victims or perpetrators of the most serious cases. They looked at all those cases and where the similarities were, and it turned out that half of those young people were known to social services before they were five years old. That tells us everything we need to know about how the duties should operate. If someone is in care, is vulnerable, has experienced domestic abuse in the home, has parents with addiction or does not have parents at all, there are things that make them more vulnerable to getting involved in violence later in life. If we intervene at the earliest possible stages, we can have a significant impact not just on the lives of those young people, but on society and on the cost to society. Figures about the cost of a murder are bandied around, although I am sure they are now outdated. People used to say a murder costs about £1 million, but it probably now costs the public purse significantly more.
Sarah Champion
I just wanted to congratulate my hon. Friend on making such a powerful and relevant speech. I also wanted to give her a moment to get a glass of water
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for allowing me to get a glass of water.
Sarah Jones
I completely agree.
When we talk about violent crime, there is often a moral panic about what is happening, and we often see very polarised responses. Either it is all about more policing and more resources, or it is about tougher sentencing—throwing people in prison and throwing away the key. Actually, we need to have a much more grown-up conversation about the causes of these issues and what the solutions are. I hope, and I think we all hope, that this part of the Bill is a step in the right direction towards doing that.
Moving on to the amendments that we have tabled, having held roundtable discussions and spoken to policing organisations, charities and others, I am concerned that, as currently drafted, the Bill will not deliver the results that we intend. There is a lot of talk of the need for a public-health approach to tackling serious violence that seeks to address the root causes, and we welcome the Government’s acknowledgement of the need to shift the focus towards that. However, we do not believe that, as currently drafted, the proposals amount to a public health approach. We, along with several agencies, are concerned that there could be a number of unintended consequences for both children and the agencies involved if the statutory public-health duty is created without achieving the desired result of reducing the number of children who are harmed by serious violence.
A vision for tackling serious violence that does not also help to protect children from harm, does not include the full range of partners and interventions needed, and does not consider some of the more structural factors that contribute to violence, will not deliver the outcome that we want. We need a broader strategy that equips the safeguarding system and the statutory and voluntary services to protect children from harm, with the resources and guidance to do so. It should embed a response that takes account of the context in which children are at risk and that is trauma-informed, as we were discussing this morning. A duty for serious violence that presents these issues as distinct from wider safeguarding duties could lead to a more punitive approach to those children, which evidence suggests is inadequate to reduce violence. Of course, implementation of a new duty without additional resources will be difficult for services that are already tasked with rising demand and crisis management options, and have low staff retention.
Amendment 78, and the amendments to other clauses, make the specified authorities involved in the serious violence duty safeguard children at risk of or experiencing harm. In particular, amendments 80 and 86 refer to children involved in serious violence in the area as a result of being a victim of modern slavery and trafficking offences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. The point we are trying to make is that the statutory duty to reduce violence cannot be effective on its own, without a statutory duty to safeguard children.
As an example, I met police from Exeter because there is a county line from London to Exeter, and the police had been working to tackle that issue. A senior police officer told me that there had been a number of occasions on which they had picked up a child at the coach station because they can quite often tell if someone is bringing drugs to the area, as they will get off the coach on their own with just a rucksack—the police pick up young children who are doing that. On several occasions, that senior police officer had to sit with the child in his office for hours because nobody would come to collect them. Perhaps the child is in foster care, which is very often the case, and because they have been found with drugs, the foster parents will not have them back. The local authority might not have any emergency foster carers and so cannot take the child back, and nobody will come to look after them. That child is committing a crime, but they are also a child who ends up sitting there playing computer games in a senior police officer’s office in Exeter because nobody has worked out how to join things together and look after them.
Sarah Champion
Does my hon. Friend agree that those children are symptoms and casualties of crime, rather than the cause? We need some sensitivity in the Bill to recognise that.
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend is exactly right. We do not disagree with the premise of what is in the Bill, but we think those two things need to come together. I am sure we all have examples of cases where children are manipulated and groomed into committing criminal offences. They sometimes have no choice whatever, or they feel that they have no choice. Those things have to be looked at together or this will not work.
Amendment 92 would add a duty on the specified authorities to prepare and implement an early help strategy to prevent violence, support child victims of violence and prevent hidden harm. The Minister may say that that could be part of the wider duty, but we have tabled the amendment because that early intervention is crucial to prevent violence before it occurs, and that really ought to be in the Bill.
We in this place will all have spoken to and had presentations from people talking about ACEs—adverse childhood experiences—whether domestic abuse or a violent death, for example. Violent death in particular causes significant problems for young people and has not really been looked at enough. We know about all those ACEs, and we know that the systems and structures in place at the moment often intervene at the point of absolute crisis rather than intervening earlier and more effectively by trying to break the cycle of violence. Including an early help strategy in the Bill would ensure that that crucial element is not forgotten. That is part of a much wider issue that is out of scope of the Bill, including Sure Start, the importance of schools and intervention, and the funding of child social services, but we want the principle of early intervention to be included in the Bill. It is important that the Government, local authorities, the police and the voluntary sector have a joined-up approach to preventing, recognising and responding to violence. Central to that must be the need to prevent the criminalisation of children, as well as early intervention to prevent young people from becoming involved in violence in the first place.
Sarah Champion
This point is more to do with new clause 47, but it is appropriate now. Does my hon. Friend agree it is vital that the serious violence duty and accompanying strategy interact with local authority strategies to tackle child exploitation, the national violence against women and girls strategy and the national tackling child sexual abuse strategy as well as others?
Sarah Jones
Yes, my hon. Friend is right. They all need to join up, but some organisations have asked questions about how such things will join up effectively to ensure that offshoots of activity are pulled together as one whole.
New clause 47 would ensure that the bodies under the duty collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce child criminal exploitation and safeguard affected children. The new clause takes the definition of modern criminal exploitation from new clause 17, tabled by my hon. Friend, which would amend the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to introduce this statutory definition of child criminal exploitation:
“Another person manipulates, deceives, coerces or controls the person to undertake activity which constitutes a criminal offence and the person is under the age of 18.”
The definition would cover activities such as debt bondage and GPS tracking by gang leaders of those coerced into running county lines. When I was in Birmingham a few weeks ago, I heard about very young gang members. Yes, they were scared, but they were so invested in their criminal gang leaders, whom they saw as their family, that they were prepared to commit crimes that would put them in prison for very small amounts of money. They genuinely believed that was the most sensible choice available to them. They were clearly exploited, but there is not necessarily a definition in place to respond appropriately to that.
As my hon. Friend said, children who are groomed and exploited by criminal gangs are the victims, not the criminals. Many different organisations have flagged, as witnesses said last week, the fact that the absence of that statutory definition makes it harder for agencies to have a co-ordinated and effective response to vulnerable children.
The serious violence duty is a unique opportunity to bring together all the relevant authorities for training and action at a local level. In the past decade, county lines drug dealing has been a major driver of serious violence across the country. I am afraid that since the National Crime Agency’s first county lines assessment in 2015, the Government have been slow to respond, and cuts across the public sector have made things worse. Sadly, county lines drug networks rely on the grooming of vulnerable children to act as drug runners. They are badly exploited, then abandoned when they are no longer of use to the gang leaders. The Children’s Commissioner for England has estimated that 27,000 children are gang members. Modelling done by crime and justice specialists, Crest Advisory, identified 213,000 vulnerable children.
Children and vulnerable young people experiencing serious violence require a different response from that given to adults, and being involved in violence is often an indicator that children are experiencing other significant problems in their lives, such as being criminally exploited. Despite growing recognition of child criminal exploitation, there are still concerns that many children and young people involved in exploitation are not being identified or sufficiently supported by statutory services. Too often, these young people only come to the attention of the authorities when they are picked up by the police, caught in possession of drugs or weapons, or through involvement in a violent assault.
I should also mention the important issue of young girls who are involved in gang activity. I met a young girl who had been involved and had been injured as a result. She was in a hotel room with several gang members, who had money and drugs. The police had raided the hotel and arrested all the boys, but told the girl to be on her way because they did not know how to respond to her. She was in danger and was being exploited, but the police response was not there because they were not used to dealing with girls in that situation. Presumably they thought they were being kind, but they were actually leaving a girl who had been exploited to potentially still be in danger.
Sarah Jones
Sadly, that tale is probably not uncommon. I am sure that the response of agencies to girls is better than it was, but it is still not joined up in a way that provides the support that is needed.
Children and young people who are victims of child criminal exploitation and gang violence are not being identified in time to save their lives, literally, and to save other people’s lives, despite frequent opportunities to do so. Communications between agencies and the recording and sharing of data is often poor, and support for at-risk children is inconsistent. As the 2019 report on gangs and exploitation by the previous Children’s Commissioner found, only a fraction of children involved in gang violence are known to children’s services.
The experience of being criminally exploited is extremely traumatising to children, and it is unlikely they will be able to escape these abusive experiences and rehabilitate without significant professional support. The approach to tackling child criminal exploitation must combine effective enforcement with long-term safeguarding and support strategies that are focused on managing long-term risks as well as the immediate ones. Too often vulnerable children receive crisis-driven care, not the long-term trust that they need, which would be provided by preventative support.
As part of criminal exploitation, children may be threatened into carrying knives or perpetrating violence against rival groups. It is important to understand the underlying causes of why children might be involved in violence and for these underlying causes in a child’s life or in the lives of children within a certain area to be addressed. This would involve adopting a more universal understanding of how children are coerced, controlled and threatened into serious violence, taking disruption action against those who coerce and control children, and ensuring that the response to children is centred on addressing their needs, fears and experiences.
Sarah Champion
I was struck by and am still musing on the fact that, earlier, when the example of a child carrying out a crime was given, the word “choice” was used. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in the situation she describes, these children have no choice unless we add to the Bill the measures that she argues for?
Sarah Jones
I agree that they do not have a choice, but I have met young people who committed crimes as a child who believed that they did have a choice and that they were making the right choice because their parents had no money and they wanted to pay the bills. They believe that they are making sensible decisions, but they are children and they are vulnerable, and they are not. We need to provide support if we are going to stop them spiralling into a life of crime in the future.
New clause 58 was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who now co-chairs the all-party parliamentary group on knife crime and violence reduction, and who worked with Barnardo’s on the new clause. It would require the Government to publish a strategy for providing specialist training on child criminal exploitation and serious youth violence for all specified authorities to which chapter 1 of part 2 of the Bill applies. It is really important that all bodies involved in safeguarding children and the prevention of serious violence receive proper training in looking out for and preventing child criminal exploitation. The training of professionals can make all the difference when identifying children who have been criminally exploited and in understanding the dual nature of a child being an offender and a victim.
I have had trauma training, as I am sure have several people in this room. I cannot tell hon. Members how useful it has been to understanding the issues children deal with and which levers might be used. I was in a meeting with police recently, talking about a 15-year-old boy who had just committed quite a serious crime. The police officers, who had had trauma training, had a relationship with this child because they had been playing football with them for several months before the crime occurred. They were able to appreciate that the child had an alcoholic mother who was abusive, and we were able to talk to some charities about getting some support for that child. The police understood what interventions were needed to try to pull the child out of criminal activity and pushed towards a life of non-criminal options. It was amazing to see. Having that training and understanding some of these underlying issues is really important. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall for tabling the new clause, which we will support.
Sarah Champion
I want to express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central for the amendments and new clauses she has tabled. Effectively, my new clause 17 underpins and provides the impetus for the work that she detailed, and I am grateful to the Children’s Society for helping me to develop it.
I start from the position of being the MP for Rotherham, where 20 years ago it was not uncommon for girls to be raped, abused by gangs or forced into carrying out crime on behalf of those gangs. They would get a criminal record and would be told that they were child prostitutes, and their lives were destroyed accordingly. We now have a definition of child sexual exploitation. That completely changed the attitudes of all the agencies, including the police and the social services, and the general population to the fact that exploitation of those children was happening.
It is clear that child criminal exploitation is going on, whichever heading we put it under, but we are quite a long way behind in our understanding of what that actually means. New clause 17 would place a statutory definition of criminal child exploitation in law for the first time by amending the Modern Slavery Act 2015. For it to be truly effective, the Modern Slavery Act must adapt as new forms of exploitation are recognised. Child criminal exploitation is the grooming and exploitation of children into criminal activity. There is a strong association with county lines, but it can also include moving drugs—I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central for adding to my knowledge; I now know what “plugging” is, which children are forced to do—financial fraud and shoplifting. Obviously, that has been around for decades, but we are only just waking up and realising the harm and damage that those criminals are causing children. The true scale remains unknown, as many children fall through the cracks of statutory support.
The Children’s Commissioner estimated that 27,000 children are at high risk of gang exploitation. During 2020, 2,544 children were referred to the national referral mechanism due to concerns about child criminal exploitation, and 205 of those cases involved concerns about both criminal and sexual exploitation. My hon. Friend rightly highlighted that girls are criminally and sexually exploited by the same gang.
Alex Cunningham
I am just reflecting on the attitude of the professionals who do not actually understand or do not have a clear enough definition with which to work. What changes do they want to ensure clarity and that they can better protect people?
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that. I am going off on a slight tangent, but The Times is tomorrow coming out with an article about child sexual exploitation. One of the key indicators of that is children going missing, and it cites the case of one girl who went missing 197 times, each time being reported to the police—this is recently—but the police still did not act. Just having the definition is not enough. This is about the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central described. It is about the training, public awareness, and all the agencies working together when they see that child. What I have found with the CSE definition is that having that hook does really sharpen and focus professionals’ minds around it. We have taken huge strides when it comes to child sexual exploitation, because we have that definition in place and because there is a level playing field when talking about it.
Sarah Jones
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the very powerful case she is making. It reminds me of a conversation that I had recently with police officers, who were talking about the number of children who go missing but are not reported to the police as missing, because the family have other children, siblings of the missing child, and are nervous that if they report that one child has gone missing—who will probably come back, because he is doing county lines—the other children might be taken into care. That underlines the case for training and understanding of these issues beyond just policing. It is through education and terminology that everyone can understand that all the different organisations involved in trying to reduce this can understand some of the issues and intervene when they need to.
Sarah Champion
Exactly. Once people have the definition, they have a list of the indicators, and going missing would of course be one of those, so the first thing that would cross the social worker’s mind, rather than “Oh, this is bad parenting,” would be, “Could the child be being sexually exploited? Could the child be being criminally exploited?” It really shifts the mindset of the professionals. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.
There is another potential nervousness that the Minister may have. I know that a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation was explored when the Modern Slavery Act was reviewed in 2019. I note that the reviewers’ main concern was about a narrow definition of child criminal exploitation that would not be future proof as the exploitation adapted. That is why the definition that I am proposing is broad and simple, focusing on the coercive and controlling behaviour that perpetrators display in relation to their victims, not on the very specific criminal act itself.
I know that the Home Office has raised concerns with regard to use of the section 45 defence in the Modern Slavery Act and children being able to take advantage of that. I am aware that colleagues have also raised concerns about unintended consequences that this definition might have for the use of that defence, but I do not believe that there would be those unintended consequences. A clear definition of child criminal exploitation would guide a jury far better than is the case now, as jurors would need to weigh up the evidence and consider the defence but would be aided by a much clearer definition of what constitutes relevant exploitation. That would in fact reduce the risk of the section 45 defence being used spuriously, which is a concern that colleagues have raised with me. This definition would not change the provisions under section 45, but I hope that the awareness raising that would come with a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation would enable genuine victims of exploitation to use the defence more routinely.
The Chair
Before we move on, I remind colleagues that they are meant to address the Chair. I am seeing quite a lot of backs. I do not mind seeing backs occasionally, but it does help Hansard writers and everybody here if we have a little bit of fluidity and motion. I call the Minister.
Sarah Champion
When the national referral mechanism was introduced, I was struck that the responses to my freedom of information requests showed that it was not UK children who were being referred. There was a perception that it was international children, whereas the act of trafficking can mean literally taking a child from one side of the street to the other. Has the situation changed, and will anything in this work make that apparent to local authorities and other safeguarding organisations?
Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. Sadly, the situation has changed and now the most common nationality of potential child victims of modern slavery is British. As she knows, the NRM is more than a decade old. The criminal world has moved on and the needs of the children we are trying to help, as well as those of adult victims, have changed.
The transformation programme is looking at whether there are different ways in which we can help victims, depending on the safeguarding arrangements that may already be in place and whether children have any family or parental links with this country. Clearly, the needs of a child from Vietnam who has no family links in this country may be very different from those of a child who has been born and brought up here, with parents looking after them and with brothers and sisters. We are trying to find ways to address the needs of all victims, but particularly child victims in this context.
Local authorities are of course already responsible for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children in their area, including child victims of modern slavery. Children’s services must already work in close co-operation with the police and other statutory and non-statutory agencies to offer child victims of modern slavery the support they require. With the background and context that it is already mandatory, we therefore conclude that it is not necessary to include that as a further requirement in the Bill.
I turn to amendment 92 and an early help strategy. The hon. Member for Croydon Central is right to point to the need for a focus on prevention, which is a key part of what the duty seeks to achieve. Early intervention is an important part of prevention work and reducing serious youth violence. The duty already sets out the responsibilities of specified authorities and the work they are to undertake, which includes risk factors that occur before a young person has become involved in serious violence. The specified authorities, including the local authority that has responsibility for children’s social care, will be required to consult education authorities in preparing the strategy. They can also be required to collaborate on the strategy. As such, the provision should already ensure that a strategy to reduce and prevent serious violence would encapsulate early help for this cohort, so we do not believe that an additional strategy is required. Again, I refer to the draft statutory guidance that already has early intervention running throughout it. Indeed, we plan to add case studies before formal consultation, to help explain and guide multi-agency partners.
On amendment 93, children’s social care authorities have a crucial role to play and significant insights to share, particularly for those young people at risk of becoming involved in serious violence, child criminal exploitation or other harms. However, local authorities that are already named as a specified authority under the duty are responsible for children’s social care services. Therefore, for the reasons I have already outlined, we do not believe it necessary for the clause to contain the explicit requirement to consult such services, because they are within the definition of local authority. Again, we will make it clear, as part of our draft statutory guidance on the duty, that social care services, among other vital services for which local authorities hold responsibility, must be included.
We believe that amendment 82 is also unnecessary, given the functions conferred on local policing bodies by clause 13, which are intended to assist specified authorities in the exercise of their functions under the duty and to monitor the effectiveness of local strategies.
I turn to new clause 17 and the important issue of child criminal exploitation. I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham for setting out the case for providing in statute a definition of child criminal exploitation. Child criminal exploitation in all its forms is a heinous crime, with the perpetrators often targeting and exploiting the most vulnerable children in our society. We are determined to tackle it. There is already a formal definition of child criminal exploitation included in statutory guidance for frontline practitioners working with children, including “Keeping children safe in education” and “Working Together to Safeguard Children”. In addition, as the hon. Lady noted, the definition is also included in the serious violence strategy, published in 2018, the Home Office’s “Child exploitation disruption toolkit” for frontline practitioners, and the county lines guidance for prosecutors and youth offending teams.
We have discussed the introduction of a further statutory definition with a range of organisations and heard a range of views. On balance, the Government have concluded that there are risks with a statutory definition. Some partners highlighted the changing nature of child criminal exploitation. Inherent to such exploitation is that it evolves and responds to changes in the criminal landscape and the environment. As such, there are concerns that a statutory definition could prove inflexible as the nature of child criminal exploitation adapts.
In addition, as the hon. Lady has rightly noted, the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, conducted by Frank Field—now Lord Field—and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and Baroness Butler-Sloss, considered the definition of child criminal exploitation under the Act and concluded that it should not be amended, as the definition currently in place is sufficiently flexible to meet a range of new and emerging forms of modern slavery.
We believe that our focus should be on improving local safeguarding arrangements to identify and support victims of child criminal exploitation, and on working to ensure that the right support is in place locally to protect these very vulnerable children.
Sarah Champion
I appreciate, foresaw and understand all the objections that the Minister raises. As she is a former barrister and someone who uses the law, does she agree that it would help to have a definition, as our witnesses said?
Victoria Atkins
Well, we do have the definition in the Modern Slavery Act. Modern slavery cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute because, as with other hidden harms, they require the involvement of often very vulnerable people, including adults as well as children. They include people who might not have English as a language at all, let alone as a first language, and people who might be targeted precisely because of their vulnerability. Although we are looking very much at the context of children, we know that vulnerable adults have their homes taken over by county lines gangs to cuckoo and sell their drugs from, with all the horrendous violence and exploitation that vulnerable adults have to endure as part of that.
We will continue to look at this. As evidence develops, we will be open to that, but, on balance, we have concluded that it is preferable at this stage to focus on the local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, and to work on the serious violence duty to get a level of understanding of all the good practice taking place at the local level, which the hon. Lady and others have talked about.
One should not view the Bill as being the only thing that the Government or safeguarding partners are doing to address concerns. We have increased the dedicated support available to those at risk and involved in county lines exploitation, and have provided funding to provide one-to-one caseworker support from the St Giles Trust to support young people involved in county lines exploitation. We are funding the Children’s Society’s prevention programme, which works to tackle and prevent child criminal exploitation, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and modern-day slavery and human trafficking on a regional and national basis.
We are also working on a public awareness campaign, #LookCloser, which was rolled out nationally in September and focuses on increasing awareness of the signs and indicators of child exploitation so that the public and frontline services report concerns quickly to the police. As I say, on balance, at this point, we do not believe that a statutory definition is the correct approach, but we are focusing on practical responses to exploitation.
On new clause 47, I have great understanding as to why the hon. Member for Croydon Central tabled it. It would require specified authorities to prepare and implement a strategy to prevent and reduce child criminal exploitation and to safeguard affected children. We have, however, built flexibility into the duty to allow areas to decide which specific crime types are a priority locally. We have done that deliberately so that local areas can react to what is needed in their areas. Indeed, the draft statutory guidance sets that out. Under the duty as drafted, the specified authorities will already be able to include child criminal exploitation in their local serious violence strategies, should that be of particular concern to them. I very much understand the motivation behind the new clause, but we are not convinced that a separate strategy is necessary.
Sarah Jones
Amendment 116 would create a duty to consult the voluntary sector and local businesses in preparing a strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence in an area. As part of the new duty, several public authorities are required to consult each other, but some agencies are missed out, including the voluntary sector and local businesses. The amendment was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi). It comes from the all-party group on knife crime, who worked with Barnardo’s on this amendment.
The voluntary sector holds crucial information and intelligence about what really happens in families and communities. The sector includes organisations that directly support victims and offenders and can help to bring their voices and experiences into policy making. They often know what works and what does not. Local areas will not be able to tackle serious violence without engaging with the voluntary sector’s knowledge and local intelligence.
Local businesses are also crucial in tackling serious youth violence. If we have learned anything from our work in child sexual exploitation, places are just as important to safeguarding as people—shopping centres, cafés, taxi ranks and gyms. Preventing violence cannot be done without their input.
Sarah Champion
I appreciate that my hon. Friend is making that point because, when it comes to Rotherham and what happened in child sexual exploitation, the community did know about it and did try to report it at the time, but to very little effect, unfortunately. Crucially, the voluntary sector stepped up, with much of the work done through charitable funds to try and support the young people. That needs recognition in the Bill, not least so that some resources will flow through afterwards, because the voluntary sector has its arms around the community. It is the eyes and ears of the community. We ought to embrace that, and the statutory bodies ought to have a duty to negotiate, engage and listen to and respond to the voluntary community’s wishes.
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and for her points about Rotherham. It is absolutely clear that the voluntary sector and local businesses are part of the solution and should therefore be part of the conversation and strategy. Their kind of preventive work will make the serious violence partnerships effective. Local businesses and the voluntary sector are a crucial part of that type of safeguarding.
Amendments 81 and 87 are straightforward. We felt that the language in the Bill was rather loose. For instance, it states that the specified authorities for an area must “from time to time” implement a revised strategy. Quite a lot of the organisations that we spoke to felt that “from time to time” could mean “not really ever at all” if they do not fancy it. Although I appreciate that the Minister might say that she wants local organisations to do what is right for them, “from time to time” felt too loose, so we suggested that the strategies should be refined every two years.
New clause 59, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall, would require the Government to establish a national serious violence oversight board. The duties of the board would be to review local serious violence strategies, to share relevant data at a national level in relation to such strategies, and to share good practice in the preparation and implementation of those strategies. The board should be fed into by individual strategies for each local area to take into account the different patterns of risk, crime, vulnerability and exploitation found across the country. The oversight board could then feed in the relevant information across different Departments to achieve a joined-up approach to preventing serious violence.
Sarah Champion
The Minister has not said that the door is closed on the definition of child criminal exploitation. To take that one particular example: we would be looking at a range of definitions to which the local authority serious crime board could respond, meaning that we would again be in the dark days of a postcode lottery. Does my hon. Friend agree that, unless these definitions are in place, something like she is proposing makes absolute sense in order to get that uniformity of service? We are trying to prevent crime and support victims, so a simple measure would be to have an oversight body to make sure it happens.
Sarah Jones
I agree with my hon. Friend. It is always good to look back at what has worked in the past, and I go back to the example I cited earlier of the teenage pregnancy strategy. There was a defined strategy from central Government that was overseen centrally but delivered locally, so that there was room for local flexibility according to what was needed. However, there was also a clear set of parameters within which people should be operating, and an expectation of what they should be delivering with what was actually quite a targeted approach. The Prime Minister used to receive daily data on what was happening in each local area. I am quite a fan of gathering data centrally and trying to push change as much as possible, so I agree with my hon. Friend.
Similarly, a national serious violence oversight board would be able to analyse national trends and provide real scrutiny of what is and is not working across the country. Strategies need to feed into somewhere central so that the national landscape can be understood and that good and bad practice can be shared. The Minister talked earlier about that balance between what we allow local police authorities to do and what we set nationally. That conversation about how much we control from the centre and how much we allow people to feed in locally is always happening. The change suggested by new clause 59 is for a local and national mechanism in which at least the information can be gathered and analysed, so that we can see who is doing well and who is not doing well, and then respond appropriately.
Serious violence inevitably crosses boundaries. Effective responses to child exploitation, for example, are often hampered by the fact that it is a form of abuse that takes place across the boundaries of all the different police forces and local authorities in England and Wales. That creates inevitable fragmentation.
While the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre has helped to deliver a more joined-up approach to policing of child exploitation, the same joined-up approach is not found between the police and other agencies, or between different local authority areas. It would be impossible to tackle serious violence without some form of national oversight of the strategies. Learning and best practice can be shared at a national level. We see from the findings of the serious case reviews that sharing is still not effective, resulting in the same failings occurring again and again. We do not want that to happen with the serious violence partnerships as well.
Under the previous Prime Minister there was a serious violence taskforce, which was disbanded and replaced with the National Policing Board, but the National Policing Board looks at all parts of the policing system and has a different function altogether. We need some oversight that specifically addresses serious violence. When the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Theresa May) was Prime Minister, a unit to tackle violence was set up in the Cabinet Office, but I am unsure whether it still exists. Does the Minister know? Either way, she might consider the amendments suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and consider a kind of national co-ordination of the strategies to ensure that they are as effective as possible.
Victoria Atkins
I hope that the Committee feels that, in my responses to the amendments, I have dealt with the substance of most of the clauses. I want to emphasise that clause 8 is included to reflect the fact that, particularly in the instance of county lines gangs, criminal gangs do not respect county boundaries, police force areas or local authority areas. They will reach their tentacles across the country, wherever they think there is a market and they can do their harm. The clause encourages and requires authorities to collaborate to address those concerns.
Sarah Champion
Does the Minister agree that they are keen to look at the legislation to see where it is weakest, and to target accordingly?
Victoria Atkins
Very much so. Criminal gangs are very adept at spotting Government and local priorities and adjusting their behaviours. During the global pandemic, still some county lines were adjusting their methodology to evade detection when they were moving around the country. It is disgraceful, disgusting behaviour, and I hope that this duty and the requirement to collaborate will help to address that.
On the point that the hon. Member for Croydon Central made about housing priority need and the comparison with domestic abuse dealings in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, I will arrange for a letter to be written to her on that point. Unless there are any more interventions, I will sit down.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 8 to 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clause 12
Preventing and reducing serious violence
Sarah Jones
Clause 12(4) states that the duty introduced in chapter 1 will predominantly be focused on the most serious forms of violence, which are marked by:
“(a) the maximum penalty which could be imposed for any offence involved in the violence,
(b) the impact of the violence on any victim,
(c) the prevalence of the violence in the area, and
(d) the impact of the violence on the community in the area.”
While those are all extremely important, we would like the Government to emphasise in the duty protection and support for women and girls. It should be in the Bill that violence against women and girls counts as serious violence. We know that women are more likely to be victims of hidden harm and domestic abuse, which does not conspicuously contribute to the prevalence of violence or the impact of violence on the community in an area. During covid, we saw an increase in domestic abuse. I spoke to a primary school head in my constituency who said that in a year they would usually deal with one or two cases of domestic violence affecting their pupils, but at that point they were dealing with seven family cases. Those issues are often hidden and so, as I say, do not necessarily impact on the community in an area in the same way as violent street crime would.
Sarah Champion
Does my hon. Friend agree that some violence is gendered, and that recognition of that in the Bill is a necessary inclusion?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which is exactly the point I was about to make. She is completely right. This is in some senses an addition. Perhaps the Minister will say it is for local organisations and agencies to decide what to prioritise, but the reality—this is not a criticism—is that this duty was conceived at the height of concerns about street violence, violent crime and knife crime, and we may all be a little bit to blame for not focusing as well on the gendered violence and hidden violence that does not make the headlines in the same way, but is equally important. One feeds the other: if there is violence in the home, there is often more violent behaviour from children because they learn that behaviour. Gendered violence is just as important but is perhaps not as highlighted and talked about as it should be.
Women from all parts of the country, from all backgrounds, young and old, are killed every week. Last year, the number of female homicide victims in England and Wales reached its highest level since 2006, up 10% on the previous year. That is true of not only murder but all kinds of violence against women and girls. For the year ending March 2020, the crime survey for England and Wales estimated that 7.1% of adults aged 16 to 74 years had experienced sexual assault by rape or penetration. Domestic violence, already endemic across Britain, increased significantly during the covid pandemic, with 260,000 domestic abuse offences between March 2020 and June 2020 alone.
Amendment 91 would ensure that specified authorities have particular regard to reducing serious violence against women and girls, including street harassment, and reducing instances of hidden harm resulting from serious violence. I hope that the Minister will consider the amendment in the spirit in which it is presented. This would be a very useful thing for local agencies to do. It is incredibly important and is part of the wider violence picture and should therefore be included in the Bill.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Fourth sitting)
Sarah Champion ExcerptsThursday 20th May 2021
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 May 2021 - (20 May 2021)
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Q
Iryna Pona: I think having a definition of child criminal exploitation would be very helpful. When we did research on child criminal exploitation, one of the messages that we had from loads of professionals, both working with the Children’s Society but also working with the local authority and police, was that different services—
Sarah Champion
Sorry, I am a bit deaf and your link is a bit iffy. Is there any chance you could speak a little slower, please?
Iryna Pona: Of course, yes—sorry. I was saying that the lack of shared understanding of what child criminal exploitation is prevents co-ordinated, joined-up responses to children who are criminally exploited, particularly responses that happen at earlier stages, when the children are groomed for child criminal exploitation.
Also, when children come into contact with police and law enforcement agencies, we know that they are still more likely to be treated as young offenders rather than being seen as victims of crime. So having a definition that all agencies—police, social care, the voluntary sector and others—can share and understand in the same way will really help to change attitudes and also help with how support is provided.
We also believe that the definition needs to be quite broad and not just focused on county lines. We have seen in recent years that there has been a huge focus on county lines, which is really welcome, but the county lines model of child criminal exploitation is just one type of criminal exploitation. We know that children may be exploited in a variety of other ways and that these models constantly evolve and develop.
Having a broad definition that would explain to everyone involved that child criminal exploitation is when someone manipulates a child into undertaking criminal activity would go a long way to improving the responses to children who are criminally exploited and it would improve early intervention as well.
Sarah Champion
Q
Will Linden: It is not necessarily my area of expertise, but I will just back up what Iryna said there. The challenge if you set a definition for child criminal exploitation is to make sure that the definition is wide and dynamic enough to cover things. The problem is that if we set definitions, we then work to them; we work to that bar—and if, for whatever reason, a young person does not qualify for or meet that definition, they can fall within the gaps in the system.
We have to be quite careful with the definition, to make sure that it is encompassing and that it is not fixed at any point in time; if we are writing it just now, the definition of “exploitation” and what happens to a young person who is being exploited will change. We have to be quite careful. It is important that we write a definition and have one, so that we understand what the services need to do, but we must not get absolutely fixated on it.
Sarah Champion
Q
Iryna Pona: From what we know about this issue, definitely not enough data is being collected. In relation to child criminal exploitation, some data is collected through the national referral mechanism when young people are referred to it. From October 2019, it started collecting data specifically on child criminal exploitation, because of the huge increase in the number of referrals. It is really helpful, but in our opinion it is only the tip of the iceberg.
No similar data is collected through social care. I know that social care will introduce this as one of the factors in assessment—from this year onwards, I think. However, at the moment we do not know the true scale of child criminal exploitation. There is some proxy data, which is about how many children have been arrested, but I believe that at that point it is too late. We need to start identifying child criminal exploitation much earlier, to offer help much earlier.
There are also gaps in relation to child sexual exploitation. Some data is collected by the police and is available from them, but police data often focuses on crime; it does not always include children aged 16 or 17 who are victims of sexual offences because of the way the data focuses on crime. It is acknowledged in the Government’s sexual abuse strategy that that is a gap.
We also do not necessarily understand the progression from identification to prosecution of these cases. There is no clear data in relation to that, which I think impacts on how agencies can see the bigger picture, gather information and plan a relevant response to these really serious crimes. Regarding prosecution, some data is available, but it is very limited.
Sarah Champion
Q
Will Linden: The Scottish perspective is very similar, but this comes down to the fact that we collect a lot of data on individuals and families—crime data, health data and social work data. The problem is that the data do not speak to each other.
We often hide behind GDPR and data protection rules. The datasets and the data holders need to be more aligned so that when we are trying to make some of the strategic decisions, we can interrogate the data better, understand the impacts on families and understand the impacts on young people. For me, this is not about collecting anything new; it is about using it smarter. From Scotland’s perspective, I do not think we are much further ahead than where we are in England and Wales now, because we need to get smarter at that too.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Will Linden: I come from a background of looking at prevention and looking at what works, both from a public health perspective and from a criminal justice perspective—not any particular one lens.
Looking at the Bill and what it is trying to do with violent crime reduction orders and other aspects, the intent is there to try to reduce violence. Some of the challenges I have with it regard the unintended consequences of the Bill. If you are going to use some of the measures in it, such as what are essentially increased stop-and-search powers and increased powers over individuals connected to, and guilty of, violent crime and carrying knives, we have to be sure that those are the targets that we want to target with this, because we really need to be focusing on those who are the most at risk of committing the highest level of violence.
For the majority of young people—it will be young people who are caught up in some of the violent crime orders—they will probably be one-off offences. What we will be doing is further criminalising them, and the unintended consequence is that we might be pushing them further down a criminal justice pathway. Looking broadly at the Bill, it is a good idea in principle, but it is about who we point it towards and who we target it at. If we are targeting it at a wide spread—everyone who is caught with a knife, or everyone who has something to do with violent crime—and everyone becomes a part of the Bill or a part of this order, the consequences could far outstrip the outcomes that we are going to try to achieve.
Iryna Pona: From the Children’s Society perspective, we are supportive of the intention behind the duty to bring together different agencies to develop a strategy to reduce and prevent serious violence in their areas. However, we know that the success of such a duty would rest a lot on how it is implemented locally. It is really important that the duty is formulated in such a way as to encourage the greatest focus possible on the safeguarding of children and on the early intervention and support for children and families, as opposed to being seen as a crime reduction initiative.
We therefore believe that for the duty to have a significant impact on reducing the criminal exploitation of children when criminal exploitation is linked to violence or children’s involvement in violence, it is important that the safeguarding of children is recognised and included in the name of the duty, encouraging multi-agency action to address the underlying causes of violence, such as poverty, poor housing, exposure to domestic violence, and criminal and sexual exploitation.
All those are really important, because I agree with what Will said. Potentially, if it is just treated as a crime reduction initiative and prevention is focused on police action, it is very different from when it is safeguarding and focused on offering the best support possible to children.
Sarah Champion
It is extraordinary. I have tinnitus, which is why I am deaf, so that ringing—
Sarah Champion
Q
Will Linden: The impact on a child receiving a criminal record is extraordinary. It sets you on a pathway for life that makes things much more challenging. It can be traumatic and it can hamper you having a job or a career in the future. It can take you further down the criminal justice pathway, where you can get further involved in criminality but you are actually more likely to be victimised and to be the victim of crime. Having young people involved in anything to do with the criminal justice system is not, under any circumstances, a thing we should ever aspire to. The criminal justice system is one of the necessary evils that we require in society at present and we should do our best to keep young people out of it as much as possible.
The Chair
Does anybody else have anything they would like to ask our excellent witnesses? No? Well, I thank the two of you for giving up your Thursday afternoon to join us. I am sorry that we lost you occasionally and that there was background noise, bells and banging, but we got there in the end, so thank you very much.
Examination of Witness
Hazel Williamson gave evidence.
Maria Eagle
Q
Hazel Williamson: There has always been a disparity for our girls in the system. I am concerned overall that the numbers of children going into custody will increase with some proposed mandatory sentencing, and I am concerned that it will impact in particular on our girls and our black and minority ethnic children—particularly our black and mixed heritage boys. I am also concerned that it may impact on our children who are looked after. There are some particular groups in the youth justice system who I believe will be adversely affected by some of the recommendations in the Bill.
Sarah Champion
Q
Hazel Williamson: I am not going to put a figure on it, but we know that we get better outcomes for children and young people who are placed in secure children’s homes that are generally run by people who are social work and social care-trained, and that provides a much more nurturing environment. It is a children’s home with security rather than a custodial environment overseen by prison rules.
Sarah Champion
Q
Hazel Williamson: I think there is a missed opportunity in the Bill to really strengthen the rights of children, whether that is in the community or in custody. There is a missed opportunity in that we are not strengthening our welfare-based approach to how we deal with children and young people. We know that children are different from adults, and we should take a stronger welfare-based approach with our children and young people. I definitely think that could be strengthened in the Bill.
Sarah Champion
Q
Hazel Williamson: Some things in the Bill mean that some of our children would receive mandatory sentences. I do not think it necessarily outlines for us how children’s welfare and the needs of children would be taken into consideration.
Sarah Champion
Q
Hazel Williamson: That is really a commissioning contract that we have not been party to. In the association’s view—I go back to my previous point—children should not be looked after where they are governed by prison rules, primarily.
Sarah Champion
Q
Hazel Williamson: It is slightly more. There is no doubt that paying for care for children where we want better results will inevitably cost us more. If we compare that with what it would cost for what is being proposed in the community, that also costs more. If we want better outcomes for our children and young people, we will have to invest, and invest a lot earlier.
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)
Q
Hazel Williamson: In terms of how we administer any community order, we work together with children and their families, or their corporate parent if they are a child in our care. We develop a holistic package that includes health. There is no doubt that health across England is patchy, in terms of provision for youth offending teams. However, health is a statutory member of all youth offending team partnerships. We would certainly advocate that the health offer is strengthened nationally, so that all children, whichever area they live in, get the right treatment at the right time.
We know that children who come into contact with our service have a significant range of unmet health needs, in particular speech, communication and language needs. We know that over 90% of the children we work with are often operating at an understanding age of between five and seven years old. So when we ask a teenager to navigate a very complex environment, their understanding is much lower than their chronological age.
Maria Eagle
Q
Ellie Cumbo: We certainly welcome it, yes. Many people might be surprised that it is not already the case that a British Sign Language interpreter can be present in those circumstances. Obviously, that is a reflection of the fact that the whole system takes the importance of an independent jury very seriously—it is perhaps the most important safeguard we have for the fundamental rights of those who are charged with criminal offences. That is probably why it has taken the length of time it has to get here.
Our view is that, given where the public consensus can be judged to be and the fact that BSL interpreters participate in other types of confidential proceedings, we do not think that at this point it would be sustainable not to move forward with these provisions. Obviously, we are pleased to see that the Government are taking seriously the risk that the jury might in some way be influenced unduly by the presence of a 13th person, but as long as those safeguards are in place, we are entirely supportive of those provisions.
Sarah Champion
Q
Ellie, I am reeling from something that our Front-Bench spokesperson said in the last session. In chapter 3, on the extraction of information from electronic devices, in clause 36(10), the Government redefine an adult away from the definition in the convention on the rights of a child, which defines a child as a human under the age of 18, to
“ ‘adult’ means a person aged 16 or over”.
Could you comment on that extraordinary change?
Ellie Cumbo: I have not had the benefit of hearing that, so I think it would be unwise and unhelpful for me to do so. Could I come back to you on that?
Sarah Champion
Q
Within the Bill, there are changes regarding the availability of live links and when a vulnerable witness could call for special measures. What reasons would a judge have to refuse the use of a live link?
Ellie Cumbo: It is important that judges maintain that discretion. It is difficult to give an overview because the examples of a judgment that it is not in the interest of justice to use those live links will be so case-specific. It would be difficult for me to enlighten the Committee any further on that, other than to say that we place great trust in the discretion of judges and believe that they would not refuse vulnerable people the ability to use special measures without good reason.
Sarah Champion
Q
Ellie Cumbo: I think that would be difficult to assess in practice. I wonder if it would be helpful for me to consult some of our members who do defence work. It will sound to most people, including me, as though there is not an enormous difference between those two different situations, but I would not want to speak out of turn and be unhelpful. Is it acceptable for me to ask some of my defence practitioners who would be best able to give you an example of why that might or might not make a difference?
Sarah Champion
I would be extremely grateful for that. Thank you. I refer you back to one of your earlier answers. There are already huge backlogs in the justice system, for various reasons. Are there any measures in the Bill that cause you direct concern that it might increase that backlog?
Ellie Cumbo: I believe I would not be the first to note that anything that enhances the risk of a welter of contempt of court prosecutions is probably not desperately helpful. That is one of the reasons why we are keen to see the final detail around what I refer to as the open justice provisions of the Bill.
Of course, we support open justice and think it is of vital importance, but the reality is that there is a de facto limit in a physical courtroom of how many people can be observing trial proceedings at any given time and what they are getting up to while under the immediate eye of the judge. If any move towards the possibility of mass observation of court proceedings were possible as a result of the Bill, there would be a much enhanced risk of abuse and of people behaving in such a way that criminal proceedings against them ensue.
On a separate point, a concern that we have is that it puts a level of pressure on the parties that simply is not an issue in a physical courtroom, that something might go viral on social media.
Those are the concerns that we have about the open justice provisions. I am aware that I have gone slightly off topic, but certainly anything that puts further pressure on the criminal justice system in that way is not ideal in terms of dealing with the backlog. As I said with regard to the pre-charge bail provisions in particular, we would like to see significant further investment in the criminal justice system to clear that backlog, rather than changes that I think can be described as a bit of tweaking around the edges.
The Chair
Would any other colleagues from the Back Benches like to participate? No. I call the shadow Minister.
Sarah Champion
Q
Ellie Cumbo: No, I think I have had the opportunity to cover most of the things that the Law Society would want to. Perhaps I should have added into the conversation about pre-charge bail that we take the same view in relation to the removal of the presumption against bail: we understand the aim, but do not think this is the best way of achieving it. We would like to retain that presumption on the basis that it is still perfectly possible to use bail, but it can only be used where it is appropriate and proportionate to do so. We think that is an important safeguard.
The Chair
That brings this session to an end. Ellie, thank you very much for joining us and for the crispness of your answers.
Ellie Cumbo: Thank you.
Mr Goodwill
Q
Nina Champion: For that period of time, but when you look at all the evidence, there is none to show that keeping people in prison for longer will have any impact on public safety or on their own rehabilitation. We are concerned, for example, about provisions that keep people in custody for longer and then reduce the amount of time that they spend on licence in the community, which is absolutely vital to enable people to resettle into the community and have that supervision by probation. Reducing that could have an adverse impact on public safety.
The Government have clearly committed to trying to reduce racial inequality in our criminal justice system, but that has to be by actions and not just by words. They have to be able to show evidence that this will have the impact that they want, and there just is not that evidence.
Dr Janes: We at the Howard League also really welcome the provisions in relation to remands for children, but we do think that not getting rid of the rather Dickensian ability to remand women and children for their own protection and welfare is a real missed opportunity, especially now that there will be a requirement to consider welfare before remanding a child. We also welcome the criminal records changes, which are very good, but more can be done to make sure that the rehabilitation period reflects the date at which the offence was committed.
We are incredibly concerned about the cost. The impact assessment shows that the increase in prison time will cost millions of pounds. We are also very concerned about the impact on our prison system. With these proposals, in the next five years the prison population will increase to 100,000, which is unprecedented in our country. Just to put that in context, in only the 1990s we were at 40,000, so that is an absolutely huge increase, and the impact assessment states that that will lead to instability, compound overcrowding, reduce access to rehabilitation, and increase self-harm and violence.
Although covid has absolutely been a challenge for everyone and a tragedy for many, it has given a brief pause in the uptick in the prison population. Not building on that, and putting further strain on the prison system, really is a bit of a missed opportunity.
Dr Bild: I echo a lot of what Nina said on the sentencing provisions. We have concerns that they do protect the public but in only the narrowest of senses—only for those additional months, or perhaps years, that someone spends in custody. If there is a plan to do something with those people while they are in custody for that extra time to make them less likely to reoffend when they come out, we suspect that that may only kick the problem down the road by a few months or years.
We are very keen on the issues around public confidence in the criminal justice system, but we do not necessarily think the Bill will make a great leap in that direction because of the technical nature of many of the changes. What the Bill does do is to make sentencing ever-more complex and complicated.
A pre-requisite for public confidence is public understanding. One of the results of some of these changes will be that it will perhaps be more difficult than ever to really understand what a custodial sentence will mean in practice. There is much more uncertainty about what a length of custody actually means. Overall, it is yet more piecemeal change in sentencing, which further complicates the framework.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Janes: Yes, the projections, as I just mentioned, show that it is set to go up to around 100,000. It is absolutely clear that many of the provisions in this Bill will see people spending a lot longer in prison. There is the increase in the minimum term. We know that with the DTO sentences we are likely to see up to 50 children at any one time in custody. The release provisions for the serious offences—four years or more—will go up to two thirds, rather than a half, which goes right back to the point that both Nina and Jonathan have made in terms of less time in the community under supervision, which is important for victims and confidence in the system.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Paradine: Most women in prison have experienced much worse crimes than those they are accused of committing and that end up meaning that they are in prison, particularly domestic abuse, child abuse and other forms of sexual exploitation, so this is a massive issue. We are really concerned about the impact on women, on families and, particularly, on children in terms of the imprisonment of primary carers.
We support the Joint Committee on Human Rights proposals for an amendment that would require judges to record and consider what they have taken into account in relation to sentencing primary carers, including to prison, and to collect data on that, so that finally we have the data, which it is really shocking that we do not have, about the number of children and families affected when the primary carer goes to prison.
When a mother is in prison, in 95% of cases her child will have to leave their own home to go into care or to live with relatives. It is completely unacceptable that the measures up until now have not resulted in the change needed. This is an opportunity to make that small change. It does not require anything different, but it will make sure, hopefully, that the things that should be happening in court do happen, that imprisonment is not having a disproportionate impact on children and that their best interests are safeguarded.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Paradine: That absolutely is the case. The majority of women are in prison for things like theft and non-violent offending, often linked to property, to mental ill health, to substance misuse and to multiple needs. The 5% of the prison population that is women is the most vulnerable of that already vulnerable population of people in prison. It is quite ridiculous that we plan to build 500 new women’s prison places, when what we should be doing is driving down the women’s prison population, which we can do if we invest in the right things and focus in the right direction.
Unfortunately, this Bill is a missed opportunity to turn the system around and to focus on rehabilitation, community intervention and making sure that prison is a last resort and not the first resort, which sadly it still often is, drawing people into a system that they find it difficult to escape from. We plead with you to make sure that we try and make sure that this Bill does not make a bad situation even worse.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Bild: Yes, when it comes to primary carers that is a relatively stable area of law and it is a relevant mitigating factor. I understand that there has been an amendment moved to go into statute, which is something that would be sensible, but sentencing will already refer to the guidelines on that. I would defer to Kate on all of these issues; it is very much her area of expertise.
The Chair
Dr Janes, you wanted to say something a moment ago and put your hand up.
Dr Janes: I would just add, on this point, that the really important aspect of sentencing is judicial discretion. That is essential if you want to really make sure we do not make women, children and disabled people—people from all sorts of backgrounds—suffer unduly. There is a real shift away from judicial discretion in this Bill.
Nina Champion: Some of the provisions will disproportionately impact women, and also black, Asian and minority ethnic women. For example, on the clause relating to assault on emergency workers, the equality impact assessment acknowledges that for that type of assault, which can often happen, for example, after a stop and search, it is more likely that women will be caught up by extending the maximum sentence in that provision. Of course, we want to protect our frontline workers, but these sentences have already been increased, even in 2018, and the deterrent effect just is not there. The proof is not there that it has any impact on protecting our frontline workers. What it does is catch more people up in the criminal justice system.
The other proposal relating to mandatory minimum sentences, particularly for issues around drug trafficking, will also capture more women and black, Asian and minority ethnic women. As Laura said, it removes judicial discretion to look at the individual circumstances of the case. We know that many women may have been coerced or exploited in drug trafficking cases. As Kate said, they are victims themselves. Introducing minimum sentences removes the opportunity for the judge to look at the individual circumstances of the case.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Third sitting)
Sarah Champion ExcerptsThursday 20th May 2021
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 May 2021 - (20 May 2021)
The Chair
Great. It is nice that we can hear you in the ether. We cannot actually see you either now, so you cannot see us and we cannot see you. We would quite like to see the witnesses if that can be organised. Who would like to ask the first question? I call Sarah Champion.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Q
Sam Doohan: There are some things in the Bill that will help to some degree, but there are some omissions. A good deal of the youth offending regime, with regard to criminal records, will stay the same. Larger changes in the Bill, particularly around cautions, are not being made for young offenders, so they will face the same regime as now and will not receive any benefit.
Another critical omission is that once the Bill passes it will still technically be possible for someone to commit a crime as a child, be convicted after they turn 18 and then receive a criminal record as if they had committed the crime as an adult. We are very keen to see some change to that. We firmly believe that we should stick to the principle that young people deserve not only a second chance but special treatment and consideration.
Helen Berresford: While there are some things in the Bill that we welcome in terms of young people—for example, the changes to remand, which will make a really big difference to what has been an ongoing issue for a while—we have a number of concerns about some of the proposals, which will likely increase the number of children and young people in custody and the time they spend in custody, with no evidence of the impact that that will have on either reducing crime or reducing reoffending. We have seen significant progress over recent years with the decrease in the numbers of children being sent into custody. That has been a really positive story, but we are very concerned that a number of the proposals in this Bill will reverse that and increase the number.
Sarah Champion
Q
Helen Berresford: Some of the proposals will increase the sentencing, such as some of the proposals around sentence length and the starting tariffs for murder, for example, and some have implications for increasing the numbers, such as the changes to detention training orders. There are a number of different proposals that will likely increase the numbers of children and young people going into custody.
Campbell Robb: I would add that, overall, some of the welcome things around problem-solving courts and some of those things could be extended into the youth, and we need to see more of that. I would like to see some more discussion during the passage of the Bill about some of the non-custodial approaches that could be introduced in the youth estate, as well as in the adult estate.
Sarah Champion
Q
Sam Doohan: To a large degree, Unlock would say that we are happy with the direction of travel, but we do not think that the Bill in its present form goes far enough. There is something of a split in the criminal records regime, essentially between those who go to prison and those who do not, and we are happy to see that the majority of people who do go to prison will see reduced spending periods for their convictions. However, we are still quite unhappy to see that some people will still disclose for life. We believe that needs quite close attention paid to it.
Further down the regime, even when we talk about what in the grander scheme of things we might think of as quite minor offences, the criminal spending regime around road traffic offences, and speeding in particular, is radically out of step with everything else in the rest of the spending regime. People end up having to disclose, say, a speeding ticket for five years, which is longer than if they had gone to prison for a year. We think that not only does this need to change and be brought into step, but that on the whole we should emphasise not only faster spending but fewer situations in which people legally have to disclose, and a higher standard of demonstrable need to discriminate on the basis of a criminal record.
Helen Berresford: We would very much agree with that. At Nacro, we run a criminal records support service, and we receive thousands of inquiries every year from individuals who are trying, and often struggling, to navigate a very complex system. We very much welcome the direction of travel and the proposals in the Bill to reduce that burden, which is also felt by employers. That is a really important part of this: lots of the employers who we support struggle to navigate the system themselves, and that can lead to them being more risk-averse when it comes to employing people with criminal records.
I agree completely with what Sam said. There are some anomalies and outliers here, and this Bill is a real opportunity to deal with them. Motoring convictions is a great example of that, and I think that can be fairly easily dealt with. There are a couple of other points that come up in this Bill, such as the new out-of-court disposals and the diversionary caution. A simple caution previously did not have a disclosure period, and I think putting one in only increases barriers, which is contrary to the Government’s direction of travel. I think there are some real opportunities to go further and tidy that up, but we very much welcome the direction.
Campbell Robb: I have nothing to add—[Interruption.]
The Chair
Sorry, Mr Robb, we did not hear that because we have a bell going off in our ears. Could you repeat that?
Campbell Robb: I hear the bell ringing. I was just agreeing with both of them; I have nothing to add.
Allan Dorans
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I do not think that it does go far enough. Sentencing is not a territory that I want to get into particularly because victims’ views are very different about sentencing. It is by no means the case that everybody who is a victim of crime wants extremely heavy sentencing. There was a piece of research recently by RoadPeace that shows that they are not particularly strongly supportive of the increased sentences for driving offences, and would prefer driving bans rather than what they see as people who have driven dangerously but are not dangerous people being locked up in prison for a long time. They feel that long sentences may deter charging or jury verdicts.
Victims, just like everyone else, are a mixed bag, but what they want very much is to be treated decently by all the criminal justice agencies; to have adequate support and courteous engagement; to be kept up to date; to have all the entitlements when they come to court that will help them to give their evidence well; and to be supported right through, including after the sentence, going into the time when someone is serving their sentence—keeping them up to date about what is happening so that they might then more easily accept what happens when the individual comes out.
That whole procedural justice—what works for victims—is absolutely key. It does start to appear quite well in the new victims’ code of practice, but certainly that code of practice, which is about the sixth version of it that we have had, must be implemented, when the others have not been. There is nothing in the legislation here to help with that. The victims’ law is coming down the line and I hope that we can do more for victims in that.
Apologies for taking a long time about digital download. I meant simply to end by saying that all the problems that we have experienced can be solved by the drafts that we have prepared, which have been accepted by everyone but the Home Office. I urge the Minister in charge to look at that again.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I agree. I wonder whether the problem starts with the victim contact scheme and whether we are not embracing enough people into it. We have done some really good work with HMPPS about that. They are moving to a much stronger invitation to join the victim contact scheme and are offering all sorts of ways to do it, even after the event. That would put people in a position where their statement would be taken, and it would be read.
In fact, during the course of the pandemic, a lot of victims have gone online and read their statement to the parole board. The number of victims who have done that has gone up, and we think the online provision—giving satisfactory remoteness to an individual from a prisoner, but none the less communicating what is good—is probably a good model for the future, but it is imperative that that opportunity is given to victims.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dame Vera Baird: In essence, yes, I do. We have just done a report about special measures, Ms Champion, and it would be good if you looked at it. The problem starts with the fact that the needs assessment is not done clearly by a single agency. It is all across the CPS, witness care units and the police. We have said that it should be in the witness care units. It should be done in a professional and thorough way with them co-ordinating it.
Then there is the real problem that the range of special measures, and the one that might suit you as a witness, are not always available and are not always offered even if they are available. There is a risk of some sort of court culture limiting the choice when the intention is that the best evidence should be given for the benefit both of the complainant, to cut the tension, and of the criminal justice system, to get evidence that it might not get otherwise.
Let me add that the roll-out of section 28 enables vulnerable and intimidated witnesses to pre-record their evidence weeks and weeks—probably, in reality, years—before a case can come to trial, and then be cross-examined on video too so that, many weeks before it comes to trial, they have finished their involvement in it. Obviously, it often just needs to be a choice, but that can be the default position to get a lot of vulnerable and intimidated witnesses out of the queue at the Crown court, put an end to their stress and record their evidence while their memory is fresh. I think that should be the default position available for all the categories that you mentioned.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dame Vera Baird: Yes.
Sarah Champion
Thank you.
Dame Vera Baird: We wrote last year and asked for exactly that.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I am not the lead for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; I am the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, and I do not know about that conversation.
There are two difficulties. One is that an unauthorised encampment often causes great discomfort to neighbours of it—that is probably a gross understatement. The other concern I have—very frankly—is that my experience is that the appropriate statutory provision is not always made to provide Gypsies and Travellers with an alternative place that is lawful and so they, too, are put in a very problematic position.
I saw what Martin Hewitt from the National Police Chiefs’ Council said the day before yesterday. He said that he did not think the police needed more powers; it would be much better if more lawful places were made available. And then there is no difficulty with getting Gypsies and Travellers out of places where they should not be, because there is a lawful place to put them. So I am afraid at the moment we have kind of two sets of victims.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Second sitting)
Sarah Champion ExcerptsTuesday 18th May 2021
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 May 2021 - (18 May 2021)
Hywel Williams
Q
Adrian Crossley: Sentencing inflation is a very real problem. For decades now, we have seen incremental rises in sentencing, right across the board. There is a theory that the more we increase the more serious offences tariffs, there is a trickle-down effect; essentially, it pulls up sentencing for lesser offences. We see, for example, sentences for drug offences increase over a 10-year period by about 30%, and for theft by around 22% over the same period. This has a very real effect on people’s lives. It is not just a question of a few extra years—that would be serious enough as it is—it can often be the difference between somebody having a sentence suspended and actually being taken away and put into a cell, so it is a very real problem.
Some regard this as a Bill of two halves with what some regard as very punitive sentencing on the one hand and some very progressive, challenging and, I would say, quite brave proposals for community reform and rehabilitation on the other. A great deal of subjectivity is involved in deciding how much time somebody should serve for very serious offences. I do not see anything necessarily wrong with reviewing how this society deals with very serious offending. If there is an increase in tariff, which we as a liberal democracy think is right, that is fine, but there are real dangers with that. My view is that we are likely to see a Prison Service that is wholly incapable of dealing with the stress of an extra 20,000 people—what is forecast for the next few years—inundated with new offenders who are likely to have very little access to meaningful reform and rehabilitation. That is deeply concerning to me.
If as a society we feel that that more serious offending requires a higher tariff, we also have to address the numbers in prison. The most important thing we need to do is to look at whether people who are currently being sent to prison, perhaps at the lower and medium end of offending, really need to go there. The Centre for Social Justice published a paper last year called “Sentencing in the Dock”. Our position was very clear that modern technology, with GPS tagging and alcohol tagging—I could list a number of requirements that are already rightly in the Bill—could provide a sufficient deprivation of liberty to act as a real punishment for serious offending or medium to low-level offending.
We need to be much bolder about the amount of people we keep out of prison and deal with in the community. We can see clearly that in treating alcohol, drug addiction, mental health problems, literacy and numeracy, you are far more likely to have an effect on those key drivers of crime if you deal with people in the community than if you put them in prison. We could be much bolder in dealing with community disposals. There is a real risk of sentencing inflation here, of a prison population growing out of control and, in my view, of brutalising people who might otherwise be able to reform.
Phil Bowen: I agree with a lot of that. The only thing I would add is that proposals are set out in the White Paper that are being taken forward by the Ministry that seek to strengthen the community justice parts of the system. They include things such as investing in early intervention and prevention, including the improvements to the out-of-court disposals regime, which I think is vital for young people and people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in particular.
The nationalisation of the probation service represents a real opportunity to strengthen community sentences and win public confidence in community sentences back from the courts. I also think a strong interest and investment are needed in high-quality treatment for offenders and the more dynamic use of electronic monitoring. While I agree with a lot of what Adrian has just said that some proposals in the Bill seek to increase the use of prison, that takes away money from smarter investments in community justice. I would also like to emphasise that there are things in the Bill that we support, because we think they take forward that idea of smarter community justice.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Q
Adrian Crossley: My view is that definitions usually start their life imperfect and develop with a great deal of expertise from public and experts who understand this issue perhaps better than I ever could. Notwithstanding that, and understanding that there may be a starting point of imperfection, they are useful. In my view, definitions of important criminal principles help real decision makers on the ground make practical decisions that are fair and consistent. Notwithstanding the fact that I see problems with that—we have seen so many different definitions of domestic abuse, which started its life as domestic violence, that it is clear these things are fluid and can develop—I think they have a practical application.
Phil Bowen: I have nothing to add to that. I agree with that.
Sarah Champion
Q
Phil Bowen: I think presumption to all of them is very useful. The other thing that I think is worth underlining is that part of the model of the specialist domestic abuse courts, which ought to operate in every magistrates court but at the moment do not, is that independent domestic violence advocates make sure the victims are asked about special measures and those special measures are put in place. I think there is a delivery and implementation question, as well as a legislative question, about whether the resources are there to help victims of domestic abuse and ensure those special measures are put in. Yes, I think a presumption would be useful, but I think it also requires attention to implementation and delivery issues. Special measures should already be used in specialist domestic abuse courts across our magistrates court estate and, in many cases, domestic abuse victims are without access to those measures, for want of anyone who asked.
Sarah Champion
Q
Adrian Crossley: I endorse pretty much all of what Mr Bowen has just said. I will not repeat what he said, so forgive me, but I particularly want to emphasise the focus that was placed on the reality of actual implementation. I worked for some years as a prosecutor and in defence, and I can say that, very often, lack of special measures is not the result of an omission in thought or some massive procedural error. Sometimes the implementation of special measures and, certainly, the pragmatics of what happens in court are not there and the stress that that puts witnesses through is absolutely huge. Sometimes, we talk a lot about witnesses not turning up or defendants gaming the system, hoping that the stress of waiting for trial is so bad that the witness just will not turn up, but the chaos and confusion that is caused by a broken system that is fixed on the day can be hugely distressing to a witness. I think implementation is important.
That point is not where I was going to go, however. Just for balance, I should say that it is always right that the accused should be able to face their accuser and evidence should be tested properly. Nothing that I have seen that has been proposed, including video examination in chief and cross-examination before trial, gives me any concern that without the right implementation that could not be done well. We always have to have an eye on making sure that the accused has a fair trial. This is important; it is not a nicety. However, the measures I have seen proposed give me no real cause for concern about that. I think it makes a massive difference to the view of the complainant and, unfortunately, it would also make a massive difference to the view of some defendants, who may face the reality of the evidence against them earlier. It may encourage pleas that should have happened earlier.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Q
Phil Bowen: Very quickly, I think the proposal in clause 100, which reduces judicial discretion about imposing minimum custodial sentences, is a regrettable step. I have seen no evidence to suggest that that discretion has been misused. I am not sure on what basis that clause was proposed, and we have been arguing for its removal from the Bill. I see a place for minimum custodial sentencing, but I tend to be against anything that fetters the discretion of judges.
Adrian Crossley: Statutory minimums can have a function when we want to give a standard approach to the severity with which society regards a certain offence. My view, though, is that over a decade or two, judicial discretion right across the board—not just in this clause—has been steadily eroded, and I do not find that particularly helpful in criminal justice. Judges are well equipped to make decisions about what is in front of them, and they are well advised. No guidelines can ever foresee the variety that life can bring you, and my view is that the more judicial discretion there is, the better our criminal justice system is likely to be.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jonathan Hall QC: No, I tried to be as comprehensive as I could when carrying out my review of the multi-agency public protection arrangements. I thought long and hard about the additional powers that might be needed, and I am pleased that they are contained in the Bill. I cannot think of anything else. From a detailed, legal perspective I would just say that there are a couple of points of detail about two of the powers, and maybe the Committee will want to question or press on whether further safeguards are needed. I did not draft the powers, of course, and I recommended that they be done generally and they have now been put into statutory language. Overall, I have nothing to add to what is here.
Sarah Champion
Q
Matt Parr: Shall I go first? I am afraid it will be a short answer. We are aware of the issue, and as you may know we do a 43-force inspection of all police forces on a rolling basis. We think that it is a bit early and that we need more time to reach an informed view on the issue, but we will look at it in our next round of inspections.
Jonathan Hall QC: I have a short point to add: I did look at one issue. There are special arrest powers in section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and those powers differ from other arrest powers in that they allow for people to be held for up to 14 days. I did consider whether there should be the power to bail after arrest in section 41 in my first report, but for various practical and technical reasons I thought that was probably wrong. That is the only thinking I have done about that.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
Jonathan Hall QC: I thought there were three key points. First, managing the terrorist risk from released offenders involves practitioners from agencies who are not always good at working together. For example, the probation service and MI5 do not have, historically, an easy way of working together.
Secondly, the likelihood of making really good decisions at the right time, which is what matters, would be increased if there was a shared understanding of risk. That involves greater data sharing, and not just secret data sharing—though that is important—but sharing data from all other sources. One of the good things about the Bill is that it resolves an uncertainty about when data can and cannot be shared. It also requires better understanding in all the agencies about what tools exist. Probation has a really fantastic, powerful tool—the ability to recall risky offenders to custody. That is probation’s power—it is not the police’s or MI5’s—and it is important for MI5 to understand that and to make sure that the person making that decision understood the risk. So a comprehensive understanding of each of those powers is important and, as you know, I recommended a couple of extra powers, which are in the Bill.
Thirdly, there is a particular difficulty in practice of managing people who had not been convicted of terrorism offences but who were of terrorist risk when released. Take, for example, someone who went to prison for a very violent offence and became radicalised in prison—they present a terrorist risk on release. It is quite difficult to get them into the structures that exist for managing such a terrorist risk, but the Bill is going to change that to make it easier—[Inaudible.]
The Chair
Hang on a second. I think we are supposed to be taking evidence from our witnesses. Do you want to answer that, Mr Hall?
Jonathan Hall QC: Yes. To continue the thought, where someone reaches the end of their sentence, their sentence cannot be increased—for example, by adding an extra licence period. In a way, it sounds quite a sensible idea that if someone is very dangerous, when they get to the end of their sentence you should just add a licence on administratively, but that would be completely wrong in principle, because the point of a licence is that you can be recalled. If someone was sentenced to 10 years by a judge and got to the end of their sentence, and you then added on a licence period of, say, five years, if they were recalled—quite a few terrorist offenders do end up being recalled—they would end up serving up to 15 years. That would, of course, be wrong in principle.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jonathan Hall QC: I am not trying to avoid it by saying that it is a really good question, but I have not properly absorbed the role of victims in the work that I have done as reviewer of terrorism legislation. One of the difficulties of terrorism is that you are looking more at future risk than at past impact, but obviously, a really bad terrorist attack has the most atrocious consequences for individuals. I am going to slightly dodge it, if I may, by saying that I have not really thought that one through, but I will take it away.
Matt Parr: I do not really have anything to add. It struck me at first glance—it is the first time I have thought about it—as a reasonably attractive idea, but again, I have not really given it a particularly great amount of thought.
The Chair
Are there any further questions? It appears not. In that case, I thank you both very much for your evidence.
Examination of Witnesses
Councillor Nesil Caliskan, David Lloyd and Alison Hernandez gave evidence.
Sarah Champion
Q
Councillor Caliskan: The first thing to say is that the Local Government Association broadly welcomes the Bill. We recognise its intentions for victims of crime and to support communities. However, there are aspects of the Bill, for instance, the offensive weapon homicide reviews, that I referred to, that lack clarity on the implications for resources, and why they are necessary, given that other reviews take place that could probably cover some of the issues. Reviews take place when you want to learn from an incident. It is unclear what the outcome of an offensive weapon homicide review would be and what learning would be achieved from that.
On the broader point about resources and support, local government have been under incredible pressure in funding youth offending services for several years. We know that youth services have seen a cut in their budgets. Youth offending services primarily have two functions: to stop reoffending, and to stop offending in the first place. The second function is not a statutory responsibility, and it is up to local authorities and partners, such as the police and NHS, to be willing to put in resources to stop offending in the first place. The early intervention and prevention aspect of things will be critical if the intention of the Bill to reduce crime over a long period of time is serious. Alongside the statutory responsibilities that the Bill sets out, the LGA’s view is that it is critical that there are adequate resources to be able to intervene with preventive measures at an earlier stage.
Sarah Champion
Q
Alison Hernandez: There are a few bits in the areas we have been looking at. One area that is particularly of public interest is around the level of offending on our roads from poor driver behaviour generally. There is an absolute appetite from the public—we carried out a survey about 18 months ago on road safety through the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and over 66,000 people responded. It was absolutely clear that people witness offending behaviour on the roads where they live for about 70% of the time. So there is an appetite for more enforcement and for the fines levels, and that is in the Bill around delivering courses for some of those driver behaviours, which I think is really great. We are interested in seeing another area, which would be a levelling up of the fines for some of those offences. They are all different, whether for speeding, using a mobile phone, or not wearing a seat belt. The fines are all at different levels. Our suggestion is: why don’t you level up the fines, then you also have an opportunity to spend more funding on road safety?
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
Q
I am very interested in this issue and there are two parts to my question. First, do you think that the existing powers under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 are sufficient to address the issues that arise from unauthorised encampments for communities that are affected? If not, do you think that this Bill goes some way to fill any gaps that have been identified and raised by a number of different groups?
Separately, regarding local authorities, I think it is little-known that local authorities are actually required to find space for Travellers’ sites, transit sites and authorised encampments. Do you have examples of local authority areas that are doing that alongside communities and the police, and it is working well? And what more can local authorities do?
The Chair
Q
Marc Willers QC: Good afternoon. My name is Marc Willers. I am a QC barrister practising at Garden Court Chambers.
Adam Wagner: Good afternoon. I am Adam Wagner, a barrister practising at Doughty Street Chambers.
Sarah Champion
Q
Adam Wagner: I will leave the Gypsy and Traveller aspect to Marc. From a protest perspective, what worries me about the Bill is that it decouples the public order element from the Public Order Act 1986. It makes that Act do things that it was not designed to do—to protect public order by effectively giving the police powers to impose directions on any protest that is very noisy, which is any protest.
In terms of discrimination, I regularly act for clients who protest—not for any particular thing; I act for clients who protest all sorts of things. My concern is that the police and potentially the Government will end up cherry-picking the kinds of protest that they consider to be valuable and the kinds that they consider to be problematic. That will ultimately be a political decision, not one based on public order. Ultimately, it does not matter whether it is a left-wing Government or a right-wing Government—they will have the ability to discriminate against groups that they do not agree with.
Marc Willers QC: You might have guessed that I am going to indicate that the Bill, particularly part 4, discriminates against Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers, two ethnic minority groups with a traditional way of life, an integral part of which is living in caravans, and which also involves nomadism. The Bill will criminalise trespass at a time when many of those who resort to and reside on unauthorised encampments have nowhere else to go, the reason that being site provision, an elderly but enormous elephant in the room, has not been addressed since 1960, when the Government and Parliament of the day introduced the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which closed the commons.
A statutory duty was introduced in 1968 by Lord Eric Avebury, but that duty was subsequently repealed in 1994. I am afraid that the encouragement of private site provision has failed abysmally, and we still have a cohort of Romani Gypsies, Irish Travellers and, indeed, new travellers who do not have a lawful stopping place. Criminalising trespass and giving greater powers, which the police have roundly suggested they do not need, to occupiers of land for the police to enforce really puts another nail in the coffin of nomadism and makes such people’s lives extremely difficult. The disproportionate impact on Gypsies and Travellers is there for all to see.
Sarah Champion
Q
Adam Wagner: It widens the test for being able to impose conditions on a protest to encompass pretty much any protest that is noisy enough to cause intimidation, to harass, or to cause
“serious unease, alarm or distress”
or “serious disruption”. If you are a protest organiser, you will know that that could apply to any protest. You have to appreciate that the current section 12 of the Public Order Act 1986 allows for conditions only when a protest causes
“serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community.”
That is already pretty wide.
By making it about noise, you are effectively saying to the organiser that any protest could be caught by that description, so they will have to rely on the good will of the police and the Home Secretary, because the Home Secretary will have a regulation-making power not only to define any of the new terms that I have expressed, but to give examples. Organisers will have to rely on the police and the Home Secretary to decide that their protest is not worth putting conditions on. From a protester perspective, that puts you entirely in the hands of the police and the Home Secretary. That very problematic for somebody organising a protest, because a lot of people will think it is just not worth it, particularly when they are representing an unpopular cause or one that they consider to be controversial. Those are precisely the protests that are the most important, and the most important to protect.
Sarah Champion
Q
Adam Wagner: No; I have not, I am afraid.
The Chair
Is there anything you wanted to add, Mr Willers?
Marc Willers QC: Much the same can be said about proposed new section 60C of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, in terms of its language. It seems to me that a lot of the language used is vague and uncertain. There is a reference to causing “significant distress” as one of the conditions that could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who refuses to leave a piece of land. That, in itself, brings inherent problems, because a private citizen could very easily invoke the power and leave a police officer with a fait accompli—in other words, they have no option but to arrest an individual who refuses to leave land in circumstances where the occupier says, “I am being caused significant distress by the very fact that this individual is parking on land that I occupy.”
That distress can be engendered or underpinned by the prejudice that Gypsies and Travellers face in our society today. It is a widespread and long-standing prejudice, dating back to the first time that Romani Gypsies came to these shores in the 1500s. I am afraid that it is fuelled by mainstream media and politicians. It is instilled in the minds of many members of the public, and it is bound to play a part. There may well be unwarranted and unjustified concerns on the part of the occupier, which could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who has nowhere else to go.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (First sitting)
Sarah Champion ExcerptsTuesday 18th May 2021
(4 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 May 2021 - (18 May 2021)
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Q
Assistant Commissioner Hewitt: We are always concerned about any officers that have to routinely undertake the kind of work in which there will undoubtedly be an impact on the officer’s welfare. We have a range of wellbeing work that we do, including a specific wellbeing service, Oscar Kilo, that looks after all aspects of wellbeing, particularly mental health wellbeing, which has become one of our priorities in recent years. When you get into specific roles such as the one that you identified there, there is training and assessment for officers who go forward and undertake those roles. There is also regular checking and assessment of those officers so that they are looked at again, spoken to and monitored for any of the specific impacts.
As you have identified, there is a range of roles that we now have officers undertaking that are by their very nature distressing, and of course we recognise that kind of repeated exposure, so there is psychological testing and support provided to those officers. In particular roles, that will incorporate routine and regular checking to ensure that the officer’s welfare is fine. That fits within the much broader work that we undertake more generally on wellbeing, and, as I say, particularly and increasingly mental health wellbeing.
Sarah Champion
Q
Assistant Commissioner Hewitt: The reality is making that work. An issue that we undoubtedly have around wellbeing and the occupational health service provision is the restricted amount of capacity. That is one of our challenges. In all circumstances, where we want to refer officers or staff for support, one of our frustrations is that it often takes quite a while to access that support. Although there is a positive in the concept of providing more universal support, it would have to be balanced with being able to actually provide the capability and the capacity to do that effectively. That is one of the challenges we face.
The Chair
Chief Constable Harrington, do you have anything to add?
Chief Constable Harrington: Like Martin said, we have some systematic processes for those who engage in high risk areas. Some of the capacity issues are dealt with by our trauma incident management response, which enables supervisors and peers to recognise, debrief and spot the people who need further and greater intervention, and almost to triage that response following any kind of traumatic incident, particularly in the cases that have been referenced.
The Chair
Thank you. I think we will try to follow the same pattern as before. I will try to get Back Benchers in first, and then I will allow about 10 minutes each for the Front Benchers.
Sarah Champion
Q
Can I ask of our witnesses the same question that I asked of the chiefs? In the police covenant, would it help and support your members if there were mandatory provision at the very beginning of training and all the way through to support you on a psychological level? I am very aware that you are the first people on many occasions to see some hugely traumatic situations. I am particularly thinking, on child abuse, of the amount of time that police officers have to invest in seeing some pretty horrific things. Should we put in the police covenant mandatory training and support for officers to deal with that trauma?
John Apter: I am happy to start. Thank you for the question. The police covenant is very close to my heart, and it is something that the Police Federation has campaigned for. Absolutely, it needs to be meaningful and tangible, and it needs to have a benefit for those it is there to support—not only officers, but staff, volunteers and retired colleagues. Mr Hewitt said earlier that much has been done about wellbeing in policing over the past few years, and I support that.
We have come an awful long way, but we have not gone far enough. One of the frustrations that my colleagues have is the inconsistency within forces. I have had this conversation with the College of Policing, and part of that is the lack of ability or willingness to mandate particular aspects of training and support. The covenant gives us a great opportunity to put in place mandated levels of psychological support and training from the start of somebody’s service to its conclusion and beyond.
Chief Superintendent Griffiths: I echo John’s view on this. There has been a rise in some of the challenges that officers face—even our members—in terms of psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and so on. In my role as president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, and as a trustee of the police charities that help and support in these issues, I have seen a rise in some of the challenges that officers face—not only those on the frontline, but my members who are senior operational leaders.
The service has come a long way with the frontline review, the officer safety review and a rise in our focus on wellbeing as a consequence of some of the challenges we have faced over the past decade. Do we need anything additional in the legislation in respect of that? There is a need for consistency across occupational health standards, but I think that could be achieved through the programme management rather than through legislation. There is a real focus in the service now, through Oscar Kilo and wellbeing, the NPCC, and staff associations in this area, and we are working closely together, so there is a golden opportunity with the police covenant to best serve and support officers and staff across the whole country.
Sarah Champion
Q
Chief Superintendent Griffiths: It is hugely important for us to be victim-orientated in our policing services. We have really focused, over the last 10 to 15 years, on vulnerability issues and the significant vulnerability areas of policing, through the College of Policing and the NPCC drive, and we have identified victims, both online and in the physical space. That is a clear focus for us as a service: how best to serve victims.
In many of the initial contacts with victims, we provide a very good service and there is very good feedback, but over time, with the pressures that we are under, that sort of connectivity, and the confidence and trust that victims have in policing, can get strained because of the lack of contact. That is not to say that things are not going on, but we have to work within a system—particularly through the criminal justice system, which is also under strain—where we have to work with victims as best as possible, to deliver the best possible service.
In terms of our service delivery to victims, not only are our tact and diplomacy important in the way we deal with them, at the incidents or wherever they report matters to us—whether current or historic—but there is almost a path by which we have to keep connected to those individuals to provide them with the best possible service. I think that is key for us: that connectivity, drive and support through all the criminal justice processes.
Sarah Champion
Q
Chief Superintendent Griffiths: We have the increase with the additional 20,000 officers who are coming in. It is my hope and expectation that we can actively deploy them to support victims, along with the other challenges and demands that we have. Do we ever have enough police officers? No. There are always things that we want to do, and we have the same ambition as society: to do the very best we can and do as much as we can. In that sense, we never have enough, but in terms of our ability to deal with some of the demand, the increase in resources is very welcome, and hopefully, we will be able to provide a better service to the whole public, as much as our focus around victims.
Sarah Champion
Q
John Apter: I completely echo and support Paul’s comments—he and I work very closely together on this. My colleagues want to do the best they can for victims of crime. What I would add to what Paul said is, “Let us not forget the victims within the service.” You heard from Mr Hewitt that assaults on officers, staffers and other emergency workers have increased by 19% during the pandemic—some horrific levels of attacks—and very often, my colleagues say that they feel they are treated as a second-class victim.
I think we have done enormous things to improve that over the years. A project called Operation Hampshire, of which we are particularly proud and which is being led by the Met, is improving the quality of service that victims within the service get. If I were to add to my ever-increasing wish list on the legislation, I would say that yes, the victims in the public must get the best service possible, but I want to see that same level of service—not better, but the same—extended to my colleagues and members of police staff, because all too often, they feel that that is not the case.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill
Sarah Champion ExcerptsMonday 15th March 2021
(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]
I welcome parts of this Bill, but there are glaring omissions, especially around violence against women and children. In Rotherham, and across the country, all too often victims and survivors of crime, especially sexual violence, lack confidence in the system, and this Bill was the opportunity to change that. There are far too many instances where sentencing is too lenient, or indeed where predatory or violent behaviours are not even criminalised.
I am relieved that the Government are finally reintroducing pre-charge bail conditions. Removing them in 2017 led to survivors living in fear of reprisals from their abusers. I also very much welcome the fact that the Government are finally bringing forward the “positions of trust” provisions that make it illegal for faith leaders and sports coaches to have sex with 16 and 17-year-olds in their care. However, the Government need to extend this law to cover the likes of driving instructors, youth workers, police officers and private tutors.
I am pleased about the progress on extending the offence of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence to include the rape and abuse of a child, and on stronger sentences for commensurate harm. However, the Bill must be strengthened to address online sexual exploitation. Aggravating factors must be included, as has been done in Australia, when it comes to sentencing. The Bill should be amended to state that approaching a person with regard to child sexual offences also specifically includes doing so online or via other telecommunications.
The provisions on the establishment of a list of countries considered to be at high risk of child sexual exploitation or abuse by UK nationals need to include countries that are at risk from UK citizens who commit abhorrent crimes online. Too often, I hear of UK nationals remotely directing abuse of, often, Filipino children from their own homes. Currently, there is a loophole in the law whereby a registered sex offender can change their name through deed poll and then go under the radar of the authorities. Alarmingly, I recently uncovered the fact that over 16,000 sex offenders breached their notification requirements in the past five years, which means that they disappeared from the system set up to monitor them.
Finally, I am astounded that while the Bill makes several changes to procedures in courts and tribunals, the Government have not used it as an opportunity to further improve support for victims and witnesses of sexual abuse.
Tragic events of the past week have shown just how important this Bill is. For too long, abuse, and particularly violence against women and girls, has gone on unchecked and survivors have been left to deal with a system that is not only not working but often making their situation worse. Crimes against women often specifically occur because they are women. These crimes are not gender neutral, so the law should not be either. We must consider a definition in terms of making misogyny a hate crime.
Grooming Gangs
Sarah Champion Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]
I really appreciate the fact that we are having this debate, because I have spent eight years trying to get justice for survivors of child sexual exploitation and to prevent grooming gangs. I have been vilified, smeared and threatened, by the far right and the far left, who use this crime for their own political agenda. The only impact it has had on me is that I get a taste of the intimidation that survivors have to endure. So their threats just make me more determined to make sure we permanently get rid of any form of child sexual exploitation. But their actions embolden the abusers. They make it more difficult for those in child protection to do their jobs, and they deter victims from coming forward.
I fail to understand why this topic is so emotive, when there is a clear picture of gangs with a similar profile being involved in sexual abuse and exploitation. This should be investigated without fear or favour, as any other gang-related crime would be. We live in a democracy, and the law should be able to be applied in an even-handed way.
We are very fortunate in Rotherham, because the National Crime Agency’s Operation Stovewood is looking at cases of CSE by grooming gangs between 1997 and 2013, a 16-year period. It has already identified 1,569 survivors and 261 designated suspects. To date we have had 20 convictions in court, and four awaiting trial. That is in 16 years. I know survivors who are 70 years old. Think about the scale and length of time of this abuse.
Now some specific suggestions to prevent CSE by grooming gangs and to secure convictions. Each potential victim should have a named person they are comfortable with, and that person should be shared across all stakeholders. The treatment of witnesses and survivors must be constantly reviewed to make sure they are able to give evidence in a safe format and receive the support they deserve.
Mandatory relationship education for all primary schoolchildren should have been in place in September 2020, but we have still not been given an implementation date. The law desperately needs updating on positions of trust and online harms. There should be stricter sentencing. The use of pre-charge bail, particularly where there is a flight risk, must be swiftly cut back.
Serious consideration needs to be given to offender release. Sexual predators do not change their patterns of behaviour, and they return to the same communities where they carried out the abuse. Prevention must be our focus, which means health professionals should be trained to spot and support potential perpetrators.
Trading standards officers should be able to investigate premises where they believe grooming gangs operate. A multi-agency approach is key, but it has to be full and equal across all partners and that should include Government Departments. I am glad the Government are looking to make funding for support services more stable. To succeed, it has to be long-term funding.
Unregulated care homes must be banned for all children under the age of 18. We need to promote closer interaction between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. We need to use disruption tactics as much as possible which avoid victims having to give evidence. Our adversarial court proceedings further brutalise victims and survivors, and this is unacceptable. We have to change it.
We need to establish a national set of triggers that allow local authorities to provide support for children showing signs of harm, rather than the current postcode lottery. We need to make sure that every toolkit dealing with CSE understands that children have a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, as currently there is an assumption that victims of CSE are non-disabled white girls, and that is not true. We need to require every local authority to take urgent steps to improve the accessibility of CSE services.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady is well past her four-minute time limit, I am afraid. I will give her a final sentence.
Sarah Champion
Fundamentally, the Government need to work in a cross-departmental way to end this crime once and for all.
Serious Criminal Cases Backlog
Sarah Champion Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Philp
I say to victims: we are there to support you, to hear you and to seek justice for you. As my hon. Friend knows, we are hiring 20,000 extra police officers to keep victims safe. We are keeping the court system running in these difficult circumstances. We are getting back to a period in which magistrates courts are clearing the backlog and, I believe, the Crown court shortly will do so. So I say to victims: justice will be done. Your voice will be heard. Come forward. We are here for you. Do not hesitate—we want to hear your story. We will listen to it, we will act and we will make sure justice is done.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]
Shockingly, only 1.4% of those reporting rape secure a conviction, and that figure was before the news of deleted police records and the covid court backlog. For the last 10 years, this Government have run down the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, courts, prisons and probation, so what confidence can the Minister give to victims and survivors of sexual violence that they will be able to secure justice?
Oral Answers to Questions
Sarah Champion Excerpts(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Victoria Atkins
Very much so. I can assure my hon. Friend that the places of worship protective security funding scheme has been designed so that each place of worship can apply for practical security measures that suit their individual needs, ranging from CCTV to alarm systems. This allows each place of worship to remain open and accessible for worshippers, while providing greater security. We want to ensure that this scheme listens to worshippers and their communities when seeking to achieve the balance to which he rightly refers.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)
I thank
the hon. Lady for her a question and pay tribute to her for the work that she has done specifically on the whole issue of child sexual exploitation.
Sarah Champion
I am grateful that the Home Secretary takes this topic seriously. We in Rotherham are very fortunate because we have National Crime Agency to deal with past cases, but will she also look at cases across the country, the resources that police forces have there and the local authorities that have to step in and put the child protection and victim support in place, as there is not enough nationally?
Priti Patel
The hon. Lady is right. It is fair to say that she and I go back a long way on this issue. I recall that she first came to see me on this point when I was in the Treasury many years ago. She knows that I have recently announced that the Home Office will be publishing a paper to help us better understand the characteristics associated with groups. I would welcome it if she were to work with me and to join our external reference group that I have established on this important area. She specifically raises issues about third-party organisations, and she mentioned some in her own constituency. I have met many survivors and sufferers with her on this issue. They have had a terrible time. They have also been failed by many aspects of the state and society. We can never allow that to happen again, which is why I am committed, not just through resourcing, but through the work that I have commissioned in the Department, which I know she will join me in and support us on, to make sure that no other aspect of the state, organisation, third party, or Government institution turns a blind eye and ignores the needs of individuals in the way that happened in her constituency.