Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th May 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Champion]

Q I am not sure if either of you can comment on this, but I particularly welcome pre-charge bail being on the face of the Bill. The Minister and I discovered the chilling effects of the 2017 legislation. Will either of you say if the Committee ought to be mindful of any resource issue around pre-charge bail or release under investigation?

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, could you outline your findings from the Fishmongers’ Hall inquiry to help the flavour of the Committee’s conversation? I think we are all in the same place on what is in the Bill, but it would be useful to hear that from you.

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.]

[Sarah Jones]

You froze. You were saying, “to make it easier”.

Jonathan Hall QC: The Bill will make it easier for MAPPA—the management structures of risk—to apply to all terrorist risk offenders. That is not just people who were convicted of terrorism offences but people who are of terrorist risk when they come out of prison.

[Sarah Jones]

Q Taken together with the measures in the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021, you have said that potentially there is nothing more legally to do—we cannot guarantee that these changes would have prevented what happened, obviously—but you did mention a couple of concerns in a bit of the detail of two of the powers. Would you like to expand on that?

Jonathan Hall QC: I have nothing to say in relation to the power of the police to arrest urgently where there is a breach of licence; that is a really sensible addition. There is a power in clause 159 to apply for a warrant to search the premises of a released offender, and I support that. The point of detail is that it would be possible to apply to a judge for a warrant that would allow you to enter on any number—potentially an infinite number—of occasions. If you think about released terrorist offenders on licence, their licences can last a very long time—for example, 10 or 15 years—so perhaps the Committee may want to think about whether it is appropriate to have a power that would authorise multiple entries into a person’s premises throughout 10 or 15 years. The power of multiple entry under warrant does exist when you are talking about a live operation, and the police find that quite useful. I am not quite sure whether it is justified in the context of this particular risk. That is just one small point of detail, more by way of a safeguard.

Secondly, I recommended and am pleased to see in the Bill a power to search the person of a released terrorist offender. For example, if someone is going to London for the first time, or if a released offender who is very dangerous is going to meet a probation officer for the first time, that would authorise the police to pat them down to make sure they are not carrying something. That is good not only as a deterrent, but as a reassurance. It is reassuring to have that ability, which exists in the context of offenders under civil measures called TPIMs—terrorism prevention and investigation measures.

The only small point is that in the Bill the purpose of searching is

“for purposes connected with protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism”.

In other statutes, for example the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011, the power is to be used for

“ascertaining whether the individual is in possession of anything that could be used to threaten or harm any person.”

When I was thinking about this point, I had in mind patting someone down for a weapon or something of that nature, rather than a personal search to check generally whether they are complying with their licence conditions. Again, that is something that the Committee will probably want to consider—what precisely is the purpose of the search. It may be that the purpose of the search goes a bit wider than is necessary. Those are two relatively small points of detail.

[Sarah Jones]

Q In March, I think you said there was no proof that the desistance and disengagement programme for released terrorists was working. Do you think the Government have taken any steps to address that? Is there anything in the Bill that addresses that point?

Jonathan Hall QC: No, I do not think there is anything in the Bill to address that. The only other bit of the Bill relevant to my area of business is the power to refer an individual who has become dangerous in prison to the Parole Board so that they cease to be someone who is automatically released and can only be released by order of the Parole Board. I think that is sensible. I do not know whether you know that I am doing a review of terrorism in prisons at the moment. The need to be agile and respond to the radicalisation that does sometimes happen in prison is important, so that is to be welcomed. I do not think—unless you can refer me to it—that there is anything that addresses the question of deradicalisation or desistance. I think the truth is that officials will say that it is an ongoing process. I am not saying it will not work with some people, but I would not put all my eggs in that particular basket.

[Sarah Jones]

Q This question is for Matt. In the “Getting the balance right?” report, the conclusion was a modest reset of the scales. There is a disagreement as to whether the Bill is modest. Can you appreciate the arguments that have come from many organisations that the breadth of powers in the Bill could have two impacts? The first is that it is not a modest reset, but quite a significant one, potentially going too far in the other direction. Secondly, you talked about the blame that the police have received on social media for decisions on protest. I completely agree. Given the breadth of powers in the Bill, is it possible that the police might be more likely to be seen to be making decisions that are subjective or political or whatever it might be, because we as legislators are not clear enough on what the police should and should not be doing in those situations?

Matt Parr: I have got quite a lot of sympathy with what you say. We were very clear in what we said that any reset should be modest. We also said that, because of article 10 and article 11 rights, some degree of disruption is not just an inevitable by-product, it is sometimes the whole point of the exercise of protest, and on that basis, it has to be encouraged. Zero protest is certainly not the aim as we saw it; zero disruption was not the aim either—some degree of it is inevitable. It is just a question of where the balance lies.

I take your point. Some of the things in the Bill we were not asked to comment on. For example, imposing conditions on one-person protests—clause 60 in the Bill —we were not asked to comment on. Some of the specific areas such as access around Parliament—clause 57 and then clause 58 if Parliament moves—we were not asked to comment on, either. There are things that we did not really look at, and therefore I have not got a judge on what effect they might have and what the potential benefit might be.

Perhaps the most contentious would be the third of the proposals that we were asked to look at that widens the range of circumstances in which police can impose conditions on protests: static assemblies or processions. It could be either type. We said that at the moment there are four acid tests. In the disruption one, it was “serious disruption” to the life of the community. As I understand it, the proposal is that that is modified to “significant impact” and so on. Ultimately, these will have to be judged in the courts. It struck me that it clearly aims to set a lower bar. Personally, when I reviewed it, I did not think the bar was necessarily the problem. There is just as much of a problem with educating and training the police officers and making sure they understand how article 10 and 11 rights can be properly tempered. It was a question of training and understanding as much as it was of where the bar was for disruption.

Interestingly—again, I am probably simplifying it a bit too much—there is quite a stark difference between London, which obviously gets a disproportionately large number of protests, and elsewhere. Senior police officers outside London—again, I am generalising—tended to think they had sufficient powers, and senior police officers inside London tended to think that more would be useful. I think that is a reflection of it.

I think yes is the short answer to your question. I think there are dangers and, as ever, the bar for measuring what was significant or what was serious should be a high one. We all recognise that. It should not be done on the flimsiest of pretexts. Again, it would then be open to challenge, and I think police officers would only wish to use it when they were confident.

[Alex Cunningham]

Q Clause 108 grants the Secretary of State the power to prevent the automatic release of prisoners who are considered to be a significant public protection concern. Some experts have expressed concern that the clause could create a cliff edge whereby an offender prevented from being automatically released would be released at the end of their term without licence. Can you confirm that that is what you understand by this? If that is the case, would it not put civilians at greater risk?

Jonathan Hall QC: Certainly most of those convicted of terrorism offences will have some sort of Parole Board referral anyway, so automatic release for people convicted of terrorism offences has virtually come to an end. I spoke—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I think we can allow each side of the Committee seven or eight minutes.

[Sarah Jones]

Q I know all three of you are incredibly busy doing very important jobs, so thank you for giving us the time today. I want to talk about the duty to tackle serious violence and the view in the consultation among some people in the police and local government that it was perhaps better to go down the route of enhancing and building on community safety partnerships, as opposed to this new layer of multi-agency collaboration. Obviously there is not one way that works better than any of the others, but can you talk through some of the challenges of how you get organisations to work together? We envisage a public health approach to tackling serious violence, where everybody comes together to look at the evidence and what the violence issues are in the area and works out ways to prevent them. Any one of you can go first.

David Lloyd: Can I come in first on that and perhaps also bring in another bit? One of my concerns about the Bill is that it does not go far enough; in fact, it does not really mention how we might use police and crime commissioners more. My concern has always been very much about trying to be at the centre of the criminal justice system and how we bring that together with someone who is a focus for that on a local basis.

One of the benefits of police and crime commissioners has been their ability to bring different parts of the criminal justice system together, along with local authorities, so that we can better ensure that we reduce violence and crime, that the lessons are properly learned and that we put support for victims and perpetrators in the right place. I think it is perfectly reasonable to establish the situation as we are doing it, but we need to go further. One tends never to talk about what is not in a Bill, but the big thing this misses, as far as I am concerned, is how you put PCCs at the very heart of the criminal justice system.

Frankly, with extra duties falling to police, more people will be arrested, and they will end up in a queue going to court which is getting ever longer. Until you have got someone who is able to break through that long queue to get to court, none of this will really work. That is a crisis that we need to solve, and I think we have a solution in trying to give more power to police and crime commissioners. That might be a discussion for another day, but it is something we really need to focus on.

Councillor Caliskan: I think the LGA would highlight that a prevention-first approach is a long-term, sustainable approach to deal with crime in our communities. We absolutely support collaboration and a multi-agency working approach, because it works. The evidence demonstrates that it works, and the best and most successful outcomes demonstrate that. Take the violence reduction units, for example; there are very good examples of that.

There are not violence reduction units everywhere, so there is this inconsistency. They were, as I understand it, first established based on the areas where there were high levels of knife crime. Now, whether that should be the criteria going forward is a matter for debate, but I would emphasise again that the long-term statutory responsibility is suitable and that the multi-agency approach is properly resourced to be able to deliver those early interventions.

The community safety partnerships are really welcome as well. Again, there are some good examples of them. I guess that the benefit of community safety partnerships is that local communities can decide what the issues are. That gives communities agency, and it allows different organisations to come together to have ownership of the problem.

We at the LGA would ask for there to be more consistency. For that, we should see violence reduction units extended and offered in more areas, and there should be a more sustainable funding model. If we are serious about seeing a reduction in crime, we have to have models that move away from just one-off grant funding or one-year grant funding, to five-year periods of funding, so that there can be long-term projects.

Alison Hernandez: If I may say, I get a bit frustrated with the conversation about funding, because it is not all about having funding from the Government. I absolutely applaud the serious violence duty. One of the challenges that we all recognise is that, generally, society is getting more violent. This isn’t, “Who has got the most violence in their area?” We have a general societal problem, which every area needs to be looking at, focusing on and tackling.

In Devon and Cornwall, we are not one of the areas that received the violence reduction unit funding, so the chief constable and I have come together in a partnership to establish a serious violence prevention programme. We are funding that through council tax payers’ funding, because we believe that it is fundamentally important that we make this a priority. So you can do it yourselves if you think it is important. The serious violence duty will help people to see that this must be prioritised to be tackled. We want to do prevention; we do not want to deal with the things in the Bill that are just about enforcement and the hard end of it. We are able to look at that early intervention and prevention.

Many Members will have heard of things such as Operation Encompass, which is throughout the country in all 43 police forces, to try to help children who are at the receiving end of domestic abuse. In that sort of thing, we are trying to help children as young as possible, to break that cycle of violence. We fundamentally know that domestic abuse is one of the key issues that, if not tackled at a young age, leads to more violence in later life. I am an absolute supporter of the serious violence duty. We have things within our own powers, as commissioners with our local authorities, to set the priorities to tackle that.

[Sarah Jones]

Q Okay. Nesil, we have sort of had this conversation already about unauthorised encampments. The view from the police organisations that gave evidence today, and others I have spoken to, is that the existing legislation is sufficient; what is insufficient is the provision of sites for people, and you cannot enforce without there being places for people to go. The number of permanent sites has gone down over the last few years. What needs to happen to ensure that local authorities can increase the number of permanent pitches for Gypsies and Travellers in their area?

Councillor Caliskan: I think you are right. There is no point talking about just enforcement if you want to see community cohesion. Enforcement alone does not allow for Gypsies and Traveller communities to have their place in our community when they want it. It is the nature of their protected characteristics.

What needs to happen? There was a question mark over the efficiency of—[Inaudible]—policy. There has to be a commitment from local authorities that those sites are allocated. The statutory legislation that already exists for these protected characteristics needs to be taken seriously. We should be meeting the obligations that are already set in statute, which says that we should have adequate sites for these communities, but we just do not.

I would like to give parliamentarians some reassurance that the LGA absolutely takes tackling crime seriously. That is why councils up and down the country fund multi-agency working. We take it really seriously—it is a priority, because residents tell us that they want to be safe. We also recognise that crime is a symptom of what is often a complicated socioeconomic issue. If we want to collectively be serious about tackling crime, we have to tackle it at every stage, which means talking about prevention and—[Inaudible.]

[The Chair]

I think we will switch to the ministerial side of the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will move on. I call Sarah Jones. You have about six minutes.

[Sarah Jones]

Q I have one question for each witness. Apparently, I have six minutes, so you have three minutes each, which is not ideal. Adam, it could be said that the nature of protest has changed and new forms of protest have occurred over the years. Extinction Rebellion is a new form—this is what was put to us this morning. We need to update the legislation, we need clarity, and we need to bring things into the modern age. I would like your response to that charge.

Marc, it was put to us earlier that this is not about discrimination or attacking Gypsies or Travellers. It is about people who are engaged in significant criminal damage in places where they should not be. It would be helpful to have your response to that charge—Adam first.

Adam Wagner: I hear that. I will just quote Lord Justice Laws, who said:

“Rights worth having are unruly things. Demonstrations and protests are liable to be a nuisance. They are liable to be inconvenient and tiresome, or at least perceived as such by others who are out of sympathy with them.”

Protest has not changed; protest has always been a pain, a nuisance and liable to be inconvenient and tiresome. What has changed is that we have a Government who do not like certain protests—although that in itself has not changed either.

Extinction Rebellion is no different from any widespread protest movement—the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the environmental movement previously—but what is different is that it has managed to attract hundreds of thousands of people to its cause and is making real inroads on the public consciousness. That in itself is not a justification effectively to give the police powers to ban or impose conditions on any protest or, even more troublingly from my perspective, to give the Home Secretary—whose role is only to protect public order, not to protect particular opinions or to impose her, his or the Government’s opinion on any particular group—powers in effect to give examples of protests that she considers to be noisy, the ones that this legislation is targeting. You are getting yourself into a situation not where the public is better served, but where this essential part of democracy is going to be reduced down and chilled.

[Sarah Jones]

Thank you. Marc?

Marc Willers QC: The first thing to say is that those who are committing significant criminal damage can be prosecuted using existing legislation. If they are committing antisocial behaviour, existing legislation is in place. Indeed, the police made that point in their responses to the consultation on these proposed measures, and did so in spades. The response from the vast majority of the police forces was, “We do not need additional powers”, or, “We do need the existing powers under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to be strengthened.”

I have no hesitation in saying, fund the police properly and ensure that they prosecute those who commit criminal offences, whether they be Romany Gypsies, Irish Travellers or members of the settled population—everyone should be treated in the eyes of the law—but part 4 and the proposed provisions do not just affect those who are committing significant criminal damage; they affect each and every Gypsy and Traveller who is exercising their right, enshrined in our convention and under the European convention of human rights, to nomadism, to roam. We should not force them into a position in which they are only lawfully exercising that right when actually on the road—a road to nowhere.

The provision not only will force them into that situation, in which they are literally only within the law when they are moving along the road, but will give police the power to seize their homes, should they fall foul of the provisions. Should they camp on a piece of land and be asked to leave by an occupier who is prejudiced against them and would not want them to be there out of fear that they might commit some behaviour instilled in the mind by prejudice against Gypsies and Travellers, then as I said, it is a fait accompli for the police who are called in. They will have to arrest and almost certainly seize the caravans, that being the home. The individual and family might end up being destitute.

This is all at a time when there is insufficient transit and permanent sites for Gypsies and Travellers to live on. The proposed legislation ignores the rather elderly and enormous elephant in the room—the lack of site provision. That lack of site provision has continued unabated since the 1960s, as I said, when the commons were first closed.

[The Chair]

We had better move to the Government side.