Offensive Weapons Bill (Ninth sitting)

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Atkins]

Clause 40 sets out the short title on Royal Assent, which is the Offensive Weapons Act 2018. The scope of the Bill is limited to those matters relating to offences involving offensive weapons. The Bill is not a general Bill about violent crime or crime more generally. It is limited to the criminal use of weapons such as knives, corrosive substances and firearms.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 40 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause 5

Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 1, 3 or 4

‘(1) This section applies for the purposes of any trial in proceedings for an alleged offence under section 1(1), 3(2) or (3) or 4(4).

(2) Where—

(a) a substance is found in a container (whether open or sealed), and

(b) there is on the container a description of the contents of the container,

the substance found is to be presumed to be a substance of that description.

(3) Where an open container is found which—

(a) is empty or contains an amount of a substance which is insufficient to allow analysis of it,

(b) was sealed at the time it was sold or delivered, and

(c) has on it a description of the contents of the container,

the container is to be presumed to have contained, at the time it was sold or delivered, a substance of that description.

(4) At the trial, any party to the proceedings may rebut the presumption mentioned in subsection (2) or (3) by proving that, at the time of its sale or delivery, the substance in the container was not of the description on the container.

(5) A party may lead evidence for the purpose of rebutting the presumption only if the party has, not less than 7 days before the date of the trial, given notice of the intention to do so to the other parties.’—(Victoria Atkins.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.

Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 6

Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 5

‘(1) This section applies for the purposes of any trial in proceedings for an alleged offence under section 5(1).

(2) Where—

(a) a substance is found in a container (whether open or sealed), and

(b) there is on the container a description of the contents of the container,

the substance found is to be presumed to be a substance of that description.

(3) Subsection (4) applies where—

(a) an open container is found,

(b) a substance has been poured out of, or otherwise removed from, the container,

(c) the container is empty or contains an amount of the substance mentioned in paragraph (b) which is insufficient to allow analysis of it, and

(d) the container has on it a description of its contents.

(4) The container is to be presumed to have contained, immediately before the action mentioned in paragraph (b) of subsection (3) was taken, a substance of the description mentioned in paragraph (d) of that subsection.

(5) At the trial, any party to the proceedings may rebut the presumption mentioned in subsection (2) or (4) by proving that, at the time the offence is alleged to have been committed, the substance in the container was not of the description on the container.

(6) A party may lead evidence for the purpose of rebutting the presumption only if the party has, not less than 7 days before the date of the trial, given notice of the intention to do so to the other parties.’—(Victoria Atkins.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.

Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 1

Annual report on corrosive substance attacks

‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within twelve months of this Act receiving Royal Assent, publish an annual report on the data available on the number of corrosive substance attacks in the UK in each of the last five years.

(2) The annual reports published under section 1 must include, but are not limited to—

(a) the location of the attacks;

(b) the corrosive substance used; and

(c) any other information as may be available on each attack.”—(Stephen Timms.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss:

New clause 25—Report on the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of this Act receiving Royal Assent, lay a report before Parliament on the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons.

(2) The report under subsection (1) must consider, but is not limited to—

(a) the effect of the reduction in police numbers on the levels of youth violence with offensive weapons;

(b) the effect of the reduction in public spending on—

(i) children’s services;

(ii) Sure Start;

(iii) state-maintained schools;

(iv) local authorities;

(c) the effect of changes in the numbers of—

(i) school-excluded children;

(ii) looked after children;

(iii) homeless children.

(3) The report under subsection (1) and the considerations under subsection (2) must consider the benefits of the public health approach to violence reduction.

(4) The report must publish all departmental evidence held relating to subsection (2).’

This new clause would require the Secretary of State to review the causes behind youth violence with offensive weapons.

[Stephen Timms]

I am delighted to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. Your constituency adjoins mine and you are familiar with the challenges with which this Committee is grappling.

New clause 1 is a straightforward proposition: that, every year, there should be publication of up-to-date basic data on corrosive substances attacks—the acid attacks—carried out over the previous five years. As we heard last week, the number of acid attacks has risen sharply during the past few years. There was no particular reason to pay them special attention five years ago, but the dramatic increase means that we need to pay much more attention and ensure that essential data about them is available. What little data is available has come from various ad hoc freedom of information requests. I referred last week in Committee to the informative answer received by Councillor James Beckles, a member of Newham council in my borough, to a freedom of information request made by him last summer. The answer contained a lot of useful information about acid attacks across the whole of London, not just in Newham, going back to 2002.

We need that information to be collected and published much more systematically in future. The answer showed that, in London, the number of violent acid offences was 145 in 2002 and 107 in 2003. It stayed below 100 for the best part of a decade from 2004 to 2012 then started to rise: in 2013 it was 142; in 2014 it was 130; in 2015 it was 275; and in 2016 it was 416. During the first nine months of 2017, the number had risen to 411. It is clear that we have a serious problem on our hands in London and elsewhere. In March 2017, in a written question, I asked how many acid attacks there were.

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[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Member for East Ham for tabling new clause 1 and very much appreciate the interest he has and the expertise he brings—sadly it is from his own constituency. He and I do not restrict our discussions to activities in the Chamber or parliamentary questions. We of course discuss it outside the formal parliamentary procedures as well, because it is a concern that he, I and other Members of the House share.

The right hon. Gentleman has raised many questions, on Second Reading and in Committee, about the statistical data for corrosive attacks. He will know from the parliamentary questions he has tabled that the Home Office does not collect specific data from police forces on acid and other corrosive attacks as part of its regular data collection. That is going to change. As he said, Assistant Chief Constable Rachel Kearton, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on corrosive attacks, has stated that my officials are working with the NPCC to look at how offences involving acid and other corrosives can be captured better in police data, to understand the scale of the attacks.

A bid for a new collection on corrosive attacks has been submitted as part of the annual data requirement return to the Home Office. That bid is currently being considered by a group of Home Office and policing experts. If successful, it will require all 43 police forces across England and Wales to report instances of attacks involving corrosives to the Home Office on an annual basis. The intention is for the data collection to be routinely published. I am happy to look at the factors that the right hon. Gentleman has pressed, not just in new clause 1 but in the relation to the point about age. My officials have heard that and I have asked the police to action that.

The publication of data from police forces alongside data on other crimes involving serious violence is the best way forward to understand and address corrosives attacks. I do not believe that a statutory annual report on statistical data is the best way forward in helping us to understand the issue and prevalence of corrosive attacks. I intend the data to be collected and published and the right hon. Gentleman and others will then obviously have access.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister and encouraged by her answer. Will she confirm that, if the bid she described is successful, information about location, substance and age would be accessible not just to the Home Office but to the public, through the way that the statistics are presented?

[Victoria Atkins]

As I said earlier, my officials have heard what the right hon. Gentleman has said and I will ask for those factors to be included in the assessment of the bid. I do not want to make promises without having spoken to the experts who will making the decision. Clearly, there would be as much as information as possible on a day-to-day basis in collecting the evidence. The data comes from police officers sitting down at a computer entering the data. We need to ensure that officers are using their time at the computer as usefully and productively as possible. I will ensure that the elements he suggests are considered in the assessment of the bid.

The right hon. Gentleman asked for a United Kingdom-wide report. The issue of corrosives used as an offensive weapon is a devolved matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it would therefore be a matter for the devolved Administrations to agree to provide relevant data. Given the great working relationship between the Scottish and UK Governments on this, I am sure we are all heading in the same direction, if I might put it that way. I do not want to pre-empt the Scottish Government but I am sure they will be made aware of this discussion. I hope I have given the right hon. Gentleman enough clarification on the approach ahead in relation to collecting statistical data on corrosive substance attacks and that, on that basis, he will feel able to withdraw new clause 1.

The starting point of new clause 25, which was tabled by the hon. Members for Sheffield, Heeley and for Lewisham, Deptford, sometimes gets lost in the rough and tumble of parliamentary debate. I am grateful to the shadow Minister that that has not been present in this Committee. There has been constructive debate about the Bill because—this is the starting point—we all want this serious violence to stop. I hope Opposition Members believe my sincerity and that of all my colleagues. We may have different ideas about to achieve that but, if we keep returning to that fundamental principle, I am convinced that we will come up with the solutions.

The hon. Member for Bristol South referred to the work of previous Governments and I take on board her learning. That is one reason why we have the serious violence taskforce, which I will come to in more detail in due course. It features not only Home Office Ministers but Ministers from across Government and Members of Parliament from across the House, including Members of the Opposition who have spoken very forcefully on these issues—the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) is a member of that taskforce, as is my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) because of his experience working with the Centre for Social Justice. There is a willingness to learn from history and other models.

I should clarify one point. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley accused me and other Ministers of never referring to the public health approach. That is not correct. She may not be a regular reader of my blogs, but I wrote only recently on serious violence for The Voice and specifically mentioned the joined-up public health approach of the serious violence strategy.

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[Victoria Atkins]

When the Prime Minister was Home Secretary, she insisted on that protection. That was in 2015. This year, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service met or spoke to every chief constable. With the help of police and crime commissioners, we are securing an extra £460 million in overall police funding.

In terms of the numbers, the hon. Lady mentioned the last violent crime peak. I am not sure that it was just 2008—I do not necessarily accept her assertion that that is not comparable with this period. Of course, we had far higher police officer numbers in the mid to late 2000s, yet we had that last violent crime peak. That is why we are steering a middle course by raising police funding as far as we can, and by giving police and crime commissioners the power to recruit more officers if they wish to. Indeed, most police and crime commissioners are recruiting more officers, and we welcome that—that is their decision.

[Stephen Timms]

Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley referred to today’s National Audit Office report, which, as I understand it, makes the point that the Home Office has not made an assessment of the effect of the reduction in the number of police officers and police staff by 44,000 since 2010. In what sense can a reduction of 44,000 be described as protecting police resources?

[Victoria Atkins]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that in 2010 we had to make changes to the Home Office budget, and other budgets in Government, because of the serious financial situation we found ourselves in. We know the reasons for that. We had to make tough decisions, which have been borne not just by the police but by others. We have to live within our means. As we have seen this year, we have reached a place where we have been able to increase the amount of overall police funding, but if we are going to have this debate, let us not forget the reasons why the coalition Government were in that position in the first place. It is not a fair representation.

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[Victoria Atkins]

Of course, Mr Gapes. I apologise—we feel passionately about this subject across the House.

I am very conscious of factors such as homelessness, school exclusions and domestic abuse. We will introduce a draft Domestic Abuse Bill, which I hope will have very positive consequences regarding children entering violent crime as a knock-on effect. Such legislation is all part of our overall strategy on violent crime, and on ensuring that children grow up with good life chances.

I hope that I have given hon. Members enough clarification on how we want to advance the serious violence strategy and I invite the right hon. Member for East Ham to withdraw new clause 1.

[Stephen Timms]

We have had an interesting and valuable debate, and my hon. Friends have made a compelling cause for new clause 25.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central was right to draw attention to the problem of growing exclusions from school as a big contributor to rising youth violence. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley had some troubling statistics from her area about what academy chains are doing on that front. I am glad that the Minister said that she is also worried about that problem as part of the pattern. Alongside that are big worries about community policing resources. I noticed that the National Audit Office said this morning that police and crime commissioners

“received 19% less funding from central and local sources in 2018-19 than they received in 2010-11, in real terms.”

The Minister made a perfectly fair point about what the coalition Government set out to do in 2010, but it is clearly not the case that police resources have been protected; they have been very sharply reduced since 2010, and that is part of the present problem. The cuts in youth services that have been mentioned are an important part of the backdrop. We need a much more serious and substantial, long-term, whole-system response to the problem of youth violence than we have seen so far.

I was encouraged by the Minister’s answer to my remarks on new clause 1. She was unable to give me the cast iron guarantee that I would have liked that all the information will be made public very soon. However, she has persuaded me that she would like it to be if possible. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the new clause.

[The Chair]

To clarify, we will vote on new clause 25 later in proceedings.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 2

Offence of threatening with a non-corrosive substance

“(1) A person commits an offence if they threaten a person with a substance they claim or imply is corrosive.

(2) It is not a defence for a person to prove that the substance used to threaten a person was not corrosive or listed under schedule 1 of this act.

(3) In this section, “threaten a person” means—

(a) that the person unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person (“A”) with the substance, and

(b) does so in such a way that a reasonable person (“B”) who was exposed to the same threat as A would think that there was an immediate risk of physical harm to B.

(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale”.—(Stephen Timms.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Stephen Timms]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause arises from my discussions with the office of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. I pay tribute to the work of the Mayor on the topic of acid attacks, and also to that of my colleague, Unmesh Desai, who represents east London and the City on the London Assembly and is deputy chair of the London Assembly’s police and crime committee. He has highlighted the problem of acid attacks as one of his priorities.

There is a problem with people pretending to have acid when they just have water or something innocuous, and using that pretence to threaten and frighten people. I have a couple of examples. There was a headline in The Independent on 19 July 2017: “Water thrown at terrified Muslim women in ‘fake acid attack hate crime’ outside Southampton mosque”.

On 8 December last year, The Times quoted Assistant Chief Constable Rachel Kearton, who the Committee has met and to whom we have already referred this morning. That report stated:

“Thieves have taken to faking acid attacks to steal mobile phones, police said as they admitted that officers lack the tools and powers to defend the public from the growing menace. The emerging trend of throwing liquid, which victims presume is acid, to cause fear during robberies or for the purpose of intimidation was highlighted by the National Police Chiefs’ Council yesterday.”

The police should have the tools to deal with such incidents and the new clause provides those powers.

There is precedent for a measure along those lines. Section 16A of the Firearms Act 1968 makes it an offence for a person to possess an imitation firearm with the intent to cause another to believe that unlawful violence will be used against them. We are all are familiar with and have heard examples of offences involving imitation firearms and the law rightly makes them an offence. That measure was inserted into the 1968 Act by the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1994—a very simple, one-clause Act—when Michael Howard was Home Secretary. He was right to put that measure into legislation and I believe it has been effective in the case of imitation firearms. We now need a comparable measure for fake acid, so that if people are intimidated and frightened by people pretending to have acid, they will know that those people who are conducting the pretence are committing an offence. I very much hope that the Minister will accept new clause 2.

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

New clause 2 is the first of a number of official Opposition amendments that would create new criminal offences. This may be a good point to repeat what I said when we started line-by-line consideration of the Bill. So far as Scotland is concerned, the Bill is a complex mix of devolved and reserved competencies. The UK and Scottish Governments have agreed that it would be better to combine them in one Bill rather than have parallel Bills going through the Scottish Parliament and here.

Criminal law is a devolved matter and there are some criminal law provisions in the Bill that would generally have been a matter for the Scottish Parliament. They have been carefully considered by both Governments and there has been agreement that they should be included and a legislative consent motion will be sought. Some of the Opposition amendments that we are about to consider would usually be matters for the Scottish Parliament. Some of the amendments make absolutely clear the territorial extent does not include Scotland. Some are a bit unclear about that and some clearly do include Scotland. My support or otherwise for the amendments will not necessarily be a reflection of the spirit behind the amendments, but their impact on devolved matters, and whether they should properly be left to the Scottish Parliament.

New clause 2 is an example of that. It relates to the offence of threatening behaviour. The Scottish Parliament last legislated in that area in 2010 and I believe that the police have the required tools to deal with some of the situations that the right hon. Member for East Ham was referring to. In the absence of a clear argument about why we should be altering the spirit behind the 2010 legislation, I would not be able to support this particular new clause. There may be a similar consideration for some of the other Opposition amendments.

[Victoria Atkins]

First, may I express my sympathy—and, I am sure, the sympathy of the Committee—for those whom the right. Hon. Member for East Ham described as victims of these fake corrosive attacks, if I may put it that way. I very much hope that they received the support they needed in dealing with those awful and frightening situations.

Cases where a person threatens another with what purports to be a weapon are already criminal offences. The law already provides sufficient powers to the police and CPS to prosecute that type of offending and we would suggest that there is no gap in the law. I am now going to read the detail.

There are various offences that would cover this type of threat—for example, the offence of common assault and the offences available under the Public Order Act 1986. Common assault is any conduct by which a person causes another to apprehend immediate and unlawful personal violence. This offence could be charged where a person threatens another with a substance that that person claims or implies is corrosive.

Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986 makes it an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour towards another person with the intent of causing that person to believe that immediate, unlawful violence will be used against him or her. We would argue therefore that these offences would already apply to the scenarios that the right hon. Gentleman has described. Section 5 of the Public Order Act also makes it an offence for a person to use threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour that is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Again, we would say that such incidents could fall within the definition of section 5.

Finally, I would like to draw attention to the fact that police officers and others can also consider the facts of the case and, if relevant, consider whether the crimes committed fall under the category of hate crime. If the crimes have a racially or religiously motivated intent, courts can impose strong sentences.

I hope that I have answered the very proper points raised by the right hon. Gentleman and alleviated any concerns he may have about a potential gap in the law. I therefore invite him to withdraw his proposed new clause.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for her response. The police view, which is set out clearly in the article from The Times of 8 December, is that

“officers lack the tools and powers to defend the public from the growing menace”.

That is quoting the work of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, naming Assistant Chief Constable Rachel Kearton. It seems to me that there is a problem here and I would like to press the proposed new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.