Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

Mr Speaker, my hon. Friend was raising the tragic case of a family who had to organise three separate funerals for a child. I understand that the deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester has written to Ms Aldridge informing her that Greater Manchester police will commence a formal investigation upon receipt of further details of the complaint. As promised, I have written to all chief constables in England and Wales requesting that their human tissue retention policy be submitted to my Department for scrutiny.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

When the Home Secretary launched the immigration White Paper, I asked him about the overseas students falsely accused of cheating in the test of English for international communication. He said he was taking the matter very seriously. Can he update the House, and will he meet the officers of the new TOEIC all-party parliamentary group to discuss progress?

[Sajid Javid]

When I met the right hon. Gentleman, I took this issue very seriously. I have asked my officials to review it. We had a further meeting to make some final decisions just last week, and I will be in touch with him shortly.

Draft Immigration, Nationality and Asylum (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 General Committees

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson.

Labour opposes the draft regulations on four grounds. First, they will make changes to 21 separate pieces of primary legislation—something that should rightly be done through primary legislation. The Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill, which has just come out of Committee, was surely the perfect vehicle for any necessary changes to primary legislation before exit day. Putting those changes into a Bill would have allowed more time for hon. Members to scrutinise exactly what they will mean for each of the Acts affected, and to table amendments if necessary. We accept that many of the changes are technical, but they could easily have been spelled out in the Bill and nodded through in Committee.

Our second reason for opposing the draft regulations is that on the Bill Committee we spent a lot of time talking about how chaotic and disorganised the current immigration rules are. They are almost impossible for immigration lawyers, judges and Home Office officials to understand, let alone the average person applying for a visa without the help of legal aid. The point of supplementary scrutiny is not just to criticise the Government, but to consider and improve what they are doing. More chances for scrutiny would avoid contradictory rules and bad laws.

Thirdly, the draft instrument puts the cart before the horse. We do not yet know whether the immigration Bill will become law, as it faces significant hurdles before Report in the Commons and has not yet been through the Lords. This statutory instrument makes changes for a post-Brexit immigration landscape that is not yet assured.

Finally, the statutory instrument revokes the Dublin III regulation, which determines which EU member state is responsible for returning an asylum claim.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend raises the question of the Dublin agreement. Is it his understanding, as it is mine, that a significant number of families who can currently be reunited thanks to that regulation could no longer be if there were no deal and we were to exit on the basis of the SI before the Committee?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson; I apologise for being a couple of minutes late to the Committee. I want to underline the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton.

I am grateful to the British Red Cross for circulating to us some information on the impact of the instrument in the event that the UK leaves the European Union without a deal. I am grateful that the Minister has made it clear that if we leave with a deal, the Government will use the subsequent transition period to ensure that we will be part of the Dublin III regulation. That is a very welcome assurance.

The problem is that if we leave without a deal, we will immediately be in a position whereby Dublin III will not apply to us. Instead of passing this SI, should the Government not commit to keeping us in Dublin III for the period immediately after we leave—if we leave without a deal—to ensure that the type of family reunions that are now possible continue at their current level, which, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, was significant in 2018?

It is not clear why the SI has been framed in such a way that we would leave the Dublin III regulation immediately on exiting the EU if we did not have a deal. It is clearly the Government’s intention that we should be part of that arrangement in the longer term. As I have said, I am glad that the Government have committed to thinking about negotiating that during the transition period. However, I am concerned that, as worded, the SI would take us out of that regulation immediately if we left the EU without a deal, so I hope the Government will take a different approach on that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

I fear that I will not make a speech-ette, but there will certainly be no ploughing on regardless either. I am grateful for the Committee’s contributions to the debate and I will address some of the issues raised.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton asked why we are not using the immigration Bill for these provisions. Of course, these provisions are very much in preparation for no deal, which is an eventuality that I do not want. The Government continue to work hard to secure a deal, but unless alternative arrangements are made, it is the default legal option. As he pointed out, the immigration Bill has just completed its Committee stage in the Commons and, to be frank, we do not expect it to have Royal Assent by 29 March, which is when these measures might be needed.

The use of secondary legislation and the immigration rules, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, is a long-established method that we have used to make changes to the immigration system. Under those well-established procedures, such changes are still subject to proper parliamentary oversight and debate, including through Committees such as this. The hon. Gentleman will know, as we discussed at the Committee stage of the immigration Bill, that the Law Commission is currently conducting a public consultation on the simplification of the immigration rules, commissioned by the Government. We look forward to receiving its response and considering its report in due course. As he knows, I am on record as having said that such simplification is much needed.

The right hon. Member for East Ham and the shadow Minister mentioned the Dublin III regulation, which is arguably the most significant regulation revoked by this instrument. As Members will be aware, the Dublin regulation contains rules for establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the member state responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in a member state by a third-country national or a stateless person, and the legal framework for returning asylum seekers to, and accepting them from, the EU. This instrument ensures that the statute book will continue to function effectively for asylum in a no-deal scenario and provide transitional arrangements. Should the UK leave the EU with no deal, those Dublin requests relating to family reunification that are still pending resolution will continue to be considered under existing provisions. That would apply to any take-charge requests that we have received before exit.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reassurance that applications that are already in the system will continue to go forward. However, given that the Government have committed to seeking to extend the Dublin III arrangements for good if we get a deal, should this SI not provide for us to continue those arrangements in the event of no deal as well? I cannot think of any reason why leaving the EU without a deal should prove disadvantageous to families seeking reunion under the existing asylum arrangements.

Knife Crime

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I note that some 50 officers were recently sworn in to serve the good county of Essex. We are all learning about, and determined to do something about, the link between exclusions and participation in or victimisation by gangs. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who is sitting next to me, is awaiting delivery of the Timpson report on exclusions. We need to make sure that if children are excluded—if that is what a headteacher believes to be appropriate not just for the child, but for the wider school community—they have excellent provision of services outside mainstream schooling.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Is it not now beyond dispute that the Government’s cuts to police officer numbers have gone much too far?

[Victoria Atkins]

I think we all recognise that the demands on policing have changed and intensified in recent years, not just in the realm of serious violence but, for example, in the investigation of historical sexual abuse. There has been a rise in the recognition of modern slavery cases, and in the reporting of domestic abuse cases. That is happening because we are trying to help people to understand when they have been victims of crime, and it has added to the existing pressures on the police. That is precisely why the Home Secretary has said that police funding is his priority for the next spending review, and it is why we have increased the funding to police forces for next year by nearly £1 billion with the help of police and crime commissioners.

Knife Crime

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure and a privilege to speak under your chairmanship, Ms Buck—particularly about a subject on which you have done so much good work. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) for securing the debate and opening it so eruditely.

Sadly, we have got used to seeing horrific murders, particularly of young people, that make headlines for a day or two before being replaced by other news or another tragedy. I hope we never become inured to that and never stop regarding each one as a terrible disaster, not just for the families concerned but for our communities. Last year, there were 139 murders in London, more than half as a result of stabbings. Equally tragically, that is the tip of the iceberg, below which there is a huge volume of crime, some of which is not reported in the same way. This is not just a London problem; over the past three years in England and Wales, there have been increases of first 22% and then 16% in offences involving knives or sharp instruments, which numbered 40,147 in 2017-18.

Looking at hospital admissions, the number of “finished consultant episodes” due to contact with a knife, sword or dagger more than doubled in three years, to 12,412 in 2017-18. The Royal London Hospital has done very good work on this subject. Its statistics show that 25% of knife crime victims were of school age, the average age of victims was 18, and it was common for victims to have between five and nine stab wounds. The number of stab wounds treated in its unit has doubled since 2012.

It has become commonplace for people to carry a knife, for whatever reason or excuse that is given, yet doing so dramatically increases someone’s risk of injury; it is not a way of avoiding injury. About half of the stab victims seen at that hospital were injured by knives they took to the scene themselves; they either suffered self-inflicted wounds or had the knife taken off them and used against them. Those figures are staggering.

However, in the short time I have, I would like to look at some of the positives and possibilities. As colleagues have said, a lot of work is going on. Office for National Statistics figures published today show that in London—not in the rest of the country, sadly—the increase in violent crime and violent crime with injury has slowed. That is perhaps only the beginning of a turnaround in the problem, but it is worth noting.

I do not say it is not possible that serious knife crime will decline. Moped crime, which is often associated with violence, robbery and so on, and acid attacks have spiked but then declined in the past two or three years. It is possible that that will happen with knife crime, too, but I do not think the underlying problem will go away, because of the figures I have just cited. There will continue to be a climate of violence, which will manifest itself in one way or another. That is why the long-term approach that the Mayor of London and others have talked about is the right way forward.

[Sir Graham Brady in the Chair]

I praise the Mayor for the initiatives he has taken. City Hall has thought very seriously about the issue, and it has come up with some money. Today’s announcement of an extra £85 million of new funding for violent crime and burglary in the capital is very welcome. That comes on top of £15 million to create the violent crime taskforce and £45 million for the Young Londoners fund, which is significant in this respect but in others, too. There will now be an additional £6.8 million for the violence reduction unit. It was useful to hear the deputy Mayor talk about that yesterday. All that is good.

Obviously, just spending money is not an end in itself, but it is being spent thoughtfully. The approaches the Mayor has looked at include targeting law breakers, targeted stop and search and better detection. Obviously, we also have to look at disposals in the courts and what punishments are available, and at keeping weapons off the street by restricting the availability of knives. I might say more about that in a moment.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I very much agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. Does he agree that in looking at the supply of knives, we need to consider the ready availability of some pretty horrendous weapons online? The Government need to look hard at what they can do to restrict access to knives through that channel.

[Andy Slaughter]

I do not disagree—some pretty horrific things are available, and they tend to make the headlines—but the most common weapons are kitchen knives, because they are so readily available. I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend about people getting around the rules online, but to be honest, carving knives, cleavers and so on are available in most kitchens. We need to think about that.

The Mayor is taking forward a number of other initiatives—other Members have spoken about them and I do not want to take up too much time—to support victims, work with communities and educate young people. I hope we all support them, and obviously we hope they are all successful, but this is a very complicated issue. YouTube and certain types of music were mentioned. The most serious recent incident in my constituency, which got a lot of national publicity because 40 people were arrested, was a horrific gang attack in which someone was pursued and stabbed on a public street on new year’s eve. Fortunately, using CCTV, the alleged perpetrators were tracked to a party and everyone at the party was arrested.

It transpired that the party venue was an Airbnb let. I am going to see Airbnb to talk about that. It tells me that it will ban that particular user and give advice to the host, but we need to go further and ensure that we do not create areas of lawlessness in the city where such things can be done. There are many steps that can be taken to control the problem, which would otherwise become out of control.

The good news is that we have a lot of sound advice and help. I have been corresponding with and meeting a retired circuit judge, Nic Madge, and with the chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, John Crichton, who did a lot of work in Scotland, which has pioneered work on this. I have also talked to trauma surgeons about it. It is a combination of detection, policing—of course—and looking at the social background, but also taking practical steps.

One issue is why there are these weapons lying around in every household, to go back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). Why do we need to have such a number—often a large number—of very dangerous weapons in any kitchen? Why are they pointed? Why do people need 10-inch pointed knives? Why is it not possible to sell knives that have rounded tips? Most serious injuries are caused by multiple stabbing. These are ideas that could be better explored and taken up.

The expertise is there, but there are not sufficient resources. The Mayor of London is doing everything he can; he is squeezing every possible budget dry and increasing his precept, which I think is the right thing to do in this case, to fund the campaign against knife crime. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) said, there have been large cuts, with £850 million in cuts, I think, to the Met budget and another £263 million to come. Cuts of that order cannot be made without impacting on the ability to tackle these offences. I compare it to homelessness—another issue that is hugely affecting London and other big cities. We have huge expertise in how to deal with that, and we have dealt with street homelessness quite successfully before. What we do not have at the moment is the resources to do that.

I say to the Minister that I am sure we will have a consensus today and that everybody here is sincere in wanting to see this scourge tackled, but it is going to take substantial resources. I hope we can hear something from the Government today about where those resources might be located and where they might be allocated.

Future Immigration

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend has emphasised an important point. The logic of having a salary threshold is strong, but it is also right that we look at cases where that will not quite work. He has given the example of lab technicians, whose salaries can be around £21,000. There are a variety of ways of trying to deal with that in the White Paper and I hope that he will welcome them.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am one of those who has valued free movement, but I welcome what the Home Secretary said today about overseas students. Is he in a position yet to offer any relief to those students—who he knows about—who had their visas cancelled after being accused, often wrongly, by an American firm of having cheated in their English language tests?

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. As he has pointed out, the White Paper makes it even easier for students, once they have completed their studies, to stay, to continue to contribute to the UK and to settle in the UK. On the specific issue, which I have discussed with him and other colleagues, we are still looking at this but we are taking it very seriously.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Stephen Timms Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anna Turley]

I rise to support my two amendments, amendments 1 and 2, with regard to a specific constituency case I mentioned earlier to the Minister. I am afraid her response did not go quite far enough to satisfy me, so I would like to press my case a bit further.

My point refers specifically to an online decorating business in my constituency, which expressed deep concerns that the proposed legislation could potentially force them out of business. My constituent estimates that were the Bill to be enacted as it stands, he would lose approximately £32,000 per year. That is probably enough to destroy a small business. He currently sells a number of bladed decorating tools, including bladed paint scrapers, craft knives, safety knives and utility blades—all very niche tools for the DIY trade. These items are delivered to residential addresses and so the provisions under clause 17 could potentially make a significant part of his trade illegal.

There could also be a wider impact on the rest of his business. As customers often purchase those items with other decorating materials such as wallpaper and paint, my constituent is concerned that if people are forced to visit decorating stores to buy a single tool, such as a scraper or a knife, they will buy all their decorating materials and bladed items there in one go. That would have a huge impact on his business.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend has seen, as I think would be the case under the Bill, that people like her constituent would not be able to post those products to somebody’s home, whereas somebody selling identical products from overseas would freely be able to carry on sending them by post to the purchaser.

[Anna Turley]

My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. That is just another huge loophole in the Bill that will have an impact on British businesses, forcing them to be unable to compete. Ahead of Small Business Saturday, I really hope Ministers will take that under consideration.

In response to my question earlier, the Minister responded that the simple difference would be that people would just have to go to a post office to sign for these goods. In areas like mine, people often travel as far as six or eight miles to get to the nearest post office. That is a long way, so why would they not go to the nearest B&Q or other big store to buy all their DIY needs? We are driving out small online businesses who have struggled to get themselves up and running. They are losing out yet again to major stores, because we are making their customers’ lives more difficult.

My constituent is just one example of many small and medium-sized businesses across the country that could be inadvertently affected by the Bill. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and local communities, and we will all be celebrating them this weekend. I am sure the Government did not intend for the Bill to unjustly penalise online retailers and I am sure this is just an oversight in the drafting. The proposed legislation already makes very specific exemptions on bladed items for activities such as sporting or re-enactment. It would therefore not be unreasonable to extend that flexibility to decorating items which similarly support a genuine public purpose and are used regularly by law-abiding citizens.

I would also like to speak in support of amendments 8 and 9, tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), which seek to address the same problem. There will obviously be a number of other businesses—we have already heard today about the importance of Sheffield steel and Sheffield knives—affected by the poor drafting of the Bill, including in the catering and the arts and crafts industries. The amendments would create a trusted trader status entitling qualifying businesses to sell bladed products to residential premises, creating another means of protecting such legitimate businesses. As long as there was not a resulting excessive administrative burden or unnecessary delays to trading while registering, the trusted trader approach could be an effective means to ensure a satisfactory balance between necessary restrictions on the sale of blades to those who intend to use them as weapons, and ensuring legitimate businesses can continue to operate.

The Minister raised the point about overburdensome regulation in opposition to the amendments. Again, she is already asking people to send their customers to the post office, so that we try to make sure that they are not selling to those under the age of 18. We are already putting such restrictions on people. I do not think it is that burdensome to ask someone to register as a trusted trader, which is a positive thing for them to sign up to and would enhance, not jeopardise, their businesses.

I hope that the Government will look again at the amendments and recognise that there is, I am afraid, a serious flaw in the drafting of the Bill. I hope that they will work with the Opposition to amend the Bill as it continues its passage through the House, while engaging fully with the retailers and others affected. Otherwise, I am afraid that the Bill as it stands will have a disastrous effect on many of our hard-working small businesses, which are the lifeblood of economies such as mine.

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[Sir Edward Davey]

Mr Speaker, you are right to be confident because I am.

There may now be more people behind bars to whom the judges might have given, on the evidence, community sentences. We may now as a society pay more in taxes to keep locked up people whom it would be better not to lock up, so we may not be able to use the money that is currently spent on prisons in other ways, such as for spending on police or youth services.

All that does not look like a good outcome from the message sent by mandatory sentences, so why are we repeating the mistake? What evidence are Ministers using to introduce more mandatory sentences? What happens if the person was coming home from the shops and he or she was holding his mum or dad’s shopping bags when stopped and searched? Surely it is for judges to act on the basis of fact, not for Parliament to second-guess it. We do not think that mandatory sentences are the right approach, and I hope that the other place will deal with the matter.

[Stephen Timms]

Given the constraints on time, I will speak only to new clause 23, from among the six new clauses that I have tabled, which deals with a particularly important subject.

It might come as a surprise to the House, as it did to me, to learn that weapons that cannot lawfully be purchased in the UK can be purchased online without anyone committing an offence. That cannot be right. The aim of new clause 23 is to plug that gap. It differs from the proposal that we debated in Committee as it allows for a defence if the website removes the offending advertisement for an illegal weapon within 24 hours of being informed of it. That reflects some recent helpful discussions that I have had with eBay about the practicalities of implementing the change that I propose.

The background is that the Criminal Justice Act 1988 introduced a list of weapons that are illegal to sell in the UK, which was expanded in 2002 to include disguised knives. A disguised knife is

“any knife which has a concealed blade or concealed sharp point and is designed to appear to be an everyday object of a kind commonly carried on the person”.

It is now illegal to sell that kind of weapon in the UK.

I have been speaking to Mr Raheel Butt, who runs an organisation in the borough of Newham called Community and Rehabilitation Solutions. He is from a gang background and has served a prison term, but since he left prison in 2012, he has made it his mission to stop others making the mistakes that he made. He has pointed out to me that a lot of the weapons being used to kill young people on the streets of our cities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) pointed out, are being bought online, a lot of them from eBay.

I should say that since I raised these points in Committee, disguised knives have been removed from eBay, although they can still be freely found on other websites. Mr Butt tells me that it is on those sites that those who are killing young people are getting their weapons. However, is it illegal for a website with a UK domain name to advertise weapons that are illegal to buy in the UK? Surely the answer ought to be yes, yet there is some uncertainty about that. If I understood her correctly, the Minister advised us in Committee that she thought that it was unlawful for an illegal weapon to be sold in that way, but then she wrote to us and said, “Actually, no. There is a defence available, because these are simply platforms.” My argument is that selling a weapon on a UK website that it is illegal to purchase in the UK should be illegal. That is the aim of my new clause 23.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Tenth sitting)

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We now recommence the line-by-line consideration of the Offensive Weapons Bill. We will of course give it due consideration, but none the less might be able to rattle through it in good time.

New Clause 3

Prohibition on the possession of a corrosive substance on educational premises

‘(1) A person commits an offence if that person has a corrosive substance with them on school premises or further education premises.

(2) It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) to prove that they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance on school premises or further education premises.

(3) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (2), it is a defence for a person charged in England and Wales or Northern Ireland with an offence under subsection (1) to prove that they had the corrosive substance with them for use at work.

(4) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3), it is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) to show that they had the corrosive substance with them for use at work.

(5) A person is to be taken to have shown a matter mentioned in subsection (4) or (5) if—

(a) sufficient evidence of the matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and

(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.

(6) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—

(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to an imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, to a fine or to both;

(b) on summary conviction in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;

(c) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years, to a fine or both.

(7) In relation to an offence committed before the coming into force of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (maximum sentence that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way) the reference in subsection (7)(a) to 12 months is to be read as a reference to 6 months.

(8) A constable may enter any school or further education premises and search those premises and any person on those premises, if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that an offence under this section is, or has been, committed.

(9) If, in the course of a search under this section, a constable discovers a corrosive substance they may seize and retain it.

(10) The constable may use reasonable force, if necessary, in the exercise of entry conferred by this section

(11) In this section—

“corrosive substance” means a substance which is capable of burning human skin by corrosion;

“school premises” means land used for the purpose of a school, excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at a school; and “school” has the meaning given by—

(a) in relation to land in England and Wales, section 4 of the Education Act 1996;

(b) in relation to land in Northern Ireland, Article 2(2) of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 (SI 1986/594 (NI 3).

“further educational premises” means—

(a) in relation to England and Wales, land used solely for the purposes of—

(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, land used solely for the purposes of an institution of further education within the meaning of Article 2 of the Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (SI 1997/ 1772 (NI 15) excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution’.—(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 4—Offence of threatening with corrosive substance on educational premises—

‘(1) A person commits an offence if that person threatens a person with a corrosive substance on school premises or further education premises.

(2) In this section—

“corrosive substance” means a substance which is capable of burning human skin by corrosion;

“threatens a person” means—

(a) unlawfully and intentionally threatens another person (“A”) with a corrosive 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.

“school premises” means land used for the purpose of a school, excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at a school; and “school” has the meaning given by—

(a) in relation to land in England and Wales, section 4 of the Education Act 1996;

(b) in relation to land in Northern Ireland, Article 2(2) of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 (SI 1986/594 (NI 3).

“further educational premises” means—

(a) in relation to England and Wales, land used solely for the purposes of —

(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, land used solely for the purposes of an institution of further education within the meaning of Article 2 of the Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (SI 1997/ 1772 (NI 15) excluding any land occupied solely as a dwelling by a person employed at the institution”.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—

(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to an imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, to a fine or to both;

(b) on summary conviction in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both;

(c) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years, to a fine or both.

(4) In relation to an offence committed before the coming into force of section 154(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (maximum sentence that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way) the reference in subsection (7)(a) to 12 months is to be read as a reference to 6 months’.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

Thank you, Mr Gray, and I bid you a warm welcome back to the Chair of our Committee. One of the welcome contributions in the Bill is bringing the law on acid and corrosive substances into line with the law on knives, so that possession without good reason is an offence. There is evidence that, in some cases, criminal gang members have switched from knives to acid because, since possession of acid has not been an offence, it has been less risky for them to carry it than to carry a knife. In my view, the Bill is absolutely right to bring the law on acid into line with the law on knives.

However, there are two respects in which, if the Bill is not amended, the law on acid will still be less demanding than it is on knives. I think they should be aligned throughout, which is what new clauses 3 and 4 are designed to achieve. Proposed new clause 3 makes it an offence to possess a corrosive substance on educational premises. It has long been an offence to have a knife in school. Clause 21 relates to section 139(a) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and rightly extends the current ban on possession of knives in schools to cover further education colleges as well. The ban in schools was introduced in the Offensive Weapons Act 1996 when Michael Howard was Home Secretary—that is the second occasion I have had to refer to something he has done. The same ban should cover corrosive substances. It is a lengthy new clause, but with a straightforward effect. I hope that the Minister will recognise the validity of the attempt and be able to accept it, or something very like it.

New clause 4 would extend to corrosive substances the prohibition on threatening people with knives that already applies in schools. It has been an offence in schools since 2012, since the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act. Again, the Bill is extending the existing prohibition on knives from schools to further education premises, which is the right thing to do. New clause 4 applies the same prohibition to corrosive substances.

I suggest that neither of the proposed new clauses is contentious—none of us wants people to have corrosive substances or threaten other people with them in schools or further education colleges. The new clauses extend to acid existing measures that cover knives and I hope the Minister agrees to them.

It occurred to me that another way of achieving the same result might be to widen the definition of “offensive weapon” to include corrosive substances, because the wording in the existing prohibitions is about offensive weapons. If one said that corrosive substances are offensive weapons, that might have the same effect as proposed new clauses 3 and 4. I would be interested to know whether that was considered. This is an offensive weapons Bill—it does not say anywhere that corrosive substances and corrosive products are offensive weapons and I appreciate that there might be technical difficulties in doing so. In the absence of that, the two new clauses would deal with the gap. I hope the Minister feels able to commend them.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. As the right hon. Gentleman has set out, there are existing offences under section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 and section 139A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which deals with incidents of threat or possession on school premises. The Bill extends these offences to cover further education premises as well as school premises.

The intention behind the amendments seems reasonable, but there are several reasons why we did not consider it necessary to extend the corrosive substance provisions in this way when developing the Bill. First, the scale of knife crime is significantly higher than that involving a corrosive substance. There were more than 18,000 recorded offences of knife possession last year and more than 40,000 recorded knife offences involving a bladed article. By contrast, there are only around 800 attacks a year using corrosives.

The impact of any crime using a knife or a corrosive substance is devastating, but the scale of the problem is different. In drawing up the Bill, we tried to keep in mind the proportionate use of corrosives. We wanted to take action against the possession of corrosives on the street because there is little evidence to suggest that possession of corrosives on educational premises was an issue. However, I accept that crime and crime types change. We were reassured by the fact that existing offences that can already be used in relation to possession of corrosives on school premises, and in future on further education premises, cover the situations to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.

For example, if a student is carrying a corrosive cleaning fluid on school premises and there is evidence that they intend to use it as a weapon, such as indicating on social media or through talking to friends that they intend to do that, the offence of possessing an offensive weapon on school and further education premises would apply. Similarly, decanting the corrosive into another container to make it easier to use as a weapon would also be covered by that offence. Carrying any corrosive substance on the way to school or college would also be an offence under clause 5.

The only scenario in terms of possession that is not covered is where a student has a corrosive substance on school or further education premises in its original container and there is no evidence that they intend to use the substance to cause injury. This is a very discrete possibility, but one that the right hon. Gentleman has alerted us to. As I have already indicated, I will be happy to consider this further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I am just looking into the detail of that. The fact of the intention makes it different from the very limited set of circumstances that I have just dealt with, where the substance is in the original container and there is no evidence that the person intends to use it to cause injury.

On new clause 4, and the creation of a new offence of threatening with a corrosive substance on school and further education premises, the gap is perhaps even smaller. It is already an offence to threaten someone with an offensive weapon on school premises, which will be extended by the Bill to cover further education premises. Any student threatening someone with a corrosive substance would be caught because they clearly intend the corrosive to cause injury.

As I said, I will continue to consider new clause 3. On that basis I invite the right hon. Member for East Ham to withdraw it.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing to consider further the content of new clause 3 with, I presume, a view to come back to it on Report.

I thought the argument that she used at the beginning of her remarks was a bit disappointing. She seemed to say, “Well, there aren’t that many acid attacks, therefore we don’t need to legislate on it.” Thankfully that view, which has long been held by Government, has changed, and I very much welcome the fact that the Bill makes the possession of acid an offence without a requirement for evidence that somebody intends to injure somebody with it. That has always been the difficulty: simply possessing acid has not, up until now, been an offence. Thankfully it is made an offence by the Bill, and I welcome that.

The argument for new clause 3 is that possessing acid in schools ought to be an offence as well, because how can a school or further education college show that a student with acid intends to injure somebody with that acid? That is exactly the difficulty that the police have always had. Nevertheless, the Minister has said that she will give the matter further consideration and come back to us on Report. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 7

Prohibition of air weapons on private land for those under the age of 18

“(1) Section 23 of the Firearms Act 1968 is amended in accordance with subsections (2) to (3).

(2) Omit subsection (1).

(3) Omit subsection (3).”—(Karin Smyth.)

This new clause would amend the Firearms Act 1968 to prevent a person under the age of 18 from having an air gun on private land other than as part of a sporting club.

Brought up, and read the First time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karin Smyth]

I am grateful to the Minister for her comments and for saying that she will consider the age issue, for the sake of consistency. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham has made some excellent points about all offensive weapons, so I am grateful for that assurance. We look forward to the report appearing shortly or soon—I am not sure which is quickest. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 10

Payment for corrosive substances

“(1) It shall be an offence for a seller to receive payment for a corrosive substance except—

(a) by cheque which under section 81A of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 is not transferable; or

(b) by an electronic transfer of funds (authorised by credit or debit card or otherwise).

(2) In this section ‘corrosive substance’ means a substance which is capable of burning human skin by corrosion.

(3) A person who is guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—

(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to a fine;

(b) on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to a fine not exceeding level 5 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.

I will speak briefly to new clause 10. I am worried that it is extremely easy to buy acid and other corrosive substances. They are often very cheap and they can readily be purchased in DIY shops. Recently, one of my constituents brought to me a product that was essentially sulphuric acid, which he had bought extremely cheaply in a pound shop down the road. I welcome the fact that the Bill will make it a bit harder to obtain such substances by banning their sale to under-18s, as well as the step already taken in April to promote sulphuric acid from the lower to the higher category in the explosive precursors regulations, meaning that, since April, the purchaser requires a licence.

New clause 10 goes a step further, making it a requirement that corrosive substances should not be paid for by cash. They would need to be bought either by cheque or by credit or debit card. There are two reasons for taking this step. First, it would end what we have seen too often, which is somebody on the spur of the moment buying a corrosive substance extremely cheaply by cash and therefore completely anonymously, quite likely with no prior intention of doing so. Something gets into their head, they decide to go along and buy this stuff and then go on to cause enormous harm to somebody by throwing it over them. Introducing the requirement for a bit of a pause before making the purchase and having to use a debit or credit card might stop some people taking that spur-of-the-moment step and regretting it for the rest of their lives. It would also mean that when substances are purchased, the purchaser will be traceable. That in itself will cause some potential perpetrators to pause before going ahead, making their purchase and then going on to inflict dreadful injuries on somebody.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for her explanation, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn for the telling points she made. Her point about contactless payment is absolutely right and needs to be considered.

The Government could take one step here to force people to pause and think a little before making a spur of the moment purchase of one of these substances and going on to inflict appalling injuries on someone else—and, as I said, for the perpetrator probably to regret having done so for the rest of their life. I am glad that the Government are legislating on corrosive substances, and this is a serious issue that we need to get to grips with now before it becomes even worse in the future, so I want to press new clause 10 to a vote.

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

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Stephen Timms]

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

On 8 January 2018, The Sun reported the case of 32-year old Andreas Christopheros. He was the victim of an acid attack on his doorstep in 2014. He lost 90% of his face and will need 10 years of facial reconstructive surgery. He lost the sight of one eye, and is in danger of losing it in the other in due course. As it turned out, it was a case of mistaken identity. The perpetrator wanted revenge on somebody for an alleged assault on a relative but knocked on the wrong door. Mr Christopheros had no connection at all with the incident for which revenge was being sought, but he has a lifetime of problems ahead as a result of the injuries inflicted on him. Given what has happened to him and his future prospects, he talked a great deal of sense during the interview published in The Sun, and he made the point that

“one bit of legislation which I’d really love to see be pushed through is a decanting legislation; to make it an offence to decant acid from its original, well-labelled bottle, into any other receptacle.”

In his case, the acid was held in a beaker by the person who knocked on his front door and then just thrown over him. New clause 11 is another measure that aims to make it a bit harder to use acid to commit a crime. New clause 11 says that a container in a public place holding acid in circumstances in which it is in the public place for good reason must be clearly marked or labelled as containing a corrosive substance. It would be an offence, as in my view it certainly should be, to carry acid around in, for example, a Lucozade bottle, which, as we have heard, has happened too often over the last year or two.

On its own, new clause 11 will not solve our problem, but I think it could help. It will constrain a little the ready and cheap access to liquid capable of inflicting appalling injuries, which is part of the backdrop for the rapid growth in this crime over the past five years.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham for tabling this new clause on making it an offence to have a corrosive substance in an unmarked container. I assume that he has introduced it because of concerns that clause 5 does not go far enough. I assure him and others that there is no need for this amendment, because under section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, anyone who is in possession of a corrosive substance can be prosecuted as being in possession of an offensive weapon, where it can be proved that they are carrying it with the intention of causing injury. The definition is set out in section 1, whereby an offensive weapon means

“any article made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person, or intended by the person having it with him for such use by him or by some other person”.

Intent to cause injury can be inferred from the context of the circumstances surrounding the offence, for example, transferring it into a container that is easier to carry or to use as a weapon. The Crown Prosecution Service has refreshed its guidance to prosecutors on offensive weapons, which includes references to the carrying and use of acid and other corrosives. The guidance covers the appropriate charges and public interest considerations to ensure that any decisions reflect the seriousness of these crimes.

Furthermore, clause 5 strengthens the powers available to the police and the CPS in cases where people are carrying corrosive substances for use as a weapon or to threaten people. By making it an offence to possess a corrosive substance in a public place, we are removing the burden on the police and the prosecution to prove that the person was carrying the corrosive with the intent to cause injury. It puts the onus on the individual to prove that they were carrying a corrosive substance in a public place with good reason or with lawful authority.

I hope that I have persuaded the right hon. Gentleman that the amendment is not required and invite him to withdraw it.

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[Stephen Timms]

I am not convinced. The problem is that the Minister is again going back to the argument about the 1953 Act and the fact that if someone intends to cause injury, it has always been an offence to carry acid. That is true, but if we accept that argument—if the Minister accepts it—we would not have measures in the Bill making possession of acid an offence. I am glad that she has got over the previous argument for not doing that and that the Bill now makes the possession of acid an offence.

I am concerned about the sort of situation where somebody is lawfully carrying acid, because they have a legitimate purpose to use it, and then, for whatever reason, the container falls into the wrong hands. I think we should be very cautious about this stuff. If it is on the streets, it should be clearly marked as a corrosive substance dangerous to life and limb and liable to cause injury. It should therefore be a requirement that the containers in which it is being carried are properly marked accordingly. I do not think the Minister has set out—

[Victoria Atkins]

In the scenario the right hon. Gentleman has set out, the acid or the corrosive substance is in the possession of someone who has lawful authority or good reason to carry it, and it then falls into other hands—I think those were his words. Of course, the moment it falls into other hands—perhaps someone swipes it in the street, or something—if that other person taking possession of it does not have good reason or lawful authority and they are in a public place, they fall foul of clause 5. I would argue that that is a very simple possession offence. We have included the defence to cover, for example, people going about their lawful business and buying cleaning products because they want to use them at home with no ill intent whatever, but the simplicity of clause 5 is deliberate, in order to cover the sort of scenario where the person is carrying the acid from the shop in a carrier bag and it is stolen. I hope that helps.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

Let us suppose that someone who is legitimately carrying acid for work purposes has it in a Lucozade bottle, and they put it down beside them while they are doing their work and someone else picks it up. It might be that someone steals it from them, or there might be some accidental reason why it comes into the possession of somebody else. My point is that that bottle ought to be properly marked as a dangerous substance—not Lucozade or whatever else the container might say on it, but a corrosive substance that can cause serious injuries.

I entirely accept that the person who has the corrosive substance will be behaving completely lawfully and properly; I am arguing that it should be their responsibility to ensure that the receptacle they are carrying this stuff in is clearly marked to show what it is. Otherwise, there is a danger that if, for whatever reason, it falls into someone else’s hands, it could cause injury.

I am grateful to the Minister and I appreciate the fact that she has responded seriously to my proposal, but I think an issue remains, and for that reason I will press new clause 11 to a vote.

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

--- Later in debate ---

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Stephen Timms]

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

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 31—Offence of hosting a seller on a platform, online third-party reseller or online marketplace used to sell offensive weapons or corrosive products to children online—

“(1) The owner of a platform, third-party reseller or online marketplace commits an offence if that platform, third-party reseller or online marketplace hosts a seller on a website used to—

(a) sell an offensive weapon to a person under the age of 18; or

(b) sell a corrosive product to a person under the age of 18.

(2) The platform, third-party reseller or online marketplace must operate a system for checking that persons who bought corrosive products or offensive weapons on a platform, third-party reseller or online marketplace were not under the age of 18.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—

(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, to a fine or to both;

(b) on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”

This new clause is a probing amendment to discuss the responsibility of platforms, online third-party resellers or online marketplace e.g. Facebook Marketplace, eBay or Amazon to ensure that sales by sellers who operate on their platform are compliant with the provisions of this Bill.

[Stephen Timms]

The Minister pointed out to us last Tuesday that under section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the sale and import of disguised knives is illegal, yet these dangerous weapons are freely available, certainly on eBay, but also on other platforms. Anyone in the UK wishing to buy one simply needs to click on that item and enter their credit card or PayPal account details, and the weapon will arrive in the post. The Bill will change nothing. My new clause 12 is intended to address that, and I am grateful to the Clerk for helping me to draft it. It makes it an offence

“to advertise, list or otherwise facilitate the sale of an offensive weapon capable of being disguised as something else.”

In other words, it would make it illegal to do what eBay and all the other platforms are freely doing.

It is extraordinary to me that a reputable company such as eBay has on sale in the UK products that it is illegal to purchase in the UK. I was dumbfounded to discover that that is the case. I have not had a discussion with eBay or any of the other platforms about it, but I cannot see how it is possible to defend having these things on sale when it is illegal to purchase them in the UK.

In our debate on new clause 9 last Tuesday, I referred to the availability on eBay of an “Ultralight Self Defense Tactical Defense Pen Outdoor Glass Breaker Writing Pen”. It is rather a long name. The tags are all required, which is why words like “pen” occur a couple of times. It is available on eBay for £2.84, and it looks like a pen but is actually a dangerous weapon. It was drawn to my attention my Mr Raheel Butt, whom I have mentioned on a number of occasions in Committee. I am pleased to inform the Committee that that particular product is no longer there, which shows that at least somebody is paying attention to what we say in Committee.

Unfortunately, all the other items that Mr Butt pointed out to me but which I have not previously mentioned are there: “Tactical pen Tungsten steel head Self Defense Woman anti wolf weapons” are available for £5.99 from a Chinese supplier. There is also a “Six inch Tactical Pen Glass Breaker Self Defense” tool, which is described as a “Tactical Pen Great for Self Defense!” and is available for £3.38 from a different Chinese firm. There are a great many more. I looked on gov.uk to find which other weapons it would be an offence to import. The Minister told us that it was an offence to import disguised knives, and there is a long list of other things it is an offence to import, including butterfly knives, flick knives, gravity knives, stealth knives, zombie knives, swords, sword-sticks, push daggers, blowpipes, telescopic truncheons and batons. I looked to see which of them I could buy on eBay, and each one was there. A butterfly knife is on eBay for £4.95. Flick knives are there. Gravity knives are apparently available from a UK firm, which is clearly committing an offence by selling these things in the UK. Telescopic truncheons are available for £11.69 on eBay from a Chinese supplier.

I did not go through the whole list, but it looks as if the great majority of these things—which it is illegal to import into the UK—are being sold on eBay, not to mention other places as well. I am astonished at how this can have been allowed to happen. I am pretty sure that I cannot buy hard drugs or child pornography on eBay, which makes sure that those things are kept off its platform, so why does it allow on weapons that are illegal in the UK? I do not know the answer to that question and have not had the opportunity to discuss it with eBay. Is it because the rules for ebay.co.uk are taken not from UK law but from US law? No doubt it is not illegal in the US to purchase any of these weapons, but it is in the UK.

It has been widely accepted that it is illegal to purchase these things in the UK and nobody has seriously argued that it should be lawful to purchase them, so surely it cannot be disputed that it ought to be illegal to advertise, list or otherwise facilitate their sale in the UK. The new clause deals only with disguised knives, not the other things on the gov.uk list, but its effect would be to make it illegal to advertise, list or otherwise facilitate for sale disguised knives. This is a difficult area to get right technically, and there are lots of reasons to be cautious about increasing regulation on the internet, but the case seems to be very strong. That would be the effect of new clause 12; I hope the Minister will be sympathetic to it.

[Louise Haigh]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham on bringing forward such an important amendment and on his forensic examination of the legislation and his detailed research—although I recommend that he deletes his internet search history once the Bill Committee has concluded.

New clauses 12 and 31 get to the heart of our debate about overseas sellers and platform liability. We have received multiple pieces of evidence—we just heard about some from my right hon. Friend—about weapons that are already illegal under UK law being freely available on platforms such as Amazon, eBay and Facebook Marketplace. I have seen examples on the app Wish, which is free to download for anybody of any age. It makes available for as little as 99p knives that are disguised as credit cards, bracelets and knuckle dusters. My understanding is that the Bill will do nothing to prevent under-18s from accessing these things, because they are already accessible, even though their sale is currently illegal.

Unless we take action on platforms and platform liability, the other measures in the Bill, however well-intentioned, will be next to useless, because under-18s will still be able to access these very offensive weapons on these platforms. My right hon. Friend is right that the debate about platforms is complex for many reasons. There are many reasons why we have not managed to crack down properly on child protection issues and online pornography issues, although the Minister was right to highlight the Home Secretary’s important speech last week. Because the problems are complex, we have not yet got to the point where we can deliver legislation. There is an understandable difficulty in labelling a platform as liable in law, as it cannot be held responsible for all the content because it is not the owner of the content, it is merely a host. However, whether a platform is a publisher needs to be clarified in law.

The debate is further complicated by issues of free speech and the boundary with hate speech, and even by the regulation of online pornography—we keep making the comparison with the Digital Economy Act 2017. When we ask platforms to take responsibility in these areas, we are asking them to make judgment calls, which is inappropriate. The Government and the courts need to make those judgment calls, not private companies. However, none of those sorts of arguments are applicable in this case. There are no issues of free speech, liability or judgment calls. These weapons are offensive and we want to ban their being made available to under-18s. We want to ban some of them being available to anybody in the UK.

We have banned, or are now banning, the sale of bladed articles and corrosive substances to under-18s. There should be absolutely no need and we should be making sure that there is no way for under-18s to access these substances or articles for sale online. We are asking the platforms to take a relatively straightforward measure: to develop algorithms that restrict to over-18s the viewing of all adverts, whether on eBay, Amazon or Facebook, that contain these offensive weapons or articles.

I genuinely believe that the Government are serious in their intention to limit access of these weapons to under-18s, but they will never be successful unless they are prepared to take on the platforms. I find it bizarre that they are putting so many burdens on small businesses and online retailers while leaving this gaping hole in the market and failing to take on the tech giants that are profiting from the sale of such horrendous weapons to children. I appreciate that the Minister has said that the Government are looking at wider internet safety and will come forward with proposals in the near future. However, if this legislation is to be at all meaningful, they must consider extending it to explicitly cover platform liability.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

As I said at the start of my speech, the backdrop to this debate is the major piece of ongoing cross-governmental work on the online harms White Paper. My officials have certainly been looking at the adequacy of existing offences as part of that review, but we already have in place legislation that applies to sales, be they face-to-face or remote, and it would be for the CPS to answer how many offences have been prosecuted under the relevant section. I hope that this debate has enabled the Committee to give comforting reassurance to those who investigate and prosecute that they can and should look at online platforms under the 1988 Act.

[Stephen Timms]

I am encouraged by what the Minister is saying, but last week she did draw a distinction between platforms—I think she gave the example of Amazon—that were themselves selling a product and those that were simply facilitating the sale of a product from another supplier or seller, perhaps in China. Is she now suggesting that, under the current law, both activities are illegal? Or is it only the former, as she suggested last week?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am coming to that. It is also possible to bring charges under sections 44 to 46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007—that is, for intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence, encouraging or assisting an offence believing it will be committed, or encouraging or assisting offences believing one or more will be committed. It is possible that a website that facilitates sales, either by selling directly or through a marketplace model, could be prosecuted for allowing an advertisement to sell a prohibited weapon on the website, even if the site is not the seller. Powers are currently in place for persons or companies that list, advertise or facilitate the sale of an offensive weapon through a website registered under their name. In the circumstances and against the backdrop of the online harms White Paper, new legislation to criminalise such behaviour is not required at this stage. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to not press the new clause to a vote.

Subsection (1) of new clause 31 refers to offensive weapons. Those who have looked at it in detail wonder whether, in fact, the intention was to refer to articles with a blade or point, which are subject to age restrictions under section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The new clause uses the term “offensive weapon” and, like new clause 12, duplicates existing legislation. It is already an offence under section 141 of the 1988 Act to advertise, list or sell offensive weapons to which the section applies, regardless of the age of the buyer. We consider that if any company or person who owns the website were proven to be selling, offering to sell or exposing for the purpose of sale offensive weapons listed in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988, they would have committed an offence under section 141. On age-restricted sales of articles with blades or points, it is an offence under section 141A of the 1988 Act for any person to sell to a person under the age of 18 an article to which the section applies.

[Victoria Atkins]

Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies to weapons listed in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988, which include any knife that has

“a concealed blade or a concealed sharp point and is designed to appear to be an everyday object of a kind commonly carried on the person or in a handbag, briefcase or other hand luggage”.

The offence applies to all kinds of sales, be they face-to-face or remote. We consider that a website selling directly, or using a marketplace model to allow sellers to use a website, would probably be caught under the wording of the legislation. The Crown Prosecution Service agreed with this analysis—in fact, I have just been handed information that says that there seem to have been no such cases. This is an untested area of law, but the Crown Prosecution Service seems to be of the view that the legislation already covers this area.

Last week, we discussed kitchen knives—or rather, knives that have a legitimate purpose and are not offensive unless they are used with an offensive intent.

[Stephen Timms]

I am encouraged that the Minister is saying that eBay and all the other platforms—I think this will come as quite a surprise to them—are currently breaking the law. Does she have any idea why there have not been any prosecutions? What would it take to initiate a prosecution of eBay? There is absolutely no dispute: these things are legal, they are all on the website at the moment, and no doubt people are making purchases of them. What would it take to initiate a prosecution?

[Victoria Atkins]

I just want to clarify that the language of the legislation—I am looking for assistance on this—in relation both to articles with blade or point and to corrosive products, refers to a person who “sells”, and we consider that, unlike section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, it would not apply to a person or company that facilitates the remote sale but is not the seller. I commend the right hon. Gentleman for finding an area of law that we have yet to discover, if I may put it that way, and as the Court of Appeal puts it when they overturn a previous judgement. I would like this to be clarified and I will write to the Committee tomorrow, if I may, with clarification on the legal advice, as it is an important point and there seem to be many manifestations of the advice.

We can see the difficulties of this legislation and I accept that, but we come back to the fact that the White Paper seeks to address many different types of online harms. We would like that to be a consolidated and considered piece of work, and during the couple of months that the Bill makes its way through the House, we propose to stick with the law as it is and we invite the Opposition not to press new clause 31.

[Stephen Timms]

I hope that the Minister was right that these people are all currently committing offences. We await with interest her letter tomorrow setting out a considered view. This is a matter that we ought not to let drop. It is clearly a significant part of the problem, and it is a significant part of the reason for these dreadful weapons being on the streets and in the wrong hands. I take her point that the issue is terribly complicated. I will return to the issue on Report, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 13

Offensive weapons and online videos

“(1) It shall be an offence for a website to host online or distribute a video in which a person displays an offensive weapon in a threatening manner.

(2) No offence is committed under this section if—

(a) the website removes the video within 24 hours of the registered owner of the website being informed that the video includes a person displaying an offensive weapon in a threatening manner.

(3) In this section, ‘threatening manner’ means that the person (‘A’) uses the weapon in such a way that a reasonable person (‘B’) who was exposed to the same threat would think that there was an immediate risk of physical harm.”—(Stephen Timms.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Stephen Timms]

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

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment (a) to new clause 13, line 10 at end add—

“(4) The person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—

(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, to a fine or to both;

(b) on summary conviction in Scotland or Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”

[Stephen Timms]

On 5 May 2018, Rhyhiem Ainsworth Barton, age 17, was shot dead while playing football with friends in Kennington. He was popular and, by all accounts, idealistic and his dream was to be an architect. A couple of days later, scrubbing his blood from the pavement where he died, his distraught mother made a heartfelt public plea that her son should be the last to die in this way.

Rhyhiem’s story was told in a harrowing edition of the programme “Panorama” on 3 September 2018. He lived on the Brandon estate in Camberwell and was a talented rapper and a member of the rap group Moscow17, which plays drill music. They were long-running rivals of another comparable group, Zone 2, based in Peckham. They both posted videos with music and lyrics that threatened each other. Rhyhiem’s family had known that he was in some danger because of all this, so he spent some months in Jamaica with relatives. He was safe there, but he felt he was missing out on opportunities in London, so he returned. Within a few months of returning, he had been killed.

On 2 August 2018, Incognito—another member of Moscow17—was also murdered. His real name was Siddique Kamara. On 18 August, four more teenagers were stabbed in a fight on the Brandon estate. What is going wrong? Why is there this unending stream of deaths among young people, particularly young black men, and what are we going to do about it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

As before, I thank the Minister for giving way. I agree with a great deal of what she is saying. She talked about efforts to remove illegal material online. The difficulty here is that, as far as I know, the material we have been talking about is not illegal. It is not against the law to host a music video where another gang is threatened. The purpose of the new clause is to make it illegal. Can the Minister hold out the prospect that the Government are going to change the law in this area so that it will become illegal, given the cross-party support that the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire referred to?

[Victoria Atkins]

Any video that incites violence—and we have heard awful examples today—is committing an offence. We have a very simple principle, which emerged from the consultation that was conducted earlier this year by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—namely, that if it is illegal offline, it is illegal online. Those are principles of which we remind the tech companies repeatedly—not just in this field but in others, such as terrorism and child pornography. We heard that the Home Secretary has rightly praised the large tech companies for their work in tackling terrorism, but it is our expectation that the lessons they have learned in that field are spread to other areas where harms are caused online.

It is already an offence to incite, assist or encourage criminal offences. Indeed, social media companies have policies in place on incitement and threats and we are working with the sector to ensure that those are applied in a timely manner, without delay. We believe that the offences are there in law in terms of incitement; we are very much approaching this in a cross-governmental, holistic way, with the online harms White Paper later this year. I therefore invite the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw the new clause.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to Committee members for their support. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn is absolutely right to press for specific penalties for hosting videos of the kind that we have been talking about. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central for her well-informed observations and her expertise in this area, developed through her work on the Home Affairs Committee and in the all-party parliamentary group. I must say, I did not know that Germany had laws along these lines already, and I am grateful to her for pointing that out to us. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire for affirming the cross-party support in the Committee for action in this area.

My worry about what the Minister said is that I do not think a prosecution of YouTube for one of the videos that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central said are currently available would be successful. I may be wrong, but there certainly have not been any prosecutions, and I do not think that, if there were one, it would succeed. That is why I think the law should be changed, as set out in new clause 13, so it is clear that hosting material that directly, or sometimes rather subtly, incites violence between groups of young people is against the law. That would give the action groups and taskforces that my hon. Friend has been describing the tools they need to get on with their job.

I recognise that this is a rather complicated issue, so I will withdraw new clause 13, but I hope that something else will come forward on Report to enable us to make progress. The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire said that this is perhaps not the right place to make the change. I do not think it really matters where it is done, as long as it is done. This Bill gives us an opportunity, and I hope that in due course it will be taken. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 14

Enforcement

‘(1) It shall be the duty of every authority to which subsection (4) applies to enforce within its area the provisions of Clauses 1, 3, 4, 15 and 18 of this Bill.

(2) An authority in England or Wales to which subsection (4) applies shall have the power to investigate and prosecute for an alleged contravention of any provision imposed by or under this section which was committed outside its area in any part of England and Wales.

(3) A district council in Northern Ireland shall have the power to investigate and prosecute for an alleged contravention of any provision imposed by or under this section which was committed outside its area in any part of Northern Ireland.

(4) The authorities to which this section applies are—

(a) in England, a county council, district council, London Borough Council, the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority and the Council of the Isles of Scilly;

(b) in Wales, a county council or a county borough council;

(c) in Scotland, a council constituted under section 2 of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994(1);

(d) in Northern Ireland, any district council.

(5) In enforcing this section, an enforcement authority must act in a manner proportionate to the seriousness of the risk and shall take due account of the precautionary principle, and shall encourage and promote voluntary action by producers and distributors.

(6) Notwithstanding subsection (5), an enforcement authority may take any action under this section urgently and without first encouraging and promoting voluntary action if a product poses a serious risk.”—(Stephen Timms.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Stephen Timms]

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

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 15—Investigatory powers for trading standards—

‘(1) Schedule 5 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is amended in accordance with subsection (2).

(2) In Part 2, paragraph 10, at end insert—

(none) “section (Enforcement)”.”

This new clause is consequential on NC14.

[Stephen Timms]

In the evidence that the Committee took before the summer, we heard from Trish Burls, the head of trading standards in Croydon—the borough represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central—who is the lead in London for the Chartered Trading Standards Institute on test sales of knives. The institute has made it clear that it welcomes the new measures in the Bill, but it also argues—in my view, rightly—that the Bill would be a good deal more effective if trading standards officers, not just police officers, have powers to enforce its provisions.

We have talked today about the fact that the police are woefully overstretched, and the National Audit Office reminded us of that forcefully this morning. Local authority trading standards departments can also make a very valuable contribution in such areas, but to do so they need new powers. As it stands, the Bill omits those powers. These new clauses would insert the power for trading standards officers to act in respect of the sale of corrosive products to under-18s, the delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18 and residential premises, and the delivery of bladed products to residential premises and people under 18.

Unlike the police, who derive their powers from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, trading standards officers have to be given powers for each piece of legislation they are called on to enforce. My case to the Committee is that they should have powers to enforce the measures we have been debating. I am quite surprised that the powers were not in the Bill when it was first drafted. They certainly should be there, as I hope the Minister will accept.

New clause 14 is based on similar provisions in earlier legislation. New clause 15 amends the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to confer investigatory powers on the enforcers listed in new clause 14. I think there is agreement across the Committee that the powers in the Bill are welcome, but if they are to have the effect we all want them to have, they will need to be properly enforced. It is not realistic to expect the police to do everything. A number of the new powers are exactly the kinds of things that trading standards officers do already and of which we know they can make an excellent job. Let us give them the tools to enable them to do that here as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

As always, I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham for tabling these new clauses. It is important to note that it is possible for the legislation to be enforced by the police and that the Crown Prosecution Service can prosecute retailers who have breached the law if appropriate. On several occasions in my previous career, there were joint prosecutions—not necessarily just with the CPS, but with the Health and Safety Executive and local councils—and in the old days, prosecutions on housing benefit fraud. There are already powers in law to enable that to happen; the Bill can be enforced through those measures.

It might be helpful briefly to explain how trading standards officers and local authorities enforce the legislation on the age-restricted sale of knives. Local authorities have taken action in the past, and prosecute the sale of knives using the general powers in section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972. Section 222 provides powers to local authorities in England and Wales to prosecute or defend legal proceedings

“Where a local authority consider it expedient for the promotion or protection of the interests of the inhabitants of their area”.

Those powers have been used to prosecute retailers in this context. Between 2013 and 2017, there were 71 prosecutions of sellers who sold knives to persons under 18. Although it is not possible to identify from the records whether the prosecution was brought by a local authority or the CPS, because the organisations do not maintain a central database that can run a report by specific offence, we understand that it is likely that the majority were brought by trading standards. Indeed, National Trading Standards has agreed to manage the prosecution fund that was introduced as part of the serious violence strategy, and it will work with local authorities in areas hit by knife crime to conduct test purchase operations and prosecute retailers if appropriate.

[Stephen Timms]

My understanding is that the powers the Minister has referred to could not be used to undertake prosecutions of offences under this legislation. That is the reason for tabling these new clauses—to ensure that trading standards officers have powers to act on the matters covered by the Bill. My understanding is that current powers would not allow that. Can she confirm whether I am right about that?

[Victoria Atkins]

My next paragraph reads: there is no reason why trading standards could not use the general powers under the Local Government Act 1972 to enforce the provisions in the Bill in relation to the sale of knives and corrosives. Of course, it is possible for the police and the CPS to use it, but I will seek further confirmation of that important point—it is quite right for the right hon. Gentleman to have raised it.

When I think back to the cases I prosecuted with local authorities, usually on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive, I was always struck by how well such organisations could work together and ensure that the needs of the local community were met. We know that the police often have all sorts of issues with time and resources, and it is helpful to have extra resources available through trading standards officers and local councils to assist in prosecuting these sorts of cases. Of course, trading standards officers will have the expertise in these cases, and will not only be experienced in test purchase operations but—

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for that response. I tabled the new clause because the Chartered Trading Standards Institute felt that it should be in the Bill.

At the very least, there is certainly some uncertainty, which was perhaps reflected in the pause before the point was answered, about quite what the legal position is. It ought to be very clear; trading standards officers ought to get on to this work as soon as the Bill is on the statute book. I cannot see any reason why we would not want to make the position absolutely clear that trading standards officers have these powers, and we could do that in the same way that it is has been done in other pieces of legislation.

I am encouraged that the Minister says that even without the new clauses trading standards officers will be able to act, but I think it would be right to put the provision in the Bill so that there is no uncertainty. I would, therefore, like to press new clauses 14 and 15 to a vote.

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

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Am I right in thinking that the right hon. Member for East Ham wishes to press new clause 15 to a Division?

[Stephen Timms]

I think, Mr Gray, that that purpose has been served by the vote on new clause 14.

[The Chair]

We now come to new clause 16.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I am sorry to hear about what happened to her young constituent; it must have been quite frightening. That also leaves a huge impact afterward as people think about what happens as someone is speeding past. I know that now when I walk past any moped I quickly hide my phone; I think many of my constituents have started to do the same as well. I am hardly going to be able to fight anyone off—I am aware of my strengths there.

Returning to my point, I have had dozens of emails similar to the ones that my hon. Friend describes, and they all describe the sense of fear created by those committing offences under subsection 5(1) from the back of mopeds. Many of my constituents see the use of a moped in such a circumstance as unduly reckless, negligent and therefore threatening, and would naturally agree that perpetrators of those offences should face tougher sentencing in the courts.

I believe that the recent case of Derryck John illustrates the threat of carrying corrosive substances on the back of mopeds. Mr John was convicted in March after being found guilty of carrying out six acid attacks against moped riders in less than 90 minutes. He sprayed his victims with a poisonous liquid, leaving one man with 30% sight loss in one eye. He stole two mopeds and tried to take another four from their owners before being arrested. Mr John was able to cause such significant damage to his victims in such a short period of time precisely because he was using a moped.

Coming back to my constituency, it is worth saying that moped crimes have plummeted about 80% since their peak. That is because of the innovative responses from the Metropolitan Police: Operation Attrition, the increase in unmarked Q cars, the use of spray-tagging of mopeds, motorcycle patrols and tactical collusions have all proved effective. However, the figures for detection and conviction rates for moped crimes remain astonishingly low. In 2017-18, detection rates for offences resolved through a sanction stood at just 2.6%, which means that more than 97% of moped criminals escaped justice in that year. That is appalling and unjust.

My new clause may not dramatically reverse that picture—after all, criminals must be caught before they are brought to trial—but it will definitely act as a deterrent to those who would be so reckless as to possess offensive weapons, particularly corrosive substances, in a public place on a moped. There can be no excuse for it, and the process of sentencing should reflect the additional fear and risk posed by the use of a moped in such instances. That is what my new clause is intended to do, and I hope that Government Members will see fit to support it.

[Stephen Timms]

I rise briefly to support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn and to welcome the fact that she has raised this in the Committee.

There is certainly a close link between acid attacks on one hand, and the use of mopeds on the other. I will highlight one particular group of victims here, which is moped delivery drivers. I think the series of attacks that she referred to was aimed at a group of drivers, a number of whom I have met. In particular, I pay tribute to Mr Jabed Hussain, who was himself a delivery driver with UberEats and was the victim of one of these attacks. He has since joined the International Workers Union of Great Britain to bring together the very vulnerable people who work delivering meals and all sorts of things around London. There are large numbers of them now, but they are pretty exposed, and if people come after them with acid they are in a dangerous situation.

When I last spoke to him, Mr Hussain had not yet been able to get back to his work because of the trauma he had suffered as a result of the attack inflicted on him. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and I hope the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically to what she has said.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn for tabling this new clause. We understand why she and the right hon. Member for East Ham, and those from other constituencies, are rightly concerned about the use of motorcycles, mopeds and scooters to commit crime. We know also that the use of corrosive substances in these circumstances is a worryingly frequent occurrence. Indeed, the fear, and short-term and long-term effects that such attacks can have, were made clear to me when the constituent of the right hon. Member for East Ham, Mr Jabed Hussain, came to talk to me about the effects that such attacks have on him and his fellow delivery drivers.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Eighth sitting)

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 6th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

At the risk of replicating the discussion, I will repeat some of the points I made earlier, because I do not think the Minister responded to the alternative proposal of expanding the clause to cover sales made internally in the UK, rather than just sales outside the United Kingdom.

We believe it could be possible to mirror this clause to cover internal UK sales, so someone would be entitled to purchase a bladed article online from a retailer outside of the UK and all they would have to do is prove that they were over 18 when it was delivered. Much of that would circumvent the issues that we discussed regarding clause 15.

Although the term “article” has, as we discussed, a different definition, it is clear that many bladed articles will be captured by the definition of “bladed products” in clause 18. Therefore a delivery to a residential address for an adult would be possible under clause 18, but not under clause 15. Will the Minister explain why there is not a similar provision to that in clause 18 for internal UK deliveries?

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend has pointed out, clause 18 deals with sales of knives by sellers outside the UK. The Minister has already rightly pointed out to us on a number of occasions that the British Government, or our laws, can impose very little control outside the UK.

The difficulty was illustrated by this morning’s discussion, in which it emerged that if in future I buy kitchen scissors from a British supplier I will have to go to the post office to pick them up. If, on the other hand, I buy them online from an overseas seller they can be posted direct to my home. That is quite problematic, and I imagine there will be more discussion of that as the Bill progresses through this House and the other place. It highlights the real difficulty of dealing with sellers located outside the UK. I have no idea what proportion of the dangerous weapons purchased in the UK are bought from sellers outside the UK, but my sense from looking at places such as eBay is that quite a large proportion of them are.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

We also have the unresolved issue of what happens, should we leave the European Union, about movement across the Irish border, and the propensity of these sorts of weapons—blades and so on—to be moved or sold from within the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland. We need to know what the provisions will be because Ireland will be an overseas country.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. I rather hoped that being in the EU would mean that we could regulate what those sellers are doing, but I gathered from the debate this morning that we cannot. The fact that Germany is in the European Union does not seem to give us any more purchase over what German sellers do than we have over Chinese sellers, and my hon. Friend is right that the impact of leaving the EU will need to be considered.

In clause 18, we are trying to ensure that knives bought from sellers outside the UK are not delivered to under-18s. I reiterate my view that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley argued persuasively on Tuesday, that age is too low; it should be higher. It should be set at 21, rather than 18.

It is clear—the Minister gave us a good example this morning—that a lot of knives are reaching under-18s in the UK. Reducing under-18s’ access to knives from sellers outside the UK will help to reduce the number of young people being injured and, indeed, killed.

We should go further than clause 18. We need something a bit more robust. The Minister rightly pointed out that sellers outside the UK are beyond the reach of UK law, so clause 18 instead places the responsibility on the delivery company. I accept that that is a perfectly reasonable way of doing this, but I worry that sellers outside the UK that are determined to increase their profits by selling knives to under-18s in the UK will fairly easily be able to get around the restrictions that clause 18 imposes. The delivery company in the UK is absolved of blame under subsection (1)(d) if it did not know when it entered into the arrangement that it covered the delivery of bladed articles. I would prefer that companies delivering parcels from overseas to households in the UK be required to carry out some degree of checking what is in those parcels. I am not suggesting that every parcel should be opened and scrutinised, but there must be some degree of checking what is being delivered. A sample should be checked.

If it turns out that the seller outside the UK with whom the company has a contract is delivering a significant number of knives, even though the seller did not tell the delivery company that they were knives, in practice the delivery company would eventually probably realise that. Someone would open a parcel on the doorstep, or perhaps a parcel would fall open en route. I think the delivery company probably would in due course pick up that it was delivering knives. Were that to happen, the delivery company should be required to end its contract with that supplier, because the supplier had obviously been dishonest and not told the delivery company that the contract involved the delivery of knives. It would be entirely appropriate for the contract to be ended.

As clause 18 is worded, however, the delivery company does not have to end its contract if it becomes aware that it is in fact delivering knives. Subsection (1)(d) requires only that it should be

“aware when they entered into the arrangement”

that it related to knives. At the very least, that should be extended so that if the delivery company becomes aware in the course of the arrangement that it is in fact carrying knives, the clause takes effect. The fact that it did not know at the moment it entered into the arrangement imposes a very limited restriction. I have not tabled an amendment to address the issue, but I wonder whether the Minister could reflect on it. I am not expecting her to give an answer today. Will she reflect on whether it would be appropriate to tighten the wording?

Say a delivery company has a contract to deliver products from a supplier that is outside the UK to purchasers in the UK. It is not aware when it enters into the contract that some of the products are knives, but discovers in the course of its deliveries that some or perhaps all of them are knives. Surely the delivery company should then be required to terminate the contract. I would go further and argue that companies delivering goods from outside the UK should be required to carry out at least some checks to find out whether they are delivering bladed articles. If they do find out, one way or another, that they are delivering bladed articles and the seller has not told them, they should surely at least be required to end the contract.

I have another question to ask the Minister. Presumably when these parcels are imported to the UK, they will have to go through customs of some sort, where some level of checking of what is in them will be carried out. Perhaps it will emerge in one of those checks that a parcel contains a knife. What would happen at that point? Would customs inform the delivery company to whom the parcel was being shipped that it contains a knife and should not be delivered to somebody under 18? I appreciate that it is not only the delivery company that is involved in checking what is in parcels. I am sure there will be some element of checking in customs. When such a check reveals that there is a knife, what is the response of customs?

My concern is that clause 18 as framed does not go far enough to restrict the ability of overseas sellers—we have established that they account for a significant part of the problem we are facing in constituencies such as mine—to deliver dangerous weapons to young people under 18.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I will be brief. There was a lot of sense in what the right hon. Member for East Ham said, particularly about the wording:

“when they entered into the arrangement”.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that. It brings to mind the amendment I tabled on the equivalent provision on corrosive substances, where the test in the Bill is that the delivery company is “aware”. I queried whether that should be “ought to have been aware”. As the Bill is drafted, there is a danger that delivery companies will take an approach of “see no evil, hear no evil” and will not make active inquiries about what products they will actually be asked to deliver. If, at the very least, we put in a test of “ought to be aware”, that will mean other companies actively trying to work out what a company will generally be requiring them to deliver. That might also be something for the Minister to think about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

The amendments in this group do one thing: provide a defence for museums and galleries, so that they can continue to own and display historical examples of flick knives and gravity knives. I will explain why such a defence is needed.

The 1959 Act makes it an offence to sell, manufacture, hire or import flick knives and gravity knives, so the supply of these weapons has been inhibited since then, and as we have just agreed, clause 19 updates the definition of the flick knife. Clause 20 extends the prohibition on the supply of flick knives, including those caught by the new definition, and gravity knives by making it an offence simply to possess such knives. The intention behind these measures is to make it harder for young people to get hold of dangerous weapons and to ensure that the police can take action when they come across these weapons.

Flick knives and gravity knives exist as pure weapons; they have no purpose other than to cause injury. That is why we have been keen to ensure that the law keeps pace with their design. The new definition will assist in that. Although it is not an offence to buy flick knives and gravity knives, anyone who has bought one from overseas since 1959 has broken the law by importing it. We have become aware through the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that some museums, such as the Imperial War Museum and the Royal Armouries Museum, hold examples of flick knives and gravity knives in their collections. Some come from the first and second world wars or are considered to be of historical interest in other ways. These museums are also, in some cases, restricted by law as to how they can dispose of items in their collections and may only be able to do so in certain, very narrow circumstances.

The amendments in this group provide a defence for museums and galleries, should they ever be prosecuted for the offence of possessing a flick knife or gravity knife. The provisions enable them to hold and display historical examples of such weapons, to acquire new items, and to lend or hire such items to other institutions for cultural, artistic or educational purposes. They are similar to provisions already provided for museums and galleries for weapons covered by section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. We have agreed with the devolved Administrations that the defence will apply to museums across the United Kingdom.

Where a member of the public owns a flick knife or a gravity knife that is of historical interest, they can pass them to a museum or surrender them to the police under clause 24 of the Bill and claim compensation. I hope that explains why these amendments are necessary, and that they will be supported by the Committee.

Amendment 35 agreed to.

Amendments made: 36, in clause 20, page 19, line 14, at end insert—

‘(3A) After subsection (2) insert—

(2D) It is a defence for a person charged in respect of any conduct of that person relating to a knife of a kind described in subsection (1)—

(a) with an offence under subsection (1), or

(b) with an offence under section 50(2) or (3) of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979,

to show that the conduct was only for the purposes of making the knife available to a museum or gallery to which this subsection applies.

(2E) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1A) to show that they possessed the knife only in their capacity as the operator of, or as a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery.

(2F) If the operator of, or a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery to which this subsection applies is charged with hiring or lending a knife of a kind described in subsection (1), it is a defence for them to show that they had reasonable grounds for believing that the person to whom they lent or hired it would use it only for cultural, artistic or educational purposes.

(2G) Subsection (2D) or (2F) applies to a museum or gallery only if it does not distribute profits.

(2H) In this section “museum or gallery” includes any institution which has as its purpose, or one of its purposes, the preservation, display and interpretation of material of historical, artistic or scientific interest and gives the public access to it.

(2I) A person is to be taken to have shown a matter mentioned in subsection (2D), (2E) or (2F) if—

(a) sufficient evidence of the matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and

(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.””

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 35.

Amendment 37, in clause 20, page 19, line 27, at end insert—

‘(4) It is a defence for a person charged in respect of any conduct of that person relating to a knife of a kind described in paragraph (1) with an offence under paragraph (1) to show that the conduct was only for the purposes of making the knife available to a museum or gallery to which this paragraph applies.

(5) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under paragraph (2) to show that they possessed the knife only in their capacity as the operator of, or as a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery.

(6) If the operator of, or a person acting on behalf of, a museum or gallery to which this paragraph applies is charged with hiring or lending a knife of a kind described in paragraph (1), it is a defence for them to show that they had reasonable grounds for believing that the person to whom they lent or hired it would use it only for cultural, artistic or educational purposes.

(7) Paragraph (4) or (6) applies to a museum or gallery only if it does not distribute profits.

(8) In this Article “museum or gallery” includes any institution which has as its purpose, or one of its purposes, the preservation, display and interpretation of material of historical, artistic or scientific interest and gives the public access to it.

(9) A person is to be taken to have shown a matter mentioned in paragraph (4), (5) or (6) if—

(a) sufficient evidence of the matter is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and

(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.” —(Victoria Atkins.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 35.

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

[Stephen Timms]

I have a question arising from what the Minister said earlier about what Border Force can do if it finds an offensive weapon coming across the border in a parcel or something of that kind. She said that if Border Force believes that there is a good prospect that the police could prosecute, it is empowered to seize the weapon. Proposed new section 1(1A) of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 says:

“Any person who possesses any knife of a kind described in subsection (1) is guilty of an offence.”

It is clear that a person who receives such a weapon commits an offence, and from what the Minister was saying, Border Force would be empowered to seize that weapon. However, where under-18s are receiving knives, it is the seller who commits the offence by selling a knife to a person under the age of 18.

If Border Force found a knife in a parcel addressed to an individual, and was aware, or could establish, that the individual was under the age of 18—admittedly, it probably would not know that—would Border Force be able to seize it? My worry is that it probably would not, because nobody would have committed an offence. The person who has bought the knife has not committed an offence; because of the way the law is framed, the seller has committed the offence, but the seller is outside the UK and outside the remit of the law. If Border Force found a knife addressed to somebody under 18, would it be unable to seize it because no offence had been committed, or is there some basis on which it could seize it? It would clearly be an unsatisfactory state of affairs if Border Force could not do that.

The Minister quite rightly explained that Border Force would need to be satisfied that there was a reasonable chance of a prosecution being secured. Where a knife or other offensive weapon is being sent to an under-18, it is not clear that an offence has been committed. Does that mean that Border Force would not be able to seize the knife? If that is the case, we may need to look at how the law is framed, because I want to see Border Force playing a role in—

[The Chair]

If I may, the right hon. Gentleman knows a great deal more about the Bill than almost anybody else in the room, and I have been a little gentle with him, but I suspect he is addressing something other than clause 20.

[Stephen Timms]

I raise the matter under clause 20 because the clause provides a form of words that clearly gives Border Force the ability to seize a weapon on the basis that the Minister explained. My concern is that if a knife is sent to an under-18 and the seller is outside the UK, no offence may technically have been committed, and Border Force might not be able to intervene. I just wanted to clarify the position, but I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr Gray, and for the compliment.

[Victoria Atkins]

If we are talking about clause 20 and flick knives, those knives are so offensive that there is no age restriction on their possession; if the Bill were passed with this clause, anyone in this room who possessed a flick knife would be committing a criminal offence. The clause aims to assist the police in circumstances where they make a house arrest—I am speculating—and one of those items is found. At the moment, the police cannot charge for simple possession because there is a gap in the law, so we are trying to close that gap.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister, and I completely accept that the position in clause 20 is clear: an offence would have been committed, and Border Force could seize the knife. I have a question arising from our earlier debates about knives being sent to under-18s. As far as I can see, an offence has technically not been committed in that situation, so would Border Force be unable to seize a knife at the border, even though it knew it was being sent to an under-18?

[Victoria Atkins]

It is an offence to import a flick knife under the 1959 Act, so the offence would be the 17-year-old trying to import a flick knife, because it is such an offensive weapon.

[Stephen Timms]

rose—

[The Chair]

Order. We may have flogged this one to death.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 20, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 21

Prohibition on the possession of offensive weapons on further education premises

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

Offensive Weapons Bill (Seventh sitting)

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 6th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

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

Welcome back, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

Clause 12 deals with the age verification systems needed to enforce the measures, it. We will discuss again the standards that will be required by the Home Office if the legislation is to have effect. I hope the Minister can give details of what she considers will meet the requirements of subsection 4(a), which refers to sellers operating

“a system for checking that persons who bought articles to which section 141A applied by the same or a similar method of purchase to that used by the buyer were not under the age of 18.”

What would be a reasonable system? Requiring a person to check a box to say they are over 18? Referring to the electoral roll? Requiring use of a credit or debit card owned by someone over 18, though that would not prove that the individual buying was the owner of the card? What kind of standards will the Home Office require?

Concerns have been raised about the work of trading standards with regard to online test purchases, which is frequently found to be unsuccessful. Can the Minister provide us with statistics on the online test purchases conducted, on the basis for bringing forward the clause, and on prosecutions brought by trading standards over the last year against retailers that have failed to comply with existing legislation on the sale of bladed articles to under-18s?

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Gray.

The clause is the first of the Bill to deal with knives. I report to the Committee with a heavy heart that there were 702 knife crimes in my borough of Newham last year—the second-highest number in London and a 15% increase on the previous year. Of those, 214 involved injury. In London as a whole, there were 80 fatal stabbings in 2017, including of 20 teenagers. I need not elaborate to underline the horror of those figures, and particularly of the fact that so many young people lost their lives as a result of being stabbed.

That was in 2017. In the first three months of 2018, there were 30 fatal stabbings in London. The fatality rate for those three months was 50% higher than in 2017. Of the 30 people who died, six were teenagers. It was reported in April, I think, that in the first couple months of this calendar year, London had a higher murder rate than New York, which is extremely troubling and chilling for all of us.

I looked this morning at the website of my local paper, the Newham Recorder. There are three headlines there at the moment: “Guilty: Three teenagers convicted for stabbing 14-year-old boy in Manor Park”; “Police appeal to find Fatjon Koka following stabbing in Stratford”; and “Man to appear in court following Romford Road stabbing”. Those are three separate and entirely unrelated items in the current issue of my local newspaper. The changes to the law in the Bill to bear down on this scourge are extremely welcome. There is clearly a pressing need to get a grip on what is going on, to change things, and to stop this seemingly rapidly escalating problem affecting so many people, particularly the young.

To get on top of this problem, we will have to increase police resources. For a number of years, the Government cut police resources and police numbers, and crime did not rise, but an increase in crime was utterly inevitable given the scale of the reduction in police numbers. The crime surge was delayed, but it is now very much with us. It is hitting us extremely hard. I very much hope that the clause and the other measures in the Bill will help, but we will need significant additional police resources.

On Tuesday, the Committee discussed how the Bill would affect sellers of corrosive products outside the UK. The same issues arise in the case of sellers of knives who are outside the UK; as I understand it, the Bill deals with them in the same way as sellers of corrosive products. We had a debate on Tuesday about my new clause 9, and as I indicated in the context of corrosive products, I am not convinced that the way the Bill deals with this problem is altogether satisfactory. The concern is greater here, because as I informed the Committee on Tuesday, Mr Raheel Butt has pointed out to me that it seems to be the norm for online purchases of appalling knives to be made from suppliers outside the UK, on platforms such as eBay. The Minister pointed out on Tuesday that the purchase of knives disguised to look like something else is clearly illegal in the UK, but there is no shortage of online platforms offering those products in the UK. They are freely available to purchasers here, even though their purchase is illegal, and in the particular case I mentioned, the suppliers were all located outside the UK.

Will the clause not have effect if a seller is outside the UK, as was the case with corrosive products, which we discussed on Tuesday? Will we therefore need to depend on separate measures—set out, I think, in clause 18, in which a responsibility is placed on delivery companies—to address the problem of sales from outside the UK? If so, can the Minister can clarify the position in cases where sellers are located elsewhere in the EU? As I have pointed out previously, eBay offers some pretty ghastly weapons supplied by firms in Germany, which is a member of the European Union, as are we, at the moment. Will clause 12 have no effect on sellers located elsewhere in the EU, as I think the Minister indicated was the case in the parallel discussion we had on Tuesday? If so, I am a little bit puzzled as to why. If a seller in Germany sells a weapon that is illegal in the UK to somebody in the UK, or a knife to a 16-year-old in the UK, how is it not possible to prosecute that company somewhere else in the European Union for having committed an offence?

We had a debate on Tuesday about amendment 53, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, which proposed that the age threshold for knife purchases be raised from 18 to 21, and the Minister quite properly explained some of the difficulties with that. However, I hope that we will not leave this issue here. There is a compelling case for saying that some of those very unpleasant weapons, the only purpose of which can be to do damage to others, should not be freely available, as they are at the moment, to 19 and 20-year-olds. I take the point that there is not an amendment that would have that effect on the amendment paper at the moment, but I hope that we will not let this matter pass. We have to change the way the age restrictions work and find ways to limit the supply of weapons that are inflicting appalling injuries—and indeed death—on far too many people in our country.

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

It continues to be a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Police records show that knife crime has increased by 16% and possession offences have increased by 28% in the year ending March 2018. The right hon. Member for East Ham has given us a taste of the devastation that those offences cause to not just the people immediately involved in the aftermath of an attack—families and friends—but the wider community. That is why, after months of detailed work with charities, the police, local authorities, health care providers and others, the Government gathered together the evidence and published the “Serious Violence Strategy” in April this year. I hope the right hon. Gentleman and others will see that it is a game-changer in how we tackle serious violence. It does not just focus on how the police tackle serious violence, although that is very important, but puts the emphasis on early intervention. As we know from discussions in this Committee, many perpetrators and victims of these crimes are children.

As part of the strategy, we are investing £22 million over the next two years in a new early intervention youth fund to provide joined-up support to youth groups and communities working with children and young people. The right hon. Member for East Ham mentioned police resources; I will touch on that lightly, as we discuss this subject in many forums. Although the policing response is incredibly important, there are other much bigger drivers of the upsurge in violence. Sadly, we all know the upturn in county lines and know that the drugs market is a major driver of the violence, but that is for another occasion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Months of work have gone into the “Serious Violence Strategy”, and the Bill will try to assist not only the police but online retailers. I do not for a moment suggest that they are deliberately trying to evade the law, and we want to help law-abiding retailers to fulfil their responsibilities under the law. We hope that setting out these conditions, which will no doubt be widely disseminated in the industry and among retailers, will help retailers satisfy themselves that they have met the expectations of the law on those sales. The clause should be read in conjunction with clause 15, which is another stage in the process of preventing knives that are bought online being delivered to residential premises.

[Stephen Timms]

The Minister gave the example of somebody aged 16 buying a knife online. I am not sure that an offence would have been committed there if the supplier of the knife was based outside the UK. I do not know if they were, but that is very likely; they could have been from Germany or China. Was there a prosecution in that case, and if the supplier was outside the UK, is there nothing the law can do about it?

[Victoria Atkins]

Because Bailey was killed, the police who conducted the investigation charged the young boy with murder. The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the subsidiary offence of possession was probably not on the indictment—or the Scottish equivalent—although I do not wish to speculate on that. However, Aberdeen City Council conducted an independent review of the circumstances of Bailey’s death and found that the boy had bought the knife via Amazon.co.uk. The point of the clause is to say that if someone is relying on the existing defence of having taken reasonable precautions, they must meet the four conditions in clause 12. It sets out those conditions in a strict manner. I will come on to the point about overseas sales in a moment, if I may.

[Stephen Timms]

By the sound of it, there should have been a prosecution in that case. Someone who was 16 was sold a knife. Clearly, if it was a UK supplier—I think the Minister indicated that it was—a criminal offence had been carried out. Surely there should then have been a prosecution.

[Victoria Atkins]

It was sold by means of Amazon. It was a Scottish case, so I will have to find that out for the right hon. Gentleman, but I make the point about Amazon. If he remembers, we had this discussion about the difficulty with Amazon or a business such as Amazon. That difficulty is discerning when Amazon is selling in its own right as Amazon and when it is acting as a marketplace, antiques fair or whatever analogy one wants to use. That is difficult, a very tricky area in which to put into law the ill-harm we are addressing. The provisions on overseas sales try to address that. I do not pretend that we are 100% there, but we are trying to weave our way through to ensure that companies that knowingly take on online delivery of overseas sales meet the threshold. We will return to that at the appropriate clause.

Clause 12 amends section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which makes it an offence to sell bladed articles to people under 18. That defence—namely, that the seller took

“all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the commission of the offence”—

is modified, or explained, in clause 12 for when the sale is conducted remotely. If sellers do not put in place minimum requirements to meet the conditions set out in the clause, they will not be able to avail themselves of the defence that they took “all reasonable precautions” or “exercised all due diligence” to avoid an offence being committed.

The first requirement is that the seller has a system in place to verify the age of the purchaser. Sellers are expected to have robust age-verification processes to reassure themselves that the person to whom they are selling is 18 or above. The legislation does not prescribe what constitutes a robust age-verification procedure, and that is deliberate, because we know all too well how quickly the online world is moving. The age-verification industry is evolving rapidly, as we saw with the Digital Economy Act 2017. We do not want to put something in statute that is a commercial decision for retailers or that might result in out-of-date measures in 12 months’ time or ones that could already be improved.

Frankly, it is for business owners to decide which solution is best for their business model. I draw an analogy with the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which does not set out what is expected of anyone running a business such as a construction company or an iron foundry, but does set out the expectation that those employers will take all reasonable practicable steps to protect their workforce and members of the public.

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[Victoria Atkins]

Yes, that is absolutely what we are trying to improve upon. Some retailers think that that is sufficient. It is simply not sufficient. If they are going to make those sales, I am afraid that, in the interest of the wider community, they have to ensure that they are lawfully permitted to sell to the people to whom they are selling. A tick-box exercise is simply not good enough.

A second requirement is for the package to be marked clearly to the effect that it contains an article with a blade—or one that is sharp and pointed—and that it can be delivered only into the hands of a person aged 18 or over. Frankly, I should have hoped that sellers would already have similar arrangements, if they wanted to ensure that a knife sold remotely would not be handed over to a person under 18, under current legislation. However, unfortunately some sellers do not mark the package as age-restricted, so we are building the further safeguard into the Bill.

The third requirement is for the seller to take all reasonable precautions to ensure that when the package is delivered it is handed to a person aged 18 or over. Again, the seller has a responsibility to ensure that the company delivering the item understands that age must be verified before it is handed over. The fourth requirement is for the seller not to deliver the package, or arrange for it to be delivered, to a locker. Some delivery companies nowadays have those facilities. That is not permissible for the sale of bladed articles—bladed products—under the clause. Obviously it would fall foul of the age verification process.

We expect that, with the placing of those minimum requirements on a statutory footing, they will be standard practice to comply with existing legislation.

[Stephen Timms]

Before the Minister concludes, can I ask the question I raised earlier? Is it the case that a seller outside the UK is outside the jurisdiction of the measures?

[Victoria Atkins]

It is. There are very few offences for which we have been able to seek extraterritorial jurisdiction. The right hon. Gentleman will know, for example, that if murder or female genital mutilation are planned outside the jurisdiction, we can make applications for extraterritorial jurisdiction to be satisfied, but on this occasion if the act of sale takes place outside the UK, it is not covered by the Bill. That is precisely why we are using clause 18 to try none the less to contain that activity.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 13 and 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 15

Delivery of bladed products to residential premises etc

[Stephen Timms]

I beg to move amendment 46, in clause 15, page 14, line 37, leave out “residential premises” and insert

“premises other than a registered business address”.

[The Chair]

With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 48 to clause 15, page 15, line 1, leave out subsections (5) and (6).

Amendment 47 to clause 15, page 15, line 1, leave out “solely”.

[Stephen Timms]

These three amendments are intended to plug what seems to me a fairly obvious loophole in the arrangements set out in clause 15. I should make it clear that I come from a position of wanting to support clause 15, although I recognise that there will be others who will want to express some misgivings about it. Nevertheless, it is right that the clause aims to stop the delivery of weapons to people in their homes.

As the clause makes clear, it will not apply if there is any business carried out from the address in question. Subsection (6) says:

“The circumstances where premises are not residential premises for the purposes of that subsection include, in particular, where a person carries on a business from the premises.”

For example, if somebody lived in a flat above a shop and had the same address as the shop, I think that as the clause stands there would be no bar to their having a knife delivered to their home.

Surely what we ought to be doing is stopping the delivery of weapons to places where people live. Amendments 46 and 48 attempt to do that by restricting the delivery of weapons to a registered business address. At the moment, clause 15 says that weapons cannot be delivered to residential addresses. My amendment suggests that that should be turned around, so that the clause says that they can only be delivered to a registered business address. Amendment 47 would do things rather differently, changing the definition of “residential premises”, so that premises where people both live and work would be included in the bar, by removing “solely” from clause 15(5).

I am conscious that neither approach is entirely without problems, so I do not plan to press the amendments to a vote. However, it is important to raise this issue, as the clause seems to have a significant loophole. Can the Minister reassure the Committee that that loophole will be plugged? I would also like to make some wider comments about the clause 15. Would you like me to do that now, Mr Gray, in the debate on these amendments, or shall I wait?

[The Chair]

It would be very sensible to do that now rather than have a stand part debate, yes. [Interruption.] The two Front-Bench spokespeople have indicated to me that they will seek a stand part debate on clause 15. Therefore, broader discussion of the clause will have to wait until then and we will deal with the amendments now.

[Stephen Timms]

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn was about to intervene on me.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine, Robert from West Hampstead, wrote to me saying that

“As a self-employed cabinet maker and a wood carver, I rely on having such tools for my business and, indeed, having them delivered to my home and place of work from time to time.”

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although his amendment is a sensible one, it is necessary to ensure that the self-employed are not unduly caught up by this well-meaning clause?

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend makes a very fair point and I have no doubt that it was instances such as that that lie behind the framing of the clause as it stands. Indeed, I myself have been contacted by a company that sells tools for hunting; I think that is right. That company asked whether my amendment would exclude the delivery of knives to sole traders—people working from home.

I must say that I have got a bit less sympathy for people who are selling knives from home than for people like my hon. Friend’s constituent, who are simply obtaining tools for their own use to pursue their occupations. Of course, if we went down the amendments 46 and 48 route, whereby such things could be supplied only to a registered business address, that would avoid the difficulty to which my hon. Friend rightly refers. The amendment 47 approach would exclude delivery to people such as my hon. Friend’s constituent, and I accept that that would be difficult to justify. That is why I made the point that I do not think that either of the two approaches I have described is the solution to the problem. The Government are right to want to restrict sales of very dangerous weapons to people’s homes. There is a bit of a loophole here, and I hope it can be addressed.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his amendment. We have tried to limit the impact of these measures wherever possible to the issue of real concern: preventing young people from having access to the most offensive types of knives online. We are not trying to make life difficult for the constituent of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn. It is a balancing act.

Amendment 46 would have the effect of restricting the range of addresses to which a remote seller can send a bladed product. It might mean, for example, that bladed products bought online could not be sent to a school or a hospital, which may not be registered as business addresses. A person working from home—for example, someone working part-time or engaged in irregular work from home—might not have registered their home as a business address. A farm might or might not be registered as a business address. We are very conscious of the fact that clause 15 will already have an impact on the online trade of bladed products, which can cover anything from breadknives to specialist bladed knives used for woodworking or agricultural activities, as the right hon. Member for East Ham described. We are trying to limit the impact on that legitimate trade by allowing deliveries to businesses to continue. The business could be a farm, a hospital, a school or a business run from someone’s home.

We considered using a registered business address as the basis for the offence, but we decided against that because there is no simple way for sellers to ascertain whether a premise is a registered business address—particularly if the person working there is self-employed or part-time. Of course, not all types of businesses that we would want to be able to receive deliveries will necessarily operate from a registered business address. We therefore took the approach of preventing the dispatch of bladed products to a premise that is used solely as a residential premise. That will allow deliveries to continue to hospitals, hotels, care homes, schools, restaurants, farms and any residential premise from which a business operates, such as a plumber who operates from home.

The right hon. Gentleman gave the example of a flat above a shop. It depends on the construction of the premise, but if it is a divided premise—in other words, if the flat has nothing to do with the shop—I suspect it would be viewed as a residential premise and so would be covered by the clause.

[Victoria Atkins]

There are a range of ways in which the seller may satisfy themselves of that purpose. They could ask the buyer to produce evidence that the address to which they are delivering is a business. It might take the form of a document confirming that it is a registered business address. It might be that the buyer supplies business papers showing the address, a document setting out that the property is subject to business rates or a simple confirmation email from the buyer to confirm that they work from that address.

There are many ways in which to tackle this issue, and the step-by-step process that the Bill proposes will make it less and less likely that a young person who is sadly on a path of criminality will think it is worth the hassle, frankly. Sellers emailing buyers to confirm their business address and to ask what sort of business they operate and so on will put a responsibility on the buyer as well, and rightly so. I hope that that explanation of our approach satisfies the right hon. Gentleman, and I invite him to withdraw his amendments.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for that response, which she set out clearly. I am interested to hear that officials considered the approach based on a registered business address. In my mind, given the importance of restricting access to dangerous weapons, it might not be a bad thing to say to people that, if they want to buy what can be used as a dangerous weapon, they will have to register their address as a business address. However, I take the point that that is perhaps not the appropriate step to take for now. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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

[Louise Haigh]

I fully understand and appreciate why my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham tabled his amendments, and that was an interesting discussion. However, I believe that the clause is fraught with potential consequences that could result from its application.

I think I am right in saying that the clause’s sole purpose is to ensure that the clause around sale to under-18s is absolutely safeguarded; as the Minister just described, the Bill, as it goes through, step by step, enforces previous clauses. However, it does not seem that other options presented to the Government, the Home Office and the Committee that would equally enforce those clauses have been properly considered by the Home Office, and I am confused about why they have not been added to the Bill.

One potential solution lies within the Bill itself. As we have discussed, clause 18 sets out the provisions by which an international seller can use a delivery company to deliver a bladed article, and the obligations on that delivery company to ensure that it is delivered into the hands of an adult. Could we not mirror that clause for UK sales, so that delivery companies for all UK sellers required age verification to prove that a buyer was over 18? Alternatively, the Minister could consider section 151 of the Licensing Act 2003, which covers the delivery of alcohol to children and when a seller is liable to a fine if a delivery is made to a person under the age of 18.

As the Committee has established, the clause’s potential consequences are extremely far-reaching; we have heard one example already, but others abound. I am sure that many Committee members will have received representations from businesses in their constituencies. As someone from Sheffield, I have obviously heard from plenty of knife manufacturers from the great steel city. I will come on to their concerns shortly.

I am concerned that an outright prohibition on sales to residential addresses, and all the unintended consequences that would follow, would not be necessary if the Government were clear on measures for online age verification. Surely, if we are prescriptive enough on age verification standards, these clauses would be unnecessary. However, the Bill makes no provision for such standards. We still do not know what the guidance, which the Government intend to issue, will say, when it will be issued or whether it will be statutory. It would be helpful if the Minister provided the Committee with the draft guidance that the Government intend to issue to online retailers on age verification. The Digital Economy Bill Committee, which passed verification measures, received draft guidance to help us scrutinise that Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

The concerns of retailers operating in this space are obvious. They believe they conduct legitimate sales, with thorough age verification checks on any number of products. Of course we support the objective of the clause to limit the ability of all under-18s to purchase knives online, but there are several other options available to the Government that would better achieve that.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend has drawn the Committee’s attention to an interesting alternative approach suggested by industry. If I have understood correctly what she has said, the real problem is stopping knives from getting to under-18s. I am more sympathetic to what I understand the Government’s aim to be—stopping dangerous weapons getting to anybody, however old they are, and being delivered to them at home, but my hon. Friend raised some interesting and telling points.

When I read clauses 15 to 17, I did wonder whether the Government intend to stop the delivery of cutlery to people’s homes. The Minister is indicating that that is not the Government’s intention, but it is not clear to me where that is carved out in the wording of the Bill. As my hon. Friend pointed out, clause 17 tells us what a bladed product is, and I cannot see there where cutlery is carved out. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that.

[Louise Haigh]

My understanding is that a bladed product must be able to provide serious injury. I do not believe that that would include cutlery, although steak knives would be covered.

[Stephen Timms]

I am sure my hon. Friend is right. The real question I wanted to raise here is different: the position of sellers from overseas. As we have now discussed on a number of occasions, there is a real difficulty in stopping overseas sellers who are contacted online from doing things that the Bill does not want them to do.

In the case of clause 12, which is about the sale of bladed articles to under-18s, clause 18, which puts an onus on the delivery company where the seller is outside the UK, had to be alongside it. In clause 15, as far as I can see, there is not another parallel clause placing responsibility on the delivery company.

I hope I am wrong—if I am, I am sure the Minister will point it out—but it looks to me as though sellers outside the UK will be entirely exempted from the requirement set out in clause 15, because there is no way for them to be penalised for sending a dangerous weapon to residential premises somewhere. If that is the case, the clause will simply force everybody who wants these things delivered to their homes to buy them from overseas suppliers instead of UK suppliers, such as those based in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley. That would be a pretty damaging outcome.

If clause 15 is going to be made to work, something must be done to address the problem of overseas sellers simply carrying on sending dangerous weapons to people’s homes, which the Bill as it stands makes no effort to address. The clause will be pointless because people will get round it in a very straightforward way.

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[Victoria Atkins]

This is all it is. I hope that this message is made clear to those retailers who have understandably expressed concerns: it is simply about ensuring that, at the point of sale, they have done what they should have done to check the age of the customers they are selling to. Frankly, they should have been doing that for the past 30 years. Let us not forget that the item will be clearly labelled at the point of handover—that is a condition of clause 12, as it is for the retailer to ensure that the delivery company, the post office, or whoever, knows that—and those conditions must be met. A great deal of thought has gone into the clause. We have very much tried to balance the needs of small businesses, Royal Mail and other delivery drivers, and of the law-abiding community who want to purchase knives online. We have excluded businesses run from home because we have listened to the responses to the consultation. We accept that a farm may well require bladed articles, and a farm on which someone lives and from which they run their business is frankly not the target of the Bill.

[Stephen Timms]

As I have indicated, I am comfortable with the clause, although the Minister should acknowledge what my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley pointed out. It will not be possible in future to have kitchen scissors, for example, delivered to a home because they have blades longer than 3 inches. That is what the Minister is telling the Committee, and I have no problem with that, but she must acknowledge that that is indeed the implication. If kitchen scissor blades are longer than 3 inches, which normally they are, as I understand the clause it will not be possible to have those scissors delivered to a home; they will have to be picked up from a post office.

I want to ask her, as well, about my point on overseas sellers. As I understand it, someone selling products to customers outside of the UK will be able to carry on posting them directly to customers’ homes without any hindrance. Is that correct?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am afraid I will not say that all kitchen scissors are prohibited under the legislation, as the right hon. Gentleman would like me to do. With the best will in the world, I cannot say whether every pair of kitchen scissors has 3-inch blades or not. [Interruption.] I am sorry, I did not hear the intervention from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley. Manufacturers will have to look at the definition. We have tried to accommodate the needs of business while keeping the intent of the Bill intact.

We will move on to the international element in clause 18, but extraterritorial jurisdiction issues mean that because the point of sale is overseas and English jurisdiction does not stretch to Germany or China, we have had to try to deal with what we can here in the UK. We will move on to that debate in due course, but there is a reason we have differentiated UK and international sales. If a manufacturer or a seller has an existing agreement with a delivery company, and the delivery company knows the person to whom they are selling products, we expect them to make age checks themselves. That is a different scenario from, say, the woodcutter in Hampstead who sells the items. They can use all the delivery companies in this country as long as they follow the steps, and someone will have to go to a shop or a post office to pick the package up.