Offensive Weapons Bill (First sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

No.

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

Q Mr Shah, the Bill would seek to make it an offence to sell corrosive products to people under the age of 18. Would you be concerned if the Bill did not also make it an offence to supply corrosive substances to under-18s for free, or for example to buy a corrosive substance on behalf of someone under the age of 18?

Jaf Shah: I suspect that it is quite common, so it would be a big concern. I will, if I may, briefly divert back to the point we have all been making around the public health approach and make an economic case for that: we conducted an economic impact assessment of acid attacks in the UK for six years. Acid attacks alone cost £350 million over six years. If we include knife crime and gun crime then we are looking at costs far in excess of £1 billion. That is an economic case to make a long-term public health approach a viable way of dealing with the problem.

[Tulip Siddiq]

Q Mr Owen, I was struck by what you said about safe places to stab people, and that it was on social media. I do not know what kind of relationship you have with social media platforms that promote this, and whether there is an onus on them to take responsibility for the fact that this is being advertised, and young people are being influenced by it.

Rob Owen: There is slowly, slowly beginning to be some work. The platforms they use are well known; it mainly involves two or three platforms. The Home Office are trying to engage with the issue, but there is still a lot of resistance from them. Often it is hidden, and is not obvious. The youngsters know where to go to find it, but not many others do. It is about starting to get to gritty levels where someone can flag it and it gets taken off instantly, with the process being speeded up. There are small amounts of funding going in and it is beginning to happen, but obviously it is not enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

Q Ben, do come in. You presumably would also need specific training. It is pretty clear what a knife is, but for a corrosive substance you need a bit more technical knowledge presumably.

Trish Burls: Absolutely.

Ben Richards: What I would say is that some areas are very different depending on what their local priorities are. Some areas will not have those voluntary agreements in place. Likewise, as the changes come in, there will not be that preparation for taking action in their local area, because it will not be seen as a priority at all. It is the decision of each local authority to make those preparations how they see fit.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q A couple of quick questions. First, the Bill seeks to make it an offence to sell corrosive substances. Is there a need also to make it an offence to supply without consideration corrosive substances to under-18s—for example, a 19-year-old buying a corrosive substance on behalf of a younger sibling, or someone else?

Andrew Penhale: The trouble is, what constitutes a supply? A mother buying bleach for a son who is 17 and moved into his own flat would constitute a supply. Once you move into the domestic setting it becomes rather difficult to police in a neat way. There are offences that could be committed if, for instance, somebody purchased a corrosive substance with a view to an offence being committed. You would need wider evidence of that, but we could prosecute that now.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Would it not be better to deal with the domestic situation that you have described by having a defence to the offence of supply, rather than just removing supply from the Bill altogether?

Andrew Penhale: It would seem a bit odd to make it an arrestable offence to supply in a perfectly innocent way. I understand the point you are making; I just think the practicalities of drafting would be quite difficult. I think there are sufficient powers. You would have to prove that there was a degree of knowledge or belief that a criminal offence was going to be committed. If, for instance, somebody provided bleach for a domestic purpose, clearly an offence would not be committed. The evidential hurdle would be to prove a knowledge or belief that an offence was going to be committed. I think we could prosecute for that already. There are offences under the Serious Crime Act 2015, for instance, that allow us to prosecute offences of incitement or assistance in the commission of an offence. The hurdles are evidential rather than legal ones.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q That is very helpful, thank you. You also mentioned that quite often the people involved in the delivery of either corrosive substances or knives will be different from the remote seller. Do you think that the Bill goes far enough in placing responsibilities on delivery companies not to do so to residential premises, or to persons under 18?

Andrew Penhale: I think it does go far enough. The difficulty is where you impose the obligation. These days, the delivery companies are often people who are completely unconnected with the retail function; they are just paid on a job to deliver to x number of people in a certain amount of time. I think the requirement for due diligence on their part is really important. Whether that should go further, I am not sure.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Just to give you an example that struck me, it is an offence, as I understand it—I might be wrong—for a delivery person to deliver a corrosive product, or indeed a knife, to a person under 18 if the seller is outside the United Kingdom. I do not understand why the provisions relate only to a seller outside the United Kingdom. Do you have any idea why that might be the case?

Andrew Penhale: I think that is an additional measure to capture those occasions when, obviously, the retailers have not gone through that due diligence because they are operating internationally, so it is then required on delivery. The difficulty is, of course, that if they do not know what it is, they would not have committed the offence. We cannot impose obligations on international companies. That is an additional element, which is an important obligation on them, but whether it has sufficient weight is debatable, because they might not know what they are delivering.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q A final question from me. There is a new offence of delivery of bladed products to residential premises. For perfectly understandable reasons, there are various defences. For example, for a person charged with an offence under section 15—delivery to residential premises—a defence is that, first, the bladed product was adapted for the buyer before its delivery in accordance with specifications provided by the buyer and, secondly, such adaptations were made to enable and facilitate the use of the product by the buyer or its use for a particular purpose. That seems to be pretty broad and almost vague. Do you have any concerns about the scope of the defences?

Andrew Penhale: I might have to come back to you on that. It is an interesting point. Various measures have been specifically drafted to allow handmade products and things like that. On whether there are wider concerns in the CPS, I would like to come back to you, if I may.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Are there any other comments on any of those questions?

Trish Burls: I would certainly like to come in on the residential premises one. The definition of residential premises could cause a problem for businesses and enforcers alike, in that residential premises have been defined in the Bill as places purely for residential use—no business use at all. These days, increasingly, many people work from home or have businesses registered at home and so on, so businesses might find that difficult to comply with and enforcers might find it difficult to enforce against.

[Stephen Timms]

Q The Bill makes it an offence to sell corrosive substances to people under 18. As I understand it, the evidence is that when checks are made of retailers’ compliance with not selling things that they are already prohibited from selling to under-18s, there is a high level of failure. Can you tell us a little about what trading standards’ experience is of the degree of compliance with bans on sales to under-18s, what you think that tells us about how effective the ban will be in this case, and what we can do to make it more effective?

Trish Burls: In terms of age-restricted products in general, do you mean?