Offensive Weapons Bill (Eighth sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

That is not technically a point of order, but I know that Committee members will be grateful for the Minister’s clarification of her previous remarks. If any Member wants to return to that matter they may do so shortly, during the stand part debate.

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

I thank the Minister for her explanation of the defences set out in the clause. I do not think that anybody has a problem with the defence set out in subsection (1), which seems absolutely reasonable. Subsection (4) seems fine, so far as it goes, although there is some suggestion that it might be useful to add some other purposes to that list.

However, subsections (2) and (3) are what my amendment is really about. I suspect and hope that they will work absolutely fine in practice, but they seem to have been drafted in a rather woolly manner. Subsection (2) is about bespoke manufacture. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think she said that adding “for a particular lawful purpose” into subsection (2), as my amendment would, would probably prove pointless in reality, on the basis that a buyer would simply make up a purpose to circumvent the rules. I may have picked that up wrong.

However, the amendment’s wording simply reflects virtually the same test that is already in subsection (3), which is about bespoke adaptations. Why is it pointless for bespoke manufacturers to have to check the purpose of the instructions that they are given, but sensible, and included in the Bill, for those doing adaptations to have to ask the buyer’s purpose and perform some sort of check? I do not know why there is that inconsistency. What is required of those doing bespoke adaptations in checking the purpose? Do they simply have to see whether the adaptation seems to fit the purpose that they have been told it is for?

As it stands, and as I pointed out earlier, the Bill does not even require that purpose to be lawful—it only has to be a “particular purpose”. I suspect that it is implied that it should be lawful, but that is not absolutely clear to me. For example, if I ask for an adaptation for the purpose of making a blade even more lethal, that would be a “particular purpose”, but it certainly would not be a lawful one. I would like some reassurance that that defence would not be allowed to be made. It may be that I am worrying over nothing, but it seems that there is still a little bit of difficulty in working out where we stand with subsections (2) and (3). For now, I think it is probably best that I leave it to the Minister and her officials to discuss. 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 (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I want to consider a couple of other areas that we have not covered on which the Committee received evidence. One such example is a request for a defence under the clause for Scout groups and other such charities. We have received evidence that a large number of people who buy knives from this particular business are Scout groups and Scout leaders and, because of the way they operate, the majority of their orders are placed by Scout leaders and delivered to their homes. They are concerned that this ban would stop that and force them to go and pick up from other access points. The evidence we received requested that a specific defence could be made allowing charities to have knives delivered to their registered addresses. All Scout groups are registered charities.

The other area of concern that has been raised is antiques. I appreciate that in another part of the Bill we will be discussing antiques and the need for more controls on antique firearms, but just for the purposes of clarification and to respond to the many people who are concerned about this bit of the Bill, could the Minister tell us why she has rejected the proposals to include purchases for charities and of antiques as a defence under this clause?

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Victoria Atkins]

Clause 18 introduces a criminal offence if a delivery company delivers, on behalf of a seller based abroad, a bladed article into the hands of a person aged under 18. A bladed article is an article to which section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies. Eagle-eyed Committee members will have noticed that we have moved from talking about a bladed product to a bladed article. The law under section 141A of the CJA applies to knives and certain articles with a blade or point—for example, axes, razor blades other than those that are encased, and all knives other than folding knives with a blade of less than three inches. Actually, with bladed products the length of the blade is also irrelevant, unless it is a folding pocket knife.

I am very conscious of the points that the right hon. Member for East Ham made about clause 18(1)(d), and I will reflect on them. I am also very conscious of the points made by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, and will reflect on those, too.

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for her observations. It is part of the balancing exercise regarding delivery. If a delivery company makes the commercial decision to enter into a contract or arrangement with someone overseas selling products, we have sought to place the responsibility on the delivery company for ensuring that all is well with the person to whom they are providing a service. Extra-territorial jurisdiction is sadly not just an issue in the case of offensive weapons, but in many areas, such as ordering drugs over the internet, particularly using the dark web. We have sought to control it through that mechanism.

For sales where the seller and buyer are in the United Kingdom, we asked delivery companies as part of our consultation exercise what they would make of placing criminal liability on their post office workers or delivery drivers. We concluded that were we to expand the provision to all online sales of knives, delivery companies might start to say to themselves, “It’s just not worth it commercially for us to deliver these knives or bladed products at all. We won’t do it.” That would leave our small businesses in great trouble, because they would be unable to get their products to their customers.

I know that small businesses are having to go through a number of checks to get their products into the hands of their lawful purchasers, but we hope that the provisions in relation to the online world overseas will mean that delivery companies are very careful when they enter into such arrangements.