Modern-day Slavery

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing the debate. It is a timely opportunity to start contributing to the welcome review that the Government have announced. I congratulate all hon. Members for covering so much ground in so little time—I will try to do a little bit of justice to the debate.

I pay tribute to the work of the all-party parliamentary group. It is not just the chairs who have incredible expertise and commitment. At the few meetings that I have attended all the members have contributed fantastically, as has been illustrated by hon. Members’ speeches. It is also good to see that the Minister and officials are engaging. I think everyone is genuinely committed to doing their best to try to tackle this horrendous issue. Hon. Members have, quite rightly, paid tribute to the huge range of individuals and institutions that are doing tremendous work on this issue. We are dealing with horrible offences, as the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) eloquently and powerfully set out.

The question we have tried to cover is how we can improve some of our response. The first issue raised was support for victims. There have been calls to put support on a statutory footing, as has happened in equivalent legislation in Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Government here may now want to do that. We have also talked about extending of the period for which support is in place to 45 days. After consultation with victims and NGOs in Scotland, the Government there have extended the period from 45 days to 90 days. We have to be evidence-led, and it may well be in due course that that is shown to be insufficient—the Government here may want to look at that as well.

That brings us on to the immigration rules. I used to be an immigration solicitor. I have to say, I find it incredibly difficult to understand what the status of victims is after they have been through the national referral mechanism. There is definitely a need for clarity and simplicity. I agree with the recommendation of the Work and Pensions Committee of an automatic period of leave, which could be for up to a year.

A number of hon. Members raised issues about training and the resourcing of frontline staff who will encounter victims of modern slavery. We heard about the police, and we have had reports from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary as well as the Haughey review. There is a lot of work to do around sharing best practice from forces that do a very good job, such as Greater Manchester police. Some forces are doing it well, but can we expand that work? Other hon. Members mentioned local authorities and the health service as well.

Finally, there are a couple of issues that I will just mention in passing. We need to look again at the stage at which victims of modern slavery are entitled to legal aid, because they have big decisions to make before they have access to important legal advice. Finally, one or two hon. Members touched on Brexit. We could have a whole separate debate on the implications of Brexit for ethical trade, justice and home affairs co-operation and all sorts of other things, but I will leave it to the two other Front Benchers to expand on some of those points.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Ninth sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[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.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Seventh sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

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

[Victoria Atkins]

We have based the Bill on existing offences, rather than setting up a completely new approach. There has been a lot of talk about small businesses. The system that the hon. Lady described strikes me, as someone who used to be self-employed, as a whole raft of new bureaucracy, in a way that these measures will not be. We did not consider that option, because we felt that this system is preferable to trying to construct a whole new system that would place a burden on the woodcutter in Hampstead or the occasional crafter in rural areas. We believe that these conditions are sensible and reasonable, and I think that they will become part of day-to-day business life very quickly.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 15 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 16

Defences to offence under section 15

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

I beg to move amendment 45, in clause 16, page 15, line 26, at end insert “for a particular lawful purpose.”

This is a probing amendment to allow debate on the appropriate scope of defences under Clause 16.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Given the vigorous debate we have had on clause 15, clause 16 is also important, because it provides the defences to the offence that we have just been discussing. One of those defences is simply that the seller did all they reasonably could to avoid delivery to residential premises, but the other three set out circumstances in which the law will deem it justified to sell and deliver to residential premises and a defence can therefore be made.

The Minister referred to a balancing act. That is the test that we have here. On the one hand, there is clearly a concern—we have heard it today—to ensure that the defences are wide enough to protect legitimate businesses. On the other hand, there is also a concern to concern that we do not draft the defences so widely that they can be abused to avoid culpability, or in a way that means that the offence set out in clause 15 becomes worthless.

The amendment is designed to provoke discussion about whether we have that balance right. It asks a couple of immediate questions. First, why is there a particular purpose test in clause 16(3), which relates to sellers who have adapted bladed products in accordance with specific instructions, but there is no particular purpose tests in clause 16(2), where a bladed product has been designed or manufactured in accordance with specific instructions? It is not immediately clear to me why the purpose of either the adaptation or the design is relevant to one but not the other.

Secondly, does there need to be more restrictions on the range of purposes that will allow for the defence to arise? All that is required now is that it is a particular purpose. I am guessing that it is implied in law that the purpose must to be lawful—for example, adapting a blade for the particular purpose of making it more efficient as a weapon does not amount to a defence—but I would appreciate confirmation.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I am inclined to agree with the hon. Gentleman that the section could be more specific in scope. For example, if historical re-enactment is to be included as a defence, as it is in line 35, surely it will be necessary to have a comprehensive list of bladed articles associated with that activity, so that carrying them is not classified as an offence. Does he agree that the clause could benefit from greater detail and clarity over exemptions for reasonable, law-abiding people, such as the self-employed artists in my constituency who have been lobbying me on this?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

That is a perfectly legitimate question. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say to that. It begs the question: to what extent is there an onus on the seller to scrutinise the claimed purpose of the adaptation, be it for historical re-enactment or anything else? Is it simply a case of whether the adaptation was consistent with the claimed purpose, or is there more involved?

We have already heard about the other defence, and the specific purposes set out that would make it acceptable to deliver to residential premises—sporting purposes and historical re-enactments. It gets to the point where I wonder whether, in an ideal world, we might simply provide an exhaustive list of purposes for which it would be acceptable to deliver. I appreciate that that would not be easy, or without risks, but it might be a much clearer way of approaching the challenge. Obviously a list could be added, perhaps by statutory instrument.

The amendment flags up concerns about whether the defences will really do the job of protecting from prosecution the businesses that we do not want to be prosecuted, while ensuring that the provisions cannot be abused by those who want to do harm.

[Victoria Atkins]

Clause 16 sets out the defences that apply in relation to the offence in clause 15. Subsection (1) sets out that it is a defence for the accused to prove that they took all reasonable precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid sending the item to a residential address. That is an important safeguard. We expect sellers to check that the address to which the bladed article is to be delivered is not residential and, in case of doubt, to send the package to a collection point. However, sellers should not be penalised if, for instance, records show incorrectly that an address is a business address when in fact it is residential.

I will deal with subsections (2) and (3) together because the rationale behind them is the same. Subsection (2) provides an exemption if the bladed product was designed or manufactured in accordance with specifications provided by the buyer. Subsection (3) provides that it is a defence if the bladed product was adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating its use for a particular purpose. So those who sell or manufacture custom-made bladed articles, or who adapt them, will continue to deliver those specialist items at a residential address. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East mentioned the impact on disabled people. The provisions may well help in circumstances where, for example, someone has to have a knife adapted because of disability. The defence would be available to the seller that it was delivered to a residential address for that purpose.

Subsection (4) provides for a defence if the bladed product is to be used for sporting purposes or historical re-enactment. We received a lot of submissions on historical re-enactments—I am surprised and delighted to see that so many people in the country engage in that interesting activity. Subsections (8) and (9) set out what is meant by the phrases “historical re-enactment” and “sporting purposes”.

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.

British Citizenship Fees: Children

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fees for registering children as British citizens.

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I trust that you are feeling suitably refreshed after the summer recess. What better way to start the new term than by seeking to ensure that all children entitled to British citizenship can access it and not be prevented from doing so by an exorbitant Home Office fee?

I thank colleagues from the different political parties who supported the debate application, the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and everyone who has come along to support it. I also thank the 69 MPs, from every political party in the House of Commons, who have signed early-day motion 1262. Finally, I thank all the campaigning organisations that have been working incredibly hard, including the Children’s Society, Coram Children’s Legal Centre, Let Us Learn, the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens—PRCBC—and Amnesty International.

What we all seek is utterly reasonable and a very modest proposal. All we are asking the Home Office to do is to put in place a charging regime for registering children as British citizens that is fair and that allows them to access their right to citizenship, rather than one that leaves them to seek various forms of costly and precarious immigration status and sometimes with no status at all.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman may have seen that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has announced that he has asked for a review. Does the hon. Gentleman have an idea of what might come of that?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I hope good things come of the review, but I suspect that the Minister will be in a better position to provide us with answers.

We seek a system that reflects what Parliament intended when it passed the British Nationality Act 1981—that is, a system that makes it easy for kids with the requisite close connections to Britain to exercise their right to British citizenship, not one that makes money out of them by charging what the Home Secretary himself has described as a “huge” sum of money in order to fund other Home Office work. That is the case in a nutshell. In the remainder of my contribution, I plan to look at what Parliament intended for these children when it passed the legislation in 1981 and then to make the case that what the Home Office has put in place undermines rather than implements those intentions.

In 1983, Parliament scrapped the laws that meant that being born in the United Kingdom was in itself enough to make a person British. As well as being born in Britain, a person now also needs to have a parent who is settled or a UK citizen at the time of their birth. That was an understandable step. Many countries, although not all, have done the same. In a world in which people can live in several countries over their lifetime, place of birth is not necessarily the best way to identify a person’s true home country—the country that the person is most closely connected to and that should take them under its wing. However, in taking that step, Parliament was careful and mindful of the fact that it did not want to leave significant numbers of children for whom Britain is home deprived of that citizenship and the protections, security and stability that the anchor of citizenship can provide, which is precisely why it enacted provisions on registration.

British-born kids who were not automatically British at birth are allowed to register as British if they lived in the UK for the first 10 years of their life; either parent settles or becomes British before the kid turns 18; or if the kid was stateless at birth and lived for five continuous years in this country. Citizenship is their right. There is no discretion for the Home Secretary, although the 1981 Act rightly retained a discretion for the Home Secretary to allow other children to register, including those who came here at an early age and are to all intents and purposes British.

We could one day have a different debate on whether the rules are precisely the right ones and whether they draw the lines in the right place, but I think nobody could disagree that this type of rule was essential. The policy reasons behind them were quite right. In ending jus soli or citizenship by birthplace alone, it was vital to ensure that the thousands of kids for whom Britain was and is home should still enjoy that citizenship. The simple fact is that, by setting exorbitant fees, the Home Office is to all intents and purposes undermining Parliament’s intentions. Too many children cannot access citizenship because the Home Office charges what the Home Secretary has acknowledged is a “huge amount” of money.

When the British Nationality Act came into force in 1983, the fee set for registration applications was £30. In today’s money, that is almost exactly £100. For a quarter of a century, the fee simply represented the administrative cost of processing an application, but from 2007 the Home Office started charging more than the administrative cost. Accelerated increases mean that we have reached the “huge amount” of just over £1,000. The Home Office estimates the cost of processing an application to be £340, so it is creaming off £672 every time a child seeks to access their entitlement to citizenship.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It does my soul good to hear a member of the Scottish National party speak in such praise of British citizenship. I concur with that, but the hon. Gentleman is making a very good point. Compared with the cost in other countries—for example, the fee is £250 in Germany, £500 in the United States, £160 in Australia and £300 in Canada—the costs in our country are far too high.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention—I shall be very happy to champion the cause of British citizenship for the next few years at least. He makes the absolutely valid point that, on the basis of international comparisons, the amount that we charge children is exorbitant. It does not compare well at all.

The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens has done fantastic work in challenging the Home Office fees on behalf of kids and even in helping to secure financial support from generous donors willing to help kids to achieve citizenship through donations, although it is outrageous that kids should have to look to charity to secure their citizenship. That organisation is fantastically well placed to speak about the impact on British kids of being denied formal British citizenship. The kids grow up blissfully unaware that they are not, unlike their peers, British citizens. They do not realise that until they cannot join their peers on a school trip abroad or they apply for university and suddenly are faced with paying overseas fees. Without British citizenship—they are just like the Windrush generation in a sense—these children are made subject to immigration control and potentially the hostile or compliant environment, which means that they run the risk of being refused access to healthcare, employment, education, social assistance and housing. There is even the possibility of being detained, removed from and excluded from their own country altogether. In fact, that was mentioned in the most recent report by Stephen Shaw.

The PRCBC has provided a number of case studies—I suspect that hon. Members have access to them—highlighting individual stories. I will mention just one. May was brought to the UK when she was two months old and she has never left the country. She was first taken into care when aged five. A full care order was made later. She should have been registered as a British citizen under section 3 of the British Nationality Act while she was in care, but she was not, and she lost the opportunity when she turned 18. May gave birth to Heather and was later granted indefinite leave to remain, but Heather was not born British, because at the time of her birth her mother was neither British nor settled. Heather now has an entitlement to register as British under section 1 of the 1981 Act because of the settled status that her mother subsequently acquired, but her mother simply cannot afford the £1,012 fee to register her daughter as British. Heather was born and brought up in Britain. She knows no other country. She is to all intents and purposes British. She is entitled to British citizenship—she should not be required to pay more than £1,000 to access that entitlement—and cannot access it.

Tens of thousands of British-born children face similar issues. Surely that is contrary to the Government’s duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and to the requirement that children’s best interests be a primary consideration in all actions concerning them.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate my fellow member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs on bringing up this very important issue. Is he aware of two things? First, the very expensive fees for all sorts of visa and citizenship arrangements in this country are having repercussions. For example, I have just had to pay out £465 for my daughter to study for a few months in Brazil—that form of visa is most expensive for UK citizens. Secondly, does he agree that, far from the Home Office making a substantial profit out of vulnerable children, there should be no fee at all in the case of children in the care system?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman has been a champion of this cause on the Home Affairs Committee. I agree that there should be no fee for children who have been in the care system. The early-day motion that I tabled referred to that and I will address it momentarily.

The Minister met me and representatives from PRCBC and Amnesty to hear our arguments. I am grateful that she was willing to listen. I want to address some of the arguments the Home Office continues to use to justify the current fees regime.

First, the Home Office asserts that the fee reflects the benefit received by the child in being able to register. That totally misunderstands the situation. Parliament has decided that these kids should formally be British citizens—it was not a benevolent act of the Home Office. It is not any more legitimate to charge these citizens for the benefits they obtain as UK citizens than it would be to charge anyone in this Chamber or our own children. It seems the Home Office is conflating registration with the naturalisation of adults who choose to make the UK their home and ask for citizenship. That is totally different. Registration was put in place to compensate or to fill some of the gaps left by the end of citizenship by place of birth. The Home Office is subverting Parliament’s clear intentions by making it impossible to access those rights.

Secondly, the Home Office states that citizenship is not necessary—people can apply for leave to remain instead, which is an astonishing argument. How many hon. Members would be willing to give up their British nationality and settle for applying for leave to remain? There is no equivalence and it is outrageous to suggest that there is. That is particularly the case given that some of the kids affected would face a hellish path to settlement, which the Minister seems to be suggesting is a suitable alternative. Those not born here would require multiple applications at a cost of several thousand pounds on top of the cost to their wellbeing caused by the insecurity and stress of such a situation. It is not acceptable to say to someone whom Parliament says should be considered a British citizen, “Never mind, you can apply for leave to remain in your own country.”

Thirdly, the Home Office argues that it is fair for those using the immigration and nationality system to pay a contribution towards the broader costs of the immigration and nationality system, so that British taxpayers more generally do not have to. In some circumstances, I accept that that is true, but not here. The sum of money is not fair. As we have heard, it is huge and prohibitive, and we are talking about children. More fundamentally, these children are not migrants who chose to come in, but people entitled to citizenship. They were either born here or came here and grew up here without having had a choice.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I have a young constituent who has been refused citizenship after applying and her family paying that £1,012, despite the fact that her father is Scottish, she was born in Scotland and she has never lived anywhere else. Does my hon. Friend agree—developing the points he has been making—that it is difficult not to see this as profiteering by the UK Government to fund their hostile policies?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I absolutely agree that it is profiteering. The Home Office tends to deny it is profiteering because it spends the money elsewhere, but the fact that profits are reinvested does not mean that they are not profits in the first place. It is outrageous to take the approach that the Home Office is suggesting. It is also contradictory, because it is saying that kids entitled to British citizenship should pay more so that other British citizens get to pay less. Both groups are British citizens. There is equivalence between them. The Home Office argument almost suggests that one form of citizenship is superior to another.

In conclusion, the Home Secretary has to all intents and purposes deprived far too many kids of their right in law to register as British by setting a fee for registering citizenship, which he has described as,

“a huge amount of money to ask children to pay”.

There are not even any fee waivers for those kids brought up in care, never mind a broader opportunity to apply for a reduction where the fee is unaffordable.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I have been approached by the London Borough of Hounslow, which has a large number of people who were born all over the world. The local authority has many children in care whose parents were not born in the UK, so they have to apply for British citizenship. The local authority has to pay this extortionate fee, which means tens of thousands of pounds coming out of the children’s services budget, which is already terribly overstretched. The lead member and the officers have told me that they resent their overstretched budget being used to subsidise national Government. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with them that it is unacceptable?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree entirely. It makes no sense. In short, I am asking—I think most hon. Members are asking—that the cost of the application be no more in any case than the administrative cost to the Home Office; that where there is an inability to meet the financial cost, there should be the opportunity to apply for a fee waiver; and that no fee should be applied in instances such as the one the hon. Lady suggested—when children are in the care system.

In conclusion, if the Prime Minister is serious about remedying “burning injustices” and if the Home Secretary genuinely wants a fairer system of fees, this is a clear and obvious place to start. I hope the Home Office and the Immigration Minister look at this again.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

I will turn to the rights of children in comments that I will make in response to other Members, so I will come to my hon. Friend’s point very shortly.

The framework of charging, and in particular the principle of setting fees to reflect benefits accruing from a successful application, has enabled us to reflect the value that people get from the services that they receive, with indefinite leave to remain and citizenship rightly being the two most valuable outcomes.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

We are getting to the crux of the matter. Does the Minister accept that the statutory right to citizenship is completely different from an immigration application, indefinite leave to remain, or anything else? These kids have a right to citizenship. It is no more appropriate to charge them an extra fee to subsidise other parts of the immigration and nationality system than it would be to charge any of us a fee for our British nationality. It is a different thing altogether.

[Caroline Nokes]

If the hon. Gentleman allows me to make some progress, I will turn to the points he made in his opening speech.

During 2017-18, about 64,000 people were granted indefinite leave to remain and 123,000 were granted citizenship. Of those granted citizenship, more than 28,000 were minor children who were registered and were related to a British citizen, or children granted citizenship on a discretionary basis. In all cases the applicants either paid the due fee or had that fee paid on their behalf, reflecting the value placed on permanent residence and citizenship in the UK.

The charging framework for visa and immigration services delivered £1.35 billion of income in the last financial year, 2017-18. That helped to fund more than £620 million of costs associated with other immigration system functions, helping to maintain their effectiveness and security, and investment in ongoing service improvement. Setting fees at above the cost of processing an application has also helped us to set some fees at below cost—for example, short-term visit visas, in recognition of the significant economic benefits that tourists and other visitors bring to the whole of the UK. The subsidy for the circa 2.5 million short-term visit visas issued each year costs in the region of £90 million per annum, which can be afforded only by setting a wide range of other fees.

Let me make one other obvious point: setting fees at the level that we do—putting the burden on those who benefit from the services—reduces the burden on the Exchequer and on the general taxpayers of this country. It is easy, particularly in opposition, to call for fees or taxes to be reduced, but a responsible Government must balance the books. The loss of income that would result from any reduction in fees would have to be made up elsewhere, and there have been rather fewer suggestions of how that might be achieved.

Turning to the nub of the issue, safeguarding the welfare of children has always been and will continue to be a priority for the Home Office that it takes very seriously, for the reasons raised by hon. Members. I am concerned by any suggestion that the current fee levels for child registration are putting children off from registering, or making it more difficult for those entitled to register to operate in our society when they reach adulthood. For that reason, I met the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East just before the summer recess. He was accompanied on that occasion by some of those involved in campaigning. I listened very carefully to what they said and undertook to reflect on the matter, which is exactly what I am doing.

The issue is also very much on the radar of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), referred to the comments he made when he appeared before the Home Affairs Committee. I am sorry that I am not in a position to give a firm answer today, but that certainly does not mean that either the Home Secretary or I are ignoring the issue or have put it on the backburner.

I reassure the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), that we are working hard, but it is a complex issue and decisions cannot be taken in isolation. They must be taken in the round, taking into account any wider implications, for example on fees charged to other groups of applicants and the impact on the Home Office budget. I wholly rebut the suggestion that the Home Office is profiteering. In 2017-18, the total Home Office expenditure was £12.9 billion, which was funded by £10.5 billion from the Exchequer and £2.5 billion generated from income.

In due course, we will also need to consider the findings of the review of the borders, immigration and citizenship chargeable services by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration that will conclude later this year. I will update the House as soon as I am in a position to do so. In the meantime, the Home Office will continue to consider granting leave to remain to a child who has lived in the UK continuously for seven years, or to a young person who is over 18 but under 25 and has lived continuously in the UK for half of their life. Such leave gives the person concerned the right to live, study and work in the UK and the right, in appropriate circumstances, to receive benefits from public funds.

An application can be made to the Home Office for the fee to be waived when the applicant is making one of a set of specified human rights-based claims for leave to remain and when there are reasons why the applicant cannot meet the payment required. Those human rights-based claims include those that are relevant to a child who has been in the UK continuously for seven years. That will ensure that the Home Office meets its core requirements to safeguard children and ensure their welfare, but we are working on a proportionate response to the representations made on child citizenship fees and will announce the outcome as soon as is practical.

Hon. Members have raised a number of points regarding young people who might be unaware of the requirement to register, and what specifically can be done to improve their knowledge of that. We are considering what more can be done using different channels. I am very conscious that, as Members have mentioned today, our immigration system can be complex, particularly for those who do not have experience or knowledge of it from the outset. It is important that we improve our processes and introduce online application systems that are intuitive and enable people to work through the parts of the process that apply to them and bypass those that do not. I am conscious that, as has been mentioned, young people perhaps do not go to gov.uk as a first port of call. We have to focus on what more we can do to better reach out to them through channels that they might use.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) raised a range of issues. At one point she sought to conflate British citizenship with the settled status process for EU citizens who are living in the UK that we have recently launched, and which is currently in its private beta testing mode. It is a crucial part of our commitment to EU citizens, and the fees for it were set in agreement with the EU. It is wrong to conflate EU settled status with British citizenship because many EU citizens might choose, both now and in the future, to apply for British citizenship in addition to their settled status.

The hon. Lady mentioned young people who might discover that they do not have the same ability to travel abroad as their classmates for school trips, which is important. The Home Office works closely with education authorities to help to establish length of residence and reaches out to schools and those organising school trips to make those applications possible. We are willing to work with other public bodies to help make those applications as easy as we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I start by thanking all hon. Members for their very thoughtful contributions. The debate has served a very useful purpose in making clear to the Home Office that there is a consensus that citizenship should be not just celebrated, but positively encouraged and facilitated. There is a pretty broad and deep consensus in the Chamber, as well as a concern that the Home Office is prioritising making a profit from applications over ensuring that all those who have a statutory right to register as British citizens can do so. The fact that the Home Office reinvests some of the income in subsidising visit visas, for example, does not disguise the fact that it is a profit. In fact, that we are asking British children to subsidise visit visas makes this all the more absurd.

In response to some of the Minister’s arguments, I would re-emphasise that I do not regard the immigration system and immigration rules as in any way an adequate substitute for citizenship. The hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) rightly mentioned awareness raising, which is as much a part of this issue as the fee itself. There is work to do. It was interesting to hear the Minister’s remarks on that. Whether it be through local authorities, schools or the social care system, we have to ensure that everyone is aware of the need to register in some circumstances.

Ultimately, the Home Office is going wrong in trying to conflate citizenship with the immigration rules and the naturalisation processes for adults. They are different things. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) nailed it: this is a statutory right. The source of these kids’ right to citizenship is exactly the same as that of our right to citizenship—it is the British Nationality Act. We would be absolutely outraged if we were to be charged £1,000 to subsidise visit visa application fees in any other aspect of the immigration and nationality system, and it is just as outrageous that kids have been charged that massive fee as well. We pay a small administrative fee for a passport and we accept that an administrative fee might be appropriate for kids registering as British citizens—but it should not be anything beyond that.

I am grateful that the Minister is still listening. She is right that Members will continue to pursue the matter, but I very much look forward to hearing the result of her deliberations in due course. I very much hope that she will listen to the concerns that have been raised today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered fees for registering children as British citizens.

Offensive Weapons Bill (Sixth sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Atkins]

We will publish guidance when implementing the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3

Delivery of corrosive products to residential premises etc

Amendments made: 15, in clause 3, page 4, line 35, at end insert—

‘(13) In Scotland, proceedings for an offence under this section may be commenced within the period of 12 months beginning with the commission of the offence.

(14) Section 136(3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 (date when proceedings deemed to be commenced) applies for the purposes of subsection (13) as it applies for the purposes of that section.”

This amendment provides for proceedings in Scotland for an offence under Clause 3 to be brought within 12 months of the commission of the offence. Under section 136 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 the default period for bringing summary proceedings is 6 months.

Amendment 16, in clause 3, page 4, line 35, at end insert—

‘( ) See section (Presumptions in proceedings in Scotland for offence under section 1, 3 or 4) for provisions about presumptions as to the content of containers in proceedings in Scotland.” —(Victoria Atkins.)

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 14.

Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Delivery of corrosive products to persons under 18

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

I beg to move amendment 43, in clause 4, page 4, line 41, leave out

“and the seller is outside the United Kingdom at that time”.

This is a probing amendment to allow debate on whether the offence should be restricted to where the seller is outside the United Kingdom.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 44, in clause 4, page 4, line 45, after “was” insert

“or ought to have been aware”.

This is a probing amendment to allow discussion on whether requiring proof of actual knowledge is the appropriate test.

New clause 9—Purchase of offensive weapons from outside the European Union—

“(1) A person commits an offence if they knowingly purchase an offensive weapon from a seller located in a country that is not a member of the European Union.

(2) 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.”

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Clause 4 concerns the delivery of corrosive products to under-18s. Amendments 43 and 44 are probing amendments, tabled in my name, and they seek to test the Government’s thinking in this area. Amendment 43 merely queries why a delivery company commits an offence in delivering a corrosive substance to a person under 18 only if the seller is outside the United Kingdom. Why is it okay for that delivery to take place on behalf of a seller based within the UK? That is a straightforward question.

Amendment 44 queries the test that the prosecution will have to meet. As I understand, under the Bill’s current drafting, the prosecution would have to prove actual knowledge on behalf of the delivery company, and that it was aware that a corrosive substance could be involved in the contract to deliver products. From recollection, I think that some offences permit prosecution if it can be shown that the delivery company ought to have been aware of that—for example, if the client who was sold the product remotely is a well-known manufacturer of corrosive substances, and that is the main part of its business. Perhaps that should be enough in itself for the prosecution to make its case, but, again, I simply seek the Government’s view on those issues and wish to test their opinion.

[Stephen Timms]

I rise to speak to new clause 9. It arises from a number of conversations that I had with a man called Mr Raheel Butt, whom I would briefly like to tell the Committee about. He grew up in West Ham, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), rather than in East Ham, and as he would freely acknowledge, he went wrong for several years and served a term in prison. I think he left prison in 2012, and since then he has made it his mission to try to ensure that other young people do not make the same mistakes he made. He set up a community interest company called Community & Rehabilitation Solutions, which works with the Metropolitan police in a number of ways, and he is very concerned about the ease with which people can get hold of very unpleasant weapons and corrosive substances—the new clause covers both corrosive substances and bladed weapons.

I arranged to meet Mr Butt a couple of weeks ago, and he came to Portcullis House to have a conversation with me about this issue. About five minutes after he was due to turn up, I realised that he had not arrived, so I gave him a call on his mobile. He said, “Well, the problem is I don’t know how to get past security with my offensive weapons.” I had not realised that he was planning to bring his offensive weapons with him, but that was indeed his intention. It caused a significant security alert; I actually never got to see the offensive weapons, because they were taken off him before he managed to get through Portcullis House security. I suppose that was reassuring.

The point he wanted to make, however, was that it is extremely easy to buy the most dreadful weapons online extremely cheaply. For example, I am just looking at a product that he pointed out to me—the ones he showed me are all readily available on eBay, and I know there are other websites where they are available as well. “Ultralight Self Defense Tactical Defense Pen Outdoor Glass Breaker Writing Pen” is the name of a product that costs £2.84 on eBay. It is designed to look like a pen, and it does look like a pen, but it is actually a lethal weapon. My worry, which I am sure is also the Minister’s worry, is how to stop these things getting into the hands of people who want to do harm with them, of whom there are sadly far too many at the moment.

Clause 4 covers the delivery of corrosive products to people under 18, and clause 15 covers the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. In both cases, the Bill places requirements on the suppliers. My worry is what happens in a case such as one Mr Butt drew my attention to. That ultra-light product on ebay.co.uk is supplied by a Chinese company called vastfire-luz. My worry is whether this legislation will cover companies such as that one in China, or companies elsewhere, that are sending these very damaging and unpleasant items to people in the UK.

I know that clause 15, on the delivery of bladed products to residential premises, puts in place arrangements to cover the situation where the supplier is outside the UK. An onus is placed on the delivery company; we will no doubt come to that in due course, but it is not clear to me how effective that will be. If a Chinese company posts an item, which could be in a perfectly innocuous small package, to somebody in the UK, will the arrangements in the Bill help us pick up that it is, in fact, a lethal weapon that is being delivered? It might be delivered by the Royal Mail through the post or by a delivery company of some kind. It is difficult to see how the measures in the Bill, although clearly intended to stop that kind of delivery being made, will in practice have that effect for suppliers determined to get around the impediments being put in their way.

That is the reason I have tabled new clause 9, which I accept looks like a rather odd proposition on the face of it, to move that a person

“commits an offence if they knowingly purchase an offensive weapon from a seller located in a country that is not a member of the European Union.”

The Bill is intended to manage sellers and delivery agencies, but I am sceptical whether that will work in practice. Through my new clause, I instead place an onus on the purchaser and, indeed, on people such as eBay who are facilitating these sales, and say to them: “If you are an individual purchasing an offensive weapon from a seller outside the EU, that is an offence.” That would be one way of shifting the onus on to the purchaser. Clearly, it would still be possible for businesses to import items into the UK in the ordinary way. What I am worried about is individuals buying the dreadful implements that are freely on sale at the moment, on eBay and elsewhere and that, as far as I can see, the well-intentioned measures in the Bill will not capture. This proposal would be another way of trying to stop those very damaging things getting into the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

The delivery company will know the nature of what it is delivering, because it will be under the arrangements with the seller. It is about whether the person it is handing the package to is over the age of 18. I am speculating, but it may well be that delivery companies set demands and expectations on the people with whom they enter into agreements when people are selling corrosive substances or bladed articles. The point is that it is about a contract to deliver substances or products that may fall under the Bill, as well as knives.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I am grateful to the Minister for her explanation. I will give it some further thought. A couple of points in her explanation seemed to hinge on not wanting to allow posties and so on to get caught up in these provisions. We must remind ourselves that, as I understand it, this offence will be committed by a body corporate, so we will in no way see posties being brought before a court of law and so on. I am not sure that properly explains why the Government have limited the offence to where the seller is outside the UK—I will give it some thorough thought—nor why the state of awareness has to be quite as high as it is. I will take it away and think about it further, but in the meantime I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Victoria Atkins]

I beg to move amendment 17, in clause 4, page 5, line 13, leave out “is guilty of” and insert “commits”.

This amendment and Amendment 23 have the effect that Clauses 4(4) and 18(4) provide that a person commits an offence in specified circumstances rather than that a person is guilty of an offence in those circumstances. This is for consistency with other provisions in the Bill and does not change the legal effect of Clauses 4(4) and 18(4).

Offensive Weapons Bill (Fifth sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

That seems eminently satisfactory.

Clause 1

Sale of corrosive products to persons under 18

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

I beg to move amendment 42, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, after “sell” insert “or supply”

This is a probing amendment to debate whether the scope of the offence is broad enough or should be extended to include supply without payment.

Thank you, Mr Gray, for your whistle-stop tour of the procedure to be followed during these proceedings, and I apologise in advance if I get something wrong. I hope that you and all hon. Members feel suitably refreshed after our summer recess. At the outset, may I reiterate the Scottish National party’s support for this Bill? I know there has been significant and close working between the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments on this issue, which covers a mixture of devolved and reserved competencies. We have tabled some probing amendments to allow for discussion on one or two issues that arose during our evidence sessions, and I will keep an open mind about the other amendments tabled by the Opposition, to see whether they can improve the Bill.

We support the creation of the offence in clause 1, and the thrust of Government amendments 13 and 14. We are sympathetic to amendment 51, although we suggest that the drafting might need some work. For example, it is not clear to me whether approval of both Houses is the right mechanism in cases where Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice is the appropriate national authority. Perhaps there should also be a role for Police Scotland alongside the National Police Chiefs Council.

I turn to my amendment 42. In the evidence that the Committee heard on this issue, one witness expressed the view that supply as well as sale should be an offence. On the other hand, we received evidence from another witness that it should not. The concern of that particular officer was about the risk of making supply an offence where there was a perfectly reasonable domestic circumstance—for example, a parent giving a cleaning product to their child. Obviously my amendment would not resolve the issues highlighted by the second witness. However, it cannot be beyond the wit of Government to create an offence that excluded such domestic circumstances, but nevertheless covered circumstances where corrosive substances were supplied for free rather than simply sold.

My concern is about, for example, where person A, aged 20, gets together with person B, aged 16, in their house, B says he is going to attack person C, and person A then supplies him with a corrosive substance. It is not clear to me whether A’s actions in supplying that substance in advance of the attack are adequately covered by the criminal law. I simply seek an assurance that they are covered by other offences or that the Government will give further consideration to whether supply without consideration should be an offence.

[Louise Haigh]

I welcome all members back to the Committee after the recess. I apologise if my hair is blinding anyone under these lights; it is a little brighter than I anticipated. I rise to speak to amendment 42, tabled by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East—I apologise that I am unable to pronounce his constituency properly, so he will be the hon. Member for the SNP for the purposes of this debate.

The Opposition have also grappled with this important issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham raised it on Second Reading and we believe it requires clarification from the Minister. First, it is as well to state clearly the problem raised by the amendment that needs to be solved. The widespread use of corrosive substances, in attacks where other offensive weapons would previously have been used, is a relatively new phenomenon. It has been horrifying to see their continued use and the spread of attacks beyond certain gangs to which they were first limited. For that reason, under law, it is clear that a high residual tolerance to them remains, even after public and Parliamentary tolerance has waned.

That is partly because such substances are used for perfectly innocuous purposes, such as household cleaning, or in industrial products. The same cannot be said, for example, of firearms. However, in recent years the climate has changed. I dare say we will hear further discussion on that throughout the debate on clauses 1 and 2. The first and most apparent reason is that the use of such substances in life-shattering attacks has increased. The most recent evidence suggests an increase of 400 attacks since 2012, from around 200 to over 600. The UK now has the highest rate of per capita acid attacks in the world.

The tragic attacks include reports of an attack on a three-year-old child and an incident where an attacker used corrosive substances in a nightclub, injuring 20. Corrosive substances are becoming a favoured weapon in muggings and thefts. It cannot be ignored as a factor that for many years now there has been a high level of parliamentary tolerance towards such corrosive substances. The most recent changes to the Poisons Act 1972, made by the Deregulation Act 2015, even watered down the existing controls, despite the fact they are clearly not strict enough. That is why amendments such as this are important in testing the law around supply. While the amendment is important in its own right, it also speaks to the broader legal architecture around corrosive substances, where we are now playing catch up.

This probing amendment raises a two-fold issue. In the first scenario, a gang member supplies an offensive weapon with the explicit intention that an individual would use it to carry out an attack. Would that be an offence? In the second scenario, an individual supplies a corrosive substance to a person under the age of 18 who has no lawful purpose for having it, but not knowingly with the intention that an individual would use it to carry out an attack. Would that be considered an offence?

I believe that the answer is yes in the first scenario and no in the second, but I would be grateful for guidance from the Minister. The guidance we have been given is that the first offence—the supply of an offensive weapon with the intention that it be used to carry out an attack—is not covered by specific legislation for corrosive substances. However, in this example it would be considered an offence under general law, given that person A knowingly supplies person B with a corrosive substance, where person B intends to carry out an attack on person C. Such conduct, involving assisting or encouraging another person to commit a crime, could be prosecuted using either the general criminal law concept of secondary liability or the inchoate offences such as conspiracy.

The Crown Prosecution Service has clear guidance on secondary liability that explains the general concept, which would be relevant to this specific type of offence. A principal is one who carries out the substantive offence; a secondary is one who aids, abets, counsels or procures the principal to commit the substantive offence. The example that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) gave on Second Reading would already be covered in general law.

There is a difficulty with the second scenario: can a person be guilty of supplying a corrosive substance to an under-18 that turns out to be an offensive weapon if they do not know that the individual will commit an offence? In other words, why would it be illegal to sell corrosive substances listed under schedule 1 to an under-18, but not to supply any corrosive substance to an under-18?

The crux of the issue is that, without intent, corrosive substances exist under law as innocuous substances rather than as dangerous weapons. The weak Deregulation Act 2015 and Poisons Act 1972 allow any non-regulated substance to be supplied to a child, an under-21, an under-18 or any individual with a criminal record. In fact, under law it is perfectly acceptable for a criminal convicted of using a corrosive substance in an attack to hold a reportable substance. If that substance was ammonia, for instance, which is responsible for many of the attacks in which a corrosive substance is used, it would be perfectly legal for them to possess it or for any individual to supply it to them.

We do not think that there would be public tolerance for criminalisation of the supply of acid, which could have unintended consequences—for instance, criminalising a mother or father in the home who supplies a household cleaning substance to a child. However, there must be scope to broaden the architecture of legislation around corrosive substances and under-18s, as the Government prefer—or under-21s, as we prefer—and to prevent convicted criminals from possessing such substances.

Aside from possession and sale, the Bill does not suggest any further criminal offences or controls for corrosive substances, despite clear evidence that such substances are becoming the weapon of choice for individuals as a direct result of the ease with which they can be obtained. There is an entire architecture for more traditional offensive weapons that would allow for such control and for the CPS to select charges for that array of offences. I hope the Minister will consider that and say why the Home Office has not considered them.

As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East mentioned, one option would be to consider supply to be a general offence. As mentioned, that could have a range of unintended consequences, but if we are to ban the sale of corrosive substances to under-18s, it seems inconsistent that it would still be perfectly legitimate for an individual to supply a corrosive substance to a minor for the same purposes.

The Home Secretary was clear on Second Reading about the intention behind clause 1:

“of course it is wrong that young people can buy substances that can be used to cause severe pain and to radically alter someone’s face, body and life. There is no reason why industrial-strength acids should be sold to young people, and the Bill will stop that happening.”—[Official Report, 27 June 2018; Vol. 643, c. 924.]

The evidence we have seen shows that the real issue is about young people getting their hands on this acid. We have seen examples of them getting hold of it and separating it into two mineral water bottles, then carrying it around and using it to devastating effect. These measures, alongside the measures on possession of acid in a public place, will combine to make a big difference to the situation we find ourselves in. However, as the Bill stands, it will still be possible for young people to, in the words of the Home Secretary, get their hands on such substances. Anybody—a parent or a friend over the age of 18—could purchase or have in their home a regulated substance or a substance listed under schedule 1 and it would not be an offence for that person to supply acid to the under-18.

It is clear that the Bill does not do what the Home Secretary thinks it does. Should the Government fail to put this right and create a specific offence of supplying such a substance, we will have to return to this issue on Third Reading. We therefore fully support the amendment, which seeks to test the law on the availability of corrosive substances. It is clear that the law is inadequate. It would be welcome to hear from the Minister whether she is open to further measures.

[Victoria Atkins]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and alongside colleagues on both sides of the Committee. It is also a great pleasure to respond to the first group of amendments. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East for giving us such an interesting issue with which to start our detailed consideration of the Bill. He rightly drew attention to the very good collaboration between the United Kingdom Parliament and the Scottish Parliament, and I record my thanks for its assistance in consideration of the Bill.

I appreciate that this is a probing amendment—there is no mention of the supply of bladed articles—but it gives us an opportunity to explore more generally whether the offences relating to age-restricted products, such as those covered by schedule 1, should be expanded to include supply without payment for such products.

“Supply” means simply providing something to another person. In this context that might cover three types of scenarios. The first is where a person over 18 buys a product and gives it to a person under 18. The second is where the product is provided free of charge by the seller as part of a deal—for example, getting a free bottle of drain cleaner to help to unblock drains when buying a tool to do so. The third is where someone delivers the product to the buyer on behalf of the seller—for example, where a delivery company supplies a hospital with products they have bought from a manufacturer. We have no evidence that corrosive products are ever given away free as part of a promotional deal. That has certainly not been raised with us as an issue by retailers, trading standards bodies or the police.

The scenario where someone delivers products on behalf of the seller raises a number of issues, some of which I am sure we will consider in more detail when we debate amendments 43 and 44. It is worth mentioning that extending the offence to cover supply would mean that a delivery driver who drops off cleaning products at a doctor’s reception, a hotel, a DIY store, a warehouse or a builders merchants would commit an offence if the person receiving them was under 18. That was certainly not the intention behind the offence, which is aimed not at business transactions but at stopping the sales of corrosives to people under 18. We will come to this later, but the offence under clause 4 would apply only to a delivery company acting on behalf of an international or overseas seller.

In relation to the scenario where a person buys a corrosive product and gives it to a person under 18, there are issues that we must resolve. Where an adult buys a corrosive product and gives it to a person under 18 with the specific intent—as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley has described—they could be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a criminal offence. Under clause 5, both they and the person under 18 could also be caught by the offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place, if that is where the transfer occurred. The main difficulty in trying to capture such circumstances by extending the offence to include supply is that corrosive products are used in a range of legitimate activities that people under the age of 18 might be engaged in. Those include hobbies such as soap making, DIY and cleaning activities in the home, as well as a wide range of jobs in which people under the age of 18 might be employed and where chemicals are used quite properly—for example, in swimming pools or by an apprentice plumber.

Under-18s may also need to use some of these products as part of their studies—for example, in A-level chemistry. Extending the offence to include supply would mean that a chemistry teacher giving nitric acid to a student to use in the very controlled situation of an experiment in their college or school would be committing an offence. A plumber who gave drain unblocker to his or her apprentice would also be committing an offence.

Extending the offence to include supply of a corrosive product would also raise the question about what we do in relation to the sale of bladed articles such as knives. The existing offence is limited to selling a bladed article to a person under 18 and does not include supply. It is not an offence for someone to buy a knife and give it to a person under 18 unless, of course, they are doing so for the purposes of committing a criminal offence. There is a good reason for that: as we all know, bladed articles cover a huge range of items—essentially, anything with a blade or a sharp point. Those under 18 need access to them; for example, catering students need their own set of catering knives and hairdressing students need scissors. It is quite right that parents should be able to buy these items and give them to their children. Banning the supply of bladed articles to under-18s would also mean that restaurants could not give table knives to 16-year-olds, which none of us want to risk happening.

The contrast with alcohol is important. It is an offence to supply alcohol to a person under 18, but its possession in a public place is not outlawed in the same way as it will be for knives and corrosives. The alcohol sold in pubs and off licences does not have other, wider uses that might justify it being given to an under-18. Children do not need access to alcohol in the same way that they might need access to a chemical for their studies or an apprenticeship. It is therefore right that an adult buying alcohol for a child or giving a child an alcoholic drink is covered by the legislation, but that does not mean that an offence of supply should be used for every age-restricted product.

We did consider supply when developing the Bill, but we wanted to maintain consistency with the current offence on the sale of bladed articles. We also concluded that it was right that the responsibility sat firmly with the seller, and that the unintended consequences of extending the offence to supply would risk capturing too many legitimate activities or require so many exemptions and defences that it would become unworkable, particularly if it also applied to bladed articles.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley asked me about the scenario in which an adult supplies a corrosive substance to an under-18 but with no intention of criminal purposes, as with a parent giving knives to a catering student. Of course, that person would not have any knowledge—what we might call the mens rea or state of mind. Indeed, from the description, they would have no intent to commit a criminal offence. Once we start tinkering with knowledge and intention, we are entering the realm of absolute liability, and there are only particular categories that permit that. The adult would not be covered in that scenario. If that young person then takes the acid or corrosive substance into a public place, then the young person risks falling foul of clause 5. If they choose to do anything with it, then further criminal offences may have been committed.

The hon. Lady also asked me about possession of corrosive substances in public, and we will come to that definition in due course. It covers any corrosive substance—in other words, a substance that burns the skin. I hope I have answered the questions put in this debate, and I would invite the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East to consider withdrawing the amendment.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The amendment served its purpose in scrutinising a number of possible scenarios where questions might be asked about whether supply should be an offence alongside sale. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley for further exploring the amendment, and for doing so far more methodically than I did. She rightly queried whether the lack of an offence of supply undermines the intention behind the Bill.

I also thank the Minister for her comprehensive response. I will have to think about whether the other offences in this Bill—aiding and abetting, and possession —adequately cover supply. She also explained the possible unintended consequences, including for delivery companies, under-18s in employment and even schools. I appreciate the Government’s position and I appreciate that criminalising supply would be a difficult and fraught course of action. I accept that amendment 42 is definitely not the right answer to all this, so I will reflect on whether something else needs to be done or whether we should make do with what we have already. In the meantime, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

[The Chair]

Just for the sake of good order in future, the form of words is that the Member seeks leave to withdraw the amendment, which I then put to the Committee.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

It is with some reluctance that I must explain why I cannot support this group of amendments. Amendment 53 relates to clause 12, which sets out defences applicable in England and Wales only; there are equivalent provisions in clauses 13 and 14 for Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are talking about a devolved matter, and I understand that the Scottish Government, who have obviously agreed this legislation with the United Kingdom Government, are not unsympathetic or closed to the idea of changing the age limit for buying these products from 18 to 21, but would not do so without full consultation and further consideration of some of the issues that the Minister has spoken about. I will therefore not vote for amendments relating to England and Wales when the Scottish Government are not prepared to enact the same measures in Scotland.

I am also sympathetic to amendments 1 to 9, but similar reasons apply, albeit that they are not devolved matters this time. I am not yet utterly convinced that the benefits that could accrue from these amendments cannot be largely achieved by other provisions already in the Bill, without the unintended consequences that the amendments might bring. I do not think that the evidence for fixing the age limit at 21 is quite there yet. I am open to persuasion, and could perhaps be persuaded by Report, but I am not there yet, so I cannot support the amendments today.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for her thoughtful response to the amendments, although I am of course disappointed by the conclusion that she reached. I accept that it might be difficult to raise the age limits—it would not be completely straightforward—but that does not mean that it should not be done.

Indeed, the Minister’s evidence seemed to set out a stronger case than mine. If the most recent data suggest that the average age of the people carrying out these attacks is 23, the case for limiting the ban on sales to 18-year-olds is even weaker, and the case for raising the threshold to a higher level is stronger still. The Minister is absolutely right to make the point that the average age of perpetrators varies between years, but it is clearly the case—as shown by the Metropolitan police figures given in answer to my freedom of information request, which I think go back to 2002—that setting the restriction at the age of 18 is too low.

The Minister makes the point that a change will cause inconvenience for some. However, the question is how seriously the Committee is willing to take this problem. Do we recognise the appalling harm being done by acid attacks? Some of them are carried out by under-18s, but the majority are carried out by people who are young but who are over 18. If we raise the age limit to 21, we would be able—I think—to reduce the scale of the problem among a significant cohort of those who carry out such attacks at the moment.

I am puzzled by the Minister’s suggestion that the Government might lose a challenge over this on age discrimination grounds. One would be able to, and would certainly have to, defend the decision on clear public interest grounds. If an age limit of 18 can be defended, I see no reason at all why an age limit of 21 could not be, given that we know that so many of those carrying out acid attacks are between the ages of 18 and 21. There is a clear public safety ground for seeking to reduce the availability of acid to people aged 18 to 21.

On the question of inconvenience, I accept that there will be some difficulties for some of those who are required to implement such changes. However, given that Challenge 21 is in place, shopkeepers are already getting into the habit of challenging people up to the age of 21. The basics for implementing this change in shops are in place. I accept that there would be some difficulties and that this is not completely straightforward. However, I impress upon the Minister that the scale of the harm of acid attacks carried out by people aged 18, 19 or 20 is too great for us simply to allow people to carry on getting hold of this stuff and doing harm, so I will press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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?

Offensive Weapons Bill (Second sitting)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I can fit in two more before we wrap up at 4.30 pm.

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

Q Assistant Chief Constable, we heard evidence this morning about how the Bill covers the sale of corrosive substances but not their supply. On the one hand, one witness expressed concern that you might have an adult purchase a corrosive substance on behalf of someone under 18 and not be guilty of any sort of criminal offence. On the other hand, another witness pointed out, as I think you did, that you would have to be very careful about criminalising perfectly innocent domestic circumstances. Do you have any views on how we can square that circle? Are other provisions already in place that would criminalise someone purchasing a corrosive substance on behalf of someone under 18?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: Yes—it is very similar to the licensing laws we have for alcohol purchases. I presume it would depend on the circumstances as well. There would be that criminal possession in a public place, potentially. It is a very valid question.

The issue behind it for me is to try to emphasise that we do not want young people to be buying this with intent, or for any reason. We want to manage the use of offensive weapons rather than to over-legislate. For me, it is more important to try to get that understanding that this is something that needs to be sold legitimately as a commercially viable product to the right people, who will then use it for the right purposes, rather than something that can then be misused with that malicious intent as an offensive weapon, than it is to rely on heavy legislation as the only answer to preventing this crime.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q This question is for you both. There are various obligations in the Bill on companies and businesses selling corrosive substances or bladed weapons remotely. Is there any risk that all their checks could be undermined if the delivery company is negligent or reckless? Is there enough in the Bill and existing legislation to ensure that delivery companies can be held accountable when they are careless or reckless about, for example, delivering a bladed weapon or corrosive substance to someone under 18?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: Controls are in place for corrosive substances to take into account that a lot of sales are now online and that there is that opportunity to purchase. That needs to have restrictions, such as a requirement to take reasonable precautions that the person buying is of an appropriate age. The requirement is on the seller to prove that—whether online or through a premises. There must also be appropriate packaging that makes it clear that it is a corrosive substance, that it is harmful and contains something likely to cause harm, and that it must be delivered to someone responsible above the required age, not just handed over to a child on delivery.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q For example, you could have a delivery driver at the end of his final shift on a Friday who goes to a house and there is not anyone there who is 18 years old or over. So rather than going back to the depot and extending his shift by an hour, he decides to hand the delivery over. He is completely independent of the seller. Is there a loophole there that you are worried about?

Assistant Chief Constable Kearton: My understanding is that that delivery has to be passed to a responsible person of an appropriate age. I would not say that leaving it on the front doorstep or in a back shed would be handing it to someone of an appropriate age.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Any thoughts, Deputy Assistant Commissioner?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: It is an interesting point, particularly when you look at the responsibility on the seller in terms of the supply of knives. One of the biggest challenges is from suppliers overseas—websites—which we have no governance or control over. So I am particularly pleased that responsibility for that is placed—under clause 18, I think it is—on the delivery company to ensure that it is carrying out the right checks. There is a responsibility on those delivery companies in those circumstances, and presumably in terms of the contracts they would have with the companies that are selling, to ensure that they know what is in those packages.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q You mention clause 18, which would create an offence if the deliverer of the product hands it to somebody under 18. As I understand it, that applies only where the seller is from outside the UK. Why not have some provision for where the sale occurs in the United Kingdom as well? Why is that not necessary?

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ball: It would be beneficial as well. The main responsibility is on the retailer to meet those particular conditions with what they are actually selling. Obviously, responsible retailers would have appropriate contracts with the delivery company. I guess, in the circumstances you describe, when the issue is about the delivery driver not delivering these things, something along those lines would potentially be of benefit.

[The Chair]

I want a good half-hour to hear from retailers, so, very briefly and lastly, Stephen Morgan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tulip Siddiq]

Q But they are not backed by legislation to say, “This is against the law”?

Graham Wynn: No, but they have to apply due diligence so it is a matter of employment, contract and training for the person, and getting a criminal record.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Mr Wynn, you expressed a couple of concerns in a paper that was submitted to us. One is that you are not convinced that the arrangements for parcels supplied from overseas are watertight. Could you explain that concern?

Graham Wynn: It does not directly affect our members in that sense, but it is an observation. If a delivery company here has a contract with an overseas supplier or seller of these things, you can understand that it could be required in the contract that the seller advises the delivery company that there is a knife or corrosive substance. But in our view, it is quite possible to have an overseas supplier or seller who might be a small business in or outside the EU, who does not have to mark the parcel and puts it in the post. Customs would intercept it if it is an illegal import, but it may not be as such. The delivery company, the post office, or whoever it is, would not necessarily know that it was one of these articles that ought to be delivered to someone, or not to a residential address, or not to someone under 18. We think there is a gap there. The point of view from our members is that it could discredit the whole system if this becomes widely known. We would like to have more assurance that that is relatively watertight.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Do you have any suggestions as to how it could be made more watertight?

Graham Wynn: Quite honestly, no. Obviously, it requires a legal obligation that cannot be exercised overseas or imposed for someone outside the UK.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Another point that you make is that you believe that the marking of packages draws attention to them and the need for the age check would be better in the paperwork or the digitised documentation. What is the problem of marking that on the package itself?

Graham Wynn: First, it is down to human error and we live in a digital age where not everything is paper. The main thing is that if these things are delivered to a collection point, including a small store or whatever it may be, a garage for collection, it is clearly marked that this is a dangerous item, therefore we think that that possibly it draws attention to it in terms of theft or if it is left unattended. It says: “This is a dangerous item; this is a parcel some people would think worth taking”.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Is there anything you want to add to that, Mr Vara?

Vin Vara: Our membership does not have many e-retailers. The few that we have have shown concerns. One of the things that they are pushing us towards is licensing the importers who bring the knives and special products in. They are also having problems because a lot of these foreign-based companies have domain names with .co.uk or .com. There is not much way of monitoring. Sometimes they are ordering knives or we are ordering knives from them thinking we are buying from a British company, but in the end they are coming from a European or far eastern company. We are looking at some way of having some sort of licensing Bill for them. There could be a registered licence for them for importing this stuff or for exporting from their country to us. We are looking at some ways of doing that.

[The Chair]

Finally, Vicky Foxcroft.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is of course absolutely right to point out how important it is that we distinguish between people who settle here legally and those who are here illegally. It is vital that the compliant environment protects vulnerable people and that appropriate safeguards are built into the measures. We remain committed to tackling illegal immigration and to encouraging compliance with our rules and laws.

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

This weekend, we learned of an Ethiopian asylum seeker who was removed even before his application had been decided, requiring a court to order his return here. How did that happen, and is it not now time to hand asylum decisions over to an independent body?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong in the final part of his question. It is important that UK Visas and Immigration continues to work to establish people’s right to be here on a fair and humane basis. The Home Office is absolutely committed to making sure that we consider each case on its own merits.