Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 284 for all the reasons that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, has explained. However, I respectfully suggest to him that there is a slight mismatch between that amendment and Amendment 285. Amendment 284 is so broadly defined, for the reasons that have been very well expressed, that it would include the conduct that is described in Amendment 285. Indeed, if we look at the wording of Amendment 285, harassment is an essential element of that offence.

I raise the point because there is a difference between the penalties. The value of the kerb-crawling clause is that it introduces a possibility of disqualification, and I see the force of that, but the fine is only level 3, whereas the fine in Amendment 284 is level 5. If I was a prosecutor, having to decide which charge to bring, I would probably go for the offence in Amendment 284 and forget about the disqualification. I wonder whether, if the noble and learned Lord is thinking of bringing the matter back, he might try to amalgamate these two and perhaps put a subsection into Amendment 284 to cover the situation that if the harassment offence is conducted from a motorcar, in the way broadly described in Amendment 285, it would attract the additional penalty of disqualification. It would then be brought into Amendment 284’s sanctions, which are imprisonment, which might well be appropriate in a kerb-crawling offence, and also the level 5 fine. That is a refinement of drafting, but I am very much in favour of Amendment 284 as it stands, particularly in view of the broad way in which it is expressed.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for all these amendments. Some of my questions have just been answered by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and his suggestion that some of the amendments be combined is positive, because retaining the opportunity to take away the right to a vehicle in an offence involving a vehicle is very useful.

I am aware of the time and the pressure to make progress, but it is a great pity that we are discussing such an important group of amendments, all put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, so late at night and in this rather rushed way. I will just draw some comparisons and links between them.

One thing to highlight is how much these amendments come from community campaigning from the grass roots up. I imagine that the campaign for the offence of harassment draws, in large part, from the group called Our Streets Now, set up by sisters Gemma and Maya Tutton, aged 16 and 22, who are working with the charity Plan International UK. Their hashtag is #CrimeNotCompliment. I suspect that the noble and learned Lord might have drawn on their ready-made Bill and I note that this has had strong cross-party support in the other place. I draw on the words of the women’s rights campaigner Nimco Ali, who said it is “bizarre” that street sexual harassment is still legal. Littering and smoking are banned, but this kind of behaviour is not.

On Amendment 285, I briefly highlight that Generation Rent, another grass-roots campaign group, has been pushing for action here. A report by Shelter in January found that, between March and September 2020, around 30,000 women had been offered housing in exchange for sex. This is a function of the extreme dysfunction of our current housing system.

I have to address Amendment 292M personally because, as I suspect is the case for many people, particularly women, it is something I have personally experienced. I was 11 years old in another country, out in the centre of Sydney on my own, when I was subjected to this offence. I was taught, as lots of young girls were then and probably still are now, to laugh, turn around and walk away. But that I can still vividly remember that street scene shows that it had an impact on me. When I look back now, I felt as an 11 year-old that this was a threat to my right to be on the streets. I did not tell my mother, because I was worried that she would think I should not be allowed out on my own to exercise the freedom that I wanted and continued to exercise. It is crucial that we see a change in attitude here and a review is a good way to address that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has covered Amendment 292T very well, but we must note that Femicide Census, campaigning on this and broader issues, reports no sign of a reduction in the rate of femicide. That study covered a 10-year span from 2009 to 2018. We are not making progress on this, but we need to. I hope the Government will go away and look at this important group of amendments very seriously, and come back to us with proposals covering—I like to be an optimist—all of them.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, spiking is a serious matter and people who do it should be caught and punished, but I issue a note of caution, because I am slightly worried about Amendment 292R, put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. I am worried it might be too reactive and respond to the perception that this is a major problem, rather than a cool factual analysis. Calling for an urgent review could unintentionally fuel what might be a moral panic and create a climate of fear.

To give some context, despite the headlines and social media hysteria, some careful commentators and a range of experts have raised doubts, queried some of the sensationalist coverage and warned against overreacting. There was a useful article in Vice that started the debunking, which quoted Guy Jones, a senior scientist at the drugs charity The Loop, who pointed out that

“few drugs would be able to be injected like this”,

using a needle. Administering drugs in this way is just not an easy task. Some experts have explained that it would be particularly difficult to use date-rape drugs, because of the larger needle that would be needed and that it would need to be in the body for at least 20 seconds.

The director of the Global Drug Survey, Adam Winstock, notes:

“There are very few widely accessible drugs”


that could be used in this way and given intramuscularly in small enough volumes that people would not notice. A critical care nurse I saw interviewed suggested that the likelihood of administering drugs like ketamine was virtually zero. After a high-profile report about somebody being infected by HIV, the National AIDS Trust pointed out:

“Getting HIV from a needle injury is extremely rare. A diagnosis takes weeks.”


So it is worth pausing.