Offensive Weapons Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 28th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, my noble friend and I support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, particularly on the question of the clause standing part. I am conscious of progress in the Chamber, so I will not say as much as I might otherwise have done. It looks like some negotiations are going on. We have a number of other amendments to these clauses as well. In addition to supporting what the noble Lord has said, I want to make clear our implacable opposition to mandatory sentences—in this case custodial ones. Judicial discretion is very important and precious in our system.

Clause 8(4) is a get-out clause, referring to having regard to the duty under the 1933 Act to have regard for the welfare of the child. I do not think this works. It was obviously a response to representations, but it applies only to children, not young adults, and seems to be a nod to that well-established provision without changing anything that surrounds it. I also have a question about the particular circumstances in Clause 8(2). I had a look at the sentencing guidelines yesterday. If that phrase originates from those guidelines then subsection (2) is actually an inversion of them. They require the court to look at the particular circumstances, but Clause 8(2) is the reverse: it is an “unless” provision. Finally, Amendment 37 deals with the appeals subsection. We have added a reference to the criteria in Clause 8(2). I am not sure whether this is appropriate technically, but perhaps we could have an explanation as to how the appeal takes into account the points made in that subsection.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support these amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the clause stand part Motion spoken to so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. The noble Lords made the case very strongly against short-term prison sentences. I want to add my voice to emphasise very strongly just how unhelpful these short-term sentences are, particularly to the very vulnerable young people who are most likely to be caught up in these offensive weapons allegations or crimes. Apart from doing nothing for those individuals, short-term sentences do absolutely nothing for society as a whole. If we do not prevent these young people committing crimes in the future, our society will be all the worse off.

Scotland has shown the way. The removal of judgment in Scotland has been proven to be more cost effective and positive when responding to people with drug and alcohol addiction and other problems often associated with the carrying of knives or corrosive substances. I believe huge proportions of these young people have drug problems. As others have mentioned, the Ministry of Justice has already produced its own evidence of the ineffectiveness of short-term imprisonment. Perhaps the Minister can explain why we are adding to these short-term sentences in this Bill.

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the radical Checkpoint deferred prosecution scheme in Durham, run by Chief Constable Mike Barton, and very much supported by his police and crime commissioner, Ron Hogg. Checkpoint is a multi-agency initiative which aims to reduce the number of victims of crime by reducing reoffending. This is what this should all be about. The scheme targets low and medium-level offenders—it is not just for people right at the bottom—at the earliest stage of the criminal justice process and offers them a suspended prosecution. It encourages them to engage in services designed to address their problems instead of receiving a caution or going to court, which does not seem to have anything to do with where these kids or young people are coming from. Checkpoint is evaluated by Cambridge University. This is very important because the evidence on this is really very thorough and reliable.

If this amendment were to be accepted by the Government, the objective would be for the Checkpoint policy, or something like it, to be applied to children and young people who are found in possession of an offensive weapon. I know very well how utterly appalling these corrosive substances are. I happen to know a young, beautiful girl whose face has been utterly destroyed by an acid attack. The poor girl has had endless operations and she will not be the beautiful person that she was, although she will be a beautiful person inside and that is what really matters. Nevertheless, I want people to know that I really understand that these are shocking and horrible crimes. The most important thing that we can do is to cut them down, reduce them and, ideally, eliminate them. Anything that somehow does not achieve that is an utter failure, so I feel very strongly about it because we have to do something that is effective.

Checkpoint shows that it is the threat of punishment, rather than the severity of a punishment, that is cost-effective and, most importantly, effective. It argues in favour of taking a whole-person-centred approach to understand the causes of their offending and ensure that those people receive appropriate interventions to address the problems of drug dependence, debt issues or homelessness—a whole range of problems that these young, very vulnerable people face. Indeed, its figures from a random control trial—and I emphasise that it is a random control trial, not just any old tin-pot kind of study—show that reoffending is reduced by 13% if we do not send these people to custody but instead try to get them involved in help for their problems.

Its study of young offenders who have committed crimes on more than five occasions within a year is very important. You might think that these are hopeless cases and that there is no point in doing anything. This study looks at the traumatic experiences during childhood that so many of those repeat offenders have experienced. Almost all have been exposed to violence, physical harm or danger, parental offending or admissions to A&E due to physical harm or trauma. They have frequently exhibited violent behaviour or problems in school and have been excluded.

We have to ask ourselves about the effect of putting those young, very vulnerable, damaged children into custody for just another dose of punishment. They obviously need a great deal of therapeutic help and support to begin to recover from their childhood experiences. Durham Constabulary, West Midlands Police and other police services are, in my view, leading the way in exploring policies which will benefit not only the vulnerable but society as a whole by reducing reoffending and will also save vast police and prison resources, but that is not the point. This is about reducing these terrible crimes and helping the vulnerable.

I hope this legislation can be amended to ensure that it works with the grain of new, evidence-based criminal justice policy. It is interesting that police services are taking the lead in this crucial field. Of course, the police have their street-level experience; I always have great regard for the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for this reason—he knows what goes on on the street. They are saying we should not send these people to prison because they see them coming round again and again. I take this very seriously; I think we all should. I hope the Minister will discuss with us how best to amend this Bill. I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th January 2019 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Meacher]

63: Clause 22, page 21, line 35, at end insert—
“(1AA) A person charged with an offence under subsection (1A) who is certified by the relevant police force as being addicted to drugs must be referred for treatment to an addiction rehabilitation service, and, if they comply with their treatment, must not be referred to court.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require those charged with the offence of carrying a flick or gravity knife who are also certified by the relevant police force as being addicted to drugs to be referred to a rehabilitation service for treatment before attending court. Charges would be dropped if they complied with their treatment.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I must first apologise to the Committee that I have been horribly absent, but there was an event in the other place that I had to attend—I will not bore your Lordships with the explanation, but there really was no option.

Amendment 63 aims to ensure that vulnerable children or young people found with an offensive weapon in a public place are assessed for addiction. So many of these vulnerable children and young people are addicted to drugs. If they are found to be so addicted, they should not be processed through the criminal justice system; rather, they should be referred to a rehabilitation service for help with their addiction and related problems. Many of them are homeless and have all sorts of mental health problems and so forth. The Government have recognised that short-term prison sentences are generally unhelpful. Re-offending rates following such sentences are very high. In the case of drug addicts, a prison sentence will generally achieve—I really mean this—absolutely nothing positive, but it is very likely to increase the vulnerability and addiction, and therefore the criminal activity of these young people.

Several noble Lords attended an interesting meeting yesterday where senior police officers and a police and crime commissioner from the West Midlands explained this. I quote one of the officers, “The police cannot reduce the illegal drugs market, however many drug dealers we arrest and imprison”. That is a powerful statement on behalf of men on the front line who deal with these things day in, day out. Those people spend their lives that way. Neil Woods, who has written two books about his time as an undercover officer arresting drug dealers over many years, explained that he came to realise that he was not achieving any reduction in the availability of drugs. He was completely wasting his life away, so he changed to a very different view about how these things should be dealt with.

The police officers also talked about how much more effective alternatives to punishment are in persuading young people to back away from the illegal drugs market. Ronnie Cowan MP talked about the work in Glasgow where young people are diverted from the criminal justice system and helped to return to a normal life. Perhaps the Minister will tell the Committee whether she is familiar with the work in Glasgow. If she is not, it may be worth her looking into it before Report.

This amendment is really important from the pure efficiency point of view on reducing addiction and crime in this context, but let us also look at it from the point of view of the children and young people involved. As I said at the beginning, a very high proportion of children found carrying a knife or another offensive weapon in a public place will be vulnerable children, who have become addicted to drugs or been targeted by the drug gangs. The Children’s Commissioner estimates that at least 46,000 children in England are involved in gang activity. It is estimated that about 4,000 teenagers in London alone are being exploited through child criminal exploitation in what has come to be known as county lines. These vulnerable children should be seen as victims of trafficking and exploitation rather than as criminals.

Gangs are deliberately targeting vulnerable children. They watch for a child walking home from school day after day alone, head down, looking miserable. These children are unsafe, unloved or unable to cope for one reason or another. Gangs take advantage of their vulnerability. They threaten or trick children into trafficking their drugs for them. They may threaten a young person physically or threaten a family member. They often offer food, which the child or family may desperately need, alcohol or clothing to the child or their family in return for co-operation.

Once children have received gifts, they feel indebted to the gang. They quickly feel they have no option but to continue. As many noble Lords will know perfectly well, the gangs use these vulnerable children to store their drugs and to move cash proceeds or the drugs themselves. No doubt they give them a knife or something else to protect themselves with. The county lines groups use high levels of violence, including the ready use of firearms, knives and other offensive weapons, to intimidate and control members of the group and its vulnerable victims. The victims are exposed to varying levels of exploitation including physical, mental and sexual harm. Some of the young people are trafficked into remote markets to work. Others are falsely imprisoned in their own homes, which have been taken over using force or coercion. I must say that I had not heard of that until I read it rather recently.

The National Crime Agency report County Lines Violence, Exploitation & Drug Supply 2017 analysed the exploitation of vulnerable people, including those with mental health or physical health problems. Sixty-five per cent of police services reported that county lines activity was linked to the exploitation of children. The police know perfectly well that we are dealing with victims here. Once involved, victims may want to get out of their situation but do not want to involve the police for fear of self-incrimination or retribution by the perpetrators. They are really caught in the middle. These victims may carry a knife or other weapon for self-protection, as I have mentioned. The real question is whether they are really criminals for carrying that knife for self-protection. Other noble Lords talked about what is in the mind. These children have got a knife not to attack others, but to protect themselves. That surely makes all the difference to one’s approach to dealing with these children.

This is a very complex problem but the courts and the prison system are not the right vehicles for dealing with victims. Yes, send the gang leaders to prison, though retraining and psychological treatment will be essential for them, too, if they are not to spend their time in prison, come out of it later and then start all over again, with just a little more bitterness added to what they already had. I hope we can have a discussion—a serious discussion—before Report about drug issues in relation to the Bill. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and I beg to move.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment because it advocates one public health approach, along the lines advocated in the serious violence strategy. The sad fact is, however, that too many of the intervention and preventive measures outlined in the strategy are not sufficiently resourced and may not materialise.

Last week, the drugs, alcohol and justice cross-party group that I co-chair heard about an initiative from Thames Valley Police, about which I immediately wrote to the Home Secretary, encouraging him to take an interest in it. It is a diversion scheme—modelled on the mental health diversion scheme so successfully introduced after the report by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley—requiring those found to be in possession of drugs to attend for voluntary treatment. The interesting thing was that the constables on duty in the Thames Valley streets reported that they found it extremely simple and clear to use.

As many other noble Lords have pointed out, knife carrying is a symptom of wider social issues. Many young people carry them because they fear for their lives. However, in confirmation of my warning that too many of the intervention and preventive measures outlined in the serious violence strategy are not sufficiently resourced, the Institute of Mental Health in Nottingham —I declare an interest as a member of its external advisory board—has found that only 18% of the community commissioning groups recognise that they have any responsibility for funding probation, which includes mental health and drug treatment. This emphasises the need for this significant programme of work—words used by the Home Secretary to describe the strategy—to involve a wide range of government departments, including liaison between the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Health on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for affording us the opportunity to discuss her amendment and to outline the Government’s approach to tackling that combined problem of drug misuse and knives. Noble Lords will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talking about the link between knives and the growth of the drugs market. It is absolutely right that she has tabled this amendment. I pay tribute to all the work that she has done in this area and to the work done by the charity of the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, to divert vulnerable women from prison.

Clause 22 prohibits the possession in public and private of flick-knives and gravity knives. A person guilty of this offence is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months’ imprisonment, a fine or both. However, under this amendment, a person who is dependent on drugs would have charges dropped if the police refer the person to treatment and the person complies with the rehabilitation treatment. It is worth noting that Clause 25 prohibits the possession in private—the possession in public is already a criminal offence—of offensive weapons to which Section 141 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies, for example push daggers and zombie knives.

The aim of this amendment is that a person who is addicted to drugs would have charges for possession of a flick-knife or gravity knife, but not any other prohibited knife, dropped if the police refer such a person to treatment and the person complies with the rehabilitation treatment.

I know the noble Baroness and others are keen, as we all are, to deal with the underlying issue where offenders have a substance misuse problem. We will not break the cycle of offending unless we do just that. She and other noble Lords said that. I assure the noble Baroness that the Government are already taking action to address the links between drug misuse and offending. A key aim of the Government’s Drug Strategy 2017 is to take a much smarter approach to drug-related offending to address the drivers behind the crime and prevent further substance misuse and offending.

The police have a range of powers at their disposal to deal with drug-related offences in a way that is proportionate to the circumstances of the offender and the public interest. This includes the appropriate use of out-of-court disposals. We continue to encourage wider use of drug testing on arrest to support police forces in monitoring new patterns around drugs.

[Baroness Meacher]

The West Midlands police and crime commissioner made the point that the police do things almost outside the law, if you like, but it is quite uncomfortable. They want a change in the law to make it clear that the right thing for the police to do is to get drug-addicted young people into really good services that will move them on and get them right away from the illegal drug market. I do not think it is okay to say that the police are doing things—even though they are—because they are not really happy about it. They want the Government to lead.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

We have to get the balance right between protecting vulnerable people from becoming further involved in drugs or crime generally and criminalising some of the people who caused them to get into that life in the first place, which may involve drug abuse.

I shall outline some of the things the Government are doing, which go right to the heart of what the noble Baroness is talking about—early prevention, intervention and treatment. Noble Lords will have heard me talking about the Home Secretary’s commitment to a public health approach to drugs, taking into account all the resources that different agencies have at their disposal to tackle such problems. The noble Baroness was talking about the work in Scotland, which is very effective and very good in terms of intervention.

NHS England is rolling out liaison and diversion services across the country. They operate at police stations and courts to identify and assess people with vulnerabilities, substance misuse and mental health problems and criminality, which are quite often interlinked. They refer them into appropriate services and, where appropriate, away from the justice system altogether. If we went back 10 years, the noble Baroness could talk about the police operating aside from the law, but there is much more understanding now that early intervention and diversion are the way forward. The schemes that the NHS is currently running cover around 80% of the population in England, and we are looking to full coverage by 2021.

The Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice are working with NHS England and Public Health England to develop the community sentence treatment requirement protocol. The protocol aims to increase the use of community sentences with drug, alcohol and mental health treatment requirements as an alternative to custody, to improve health outcomes and reduce reoffending. It sets out what is expected from all involved agencies to ensure improved access to mental health and substance misuse treatment for offenders who need it. The Department of Health is currently leading an evaluation of the implementation of the protocol across five test-bed sites to inform further development.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, also talked about funding. I do not know whether he knows, but a youth endowment fund of £200 million is being introduced—quite a substantial amount of money. It will run for 10 years, so it is not a short-term approach. The fund will open shortly, so I hope that alongside some of the things we are doing, it will help us in our endeavours to tackle some of the root causes with early interventions and diversions from that type of activity. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I shall briefly raise a matter I should have raised before. I thank the Minister for her reply, for the tone of what she said and for her recognition of the need to get to the underlying problems. I omitted to develop the concern about children and young people in care and care leavers. As the Minister will know, there is a long-standing concern about the criminalisation of young people in care and care leavers. Very few arrive into care because of criminal activity, but far too many are represented in our prisons, both as children and as adults. My noble friend Lord Laming led an inquiry into reducing the criminalisation of children, and he is concerned to see all agencies working together to keep young people—both those who have left care and those who are in it—out of the criminal justice system. What the Minister and the noble Baroness have said is helpful in this regard. But there is also a new strengthening duty on the corporate parenting responsibilities of all agencies to support young people leaving care. These are important matters to relate to this particular issue, and I thank the noble Baroness for allowing me to make those points.

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank the Minister very much for her thoughtful response, but she did not respond to my reference to Report stage or to whether we could do something to align this Bill with the Government’s thinking on people addicted to drugs who get into these awful situations with gangs. Does the Minister feel able to say something about what we might do between now and Report?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness. She and I have had many discussions on this subject—we have not had one for a while, so perhaps it would be worth having another. Early intervention and prevention, and a multi-agency approach to assist in diverting people away from the criminal justice system, need to be balanced with the fact that there are quite hardened criminals out there involved with drugs and gangs who we need to capture via the legislation. We need to run both in parallel.

[Baroness Meacher]

I thank the Minister, and could not agree with her more. In my little remarks, I also made the point that there are such hardened criminals who are turning these young people into victims. It would be good to discuss all that before Report. On that basis, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 63 withdrawn.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments from the Government, because we have to send a message out there for young people. While I respect all noble Lords who talk about criminalising young people, I stand with several hats on here. I have worked with young people in prisons and with a YOT, and have gone around to find out evidence. The main thing that worries me in all this is that we can put prevention orders up—we have to send a message; we owe that to the rest of society, who do not feel safe—but I want to prevent the young people I have spoken about having to carry a knife to feel safe. We need to stop them early, saying that it is not really right for them. Some young people in gangs have said they do not want to do it but have no choice.

There are several messages here about young children. I have three young daughters who saw their father murdered by hands and feet; they have suffered and could have gone down the criminal route. It would have been justified to put them in that box and to say that there is a reason why they do it. It is the same for a knife. These young people will carry knives to protect themselves, but do not want to. So we have to have something there—a message for communities and young children to feel safe. I am very grateful for the Centre for Social Justice briefing on this. It welcomes the process of the order, but is concerned about the mechanisms of how it will be carried out.

The whole point here is protecting the child. We are hearing much about criminalising a child but not about looking after the child’s welfare. I ask my noble friend the Minister, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, whether we could make it a weapon-neutral offence that sends a message to all those carrying blades, knives and everything. Making it specific to a knife or blade does not really have the effect we want. We need to send a generalised message to help protect young people. I am concerned that we are not standing up here and protecting young people in the first place. We are looking at criminalising young people when they have been caught with something on them. We have to protect the people I have been speaking to, because they are really scared to come out of the school grounds. They go home to protect themselves. We are not looking at that niche of young children.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support many of the comments made by other noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and in particular the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. There are many problems with these prevention orders. We may need orders of some sort, but surely not these. I hope we have a really serious discussion about how to protect children. In subsection (5) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 73A, the reasons accepted as good reasons for carrying a knife do not include a fear of harm. Yet, as other noble Lords have said, this is probably the most common reason. I regard it as utterly right and proper; we do not want kids carrying knives, but if you are terrified of being attacked you should not be criminalised for carrying a knife in your pocket to protect yourself. I hope that before Report the Minister will give serious thought to including at least that—that is just one tiny bit—in the reasons accepted as good reasons.

A second problem is that, according to subsection (1) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 73C:

“An application for a knife crime prevention order … may be made without the applicant giving notice to the defendant”.


The police can impose an interim knife crime prevention order, and the same requirements may be made under that interim order as under a full knife crime prevention order. Yet the defendant does not even know this is happening and has not put their side of the story or explained, for example, that they were carrying the knife only because they were petrified of the three boys who live down the road who were trying to get them involved in a gang. What is going on? I am terribly worried about that bit of it.

Others have mentioned the standard of proof— the balance of probability—when these kids go into criminality. Surely that cannot be right. However, there are many more general concerns about the imposition of yet more criminal deterrents on children as young as 12. I have read some briefings carefully and I want to refer to the one from the Children’s Society. According to its Good Childhood Report 2017, an estimated 950,000 children aged between 10 and 17 had experienced crime. No wonder crime is often cited as the reason children carry weapons. This problem is rife and of course we all want something done about it, but are we really tackling it in the right way here? I do not think so.

We know that for two decades the Government have attempted to deter violent crime and anti-social behaviour through the imposition of criminal and punitive civil deterrents. So far, such deterrents have not had a substantial impact on reducing the level of youth crime and youth violence, but that is what we all want—we certainly do not want knife crime. Of course we want violence to be reduced, but these approaches have been shown not to work. As we know, the level of knife crime has risen sharply. There is a body of evidence to show that criminalised interventions do not lower crime rates. I referred in an earlier debate to the meeting in which we listened to Neil Woods. After years of working as an undercover officer and catching people involved in criminal gangs and so on, he realised that he was making not a jot of difference to criminality and violence. He threw it all up and has now written books on the subject. He knows that he has not made any difference, having put his whole life on the line and having been in considerable danger for many years. We need to listen to people like him.

Does the Minister accept that the Home Office needs to make targeting the adults who coerce, control and threaten these kids a much greater priority? Surely Ministers should not target these children with these orders. It just does not feel right and, to be perfectly frank, I do not understand it. Therefore, can we amend these proposed new clauses before Report to ensure that, if we are to have prevention orders—and I think that we probably need them—they focus on positive inputs for children under the age of 18 with the provision of support, treatment in the case of kids addicted to alcohol or drugs, educational guidance and help to secure the safety of the child.

When a child is considered for an order, surely they should be referred to children’s social care for an assessment under the Children Act 1989 or to the national referral mechanism as appropriate. If the child is found to be at risk of exploitation, the police response surely needs to be entirely different from that envisaged in these amendments. I am not saying that there should not be a response but it should be different. As I said in relation to another amendment, we know that short-term prison sentences have very poor results in terms of reoffending. Why would we have more of them? In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will be willing to discuss how the emphasis of the amendments can be shifted from punitive, unsuccessful, short-term incarceration to something that will work. We have quite a lot of knowledge about what might work.

It is difficult to debate these proposals without reference to the huge cuts to youth services in this country. I know that it could be said that this is a political point but I do not mean it to be that at all. It is pretty desperate when £400 million is taken off those services at a time when we want these children to be referred to them for support, and £51 million has been put into the Serious Violence Strategy. That is one-eighth of the cuts—it is a peanut; it is nothing. Local authorities are facing a deficit in their budgets for children’s and young people’s services of £3 billion over the next five years. It seems that spending on police, courts and prisons is fine but spending on real prevention and turning young people around is something that we can dispense with. I say that because it is obvious that we should put money there rather than elsewhere. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said that because I had made a suggestion about how the amendment might be improved, it indicated a lack of consultation. In fact, one of the amendments was a police proposal which has not found its way into the Bill, so I am re-presenting it. It was not that it not been asked for or shared; for whatever reason, it was not there, which I found odd.

More fundamentally, we have to keep an eye on what the Bill is trying to do. Good parents of young people will either try to stop them mixing with the wrong people or stop them going to certain places where they would get into harm or cause it. That is broadly what the Bill tries to do where a parent cannot or will not: it tries to restrict where people can meet and whom they meet if they are causing a problem.

The right reverend Prelate said that she hoped the law would acknowledge the difference in age. The sad reality is that the criminal law makes no distinction about age other than by criminal responsibility. Murder is murder. Whether you are 16 or 33, it is murder. From 14 onwards, it is absolute liability; from 10 to 14, one has to prove a certain intent. We have to accept that that is true. The thing that concerns me in some of the contributions is that we seem almost to be giving a defence to someone who is terrified—which I accept—that it is therefore okay to carry a knife. That means that the offensive weapon law is useless. I understand that it is a sincere belief—I do not challenge that—but that is what everyone says. Sometimes it is true, and sometimes they are the aggressor. However, even if it is true, unless we are going to agree to people carrying guns and any offensive weapon justified by their fear about defending themselves, it is a real difficulty. It may be something on sentencing, or it may be that you can show reasonable cause—I do not think you can ever show reasonable cause for carrying an offensive weapon—the definition of an offensive weapon is something intended, made or adapted to hurt people. It is important that we keep an eye on that because if we put a defence of that type in, it will be abused.

[Baroness Meacher]

The noble Lord suggests that some of us are saying, “It’s okay to carry a knife”. I want to make it clear that I am not saying that. I have a feeling that noble Lords around us are not saying it either. It is not okay for kids to carry knives. The only issue is what we do to help them not to have to carry a knife.

[Lord Elton]

If I may go back to the noble Baroness’s speech, I am drawn to my feet simply to endorse her view of the inappropriateness of a short prison sentence and, with juveniles, of any prison sentence. For a time, I was Minister responsible for the welfare of young people, other than their health, at the DHSS, which simply meant juvenile offenders in secure accommodation and keeping them out of it. I then had three years being responsible for prisons in the Home Office. I therefore dedicated the next chunk of my life to stopping young people going to prison. You cannot do it when they are into crime; you have to do it before. You have to see that they are not frightened. They must feel safe at home, at school and on the streets, and you must see that they are not bored. The two spurs are fear—“To protect myself I must be armed”—and, “What on earth am I going to do? Let’s go and make trouble. Let’s take a car that does not belong to us and drive it very, very fast around Blackbird Leys in Oxford”. It is the buzz they have to get. We have to provide that by means other than punitive, by pre-emptive means before the event. We have to engage them. When they are on the edge of the event, we have to try even harder. One good way is to find a group of young adults with enthusiasm for almost anything, but preferably a team sport or team activity; for example, white-water rafting, jazz playing, football, canoeing or rock climbing, give them the small amount of money necessary to set up a group to do that and the bored young and the frightened young will come there in clusters. When we did that when I was in what one might call civilian life, the people concerned learned to get £5 of funding from elsewhere for every pound that my people were able to give them.

What I am trying to preach here is outside the terms of this Bill, and I apologise for that, but we are putting the money, as the noble Baroness says, in the wrong place, too late. If only we had enough cash to do a sensible job for our young people. Many of them have no male adult role model, and it is almost impossible to get male teachers into primary education now because the dangers of being sussed as having improper relations with pupils are so great. It is a risk to cuddle a child if they fall and hurt themselves, and we have the new phenomenon of mobile phones which are distracting young adults so that they do not pay attention to children at all. All of that has got to be remedied by the community acting together to give young people things to do which excite them, in safe places with secure adult supervision. That cannot go into this Bill, but I hope nothing which puts juveniles in danger of short prison sentences will go into this Bill, because that is wholly counterproductive.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I too want to say something controversial, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, will find more controversial than most. I was convinced, 35 years ago, on incontrovertible evidence, that a course of non-custodial treatment was more effective than a custodial sentence in curing people of crime. The people in question were young people, and since then I have devoted a great deal of my life to trying to stop young people getting into crime. For three years I was in charge of the Prison Service, and nothing that I saw there changed my mind. Thereafter, I became chairman of the National Fund for Intermediate Treatment, the function of which was to provide excellent treatment in the community for offenders, which was monitored. When government funding was withdrawn, I founded a charity to do the same thing.

Non-custodial treatment must be done properly—it is not about turning up and ticking in a book or sweeping the street; what you need is an experience that the young person has not had before. In a frighteningly high percentage of cases, what these courses—or whatever you like to call them—provide is the first experience a young person has of an adult who actually cares what they are doing and what they are doing with their lives, and that has an electric effect. It cannot be produced in custody. It can be produced in outward bound programmes, in a jazz band or in whitewater rafting. It depends on the adult and young person’s relationship. It works, it is far cheaper than custody and far more effective. I echo the words of the Secretary of State for Justice in support, which are powerful evidence:

“Why would we spend taxpayers’ money doing what we know does not work, and indeed, that makes us less safe?”


That is what is being advocated. I do not often fall in step with noble Lords sitting on the Benches opposite, but on this occasion, my lifetime’s experience means that I have to support them.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. The one thing we know about short sentences is that people do not receive any education, training, therapy—anything at all, in fact, because, well, they are not there long enough to benefit. Therefore, as the noble Lord said, why on earth do we spend all this money only to create hardened criminals? I very strongly support these amendments.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the amendments. I was at the speech given by the Secretary of State for Justice last Monday, in which he said that in the last five years, there have been just over 250,000 custodial sentences of six months or less, and over 300,000 of 12 months or less. He went on to say that nearly two-thirds of the offenders had gone on to commit further crime within a year of being released. He also said that the Government were now taking a more punitive approach than at any time during the Thatcher years, which I thought was a strange admission from him. I wrote to him pointing out that this Bill appears to be him against the Home Secretary, and he replied today that “work in the area will require careful collaboration with other government departments to ensure a consistent approach to sentencing reform which reflects my ambitions and, most importantly, keeps the public safe”.

Everything has been said about the growing body of evidence that diverting children away from the formal justice system is more effective at reducing offending than punitive responses, and I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on that. I also deplore the removing of judicial discretion, which works against the Sentencing Council’s guidelines. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child resolved that the interests of the children must be placed first. Mandatory short prison sentences have been proved to be ineffective—I have seen them to be ineffective—because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, there is nothing happening in any young offender institution which is worth the while, and if people are there for a short time, nobody has time to establish their needs, let alone tackle them. Therefore, I strongly support the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

My Lords, I also spoke in Committee. I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, as he is aware. I come from a similar background and do not have the same experience of anti-social behaviour orders. They were introduced by a Labour Government and, at the time, I think they had an effect. We had a moral panic, and we also had a problem with anti-social behaviour. They were intended to address repeat offenders, repeat locations and, sadly, repeat victims. They did have an effect. They probably went on a bit too long and eventually outlived their usefulness, but the principle was valid and addressed the order to people’s offending. People had the choice to address their offending pattern or have a criminal sanction, and some chose not to address their offending pattern.

The point that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made—that it seems to intervene with young people who may not be able to remember all of the conditions placed on them—is not unreasonable. However, generally, this order’s aim is to replace the parental care that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to earlier. When some of these kids do not have someone who cares enough to say, “That’s a line—don’t cross it”, this is one way to give them some advice. I do not think that it means that a 12 year-old will always end up with a prison sentence or even a criminal conviction, but someone needs to intervene in that pattern. Why are they getting involved with gangs and, frankly, mixing with people who are not helping them? Someone needs to advise them where they should not go, who they should not see and about the types of behaviour that are causing them problems. This is one way of doing it. I accept that there may be others, but I do not think that it is unreasonable to give that type of advice.

I broadly support these orders, mainly because we have a serious problem. The Minister went through the number of people who have been hurt and arrested carrying knives, and we clearly have a cultural problem at the moment. We have had it in previous years—this is not the first time. People in this Chamber will remember tens of years ago, when various groups who carried knives ended up competing with each other, often to sell drugs or for any other form of territory where a weapon became the means of establishing it. We have to intervene now and send a message.

I will contest one final point from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about whether community officers are there to arrest people. They are not, but in my view they are not there just to smile and be nice to people. They have powers. It does not help the community they serve if they ignore offences and leave someone else to make the arrest. They are there to exercise the powers that allow people to trust that it is worth telling them when an offence has been committed.

I would ask the Government still to consider two areas for the future. I agree with the point about pilots. At one time, the Ministry of Justice had so many pilots that we thought it was starting an airline. The danger is that, after a while, it becomes confusing. It also becomes quite difficult to evaluate the success of multiple pilots; so, I worry about pilots generically.

The second point, which the Minister quietly mentioned earlier, is that some people are released from prison to areas other than those where they were convicted. Also, offenders move from where they live to other areas around the country, which means that officers in areas where a pilot may not be in place would have to understand what the powers are; frankly, that could get pretty confusing. This House and the other place generate a huge amount of legislation; officers are expected to remember and act on it fairly. The more legislation there is, the harder it is to enforce when it is partial and fragmented. I worry about pilots for that reason too.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, if we accept that there is a need for this legislation—as I do, and I am prepared to support it—deciding to implement it partially seems an odd conclusion, since we have agreed that nationally there is a problem. We need to implement legislation in a uniform rather than a fragmented, incremental way.

Finally, I repeat a point that I made in Committee: this Bill does not give a power of search. The Minister said in Committee that existing powers of search were sufficient. I honestly do not believe they are. Section 1 of the Bill gives a power to search—anybody at any time—on reasonable suspicion, but these orders are for people who have already gone through a court process, probably at least twice, and have been found to be at risk of carrying knives. It seems not unreasonable to support the police in the relatively few cases concerned, as mentioned by the Minister; I am sure that far fewer than 3,000 of these orders will be implemented. It would not be an incredible burden for the legislature to support the police by saying that a power of search goes with this power, without the “reasonable cause” that Section 1 requires; it would not be unreasonable to support the police in that way. The officers described by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who proposed this power—which is generally supported by the police—had requested that the power of search went with it. They were disappointed when they saw that this request had not been accepted in the legislation.

I support the amendments but I suggest to the Minister that the Government consider the two issues I have mentioned: piloting and the power of search.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I rise to respond to the government amendments in this group, as well as Amendments 55 to 60 in relation to the proposed pilots of the new KCPOs. I thank the Minister for meeting me to discuss my considerable concerns about these knife crime prevention orders. Amendment 52 could provide some reassurance, but that would depend very much on how those pilots are undertaken and reported upon.

In view of the Government’s claim that these orders were wanted by the police, I asked Ron Hogg, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Durham—which is one of the top-performing constabularies in the country, according to the inspectorate—whether he and his chief constable, Mike Barton, would find KCPOs a helpful contribution to policing and dealing with knife crime. His considered response—given at some length—amounted to a resounding no.

I would be grateful if the Minister could inform the House how many police services want knife crime prevention orders and how many would prefer not to have them. Police and Crime Commissioner Hogg reiterated many of the concerns that I raised in Committee; in particular, that there is a body of evidence to show that criminalising and punitive civil deterrents have not had a significant impact on reducing youth violence. These policies, as others have mentioned, have included ASBOs, dispersal orders and criminal behaviour orders. Can the Minister confirm—this is very important—that the KCPO pilots will specifically assess, and report on, their impact on the criminalisation of children, and the impact on knife crime in the areas involved? It is no good having pilots if they do not nail down what the orders are achieving in the crucial areas.

Does the Minister accept that in the light of recent swingeing cuts to local authority youth services, and drug services in particular, it will be important to boost these services and restore those cuts in the pilot areas, with a view to rolling out that restoration of funding across the country? Only if these prevention orders really do lead to children and young people accessing the services and treatment they need will criminalisation be avoided and positive outcomes achieved.