Violent Crime, Gang Activity and Burglaries

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Snape, not only for obtaining this timely debate but for his introduction to it. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I will focus on just one specific area of this huge topic, which I imagine many of us will want to address: knife crime. The diocese I serve encompasses Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire; in Bedfordshire, knife crime has increased by a third since 2010. There are various estimates about the increases over the last year, but it is something in the region of 10% across our nation. There was a fall during the lockdowns, but we are now rapidly reaching the same levels as pre Covid and the projections are stark—so it is deeply worrying.

It is engendering huge levels of fear: as I go around talking to people, many of the elderly are fearful of their houses being broken into, although they are statistically unlikely to be the victims of knife crime. However, when you go into schools, it is a topic of which many young children are terrified, not least as they make their way to and from school. Hospitals are dealing with soaring numbers of stab victims: 4,112 cases were recorded last year, a 2% increase on the previous year. Of those, 855 were in London, 405 in the West Midlands, 310 in Greater Manchester, 240 in West Yorkshire hospitals, 175 in South Yorkshire and 140 in Merseyside. In other words, this is not just a case of stories being particularly highly reported in the papers of London; it is something that affects areas—particularly urban but even sometimes rural—across our country. It is particularly concerning that a recent report suggests that only one in six crimes involving a knife in London has been solved by the police over the last two years.

I know that others will comment on the police, but we need to start by thanking them for being on the front line, which is the most terrifying place to be when you are confronted with a knife. Having been out sometimes with a night shift to watch what our police are having to cope with, I have nothing but admiration for them putting their lives on the line and having to deal with situations I would not know how to begin with—and some of them are doing it night after and after. We really need to support our police. This is why we need to ensure that the promises that have been made to recruit 20,000 new police officers are met, and that we get those people in place. The latest I can find out on recruitment is that we are sort of half way there. I will ask the Minister a bit more about that at the end. We need to have people on the ground who are policing, and we need to support our police and everybody in our criminal justice system.

Having said that, when someone is convicted, it is too late: we need to get far ahead on preventing it before we are simply dealing with the effects. As noble Lords know, some people say it costs—we hear various figures—something like £40,000 a year to keep someone in a young offender institution. It would be far better if we were spending that money on preventive work with youth workers and other people to get ahead of the game. We need to try to work out how we can support the police and get ahead of this terrible problem that is affecting so many communities.

How can we work to beat our swords into ploughshares and our knives into useful tools? In the areas where I work with voluntary groups and churches, there is an awful lot of work going on and a lot of analysis about how we can build the sort of communities that are likely to reduce the levels of knife crime. This is not a problem for just the left or the right; we need solutions from all political sides if we are going to get on top of this. According to a very interesting analysis I read, there is poverty of resources, poverty of relationships and poverty of identity.

On the poverty of resources, we are not investing in the way that we used to in youth work, and we are not investing in enough groups, sports and other activities to give young people activities to engender their sense of competition, pride and so on. We really need to think about how we are investing in this. In the communities in which I work, so many of our youth centres are being sold off. I think I am right in saying that my diocese now employs more youth workers—as a voluntary organisation—than Hertfordshire County Council and the Bedfordshire unitary authorities combined. That is good, but we need to invest more and recognise that there is a poverty of resources.

From the perspective of the right, there is a poverty of relationships. We have a crisis of children being brought up in families with absent parents and where there are no role models. A lot of the extended family has gone—where, for example, when a marriage broke up there was probably an uncle who would come round and be in loco parentis. A lot of that has gone. We need to look at how we can invest in our family life and how we think about young people having real mentors who can hold them responsible. It is vital that we think about these role models.

Finally, on the poverty of identity, many young people feel as though there is nothing to which they can aspire. They are being sold an awful lot of guff in the media about how everybody can be successful and famous. It is no wonder that they are dismayed when they know there is no way out of their local community. How can we provide ways for these young people to see that there are alternatives to finding their identity and role in society that are not based on holding a knife and saying, “Do what I say, or else”? Some of the very interesting work that has gone on with our churches has involved knife amnesties. Some noble Lords will have seen the extraordinary sculptures made of the knives that have been handed in; we had one recently in one of our churches in Luton.

I will ask the Minister three questions. First, may we have an update on the recruitment of police and police community support officers? That needs to include how many are leaving, not just how many we are recruiting: are the total numbers going up, because we need to ensure that we have the resources on the ground? Secondly, may we have an assessment of the success of serious violence reduction orders in reducing knife crime? Thirdly, may we have an assessment of the troubled families programme, which ran from 2013 to 2020 and worked with over 400,000 families? What lessons did we learn and are we implementing them?

Emergency Services: Ministers of Religion

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I do not think there is any doubt that the police chaplaincy service is fully supported by the Government. It provides a vital service at critical times to people in need. I cannot say further than that, but what I will say to the noble Baroness—and I congratulate her on the work she does —is that the Government fully support the service.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, this is a delicate area, especially when we are dealing with crime scenes or potential crime scenes. Nevertheless, do Her Majesty’s Government have any plans to ensure how this information will be rolled out in training people who are going to be in charge of these scenes? Is there going to be any monitoring to ensure that this is available? The sacrament of the last rites is a fundamental religious principle for many people. Can we have some assurance that this is going to be monitored?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am sure it will be monitored, for the very reason that we need to be very clear that the police should be able to do the job that they have to do at the scenes of what might be quite critical incidents. They need to have the freedom to make those judgments but also be mindful of the wishes of people who might want to have a priest or religious leader with them at the time of critical illness or nearing death. I say to the right reverend Prelate that there is certainly further learning to be done on this, but I think this is a very welcome step forward.

Home Office Visas for Ukrainians

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I understand my noble friend’s points, but we will continue to carry out security checks on anyone who comes in. The point is that Ukrainians with passports will be able to come straight here and have their biometrics taken. That will free up the system much more quickly.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, perhaps the Minister could help us a little. Ukrainians are arriving, some of them with leave to remain, but they have no recourse to public funds. For example, yesterday my chaplain at the airport in Luton was phoning me saying, “We have 12 people. They have been put up for a week in a hotel by Border Force, but that is going to come to an end on Monday.” We are currently trying to raise money and funds, and to identify places for these 12 people. This is a really serious problem facing us immediately. We want to help, but there is a very real danger that, if we cannot get the legalities sorted out, there are going to be people—particularly single people—sleeping rough by next Monday. Will clear guidance be given to local authorities, and can we try to find a way through some of these problems, which need to be addressed now?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am assuming that the right reverend Prelate is not referring to people coming in under the family scheme, because clearly they would have recourse to public funds. I am assuming that he is talking about Ukrainians seeking asylum here. Ukrainians coming here under the family scheme, by its very nature, will have family members here. I will take this offline and discuss it with the right reverend Prelate, because certain things in what he is saying do not seem to fit the scheme that we are talking about.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

It is not a matter of balance. Is it any wonder that victims do not have the confidence that they will be regarded as victims if one of the criteria for support is that they will co-operate with a prosecution? It is not a new point. We support all the amendments in this group. I would like to have longer to say so but we do, and we are not reassured.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 67 and 68 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I spoke to these amendments in Committee because I was concerned that Clause 59 was effectively raising the reasonable grounds threshold for identifying a victim of modern slavery. With respect to the Government, I confess that I remain unconvinced by their desire to alter reasonable grounds thresholds, and was not adequately assuaged in my fears that this could erect an unnecessary barrier to victims accessing the national referral mechanism.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, made the argument in Committee that reasonable grounds decisions on the standard of “suspect but cannot prove” would allow the Modern Slavery Act to be more in line with ECAT. I am not a legal expert so this may well be the case. However, I made the point that since we currently use “maybe” as it exists within the Modern Slavery Act, as opposed to “is” or “are” as proposed by the Government —indeed, rather than “has been” as appears in ECAT—in supposedly bringing ourselves in line with ECAT we would effectively raise the threshold for access to the NRM.

There are then two possibilities here. Either by opting not to have a “suspect but cannot prove” reasonable grounds, we are moving away from ECAT, or we are essentially raising our reasonable grounds threshold away from a standard of “suspect but cannot prove” to be in line with ECAT. If it is the former, the amendments presented by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, would better achieve the Government’s stated aim. If it is the latter, it begs the question as to what the benefits are of aligning ourselves to ECAT if we are in effect raising the threshold and making it more difficult for victims to access the NRM.

I recognise that we have obligations under ECAT but, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, previously pointed out, we do not break our international obligations by going further than them, and by seeking alignment via Clause 59 we would effectively withdraw to an obligation that is weaker than our existing legislation. It is slightly bizarre that Her Majesty’s Government seem happy to diverge from Europe when it comes to regulation and standards, as was recently announced with regard to the prospective Brexit freedoms Bill, but when it comes to reducing a threshold for the victims of modern slavery it appears that they are rushing for alignment.

As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that the NRM is being abused. In 2020, the single competent authority made 10,608 reasonable grounds referrals, of which 92% were later confirmed as victims, and 81% of reconsidered claims were later positive. There is an obvious fear that, through this higher standard, a number of victims may not even enter the system at all and, furthermore, that exploiters and slavers will be able to lean on this increased threshold to further manipulate and control their victims and deter them from seeking help. Surely this cannot be the Government’s intention.

I will listen with great interest and care to the Minister’s response. I hope that rather than just talk about the need for legal clarity in relation to both the statutory guidance and ECAT, which I recognise is important, he will address the pressing problem about whether this increased reasonable grounds threshold would have a negative effect on people using the NRM or indeed on referrals being made. I believe that this is the central concern that many of us have in this whole group of amendments, which I support.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, forgive us for having two Bishops in a row. We do not normally do this—it is the way the groupings have fallen out. I support Amendment 70ZA tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, to which I have added my name with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and I declare my interests in relation to both RAMP and Reset. My interest comes from my ongoing engagement in the House with issues concerning children and their well-being and safety, and ensuring that their best interests are central to legislation.

I am deeply concerned that the protection of children identified as victims of modern slavery or human trafficking is not of primary concern in the Bill. I note again that not all children who are in modern slavery or human trafficking are brought into this country from outside. Some are born and raised here but find themselves held in slavery. This is a safeguarding matter, not an immigration matter, and the legislation should recognise that children require special protection. They are covered by the Children Act 1989, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, pointed out earlier. Why on earth is there no specific provision for the greater protection of children despite all our international and domestic obligations? As with many other parts of the Bill, it is simply not satisfactory for a Minister to rely on unscrutinised guidance at a later date, applied on a case-by-case basis. Safeguards must be built into legislation so there is no doubt that children receive the protection they deserve and that this is not left to chance. Can the Minister say when the guidance will be produced so that it can be properly scrutinised, and how can he reassure us that children are properly protected?

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the Rural Coalition. It is a great delight to stand in the House and congratulate the Government on tabling these amendments to address this very serious rural problem of hare-coursing, which has affected so many landowners and farmers across these islands. In particular, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, who really listened to the debate, when people from every part of the Chamber spoke. I know that he has taken that back to others. I am hugely grateful to him for doing that.

I know that this is something that the Government were keen to do and that the consultations with Defra and others were ongoing during the passage of the Bill, so I am grateful that we will not see the delay we thought we would face and that we can offer protection to rural communities and, indeed, hares. I will not say much about the actual amendments—they have been laid out already before us—but I note that the changes the Government are bringing forward are the result of a long-running campaign. I pay tribute to organisations such as the NFU, the CLA and others, which have continually raised this issue and campaigned for a change in the law.

I also pay tribute to our rural police forces and our rural police and crime commissioners. I have been speaking to those in my area who work in my diocese, and this has been a real issue for them. It has been very helpful that they have provided input and feedback on the sort of legislative changes that would be most useful to assist them to be more assiduous in combating hare-coursing. I hope these amendments will go a long way to assist the police to do this.

Of course, there will be some other problems beyond the legislative changes, such as with local police resources and their ability to arrive on time and in sufficient numbers to deal with it. That being said, this is a victory for rural communities, rural police forces, hares and, I believe, Her Majesty’s Government; I strongly welcome it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I commend the government amendments, and congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his successful campaigning and all those behind it. It is great that we are seeing an awareness of the huge issues around wildlife crime, but this is very much a piecemeal approach, addressing one small element of wildlife crime, as important as it is. As the right reverend Prelate said, this is about the welfare of hares, as well as what is happening to people living in the countryside.

I ask the Minister—if he cannot respond now, I would appreciate a response by letter—whether the Government are considering doing something about the welfare of hares, particularly those being caught in spring and snare traps. There is a particular issue around Fenn traps approached by tunnels. There is guidance that says they should be restricted in size to the target species, but there is no legal provision on that. I am afraid there is some very disturbing documentation of hares, and pieces of hares, being found in such traps, and in Perdix traps. Think about what happens to an animal trapped by a paw and left to die, possibly for days, in terror and pain; I hope that that is something the Government are thinking about dealing with.

Briefly, on the wider issue of wildlife crime, I point any noble Lords interested in this to the Wildlife and Countryside Link’s annual report—there have been four of them now—on wildlife crime. It is the only summary available on the scale of the problem. As pointed out by that organisation, which is a coalition of 64 groups around the country, there is currently no recording of wildlife crime as a special category by the Home Office. That group is campaigning for that to happen. I hope the Minister might think about taking action on that.

Finally, we have a very solid law against the persecution of raptors, but we have to think about the use and application of that law, given that 60 hen harriers have been killed illegally or disappeared under suspicious circumstances on and around grouse moors since 2018.

Domestic Abuse: Older People

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, with increasing numbers of bank branches being closed on high streets and the impact of Covid, the elderly vulnerable are having to negotiate the choppy waters of online banking like everybody else, in an environment where there are large numbers of online scams and frauds. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to offer training and resources to try to protect the elderly vulnerable as they engage with online financial services?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate points to a real problem which particularly targets the vulnerable, never mind the elderly—who are obviously in that bracket. We have Action Fraud, which is trying to tackle the problem. Some information is also being put out to help to guard against people being scammed. I think every one of us has at some point had messages appearing on their email which appear to be genuinely from their bank but, in fact, are not.

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I have to agree with my noble friend that someone dying before they receive compensation is absolutely tragic. Of course, we would work with the next of kin to ensure that any compensation due to that person is paid to the next of kin or to the designated chosen person. The point is that it is not acceptable that people die before they get the compensation they deserve. It is incumbent upon the Home Office to ensure that these claims are expedited more quickly than they have been.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, the Windrush protests are a wake-up call to all of us and to every institution in this country. Indeed, the Church of England has set up an antiracism taskforce to look at this issue and to achieve change. Is it correct that the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is investigating this issue with regard to the Home Office, does not have a single black commissioner on the current board? What do Her Majesty’s Government plan to do to make the EHRC more representative so that it can undertake this work?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I do not think it essential that there is every protected characteristic on the EHRC. However, I take the right reverend Prelate’s point that—certainly in the current climate—BAME representation or indeed black representation might be a really good asset to the EHRC. I am sure he is correct, but I will check out the veracity of that and get back to him.

Knife Crime

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the statistical bulletin by the Office for National Statistics Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2020, published on 17 July, which reported that the incidence of knife crime is at a record high, what action they are taking to address the rise of knife crime in England and Wales.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are taking urgent action to tackle knife crime, which is costing too many lives and leaving too many people afraid. Police funding is increasing by more than £1 billion this year. We are recruiting 20,000 more police officers and making it easier for them to use stop and search, and we are ensuring that more knife crime offenders go to prison for longer.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

I thank the noble Baroness for her reply. We need a much more ambitious approach so that, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, swords are turned into ploughshares or—to put it into modern language—knives are turned into tools to capture the passion and energy of these young people whose lives are being blighted at the very point when we need their contribution more than ever. Will Her Majesty’s Government commit to a public health approach to this problem, encompassing reducing poverty, increasing youth services and strengthening community policing?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I say to the right reverend Prelate that that is the only way to go. Knife crime problems are not caused by any one source and there is no magic area where we can deploy interventions. It has got to be a multiagency, public health approach, as the right reverend Prelate says.

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with the noble Viscount that we can learn from the past in order to make our future world better. This cohort of people who have been systematically failed by successive Governments are a particular case in point. That is why a whole-of-government approach is being taken to look at just what the factors were, are and might be in future if we do not address them by introducing some more fairness into the way that we work.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

My Lords, we are all implicated in the conscious and unconscious bias which bedevils our society. It will change only if we all take responsibility to make that change come about. Due to the age of those who came on the “Windrush”, time is of the essence in gaining compensation. Some of them have already died. What specifically is being done to speed up the process? On the more general issue, what is the relationship between the various groups, such as this cross-government working group and the race equality commission, and is the Minister sure that these groups will complement each other and expedite matters rather than confuse them?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I apologise to the right reverend Prelate because the line was not entirely clear. There was a little bit of feedback. I think he talked about the groups complementing each other and not confusing the whole picture entirely. He is absolutely right. He also talked about people who have died. That was brought up yesterday in the House of Commons. It is right that people whose parents or relatives have died take up claims for them, so the Windrush Advisory Group will be very much involved in engagement and outreach. The cross-government working group will be much broader and will look at the lessons learned report from Wendy Williams and a lot more broadly across government at what the right reverend Prelate talked about: unconscious bias and other things that plague some of the workings of our state institutions.

Reading Terrorist Attack

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am sure that the noble Lord will realise that I cannot talk about any details of this case. On the terrorist threat, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about additional money for counterterrorism policing, and I pointed out that there is an additional £90 million this year and that we intend to recruit 20,000 more police officers over the next few years. Of course, it is about how that resource is deployed. As my noble friend Lord Caine said, intelligence is a very difficult science. I pay tribute to our intelligence services which, despite some of these attacks, have kept us safe from 25 terrorist attacks over the last three years.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

The Minister has referred to the extra £90 million for counterterrorism. Is this ring-fenced and will it be continued in future years? Secondly, what reassurances and protections are being given to minority communities, which will be feeling very vulnerable at this point?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The answer to the first question is yes; the CT budget is always ring-fenced. I do not know whether the right reverend Prelate saw last night on the television the solidarity with which different faith communities in Reading came together immediately. It seems to be really crucial that different faiths come together in the immediate aftermath of things like that, to stand together against terror.