Lord Blencathra
Main Page: Lord Blencathra (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Blencathra's debates with the Home Office
Crime and Policing Bill
Lord Blencathra ExcerptsMonday 17th November 2025
(1 day, 13 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Crime and Policing Bill 2024-26 View all Crime and Policing Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 111(Corrected)-II(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (14 Nov 2025)
Lord Blencathra
“Forfeiture of vehicles under the Environmental Protection Act 1990In section 33C of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (section 33 offences: forfeiture of vehicles), omit subsection (7).”Member’s explanatory statement
This would remove some of the issues a court has to consider before granting a forfeiture order for someone convicted of fly tipping controlled waste, and ensures that the innocent landowner must not bear the cost of removal.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I apologise for the delay; the lift was delayed, so I just made it.
In moving my Amendment 40, I will also address Amendment 42. Amendment 40 suggests omitting subsection (7), on the forfeiture of vehicles, from the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The first question is: what does subsection (7) say? To start with, this part of the 1990 Act deals with the criminal act of illegally fly-tipping and the massive amounts of rubbish dumped in the countryside, including controlled waste. We saw an example of that at the weekend at Kidlington, where an enormous amount was illegally dumped there. Section 33 deals with a forfeiture of vehicles and rightly gives the appropriate authority, which may be a local authority or the Environment Agency, power to ask the court to take possession of the vehicle used in the commission of the crime and dispose of it—excellent law, in my opinion.
Regarding subsection (7), the point of my amendment is to remove a few hoops which the court has to consider before making the order—in my opinion they are not necessary—and make it more difficult to penalise the organised crime rackets behind most of the worst illegal dumping. Thus, subsection (7) says:
“In considering whether to make an order under this section a court must in particular have regard to … the value of the vehicle … the likely financial and other effects on the offender of the making of the order (taken together with any other order that the court contemplates making) … the offender’s need to use the vehicle for lawful purposes”
and
“whether, in a case where it appears to the court that the offender is engaged in a business which consists wholly or partly in activities which are unlawful by virtue of section 33 above … the making of the order is likely to inhibit the offender from engaging in further such activities”.
I say to these caveats that the value of the vehicle is irrelevant. If the criminal uses it to commit a crime, too bad. Whether it is a 20 year-old clapped-out van or a new Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, if it is used in a crime, he loses it, whatever the value. As for the likely financial effects, what should we care if it has financial effects on the criminal? I would hope it would—that is the point of confiscating the implement he uses to commit the crime.
Then the court has to consider the criminal’s
“need to use the vehicle for lawful purposes”.
I have no doubt that he will tell the court that he needs it to transport meals on wheels or medical supplies and give any number of bogus excuses. If a criminal uses a vehicle for criminal purposes and has made a lot of money by doing so, he should forfeit the vehicle, even if he can no longer use it for the school run.
Let us not be naive. We are not looking here at a householder who drives in his Volvo to the countryside to dump a bag of garbage but at serious and organised criminals, using their three-tonne tipper trucks—or, as we saw recently, their 30-tonne tipper trucks—to dump thousands of tonnes of controlled waste, including asbestos, chemicals and other building rubble. It is estimated, according to our House of Lords Select Committee report of two weeks ago, that the organised gangs make about £1 billion per annum from illegal dumping of controlled waste. As I said in a debate last week, the only thing that hurts these criminals is not a fine, which they might not pay, but depriving them of their property. We should not have any get-outs, as we have in subsection (7); instead, we should confiscate any and all vehicles used in their criminal waste-dumping activities.
I will not speak to Amendment 42, since my noble friends on the Front Bench put down their own amendment before mine and will make a better argument of it than I can. All I say is that I apologise that my explanatory statement is wrong here; I inadvertently attached the same one as for Amendment 40. However, going back to Amendment 40, I beg to move.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
My Lords, I wholeheartedly support my noble friend. He has done the Committee a great service by bringing forward these amendments. The Bill is indeed very broad, and the question of fly-tipping falls very squarely within its auspices.
This is a very serious issue indeed, and it is undertaken by a range of criminals, from small one-man bands to large, organised gangs, and everything in between. The fact is that we still have a really serious problem, which is not taken sufficiently seriously by law enforcement. Therefore, we have to bring forward measures that the criminals will be frightened of and will not just consider as a cost of business of being in that field. They must be concerned about the potential loss of their vehicles and the potential removal of—or, at least, adding of points to—their driving licenses. I could not agree with my noble friend any more; he has absolutely hit the nail on the head.
There is another very important measure, on which we will hear from my noble friends on the Official Opposition Front Bench in a few moments, around equity. It is inequitable that the person who is the victim of this crime must be responsible for clearing it up—that is just completely wrong. I have never understood why that should be the case.
I declare an interest of some description in that I have a small farm in Devon. I really feel for landowners and those who have responsibility for land. They go into their fields to tend their stock and then see massive piles of waste that could contain everything from biowaste to asbestos, to building products, and so forth, and then somehow it becomes their problem to find the means to clear it up. This is wrong, so we ought to use the Bill, in a very positive way, to remove that burden on the victims of crime and put it on the perpetrators, with support from local authorities.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I am afraid I will have to write to the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, with that detail. But I stress that there is no statutory limit on the amount of compensation that may be imposed for an offence committed by an offender aged 18 or over. However, in determining whether to make a compensation order and the amount that should be paid under such an order, the court must take into account the offender’s means. If they are limited, priority must be given to the payment of compensation over a fine, although a court may still impose a fine. I suppose 20% of something is better than 100% of nothing, if I can put it that way.
Having said that, guidance on presenting court cases produced by the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group, which is a group chaired by Defra that includes a wide range of representatives from interested parties—central and local government, enforcement authorities, the waste industry, police and fire services, private landowners, and the devolved Administrations—sets out that prosecutors should consider applying for compensation for the removal of waste. Defra will consider building on this advice in the statutory guidance that will be issued under Clause 9 once the Bill becomes law.
Noble Lords will also be interested, I hope, to hear that local authorities can already issue fixed penalties of up to £1,000 to fly-tippers, the income from which must be spent on clean-up or enforcement. Local authorities issued 63,000 fixed penalty notices in total for fly-tipping during 2023-24, and these were the second most common enforcement action, according to Defra data.
I fully understand the sentiment behind these amendments and entirely accept the principle that the polluter should pay but the Government believe that the sentencing framework, as set out in primary legislation, is the proper place to deal with this issue. I recognise, however, that there may be benefits in providing the court with an alternative disposal relating to penalty points, as proposed in Amendment 46 from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. Defra remains committed to considering such a move and will provide an update in due course.
I also stress, and in response to Amendment 47, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, noted, that there is an existing power for local councils and the police to seize a vehicle where there is a reasonable belief that it is being used or had been used for fly-tipping, which can lead to the vehicle being sold or crushed if it is not claimed. If the vehicle is claimed, the council can prosecute and a court can order that ownership rights are transferred to the council, under which it can keep, sell or dispose of the vehicle. There were nearly 400 vehicles seized in 2023-24 as an enforcement action.
When such an order is being considered, it is appropriate that the court must consider certain factors that Amendment 40, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to remove. The duty on the courts to consider these factors, such as the financial impacts of the forfeiture or the offender’s need to use the vehicle for lawful purposes, embeds principles of Article 1 of Protocol 1 of—our friend—the European Convention on Human Rights. This entitles a person to a peaceful enjoyment of their possessions but allows the state to enforce laws to control use of that property when it is in the general interest. Any such interference with this right must be lawful for legitimate aim and be proportionate. Amendment 40 would remove these safeguards, and we should always tread lightly when considering long-held rights regarding property, something I am sure I would not have to tell the Benches opposite.
In light of my explanations, I hope the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and to all those who have spoken in this short but interesting debate. I start with the problem: fly-tipping does not sound as bad as the crime actually is. Many people say, “Oh, fly-tipping, that is just dumping a mattress or a fridge in the countryside”, but as we have seen recently, there are 30,000 tonnes of contaminated garbage in Hoads Wood, with probably around 900 or 1,000 tonnes left at the weekend. It is not fly-tipping: it is rubbish racketeering. I am not going to suggest an amendment to change the title of it, but we really need to take it seriously.
Now, the other point that my noble friend on the Front Bench and I—and, I think, nearly all of us—agree on is that, ideally, the landowner should not have to pay the cost of clearing it up. He or she is the victim by having it dumped on their land in the first place, and then they are the victim the second time around in having to pay for clearing it up. But it should not be the ratepayers who pay for it either.
Ideally, of course, it should be the people who do it, but in many cases, we cannot catch them; we do not know who they are. In those circumstances, it seems grossly unfair that the landowner then has to bear the cost of doing that. We may discuss this in the next group of amendments, but I would hope that on, say, the Kidlington thing, a couple of forensic experts can crawl over that and find something. There must be addresses; there must be some data—that rubbish has not come from 200 miles away. There must be intelligence to pin down who has been doing it and then we should hit them hard.
I do not accept that the European Court of Human Rights would say that we need all those safeguards before taking away the vehicle of someone who has been involved in heavy crime. I challenge the Minister on that. I like the idea of three points on the licence, although I would go slightly further and make it three points for every load the person has dumped, but there are various penalties we can add there as well.
So I think we are all on the same side here—the noble Earl, Lord Russell, my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel on the Front Bench, myself and the Minister—and we are all searching for slightly tougher penalties. I hear what the Minister said, but perhaps if all of us on this side of the House could agree some simple, concerted amendment for Report where we can toughen up on this a bit, maybe adding the penalty points thing, maybe finding some way to make sure that the landowner does not pay and some way to penalise the organised crime behind this, it may be worth while coming back on Report. But in the meantime, in view of what the Minister said and his assurances, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 43, I shall speak also to Amendments 44 and 45, all on serious and organised waste crime. By chance, I found myself involved in this since those from the save Hoads Woods campaign came to me. That resulted in a ministerial direction and resulted in the clean-up of Hoads Wood at a cost of £15 million to the taxpayer, equivalent to the Environment Agency’s annual budget for fighting waste crime. It also led to the Environment and Climate Change Committee conducting a short inquiry into these matters, which has reported in the last couple of weeks. My amendments deal with some of the key findings from that report.
I do not wish to jump the gun, but some of these matters are clear cut; they are urgent, and I want to keep up the pressure. The Bill represents a vital opportunity to make progress, and it is progress that I do not want to be missed. I know that the Government have inherited broken systems and are committed to making reforms, particularly on the broker and dealer regulations, which I welcome and thank them for doing. The work done by the committee clearly shows that all parties recognise that this is a problem and is out of control. The findings paint a picture of fundamentally broken systems, where criminality is endemic in our waste sector. The key is to treat it as an organised crime problem and provide the right tools with which to fight it. We need to fight fire with fire.
While we sit with bits of paper that are easily forged, criminal networks buy land under false ID, using the dark web and secret apps to communicate with each other. I have no wish to blame individuals, but broken systems are creating broken results. This is a £1 billion a year problem. These criminal organised gangs are also involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery. There is the sheer scale: 38 million tonnes—enough to fill Wembley stadium 30 times over—is believed to be illegally managed every year.
We need look no further than the devastating environmental catastrophe that is unfolding in real time in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which came to light just this weekend. My heart sank when I saw this, because this dump—150 metres long and 6 metres high—threatens to become an environmental disaster, with toxic leachate running into the River Cherwell, which is only metres away. It feels like Hoads Wood has been allowed to happen all over again. I do not understand how, for months and months, lorries were allowed to dump this stuff and nothing has been done. I ask the Minister seriously to consider meeting the costs and to work with local residents and the council to ensure that that clear-up takes place. That is extremely important.
Without swift and decisive action, we will continue to draw ever more sophisticated criminal networks into the UK waste sector. The National Crime Agency warns that this is now a strategic threat. Beyond financial losses, this is not a victimless crime; there are damaging consequences for public health and the natural environment, and we, the taxpayer, are left to pick up the bill.
We welcome the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, but it has only 12 individuals and has no statutory footing or clear strategic direction. There needs to be better co-operation between partners. The committee heard witnesses say that this is the Bermuda triangle of intelligence—information is simply lost between partners and falls between the cracks. Amendment 43 would require the Secretary of State to take serious and organised waste crime as a strategic priority threat and to mandate the Joint Unit for Waste Crime to establish a comprehensive national action plan. That would focus on prevention, protection and prosecution, underpinned by effective intelligence sharing. It would place a duty of co-operation on all relative public bodies and enforcement agencies, ensuring that intelligence and expertise flow across the system. The national action plan would create a single point for receiving and disseminating waste crime reports.
Members of the public report this and get rightly frustrated when nothing happens. The need is clear: these issues are falling between organisations and jurisdictions, and all the while it is the criminals who are benefiting. Amendment 44 calls for greater transparency and accountability. Openness and accountability are key to understanding the causes and the scale of organised waste crime. A lack of transparency benefits only the criminal networks.
When the Environment Agency was asked by the Environment and Climate Change Committee how many sites of a similar size to Hoads Wood existed, the answer given was six. However, since then Sky News has reported a site in Wigan and, as we have heard, there is the site in Kidlington which was publicised in the press at the weekend. It is not clear whether those two sites are additional, but time will tell, and we need to know the true scale. We cannot effectively fight that which we do not know. More than numbers, it would require location, sizes, types of waste and what action is being taken to clear up these tremendous, huge waste piles. This amendment is also essential; these matters need to be legislated for as otherwise they will not be properly reported.
Amendment 45 is the linchpin of the committee’s recommendations. It would establish a root-and-branch review of serious and organised waste crime which would be independent of Defra, the Environment Agency and HMRC. The committee found multiple failures by the Environment Agency and criticised the regulators for being slow to respond. Despite receiving over 24,000 reports of waste crime in three years to March 2025, the EA opened only 320 criminal investigations. HMRC has achieved zero criminal convictions for landfill tax fraud, despite the tax gap being estimated at £150 million annually. The independent review scrutinised the egregious events at Hoads Wood, the fact that they were reported for years and that it took until January 2024 for the EA to obtain a restriction order. Clearing up the six sites that are already known about could cost close to £1 billion if the cost is similar to that of clearing Hoads Wood.
These are very important issues. Critically, we want to see a change in the financial rules set by the Treasury that prevent the Environment Agency diverting income derived from environmental permits on legitimate businesses towards dealing with criminal activity. Additional funding provided to the Environment Agency for 2025-26 should be maintained.
To conclude, I recognise that the Minister has not had long to consider the committee’s report, and that a formal response is not due until the start of December. My hope is that there is time for a formal response to the committee’s report prior to the Bill’s Report stage. I hope that the Government are minded at least to take an initial look at the amendments. If it is helpful, I am fully prepared to work and co-operate with the Government in any way I can. I beg to move.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
May God and my noble friends forgive me, but I think our Lib Dem Peers have a good point, particularly with regard to the new clause proposed in Amendment 43. I will not repeat what the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, but the letter from our chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee is absolutely spot on. The crime is massive—costing the country £1 billion per annum—and the environmental damage is enormous. I was not aware that our committee had carried out a short investigation, and I had not focused on Amendments 43, 44 and 45 until I saw the horrendous photos and videos last Friday and Saturday of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of tonnes dumped on that back lane in Kidlington, just six yards from the River Cherwell. The local MP and others have called it an environmental catastrophe, and that is no exaggeration.
This criminality is happening all across the country. I was on the board of Natural England when our SSSI at Hoads Wood was destroyed by 30,000 tonnes of illegal waste, dumped over a period of many months before the Environment Agency was aware of it. The agency then issued a notice barring further access to the site and is now spending £15 million to clean it up. The cost of cleaning up the Kidlington dump is estimated to be greater than the local authority budget.
Many have criticised the Environment Agency but I will not slag it off—at least, not too hard. Its main response is to issue a notice stopping further dumping, but inevitably that is weeks or months too late and the criminal gangs will have found new sites by then. This level of mega organised crime is way beyond its capability. It is a licensing organisation. It can do criminal investigations, but not of this complexity. It is easy for it to investigate a leak into a river from a factory, or prosecute a farmer who illegally dredged the River Lugg, but this level of organised crime is way beyond its capacity to investigate.
Conclusion 2 in the letter to the Defra Secretary of State from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, is so right. She says:
“What we do know, however, is that criminality is endemic in the waste sector. It is widely acknowledged that there is little chance of criminals being brought to justice for committing waste offences—the record of successful prosecutions and other penalties is woeful. Organised crime groups, including those involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery, are well-established in the sector. They are attracted to the low-risk opportunity to make large sums of money and commit crimes from coordinated fly-tipping to illegal exports and landfill tax fraud”.
When I was on the board of the Food Standards Agency until 12 months ago, I had responsibility for the National Food Crime Unit. We found that the gangs involved in recirculating condemned food back into the food chain, usually to the catering sector, were also involved in moving stolen high-value cars, JCBs, drugs, mobile phones, et cetera. They were simply movers and distributors of all high-value stolen property or illegal items. If you have the network to move stolen vehicles then you have the network to dump thousands of tonnes of rubbish also.
How much money do these organised crime teams make from illegal dumping? The cost of legally disposing of mixed waste is up to £150 per tonne, and up to £200 per tonne for hazardous waste. A legal company would have to charge that fee, which includes the landfill tax of £94 per tonne. All these crooks have to do is put in a bid slightly below £150 and they would probably get the contract, including from possibly legitimate companies that did not know that they were dealing with crooks—it is possibly more likely that they would know, but they take the cheaper option and deny responsibility. The crooks who dumped at Hoads Wood probably made away with about £4 million: 30,000 tonnes at a profit of £130 per tonne. At Kidlington, let us say that they dumped 10 loads of 30 tonnes each day for 30 days. That is 900 tonnes, or £120,000 pure profit—dirty profit, to be more exact.
Although Amendments 44 and 45 are okay, they are not the important ones in this group. Of course there is no harm in more data, but we already know how serious the problem is, as our Lords inquiry has shown. Conducting a review to report by 2027 sounds a bit like that wonderful line from Sir Humphrey Appleby in the “Yes Minister” episode “Doing the Honours”, when he said,
“I recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference, so that at the end of the day, we’ll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions”—
to which Hacker says: “You mean ‘no’?”
However, the new clause in Amendment 45 has one good gem in it—namely, proposed new subsection (2), which says that the review must consider
“the extent and effectiveness of integrated working between the Environment Agency, HMRC, the National Crime Agency, local police forces in England and Wales, and local authorities”.
That leads me on to the noble Earl’s Amendment 43, which has a very sensible key suggestion: beefing up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, whom we all respect, said in answer to an Oral Question in this Chamber on 15 October that Defra had increased the budget for the EA to use on the joint unit by 50% and that the number of staff had doubled. I have no real criticism of Defra, but that will still not work because the Environment Agency is the wrong organisation to lead it.
We are talking about massive, organised crime of £1 billion. There is only one organisation capable of leading a multiagency task force on that, and that is the National Crime Agency. I urge the Minister to take this back to the Home Office, discuss it with Defra, the EA and the NCA, and, without changing everything, give the National Crime Agency the lead in tackling this. As I and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, have pointed out, these same criminals are involved in high-value stolen goods such as mobiles, construction equipment, drugs—all stuff way out of the league of the EA but bang in the bailiwick of the NCA. If the noble Earl, Lord Russell, can come back with a simpler amendment on Report on something like that, then I would be minded to support him.
Lord Blencathra
Member’s explanatory statement
Anyone trespassing in the gardens or grounds of a private house must be assumed to be targeting the private residence and should be guilty of the same offence as if the tresspasser had entered the physical building and there should be a minimum penalty as well as the scope to have a larger maximum.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 47B.
Amendment 47A is to seek clarification that the definition of “premises” as
“any building, part of a building or enclosed area”
will include gardens and grounds associated with private dwellings. The phrase “enclosed area” is a key part of the statutory definition. Gardens and grounds of private dwellings are typically surrounded by fences, walls or hedges, marking them as distinct and separate from public areas. I hope that the intention behind the word “enclosed” here is to extend the definition beyond the physical structure of the buildings to include spaces that are set apart for private use. Therefore, I suggest that gardens and grounds, by virtue of their possible enclosure and association with the dwelling, fulfil the criteria set out in the definition.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and read the Member’s explanatory statement on these two amendments. I will be brief.
I can remember, as a child, signs indicating the barriers and limits of public access to certain parcels of land. Across the field, there was a substantial area of public allotments with a wide footpath running through the middle to an empty field beyond, which had public access. Nevertheless, there was a large hand-painted black sign at the start of this footpath that read, “Trespassers will be prosecuted”—not that as a child I understood what that meant, except to say that I could not use the footpath to access the field beyond but would have to walk a long way round to access the field, which was public open space.
Trespass is a crime that has been with us for decades but not always understood. At a time when Governments are trying to open up the countryside to those who have previously had limited access, extending trespass to private gardens and grounds needs careful consideration. Of course, if someone enters your property uninvited, even if the front door is temporarily open, they are trespassing, but those who are not intent on committing a crime—stealing the owner’s valuables, or helping themselves to the contents of the fridge—might have strayed there by accident. That is extremely unlikely. Strangers will generally enter a private property uninvited only if they have some nefarious project in mind.
However, that is unlikely to be the case in respect of grounds and gardens. Public footpaths are not always clearly signposted. The map that the walker may be following might be inaccurate or out of date. Some footpaths may have been temporarily diverted due to the lambing season or some other stock grazing in the area. Stiles and bridges may have fallen into disrepair, causing walkers to look for an alternative route to complete their walk. Is the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, suggesting that these unwitting miscreants should be dealt with in the same way as those who have deliberately set out to commit a crime?
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My amendment refers specifically to gardens and grounds of houses, not to farmers’ fields with a footpath wandering through them. Even if a garden has a footpath going through it, people have the right to use that footpath and it would be difficult then to prove that someone had criminal intent, but if someone enters the grounds and gardens of a private residence, we must assume they have the same criminal intent as if they want to enter the person’s house. It has nothing to do with farmers’ fields or footpaths.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s interjection and for that clarification. However, as somebody who lived for 35 years with a footpath running through their garden, I have to say that I do not really agree with him.
We should be very careful about implementing these two amendments. They smack to me of the landed gentry attempting to keep the ordinary man and woman from enjoying the countryside. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that it would not be an easy task to prove that deliberate trespass had occurred over land and grounds or gardens with the intent of causing harm or wanton damage to those grounds.
In respect of Amendment 47B, I do not support increasing the fee should an offence be proved. I am nevertheless keen to hear the Minister’s views on the amendment, but at the moment I am not inclined to support the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for tabling the amendments. I hope I can half help him today and, in doing so, assist the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.
I confirm that the Government will repeal the outdated Vagrancy Act 1824. In Clauses 10 and 11, the Government are legislating to introduce targeted replacement provisions for certain elements of the 1824 Act, to ensure that the police have the powers they need to keep our communities safe. Those targeted replacement measures include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain, which we will come on to shortly, and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime. Both were previously provided for under the 1824 Act, and the police have told us that it would be useful to retain them.
I hope this helps the noble Baroness, because the new criminal offence of trespassing with intent to commit a criminal offence recreates an offence that is already set out in the 1824 Act. It does not add to it; it recreates it. As is currently the case, it will be an offence for a person to trespass on any premises—meaning any building, part of a building or enclosed area—with the intention to commit an offence, and that is currently in the legislation.
Amendment 47A from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to ensure that trespassing in gardens and grounds of a private dwelling is captured by the replacement offence. This is where I think I can half help him by indicating that gardens and grounds would already be included in the definition of “premises” in the 1824 Act, so, in essence, that is covered already.
His Amendment 47B would introduce a minimum level 2 fine and increase the maximum level fine from level 3 to level 4 for this offence. Again, the measure in the Bill replicates entirely—going back to the noble Baroness—the maximum penalties currently set out in the existing legislation that we are repealing, but replacing in part, through the clauses addressed by these amendments. I agree with the noble Baroness on the proportionality of the current level of the fines. I say to the noble Lord what he anticipated I would say to him: sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary, and we need to afford it appropriate discretion. Parliament rarely specifies minimum sentences, and this is not an instance where we should depart from that general principle. I know he anticipated that I would say that—as the good old, former Home Office Minister that he is, I knew he would clock that that was the potential line of defence on his amendment.
It is important to say that the penalties set out in the current legislation, which we are replicating, are considered appropriate and proportionate to the nature of the offence. Therefore, with what I hope was helpful half clarification on grounds and gardens, and with my steady defence on the second amendment, which the noble Lord anticipated, I ask him not to press his amendments.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, half a loaf is better than no bread, of course. All I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, is that she has got totally the wrong end of the stick. I will not go into more detail to argue against her, except to say that I too had a footpath right across the middle of my garden in Cumbria, and I had no problem with it at all. However, that is quite separate from the guy who, in 2000, threatened to burn down my house because he did not like my view on hunting. That is quite a different matter. He committed an offence on my driveway, as opposed to the thousands of people who used the footpath, which I built special turnstiles at either end of for them to use.
I accept entirely what the Minister said and am delighted to see that grounds and gardens of public dwellings will be included in the definition—that is the half I am very happy with. I knew he would not accept my amendment on the penalties. He said that it is up to an independent judiciary—I wish we had one, without a Sentencing Council tying its hands, but that is a matter for another debate. With the Minister’s courteous remarks, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments. Every week, coming from the north of England to this House, I see literally miles and miles of repulsive gang graffiti. On the outskirts of every station, walls and buildings are plastered with it. At Crewe and near Euston, hundreds and hundreds of goods wagons are covered in it, and even the walls of residential buildings. We see it everywhere, so why worry about it? It is unsightly and destroys any beauty that may be left on the approaches to cities by rail, but it is much more insidious than that, as my noble friend on the Front Bench has pointed out.
Gang-related graffiti, which we see in all urban areas, is often seen as both a symptom and a catalyst of criminal activity. I suggest that there is sufficient evidence available to conclude that gang graffiti leads to increased crime in affected neighbourhoods and that it instils fear among local residents. Gang graffiti typically consists of symbols, tags or messages used by criminal gangs to mark their territory, send warnings or communicate with other gangs. It differs from other forms of graffiti, such as street art, due to its association with organised crime and territorial disputes.
Several studies and reports indicate a correlation between the presence of gang graffiti and higher rates of crime, particularly violent offences. Gang graffiti is often used to demarcate territory, which can lead to turf wars and retaliatory violence. Areas marked by gang symbols may experience an increase in robberies, assaults and drug-related crimes as gangs seek to assert dominance. A study published by the Journal of Criminal Justice found that neighbourhoods with visible gang graffiti reported higher levels of gang-related crime and violence, suggesting that graffiti serves as both a warning and an invitation for conflict. Police departments in cities such as London and Manchester have noted that the appearance of new gang graffiti often coincides with spikes in criminal activity, particularly when rival gangs respond by marking over existing tags.
Crime prevention experts argue that gang graffiti is not merely a symptom but a tool used to intimidate, recruit and claim control, thereby fostering an environment conducive to criminal behaviour. Although correlation does not necessarily imply causation, the consistent association between gang graffiti and increased crime rates supports the argument that graffiti can contribute to localised crime.
The visual presence of gang graffiti can have a significant psychological impact on residents and visitors, as my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel said. Research conducted by community safety organisations has shown that people perceive areas with gang graffiti as less safe, which can lead to heightened anxiety, avoidance behaviours and reduced community cohesion. Surveys by our local councils in the UK reveal that residents often cite gang graffiti as a major contributor to their fear of crime, even if they have not personally experienced gang violence.
Our own British Crime Survey found that the visibility of gang markers and threatening messages increases the perceived risk of victimisation, causing some individuals to alter their daily routines or to avoid certain neighbourhoods or streets altogether. Community leaders report that gang graffiti can erode trust in public institutions as residents feel that the authorities are unable to maintain law and order and prevent criminal groups operating openly. In summary, gang graffiti acts as a visual clue that can frighten people, negatively impact mental well-being and discourage positive social interaction within affected communities.
Last year, the Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 102 active gangs in London engaged in violence and robbery, and they were responsible for a significant amount of serious violence, including half of all knife crimes with injury, 60% of shootings and 29% of reported child sexual exploitation. I think those 102 gangs equate to about 4,500 individuals. It is not just London; the same is happening in all our major cities. Let us be clear: gang-related graffiti is not some kids with aerosol cans spray-painting walls for a bit of fun. Gangs are making powerful statements to their allies and enemies that this is their criminal territory. Therefore, the solution has to be the prompt removal of graffiti, expensive though it is, and that has to be part of gang prevention strategies. However, we also need increased penalties, as suggested by my noble friend in his Amendment 51.
I do not need to speak in support of Amendment 52; I think I have just made the point that gangs are highly dangerous organisations and there should be tougher sentences for any crimes that have gang connections.
Baroness Doocey (LD)
My Lords, everyone is concerned about gang activity. The dark web means it has never been easier for people to source and buy drugs independently, contributing to the emergence of more loosely organised micro-gangs, as once an individual has a large supply of illicit drugs, they need to recruit others to help distribute them. I am sympathetic to the intentions behind the tabled amendments.
On Amendment 51 on graffiti, I entirely agree with some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that this usually relates to gangs marking territory or expressing group affiliation. It can result in public spaces feeling unsafe, and the fear is that it could fuel turf wars between rival gangs. To many it is also an unsightly nuisance, with the clean-up cost high for home owners, businesses and local authorities. However, we remain unconvinced that this amendment is the way forward.
Graffiti without the property owner’s permission is already a criminal offence, classified as vandalism or criminal damage, with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment. I am also concerned that measures such as this risk embedding racial bias in law enforcement and disproportionately affecting minority and marginalised communities. The courts have already found that using graffiti as a marker of gang identity can result in the unjust targeting of marginalised groups, especially people of colour.
In 2022 a legal ruling forced the Metropolitan Police to admit that the operation of its gangs matrix was unlawful, breached human rights and had a disproportionate impact on black people. The matrix used factors, including graffiti, to label people as gang members, leading to life-changing consequences for those who had been wrongly included. Over 1,000 individuals assessed as low risk subsequently had to be removed from the database. This demonstrates the danger of conflating graffiti, gangs and criminality. While I understand the intention behind this amendment, the risk of unintended consequences is clear.
The definition of a gang in Amendment 52 feels worryingly broad, so we cannot support it. As drafted, it raises significant concerns that outweigh its intended benefits. Prosecutors are already cautioned not to use the term “gang” without clear evidence because, used inappropriately, it can unfairly broaden liability for an individual’s offending while disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities.
This proposal also feels overly prescriptive. It is important that the courts retain discretion and the law allows for nuanced sentencing; for example, when someone was plainly being coerced, groomed or manipulated into gang activity.
On these Benches, we believe that sentencing must account for individual circumstances and be based on specific individual criminal behaviour. Simply being in with the wrong people is not the same thing.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, for tabling Amendments 51 and 52. These amendments are proposed and supported by three Members of your Lordships’ House who, between them, have considerable experience in what might loosely be called the law and order space. They are, in rugby terms, a formidable front row and, as such, I have considered what they proposed with care.
I reassure the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Blencathra, and indeed your Lordships’ House, that this Government are definitely against gangs and absolutely against graffiti. That said, we do not believe that these proposals are needed, primarily because the activities criminalised in these measures are already covered by existing legislation.
The intended effect of Amendment 51 is to criminalise the kind of graffiti which gangs use to mark what they feel is their territory and/or to threaten rival groups with violence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, said, this criminal behaviour is already covered by the existing offence contained within Section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. Section 1 is broad enough to cover graffiti because case law establishes that the damage does not have to be permanent, and it catches behaviour such as using water-soluble paint on a pavement or smearing mud on the walls of a police cell. In addition, Section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act has a higher maximum penalty than the proposed new offence, being punishable in the Crown Court by a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.
Not only is the proposed offence not needed, there are very real problems with the structure of what is proposed; I will mention three, but there are others. First, this amendment creates an offence of strict liability. That means that the prosecution is not required to prove intention, recklessness or even knowledge. The result is a criminal offence which could be committed by accident. The criminal law does not like strict liability offences, and they are very rare in our jurisprudence. The reason is simple: we do not usually criminalise people who are not even aware that they were doing anything wrong.
Secondly, whatever the intention behind the drafting of this proposed criminal offence, in the way it is drafted, the definition of “gang” is so broad that it would capture both the Brownies and the Church of England, as well as football teams, drama societies and many other groups not normally regarded as criminal. I do not think that the noble Lords intend that a Christian cross chalked on a fence could potentially be prosecuted as a criminal offence.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I apologise for standing up a bit late but I want to go back to an earlier comment that graffiti could happen by accident. How on earth can graffiti artists spray a wall with gang tags by accident?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
The difficulty is that if somebody were to put something on a fence, for example, and they were not aware that this was associated with a gang, they would potentially be criminalised by it.
Thirdly, the requirements of the proposed new offence mean that expert evidence would need to be adduced in order that the jury or magistrates could decide whether the prosecution had proved to the criminal standard—that is, beyond reasonable doubt—whether the graffiti is gang-related within the meaning of the section. Most judges, magistrates and juries are unlikely to understand the significance of particular names, symbols or tags—this is not just the Sharks and the Jets that we are talking about, but rather most abstruse versions. Then the requirement that a trial be fair would require that the defence would also have to be able to instruct an expert, usually at public expense. Your Lordships’ House is well aware of the difficulties the criminal courts already have with delay. The idea that these existing challenges should be added to by numerous “battle of the expert” trials about graffiti is as unpalatable as it is unnecessary, given that the conduct is already captured by the Criminal Damage Act.
Amendment 52 seeks to make gang involvement a statutory aggravating factor in the sentencing for any criminal offence; thus, it is very wide indeed. The definition of “gang” is once again so broad that it would capture a number of wholly innocuous groups, and this is not a mere drafting issue. It encapsulates the fundamental problem with this provision, which is the difficulty of defining the conduct which it seeks to condemn with sufficient precision to make it workable. Again, evidence might be needed at the sentencing stage.
Lord Blencathra
“(k) outside any residential building.”
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, as well as moving Amendment 53A, I will also speak to my Amendment 53B in this group. I completely support the comments of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel on the Front Bench, and I support his amendments.
I encounter this every day coming to this House, where beggars lie on the pavement, half blocking it. Possibly they think they are less frightening sitting down than standing up, but the nuisance is the same, as is the chant asking for money. I have not seen them for some months now, but for a couple of years we had different beggars every day; then I realised it was the same dog they had. I presume that the dog got passed around between them, since the public are possibly more sympathetic to the dog than to the beggar— a kind of Dogs R Us.
There was another one who, when I first encountered him, was really scary. He was a beggar, but he was shouting and screaming—not at the public, I realised, but more to himself or to the ether than anything else. Clearly, he had a mental health problem. After I saw him a couple of times, I had no problem; I just did not make eye contact. However, people who had never met him before, such as women coming out of the shops, were terrified of him. It was nuisance begging, but clearly there was a health problem behind it.
My Amendment 53A would merely add a little tweak to my noble friend’s new clause by adding “outside any residential building” to the list in subsection (6). In this Westminster area, I have seen them sitting not on the doorstep but right beside the entrance to a residential block of flats. Frankly, I think that is intimidating, and residents should not have to face that fear, whether misplaced or not, that they may face beggars as they come and go from their own property.
My Amendment 53B would amend my noble friend’s amendment after subsection (7), by inserting:
“The judgement that the begging satisfies the conditions in (a), (b) and (d) is one to be made by the person who is the victim of the begging”.
So what does subsection (7) say? It says:
“This subsection applies if the person begs in a way that has caused, or is likely to cause … (a) harassment, alarm or distress to another person, … (b) a person reasonably to believe that … they, or any other person, may be harmed, or … any property … may be damaged, … (c) disorder, or … (d) a risk to the health or safety of any person except the person begging”.
In other words, the purpose of my amendment is that I do not want a police officer to come along and say, “Oh no, guv, that’s not harassment or causing alarm. What are you worried about? There’s no risk to your health and safety”. I suggest that the judgment be made by the person who is the victim of the nuisance begging. Some people will not be worried or alarmed, as I was not worried after I saw that chap with the mental health problem a few times, but others may be.
I came across this in an accusation about bullying in the Civil Service. If a civil servant believes that someone is bullied, that is taken for granted because one person felt it even though others might have felt differently. I dealt with that in my capacity of serving on an ALB.
In conclusion, I want to make it clear that, if a person feels that begging is causing him or her alarm, distress or harassment, or is a risk to health and safety, then it is the victim’s view that must be considered, not that of anyone else applying their own test for what that alarm might be.
Baroness Doocey (LD)
My Lords, there is a genuine problem around aggressive begging and the involvement of organised criminal gangs. That is why we support Clause 11, which rightly focuses not on individuals who are begging but on those who are orchestrating and profiting from this practice.
Lots of things in life are a nuisance, but that does not mean we should criminalise them. Where begging is causing a genuine nuisance, police already have a range of powers to deal with it under anti-social behaviour legislation. We think this amendment is the wrong solution at a time when charities such as Crisis say that the number of vulnerable people on the streets who survive by begging, including women and first-time rough sleepers, is rising. In these circumstances, we should be looking at how we can better reach and support those in such straitened circumstances. By contrast, criminalising begging would push people away from support, and it will not solve the problems of poverty, homelessness, addiction or exploitation.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his Amendment 53, which, as he explained, would introduce a new offence of nuisance begging and permit a constable to move on a person engaging in this behaviour. Failure to comply with the notice would constitute a criminal offence. I note also Amendments 53A and 53B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which seek to further extend what constitutes nuisance begging under the proposed new offence.
I start by saying to noble Lords that the Government do not wish to target or criminalise individuals who are begging to sustain themselves or rough sleeping because they have nowhere else to go. That is why we are committed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned, to repealing the outdated Vagrancy Act 1824, and why we will not be introducing measures that target or recriminalise begging and rough sleeping. It is also—for the very reason the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned—why the Government have invested more than £1 billion in homelessness and rough sleeping services this year, which is up £316 million compared to last year. So there is an increase in support to tackle the very issues that the noble Baroness mentioned.
However, we are legislating in the Bill to introduce targeted replacement measures for certain elements of the 1824 Act to ensure—I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will welcome this—that police retain the powers they need to keep our communities safe. These targeted replacement measures, in Clauses 10 and 11, include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime, both of which were previously provided for under the 1824 Act.
As noble Lords mentioned, begging is itself a complex issue, it can cause significant harm or distress to communities and local areas need appropriate tools to maintain community safety. But where I come back to in this debate is that there are powers in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which many police forces use effectively to tackle anti-social behaviour in the context of begging and rough sleeping—for example, the very point the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mentioned, where an individual may be harassing members of the public on a persistent basis, including potentially outside their own home, as in his amendment.
The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 provides for current statutory guidance. I hope that it partly answers the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, to say that we will update that anti-social behaviour statutory guidance. This will ensure that it is clear to agencies how ASB powers can be used in the context of harassment and this type of begging, if an individual’s behaviour reaches a threshold that will be set in the ASB statutory guidance.
Existing criminal offences can also be applied where the behaviour crosses the current criminal threshold. I expect the updating of the guidance to take place very shortly after Royal Assent is given to the legislation passing through the House of Lords. In the light of the assurances that we take this issue seriously, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will not press his amendment and that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is somewhat mollified that there are powers in place to deal with the issues that he has raised.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I am grateful for what the Minister said. I admire his style at the Dispatch Box; he is courteous and thorough in giving his answers. In view of his assurances that this is really covered by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Blencathra
“Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014: amendment(1) Schedule 2 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 is amended as follows.(2) After paragraph 1(3) insert—“(3A) A detention order must be made in relation to a person between the ages of 14 and 18 who has been in breach of three injunctions.(3B) A person subject to a detention order under sub-paragraph (3A) must be detained in youth detention accommodation as defined by paragraph 14(3).”.(3) After paragraph 2(7) insert—“(8) Any person subject to a supervision order under this paragraph is eligible for an electronic tag.”.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment and another in the name of Lord Blencathra add a power of detention for 14 -18 year olds who have a record of breaching inunctions.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, in moving my Amendment 54, I will also speak to my Amendment 55. Amendment 54 seeks to amend Schedule 2 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The relevant section says that:
“A youth court, if satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that a person aged under 18 is in breach of a provision of an injunction under section 1 to which he or she is subject, may make in respect of the person—(a) a supervision order or (b) a detention order”.
Dealing with the detention provisions first, the court “may” make a detention order. My amendment seeks that it “must” make such an order, tying the court’s discretion, if a person between the ages of 14 and 18 breaches three or more injunctions.
As the Minister knows—indeed, as we all know—the problem with juvenile crime is habitual offenders. None of us want to lock up little kiddies who make a couple of mistakes or commit minor crime—of course not. However, before any juvenile gets an injunction, the anti-social behaviour has to be reasonably serious. This is what the College of Policing says on the grounds for an injunction:
“A civil injunction is issued on the balance of probabilities. It must be just and convenient to grant the injunction to prevent anti-social behaviour, and the respondent must have engaged in or threatened to engage in either: conduct that has or is likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress … or conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance”.
The College of Policing states that a civil injunction is used for
“drug/alcohol-related ASB … harassment … noise (tenure-neutral)”—
whatever that means—“vandalism” and “aggressive begging”. Therefore, I submit that if a juvenile between the ages of 14 to 18 breaches three of those, we have passed the stage where the court may—I stress “may”—make a detention order. Anyone who has breached three injunctions is rapidly heading to becoming a habitual offender. If he does not get a detention order after all that behaviour, what signal will that send to him and his mates? It will signal that you can get away with it, and nothing will happen but another appearance before the court, a rap on the knuckles and being told to be a good boy. As parliamentarians, we owe it to innocent members of the public to protect them from habitual trouble-makers, and my amendment would do just that.
The court also has a discretion on whether to make a detention order when a juvenile breaches one or two injunctions. I am happy with that. I submit that we only remove that discretion when the offender breaches three or more.
I will move on to supervision orders. The court could order a supervision order instead of detention. Such an order could impose one or more of three requirements: a supervision requirement, an activity requirement or a curfew requirement. We do not need to go into what each of those requirements can do or the obligations they might impose. My amendment simply seeks to add an additional power, so that:
“Any person subject to a supervision order … is eligible for an electronic tag”.
Note my wording: it states that they would be “eligible” for an electronic tag; I am not tying the court’s hands here to make it compulsory.
One of my reasons for attaching electronic tags to juveniles under court-imposed supervision orders is the enhancement of accountability. Electronic monitoring provides a reliable, objective mechanism for tracking the whereabouts of young offenders. This not only helps to ensure compliance with curfews and exclusion zones stipulated by the court but gives our Prison and Probation Service immediate insight into any breaches. The knowledge that their movements are being monitored can act as a significant deterrent against further anti-social or criminal behaviour.
I suggest that electronic tagging offers reassurance to communities affected by persistent anti-social behaviour. Enabling authorities to monitor offenders more closely would reduce the risk of reoffending while under supervision. This is particularly pertinent in cases where the offence involves intimidation, vandalism or harassment in a particular locality. The visible commitment to monitoring can help rebuild public confidence in the justice system’s capacity to protect communities.
I have no doubt that some will argue that tagging for a juvenile is punitive, but I suggest it can also help with rehabilitation. Electronic monitoring allows for greater flexibility compared with secure detention, enabling juveniles to remain in their communities, continue education and maintain family relationships. The structure imposed by tagging can help young people develop routines and take responsibility for their actions, while still being held accountable. For many, this balance of liberty and oversight provides a constructive framework for positive behavioural change.
As we all know—the Minister knows this, and he knew it from his last experience in the Home Office—for many young offenders, early intervention is critical to prevent escalation into more serious criminal behaviour. Electronic tagging, as a clear and immediate consequence, can serve as a wake-up call, highlighting the seriousness of continued non-compliance. This timely intervention can disrupt cycles of offending and encourage reflection, potentially diverting young people from the future of criminality.
I will not speak to my Amendment 55, since I think I have a bit of inadvertent duplication here. I was drafting an amendment to the Act and then one to Schedule 2, and my Amendment 55 is my first draft, which I should not have sent to the Public Bill Office by mistake. Therefore, I beg to move Amendment 54.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for Amendment 54 and for fessing up to Amendment 55, which we will accept as an honest mistake. I welcome his honesty in raising the issue.
There is a recognition that Amendment 54 still wants to provide for minimum sentences for persistent breaches of youth injunctions. I emphasise that the Government do not want to criminalise children unnecessarily, an aspiration we share with the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. That is why the new respect order in the Bill will not apply to those under 18. However, we know that in many cases the behaviour of offenders under 18 requires a more formal deterrent and intervention. That is why we have retained the civil injunction as is for those under 18. Practitioners have told us that it is a particularly helpful and useful tool to tackle youth anti-social behaviour and to ensure that their rights and the safety of the community are upheld.
Youth injunctions are civil orders and fundamentally preventive in nature, which again goes to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. It is more important to intervene to prevent than it is to punish afterwards, particularly when young people are the individuals who are causing those challenges in the first place.
The important point about youth injunctions, which, again, goes to the heart of the noble Lord’s amendment, is that if the respondent abides by the terms of the order, they will not be liable for any penalties but, self-evidently, where a respondent does breach an order there needs to be some action. The noble Lord has suggested one course of action. I say to him that the courts already have a range of responses, including supervision orders, electronic tagging, curfews and, in the most serious cases, detention orders for up to three months for 14 to 17 year-olds.
I hope there is a common theme across the Committee that detention of children should be used only when absolutely necessary, and that courts should consider the child’s welfare and other risks before imposing such a response. This should be on a case-by-case basis, and the prescribing of a mandatory minimum sentence, even for repeat offenders, would both undermine the ability of the independent judiciary to determine the appropriate sentence and potentially be disproportionate. There is a place in our sentencing framework for mandatory minimum sentences, but I submit that this is not it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, is quite right again that one of the best preventive measures we can have is to have large numbers of boots on the ground in neighbourhood policing. She will know that the Government have a manifesto commitment to put 13,000 extra boots on the ground during this Parliament. In this first year or so, the Government have put an extra 3,000 in place. We intend, where we can, to increase the number of specials, PCSOs and warranted officers to replace those who were lost between 2010 and 2017. When I was Police Minister in 2009-10, we had 20,000 more officers than we had up to around 2017. That is because they were hollowed out and taken out by the two Governments who ran the Home Office between 2010 and 2017.
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that visible neighbourhood policing is critical to tackling anti-social behaviour, but the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to provide minimum sentences, which I do not think will achieve his objective. It does not have my support either. I hope he will withdraw the amendment, having listened to the argument.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, once again, I am grateful to the Minister for his courteous and detailed answer. I did not realise that electronic tagging was already an option and it is very important that it is applied in appropriate cases. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that I am not creating a new criminal offence here. The power of detention already exists to be used by the court when it thinks fit.
On the general principle of minimum sentences, why do we fetter a judge’s discretion by having a maximum sentence? If we want proper judicial discretion, we should say that the judge can sentence anything he likes, but we do not—and I am glad we do not. We say that Parliament cannot set a minimum. Why is it appropriate, in a democracy, for Parliament to set a maximum sentence but not a minimum? I knew that the Minister, in his courteous way, would say that we would fetter judicial discretion, but I have suggested three breaches of injunctions. When can a court say, “You’ve done six now”, or, “You’ve done 10, Johnny”, and impose a sentence of detention for continued breaches of injunctions? As a democracy, it is perfectly legitimate for us as parliamentarians—and Members in the other House, whose constituents are suffering—to say that judges will have a discretion to impose orders of detention up to a certain level, but once the breaches of injunctions go past a certain threshold, Parliament demands that they impose a level of detention, whatever that level may be.
I have made my point. The Minister will probably hear me make a similar point about minimum sentences at various other points in the Bill but, in view of his remarks, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Blencathra
“(3) The coordinating officer need not be a constable but must be someone versed in the internet and online sales and purchases.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to ensure that the police and NCA appoint a person as the co-ordinating officer who is the most qualified about the internet and online sales and need not be a person who has qualified as a constable.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
The House will be relieved to know I will be mercifully brief on this occasion. Until 1968 the Met and other police forces used CID officers to do SOCO work—that is, collecting forensic evidence at the scenes of crimes. For many it was not their speciality and they often damaged vital evidence. Police forces realised that teams of dedicated civilians who specialise in gathering evidence at crime scenes could do a better job. Naturally, the Police Federation opposed any civilians being brought in to do it. Now, civilians do command and dispatch—which used to be done by serving officers—investigation support, and crime analysis. Over the years the police service has had to recognise, reluctantly in my opinion, that a constable of whatever rank may not be the best-qualified person to undertake increasingly complex tasks. We see credit card fraud going through the roof because there is practically no one in any police force capable of investigating it. Goodness knows who could do it —forensic accountants, perhaps.
All I am seeking here is an assurance from the Minister that this important co-ordinating role will not go to an inspector or a superintendent unless he or she is an absolute expert on the internet and online sales. This requires a switched-on internet geek, and not necessarily a uniformed bobby. Can the Minister assure me that the police will recruit for this role the best-qualified person, from wherever that person comes from, provided that he or she passes all the integrity tests, and that the guidance envisaged in the clause will say so? I beg to move.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
I must say, I admire the range of interventions made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I do not want him to fall back on his seat, but on this occasion, we have some sympathy with the two amendments he has put forward. This group addresses the establishment of the new civil penalty regime for online advertising, a measure which we on these Benches support for its goal of strengthening accountability for online platforms. The introduction of civil penalties in this part of the Bill is intended to tackle the online grey market that facilitates the sale of illegal weapons, enabling earlier intervention and prevention of offensive weapon crimes. We must ensure that the framework we establish is not only robust legally but operationally effective in the digital age.
Amendment 55B tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, concerning Clause 13, focuses specifically on the essential role of the co-ordinating officer. Clause 13 mandates that the Secretary of State designate a member of a relevant police force or a National Crime Agency officer as the co-ordinating officer for this chapter. The amendment proposes that:
“The coordinating officer need not be a constable but must be someone versed in the internet and online sales and purchases”.
We on these Benches recognise that 21st-century crime fighting is no longer solely about boots on the ground. It relies heavily on specialised digital expertise to effectively police online marketplaces and hold search services and user-to-user services accountable. The designated officer must possess deep knowledge of digital platform sales techniques and online advertising mechanisms, as the noble Lord indicated. By explicitly allowing this officer to be a non-constable professional and expert, we would ensure that law enforcement can deploy the most qualified individuals to secure content removal notices and apply civil penalties. In our view, this pragmatic approach would ensure efficiency and maximum efficacy against technologically sophisticated platforms.
Amendment 55F in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, relates to Clause 24, which governs the guidance issued by the Secretary of State regarding the operation of this new regime. All new intrusive powers, especially those concerning online services, require clear, precise guidance to avoid unintended consequences and ensure fairness. Proper statutory guidance is the mechanism by which the principles established in the Bill should be translated into proportionate and actionable requirements for online service providers.
In short, in our view these amendments seek to guarantee that the architecture of this new regime is built on technical expertise and clarity, both those pillars being essential in ensuring that our online crime-fighting tools are fit for purpose. As such, we support them.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his amendments to the clauses that implement this Government’s manifesto commitment to hold senior managers of online platforms, be they social media platforms, online marketplaces or search engines, personally liable for the failure to remove illegal online content relating to knives and offensive weapons. His Amendment 55B would require the co-ordinating officer—that is, the person appointed by the Home Secretary to administer these new powers—to have the necessary internet and online sales experience and skills, stating that they need not be a warranted officer. Amendment 55F would make these criteria explicit in the statutory guidance for these measures.
I agree with the sentiment behind the amendments. It is of course important that the co-ordinating officer responsible for the administration of these powers be suitably experienced. I reassure the noble Lord that the Government are providing £1.7 million for a new national police unit to tackle the illegal online sale of knives and weapons, including the issuing of content removal notices. The unit will be dedicated to co-ordinating investigations into all aspects of online unlawful knife and offensive weapon sales, and to bringing those responsible to justice. It will also improve data collection and analysis capability in order to expand police understanding of the knife crime problem and how enforcement activities can best be targeted. The intention is that a senior member of this specialist unit will be appointed as the co-ordinating officer, and they will have the necessary skills and resources to administer the powers.
Whoever is appointed as a content manager must be experienced in both aspects of the problem we are trying to tackle. They should have experience not only of online sales but of the investigation of illegal online sales of knives and weapons—that is, they must be able to understand the investigatory and evidential process as well as having experience of the internet. This will, to paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, not be any old bobby with a warrant card but someone highly experienced in internet sales and the investigatory and evidential role. That is why, in short, we feel that the role must be held by a warranted officer. It is a police role. They will be issuing enforcement notices and, as part of the criminal process, they need to have that experience as well as the essential online experience that all noble Lords who spoke in the debate mentioned; we agree that that is necessary.
Given the assurance that we are not neglecting the online side of things, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, will be sufficiently reassured and is content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, first let me say that I am almost overcome with deep emotion, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the Lib Dems have supported a Blencathra amendment—I wonder where I have gone wrong.
I say to the Minister that I am not totally reassured. I was not suggesting any old bobby; I was afraid that the police would automatically look for someone of senior rank: inspector, superintendent or chief superintendent. But the absolutely crucial thing is that that person must be fully qualified on internet sales and online stuff. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, set it out with rather elegant detail; I called the person a computer geek. If that superintendent is a senior investigating officer and he or she is a computer geek, then I am satisfied. I do not suggest that I will take this back on Report, but the Minister’s answer did not totally satisfy me that the best person will necessarily be recruited for the job. Yes, of course the person must have an understanding of investigation techniques, but that does not necessarily mean that it has to be a high-ranking police officer. The police already have civilians investigating things that do not require an officer.
As I say, I am slightly equivocal about the Minister’s answer. It is slightly disappointing that the Government will not countenance the possibility that this person may not be a warranted officer. It is quite simple: if you recruited the right computer geek, you make him or her warranted officer—you can do it that way. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Blencathra
Member’s explanatory statement
A fine is based on a judgement of the seriousness of the crime and is subjective. My amendment ensures that the penalty is based on the actual value of the illegal knives and the profits from their sale.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 55C, I will speak also to my Amendments 55D and 55E. My three amendments here are all similar, as I argue that a value-based penalty is more effective than a maximum fixed fine. The issue of illegal knife sales on the internet is a matter of serious public concern. It is big business with big consequences when those knives—machetes and zombie knives—are used to kill and maim, as is increasingly the case.
The proposals in the Bill to fine individuals and businesses up to £60,000 for selling illegal knives online seem hefty at first glance. However, the effectiveness and fairness of such a fixed penalty are questionable. A more effective approach would be to impose a fine equal to 500% of the total value of all the illegal goods advertised. I want to convince the Minister that a proportional penalty is, in some cases, superior to a subjective fixed maximum fine.
First, there is the subjectivity of the fixed maximum fine. Setting a maximum fine of £60,000 for selling illegal knives leaves the final penalty to the discretion of the court. This introduces subjectivity into the process, as judges must determine what amount is appropriate in each case. The outcome may vary significantly depending on the judge’s interpretation of the offence’s severity, the defendant’s circumstances and other factors. Consequently, similar offenders could face vastly different penalties, undermining the consistency and predictability of the law. Then, of course, I come back to my favourite organisation, the Sentencing Council, advising that the £60,000 fine should never be imposed—but let us leave that aside for the moment.
Moreover, a fixed cap may not reflect the true scale of the illegal activity. For example, a small-scale individual seller and a large business operation could both face the same maximum penalty, despite the latter potentially profiting far more from illegal sales. This lack of proportionality can result in fines that are either too lenient or excessively harsh, depending on the specifics of the case.
In contrast, my suggestion of a fine set at 500% of the value of all illegal knives advertised is directly linked to the scale of the offence and the profits. This proportional penalty approach ensures that the penalty increases in line with the seriousness of the crime. Large-scale operations, which are likely to profit more and cause greater harm, would face correspondingly larger fines. This not only achieves greater fairness but strengthens the deterrent effect. As we have said on many occasions, criminals are primarily motivated by profit. If the financial penalty reliably exceeds any potential gains—by a factor of five in this case—the risk heavily outweighs the reward. I suggest that that creates a strong disincentive for individuals and businesses to engage in illegal knife sales.
The proportional system also ensures that penalties remain meaningful, even as the market or profitability of legal knives fluctuates over time. The proportional penalty system is more likely to deter criminal behaviour, because it removes ambiguity and subjectivity from sentencing. Offenders know in advance that any profits from illegal activity will be entirely wiped out and replaced by a substantial loss. That clarity and certainty are crucial in discouraging would-be offenders. Furthermore, tying the fine to the value of the legal goods ensures fairness across all cases. Small-time offenders are punished proportionately for their actions, while major players face penalties commensurate with the harm they cause and the profits they make. That upholds the principle that the punishment should fit the crime.
In summary, I submit that a fixed maximum fine of £60,000 for selling illegal knives online introduces subjectivity and inconsistency—whereas a penalty of 500% of the value of all illegal goods advertised is fair, more predictable and far more likely to deter criminal activity.
I do not need to speak to my Amendment 55E; it is the same concept but suggests a mere 100% proportional penalty for a lesser offence. I urge the Minister to consider adopting a proportional penalty system to effectively combat the sale of illegal knives over the internet. I beg to move.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has so concisely described—he gets more concise as the evening goes on—this group deals with the sanctions applied under the online weapon advertising regime.
We very much welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring accountability for businesses and sellers who facilitate the online sale of knives. However, if the penalties imposed are too small, they merely become a tolerable cost of doing business for large, wealthy online service providers. As the noble Lord explained, the Bill proposes maximum civil penalties for service providers of up to £60,000 for failing to comply with content manager requirements or for failing to comply with a content removal notice. His Amendments 55C and 55D directly challenge that maximum limit by proposing that the penalty for a service provider’s non-compliance should instead be a minimum of 500% of the value of the illegal goods advertised.
In our view, that proposal shifts the focus decisively towards financial deterrence—although I hate to agree with the noble Lord twice in one evening. The argument embedded within these amendments is sound: fines should reflect the scale and profitability of the illegal advertising business they enable. By linking the minimum fine directly to five times the value of the illegal goods advertised, we ensure that the penalty scales proportionally with the volume of the illicit trade facilitated by the platform, making it financially unsustainable to turn a blind eye to illegal weapon content.
The noble Lord’s Amendment 55E applies this same principle to the penalties imposed on the service provider’s content manager. Clause 23 currently sets the maximum penalty for the content manager at £10,000. Amendment 55E seeks to replace that cap with a minimum penalty of 100% of the value of the illegal goods advertised. That would ensure that the individual responsible for overseeing compliance within the organisation also faces a penalty that reflects the seriousness of the content they failed to manage or remove, particularly where that content is tied directly to the advertisement of unlawful weapons.
These amendments force us to consider how we can make our laws genuinely tough on organised online crime. In our view, legislation must be proportionate; and proportionality, in the face of corporate digital crime, means that penalties should meaningfully exceed the profits derived from facilitating criminal activity. The amendments rightly push us to consider the financial consequences that would truly deter platforms from risking public safety for private gain.
Lord Katz (Lab)
Well, that is a very good segue into the words that are just following—I was about to get there.
Many knives and weapons that are sold illegally are sold relatively cheaply, in the order of tens of pounds. Some sellers who sell knives and weapons over social media tend to hold and advertise small stock numbers. Therefore, we contend that the suggested minimum penalties are simply too low to incentivise the prompt removal of illegal content. The independent review of online safety of knives shows a case study as an example where an individual bought 30 knives to sell illegally over social media for under £50 each. Should the social media company not take the illegal content down, the proposed minimum fine under these amendments would be £1,500 for the executive and £7,500 for the companies. Those penalties, as I am sure noble Lords would agree, would be too low for large tech companies and executives to be worried about at all. Not having a minimum penalty will leave full discretion to the police, who specialise in investigating illegal knife sales online. This will allow them to use their judgment to issue fines that are commensurate in each case.
The penalties for failing to comply with these are, as already noted, issued in the form of civil penalty notices by the police. They can be up to £60,000 for companies and £10,000 for individuals. I remind noble Lords that these penalties are for single violations and will add up if companies and executives repeatedly fail to comply with removal notices. The measure is intended not just to punish companies but to facilitate behaviour change. I trust that the police administering these measures will issue fines of an appropriate level to incentivise the prompt removal of illegal content.
I note the experience, which I found instructive, of the independent review of the online sale of knives, that a lot of the activity is undertaken through very small stocks that are cheaply sold. If we used the regime of a proportionate measure, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, we simply would not generate enough. Noble Lords may not think that £60,000 is worth much, but we certainly would not generate anywhere near £60,000 in those examples.
It is worth bearing in mind that a lot of the grey market sellers do so over social media websites. The recipient of the fine is the tech company that does not take down the illegal material, rather than the person selling the knives or the weapons. We understand the intended recipient of the punishment—the fines—which is why we think that having the £60,000 or £10,000 level is appropriate, because that is for single offences. Any time a company fails to remove the content for which they have received a notice, the fines will add up and accumulate, which will make an impact—and we would all agree that that needs to be done.
In response to another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, we feel that the Sentencing Council is unlikely to comment on the level of a civil penalty. That may be a little speculative from my perspective, but I think that it is probably what the experience bears out.
Given this explanation and the clarification of our view of how the environment—I should not have used the word “market” earlier—in which these sales take place, I hope that the noble Lord is sufficiently assured that these penalties will have an impact in the way they are set out in the Bill and that he will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I almost had palpitations for the second time tonight when the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, supported my amendment.
I hear what the Minister has to say. I had not intended for the 500% penalty to apply to just two or three individuals selling a few knives; I intended that it would apply to the supply of the whole shooting match. The individuals who are selling a few knives have got them from somewhere: there is a supplier or a big source making these by the thousand. For someone at the centre who has a warehouse with £100,000 worth of knives, a penalty of £500,000 would clean them out completely, whereas a penalty of £60,000 would still leave them with £40,000 profit. However, I accept the point that, if the case involves small-scale individuals, the 500% penalty might not be as great as the penalty in the Act. I wonder whether it is worth looking at the possibility of offering “either/or” as an option—I think that is a possibility for the future.
I will make another general point. I woke up about a week ago at 2 am and thought of this proportional system. It may not be perfect for knives, but I think there is some merit in this concept of proportionate fines for certain offences, whereby rather than having a maximum penalty imposed by law, the penalty is a percentage—100%, 200%, 300% or 1,000%—of the value of the goods being advertised or sold.
Bearing in mind what the Minister said, we would like to look again at the possibility of offering a fine and some proportional penalty. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Viscount Goschen (Con)
My Lords, very briefly, I align myself with my noble friend on his remarks and the question he put to the Minister. I do not understand the situation, so I would very much appreciate an explanation from the Minister. What is the logic of having the same maximum penalty for both the existing offence of carrying an offensive weapon and the new offence of carrying an offensive weapon with intent to commit harm or violence, and so forth?
My mild concern, which I am sure the Minister with his usual skill can allay, is that if we have the four years maximum penalty for the new aggravated offence of having intent to commit harm, is there not a danger that that could diminish the seriousness of the existing offence if it is not possible or likely to prove the intent to commit violence or the other provisions of the new section? I absolutely support what the Government are trying to do here; we are all on completely the same side. It would be very helpful for the Minister to explain how these two offences would differ in their application in practice and therefore the implications for the maximum sentences.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I rise for the final time tonight—the Committee will be pleased to know—to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel. I wish I had put down my own amendment to Clause 27 to draw attention to what I think is the complete disconnect between subsections (1) and (3) in the new section.
The Bill in its current form proposes in subsection (1) of the new section that it shall be an offence for any person to possess an article with a blade or point or an offensive weapon with the intent
“to use unlawful violence against another person, … to cause another person to believe that unlawful violence will be used against them”
and others, or
“to cause serious unlawful damage to property”.
That is fairly serious stuff.
However, the penalties in subsection (3) of the proposed new section, with a maximum of 12 months’ imprisonment in a magistrates’ court and up to four years on indictment, are insufficient given the gravity of the offence. I support the argument for a substantial increase in sentencing powers to reflect the seriousness of the conduct involved.
Possession of an offensive weapon with intent to use it for violence or to cause fear is a profoundly serious criminal act. Such intent demonstrates a premeditated willingness to inflict harm, intimidate or destroy property. It is not a spontaneous or lesser form of criminality but rather a calculated and dangerous escalation. The mere possession of a weapon with such intent poses a direct threat to public safety, undermines community trust and creates an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.
As the Minister will know, offences involving offensive weapons are often precursors to more serious crimes, involving grievous bodily harm right up to homicide. I maintain that actions that create an imminent risk of serious harm should be met with robust deterrence and sentencing. Allowing relatively lenient penalties for those caught with weapons and with criminal intent fails to deter potential offenders and signals a lack of seriousness in addressing violent crime. The psychological impact on victims—those who are threatened or believe they are at risk of violence—can be profound and long-lasting, as many reports say, even if no injury actually occurs.
When compared with other offences of similar seriousness, the proposed penalties appear disproportionately low. For instance, offences such as aggravated burglary or possession of firearms with intent to endanger life attract significantly higher sentences, often exceeding a decade in custody. This clause is about people going out with vicious knives or machetes, intending to use unlawful violence against another person—in other words, to attack them and possibly kill them. Why on earth should there even be a summary trial for that sort of offence? That is why I wish I had put down my own amendment to delete from the new section subsection (3)(a), which provides for trial in a magistrates’ court.
Of course, we must not look at this Bill in isolation; we have the Sentencing Bill coming along, which will aim to ban anyone—if I understand it correctly—going to prison for a sentence of 12 months or less. If one of these cases goes to a magistrates’ court, and the magistrates impose the maximum sentence of 12 months, it will be automatically suspended and the perpetrator will get away with it. What signal does that send? If these criminals were going out with a knife to scratch cars or vandalise property, summary might be appropriate, but they are going out with knives to attack people and possibly kill them. That is why, in my opinion, it has to indictable only and a 14-year maximum sentence—which, as we know, will end up as seven in any case, with automatic release at half-time. I believe the current proposal for a maximum of four years on indictment is markedly out of step with comparable offences and the seriousness of potential offences in subsection (1).
The criminal justice system must not only punish offenders but deter would-be offenders and reassure the public that their safety is paramount. Inadequate penalties such as this one risk undermining public confidence in the legal system. A more severe sentencing framework would send a clear message that society will not tolerate the possession of weapons in the street with intent to commit violent acts or grievous bodily harm to people. It would also be a stronger deterrent to those contemplating such conduct.
In conclusion, I believe the Government are absolute right to introduce this new power, but they have the penalties wrong since they are disconnected from the seriousness of the offence. Given the potential for severe physical and psychological harm, the premeditated nature of the crime and the need for effective deterrence, I also submit that the maximum penalties should be increased. Of course, this is not tying the judge’s discretion; I am suggesting no minimum sentence but a sentence of up to 14 years.
I should add that I have exactly the same view on the suggested penalties in the next massive group of amendments, but I have made my arguments here and I will not repeat them when we come to that group on Wednesday.
Baroness Doocey (LD)
My Lords, nearly half the murders in the UK over the last three years are due to knife crime, so we recognise the vital importance of equipping police with the necessary tools to intervene when there is clear evidence of intent to commit serious violence. We give Clause 27 our full backing.
Before I turn to the amendment, I want to make a couple of points around the new offence. Will the Government ensure that robust guidance and oversight are in place to prevent unjustified or discriminatory use of this power? That needs to be accompanied by improved training for police and judiciary. The reality is that young black men are already significantly overrepresented in knife crime prosecutions, and we must be careful not to compound that position. Discrimination and justice are opposites.
I hope this may also help stem the rising number of incidents in which people suffer life-changing injuries after being attacked with acid or other corrosive substances. Reports of such offences increased by 75% in 2023, including 454 physical attacks. Half these victims were women, with attacks often occurring in a domestic abuse context, but only 8% of these cases resulted in a charge or summons, partly due to the victim’s fear of reprisal. The hope is that this new offence may allow prosecutions to be brought before harm is inflicted, since proving intent would not necessarily require the victim to testify. Can the Minister say how the Government intend to use the offence to this end?
On Amendment 56, the Liberal Democrats agree with Jonathan Hall that four years in prison in insufficient when there is clear evidence of the intention to cause mass fatalities. The court must have the full weight of the law behind it in the hopefully rare cases in which a lengthy sentence is thought necessary for public prosecution. I would expect the Sentencing Council to issue guidance around how to categorise levels of seriousness, and I hope this will guard against sentence inflation. Nevertheless, we are minded to support this amendment and I urge the Government to look again at the maximum penalty.