Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Paddick

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 172, I will also speak to Amendments 173, 177, 179, 180 and 186, to be inserted after Clause 79. These are about victims’ financial losses, which can often arise as a result of an assault on their person, their property or their belongings. The amendments seek to ensure that the authorities and the perpetrators are made available of these costs and that, in turn, where possible, there might be some restitution for these innocent people whose property and goods have been attacked.

I bring the issue to the Committee’s attention based on a most unfortunate and regrettable experience of a friend of mine, Mr James McAra, who lives just outside Scunthorpe. He was at home watching television on the evening of 13 September this year in his house at Ashby. He was alone—he is a widower, aged 78 years, who has lived there for 55 years. He has brought up his family; they have all flown the nest and he is left alone. At 10 pm, his life was changed. There was a terrific crash outside the house, then suddenly his windows were smashed in and his front door was crashed down. Five masked, armed men with sledgehammers appeared in the house. He confronted one of them, who then gave him a push and shouted to his accomplices, “Oh fuck, it’s an old man. We’ve got the wrong effing house.” With that, they turned around, ran out and left him in a terrific state of shock. In the event, it turns out that the noise outside had been the smashing of his car with sledgehammers. It was so badly damaged that it has had to be written off.

As noble Lords can imagine, this is a most distressing experience—an attack and assault—for a man of such an age. The police arrived promptly; by all accounts, they were excellent and knew straightaway what had happened. The two houses next door had been raided on numerous occasions over the last two years in relation to drug dealing, and only two months earlier a young man had been found dead in one of them. The police believed that the attack on his property was intended for one of those houses, related to the ongoing drugs problem. This couple of houses, with numerous instances of anti-social behaviour, has made this once peaceful street a nightmare to live in. As a consequence, James is now considering moving because of this sickening experience and attack.

I turn to the amendments. To compound matters, Mr McAra is well out of pocket from this experience. The car insurance in no way covers the cost of the replacement car he has had to get. Then he has had to pay the excesses on the house insurance for new doors and new windows, and he has now been told that his future insurance premiums on his car and his property—the lot—will go up next year. Where is the justice for a victim of this kind?

I suspect that the chance of getting some reparations from the attackers, if they could be found, arrested and convicted, is quite a long shot. However, we have been disturbed to learn that it is not always understood by the authorities what the total cost has been and that there is no formal request for a record of the costs that might arise, in a variety of different ways, when someone is attacked in this way. Obviously, a requirement for conversations with the victims is laid down and victim support is offered, but financial losses are not necessarily recorded. I believe, and I am sure noble Lords share this view, that they should be. They should be taken into account in determining punishments and, if it is possible to get restitution, they should be known factors taken into account for that purpose.

Having heard this story, I am sure that noble Lords, like me, feel that it is time for some changes to try to give further assistance to victims. Mr McAra’s constituency MP is Holly Mumby-Croft, a Conservative MP who knows all about these facts and has been as supportive as she could be in the circumstances. She has been advised that these amendments will be put before the Committee today and, in due course, we are hoping they will be adopted and go back to the Commons. I think she is hoping that she can look for a sympathetic hearing from the Front Bench today. For positive action, in adopting these amendments, which will cost little to implement, we must go some way towards actually making changes. The amendments before us would facilitate such changes. On behalf of victims affected in this way, particularly Mr McAra, I have great pleasure in moving this amendment.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, has relayed to the Committee clearly a very distressing case of mistaken identity and anti-social behaviour generally in that street, apparently to do with drug dealing. If the perpetrators of this terrible crime were found, I am not sure that they would be given a caution, and I thought this part of the Bill was about police cautions—but I accept the general point that victims need to be protected. Although a caution would not be applicable in this case of the break-in at the home and the damage to the car, there might be one in respect of the general anti-social behaviour in the street. It is absolutely essential that the needs of victims are taken into account by the police, including for the financial losses that victims have suffered.

As I said on a previous group, out-of-court settlements have a high victim approval rating already. These amendments, in so far as they apply to police cautions, would ensure that they remain high, and to that extent we support them.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Paddick

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the clause do not stand part of the Bill and, in short, that it be deleted. If carried, the clause means that the definition of alcohol will be extended to cover all forms in which it might be presented. Specifically, it will cover powdered alcohol and vaporised alcohol, and it follows that they will then become regulated for sale in the UK under the Licensing Act 2003.

Yesterday we had a short debate on the action the Government are taking to address reports of increasing violence in prisons. The Minister replying referred to the White Paper, Prison Safety and Reform, in which there is a section on reducing the supply of and demand for illicit items. If I had been able to get into the debate yesterday, I would have asked the Minister to explain to the House how permitting for the first time in the UK the sale of powdered and vaporised alcohol will help to reduce the problems in prisons. I would be grateful if the Minister endeavoured to respond to that point. How can this change be justified against the background of the Government’s announcement last week that no-fly zones are to be imposed over jails in England and Wales to stop drones being used to smuggle drugs into prison grounds? It is against a background of numerous initiatives costing £1.3 billion that we are trying to tackle rising violence, drug use and other problems in prisons.

The Home Office may have consulted the drinks industry on this change, but did it consult its own Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for prisons, and the health authorities on how they view the proposals? I have tabled a whole range of Written Questions asking the Government about this topic and they have answered a fair number recently. I particularly asked if they would define the benefits of this change to the public. I have had no reply, so I should be grateful if the Minister told the House today what benefit the Government see from authorising the sale of powdered and vaporised alcohol.

Powdered alcohol has been around in some countries for quite a while—not vaping alcohol, which is a new development to which I will come back shortly. The production and marketing of powdered alcohol started to take off in the USA about two years ago—March 2015—when its sale was authorised by the federal bureau on drugs and drinks. This has been controversial in the States. Powdered alcohol can be consumed with fruit juices, water and other soft drinks. It can be mixed with other alcoholic drinks to double or treble their strength. It can be taken to and consumed in places where ordinary liquid alcoholic drinks cannot because they are prohibited, such as sporting and musical events, public places and on public transport. Powdered alcohol can be taken there because it cannot be detected. It can be baked, put into ice cream, and so on. A whole range of things can be done with it.

There has been an outcry in the States about the attempt to market and sell it. Opposition has grown over the months, and I understand that 27 states have banned its sale. The opposition has been such that there have been disputes about its legality, and the main producer of the main powdered alcohol—Palcohol—is having to take a different stance entirely to the one it adopted previously. It is interesting to note, too, that this year, Russia is banning the sale of powdered alcohol. Yet here we are in the UK contemplating legitimising its sale. It is true that it is not yet on sale here but as I pointed out to the Home Office, websites are already set up waiting to sell it online as soon as it is legalised for sale.

As the Home Office has conceded, alcohol in vaping form is already here. It is true that it is being presented as a novelty item, but how long will it remain as such? Indeed, is it being used as a novelty item? I do not think it will stay like that for long. The cigarette manufacturers are already moving big time into vaping. The CEO of Philip Morris, which has the big selling brand, Marlboro, and commands 30% of the market outside the USA, selling 847 billion cigarettes last year alone, said that he is on a mission to get millions more people vaping. He says he can see the day when Philip Morris stops selling cigarettes entirely, and will be totally into vaping.

So a big change is taking place—we will have a vaping future. Of course, it will not just be nicotine. Last week, I went to one of my local vaping shops in Battersea, which has 50 different vaping items on sale. As yet, they do not have alcohol, but when I talked to them about the possibility, they said, “Yes please, could you tell us when we can get our hands on it?”. The items they are already selling come from all different parts of the world, in all different concoctions. There must be a question from a health point of view about what people will be vaping and the effect over time on their health—even from what is currently available for sale.

Make no mistake: when we look at the future of vaping, what we are seeing is just the start of a major development and we should be aware of it—if indeed the Government intend to proceed with this measure. I hope they are prepared to think again. The truth is that powdered ethyl alcohol and vaping alcohol are mind and mood-altering substances little different to class C prohibited drugs, while those classified in the recently passed Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 will in due course cause the same kind of problems as the substances which have been previously been banned, if not more, particularly if vaping takes off on a big scale.

The Government should withdraw Clause 117 and to help them, I oppose its standing part of the Bill. To help them clarify the legal position—which is ostensibly their concern and why they are taking this action—I suggest they have a look at class C prohibited drugs and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 to see whether these substances should be so classified. If not, they should simply and straightforwardly be banned.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I rise to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and his persistent campaign against powdered alcohol and vaping. I accept what he says about these things being mind-altering substances, but surely that is because they contain alcohol, which is an accepted mind-altering substance—no more, no less than that. I understand the concern about the way you take the alcohol. Vaping, I understand, gives a very instant hit, unlike drinking alcohol, where you get a delayed reaction. However, have we not learned lessons from the past about prohibition and, in particular, prohibition of alcohol, not being an effective way of dealing with these issues? On these Benches, we would say it is far better to regulate, license and control the use of these new substances, rather than trying to ban them.