Offensive Weapons Bill

Ed Davey Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sajid Javid]

On acid?

[Sir Edward Davey]

Yes. The Home Secretary is absolutely right to legislate for this offence. Will he tell the House how he and his colleagues will ensure that local authorities, trading standards, the police and others will be supported in enforcing this offence, to ensure that the new powers are actually used?

[Sajid Javid]

I must point out that when I said to the right hon. Gentleman, “On acid?” I was not asking him if he was on acid. It was a more general question, although I noticed that he readily jumped up and said yes. He makes an important point about ensuring that once the changes are made, all those who need to be aware of them will get training in the process of bringing them about. As he knows, this will involve trading standards and local authorities, and we are in touch with those groups. By the time the Bill has progressed and hopefully achieved Royal Assent, we will have worked quite intensively with the groups that have an interest in this to ensure that the measures in the Bill are well understood.

If I may turn to knives, it is already against the law to sell knives to under-18s, but some online sellers effectively ignore this. Sadly, such knives can get into the hands of young people and this has led to tragic deaths. We will stop that by ensuring that proper age checks are in place at the point of sale. We will stop the delivery to a home address of knives that can cause serious injury. We will also crack down on the overseas sales of knives by making it an offence to deliver them to a person under 18 in this country. I find it appalling that vicious weapons are on open sale and easily available. It shocks me that flick knives are still available despite being banned as long ago as 1959, and that zombie knives, knuckledusters and other dreadful weapons are still in wide circulation. The Bill will therefore make it an offence to possess such weapons, whether in private or on the streets, and it will go further and extend the current ban on offensive weapons in schools to further education premises.

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[Louise Haigh]

The Mayor of London has put £150 million into recruiting additional police officers. I appreciate the serious concerns in London but this is a national problem, as I have made clear and as the Home Secretary has acknowledged. This is not a London-only problem. Indeed, the increase in violence in London is actually lower than in other parts of the country, which is why a national solution is required. It is politically easy to pass the blame on to the Mayor of London, but it simply is not the case that that is the only solution.

[Sir Edward Davey]

The hon. Lady is speaking huge common sense, as everyone in this House knows. Anyone who looks at our prison population knows that people in prison are suffering from mental health problems and learning disabilities, all of which could have been dealt with through early intervention. I ask her not to be put off by completely irrelevant interventions.

[Louise Haigh]

The right hon. Gentleman need not worry; I will not be put off at all by interventions from Government Members.

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[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Today I am going to address the corrosive substances provisions of the Bill and welcome the progress that has been made. Had I realised the direction that the debate was going to take, I would have sought to speak for longer and to discuss the wider concerns that have been raised today. I have been seeking a Westminster Hall debate on those wider issues, and if any other Members wanted to join me in trying to secure a debate in the dying days of this term, I would be delighted.

Last year, there were 85 attacks using corrosive substances in Newham and 468 in the whole of London. In the five years since the start of 2012, the number of acid attacks in London has increased by some 600%, and my constituency is something of a hotspot. This time last year, the fear in my constituency about acid attacks was palpable. I heard about constituents of all ages and backgrounds who were afraid to leave their homes because the perception was that these acid attacks were random. It was a crisis, and it needed a strong response from Government. I called for that, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), and I am happy to see that many of the specific measures I called for are in the Bill.

Most importantly, the Bill takes a step forward in recognising that corrosives are just as dangerous as knives. They can do just as much harm physically and emotionally, so they should receive the same kind of legal and police response. The introduction of a clear and specific offence of possession of a corrosive substance in public should make the job of the police and the courts easier in catching and prosecuting those who carry acid as a weapon.

The ban on the sale of corrosive products to children is also very welcome. Although I accept the arguments for the age restriction of 18, I join colleagues in asking whether a higher age restriction might be appropriate. I also think that the Bill Committee should look closely at the broader issue of supply, and not just sale. Would it be better to introduce an offence of supplying a child with acid in an unsafe way, not just selling in exchange for money, which I suggested last year? It is important to get this right because some acid attacks, I am told, are revenge, punishments or even initiation rites for junior members of criminally run gangs. If an older man gives acid to a child and tells them to commit an offence or an attack, will the act of giving be covered by an offence in the Bill? Can we prosecute the man who has given the acid to the child as effectively as we would if he had taken money for it? Personally, I think that that is a higher offence than those of unwitting sale or of not taking a salesperson’s responsibilities as seriously as the law demands.

Over the past year, I have raised several concerns about online sales of corrosive products. At this time last year, people could buy 96%—I stress, 96%—concentrated sulphuric acid in large bottles from Amazon for about five quid each, with no checks. There is still a requirement for online sellers, like all sellers, to monitor suspicious purchases under the Poisons Act 1972, but the Government have failed to convince me that they can implement or enforce this online, so I welcome the ban on home deliveries of corrosive products. I think that that will take us where we need to be. I hope that it will indirectly ban these sales, because if we cannot make online sales safe, they simply have to be stopped to protect communities.

This Bill is a step forward. It will help to ensure that sellers of these products have face-to-face contact with buyers and can ask them questions. There is really no other way that the law could work. It was always a bit of a joke to suggest that online sellers could monitor suspicious purchases, and I think we got that message across in our debate before Christmas.

I hope this change will make suspicious transaction reporting more workable, but putting a greater emphasis on reporting by retailers only increases the need for proper guidance and for the Home Office to monitor and enforce the legal requirement. Retailers have to understand that there is a real chance that the Government will take action against them if they fail. In written questions, I have asked Home Office Ministers whether the Department has a programme of test purchases, but—bless them—I keep being given vague answers to my questions. I would like to hear about this issue from the Minister today, or if she wants, she could write to me about it.

[Sir Edward Davey]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. She has done a lot of campaigning on this issue, and I congratulate her on it. The point she is making is absolutely crucial to ensure that the legislation is absolutely effective. Trading standards departments in local authorities up and down the country have been the butt of quite a lot of cuts because councils can get away with it. Unless we support trading standards departments and officers, and back the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, we will not be able to detect such crimes. We will not have the scale of test purchasing that we need to make sure that retailers are acting responsibly.

[Lyn Brown]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. As so many others have gone outwith the Bill, I suggest that the Government could at the same time look at the minimum wage legislation, because that would give my constituents an awful lot of help.

The Government could have taken a different approach to the Bill. In my speech before Christmas, I argued that several corrosive substances need to be brought under greater control, including ammonia, sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid, as well as sulphuric acid. I am reassured that all those substances have been included in schedule 1 as corrosive products. The list in schedule 1 is new, and does not match the lists in parts 1 to 4 of schedule 1A to the Poisons Act. The Minister could use this Bill or a statutory instrument to move more poisons or chemicals into parts 1 or 2 of schedule 1A to the Poisons Act, meaning that they would require people to have an official licence and photo ID before purchase. That would prevent us having to rely so heavily on retail staff to spot suspicious purchases, and it would restrict these chemicals to the hands of trained professionals who, I presume, will use them safely.

Sulphuric acid has now been moved into part 1 of schedule 1A to the Poisons Act, as I and others have called for. It will require people to have a licence from the end of this week, which is very welcome. My question, however, for the Minister is: why was that decision made for sulphuric acid only, not for the other chemicals I have highlighted? Why not move hydrofluoric acid into part 2 as a regulated poison? It is highly dangerous: as I said in the debate before Christmas, exposure on just 2% of the skin can kill. Why not move ammonia into part 2 as well, given that ammonia was found at 20 out of 28 crime scenes tested by the Met? Perhaps the Department has better evidence about which chemicals are being used in crimes or about those that pose a risk, but if so, I would argue that such a case needs to be made, and made transparently, during the passage of the Bill. That only leaves me to welcome the progress that this Bill represents, although I hope the Minister will agree with me that there are still some serious issues to be addressed.

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[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is not too harsh. I am simply saying to him that there is concern among Government Members, and it is worthy of further discussion.

[Sir Edward Davey]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that some groups representing disabled shooters are concerned that this legislation may particularly affect them, although the Government’s equality statement says that it does not? Does he have a view on that matter?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I do. Of course we want shooting to be used by every group in society; no group should in any way be excluded. I was not intending to talk about bump stocks and the VZ58 MARS—manually actuated release system—proposals in the Bill. I know that representations have been made that those semi-automatic additions to rifles help disabled groups, but I take the view, having received representations from the groups I represent, that such adaptations of otherwise bolt-action single-shot rifles, converting them into, in effect, semi-automatic rifles should be banned. After the horrific shootings in the United States, even President Trump was minded to say that they should be banned. On that basis, I think Ministers are doing the right thing, although I accept that it might well disadvantage some disabled people. We have to find other ways of helping those groups, perhaps by adapting rifles or the places where these people shoot.

I am chairman of the all-party group on shooting and conservation, and I work closely with all the professional shooting bodies, including the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the Countryside Alliance and the British Shooting Sports Council. They have made lots of very professional representations to the Minister on this subject. I have also been working closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), who represents the BSSC but could not be here for our debate because, unfortunately, he has had to attend a family funeral today. We are seeking to persuade the Minister to consider modifying the proposals.

In clause 28(2), the Government propose to ban all weapons that have a muzzle energy greater than 13,600 joules. The Bill would put them into section 5 of the Firearms Act 1968—in other words, it would make them a prohibited weapon. There are about 200 of those weapons—a small number—and just over 200 people, probably, have a licence to use them. I will discuss where the weapons should be stored, but I want to give the House a sense of the sort of people who are disadvantaged by the Bill by quoting paragraph 7 of the British Shooting Sports Council brief:

“In fact, the Fifty Calibre Shooters Association…which is dedicated to target shooting with this calibre has its origins in the early 1980s in the USA and has over 2,500 members internationally. It is affiliated with .50 calibre target rifle shooting groups in Australia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and, in addition to regular competitions, hosts the annual World Championship in which UK FCSA target shooters compete. The UK FCSA is a Home Office Approved Club, has existed as a well-respected target shooting club since 1991 and has grown to a membership of over 400.”

These are the sorts of people whom we are disadvantaging. As I have already said, and as I stress again to the Minister, these are some of the most law-abiding people in the country.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Ed Davey Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

Let me finish by asking this: is there a greater national emergency? I know Brexit dominates, but this Parliament should be discussing, almost every week, serious violence and why it is happening. We should be having a huge debate on it. For goodness’ sake, given the number of young people being killed, and the number of knife crimes offences and other offensive weapons crimes that there are, surely we, as a Parliament, need to wake up and debate it with the priority people in this country would expect.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) on his excellent speech and I associate myself with his sentiments. The Bill makes some welcome improvements to how the police and courts tackle threats to the public from offensive weapons. Given the violence and the deaths we are seeing now, it is vital that we act. I welcome some of the amendments, particularly those tabled by Labour colleagues, including new clauses 1 and 6. However, a number of details in this Bill would prove counterproductive in the fight against crime—things that are not based on evidence—so I have tabled a range of amendments. I will speak only briefly to some of them now, given the time available and the fact that other Members wish to get in.

Amendments 12 and 13 would in essence replace short-term prison sentences with community sentences. As the Bill stands, the new offence in clause 1 of selling corrosive products to under-18s is punishable by up to 51 weeks in prison. We are puzzled by this, because it directly contradicts Government policy as articulated at the Dispatch Box. The Secretary of State for Justice himself has said that short-term prison sentences do not work. He said that they should be used only “as a last resort.” Amendments 12 and 13 therefore appear to be in line with Government policy and would ensure that the offence set out in clause 1 is punishable by an effective community sentence and/or fine, instead of by an ineffective short-term prison sentence.

Amendment 14 would amend the welcome new offence of possession of corrosives by adding to clause 6 the words “with intent to cause injury”. I assume that the current wording is the result of a drafting error.

Finally, amendments 15 and 16 would remove mandatory prison sentences for a second offence of possession of corrosive substances. In other words, they would prevent this House from yet again trespassing on judicial discretion. I have never understood why Governments and colleagues think that they are capable of second-guessing the facts of a case that has not yet happened, or why this House should pretend that it makes any sense at all to bind the hands of judges, who see and hear the real facts of the case, are trained to assess the facts and are experienced in sentencing.

The House may remember when, back in 2014, a Conservative Back-Bench new clause was passed to create mandatory prison sentences for a second offence of possession of a knife. My party voted against that new clause on the principle that mandatory sentences tie judges’ hands, put more pressure on already overburdened prisons and mean that more people, especially young people, end up with ineffective short-term prison sentences. Regrettably, that new clause was passed, thanks to some Labour MPs supporting it, the Conservative Front-Bench team abstaining and Conservative Back Benchers voting for it.

To be fair, there were Labour MPs who voted with those of us who opposed the tying of judges’ hands. One Labour MP in particular made a fine speech, and said:

“There is a principle at stake here. There is a Sentencing Council and legislation on what is and is not a crime, but surely it must be for the courts to determine what is appropriate for the prisoner in front of them, rather than to have that laid down by statute.”—[Official Report, 17 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 1041-1042.]

That MP was the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), so I hope that the Labour Front-Bench team will support our amendments to get rid of mandatory prison sentences.

Back in 2014, when the House debated similar proposals in respect of knife crimes, the supporters of tying judges’ hands said that it would send a message to the people, and that that message would reduce knife crime. That was a rather odd argument, which seemed to assume that young people especially tuned into our proceedings with enthusiasm. It had no basis in fact at the time. We now have the benefit of seeing how four years of limiting judicial discretion over knife crime has worked—how the message that Parliament apparently sent was heard.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am listening intently to the right hon. Gentleman, as always, and in a friendly way I express the confident hope that he is approaching his peroration.

[Sir Edward Davey]

Mr Speaker, you are right to be confident because I am.

There may now be more people behind bars to whom the judges might have given, on the evidence, community sentences. We may now as a society pay more in taxes to keep locked up people whom it would be better not to lock up, so we may not be able to use the money that is currently spent on prisons in other ways, such as for spending on police or youth services.

All that does not look like a good outcome from the message sent by mandatory sentences, so why are we repeating the mistake? What evidence are Ministers using to introduce more mandatory sentences? What happens if the person was coming home from the shops and he or she was holding his mum or dad’s shopping bags when stopped and searched? Surely it is for judges to act on the basis of fact, not for Parliament to second-guess it. We do not think that mandatory sentences are the right approach, and I hope that the other place will deal with the matter.

[Stephen Timms]

Given the constraints on time, I will speak only to new clause 23, from among the six new clauses that I have tabled, which deals with a particularly important subject.

It might come as a surprise to the House, as it did to me, to learn that weapons that cannot lawfully be purchased in the UK can be purchased online without anyone committing an offence. That cannot be right. The aim of new clause 23 is to plug that gap. It differs from the proposal that we debated in Committee as it allows for a defence if the website removes the offending advertisement for an illegal weapon within 24 hours of being informed of it. That reflects some recent helpful discussions that I have had with eBay about the practicalities of implementing the change that I propose.

The background is that the Criminal Justice Act 1988 introduced a list of weapons that are illegal to sell in the UK, which was expanded in 2002 to include disguised knives. A disguised knife is

“any knife which has a concealed blade or concealed sharp point and is designed to appear to be an everyday object of a kind commonly carried on the person”.

It is now illegal to sell that kind of weapon in the UK.

I have been speaking to Mr Raheel Butt, who runs an organisation in the borough of Newham called Community and Rehabilitation Solutions. He is from a gang background and has served a prison term, but since he left prison in 2012, he has made it his mission to stop others making the mistakes that he made. He has pointed out to me that a lot of the weapons being used to kill young people on the streets of our cities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) pointed out, are being bought online, a lot of them from eBay.

I should say that since I raised these points in Committee, disguised knives have been removed from eBay, although they can still be freely found on other websites. Mr Butt tells me that it is on those sites that those who are killing young people are getting their weapons. However, is it illegal for a website with a UK domain name to advertise weapons that are illegal to buy in the UK? Surely the answer ought to be yes, yet there is some uncertainty about that. If I understood her correctly, the Minister advised us in Committee that she thought that it was unlawful for an illegal weapon to be sold in that way, but then she wrote to us and said, “Actually, no. There is a defence available, because these are simply platforms.” My argument is that selling a weapon on a UK website that it is illegal to purchase in the UK should be illegal. That is the aim of my new clause 23.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Ed Davey Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am about to come to the framework for these orders, because I am conscious that in an ideal world we would have had the measure in the Bill when it was first laid before the House in the early summer last year. However, the police came to their view and alerted us to their thinking at the end of summer, and although we have frankly acted pretty quickly, we could not by definition have put the measure in the Bill before the police asked us to. We are doing this in response to the express wish of the police; in fact, the Mayor of London wrote to the Home Secretary in December asking that the orders be inserted in the Bill.

I do not know whether the hon. Lady has had a chance to speak to the Mayor of London, but the reason we are introducing these orders is that we want to try to help local communities to tackle knife crime. They are one measure. We do not pretend that they will solve all knife crime, but they are about preventing young people from getting ensnared in criminal gangs or getting into a situation where they think that carrying a knife will protect them. This is about trying to wrap services around those children before they become criminalised.

I know that concerns have been raised about the age at which the orders can be imposed. The orders apply from the age of 12 upwards because the police tell us that the age at which people carry knives is getting younger. We also know from hospital data that younger children are victims and perpetrators. That is why we have chosen that age. If we are serious about tackling knife crime on our streets, the measures that we take must apply to young people and children.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will give way, but then I must make some progress.

[Sir Edward Davey]

I think the whole House is with the Minister in the determination to tackle knife crime and to try to prevent young people from getting into it, but can she tell the House what other mechanisms, orders or contracts the Government looked at before concluding that this was the right way forward? I have spoken to her privately about antisocial behaviour orders, which in the past did not work, whereas acceptable behaviour contracts, which worked with the young person, did work. Have the Government looked at those?

[Victoria Atkins]

I think the right hon. Gentleman and I talked about that last week. As I have said to him, I will happily look into those. We looked at whether gang injunctions are appropriate, but as Members across the House will know, not every child carrying a knife is a member of a gang. We also looked at criminal behaviour orders, but both those measures are contingent on a child being convicted of a criminal offence. With knife crime prevention orders, we want to try to reach those children before they are convicted of carrying a knife. The orders are also available upon conviction, because we want to wrap services around children if they are convicted and serve a detention training order. We wanted an extra structure around children to try to tackle the issue.

[Sir Edward Davey]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I must make some progress.

The order may impose such requirements or prohibitions on a person as a court considers necessary to protect any person from risk of harm or to prevent the commission of an offence involving a bladed article. A KCPO that imposes a requirement must specify a person who is responsible for supervising compliance with that requirement. Again, I emphasise that this is about protection and prevention. It is not about criminalising children. The order is a civil order. We do, however, accept that the breach of an order is, in itself, a criminal matter. I know that some have argued that it would be better to go down the antisocial behaviour injunction route, which applies to children as young as 10. The argument is that having a contempt of court rather than a criminal offence for a breach would make the orders more palatable, because it would mean that children did not get a criminal record. The advice from the police—it is advice that we must listen to very carefully—is that making it a criminal offence to breach an order is important if we want these orders to be taken seriously.

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[Sir Edward Davey]

The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) speaks with authority as a former youth worker, and one listens to him with great attention, but I disagree with his conclusion that the proposal before the House is the best way forward. I want to suggest alternatives that I hope he will consider.

There is no doubt that action on knife crime is needed—that fact unites us all—and a lot of the action will involve spending money, whether on policing, including community policing, or on youth workers. There may have been a lot of youth workers when the hon. Gentleman was active, but when I look around communities today I do not see many youth workers or community police officers, but we will need them to implement these orders. We will need to spend money if we are to have the people in place to give those young people alternatives and protect them. We as a Parliament have to recognise that the public health approach is not a cheap option.

Do we need another legal power? The Government argue that, despite the panoply of powers already on the statute book, we need a new one, which is why the House is right to scrutinise the proposal; I only wish it had more time. Will the proposal work? We have some evidence from the past. As you will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, we have had many debates in this House, in previous Parliaments, on how to tackle antisocial behaviour, and we have seen policies such as antisocial behaviour orders, on which, I believe, these knife crime prevention orders are modelled. My noble Friend Lord Paddick in the other place has pointed out some of the major problems with ASBOs that we believe knife crime prevention orders will also have.

I want to be constructive, however, and to support the Minister in her work to tackle knife crime. I hope that she will agree to meet me to discuss the Liberal Democrats’ proposal for what I have named anti-blade contracts—linked to the ABCs, or acceptable behaviour contracts, of the past—which could be far more effective in preventing young people from carrying knives in the first place. I would also make the case for other similar initiatives, such as what I call knife crime prevention injunctions, which would have the benefit of not resulting in criminal records for young people.

First, though, I will make the case against the Government’s proposal. The fundamental problem is that these will be pre-conviction orders—as opposed to on-conviction orders—which means that young people as young as 12 could be handed a court order on the grounds that, on the balance of probability, they may have carried a knife. That ought to alarm every colleague. Guilty before anything has been proven—that is a shocking legal principle. I am surprised that a lawyer as distinguished as the Minister feels comfortable about young people getting court orders even when it has not been proved that they committed a crime.

The Minister’s mitigation is that this is a civil offence, but if the order’s conditions are breached, it becomes a criminal offence. A condition may, for instance, be a requirement to notify. A young person who fails to notify the police of a change of address within three days will be in breach of the order, and could be imprisoned.

This legislation has no link to real life—to the chaotic lives that some of these young people lead. The idea that they will remember to notify a police officer within three days that they have changed their address because they have moved from one parent or carer to another, thus avoiding a prison sentence, is total nonsense. Why do we need to criminalise young people who have not committed a crime? Where is the evidence that that will tackle knife crime? Prisons are overcrowded, and there are high levels of self-harm. Is this really a sensible approach?

[Victoria Atkins]

The point of the orders is that there is information suggesting that these children have been carrying a knife on two or more occasions. The criminality, if we are talking in those terms, would be in the fact of the possession, and a magistrates court or a youth court would consider that very carefully. A child who is carrying a knife may well get into terrible trouble with the police because he or she has used it against someone, and we are trying to get to children before that happens.

[Sir Edward Davey]

There I have sympathy with the Minister, and I want to propose an alternative which addresses that very point. However, she was beginning to suggest—I am not sure that she meant to—that a criminal test had to be passed, and that is not what is in the Bill. It is not a criminal test that must be passed; it is a civil test, which could then result in a criminal record. I think that the House should think very carefully before going down that road.

Let me say a little about the alternative model that I want the Minister to consider. I am proposing what I have called anti-blade contracts. The idea is that a police officer, along with the parents or a carer, or possibly a youth officer, would sit down with a young person and require them to sign a contract saying that they should not carry a knife and that there would be consequences—for instance, fines or community sentences —if they were caught doing so. Crucially, however, linked with the public health or prevention approach would be positive elements. Young people could, for example, contact a named youth worker or police officer if they were concerned about their safety. There could also be a package of other support, which might involve access to youth services.

That is the way to change behaviour. That is the way to prevent a young person from ending up on the pathway to more crime. People who go to prison often see it as a college of crime, and we must try to avoid that. The approach that I am suggesting would do what the Minister wants: it would meet her objectives, but without the cost and without the potentially damaging impact that her orders would have.

[Bob Stewart]

Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that all young people should sign such contracts? That has a certain appeal to me—the idea that everyone at school, say, is given a lesson and then signs a contract, so that they understand what they are doing. Is that what the right hon. Gentleman is proposing?

[Sir Edward Davey]

Not in the first place. The idea—and this goes alongside the Government’s proposal—is not that every young person would be open to the process, but that it could be offered to young people who were thought to be in danger. I am not sure whether we would want it to be applied to every young person, although it could go further and be part of an educative process as well. Given the lack of resources in the police and youth services, I think that we should target those who are most at risk in the first instance.

The crucial part of my argument is that I am putting forward something that is based on evidence. The evidence from the Home Office, in its reports on the difference between antisocial behaviour orders and acceptable behaviour contracts back in 2004, and the evidence from the National Audit Office in a 2006 report, suggested that ABCs were far more effective in changing young people’s behaviour, which is what we want to do. More important—or, at least, as important—was the fact that they were cheaper. They took less time. Orders that need to go to court require considerable police resources, and we do not have those resources. They also take up the time of magistrates, which is already rather stretched, so we are putting forward something that goes against the evidence from the past and that we know is going to be more expensive and more time consuming. This is an urgent problem, and our proposal based on evidence does not need even this place to legislate. We could get on with it; we could issue guidance. Why on earth are we doing this? The situation is far more urgent than the Government seem to think. The Minister’s proposal would take so much time and money when we know that is not available.

I implore the Minister: I am pleased that she has nodded from a sedentary position to indicate that she is prepared to meet me to discuss our proposal—

[Victoria Atkins]

I confirm that I am.

[Sir Edward Davey]

I am very grateful to the Minister for doing that, but I hope she will reflect on this.

I will be supporting the Labour amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) tonight, which are well tailored. The Labour proposal requiring this House to vote on a report on the evidence from the pilot is a good compromise; it is an example of this Parliament working together to make sure that what we do is evidence-based. The good thing the Minister could do if she goes down my route is proceed with my anti-blade contracts while those pilots are going on, because an anti-blade contract does not need to bother this legislature.

[Sarah Jones]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) and I agree with much of what he said. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) put his finger on it when he said that these knife crime prevention orders are a roll of the dice. That is absolutely the point we all want to make, and while I completely disagree with the conclusion he has come to, this is what we are doing in this House: we are rolling a dice and there might be unintended consequences that we do not know yet. That is what I want to speak about today. I shall speak to the amendments I added my name to: 7, 9, 10, 12 and 23.

I chair the all-party group on knife crime, and yesterday we hosted an event on knife crime prevention orders. We heard evidence from the Magistrates Association, lawyers, academics, charities and youth offending teams who work with children and young people involved in knife crime. There was resounding agreement: they all want to stop knife crime and protect young people, but they all believe that these orders are not the answer. I think they are a knee-jerk reaction to a moral panic and they risk exacerbating, not diminishing, the problem. Lawyers, magistrates and youth offending teams are all in agreement that, far from being preventive, as the name of the orders suggests, the orders will have unintended consequences that could criminalise a generation of young people and actively work against the Government’s stated aim of reducing knife crime.

This final stage of the Offensive Weapons Bill is the first opportunity MPs have had to have our say on whether or not these orders should become law. This is indicative of the Government’s approach of late: rushing through ill-thought-out plans so they can appear to be doing something without actually listening or engaging with experts or allowing parliamentary scrutiny. No real consultation took place other than some rushed consultation within the police—although we heard yesterday that even the senior police representative for children and young people was not asked about these knife crime prevention orders.

As far as we can tell, the orders are the result of a few behind closed doors conversations between the Home Office and a few senior Met police. They have not comprehensively been thought out, and they were not a part of the Government’s own serious violence strategy. This is not the proper way for the Government to create laws, and it is an example of how bad, ineffective policy is created.

As we have heard, these are civil orders that would be placed on children as young as 12 who are suspected of carrying a knife. They could place severe, lengthy and potentially unlimited requirements and restrictions on the person subject to the order. If the requirements are not all met, a breach will be punishable by up to two years in prison. We have a situation in which somebody—a child—who may never have carried a knife and never have broken the law will end up with a criminal record and potentially a prison sentence for an order placed on them just on the basis of probability, rather than a criminal standard of proof. This leaves room for subjective decisions being made and for many young people to feel unfairly targeted.

The Government should be seeking to draw people away from the criminal justice system, not pushing children into it. And for solutions to be effective, they need to target the underlying cause of the behaviour. Sending children to custody does not work and is not an appropriate or proportionate response. Vulnerable young people must have access to education and employment so that they have routes away from drug gangs and the like. Criminal records and other criminal sanctions will disrupt lives and further marginalise young people, locking them out of mainstream society and exacerbating the root causes of violence. Children and young people have told our all-party parliamentary group many times that many are picking up knives out of fear. They feel that it is a necessary form of self-protection because everyone else has one and the police are not there to help them. Knife crime prevention orders will not deter children from picking up knives. They would rather be in prison for carrying a knife than be stabbed to death.

Another thing that was clear from our meeting yesterday was that the orders are neither necessary nor new. Magistrates and lawyers who are involved in children’s sentences have not called for more sentencing options. There are already intervention options available that could be promoted and developed. Many youth offending teams have programmes to address knife carrying, and if they had the money to do more outreach, they could help more children in this way. Conditional cautions can place requirements on children and young people, such as having to see their youth offending team and attend education programmes. These have lower reoffending rates than other more punitive responses, and they deal with behaviour outside the court system. Likewise, there is the triage system, where a young person who is arrested in a police station can be directed to appropriate intervention without being unnecessarily over-criminalised.

The similarities between knife crime prevention orders and the old antisocial behaviour orders are clear. The author of the Youth Justice Board report on ASBOs told us yesterday that they were disproportionately used on children and that they were breached in over two thirds of those cases. The use of ASBOs petered out over time because the courts and other agencies became increasingly concerned that they were counterproductive. Children had come to view them almost as a badge of honour and to define their identity around them. ASBOs were actually encouraging the behaviour they were designed to discourage. Over a nine-year period, more than 5,500 children were sent to prison for breaching their order. The bottom line was that they were not effective, because the kids kept coming back.

A number of other concerns have highlighted how little time has been given to the detail of these orders. Who will monitor them? Who will be responsible for reporting breaches? It seems that charities running programmes with young people would be expected to tell on their young people if they did not turn up. That would betray all the trust those organisations had carefully built up and would undoubtedly affect engagement. If the orders are imposed on the basis of probability, will not the victims of crime be more resistant to going to the police in case they get an order slapped on them, too? If school exclusions are already a big problem and a driver of young people becoming involved in violence, what impact do the Government expect the orders to have on access to education? A school will not want to take on a child who has been issued with a knife crime prevention order.

Finally, young black boys are already disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, and there are real problems with trust and community relationships with the police. The imposition of restrictive orders such as these, especially when someone is only suspected of carrying a knife, will feed into those young boys feeling disproportionately targeted or harassed by police, their feelings of marginalisation and alienation, and their feeling that they are being treated less fairly than others by the justice system. This will be a major setback.

In 2010, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), described ASBOs as a

“top-down, bureaucratic, gimmick-laden approach”.

She said that they were

“too complex and bureaucratic…they were too time consuming and expensive and they too often criminalised young people unnecessarily, acting as a conveyor belt to serious crime and prison.”

The Government should listen to that now. They should also listen to the wide coalition of professional bodies and organisations that have come out against these orders. They should listen to concerns raised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and to the Justice Secretary himself, who has highlighted a lack of evidence that the orders will be effective. They should also look at the evidence of what works to tackle violent crime. They should consult, and they should work out the actual impact of the policy before imposing it.