Violent Crime Reduction Bill

My Lords, I appreciated very much the Minister’s introduction to the Bill and explanation of it. I wish to make a general point about it and illustrate that with a particular clause. I recognise that at future stages of the Bill there will be opportunity to address individual provisions. However, in one sense the Bill uses rather old remedies to deal with the problem. In some circles to which I belong it is a requirement, before introducing any proposal, that you have it costed; that usually means in financial terms. I would like to see a self-denying ordinance on government to require the answering of the question: how many additional persons will be incarcerated as a result of the passage of the Bill and the creation of its offences? That is a really important question because all the evidence is that the more people we incarcerate, the fewer are successfully rehabilitated, so the less likely we are to have the overall crime reduction which the Government seek. I am seriously concerned that in just one day in this House we have created a number of new offences. If we have created a number of new offences, we have created a number of new offenders. If we have created a number of new offenders, we have created more work for our already overcrowded prisons, with the consequent effect on the Government’s very serious and committed attempts to achieve crime reduction, one of the major factors in which is the reduction of reoffending. The Minister has heard me say this several times before, and if she yawns I shall not be surprised, but it seems to me that on this Bill too we have to ask: was there no other way to deal with some of these matters? I have not done the calculation and I do not know how much further likelihood there is of creating offences as a result of the Bill’s provisions on alcohol-related disorder. I realise that the orders which are proposed as civil orders do not automatically lead to imprisonment, but I still think that the question of sanctions arises, and at the other end of sanctions imprisonment can arise. I would like some reassurance on that. Gun crime is one of the Bill’s major concerns. In the week following the major gun incident in Birmingham, which was not that long ago, I believe that the number of people in prison increased by 180. That was simply the result of public concern reflected, quite properly, in the response of the judiciary to what had happened. Clause 41 concerns the power to search further education students for weapons. That power is conferred on a member of staff—and ““a member of staff”” is very widely drawn—who has ““reasonable grounds”” for suspecting that someone is carrying a weapon. What are reasonable grounds? Are they the sight of a weapon-shaped bulge in somebody’s coat pocket? That would be one kind of reasonable ground. Or might it be the continued emotional volatility of the person concerned, which has led to them uttering abusive threats? Some of our students in further education institutions react to pressure by becoming violent. Will the clause which confers the power to use reasonable force lead to explosions of anger by vulnerable people and criminalise them as a result? I do not know the answers to those questions. But I feel a real concern on reading this Bill in the context of the Government’s general response to crime, which is the repeated creation of further offences, and therefore of further offenders. I frequently use the prison population as an illustration of the nature of original sin. We all want the numbers brought down, but we constantly pass laws that have the predictable effect of increasing them. It is true that there is a reduction in crime, but at what cost and by what means can it most effectively be pursued? I have responded to the production of this Bill more by a series of questions than by opposition to its principle. I want to be sure that a prison population audit is carried out before new offences are created, so that our society does not suffer the blight of a constantly rising proportion of the population incarcerated with the effects that that has on the destruction of communities, families and their own ability to function effectively in society. That this Bill has good intentions is not in doubt; but I doubt whether I can really be comfortable with the pattern of behaviour that it represents, which is a pattern of response to disorder by creating new offences and more imprisonment.