My Lords, I was listening with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. It was a very good contribution and he raised a huge number of real concerns shared by many noble Lords across the Chamber. The question for the Government is whether they will actually listen to some of the points being made and change the legislation. In the light of some of the comments made by the noble Lord and by many others across the Chamber, I hope that they will. Irrespective of one’s view of this, there is a need for the orders to change; even if one disagrees with them as a whole, they need to be improved, and that is the point of Committee.
To be fair to the Government, I understand what they are trying to do. Noble Lords will know that I am not a lawyer, but I go to the facts to find things out, and I usually find it helpful to quote the Government’s own facts because then they do not accuse me of making them up. So I will quote from the Serious Violence Reduction Orders: Draft Statutory Guidance, of October 2021. Here we see the scale of the problem. According to the Government, these orders are needed because
“Recorded knife crime has risen over a period of several years.”
These are the Government’s own figures:
“For example, offences involving knives or sharp instruments increased by 84 percent between the year to June 2014 and the year to June 2020.”
Whatever the reasons or the rights and wrongs, that is a huge increase.
The public, and all of us, would expect the Government to do something about that, but the questions being posed here are these. First, are serious violence reduction orders the way to do it? Secondly, even if they are, are the Government going about it in a sensible way? I would say that the answer to both is probably no.
There are a huge number of concerns about these serious violence reduction orders, not least of which is, if you have a serious problem with knife crime, what has been shown to be successful over the decades—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, will know this from his policing days, and others have had experience of this, including the Minister in her local authority—is targeting police activity alongside the community, with all the various agencies diverting people, and young people in particular, away from it. That has been proven time and again. If the Minister goes back to the Home Office, she will find research after research to say that that is the way to deal with it: increase policing, work with local authorities and other local partners, and work with the community to take action.
I tell you what I think has happened: the Government have said, “My goodness, we have a real problem here, what are we going to do?”, and reached for an order which gives the impression of doing something. Of course, everyone wants the Government to do something—all of us want knife crime reduced—but is this the most effective and best way of doing it? Is this proportionate? Will it work? I have very serious concerns about the process but also about whether these orders will actually do what the Government, and all of us, want them to do, which is to reduce knife crime and stop people of whatever age offending. The Minister needs to explain why these will work. Why will they do what the Government intend? Will we read in a year or two that that 84% figure has been reduced?
Nobody in this House believes that stop and search is not a necessary action for the police to take at certain times, but it is the most controversial aspect of policing. I am sure that many people will have experienced or witnessed—it may not have been themselves personally—stop and search. It is a real infringement of people’s liberty, but communities accept it for the common good. That does not mean that they want it to happen carte blanche. The use of Section 60 is sometimes allowed, and communities will agree with it, but Section 60s do not last for two years. They last for a very short period, where the community has agreed that such is the crisis facing their particular area that, when it comes to whatever age of people, they will allow the police to have what they regard as a draconian power in order to further the public good.
The Government have driven a coach and horses through that with this serious violence reduction order. It is not just me who thinks this: the former Home Secretary and Prime Minister, Theresa May, talked in her contribution to this debate about the unintended consequences of this legislation and what she would have wanted. That is why my noble friend Lord Ponsonby
has indicated that he will oppose Clause 140 standing part of the Bill. A general debate needs to take place and the Government need to justify to this House and to the public why this clause will work and why it is necessary.
We have heard lots of contributions on the various amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, but nobody could have failed to have been moved by what my noble friend Lady Armstrong said. She was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, in another good contribution, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. As they pointed out, everybody knows that what my noble friend Lady Armstrong said is true: if this Bill goes through unamended, there will be young people—and people of any age—who will, by implication, be in trouble because they “ought to have known”. What sort of standard is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, asked? They ought to have known? I was a schoolteacher: you could not even give someone detention sometimes on the basis of “ought to have known”. This is serious: it is about taking away someone’s liberty. It is about stopping them in the street; it is about doing all of that. I do not know about your Lordships, but I have been in the company of lots of people in different sorts of situations and I did not always know what they were going to do, especially not criminal activity. I am sure that we all have said: “They did what?” That could even happen with friends, yet the Government are basing serious violence reduction orders on the basis of “ought to have known”. My noble friend Lady Armstrong was quite right.
Women are coerced into criminal activity. We all accept that—it is beyond debate—yet the Government are going to criminalise them. It beggars belief. I do not believe that either of the Ministers facing me believe in this. I think that they accept that women are coerced into activity that they do not want to get involved in, but they are going to pass legislation that will allow them to be criminalised. It just does not add up; it does not make sense. The Government have the power to change this—that is what is so frustrating. This is not yet the law. That is why we are debating it and why people are raising these issues. They are saying that it will not work, that it is unfair, that it is unjustified or that it is not in accordance with the principles of the legal system of our country, of which we are all so proud. There are doubts about its effectiveness. I hope that noble Lords will bear with me on this stand part debate, as Clause 140 goes to the nub of it. There are all sorts of amendments that we could put, but on this particular order—it will be for noble Lords to decide—that clause goes to the nub of what we are talking about.
My noble friend Lady Lawrence, who is not in her place, is a remarkable woman. Continually, year after year, despite the horror of her own circumstances, she points out in a calm, respectful, dignified way that the Government have to understand the consequences of some of the things that they are imposing on black and ethnic minority communities. She is not saying it just because she is a Labour Peer and wants to have a go at a Conservative Government; she is saying, “From my experience, from my knowledge, from my understanding, this will be the consequence of what the Government are going to do.”
We know that black and ethnic minority people are disproportionately affected by these changes. Go to these communities and talk to them, as I did when I was a Home Office Minister, and as I am sure Ministers will do, and if you get their agreement, they will support you. They do not want their young people stabbed; they do not want crime all over; they want their young people and their adults to be safe—of course they do—but they want it done with them, not to them. I have statistic after statistic around the disproportionality that exists, as well as what the College of Policing says about it. The House of Commons Library states:
“Available statistical analysis does not show a consistent link between the increased use of stop and search and levels of violence.”
If that is wrong, where is the evidence to show that it is wrong? I would say that, while stop and search may work in a blanket way, we need to look specifically at where it is targeted. I think that stop and search does make a difference, but it is where it is targeted: it should not be a blanket “Here you go; do it when you want”, which is what perverts the figures. As I say, we have real concerns, epitomised, and I make no apology for repeating this, by what the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, said.
I have a couple of things to say about the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby. Amendment 226 would remove the provisions that allow an SVRO to be applied to a person who has not actually handled a knife, as we were saying, or any kind of weapon, but who was in the company of someone else who had used a knife and, as the Bill says, either
“knew or ought to have known”
that their companion was armed. I just think that that will have to change. These orders allow a person to be stopped and searched without grounds; they can be stopped and searched without reasonable suspicion for up to two years. I think that there is an amendment, although I cannot remember if it is in this group, that questions whether that can be continually renewed and whether two years is the limit. From my reading of the Bill, it seems that it can go on and on, so it is quite a draconian proposal.
On Amendment 239—the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has signed both the previous amendment and this one—the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee says that too many of these powers are going to be applied by the negative procedure. It says to the Government, even if it is right to take away some of the liberty of the citizen in our country, on the street, by giving the police additional powers, surely that should be debated in Parliament. It should not just be for Ministers to make it up and lay it and that is it. Are we really saying that freedom of the individual in this country is dependent on a Minister in an office determining what the regulation should be on something as serious as this? Do we not agree with the committee, particularly regarding stop and search as well as other matters in the Bill, including these violent crime reduction orders, that at least the affirmative procedure should be used? We cannot amend the instruments, but we can at least debate them and I think that people would reasonably expect that.
Finally, if the Government are going to go ahead with this, as I expect they will, Amendment 240, in the name of the noble Baroness, Baroness Meacher, is essential: the pilots that the Government are running must be of a real standard, a real quality, and must be strengthened. If the evidence from those pilots is not what the Government want it to be—if it shows that they do not work—can we be assured that they will listen to what the pilots are telling them?
I could go on, and I am sorry that I have gone on a little while, but I think that stop and search, particularly without reasonable suspicion, is one of the most important powers that the police have to tackle serious and violent crime, but it is also one of the most controversial and, as such, should be handled with real care. I suggest that these amendments say to the Government that even if they are right to introduce these orders, they have not really, through the Bill, shown us that care and demonstrated it to the public. The Government need to think again.
4.30 pm