Violent Crime Reduction Bill

My Lords, inadvertently I have skipped a group and spoken to Amendment No. 42 when moving Amendment No. 39. I apologise to the House. I must say that I was confused myself because I had thought that my speaking notes were rather longer. I shall now speak to the right amendments. This group of amendments covers slightly different subject matter, although it is not unrelated to the amendment I have just addressed. I shall move government Amendment No. 39 and speak to Amendments Nos. 44, 46, 48 and 52. In doing so I shall also resist opposition Amendments Nos. 41, 43, 45 and 47. I hope that that clarifies the position. Amendment No. 41 seeks to remove the proposed power to generally authorise staff to search for weapons in a school. It is important to have a power to authorise generally as it would allow staff, once generally authorised to search, to act immediately when they suspect there is a concealed weapon. Without general authorisation, staff or pupils could be at risk if staff suspected that there was a weapon while the head or deputy head teacher could not be contacted for any reason. Amendments Nos. 43, 45 and 47 require the relevant Secretaries of State to issue guidance and suggest that the guidance may in particular refer to training and information on paying compensation. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills already has plans to issue guidance for schools, while my department will issue guidance for attendance centres. Further education institutions will be able to make use of the guidance for schools. We will consult fully on the draft guidance, which will include advice on staff training and employers’ duties to take reasonable steps to keep staff members safe, as well as having insurance to cover any liability for injury in the course of their employment. It is therefore not necessary to put a duty on the Secretary of State to issue guidance, nor is it necessary to suggest the contents of such guidance. In those terms, I hope that the noble Baroness will not press her amendments. Government Amendments Nos. 39, 44 and 46 relate to the power to search for knives or offensive weapons in schools, colleges and attendance centres respectively at Clauses 42, 43 and 44. By changing the grounds for a search from ““reasonable grounds for believing”” to ““reasonable grounds for suspecting””, we will broaden the scope of searches to include a wider range of people. It is important to do this for two reasons. First, head teachers have told my noble friend the Schools Minister that they sometimes suspect that a knife is in the school, but that the information is not strong enough for believing that a particular pupil has it. This amendment would enable a search in those cases where a member of staff has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the particular pupil has the knife. Secondly, we want to do all we can to counter any possible accusation that staff have performed a search without sufficient grounds. Lowering the grounds from belief to suspicion makes such accusations less likely to arise and less likely to succeed. We also take the view that suspicion of a weapon in the school allows a search to move outwards, starting perhaps with those pupils who are said by other pupils to be carrying a knife, or pupils who have been trying to hide something. If nothing is found on them, the search can move on to those who tend to act as willing minders of illicit items, or are easily bullied into being unwilling minders. Staff often have a clear picture of such dynamics among their pupils. The search can then broaden to pupils in the same class year or in the same neighbourhood. That increases the chances of finding a knife that is suspected to be somewhere and could enable a school to search quite a large proportion of its pupils. However, before searching any pupil, there must always be a reasonable suspicion that the individual may have the knife. While safeguarding the rights of individual pupils being searched, we also want to protect all pupils and staff from the risk of or threat of violence, so we want to give schools and others as much discretion as possible where a knife might be on the premises. Attendance centres provide group-based sessions for offenders aged between 10 and 25. These offenders have been sent to such centres by the courts for offences which include the use of violence and the possession of knives or offensive weapons. Widening the grounds to search from ““reasonable grounds for believing”” to ““reasonable grounds for suspecting”” will ensure that designated attendance centre staff are able to act upon intelligence to search individuals and will ensure that all staff and attendees are afforded the proper protection from knives and offensive weapons. We recognise that few incidents of attendees carrying offensive weapons have been reported over the past two years. However, we believe that this power should be available to staff if they so choose to use it, and that it should offer the most realistic test by which they would be able to initiate a search. The clause offers appropriate safeguards and authorisation of search criteria. Through government Amendments Nos. 48 and 52, we are seeking to reduce the threshold for a constable to exercise his or her powers of entry and search in Section 139B of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. This section currently enables an officer to exercise those powers provided that he or she has reasonable grounds for believing that a person on the school premises has a knife or offensive weapon with them. As indicated above, we consider that this presents a threshold which is not in proportion to the nature of the problem and the potential consequences that might arise from it. Therefore, we propose revising that threshold to one of reasonable grounds for ““suspecting”” to ensure that the police power to search in schools is consistent with that of school staff. Guidance will be produced by the Department for Education and Skills in consultation with the Home Office, the police and other key stakeholders. This will contain pointers which schools could take into account when considering whether a search is justified on the grounds of reasonable suspicion, together with advice on the way in which the power should be applied. I also take this opportunity to refer noble Lords to a closely related matter regarding the Written Statement made earlier by my noble friend the Schools Minister about the non-contact or minimal contact screening of pupils and others for weapons. Such screening involves the use of metal detectors contained in walk-through arches or handheld wands. Screening can be carried out on all pupils provided it is carried out in a way that respects people’s privacy. If screening indicates that a weapon may be present, school staff could then call the police or use the new power included in the Bill to carry out a hands-on search. The guidance I have referred to will include good practice advice on screening. The power to screen pupils, as recently clarified by the DfES legal advisers, is enabled by education law giving head teachers the power to make school rules relating to behaviour and discipline as a condition of entry. I beg to move.