Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I would certainly pay tribute to the noble Baroness's record on women's issues, particularly the issue of women in prison. Of course I have read the debates in the other place, and, as I was about to say, trafficking is an appalling crime. Exploited women who are trafficked need the full protection of the law, but legislation already exists to address the issue of trafficking. Is further criminalisation of women working in the industry the way to address the issue? She talked about the issue of men buying sex, but she is being extremely optimistic if she thinks that this legislation will solve a problem that has been around for 3,000 years. We are angry that the Government have not looked at the evidence of what works. Ministers have chosen to turn a blind eye to the constructive approach taken in New Zealand, for example, which has decriminalised prostitution and treats it as the social and health issue that it is. Five years of evidence show that that was a good move. Nor does the Bill take the right approach to the exploited children in the sex trade. Instead of treating them as the victims they are, it leaves the under-18s to be treated as criminals. That attitude really worries us and will do nothing to help the exploited children in this country or, by example, in the rest of the world. All too often young street-working children in the rest of the world are treated as criminals simply for selling themselves for sex in order eat. We do not want to replicate that problem here in the UK. My noble friend Lady Walmsley will outline in more detail our thoughts on how the Bill deals with children, and my noble friends Lord Bradshaw and Lady Harris of Richmond will dissect whether the clauses contain anything worth while to address police accountability. We believe that accountability is an immensely important issue, especially as the Government have given the police so many more powers. As the Minister will know from our many debates, the powers under the police counterterrorism legislation have worried us. They were largely rushed through Parliament, and are sometimes now used in non-terrorist situations. We shall certainly want to look at how accountable the police should be under, for example, Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which allows very wide stop and search powers akin to the old discredited sus laws. Communities are actually barred from knowing in which parts of cities or to which other places Section 44 applies, so it is impossible to know whether it is being used correctly. Such use must at the very least be balanced by proper accountability, an issue which my noble friends will talk about. These Benches will be seeking to amend the legislation so that such powers cannot be misused easily. In the Bill the Government rightly turn their attention to alcohol misuse, a tremendously serious problem for society in health terms and a driver behind the violence that wrecks some people's Saturday nights and other people's lives. However, as a legislative response, it uses curtailment of individual rights rather than addressing some of the very simple measures that both police and A&E departments say would most improve the situation. For example, a change in the law to allow licensing authorities to require, when appropriate, that substitute materials for glass should be used is a simple one, giving power to local people to solve the problem locally. We will table such an amendment. The Government should listen to the LGA’s reservations of these clauses; its members are the licensing authorities and have a realistic view of the locality for which they are responsible. They say that the creation of mandatory licensing conditions will impose blanket regulations across the board that will not take account of local conditions. The Government should also take as a warning what they did under the Licensing Act 2003, which had such an adverse effect of many small community centres and village halls, by imposing significant burdens on these locally run organisations. The Bill is in danger of doing exactly the same. We hope that it is not another example, but we fear that it is, of the Home Office undermining some of the work of other departments like the DCMS and the DCLG, which are busy trying to support and fund such organisations. The Government also address the serious issue of gang violence in the Bill. The loss of life of young people caught up in gang violence is obviously incredibly tragic. The fact that many others live in terror is appalling. We on these Benches believe in trying to work with the Government to address these issues but have grave concerns about the legislative response in the Bill. These measures appear to be aimed at the over-18s, but can the Minister say when they would be used against the under-18s? Four in every 10 muggings in Britain are committed by children under 16. The most likely person to carry a knife is a boy between 14 and 19. There is a real issue here. We do not want to curtail the liberties of children but, at the same time, what is the point of introducing measures that do not address the very age group with the problem? We are concerned that the injunctions are in effect very like control orders, which can be used against individuals without any evidence of their guilt. There is more of a parallel with control orders than ASBOs. One of the worst aspects of this provision, which needs wide debate, is that it was not debated at all in the Commons on Report. We will have to remedy that here. The wording in these clauses is very loose. It talks of "association", which could simply be being related to, or a friend of, a gang member. The individual themselves might have absolutely no wish or intention to be part of a gang. We will want to establish the Government’s evidence base that, where such measures have been used, they have been effective at diminishing the violence associated with gang membership. After all, only the violence should be targeted. There is nothing wrong with belonging to a gang in itself; the intimidation and violence is the problem. Cybercrime is not in the Bill, but again last week it was highlighted as a major national and international crime issue. In my response to the gracious Speech on 9 December 2008, I talked about the Government’s failure to take cybercrime seriously. I mentioned the devastating effect that it would have on individuals, companies and, potentially, whole economies. The Minister has today talked of aviation security, which is of course in the Bill, but you only have to think what an attack on an air traffic control system would do to realise what a severe problem this is. I would not have expected the Minister to have taken my advice when I talked about it back in December. Now, however, he might like to take a leaf out of President Obama’s book. He talked about cybercrime last week and announced that he will take a new cyber tsar to press for action. He said: ""It’s now clear that this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation. We’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country"." The UK is certainly not prepared. The Government have spent time appeasing the right-wing press through introducing certain sections in the Bill—time which could have been spent tackling this very serious threat to individuals and to the UK as a whole.