Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, the juggernaut of Home Office legislation trundles its way relentlessly along, despite the Minister’s very spirited introduction. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, has already indicated that more than 60 Bills on criminal justice since 1997 have added a further 3,600 criminal offences to the statute book. It is astonishing. We are liable to imagine that every problem, irritation or fault in our society can be solved, soothed or improved by legislation, but it is not so. The difficulty is that every Bill before us, like this compendium of assorted and unrelated issues, contains many good intentions and some good proposals. We can and should prevent the worst consequences of bad behaviour affecting others adversely and diminishing the peace and security of our society, but we seem to have drifted into imagining that the law can stimulate good behaviour. We are even tempted into thinking that acting within the rules and under the law is sufficient evidence in itself of moral rectitude. When we legislate as much and at the speed that we do, the consequences are not as we would wish. Living under too many rules, regulations and laws does not coerce people into good behaviour; it can cause anger, resentment and bitterness. Coercion cramps conscience. What we are doing also means that an increasing proportion of people in our society are criminalised. Thousands more criminal offences have consequences, such as the clogging of the judicial system and the burgeoning of our prison population. One of the dangers of the proposals, especially as they target young people, is that they may create a more criminalised society. Let us take, for example, Clause 29. Good intentions lie behind it, as we have heard. We want to discourage children from drinking alcohol. Good. We want to discourage them from drinking alcohol in public places, with all the consequences for disruption and uncontrolled behaviour that may follow. Good. That is what caused this House to approve the Confiscation of Alcohol (Young Persons) Act 1997. It enabled the police to confiscate alcohol from young people in public places if they were consuming it or if the police could show that they intended to consume it in that public place. Now we are proposing to abolish the doctrine of intention. I am rather keen on doctrines. Possession is enough. The 15 year-old boy, given a celebratory bottle after passing some examinations, and which he could legally drink at home, might have the bottle taken off him for possessing it in the street. The doctrine of intention is important in relation to crime, but possession is easier to determine. We are in the Bill lowering the barrier of criminality. We seem to be saying that if we catch the unwary, that is the price we will have to pay. The danger is that young people may be criminalised much more easily than we imagine for something that they cannot comprehend should put them on the wrong side of the law at all. We therefore increase their anger and impatience with the law and authority. We may even reduce the stigma of criminality itself and make the high spirited young seem more wayward as a result. What will we have achieved? Let us take Clause 27. The maximum fine for consuming alcohol in a designated public place will rise from £500 to £2,500. Why? Will it matter whether it is £2,500, £25,000 or £125,000? Why would it matter to some offenders whose whole income is spent on drink and drugs? Is not one of the problems with these great portmanteau justice Bills that we have not always decided what we want the law to do in each case—and in each clause? Are we seeking to deter? Are we seeking to extract retribution? Are we encouraging reformation of manners and behaviour? I doubt whether what is proposed in Clause 29, for example, will deter or extract retribution and I am absolutely certain that it will not amend behaviour. So what is it for? We also seem to move into punishment mode too swiftly when dealing with children and young people who misbehave. Disordered juvenile lives are best dealt with by welfare provision, not criminalisation. Sometimes, we seem to put the two together. Then the welfare seems like punishment, which absolutely ensures non-compliance. It is a depressing in the extreme that Clause 31 proposes the extension of the directions to leave power to include children as young as 10. Is it any wonder that, as the Good Childhood inquiry revealed, so many of our children feel so unhappy and uncherished in this country—more so than in any comparable European country? The Government’s continued determination to criminalise young people engaged in prostitution is a case in point. It is argued that we need the criminal law to enable such young people to access support, but that runs directly contrary to the views of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. It is the outworking of a culture that resorts to the criminal law far too quickly for our own or our children's good. The good intentions behind the Bill are again evident in the proposals regarding prostitution. The declared strategy that the Government have followed since 2006 has included prevention—stopping people from getting involved in prostitution—tackling demand, developing routes out of prostitution, bringing to justice those who exploit the vulnerable, and tackling off-street prostitution, especially where young and trafficked people are involved. That is a commendable strategy, which the Church of England supports. The difficulty, which is well illustrated here, is how to translate it adequately into legislation. Should we criminalise payment for sexual services to a prostitute who is subject to force, deception and threats? It seems entirely right to shift the blame from the victim—as the prostitute often is—to the purchaser of the services. Apart from the question of strict liability, will the provision make it easier or harder to discover who is being exploited? I am a patron of the Magdalene Group in Norwich, a charity that works to help those involved in prostitution. Its staff tell me that even they sometimes find it difficult to know for sure how far some prostitutes with whom they have built a relationship are truly being controlled or coerced. While some prostitutes may have originally been subject to force or deception, they get into a prostitution lifestyle. They may then cease to be subject to force or threats, but simply do not have the emotional, physical or spiritual energy to get out of it. Are we talking about contemporary force, threats and deception? How historic might it be? If what we really want to do is to make it illegal to pay for sexual services, should we not simply do so? I am very sympathetic to the Government's intentions here, but am concerned that even those working for the welfare of prostitutes are uncertain how the proposals would benefit those for whom they care. I have a final few words about the provisions relating to gang culture and violence. When the extension of the use of control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act was debated in this House a couple of months ago, I said there was a danger that the Secretary of State would be tempted to extend more widely that sort of arbitrary power. My concern about the use of injunctions here is the sheer breadth of control they permit. How do we ensure that the provisions are not used arbitrarily or restrictively to control behaviour? Will they not simply deal with the symptoms of gang culture rather than the causes? Those causes often relate to family breakdown and chaotic lives, to which gangs offer an attractive, if illusory, answer. We will not address that issue by criminal legislation alone. It is changed minds and hearts that alter things. Many of the problems addressed in the Bill arose and arise because too many people in our society believe themselves to be unloved and unlovable. That is the cause. Society does not become more loving by making more laws; it becomes more fearful. Perhaps in this House we might consider more fully how more loving support and welfare structures can be created for young people in trouble, sex workers or gang members. That might just bear more fruit than our legislative programme.