Policing and Crime Bill

Amendment 106 in this group is designed to address a deep concern on these Benches about the Government’s removal of the requirement that there needs to be evidence of intent to drink the alcohol before it can be confiscated. Amendment 104 probes why there is no defence of reasonable excuse inserted to replace such a safeguard. Essentially, these are probing amendments to establish why the Government are changing this power in such a way as to remove all necessity of bad behaviour. The Government’s amendments in this clause would make it possible for a policeman to confiscate a sealed bottle of alcohol from a young person even if there was absolutely no evidence to suggest that he was going to drink it and he had a perfectly good excuse as to why he was carrying it. This would be ludicrous. While maintaining, as ever, my full support for effective measures to address underage drinking, I fail to see how a young person carrying a bottle of wine home for his parents is in any way a suitable target for the police. Even worse, by then refusing to hand over that bottle of wine, he becomes subject to criminal sanctions—and for what? Although I understand the desire to allow for the confiscation of alcohol from someone who is transporting it to be drunk by another young person—a situation which the current legislation does not cover—there surely must be a defence of reasonable excuse inserted in order to replace the absent subsection. I beg to move.