Policing and Crime Bill

Debate on whether Clause 29 should stand part of the Bill. As we have just heard, Clause 29 amends the police’s power to confiscate alcohol from young people in a public place. As the Minister said, the police no longer have to prove that the individual intended to consume that alcohol. The clause also requires the young person to give their name and address to the police and allows the police to return the individual to their home or a place of safety, which is not defined. Confiscation is not the best way to deal with young people who drink outdoors. We on these Benches are concerned that such an approach could antagonise young people and result in conflict between them and the police. It is very easy to get young people’s backs up when they feel that they have been dealt with unfairly. The Government should bear in mind that a 15 year-old may be taking the alcohol home where he or she can legally drink it. There is no link to consuming the alcohol in public. The Government are criminalising behaviour in which the young person is simply preparing to do something perfectly legal—that is, to drink the alcohol at home. I am also concerned that the power to return the individual to their home or a place of safety is very broadly drafted, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has just pointed out. A similar power in Section 30 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 to remove persons under 16 to their place of residence can be exercised only when certain conditions are met—that is to say, only between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am; where the relevant officer, who is a police officer above the rank of superintendent, has grounds to believe that any members of the public have been intimidated by the presence or behaviour of groups in the locality; and where anti-social behaviour is already a significant and persistent problem. There are no such safeguards against abuse of the powers in this Bill. We believe that children and young people who are drinking in public places should not, without also having behaved in some other criminal or anti-social way, be subject to criminal sanctions. Dragging them into the criminal justice system and giving them a criminal record will have damaging effects on their future prospects for employment and will be of little deterrent against what is common teenage behaviour. In relation to younger children in particular, public drinking suggests a lack of proper parental supervision and carries evident risks to their health. A welfare-oriented approach should, therefore, be used, including parental support and working directly with the family. As I said at Second Reading, criminalising possession of alcohol may also lead to children seeking out isolated locations in which to drink, where they may be at risk, particularly at night. There are all sorts of nasty people out there. We also have a problem with the proposition in Clause 29 that those people from whom the alcohol is confiscated should have to give their names and addresses to the police, and that this is then likely to be used as evidence against them in proceedings under Clause 30 to establish a persistent pattern of possession. Children from whom alcohol is confiscated are, therefore, required under Clause 29 to incriminate themselves. They will not be warned of this by the police, nor will they be legally advised, nor will they have an appropriate adult with them—as would happen in situations that occur in a police station. Further, you can imagine what a child might do when confronted with a police officer asking for their name and address. There is every chance that they will give a false name and address, and they may implicate another innocent young person who will then find it hard to dispute his identity as the person from whom the alcohol is confiscated. A miscarriage of justice is waiting to happen. In response to the Government’s youth crime action plan, the Standing Committee for Youth Justice cautiously welcomed Operation Staysafe, under which the police use existing child protection legislation to remove children and young people from the street late at night to a place of safety; but the committee expressed concern that that was being used under the banner of controlling anti-social behaviour and should not result in children being swept off the streets. I share that concern. Children should be removed to a place of safety only if they themselves are at risk of harm, as defined by the Children Act 1989. Even then, the interpretation of the words "at risk" and "place of safety" need careful consideration. Let us not further criminalise children, many of whom are only copying behaviour learned from their parents. They need help and guidance, not criminalisation.