Policing and Crime Bill

I also support this amendment. Certainly, I invite the Minister to carry out further research. I first came across glassing when I was a young national service officer. Young gunners—often from Glasgow, alas—often used to be brought up before the colonel and subsequently go to much more serious courts because they had got drunk in Salisbury and glassed other people, causing hideous injuries. Everybody who has been in the criminal courts knows that this is a very serious problem. The noble Lord will know this because I suspect that it even happens in the Navy from time to time. It was raised quite recently and the licensed trade is obviously worried about it. We have to recognise that we must give the licensed trade time to make changes and encourage further research to find suitable alternative glasses—whether they are made of polycarbonate or something else—to substitute for what is, at the moment, a very popular drinking vessel. I would have though that bottles were less of a problem, but breaking bottles and shoving them in somebody’s face is another very common cause of grievous bodily harm. I do not know whether quite as many injuries are caused by breaking a bottle as by smashing a glass, but it is the sort of thing that the Home Office ought to know. It is a very serious problem; it exacerbates what would otherwise probably have been an unimportant fight into grievous bodily harm, and it is well worth looking into. I ask the Minister to think about it carefully and let us know as much as he can today and more on Report.