Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, in responding to these amendments I am aware that these proposals were discussed previously in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act last year. I am very glad to say that we very much support the principle of the intention of the noble Baroness and other noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. It is very clear that alcohol-related offending causes a great deal of harm and there is an undeniable logic in tackling alcohol-related offending by preventing an offender from participating in the activity that has given rise to or exacerbated their criminal conduct. The noble Baroness makes a very cogent case, and we all know how very damaging the abuse of alcohol can be. I can therefore confirm to the Committee that the Government will shortly be establishing two pilot schemes to test the principles and effect of enforced sobriety schemes as part of our effort to tackle and reduce alcohol-related crime, drawing on the success of similar schemes that have been trialled in the United States. At the time of the policing Bill, the Government committed to testing sobriety schemes as part of conditional cautions within existing legislation. Since then, the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office have developed further proposals to pilot sobriety as part of community orders within the existing law. There will be two pilots using tags and breathalysers because it is extremely important to assess the practical advantages and disadvantages of schemes such as this. The conditional caution pilot will focus upon offenders who commit high-volume alcohol-related offences, such as drunk and disorderly, common assault and criminal damage. Offenders will face the tough choice of accepting sobriety conditions or facing prosecution and the prospect of receiving a drinking banning order on conviction. Anyone failing to comply with these conditions would be prosecuted for the original offence. The second pilot will test sobriety as part of community orders, which will target a range of more serious offences where alcohol is a contributing factor. We will be looking at making use of the latest technology through which to monitor an offender’s compliance with the terms of the sobriety requirements. Breach procedures will exist as they currently do. We will set out further details of these pilots in the Government’s forthcoming alcohol strategy. We want to hear the views of the judiciary, professionals within the criminal justice system and the public on the proposals. We will therefore be consulting in parallel with the pilot schemes to ensure that we give full consideration to the purpose, effect and benefit of sobriety schemes as we develop work further. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, as a medical scientist, knows how important it is to evaluate evidence. In her introductory remarks, she flagged up some of the complexities in this area. It is extremely important that we learn from these pilots in order that we can take forward what works best. Alongside this we are taking a range of other measures to tackle alcohol-related offending. Pricing is one crucial lever for tackling alcohol misuse and its associated crime and health harms. I have just mentioned that the Government’s alcohol strategy will be set out shortly. We are also rebalancing the Licensing Act in favour of communities by giving greater powers to police and licensing officers to tackle irresponsible businesses. We are also strengthening violence reduction programmes to incorporate a greater emphasis on tackling the impact of alcohol and drugs and gathering evidence from drinking banning orders that are being piloted in 50 areas across England and Wales. The noble Baroness has done a great deal to bring this issue to the Government’s attention, and I congratulate her for it, but as I have said, it is extremely important that we are certain of the effectiveness of this policy before it is put in statute, which is why I am very glad that we can take forward the pilots under current legislation so that the practical aspects can be properly assessed. There are some concerns not about the principles of the amendment but about the design of some of the elements. We feel that some safeguards are not quite as they should be. The noble Baroness mentioned questions over the tagging equipment. It will be assessed, but I flag up that in 45 states in the United States it has been used for more than 5,000 offenders and has the confidence of the US judiciary and so on. There are a number of things that I can write to the noble Baroness about in regard to that, but as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, there are different views on some of the equipment which are slightly at variance with what the noble Baroness said. That shows how important it is to pilot and to see how these various approaches work. On the issue of compelling an offender to pay for the test, while there are mechanisms for courts to administer and collect financial penalties, no mechanism exists for a criminal court to require an offender to pay the costs of delivering a non-financial penalty in this way. Furthermore, since the fine would be a punishment in its own right, this would add considerable punitive weight to the nature of the sentence and the court would factor that in. Therefore, we feel that the offender-pay element in the noble Baroness’s pilot proposals should not be taken forward. It is not an essential part of them, and we feel it is very important to see how other aspects of the proposals work. There are a number of other concerns about the proposed amendments—for example, the proposal to give a constable a power of arrest without warrant, without warning and, more importantly, without appropriate consultation with the responsible officer, either a probation officer or a youth offending team worker. If the intention is to bring an offender immediately back to court, it would achieve little because there is no power to detain the offender, who would have to be released pending any breach hearing. There are some complexities in that. Various noble Lords mentioned domestic violence. In piloting this, we do not feel that it is the first area in which we want to use this. We have reservations about sobriety schemes being applied to domestic violence offenders because, if you like, alcohol does not cause domestic violence although, of course, it may very well increase its severity and/or frequency. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, referred to that and to the need to make sure that there are other programmes in place to ensure that the reasons for that domestic violence are being tackled properly. Therefore, for those reasons, it is clear that we need to address the underlying reasons why domestic violence is taking place. It is probably not the best area in which to see whether this is working well. If in future, in conjunction with other supportive measures in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, indicated, it is seen as having potential, that will be a different matter. I am not at all surprised that there has been huge public interest in this. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, I am a mother, and I know the impact on my children of alcohol—their own consumption, that of their friends and that of their adversaries. I have been in A&E with broken bones and in hospital with one of my children who chose to swim the Thames when drunk at midnight and ended up with something like typhus. Thus far, my children have survived, and I have not faced the awfulness of what the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, had to face. These are very important proposals and we have given very serious thought to them. We are very grateful to the noble Baroness. She is very persistent in arguing her case, and she is right to be so. That is why I am very pleased that we are taking forward the principles of the amendments in the pilots that I have laid out. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, should be reassured that we can take this forward under current legislation, so we do not need to think about sunset clauses and whether we are putting something flawed into the Bill. Although we are very pleased to welcome the principle of these amendments, we ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment and hope to work with her in future to take this forward.