My Lords, this Government have worked to cut crime and to reform the police, and our reforms are working. The most recent report of the independent Crime Survey for England and Wales was published earlier this month and shows that crime continues to fall. In the year to the end of June 2013, overall crime fell by 7% to the lowest level since the survey began in 1981. However, we cannot be complacent. Last year there were still 2.2 million incidents of anti-social behaviour, with 28% of adults having personally experienced or witnessed such behaviour. As we know, often the most vulnerable members of our communities are most affected by these problems.
Across the country the police, local authorities, social landlords and others are working hard to stop anti-social behaviour using a combination of informal and formal interventions. However, in order to protect
victims and communities, they must have the right tools available to them. It is clear that the many existing statutory powers in this area are inadequate and ineffective. Anti-social behaviour orders, in particular, have not worked overall. More than half of them have been breached at least once and just over 40% have been breached more than once. That is why the Government have brought forward a new, streamlined, more flexible set of powers in this Bill.
The criminal behaviour order and the injunction to prevent nuisance and annoyance will replace the anti-social behaviour order and a number of other existing orders, and can be used to stop anti-social behaviour by individuals. Importantly, it will also be possible for the courts to attach “positive requirements” to help perpetrators address the underlying causes of their actions. The injunction is a wholly civil measure and is intended to be used to address problems quickly, before they escalate. The criminal behaviour order will be available for more serious cases where an individual already has a criminal conviction, although it will also be preventive in nature. Tough sanctions will be available to deal with breaches of the injunction or the order.
The new dispersal power will enable the police to move people on where they are causing problems at particular locations. The community protection notice, the public spaces protection order and the new closure power will deal with environmental anti-social behaviour which affects the community’s quality of life or ability to enjoy or access particular places. Part 5 of the Bill will strengthen the powers of landlords to seek possession where tenants blight the lives of their neighbours.
With these new powers the Bill contains important safeguards, including, in appropriate cases, judicial oversight. Such powers are necessarily always a balancing act between the rights of individuals who may be on the receiving end of an injunction, notice or order and those of the wider community who do not want their lives blighted by anti-social behaviour. We believe that the Bill gets that balance right.
Part 6 will empower local people through two measures: the community remedy and the community trigger. The remedy will ensure that victims have a say in the out-of-court sanctions used for low-level anti-social behaviour. The community trigger will empower victims to hold agencies to account for their response. Where a victim is suffering from persistent anti-social behaviour or feels that previous complaints have been ignored, the community trigger will require local agencies to conduct a joint review of the response. That is not to say that agencies do not need to act until there have been several complaints or until the trigger is used. We continue to expect that every complaint should receive an appropriate response. However, it is important that victims have this safety net for when things go wrong. I believe that, taken together, these reforms will focus the response to anti-social behaviour on the needs of victims and their communities, ensure that professionals are able to protect the public quickly and effectively, and tackle the underlying drivers of anti-social behaviour.
I now turn to the issue of irresponsible dog ownership. There are two broad elements to the Bill’s provisions here. The first is primarily preventive. The anti-social behaviour powers that I have described will allow agencies—local authorities and the police—to address
emerging problems. For example, when a dog causes a nuisance because it has not been trained properly, the owner could be required to keep it on a lead and attend training classes. The Bill also makes amendments to the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 to strengthen the response where a dog presents a risk to public safety. This includes extending to all places the Section 3 offence of owning or being in charge of a dog that is dangerously out of control. Your Lordships will all be aware of the recent tragic case in which attacks took place at the owner’s home and therefore no prosecution could be sought under the Dangerous Dogs Act. These provisions seek to address that gap.
Noble Lords will also be aware of the debate in the House of Commons on the penalty for this offence. There was a broad consensus that the existing two-year maximum penalty for the aggravated offence is inadequate. I can now confirm that the Government will bring forward an amendment in Committee to increase the maximum penalty to 14 years in a case involving the death of a person, to five years where a person is injured and to three years in any case involving the death or injury of an assistance dog.
I now turn to firearms. Part 8 strengthens the law in respect of illegal firearms to target the middle men who supply weapons to street gangs and organised crime groups. While gun crime is thankfully relatively rare in this country, when it does occur it has a devastating effect on its victims, their families and communities. The evidence suggests that a reasonably small number of weapons are used in these crimes, with middle men hiring out guns to criminals. The Bill will accordingly introduce a new offence of possession of a prohibited firearm for sale or transfer. It will also increase the maximum penalties for the illegal importation, exportation and manufacture of firearms to life imprisonment.
I turn now to sexual offences. Part 9 of the Bill brings me to measures to protect children and vulnerable adults from sexual harm. These provisions respond to an independent report by Hugh Davies QC and to amendments proposed in the House of Commons by Nicola Blackwood MP, supported by 67 other Members of that House. They seek to address serious weaknesses in the existing regime of civil preventive orders under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Taking a similar approach to the one we have taken to anti-social behaviour, Part 9 rationalises and strengthens the powers available. Three existing orders will be replaced by two new ones: the sexual harm prevention order and the sexual risk order. They can be used where a person poses a risk, either following conviction for a relevant offence in the case of the sexual harm prevention order, or without a conviction for the sexual risk order. Both orders may impose restrictions that a court considers necessary for protecting the public from sexual harm. For example, restrictions could be placed on foreign travel. The new orders will be more flexible than the existing powers and will help professionals act to prevent harm. Our aim in making these reforms is to give enhanced protection to children and vulnerable adults, both in the UK and abroad.
Providing victims and potential victims of forced marriage with enhanced protection is also the purpose of Part 10 of the Bill. These provisions introduce new
offences of forced marriage and breach of a forced marriage protection order. The legislation will complement the important work done by the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit, charities and others to tackle the serious harm caused by forced marriage. The new offences will send a clear message that this appalling practice will not be tolerated and will ensure that those who perpetrate it face appropriate penalties.
Part 11 of the Bill includes measures that continue the important work of police reform to build on the significant steps that the Government have already taken in this area. First, it gives statutory powers to the new College of Policing to prepare regulations, codes of practice and guidance to support its role in developing the professionalism of the police. Police leadership is extremely important to the future of the police and we recognise the need to recruit the brightest and the best to senior roles. In addition to the college’s work to nurture talent within our police forces, it may sometimes mean recruiting exceptional candidates from outside. Part 11 accordingly enables police and crime commissioners to appoint as chief constables officers with suitable experience in forces overseas.
The provisions in respect of the Independent Police Complaints Commission enhance its powers in order to improve public confidence in police integrity. They include the extension of the IPCC’s remit to cover private contractors used by forces and a power to require forces and other bodies to respond publicly to the IPCC’s recommendations.
Part 11 also takes forward recommendations made by Tom Winsor in respect of the mechanisms for considering police pay and conditions. It abolishes the ineffective and inefficient Police Negotiating Board and establishes in its place an independent review body to make evidence-based recommendations on officers’ remuneration. This is similar to the system already used for many public servants, including the Armed Forces and the NHS.
We are building on the role of police and crime commissioners in their local communities by conferring on them new powers to commission services for victims and witnesses. They will be best placed to determine local needs and they should be empowered to provide victims with the appropriate support.
Alongside these structural reforms to the way in which police forces and other institutions operate, Part 11 also deals with the powers used by front-line officers. In particular, it continues the work we started in the Protection of Freedoms Act to ensure that counterterrorism powers protect the public but do so in a fair and proportionate manner. The port and border security powers in Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000 are a vital part of the United Kingdom’s security arrangements and an essential tool in countering the threat from terrorism. The provisions in Part 11 will reduce the potential for these powers to be used in a way that is disproportionate or unnecessary, while maintaining their operational effectiveness. These include reducing the maximum period of detention from nine hours to six and providing for persons detained at ports to have access to legal advice. We will naturally consider very carefully any observations and recommendations made by David Anderson QC, the
independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, in his report on the examination of David Miranda, but I am sure noble Lords will agree that we should wait for his report rather than take any precipitative action.
The Government’s concern to ensure proportionality and fairness also underpins Part 12, which reforms our extradition arrangements. The Home Secretary, my right honourable friend Theresa May, announced in the summer that she would introduce legislation to reform the operation of the European arrest warrant in the UK and increase the protections offered to those wanted for extradition, particularly British citizens. Accordingly, the Bill addresses many long-standing concerns about extradition. These include introducing a bar to extradition where a judge considers it is not proportionate, measures to address the problem of lengthy pre-trial detention and making it clear that dual criminality must apply in all cases where part of the conduct occurred in the UK.
Finally, Part 13 contains criminal justice provisions and I will speak briefly about three of them. The first clarifies the test for determining eligibility for compensation where someone has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. At present, the test is subject to definition and redefinition in case law, which has led to a lack of clarity for applicants and numerous legal challenges. The new test will provide much-needed certainty in this area by putting on a statutory basis the test that operated between 2008 and 2011. It is not our intention to reduce the number of applicants who receive compensation—which at present is around two to four a year—but we want to reduce the number of complex, expensive and generally unsuccessful legal challenges that currently arise.
The second relates to prosecutions for low-value shop theft. As I said earlier, one of the policing reforms we are making is to free up police time to focus on fighting crime. Extending police-led prosecutions—and avoiding the unnecessary passing of cases between the police and the CPS—is an important element of this work. Provisions in this part would bring a further 50,000 cases of shop theft into the scope of police-led prosecutions, empowering front-line officers and bringing retailers swifter justice.
Finally, the Bill provides that the Lord Chancellor may set fees for certain proceedings in the civil and family courts and tribunals, and for services provided by the Office of the Public Guardian, at an enhanced level above cost. Enhanced fees are a critical part of our plan to ensure the courts are properly resourced so that access to justice is maintained. In the context of the need to reduce spending and to tackle the fiscal deficit, we believe it is fair that those who use the courts, and can afford to pay, should make a greater contribution to the overall costs of these courts. The Government are not proposing specific fees now. We want to take some time to make sure our proposals are set at the right level and aim to consult on detailed proposals before the clause is considered in Committee.
I recognise that some noble Lords may have concerns that enhanced fees could lead to a denial of justice. I want to reassure the House that that will not be the case. The Lord Chancellor will continue to be under a
duty to ensure that the principle of access to justice is not denied. Fee remissions will continue to be available for those who qualify and the clause has a number of safeguards built in. However, I have no doubt that we will return to this provision, as we will many others, in due course.
The Bill covers a wide range of issues but there are a few important principles that run through it. Front-line professionals and the courts must be properly equipped to protect the public from harm. Reform must continue so that our police enjoy enhanced professionalism and public confidence. The powers exercised on the part of the state must be fair and proportionate and, perhaps most importantly, the rights and interests of victims should be central to our response to anti-social behaviour and crime. I commend the Bill to the House.
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