Clause 1 - Arrest without warrant
Aviation (Offences) Bill
Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw, Labour)
I thank members of the Committee for giving up their time for this important Bill. I also thank you, Miss Widdecombe, not least for the advice that you were good enough to give me some moments ago.
Disruptive passenger behaviour, or air rage as it is commonly known in this country, is a serious offence. It could affect anyone who flies in an aircraft. Figures show a 400 per cent. increase in air rage incidents throughout the world since 1985. In the past year, there have been 1,055 incidents in the United Kingdom.
The lively debate on Second Reading showed how much interest there is in the subject. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) gave details of a personal experience of an air rage incident. It was very disturbing, if only for the fact that, apart from witnessing disruptive behaviour, everyone must bear in mind that it took place in an aeroplane travelling at 500 mph, 30,000 ft up.
The United Kingdom has been at the forefront of developing policy to tackle disruptive passenger behaviour on aircraft. The law dealing with such offences is among the most comprehensive in the world. The Bill will improve the enforcement of the law. It deals with specific recommendations made by the police and is supported by the entire aviation community.
On Second Reading, I was heartened by the remarks of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), who described the measure as
"a model private Member's Bill.''—[Official Report , 7 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 591.]
Praise indeed. The Bill is succinct, narrowly focused and, I hope, uncontroversial. In addition to usual criminal law, which also applies on board UK-registered aircraft, several specific offences in UK law relate to disruptive passenger behaviour. Those offences under the Air Navigation Order 2000 are endangering the safety of an aircraft, being drunk on an aircraft, smoking when it is prohibited on an aircraft, disobeying a lawful command by the commander of an aircraft and acting in a disruptive manner, which includes interfering with the cabin crew in the course of their important duty.
None of those offences carries a statutory power of arrest. Without a warrant, the policy may arrest suspects only if they are likely to injure themselves or others, or if their identity cannot be established, which in this day and age is unlikely. Obviously, those who travel on aircraft that travel between countries will have passports. Even on domestic flights, customers are required to have some form of identification. In most cases, the police are restricted to taking a name and address, and reporting the offender for summons.
The lack of powers to detain suspects creates several practical problems. It means that the police are unable to search, fingerprint or question suspects, or to take witness statements. For charges to be made, the police must travel to the suspect's address. For example, the suspect may live in London and the police may have to travel the length and breadth of the country to, say, Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, Glasgow or Edinburgh to speak to witnesses. That is a great waste of valuable police time. No doubt hon. Members who represent constituencies with airports could back up that assertion with many examples that they have received from their local police force.
On Second Reading, I gave an example of a football charter flight going from Vigo to Glasgow in November that had to land at Cardiff because of disruptive behaviour. The police in Cardiff interviewed as many people as possible. The suspects then went home to Glasgow. The Cardiff police then had to travel from one end of the United Kingdom to the other to take statements and, only a few weeks ago, four of those gentlemen were found guilty. That shows how much time is wasted to investigate such an incident. It must also have been extremely costly to the Cardiff police.
In order to give the police a power of arrest without a warrant, the alleged offence committed must be classified in law as an arrestable offence. The effect of clause 1 is to thus classify offences relating to drunken or disruptive behaviour.
Subsection (1) provides for certain offences to be inserted after paragraph 11 of schedule 1A to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—commonly known as PACE—which applies in England and Wales. The intention behind the wording of the clause is to refer to two specific offences in the Air Navigation Order: first, acting in a disruptive manner, as per article 68; and secondly, drunkenness in an aircraft, as per article 65. Section 24(1) of PACE defines an arrestable offence generally as any offence for which the sentence is fixed by law. All offences listed in schedule 1A to PACE are classified as arrestable.
As the maximum penalty for the air rage offences cited is two years imprisonment, at present the police would not normally have powers of arrest. Their insertion in schedule 1A will therefore have the effect of making the offences arrestable. In order to make the offences arrestable in Northern Ireland, subsection (2) inserts the same offences at the end of article 26(2) of the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, which is equivalent to schedule 1A of PACE.
Subsection (3) inserts an equivalent provision for Scotland after section 82(3) of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. As PACE does not apply in Scotland, the Act was considered the appropriate place to insert the offences, given that it already contains similar provisions relating to aviation security offences. There is a reserved mark in the measure for not being devolved, which is why we can put it in the Bill.