Clause 34 - Sale etc. of knives and other weapons
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
5:45 pm
Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Woking, Conservative)
I shall focus entirely on amendment No. 56, and have nothing to say on amendment No. 67, which is also in my name. On the amendment paper, there is a slight misprint in the amendment, which would require a minimum custodial sentence for the offence of carrying a bladed article. It reads:
“A court shall, on a person’s first conviction for an offence under Section 139(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Placed article)”—
that should read, “Bladed article”—
“pass a minimum custodial sentence of 3 months, unless exceptional circumstances exist in relation to the offence or the offender which justify its not so doing.”
I want to give the Committee a terrifying statistic. The Government have confirmed in a parliamentary answer that no fewer than 20,000 children aged 11 to 16 admit to having carried a knife in school for offensive purposes, and no fewer than 40,000 children aged 11 to 16 admit to having carried in school a knife for so-called defensive purposes—that is 60,000 children.
The culture of the blade is on the up, and I am afraid that it is becoming firmly rooted in our society. Knife crime has rocketed in the past eight years. Recent reports show that knife crime in England and Wales has leapt by as much as 90 per cent. in two years in some areas.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 show nearly 25,000 knife crimes last year logged by the 30 police forces that supplied the figures. The highest rise in knife crime was recorded by Nottinghamshire police. There, offences involving blades went up from 338 in 2002 to 650 last year, a rise of some 92 per cent. Muggings involving the use of a knife or blade have shot up. I quote the assistant chief constable of Devon and Cornwall, Tony Melville, who is the spokesman on knife crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers:
“Lots and lots of people are carrying knives in public places. In many parts of society it now seems to be a credible and normal thing to carry a knife.”
Doctors report a marked increase in the number of patients attending casualty with stab wounds. I sit as a recorder in the Crown Court, and as a district judge in magistrates courts, and day after day I see around me young people charged with offences under section 139 of having a bladed article. It is almost as if that is the norm, and nobody understands that it is wrong.
That sort of crime is not only on the increase, but it is deadly serious and must be stamped out. One has only to listen, as I have done, to witnesses giving evidence in cases in which a knife has been taken out and waved at them in public. They recount the sheer terror, and each of us can imagine that. It has never happened to me, but I venture to suggest that those to whom it has happened will never forget the experience of terror.
That is the background. The amount of crime involving knives and bladed articles, or having a bladed article in a public place, goes up and up, but the number of prosecutions is abysmally low, as are the levels of detection in relation to knife crime. As I have said so many times in this Committee and elsewhere, passing laws is one thing, but enforcing the existing law is vitally important. Sadly the courts are not passing stiff enough sentences. We are forgetting the importance of deterrence in our criminal justice system, and relying too much on other—no doubt worthy—approaches.
Let me illustrate what I mean about enforcement of existing law by reference to some parliamentary questions that I have asked, and the answers that I have received in the past six months or so. All the time, let us keep in mind the horrifying statistic that I gave some moments ago—a minimum of 60,000 children carrying knives in school for offensive or defensive purposes.
There is a very important section of our statutes involving people who market knives. The Knives Act 1997, which relates to the marketing of knives and the offence of so doing, is a serious Act of Parliament. I am talking about marketing extremely nasty knives. I asked the Home Secretary how many people had been charged with or convicted of offences relating to the unlawful marketing of knives and of an offence of publication in connection with the marketing of knives under sections 1 and 2 of the Knives Act 1997. The answer was that in the last five years for which figures were available, only 18 persons have been charged with the unlawful marketing of knives under section 1 of that Act, and only five convicted.
What about prosecutions under section 2 of the Knives Act, which states:
“A person is guilty of an offence if he publishes any written, pictorial or other material in connection with the marketing of any knife and that material—
(a)indicates, or suggests, that the knife is suitable for combat”?
In the last five years for which figures are available, only one person has been prosecuted under that provision, and even he—it might have been she—was found not guilty. There lies a statute which has not properly been used.
What about the offence of selling to a person under the age of 16 a knife, knife blade, razor blade, axe and any other article that has a blade that is sharply pointed and made or adapted for use for causing injury to the person? What a heinous offence. It is the sort of thing that Governments often rail at. In the last five years for which figures are available, only 39 persons have been proceeded against under that statute. So much of this is about proper enforcement of the existing law.
I moved on to convictions under section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Remembering the vast number of offences involving the use of knife-bladed articles, I asked how many persons had been prosecuted for having an article with a blade or point in a public place in the last five years for which figures are available. There were many more prosecutions for such offences but my point is about how the court disposed of those prosecutions.
I agree with most district judges that having a bladed article in a public place is a very serious offence, which must be stamped out. One would expect the courts to take a seriously robust attitude to these offences. In 2003, 6,800 persons were proceeded against, of whom 5,300 were found guilty. The figures for the previous four years were approximately 5,000 a year for two of those years and 3,500 for another two years. I venture to ask the Committee whether it would like to suggest what percentage of those convicted went into custody. The answer is somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent. only. The rest were simply sent away from court with a sentence that permitted them to carry on taking knives around in public places.
We need to take a much stronger attitude towards the carrying of knives, which is why my amendment would impose a minimum sentence of three months on anyone who is caught with a bladed article in public, subject to the usual defences and there is a defence, so ’an innocent explanation is entirely proper. I am thinking of the message that we should be sending to the young people out in the streets who think that going tooled-up with a knife is a great idea and that going into school with a knife is a great idea. I am old-fashioned enough to say that I am depressed with the kind of society in which we live at the moment where too little emphasis is placed on deterrent and far too much on education.
Were you as shocked as I was, Mr Forth, to read the story—the Minister will no doubt tell us of the background—of a council that was forced to pay £11,000 to a boy expelled for taking a knife to school? Greenwich was ordered to apologise to the teenager and pay his mother £5,000 compensation for anxiety and uncertainty, plus £6,000 for home tuition of her son. Teachers reacted with fury: the union said that the boy should have been prosecuted for carrying a blade. The pay-out was ordered by the Local Government Ombudsman. It makes one scratch one’s head in sheer disbelief, if this story is true—is it true that a boy with a knife in school finds himself going to the ombudsman with his parents and getting some taxpayers’ money for the privilege?
Another aspect that troubles me is the approach taken by the Government, who should focus much more on getting the police on the streets where such offences are taking place and arresting, charging and securing convictions in appropriate cases with the courts reacting more strongly. A parliamentary question was asked a year or two ago by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) to the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) in her then capacity as a Home Office Minister—I like this one:
“To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps the Government are taking to tackle the problem of assaults on children involving knives”,
which is a pretty fair question. Listen to the answer from the Government—I do not suppose that we would disagree with the first sentence:
“It is unacceptable for young people to carry knives and the Government take their responsibility for public safety in this area extremely seriously. There is a range of legislation and police powers in place aimed at preventing the possession or use of knives and offensive weapons and this is kept under constant review to ensure it is comprehensive and effective”—
Most of the Committee will be asleep already—
“It is essential to educate young people about the dangers and consequences of becoming involved in criminality associated with weapon-carrying”—[interruption.]
All right, perhaps is the quotation is a little long.