James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Eric Forth (Bromley & Chislehurst, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 4—Definition of ‘Public Servant’—

‘A person is a public servant if—

(a)he is an employee of a public authority acting in the course of his employment;

(b)he is engaged in the provision of care on behalf of the National Health Service and acting in the course of his employment;

(c)he is engaged in the provision of education in maintained schools or further or higher education and acting in the course of his employment;

(d)he is employed by central or local government, including fire services, and is acting in the course of his employment;

(e)he is engaged in the provision of social housing and is acting in the course of his employment;

(f)he is engaged in the provision of public transport, including railways, buses and taxis, and is acting in the course of his employment.’.

New clause 5—Offences against public servants: malicious wounding etc.—

‘(1)A person is guilty of an offence under this section if he commits—

(a)an offence under section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (24 and 25 Vict c. 100) (malicious wounding or grievous bodily harm),

(b)an offence against section 47 of that Act (actual bodily harm), or

(c)common assault,

which is aggravated by reason of being committed against a public servant.

(2)A person guilty of an offence falling within subsection (1)(a) or (b) above shall be liable—

(a)on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to a fine, or to both;

(b)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years or to a fine, or to both.

(3)A person guilty of an offence falling with subsection (1)(c) above shall be liable—

(a)on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both;

(b)on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine, or to both.’.

‘(1)A person is guilty of an offence under this section if he commits—

(a)an offence under section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986 (c. 64) (fear or provocation of violence);

(b)an offence under section 4A of that Act (intentional harassment, alarm or distress); or

(c)an offence against section 5 of that Act (harassment, alarm or distress),

which is aggravated by reason of being committed against a public servant.

(2)A constable may arrest without warrant anyone whom he reasonably suspects to be committing an offence falling within subsections (1)(a) or (b) above.

(3)A constable may arrest a person without warrant if—

(a)he engages in conduct which a constable reasonably suspects to constitute an offence falling within subsection (1)(c) above;

(b)he is warned by the constable to stop; and

(c)he engages in further such conduct immediately, or shortly after the warning.

The conduct mentioned in paragraph (a) above and the further conduct need not be of the same nature.

(4)A person guilty of an offence falling within subsections (1)(a) or (b) above shall be liable—

(a)on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, or to both;

(b)on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine, or to both.

(5)A person guilty of an offence falling within subsection (1)(c) above shall be liable to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.

(6)If, on the trial on indictment of a person charged with an offence falling within subsections (1)(a) or (b) above the jury find him not guilty of the offence charged, they may find him guilty of the basic offence mentioned in that provision.’.

James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

The three new clauses in my name together create an offence of violence against a public servant and make it an aggravated offence, which attracts a higher maximum sentence than would otherwise be the case.

My starting point is that all offences of violence are a serious matter, but offences of violence committed against a public servant are particularly serious for the reasons that I shall outline. There are a number of factors that establish why that is the case. First, in many cases the public servant will be fulfilling a duty in the service that he or she provides to the public, and in some cases will be fulfilling a duty as a member of the emergency services—for example, in the case of fire or ambulance services—in very serious situations. In many instances the public servant will be in a particularly vulnerable situation doing his or her duty.

In all cases involving a public servant, he or she is providing a service to the public, and to attack the public servant is to attack the public service itself; that is, to interfere with or disrupt the service and cause loss and disruption to the public as a whole and in some cases even put the public in danger.

I am sure that the Committee will agree that a person who attacks a nurse is committing a particularly despicable act, but it is not just a despicable act against that nurse. The assailant is   also disrupting a vital public service, perhaps taking out of public service someone who would otherwise have been able to give extra care and attention to other members of the public, who may go without that expert care and attention because of the antisocial actions of the assailant.

The Committee will know that attacks against public servants are sadly all too frequent and, in a number of cases, they are on the increase. For some antisocial members of our society, no depths are too low and no irresponsibility is too wanton. I can perhaps best illustrate that with a local example from my constituency, which also involves the topical issue of air weapons. Earlier this year, the fire service in my constituency, which does a first-class job—as fire services do in all constituencies—was called out as an emergency service to attend a potentially dangerous and malfunctioning shop sign in the main street. A male officer investigating the situation was shot in the forehead with an air pellet. Happily, the injuries that he sustained were not serious, but it does not take great imagination to realise that they could have been. It was good fortune that he did not suffer serious injuries.

Fire officers who turn out to deal with incidents face enough risks without additional hazards. I am sad to say that it is not unusual for fire officers to suffer such hazards. It is happening up and down the country. According to a written answer that I received from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on 22 June, there were hundreds of such attacks on firefighters last year. That is one example; I could no doubt find many others involving fine public servants who provide a service in our constituencies.

Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green, Labour)

I know that no one will be desperate for me to detain the Committee, but I want to put a straightforward point to the hon. Gentleman. I have immense sympathy with his proposal, but it occurs to me that the way it is framed means that someone who attacked a police officer while the police officer was acting as an employee in the course of his employment would be guilty of the aggravated offence, but someone who attacked an off-duty police officer because of a previous grievance would not, and neither would someone who attacked a former police officer because of a grievance. The intention is clear but the reality is that drawing such a distinction would be unhelpful. We could find that identical assaults were treated differently depending on whether a person was on duty at the time. That may be a flaw in the proposal.

James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and it may interest him to know that if he looks down the list of persons covered by new clause 4, which is the definitional clause and which I was going to come to, he will see that a police officer is not named. A police officer would undoubtedly be covered by virtue of his being an employee of a public authority acting in the course of his employment.

Mr. Malinsrose—

James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

I shall give way to my hon. Friend in a minute.

It may interest the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Steve McCabe) to know that his counter-argument is not a good one because there is already the separate offence of assaulting a police officer. The distinctions that he has drawn between a police officer’s being on or off duty have not prevented that offence from being a well-established part of our criminal law which has served to protect police officers in the course of their duties.

Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Woking, Conservative)

I was simply going to make the point that my hon. Friend mentioned about the assault of police officers. He covered it admirably.

James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

The test will always be whether somebody is, in the course of their duties, providing a service to the public. That is not to say that other offences of assault are not serious, but interference with a public servant carrying out his duties is the test that lies at the heart of the proposals. It is important that we should give those public servants additional protection.

Further points might be made about the definition in new clause 4. The intention is to cover all who serve the public according to the test that I have just outlined. It includes, among many others, all those involved in the provision of public transport, including bus and railway employees. In the course of carrying out a small amount of research by way of parliamentary questions, I found that there has been an increase in the number of attacks on such public servants.

The Committee may be aware of the very good poster campaign in railway stations which aims to deter people from abusing public servants. It is imaginative and necessary, because there has been a substantial increase in recent years in the number of assaults on both bus and railway staff. To give one example, the number of assaults on railway staff recorded by the British Transport police rose from 1,329 in 2000 to 2,769 in the last year for which figures were recorded. There is a similar trend in the case of bus company employees, both drivers and the diminishing number of bus conductors. The number of assaults on such public servants runs into the thousands. It will not take much imagination on our part to realise the vulnerability of such people, who sometimes work late at night, often on their own, providing a valuable service to the public.

I hope that the Committee will also notice that I have taken something of a liberty with the definition of public transport by extending it to include taxi drivers. They, too, provide an important service to the public, and they are particularly vulnerable to assault. Apparently, no figures have been collected on assaults on taxi drivers, but I fear that cases concerning such attacks are all too common in our courts. They, too, are isolated and vulnerable people who provide a valuable service to the public, but who are at risk in a number of ways when they are carrying out their work.

We might have further debate on the definition, but I hope that the Minister will accept the intention to value and protect our vulnerable public servants. I shall happily listen to any suggestion as to how we   might improve the definition, but I hope that we will not allow technical arguments about definitions to get in the way of the intention. I am sure that the provision could be put into statutory form without too much trouble.

New clauses 5 and 6 provide for maximum sentences, which are higher if the victim is a public servant than they would otherwise be for such offences. I hope that they are technically sound—they follow the scheme of provisions relating to racially aggravated offences. I have taken the liberty of borrowing the wording from the relevant clauses in other legislation in order to put into law these provisions protecting public servants.

My intention is simply to send out the message that offences against public servants are a serious matter. Those who assault our public servants should expect to be dealt with severely. Those advertisements in railway stations, and the other ways in which we try to deter people from carrying out assaults on public servants, will be backed up by the message that we can send through this Bill that we will protect our public servants by creating severe sentences for such assaults.

Stephen Pound (Ealing North, Labour)

Some of us may have a difficulty in view of our non-pecuniary interest in new clause 4(d). Can the hon. Gentleman confirm whether Members of Parliament would be covered by it? If that were the case, an interest would have to be declared.

James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

I have to say that I tried to think of as many public servants as possible to declare. The hon. Gentleman has given me something of a conundrum as that was not something that fell within my range of contemplation. Although we are public servants, I am thinking primarily of the sort of public servants that I have defined this evening. I hope that the Committee will be with me in wanting to give them the protection that they deserve.

Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Woking, Conservative)

I support my hon. Friend. He has done the Committee a great service by introducing the new clause. His arguments are powerful and compelling, and I congratulate him.

Jeremy Wright (Rugby & Kenilworth, Conservative)

I too commend my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison). The Minister will no doubt rely on the fact that the issues that he raised could be regarded as aggravating features under existing offences. As my hon. Friend said, public servants deserve our protection under the law. I have no doubt that she will also bear in mind that they will relish the fact that some offences on the statute book give them overt protection. I hope that she will give that serious consideration.

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

I have considered the matter extremely seriously. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Hertsmere that attacks on public servants are completely and utterly unacceptable. Many people place themselves in vulnerable positions, face to face with the public, and carry out their duties selflessly and in the most altruistic manner—and we rely on them to do so. The worst thing that can happen is that they are   assaulted while carrying out those duties. I entirely share the concerns expressed by hon. Members. However, there are grave difficulties with the new clauses.

I shall not deal only with the technical difficulties; I agree with the hon. Gentleman that they can often be overcome. However, I have substantive reasons for asking the Committee to resist the new clauses. It is doubtful whether they would give any extra protection to public servants. It is not simply a matter of having such provisions on the statute book. Making law can sometimes seem to be a gesture—I do not say that that is what the hon. Gentleman has done—so we must ensure that the law delivers what we want, which is increased protection for people who serve the public.

First, the Sentencing Guidelines Council has responsibility for issuing sentencing guidance to the courts. The magistrates court sentencing guidelines and the council itself speak of attacks being committed against a victim who is providing a service to the public. It is important to realise that those who provide services to the public may technically not be public servants.

Hon. Members may remember the excellent freedom from fear campaign conducted by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. Some of our shop workers have been subjected to the most horrendous attacks and verbal harassment. Shopkeepers who refuse to serve alcohol to under-18-year-olds can find themselves in a dreadful position, and we have used antisocial behaviour orders to ban such people from shops. I am concerned that, if we applied the rules only to public servants, we would miss out a range of people who serve the public.

The Sentencing Guidelines Council guidance is a much better way to proceed. We could end up with someone working in the NHS being protected while they were looking after an national health service patient but not if they were looking after someone else.

Jeremy Wright (Rugby & Kenilworth, Conservative)

I understand entirely what the Minister says. Does she accept that those who are tempted to commit the type of offences described by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere will recognise much more clearly an offence that specifically defines itself as an assault on a public service worker than they would recognise guideline sentencing?

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

That is a real challenge to the Government. When we get the sentencing guidance, we must ensure that it is clear to those who might contemplate carrying out an assault on someone who serves the public that it will be an aggravating factor and that it is likely to attract a longer sentence. It is important to have a public education campaign saying that it is entirely unacceptable behaviour. That is what the freedom from fear campaign did. It is also the subject of the campaign being run by the Transport and General Workers Union for people who work on   public transport. However, the Government also have a responsibility to ensure that the message is sent out loud and clear.

My other objection is that, if we create a specific offence, it may prove more difficult to get a conviction. People might seek to evade responsibility by basing their defence on whether a victim was acting in the course of his employment. That could make it complicated to get a conviction. At the moment, we have only to convict on assault, grievous bodily harm, a section 18 wounding or a section 20 offence. Those are well established criminal law procedures. If we complicate the matter by creating specific offences, we have to prove something extra on top of the fact that somebody has committed an assault, such as that it was on somebody acting in the course of his employment. My concern is that people will find it easier to evade conviction for such offences than they do for offences under existing law.

Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Woking, Conservative)

I am following the Minister’s argument, but is it not let down by the fact that there is no difficulty with the current law on assaulting a police constable in the execution of his duty? People do not get themselves acquitted by getting round that and making it very complicated. If that specific charge can be handled perfectly properly in the courts, does not her argument fail?

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

I recommend that the hon. Gentleman look at some of the figures that I have seen on the offence that he mentions. I do not have them on me, but I shall be more than happy to supply them. They appear to indicate that the sentences imposed with regard to the specific offence are no greater than those imposed for general offences, so we are not providing any more protection by creating a specific offence. I shall happily provide any information that Committee members would like to see, because I am concerned that we do not put offences on to the statute book that might result in public service workers enjoying less protection than they have now. I accept the point about sending out a message, and we can do that through the Sentencing Guidelines Council.

There are many vulnerable groups as well as public service workers, although they are hugely important. Assaults on elderly people should be taken into account in the sentencing guidelines when aggravating factors and the degree of seriousness of the offences against vulnerable people are considered.

There are sometimes direct parallels with what is happening in Scotland. A specific offence of assaulting or impeding an emergency worker responding to emergency circumstances has recently been introduced there. That offence is much more narrowly drawn than the offences that the hon. Member for Hertsmere seeks to set out. It is important to follow what happens—

Stewart Hosie (Dundee East, Scottish National Party)

The Minister has said that the Scottish provision is more narrowly drawn. She might not be aware, but it is useful for her to know, that there is ongoing debate in Scotland to the effect that it should be widened to all public sector workers and, as has been suggested here, to those who serve the public in different circumstances.

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. It is important that we monitor the impact of that, and see whether it results in better protection, or fulfils my concern that it might be more difficult to prove a specific offence than it is to prove the established offences in the criminal law.

The introduction of that offence in Scotland has taken place in the context of a wide-ranging campaign of education and information. Much similar work is being done in England, particularly in relation to the NHS. The campaign that has been going on in the health service for several years is bearing fruit. More prosecutions are being brought and there is more of a zero-tolerance attitude to violence against NHS workers. It is right that that should happen, as should other measures, such as the installation of video cameras in the cabs of buses and trains. It is important to capture as much evidence as we can so that prosecutions can be brought.

Our guidelines on seriousness and aggravating factors should be sufficient to deal with the issues, but we need to make it crystal clear to anybody who might contemplate attacking people who serve the public that the decent, law-abiding majority find that completely unacceptable, that they will be dealt with properly and severely by the courts and that appropriate sentences will be passed. On that basis, I am not able to support the new clauses, although I accept the spirit in which they have been proposed.

James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

I am grateful to the Minister for her words about the intention of my new clause. I was hoping that there would be a little more of a chink of light in there. I was not necessarily expecting the Minister to go the whole hog—if I can put it that way—and open the door completely. I shall try to persuade her that there should be a chink of light and that some of the arguments she has sincerely put before the Committee do not hold as much water as she thinks.

To take the first of her arguments, she said that the new clause would not give much extra protection because protection is already provided by sentencing guidelines, which show that this matter should be taken seriously. Moreover, she added that it is committing an offence anyway, with aggravating features that can be drawn to the attention of the court. That is all well and good, but the Government decided to go down the route of creating aggravated offences to mark out particular offences as serious. They began doing so with racially aggravated offences, from which some of the wording of the new clause is borrowed.

We went round the course on that argument when racially aggravated offences were created and the Government took that action. They recognised that there was extra value in having an aggravated offence in relation to racial offences. I do not take one whit away from the seriousness of racially aggravated offences, but the Minister’s argument does not hold water. If that course were taken in the case of racially aggravated offences, it could be taken just as easily in the case of offences against public servants.

The Minister’s second argument stated that other people who come into contact with the public and serve them on behalf of other interests also deserve to be protected. She overlooked one of the points I made in what I set out as the test of public servants. The Minister gave an example of someone working in an off-licence who suffered abuse or assault because they would not serve an under-age person with drink or cigarettes, which could also happen to someone working in a store. Those are serious offences, but they are different from this type of offence because there is no interference with a service provided to the public. The store might have to close and the employer might have to take on someone else to serve the public, but that would not interfere with a vital service to the public as it would in the case where a nurse is assaulted and their services are lost to members of the public.

I cited the example of a fire officer being assaulted, meaning that his services are lost to the public. Think how serious the consequences of that could be, not just through disruption and inconvenience to public service. Think how serious it could be for members of the public if a fire officer were taken out of action by an antisocial act. It is a question not just of a shop having to close, but of a fire officer being unable to do his duty. Each of the examples I gave dealt with a public servant being assaulted and a service to the public being interfered with, with the possible result that that service is not available to the public. The likely result in all those cases would be inconvenience, disruption and additional cost to the public. That is why those offences are different.

The Minister raised the point about proving that someone was acting in the course of their duties or employment. I hope that she will accept the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking, who is a lawyer with experience in such matters. The idea of someone acting in the course of their duties is not unfamiliar to civil or criminal law, and it is not beyond the wit of prosecutors to prove, courts to know or judges to judge when someone is acting in the course of their employment. That is not a particularly pressing argument to use.

The Minister referred to emergency workers. The hon. Member for Dundee, East made the point that that might be a bigger example of getting hung up on a definition than anything else we have heard this evening. There is a question of who is an emergency worker for these purposes and I suggest that that is a much less straightforward matter than deciding who is providing a service to the public.

I am not that familiar with cases in Scotland. I do not know, for example, and the hon. Gentleman might be able to assist us, if a nurse would be considered as an emergency worker in Scotland. I imagine that a fire crew would be. I want to protect nurses and everyone else who is providing a service to the public in the way I have described.

I welcome all the measures that the Government are taking and which the Minister described, such as putting spies in cabs and having advertising campaigns. However, that is not an argument for not having the new clauses too. I am suggesting that we   should reinforce all the messages that the Minister wants to send. The new clauses would do so in a clear way by spelling it out to everyone responsible for these antisocial actions that they would face a serious criminal penalty.

I hope that the Minister can at least find it in herself to say that she will think more carefully about the issue and will perhaps return to it. I would be more than happy if she gave me just some hope on this front. I have no problem with her saying that she does not accept the new clauses because they are not technically perfect. However, the intention behind them is sound and could be put into law perfectly well. I would not be happy if technical definitional factors defeated something whose intention was reasonable and was shared by many of our constituents.

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

I am not entirely convinced by the hon. Gentleman’s arguments. I genuinely think that there is an issue about the proposals. Let us imagine that a prosecution is brought and a specific offence has to be proved in respect of someone who was carrying out duties in the course of their employment. We could fail on that charge and then the person could not be prosecuted for the offence that had been committed. I do not want people to be more vulnerable than they would be otherwise, but I genuinely believe that that could happen in certain cases under the proposed system. The more complex we make the offence, the more elements have to be proven to secure a conviction. I do not want offences on the statute book that do not provide extra protection to workers in the circumstances that we are discussing.

It is still a powerful point that the hon. Gentleman has sought to make a distinction between those serving the public and public servants. I think that people serving the public deserve protection. Provision that covered only people engaged in particular jobs or occupations would be too narrow. People serving the public are entitled to the full protection of the criminal law.

I am not entirely convinced by the hon. Gentleman’s arguments, but he is very persuasive and I will continue to think about the issue. We have a manifesto commitment to ensure that there are tougher sentences for people who attack workers engaged in serving the public, and that is exactly what I mean to achieve through the Sentencing Guidelines Council and a proper campaign of publicity that tells people that if they indulge in particular action, they will face the full weight of the law. They will certainly face antisocial behaviour action too. We are using antisocial behaviour orders in addition to prosecutions under the criminal law, so we have a wide range of tools now to deal with what is a real problem in our society.

I do not accept that the way forward is through the hon. Gentleman’s new clauses. We can do what is necessary through the Sentencing Guidelines Council. I would like to share the information that we have about the offence in respect of police officers, which   appears to indicate that the specific offences do not give people the additional protection that we want them to have.

James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)

I think that I got the merest glimpse of a chink of light in the Minister’s remarks. If that is the case, this has been a useful debate. However, I want to study the totality of her remarks to see how much light was in them and to reflect carefully on them. I may want to consider the issue at a later stage in consideration of the Bill, but as there has been a short but useful debate this evening, which has ventilated an important subject that may well be worthy of further consideration, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.