New Clause 3 - Offences against ‘public servants’
Violent Crime Reduction Bill
8:30 pm
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.