Clause 7 - Duties to collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence

Part of Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill – in the House of Commons at 6:30 pm on 28 February 2022.

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Photo of Sarah Jones Sarah Jones Shadow Minister (Home Office) 6:30, 28 February 2022

By the time that prosecution happened such legislation was in place, and there is precedent for that. I could point the hon. Lady in the direction of a very good briefing that explains all that in much greater detail, and I would be happy to send that to her.

Tonight we have two opportunities—I mean to touch on them briefly, Mr Speaker—for the House to tackle pernicious practices that have no place in society, and we would support the Government if they chose to back the Lords amendments. I should acknowledge properly the work of the other place on this Bill. Members of the Lords did some terrific work voting late into the night, and we are grateful to them. Hard work and strong arguments by many of my Labour colleagues in the Commons and the Lords have already forced the Government into several defeats and U-turns. Indeed there have been more successful Labour amendments to this Bill than to any other Bill this Parliament.

On data extraction, the Government have conceded Labour’s calls to protect victims, particularly victims of rape and sexual abuse, from painful and often unnecessary intrusion into their lives by the mining of their phone data. We welcome that shift. On the serious violence duty, after continued pressure from Members across the House, the Government agreed to make clear in the Bill that the definition of “serious violence” for the purpose of the serious violence prevention duty includes domestic abuse, domestic homicide and sexual offences. We welcome that shift.

My right hon. Friend Yvette Cooper has campaigned on time limits for prosecutions, and the Government have accepted our proposal to stop victims of domestic abuse being timed out of justice. The campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow on voyeurism means that there will be a new offence of breastfeeding voyeurism. Under pressure from Labour, the Government have agreed to a review into “spiking” to find out how widespread it is and who is being targeted. We welcome that.

However, tackling the horrific prosecution rates, repeat offenders, and making women feel safer on the streets and in their homes will take so much more. We have a list of 50 proposals that we wanted to be included in the Bill to tackle violence against women and girls, and by my count the Government have agreed to two of them. I am happy to give the Minister a copy of the list, and perhaps we could see some more action.

Serious violence is a significant problem, and offences involving knives or sharp instruments increased by 84% between 2014 and 2020. Of course serious violence went down during lockdown, as we would expect, because people were indoors and shops and places of work were closed. The police were able to be proactive in tackling crime—indeed, a senior officer said to me that it was almost like policing used to be when they had proper resources. We are now out of lockdown, and the reports we are getting suggest that serious violence is back on the rise.

Labour will support any measures that tackle violence. That is why we carefully considered the serious violence reduction orders in part 10 of the Bill. We have concerns, which the Government have acknowledged, about the powers that officers would have to stop and search people with an SVRO without reasonable grounds, and whether that would significantly increase disproportionality. Stop and search is a crucial tool for the police, which we all agree with when used alongside good local police intelligence. Badly targeted stop and search is a waste of police resources, and it reinforces lack of trust in local communities. SVROs are to be piloted in four places, and Lords amendment 116 would require the Secretary of State to

“obtain, record and publish all reasonably available data,” on the effect of SVROs over a period of no less than 12 months before the report of the pilot.

The Government have tabled their own amendments in lieu. We welcome that U-turn up to a point, but we do not believe it goes far enough to address our concerns. We fear that SVROs might be similar to knife crime prevention orders, which were hailed several years ago as the answer to violence, but have not yet been introduced, probably because it is hard to make them work. Good policing and prevention is key, and the Government should focus their attention on that.

In conclusion, we urge the Government to back Labour’s sensible amendments through the Lords to tackle violence against women and girls, and to have a relentless focus, not on stopping singing in the street—we will come to that later—but on tackling serious crime. The Government have created this Bill with the objective of being divisive, but Members across the House, and in the other place, have come together and voted to improve this flawed piece of legislation. We are proud of the changes we have delivered, but Labour Members will not stop pushing the Government to get a grip on the issues that matter: reducing crime, improving prosecution rates, supporting victims, and giving people the security they deserve.