Examination of Witnesses

Offensive Weapons Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:12 pm on 17 July 2018.

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Vin Vara and Graham Wynn gave evidence.

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire 4:34, 17 July 2018

Q As you arrange yourselves, I will explain that you are from the British Retail Consortium and the British Independent Retailers Association. May I ask you, starting with Mr Wynn, to introduce yourselves for the record?

Graham Wynn:

Graham Wynn, from the British Retail Consortium. I am assistant director for consumer and regulatory affairs.

Vin Vara:

Vin Vara from the Tool Shop Group and past president of the British Independent Retailers Association.

Photo of Victoria Atkins Victoria Atkins The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Minister for Women

Q First of all, may I thank your different sets of members for signing up to the voluntary commitments to prevent the sale of corrosives to under-18s. Can you please tell the Committee how effective these voluntary commitments have been and what the response has been from staff members?

Graham Wynn:

Retailers tell me the response has been to educate and train better, and that, ideally, it has worked. Of course, a legal requirement always brings an extra dimension, but retailers have been willing—because they realise the overall aim—to sign up to these voluntary commitments, both on knives and on corrosives. They cause some problems because they are voluntary; nevertheless, my understanding is that, in the companies that have signed up, to a large extent—I am not saying 100%—they have focused attention.

Vin Vara:

The vast range of members in our association have generally welcomed the idea of this, and we had quite a few people sign up for it. Again, we gave “Oohs” and “Aahs” with it, asking, “Why do we need to do this?” and “Is it law yet?” They are asking far too many questions for us at the moment, but we do not have the right answers. We are trying to educate them. As Graham said, it is a process of getting education to them and the reasons why. It is working slowly.

Photo of Victoria Atkins Victoria Atkins The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Minister for Women

Q How are you going to work with your members if these voluntary arrangements become statutory?

Vin Vara:

We have got a channel of communication—normally it is emailing and texting—but we also have a publication for our members, and we will be sending out guidance from the Home Office to all our members and other retailers on our target list.

Graham Wynn:

The main desire is to be clear about exactly what people are supposed to do. That is one reason why we would particularly like to see clause 17 —the requirements there, and what you can and cannot deliver to a residential address—be perhaps a bit more precise, either in guidance or in the Bill itself. That’s knives, of course. We largely represent larger and medium-sized retailers, so they have their own processes for ensuring compliance with the law. Our role is to make sure they understand as far as possible what is required so that they can comply.

Photo of Louise Haigh Louise Haigh Shadow Minister (Home Office) (Policing)

Q Do you share the concerns of the USDAW trade union about the criminalisation of shop workers and shop owners? Do you agree there should be an offence for attempting to purchase weapons, and what implications will the offence on shop workers and shop owners have for your members?

Graham Wynn:

I understand from our surveys that there are probably about 50 offences a week—attacks—on shop workers. That is extrapolated from some research. We do share the USDAW view that carrying out an attack on a shop worker in the course of their employment should be a specific offence: either a generalised offence, or one that relates to age checking, but certainly some sort of specific offence. At the moment, people feel under threat, and that is one reason there is general support for the overall objectives of the Bill.

Photo of Louise Haigh Louise Haigh Shadow Minister (Home Office) (Policing)

Q What about a specific offence for attempting to purchase?

Graham Wynn:

We believe that age-restricted sales apply only to alcohol currently. One would think that the attempt to purchase a knife should be classified as more dangerous even than alcohol, because it is a weapon. We certainly believe it would be wise to make attempting to buy an offence because, at the moment, a shop worker who sells is criminalised. They are taken to court and they get a criminal record, but the person who attempts to buy or who does buy goes off—I was going to say scot-free, perhaps I shouldn’t. They go away without a blemish.

Photo of Louise Haigh Louise Haigh Shadow Minister (Home Office) (Policing)

Q In the last session, we heard from a senior police officer that they would welcome the locking away of knives in retail environments. We heard in a session this morning that a significant proportion of knives that end up being used in violent offences come from shoplifting. I assume that shoplifting has increasingly been an issue for your members in recent years. How would you feel about legislation around locking away knives in stores?

Graham Wynn:

Generally, members do not want to have to do that. They would rather have other things in place. That is why the voluntary commitment talks about retailers ensuring that knives are displayed and packaged securely as appropriate to minimise risk, including sometimes proportionately restricting accessibility to avoid immediate use. They would prefer not to be required by law to lock them away.

Photo of Louise Haigh Louise Haigh Shadow Minister (Home Office) (Policing)

Q What proportion of your members subscribe to the voluntary agreement?

Graham Wynn:

There are about a dozen or so, but sales-wise, they would represent a bigger proportion.

Vin Vara:

It is the same with our retailers; it is very difficult to tell them what to do. We have advised our members to put bladed objects behind the counter, but unfortunately, 2,500 members are hardware retailers, and they are arguing with us by saying that it is not just the knives; there are other bladed items in hardware shops that are more offensive.

From our research, in the work that we have done with our members, we found that when things happen, knives are actually stolen from homes and kitchens, rather than bought from shops for a specific offence.

Photo of Louise Haigh Louise Haigh Shadow Minister (Home Office) (Policing)

Q On age verification, you mentioned in your submission that you would prefer some explicit guidance on exactly what kind of age verification tools your members should use online. Do you want to be dictated to about which age verification tools to use, or do you just want guidance about what kind of tests that age verification tool should meet?

Graham Wynn:

Ideally, we would like to see some standards, so we can be sure that online age verification systems developed by businesses such as Yoti and others will be accepted as due diligence by the enforcers. Currently, the systems for offline are fairly standard and obvious for face-to-face, but it has always been somewhat difficult to be sure that you are really complying with the online ones. You might think that the credit card companies could have done something about it, but they refuse to put an identifier on their cards to give an indication, so other means are necessary.

Technologically, things are developing, and I understand that, for some things, such as the pornography legislation that has recently gone through, there has to be some online verification. Perhaps that is slightly less dangerous than a knife sale, but nevertheless it would be useful for retailers to be sure that the system they are using meets certain standards. Of course, more will develop over time as technology advances.

Photo of Kevin Foster Kevin Foster Conservative, Torbay

Q Earlier, we were discussing the issue of what age should be set, and 18 was proposed. Do you see any issues for your retailers and members if there was a different age? I think we can say that it would not be under 18, but let us say 21 for the sake of argument.

Graham Wynn:

The difficulty is that most age restrictions are at 18, although not all, so in store, people use challenge 25 to try to capture it. Some still use 21, but most use 25, so you can see roughly whether a person is likely to be 18 or not—it gives a margin of error. If you start to have a wider range of ages, it becomes a matter of training for the shop assistant in the store, and training becomes more difficult because there is quite a high turnover of shop assistants. The ideal is to try to keep things roughly in the same area.

Photo of Kevin Foster Kevin Foster Conservative, Torbay

Q Do you see 18 as the optimum, given so many other things are at 18?

Vin Vara:

At BIRA we recommend challenge 25, but most of our members are looking at 21 years old.

Photo of Kevin Foster Kevin Foster Conservative, Torbay

Q Just to be clear though, challenge 25 means that if you look under 25, I will ask for your ID to see whether you are 18; it is not about being 25.

Vin Vara:

From the ID you can work out their age. We say that 21 is a good age to challenge and to make as law, but the problem is that not all our members have the tools to verify—they do not have the ecosystems to challenge when you scan the barcodes. They still use the old tills. They and their staff need to be better trained on selling, which we are doing at the moment.

Photo of Tulip Siddiq Tulip Siddiq Labour, Hampstead and Kilburn

Q Mr Wynn, you mentioned age verification and how the face-to-face encounter is more obvious. Which is the acceptable form of identification for retailers when they check age? In my experience of speaking to small businesses in my local area, there is a real challenge with fake IDs and what is an acceptable form of identification. If someone presents an international driving licence that states that they are the right age, sometimes a retailer will be forced to accept that, but a lot of those have turned out to be fake in the long run. Do you feel the legislation around that is strong? Do you feel like things need to be changed and that the acceptable form of identification needs to be dictated more strongly?

Vin Vara:

Most people will produce a driving licence or a provisional licence, or young people will bring in a passport copy. There are not many other forms of ID. They bring bank and credit cards, but they do not verify their age, so we will tell members not to accept them. Something with a photo ID, date of birth and probably an address on it would help, but we need to standardise it. There are so many different types and, as you say, there are a lot of fakes out there.

Photo of Tulip Siddiq Tulip Siddiq Labour, Hampstead and Kilburn

Q Is that a problem that you have?

Vin Vara:

It is a major problem for us.

Photo of Tulip Siddiq Tulip Siddiq Labour, Hampstead and Kilburn

Q Is there anything you wanted to add, Mr Wynn?

Graham Wynn:

The list in the Bill relating to Scotland of the IDs that are acceptable under Scottish law are generally the ones that will be used in England and Wales, too: passport, driving licence, or the PASS card, as it is called, which will be linked to the Yoti system and other systems. There is another that escapes me. Those are the ones that would normally be used—ideally a driving licence or something like that because we do not want to encourage young people to carry their passports around.

Photo of Tulip Siddiq Tulip Siddiq Labour, Hampstead and Kilburn

Q I understand that, but my question is that if someone does not supply the documents that you outlined—driving licence, provisional licence or passport—but they come up with something like a student card, what grounds do retailers have to challenge that and say that it seems fake?

Graham Wynn:

There are none.

Photo of Tulip Siddiq Tulip Siddiq Labour, Hampstead and Kilburn

Q They have to accept the student card, even if they think it is fake. Is that right?

Graham Wynn:

They would not in a larger retailer; they would say, “I am sorry I cannot sell the goods to you,” because it is a question of being sacked, frankly.

Photo of Tulip Siddiq Tulip Siddiq Labour, Hampstead and Kilburn

Q But they are not backed by legislation to say, “This is against the law”?

Graham Wynn:

No, but they have to apply due diligence so it is a matter of employment, contract and training for the person, and getting a criminal record.

Photo of Stuart McDonald Stuart McDonald Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Immigration, Asylum and Border Control)

Q Mr Wynn, you expressed a couple of concerns in a paper that was submitted to us. One is that you are not convinced that the arrangements for parcels supplied from overseas are watertight. Could you explain that concern?

Graham Wynn:

It does not directly affect our members in that sense, but it is an observation. If a delivery company here has a contract with an overseas supplier or seller of these things, you can understand that it could be required in the contract that the seller advises the delivery company that there is a knife or corrosive substance. But in our view, it is quite possible to have an overseas supplier or seller who might be a small business in or outside the EU, who does not have to mark the parcel and puts it in the post. Customs would intercept it if it is an illegal import, but it may not be as such. The delivery company, the post office, or whoever it is, would not necessarily know that it was one of these articles that ought to be delivered to someone, or not to a residential address, or not to someone under 18. We think there is a gap there. The point of view from our members is that it could discredit the whole system if this becomes widely known. We would like to have more assurance that that is relatively watertight.

Photo of Stuart McDonald Stuart McDonald Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Immigration, Asylum and Border Control)

Q Do you have any suggestions as to how it could be made more watertight?

Graham Wynn:

Quite honestly, no. Obviously, it requires a legal obligation that cannot be exercised overseas or imposed for someone outside the UK.

Photo of Stuart McDonald Stuart McDonald Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Immigration, Asylum and Border Control)

Q Another point that you make is that you believe that the marking of packages draws attention to them and the need for the age check would be better in the paperwork or the digitised documentation. What is the problem of marking that on the package itself?

Graham Wynn:

First, it is down to human error and we live in a digital age where not everything is paper. The main thing is that if these things are delivered to a collection point, including a small store or whatever it may be, a garage for collection, it is clearly marked that this is a dangerous item, therefore we think that that possibly it draws attention to it in terms of theft or if it is left unattended. It says: “This is a dangerous item; this is a parcel some people would think worth taking”.

Vin Vara:

Our membership does not have many e-retailers. The few that we have have shown concerns. One of the things that they are pushing us towards is licensing the importers who bring the knives and special products in. They are also having problems because a lot of these foreign-based companies have domain names with .co.uk or .com. There is not much way of monitoring. Sometimes they are ordering knives or we are ordering knives from them thinking we are buying from a British company, but in the end they are coming from a European or far eastern company. We are looking at some way of having some sort of licensing Bill for them. There could be a registered licence for them for importing this stuff or for exporting from their country to us. We are looking at some ways of doing that.

Photo of Vicky Foxcroft Vicky Foxcroft Opposition Whip (Commons)

Q I want to come back to the knives being locked away or behind counters. If the Bill makes it a legal requirement to do that, what would be the challenges?

Graham Wynn:

Mainly where to put them, where to lock them away. There would be a need to have a shop assistant who is trained and has a key and can get access and show the customer exactly what is available. It depends a bit on what sort of knife we are talking about. If we are talking about cutlery, I hope we can put that to one side. Then you decide whether it applies to kitchen knives and that sort of thing and things that many law-abiding citizens would want. It is mainly a matter of convenience, but if it came in, retailers would clearly comply, as they do with fireworks, hopefully.

Vin Vara:

Retailers in the hardware section in our group would find it very difficult to put everything behind lock and key. We already put them behind the counter, especially cutlery and long fixed knives. With small tools, the Stanley knives and retractable knives and all that, we would not know what to do. Our retailers do not have big spaces or anything like that—it could be anything from 400 square foot to 2,000 square foot units. Space would be the biggest problem, and training the staff, having the right staff with the right keys at the right time if the supervisor is on a break or if they have to sell something, so they are looking for it. There could be lots of things. We will have to adapt some way or another, but we need to make the range of knives clear when saying which need to go in a cabinet—a fixed knife, folding knife, flexible knife, flick knife, game knives. There is a big range to put in.

Photo of Vicky Foxcroft Vicky Foxcroft Opposition Whip (Commons)

When I go round my constituency in Lewisham, Deptford and go into many of those hardware stores, I always see the knives freely available and that people could very easily go and steal them. You are hinting at, but maybe not meaning to—[Interruption.]

Photo of James Gray James Gray Conservative, North Wiltshire

Order. Mr Wynn, Mr Vara, thank you very much for your evidence. It has been most useful to the Committee. There being a Division of the House, we will now adjourn the Committee and meet again on Thursday at 11.30.

The Chair adjourned the Committee without Question put (Standing Order No. 88).

Adjourned till Thursday 19 July at half-past Eleven o’clock.

Written evidence to be reported to the House

OWB 01 Dr P J R Whicker

OWB 02 Mark Stone

OWB 03 Dudley Newliss

OWB 04 Firearms UK

OWB 05 Rikki Wells

OWB 06 An individual who wishes to remain anonymous

OWB 07 Cosmin Maris

OWB 08 Bret Boivin

OWB 09 Paul Freeman, Manager, DNA Leisure Ltd

OWB 10 Lawrence Taylor, Blades UK Ltd

OWB 11 Andrew Burton

OWB 12 Steven Goldsmith

OWB 13 John Carlin

OWB 14 Robin Watson

OWB 15 Matthew Ball

OWB 16 Nick Wright

OWB 17 Mark Austin

OWB 18 Andrew Stevens, Antique Swords UK / EU

OWB 19 International Gallery Rifle Federation

OWB 20 Dr Keith Pearson

OWB 21 Keith Charles Howell, Chairman, Frome & District Pistol Club Ltd

OWB 22 Alan Willey

OWB 23 Alastair Haley, Chairman, County of Gloucester Rifle Association

OWB 24 Simon Edwards

OWB 25 David Eadsforth

OWB 26 Alison Castle

OWB 27 Chris Ellis

OWB 28 Nicholas Riley, MD Blades and Bows Ltd

OWB 29 Register of Professional Turners

OWB 30 Tony Price

OWB 31 Carl Wiles

OWB 32 Gwilym Harding

OWB 33 Laurentius Huige

OWB 34 Alistair Alan Cormack

OWB 35 Leszek Sikon

OWB 36 John Rossiter

OWB 37 Bruce McPherson

OWB 38 Phil Proctor, MD for Robert Sorby Ltd

OWB 39 Steven Macleod

OWB 40 Mr J Barnes, Director, BDU Imports Ltd

OWB 41 Nicholas Julian

OWB 42 Diana Taylor

OWB 43 Lionel Nierop

OWB 44 Alex James

OWB 45 Dave Lockett

OWB 46 Adrian Hodgson

OWB 47 Stuart Fingland

OWB 48 Mr Tom Morton of Pilgrim Leathercraft

OWB 49 Karl Franks, Director, Karlyon Care Ltd

OWB 50 Dr Gordon Allison

OWB 51 Mike Devonport

OWB 52 Robin Slade, Scrubby Oak Fine Foods Ltd

OWB 53 Joe Wakeham

OWB 54 Mr Declan Mouland

OWB 55 Roger Harrington

OWB 56 Tactical Reviews

OWB 57 Max Bone (Managing Director), Decorating Direct Ltd

OWB 58 George Ellis, Chairman, Greensleeves Shooting Club

OWB 59 Paul Fremantle

OWB 60 Napoleonic Association

OWB 61 BASC

OWB 62 Anthony Newman

OWB 63 Trevor Howard

OWB 64 Michael Ebbage

OWB 65 Mr R E Flook

OWB 66 John Parris

OWB 67 Roger Sinden