Violent Crime Reduction Bill |
|
New Clause 23 Corresponding provision for northern ireland
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill. Column Number: 325 New Clause 24 Continuity of sexual offences law
Column Number: 326
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill. New Clause 3 Offences against ‘public servants’
Brought up, and read the First time. Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con): I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: New clause 4—Definition of ‘Public Servant’—
New clause 5—Offences against public servants: malicious wounding etc.—
Mr. Clappison: 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
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. Steve McCabe: 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. Mr. Clappison: 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. Malins rose— Mr. Clappison: I shall give way to my hon. Friend in a minute. Column Number: 329 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. Mr. Malins: I was simply going to make the point that my hon. Friend mentioned about the assault of police officers. He covered it admirably. Mr. Clappison: 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
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: 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. 8.45 pmMr. Clappison: 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. Mr. Malins: 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: 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: 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
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: 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: 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
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. |
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 2005 | Prepared 27 October 2005 |