Bishop speaks on Policing and Crime Bill

I understand this is the 66th bill on criminal justice since 1997. These bills, between them, have added a further 3600 criminal offences to the statute book. We seem to imagine that every problem, every irritation, every fault in our society can be solved, soothed or improved by legislation. It is not so. The difficulty is that every bill before us, like this compendium of assorted and unrelated issues, contains many good intentions and some good proposals. We can, and should, protect the worst consequences of bad behaviour from affecting other people adversely and diminishing the peace and security of our society. But we do seem to have drifted into imagining that law can stimulate good behaviour. So we are even tempted into thinking that acting within the rules and under the law is sufficient evidence in itself of moral rectitude.

My Lords, when we legislate as much and at the speed we do, the consequences are not as we would wish. Living under too many rules, regulations and laws does not coerce people into good behaviour. It causes anger, resentment and bitterness. Coercion cramps conscience. What we are doing also means an increasing proportion of people in our society are criminalised. Thousands more criminal offences have consequences - the clogging of our judicial system and the burgeoning of our prison population. One of the dangers of the proposals here, especially those targeted at our young people, is that we may create an even more criminalised society.

Take, for example, clause 29. Good intentions lie behind it. We want to discourage children from drinking alcohol. Good. We want to discourage them from drinking alcohol in public places with all the consequences for disruption and uncontrolled behaviour which may follow. Good. My Lords, that's what caused this House to approve the Confiscation of Alcohol (Young Persons) Act in 1997. It enabled the police to confiscate alcohol from young people if they were consuming it or the policed could show they intended to consume it in a public place. Now we are proposing to abolish the doctrine of intention. Possession is enough. So the fifteen year old boy given a celebratory bottle after passing some examinations and which he could legally drink at home might have the bottle taken off him simply for possessing it in the street.

The doctrine of intention is important in relation to crime. But possession is easier to determine. We are lowering the barrier of criminality. We seem to be saying that if we catch the unwary that's the price we pay. My Lords, the danger is that young people may be criminalised much more easily than we imagine for something they cannot comprehend should put them on the wrong side of the law at all. So we increase anger and impatience with the law and authority. We may even reduce the stigma of criminality and make the high spirited young more wayward as a result. So what have we achieved?

Or take clause 27. The maximum fine for consuming alcohol in a designated public place is to rise from £500 to £2500. Why? Will it matter if it's £2500 or £25000 or even £125000 to some offenders whose whole income is spent on drink and drugs? Isn't one of our problems in these portmanteau justice bills that we haven't always decided what we want the law to do in each clause? Are we seeking to deter? Are we seeking to extract retribution? Are we encouraging reformation of manners and behaviour? I doubt that what's proposed in clause 29 will deter or exact retribution and I'm sure it won't amend behaviour. So what is it for?

My Lords, we seem to move into punishment mode too swiftly when dealing with children and young people who misbehave. Disordered juvenile lives are best dealt with by welfare provisions not criminalisation. Sometimes we seem to put the two together and then the welfare seems like punishment which ensures non-compliance. It is depressing that clause 31 in this bill proposes the extension of the Directions to Leave power to include children as young as ten years old. Is it ant wonder that, as the Good Childhood Inquiry revealed, so many of our children feel unhappy and uncherished, more so than in any comparable European country?

My Lords, the good intentions in this bill are again evident in the proposals regarding prostitution. The declared strategy the Government has followed since 2006 has included prevention (stopping people from getting involved in prostitution), tackling demand, developing routes out of prostitution, bringing to justice those who exploit the vulnerable, and tackling off-street prostitution especially where young and trafficked people are concerned. It's a commendable strategy which the Church of England supports. The difficulty, well illustrated here, is how to translate it adequately into legislation.

Should we criminalise payment for sexual services to a prostitute who is "subject to force, deception and threats"? It seems entirely right to shift the blame from the victim to the purchaser of these services. But, quite apart from questions of strict liability, will this provision make it easier or harder to discover who is being exploited? I am the Patron of the Magdalene Group in Norwich, a charity working to help those involved in prostitution. Its staff tell me even they find it difficult to know for sure how far some prostitutes withy who they've built a relationship are being controlled or coerced. While some prostitutes may have originally been subject to force and deception, they get into a prostitution lifestyle. They may cease to be subject to force or threats but simply do not have the emotional, physical or spiritual energy to get out of it. So are we talking about contemporary force or threats? How historic might this be? If what we really want to do is to make it illegal to pay for sexual services, should we not do so? I'm very sympathetic to the Government's intentions here, but concerned when those who work for the welfare of prostitutes are uncertain of the impact of the proposals.

A final word about the provisions related to gang violence. When the extension of the use of control orders under the Prevention of Terrorism Act was debated in this House a couple of months ago, I said there was a danger that the Secretary of State might be tempted to extend more widely such arbitrary power. My concern about the use of injunctions here is the sheer breadth of control they permit. How do we ensure these provisions are not used arbitrarily and restrictively to control behaviour? And will they not simply deal with the symptoms of gang culture rather than the causes? Those causes relate often to family breakdown and chaotic lives, to which gangs offer an attractive if illusory answer. We will not address this issue by criminal legislation alone. It's changed hearts and minds that alter things.

My Lords, many of the problems addressed in this bill arise because too many people in our society believe themselves to be unloved and unlovable. That's the cause. And society does not become more loving by making more laws. It becomes more fearful. Perhaps in this House we might consider more fully how more loving support and welfare structures can be created for young people in trouble or sex workers or gang members? It might just bear more fruit than our legislative programme.