Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-10-25
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the noble Lord for his brevity and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and other noble Lords for setting out the case for these amendments. The noble Baroness put forward Amendments 34 and 60 which seek to avoid possible conflicts with competing duties. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, the arguments put forward in this debate are very similar to those discussed in relation to earlier amendments. To engender an effective multiagency approach to preventing and reducing serious violence, we need all the relevant parts of the system taking equal responsibility and playing their part. The specified authorities for the serious violence duty, being the police, local authorities, probation, youth offending teams and fire and rescue authorities, clinical commissioning groups in England and local health boards in Wales, have been intentionally chosen because of the direct link between the work they already do and the need to prevent and reduce serious violence. Therefore, I do not feel it is necessary or correct to provide such authorities with the opportunity to be exempted from the serious violence duty, as we expect that it would complement the existing duties of such authorities rather than conflict with them I understand that there are wider concerns that this duty may breach other duties of the specified authorities, such as duties of confidence, the point most frequently mentioned, and I will come to address those shortly. However, I think that Amendment 34 would unhelpfully weaken the impact of the serious violence duty Similarly, in relation to Amendment 60 to Clause 14, we have intentionally required the initial collaboration between specified authorities and education, prison and youth custody authorities as part of the preparation of the local strategy in order to ascertain whether any such institution ought to be involved in the implementation of the strategy or, indeed, need not be involved, as the case may be. This is a crucial step in ensuring that the institutions which are affected by serious violence will be drawn into the work of the local partnership without placing unnecessary burdens on those which may not. Therefore, I do not think that such authorities should be able to opt out of this consultation, given that it would ultimately be in their interests to engage with the specified authorities at this stage in order to ascertain whether their future engagement in the strategy’s implementation will be required I understand Amendment 35 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to be a probing amendment about the relationship between the serious violence duty and the work of crime and disorder partnerships. I agree that crime and disorder reduction partnerships can and do play a vital role in ensuring community safety and reducing violent crime locally, but I do not think that they are or should be the only partnership model responsible for doing so. Again, the draft guidance makes it very clear in that context. The geographical reach of such partnerships might mean that they are not the optimum partnership model in all areas, which is why we have intentionally built in flexibility to allow local areas to choose the most appropriate multiagency structure to deliver this duty. However, I recognise that they have a key contribution to make to local efforts. That is why, in addition to creating a new duty, we will be amending the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to include a requirement for crime and disorder reduction partnerships to have in place a strategy for preventing and reducing serious violence. Such a strategy would in any case meet the requirements of the serious violence duty if all relevant partners specified in the Bill are involved in its development and implementation The other amendments in this group bring us back to information-sharing. It might assist the Committee if I recap why we have included provision for the disclosures of information. The serious violence duty proposes to permit authorities to share data, intelligence and knowledge in order to generate an evidence-based analysis of the problem in their local areas. In combining relevant data sets, the specified authorities, local policing bodies and educational, prison and youth custody authorities within an area will be able to create a shared evidence base, upon which they can develop an effective and targeted strategic response with bespoke local solutions. Each of the authorities specified in the legislation has a crucial role to play, and it is vital that authorities are able to share their data to determine what is causing serious violence in their local areas. For example, information-sharing can contribute to local efforts by allowing authorities to identify patterns and trends, geographical hotspots and the most vulnerable victims. This data should be regularly reviewed by authorities to determine the effectiveness of the interventions they put in place at a local level I shall explain what we mean by information-sharing in this context. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked a pertinent question. Clause 15 will create a new information-sharing gateway for specified authorities, local policing bodies and education, prison and youth custody authorities to disclose information to each other for the purposes of reducing and preventing serious violence. I must be clear that this clause will permit, but not mandate, authorities to disclose information to each other. It simply ensures that there is a legislative basis in place to enable information to be shared between all authorities exercising functions under Chapter 1 of Part 2. However, the clause ensures that any disclosures must be made in compliance with data protection legislation and cannot be made if certain prohibitions on disclosure set out in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 apply The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked for examples of data types that may be shared by partners. To be fair, he asked me that under a previous group as well and I completely forgot to answer him, so I hope to combine the two answers in one at this point. Examples include hospital data on knife injuries, the number of exclusions and truancies in local schools, police recorded crime, local crime data, emergency call data, anonymised prison data, areas of high social services interventions, and intelligence on threats such as county lines, including the activity of serious organised crime gangs in drugs markets. I hope the noble Lord finds that information helpful.