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Offensive Weapons Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 34 in my name and those of others, I will speak to my opposition to the clause. My comments about Amendment 34 apply to the clause as a whole.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has already mentioned the very good briefing which many Members have received from the Standing Committee for Youth

Justice and the Prison Reform Trust. Speaking about the new possession offences, it forecasts that the measures will be ineffective because they increase the use of ineffective short mandatory minimum sentences. They create legal uncertainty, may lead to disproportionate sentences and are likely to increase black and ethnic minority disproportionality, further damaging trust in the justice system. I apologise for saying some of this earlier in the debate on another amendment.

Amendment 34 seeks to move the application of this clause from the age of 16 to 18, and is entirely in balance with the Children Act 1989, which lays down that every person in this country under the age of 18 is a child. My contention is that, if mandatory short sentences are ineffective for adults, they are even more so for children. The appropriate sentence advised in Clause 8 is,

“a detention and training order of at least 4 months”.

That means that they will have only two months in prison and two months supervision. Bearing in mind the conditions in our prisons at the moment, and remembering that last year the Inspectorate of Prisons reported that there was not a single young offender institution in the country in which young offenders were safe, that means that—with the overcrowding and shortage of staff—two months will not be enough even to complete an assessment of what a young offender needs.

I therefore think that, in all cases of children involved in possession, custody should be eliminated from the equation—and eliminated from this Bill. As I mentioned, community sentences are in some disarray at the moment, but that does not apply to the youth offending teams, which have the benefit of being under local government control and are therefore able to reflect the wishes of the community in the community sentences that they impose.

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In general terms, we must have clear evidence that everything has been tried, and has failed, before any child is sent to custody. That would, not least, honour the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that custody should be used only as a last resort. In tabling this amendment, I add that no child should be ordered into custody for a mandatory short sentence.