Sir Stephen Timms
MP for East Ham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to send me details of that particular case, I will happily look into it. On the subject of people with hearing impairments, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities and I will be meeting the British Sign Language Advisory Board this afternoon.”
“Better outcomes require early identification and support for girls and young women with special educational needs, including dyslexia. That is the aim of the SEND reforms and the development of national inclusion standards.”
“Autistic people and people with ADHD have been struggling to get the right support at the right time. Recommendations from Professor Karen Guldberg’s neurodivergence task and finish group directly informed the SEND reforms that were published earlier this year.”
“The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public bodies to make reasonable adjustments, so that disabled people are not put at a disadvantage by accessibility challenges.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. This benefit is there to contribute to the additional costs of disability. Too often, what has happened—my hon.”
“I think we can take the hon. Member’s question as a tacit recognition that in 14 years the previous Government should have done something to fix these problems. The steering group is clear that the provision of cash to meet the additional costs of disability is vital.”
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Every one of 5,185 lines we hold for Sir Stephen Timms, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 49 of 104.
“Before the Minister concludes, can I ask the question I raised earlier? Is it the case that a seller outside the UK is outside the jurisdiction of the measures?”
“I beg to move amendment 46, in clause 15, page 14, line 37, leave out “residential premises” and insert “premises other than a registered business address”.”
“Amendment 47 would do things rather differently, changing the definition of “residential premises”, so that premises where people both live and work would be included in the bar, by removing “solely” from clause 15(5). I am conscious that neither approach is entirely without problems, so I do not plan to press the amendments to a vote. However, it is important to raise this issue, as the clause seems to have a significant loophole. Can the Minister reassure the Committee that that loophole will be plugged? I would also like to make some wider comments about the clause 15. Would you like me to do that now, Mr Gray, in the debate on these amendments, or shall I wait?”
“Subsection (6) says: “The circumstances where premises are not residential premises for the purposes of that subsection include, in particular, where a person carries on a business from the premises.” For example, if somebody lived in a flat above a shop and had the same address as the shop, I think that as the clause stands there would be no bar to their having a knife delivered to their home. Surely what we ought to be doing is stopping the delivery of weapons to places where people live. Amendments 46 and 48 attempt to do that by restricting the delivery of weapons to a registered business address. At the moment, clause 15 says that weapons cannot be delivered to residential addresses. My amendment suggests that that should be turned around, so that the clause says that they can only be delivered to a registered business address.”
“These three amendments are intended to plug what seems to me a fairly obvious loophole in the arrangements set out in clause 15. I should make it clear that I come from a position of wanting to support clause 15, although I recognise that there will be others who will want to express some misgivings about it. Nevertheless, it is right that the clause aims to stop the delivery of weapons to people in their homes. As the clause makes clear, it will not apply if there is any business carried out from the address in question.”
“The amendment 47 approach would exclude delivery to people such as my hon. Friend’s constituent, and I accept that that would be difficult to justify. That is why I made the point that I do not think that either of the two approaches I have described is the solution to the problem. The Government are right to want to restrict sales of very dangerous weapons to people’s homes. There is a bit of a loophole here, and I hope it can be addressed.”
“My hon. Friend makes a very fair point and I have no doubt that it was instances such as that that lie behind the framing of the clause as it stands. Indeed, I myself have been contacted by a company that sells tools for hunting; I think that is right. That company asked whether my amendment would exclude the delivery of knives to sole traders—people working from home. I must say that I have got a bit less sympathy for people who are selling knives from home than for people like my hon. Friend’s constituent, who are simply obtaining tools for their own use to pursue their occupations. Of course, if we went down the amendments 46 and 48 route, whereby such things could be supplied only to a registered business address, that would avoid the difficulty to which my hon. Friend rightly refers.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that response, which she set out clearly. I am interested to hear that officials considered the approach based on a registered business address. In my mind, given the importance of restricting access to dangerous weapons, it might not be a bad thing to say to people that, if they want to buy what can be used as a dangerous weapon, they will have to register their address as a business address. However, I take the point that that is perhaps not the appropriate step to take for now. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.”
“Friend pointed out, clause 17 tells us what a bladed product is, and I cannot see there where cutlery is carved out. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that.”
“My hon. Friend has drawn the Committee’s attention to an interesting alternative approach suggested by industry. If I have understood correctly what she has said, the real problem is stopping knives from getting to under-18s. I am more sympathetic to what I understand the Government’s aim to be—stopping dangerous weapons getting to anybody, however old they are, and being delivered to them at home, but my hon. Friend raised some interesting and telling points. When I read clauses 15 to 17, I did wonder whether the Government intend to stop the delivery of cutlery to people’s homes. The Minister is indicating that that is not the Government’s intention, but it is not clear to me where that is carved out in the wording of the Bill. As my hon.”
“The clause will be pointless because people will get round it in a very straightforward way.”
“I hope I am wrong—if I am, I am sure the Minister will point it out—but it looks to me as though sellers outside the UK will be entirely exempted from the requirement set out in clause 15, because there is no way for them to be penalised for sending a dangerous weapon to residential premises somewhere. If that is the case, the clause will simply force everybody who wants these things delivered to their homes to buy them from overseas suppliers instead of UK suppliers, such as those based in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley. That would be a pretty damaging outcome. If clause 15 is going to be made to work, something must be done to address the problem of overseas sellers simply carrying on sending dangerous weapons to people’s homes, which the Bill as it stands makes no effort to address.”
“I am sure my hon. Friend is right. The real question I wanted to raise here is different: the position of sellers from overseas. As we have now discussed on a number of occasions, there is a real difficulty in stopping overseas sellers who are contacted online from doing things that the Bill does not want them to do. In the case of clause 12, which is about the sale of bladed articles to under-18s, clause 18, which puts an onus on the delivery company where the seller is outside the UK, had to be alongside it. In clause 15, as far as I can see, there is not another parallel clause placing responsibility on the delivery company.”
“As I understand it, someone selling products to customers outside of the UK will be able to carry on posting them directly to customers’ homes without any hindrance. Is that correct?”
“As I have indicated, I am comfortable with the clause, although the Minister should acknowledge what my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley pointed out. It will not be possible in future to have kitchen scissors, for example, delivered to a home because they have blades longer than 3 inches. That is what the Minister is telling the Committee, and I have no problem with that, but she must acknowledge that that is indeed the implication. If kitchen scissor blades are longer than 3 inches, which normally they are, as I understand the clause it will not be possible to have those scissors delivered to a home; they will have to be picked up from a post office. I want to ask her, as well, about my point on overseas sellers.”
“I have no idea what proportion of the dangerous weapons purchased in the UK are bought from sellers outside the UK, but my sense from looking at places such as eBay is that quite a large proportion of them are.”
“As my hon. Friend has pointed out, clause 18 deals with sales of knives by sellers outside the UK. The Minister has already rightly pointed out to us on a number of occasions that the British Government, or our laws, can impose very little control outside the UK. The difficulty was illustrated by this morning’s discussion, in which it emerged that if in future I buy kitchen scissors from a British supplier I will have to go to the post office to pick them up. If, on the other hand, I buy them online from an overseas seller they can be posted direct to my home. That is quite problematic, and I imagine there will be more discussion of that as the Bill progresses through this House and the other place. It highlights the real difficulty of dealing with sellers located outside the UK.”
“Would customs inform the delivery company to whom the parcel was being shipped that it contains a knife and should not be delivered to somebody under 18? I appreciate that it is not only the delivery company that is involved in checking what is in parcels. I am sure there will be some element of checking in customs. When such a check reveals that there is a knife, what is the response of customs? My concern is that clause 18 as framed does not go far enough to restrict the ability of overseas sellers—we have established that they account for a significant part of the problem we are facing in constituencies such as mine—to deliver dangerous weapons to young people under 18.”
“Surely the delivery company should then be required to terminate the contract. I would go further and argue that companies delivering goods from outside the UK should be required to carry out at least some checks to find out whether they are delivering bladed articles. If they do find out, one way or another, that they are delivering bladed articles and the seller has not told them, they should surely at least be required to end the contract. I have another question to ask the Minister. Presumably when these parcels are imported to the UK, they will have to go through customs of some sort, where some level of checking of what is in them will be carried out. Perhaps it will emerge in one of those checks that a parcel contains a knife. What would happen at that point?”
“At the very least, that should be extended so that if the delivery company becomes aware in the course of the arrangement that it is in fact carrying knives, the clause takes effect. The fact that it did not know at the moment it entered into the arrangement imposes a very limited restriction. I have not tabled an amendment to address the issue, but I wonder whether the Minister could reflect on it. I am not expecting her to give an answer today. Will she reflect on whether it would be appropriate to tighten the wording? Say a delivery company has a contract to deliver products from a supplier that is outside the UK to purchasers in the UK. It is not aware when it enters into the contract that some of the products are knives, but discovers in the course of its deliveries that some or perhaps all of them are knives.”
“Someone would open a parcel on the doorstep, or perhaps a parcel would fall open en route. I think the delivery company probably would in due course pick up that it was delivering knives. Were that to happen, the delivery company should be required to end its contract with that supplier, because the supplier had obviously been dishonest and not told the delivery company that the contract involved the delivery of knives. It would be entirely appropriate for the contract to be ended. As clause 18 is worded, however, the delivery company does not have to end its contract if it becomes aware that it is in fact delivering knives. Subsection (1)(d) requires only that it should be “aware when they entered into the arrangement” that it related to knives.”
“The delivery company in the UK is absolved of blame under subsection (1)(d) if it did not know when it entered into the arrangement that it covered the delivery of bladed articles. I would prefer that companies delivering parcels from overseas to households in the UK be required to carry out some degree of checking what is in those parcels. I am not suggesting that every parcel should be opened and scrutinised, but there must be some degree of checking what is being delivered. A sample should be checked. If it turns out that the seller outside the UK with whom the company has a contract is delivering a significant number of knives, even though the seller did not tell the delivery company that they were knives, in practice the delivery company would eventually probably realise that.”
“It is clear—the Minister gave us a good example this morning—that a lot of knives are reaching under-18s in the UK. Reducing under-18s’ access to knives from sellers outside the UK will help to reduce the number of young people being injured and, indeed, killed. We should go further than clause 18. We need something a bit more robust. The Minister rightly pointed out that sellers outside the UK are beyond the reach of UK law, so clause 18 instead places the responsibility on the delivery company. I accept that that is a perfectly reasonable way of doing this, but I worry that sellers outside the UK that are determined to increase their profits by selling knives to under-18s in the UK will fairly easily be able to get around the restrictions that clause 18 imposes.”
“My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. I rather hoped that being in the EU would mean that we could regulate what those sellers are doing, but I gathered from the debate this morning that we cannot. The fact that Germany is in the European Union does not seem to give us any more purchase over what German sellers do than we have over Chinese sellers, and my hon. Friend is right that the impact of leaving the EU will need to be considered. In clause 18, we are trying to ensure that knives bought from sellers outside the UK are not delivered to under-18s. I reiterate my view that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley argued persuasively on Tuesday, that age is too low; it should be higher. It should be set at 21, rather than 18.”
“The Minister quite rightly explained that Border Force would need to be satisfied that there was a reasonable chance of a prosecution being secured. Where a knife or other offensive weapon is being sent to an under-18, it is not clear that an offence has been committed. Does that mean that Border Force would not be able to seize the knife? If that is the case, we may need to look at how the law is framed, because I want to see Border Force playing a role in—”
“If Border Force found a knife in a parcel addressed to an individual, and was aware, or could establish, that the individual was under the age of 18—admittedly, it probably would not know that—would Border Force be able to seize it? My worry is that it probably would not, because nobody would have committed an offence. The person who has bought the knife has not committed an offence; because of the way the law is framed, the seller has committed the offence, but the seller is outside the UK and outside the remit of the law. If Border Force found a knife addressed to somebody under 18, would it be unable to seize it because no offence had been committed, or is there some basis on which it could seize it? It would clearly be an unsatisfactory state of affairs if Border Force could not do that.”
“I have a question arising from what the Minister said earlier about what Border Force can do if it finds an offensive weapon coming across the border in a parcel or something of that kind. She said that if Border Force believes that there is a good prospect that the police could prosecute, it is empowered to seize the weapon. Proposed new section 1(1A) of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 says: “Any person who possesses any knife of a kind described in subsection (1) is guilty of an offence.” It is clear that a person who receives such a weapon commits an offence, and from what the Minister was saying, Border Force would be empowered to seize that weapon. However, where under-18s are receiving knives, it is the seller who commits the offence by selling a knife to a person under the age of 18.”
“I raise the matter under clause 20 because the clause provides a form of words that clearly gives Border Force the ability to seize a weapon on the basis that the Minister explained. My concern is that if a knife is sent to an under-18 and the seller is outside the UK, no offence may technically have been committed, and Border Force might not be able to intervene. I just wanted to clarify the position, but I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr Gray, and for the compliment.”
“I am grateful to the Minister, and I completely accept that the position in clause 20 is clear: an offence would have been committed, and Border Force could seize the knife. I have a question arising from our earlier debates about knives being sent to under-18s. As far as I can see, an offence has technically not been committed in that situation, so would Border Force be unable to seize a knife at the border, even though it knew it was being sent to an under-18?”
“Clause 1(10) refers to the “appropriate national authority” to make additions or changes to schedule 1. Could the Minister clarify what that authority will be? Will it be a different authority in different parts of the UK, or a single authority throughout? A couple of times, the Minister made the helpful point that regulations to make such changes will be subject to the affirmative rather than the negative procedure. Could she point us to where in the Bill that assurance is provided? I have not been able to find it.”
“Through my new clause, I instead place an onus on the purchaser and, indeed, on people such as eBay who are facilitating these sales, and say to them: “If you are an individual purchasing an offensive weapon from a seller outside the EU, that is an offence.” That would be one way of shifting the onus on to the purchaser. Clearly, it would still be possible for businesses to import items into the UK in the ordinary way. What I am worried about is individuals buying the dreadful implements that are freely on sale at the moment, on eBay and elsewhere and that, as far as I can see, the well-intentioned measures in the Bill will not capture. This proposal would be another way of trying to stop those very damaging things getting into the country.”
“It is difficult to see how the measures in the Bill, although clearly intended to stop that kind of delivery being made, will in practice have that effect for suppliers determined to get around the impediments being put in their way. That is the reason I have tabled new clause 9, which I accept looks like a rather odd proposition on the face of it, to move that a person “commits an offence if they knowingly purchase an offensive weapon from a seller located in a country that is not a member of the European Union.” The Bill is intended to manage sellers and delivery agencies, but I am sceptical whether that will work in practice.”
“I know that clause 15, on the delivery of bladed products to residential premises, puts in place arrangements to cover the situation where the supplier is outside the UK. An onus is placed on the delivery company; we will no doubt come to that in due course, but it is not clear to me how effective that will be. If a Chinese company posts an item, which could be in a perfectly innocuous small package, to somebody in the UK, will the arrangements in the Bill help us pick up that it is, in fact, a lethal weapon that is being delivered? It might be delivered by the Royal Mail through the post or by a delivery company of some kind.”
“My worry, which I am sure is also the Minister’s worry, is how to stop these things getting into the hands of people who want to do harm with them, of whom there are sadly far too many at the moment. Clause 4 covers the delivery of corrosive products to people under 18, and clause 15 covers the delivery of bladed products to residential premises. In both cases, the Bill places requirements on the suppliers. My worry is what happens in a case such as one Mr Butt drew my attention to. That ultra-light product on ebay.co.uk is supplied by a Chinese company called vastfire-luz. My worry is whether this legislation will cover companies such as that one in China, or companies elsewhere, that are sending these very damaging and unpleasant items to people in the UK.”
“It caused a significant security alert; I actually never got to see the offensive weapons, because they were taken off him before he managed to get through Portcullis House security. I suppose that was reassuring. The point he wanted to make, however, was that it is extremely easy to buy the most dreadful weapons online extremely cheaply. For example, I am just looking at a product that he pointed out to me—the ones he showed me are all readily available on eBay, and I know there are other websites where they are available as well. “Ultralight Self Defense Tactical Defense Pen Outdoor Glass Breaker Writing Pen” is the name of a product that costs £2.84 on eBay. It is designed to look like a pen, and it does look like a pen, but it is actually a lethal weapon.”
“He set up a community interest company called Community & Rehabilitation Solutions, which works with the Metropolitan police in a number of ways, and he is very concerned about the ease with which people can get hold of very unpleasant weapons and corrosive substances—the new clause covers both corrosive substances and bladed weapons. I arranged to meet Mr Butt a couple of weeks ago, and he came to Portcullis House to have a conversation with me about this issue. About five minutes after he was due to turn up, I realised that he had not arrived, so I gave him a call on his mobile. He said, “Well, the problem is I don’t know how to get past security with my offensive weapons.” I had not realised that he was planning to bring his offensive weapons with him, but that was indeed his intention.”
“I rise to speak to new clause 9. It arises from a number of conversations that I had with a man called Mr Raheel Butt, whom I would briefly like to tell the Committee about. He grew up in West Ham, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), rather than in East Ham, and as he would freely acknowledge, he went wrong for several years and served a term in prison. I think he left prison in 2012, and since then he has made it his mission to try to ensure that other young people do not make the same mistakes he made.”
“Can the Minister clarify the law on this? If it is illegal to sell disguised weapons in the way that she has just said, but there are loads of them on eBay and anyone can look them up and anyone can buy them, who is committing an offence in that situation?”
“The Minister made the point earlier, if I understood her correctly, that it is illegal to sell a disguised weapon. Lots of those kinds of weapons are freely available on ebay.co.uk, which presumably has some sort of UK presence. They are being sold by companies in China and around the world. If one of those companies sells a disguised weapon to somebody in the UK, has a crime been committed?”
“But if it is, as it would be in the case of an eBay purchase, an individual buying the product online and then receiving it through a postman or courier, has anyone committed an offence? If so, who is it?”
“The Minister has given the Committee a lot of helpful information. From what she says, anyone who buys the kind of product that I described, which is freely available on eBay, is committing an offence. If I buy a disguised weapon on ebay.co.uk from a Chinese company, I am committing an offence. How is it that eBay continues to offer all these things on its platform? At the very least it is highly irresponsible because, by definition, anyone who clicks on that item and makes a purchase is committing a crime. Surely that should not be permitted?”
“I rise to make a contribution. The Minister referred to the obligations that the clause places on delivery companies in cases where purchases are made from a company outside the UK, as we have just discussed, with the onus therefore needing to be on those companies. Will she spell out for us what checks the delivery company will be required to make? She emphasised the importance of not making unreasonable demands of delivery companies, but how far will the legislation expect them to go in making sure that they are not delivering a corrosive product to somebody’s home?”
“I am grateful, Mr Gray, and I apologise for the confusion. I will make one final contribution, if I may. Can the Minister tell us a little more about what is regarded as reasonable? If a delivery company enters into a contract to deliver products from a supplier outside the UK and that supplier says that none of the products is corrosive, and if the delivery company believes them, has it taken all reasonable steps, or should it check the consignments to see what is in them? Should it check all of them, or just some of them? It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us a little more about what is expected of delivery company in such situations.”
“I think that all of us would rightly accept having it for work to be a perfectly defensible reason. I wonder whether there is a risk of getting into some difficult areas where people come up with a raft of potential excuses for carrying acid in a Lucozade bottle. Has there been any thought about what would count as a good reason or lawful authority for having this substance, to give some guidance to magistrates courts and others who might themselves quite quickly having to make these judgments when cases come before them?”
“I very much welcome the inclusion of clause 5 in the Bill. It is a very important step forward to make an offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place, in exactly the same way as having a knife in a public place is an offence. I am hopeful that the Bill will address some of the problems we have seen in areas such as mine. I just want to ask the Minister one question. Subsection (2) makes the point that it is a defence for somebody if they can prove that “they had good reason or lawful authority for having the corrosive substance with them in a public place”. Subsection (3) goes on to say that it is a defence if the person has the corrosive substance with them for work. Will the Minister set out what the courts should expect to regard as a good reason for carrying a corrosive substance in a public place?”
“I wish it were not the case that we represented the area where these problems seem to be the worst, but unfortunately, it is. That has created an aspiration in the community we represent to deal effectively with the problem of rapidly increasing acid attacks, and the Bill is an important step in doing so. Clause 1 introduces a ban on the sale of acid products to under 18s. I welcome it. It was not something that I called for, but it is a welcome and positive step and I am grateful to the Minister for introducing it. My amendments 1 to 9 simply raise the age threshold from 18 to 21. Amendment 53, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, which I also support, similarly raises the threshold for the sale of knives and bladed items in the Criminal Justice Act 1988 from 18 to 21.”
“Are there people around carrying what might appear to be a Lucozade bottle, which actually contains acid, who are going to inflict serious injuries on people at random?” That incident and the reaction to it gave rise to the Adjournment debate held on 17 July 2017, which was answered by the Minister’s predecessor. I welcome the steps taken in the Bill to address the problem. Unfortunately, for reasons I understand, there has not been a great deal of data about this problem and about who has been carrying out these attacks. Sadly, the borough I represent appears to be the London borough where the largest number of attacks have occurred. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham and I both took part in the debate on Second Reading. Indeed, my hon. Friend’s contribution has already been referred to by my hon. Friend the shadow Minister.”
“My concern and interest in all this greatly increased just over a year ago when there was a dreadful acid attack in the borough I represent—Newham—which was very widely reported. Two cousins were sitting in a car when somebody leant in the car window and threw acid over both of them, causing serious and life-changing injuries. Particularly striking about that was how, in the community I represent, there was suddenly a huge surge of anxiety as people asked themselves, “If I am walking down the street now, will somebody come up and throw acid over me?”
“It is over a year since I called for possession of acid in a public place to be made a public offence, which is what clause 5 does. I am delighted it is here, but I would have been pleased if it could have happened a bit faster. The background to this Bill is clearly the surge in violent crime—not just acid attacks but lots of other violent crime, including crimes involving the implements we will be talking about later in our work as a Committee. I noticed that in June, the BBC’s “Reality Check” asked “Violent crime: is it getting worse?” The verdict was “‘High harm’ violent crime is genuinely increasing.” There is no dispute that we have a serious and growing problem with the incidence of violent crime, of which acid attacks are one very troubling example.”
“I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Gray. This is a long list of amendments with a very simple purpose, which is to change the age threshold, which is picked up in clause 1, from 18 to 21. I welcome the Bill. As I said on Second Reading, I am pleased with how it is addressing the rapidly increasing problem of acid attacks, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley reminded the Committee of the dramatic scale at which the incidence of such attacks has increased. I thank the Minister for introducing the provisions and for the way in which she has kept people such as me informed of developments as she has been working on them. I am sure that she, like me, would have been pleased if they could have come forward a little sooner.”