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7 Feb 2003 : Column 593—continued
Mr. Swayne: I wonder whether smoking itself might be an issue. The fact is that people who smoke tend to become tetchy if they are denied the ability to do so for a substantial period. A more liberal smoking regime might solve part of the problem.
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Funnily enough, it relates to what the promoter
said in the context of alcohol. We can all agree that drinking in moderation can help to settle people's nerves and make them less nervous on aircraft—or anywhere else. The same may apply to those who are addicted to nicotine. The issue arises when they go beyond that and move from being relaxed by a drink or a cigarette to becoming violent. However, I am not aware of many violent smokers, so the issue applies only to drink. That is what we are considering, although I do not think that we should be sidetracked into reopening the issue of whether smoking on aircraft is a good or a bad thing. In the United States, a solution that has been tried is all-smoking flights. That is an interesting thought, but I do not think that the idea ever got off the ground.Let me return to jurisdiction. My brief tells me that the 1963 Tokyo convention established jurisdiction over offences committed on board aircraft and involved the extradition of offenders. Apparently, the country in which the airline is registered has the authority to apply its own laws to passengers on board. If anything happens on a United Kingdom-registered aircraft when the doors close, UK law is applicable. We have jurisdiction over any aircraft that lands in the UK. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw graphically described the lacuna in that: people who misbehave or drink excessively before they board the aircraft cause the problem after boarding that the Bill is intended to tackle.
Sadly, I cannot understand how the measure will deal with such a problem. If the authorities on the ground do not prevent people from boarding, can the people in charge of the aircraft deny access to it? My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, with his extensive legal knowledge, may be able to help, but I fear that the Bill cannot tackle the problem. Perhaps the Minister can help us.
If those in charge of an aircraft in another country were able to deny access to it, that would solve the problem. For example, if I am in Malaga, have too much to drink and attempt to board an aircraft but the people in charge say, "You cannot come on board in your condition," that would go a long way to resolving the difficulty that the promoter identified. I shall deal with drinking on the aircraft later.
- "a provision which prohibits a person from being drunk in an aircraft".
Mr. Swire: I broadly agree with my right hon. Friend. Does he agree that if someone on board a domestic airliner in a foreign airport is to be given the power to refuse entry to passengers who are inebriated or pose a threat to others, it should be the captain? He or she should make the ultimate decision.
Mr. Forth: That sounds right, and I am grateful for my hon. Friend's helpful suggestion. It ties in with the matter that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough raised earlier about the identity of the person who will have the new power of arrest under the
Bill. The promoter implied that only Mr. Plod had that power. Perhaps the captain of an aircraft should be the person to whom the powers in the Bill are granted, or perhaps a citizen's arrest can be effected. However, the Bill does not provide for that. That may pose a difficulty in Committee.
Mr. Leigh: It is not up to me to try to explain the Bill, but the opening description of it was inadequate. The law is clear: the Bill will make no difference to the powers of anybody on the aircraft to let people on the aeroplane or to arrest them when they are on board. Existing common law and rights of property will deal with that. The Bill will simply allow the police to arrest someone who has caused a disturbance once the aeroplane has landed in the United Kingdom.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's explanation, because I was afraid that that was the case. If the Bill is a Government measure, the blame attaches to the Government, not the promoter. Worthy though it may be, it will not do much good.
Mr. Swayne: I disagree. I hope that the Minister will clear up the confusion. I understand that the Bill tries to create an arrestable offence, which carries a five-year penalty or falls within schedule 1A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The schedule makes it clear that the offence is arrestable by any person, not necessarily a police officer. I presume that that applies to all arrestable offences.
Mr. Forth: I am partly encouraged by that helpful comment, although it could lead to some interesting possibilities. If we are talking about what I, in my layman's terms, would call a citizen's arrest—
Mr. Forth: In that case, we are talking about anyone on an aircraft being able to arrest anyone else. Once we open up that possibility, life really does get interesting. What if the person who was misbehaving attempted to arrest a member of the crew? I am not sure that my hon. Friend has been as helpful as he intended to be. The schedule to which he has become so attached may not help him in this matter. Perhaps he could have another look at it, and expand on the idea when he seeks to catch your eye later—as I hope he will—Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for his efforts, but I am not totally sold on his idea.
My next point links in to what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said a moment ago. I have here a list of cases in which action was taken effectively to deal with these problems. I will not go through all of them, but one involved a flight from London Gatwick to Montego Bay in Jamaica, on which a group of passengers became disruptive and demanded alcohol. Another passenger complained and threw a drink over one of them—he did not try to arrest him; he just threw a drink over him—and an altercation broke out, and the cabin crew had to restrain them. When the plane landed in the United States, the FBI boarded it and removed the offenders. They were returned to the United Kingdom and one was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment for endangering the aircraft. Cases such
as this—one or two others are mentioned in this briefing document—suggest that adequate powers to deal with them already exist. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw is arguing that these powers should come into effect only in extreme cases.I do not want to go through the entire list of incidents that I have here, but recent history seems to suggest that there is a fair degree of discretion and powers to deal with these problems. As I said, that flight was going from London to Jamaica, and was diverted to the United States. The US authorities exercised their powers and the people were returned to the UK—I guess it must have been a UK-registered aircraft—and one was then sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment. I am unsure whether the hon. Gentleman has yet made a case for the additional powers in the Bill, taken against the background of what already seems to be happening. A new offence has already recently been created, and despite his valiant efforts, I am not persuaded that his case has been made beyond doubt.
We are always very ready, in the House, to have a knee-jerk reaction and to say that, if there is a problem of social misbehaviour, criminality or whatever, we should increase the penalties available. I would not normally shrink from that, but we must be pretty certain in our own minds that simply increasing the penalties will have the effect that we desire.
Mr. Swayne: I was just wondering whether my right hon. Friend's attention had been drawn to the list of incidents that have already taken place. I notice that one of those involved, Victor Mardell of Wood Green in north London, who was indicted by a grand jury for being abusive and trying to open the door during a flight, now faces up to 20 years in prison in the United States and a fine of £163,000. I am not sure that penalties, of themselves, will provide a sufficient deterrent, bearing in mind the fact that people are often drunk when they do these things.
Mr. Forth: This is the time-honoured debate about deterrence, and about how clearly the kind of people who are prone to this kind of misbehaviour on an aircraft will be thinking about the penalties that they might suffer if they misbehave. Almost by definition, they are unlikely to do so.
Mr. Swire : Would not one way of dealing with repeat offenders be for airlines to refuse to carry them for a fixed period—five or 10 years, for example—and to make the necessary information available to other airlines? Such people would thus be effectively grounded
Mr. Forth: I suspect that airlines can do that already, and no doubt they do. One hears of cases in which either one airline or all airlines ban people, as I am sure airlines are free to do. I do not think we need the Bill for that purpose.
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