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Westminster Hall
Tuesday 1 March 2005
[Mr. John McWilliam in the Chair]
Attacks in the Workplace
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Watson.]
9.30 am
Jim Sheridan (West Renfrewshire) (Lab): I secured this debate in the full knowledge that Government alone cannot deal with the problem of violent attacks or assaults in the workplace. All sections of society have a vital role in ensuring that people who leave home to go to work have the fundamental right to return home safe. They should be safe in the knowledge that every effort has been made to protect them from violent attack and assault, and—this is more important—that when they are attacked, those responsible are brought to justice and the courts will deal effectively with culprits. In my view, many of our judiciary, including magistrates, are too far removed from real life and do not fully understand the long-term anxieties and pressures that many public and private sector workers face in their everyday lives at work. Such attacks impact also on the number of working days lost, which all of us have to pay for as taxpayers.
The attacks are consistent across many disciplines and industries, including among teachers, police, firefighters, health service workers, shop workers, bus drivers, and bar staff. Indeed, it is a problem for almost everyone whose job interfaces with the general public. I include our own profession, and there have been serious attacks on politicians of all parties at every level by angry, and at times frustrated, constituents. That frustration is often fuelled and exploited by sections of our press, who see politicians as fair game for abuse—verbal or otherwise. The same elements in the popular press portray migrant workers as the enemy within, and they experience racial and physical abuse as a result. Although things can be difficult for white public sector or private sector workers, we can only imagine how much more difficult life is for migrant workers who are physically or racially abused.
Why should teachers have to tolerate disruptive and obnoxious children when their parents refuse to face up to their responsibilities or seek to blame everyone else for their misbehaving children? Why should firefighters endanger their lives answering emergency calls only to be stoned by youngsters when they arrive at the location, especially when many calls are false alarms? Why should our police forces be stretched and their valuable time wasted filling in endless forms, only for them to find the accused back on the street within hours of being charged? Why should shop workers face the everyday threat, "We will be waiting for you when you finish!" simply because they refuse to serve someone or catch them shoplifting?
Why should bus drivers and other public transport workers be attacked and spat on simply for doing their jobs? Why should health workers, who are committed to
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saving lives, be put at risk by yobs who are drunk or under the influence of drugs? Every day, we hear of health service workers being attacked by irresponsible people who think nurses, porters, ambulance drivers and paramedics are all fair game. Perhaps we should seriously consider denying them treatment from those whom they seek to abuse.
The list of occupations is endless, but the common denominator is that all those people want to serve the public but need protection from the minority who think that they are fair game for attack. Let me put the problem into context: it is a small minority of idiots who choose to ignore the good work done by our public and private sector workers and who sometimes behave irresponsibly.
As one would expect, the trade union movement is doing its bit to address the problem and to highlight the seriousness of the issue to the general public, and none is doing more than the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, whose "freedom from fear" campaign was highly successful in raising public awareness of the huge scale of the problem. Its research showed that incidents of assault on or abuse of shop workers occur every minute of every day.
The campaign also sought to promote safer shopping partnerships and bring together the major retailers, the police, and national and local politicians. The survey showed that 47 per cent. of staff reported physical attacks or assaults over a 12-month period, that threats are made every week in one in four stores, that verbal abuse is a daily event in more than one third of stores, that time off after an incident is commonplace for traumatised staff, that threats of violence were reported in 72 per cent. of stores, and that more than 85 per cent. of staff expressed concern about verbal or physical attacks or assaults.
USDAW's conclusions from the survey were clear. More links must be set up between retailers and local authority crime and disorder reduction partnerships to deal with persistent offenders, and the police need to work more closely with stores in many areas. On proof of age, a robust scheme of age-identity cards must be adopted. Some youngsters try to abuse, bully or threaten retail staff into making a sale. Many of us have seen youngsters outside licensed premises trying to get alcohol, particularly at weekends. Sometimes they are helped by irresponsible adults who get it for them. We should consider charging and dealing effectively with those people. A robust identity scheme would take the guessing out of age-restricted sales and would significantly contribute to reducing abuse and violent incidents against shop workers.
The Government's alcohol strategy is much needed to deal with drunkenness. Survey results show that shop workers are threatened and attacked for upholding the law and refusing to sell alcohol to drunks. Their position should be considered by licensing boards when they decide on licensing hours.
Another major concern is public transport and employees who are on the front line. Again, the major trade union in that industry, the Transport and General Workers Union, is working hard to solve some of the problems that its members encounter daily. Workers the length and breadth of the country are subjected to horrendous attacks that range from being spat on,
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having missiles thrown through their windows and being attacked violently with knives. The TGWU has put forward sensible and practical recommendations to deal with such problems. It recommends, as a right, that there should be no loss of earnings for assaulted public transport workers. There should be an obligation on employers to offer professional counselling facilities; a firm legal requirement on operators to carry out risk assessments on violence and to implement appropriate agreed measures; requirements for bus operators to install and keep in good order radio or alarm systems; special compensation for front-line public service staff to include bus drivers, benefit staff, railway workers, firefighters and health workers with fast-track financial settlements; a clear directive from Government accompanied by more resources to enable a higher-priority police response to public transport assaults; mandatory prison sentences or tougher penalties for those convicted of attacking workers; legal sanctions to ban offenders from using public transport in future; and an extension of the role of the British Transport police. Those are the recommendations put forward by the TGWU, of which I am a member, and they are not only practical but pragmatic.
I have identified some of the issues and the disciplines affected by violent and abusive assaults. I am sure that colleagues will bring their own views and experiences to this debate, and I thank them for that. The overall problem that still exists is the inability, or indeed the unwillingness, of the judiciary or magistrates to deal effectively with this matter.
I shall put into context my understanding of the current penalty priorities. As things stand, a person is more likely to be heavily sentenced for stealing a mobile phone than for attacking a worker at their workplace—someone who is, after all, only carrying out his or her job. That cannot be right.
As I said at the outset, Government alone cannot solve the problems. They should legislate where needed, but all of society has a responsibility to engage with those affected and to raise public awareness. We must ensure that all our efforts are not undermined by a judiciary that cannot or will not take the issue seriously and impose effective sentencing on the culprits.
9.42 am
Anne Picking (East Lothian) (Lab): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) for raising this important subject. I want to tell the House my experiences with violence at work, not because I am trying to score brownie points or tell an elaborate story, but because it is important that people understand exactly what workers in a profession such as my previous one—nursing—are subjected to. During my first week working in a hospital, I suffered my first attack, which was carried out by a patient suffering from a mental illness. That creates a problem in itself because people suffering from a mental illness may not be in a position where they can be criminally prosecuted for what they do.
I have suffered numerous injuries: I have had a broken leg, both of my collarbones have been dislocated, and I have had numerous black eyes and the usual bumps,
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bruises and scratches that happen when people work in a hectic nursing environment, whether they work in accident and emergency, with people suffering from mental health problems, with drunks coming in off the street or with people under the influence of drugs. I remember working in Belfast, and it was ironic that I was standing there as a staff nurse in a white uniform having to admit a patient who was in a Land Rover being protected by four policemen with bodyguard stuff, rifles and so on. They let this guy come in, then I had to take over and look after him. That sort of thing happens.
I am not saying that the police do not do a good job; they do, and they suffer from assaults themselves, but the front line of the health service is not protected in the same way as the police. We are not in a position to protect ourselves because if someone is being attacked, there is a lot of ambiguity about the level of restraint they can use and how they can protect themselves. Far less is there any sort of support in the way of administering medication.
My story continues when, later on in my career, I was in charge of a big psychiatric hospital at night. Thankfully, we have moved on from big asylum-type institutions, but in that hospital there were 60 exits and entrances, where any intruder could get access. When I was doing my rounds, I was attacked by an intruder who pushed me to the ground. We do not know why he attacked me—whether it was a sexual thing, whether he was an ex-patient with a grudge, or whether he quite simply wanted to secure the hospital drug keys, which I had. He tried to suffocate me, but thankfully something attracted his attention and he got up and ran off. The police tried to get him. The dogs got the scent, but unfortunately he got away because we were out in the wilderness. With all those exits, he could have gone in any direction and he managed to get away. I spent six months out of work, severely traumatised by the whole event and with a serious injury to my back.
Those are not isolated incidents that people have to go through. I found it quite unbelievable, not so long ago, when the Countryside Alliance was marching and demonstrating in the streets and I tried to get access to my workplace to cast my vote against fox hunting, that I was punched in the face by one of the protestors. I really thought that I had left that level of abuse behind before I came to this job. There is an onus on us as a Government to do something about this issue. There should be strict penalties. Legislation should be brought in to penalise people who are prepared to hurt other people who are just trying to deliver a public service, sometimes against a background of great adversity.
The Scottish Executive have led by example and are consulting at the moment on the protection of emergency workers. I greatly welcome that, but I am concerned about the ambiguity over who is or is not an emergency worker. A nurse going about her ordinary working day in a ward would not necessarily constitute an emergency worker, whereas a nurse attending an accident with the paramedics would. We should have similar legislation, but it should cover all public sector workers who face assault and abuse in the workplace.
Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire for raising this debate. I look forward to hearing the response from the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety. It is
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admirable that she is here this morning, given the time that she had to put in yesterday. I am sure that she felt under assault herself on many occasions, so she will be quite sympathetic towards us.
9.48 am
Mr. John Lyons (Strathkelvin and Bearsden) (Lab): I join my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) on securing the debate. He reinforced something that all Members know: he is always to the fore when it comes to defending workers' rights. Today is a good example.
We are talking about people who are public servants in the health service, who teach, and who work in public transport and the emergency services. People working in all those areas face violence day in, day out. It would be crass to say that that has become routine to some extent. As part of the debate, we must say that we will never accept that facing violence every day or every shift should be a routine part of a person's job or their contract of employment. There is nothing inevitable about violence. We must try not just to lift awareness, but to clamp down solidly on people who assault public service workers. It is as straightforward and as simple as that.
The evidence is everywhere. There is first-hand evidence from people who are involved, such as my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian, and from others who can tell similar stories, such as firefighters who turn up for a fire and find themselves under a hail of bricks and stones and are assaulted. That is almost a normal part of their job. Much the same situation applies to ambulance staff. They turn up to a very serious accident and are assaulted and abused, verbally and physically. It is a tale that applies across the public sector. No part of that sector is different in any way. All people who work in the public sector face the problem. For example, we heard an Ofsted report on the question of violence against teachers. The problem does not affect just the people whom we would normally expect to be involved in violence—front-line staff—but even people involved in teaching. We need to do everything that we can to protect them.
What is the extent of the problem? The British crime survey said that there are about 1.2 million assaults on public sector staff. If thought of day to day, month to month, or year to year, that is frightening. It is something that we need to report not as a statistic or a figure, but as something that encourages us all, whether we are employers, trade unionists or politicians, to do more. It firmly sets an agenda: we need to make changes to the situation that public sector workers face.
There is greater awareness about public sector staff being assaulted. There are posters on the underground. I congratulate Transport for London and others who are trying to lift awareness of the issues and to involve the public in ensuring that the situation is not accepted as a normal way of life for staff. So employers are doing their bit. There are also trade union campaigns. My hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire referred to the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and others such as Unison, the Transport and General Workers Union and the Royal College of Nursing. Throughout the TUC, trade unions are interested in
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protecting their members and rightly so. They have done a lot of work, not just at TUC level but locally, to reinforce the agenda of protection of public sector staff. I, for one, am signed up to that agenda.
There are some specific areas of concern. In its survey of health staff, Unison asked 3,000 staff to give an opinion about what they felt their reaction would be to the situations that they have faced in the past. Among nursing and ambulance staff, there were increases in violence year on year. That is unacceptable but it is the reality. The figures are there. I am sure that other trade unions could repeat those statistics.
The Government have, of course, done a lot on violence at work and assaults on staff. They have developed and implemented a zero-tolerance agenda and policy. However, the problem is that that policy is falling down in certain areas. For example, while 18 per cent. of trusts say that there has been a reduction in the number of assaults on hospital staff, more than 50 per cent. of trusts report that there have been increases of assaults against staff, whether they be nurses, porters or whatever. That statistic should make us worried.
If we manage nothing else in this debate, we should be clear about one thing. All staff should feel safe in the place where they work. There is no question about that. They should feel that they can turn up to work. They should know that they will work for a certain time—be it seven or eight hours—and they must feel that they can work in safety and be under no threat. It must be our aim as politicians to try to bring that to the public sector.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire made a number of points in opening the debate. I think that we have to talk about creating a specific charge of assaulting a public service worker and that the Government will have to move on that. There is no way that the matter can be left without anything being done. We need to develop new legislation so that people are clear that if they assault or abuse a public sector worker, a specific charge will be raised against them.
Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con): I understand what the hon. Gentleman said, but is there not a danger that, if there is a specific charge of assault against public service workers, it would leave some people thinking that those in the private sector are second-class citizens, notably, as the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) said, shop workers?
Mr. Lyons : I welcome that point. I am not arguing that we need to protect public service workers and do nothing else, but, if we seriously want to make a practical start, that start needs to be in defending public service workers. They are out there in a way that bears no comparison with many private sector jobs. If we can get the legislation to work in the public sector, I am happy to extend it to the private sector, but we should initially target the problem, which is in the health service, the ambulance service, the emergency services, social work and teaching. We need to concentrate our efforts on the public sector so that people are clear about the charge they would face if they decided to assault someone.
Much is being done, and I compliment the people who are doing it. For instance, closed circuit television is being used more and more in hospitals to protect staff
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and ensure that they can work safely, and we need to extend such arrangements where we can. I welcome the use of DNA swabs in cases where someone spits at public transport workers. The First group has been using DNA swabs throughout the UK, and they can be used in evidence to prosecute someone who has assaulted or spat on a driver, which is a horrid thing to happen to staff in the course of their daily duties. I welcome those developments, but we need to do more to ensure that they extend across the range.
I am quite happy to support this debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire on securing it and on giving us all the chance to discuss how best we can protect public service workers.
9.56 am
David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab): I intend to raise only one or two points because most of the issues have been covered. I am sure that others will talk about how we develop a strategy that protects people who deliver a service. As has been said, people are entitled to go to work without being assaulted, irrespective of whether they are a shop worker or a public sector worker.
I want to talk about two experiences that I have had to deal with as a local councillor, a Member of Parliament and a local citizen. Several years ago, I was out on a Saturday night, standing by a bus stop with my wife. Some people set about me, and I was so badly injured that I had to be taken to hospital. I was rushed to hospital with concussion, and the doctor tried to patch me up. I had bruised ribs and a cut across my face. The doctor sent me home, but I was in such a condition that my wife had to stay up all night to make sure that I was all right.
I was sent home because, on a Saturday night, the Royal Infirmary was like the OK corral. Drunks and junkies came in regularly, and the police were there in force. I had the luxury of being sent home that night, but the staff had to stay there to deal with things. Some of the staff happened to be constituents of mine, and when I met some of them later, they were worried about me. But they have to deal with assaults that happen on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in the town centre, and most city centres have the same problem. It is a sad indictment of our society that the first thing we see when we go to hospital is security guards.
Gone are the days when we would step in to assist someone who was being assaulted on the other side of the road. Nowadays, we are really quite worried about doing that. I have seen shop workers being verbally abused in shops, and I have had to intervene, but we are always wary about doing that, because we do not know what the person who is giving the abuse has been doing. Indeed, one issue has not yet been touched on very much. To someone of my age, drink used to be the major issue, but now it is drugs. When drugs are involved, we do not really know where someone is coming from; indeed, in many cases, that individual does not know where they are. So there is that problem, too.
Jim Sheridan : My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the relationship of drink and drugs to violence at
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work, and they are all intermingled. However, although drugs are illegal, and we can charge those involved with dealing in drugs, the big problem seems to lie with alcohol. My hon. Friend is right to suggest that hospitals have to pick up the tab after drunks have spent most of their time in licensed premises. Does he not agree, however, that it is time licensed premises made a contribution, given what they are doing to society by feeding young people, in particular, too much alcohol?
David Hamilton : That brings us to the question of ID cards. Just last week in Scotland, other parties decided not to go ahead with ID cards, and I regret that. At the end of the day, it is a simple matter. When I speak to people in my constituency—I stay in the biggest council estate in Midlothian—they wonder why ID cards are not a normal thing.
When I was in America, in Florida, I saw a young couple walk into a bar. They looked to me to be obviously 23 or 24 years old, but the barman asked for an ID card. Afterwards, I said to him that that seemed a bit heavy handed. He said, "Sir, if the cops walk in here today and I am serving somebody who is under age,"—this addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan)—"they will close my bar immediately and it will take me two weeks to open it again. I cannot afford to lose that custom." That was a good point, because one of the benefits of a simple thing such as an ID card is that it protects the shopkeeper and the bar staff and allows them to make that distinction. That is a simple way forward, and ID cards are a good thing in relation to such problems—without our talking about terrorism or anything else.
What I said about hospitals and what they have to suffer is also true of buses. Some cities have no-go areas where the bus companies have withdrawn because of continual stoning. Of course, the police do not have the back-up to be able to put 24-hour coverage into such areas or to form a convoy. I do not want to paint a bleak picture, but that happens throughout society and is due to the change in how we deal with things as parents and as families. It is a major concern. At the back of everything that has been said, including by my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire, is the fact that discipline is lacking in society, which has to be addressed. There are much bigger issues about how we deal with that.
I have a nephew who is a bus driver for First Bus throughout the Midlothian area and in Edinburgh. Not all the buses have a cover to protect the driver. Not all the buses have a radio control frequency; then again, though, a radio control frequency will be helpful only after the event, not before. A man jumped on my nephew's bus, punched him across the jaw, very nearly broke his jaw and jumped back off the bus, all for no apparent reason. Bus drivers are so apprehensive nowadays that if there is a carry-on up the stairs, they will stop the bus and go, to try to get the person off. Back in your young days, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and in mine, if we were up the stairs as kids and were doing something wrong, the bus driver would come up, tell us off and that would be it. It is not like that now. A driver is apprehensive about whether he or she should go up and deal with it.
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Two areas of this discussion are really important, and I have seen that because I have been there. When I went to Craigmillar in the south part of Edinburgh, a rough area where major redevelopment is taking place, I saw the fire services coming in and being pelted, and I tried to intervene to stop people. It is kids who do that, and we need to ask why kids are out at 9, 10 or 11 o'clock at night.
I come back to a core problem in society. That problem is about people taking responsibility. We should accept zero tolerance and individuals should be challenged, and families should be challenged, too. Maybe I was too hard on my two girls, and I have five grandkids now, but I do not understand why a 10 or 11-year-old should be out at midnight on a Friday or Saturday. To me, the parents have to be drawn into line. Many of the issues that we are talking about, such as the throwing of stones and so on, involve children. Discipline needs to be put forward.
When we talk about the trade unions—I support many of the trade unions that are trying to do something on behalf of their members—we need to look at joined-up issues. Local authorities, health boards, fire authorities, police boards, local government and the Government, whether the Scottish Executive or the one in Westminster, should have strategy meetings to see how best to combat problems when dealing with people working with the public as part of an overall strategy. That would take care of public sector workers as well as people working with the public, and it would be a step towards meeting people's expectation that they can go to work and not be assaulted.
10.5 am
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) on securing the debate. The contributions made today suggest that we all agree that there are real issues and real problems to be addressed. To be honest, we are all groping for a solution.
As the hon. Member for Midlothian (David Hamilton) said, we need a joined-up approach across several sectors, and although attacks in the workplace are a problem in both the public and the private sectors, they are a particular problem for people whose primary job is to interface with the public. The statistics for the total number of assaults in the workplace are appalling—we are talking about some 800,000 plus assaults. As the Minister will tell us, that figure is lower than previous figures. Nevertheless, 800,000 plus people a year facing assaults at work is unacceptable, even if a relatively small percentage of people have suffered assaults.
It always enriches a debate when hon. Members can cite personal experience. I am glad to say that I do not have any personal experience to bring to the debate, but I was moved by the experiences of the hon. Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking), which make one wonder why people go into nursing if they have to face such treatment. Yet we know why people go into nursing: it is because they care, and they want to serve the community and give something back. They want to do that job. It is a huge and appalling irony that people whose prime work function and objective is to look after people who are mentally or physically sick face such aggression when they are trying to help others. That is simply unacceptable.
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The hon. Member for Midlothian mentioned people working in casualty departments. It can make one angry, when we are fighting a hard battle for health service funding and resources, that so many resources are used to deal with self-inflicted wounds brought about by drunkenness and aggravation, rather than being used to deal with genuine illness or accident, which is what the service is there for. We cannot, however, refuse to treat people or to take people in because they are drunk, although we must address the reasons why the problem arises.
The hon. Member for Midlothian and I broadly disagree about ID cards, but I agree with him about their use in combating under-age drinking—indeed, I have actively encouraged that—in circumstances in which the landlord, the publican or the licence holder is obliged to require proof of age before serving someone. The local authority or agency should provide an ID card for people to produce in those circumstances. I have a different view about a national ID card and the data required for it, but ID cards clearly have a role to play, and I support their use in the context that I just described.
David Hamilton : What ID would a young person be able to produce who has never been abroad and has no passport, and whose birth certificate is held in their house or may have been mislaid?
Malcolm Bruce : There are several voluntary schemes. A scheme promoted by the council and the social services in Aberdeenshire and Moray enables young people to apply for such a card, which enables a publican to refuse to serve someone who does not have one. It is not the law, but the licence holder has the legal responsibility, and the legal right, to refuse to serve someone. Several publicans have told me that that is useful and that they wished the scheme was publicised more widely.
The debate about ID cards and the role of identity is not black and white. There is clearly a role for them. We must all produce identity every day for various reasons. Indeed, we are required to produce ID to get into Parliament. Some longer-established Members may claim to find that irksome, but most of us fully understand the reasons for it and are happy to co-operate. I do not want to create dissent, because we agree about the practical role of ID cards.
To return to the central subject of the debate, the Scottish Parliament is, as the hon. Member for East Lothian has said, struggling to some extent with the proposed measure for dealing with violence in the workplace, particularly with respect to public sector workers. I am sympathetic to the intervention made by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) about the distinction between public and private, although I accept, having read an article in my local paper, The Press and Journal of Aberdeen, that there is a particularly serious problem in the public sector.
The figures show that 67.9 per cent. of occupational injuries in the national health service in Scotland are the result of violence and aggression. That is a pretty appalling statistic. The figure for general practices and surgeries is 54.4 per cent., and among nurses and midwives it is 75.3 per cent. There is clearly a serious
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problem when the biggest risk of injury to people working in the health service is from violent assault by a patient rather than from an accident at work. That must clearly be tackled.
I want to make a point that is, perhaps, philosophical, and a related practical point. I am not against exploring the possibility of a law. If the Scottish Parliament is pursuing that, I am interested, but it is interesting that it is encountering difficulty in formulating it correctly. However, we should not reach for the idea that we must pass a law and that that will solve the problem. There is a cultural problem to be tackled.
Assault is a criminal offence in any circumstances, so the law exists. People know that it is a criminal offence, but they still perpetrate assaults; that may be because they are drunk, angry, out of control and not thinking; it may be because they think that they will get away with it; or it may be because they are in some other way not engaged. I do not say that there is not a case for a law to protect public sector workers in particular, but it would be wrong to think that we could just pass a law and feel comforted, or even to think that passing a law would materially change the figures. We must change a society in which people feel that it is all right to behave in the way in question.
Jim Sheridan : The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We do not need to make a law when there is already a law for dealing with the issue. However, does he agree that it is not so much the law that is the problem as the judiciary and magistrates? It must be extremely frustrating for police officers to go through the procedures of arresting and charging someone—particularly a young person—and doing all the paperwork, only to find that the offender is back on the street even before the officer concerned. The problem is not so much the law as its application, together with effective sentencing.
Malcolm Bruce : That is a fair point, although the courts will always have to argue about the circumstances of any individual case. However, I agree that part of the process of conveying to people that such behaviour is unacceptable is to make it known that serious penalties exist and that courts take a serious view of the offences and will act accordingly. I appreciate how frustrating it is when that does not happen. The point takes us towards a wider debate, on which the hon. Gentleman has already touched and with which the Minister must deal more closely than any of us: it concerns the general view, which is often uttered although it may or may not be true, that too many of the wrong people are in prison, and too many of the wrong people are outside it.
Anecdotally, in my own circle, the husband of one of my wife's friends has been sentenced to two years' imprisonment, probably perfectly correctly—in fact almost certainly correctly under the law—for causing death by dangerous driving. The case, however, is one of those with very balanced arguments, in which the person in question has come out on the wrong side. As a local police officer said, the law is the law, the man committed the offence and the sentence was appropriate. The officer pointed out, however, that the person in question was not a danger to society. He had done something
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appalling, with which he would have to live for the rest of his life, and was taking the penalty. However, persistent offenders, who deliberately abuse the law, are not given the same punishment. I am not trying to suggest, should the Minister pick me up on it, that a prison sentence is not appropriate for causing death by dangerous driving, but there are degrees of motivation and engagement. The hon. Member for Midlothian described the Edinburgh Royal infirmary as the OK corral on a Saturday night—
David Hamilton : The old Royal.
Malcolm Bruce : Indeed, but that may be true of casualty departments all over the UK, and it is a sorry situation. To pick up the point about drinking and violence, which is a factor in the workplace too, I wonder whether, as part of the education programme, we might encourage publicans and landlords, and certainly those who have had problems with drunks coming out of their premises, to spend a night in a casualty department. They could see the consequences of serving people who are under age or beyond the point where they have drunk too much, and then letting them out on to the street. We require publicans and landlords to accept responsibility for not fuelling people with drink and then letting them out into situations in which they can cause problems.
I have strayed slightly wide of the debate. We are talking about violence in the workplace and I should like, briefly and finally, to touch on the connection that there can be between a climate of bullying and violence. Bullying is not violence, but it can lead to a climate of violence. An employer who uses bullying-style tactics can create an environment in which violence is likely to occur, not necessarily between employer and employee but among frustrated employees. We have to recognise that bullying is an issue in the workplace. Clearly, responsible employers will take the view that they should be aware of behaviour that might lead to violence in their workplace, and be prepared to act on it.
I totally accept that, although not all workplaces are unionised and not all people are members of trade unions, that is the sort of issue with which the trade union movement has a long and reputable history of engagement. Its approach is to say, "We want employers to understand our problems and to address them, but we will accept responsibility also for engaging with our members to ensure that they understand their responsibilities." There are two issues: violence between the public and people in their workplace, and violence between employees. Both are serious.
I hope that all of us believe effective, efficient, consumer-friendly, compassionate public services are an essential facet of a civilised society and central to the political debate. We have been talking for years about resources for health and education—smaller classes, more teachers, more doctors and more nurses—so that we can have a better ratio between the public and those who serve them. All that is designed to create a better interface and, one hopes, might have contributed a little to the reduction in the number of violent incidents. Nevertheless, if we want to recruit people to be nurses, teachers, doctors and social workers—to serve society—we have an obligation to protect them from violence in the workplace. That is partly because it is right—people
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should not be subjected to violence, and we should do all we can to lower the incidence—and partly for the practical reason, as I said by implication to the hon. Member for East Lothian, that if we cannot do it and people feel that by taking up those professions they will put themselves in situations in which they might suffer, we will not get people to do the jobs. The hon. Member for West Renfrewshire has done us a great service by initiating this debate, and I welcome that and thank him for it.
10.19 am
Mr. John Randall (Uxbridge) (Con): I, too, heartily congratulate the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) on having initiated the debate. We have had some excellent contributions and heard recounted some first-hand experiences. I must declare my interest as a director of a retail outlet; that may explain my somewhat biased attitude toward shop workers. Although director of a retail outlet may sound grand, it is a family business in which I have spent most of my time on the shop floor dealing with members of the public. In such a situation, one is open to whoever should come through the door in whatever state they may be. Dealing with the public is a difficult job.
People, perhaps, do not properly understand how the problem starts with a culture of abuse toward those people who serve us, which may be due to frustration or other reasons. Members of Parliament probably find the public more ready to abuse us straight away, without first bringing their complaints in a more civilised manner. If only people knew that they would be more likely to get a better result if they were to treat public service workers, shop workers, and even Members of Parliament in a more civilised way.
Jim Sheridan : The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the problem that some members of the general public think that politicians are fair game for verbal or other abuse. Does he agree that an element of that is worked up by some in the popular press who see politicians as fair game for verbal abuse?
Mr. Randall : I agree entirely. Another group of workers who suffer a great deal, but who, by and large, are not in the public sector any longer, are traffic wardens. They are probably held in a similar sort of esteem that is worked up by the media. It may be frustrating if they are what one might call jobsworths, but they are simply doing their jobs. It goes beyond that; recently, an off-duty traffic warden was recognised in a supermarket in Hayes, in the neighbouring constituency, and suffered a severe assault. That is the worst sort of assault.
I agree that people are encouraged to regard a lot of professions as fair game for abuse. I do not think that the media would suggest that people should use violence, but, today's culture starts with abuse and too readily leads to violence. Such actions are often fuelled by alcohol or drugs. In my constituency, although there is considerable drug abuse, alcohol is probably more likely to lead to violence, particularly late in the evening.
The basic protection for everybody should always be the ordinary criminal law, with a proper commitment from management and unions to tackle incidents of
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violence. Whatever the cause of such incidents, there should be a readiness to call the police. A school may find it difficult to call the police after an assault by a pupil or parent because it feels that that might ruin the relationship between the school and the wider community, but that is nonsense. Every attack on anybody must be reported to the police, and the police must respond appropriately.
Anne Picking : The problem affects different occupations, but is there not a particular problem in that teachers who are attacked or assaulted by children are reluctant to defend themselves because of what could happen to them? It is the same for health professionals when they are attacked by a patient. Sometimes their ability to restrain the patient is limited, because they fear being prosecuted themselves. In all such forms of work, training from the employer to the employee in how to deal with these situations is essential.
Mr. Randall : The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I should declare another bias: my wife was a teacher. I remember that once when she was pregnant she was tripped up maliciously and fell down. Nobody particularly thought that that should be regarded as an incident; it was just one of those things that happens. I was not best pleased, but Members will be happy to know that I usually bow to my wife in everything.
It seems to me that these incidents are increasing. The Minister might have some statistics with regard to what the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) said, but I think that there is a perception that there is an increase. It may be the case that fewer people than in the past are now technically in public service, but attacks seem to be more violent and not just confined to one area—they occur throughout the country.
Members of the nursing profession, and doctors and ancillary workers within the health service, face very serious violence. I cannot understand that, but the hon. Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking) described it very clearly, and I know that it happens. That is appalling. I am also aware of the experiences of bus drivers and transport workers. When I speak to bus drivers, they tell me that the time they fear most is when the schools finish for the day, which is a great worry. Before I looked into this matter, I naively thought that the time they would fear most would be late at night, but far from it.
We might be able to tackle that problem that arises when the schools finish a little more easily than some others. A bus driver I know told me about something that happened to him when he was driving during the day near Shepherd's Bush. A smart-looking car cut him up. He just stopped the bus—he didn't hoot his horn or do anything else like that—and the driver of the car climbed out and approached him. The bus driver wound down his window, and the driver of the car hit him straight in the face, breaking his nose, and then drove off. That happened in the middle of the day. I am afraid that that is where some sections of society seem to have got to. There is a lot of frustration in some jobs.
Jim Sheridan : The hon. Gentleman is right that many bus drivers are terrified of the school run, and particularly of the journey home after school. One solution that has been piloted may be worth while:
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parents are encouraged to travel back from school on those buses. First, that lets them know how their young darlings are behaving, and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it stops parents driving their 4x4's to the playgrounds to pick up their kids.
Mr. Randall : The hon. Gentleman is right on both counts.
The point about letting parents see what is going on leads me on to something that I have always thought would be helpful, particularly from my viewpoint from behind the counter, as it were. If more people had served the public and seen the public in action, they would probably be a little more sympathetic in their dealings with public service workers and shop assistants. It is necessary to spend some time on the other side of the fence in order to realise how awkward, difficult and unpleasant people can be.
In the past, violence in the workplace sometimes arose out of industrial problems, although I am pleased to say that that is very rare now. We have only to look back to the miners' strike to see that serious violence can arise at certain times. Happily, I think that those days of real confrontation have gone, and that is to the credit of all sides involved.
There are more subtle pressures, and the hon. Gentleman talked about bullying. Racial bullying can lead to violence. Often, the frustration of the person being bullied eventually boils over and leads to violence in the workplace, and that is where management has a strong role to play by monitoring and ensuring that those incidents do not happen. It is important to recognise that within the workplace there are traditions that must be eradicated—a macho tradition in some cases. As I have said before, employers have a duty of care. Although they cannot shoulder the burden of fighting lawlessness on their own, they have a responsibility to provide reasonable external security against intruders—however regrettable that might seem in a civilised society. Unfortunately it seems to be a fact of life. Employers have a duty to ensure that women do not work singly and in potentially difficult environments, and they also have a duty to provide adequate back-up to those staff who are exposed on the front line.
As the hon. Gentleman said, training people to handle violent incidents with the minimum of counter-force is extremely relevant. We have to recognise that more training must be done by management. There are ways of trying to calm people down, although not necessarily when they are fuelled with alcohol or drugs, as that must create a very difficult situation.
As we have heard, the problem under discussion reflects a wider malaise in society. The fact that we see security personnel in hospitals, shops, all sorts of other places and even schools reflects something about which we must all be worried—the culture of violent confrontation. I see it on my television screen much more than I used to. People are growing up with the idea that the way to settle an argument is to shout loudly, and eventually that will lead to violence. We all have a responsibility to try to stop that, and we have to clamp down on it. The police must respond and they must have the resources.
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This is so easy to say, and I am sure that we all say it, however discipline and the respect for—not deference to—authority must start in school and in the home. I am not sure how we achieve it and I am not sure that we can legislate for it, but we must all work hard to do so. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on giving us an opportunity to discuss the problem, and I hope that we can return to the subject to see how we are doing.
10.33 am
The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety (Ms Hazel Blears) : I confess that after yesterday's business, the prospect of an hour and a half's Adjournment debate this morning did not exactly fill me with joy. Having listened to the debate, however, I think it has been one of the best that I have been at for a while. It has raised an important issue, which has been addressed in a practical and thoughtful way by all Members. I hope that I can add something to it, because I have thought about this issue for some time. It is an important area to be concerned about.
I thank in particular my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) for raising the issue. He has a good record of raising issues of concern to people in the workplace. He had a private Member's Bill on protecting people who have been exploited by gangmasters, which links to this morning's agenda of ensuring that people can go about their day-to-day work without fear of harassment, alarm, distress or violence.
My hon. Friend mentioned the work of a range of trade unions: the Transport and General Workers Union, GMB, Unison and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. All trade unions are concerned that workers should be protected and able to go about their lawful business.
Various hon. Members have raised specific groups of workers, including shop workers, firefighters and other emergency personnel. I will comment on those issues, but first I want to deal head-on with whether a new offence is needed and whether the law should be changed. Consultation is going on in Scotland, and I have thought about the issue quite deeply. My starting point is that the existing criminal law should usually be applied to people who commit offences of violence, whether that is assault, wounding, grievous bodily harm, violent disorder or affray. There is a framework in the existing criminal law to deal with various levels of violence. I am reluctant to go down the path of a specific offence for public sector or emergency workers, because there would be difficulties in defining people in a way that allowed us to tackle the mischief that we are trying to tackle. A specific offence could be too rigid. People might fall just outside the boundary, and then we would then have a legal system that was unfair to different sets of workers.
The right approach is the one that we have taken recently. Perhaps hon. Members are not fully aware of it and it is not yet making an impact in the courts, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire said. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 established the Sentencing Guidelines Council, which is charged with drafting and distributing consolidated sentencing
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guidelines applicable throughout all criminal courts in England and Wales. The purpose of the guidelines is to ensure consistency—the exact point raised—and to require the courts to take account of all the relevant aggravating or mitigating features of a case. The council has issued guidelines on determining the seriousness of an offence, which refer explicitly to the fact that a victim was at the time of the offence providing a service to the public as being an aggravating feature. That is a better definition than referring to a public sector or emergency worker, because we may be talking about people working in shops or in a privatised transport undertaking. If such people are subject to assault, grievous bodily harm, violent disorder or affray while providing a service to the public, that should be an aggravating factor when the case comes before the courts, and the penalty should be more serious.
David Hamilton : I shall not mention the miners strike; it was unfortunate that the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) made a digression on that.
How will the message outlined by the Minister translate to the public? It will be some time before cases go through the courts, but the public must be made aware now that zero tolerance is the issue. I travelled on a bus in Nevada last year, and there was a big sign on every bus there saying that there would be a $1,000 fine for any assault on a driver. The public there know right away that they will be treated harshly if they assault a driver. Judging by the Minister's description of our system, however, it will take some time for the message to filter through to the public.
Ms Blears : My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. I do not think that there is wide awareness that the guidelines exist. The national health service has had a big campaign on zero tolerance of violence against NHS workers. Many NHS trusts have schemes whereby there is a yellow card and then a red card and people can be banned from services. Posters have been put up and there has been publicity, but we must do much more to get across to the public the message that if someone who is serving the public is assaulted, the penalty is likely to be more severe than in other circumstances. My hon. Friend makes a serious point about the need for more publicity. The "freedom from fear" campaign run by USDAW was excellent. It went to virtually every shopping centre in the country and involved workers, consumers and the shops themselves. It was an example to us all of how to get the message across that violence at work will not be tolerated.
The Government believe that prison is the proper place for dangerous and violent offenders. I want to be very clear about that. That is why we have created some new offences, particularly for dangerous offenders, which involve an indeterminate sentence. Their risk to the public will be determined when they come up for parole, and if they are deemed still to be a risk, they will stay in prison. We have a much stronger sentencing framework to ensure that violent and dangerous prisoners are not released to continue assaulting others.
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I am also able to tell the House that 9 per cent. more people convicted of violence against the person last year were given custodial sentences than in the previous year, so there is some evidence that the courts are beginning to take violent crime more seriously.
Mr. Randall : I genuinely do not know the answer to this question, but are more people being convicted because more crimes are being committed or are there simply more convictions?
Ms Blears : In fact, violent crime has fallen dramatically—by about 30 per cent. in the last few years—and the figures are now relatively stable. I was saying that 9 per cent. more of those who are convicted now receive a custodial sentence, when they might previously have been given a conditional discharge or a suspended sentence.
The courts are taking the matter more seriously. However, I think that my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire was right: we need to ensure that magistrates are fully aware of aggravating circumstances. It has long been a passion of mine that magistrates should come from a wider cross-section of the community. Many magistrates do a sterling job, but I know that in my area they tend to come from the more affluent and better-off parts of the community. Rarely do they come from the inner city where many of the problems of crime, disorder and antisocial behaviour happen. The Department for Constitutional Affairs is running a big campaign to try to recruit more locally based magistrates. That would certainly help us to get issues of this kind taken more seriously by the courts.
As well as levying punishments on those involved in violence, it is important also to engage in preventive work; it should be everyone's aim that no one is assaulted at work. Enforcement by the police is important, but we must work with the Health and Safety Executive and companies to train and to spread good practice. The HSE has been running a three-year work programme to try to reduce the incidence of violence at work, and it has commissioned research to find examples of good practice. That research is now on its website and is being made available to industry.
The HSE has funded the development of new national occupational standards in the management of workplace-related violence. Those standards are aimed particularly at small businesses, which often find it difficult to deal with such issues, perhaps because they do not have the management infrastructure of larger companies. It is obviously important to help small and medium-sized enterprises as well as large ones.
Work is also being done on protecting people who work alone. The one person working in the late-night corner shop is particularly vulnerable. We must ensure that premises are designed in a way that minimises the prospect of people being assaulted, including the installation of closed circuit television, alarm systems, and radio networks so that people can call for immediate support. Such things can be designed into premises from the beginning.
We are also supporting a range of retail and business crime partnerships; 100 are already established, and we are working to set up another 100. Last week, I visited the Dudley partnership in Halesowen. It has a
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tremendous scheme in its shopping centre; photographs of known prolific offenders are circulated to a network of all staff, so that they can warn each other that one of those persons is in the shopping centre and might come into their shop. People can thus be prepared and take action in anticipation. Those partnerships enable people to help themselves, but they also allow them to call for immediate help—from a security guard in the shopping centre, from the local police, and increasingly from the community support officers who patrol such areas.
Mr. Randall : Having had one those schemes that notify people of known troublemakers wandering around the town, I know that when one sees such a person entering premises, the problem is confronting them. That often leads to more trouble, but because nothing has yet happened, the police do not really want to know.
Ms Blears : I say two things to the hon. Gentleman. The staff in the Dudley partnership to whom I spoke felt very able to tackle such people. They did it politely and firmly, and found that, overwhelmingly, people simply left the premises. The staff felt that they were well supported, as they could call on security staff, the police and community support officers. People who were subject to an exclusion order did not need to commit a crime but could simply be excluded, and the staff felt that the system worked extremely well.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Anne Picking) graphically set out in a moving speech the problems in the health service. It is an irony of the worst kind that people who dedicate their lives to caring for others should far too often be on the receiving end of abuse and violence. Several Members discussed the links between alcohol and binge drinking and the way in which people, particularly those who work in the NHS, are subjected to violence. Our research shows that about half of violent crime is linked to alcohol and that some 70 per cent. of accident and emergency visits at the weekend between midnight and 5 am are the result of alcohol. That is the reason for our massive campaign to tackle binge drinking.
The police have undertaken two big enforcement campaigns this year and have issued fixed penalty notices under their powers to disperse groups and close premises. The Government have just issued a consultation document on the possibility of setting up alcohol disorder zones in which the industry will have to make a contribution towards the cost of dealing with crime and disorder, and we are consulting on banning orders under which people who deliberately go out to drink to excess and then become violent could be banned for a period from drinking in a vicinity. Such issues must be tackled urgently.
I was struck by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (David Hamilton) about the American experience. He mentioned a bar that the police could walk in and immediately close. That is exactly the kind of power that we seek to obtain. Such short, sharp intervention really does concentrate minds and can start to change behaviour in the long term.
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There is almost nothing more important to us at present than tackling the binge drinking that has become the blight of many of our town and city centres.
David Hamilton : I appreciate the Minister's comments. Five Members in the Chamber are Scottish Members, and they are concerned about many of the things that she has mentioned. What discussions have taken place with the Scottish Executive to take on some of the pilots in England and Wales to which she referred?
Ms Blears : Policing and enforcement is a devolved matter in Scotland, but I have detailed discussions and a good relationship with the Scottish Ministers on these issues. I saw in the Scottish newspapers today that Scotland is as exercised about the problems of binge drinking as England and Wales are. We can share our good practice, particularly the enforcement campaigns that our police have run, which have been innovative. They used the whole range of fixed penalty notice powers to deliver on-the-spot, short, sharp shocks. I am perfectly happy to share the information and good practice that we have developed from that experience.
The British crime survey shows that there has been a fall in the number of incidents of workplace-related violence in England and Wales. It was 1.3 million in 1999 and is down to 850,000. That fall is significant, but we certainly are not complacent. We must work hard to maintain the downward trend.
Various initiatives involve working with employers; for example, training programmes. Workplace inspections that are targeted at NHS trusts and nursing homes can be useful. Inspectors can go in and determine what procedures are in place to minimise the chance of violence happening. There is improved advice and information for health and safety inspectors, and a specific project with the railway industry that involves targeted investigations of known areas of weakness. My hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire discussed the important contribution of the British Transport police, who do some excellent work in this area. Railway workers, like bus workers, are particularly vulnerable to assault.
My hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Lyons) raised issues around fire and ambulance staff. One of the saddest things in our society is that firefighters who turn up to save lives are abused and sometimes stoned by children as young as seven, eight or nine years old. That is symptomatic of the wider malaise—the breakdown in decency and standards of behaviour—that all hon. Members have raised.
I know that, in many areas, the fire service has started to run projects. It runs one in my community, where the firefighters work with young people to try to get some discipline back into how they behave. Some projects have been incredibly successful. There are junior firefighters, aged 10, 11 and 12 years old, who now appreciate what the fire service is trying to do. They understand that it is saving lives and that it could save the lives of their own families, and they are much less likely to abuse firefighters in the way that happened previously.
I recently visited a project in south London, where the fire service is helping some of our most difficult young people. The fact that it is a uniformed service, but that
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its members are not the police has given the firefighters a real relationship with some of those young people. They have ended up mentoring them and trying to show them a different way of life. However, it is a pretty sad state of affairs when our fire service finds itself having to do that to counter the violence that is raised against it.
I want to raise the issue of antisocial behaviour because everything that we have been talking about falls very much in that category. One of the things that I have been working on with USDAW, in relation to "freedom from fear", is trying to get authorities to use antisocial behaviour orders in those circumstances. They can be the most useful tool. If an antisocial behaviour order that excludes or restricts people from going into a shopping centre or a medical facility, such as a hospital or a GP's practice, is breached, that can carry a custodial sentence. That can be a useful tool for reducing violence. In addition, the dispersal orders available under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 have been used 400 times since they were brought in. They can bring calm and peace to an area that is out of control. We also now have parenting orders. It is important to try to ensure that parents are involved and take responsibility for the behaviour of their children. If parenting orders can be attached to antisocial behaviour orders, it is a criminal offence if they are breached. Using the whole range of powers available to the police and local authorities to tackle antisocial behaviour is really important.
I appreciate the concern of the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) on these issues. The way that he expressed that concern was heartfelt. He said that we must make a cultural change in our society. I am not making a party political point, but, yet again, I feel that the Liberal Democrats will an end—a better society—but are not prepared to will the means. Those means must include using antisocial behaviour powers and saying, "These are the norms of behaviour we expect in our society and if you transgress them, there will be sanctions. There are boundaries, and there are consequences to your actions." One of the reasons why we have a breakdown in decency in our society is because people do not feel that there will be any consequences to their actions, and some people feel that they are untouchable by the authorities. That must end. We are making huge inroads into that and have seen a massive expansion in the use of antisocial behaviour powers. I really wish that Members who want to see a better society would also be prepared to support some of the tools that we have put on the statute book for the police and local authorities to use.
Malcolm Bruce : As the Minister knows, our home affairs spokesman has modified his position on that, and that is fine and good. My point about the cultural change, however, is that we must get at the root cause of why people are behaving as they are and change their behaviour patterns. With the greatest respect to the Minister, whatever the role of antisocial behaviour orders, they do not do that. They are a sanction. We must go into the issue more deeply and ask why people feel that they can behave as they do. There is a variety of measures, for which we could probably get cross-party support, that would deliver results. There are good
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examples. As the Minister will know, my noble Friend, Baroness Linklater has introduced a number of radical proposals, which I hope the Government will consider.
Ms Blears : The hon. Gentleman knows very well that our strategy for tackling antisocial behaviour is a twin-track strategy and involves enforcement and support. That is what is beginning to make a difference in our communities.
Mr. Lyons : The Minister makes a proper point. The public expect their councils to use antisocial behaviour orders. East Dunbartonshire council—it happens to be Liberal controlled, but that is neither here nor there—refuses to issue antisocial behaviour orders. The public feel let down by the council to some extent. There are lots of issues across the council, but there is a failure to use the orders.
Ms Blears : I am afraid that that picture is still too widespread. Many authorities are using the powers, but my message to others is that they are responsible to the communities that they serve. The powers are on the statute book, and we have to use them to make a difference.
My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian raised important issues concerning ID cards and the idea of people not being able to obtain alcohol without proof of age. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that we have a good, robust framework in place. It will be a couple of years before we have the formal ID cards with biometric identifiers, but even now there is a lot more that we can do to ensure that young people produce a driving licence, a passport or a pass card—an officially approved proof-of-age card with a hologram on it, which makes it difficult to forge.
We need a big campaign that will start to change the whole culture so that young people expect to be challenged when they want to buy alcohol. No ID should mean no sale, which will help to protect many people serving in shops and ensure that alcohol does not get into the hands of very young people, which leads to some of the problems we see now. I am working actively on that with the industry to ensure that we have a big publicity campaign of the sort described by my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian. If we change the balance so that people expect to be challenged, we will be able to minimise the violence that goes on.
We are tackling not just antisocial behaviour but prolific offenders. Many of the people who undertake violence against people in the workplace would fall into our category of prolific offenders, and a huge amount of our work is focused on three strands: trying to deter and prevent prolific offenders, catching and convicting them when they are offending, and resettling and rehabilitating them when they come out of custody. Breaking the cycle of violent crime is very important.
The debate has been tremendous. It has certainly re-energised me to ensure that I get my officials to focus on some of the issues. My hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire raised some detailed issues, particularly in relation to transport. I have not been in a position to respond to him about those today, but I have asked my officials to liaise with other Departments
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where necessary, and I would be more than happy to write to him in detail to deal with the specific issues he raised.
Jim Sheridan : Will the Minister clarify whether ASBOs can be used in schools, given that teachers are becoming ever more worried about kids taking knives into school?
Ms Blears : The conditions that can be put in an antisocial behaviour order are designed to prevent the particular behaviour from happening in future, and those restrictions can cover a range of issues. I see no reason why some conditions could not be specifically aimed at the sort of violence that takes place in schools in order to restrict it. ASBOs are being used in fairly imaginative ways, and I am delighted about that. They have been used to exclude certain people from hospitals, and used in a similar way in shopping areas. I see no reason why we could not use some conditions—not necessarily exclusion, because we want young people to go to school—to deal with behaviour in school, which may well help teachers.
I say to the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) that we have police officers working in a number of secondary schools who are part of the education team. Where those police officers are working closely with head teachers, teachers and children, they are building relationships and starting to get decent behaviour back into schools, because the police officer is now a respected figure of authority. Getting some figures of authority back into our communities is vital. Far too many were stripped out in the name of efficiency in years gone by. Getting inspectors, park rangers, wardens, and community support officers out there, and saying what the norms of behaviour are, should help to tackle some of the important issues raised by hon. Members today.
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