Q
181Mr.
Ruffley: Yes, Mr. Fitzpatrick—always a
pleasure.
We heard
evidence to the effect that the proposed legislation is a
one-size-fits-all affair. What practical measures have you worked up
with your Home Office colleagues, to prevent onerous financial burdens
being put on the smaller airports and
aerodromes? Jim
Fitzpatrick: We recognise that there are airports
which at the moment are not contributing to the policing of their
establishments, but which are going to be required to do so in due
course. However, it has been clearly demonstrated, by those airports
that are paying for it, that it can be done. We have created a
structure where each airport can devise a security plan that fits its
needs, which will mean that there will not be a one-size-fits-all
system; it will be a flexible arrangement that is adequate for those
airports. There
will be a 15-month introductory period between the Bill being passed
and the requirement to pay, so there will be some time for the airport
to make arrangements with its customers, passengers, operators and
retailers regarding how that money is gathered. Although there will be
a financial payment to be made, we do not think that it will be beyond
airports to make it, and we think that there is enough flexibility in
the system to ensure that the required security arrangements will be
commensurate with the needs of the
airport.
Q
182Mr.
Ruffley: So your response to the critique that a
one-size-fits-all approach will be to the disadvantage of the smaller
airports and aerodromes is basically to say that
the arrangements will be proportionate and that that will be a matter
of common sense in the negotiations, so we do not need to worry that
the clause will be applied to the smaller airports
heavy-handedly? Jim
Fitzpatrick: Indeed, and we will produce guidance for
airports to be able to apply. By creating a mandatory
framework—at the moment, this is voluntary and does
not happen in some instances—we will ensure an application across
the country that is acknowledged and identified as appropriate. We are
introducing an appeals procedure to the Secretary of State in the event
of disputes, but we do not anticipate many disputes arising. As the
guidance is digested by airports and as the application for each
airport is identified, we believe that agreements will be reached
between the police in that area and the airports, so we think that it
is a very positive way
forward.
Q
183Mr.
Ruffley: I have a final question, to which the Minister of
State might want to contribute, about police time and resources. Let us
take the example of aerodromes and airports at which, to be frank,
little policing is done. Under the arrangements before us, a local
force will have to provide—admittedly for cash—resources
and assets to police the airport. What assessment has been made of the
capacity of local forces to deliver that? It is a bit too simplistic to
say, “The private sector will cough up the money, so that the
chief constable of force X can employ more officers and kit to deliver
policing at that airport.” Logically, that is easy, but in
practice it is not like that, is it Minister? What discussions have
been had with local forces about how they will provide those extra
assets and police time, even though they are getting paid for
it? Mr.
Coaker: The measures in the Bill have been drawn up
in collaboration with the police, so those capacity issues and the very
real concerns that you raise—they are genuine points—were
part of the discussions that took place. As I said, the police believe
that, in the context of the new arrangements for airport policing, and
with the resources to be made available and so on, they can police the
airports
appropriately.
Q
184Mr.
Ruffley: They are quite satisfied with it and have done
their planning and are thinking ahead of the game. Training and further
recruitment will be necessary—all that has been sorted, has
it? Mr.
Coaker: All that is part of what will need to be
sorted out for the plan to be put together and made effective, when the
Bill becomes
law. Jim
Fitzpatrick: In terms of bringing airports into
mainstream policing, we do not anticipate that the numbers or pressures
will be that great. Our dispute on Tuesday about Prestwick was about
whether there should be four and a half or nine officers at a
relatively big airport. We are not talking about massive numbers that
will impinge on any chief constable’s ability to perform his
statutory
duties. Mr.
Coaker: The point has been made that,
with additional and more effective airport policing, we could reduce,
or put off, some harmful criminality coming in through
airports. Jim
Fitzpatrick: In many instances, the police are there
already undertaking such duties, but they are not being paid for by the
airport operators. They are already in situ, and they have already been
recruited and trained to do the
job.
Q
185Paul
Holmes: The two witnesses from the Airport Operators
Association suggested that an alternative offering financial economies
of scale was to let the British Transport police take on the job. Does
that idea have any merit? Has that been considered?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: It has been considered and dismissed as
inappropriate, for a number of reasons. Some simple ones are: in the
event of a demonstration at an airport, the British Transport police
would police the airport and the local constabulary would have to be
outside. Furthermore, the British Transport police have no armed
capability, so if you need armed officers within the airport you would
need to train BTP officers, which would mean bringing in a whole new
capacity. Where there was a requirement for the local force to come in
to supplement security because of a particular threat you might have a
command and control conflict, because you would have two different
forces serving the airport. The idea has been looked at, but it was
felt that what we needed was mainstream policing and the chief
constable to be involved with the local risk assessment and the local
airport. It was not considered appropriate but it has been
considered.
Q
186Paul
Holmes: The AOA witnesses also expressed concern about
every airport having to have armed police. To me the terrorist
potential of a crowded airport lobby would suggest that you need armed
police. What are your
thoughts? Jim
Fitzpatrick: We do not think that is an obligatory or
mandatory requirement. We do think that having the risk assessment
group review the needs of each airport will determine what is required
at each airport. We do not think it obligatory for every airport to
have an armed detachment. It will be for the senior managers of the
airport and the local constabulary to make an assessment and then work
out what is appropriate for
them.
Q
187Paul
Holmes: Finally, do we know when the draft code of
practice on how all this will operate and how decisions will be taken
is going to be
published? Jim
Fitzpatrick: We informally gave sight of it to all
stakeholders in November 2008 so it is informally in the domain. We
will be listening to comments and will produce it later this year.
Clearly, Royal Assent being given to the legislation will give us the
impetus to move forward but it will be later this
year.
The
Chairman: I will call Dr. Evan Harris, but we are running
ten minutes behind our
schedule.
Q
188Dr.
Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD): I just have
a quick question on the aspect of the Bill dealing with airport
security. I was wondering, given what has happened in respect of the
airbase at Diego Garcia, whether the Government were having new
thoughts about amending the Aviation Security Act 1982 to allow
searches of planes where the Secretary of State has a reason to suspect
extraordinary rendition? We have had a briefing to that effect from
Liberty, which I suspect you or your officials have seen. It has come
up previously in Bills such as this but it has not found
favour. Jim
Fitzpatrick: I am not sighted on that one but my
understanding is that it has not been
considered.
Q
189The
Chairman: The right to search an
aircraft? Jim
Fitzpatrick: I understand that it has not been
considered, but I can feed back to Dr. Harris and the Committee, once I
have had a chance to do some more research.
Q
190The
Chairman: If you communicate with Dr. Evan Harris,
will you please communicate with every Member of the
Committee? Jim
Fitzpatrick: As I said, I will do
that.
The
Chairman: Thank you. We now move on to an area to which we
are allocating perhaps the largest amount of time and that is
prostitution.
Q
191Mr.
Ruffley: In that spirit, I will take
proportionately the shortest amount of time because I have only two
questions for the Minister of
State. The
first picks up on what Shami Chakrabarti said in this morning’s
session, which was that strict liability is a blunt tool. She said that
an alternative way of clamping down on this abhorrent trade of
trafficking females was to have an offence with intent imported into
it—she suggested recklessness or negligence. On the strict
liability drafting, did you, with your officials and legal advisers,
give consideration to what Ms Chakrabarti said was possible, that is,
an element of intent? If not, why
not? Mr.
Coaker: My colleague, Alan Campbell, will say some
things on prostitution but Mr. Ruffley asks me directly so I
will respond to this question.
Without
taking too much of the Committee’s time, it is necessary to say
that the legislation we are proposing marks a fundamental shift in the
way we try to tackle this problem. That is what I said to Ms
Chakrabarti this morning. It is not about banning prostitution. It is
about trying to turn it around and say, let us stop for ever talking
about the women—as much as we need to in terms of improving
services, trying to prevent them entering prostitution in the first
place, and so on. Let us for a complete change focus on men and the
responsibility they have in this area. I am not ignoring the question
that was directly asked; I shall come to
it. Interestingly,
we have started to debate the issue in that way without being laughed
out of court. I make that point everywhere I go. You can argue that if
two, four, six, eight, 10 or whatever number of years ago, we had
started to say that we need to look at the male side of the problem,
people would have trashed it and said, “This is ridiculous.
Prostitution has existed for centuries, you are not going to change
anything,” and so on. I think that there has been a shift in the
debate, and to be fair to the shadow Policing Minister, he and his
Front-Bench colleagues have said that they are considering their
response. That is a change, too—all of us are now wrestling with
the problem.
The next
question is, what sort of offence do you create if you are talking
about the men? In a sense, you are trying to change the current dynamic
whereby a man purchasing sex in most instances—most, not all; I
do not want to decry everybody—thinks, “I’ll
purchase the sex.” They do not think, “Is this somebody
who is exploited?” We have talked about trafficking, but we are
also talking about women who are exploited, used, controlled and forced
by violent partners. In no sense can that be regarded as a free
choice.
We
then started to explore the matter and thought about how to create a
situation in which men, instead of acting with impunity, are put in a
position where, at the very least, they are concerned about the
consequences of their action. I am often told that there is no problem
and we should just prosecute them for rape, but how
many times has anybody been prosecuted for rape? Who
really believes that the alternative to what has been
suggested—I am not saying that Mr. Ruffley said
this—is to prosecute them for rape? So, we thought in our
discussions that the strict liability offence was necessary. Mr.
Ruffley asked whether you need intent—whether it is
recklessness.
Q
192Mr.
Ruffley: Was that considered in policy
terms? Mr.
Coaker: All the various issues were
considered—whether you just had an offence of having sex with a
trafficked woman, or with someone who was forced to work as a
prostitute. We thought that if we were really going to make a
difference, rather than introduce something cosmetic that made everyone
feel good but did not drive down to that particular interaction, we
would need something far stronger. That is why we have gone for the
strict liability offence. The point that Julie Kirkbride made this
morning is the one that we in the Home Office have had a considerable
debate about. Clearly, the difference between lawyers is on how you
define “controlled for gain”. We will need to consider
that point in Committee, but that is how we arrived at the strict
liability
offence.
Q
193Dr.
Harris: We can agree on the aim, but, at the Joint
Committee on Human Rights, we had an exchange about how you deal with
men, when I asked whether the Government were considering something
similar to the scheme in Italy, where there is a hotline for punters to
report abuses. They are encouraged to do so, and, to make it work, they
do not criminalise; they think that you will get better harm reduction
and more convictions by that method. You may recall that we had an
exchange when the Committee showed evidence from our visit that there
are 100 times more prosecutions for trafficking and 100 times more
women are saved—on the raw figures. People have considered the
demand side and how men can be approached, but to what extent did you
consider that option when formulating your policy? There is not much
reference to it in the “Tackling Demand for Prostitution”
review document.
Mr.
Coaker: We considered it. At the JCHR Committee we
had a number of exchanges, but we certainly had a constructive
exchange. I have been to Sweden and the Netherlands, we have done a
literature review, and we looked at research and evidence—I know
you were raising that point the other day, and had considered different
studies—and all those different things. At the end of the day,
if you are ever in government, you will make judgments about what you
consider to be the most appropriate. That is what it comes down to in
the end. You have all of those options, you consider them, and you make
a judgment about what you think will have an effect.
I know that
there is the argument that, if you have a strict liability offence, it
will affect the fact that there are all these men queuing up to phone
in and let the police know that they think that there is somebody being
trafficked or exploited. It is not just
trafficking; it is people who are forced into it through violence and a
dependence on drugs. All of those sorts of things are also examples of
somebody being exploited and who
cannot, in any sense of the word, be expected or
considered to have made a free choice. So, we have considered all of
these things, and, in the end, it comes back to what I said to
Mr. Ruffley: if you really want to make a difference, rather
than have something which is cosmetic and makes everyone feel good, you
have to get down there and drive into
that. | 
