I beg to move amendment 142, in clause 39, page 40, line 12, leave out “3 years” and insert “1 year”.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 138, in clause 39, page 40, line 31, at end insert—

“(9) Where a person has been served a nuisance begging notice the serving authority must refer that person to their local authority who must provide guidance relating to welfare rights or any other associated issue the person faces.”

This amendment would require the local council to offer support for people given nuisance begging notices.

Clause stand part.

Amendment 141, in clause 40, page 41, line 5, at end insert—

“(c) any interference with the person’s attendance at substance abuse support services, mental or physical health support services, or places of worship.”

Clause 40 stand part.

Clause 41 stand part.

Clause 42 stand part.

Clauses 39 to 42 relate to nuisance begging notices, which will be a step up from the nuisance begging directions discussed previously. Clause 39 sets out new powers for an authorised person to give a nuisance begging prevention notice to a person appearing to be aged 18 or over if satisfied on reasonable grounds that the person is engaging, or has engaged, in nuisance begging. This is a notice that will prohibit the person from engaging in a specified behaviour for a specified period of time, or require them to do specific things, within specific times and in—or not in—certain places. Clause 39 (3) provides that the maximum duration of any requirement is three years. That is a significant period of time. Subsections (7) and (8) make it an offence to fail to comply with a nuisance begging prevention notice without reasonable excuse, the maximum penalty being one month imprisonment—I would be exceptionally surprised if that is how it is intended to be used—or a fine of up to £2,500, or both. That is a punishment that is likely to be difficult to enforce.

The powers contained in these clauses are substantial. They place stringent requirements on individuals not to engage in certain behaviour. Of course, that can also be used positively to ensure an individual engages with support services. As in clause 38, an authorised person is defined as a police constable or someone from the relevant local authority. We know that police officers up and down the country already contend with heavy workloads and are not necessarily experts in nuisance begging or homelessness. I would be interested to hear from the Minister about how that might be covered in guidance, but there is a real risk that these new powers send the signal that begging is a criminal justice issue and that it is the police’s job to sort. In some cases it might be, but in many if not most it will not be. I hope to hear the Minister say that he does not think this is an issue we can police our way out of. Yes, we need to break organised criminal gangs, but beyond that the reasons for people ending up destitute and begging for money are service failure or their engagement with services across the piece all the way to the final stage of sitting next to a cap or a cup. It is wrong to say that that is simply a criminal justice issue.

We had this problem in Stockton with nuisance begging, with people aggressively approaching customers sitting outside a café having a coffee. The local authority and the police force worked together on a solution and have put the resources in, but I am concerned that it could become just a police matter, as my hon. Friend has outlined. Can he think of any way we can get round that, such as resources for local authorities?

I am grateful for that intervention. The case for resources for local authorities is one that we cannot make enough. My hon. Friend gives a good example of partnership working that has not just turned to criminal justice outcomes and told the police, “Well, this is now your problem to deal with.” We need that good faith partnership working and I hope that my amendments help to promote that to some degree.

Amendment 138 seeks to mitigate those challenges by inserting a new subsection so that

“Where a person has been served a nuisance begging notice the serving authority must refer that person to their local authority who must provide guidance relating to welfare rights or any other associated issue the person faces.”

The amendment seeks to ensure that someone who receives a nuisance begging notice is referred to the right support services and can liaise with the right qualified individuals on the matter. That would move away from criminalising the person and towards making sure that they get support to make a change in their life. My amendment is one way to do that and I would be interested in hearing about other ways from the Minister. In a previous debate, the Minister said it would be “support first”, and this is a way to make that real.

Clause 40 governs what can and cannot be required in the prevention notice. I have sought to amend that with amendment 141, which mirrors what I said in the previous debate. I will not repeat those arguments or press this to a Division, on the basis of what the Minister offered.

Amendment 142 would reduce the period that a prevention notice may be in place from three years to one year. Three years is a lengthy period for which—we will discuss this in relation to clause 49—someone could be told that they cannot attend their local town centre or high street. That could be based on the judgment of quite a junior officer, with minimal oversight, on pain of a month in prison or a fine of £2,500. Setting to one side those who are in genuine destitution, who I cannot believe we would want to banish from their town centres, part of the risk is that criminal gangs will cycle through the vulnerable people that they are exploiting. It will not matter a jot to those gangs that that person has to deal with a very difficult consequence for their life; they will move on to someone else. Amendment 42 would reduce the period of the notice down to one year. I hope that the Minister can explain the rationale for choosing three years.

Clause 41 is about the appeals process. We support an appeals process being included in the Bill, but I have significant concerns, which will be mirrored in the debates relating to homelessness, about access to justice and about whether the most destitute will be able to engage with the magistrates court to try to get a notice lifted. I would not challenge the power in clause 42 to vary notices, as I suspect there will be moments when they will be revised down.

Those are some ideas to try and soften some of the provisions. I am interested in the Minister’s views.

As the shadow Minister explained, his amendments are to clauses that provide for nuisance begging prevention notices. The notices are a further tool that would be made available to police and local authorities to tackle nuisance begging, where it arises. The nuisance begging prevention notices that are set out in this and subsequent clauses follow the structure of existing notices such as community protection notices, which the police and local authorities are already familiar with using.

The nuisance begging prevention notice builds on the move-on direction in clause 38, allowing for an escalated approach, and can be tied in with relevant offers of support. The notice will prohibit the relevant nuisance begging behaviours and help to direct the person into the relevant support where it is necessary to do so in order to prevent the nuisance behaviour. For example, the notice may state that the individual must not beg close to cashpoints or that they must not approach people to ask for money, and also that they should attend a drug treatment centre so that their support needs can be assessed. In that way, the public would be protected and any relevant underlying drivers causing the nuisance begging could be addressed.

In relation to the point that the shadow Minister raised, I can confirm that the intention is absolutely to support people. We want to help address the underlying causes of begging and rough sleeping, which may be related to mental health problems or drug problems. I will give the shadow Minister a sense of the thinking on this. In drafting the Bill, there was extensive debate about whether we could go further and actually require people to have drug treatment, mental health treatment or whatever, or to attend a refuge or a shelter. There is evidence that people do not always want to accept those offers of help, so we considered whether we could introduce a power to essentially require them to do it. Having taken legal advice, it was suggested that that would not be lawful, and that is why this is constructed in the way it is. However, hopefully that illustrates that the Government’s thinking is that we want to offer more assistance and to get more people who are sleeping rough or begging into mental health treatment, drug treatment and alcohol treatment. We thought of going further, but for legal reasons that are principally connected to the European convention on human rights, we were not able to do so. Hopefully that illustrates the thinking on these issues.

Amendment 142 seeks to reduce the maximum duration of a nuisance begging prevention notice from three years to one year. I should start by stressing that the three years provided for in the Bill is the maximum period over which the notice can be enforced, and, naturally, where appropriate, a shorter timeframe can be specified. It is for the authorised person, which will very often be a local authority officer, not just a police constable, to consider the individual circumstances—all the relevant information about the person’s circum-stances—to decide what is appropriate, reasonable and proportionate.

In some cases, prohibiting someone from engaging in nuisance begging behaviour for three years might be necessary to give assurance to other members of the community that that behaviour is not acceptable and is being taken seriously. Clause 42 does make provision for notices to be varied or discharged, should circumstances and need change during the period of the notice. Shortening the maximum period from three years to one, as the amendment seeks to do, would reduce the flexibility afforded by these tools and the ability of the authorised person to help members of the public who have been negatively impacted.

Amendment 138 seeks to provide that, where a nuisance begging prevention notice is issued, a person must be referred to their local authority, which in turn must provide guidance. I spoke to that a moment ago, and gave a flavour of the Government’s thinking; we want more people who are sleeping on the streets, or who are begging, to get referred into support.

The shadow Minister mentioned that he was concerned that the police would not have enough time to do that; we are also encouraging the police to always take a problem-solving approach to problems where they encounter them. I am specifically encouraging the police to refer more people into drug treatment. I have been working with Chief Constable Richard Lewis, the chief constable of Dyfed-Powys—who is also the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for drugs—to get more people referred into treatment, and I will discuss that with him further on Monday of next week. But, of course, it is not just police that can use these powers; local authorities, as the public health authority, often have oversight of many of these treatment options, particularly for drugs and alcohol, and also have close relationships with the health service in relation to mental health.

What concerns me, regarding certainty of referral, is if there are cases where people—where I live in Birmingham, the biggest problem in nuisance begging is Romanian women who are clearly being trafficked; there are no two ways about that. I fear their criminalisation more so than their traffickers’ criminalisation, which is nil. I wonder whether there could be a mechanism for referral directly to the national referral mechanism. Both the police and local authorities act as first responders in the national referral mechanism already, so that would not need a change in the law. Maybe that is a compulsory referral that could be made.

The hon. Lady raises an important point. As she says, first responders, among others, are already under an obligation—I think a statutory obligation—to make referrals into the national referral mechanism. I suspect that it was the Modern Slavery Act 2015—I am looking to my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury, for assistance; it probably is that Act—that enacted our obligations under the ECAT, or Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, treaty. So, those obligations already exist. I would certainly agree with the hon. Lady that, if first responders—either the police or indeed local authorities—think that someone is a victim of trafficking or modern slavery, they should certainly make the referral into the national referral mechanism.

In terms of potential prosecution, obviously there are provisions in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, where someone is the victim of trafficking, that provide protection in those circumstances. I would also say that there are some circumstances in which referrals into support are not necessary. There are many cases—probably the majority of cases—where they are necessary, and I would expect that to happen in those, whether it is the police or a local authority, but there are also circumstances in which it is not necessary, or where the help has been repeatedly refused in the past. I therefore think that a blanket requirement on the face of the Bill, as per the amendment, probably is not appropriate.

However, again, I agree with the spirit enshrined in the shadow Minister’s amendment, and I would like to put it on record that the expectation from the Government, as well as, I suspect, from the Opposition, is that, where somebody needs support—mental health support, drug treatment support, alcohol treatment support, domestic abuse support, or protection from trafficking and other vulnerabilities—the police and local authorities will make the appropriate referral. But that will not necessarily apply in all cases, whereas the amendment, as drafted, covers everyone, regardless of whether there is a need or not.

Amendment 141 is similar to amendment 140, which was in the previous group. As I said then, I am not sure that it is possible or desirable to set out all the possible circumstances in which an individual may need access, so guidance is the right place to put that.

The expectation, rather than necessarily the duty in law, is a referral. Beyond a referral, what happens if a woman nuisance begs in the 1,000 days that it takes to get referral through the national referral mechanism? It takes women 1,000 days to get a conclusive grounds decision, and it takes men 500. Or what if someone is waiting for a mental health referral? As I think every Member will know, you might as well wee in the wind. What happens if they nuisance beg in the 1,000 days, or a year, from when they are first helped to when they can get counselling in a domestic abuse service? What happens in the gap?

If someone is given a nuisance begging prevention notice, the expectation will be that they comply with it. If there is any prosecution for a breach, it may be that the protections in the Modern Slavery Act would apply. Again, if a police officer or local authority officer thinks there is a problem with trafficking, it may well be that they think it inappropriate to make the prevention order. It is a power, not an obligation; they do not have to give the notice. We would expect the officer to have regard to the circumstances of the individual, which might include those the hon. Lady described. The national referral mechanism can take quite a while, although it is speeding up, but it may be that other support is available much more quickly than the support that follows an NRM reasonable grounds decision.

To repeat the point, the expectation is that support is made available where it is necessary, but support could be provided hand in hand with a nuisance begging prevention notice. The authorities could seek to prevent nuisance begging, which is bad for the wider public, by using the notices and other powers, while at the same time ensuring appropriate safeguarding. The two are not mutually exclusive; it is possible to do both at the same time. I also draw the Committee’s attention to clause 39(7), which is relevant to the intervention. It says it is only an offence to breach the conditions “without reasonable excuse”. For example, if someone has been coerced into behaviour that results in a breach, that coercion could—it would be for the court to determine—be a reasonable excuse, and therefore a defence.

I hope that that explains the purpose of clauses 39 to 42. Although I understand and agree with the spirit of the amendments, they are not necessarily the right way to achieve the objectives that the shadow Minister set out.

I am grateful for the Minister’s response. The “reasonable excuse” provision in clause 39(7) gives a degree of comfort, but the reality is that, particularly in the trafficking cases mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, individuals will not say that they have been coerced into nuisance begging. Instead, they will take the punishment; they will not be able to proffer what would be considered a reasonable excuse. That is our concern.

The debate on amendment 141 mirrored previous debates, and I am happy not to move it on the basis of the answers I have had. On amendment 142, I hear what the Minister said about the three-year duration being a maximum, not a target, but I fear that because it is in the Bill, it will become a magnet. With regards to police constables, we know about their training and codes of practice, so we can be confident about the criteria that they are expected to apply, but we are concerned that the Bill is—for good reason—drafted in such a way that very junior local authority officers could be making that decision.

Who have never heard of the NRM.

Who do not know anything about the national referral mechanism and have no criteria to make a judgment against. Frankly, an authorised person who works frequently in a town centre or on a high street might just really not like someone. This power would be available to them, with minimal oversight, and there would be little recourse against it, which is why I think that three years is too much. I will push the amendment to a Division as a result.

I am grateful for what the Minister said about amendment 138 and support first; I completely take him at face value, and that is clearly what he said. My anxiety, as we enter the final year of this Session of Parliament, is that I have done lots of these Bills, and Ministers change. I thought that I had a really good concession from a Minister on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, and the next day the Minister changed; I have learned from that. What is in the Bill is important, and I am really keen that that message be in it, so I will also push amendment 138 to a Division.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 9.

Question accordingly negatived.

Amendment proposed: 138, in clause 39, page 40, line 31, at end insert—

“(9) Where a person has been served a nuisance begging notice the serving authority must refer that person to their local authority who must provide guidance relating to welfare rights or any other associated issue the person faces.”—

This amendment would require the local council to offer support for people given nuisance begging notices.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 9.

Question accordingly negatived.

Clause 39 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 40 to 42 ordered to stand part of the Bill.