§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ainger.]
§ 10.4 pm
§ Mr. David Borrow (South Ribble)The issue that I raise should concern all Members of the House. It relates to the problems that arise in the pubs and clubs throughout the land that are frequented by young people and to the injuries, in particular facial injuries, that can result from incidents involving glasses and bottles.
A few months ago, a constituent came to see me following an incident involving her child at a licensed premises in Lancashire. The child was badly injured by a glass as the result of an assault in a public house. Following her visit, my constituent spent a great deal of time and energy examining how the incident happened and the factors that might be involved in reducing the incidence of glassing in pubs and clubs.
My constituency includes the town of Leyland and the southern suburbs of Preston, so many of the young people in my area go to pubs and clubs in Leyland, but most of them go to the town centre pubs and clubs in Preston. The university in Preston now has more than 20,000 full-time students and it is the seventh largest university in Great Britain. It is a Mecca for young people.
The police and the local authority have been assiduous in ensuring that the pubs and clubs catering for young people are grouped together. There is closed circuit television, a strong police presence and most of the public houses and clubs have people on the doors. However, that does not stop incidents happening.
If large numbers of young people mix together with significant amounts of alcohol available and with glasses and bottles close to hand, violent incidents occur. Some of them will involve glassing that leads to severe facial injuries. We often think that such incidents involve males who one might argue have only themselves to blame. However, that is not always the case. Many incidents involve innocent bystanders or women both as victims and as aggressors. Therefore, we need to examine the scale of the problem as well as its causes.
I have carried out a little research on how many incidents of glassing take place each year. In 1999, the British crime survey estimated that there were 80,000 incidents involved glassing and that figure was based on a survey of a certain number of households. A survey a couple of years earlier produced a figure of 178,000 each year, but not all those incidents led to conviction or severe facial injuries.
I have a number of letters that give a Home Office figure of between 3,400 and 5,500 glassing incidents a year and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has released figures on the incidents involving severe injuries that have led to compensation claims. In 1999–2000, 6,550 claims were made following violent incidents in public houses, and many of them would have been glassing incidents. Of those, 3,448—that is 53 per cent.—led to monetary awards costing £7.2 million.
It has been pointed out to me that the statistics deal only with incidents in licensed premises and do not cover those that spill out of them on to the streets or surrounding areas. It has been estimated that the cost of glassing incidents to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is about £10 million. The figures are not insignificant.
813 What are the key factors that cause this problem? An important element in any glassing incident is the nature of the glass or bottle itself and significant progress has been made in many pubs and clubs in that regard over the past 10 years. Many traditional glasses have been replaced by ones made out of toughened glass, but it is clear that the repeated use in pubs and clubs of toughened glassware leads to the weakening of the glass itself. When toughened glass goes through the washer many times, it no longer has the properties that led people to support its introduction. An increasing number of severe injuries are arising from its use.
In 1998 or 1999, a patent was made for Safeglass, although production of glasses and bottles in that safety glass has not got off the ground. The documents relating to the patent state that there are two important applications of safety glass. The first is glassware and bottles. The documents explain that
12000 drink related incidents happen every week. The Home Office are to order magistrates to tighten conditions of pub and club licences to use toughened glasses to serve beer. This will reduce the injuries caused when glasses are used as weapons, currently running at 5500 per year. Safeglass glasses and bottles could play an important safety and security role in clubs or live events, they would also be cheaper than glass.Will the Home Office consider whether more research and investigation should take place into the use of such safety glass? Perhaps the Government could recommend that or introduce it in regulations as an alternative to toughened glass, given the weaknesses that have been discovered. Research into that is insufficient, and that needs to be addressed.Figures from a survey in 1993 on the wider problems of glass and their effects on bar staff suggested that 40 per cent. of bar staff received injuries not as a result of violent attacks, but simply through handling glassware in pubs and clubs. Anything that can be done to make glassware less likely to cause injury would have significant health and safety implications for bar staff.
My constituent and several organisations have mentioned the value of placing kitemarks on glassware. That would give people who go into pubs and clubs, and local authorities who inspect them, an idea of the quality and type of glassware that is being used. I am sure that that would improve things.
We need to consider the whole issue of alcohol-related violence. The use of CCTV in many pubs and clubs, which is growing, makes a difference by controlling the licensed premises. There are serious concerns about under-age drinking and excessive drinking by young people. There is also concern about the policies of the alcohol trade, which manufactures products with a high alcohol content which are attractive to young people.
Young people have nights out when they drink excessively, and that will probably always be the case. When I was 18 or 19, drinking pints of beer was a slower and different experience from drinking high-alcohol sweet-tasting products, which is what many young people drink. Much more alcohol is consumed in a short space of time than it was 30 years ago. It would help if the Government invested in schemes to deal with alcohol-related violence.
My constituent has been assiduous in campaigning locally on the issue. I have no intention of mentioning her by name because of the trauma that she and her family 814 experienced, but I made the commitment to raise in the Chamber all the matters that she has discovered from her research.
I have received a number of petitions and letters of support from police and Church groups. I also received a letter from Katie Parr, the welfare officer at the university of Central Lancashire, which says:
These acts are mindless and stupid and if we could implement the Safety glass, kite marks and a new scheme which concentrates on incidents relating to alcohol, then I feel we would all suffer less.The students' union at the university has taken a particular interest in the safety of its members when they are enjoying themselves in the centre of Preston.I received a letter of support from Tina Morrow, the director of Victim Support in Preston, who has been active in collecting signatures on petitions in the area, and a letter from Kevin Quigley, the principal at Cardinal Newman college in Preston, which takes many young people from my constituency. He says:
I write to support you in your attempt to get something done through the House of Commons about this issue.I have received a letter and much active support in collecting signatures for petitions from the Knights of St. Columba and the 323 branch of Leyland council. I had a very long and thoughtful letter from David Jenkins of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which has looked at the ways in which the number of accidents can be reduced. It is particularly concerned about the use of better glass.There may be no simple method of making it safer for our young people to have a good night out. Young people will always be fairly active and run the risk, when they have had a bit too much to drink, of being aggressive. As I said, the combination of energetic young people, excessive alcohol and dangerous weapons in the form of glass bottles and glasses full of alcohol leads to all too many severe facial injuries. Incidents will always happen, but as Members of Parliament, we need to do what we can to minimise the risks.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) on securing the debate. I know what competition there is for such debates and the effort that he has had to make. All those present will join me in offering regrets and sympathies to his constituent, and also our thanks for the fact that some good has come of a terrible event, in the sense that my hon. Friend and others have been encouraged to campaign on this important matter.
My hon. Friend drew attention, in particular, to the devastating consequences of glass being used as a weapon when violent incidents occur on licensed premises. Before responding to the detail of his remarks, I should like to state clearly for the record this Government's absolute determination to tackle violent crime, including violence that occurs on or in the vicinity of licensed premises, which we know is often fuelled by heavy drinking.
We know that something like 90 per cent. of the adult population in this country drink alcohol, often in the social setting of a pub, club or other licensed premises. They do so lawfully, peacefully and without causing harm 815 to themselves or to others. Although they rightly expect to be able to do so without the threat of violence or other antisocial behaviour, we know from a Portman Group survey, conducted about a year ago, that 14 per cent. of people have been the victim of violence in a pub at some time or other.
The British crime survey tells us that about 40 per cent. of all violent crime is alcohol-related, with as much as half of all stranger violence taking place in or around pubs and clubs. So as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, we are not talking about a small minority of people who drink too much and get into fights. Far too many completely innocent people are affected by this problem.
The issue raised by my hon. Friend concerns drinking glasses and the harm they cause when used to inflict horrible facial injuries in a violent act. I agree that we must do all we can to reduce that potential but, at the same time, we must ensure that we are doing all we can to tackle the circumstances in which violence occurs in the first place. Our general approach is set out in the action plan to tackle alcohol-related crime and disorder, which was launched by the Home Office in August 2000 and which explicitly recognises the part that glass can play in violent situations; some of the facts and figures that it quotes are well worth repeating. First, about 120,000 people suffer from facial injuries in violent circumstances each year in this country. In the vast majority of cases, either the victim or the assailant will have been drinking. About 5,000 of those incidents will involve what is commonly known as glassing, with devastating and often permanent consequences for the victim.
Research undertaken by the university of Wales suggests that bar glassware accounts for 10 per cent. of assault injuries in accident and emergency departments that lead to permanent, disfiguring facial scars. We believe that one response to that is the adoption of toughened drinking glasses in pubs and clubs. My hon. Friend mentioned safety glass, but the critical point is that toughened or safety glass alone will not prevent violence or injury, as he pointed out. Toughened glass can be up to six times more resistant to impact than conventional annealed glass, and breaks into smaller, blunt-edged pieces rather than long, sharp shards, so it significantly reduces the injuries that can be inflicted if the glass is used as a weapon. That is an undoubted benefit.
My hon. Friend spoke about the effect of time and wear on the properties of toughened glass. We are fully aware that it weakens far more quickly than conventional glass and has to be replaced more often. However, there are benefits to toughened glass, including its resistance to breakage and the manner in which it breaks. If my hon. Friend was trying to suggest that the way in which the glass breaks changes over time, I should be interested to know the facts, as we are not aware that it has such properties and would be happy to look into the matter.
Whatever the relative merits of toughened glass versus safety glass, the British Medical Journal noted in an editorial some years ago that
injury caused by drinking glasses could be reduced substantially by the universal use of toughened glass in bars and clubs.I am pleased that those words did not fall on deaf ears. In October 1997, the Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association—now the British Beer and Pub Association—estimated that toughened glass was in use in about a third 816 of public houses and recommended the more widespread adoption of toughened glass. Since then, those responsible for licensed premises have been making the switch to toughened pint and half-pint beer glasses—the glasses that are most often used in violent incidents—as they replace old stock. The British Beer and Pub Association now estimates that toughened beer glasses are used in about 90 per cent. of establishments, which is good progress.As well as looking at toughened or safety glass, we need to look more fundamentally at the availability of glass and glass bottles, particularly in some of our busier city centre establishments, where they are more likely to cause problems. Like glasses, empty beer bottles can be used as weapons and it is worth looking at whether or not anything can be done about that. Options are available, including a refusal to provide drinks in bottles—a practice that is followed in some establishments—or the adoption of plastic drinking glasses to replace beer glasses entirely. The Government support such measures, but we know that there can be resistance to ideas like these. Drinking from bottles is very much in vogue, particularly among younger drinkers, but fashion can be changed over time if there is a willingness to do so on the part of those who may be able to influence it. We are keen to promote a dialogue on such issues with the drinks industry. We know that some manufacturers and retailers have experimented with the use of plastic beer bottles in pubs and clubs, which may offer a viable way forward.
Home Office Ministers meet with representatives of the alcohol industry from time to time. I last met industry representatives as recently as 3 December, and at that meeting I raised the issues that my hon. Friend raises in the House. We should like the greater use of plastic to be considered, as part of our forward programme for tackling alcohol-related crime and disorder.
In the individual establishment, there is a wide range of steps that can usefully be taken. Specifically in relation to glass, those include the education of customers, licensees and staff about the potential dangers arising from the careless use of glass; ensuring that bar staff are diligent in collecting up empty bottles and glasses within the establishment, thereby reducing the potential for accidental harm; and ensuring that licensees and door staff keep a tight rein on their bottles and glasses, preventing them from being removed from the premises where they might later cause injury or other problems to people leaving the premises.
Those are relatively simple steps, but we know that where they are followed—as they have been, for example, by establishments in Liverpool city centre—they can reduce the potential dangers considerably. We are keen to see those and similar measures adopted throughout the country.
Alongside those important measures, there is more work that can be done to ensure that licensed premises are safe and trouble-free places. Indeed, we must recognise that the overwhelming majority of them are. The licensed trade clearly has the primary responsibility for managing licensed premises properly, so as to prevent trouble occurring in the first place or see that it is nipped in the bud.
It has for many years been an offence for a licensee to permit disorder on his or her premises, and we have recently strengthened the law in section 32 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, which came into effect on 817 1 December, so that it is now an offence for anyone who works on licensed premises, not just the licensee, to permit drunkenness or violent behaviour on the premises.
Other key measures that we are raising with the industry include initiatives to encourage sensible drinking and to discourage binge drinking, which can often precede trouble on licensed premises. The recent phenomenon of "happy hour" and other retail initiatives encourage the wrong kind of drinking and do great damage to the reputation of the industry. We support initiatives such as Pubwatch schemes, backed up by exclusion orders, to keep known troublemakers out of licensed premises. We believe that the industry can do more to avoid irresponsible sales promotions, such as those that offer, for a fixed fee, the chance to "drink `til you drop." Those encourage heavy drinking, which often leads on to trouble.
We know that other measures can be taken when all the local key partners work together to develop innovative solutions to local problems. That may provide some of the answers that my hon. Friend was looking for when he spoke about the need to reduce alcohol-related violence. In a number of areas, local licensees sit on the local crime and disorder partnership, which can help to a produce co-ordinated local programme such as the city centre safe initiative in Manchester, which offers a clear example of what can be achieved through effective partnership working.
The partnership in Manchester includes local sponsorship and has been able to set up a wide range of key initiatives, including late-night transport, targeted policing, pub and club-watch schemes and design and 818 training initiatives to make the city centre a safer place for those who go there to enjoy an evening's entertainment. Any ideas that my hon. Friend wants to feed into the ongoing debate between the Home Office and the industry would be very welcome. I look forward to receiving those suggestions and to having a continuing dialogue with him.
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and enabling us to raise its profile through this debate. I hope that I have been successful in demonstrating to him that we take these matters seriously and are seeking to work with the industry. We are receiving from the overwhelming majority of those involved in the industry a fairly positive a response to the sort of initiatives that we are asking them to consider. If we can persuade them, there is an awful lot that we can change in terms of the habits that have grown up in the retail sector and the alcohol trade.
We have seen some great changes with regard to the way in which the product itself is marketed. My hon. Friend referred to some of the high-alcohol drinks now available, which were not available some time ago. Some of the advertising associated with such drinks, aimed at young people and the very worst of habits, was effectively curtailed by guidance followed by the industry. We now need the sort of thing that has been done so successfully with regard to the product to be applied to the retailing of alcohol as well. I think that we could make great strides in reducing the sort of incidents that my hon. Friend so graphically brought to the House. I thank him for doing so.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes to Eleven o'clock.