Lords Chamber

Wednesday 7th January 2026

(began 1 day, 1 hour ago)

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None Portrait Oral questions: Increasing productivity in the public sector
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I beg leave to ask the question. Standing in my name on the Order Paper.
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None Portrait Oral questions: Reconsidering the refusal to allow Shamima Begum and other British-born women and children detained in north-east Syria to return to the UK
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Oral Question Lord Dobbs. standing in my name on the Order Paper. Paper.
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None Portrait Oral questions: Imposing sanctions against the United States in response to its actions in Venezuela
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Fourth of all. question standing in my name and the Order Paper.
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Baroness Morgan of Cotes Portrait Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-affiliated)
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My Lords, I rise to move. >> My Lords, I rise to move. Amendment 356 A in my name. I had hoped, as the Minister knows, we hoped, as the Minister knows, we might have reached this bill last month, in the same week that the government published its long awaited Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, which would have been appropriate. But I left him to debate another extremely important issue, and it's a pleasure to open the proceedings on the bill in 2026.

With this amendment, I am sure that all noble Lords support the government's ambition of halving violence against women and girls. The challenge with any such strategy is, of course, in its delivery. Securing safer public spaces for women and girls is essential, and safer streets was, of course, a key demand and continues to be following the terrible murder of Sarah Everard. But there are, of course, many places where women and girls feel unsafe, and that includes our trains and public transport. I noted this paragraph on page 65 from the government's December strategy.

It's headed every corner of public life will be safe. Women and girls must both feel safe and be safe in every aspect of public life. Safety is not just about reducing risk, it is about creating environments that foster confidence, dignity and freedom of movement. Design and planning are critical tools in achieving this. Well lit streets, accessible transport and thoughtful urban design can deter violence, reduce opportunities for harm and send a clear message that public spaces belong to everybody.

By embedding considerations of Borg into planning and transport guidance, we can ensure that safety is built into the fabric of communities, making public spaces welcoming and secure. For all this, we, the government, will update national design guidance to reflect a perspective ensuring safety considerations inform how public spaces are designed. Turning to this amendment, the House should be aware that since 2021, there has been an alarming rise in violence against women and girls on our railways. It is up 59%. Sexual offences specifically have risen by 10% and harassment up 6%.

Put this in actual numbers in 20 2223, there were 2475 sexual offences. That was up from 2246 the year before. In 2021, there were 7561 crimes against women and girls on railways were recorded by British Transport Police that had risen by 2324 to 11,357. It is therefore no surprise that these crimes are now classed as a national emergency by the National Police Chiefs Council, and due to this need, two thirds 63% of women say they avoid travelling alone and even women that do continue to use public transport often undertake what is called normalised behaviour, like being very choosy where they sit or assiduously avoiding making eye contact with any fellow passengers.

Now, of course, numbers only tell half the story for each survivor of an offence or an attempted offence, their experience stays with them. And as we heard just in the last couple of weeks, in the powerful testimony given by Her Majesty the Queen. But there are, of course, many others who have bravely shared their experiences of vulnerability in a place that they should not feel vulnerable at all. Now, it is clear from the numbers I have just given to the House that action is needed to ensure that measures can be put in place to reduce this level of crime against women and girls on our national rail network, and it is a government who need to take a lead on this.

Now, this is, of course, a probing amendment. The wording in subsection one would place a clear duty that the British Transport Police, and I quote from the amendment, must take all reasonable steps to prevent violence against women and girls on trains. Subsection two sets out what such abuse could entail, but is not limited to those offences. And then subsection three sets out what reasonable steps must include. Now, the reason this is a probing amendment is that I suspect that the Minister will tell the House shortly, tell me shortly that this is not the right bill for such an amendment.

So I want to take this opportunity to say that whilst I might have some limited sympathy for his argument, he is looking slightly surprised. So perhaps I pre-empted or that's not the argument that he's going to make, in which case I would be delighted. But if it is, then Ministers will not be able to use the same argument in the forthcoming Railways Bill, where the government will be accepting a clear responsibility for what happens on trains operating as part of their nationalised services. Now, the reason for subsection three is that enforcement after the event the perpetrators is not sufficient.

If the government stands any chance of cutting violence against women and girls by 50%, prevention is key to achieving anything like that goal. The suggestion in subsection three about what could constitute reasonable steps is vital if we are to move to a preventative and safety by design model, and a crucial first step would be, as the amendment suggests, the sharing of data about cases and levels of violence against women and girls between the British Transport Police and the rolling stock companies.

Now, of course, this is not just about violence against women and girls in relation to passengers, but it is highly relevant to female staff operating on the rail network to following Royal assent of the Passenger Railway Services Public Ownership Bill 2024, the Department for transport constructed DfT operators to assume responsibility for train operators ownership in England and provide and I quote, safe, secure and sustainable transport. However, since then there has been no clarification as to how this will occur.

These amendments provide a way in which there can be a review of safety issues and standards on trains, better and more synchronised technology subject to government standards, and fitted at the point that a train is manufactured would truly create that safe, secure and sustainable transport. It also ensures that the government could have true oversight of this issue, and that all modern technology and innovation used by rail operating companies to help drive confidence in passengers, especially women, that are used by manufacturers subject to a gold standard.

In addition, whilst manufacturers have the option to not include as long as manufacturers have the option to not include extra specifications that cost them money but do not seem to bring them monetary benefit, merely societal benefit, they are less likely to install such measures, especially in the current economic environment where every penny will count. It's worth remembering that the previous government created the Secure Stations Scheme, which emphasised collaborative working and station design that deters crime and aids in safeguarding vulnerable individuals using advanced technologies created by innovative companies that provide rolling stock with custom made parts and technology.

These amendments would allow the extension of this scheme to further improve passenger confidence. Just including more CCTV is insufficient. Design features such as, for example, improved lighting deployed by a company such as Beaver Rail are very relevant here. This amendment is an early opportunity for the government to show it is ready to stand behind its December Violence Against Women and Girls strategy. It will also demonstrate that delivery of the strategy is a priority across all government departments, and it is not just being left to the Home Office.

I beg leave to move. Amendment 356 a.
15:58
Lord Hendy Portrait Lord Hendy (Labour)
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Amendment proposed after clause 109, insert the new clause as printed on the Marshalled List. >> Lord, it's a. >> Pleasure to follow.

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Pleasure to follow. Baroness Morgan of Cotes. My proposed amendment 356 F is proposed amendment 356 F is complementary in a sense to hers. My amendment would create a specific offence of assaulting a transport worker whilst at work. It would be an equivalent protection to that given to retail workers by clause 37 of the bill. And there is, of course, an existing legislative existing legislation protecting emergency workers laws. I confess to a certain unease in proposing specific offences for specific groups of workers.

But in the case of transport workers, there are particular circumstances which I think justify a an offence to protect them. There's been a marked increase in violence against transport workers. The situation, of course, was highlighted by the multiple stabbing at Huntingdon on the 1st of November 2025, but violent offences against rail staff have increased by 35% in the year 2024, according to the British Transport Police Authority. The overall increase in both incidents and severity of violence against transport workers is to be noted.

And of course, it's not just railway workers. It we transport workers protected would include those on the underground metro, tram, ferries and bus workers and all other transport workers. The problem has been exacerbated by cuts to the funding of the British Transport Police, which faces a shortfall of 8.5 million for the year 2025 to 2026, and has been awarded just 4.6% increase in funding compared to the request that the force made for 9.8%.

It's estimated that around 1000 additional officers are required to restore protection to historic levels. Instead of that, some 500 posts are due to disappear by the end of the year 2025 to 6. The British Transport Police Authority figures suggest that police presence on the railway has dropped by one third since the year 2009 to 10. A survey of 6000 RMT members in transport reported in 2025 that nearly two thirds had been assaulted in the past year.

Lord Dear. There can be no doubt that the privatisation of rail and bus networks led to has led to cancellations, delays and overcrowding, which in turn have contributed to passenger anger, which has created an environment in which criminal there is criminal behaviour by a very few. The government is addressing those more fundamental issues, not least by the Great British railway legislation, in respect of which, of course, I pay respects to the work of my noble kinsmen.

But the this amendment would be, I suggest, a useful adjunct to these measures, and added protection to our hard pressed transport workers, who showed, of course, their heroic dedication to their duties during Covid. I believe that the amendment, or at least its purpose, is supported by the British Transport Police, rail delivery Group, Network Rail and Stagecoach, the bus operator, as well as RMT, who asked me to draft it. I hope the Minister can find a place for the amendment or something like it in the bill, or at least meet with me and other supportive Lords and the RMT to discuss ways in which this specific problem may otherwise be addressed.
16:03
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
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My Lords, I'd like to speak in >> My Lords, I'd like to speak in particular in support of amendment three. Five. Six a in the name of my noble friend Baroness Morgan of of Cote. I also would like to hope that the noble Lord in replying might see fit to include this in this bill equally as argued by by the noble Lord opposite for his amendment, it's very difficult to find the right bill, the Railways Bill is one possibility.

I've tried to put some aspects into the Crime and Policing Bill that I was told wasn't the right place. Now I'm told that the English devolution bill is not the right place, but we will keep seeking it. I'm particularly supportive of the comments that my noble friend made in moving her amendment on protecting public spaces, and not just the very sad and tragic case of Sarah Everard, but the one that is closer to home for me, that of Claudia Lawrence. As I mentioned briefly before, the house rose in December, Claudia Lawrence disappeared in the most bizarre circumstances, walking from her flat to work in York at the as a chef in York University, and has never been seen since.

The police enquiries have been intermittent, partly ongoing, partly not. And obviously this is causing extreme regret and anxiety to to her family, not least her mother, who I still remain in contact with. I should declare an interest. I wasn't the MP at the time that Claudia disappeared, but I've tried to help the family subsequently. When for five years I was the MP for for for Malton. I do believe that this bill actually could very seriously be the right opportunity to address these issues.

In particular of of these serious attacks and aggravated attacks of women on public transport that I know does whatever age you might be, younger women perhaps feel more vulnerable. But as one gets older, one does think about what time of day or night one should be travelling. So I think it affects every age group. And elderly men I think as well are affected by this, but it's a particular problem of attacks on women that I think my noble friend has been right to address.

But I wondered if she or the government might might seek to expand this to public spaces to make sure that where there are incidents, there can be closure for the family, such as in the case of Claudia Lawrence, that her mother Joan, can find some

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settlement and closure in the case. I'm grateful. For this short, short debate. I'd simply like to perhaps widen

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I'd simply like to perhaps widen it a little bit beyond just just the railways. I'm blessed in Greater Manchester by living at the Greater Manchester by living at the heart of a of a major Metrolink tram network, and the tram network has many similarities with the has many similarities with the railways. There's often very few staff late at night, particularly on the on the trams, and women and
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston Portrait Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Conservative)
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I it's actually the noble Lord Lord Hendy amendment 356, which attracts me to the chamber. attracts me to the chamber. Although I, I don't necessarily share his arguments or reasoning. The main purpose of my speaking, the noble of the Minister won't be surprised, I'm sure to hear, is that I think it affords an opportunity for me to highlight again, that the government's decision to introduce, at clause 37, a new offence of assault against a retail worker and only a retail worker risks creating a new problem.

Now, as I've said before, I know that in doing that, the government's intentions are good and I don't have any desire to mount a campaign against clause 37. But the fact that a new offence of assault against a retailer is otiose doesn't mean it has no negative effects. If it causes other public facing workers to believe they are not protected. If assaulted. And as I've argued before, clearly they are the workers that noble Lord Lord Hendy has been referring to in his remarks will be protected without his amendment.

They will be. But what I worry about is the people fearing that they will not be, and this deterring employees from exercising the delegated authority that we need them to exercise to uphold good order when in charge of a public place or space. And it's because of this that I, I do ask the noble Lord, the Minister, and I know he and I will continue to have this discussion, and he knows very much. I'm looking forward to that discussion.

But I think this is something that I just would urge him to think again, because I, I just find it hard to understand how the government can legislate for some and not others in this way. And whilst it's not where I would start, I do think we have to be very conscious of unintended consequences of clause 37, which the noble Lord Lord Hendy has highlighted in his remarks today.
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Lord Goddard of Stockport Portrait Lord Goddard of Stockport (Liberal Democrat)
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I write to speak to amendment 399. In my noble friend, Baroness Pidgeon name was unable to attend today, and also that of my noble friend Baroness Doocey. This amendment would enable CCTV systems on the railways to be quickly available to the police and continually for 30 days. Alongside defining the technical standards to support this access. It's about ensuring investigations on the railway can be carried out efficiently. The amendment was first tabled by our colleagues Daisy Cooper, following a spate of bike thefts at Saint Albans station.

In trying to resolve this issue, the correspondence from the British Transport Police was quite revealing. The CCTV system at Saint Albans is operated by Govia Thameslink Railways GB, as part of a commercial franchise agreement. GTR manages CCTV across 238 stations with over 6000 cameras, and whilst British Transport Police and other forces have established information sharing agreements with GTR and similar operators, these agreements are designed to govern data management, including storage and access protocols. They do not constitute contracts with commitments to supply CCTV footage within time frames or specific volumes.

Currently, there are no provisions for rail franchise agreements and that mandates specifically service levels for supplying CCTV footage is not in the law yet. Whilst this may change over coming years, the franchises may be nationalised. This still remains an issue. Unlike Council on CCTV systems that are often featured with integrated platforms allowing direct access. Many rail CCTV systems are stand alone, not remotely connected. Retrieval often requires physical visits to stations, delay access, and sometimes operators impose limits on the duration and length of footage they can supply.

Whilst that knowledge leads to challenges as a result of the current franchise arrangements which will gradually be resolved, all the constraints are rooted in the operational systems. I'm aware that in September, the government has announced it will be providing almost £70 million for funding so that Network Rail can make some improvements to CCTV. And while this is welcome, amendment 399 would ensure that a legal obligation exists and I hope the noble Lord, the Minister, will look carefully at the issues we are raising today.

Turning to the other amendments in this group 3568 from Baroness Morgan of Cotes a duty on British Transport Police to take steps to prevent violence against women and girls on trains. This is a national emergency with 1 in 4 women have experienced domestic abuse and a woman is killed by a man once every three days. Given that fewer than 1 in 6 victims of rape or attempted rape report their assault to police with reasons cited, including the police won't believe them could not help the concerns.

They would not be understood. Only 2.6% of rape offences result in a charge or summons, and it's crucial we do everything we can to assist in this process. We fully support specialised violence against women and girls teams in every police station, including British Transport Police station, and welcome the government's overall work in this important area. The amendment also raises the issue of rolling stock design, and it's a real opportunity here as the railways come under public ownership for the government to lead on the right design for the interior of its new fleet of trains and the procedures to design to cut out crime and ensure safety and accessibility to everybody.

And that should be the heart of that design. However, it should be noted that rolling stock, of course, would not be publicly owned, rather continued to be leased as the current situation is, and that may need to be looked at again. Lord Henley amendment 356 creates an offence for assault and public transport worker, rather similar to the offences of assault on retail workers and emergency workers. We are sympathetic with this amendment, but I think, as Lord Henley has indicated himself, it may want some refinement regarding the wording, but the principle of it is is clear and obvious that that protection is needed.

These are important group of amendments and based on it's based on the safety for our railway networks and our systems and our travel in public. I look forward to the Minister's response to the many serious points that have been

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raised. Thank you. Five, six. Eight. In the name of my noble friend, I think I recognise the problem will probably be problem will probably be enforcement and the answer may have to be a lot more. British Transport Police routinely patrolling on Police routinely patrolling on certain trains. But I also want to raise another issue which affects women. Now this this amendment women. Now this this amendment deals with the big crimes rape and sexual offences, stalking upskirting domestic abuse. But women and girls also suffer the bad behaviour on trains.

For example, if a woman or girl goes on to a train and the only seat left has got some yobs rucksack on it, how many women or girls would say could you move your rucksack please? So they probably stay silent, afraid that if they do speak up they'll be attacked. And the same goes on late at night when there's groups of youths have been drunken or making a noise or playing their music loudly, causing a disturbance, I think, well, I often have the guts to tell.

I had to tell someone a few weeks ago, take your feet off the seats. And he did. But I wonder how many women and girls would actually take that action to ask people to turn the music down?
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16:15
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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This has been an interesting debate, and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this group of amendments, each of which addresses the very issue of safety on our public transport networks, whether this be for passengers, workers or those tasked with policing them. The amendments before us reflect genuine concern about how effectively our current frameworks protect people from violence, intimidation and abuse in transport settings, and they deserve careful consideration from the Minister. So I'll begin with amendment 356A tabled by my noble friend Baroness Mone, which would place a duty on the British Transport Police to take all reasonable steps to prevent violence against women and girls on trains, violence against women and girls remains an appalling and persistent problem.

Just yesterday, the government and Liberal Democrats joined together to defeat a conservative amendment to the sentencing bill that would have exempted sexual offenders and domestic abusers from the automatic presumption of a suspended sentence for victims of sexual assault or domestic abuse. The distinction between a custodial sentence and a suspended sentence one is not an abstract policy question. It is the difference between knowing that their abuser has been removed from the community and knowing that they remain at liberty. This point is reinforced by the government's recent recognition of the scale of the problem.

Violence against women and girls has been described by the Home Secretary as a national emergency. The Government of Domestic Abuse Protection orders to track domestic abusers. But the most effective way to protect victims is to ensure that offenders are facing facing custodial sentences for their crimes. A government that opposes this principle is not a government that can claim to hold violence against women and girls as a priority, and in the year ending 2024, police recorded more than 106 sexual offences in England and Wales, an increase of around 10% on the previous year.

Women continue to report feeling unsafe on public transport, particularly during off peak hours and at night, so this amendment recognises that prevention must go beyond enforcement alone. It emphasises on data sharing and engagement in train design, reflects the reality that safety is shaped by visibility and coordination. It is a practical, forward looking measures which deserve serious engagement from the government, and I hope the Minister considers them carefully. Turning to amendment 356 F in the name of the noble Lord Lord Hendy, which proposes a new offence of assaulting a public transport worker, abuse and violence directed at frontline transport staff have increased markedly in recent years, with British Transport Police data showing a significant rise in assaults on railway employees.

Public transport workers perform an essential public service, often in challenging circumstances, and they should be able to do so without fear of violence or intimidation. Amendment 399, tabled by the noble Baroness Baroness Pidgeon, addresses a long standing operational problem, inconsistent and delayed access to railway CCTV footage, timely access to high quality CCTV is often critical to identifying suspects, supporting victims and securing prosecutions. Establishing clear legal requirements for accessibility and technical standards would help remove barriers that currently frustrate investigations and undermine confidence.

So taken together, these amendments highlight a broader concern. While the government has articulated ambitions around tackling violence against women and girls and improving safety and public transport, there remains a gap between aspiration and implementation. And too often victims, police and frontline workers encounter fragmented responsibilities, inconsistent standards and slow operational responses. For what is needed is a clear leadership, stronger coordination between agencies and a willingness to embed prevention into everyday operation of our transport networks. And on these benches, we are clear that public transport must be safe and accessible for all, and that violence against women, passengers and workers must be actively prevented, not merely responded to after the fact.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the government intends to ensure that the objectives reflected in these amendments are delivered in practice, and how it will translate stated commitments into real world

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safety improvements. I'm grateful to the noble Lady Baroness Morgan of Cotes for the amendment 356, and I'm glad we reached it today. We hope to reach reached it today. We hope to reach it prior to Christmas, but time didn't permit. But I know that she has championed this issue in the has championed this issue in the House before and I welcome her contribution. Pressing the government today. And I also, if I government today. And I also, if I may say, I welcome the widening of the debate slightly by the Right Reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Manchester, to look at metro services.

I note the comments of the noble Lady Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and the terrible case of Claudia Lawrence. She has written to me separately on that I have already instigated with my colleagues in the Home Office, a response to the issues that she's raised, and I hope she'll forgive me if I concentrate on other matters today. But that is not off my agenda, and I know that the whole House will support the fact that the government has taken action on violence against women and girls, which is intolerable anywhere, including on the railway.

And the noble Lady herself referenced the government's strategy on violence against women and girls, which was published on the last day in the House of Commons before Christmas. The repeat statement hasn't happened in this House because the opposition didn't want to make that. That's fine, I understand that, but the commitment from the government is very clear, and the recently published strategy to halve violence against women and girls is absolutely vital. And I do take as well the points made by the noble Lord Blencathra on behaviour, which is an encouraging comment as part of that, because the points he's made are valid and I accept those.

And I would say that the British Transport Police are essential in helping us to deliver that objective of halving violence against women and girls alongside police counterparts in Home Office forces. Now, it may be helpful to the House to say that the British Transport Police are already required, as is the police force for the railway as they are the police force, the railway authority to prevent crime and this includes the offences set out in the amendment. The British Transport Police undertake activities across the railway to encourage victims and bystanders to report offences and indeed poor behaviour, and will relentlessly pursue offenders now in the policing plan for 2527 that the British Transport Police have produced, they have given specific commitments to preventing violence against women and girls by effective and sensitive investigation, robust offender management and through targeted activity to identify and apprehend those intent on offending.

And I'm very happy if it helps the noble Lady, Baroness Morgan of Cotes, to provide, through my colleagues in the Department of Transport, a further meeting for her to look at that work and understand it at first hand. Now she's mentioned also the question of rolling stock companies and the manufacturer and lease trains to train operating companies. The design of trains is not defined by the rolling stock company, but by the train operating company. Therefore, the proposal that the British Transport Police share data on violence against women and girls with rolling stock companies would not lead to improvements in the design of train carriages.

But I do take her point. British Transport Police already do share crime data with train operating companies who can feed into the British Transport Police policing plans. The noble Baroness will also, I hope, be aware that the Rail Standard and Safety Board already publish key train requirement guidance, which is used by train operating companies that are ordering new trains. This helps detail the features that are to be included in the specification. The content of the document is prepared by a group of rolling stock experts, which represents train operating companies, manufacturers, leasing companies, industry bodies and the Department of Transport, and following input from security experts in the Department of Transport and the BTP.

New content has recently been prepared, which includes additional measures to do exactly what the noble Lady wishes, which is to enhance personal security, including those which seek to reduce violence against women and girls. Now, the content has been included in a draft of the document, which will be submitted for consultation with the rail industry. And the intention, which again I hope is helpful for the noble Lady, is that in spring 2026 that will be published and again, whilst not the legislative backup that she's seeking in the amendment, that I hope meets the objective of her very valid points that she's made today.

I just want to comment briefly, if I may, on on the noble Lord Davies of Gower, because he has mentioned sentencing. We've had a full debate yesterday on the sentencing bill. The House has made its decisions on the sentencing bill. There's a difference between us on that. But I want to see offenders brought to justice and people caught. And that is an important part of the proposals that we've got in the prevention measures, but also in the performance of the British Transport Police on these issues.

If I can turn to amendment three, five, six F in the name of my noble friend Lord Hendy, which includes the introduction of a standalone offence of assaulting a public transport worker. Before I refer to what he has said, can I just comment on the noble Baroness lady stole? First of all, I just want to confirm we are having a meeting. It is in the plan. It will be sorted and that is coming down the line very quickly. She's referred to clause 37 and the standalone offence on retail workers.

We've taken the view that this should be a standalone offence, because retail workers are upholding the law for the state on sales of alcohol, drugs, knives, cigarettes and a range of other matters. But I think I agree also with her that it is essential that transport workers feel safe going about their job. There is no place for abuse and assault of any worker, and I know we will all agree with that. The attack that took place in Huntingdon in early November shocked and horrified us all.

And there was, you know, tributes, I think made at the time to this railway staff that stood in the way of alleged attackers and did their duty at that time. And those matters will come to court in due course. But I must stress the important point, and this goes to the heart of what my noble friend has said, that a public transport worker who suffers violence or abuse at work, it is essential they reported to the police that it can be investigated and we do take it seriously by the police, the transport police, the railway and the Home Office elsewhere and as the dedicated police service for the railway, British Transport Police are able to provide further reassurance to rail staff that they are there to protect them and will arrest offenders quickly.

The key point I want to make to my noble friend, however, is that transport workers are already protected and the noble Baroness touched on this in legislation already. The police, Crime and Sentencing Act of 2022 makes offences against public facing workers for which transport workers would be included as an aggravating factor that the courts must consider in sentencing. As I've said also during early debates in committee, everybody is protected from assault. It is criminalised under the Criminal Justice Act of 1988, and that long standing piece of legislation, the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861.

But the key point in this case is the transport workers are covered by that legislation. Whereas going back to clause 37, retail workers were not in the way that public facing workers are in relation to police and others, they're still covered by the main offences of the Criminal Justice Act. But the aggravating factor we're introducing under clause 37 deals with retail workers specifically. But I'm very happy on 37 to discuss with the noble Lady when we have the opportunity to meet very shortly the concerns that

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she has on that legislation. The noble Lords and I will look forward to discussing that at that forward to discussing that at that time. But I think what he's just said, I'm not an expert in the law said, I'm not an expert in the law in this area, but I'm genuinely surprised by what he's just said about the current legal provisions and protections for retail workers and the need for that which has and the need for that which has been included in the bill on the on on the grounds that he's argued.

And if, as a result of this short debate, there is any need for him to clarify that further, it would be really helpful. But, I mean, I'm just genuinely surprised by that.

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We're in danger for the committee to be revisiting clause 37. I've got an opportunity to meet 37. I've got an opportunity to meet with the noble Lady. We can discuss those issues there. What I'm saying to my noble friend in relation to to my noble friend in relation to his amendment is that the police, Crime and Sentencing Act of 2022 does make offences against public does make offences against public facing workers and aggravating offence. We are strengthening that for retail workers in the context for retail workers in the context of clause 37, but if you'll allow me, we'll revisit that when we have a further discussion.

If I may turn to three, nine, nine, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, but spoken to by the noble Lord Goddard of Stockport, that would introduce a requirement that all CCTV camera images on the railway are to be made immediately accessible to BTP and to the relevant Home Office police force. Can I just say to him and to the noble Lady Baroness Pidgeon through him, that I welcome the aims of the amendment, as historically the lack of immediate access to railway CCTV images has been a significant impact issue for BTP, which can reduce their ability to investigate crimes quickly.

However, and this is where we may differ, is that I don't believe that legislation is necessary to address this issue. He rightly said in his contribution that the Department of Transport have secured 17 million of funding to implement a system to provide more remote, immediate access to station CCTV to the British Transport Police and the railway industry. And he did welcome that. And I can say to him today that the Department of Transport will be funding Network Rail to deliver the project on behalf of the rail industry, which will cover the whole of the railway in England, Scotland and Wales and prioritise stations where there are most passenger journeys now.

The project itself was planned to start in April 26th, with funding through to March 2030. But given and this again goes to the point that my noble friend mentioned, given the tragic incident on the train at Huntingdon on the 1st of November, the Department of Transport is now looking to accelerate delivery of that £17 million funding project and will do so. And in a sense, his legislative answer to that, I hope, has been answered by the executive decisions taken by the Department of Transport to fund those issues.

So I hope that I've been able to give some comfort to noble Lords and noble Ladies who put forward these amendments. Because, sir.

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Would you take this idea to the to the British Transport Police? By the time one has done a three hour the time one has done a three hour journey, when it's heartily sick of hearing for the 20th time, see it, say it sorted. But could they possibly intersperse between those? Something like this coach has video recording. We will take action against any passengers who harass against any passengers who harass or cause trouble for other passengers. Well, that's not the right word, but something warning

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them about that might be helpful. Can I say I will give consideration to that with my colleagues in the Department of Transport? I mean, as a as somebody who travels every week on the train to, to this house, see it, say it sorted does appear both in English and in my case in Welsh on a number of occasions on the train journey. But he makes a valid point that I think that the importance is that there should be an acceptance and an acknowledgement that the type of anti-social behaviour, which he has mentioned in his reference as a low level, can be intimidating for individuals and the ability to undertake physical violence in the extreme form that that that allegedly took place in Huntington.

I you have to use the word allegedly, but the allegedly took place in Huntington and the low level abuse that might occur are significant issues. And the British transport staff on railways from whichever railway company and you know, teams that are operating require the support of the state to give them that backup. And under current legislation, I believe my noble friend's amendment is not necessary. But the general principle that we've had from the noble Lady and from other speakers and from my noble friend, and from the noble Lady Baroness Pidgeon via Lord Goddard of Stockport is absolutely valid, and it's very well worth raising today, but I hope that I've been able to give assurances on that, and that the noble Lady will withdraw her amendment.



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Oh my Lord, just before my noble friend the Minister sits down, I friend the Minister sits down, I wonder whether he he would find time in his busy timetable to see time in his busy timetable to see me and the RMT about this, because I didn't quite understand what the distinction was between the creation of an offence of assaulting a retail worker at work assaulting a retail worker at work in 37 and assaulting a transport worker at work.

In my proposed amendment, I take the point about an aggravating factor in sentencing. But the question really is about the creation of an of an offence. Seem to me there might be room for further discussion outside the

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chamber. Can I say to to my noble friend that he mentioned himself, his that he mentioned himself, his noble kinsman Lord Hendy, who is the Transport Minister? British the Transport Minister? British Transport Police are the responsibility of the Department of Transport and answer to the Transport and answer to the Department of Transport. And my noble friend Lord Hendy is the noble friend Lord Hendy is the other Lord Hendy is is the Minister responsible for for transport. What I will do, if I may, if I can refer that request to the direct policy Minister in this bill, then they can consider what my noble friend has said.

I think there is a distinction between the existing legislation that I've mentioned already that provides security against attack for public facing workers. And the clause 37 issue, which we've already debated. But we may return to this at report in several forms, undoubtedly. But in the meantime, I'd be grateful if the noble Lady would withdraw her amendment.
16:35
Baroness Morgan of Cotes Portrait Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-affiliated)
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Well, can I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this Lords who have taken part in this short debate? I think it's one of those debates that often shows the House at its finest, actually, where there is a genuine discussion of some important issues. I this was a this was a deliberately narrow amendment, but I welcome the comments that have been made across the House in terms of how it could be widened, particularly from my noble friend Baroness McIntosh about public spaces more broadly, but also the suggestion in relation to other forms of public transport, particularly trams.

I suspect you'd be saying we could apply it to on the underground as well, in other cities, not just London, but also I welcome the comments from the noble Lord Blencathra about behaviour on trains, and the list of offences in subsection two is not exhaustive, but I fully take his point. And the irony actually, of debating this at a rather more civilised time of the day than we might otherwise have done had we reached it in December. And one of the reasons that I wanted to know then, whether we were going to reach the debate, was that because we sat late, that meant that I then had to get a 10:30 p.m.

train home to Leicestershire. Now I would describe myself as being rather robust, but I actually don't want to travel at 10:30 at night and get home to a deserted car park at nearly midnight. I don't think anybody wants to do it, and I don't think we should ask members of the House of staff to to do it either, but that I will leave that debate about sitting hours to a very different set of noble Lords to consider. Let me thank the Minister, the noble Lord, the Minister, for his very helpful and constructive comments in relation to my amendment.

I think what the House has identified today is that this is an issue about prevention of violence against women and girls, not just about enforcement. After the event, he rightly took the point that it's not just about British Transport Police, it is about working with. In his case, he said, the train operating companies and I would very much like to take up his offer of a meeting, whether it's with Department for transport officials. But also he mentioned the Railway Safety Standards Board and their forthcoming consultation.

I think we will return to this issue in the Railways Bill so he can let the other Lord Hendy know to expect such debate. But for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Is it your Lordship's pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn? Amendment by leave withdrawn. Amendment 356 be already debated. Amendment 356 be already debated. Baroness Stern of Alderley Edge not moved. Not moved. Amendment 356 C already debated. Lord Moynihan not already debated. Lord Moynihan not moved. Not moved. Amendment 356 D already debated. Lord Moynihan not moved. Moved. Amendment 356 E or debated. Baroness Royall of Blaisdon not moved. Moved. Amendment 356 F Lord Henley not moved.

Moved. Amendment 356 G already debated Lord Hampton not already debated Lord Hampton not moved. Not moved. In clause 110, amendment 356 H. Lord Davies of Gower.
16:38
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords. >> My Lords. >> I rise to move amendment 356 H. In my name and that of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel. friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel. This amendment seeks to strengthen clause 110 of the Bill by ensuring that those who are concerned in the supplying of electronic devices used in vehicle theft are brought within the scope of the new offence. Vehicle crime remains a persistent and evolving challenge. Organised criminal networks are increasingly turning to sophisticated electronic devices such as signal jammers, key programmers and relay attack tools to bypass modern vehicle security systems.

These devices are not sold in back alleys alone. They are traded online, often under the guise of legitimate diagnostic equipment, and then misused to facilitate theft. The law must keep pace with this reality, so clause 110 rightly takes some steps towards addressing this growing problem, and I welcome the new provisions. I do have one particular question for the noble Lord, the Minister. What is the difference between this new offence and the offence of going equipped for stealing? Under section 25 of the Theft Act 1968, I note the different maximum penalties being three years imprisonment for the section 25 offence and five years for this new offence in clause 110.

But is that the only difference? I do not ask this to be overly critical, but simply to understand the rationale behind the inclusion of this new offence. I do recognise that electronic devices for stealing vehicles are a new and evolving problem, and as such the new offence must be watertight. That is why I have tabled my amendment. The noble Lord Minister will, I'm sure, have a sense of déja vu when speaking to this amendment. It is very similar in nature to the amendment we brought to at Committee stage to clause 13 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration bill earlier this year.

And that bill, our amendment sought to add possession with intent to supply to the new criminal offence of supplying an article for use in immigration, crime. And the government did indeed listen to us and tabled their own amendment at report to widen the scope of that offence, to include being concerned in the supply of a relevant article. Amendment 356 is intended to close the same possible loophole in in clause 110 that existed in the original drafting of clause 13 of the Border Security Bill.

Clause 110 is two separate offences. Subsection one states that it is an offence to possess an electronic device in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that the device would be used in connection with a relevant offence. Subsection two states that it is also an offence to import, make, adapt, supply or offer to supply such a device. That does not. That does capture quite a wide range of activities, but what is missing from this aspect of the offence is possession with intent to supply such a device, or any other activity relating to the supply of these devices.

My amendment addresses this gap by including two further offences. It explicitly includes the possession with intent to supply an electronic device in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that the device would be used in connection with the theft offence. It also contains the same language the government brought forward for the Border Security Bill, paragraph B of the amendment therefore, states A person commits an offence if they are concerned in the supplying of or making of an offer to supply such an electronic device.

This, I believe, would capture those who are knowingly involved in the chain of supply. Those who broker deals, advertise devices or otherwise facilitate the distribution. Without this amendment, there is a risk that individuals who play a crucial role in enabling vehicle theft will escape liability simply because they are not the final supplier. There is a loophole we cannot afford to leave open, given the government accepted that this was a gap in the section 13 offence in the border security Bill. I hope the noble Lord, the Minister, will agree with me that it is also a loophole in this offence that should be closed.

I beg to move.
16:42
Lord Goddard of Stockport Portrait Lord Goddard of Stockport (Liberal Democrat)
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Amendment proposed clause 110, page 141, line 31. At end, insert page 141, line 31. At end, insert the words as printed on the Marshalled List.

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Marshalled List. We rise to support Lord Davies of Gower, and I think he's hit the nail on the head with this amendment. It's about the intent to supply electronic devices for car theft, which has become an epidemic in this country. Data assessed by colleagues in the other House revealed in 2024, 75% of vehicle thefts were unsolved. 2% resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed. 95,000 cases were unsolved in November 2025. The BBC report showed that keyless car thefts are used by criminals, can be found to be found online and retail for around £20,000.

And according to that report, the video guides and the devices can be easily found online, allowing access to high end cars such as Jaguars, Range Rovers and Cars Woods. And this bill provides an offence for owning such a device. This amendment addresses the potential loophole in supplying the device and away with interest away from the Minister's response to this, because motorists are taxed to the hilt, motorists have road charges, congestion charges. I don't think it's unreasonable that the government tries to do something to protect the motor vehicles.

All the money goes in there, we pay our taxes, we pay our insurance and the numbers are staggering. 95,000 cases last year unsolved. And if you own a reasonably priced car after working hard, they should be something to protect the people supplying the equipment rather than the person using the equipment. And I'll be interested to hear the minister's response.
16:44
16:46
Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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I'm grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davis, for explaining the purpose of this amendment. And indeed, he's right in highlighting indeed, he's right in highlighting the importance of the issue it raises. Indeed, the the met estimates that electronic devices are used in approximately 60% of vehicle theft, so I'm glad that we are having the opportunity to debate clause 110. And the important the important measures it takes in relation to vehicle theft. I can certainly understand the noble Lord Lord Purvis desire to make the offence in clause 110 as tight as possible, but I hope to persuade him and noble Lordships House that the amendment is unnecessary.

In particular, I don't believe there is a gap in the offences provided for in clause 110. Furthermore, the amendment would require the police and prosecution to prove intent rather than the burden being placed on the defendant to do so. This would have the effect of weakening the offence, as it would place a higher bar on the prosecution to secure a conviction by way of background. Clause 110 provides for two new criminal offences in relation to electronic devices using vehicle theft. The first will criminalise the possession of such devices.

The second rule criminalise the importing, making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply these devices. Both offences require a reasonable suspicion that the device will be used in connection with the theft of a vehicle, or theft of anything in a vehicle. This amendment seeks to extend those offences to include a person concerned in supplying of an electronic device for use in vehicle offences. However, my Lords Clause 110 already provides already makes provision rather for it to be an offence to possess a device where it appears there could be an intention to supply.

It also outlines that the court may assume the defendant possessed the relevant article, where it was on the premises at the same time as the accused, or on the premises of which the accused was the occupier or habitual user, other than as a member of the public. I'd also like to point out the amendment would require the prosecution to prove intent to use the device to commit theft. And this, as I've already said, is a higher bar than the clause as is drafted in the bill.

Clause 110 outlines that it is a defence for a person charged with offence to show that they did not intend for, or suspect that the relevant article would be used in connection with a vehicle or anything in a vehicle, so a court can infer the articles in question are intended for use in vehicle theft. This reflects the fact that there are likely to be few legitimate uses for those specified articles. It's appropriate to expect that those who are involved with such articles should be alert to the possible use of the articles for criminal purposes.

The amendment states there would be an offence for a person to be concerned in the supply of, supplying of, or making an offer of, an offer to supply an electronic device. I'm not sure, my Lords, that such wording materially expands the scope of the offence. Indeed, it's difficult to imagine who may be captured by such a wording, who will not already be captured by the existing wording in the bill. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked a specific question around the the charge with offenders who could be charged with going equipped to commit theft under section 25 of the Theft Act 1968.

However, however, these existing offences put the burden on the prosecution to prove the defendant's intention to steal the vehicle or steal something from inside the vehicle. This new offence places the burden on the defendant to prove that they were not intending to steal a vehicle, or the device would be not be used to steal a vehicle or commit vehicle crime. Also, I note that in his contribution, noble Lord Viscount Goschen asked about the the online sale of devices and as are my Lords under the Online Safety Act 2023.

So there's a new duty placed on social media and tech companies to prevent the advertisement of stolen goods and devices which facilitate crime. Online sale platforms will block adverts and listings for items that are illegal to sell. Sells items already do this for other illegal items, my Lords. In terms of the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Davis in with respect to the borders Bill, I think it's fair to it's fair to say the offence deals with a different set of circumstances to the offences in the border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act.

But we'll take away the comments and ensure that there is there are no gaps in the offence. So I appreciate him raising the point. So my Lords, for all these reasons, I'm not persuaded that the amendment is required and I hope the noble Lord will be content to withdraw it.
16:50
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords, I'm grateful to the noble hon. Friend of Viscount Goschen and to the Democrats for their support for this amendment. The purpose of the amendment is not to widen the offence indiscriminately, but to ensure that clause 110 operates as Parliament clearly intends, without explicitly including those who are concerned in the supplying of these devices. The offence risks capturing only the least sophisticated actors while leaving untouched those who organise, promote and enable the trade from behind the scenes.

The reality of modern vehicle crime is that it is technologically advanced and often commercially organised, and those involved in supply chains are frequently well aware of the criminal end use of the devices they help to distribute, yet they structure their involvement precisely to evolve, avoid possession, and that is a gap that criminals will exploit if we allow it to remain so. I hope the Minister will reflect on the constructive nature of this proposal. Given that the government are aware of and have acknowledged the potential gap in the legislation.

But for now, I beg

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leave to withdraw the amendment. Is it your Lordships pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn? that this amendment be withdrawn? Amendment by leave withdrawn? The question is that clause 110 stand part of the Bill, as many of their part of the Bill, as many of their opinion will say. Content contrary, not content. The contents have it. The question is that clause 111 stand part of the bill, as many of them have been, say, content contrary not content. The contents contrary not content.

The contents have it after clause 111 amendment. 357 Baroness Doocey.
16:52
Baroness Doocey Portrait Baroness Doocey (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords.

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First tabled by my party in the other place earlier this year, would extend the operation of the Equipment Theft Prevention Act by making explicit reference to GPS making explicit reference to GPS equipment or, as the industry now prefers, global navigation satellite systems. For several satellite systems. For several years, Liberal Democrats have highlighted the sharp rise in rural crime, with organised gangs systematically targeting farms and rural businesses. Their focus has been on stealing high value GPS, drones, receivers and in-cab screens from tractors and harvesters.

This equipment is worth thousands of pounds and is essential for modern precision farming. The loss of these units leaves farmers facing costly delays and crop losses at critical times of year. These thefts have formed part of a well-organised international trade where equipment is stripped, containerised and shipped overseas, often beyond recovery. Crucially, offences spiked as rural policing came under ever increasing strain. Local stations were closed and experienced neighbourhood teams hollowed out, taking with them the deep local knowledge that underpins effective intelligence gathering.

Organised gangs stepped into that vacuum, crisscrossing county boundaries with little deterrence. We recognise that real progress has been made over the last year, with insurance claims for GPS theft now starting to fall thanks to greater collaboration between farmers, insurers, police and the National Rural Crime Agency, whose invaluable work is now rightly benefiting from strengthened national funding and support. The Equipment Theft Prevention Act would build on that work, offering a strong framework for prevention, giving the Secretary of State powers to require immobilisers marking and registration of agricultural machinery, and to extend these measures to other equipment by regulation.

Amendment 357 would strengthen that framework by naming GPS units explicitly in the primary legislation. This would give a clear signal of intent, ensure momentum, and guard against any further delay in bringing the provisions into effect. We welcome the government's recent commitment to include removable GPS units from future regulations, and I'm pleased that Ministers have listened to evidence presented from these benches and others. But the reality is that the key provisions of the act have not yet been brought into force, and the secondary legislation required to implement it is still pending.

Our amendment would ensure timely and decisive action, so farmers and rural businesses see the benefits on the ground sooner rather than later. My Lords, this is a simple, practical step that supports the government's aims and helps stop theft and

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resale of vital agricultural technology. I beg to move. Yes.

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Yes. Amendment proposed after clause 111. Insert the new clause as
16:55
Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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printed on the Marshalled List. >> If I start with a simple question where on earth are the question where on earth are the regulations we are promised? Way back in 2023, when we passed this Equipment Theft Act, I took the bill through this house with all party support, getting Royal Assent in July 2023, the Home Office promised they would consult urgently on the necessary regulations, and they started that consultation immediately. The consultation closed in July 24th, but the government only announced their conclusions on the 17th of October this year, and they've dumped some of the most important provisions of the act.

It will now only apply to new all terrain vehicles with forensic marking and registration, and also to removable GPS units dumped at the proposals for Immobilisers and extending it to other agricultural machinery. So a £5,000 quad bike is protected. But not the not the £500,000 combine harvester. If someone breaks into the £300,000 John Deere tractor and steals the £10,000 GPS unit that is covered, but not the John Deere itself. I saw one advert for a GPS which said Putin this year attracted put this in your tractor and you'll be able to track it if the tractor is stolen.

Well, only if a farmer makes it impossible to remove and the thief steals us to steal the tractor as well as the GPS unit. Dumping and proposals to do hand tools at the moment may be a wise measure, even though an incredible number are stolen. I accept that a forensic marking and registration scheme for power tools needs more time if it is ever to happen. It is estimated estimated, that the power tools market may reach 1.5 billion in 2025, and professional power tools average about £200 each.

And as a DeWalt combi kit of six tools is sharing, the same battery will come in about £1,000. Therefore, my Lords, if tradesmen are spending about 1.5 billion on £200 item per tools, that's over 7 million new tools brought per annum. And I think I've got half of them in my own garage. Actually, that's another matter. It would be a massive logical task to register those 7 million tools, but large machinery is different. Last year, my Lords, 10,241 tractors were registered in the UK, worth 1.6 billion and 400 combine harvesters worth 160,000,003 34,000 excavators, diggers and earthmoving machines were sold worth 1.5 billion, and last year 8000 ATVs were sold and the total value was just £80 million.

So, my Lords, we will have 44,000 big machines worth 3.4 billion, and there will be no forensic marking or isolator scheme for them, but we will have one for just 8000 ATVs worth a mere 80 million. I don't understand the sense of the wisdom of that. If it's possible, it is. If it is possible to devise a forensic marking registration scheme for 8000 vehicles, then it should not be rocket science to devise one for 44,000 vehicles worth 42 times more. So I do urge the Home Office to lay the ATV and GPS regulations immediately, and then get on with drafting the next phase of those regulations to apply them to big farm machinery and construction equipment.
16:59
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords, this group of amendments addresses an issue that will be immediately recognisable to many people across the country the many people across the country the theft of essential equipment from those who rely on it for their living. Turning to First Amendment 357, tabled by the noble Baroness Baroness Doocey, we broadly support the intention behind extending the equipment Theft Act 2023. This was an act brought in under the conservative government to protect businessmen and tradespeople, and the noble Baroness Amendment would ensure that it explicitly includes GPS equipment.

My Lords, technology becomes ever more central to commercial activity, particularly in agriculture, construction and logistics. It is therefore right that the law keeps pace with the evolving nature of equipment theft. GPS units are high value, easily resold and frequently targeted, and bringing them clearly within the scope of the act is a sensible and proportionate step to help disrupt illicit resale markets. I now turn to amendment 368. In my name and that of my noble friend, Lord Cameron of Lochiel.

This was an amendment tabled in the other place by my hon. Friend Matt Vickers, and was supported by the Liberal Democrats. The Equipment Theft Act was introduced precisely because we recognised the theft of tools and equipment is not a victimless or low level crime, but one that can devastate self-employed tradespeople, small businessmen or small business people and farming communities. The harsh reality of tool theft is that it has a double impact on the victim. The tradesman loses his tools and some must incur the monetary cost of replacing them, but he also loses the means to carry out his work, resulting in lost income.

In this regard, tool theft is indeed worse than many other types of theft. That reality has not diminished. If anything, it has worsened. The figures and tool theft are staggering. 3 in 4 tradespeople have experienced tool theft, with over 25,500 tool thefts reported to police last year. This equates to 70 tool thefts per day, with a total value of tools stolen estimated to be £40 million. Individual losses often ranging from 1000 to 5000 per incident. For many sole traders, that can mean cancelled jobs, weeks without income and in some cases the loss of an entire livelihood overnight.

These are not abstract statistics. They represent real people being forced out of work through no fault of their own. And despite this, the penalties currently imposed often fail to reflect the true economic and personal harm that is caused. This amendment seeks to ensure that enforcement is taken seriously with resale markets, including temporary and informal markets, are properly policed, and that those who profit from stolen equipment are pursued with the seriousness that they deserve. It will ensure that perpetrators face financial penalties that are commensurate with the impact their criminality has had on the victim.

The Magistrates' court will be able to impose a fine that is equal to the replacement cost, the equipment, the cost of repairing damage caused during the theft and the total trading total trading losses incurred. This means that tradesmen would not be out of pocket and the other place the government opposed this amendment, arguing that existing powers to impose theft related fines are sufficient, as courts already have the power to impose fines up to an unlimited amount. So I therefore hope that the government's response will not once again be that sentencing is a matter for the judiciary.

It is clear that the government do not believe that this principle is sacred. That is, of course, their right. But given that this is the stance of the government, they cannot use judicial discretion and sentencing independence as reasons to oppose amendments calling for tougher actions against criminals. When Lord Sewell theft is not a minor inconvenience, it is an attack both on work and aspiration, and I hope the Minister will engage constructively with the issues raised in this group and recognise the strength of feeling both in this House and beyond.

So I look forward very much to what the noble Lord, the Minister, has to say in response.
17:03
Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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All my Lords, can I thank all noble Lords for speaking in this debate and raising the these debate and raising the these important issues. Turning first to amendment 357, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Ducey, I can confirm that the government remains committed to the implementation of the Equipment Theft Prevention Act, 2023 and fully supports the intentions behind its introduction, informed by responses to the call for evidence and direct consultation with industry. The act will cover the forensic marketing, marking and registration on a database of new all terrain vehicles, quad bikes and, I'm pleased to say, removable GPS systems.

My Lords, the NFU Mutual Crime Report 2025 highlights that GPS theft cost an estimated £1.2 million in 2024. It is those GPS units that are particularly vulnerable to theft and massively disrupt day to day farming operations. That's exactly why we have included them within the legislation, and I'm pleased to echo Baroness Doocey acknowledgement of the progress that's been made in this important area with, as she said, falling insurance claims thanks to the concerted effort of the police and indeed other parties.

The act, my Lords, require secondary legislation before it can come into effect, and we do intend to bring this forward as soon as possible. As the noble Lord Lord Blencathra said. Blencathra apologies said the government's response to the call for evidence was published rather recently in October 20th, 2025. And it's we're very grateful to all those who took the time to respond, and we carefully considered the views. Are the views and evidence provided in that. In those responses, I would say, my Lords, there are significant technical concerns raised and we needed to assess the impact before we committed to introducing secretary legislation.

We didn't want to introduce regulations that weren't fit for purpose or, more importantly, introduce regulations that would adverse impacts adverse, adversely impact vehicle safety. He asked particularly around and talked about the comparison between those smaller vehicles and and indeed and and big, larger, more expensive farmyard farming and machinery such as such as tractors. I we've carefully considered the benefits and implications of including other agricultural equipment in the regulations installation of immobiliser immobilisers onto other large pieces of machinery.

Post manufacture poses a similar risk to ATVs, so there's a delicate balance to be struck between the cost to businesses and achievability of of of in the ends of the regulations. Should the act become more effective in tackling rural theft, the legislation could be widened in the future by introducing other large agricultural machinery in a further tranche of regulations. So we are looking at the situation, we look at the situation, we look at the way the regulations operate and

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we'll and we'll see if we can apply them further. A timescale of when they might

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A timescale of when they might go out to consultation and extending it to, say, heavy agricultural machinery or or or

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contracting equipment. Rough timescale. Well, I don't want to commit to any particular timescale. It probably behoves me to do so. But I would obviously point out that having, you know, published the call for evidence a couple of months before Christmas, we are our response rather to the to the call for evidence a couple of months before Christmas. We are obviously trying to give the motor ahead with it. Can I turn now to amendment 368 in the name of the noble Lord Lord Davies of Gower, which proposes two changes.

Firstly, to expand enforcement provisions under the 2023 act, and secondly, to introduce a statutory aggravating factor for theft of tools from tradesmen under the Sentencing Act 2020 onwards, the government recognises the distress caused by tool theft and its impact on tradespeople and small businesses, which the noble Lord Lord Gove spoke to. These tools are essential indeed, as you said, essential to livelihoods and their loss can cause real financial and emotional harm. That is why we are already taking action through the National Vehicle Crime Working Group, which brings together specialists from every police force to share intelligence and tackle emerging trends in vehicle related crime, including tool theft.

On sentencing. The current framework is sufficient and robust. Courts must follow guidelines issued by the Sentencing Council, which already require consideration of harm, culpability and aggravating factors such as financial loss, business impact and emotional distress. Courts also have powers to impose compensation orders to ensure victims receive financial compensation. In introducing a statutory aggravating factor as as this amendment calls for would duplicate existing provisions unnecessarily and have limited impacts on outcomes. Indeed, I'm reminded that a wise man once said, to quote, I am sceptical of the need for more aggravating, aggravating factors.

And that was, of course, the noble Lord Lord Davies of Gower speaking just three weeks ago on the on the 15th of December, in response to an amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Ducey, to Clause 1 or 2 on self-harm. Indeed, my noble Lords, I couldn't have put it better myself. I hope I've been able to reassure the noble Baroness Doocey that we accept the spirit of her. Amendment 357, and we're working to give effect to this issue. I hope to the noble Lord, Lord Davis will understand why we do not consider his his amendment 368 to be necessary.

And forgive my light ribbing a moment ago. For all of those reasons, I invite the noble Lady to withdraw her amendment.
17:08
17:10
Lord Vaux of Harrowden Portrait Lord Vaux of Harrowden (Crossbench)
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this bill, I should first apologise that I was unable to take take part in the Second Reading debate due to a clash with other House business. Amendment 358 is a very simple extension to what the bill already does, and I thank the noble Lady does, and I thank the noble Lady Baroness Morgan of Cotes and the noble Lords Lord Young of Cookham and Holmes of Richmond for adding and Holmes of Richmond for adding their support to it. My Lords, I was a member of the Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee, and Digital Fraud Committee, chaired brilliantly by the noble Baroness Morgan, that reported in November 2002 22.

This was a lengthy report for fraud is a huge subject with many recommendations. One area that we raised was the use of SIM farms by fraudsters to send out bulk texts and make bulk calls, so I'm very pleased that we are at last bringing in restrictions on the use and supply of SIM farms in this bill and clauses one one 2 to 1 one seven, and I am glad that the Bill allows other articles to be added to this, both technology and the ways that fraudsters use that technology to make contact with potential victims are constantly changing, so having the flexibility to react is important.

And it's also important to recognise that there are some legitimate reasons for the use of a SIM farm. And the Bill does recognise that. Unfortunately, however, the world has moved on since we reported in 2022. Clause 114 defines a SIM farm as being a device capable of using five or more SIM cards simultaneously, simultaneously or interchangeably, and it then goes on to define a SIM card as being a removable physical subscriber identity module. The problem, my Lords, is that physical sims are being overtaken by virtual Sims or e-SIMs.

A number of the latest phones no longer even have slots for physical SIM cards, and it's a trend that is accelerating the SIM farm restrictions that this bill introduce are already at risk of being redundant before the bill is even passed. So amendment 358 simply attempts to fix this by including virtual sims in the definition, so that SIM farms that utilise e-SIMs will also be covered from day one. If we don't make this change, the SIM farm restrictions will quickly be pointless.

Now I realise this might be a little more complicated, as a number of newer phones can store more than five e-SIMs, although in fact most only allow two to be active at any one time. So we might need to make some further tweaks to the wording of clause one on four a little further than this amendment does, but the point remains. We know that physical SIM cards are being phased out over time to be replaced by e-SIMs, so we should act now to ensure that this part of the bill is not redundant as soon as it comes into force.

And that's the point of this amendment. The use of SIM farms does, however, raise a wider issue, which I'd be interested to hear the Minister's views on. We can ban the sale and use of SIM farms in this country, and we should. But increasingly fraud comes from overseas, where a UK ban will have little or no impact. The real problem is that fraudsters are able to acquire an apparently limitless supply of UK mobile phone numbers. I don't know about other noble Lords, but I'm currently receiving almost daily calls from UK mobile numbers where someone who speaks poor English tells me they're calling from O2, and there's a problem with my SIM card.

It doesn't matter how many I block, they just keep coming each time on a different number. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that. In November 2022, Ofcom issued guidance to telecoms companies about the allocation of supply of UK phone numbers. The guide set out the steps that Ofcom expects providers to take when allocating and assigning numbers. Numbers can be allocated and an unlimited unlimited number of times, which makes controlling who ultimately acquires them difficult. And the guidance is only as good as the final link in that chain.

The guide covers three areas due diligence checks before allocating or assigning numbers, ensuring continued compliance, and reassessing risk after the transfer of numbers and responding to incidents of misuse. But despite this guide, it remains almost comically easy to acquire. Pears. You go sim cards in bulk a quick Google search shows a myriad of websites of varying legitimacy, selling bulk sims, both physical and e-SIMs. The very first listing on an eBay search for bulk sims is a package of 1000 EE pay as you go SIM cards for £999 or best offer.

Many of the websites have reseller arrangements, where anyone can earn commission by selling Sims onto further end users. There are legitimate reasons why someone might buy Sims in bulk. Internet of things connectivity, company travel, all legitimate mass marketing marketing, for example. But they can also be used for mass scam phishing messages or calls. Identity theft, SIM swapping, money laundering and creating bulk social media accounts to list just a few. It is too easy for fraudsters to acquire large numbers of genuine UK numbers under the current system.

This is not about spoofing numbers, these are real numbers. KYC checks on end users above Sims appear to be laughably weak and don't appear to be policed in any meaningful way. When was the telco last fined for this? What meaningful monitoring actually takes place of where these numbers end up and how they're actually used? The new voluntary UK Telecommunications Fraud Sector Charter, published in November, says only that signatories will, and I quote, continue to implement existing CCE UK guidance on preventing misuse of allocated and assigned numbers and monitoring for fraudulent calling patterns.

That's clearly not working at present. We need to do more. So in addition to responding to the specific amendment on e-SIMs, I would be grateful to hear the thoughts of the noble Lords Minister as to how we might make life more difficult for the fraudsters who are able to operate easily on an industrial scale from foreign countries using real UK phone numbers. Does he agree it's time to strengthen, monitor and enforce KYC rules on the sale of bulk phone numbers? I beg to move.



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Amendment. My Lords Amendment proposed

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My Lords Amendment proposed clause 114, page 105, line 16 at end insert or virtual subscriber

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identity module. My Lords, I added my name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord amendment moved by the noble Lord Lord Faulks and like him, I served on the Select Committee on Fraud,
17:16
Lord Young of Cookham Portrait Lord Young of Cookham (Conservative)
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ably chaired by my noble friend Baroness Morgan of Cotes, that produced a very substantial document indeed. After we produced our report, the government published a consultation document headed Preventing the Use of SIM farms for fraud, and in December 23rd, the government published their response to that document. And what I want to do is quote very briefly from three paragraphs of that response, referring to the responses they got. The government said this. A few responses noted that banning physical SIM farms alone is likely to result in displacement to e-SIM farms, the point that has just been made.

However, they acknowledge that if e-SIMs were included to the proposed ban, the government's definition of SIM farm should be adapted to ensure it excludes smartphones that can hold more than four e-SIMs. Now, the government's response to that section was. This response is noted that the definition could also include e-SIMs and mobile apps. However, we did not receive sufficient evidence at consultation to include them in the proposed ban due to their complexity and ongoing pace of development. This could be further addressed by the proposed powers to telecommunications, telecommunications equipment and articles used to perpetrate fraud, and then they referred to a further final paragraph headed government response.

The government considers it important to ensure that the ban is flexible, and can be used to rapidly prohibit other types of technology where these are identified in the future. Some such technologies are mentioned above, whilst others may emerge in the future and the government will continue to review fraud methodologies closely for changing patterns and new technologies being used, such as e-SIM farms and others. However, the government agrees with respondents that any powers to ban through secondary legislation ought to have clear parameters for their use.

Now, that, of course, was the last administration, and it would be helpful to know whether the government agrees with that line. The question I want to ask the Minister is this that if one looks at clause 114, subsection four, it says this, and this is referring to the clauses on SIM farms. The Secretary of State may, by regulations amend this section other than this subsection. So is that in effect, giving the Secretary of State powers to introduce by secondary legislation something that the previous government said should not be done by secondary legislation? And I leave that question hanging in the air while the government seeks advice from the bench to see what the answer is.

OK.
17:19
Baroness Morgan of Cotes Portrait Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-affiliated)
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My Lords, I want very briefly just to speak to the amendment three, five, eight. It's a pleasure to follow Lord Vaux and also my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. And I declare, because we're going to be discussing this and a later amendment around fraud, I declare my interest as a director of Santander UK. It was a huge pleasure and privilege to chair the Lords inquiry into for online fraud. Digital fraud, which reported in 2022, and I would like to think that we had some impact in raising issues which are of huge importance to the public.

Fraud is the one of the crimes that people are most likely to be victims of. And I know the noble Lord, the Minister knows this because he is the the fraud or the anti-fraud Minister in the the department and the noble Lords have have already spoken about the importance of this amendment, the need for the law to be kept up to date as the technology develops, and the fact that allowing as much flexibility in legislation as possible to enable that to happen is important.

I think that what we have seen in the report, the reason we talked about the fraud chain, is because obviously people encounter fraud in a myriad of different ways. Fraudsters are, as we have heard, incredibly flexible, entrepreneurial for all the wrong reasons. And of course, telecoms and people's smartphones or phones is where many people will first encounter the fraudster who will then try to, as we heard in our evidence, get them away from technology and strike up some kind of relationship, which unfortunately ends in people often losing life changing amounts of money.

So as we're going to, I don't want to pre-empt the debate on amendment three, six, seven, which I hope we're going to reach as well today. But I think the question perhaps now or for later is whether the government, the noble Lord, the Minister, is confident that the government's last government, the current government's ask of the telecoms industry, is strong enough given the frequency with which the public encounter fraud via their telephones. And I'm sure that I'll ask the question now and I'm sure we'll come back to it, which is we we are all waiting for the forthcoming fraud strategy from the government, which we understand is hopefully close and perhaps the noble Lord, the Minister, is able just to give us a little precursor of whether, in fact, that will impose tougher asks and potential penalties of companies for the reasons that we have already heard.
17:22
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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So we. >> So we. >> Strongly support amendment. >> Three five, eight in the names of noble Lord Vaux, the noble Lord Young of Cookham, Lady Morgan of Cotes and Lord Holmes of Richmond, and they've made the case, I think, extremely well today, and I pay tribute to the Fraud Act committee, chaired by the noble Baroness Mone, and I shall be extensively quoting from it later on the next group. But, my Lords, this amendment would rightly ensure that the definition of a specified article includes devices capable of using virtual subscriber identity modules, not just physical SIM cards.

And as we've heard, My Lords, the criminal landscape evolves rapidly. If we legislate only for plastic sims, criminals will simply pivot to readily available virtual SIM technology by incorporating virtual Sims into the definition. Now, we help to future proof these provisions and make them genuinely effective against highly scalable, technology enabled fraud. Clauses 112 to 117 quite rightly, seek to address the serious and growing problem of SIM farms being used at scale to perpetrate fraud and other abuses.

And it was very interesting to hear what Lord Young's quotes from the Select committee's report, which demonstrates that the problem has been been with us for several years now, but they're used at scale to perpetrate fraud and other abuses. But as drafted clause 114 risks being a technological step behind the criminals. It refers to devices, as we've heard, capable of using physical SIM cards, but the market is already rapidly moving towards virtual or embedded sims. And indeed, my Lords, I have a iPad in my hand that has a virtual SIM inside it.

No physical SIM card at all, my Lords. And if the bill focuses only on the plastic card and not the underlying functionality, it will leave an obvious loophole that organised criminals will quickly exploit. My Lords, the noble Baroness Mone used the words you used the word entrepreneur, but not in a good way. My Lords, we know that fraudsters are highly adaptive as mobile operators deploy more robust controls on physical sims, and I suspect not enough for the noble Lord Vaux. And as handsets and routers increasingly use e-SIMs or other virtual identities, those intent on running industrial scale smishing and scam operations will migrate to those platforms.

If we legislate today for yesterday's technology, we will simply displace the problem from one category of device to another and will be back here in a few years time having the same debate, my Lords. So I hope that the Minister will be able either to accept the amendment or to confirm that the government will bring forward its own wording. There's always a bit of not invented here, my Lords, these things. But without that assurance, my Lords, there is a real risk that this part of the Bill will be lacking in force from the day that it actually comes into effect.
17:25
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord Lord Vaux of Harrowden for moving this group of amendments and speaking to his amendment 358. I agree that the government should look to make provisions that account for all forms of SIM cards used in SIM farms. As the noble Lord stated, the current drafting of clause 114 does not encompass e-SIM cards in the devices used for SIM farming. Given the amount of mobile phones that are now using e-SIMs, this really should be amended.

My Lords, this speaks to the larger issue of defining provisions ahead of legislation coming into force when changes are being made to the legality of certain products, suppliers and consumers should be made aware well in advance. Behaviours will have to change with reform. This is not just a case of courtesy, but constitutional propriety and that is the reasoning behind my amendments three, five eight and 538358A and 538A, legislating for the criminalisation of specific devices and software related to fraud should not be done on a whim.

Individuals should not wake up one day and possess an illegal device or software that a day before was considered legal, with no prior warning of the coming change. Some notice must be given. Currently, the bill simply permits Ministers to specify device whenever they wish. There is no requirement for those regulations to come into force before the new offences of possession supply come into force. My amendments would ensure, in the interests of fairness and the rule of law, that the new offences could not, until at least three months, have passed from the making of the regulations defining the articles.

So I believe that a period of three months before the possession and supply of certain articles becomes illegal is a sufficient period for people to change their habits and businesses to change their models. So we in this house would be doing the public a disservice if we do not provide them with the necessary time to adapt. So I hope the noble Lord, the Minister, agrees with this reasoning. I hope he considers the noble Lord Lord Vaux amendment. And as always, I look forward very much to hearing his reply.
17:27
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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My Lords, can I first of all give my appreciation to the work of the noble Baroness Morgan of Cotes and the noble Lord Young of Cookham, and the noble Lord Vaux of Harrowden for producing their report on this matter. During my enforced sabbatical from Parliament. So I wasn't a party to the discussions at that stage, but it's useful to have that continuum of discussion, and that the previous government's initial intentions have been carried forward by this government as a whole.

Amendment 358, as the noble Lord Vaux of Harrowden has mentioned, expands the definition of SIM cards. Now, again, I want to be clear to him that the government's consultation and evidence gathering, as part of the preparation for this bill focussed on physical SIM cards, which are where current and most significant threats arise, and what the bill's clauses before the committee today seek to address. The provisions in the bill are designed to tackle the misuse of physical SIM cards, which are widely used for criminal purposes, such as fraud and spam, and we're all aware of how that manifests itself on our phones and those of those we know and work with.

Virtual technology, yes, is developing, but is not currently presenting the same scale of risk. And the evidence that we have from the consultation does not support extending the ban at this time. Physical SIM card phones farms pose a significant and immediate threat because they enable large scale criminal activity and unlike virtual Sims, physical SIM cards are harder to trace. They're not inherently linked to a specific handset or to a verified identity, and the anonymity of that makes them ideal for fraud, phishing, and mass spam campaigns.

Furthermore, the trade in physical SIM cards creates a black market where thousands of cards can be bought and sold with minimal or no oversight. This flow of unregistered Sims fuels organised crime facilitates money laundering and undermines law enforcement efforts. Now, virtual SIM technology, by contrast, is generally. Generally, I say this generally more secure and traceable because it requires integration with the device software and often involves stronger identity checks. And at present, I say again, there is no evidence of virtual sims being exploited at scale for criminal purposes.

Our focus, therefore, remains on the tangible and proven harm caused by physical SIM cards. But having said that, and I put that down just as the as the marker for the purpose behind the clauses. The provisions of the bill do provide for the Home Secretary to have the power to update the definition of SIM card. Going back to the point, the noble Lord Young of Cookham mentioned via regulations, meaning that e-SIMs could be added in future via secondary legislation. And I remind the committee that secondary legislation has to go through a process in both houses, has to be approved by both houses and is debateable on the floor of the main chamber.

In the event of members wishing to do that. So if there is evidence that sims are being used in the same way virtually as physical SIM cards are now, we could add those regulations in due course. And again, I just say that the noble Lord Vaux of Harrowden mentioned the fraud charter. I was pleased to launch the Fraud Charter for Telecoms Fraud at BT Tower in November. That does cover 50 really strong actions, which the telecom industry will implement to tackle fraud within the sector, including developing AI models to detect and prevent fraud, building a new call tracing system to track down fraudulent communications, upgrading the UK's networks and I'm intending with that charter to quarterly monitor the performance of the telecom companies.

As Minister responsible for anti-fraud measures in the government, at the request of the Home Secretary and of the Prime Minister. So we do examine that, and I think that the the noble Lord has raised legitimate issues of potential concern. But I say to him today that the purpose of this legislation builds on what was done previously by the noble Baroness and others, and the potential for secondary legislation is there for the future. So I do remain open to monitor developments in this area.

I do remain open to bringing forward regulations under clause 114. Should virtual SIM cards become a material threat. But for now, I would suggest that the amendment would go beyond the scope of the evidence base and the policy intent of the provisions of the bill, but we can debate that, and I hope the noble Lord can hear what I've said and determine whether he wishes to pursue that matter. Can I just say also that the intention behind amendments 358 and 538 put forward by the noble Lord Davies of Gower? I also recognise those as being serious and important before making regulations under clause 117, specifying articles to be caught by the possession and supply of offences in clause 115 and 116, it is important to consult and give proper notice to affected persons.

That's why clause 117 already requires the Secretary of State to consult appropriate persons that are likely to be affected before any of the further regulations under that clause could be made. And moreover, regulations made under clause 117 are subject. Again, as I've just said to the draft affirmative procedure in both houses and once approved, would have a period of regulation before the consultation period of further gap, before the regulations would come into force. I would also add that the government has responded to the report on the Bill by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which included a recommendation in respect of the powers in clause 117.

And I do intend to bring forward an amendment at report to provide much more detail on narrowing of the scope of clause 117, by introducing clearer criteria for the types of articles that may be specified in regulations. In response to the report that has been produced on the bill Committee, can I also say again this I hope this is helpful to the noble Lord Vaux of Harrowden as well, that the fraud strategy will be produced in very short order.

I can't give a definitive date because you never can from the Dispatch Box until such time as it is produced, but it will be produced in relatively short order. That's the commitment I've given publicly, but included in that fraud strategy for the next three years will be considerable efforts on international action, on the very points that the noble Lord Vaux has mentioned. I went to Nigeria in April last year and signed a charter with the Nigerian government to tackle activity in Nigeria.

The Prime Minister signed a similar charter with the Vietnamese government in the latter part of 2025, and we are intending to foster greater discussion on how we deal with those international countries where SIM farms of a major size operate within the nation as a whole, and it may help us again, will be referenced in the fraud strategy. So I'm not breaking confidences because I've already referenced this outside of the fraud strategy, but we will be sponsoring a significant international conference in Vienna in March 16th and 17th of this year, where we're looking to get some international agreement on how we tackle fraud across the board and that type of activity that the noble Lord has mentioned is key to that.

We're also anticipating developing, and we are taking the lead as the UK government on developing a United Nations charter on fraud. And self-evidently the the mass use of SIM farms in a small number of countries providing phone calls of a nuisance nature, but also a fraudulent criminal nature to the UK is extremely important to focus on. So with those comments, I hope that in essence we have put in place in the bill clauses which were had cross-party support previously, have been encouraged by the noble Ladies Committee and are now in place subject to this parliamentary legislation.

We have the power to regulate, subject to consultation, which makes the noble Lords objectives, and we will look at the issues of international action as a key step in the three year fraud strategy shortly to be produced. So with that, I hope that the noble

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Lord will withdraw his amendment. My Lords, I thank all noble

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My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short, I think, important debate, short, I think, important debate, and I'm very grateful to the Minister for his detailed response. I, I think I probably speak for all of us. We look forward enormously of us. We look forward enormously to seeing the the long awaited fraud strategy. I think it'll be the third one since I've been in
17:37
Lord Vaux of Harrowden Portrait Lord Vaux of Harrowden (Crossbench)
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this house. But but anyway, but a lot of what he said, you know, definitely moves in the right definitely moves in the right direction in relation to this amendment specifically, I'm a little disappointed because whilst I hear what he says about the evidence base, which is obviously backward looking, the situation backward looking, the situation here is we know that the situation is changing. Physical sims are is changing. Physical sims are being replaced by e-SIMs at a fairly rapid rate. So this is something we know is changing and I think it would be better to future proof the the bill at this stage if we can.

I do take on board his point that e-SIMs are a more traceable than physical sims, but part of the problem is that's not always the case in quite a lot of countries. And these things can be from anywhere. So I only take a certain amount of comfort from that. But that said, particularly given his assurances that we will that this will continue to be looked at. And if the evidence base does support change, I will at this stage beg leave to withdraw my

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amendment. Lord Christopher amendment be withdrawn. The amendment is by withdrawn. The amendment is by leave withdrawn. The question is that clause 114 stand. Part of the bill is minute. Is that opinion bill is minute. Is that opinion will say content to the contrary, not content the contents of it. The question is that clauses 115 and 116 stand part of the bill. As many as are of that opinion will say as are of that opinion will say content to the contrary, not content.

The contents of it. In clause 117, amendments 358 A Lord Davis not moved, not moved after clause. Apologies. The question is that clause 117 stand part of the bill is manager of that opinion will say content contrary not content. The contents of it after Clement-Jones.
17:39
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, I have tabled and I'm now moving amendment 359, which would create a new offence of digital identity theft. And I'm very pleased that the noble Lord Holmes of Richmond has signed and supports it to the amendment is deliberately tightly framed. It targets the foundational act that underpins so much modern fraud and serious criminality the deliberate harvesting of someone else's personal and sensitive information with the intent to impersonate them and conduct transactions, activities or communications in their name without their knowledge or consent.

It's about criminalising the act of stealing and weaponising a digital identity before the fraud or other downstream offending takes place. My Lords, as things stand and I very much hope that the Minister will confirm this, and indeed the promised fraud strategy will recognise the act of identity theft is not recognised in our law as a criminal offence in its own right. The Fraud Act 2006, the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and the Data Protection Act 2018, and the and subsequent Data Protection Act all play an important role, but they are primarily concerned with what happens after the identity has been stolen.

After the account has been opened, the loan has been taken out or the money has been moved. They addressed the fraud, the unauthorised access or the misuse of data. What they don't do is squarely grapple with the initial acquisition of personal and sensitive information with the purpose of impersonation. And indeed, as the House of Lords Fraud Act and Digital Fraud Committee, chaired by the noble Baroness Morgan, heard in evidence, identity theft is still formally regarded in much official material as a social rather than a legal concept.

Now, my Lords, that might have been tolerable in a predominantly analogue world, but it is simply not credible in the age of data breaches, credentials, stuffing deep fakes and synthetic identities, treating identity theft as a mere background condition rather than as a legal wrong in itself, leaves people's most intimate identifiers. Biometric data, passwords, National insurance numbers, digital credentials fundamentally under protected. The effect in practice is that law enforcement may feel they have limited tools to intervene at an early stage, even where there is clear evidence that large quantities of personal data have been harvested and traded with a view to impersonation.

Instead, the system waits for the fraud or the money laundering or the other downstream crime to crystallise. By then, the victim's credit record may be shredded, their bank accounts compromised and their reputation damaged. Yet the initial act of stealing their identity remains conceptually elusive. My Lords, the scale and nature of digital identity theft makes this gap increasingly untenable. We now know that organised criminals and fraudsters operate effectively. Industrial scale harvesting operations, feeding on the constant stream of data breaches and leaks from both public and private sector systems.

Those databases of stolen credentials are then traded, refined and recombined very often on the dark web to facilitate mass impersonation and fraud. And this activity is not just an adjunct to fraud. It is, as the Lords Fraud Committee rightly described it, a predicate action, a necessary precursor to a great deal of online financial crime and in some cases to other serious and organised criminality, including terrorism financing. The threat is being turbocharged by new technologies. Large language models enable highly convincing phishing and social engineering communications at scale and with very low cost.

Deepfake audio and video systems allow criminals to mimic a person's voice or image in ways that can be all but indistinguishable from the real thing. When those tools are combined with rich stolen identity data, criminals can construct synthetic identities or impersonate genuine individuals to open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, register mobile phones, and pass remote. Know your customer checks with alarming ease in that ecosystem. The act of stealing and collating identity data is itself a sophisticated, harmful criminal enterprise, not simply background noise.

My Lords, this bill is rightly concerned with modernising a range of policing and crime powers for the digital age. It updates police powers in relation to electronic devices and remotely stored data, and seeks to equip the criminal justice system to deal with contemporary threats. Yet it does not deal with this. Most basic of digital harms the theft of a person's identity, and that is why this amendment would define a clear, freestanding offence of digital identity theft. The test that the amendment proposes is straightforward and proportionate.

A person commits the offence if they obtain or attempt to obtain personal or sensitive information relating to an individual, and they do so with the intention of using that information or enabling someone else to use it to impersonate that individual for the purpose of carrying out any transaction, activity or communication in their name without consent or lawful authority. Personal or sensitive information is defined broadly enough to reflect modern methods of authentication, covering passwords, pins, credit card numbers, National Insurance numbers, biometric data, and other unique identifiers.

But it is tightly anchored to the intent to impersonate mere possession of data or ordinary lawful processing of personal information is not captured, nor is legitimate investigative work by law enforcement or regulators acting with lawful authority. In other words, my Lords, this is not about criminalising ordinary data handling or routine cyber security research. It's about reaching the deliberate, malicious act of obtaining someone's identifiers in order to pass oneself off as them and act in their name. Where that intent can be shown, it is entirely right that the law should bite at that point, rather than waiting passively for the fraud or for the victim's life to be upended.

The penalties proposed a maximum of 12 months imprisonment on summary conviction and up to five years on indictment are calibrated to reflect the seriousness and prevalence of the conduct and to give the courts flexibility to distinguish between lower level offending and the more organised industrial scale identity harvesting operations that we increasingly see. My Lord, some may say that the existing law is adequate, and we simply need to make better use of the Fraud Act or computer misuse offences.

With respect, my Lord, that underestimates the problems. It sends the wrong signal to say that the theft of your identity is not a harm in itself, merely an adjunct to other offences. Practically, it makes it harder for law enforcement to build cases against those at the centre of identity harvesting operations. Because the legal framework is not designed to capture the preparatory misuse of data in this way. And there is another reason to act now across government and industry, we are moving towards much more extensive use of of digital identity systems and digital attributes to verify who people are online, whatever the merits or demerits of compulsory or voluntary digital ID.

My Lords, done. Well, that can bring real benefits in terms of convenience, security and inclusion, but it also creates a more concentrated target for those who would steal and weaponise identity data. If we want citizens to have confidence in these emerging, emerging digital identity infrastructures, they will need to see that the law recognises the theft of their digital identity as a serious, specific criminal. Wrong. Not an unfortunate side effect. Unless we create an offence of this kind, there is a real risk that the public will become even more fearful of digital identities and digital attributes than they are of traditional physical documents.

People need assurance that the state understands the risks and has put in place a framework that deters and punishes those who would appropriate their digital selves for criminal ends. My Lords, this is a modest, targeted and I would say overdue proposal. It does not seek to redraw the whole law of fraud or cybercrime. It simply closes a glaring gap by recognising that the act of digital identity theft, the deliberate acquisition of someone else's personal identifiers with the intention of impersonation should itself be a criminal offence.

It would support earlier intervention by law enforcement, strengthened deterrence and send a clear public signal that in the digital age, your identity is not up for grabs. My Lords, I very much hope that the Minister will not simply respond by listing existing offences, but will engage with the underlying question do we accept that the theft of identity in and of itself, is a serious harm, that our criminal law should explicitly recognise? My Lords, if the answer is yes, this bill is the obvious vehicle I beg to move.



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Amendment proposed after clause 117, insert the new clause printed on the Marshalled List.

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on the Marshalled List. My Lords, pleasure to speak in this Committee stage and to follow my friend Lord Clement-Jones, who perfectly and indeed proportionately set out the principles in this amendment which principles in this amendment which I support to every last sentence.
17:50
Lord Holmes of Richmond Portrait Lord Holmes of Richmond (Conservative)
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My Lords, we are getting to a number of amendments now where we are discussing areas where the existing law and indeed this bill as currently drafted, is clearly out of date and full of gaps, not least when we consider the nature of how our nation, our economy, and indeed the state itself is seeking to move to digitisation, which has such benefits for citizens, for communities, for our cities, for our entire country. But one key element which enables, which empowers, which underpins almost every element of that digital transformation is effective digital ID there are a number of arguments which be made at another time around.

The correct approach to digital ID. I would suggest that the principles around self-sovereign ID should strongly be considered. Mandation is clearly problematic, and the reasons for introducing a digital ID should be clearly made and the benefits set out. But the specifics of this amendment are both clear, proportionate and timely. Because a digital ID is so critical and so essential to being able to avail oneself of the opportunities and indeed protect oneself against many of the harms to not have a digital ID protected by the criminal law would be a huge gap and an inexplicable and indefensible gap.

If the government want digital ID to be the means of accessing government services, if the government want to see greater digital inclusion, and through that, the attendant and very, very necessary financial inclusion, then action on the protection of our digital ID is critical. Lord Clement-Jones effectively set out the provisions of this amendment. I think it is proportionate, valid, timely and necessary. I very much look forward to the Minister accepting the principle as set out.

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Very briefly, to say that that identity theft that my noble friend identity theft that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond said, is no longer a niche crime. It's a dominant fraud type in the UK, and it's getting worse in 2024. Over 421,000 fraud cases were filed to the National Fraud Database, and the National Fraud Database, and almost 250,000 were identity fraud filings, making identity theft the filings, making identity theft the single largest category recorded by industry partners, and Cvas, the credit industry fraud avoidance system recorded a record number of cases to the National Fraud Database in 2024.

Now, the organisations themselves prevented more than 2.1 billion of attempted loss. Yet criminals are shifting tactics. The the account takeover rose 76% and unauthorised sim swap surge, driven by the rapid adoption of AI and generative tools that let fraudsters create convincing fake documents and synthetic identities at scale. Now, we've all read of some of the high profile examples. Celebrity impersonation via deepfakes cloned voices has been widely reported. Manipulated videos and voice clones purporting to show public figures from Elon Musk, Martin Lewis, Holly Willoughby and others have been used to generate investment scams and phishing campaigns, and documented victims.

Losses include large and individual losses linked to celebrity impersonation scams. One reported NatWest customer lost £150,000 after responding to a scam impersonating Martin Lewis. Now, however, my Lords, I think we're all more concerned with the tens of thousands of ordinary people who are not celebrities and lost all their savings to these crooks. These are the victims who suffer real financial loss, damage and long, costly recovery processes, and businesses facing rising prevention costs and operational
17:54
Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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strain. Therefore, my Lords, I strongly support the concept of the draft clause and the need for it. draft clause and the need for it. And whilst it is well intentioned, I fear it's got some technical difficulties. It's a bit broad and vague about what obtains, means and impersonate means, and it does risk impersonate means, and it does risk overlap with the Fraud Act, the Computer Misuse Act and the Data Protection Act, and it does lack Protection Act, and it does lack some clear defences for legitimate security research or unlawful investigations.

And it also needs to address the AI deepfake specific methods set out what we can do about extraterritorial reach, for example, or aggravating factors for organised large scale operations. Now, we all know, my Lords, that as we've just heard, my noble and my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond is an absolute expert on AI, and he recently addressed a top level group of the Council of Europe on this subject. Could I suggest that he and the noble Lord Clement-Jones did, together with the Home Office or other government digital experts, and bring back the report, a more tightly drafted amendment which, amongst other things, would tighten the definitions for the word obtain and personal and sensitive, ensure that mens rea is tied to dishonesty or intent to cause gain or a loss or gain, and include recklessness for enabling others.

Limit the scope to unlawfully obtain data that use that bypass authentication and explicitly include AI. Deepfake methods when used to bypass checks or cause reliance. And my Lords, they should have clear defences for lawful authority and make sure that they avoid duplication where it may be. The Fraud Act Computer Misuse Act and Data Protection Act. And finally, I know this is an impossible task and governments find it almost impossible to do, try and do something about extraterritorial reach, because that is terribly important.

So, my Lords, there is a gap in the legislation here. I say to the Minister, we should plug it, and we may have time to bring back a tight, more tightly constrained amendment report, which would deal with all the concerns of of the noble Lords and the the possible problems. I've just raised.
17:56
Lord Fuller Portrait Lord Fuller (Conservative)
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My Lords, I rise briefly and to support strongly the comments of the noble Lord Lord Blencathra, and also the principle of the amendment laid by the noble Lord Clement-jones. And it's a very timely amendment, possibly more timely than Lord Clement-Jones anticipated, because today the government has announced the promotion of a Minister to promulgate digital IDs amongst the population, and digital IDs are going to have a huge vista and connection, not just with personal linking to personal data, but other areas of life in the relationship between the state and the individual, the payment of parking tickets, toll roads, paying stamp duty fishing licences.

That's a different sort of fishing begins with an F, not a P. So I do agree with Lord Clement-Jones as the thrust of the amendment, although I accept some polishing is required because if the government is to promote digital IDs, the population at large needs to have confidence, not just that they're going to be correctly introduced, but there are safeguards for this impersonation. So I do strongly support the principle of this amendment. And I say to the noble Lord, Lord Flint, if the government resists in principle this amendment, what confidence can the man in the street have that it is that the government is sincere about the safeguards it intends to introduce, alongside its intention for digital ideas, to get that balance right, the balance between the state and the individual, coupled together against the criminal.

And I think we need to bring this back at report. I hope the Minister is prepared to meet with Lord Clement-Jones and others to get this principle, so that the government gets off on the right foot if it intends to promote digital IDs and not sort of resist this because there's a world of pain. If it does.
17:58
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones for tabling this Lord Clement-Jones for tabling this amendment, and I know that the creation of a specific identity offence has been a long standing concern of his, and so I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I'll move to tentatively support the principle behind this amendment, although I do believe that this is an issue deserving of more scrutiny and thought than perhaps what we are able to give it as an amendment, a Committee stage.

I recognise the impetus for this amendment. Identity theft has long been the primary means by which criminals commit fraud, and with a booming online world exacerbated by the introduction of artificial intelligence, digital identity theft is fast becoming a serious issue. Cifas, a leading non-profit fraud prevention service, has documented the rise in identity theft. Last years. We've already heard from my noble friend Lord Blencathra Lord Glenarthur. Over 420,000 fraud cases were filed to the National Fraud Database, a 13% increase on the year.

The main driver of this increase was identity fraud. The 250,000 filings, representing a 5% annual increase. Cifas cites online fraud as a primary cause of this increase. AI and generative technologies enable criminals to exploit people and speed and scale at speed and scale. Documents and identity cards are being forged at a more sophisticated level than before, with many now able to pass verification checks. Targets are often the elderly, as criminals target the less technology capable and therefore most vulnerable victims.

And as AI and other programmes continue to expand and improve and cross-border connectivity becomes ever more accessible, online fraud will only get worse. It does feel as if we are witnessing the beginnings of a boom and a new type of crime. The incentive is there for government to legislate for a specific offence to attempt to kerb this. And yet, despite this data and the dire projections that we face, there is no legislative framework that covers online identity fraud. The Theft Act 1968 covers the dishonest appropriation of someone else's property.

This extends to identity. The Computer Misuse Act of 1990 provides for the illegal accessing of another's computer. The Identity Documents Act of 2010 makes the possession, rather than the theft of another's identity document, illegal. There exists an unsystematic set of laws and regulations that might cover online identity fraud, but I can see why this is undesirable and how certain offences may slip through the cracks. If possible, the government should be seeking to bring all of these offences under a single offence.

It is a crime that will only get worse and as such we should attempt to minimise negative externalities and prevent cases to go unprosecuted. I do believe that the noble Lords amendment begins to do this. That being said, this is an important issue and therefore it should at least have government support and probably be government led, attaching it as an amendment to an existing bill is not the most desirable approach. Perhaps the noble Lord, the Minister, will be able to set out the government's position.

And as always, I look

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forward to hearing from him. Can I thank the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones for tabling the amendment, which will introduce a bespoke criminal offence of digital bespoke criminal offence of digital identity theft. I know he tabled similar amendments. He's a persistent Lord on these matters to persistent Lord on these matters to the Data Use and Access Bill, and I did hear the support from the noble did hear the support from the noble Lord Holmes of Richmond, noble Lord Fuller and the noble Lord Blencathra on this as well.

Although I did note the noble Lord Blencathra put a number of caveats to his broad support, which are caveats I share with him on this matter. The noble Lord Clement-jones asked me whether I would read out a number of amendments to previous bills and to previous pieces of legislation, and I may disappoint him by reaffirming those issues, as he would expect, because although Identity digital theft is not a standalone offence, there are, as he recognised himself, several criminal offences already existing to cover the behaviour targeted by his amendment.

The Fraud Act 2006. It's a criminal offence to gain from the use of another person's fraud cases, where accounts or databases are hacked into are criminalised under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. I can read to him the offences captured in sections two and six of the Fraud Act and one and two of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, section 170 of the Data Protection Act 2018 all apply to the online sphere and to create a new criminal offence. I could argue, and I think this is potentially might have some sympathy with the noble Lord Davies of Gower could be unnecessary and could be a duplication.

The Fraud Act 2006 captures cases where someone uses another person's identity. There's an equivalent common law offence in Scotland. The Fraud Act also establishes the offence of someone having in their possession or control, an article which includes data or program in electronic form. The Computer Misuse Act criminalises unauthorised access and section 170. The Data Protection Act covers the deliberate or reckless obtaining, disclosing and procuring of disclosure. Now, that's not to downplay the issue that the noble Lord has mentioned, because it is an important issue and I do recognise the concerns raised by the noble Lord and the government, I hope will will act decisively on these matters.

We are currently in the process of transitioning from the Action Fraud Service to a new, upgraded platform, which gives a better reporting tool for victims, stronger intelligent flows for police forces, and enhanced support
18:05
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour)
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for victims. We're also looking at doing what I think he wants, which doing what I think he wants, which is upskilling police officers. We have had a full review of police skills completed. The skills completed. The recommendations are being delivered through updated police training on this very important matter. And he this very important matter. And he will know that this government has made sure that His Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary and Fire Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services has now updated the strategic policing requirement, which will be published in this year, which will drive forces to upskill their staff on wider police reform.

On fraud matters, what we want to try and do is to upscale and upskill the capability to ensure the police does keep pace with the challenges that he's rightly identified. There is also, and this is important to take, perhaps on board the points that the noble Lord Blencathra has mentioned as well in his supportive critique of the proposals in the amendment, the Home Office has commissioned an independent review into disclosure and fraud offences. Part one of the review addressed disclosure has been conducted part two of the review, with Jonathan Fisher KC leading on it for.

The government will examine whether the current fraud offences are fit for purpose, and specifically whether they meet the challenges of investigating and prosecuting fraud and whether existing penalties remain proportionate. And I'm awaiting that report, which may or may not cover the areas the noble Lord has mentioned. But it is important that we have proper examination of that. And that's

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what is currently on, on going. Could the Minister give us an idea of timescale? Would it be deliriously possible to see this report before Report stage of this

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bill? As ever. As ever? I think I should just

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As ever? I think I should just have it tattooed on my forehead that says something like it will be produced in due course, because produced in due course, because that is the the commitment. Again, I can give but again, Report stage for this bill is going to be some significant time away. Yet we have another five days of committee. We have a gap in between for recess. We have a statutory gap in terms of our consideration of Report stage after Committee stage has finished.

So it is some while away. And the noble Lord is very adept at tabling further amendments that report should he so wish. But I say to him now that part two of the report is being considered by government, and we want to examine that and publish in due course. And I again, I expect that again in the very near future, we will producing the new updated fraud strategy, which will address the evolving threat of fraud, including the harm caused by identity theft.

And I can't again yet give him a date for that either before he intervenes. But I try and help the house by saying that it will be soon, and I will bring to the House that fraud strategy in due course, which will cover some of the areas potentially, that the noble Lord has mentioned. So there's a lot going on and there is existing legislation. I anticipate and understand that it's a genuine issue. I very much welcome the fact that noble Lord has brought it today, but I hope on the basis of what I said for today, at least, he will withdraw those amendments for that amendment.



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My Lords, can I thank the Minister and I'll come and respond Minister and I'll come and respond in a second. But first of all, my Lords, I'd like to thank the noble Lord Fuller for agreeing with the Lord Fuller for agreeing with the thrust of the amendment, in his words, for the noble Lord Blencathra, for his in principle support. And I entirely accept the support. And I entirely accept the points that he made. And indeed, if they're not there, they should be
18:08
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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the the additions, my Lord. So any amendment that was brought back to report should definitely take heed report should definitely take heed of the points that that he made. In terms of those reservations, my terms of those reservations, my Lords, and also the noble Lord Davies of Gower I was I anticipating that in a sense there anticipating that in a sense there might be too much continuity because I, his colleagues, obviously on the data use and obviously on the data use and access bill, pushed back on the idea of a of a digital identity theft offence in rather more adamant terms than the Minister has today, my Lord.

So I'm grateful for his in-principle support with all the the reservations that he had. And, my Lords, I thought the noble Lord Holmes really encapsulated quite a lot of this. Because as we move into the world of digital ID, having your digital identity stolen, my Lords, is an issue of digital exclusion, financial exclusion. My Lords, this is going to be increasingly important. And I was very interested that the noble Lord Blencathra had dug out the figures as such.

I mean, the scale of digital identity theft is huge, my Lord. So the, the, the, the number of people affected by what is effectively financial and digital exclusion is only going to grow, my Lords. But I did take some comfort. There was a glimmer of light coming out of the Home Office, my Lords, and I'm not always used to that, so I celebrate that, and particularly in view of the fact that there is a review that is taking place that may well report in the near future whatever the Minister has stamped on his forehead, I'm sure he's impatient to see that, given his specific role as the fraud Minister, my Lords and I do agree with him about the need for the police to have those specific powers.

My Lords, in terms of skills. And I welcome what he said about the upgraded platform in terms of understanding the evidence that is going to be underpinning any move towards creating an offence. My Lords, I think almost inevitably I'm going to come back with something more refined at Report stage. My Lords, in the hope that the Home Office review will. Review and indeed the of current fraud offences will come up with the goods, my Lords.

But I live in hope. But often where the Home Office is concerned, I'm afraid my hopes are only too frequently dashed, my Lords. But I live in hope, and I

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beg to withdraw. Amendment 359. Your Lordships pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn. Amendment is by leave withdrawn. We come now to amendment 360 Lord

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Clement-Jones. My Lords, I rise to move

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My Lords, I rise to move amendment 360, which seeks to introduce statutory defences to introduce statutory defences to changes under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. And I thank the noble Lord Holmes again for his support. And of course, he's tabled a number of amendments which are companions to this amendment. My Lords, the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is widely recognised as outdated, inadvertently criminalising legitimate and beneficial cyber security research, making the UK a difficult place for cyber experts to operate in.

And there's been a very vigorous campaign, as I'm sure the Minister is aware, by the cyber up campaign, and they have made the case very clearly. This anomaly risks undermining our national cyber resilience and the ability of researchers to proactively detect vulnerabilities. And this amendment addresses this by inserting a statutory defence where unauthorised access was demonstrably necessary for the detection or prevention of crime, or carried out in the public interest. My Lords, this reform, I believe, is vital for supporting responsible cyber research and aligning our laws with the needs of the 21st century digital landscape.

The CMA was passed in 1990 when cyber security, as we know it today, simply did not exist. At the time, only 0.5 percent of the UK population regularly used the internet. Critics, including 93% of cyber security professionals surveyed, believe the act is no longer fit for this century. The current criminal law criminalises unauthorised access irrespective of the good intentions or defensive motivations of the professional, and this has created a perverse situation where the UK's cyber defenders are forced to act with one hand tied behind their back.

Threat intelligence researchers investigating criminal infrastructure, for instance, are often unable to obtain explicit consent required under the act. This results in 80% of cyber security professionals in surveys carried out having worried about breaking the law while investigating cyber threats. This ambiguity and restriction deters a large proportion of the research needed to assess and defend against emerging threats posed by organised criminals and geopolitical actors. It also limits the UK industry's capability compared to foreign competitors in countries such as France, Israel and the US, which already offer more permissive legislative regimes.

Consequently, the UK cyber industry is held at a competitive disadvantage. My Lords, this is a clear economic issue, not merely a legal one. Reform of the CMA is essential to securing a robust digital economy. Updating the act is estimated to unlock up to £2.4 billion in additional annual sector revenue, and support the creation of thousands of highly skilled jobs. The case for this reform has been strongly supported by government experts, and my Lords are, I'm sure the Minister has in his brief, Sir Patrick Vallance, now Lord Vallance in his Pro-regulation Pro-innovation Regulation of Technologies review, recommended amending the CMA to include a statutory public interest defence, arguing it would provide stronger legal protections and have a catalytic effect on innovation in a sector with considerable growth potential.

Such a defence would legitimise activities otherwise prohibited under section one when carried out to detect or prevent cybercrime, or when justified by the public interest. And I very much hope the Minister, if he hasn't already had the opportunity to talk to his noble friend, will do so. My Lords, we must also ensure that safeguards are in place to prevent misuse. The intent is not to legalise vigilantism or hacking back activities involving the disruption or degrading degradation of systems.

This must remain solely the prerogative of the state. Instead, implementation would be guided by a framework assessing proportionality, competence, intent and the balance between harm and benefit. My Lords,
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18:17
Lord Holmes of Richmond Portrait Lord Holmes of Richmond (Conservative)
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Amendment proposed after clause 117. Insert the following new clause as printed on the Marshalled List. >> My Lords, again, it's a pleasure to follow my friend Lord Clement-Jones, whose amendment I agree with and indeed my amendments, which I'll speak to 361 through 364 are, as he rightly put it, companions to the intent of his 360. My Lords, in simple terms, we have an opportunity to change the law to benefit our cyber professionals and everything that they do to keep us safe, often and rightly and understandably in the shadows.

They not only deserve our respect, they deserve our support. And this is one small way in which we can support them. I'd also like to put on record my thanks and congratulations to Cyber Up, an effective campaign. Effective because they've taken an issue, understood it at its essence and been clear, consistent and proportionate in their campaigning, not only campaigning around the difficulties, but offering practical and proportionate solutions. They are the very model of what a campaigning organisation should be.

My Lords, in 2026, we are told it's going to be the year when smart glasses really take on. We'll see. In 2007, the iPhone was launched, and yet the Computer Misuse Act still sits comfortably dustily Fustily out of date on the statute book since 1990 1990, when point 5% of US UK ers were online. So what's happened in that intervening 35.5 years? Has that 0.5% doubled, trebled, increased tenfold 20 fold.

Well 0.5% in 1990. In 2025 has moved on to 98.7% of the UK being online. That percentage alone should be enough to make the case for the need for urgent updating of the Computer Misuse Act. It came into being to address the issue around attacks on telephone exchanges. If the government or any polling organisation went on to the streets of our country and asked anybody under the age of about us, about a telephone exchange, I think you might get some interesting results, but not any of any benefit to the issues we're discussing.

It would be the smallest wording. The greatest understatement to say that since 1990, things have moved on. There's a case for change, and the previous government and this government have largely accepted that work has been done since 2021. Looking into reviewing, considering this issue, and yet still we await any legislative change. What we're talking about is incredibly straightforward to give a legal defence to legitimate cyber activities. Clear, concise, precise and proportionate.

It would be a good enough reason to update the CMA just on that point of it being so chronically out of date. But more than that, it isn't just out of date, it's doing harm. Harm to our cyber professionals who, as I've already mentioned, do so much to keep us safe. Harm to the security of our nation and harm to security of our nation and harm to the UK cyber industry. Some numbers 36.77 million reasons to make a change because 36.77 million cyber attacks on UK businesses and charities.

Another number 27 billion. Reasons to make this change 27 billion. The costs to UK businesses and our economy from cyber attacks, not 27 billion costs in total 27 billion year on year. So since 2021, when these various reviews have begun, that's 27 billion out of our economy year on year. These changes in these amendments would bring the legal clarity and certainty which is required by our cyber professionals. And if we look in other parts of the bill, we can see where legal defences, clarity around public interest are being brought in.

That would be completely analogous with what we're suggesting here. When it comes to the Computer Misuse Act, and we're falling behind, that means we're falling behind in terms of security, societal and economic benefits. The United States, France, Germany, Israel, Belgium and more countries already have a more appropriate regime than we do in the United Kingdom. The government talk about growth. And quite right too. Well, imagine we already have a 13 billion cyber industry in this country.

This change could unlock growth in the region of 3 billion skills training, jobs, careers, just by dint of making this very straightforward, clear, concise and proportionate change. Dan Jarvis partially in another place and largely at the Financial Times Summit on the 5th of December last year, acknowledged this issue, understanding the points behind it and stating that it was a priority for the Home Office. So can I ask the Minister, is this a key priority, a pressing priority and urgent priority? I'd suggest it should be one of the Home Office's top priorities.

And to that end, would the Minister agree to meet with me and other colleagues across your Lordships House to update us on exactly where the Home Office is thinking is, and where and when they are looking to make this change. We have the ideal opportunity with this bill. The time is now. In many ways. We're well overdue for the time being. Now, I ask the Minister, if not when?
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Baroness Neville-Jones Portrait Baroness Neville-Jones (Conservative)
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Well, my Lord. >> I rise to support the amendments in this group, especially the ones put forward by our noble Lord Lord put forward by our noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones and also my noble friend, Lord, Lord Holmes. They are 360 and 362 and I, like others, welcome the fact that the government appears to have seen value in the introduction of a statutory defence for cyber security researchers, which results, I hope, in the updating of the Computer Misuse Act, which, like others, I have been campaigning for about a decade.

That act, you know, when it was passed, was perfectly valid. But in market conditions which had been described by colleagues, which were extraordinarily different, and it now, as Lord Holmes has rightly said, is not just neutral in the scene, it's actively doing damage to our national security because it prevents or discourages those professionals whose work is lies in research into things like vulnerabilities in the system or threat intelligence are discouraged, frankly, from doing that work by the possibility of finding themselves in trouble with the law.

So it's very important that we now arrange organise ourselves so that such challenges, if they exist, if they come forward, can be defended. And the activities of our professionals can be both supported and encouraged. So I hope the government will ensure that in drafting the legislation, they cover all aspects of this particular difficulty, that's to say, not just vulnerabilities in the system, but particularly actually threat intelligence, which, if you think about it for a moment, is becoming increasingly important.

It's what we need to know about what's wrong with the system, and we need to know it early and soon and before it actually capable of doing real damage in each case. So this is an important amendment. Could I ask the Minister when he replies, that he will give an assurance to the effect that the amendments that the government will bring forward will cover both the question of vulnerabilities, but also the issue of threat intelligence?
18:29
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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Yeah, yeah. Lord Lord Clement-Jones and my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond for tabling the amendments in this group. In this group, beginning with amendment 36. Oh, I welcome that. Overlord's aims when a crime is detected or prevented. It is a sensible principle that the individual responsible for detection or prevention should not be punished. That said, I do think that the amendment is perhaps too wide in its scope. It mentions nothing of proportionality, which leads me to worry that it could end up being used as a defence for an individual who has committed a far greater crime than which they claim to have been preventing.

Similarly, public interest is broadened and defined, and I would appreciate if the noble Lord, perhaps Lord Clement-Jones, could clarify what would fall under this defence. I'm also sceptical of my noble friend's amendment 36 one. Standardising sentences for crimes of different degrees is not a common rule of thumb, and I don't see the benefits of doing so for the act in question. I might agree with my noble friend if his argument is for higher and harsher sentences. Since the 1990 act came into force, computer misuse has become a far greater issue.

But simply levelling all maximum sentences to 14 years seems illogical. By definition, unauthorised access to computer material with intent to commit or facilitate an offence is worse than unauthorised access without the intent. That is why, in the Act as it stands, there exists a disparity of maximum sentences and to level these punishments provides no incentive against committing the worst crime. And I understand that a 14 year maximum would give the courts room to judge for themselves, but I do not think it is the right way to legislate in general, to set a maximum penalty and leave it to the discretion of judges.

There must be a scale of punishment. I agree with the caveat that subsection three would introduce an amendment 36 two, ensuring that an action required or permitted by a law or by an authority is not illegal, is sensible. Section three, however, is perhaps too vague. I understand why my hon. Friend believes this to be a sensible measure, as access to, for example, a friend's computer without explicit consent might not or might not always warrant a charge being brought forward.

I would be interested to hear whether noble, my noble friend, has the data on the number of offences that have fallen into this category. In general, however, introducing a conditional condition into an act must always be done cautiously. It often requires more evidence and therefore more court time to prove an offence, and I am not sure our courts are in the right state for that currently, and without the information to hand, I cannot support the measure. I am also hesitant to offer my support.

Amendment 36 for I understand the impetus for extending the legislation to bodies, corporate and partnerships, but I am again unsure whether the data would deem this necessary. And in the 12 months leading up to April 2025, only 55 offences led to charges or summons under the Computer Misuse Act. So I cannot find I cannot find the number of those which were committed by corporations. But even if all 55 were so, we would still be dealing with a very small number. Individuals are already liable for offences under the act, and I am unsure of the need to extend this to bodies.

I will end on a positive note and say that I support the principle behind my noble friend's amendment. 363. The amendment clarifies the territorial scope of the original act, making it extraterritorial application clearer and more rigorous, especially as we now exist in an area with heightened computer related fraud and crime. So this is welcome. I look forward to hearing whether the noble or the Minister shares my view, and to hearing the noble Lords closing remarks.
18:32
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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Once again, I'm grateful to the noble Lord Clement-Jones and indeed, with support from the noble Lord Holmes of Richmond, for raising this topic in the amendments today. And I'm grateful also for the noble Lady Baroness Neville-Jones, for bringing her vast experience in this area to the debate today as well. And if I can say genuinely to all of them in the responses that they've made, they do have a point. And it's a point that the government has recognised to date that we do need to ensure that we update the act accordingly.

There is no doubt that UK cyber security professionals contribute greatly to enhancing and protecting the country's security, and supporting them is vitally important. And the figures that the noble Lord Holmes of Richmond put in terms of the growth since the original act took place, is absolutely valid and absolutely understood, and I recognise that he did mention, and he's right to do so, that the previous government, at other ministerial official level, I'm not party to how that worked. Commissioned the review in 2021, but now in 2026, this government has had custody of this issue since July 24th.

And I think that it's a reasonable presumption that we need to come to some conclusions on the review. The government's listened to the concerns raised by noble Lords and the the noble Lord Holmes of Richmond again mentioned my colleague Dan Jarvis, who's the Minister responsible for these areas. They have listened to the concerns and they have over the past year, made real progress in developing a proposal for a limited defence to the offence at section one of the Computer Misuse Act, namely unauthorised access to computer material.

And, crucially, this includes safeguards to prevent misuse. However, and this is where my caveat comes in place. This is a immensely complex area. Noble Lords, including the noble Lord Davies of Gower, have pointed to that complexity in their contributions. But there is engagement underway, including with the cyber security industry, to refine the approach, and I hope that we'll be able to provide an update at some point. Further work is currently required to consider the safeguards that would be needed to accompany any introduction of statutory defences, and my colleagues at official level in the Home Office now are currently working with the National Cyber Security Centre.

Law enforcement and the industry on this issue to try to come to some conclusions. The Home Office is actively considering wider changes to the Computer Misuse Act. As part of the review we're undertaking, we are scoping several proposals to update the act, including the very point that's been mentioned by a number of noble Lords in their contributions, which is the Act's extraterritorial provisions and indeed the maximum penalties that were introduced in relation to the proposals to increase maximum penalties for computer misuse.

Offensive. The act already provides for a range of penalties, including life imprisonment, for offences that cause or create a significant risk of serious damage to human welfare or national security. And whilst the government shares the noble Lords concern regarding appropriate sentencing, and are considering this as part of the wider review of the 1990 act, but we do not consider the proposal currently to update the majority of offences and uplift them under the act of 14 years to be proportionate. But I say, and I hope this is accepted, that and again, I've said this in a number of areas today.

This government is still just over 18 months into office. There is a review being undertaken and I hope that will come to some conclusion on those issues. But at the moment those complexities are still under consideration. Amendment 364 would introduce a personal criminal liability for directors and managers who fail to prevent or otherwise consent to offending under the Computer Misuse Act. And again, I recognise the intent to strengthen accountability. The current view that we have is it's unnecessary, given the existing offences applicable to persons who enable or facilitate offending.

Now, again, I know this will be entirely unsatisfactory as the noble Lord, both Clement Jones and indeed to the supporters who've spoken in this debate today. But while this review of the 19 act 1990 act is ongoing, I am limited in regards to what I can say about the government's plans to reform the act. But I hope I have considered that the points that have been raised are absolutely valid. Certainly.

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Apologies. Can I just clarify if the Minister's able to clarify, is the Minister's able to clarify, is the review still ongoing, or is the government currently reviewing the review? Well.

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review? Well. Can I say to the noble Lord and I hope he takes this in the way in which I, I respond. The review which I, I respond. The review commenced in 2001. It is now 2006, commenced in 2001. It is now 2006, a 2021. Sorry, it is now 2026. That is a long time for a review, and I would want to ensure that we come to some conclusions on the 1990 act. But I can't at this stage give him a timescale for the reasons that I've mentioned, about the complexity of this matter I have had with Minister Jarvis custody in the Home Office of these issues since July 24th.

That is still three years into a review that was commissioned in 2021. So I can't give him a definitive timescale today, but I just hope that the House can accept that there is active consideration of these very important matters raised by members today, and that the Home Office does plan to reform the act. But I will hopefully demonstrate that we are progressing this work at pace. But we do need to get it right. And sadly, we're not going to be able to legislate in this bill ourselves as a government.

But there is scope to examine issues at a later date accordingly. But with those reassurances, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
18:39
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, can I thank the Minister like his flooding through the windows of the Home Office? Unusually. And I'd like to thank him, but I'll come back to what he had to say. First of all, want to thank the noble Baroness Neville-Jones for her support as Minister said her huge experience in this area is really valuable. It's really valuable to have her support in those circumstances. A very big thank you to the noble Lord homes, who thinks these things through in very eloquent fashion, and he more or less reminded me that back in 1990, the thing that I was using was a dial up Apple Mac classic, I think classic two probably, which just shows how long ago the act was, was.



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I don't wish to disturb the noble Lord in full flow, but I just remembered I did miss an important remembered I did miss an important point for the noble Lord Holmes of Richmond, which was he did request a meeting with either myself or an a meeting with either myself or an appropriate Minister. And what I will do is if the noble Lord would allow me to intervene on him, I allow me to intervene on him, I will take that away and get back to the noble Lord in due course, with either myself or my colleague,

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Minister Dan Jarvis, or both of us meeting with anybody who wishes to bring with him. Well. I think that's a very useful offer, my Lords, for those who are involved or have interest in pushing this agenda forward, and the noble Baroness Neville-Jones also emphasised following Lord Jones speech, it's not just about being out of date, it is actually positively harmful. And I think the Home Office appears to be aware of that. My Lords, despite the stately progress on on the review.

But I just think that the fact that the Minister has said there is a recognition of the need to update the act, I think is is very helpful. And the fact that he said they've made progress in formulating a limited defence is not quite so sure about that, my Lords. But let's see that when it when it arrives and I'm sure he's got engraved across his forehead the phrase update at some point, my Lords, that's a, you know, not quite as good as shortly or it's better perhaps than in due course.

But, you know, one has to take away the crumbs of comfort one can, my Lords. And I think the the thing that I take most comfort from is the fact that we have a cyber security and resilience bill, which is going to come to this House after it's hit the Commons, which had its Second Reading yesterday, my Lords. And that might well, if the Home Office picks up a bit of pace, might be the opportunity to produce an clause in there which would provide the kind of defence we're talking about today.

I understand that he's got a rather Trappist vow at this point. My Lords, in terms of being limited in what can be said. So we very much hope that he will be able to let loose at some stage in the future, my Lords, and we look forward to that. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Is it your Lordship's pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn? The amendment is by leave withdrawn. The amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendments three six 1 to 3 six four. Lord Holmes of Richmond not four. Lord Holmes of Richmond not moved. We come now to amendment 365.
18:42
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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Lord Davies of Gower. >> My Lords, this this group addresses two of the most addresses two of the most significant criminal challenges facing our railways fare dodging and freight crime. First, my amendment 365 seeks to increase the penalties for fare dodging on the railways. It was reported towards the end of last year that 1 in 20 London Underground passengers were dodging fares. Transport for London has estimated their losses at around £130 million over the last year, with losses across the whole railway network potentially reaching £330 million.

This is not a victimless crime. Those losses do not simply disappear into the aether. Every penny not paid in rail fare means less money for improvements to services, less money for infrastructure upgrades and higher fares for the vast majority of law abiding passengers who do pay their fares. Often, fare evasion is a crime committed in conjunction with other, more serious offences. Some of those who have been stopped and searched by police for fare evasion have been found with knives and drugs.

This amendment would increase the maximum fine that can be issued by officers of the railway operators for fare evasion from level two to level four on the standard scale, therefore bringing the maximum penalty from £500 to £2500. Furthermore, it increases the maximum penalties that can be handed out on summary conviction to a level five fine or a term of imprisonment of up to six months. The the existing penalties were fixed at the current levels through the Criminal Justice Act 1982, meaning they were set a number of decades ago.

Given the scale of the problem, it is clear that these penalties do not reflect either the seriousness of persistent fare evasion or the reality that some offenders treat the current regime as a calculated risk. This amendment would increase the maximum penalties available to the courts, particularly for repeat or aggravated offenders, while leaving full discretion with magistrates to distinguish between genuine error or deliberate fraud. But my Lords, this is not just about punishment, but enforcement. Railway staff, especially transport for London, need to be trained to confront those bumping barriers and take action.

It is an all too common occurrence to see staff simply watching as people jump the barriers. My Second amendment in this group requires the government to publish a rail freight crime code. Freight crime has become one of the most serious threats facing the logistics sector. From thefts at motorway service areas to violent attacks on drivers, organised criminal gangs are deliberately targeting freight operations. The impact is indeed severe, with freight crime costing the UK economy over £1 billion since 2020, including £111.5 million worth of goods stolen in 2024 alone, many of which are high value electrical items.

On average, each incident results in £20,000 of lost stock and £2,000 of vehicle damage. There's some large scale attacks reaching up to £5 million. Drivers are being threatened, assaulted and driven from the industry, worsening retention and recruitment challenges. At a time when the UK needs logistic capacity more than ever. Tackling this is hampered by the lack of a consistent national framework for recording or investigating freight crime, leaving major gaps in data and enforcement. This is all against the backdrop of the government's target to increase rail freight by 75% by 2050, a target set by my noble friend Lord Harper when he was Secretary of State for transport, in which this government remains committed to.

But that growth in the rail freight sector cannot materialise if the sector is facing such high levels of theft. My amendment does not seek any new offences, but requires the Home Secretary to establish a new freight crime code. The aim is to ensure that incidents of freight crime are properly recorded and investigated across the country. Amongst the issues with current data collection is the fact that freight theft is currently recorded as theft from a vehicle. This does not reflect the seriousness or nor the specific nature of freight crime.

So, my Lords, I look forward very much to what the Minister has to say in relation to this.
18:47
Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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Amendment proposed after clause 117, insert the following new clause as printed on the Marshalled List. >> I rise to support my noble friend's amendment 365 to clause friend's amendment 365 to clause 117, which would increase the penalties for those who deliberately avoid paying rail fares. Deliberate fare evasion fares. Deliberate fare evasion undermines the integrity of our railway and cost taxpayers and passengers hundreds of millions each year, and we must be firm in protecting revenue and fund services and investment. However, my Lords, there is another side to this issue that we cannot ignore.

Recent reviews and watchdog recommendations show a system that is complex, inconsistent and at times unfair to passengers who make genuine mistakes. The passenger watchdog has called for a national yellow card warning for first time errors, and a central rail card database to prevent innocent people being prosecuted for technical or administrative errors. I always book advance tickets on the train. They're slightly cheaper than the full fare ones, and a few weeks ago, business here finished early. I got to Euston early, got on the train early, but an earlier one than boot.

And when I produced my ticket I said to the manager, I'm on an earlier train. Is that all right? Oh, he said, I'll let you off on this occasion. I think what he meant was he let me off paying the full fare because I was on an earlier train. But, my Lords, I've heard of people being accused of fare evasion for being on with with a ticket they've paid for being on, on at the wrong time on the train. Now, that would be a perfect example where the yellow card system should be used.

The Office of Rail and Road was asked to review revenue protection practices, precisely because enforcement has been uneven and opaque, and we've seen the consequences of those failures. Thousands of prosecutions were quashed after courts found operators had used inappropriate fast track procedures, and many passengers face the threat of criminal records for minor errors. Now, these are not abstract concerns, my Lords. They are real harms to livelihoods and trust in the system. So I support the principle of tougher penalties for deliberate evasion, but only if there are clear safeguards.

And those safeguards should be a statutory first warning step, a consistent published test before any prosecution, improved point of sale information and standardised enforcement guidance for all the different train operators and mandatory staff. Training and data sharing to identify repeat offenders rather than punishing honest mistakes. Now I understand the government has accepted the recommendations and must now legislate to ensure enforcement is proportionate and transparent. So, in short, my Lords, tough penalties and fairness are not mutually exclusive. We can deter deliberate evasion while protecting innocent travellers, but only if this amendment is paired with the reforms.

The Orr and passenger bodies have recommended. So I urge the noble Lords Minister to support the amendment on that basis, and also to press the government to enshrine these other safeguards into law.
18:50
Viscount Goschen Portrait Viscount Goschen (Conservative)
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My noble friend Will. Blencathra has made. >> A a. >> Very pragmatic. >> Speech on the difficulties. >> Of of fare evasion and the

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Of of fare evasion and the extraordinary complexities of the ticketing and fare system in the UK. ticketing and fare system in the UK. And of course, I note that the government is is legislating in this area as part of its broader GB Railways bill that's coming down the tracks, as it were. But I really don't believe that there is a single individual in the United Kingdom who could answer any, you know, 20 questions about the cheapest fare from A to B, crossing C, and get it right.

It is an extraordinary system and I quite agree. There are many people making inadvertent errors and that should absolutely be taken into consideration. Equally, the Lords, the noble Lord, the Minister will have heard me on many, many occasions throughout the passage of this bill, talking about enforcement and the law is is brought very quickly into disrepute. If the laws that law abiding people see as, as absolute necessary are being avoided by, by a determined criminal element.

Lords, we've all seen it. We've all seen it in the tube. People barging through, tailgating, hopping over the barriers. I've seen it myself, I think at Green Park Station late in think at Green Park Station late in the evening to. To officials of of London Underground chatting to each other. Someone comes barging past and they absolutely nothing whatsoever. Well, if that continues, then I suggest we get ourselves into a very difficult situation indeed. So, Lords, when the naval Lords Minister does come to respond, I would ask that he does talk about enforcement.

I'll ask that he does talk about the attitude of of the police to combat the serious issue which does rob Railways, London Underground, hundreds of millions of pounds and is unsustainable. But I do think on the ticketing issue or the fare issues, the answer really lies in technology. I think the apps have made this much more straightforward. This is absolutely a task for computers to find the best ticket from from ASB, but there are plenty of people who don't use those who aren't particularly computer literate and prefer paper tickets.

So, Lords, it is perhaps more complex than it seems from the outside. But I really do think we have to put more effort on enforcement in this difficult area.
18:53
Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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My Lords, briefly, because very >> My Lords, briefly, because very good points have been made. I am tempted to want to say yes. What we tempted to want to say yes. What we need to do is increase penalties, or what we should do is threaten people with prison, because fare dodging does drive me mad, particularly on the tube. And it's partly the kind of brazen, quite violent and intimidatory way that it happens for ordinary people that you kind of are pushed out of the way and you, you just don't know what to do.

And we all we're not all Robert Jenrick with a camera. I mean so you kind of you want to intervene, you want to say something, you want to have something happen but it doesn't happen. And so what's what's occurred is a normalisation of anti-social behaviour. The difficulty therefore is whether you can legislate against that, because it seems to me that partly at least this is cultural and that we have a situation of a kind of looking away from members of the public.

But I do think there's a problem with staffing, whether TfL staff in particular are intimidated or whether they're indifferent. It's hard to tell, but I can assure you they're not intervening very much. And even despite the fact that this has had a lot of publicity recently, I've seen it carries on. It seems to me all the time. And even if you go to talk to the staff, they look the other way. So it's it's one of those things and then you don't want to be a grass and so on and so forth.

I mean, that's the way I don't mean, you know, I can I can see people feeling I don't necessarily want to go and report on that person. I'm not sure what to do. In other words, the public are stymied. They're not quite sure how to respond. And it's ironic because we're constantly told that we should respect staff, public facing staff. And that's absolutely right. But if the public facing staff don't respect us as members of the public, it makes it difficult. So I'm not convinced, despite the good intentions of this, this amendment, that I think it's the solution because I'm fed up of laws being added to the statute book that then nobody enforces.

It seems to me to bring the law into into disrepute. I also just wanted to add a note about the difficulties of buying tickets and knowing whether you're using the right ticket. In terms of National Rail, I can assure you I've made mistakes. But one of the reasons why one can make a mistake is if you've got fixed time, the fixed ticket and the train is then late and then you get on another train, you actually can be reprimanded for being on the wrong train, when in fact it's just arrived at the time that the train that you were going to get should have arrived or hasn't arrived.

I mean, I won't bore you with the details, but anyone who's travelled on trains regularly will know what I'm talking about. And then to be kind of sneered at by a member of staff as though you're kind of. So it does seem to me that the danger here is that the innocent could indeed find themselves at the receiving end of a more draconian enforcement, whereas the culprits, as it were, gets away with it. I also wanted to just draw attention to, you know, the the dangers of fast track court processes.

I really got I really hate the single justice procedure, and I thought it was worth noting that the TfL are the people who use that most to prosecute people. And so you could say that, you know, when the noble Lord Lord Blencathra made the point about, you know, you can appeal to magistrates? Well, not in that instance. You can't, because actually you're not in the courtroom. You're actually it's all happening behind your back. And so I just worry about this just injustice occurring.

But on the other hand, I would like to hear from the government what strategy they have got for really not relying on one person with a video camera to expose this, but to have a campaign about fare dodging would do no harm because it is public money. It the public do get very irritated by it. And so I don't think we need an amendment, but I wouldn't mind a I wouldn't mind some action to be taken.
18:57
Lord Goddard of Stockport Portrait Lord Goddard of Stockport (Liberal Democrat)
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Well, that's interesting group >> Well, that's interesting group of amendments. And I think we've stray slightly away from the intentions of the of the move of intentions of the of the move of the motion. And three, six, five is another amendment from the conservative benches increasing penalties for fare dodging. And and as other speakers have said, and I'm glad that Lord Davis acknowledged that he for enforcement is consistency of how these regulations are applied. And currently that isn't the case.

So I hope that great British Railways, when they take over the franchises, will guarantee some common training and work in that area, which will stop the blindingly obvious things that we do see. I mean, I've seen it at Westminster station here, where three people have just burst a barrier and there have been two staff members there, just with their arms folded and almost waved them through. You know, it's not my job to go and off they go. But and I just make one comment and perhaps I don't think Baroness Fox made it with any in any intention, but I've never found any staff on on British Railways to, to be sneering and sort of offensive.

But you have to understand that sometimes you're dealing with people who make a professional life of travelling on the rails without paying. And I've been on a train down to London and sat across from me, was a gentleman, and his son looked about ten years of age with little iPad, and we finally get to. Milton Keynes, almost two miles out. Ticket collector comes through and he's got a single ticket off peak to Macclesfield, which is the next station. And it was.

It wasn't going to buy the ticket. I'm not That's the dilemma. Then the train manager finishes. It's the emotional blackmail. And how often does this happen? But the train manager is very polite. It dealt with him and just asked him if he had a ticket with his credit card, or he had to get off at Milton Keynes and there'd be a policeman waiting for him there, and that impossible to do, and he made a quick phone call. He pulled into Milton Keynes, and the chap had to get off because there was some peer pressure from other passengers, I must admit.

And there was a policeman waiting for him, and that just sends a real message about connectivity of what? What what guards can do without having to get into confrontational attacks, you know, with, with, with passengers. So I think it's a double edged sword. It's not always putting the fine up. It's it's making sure you can do it. And I've been travelling on the tube, which is slightly different for 11 years, and I've only once I've seen the, the crew that get on to get fair dodgy on the tube.

And what they do is about six get on in one carriage either entrance and go right across. So in the gap between you getting from one tube station to up, they see everybody and they can't escape because they come out from both sides. I'd only ever seen that once in all the time I've travelled on the tube. So I think that catching them on the train, rather than trying to stop them bursting through a barrier, might be another option that the transport for London might want to consider.

The amendment 368 on freight crime. It's very interesting probing amendment. And it is interesting because all the members have highlighted the the level of crime with logistics center. And Lord Davies tells us the numbers and they are frightening. More frightening is the attack on the drivers and the fact that motorway service stations are now being targeted by groups of crimes, organised crime, even so, deliberately targeting the operators. So I think it's something that the government need to look at.

And to be clear, my Lords, this amendment does not change the law. This amendment would not create a new offence. What it does, it requires the Home Secretary to establish a freight crime code, ensuring incidents are properly identified, recorded, investigated across all police forces. Because recording these high value crimes differently from a standard theft from a vehicle, that better reflects the seriousness and the economic consequences of freight crime, and that creates the groundwork for building the stronger deterrent to the organised crimes and and occasional criminals that are taking this huge amount of money out of our economy, threatening drivers and destabilizing the logistic industry.

And I would be quite interested to see whether the Minister on this occasion, considering we're not looking or the Lord is not looking to bring a new bill in just to create a cold. And surely that's not beyond the wit of the government to create a code, to actually just record, investigate and ensure that people understand these are high value crimes and not just theft from vehicles. Thank you.
19:02
19:03
Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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trains rather than at the barriers. Can I thank all noble Lords for speaking in this short but speaking in this short but important debate and raising these important issues, particularly as we're discussing rail issues, I we're discussing rail issues, I feel first of draw noble Lords attention to my interests as as declared in the Register, as a former employee and indeed current shareholder of a transport operator, FirstGroup, and indeed a former employee and current member of a rail union Transport Salaried Staffs Association.

So both staff side and management, it balances out. So turning first to amendment three six, five, put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Davis, which seeks to increase the fines for fare dodging, the government is committed to ensuring that everyone who travels on the railway pays the correct fare for their journey, and train operating companies have multiple mechanisms in place to prevent passengers travelling without the correct ticket. This includes provisions that are set out in the Railways Act, but also includes the use of the civil enforcement regime for penalty fares.

In 2022, the penalty was raised from £20 to £100, and this ha had a positive impact on reducing fare evasion and preventing fraud on railway, which we of course all want to see. Whilst issuing penalty fares is one way of tackling fare dodging, there are other measures that can be taken, and I'm pleased to say that we had quite a extensive debate on these. As Lord noble Lord Blencathra acknowledged, the Office of Rail and Road have been asked to consider improvements to the industry's revenue protection practices, and they published their review earlier this year that set out five recommendations, which the secretary, my colleague, the Secretary of State for transport, accepted in full.

And it's probably worth actually just very quickly going through those recommendations, were to make buying the right ticket simpler and easier, to strengthen consistency in how passengers are treated when issues arise, to introduce greater consistency and fairness in the use of prosecutions. To make information on revenue protection easy to access and understand, and to provide greater coordination, oversight and transparency of revenue protection activity. And I hope to an extent, those address the the very valid concerns that Lord, not only the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra expressed about complexity, but also those shared by a noble Viscount Goschen and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of of Buckley.

My Lords, I think we all want to encourage rail travel. We don't want to discourage it by making the system too complex. And we also don't want to penalise people who are truly acting in good faith. But it is at the same time important that we are, that we prevent fair, fair dodging and make sure that there is a proper regime to prevent that. Fare simplification is, of course, at the heart of this. As many noble Lords said in the debate on these amendments, and this is, I can confirm, very much part of the government's plan.

Plans for rail reforms as part of the creation of Great British Railways. I think it's probably up to individual train operators and indeed other public transport operators to promote their own campaigns on on fare dodging. But certainly I think it's it's to pick up the point made by the noble Lady, Baroness Fox. But I think it's, you know, it is it is the case that you you whether you're travelling on, on the tube or indeed on National Rail, you actually can't go far without seeing posters and public information about about fare dodging.

This is about the balance between promoting responsible behaviour and also and and also penalising and enforcement in, in enforcement. But Lord, the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, talk to as as others did talked about enforcement. And I have to say I, I didn't on TfL. I don't share his experience. Maybe I use the tube a little more than than he does, but I'm multiple times I've seen plainclothes crews both on board trains and tube trains and indeed at at ticket I saw one at Kings Cross ticket barriers on the, on the tube just at the tube station just last week, a large gang of of of enforcement officers waiting to catch people trying to get in without tailgate, people who are who are paying for fares through the automatic automatic gate.

So I think transport operators are very much aware of their responsibilities. And just one last, one last word to be very clear on this, on, on, on the review, a number of contributions focused actually not on National Rail but on the tube. And obviously that's operated by transport for London and a devolved body that's overseen ultimately by the by by the mayor of London. It's I just want to to, to inform a noble noble Lordship. The IRR spoke to TfL as part of their review and it's of course up to TfL whether they take on their recommendations when it comes to National Rail, National rail operators, the IRR has has has a full purview there.

Turning to amendment 368, the government is very aware of the rising frequency of freight crime and the significant and damaging impact it can have on businesses and drivers. We are determined to crack down on it. Lord Davis talked very much in the context of rail freight, but of course this is a problem on road freight as well. We could say the incidence of cargo theft, where criminals are ripping the sides of lorries and taking the goods inside, is both frightening for for very dedicated HGV drivers across the UK and the protection, this crime is low risk and high reward is very much unacceptable and one that we want to change.

So whether it's on the rail and the road, we share the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Davis's determination to do something about it. What I would say is that working with the police, the Home Office has agreed to create a freight freight crime flag which will be attached to any applicable crime, whether it's on the road, on the rail, because it will apply ultimately across all police forces, including the British Transport Police, of course, police, the railways. The data will be collected as part of the annual data return to the Home Office.

The flag is currently being piloted, piloted in a small number of forces and following this the intention is to roll it out across all forces. The benefit, my Lords, of using a flag as opposed to creating new crime classifications is that in a case, for instance, where the driver has their vehicle or load stolen and violence is used or threatened against them, the crime that would be recorded would be robbery as opposed to vehicle crime. The flag, however, would identify the robbery as a freight crime.

However, I would say to the noble Lord that will monitor the implementation of the flag, we are indeed about halfway through the six month pilot. And so we will we'll we'll keep a close eye on how this is, how this is panning out, and consider whether further steps are required in the are required in the future. We know that having a code or flag will not of itself solve the problem. Victims should always report crime to the police and and we expect police to investigate.

But I will always say, as you would expect me to say, that it is for chief constables to allocate resources for such investigations in line with local policing priorities. I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the worrying involvement of serious and organised criminals in committing freight crime. These individuals are damaging this country's global reputation and are costing us billions each year. So the government is committed to tackling serious and organised crime in all its forms and is working with policing.

To that end, we are working closely with the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service and with Opal, the police's National Intelligence Unit focused on serious organised acquisitive crime, including a vehicle Crime intelligence desk, which covers freight crime. I hope in my response, I've been able to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Davis, that we accept much except the spirit of his amendment 368A and we're working to address the issue he's raised in tabling the amendment. I hope to the noble Lord will understand why we do not consider amendment 365 to be necessary.

So for all those reasons, amendment.
19:11
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19:12
Baroness Neville-Rolfe Portrait Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative)
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I rise to move. Amendment 366 an >> I rise to move. Amendment 366 an amendment 538 in the name of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, who has commitments Peterborough, who has commitments overseas today, I'm particularly delighted to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-howe. With his experience as Met Commissioner and the wisdom he showed when we served together in the Cabinet Office Board, and also of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-jones not a conservative, but my partner. Over the last decade in the defence of intellectual property.

Now, given its importance of cutting crime, this is rightly a cross-party amendment, and we have drawn heavily on the work of James Chi Onwurah MP, and her Select Committee on Science, Innovation and Technology and how well known tech expertise. My Lords, there is a serious problem. Politicians, spurred on by their advisers, boast far too often that they are, and I quote, world leading. Unfortunately, we are a world leader in this sphere of phone theft. We are the phone theft capital of Europe, with a horrific 70% of UK thefts in UK thefts in London, many of them from tourists.

So important to UK growth. And in 2024, around 80,000 smartphones were reported as stolen, compared with just 64,000 previous year. Just the sort of growth we don't want to see now on the streets, the value of a phone is roughly 3 to £400, and because they are the most valuable, about 80% are iPhones apps. Apple's brilliant device. According to the met, stolen phones had a street value of around 20,000,000 in 2024, but the replacement value of these phones members of the public and insurance companies having to pay to replace them is estimated by the met at around 50 million.

Last year, Commander Conway of the met told the select committee in June that 65 to 70% of our knife crime is produced by our robbery problem, that it also derives a significant chunk of our violence challenge in the capital and across the UK. And in that space lies the exploitation of young children and young people and into gangs, and that this is largely an international organised crime phenomenon, driven by criminal economics and the difficulty of getting hold of smartphones legitimately in some parts of the world, analysis of data relating to an industry sample of some 4000 Apple devices stolen in London in 2023 shows that Algeria, with 22%, is the most common internet address of connected devices, followed by China 16%, and in total, 78% of the stolen devices were connected to overseas networks.

This means that the devices are, for the most part, being sold to be used as devices in other countries, not as part of a current focus of Apple. Commander Richard Smith of the National Police Chiefs Council has said that forces continue to target those habitual criminals responsible for prolific offending. However, he said we know we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. Manufacturers and the tech industry have an important role in reducing opportunities for criminals to benefit from the resale of stolen handsets.

Commander Owen Richards, who was in February 2025 leading the Met's response to phone theft, said we are seeing phone thefts on an industrial scale fuelled by criminals making millions by being able to easily sell on stolen devices either here or abroad. By intensifying our efforts, we're catching more perpetrators and protecting people from having their phone stolen in the capital. But we need help from partners and industry to do more. And this follow up to the letter to the committee, Commander Conway said that device level security and activation locks, those are the protective measures favoured by the smart phone providers are not defeating what has become an organised criminal activity, and this is partly because these measures depend on purchasers selecting these options, which they find it difficult to do or do not want to do for good.

Wider reasons, such as the need to keep GPS active. I would add that there is a suspicion underlying some of the tension in the committee that the £50 million revenue from replacement of mobile phones weighs commercially with the apples and the Googles. My Lords, I hope that is not true. They produce amazing products and in my own experience at Tesco, it is for long term success in consumer businesses to put the customer first and take such financial hits. The fact is that customers are very dissatisfied at the level of phone thefts.

I was at the Apple Store in Oxford Circus buying a new phone alongside a very distressed man who had come to buy another one because his had just been snatched and he was having great difficulty blocking the Oba. So what, my Lords, is the solution. Darren Skates is the chief digital data and Technology officer at the met. He and the met are in discussion with the smartphone providers about stopping the stolen smartphones. Being smart. The only thing he said that makes a smartphone smart is it.

That can be connected to cloud services. They have asked Apple and Google at cloud level, which is an international level, to stop a smartphone serial number connecting to their services if it is reported lost or stolen. He added. We're actually asking the cloud provider specifically to prevent a lost or stolen device from connecting to their cloud services. They have not yet agreed to do that. Cloud level action is the approach in our amendment today, at least as regards UK, UK firms, and it would in effect be a kill switch and would make phones unusable after they were reported stolen.

Now, on the 6th of February last year, the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, held a summit of policing leaders, the National Crime Agency, the mayor of London and leading tech companies to drive new action to tackle mobile phone thefts. She urged the companies, including Apple, Google and Samsung and law enforcement, to join forces and to build on existing anti-theft security measures and help design out and incentivise phone theft by making phones worthless. Criminals all in attendance agreed to greater collaboration between police and tech by significantly boosting intelligence sharing on both sides, and to reconvene in three months time.

My Lords, I understand they have not reconvened in the 11 months since, and at the event, Samsung, Apple and Google all committed to being helpful. So the question I asked the Minister today is why have they not reconvened and why are they not doing what the met has asked? Dame Chi Onwurah, the committee chair, said in a statement Apple has told us there is no silver bullet to stop phone theft, but there are clearly technological solutions that can help to deter it.

The committee has yet to hear any convincing reasons why this has not been implemented, and, tellingly, Lib Dem MP and committee member Martin Wrigley said I'd just like to thank you because you both now said that you can stop this by blocking IMEI on the GSMa blacklist, and you're just deciding not to do so yet. So it seems that the government just needs to act. My Lords, the level of smartphone thefts and the associated crime wave is a blot on Britain and especially on London.

I urge the Minister to agree to our amendments, which seek to ensure that technology companies use technical measures such as cloud based blocking and IMEI linked device locks to make the resale of stolen mobile phone devices abroad more difficult. And to bring this into effect six months after Royal assent. Only. This action will materially reduce the incidence of phone thefts in the UK. I beg to move.

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Amendment proposed after clause 117. Insert the words on the

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Marshalled List. I'm very pleased to support

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I'm very pleased to support amendment at 366 and 538, tabled by the noble Lord Jackson and introduced so cogently by the noble introduced so cogently by the noble Baroness Neville Rolfe, and I thank her for the reference to my hon. Friend Martin Wrigley as well, my
19:21
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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Lord, to help to identify this particular issue, which addresses the growing problem of mobile phone and device theft, often fuelled by the profitability, as the noble the profitability, as the noble Baroness has described, of reselling these stolen goods reselling these stolen goods overseas. And we are currently facing an epidemic of mobile phone theft, as she described my Lords, theft, as she described my Lords, with reports indicating that phone snatches have increased by as much as 150% in certain areas every single day.

Approximately 200 mobile phones are stolen across the country, with many destined destined for a lucrative resale market abroad. And they are. These stolen devices remain valuable criminal assets because currently they can often be still accessed or resold even after being reported. And my Lords, we support amendment 366 because it seeks to strike at the heart of this criminal profit model. It seeks to they. The amendments seek to ensure that technology companies actively employ technical measures, specifically cloud based blocking and IMEI linked device locks, as the noble Baroness described to deter the resale of stolen stolen mobile phone devices without compulsory cooperation from cloud service providers and manufacturers, stolen data and devices will remain valuable criminal assets even if the physical device is recovered.

This is an essential step towards forcing technical solutions from technology companies to counter the incentives for theft. And I believe, my Lords, that amendment 538 also provides the industry with a necessary and reasonable lead in period, specifying that these cloud service access restrictions will come into force six months after the act is passed, and this would ensure that technology companies have the time required to implement the necessary technical standards and administrative processes. For too long, manufacturers and cloud providers have treated device theft as a secondary concern.

It's time that they were much more customer friendly in the way that the noble Baron is described and used their immense technical capabilities to simply turn these devices into mute bricks the moment they're stolen, thereby removing the incentive for the crime altogether. And I very much hope that the Minister will accept these common sense measures to protect property and safety. I've added my name to.

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Lord Jackson's amendment, as ably explained by Baroness ably explained by Baroness Neville-rolfe, and I may cover some of the same ground. I was only grateful that Lord Clement-jones grateful that Lord Clement-jones intervened, because probably people might have forgotten some of the points you've made. And if I amplify them too much, I'm sure amplify them too much, I'm sure somebody will remind me. I was particularly keen on supporting this amendment, because one of the
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Lord Hogan-Howe Portrait Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench)
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this amendment, because one of the things I've done in the past is to criticise the police at times for lack of enforcement and detection, but of course they can't do everything. And one of the things we know is that, in fact, organised crime, which I'll go on to later, is really about money. It's just another form of business. Theft is driven by people trying to make a profit. And this is amendment is all about the commercial business of mobile phone sales, some of it legal, but some of it criminal.

Apparently there are about 88 million telephone mobile phones in this country. If you think that they can be about £1,000 each, that's about 88 billion market, something of that order. So a massive market in 2023, these devices cost £5.8 billion to be bought. And then there's another 2.5 billion of services that they provide that we all pay for, from data to just the general use of a mobile phone. So at least by any measure, is a massive business.

The value of the phone stolen, as Baroness Neville-rolfe mentioned, was about 20 million, with the reinsurance value of 50 million. The number of phones stolen in the UK is about 120,000, two thirds of it in London. Big city an awful lot of targets for criminals to to wander about. And people, of course, as they leave the tube, take their phone out to get the signal that we all want to check on the messages they haven't received while they're in the tube, and that's where the criminals spot them and follow them to a place where they relieve them of them.

I suspect that's one of the reasons why we see so much of it in London. But clearly the business model works very well here. And of course, they're the ones that are reported. There's an awful lot of things that are stolen which are never reported. I've talked to people in this place who haven't reported their phones stolen, because it's been a level of embarrassment about the fact it's happened to them on the street. They've just got another phone, so we only know about the bare minimum of the number of phones which have been stolen in the course of a year.

And of course, on many occasions violence is used. Just the ripping of a phone from a hand can lead to anybody trying to hold on to it. And in that contest, we never know where it will end. Somebody ends up on the floor, then violence can follow. And the causes, the physical consequences can be quite severe. Now, as far as the mobile phone industry is concerned, this is a very small number, 20 million, compared to an 88 billion market is a very small number.

More importantly, they get benefits, as Baroness Neville-rolfe pointed out, because when you have your phone stolen, you go back to get another one. So why would they stop this? There is no financial incentive to actually do anything about it. There might be a moral one, but I'm afraid it looks like the moral one is really not having an awful lot of effect. And of course, none of the manufacturers nor the networks try to lead in the market by saying, well, our phone cannot, if it's stolen, cannot be used.

So there's no market incentive for one manufacturer to say, well, this is a better phone because it can't be stolen, or alternatively, it is stolen. It has no value, so there's no effect of the market that's helping to prevent the theft of phones. It's all to do with organised crime. And there's some very fancy definitions. And 1 or 2 people in the chamber may know of them. In terms of organised crime. What it's all about, what it's all about is really about money.

It's all about actually being organised enough to actually steal things in such a volume and have somebody to buy them, which means that in fact, it's been worth stealing in the first place. And the market that they're involved in is enforced by violence. There's no Monopolies Commission supervision of this market, whether it be drugs or mobile phones. It's actually enforced by violence to make sure that, in fact, they succeed and that other people fail. So it's really important that we get this right.

We're told, as Baroness Neville-rolfe said, that in fact stolen the the resale value of mobile phone that's been stolen is about 3 to £400. Well, the thief doesn't get 3 to £400, but by the time it's gone through a few hands, that's the sort of return that they're expecting. And to pay everybody out. That's why they need to get 3 to £400 to make sure that it works. Now, of course, the problem is that 78% of the phones that are going abroad has been said, and we can't seem to stop them at the border.

Now, this is not entirely surprising. The very small items, 90% of the world's goods travel by sea. Now they're all travelling by container. The chance of finding mobile phones without intelligence is very, very limited. So therefore we aren't able to physically stop the phones leaving and going to places like Algeria, going to places like China. So the police at the moment the police are fighting a losing battle to catch the thieves a very low down the organised crime chain and trying to prevent the export of stolen phones, which as I said, given their size is quite difficult, they're looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack.

So what we need to do is to do something to block the phone being valuable. And that really is down to the IMEI number. That's the phone. The thing that identifies that phone. You can put another SIM in it, but the phone itself is identified by an IMEI number. And if that can be blocked from the network, it will make a difference. Now it's possible in this country, but it's not actually working 100%. And it's certainly not been used for all these phones that have been sold abroad.

And yet it could be because for the international provision of the cloud, then it means that all these networks could actually do something about it. This solution, which is about really about design. And I think this afternoon, as we've heard about various amendments, design has been mentioned an awful lot. And I'm afraid at the moment, I would say every government for the last 20 years has done almost nothing to prevent crime by design. We've seen it actually work very well for fire, very few fires.

Now, this place may not be a very good example, but you design things and places not to burn. You design them to have great alarms. But who actually cared about the last time we designed cars, or in this case, mobile phones, to stop them being valuable on sale or to stop them being stolen in the first place? And I'm afraid the bottom line is they're not being designed. And that is one of the most important strategic differences that we could make to make sure that, in fact, in the future, this type of crime is reduced.

I doubt we'll ever stop it. But the designs of phones at the moment and the re the reconnection to mobile phone network means that in fact, they always will be valuable and their size means that it would be quite hard to discover them at once stolen. I think this amendment is a real opportunity for this government to make a statement about design being important in the prevention of crime, and I can't honestly see a reason why they wouldn't. This is requiring the manufacturers and the networks to do something within their gift, which is not a financially massive burden on them, but could have a societal make a societal difference, which would be quite massive.

And finally, I would just say that I can't understand why the governments in the past have not called these people to account when they've had them to meetings, said they're going to come back and do something about it. Well, why haven't they? Well, the answer is nobody's asking them to do it now. There's no financial incentive to do it either. That's what governments are for, it seems to me, and this is a real opportunity to do something about it. And I really 100% support it, and I hope the government will take action on it.

My noble friend Lord.
19:32
Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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Jackson. >> Jackson. >> On the on the quality of the amendment he drafted. >> And I. >> Also congratulate my noble friend, Baroness Neville-rolfe on friend, Baroness Neville-rolfe on the superb speech she made setting out why this amendment is necessary. As we know it addresses one of the fastest growing forms of organised crime in the UK the theft and export and rapid export of mobile phones. Thousands and thousands of them. And they're no longer opportunistic street offences. As noble Lords have said, they're part of a highly profitable, highly mobile criminal market.

That depends on one thing. Above all else, the ability to reactivate and resell the stolen devices abroad. A couple of years ago, I was at the Victoria station on the on the end of Victoria Street waiting to cross the road, and I saw a woman with her waiting for the lights, the pedestrian lights to change, a woman holding her mobile phone out. I think she was trying to read the map and hold it almost like a Geiger counter. Then I saw the two guys on the motor scooter coming around the corner.

I was trying to shout to her to put her phone away, but too late. It was snatched in seconds. That was a couple of years ago when I think there were motor scooter gangs doing it. Now, as we've seen as we were talking about the e-bike problem in this bill before Christmas, lots of videos of these guys on their very fast bikes snatching phones. And I believe the met have got a response squad as well. Now on those high powered bikes chasing the phone please.

So it's a big, big problem, particularly in London. And at present our defences are simply not keeping pace. IMEI blocking helps, but criminals now routinely bypass it by altering identifiers or moving devices to jurisdictions where UK blacklists are ignored. What they cannot bypass is the cloud. As. As noble Lords have said, modern smartphones are useless without access to the cloud based services that power authentication, updates, storage and app ecosystems. The amendment therefore introduces a very simple, proportionate requirement when a user reports their phone lost or stolen.

Cloud service providers must take reasonable steps to block that specific device from accessing their services. If a stolen phone can't be reactivated, it cannot be resold. If it cannot be resold, it is not worth stealing. It's as simple as that, my Lord. Now, my noble friend Baroness Neville-rolfe hinted at possibly the phone companies may have a financial benefit from not cooperating here. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-howe was more blatant. I'll be more blatant. Still, I'm absolutely certain they're conspiring not to cooperate so they can sell more phones.

We were discussing all terrain vehicles in our amendment a couple of hours ago, and when that bill was going through, the police officers who were advising us said they had heard from some of the big manufacturers of, of of of ATVs, ones who make motorbikes with locks you couldn't penetrate. They were deliberately putting the rubbish locks on the ATVs, because when the 8000 quad bike was stolen, the farmer immediately replaced it. They saw marketing goods being stolen. I think the big phone companies say exactly the same thing.

There's a market in replacement phones now. Noble Lord asked, why don't the British government do something about it? Well, I suspect it's mega US, UK politics. If we were to say we're going to restrict the ability of Apple and Google and others to sell their phones here, I think we'd have Mr. Trump seeking to invade us next week. So I suspect there's there's geopolitical problems there. Now, the amendment also ensures proper safeguards verification before blocking a, a clear appeals process, a role for the Secretary of State in setting technical standards.

It strengthens law enforcement by requiring timely notification to the National Crime Agency and local police, giving them valuable intelligence on organised thefts. This is not about burdening industry, it's about ensuring that all providers meet a consistent baseline of responsible behaviour, one that many already follow voluntarily, by which criminals exploit and when it is not universal. My Lords, I conclude by saying we have an opportunity here to collapse the economic incentive that drives mobile phone theft. Cloud based blockchain is practical, it's proportionate and it's overdue.

And I do commend the Minister.
19:36
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords, I'm grateful to my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough for tabling these excellent amendments. And to my noble friend, Lady Neville Rolfe, for moving them on his behalf. This amendment is driven by a simple proposition. If we are to bear down on the scourge of phone theft, then we must remove the profit motive, because it is precisely this incentive to profit that drives the vast industry behind phone theft. Too often, the criminal justice system is left trying to deal with the consequences of crime after the event, rather than addressing the incentives that fuel it in the first place.

Phone theft is now a high volume, high impact crime, particularly in our cities. And it causes not only financial loss, but real fear and disruption to victims lives. What this amendment seeks to do is eminently practical. It asks cloud service providers who already control the digital lifeline that makes a smartphone valuable, to take responsible and timely steps to deny access to those service services. Once a device is verified as lost or stolen, a phone that cannot access cloud backups, app stores, authentication service or updates rapidly becomes worthless on the secondary market, whether at home or abroad.

This is not a novel idea, nor is it an untested one. As many noble Lords will know, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has examined this issue in detail, and his recent correspondence with Ministers and technology companies. The committee highlighted both the scale of the problem and the frustrating gap between what is technically possible and what is currently being done. The committee made clear that voluntary action has been uneven, that existing measures are inconsistently applied across platforms, and that stronger coordination, potentially underpinned by legislation, may be required.

If we are serious about prevention. This amendment directly reflects that evidence based work and gives effect to its central recommendations. Importantly, the amendment builds in safeguards for users to appeal or reverse a block where a mistake has been made or a device is recovered. It leaves the detailed technical standards, timelines and sanctions for secondary legislation allowing flexibility and proper consultation with industry, and it recognises the importance of law enforcement by requiring prompt notification to the National Crime Agency and local police.

Strengthening intelligence and disruption efforts. Fundamentally, my Lords, if we can force cloud service providers to implement this provision, we can break the cycle of phone theft. I look forward to what the Minister has to say in response.
19:39
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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I'm grateful, particularly to >> I'm grateful, particularly to Baroness Neville-rolfe, for taking up the cudgels on behalf of the noble Lord Jackson. I thought I'd noble Lord Jackson. I thought I'd got away with it when I didn't see him in the chamber, but the noble Lady turned up like the cavalry at the last minute and charged in to raise what is a very important issue. And I do appreciate her raising it. And she is right to do so, because self-evidently, mobile phone theft is unacceptable.

It is a criminal operation. It is a significant criminal operation. As the noble Lord Hogan-howe said, it involves overseas criminal gangs. It is a great inconvenience, cost and discomfort to many people and we collectively need to take action to support the reduction of that mobile phone theft. Now, the noble Ladies Amendment, on behalf of the noble Lord Jackson of Peterborough, amendment 366 would require technology companies who offer cloud based services to use technical measures such as cloud based blocking to prevent access to cloud based services after a device has been lost or stolen by a registered user.

And again, the noble Lord Clement-jones, the noble Lord Hogan-howe, the noble Lord Blencathra, and indeed the noble Lord Davis of Gower, from His Majesty's Opposition's Front bench, have all expressed support for that principle and have indicated that it is one method of tackling the scourge of mobile phone theft. And I share the noble Lady's concern about the theft of mobile phones and other devices that host cloud based services. The number of thefts is too high. We are determined to get this down, and I agree that urgent action is required to make sure that the companies that design these devices taking up the point again of the noble Lord Hogan-howe play their part and do absolutely everything they can to ensure that a stolen mobile phone is not a valuable commodity and therefore not worth stealing.

Now I share the intent to reduce mobile phone theft, but I do suggest to the noble Lady who moved it that there are potentially a number of practical challenges that I am uncertain whether currently would be able to overcome in the approach that has been proposed here. Today, many apps on mobile phone devices have some elements of cloud access, so the range of companies in scope of the provision would appear to be extremely broad. In addition, disabling all cloud services could, for example, stop tracking and recovery of mobile phones, especially if the tracking function relies on cloud connectivity.

That would impede law enforcement ability to identify locations where stolen devices are taken to, and as noble Lords will note in this bill as a whole, there is a measure in the Bill to ensure that tracking of mobile phones is dealt with in a much more speedy and effective way, without the need for warrants by measures in this bill before the committee. Today, the government is working with industry and law enforcement partners on the delivery of practical and effective measures. And as the noble Lady said, there was a very productive round table in February which brought together police, technology companies and others to look at how we can do what the noble Lord Hogan-howe has recommended, which is break the business model of mobile phone thefts.

Now the summit resulted in clear commitments from attendees, including data sharing of mobile phone theft to get a comprehensive picture. And there were another range of measures which have included the police now stepping up their operational response, and members will have seen that, particularly in London, the Metropolitan Police. And again, I pay tribute to the City of London police have targeted in high areas that activity as operational responses to catching criminals responsible for these crimes. As I've mentioned, the Crime and Policing Bill does give police powers to enter premises to search for and seize stolen items, which would be negated if the tracking element of the proposal here was not allowed.

But that will help again in seriously tackling this issue by being able to track down mobile phone thefts to particular properties. And as a result of the summit, technology companies and policing partners have continued to work together and there have been a number of working groups, although the the main committee has not been reconvened, there are a number of working groups looking at tech, looking at operational issues of street action by police forces and looking at other issues collectively.

But I will if I may. We have had a change of Home Secretary since the summit has taken place, and I will go back to the Home Secretary's office about the potential for reconvening the major group, because I think it is important that that is done and is seen through. But I hope that nobody in the committee today takes away from this debate that the government is not serious about tackling this issue. But I leave with the committee that the amendments that have been proposed by the noble Lady on behalf of the noble Lord Jackson, would potentially create a number of technical problems that need to be thought through in a much more constructive way than accepting the amendment today.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't solutions there. The noble Lord Jackson, on his return, may wish to renew this debate in in in Report stage. But for the moment, I would say there is a serious attempt by the government to tackle this issue. We're bringing together partners. We're trying to secure initiatives. We want to look at the issues of designing out in the longer term. But if I accept this amendment today, there would be a host of potential spin offs which would be consequential to the amendment.

And I will allow the noble Lord to intervene.

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Thank you. What is just on the point, and I know he's trying hard to make sure that there's a to make sure that there's a positive response. I acknowledge that, but on the reasons he's been offered, I just wonder if he wants offered, I just wonder if he wants to challenge when he goes back to the Home Office. I mean, for a start, most of these mobile phones, if you've got any sense they'll turn them off because the risk of being tracked is not insignificant.

But clearly they don't always. That But clearly they don't always. That could be managed in two ways. I would suggest. First of all, there could be a time limited before they're blocked, you know, 48 hours. I mean, they're not going to be looking for this film for the next six years. So so there could be a time limit. But probably more important, it's a bit catch 22, isn't it? If we argue, and I think the government accepts that the reason it's valuable is because it can still connect to the network.

Once the thief knows it will not be connecting to the network, there'll be no need to track it having been stolen, because nobody will be stealing it. Now I know it won't be perfect, but if you could reduce it by 90%, it could make a massive impact. So I'm not persuaded myself. I accept that, you know, it's well intended about the tracking, but if we actually made this difference, it couldn't be, you know, it wouldn't be reconnected. There'd be no need for tracking. And if there is a need for tracking, perhaps we just time limit it.

So I accept what is the advice you've been given? But I do think there is a way around that particular argument.

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Again, I am content to with the experience that the noble Lord has of how these matters can be dealt of how these matters can be dealt with, to reflect on what he has said in relation to that issue. But it still doesn't get away from the it still doesn't get away from the fact that today, with the amendment as drafted, the problems that I've as drafted, the problems that I've outlined would still be present. So I can't accept the amendment today. But in principle, the solutions that we're all looking for is how do we stop mobile phones being stolen by either effective police action on the ground by use of the neighbourhood policing, targeting hotspot areas where there are high levels of mobile phone traffic? And the noble Lord himself mentioned tube exits, for example, as one particular area.

But I can't accept the amendments in the form it is today, because the reasons that I've given are ones that are ones that need to be thought through, and the noble Lords contribution a moment ago is another area where thought can be given to. But in the light of what I've said, and in the light of the comments that I've made, I would hope the noble Lady could withdraw the amendment for now, but not withdraw the general concern of this committee, this House, and this government that we need to take action on this issue.



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Of all, I'd like to thank the Minister for his constructive response to this very important response to this very important amendment and to thank all those who took part in the debate. I mean, I think we've got a very powerful combination of the Lords combination of the Lords Clement-jones Hogan-howe, my noble friend, Lord Blencathra, Lord Davies of Gower, the Minister Davies of Gower, the Minister himself, quite a lot of expertise in this area and concern to get criminal activity in this area
19:48
Baroness Neville-Rolfe Portrait Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative)
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tackled. So I'm very grateful for that. And I think the former home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was absolutely right to convene interested parties to try and tackle the appalling damage being done and being done to victims of this criminal activity. And, you know, the theft of of the phones and then their onward sale overseas in a very profitable business model. And I think the theft statistics probably understate the problem, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-howe, and the providers don't at present have an incentive to solve it.

I mean, I think it's highly regrettable that as a result, not enough has been done. And I'm not convinced that tracking and data sharing and hotspot enforcement, which I'm very supportive of and have spoken in favour of to the Minister before, are quite enough, although I'm glad to hear that working groups are continuing and the undertaking to have a further meeting of the Home Secretary's group is obviously very valuable, but I hope the Minister will also reflect on the debate and think what can be done, and perhaps come back with a government amendment or undertakings as to what can be done.

But failing that, and probably in any event, I think we all wish to return to this important issue at report. But in

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the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw. My amendment. Is it your Lordships pleasure

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Is it your Lordships pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn?

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Amendment by leave withdrawn. My Lords, I beg to move that the House be resumed. We will then move House be resumed. We will then move to dinner, break business, to the bi

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Sure, sure. 2051 now the question is that the House be question is that the House be resumed. As many as are of that opinion, say content, the contrary opinion, say content, the contrary

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OK.

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OK. Questions on a statement made in

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Questions on a statement made in the House of Commons on Monday the 5th of January on the Middle East

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and North Africa. My Lords, I thank the noble
19:51
None Portrait Questions on an Oral Statement: ‘Middle East and North Africa’
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Baroness and Minister for giving us the opportunity to ask questions on the statement. The statement
19:51
Earl of Courtown Portrait The Earl of Courtown (Conservative)
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covered events in Iran, Gaza, Syria, Yemen and the case of Alaa Abdel Yemen and the case of Alaa Abdel Fattah. That alone demonstrates the increasing instability we're facing increasing instability we're facing globally. My Lords, the official opposition is clear that the UK can opposition is clear that the UK can and must play a full role in facing up to the challenges of our increasingly unstable world, beginning with Iran. My Lords, we stand with those brave Iranians who have risked so much by exercising their fundamental right to free protest.

Reports that at least 36 protesters have been killed during the Iran protests is extremely concerning. The violence perpetrated by the Iranian regime against protesters is appalling as well. Can the noble Baroness and Minister say what practical steps the UK can take in looking at how we can support and bring those responsible to justice for these dreadful acts? My Lords, on the case of Craig and Lindsay Forman, we know the Foreign Secretary raised their case with the Iranian foreign Minister on 19th December, and we welcome that.

Can the noble Baroness, the Minister, give the House an update on their case and set out what further steps the United Kingdom government intends to take to secure their safe release in such an uncertain political context, it is essential that Ministers redouble their efforts on this area. Turning to Gaza, my Lords, the Official Opposition welcomes the progress that is being made towards a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Gaza conflict, but we remain concerned about the breaches of the ceasefire perpetrated by Hamas in particular.

My Lords, can the noble Baroness Minister, update the House on what progress is being made to secure the return of the body of the remaining hostage? My Lords, on Monday, Minister Faulkner announced that the UK will establish a Palestinian embassy. Can the noble Baroness, the Minister, provide further details on this and can she confirm where the Palestinian Embassy will be established and when it is expected to be open? My also take this opportunity to ask about reports of terrorists infiltrating aid agencies.

What assessment has Her Majesty's His Majesty's Government made of these reports? Can the noble Baroness, the Minister, give us a sense of the scale of infiltration that the government is aware of? My Lords, on the situation in Yemen, it is now being reported that the separatist leader is going to take a last stand after rejecting the Saudi ultimatum. Can the noble Baroness, the Minister, provide an update on the fast moving situation there? My Lords in Syria, we welcome the Royal Air Force's successful joint operation with the with France on Daesh.

We know Syria is still facing huge challenges. So specifically on the issue of sectarian violence, what practical steps can the Ministers can the Minister take to support the Syrian government in their work to tackle this? Finally, my Lords, on the Alaa Abd El-Fattah case, can the noble Baroness confirm exactly Minis the horrific social media comments? The source of so much debate over the recess, the the official opposition has called for a citizenship to be stripped. Can the noble Baroness, the Minister, confirm whether Ministers are considering this option? My Lords, I look forward to hearing the responses from the Minister.
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Lord Purvis of Tweed Portrait Lord Purvis of Tweed (Liberal Democrat)
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So grateful for the statement. >> So grateful for the statement. But I'm also slightly disappointed that, given the linkages with the Middle East and North Africa, with Middle East and North Africa, with the crisis in Sudan, there was no mention of that emergency. I will return to that in a moment, and I hope the Minister might be able to give an update and respond to a couple of points that I wish to make on that. On the ongoing low level conflict which continues in Gaza, it is palpably obvious from the Minister's statement that there is not what can be described as a humanitarian ceasefire, as the words that he outlined in the House of Commons.

I agree with, he. Decried the lack of humanitarian response and as a disaster, in the minister's words, catastrophic, unjustifiable. And he went on to say that the hyperthermia and sewage running in the streets is unforgivable. I also agree with his strong words on that. It is a very long way from October, when our Prime Minister flew in a flurry to Egypt to, in his words, give special tribute to President Trump on a so-called historic peace agreement.

For months on, there's been little progress on governance, and there still continues to be far, far too little in food and medicine, assistance to civilians. Peace. Proper peace seems a very long way away, especially with Hamas and gangsterism continuing. We had been informed that our government was playing a leading role in the coordination work of governance arrangements for Gaza, but can the Minister give some concrete examples of what impact the UK is having and what role we are playing in the Board of Peace, and what is the board's current impact? What is the Minister's assessment of how far from the next phase, the crucial next phase? We are, in the government's estimate on Iran.

The latest repression continues to alarm, and it is worth remembering the rhetoric at the time of the US airstrikes that this will have weakened the regime and potentially hastened its end. But we continue, continue to see the dictatorial human rights abuses of the Iranian regime. We also note the continuing abuse of Lindsay and Craig, and I also endorse the question as to what actions are being taken and to secure their release. For some young Iranians, especially the young women who continue to be targeted by the regime, especially those that have some connection with the United Kingdom, there continues to be no safe and legal route for them to seek asylum in the United Kingdom.

Why is this in opposition? Labor supported my amendment to the then migration bill for a safe and legal route that would cover Iran. This is now opposed by the Home Office. Can the Minister outline why that is the case with regards to the violence in Yemen and the security impact in the Red sea? We also hope that there will be some form of response to the initiatives for peace, but it does seem far away and a further update from the government would be welcome on Syria.

Is it still the view of the government that Syria is considered to be a safe country as far as migration is concerned? Advice is for travel is still restricted and we still don't have an embassy. I also wish to ask the Minister with regards to comments made by her colleague, and I'm fully respectful of the fact that he's had to go during the dinner break business because he's been occupied under the legislation this afternoon. But the case of my noble friend Baroness Hussain issue raised the case of 35 British children and 15 women detained indefinitely and unlawfully in northern Syria, half of which are under ten.

My noble friend asked the Minister what actions the government was taking. The Minister said that they were able to avail themselves of requests for consular facilities is open to access. There is no consular provision in Syria for any UK nationals or joint nationals. The advice from the Fcdo on its website is perfectly clear that no consular access is available, so I wonder if the Minister could write to me with clarification as to what kind of consular access within Syria is available, because the Fcdo website says that there isn't any.

Given the restrictive nature of the regime in Syria, and the fact that the government has lifted sanctions and provided relief against the sanctions without any conditions of it, then I maintain the concerns that I've raised previously of the lack of conditions on the on the regime to make improvements for human rights, especially for women within Syria. Finally, on Sudan, the Minister is well aware now that it's estimated that 75,000 civilians have been slaughtered in Al-fashir in the atrocities within Sudan.

And the Minister is well aware of my concerns about El Obeid and other areas. What what are the latest actions for the protection of civilians within Sudan that the government, as Penholder and the UN Security Council are taking? And finally, can the Minister restate the view of the government, our government, that the future of Sudan can only be in the hands of civilians and a civilian led governance is the only way of reconstructing towards peace, and there should be no profit from those combatants in any future.

And will she be willing to meet me and Sudanese civilian leaders to discuss both protection of civilians and also the necessity of having reconstruction for that country, potentially after peace, if we can secure it, which is in the hands of civilians.
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Baroness Chapman of Darlington Portrait Baroness Chapman of Darlington, Minister of State (Development) (Labour)
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Thank you. I'm grateful to both >> Thank you. I'm grateful to both noble Lords for their comments and particularly to thank noble Lord, particularly to thank noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for reminding us of Sudan, which, as he said, wasn't part of the statement that was specifically about Middle East and North Africa. But he's absolutely right when he says that the events in Sudan and events in the Horn of Africa, events in Yemen are connected in in many different ways.

And I think that he's right to draw that to our attention. The the risk of spending the entire time that I have on Sudan, which I could quite easily do. Al-fashir is a crime scene. And the the sheer hell of what happened there, and the darkness of that I think, is yet to be fully appreciated by the international community. But that will happen and access will improve. I am in contact with Tom Fletcher regularly. He sent me a note just this week about his what he discovered on his recent visit to Sudan, including into CSF controlled areas, and it is bleak, but we continue to maintain our focus on the Foreign Secretary is as well maintain our focus on Sudan.

What he says about the how vital it is to have a civilian led future. It's absolutely right. I agree with him and I would of course, be happy to meet with him and and those from Sudan, whenever that that should be possible. I'd be very happy to agree to do that. But on the the substance of the the statement that my noble friend Minister Faulkner made in the other place, the on Iran, it is right, as the noble Lord says, that those who wish to protest and make their points about their their views of the regime under which they live, they should be free to gather, free to protest, free to speak, free to make their case as they see fit.

And it is wrong that they are being treated in the way that they are. We are cautious about what we say sometimes about this, because it is part of the regime's position that these are events that are being facilitated, encouraged by foreign powers. That's absolutely not the case. We know that, but we don't want to say things that could enable the regime to, to to make that incorrect assertion and cause harm to those protesters who are doing what they have absolute right to do.

And on the the foremans that it's wrong, that they are being held, that they've been charged with espionage. My friend, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa has met with the family. I believe the Foreign Secretary has been in contact as well, and we will continue to work for their release, as both noble Lords have encouraged us to do. And as the noble Lord said about the the hostage, the remaining body of the hostage in Gaza needs to be returned back to the family so that they can they can mourn and they can grieve as they should be able to do with dignity.

It is outrageous that this is going on now. I think for 820 days it is wrong and that should be brought to an end as soon as possible. The issue of the embassy. I don't have anything further to add to that, which Minister Faulkner said in the statement, but it is a logical next step following our decision to recognise the State of Palestine. He asked about infiltration of aid agencies. And yes, we of course we're concerned about that. But our biggest concern when it comes to aid, and this is in response to noble Lord Purvis's question, is that, yes, we have been able to work to increase the amount of aid reaching Gaza, but there are still around 100 or so trucks short of what is estimated to be needed.

The restrictions on access still persist to too great an extent. Not all the crossings are open. Some commercial goods are allowed in things like cigarettes and luxury goods, whereas some shelter kits and medical supplies are not being permitted in this. You know, this needs to stop. We need to get the appropriate goods in to where they are desperately needed, and that needs to happen urgently. And both noble Lords asked for an update on Yemen. We are pleased, I think, to see that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are talking about de-escalation and that that is what they both wish to see.

The Saudis have offered to host a conference. This is welcome, and we will encourage this because in de-escalation and an end to the violence, there is is urgently, urgently the situation is really quite desperate. Access for aid workers is is difficult in some parts of Yemen. And the only way forward is for that that fighting to stop. And it's good that both the UAE and Saudi are saying the same things at the moment on Syria. And it clearly, as we've discussed many times, Syria is in a very precarious situation.

This is an early stage of a new regime. It is not straightforward by any means. We are coordinating with other donors. We are providing technical assistance. We were one of the first countries to lift sanctions, and the reason that we did that was it was a recognition that if this opportunity that Syria now has is to come to anything at all, then it needs the ability to strengthen its economy and to to build the security that it needs. Because, as the noble Lord asked about return of refugees, many of the refugees that I speak to from Syria, and I've spoken to them here in the UK, and some who have returned and others who've been in Jordan, and not everybody wants to return.

Some feel that their children saw things that they never want them to be retraumatized and to return, but many do. They're desperate. They really do want to return, but they don't want to do that until they're sure that they and their families can be safe, that their children can be educated, that they can have access to healthcare. I think that's completely understandable position to take. So it really is it matters to us as the UK because we want to enable the return of refugees who've been welcomed here.

The refugees want that and actually it's vital for the future of Syria that people who want to and are able to can go home and and contribute and take part in the rebuilding of their country. And they tell us that that is what they they tell us that that is what they want to. And I was asked to comment on the remarks of my noble friend on the return of Syrian refugees, sorry, refugees in Syria who are in camps. Yeah, there are, there are there are a small number of UK nationals in those camps.

And he will appreciate that there are serious security considerations around their status, and those are considerations that I'm not privy to. But I'm very happy he asked me to write to him. I'm very happy to do that with any further detail, particularly around the kind of access to what sort of assistance might be possible. And I you know, I agree with him. It's incredibly difficult to to imagine how that is at all straightforward in the circumstances. But I'm happy to write to him with more detail on that.
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Lord Reid of Cardowan Portrait Lord Reid of Cardowan (Labour)
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My Lords, the. The conflict in Yemen has now been gone on, I think, Yemen has now been gone on, I think, more than 12 years, with tragic consequences. And those of us who have observed this over the past decade or so have always regarded it as both a tragedy and a very complicated issue, all the more so because of the recent clashes between the US forces backed forces and the Saudi forces. And I was very glad to hear the Minister say that initial contact has been made with a view to de-escalation, because the last thing we need in that area is a further tragic complication, with two external powers contributing towards the tragedy.

Can is she in a position to tell me whether or not UK Ministers have had contact with their Emirati and Saudi counterparts, and much more difficult, I know. Do they assess those initial contacts as mere superficial politics, or are they convinced of the depth of understanding of the danger and the sincerity to deescalate on the part

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of both of them? I can confirm that there is regular contact between UK Ministers and their counterparts in Ministers and their counterparts in UAE and KSA, specifically about Yemen. They are substantial and Yemen. They are substantial and meaningful, and they're not. I think, as he described it, sort of think, as he described it, sort of going through a political political motions. This is serious, and we do want to see progress in de-escalation. And that is what we're hearing from both UAE and KSA as well.

So we need to keep up those contacts and try and make sure that we see the result of those on the ground.
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Baroness Foster of Oxton Portrait Baroness Foster of Oxton (Conservative)
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My Lords, on Iran refusing to >> My Lords, on Iran refusing to proscribe the Islamic Republican Guard Guard Corps, which is the regime's primary tool of repression regime's primary tool of repression and terror, sends a dangerous signal, a signal of weakness. At this critical moment, more than ten this critical moment, more than ten days into the uprising, there has been no public statement of support for the people of Iran from the Prime Minister. At a time when protesters are being killed, hospitals are being attacked, and a nation is demanding freedom.

Recent statements from the president of the United States has warned the regime against mass killings and expressing support for the Iranian people, and has resonated strongly inside Iran. They offer hope not because of rhetoric, but because the people of Iran can finally express their protests, knowing full well that they have forces on the ground in their support. So could the noble Baroness, the Minister, tell us when the Prime Minister is planning to stand up and condemn these atrocities being heaped upon the civilians in Iran, and at the same time tell us when he will prescribe the IRGC as a

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terrorist organisation. I talk about prescription before

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I talk about prescription before we do it. As I explained in my response to the front benches response to the front benches earlier, we are careful what we say, and that's not because we think that people shouldn't have the right to protest, shouldn't be free to do it. And we don't agree that actually, you know, with many of actually, you know, with many of the things that they're saying when they do that, but it's because we want to make sure that there is nothing that this government says that actually puts the lives of those people protesting and making their case as they should, that we don't do anything that actually makes their predicament even worse, because it is the position of the regime in Iran that we are somehow encouraging, facilitating, enabling, you know, making that encouraging those protests.

Clearly we are not. And these are very firmly the views of the people of Iran who are choosing to take the steps that they're taking. But we are mindful of what we say. And I think that it's right that we are.

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The. Lord, the Minister, for the

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Lord, the Minister, for the condemnation of the activities of the current regime in Iran. But I the current regime in Iran. But I would ask, despite what the noble Baroness, the Minister, has just said, will Her Majesty. His said, will Her Majesty. His Majesty's Government condemn attacks by the regime on Ilhan Hospital and yesterday on Sinai Hospital and yesterday on Sinai Hospital in Tehran and the abduction of wounded people seeking help in those hospitals? And can they consider again the policy and perhaps demand the immediate release of all those arrested during the protests? And how will Her Majesty.

His Majesty's Government support the Iranian people and their organized resistance in the ongoing struggle for justice, human rights and freedom? Does His Majesty's Government recognize the right of Iranians to bring about real change by establishing a democratic republic, as articulated in the Ncri president elect Maryam Rajavi? Ten point Plan. My Lords, in the light of the fact that there have been some 2500 executions in Iran in recent times, is it not time for a change of policy and a more assertive and condemnatory policy is.
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Lord Teverson Portrait Lord Teverson (Liberal Democrat)
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Think about Russian. >> Think about Russian. >> Aggression in Ukraine, quite rightly. But if we think of North rightly. But if we think of North Africa, despite the death of the Wagner Group, we have the so-called Russian afrikakorps still very active in the Sahel and Libya, and they support rather ugly regimes. They are there capturing important resources that are for Russia, and they also fight in a way that is contrary to rules of war and human rights.

This seems to me to be something that's rather understated and not seen enough, but is quite dangerous to ourselves and Europe. And I wondered how the Foreign

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Office saw this and how its threats can be contained. I think the noble Lord is

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I think the noble Lord is absolutely right, and one of the the reasons that I feel quite so the reasons that I feel quite so strongly that the UK does need to be outward facing and strong diplomatically, defensively and in diplomatically, defensively and in our development work is because if we neglect areas of the world like we neglect areas of the world like the Sahel and the conditions that are allowed to to grow in Africa and that particular region, especially if we allow that to continue, it is a breeding ground for extremism, for dangerous Islamism, for activities of states that do not wish us any good and certainly don't wish the people of the Sahel any good either.

So it is vital that the UK maintains its leadership role globally in fighting these things, and we work as closely as we ever have with our allies and partners in, especially in places where it is the most difficult, such as those that he

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describes. So first of all, I welcome the Minister back to her usual position Minister back to her usual position this week. I know it's been a long week and it's only Wednesday, but I week and it's only Wednesday, but I very much welcome the update on a wide range of issues. I want to ask wide range of issues. I want to ask her a question on Iran, because I absolutely recognise that she's absolutely recognise that she's speaking on behalf of the government, wants to be careful in her wording.

However, I think those of us who are not in government and therefore free to say this, want to stand in solidarity, very strong solidarity with the protests in Iran, and particularly the repression that women and girls have faced in Iran over this past number of years. And given that The New York Times, citing Iranian officials, have said that Iran is operating under, quote, survival mode, can I ask the noble Lady, the Minister, if our government, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence are ready for the potential collapse of the Iranian regime and the consequences that will bring, not just for that particular state, but also for regional security and, of course, UK interests.



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We consider all eventualities and work these things through very, and work these things through very, very carefully because some things seem imminently likely. Are the things seem less likely, but would things seem less likely, but would be would have very wide ranging consequences should they occur. And we do do the kind of work that we do do the kind of work that she's asked me about. I am not in a position to give a detailed position to give a detailed analysis right now of what that looks like, but the position, the position of the government is that we do support people who want to see the open society in Iran.

We think the repression that they've lived under is wrong, and they've tolerated it for far too long.
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Baroness Chapman of Darlington Portrait Baroness Chapman of Darlington, Minister of State (Development) (Labour)
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I think there is going to be a review. I hope it's very quick because I would like to draw a line under this. I don't know about anybody else, but we do need to understand what went wrong here. Mr. El-Fattah was given the given British citizenship. I think under the previous government. It takes a lot for us to remove. A noble Lord opposite actually asked me about this and I didn't give him an answer, so I will do that now.

It takes a lot for us to remove somebody's citizenship, and when the noble Lord asked me, are we looking at the the sort of previous social media of everybody that we provide consular assistance to? No, we don't do that routinely. There may be occasions where that is appropriate. And how should I put this diplomatically? Some of our fellow citizens have views that we don't appreciate particularly. That doesn't mean we don't try and help them or we don't make a judgment, particularly in all cases, about why they went somewhere that we told them not to go or got themselves in a situation that we would prefer they hadn't.

We do provide this assistance judgment free if you like. This situation, I think is slightly different because of the high profile nature, because of ministerial involvement over successive governments and from all parties. So it is right that we look at exactly what went wrong here and why we didn't know, and we were unable to make those sorts of. We may have made slightly different judgments at different points along the way. So that's that's what this review is about. I hope it's quick. So we can we can share the findings and perhaps avoid this sort of

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situation in the future. But.

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The comments made by the noble Lord Purvis of Tweed about the lack of progress on the peace process, I of progress on the peace process, I would very much associate myself with. And I note how the statement with. And I note how the statement talks about the way NGOs being banned and so much aid being stuck at the borders, the huge
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Lord Massey of Hampstead Portrait Lord Massey of Hampstead (Conservative)
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side of the issue, which are Hamas should disarm and allow a pass path to lasting security. No emotive language, no criticism of Hamas. The statement contains the comment about the ban on the 37 NGOs as unjustifiable, but doesn't mention the actuality that the ban would take place in March. If these NGOs don't disclose details of their staff and their operations. Given that we know that Unwra and other NGOs have been infiltrated by Hamas, why is it so unjustifiable that Israel requires this information, especially in the context of Hamas's refusal to disarm and honour its side of of the agreement? So I asked the noble Baroness and the Minister Baroness whether she thinks there is a natural connection between Israel's conduct and Hamas's refusal to honour its side of the agreement.

And I have an additional question on the matter of Allah El-fattahs tweet. If the government had done its due

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diligence, would he still have been? Welcome back to the UK. Yes. Well done.

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Yes. Well done. Well, what he said was wrong and whether different decisions would whether different decisions would have been made at an earlier point, I can't answer. I think there may be the point at which to have made be the point at which to have made a different decision. Would have been the point at which he was awarded citizenship, and I was not. awarded citizenship, and I was not. This government was not responsible for that choice. So once that citizenship has been given to remove citizenship, abhorrent, though clearly the things that he said were and he's rightly apologised for that, I'm not clear that that would have been sufficient cause to deprive somebody of their citizenship.

However, fundamentally, we disagree with what was said, and I think the noble Lord can appreciate the complexities around that. On the issue of aid agencies and personnel and what's happening here is a government is requiring the disclosure of the names of individuals working for aid agencies. We just disagree with that. And, you know, other people will think that, you know what, other people will agree with it. We don't we think that's the wrong way to conduct the access for aid agencies.

We just think the government of Israel is wrong on this point, and we'll continue to make that case to them and explain why these agencies are they're very, very effective at getting aid to people that need it desperately. The the need is still there. Things have improved somewhat that latest IPC assessments on hunger show that things have improved a bit, but there is still an awful lot more that needs to happen. We have thousands of traumatized children now who are having difficulty with speech and language at school and accessing education, accessing healthcare, getting sufficient quality food.

These are all things that I know. Everybody in this chamber will want to see resolved, and we think the best way to do that is to allow the agencies to do their job.
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Lord Vaux of Harrowden Portrait Lord Vaux of Harrowden (Crossbench)
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I thought I'd missed.

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My Lords, we we come back to fraud as the noble Lord. The Minister will be well aware. This is not the first time I've raised is not the first time I've raised the issue of ensuring that the technology and telecoms companies take their share of the take their share of the responsibility for the use of their services or platforms by fraudsters, and are made to contribute to the and are made to contribute to the costs of reimbursing victims. I thank the noble Lady, Baroness Morgan of Cotes and the noble Lords Young of Cookham and Holmes of Richmond for their support on this amendment.

I've already mentioned in a previous group, the Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee, on which I was privileged to sit. Our report titled Breaking the Chain, which was published in November 2022, made the very clear conclusion that and I quote, until all fraud enabling industries fear significant financial, legal and reputational risk for their failure to prevent fraud, they will not act. My Lords, I think that's been borne out over the three years since then. There's been no significant improvement, despite the voluntary charters that have been agreed.

Only the banks are actually on the hook for the costs of fraud. Under the mandatory app reimbursement rules that were brought in by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, the banks must now pick up 100% of the reimbursement liability, and there is evidence to suggest that this is having a positive impact on the efforts of the banks are making to identify and prevent fraud. Similarly, the payment services regulator's six monthly reports on the performance of the banks has provided welcome transparency as to which banks and payment services are doing most and least to combat fraud.

As an aside, it would be good to have confirmation from the noble Lord, the Minister, that the subsuming of the PSR into the FCA will not reduce the important reporting and oversight of app fraud that the PSR has been providing. So the banks are picking up the liability, but they are not where the fraud originates. According to UK finance statistics, around 70% by volume and 30% by value arise from online platforms and 16% by volume and 36% by value arise from telecoms, from calls and texts and let's name names.

My Lords, according to the PSR, over half of scams originate on meta platforms, Facebook and so on. So my Lords, nothing has has changed. That would change the conclusion of the committee that these industries will not take the issue seriously until they actually face liability for what they allow to happen on their platforms or services. The banks have sharpened up their acts in part because of the mandatory reimbursement requirement that we've imposed upon them. The banks face real liabilities for fraud that goes through their accounts.

The Online Safety Act does include some important measures to prevent fraudulent content and scam advertising, but it does not make the companies liable for the losses. We've mandated that the banks should reimburse victims of app scams after we decided that the voluntary code wasn't working, and it is now time that those who actually enable the frauds should pick up their share on a compulsory, not voluntary basis. There are many possible ways to achieve this, so I've not been prescriptive in the amendment.

It could be as simple as bringing the telcos and tech companies into the reimbursement requirements. Or we could look at extending the new failure to prevent fraud offence so that it covers the use by third parties of services provided by a company. The failure to prevent offence currently only covers actions by employees or associates, so it would not cover scams in this situation. Amendment 67 simply requires the government to bring forward proposals for how to do this. Within six months of this bill passing.

My Lords, it's not enough to keep publishing more fraud strategies. I think the one that is due to be published shortly, shortly, which I'm sure the noble Lord the Minister will be referring to, will be the third fraud strategy since I've been a member of this House. He said earlier that the fraud strategy will be published soon. I think he said in very short order. I know he can't give a date, but it would be helpful to know if that will be before the Report stage of the bill.

It might be that the content of the strategy might make this amendment unnecessary. So it would be very helpful if we could see it before Report stage. My Lords, fraud and scams are not falling and they still make up around 40% of all crime in the UK. It really is time that we make those who allow their services to be used by the fraudsters, fraudsters, those who enable the fraud liable for their actions or rather lack of action. It's the only way to make them take the issue seriously.

I beg to move.
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Baroness Doocey Portrait Baroness Doocey (Liberal Democrat)
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Amendment proposed after clause 117, insert. The following new clause is printed on the Marshalled List. List. >> We. We're very happy on these benches to support this amendment. benches to support this amendment. We all know the grim scale of fraud. Now our most common crime, authorised push payment scams are driven by online platforms, adverts on social media fuelling shopping and investment frauds and hacked accounts enabling ticket scams. Yet, as has been said by Lord Faulks, platforms such as meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, can still take six weeks to remove illegal content, allowing scammers to resurface again and again.

So-called life boating. This amendment is designed to cut through that inertia. It would provide a clear statutory duty of care on tech and telecom firms to prevent scams at source, using their own AI and tools. It would also require them to share the financial burden with payment providers, who must already inverse many victims of authorised push payment fraud. That seems a fair step, given the platforms hosts most of the scams and profit from the engagement that keeps users scrolling weak voluntary charters, non-binding Ofcom guidance and even the Online Safety Act's proportionate measures have let these firms do the bare minimum.

Reacting to reports rather than proactively detecting fraud through verification, AI driven scans and systematic audits, Big Tech has unparalleled know how the AI, the software and the manpower to spot fraudster patterns and take them down. Banks cannot fight this alone and nor can the police. This amendment would compel these companies to protect their users. Stopping scams upstream. We do hope that the government's fraud strategy will follow the example of this amendment and go even further with a failure to prevent fraud offence, backed by strong fines and tougher binding Ofcom standards.

Meanwhile, amendment 367 would provide some timely backbone, giving tech and telecom firms a real incentive to act swiftly before yet more victims lose potentially everything.
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Lord Young of Cookham Portrait Lord Young of Cookham (Conservative)
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Model name to the amendment moved by Lord Hawks. And I want to add a brief footnote to the speech add a brief footnote to the speech which he made in support. In an earlier debate, the Minister was very complimentary about the work of the Fraud Committed Fraud Committee on which we both served, and he can convert that praise into action by accepting one of the recommendations which we made in our report. And it's worth actually just quoting the relevant sections of the report that led up to that recommendation.

Page 162 para 57 said this. However, banks are the last link in the fraud chain and cannot be expected to foot the fraud bill alone. End of quotes. And then we come on to our recommendation to incentivise companies to act on fraud and more accurately reflect the balance of responsibility for fraud, the government must establish a mechanism by which fraud enabling sectors, in addition to the outgoing recipient PSP payment service providers are required to contribute to the costs of reimbursement in cases where their platform and services helped to facilitate the fraud.

A very clear recommendation, and we came to that conclusion after taking evidence from example from the TSB and from academics, and they all made the point that there was absolutely no incentive at all on the part of the telecommunication companies to do anything because their business case rested on generating revenue and they faced no penalties at all. So that was our recommendation. And I turn now to the response from the previous government. And I quote from government, the government response to fraud 2.8 and the relevant paragraph in response to that clear recommendation was this beyond reimbursement by the financial sector, we continue to work with all industries, including the telecommunication, telecommunications and tech sectors, to ensure that protections are in place to protect the public from losing their hard earned money, and to ensure that every company does what it can to support the victims.

Now, I think we can all crack the code, but that is not an acceptance of the very clear recommendation from the select committee. And so the first question for the government is do they stand by that conclusion from the previous government, or are they minded to take the recommendation more seriously? And the second point I want to make is that we're not actually asking them to go quite as far as the select committee went, and bringing the telcos within the embrace of possible penalties.

We're simply asking the government to prepare a report. Now, that could be the basis of a green paper, which was then out for consultation. It doesn't go nearly as far as the select committee. So if the government is serious about the work of the Select Committee on Fraud, and they're serious about doing something about this, the least they can do is accept the recommendation, the amendment and publish a report indicating how the telecommunication companies might be brought within the embrace of the penalty regime, consult on it, and then we can take it to the next stage.

So I hope there'll be a positive response to this amendment from the Minister.
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Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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Alone. My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord, for of for bringing forward this amendment that addresses a very important issue. According to UK finance, authorised push payment fraud accounted for almost 41% of fraud losses in the first half of last year, whilst unauthorised fraud decreased by 3% on the year. App increased by 12%. It is clearly a pressing issue and I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to debate it. The proposition in question would require technology and telecommunications companies to firstly owe a duty of care to their customers to prevent fraud from occurring on their platforms and services in general.

I do not see an issue with this. In principle, companies should attempt to protect their customers from fraud by implementing general safeguarding measures to prevent against common tactics such as impersonation. I would rather this came not from government intervention and was instead the product of a competitive industry. But I do recognise there's only so much the market can achieve in the short term, and I look forward to hearing the government's position on this. I'm a little more hesitant to offer support to the second condition of the noble Lords Amendment, which would require technology and telecommunication companies to contribute to the costs of reimbursing victims of of app fraud that has occurred on their platforms or services.

Firstly, whilst I acknowledge there is already an existing framework for company reimbursement in the form of mandatory reimbursement measures of October 2024, I'm not certain that the policy is transferable to technology and communication companies. The PSR requires banks and payment to split the reimbursement costs evenly between the sending and receiving institutions, and it's very easy to discern which companies are responsible and therefore liable for payment. I think technology and communication companies into that framework is not as straightforward.

These companies are essentially a third party in the actual fraud occurring. They are neither the sender nor the recipient of the defrauded money. They are the medium through which fraud is made possible, but not through which it actually occurs. Responsibility for the fraud and subsequent reimbursement does not seem to me as clear cut with technology companies as it does with banks and payment firms. Secondly, I do not think that the second measure in the Lords amendment is thorough enough to support.

Even if my worries were addressed, the PSR mandatory reimbursement policy, enacted a year and a half ago, was the product of almost seven years of deliberation and policy making. To then extend this measure to a whole new industry should face more scrutiny than what can be achieved through a single amendment. Amendment itself raises questions which companies will qualify? Which companies will qualify? What will their contributions be? How will these fit within the existing requirements placed upon banks and payment firms? These are just a few questions, but there are many more that will need answering.

If we are to seriously consider this measure as a law and order. That is not to say that app reimbursement has not proved to be an effective tool in mitigating the harmful effects of fraud in the available 12 months of data since the PSR introduced mandatory reimbursement for app fraud victims by banks and payment first, 88% of lost money in scope has been returned to victims. Nor is that to say that technology and communications companies will not be the vehicle for of the future by which app is committed.

Ever popular social media and the ever increasing AI industry will make sure of that. It is simply to say that we do not know enough about the implementation of this measure to support it. I appreciate its aim, and I agree that something must be done to tackle this specific type of app, but at this moment, I'm not sure the amendment adequately achieves that. So I do look forward to hearing perhaps what the noble to hearing perhaps what the noble Lord might have to say in closing.
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Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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My Lords, this government is deeply concerned by the devastating impact online fraud can have on individual victims, both financially and emotionally. And I'm grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, for bringing this amendment and also from to the noble Lord, Lord young and noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for helping us to understand, acknowledge the the extent of the importance of this issue that we are discussing. We as the government, recognise the importance of preserving trust in digital communications and online spaces in order for for all of our hard working businesses operating in the UK to grow and prosper, we recognise incentives are important for accountability for all stakeholders.

The government has seen a significant contribution from the banking sector in preventing fraud and supporting victims in response to the payment system regulator's new authorised push payments scams reimbursement requirement in the first nine months of the App Reimbursement scheme, 88% of eligible losses were reimbursed, with £112 million returned to victims. These figures, my Lords, reflect a strong and sustained commitment to protecting consumers. A positive trajectory that that deserves recognition. And just whilst on the scheme, the noble Lord, Lord Vokes asked about the the transition from of PSR into the FCA.

It's just worth noting that we consulted on the plan. That plan merger of PSR into FCA in September and October last year. We're currently considering the responses to that consultation and we'll bring forward further proposals in due course. But I you might you might expect me to say that we don't we we want to manage this process in a way that may very much doesn't undermine the work that the payment systems regulator is already doing to ensure that this system works well, however, and it is the case that every part of the ecosystem has played a meaningful role in fraud prevention, including the telecoms and telecommunications and tech sector.

And the government has already taken steps to ensure that both the tech and telecommunications sectors are rightly incentivised to proactively tackle fraud on their networks. The Online Safety Act requires in-scope companies to take proactive steps to stop fraudulent content appearing on the platform and remove fraudulent material quickly when they become aware of it. If they do not, they risk facing the full regulatory costs of failing to comply, which can extend to 10% of their global revenue. Ofcom's duties on user generated content are now in force in relation to several online harms, including fraud and the regulator's already assessing platforms compliance.

Further duties concerning action against fraudulent advertising will be consulted on this year and likely to come into effect next year. That's 2027, my Lords. The telecom sector is subject to regulation that requires providers to block calls that appear to be from scammers and to prevent scammers from using telephone numbers. And I think it's fair to point out that there has been a fair amount of success already in that. In that effort, voluntary action has proved effective, and under that, the telecoms charter operators have introduced firewalls, introduced firewalls, stopped more than 1 billion scam text messages since January 2022.

So that kind of indicates the scale of the both the problem and the progress that that has been that has been made. We're also working with the sector and with Ofcom on a number of innovative further actions to tackle the criminal abuse of telecoms networks. The government's launched the second Telecoms Fraud Charter in November 2025. This is an ambitious charter which will cover 50 actions which the telecoms industry will implement to tackle fraud within the sector. It includes developing new AI systems to detect and prevent fraud, building a new call tracing system to track down fraudulent communications, and upgrading the UK's networks to enable new features to protect customers from spoofed calls.

This is a voluntary commitment from the telecoms sector, which aims to strengthen efforts to further identify, block and disrupt telecoms fraud through enhanced industry collaboration and robust duty of care towards UK consumers and smaller telecom businesses that themselves have been victims of fraud. The Telecoms Fraud Charter helped the UK mobile network operators to block over 1 billion scam messages. As I've said, through implementation of firewalls, we want to go further than that, which is what the telecoms charter will seek to achieve.

In addition to this, Ofcom launched a consultation in October outlining new rules on how mobile providers must stop scammers from sending mobile messages. These proposals draw on existing best practice in the mobile sector, and are intended to both prevent scammers from accessing mobile messaging services and to stop their activities where they have gained access. Last July, Ofcom also published a consultation on new rules to stop scammers outside the UK from reaching people and businesses with calls that imitate UK, UK mobile numbers and these are likely to be introduced this year.

We expect these measures to address gaps in the industry's existing counter scam measures, and to significantly reduce the risk of individuals and businesses receiving scam messages. Furthermore, the government will explore options to make it harder for criminals to exploit the UK telecoms networks to commit fraud in the upcoming fraud strategy, which we have already discussed earlier in committee this evening. And, and indeed was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord. He, he he tempted me to stray off the primrose path of prudence.

When it comes to timing, I'm afraid I can't do anything and go any better than repeat what my noble friend the Minister said in terms of saying it will be. It will be coming in due course, and obviously we have some some time left, even even in committee, let alone further stages of this bill, so I can make no commitments there. I'm afraid the government will continue monitoring developments in this area to ensure the telecommunications and tech industries remain accountable for delivering on their commitments to tackle fraud and the criminal abuse of their services.

In line with the plan we set out in our soon to be published forward statutory. However, where insufficient progress is being made in reducing abusive telecoms networks or tech platforms for the purposes of fraud, the government and regulators will not hesitate to take necessary measures to compel further action. And I have to say it's good to. I think I'm in common ground with the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Davies, when he was critiquing the the amendment in in terms of how showing concern about the intermediary nature of the liability that some telecom platforms will, would, would, would be under will be under under the proposed amendment.

It's it's a fact that a tech tech sector reimbursement scheme would undermine the UK's long standing intermediary intermediary liability regime, which means platforms aren't liable for illegal content posted by users, provided the platforms are unaware of the unlawful activity which underpins the interactive internet and is a cornerstone for digital innovation. A departure and I share his concerns here. A departure from intermediary liability would leave the UK out of sync with our international partners and potentially threaten growth in the UK's digital economy.

Therefore, in view of the clear, clear plan we are putting in place to tackle fraud, it is the government's assessment that the measures set out in this amendment aren't out in this amendment aren't

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necessary at this time and I invite. My Lords. I thank you, everybody, for every noble Lord who has taken part in this short debate, and in in this short debate, and in particular the noble Baroness, Baroness Duchy and Lord Lord Baroness Duchy and Lord Lord younger, who both pointed out the the question of incentivisation, which is, I think core to this, we which is, I think core to this, we need to incentivise the people who
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Lord Vaux of Harrowden Portrait Lord Vaux of Harrowden (Crossbench)
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are facilitating or enabling fraud, or for the fraudsters to make contact with the victims. We need to incentivize them to to do the right thing. We have got the voluntary charters and I accept there has been some progress, particularly, I think, on the telecom side, and the moves to clamp down on number spoofing and that sort of thing has been very positive, but it's only a small part of it and we are still all of us, I think, regularly bombarded by calls and texts that come through those platforms.

I don't think it is enough for them to be unaware that the services are being used fraudulently, as the noble Lord just suggested. I think they need to start doing a bit more due diligence about how their services are being used, and to take reasonable steps to prevent them to be used by fraudsters. Hence my suggestion of extending the the offence of failure to prevent fraud from where it the very narrow focus that it has at the moment. You know, I don't believe that anything has changed since we, we we issued our report that said very clearly that these these facilitators and that is what they are, won't take serious action unless there's real financial implications to them for, for, for doing it.

And I'm not hearing I don't think at this stage anything that does that, you know, we have seen how putting the liability on the banks has made the banks changed their behaviour. They are doing much more now to identify and stop fraud. And the idea that the receiving bank, my bank, sorry, the paying bank, my bank when I'm being defrauded and I pay the money out, then they are much less responsible for the fraud than, for example, Facebook or whoever. The bank that receives the money arguably is much more responsible, and I think it was a success that we got the liability there split 5050.

I think it is something that needs still to be looked at further. I think the liability should be more on the bank. Who actually processes the money for the fraudster, but it's analogous. There's no difference between my bank making the payment at my request to Facebook. They're just part of the chain. We need to break that chain, as our report said. The Online Safety Act. Yes, it makes some changes, but again, it doesn't push direct liability for the frauds that are going through the system to the the facilitators.

And I'm afraid I do part company with the noble Lord, Lord Davis here. I don't think it's that difficult to identify which platform has come through. We do it already. The PSR is reporting on it, the banks report on it. You know, we're reporting on it all the time. It is easy to identify which where it came from. And it's fairly easy to say you're just as responsible as the bank is. That will make them sit up and stop doing it. I mean, they have to take action to prevent their their services being used in this way.

Until we do that, they won't do it. There's no incentive not to. I think anybody who's dealt with Meta and Facebook and all the rest of it shares the frustration that they're really not interested. Until we force them to be interested, they won't take action. So, my Lords, I am a bit disappointed by the the response. I will hope that we receive the the fraud strategy before report, because I think that would be extremely helpful in this discussion. I am slightly puzzled.

The noble Lord, Lord Katz referred to in due course the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, referred to very short order. I'm not sure which of those is quicker and which of those is slower. Very short order sounds quicker to me, so hopefully that's. Yeah, but I think it would be very helpful in this discussion to receive that, because it could well pre-empt a lot of this discussion. But until we in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the the amendment. But I think we will be coming back to this.



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Is it your Lordships pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn? that this amendment be withdrawn? It is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 368. Lord Davis not moved. 368. Lord Davis not moved. Amendment 368A Lord Davis not moved. The question is that schedule 11 b the 11th schedule to the bill, as many as are of that opinion, say content the contrary not content. The contents have it before. Clause

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118, amendment 369. Lord marks. My Lords, in this group I have

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My Lords, in this group I have two amendments 369 and 371. two amendments 369 and 371. Amendment 369 is co-signed by my noble friend, Baroness Doocey, the noble Lady Baroness Fox Buckley, noble Lady Baroness Fox Buckley, and the noble Lady Baroness Jones of Moleskin, and is itself subject
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Portrait Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)
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of Moleskin, and is itself subject to two suggested amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra three six, nine A and B. Our other, amendment 371 is co-signed by my noble Baroness Doocey and Lord Strasburger, and again by the noble Lady, Baroness Fox of Buckley. I'm grateful to them all for their support. My Lords, Amendment 369 seeks to enshrine in statute the right to protest, as it has long been enjoyed in this country. The right to protest is, of course, enshrined in our Echr rights.

Article ten concerns the right to freedom of expression and article 11 the right to freedom of assembly and association. The right to protest is and always has been circumscribed in English law, just as articles ten and 11 rights are circumscribed in the convention. And it's worth reminding ourselves, reasonably briefly, of the limits placed on the two freedoms by the convention the right to freedom of expression under article ten expressly includes the right, the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority.

But it is limited, and the way it's limited is by saying it may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society and most relevantly, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. The article 11 right to freedom of association and Assembly accords to everyone the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and of freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the production of his interests.

And it limits the rights, the restrictions that may be placed on those rights to those that are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety. And the list goes on. In the same way as article ten. My Lords, I repeat the words of the two convention articles not because they are in any sense new, but because they demonstrate the balancing exercise that the state must carry out when considering how far it may or may not be legitimate to restrict the exercise of the convention freedoms in this country, not as a matter simply of compliance with the convention, but as a matter of some public policy.

The right to protest has never been explicitly enshrined in English or UK legislation, although the restrictions on it have been considerable. Changes were made by the conservative government in the police, crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of 2022 with new statutory offences of public nuisance, more police powers to impose conditions on demonstrations that were deemed likely to be noisy or disruptive, and harsher penalties for obstructing highways. This bill now proposes further restrictions. For example, clauses 118 to 121 to be considered in the next group would create a new offence of concealing identity at protests in localities designated by the police in the light of the development of live facial recognition technology that looks and sounds ominous, clause 121 would ban the use of pyrotechnic articles at protests, which I take could include any type of firework unless exempted by the regulations.

Collectively, the new restrictions on liberty and further police powers, particularly taken with the new powers and conditions legislated for in the 2022 act, mean that the right to protest is being progressively restricted. That highlights, we say, the need for a very public statement in domestic law of the right to protest and of the criteria to be applied when limiting it. Our amendments seek to provide that in a way that is proportionate and balanced, but firm. We start amendment 369 with a statement that everyone has the right to engage in peaceful protest, both alone and with others.

Our amendment then imposes on public authorities three pronged duties to respect, protect and facilitate the right to protest. We appreciate that there are or can be significant resource implications for police and public authorities in policing protests. It can be an expensive exercise. We also appreciate that there is a difficult balance for the police to draw between over policing protests and under policing them, and that it is very often difficult to predict what is the right level of policing to maintain the balance between protecting the right to protest and risking disturbance if things go wrong.

But the right to protest is a very valuable right, and it's extremely important to freedom and democracy that public authorities appreciate that they do have the legal duty to to respect, protect and facilitate it. That our amendment describes that legal duty must be backed by resources for the police and local authorities to ensure that this duty can be effectively performed. My Lords, the government have appointed the noble Lord, Lord MacDonald of River Glaven, to carry out a review of public order and hate crime legislation.

Its terms of reference were published last month and the final report is expected next month, February 2026. In spite of the tight timescale scale, the noble Lord will no doubt carry out a thorough review of the law in this area, guided by the three principles that are set out in his terms of reference. First, considering whether the legislation is fit for purpose. Secondly, whether it adequately protects communities from intimidation and hate, and thirdly, whether it adequately strikes a fair balance between freedom of expression and the right to protest with the need to prevent disorder and keep communities safe.

We maintain that subsection Subclauses two and three of our amendment set out succinctly and clearly that balance, in order to be permissible interference with or restriction of the right to protest must be necessary and proportionate, and for the purpose of protecting national security or public safety, preventing disorder or crime, or protecting public health or the rights and freedoms of others. Those we say are the public interests that justify restriction of the right to protest. In many ways, it is a pity that the MacDonald review was not commissioned before this bill was introduced, given that deferring this legislation until after the report might have given the government and Parliament a better opportunity to look at it, look afresh at some of the new provisions in the 2020 and the provisions in the 2022 act, and consider the proposals in this Bill.

But, my Lords, we are where we are, and it is for Parliament to set out the policy objectives. So I suggest that it's more important than ever that we set out in statute the balance that is to be struck, even if this bill will not be passed in its final form before the MacDonald review is published. My Lords, our amendment 37 one seeks a review of the existing legal framework of protest and its interaction with articles nine, which covers freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as ten and 11 which I have considered above.

If our amendment 37 one is accepted, that review will no doubt build on the work of the MacDonald review in the light of the passage of this Bill. My Lords, I next turn to the two amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, with the balance between the right to protest and justifiable restrictions thereon as the Touchstone Amendment three six, 9ZA would make would put public authorities under a duty, and I quote, to ensure that all other members of the public are not hindered in any way from going about their daily business, and 369 ZB would say that public authorities could interfere with the right to protest by restriction, to prevent inconvenience to any member of the public, or to permit any persons from going about their daily business.

I suspect the noble Lord must be to permit any persons to go about their daily business. The implication of both amendments is that it could be legitimately seen as necessary and proportionate to interfere with, or restrict the right to protest for such a reason, yet there is no requirement in either amendment that a significant number of people have to be inconvenienced or troubled in their daily business for a restriction to be justified. Far from it. 369 Za talks about any member of the public.

369 ZB talks about permitting any persons. My Lords, those amendments are far too draconian. We are all of us familiar with crowds and demonstrations in the vicinity of this building, whether on foot or in tractors or otherwise noisy and inconvenient they may be. They may hinder many of us, and frequently in our daily business. But there is no justification for a public authority to be placed under a duty to ensure no hindrance. Whatever. My Lords, I invite you to consider the farmers protests entirely.

Irrespective of what you thought of the proposed inheritance tax on farmland, which my party opposed. Yes, the farmers made a lot of noise in London. They probably clogged up roads in the country too. Yes, they were noisy, but they had a point and they won it. And their protests were, I suggest, entirely legitimate and it would have been completely disproportionate to restrict their right to protest. Proportionality and purpose are the key. So I turn to the use of the Terrorism Act to justify the arrest of peaceful protesters who were demonstrating against the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, put aside entirely, please, what we may think of what is happening in Gaza and what we may think of the rights and wrongs of the proscription of the Palestine Action Group, given the criminal damage that was clearly done by that group to military aircraft.

But even if the proscription of the Palestine Action Group is right in law, there is something profoundly wrong, I suggest, about criminalising the activities of individuals under the Terrorism Act for peaceably carrying placards or wearing clothing at a demonstrating demonstration denoting support for that organisation. Many of the protesters who were or are being prosecuted are students on the threshold of their careers. Others are public servants, active or retired. I do not believe it can be right for them to be branded as terrorists.

The consequences for many are wholly disproportionate. They will be unable to secure employment in many fields, unable to travel to the United States or from later this year when the scheme comes in to travel to the Schengen Area. Yet senior police officers at the time of the protests have been heard saying that that is a reason to stay away from such protests. In other words, deliberately reducing attendance at those protests. My Lords, we have to get this right if our fundamental freedoms are not to be progressively eroded.

History teaches us that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. That's a quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but almost certainly wrongly. But it's nonetheless valid for that. Our amendment 369 is a way of helping the government to avoid serious infringements of our liberties creeping into law, almost inadvertently. Amendment 371 would assist the protection of the right to protest by the review it calls for. My Lords, I beg to move.

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My Lords amendment. Sorry amendment proposed before clause 118. Insert the new clause listed 118. Insert the new clause listed on the Marshalled List. I must on the Marshalled List. I must explain that amendment 369 is an

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amendment to amendment 369. Lord Blencathra. My Lord. I rise to speak in support of
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Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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the new clause, establishing an express statutory right to protest and to move my amendments, which I believe make that right workable, balanced and fair to all members of balanced and fair to all members of the public. Let me begin by saying that the right to protest is a cornerstone of any free society. It cornerstone of any free society. It is a mark of confidence, not weakness. When a nation allows its citizens to gather, to speak, to citizens to gather, to speak, to dissent, and to challenge those in authority.

I support that principle wholeheartedly. But rights do not exist in isolation. They exist in a framework of mutual respect, where the rights of one group cannot simply extinguish the rights of another. That is why I have tabled these amendments to ensure that alongside the duty to respect, protect and facilitate protest, public authorities must also ensure that those who are not protesting are not hindered in going about their daily business. My amendment adds a new subsection 2D, which makes that duty explicit, and I've added two further subsections, 3D and 3D, to make clear that preventing inconvenience to any member of the public and permitting people to go about their daily lives are legitimate grounds for proportionate restrictions on protest.

My Lords, this is not an attempt to water down the right to protest. It is an attempt to anchor it in the real world. And as a noble Lord, Lord Marxist said in the words of the convention, it is to protect the rights and freedoms of others as well. Because in my Lords, in the real world, the public is not an abstract. The public are individuals. It's a nurse trying to reach her shift on time. It's a carer who must get to an elderly relative.

It's a parent taking a child to school. It's a work at a low risk, losing wages or even a job because the road has been blocked. It's a small business owner whose customers can't reach them. It's the disabled peer in his wheelchair who couldn't get across Westminster Bridge three years ago because because Just Stop Oil were blocking me getting across. I should have borrowed one of their banners, and then the police would have helped me across all these people. My Lords matter every bit as much as those who are protesting.

Their rights are not secondary. I submit their needs are not trivial and their lives should not be treated as collateral damage in someone else's political campaign. Now some argue, I think the noble Lord, Lord Mark said, so the noble Lord, Lord Mark said so. The inconvenience is a part of protest, but inconvenience is not a theoretical concept. Inconvenience has consequences. Miss medical appointments, missed exams, miscarriages, missed wages, missed opportunities. And for many people, what is dismissed as mere inconvenience is in fact material harm.

And I want to be absolutely clear a legitimate public interest does not need to be a crowd of thousands. It does not need to be a major national event. It does not need to be a threat to infrastructure. Sometimes a legitimate public interest is one person, one individual who simply needs to get to work or go to school or go to hospital. A democracy protects minorities, and sometimes the minority is a minority of one. So my amendments, my Lords, recognise that reality.

They ensure that the right to protest is balanced, but with the right of everyone else to live their lives, they give public authorities clarity rather than ambiguity, because at present the police are often placed in an absolutely impossible position. If they intervene, they're accused of supporting protest. If they do not intervene, they're accused of failing to protect the public. So my amendments give them a clear statutory duty. Protect protest, yes, but also protect the public and ensure that daily life can continue.

This is not about silencing anyone. It's about ensuring that protest remains peaceful, proportionate and legitimate. Because if protests routinely prevent ordinary people from going about their lives, public support for protests will erode. And when public support erodes, the right itself becomes more fragile. I think we all saw on television recently my Lords, motorists getting out of their cars and dragging people off the road. That should not be happened. They had to become vigilantes to clear the road, and that's because they felt the police were not doing the or.

The authorities were not doing their duty in keeping the roads clear. My amendments strengthen the right to protest by ensuring it is exercised responsibly and in a way that commands public respect rather than public resentment. My Lords, the new clause before is well intentioned, but without my amendments, it risks creating a one sided right, one that elevates the interests of protesters above the interests of everyone else. That is not balanced, that is not fairness, and it is not how rights should operate in a democratic society.

My amendments restore that balance and recognise that the right to protest is vital but not absolute. The recognise that the rights of protesters must coexist with the rights of those who are not protesting, and they recognise that sometimes the legitimate public interest is not a grand principle, but a simple human need, the need to get to work, to keep an appointment, reach a hospital, or simply go about one's daily business without obstruction. I

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commend my amendments to the House. I beg to move. My Lords. Sorry, just one minute.

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My Lords. Sorry, just one minute. Amendment 369ZA proposed as an amendment to amendment 369A after inserted subsection two c insert

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inserted subsection two c insert the words as printed on the Marshalled List. Quite difficult. To sit here and.

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Listen to that, but I will come to that. I. I very strongly support amendment 369, and I do so with a real sense of fury that we are in
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Portrait Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party)
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this position, that we actually have to do this, that it is not obvious to any government that in a democracy we need the right to protest, to be protected and to engage in peaceful protest means irritating other people. I'm sorry, Lord Blencathra, but unfortunately what you said just now was complete what you said just now was complete and utter nonsense. And shame. OK, over recent years, we've seen a real erosion of protest rights through one bill after another.

I sat here and watched it all and protested at every single move, and each has been justified on a sort of narrow technical or operational point, but taken together amounting to a clear political direction, making protests harder, riskier and much easier to shut down. Amendment 369 does not invent new rights. It states in clear and accessible language that peaceful protest is a fundamental democratic right, and that public authorities have a duty to respect, protect and to facilitate that right.

So I will now turn the amendments 3690 and 369ZB, which seek to qualify this right by reference to whether members of the public are hindered, experience inconvenience, or are able to go about their daily business. These amendments fundamentally misunderstand the nature of protest. Almost all meaningful protest causes some degree of hindrance or inconvenience. If it does not, it is very easy to ignore from from the suffragettes to trade unionists to civil rights campaigners, protest has always disrupted business as usual, precisely because that is how attention is drawn to injustice.

For example, prescribing Palestine action. That was such a stupid move by the government that has actually caused more problems for the government and for the police than if they had just left them alone and arrested them for criminal damage and similar. So back to these embarrassing amendments. It's not just the problem for their intent, which I disagree very strongly about, but also their vagueness. Terms like hindered and inconvenience are entirely undefined. Five minutes delay could be an inconvenience.

Noise could be an inconvenience. Simply being reminded of a cause that one disagrees with could be, for some, could be considered an inconvenience. And if those concepts become legal, thresholds for restricting protest, then the right itself becomes meaningless. And the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra used this phrase about in the real world. Well, let me tell you, I live in the real world, and I understand what protest does, and I understand why it's needed. Any protest that is visible, noisy or effective could be banned on the basis that someone, somewhere, was inconvenienced.

Democracy is, by its nature, sometimes noisy, disruptive and inconvenient. And if we it's very inconvenient being here at night debating these issues quite honestly, in a moderately cold chamber. Or and cold chamber. And if we prioritize convenience over conscience, we should not be surprised when people feel shut out of political decision making altogether. So for those reasons, I support amendment three, six, nine and also 371. Essentially, protest law is a terrible mess. And we've got here by a long series of, of government decisions and, and government sort of weirdnesses.

The whole thing is confusing for the police. We've been told that by senior police officers. It means that police officers make mistakes based on their own judgment, and that is a terrible thing to happen in a democracy. And so I would say that let's just get this into the bill to make it clear exactly what a democracy looks like.

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The right to protest, like most. Of the rights. Under the European Convention on Human Rights.

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Human Rights. Under the European Convention. On Human Rights, requires a balance, and it requires a balance balance, and it requires a balance here between the rights of protesters and the rights of others. And Lord Blencathra is absolutely right. Baroness Jones may not wish to recognise it, but there are other rights as well that need to
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Lord Pannick Portrait Lord Pannick (Crossbench)
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other rights as well that need to be balanced against the rights of protesters. And for Baroness Jones to dismiss as her word nonsense. Lord Blencathra concerns, I think, will trouble many people here in this House because the protester has to accept that there are other rights, there are other interests that need to be taken into account. So I'm with Lord Blencathra on this issue. I'm also unpersuaded that we need amendment 369, that Lord marks has eloquently advanced today.

And the reason why I doubt it is because, as he rightly says, it echoes almost word for word. What is in article 11? Read with article ten of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is already part of our law under the Human Rights Act. And I'm very doubtful indeed that we need an express statutory provision that repeats what is already part of the law of this land. Indeed, the amendment, if it were enacted, would would raise expectations of people like Baroness Jones that there is a right to protest, which will expand on current rights, and it won't, because amendment three, six, nine, were it to be introduced into our law, would have to give way to other statutory provisions, express statutory provisions that give powers and impose duties on the police and others.

So it would cause confusion. Are we really going to incorporate into our law, express statutory provisions that echo each and every one of the protections under the European Convention on Human Rights? I doubt whether this is a sensible way to legislate.
21:46
Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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My Lords, I've added my name to amendment three six, nine because I amendment three six, nine because I like the fact that it creates a duty on public authorities to duty on public authorities to respect, protect and facilitate the right to protest so that a public authority may only intervene with authority may only intervene with the right to protest, including by placing restrictions when necessary and proportionate. And that's the balancing, I think, that the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley on Thames explained so well in his introduction because it is undoubtedly the case that there is a balancing act.

But I'm pleased to support the amendment because I've never felt it's been more necessary to reassert why the right to protest matters. And despite Lord the noble Lord panic telling advising us maybe to to not panic, should I? I didn't mean that to be quite the pun that as it came out, I feel that there's a danger of complacency there. I think that restating this and this amendment is, is actually essential. The fact that we need to restate the the importance of the right to protest as a fundamental right in a healthy democracy, that it gives us an it seems to me, gives us an urgency in championing and guarding carefully and closely what I think is under threat.

It allows protest. That is, as the UN notes, individuals to express themselves collectively and to participate in shaping society. It is a system of participating governance. And I worry that if people believe that that right to protest is being eroded consistently, that it actually leads them to take more dangerous extreme measures, right? The right to protest is a political free expression. And it strikes me as I've watched, as we've all watched over the last week or so, the protests in Iran, the absolute bravery of those protesters that we're happy to cheer them on and to say how important it is.

But I think we have to, closer to home, also carry on and expressly say that political ideas expressed on the streets that challenge the status quo, that allow people to express anger and their dissidence and their opposition, does seem to me to be worth restating. I do think that there has been a relentless attempt at curbing such democratic expression. Since I've been in this House over five years, there seems to have been a relentless stream of laws threatening the right to protest as the noble Baroness, Baroness Joseph, just explained.

The police, crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022, the Public Order Act in 2023 have substantially expanded police powers to impose restrictions on protests to arrest people for breach of these restrictions, as well as increasing sentences for peaceful protest offences and lowering the threshold for what would constitute serious disruption to the life of the community. Those laws have been passed their ongoing, with far reaching legislative have led to legislative crackdowns on peaceful protests. But here we are again because it's never, ever enough.

It does seem to me, as I've argued before, that every time the law is changed, those laws are not enforced, or the police or people in authority say it's we need. We can't do anything. We need more laws, we need more restrictions. And so it goes on and on and on. And so I worry that as this has been the third piece of primary legislation in less than five years, to to chip away at the right to protest that we should be worried.

And that's why I put my name to amendment 123, looking for a review of existing protest framework, because there is an awful lot of legislation now that can control and curb one's right to protest. And I am delighted, by the way, about the MacDonald review. But I would urge that we do need to make sure that the the law is fit for purpose and not just keep adding on laws all the time, because I do fear the impact of the acts on freedom of association, freedom of expression and so on.

And so I, I, I support both amendments. I, I suppose I want to admit something though, which is I don't want to be naive. I also know, despite what I've just said, that protests have changed in many ways. And so I want to. This is the balancing act I want to work out. And as we enter into a new discussion now on all aspects of protest, I'm aware of the fact that I also need to be open minded because I'm completely principled on the right to protest.

I do understand, though, that we have to take certain things into account. I have watched demonstrations and protests over the last year or so, last few years in which intimidation, anti-Semitic slogans, toxic, intimidating behaviour has happened. I've seen that myself. I can't deny it. There is a more violent vibe around some protests. That's also true. I could not believe. I genuinely could not believe that pro-Palestinian protests happened after the Manchester synagogue murdered, that I just couldn't get over it.

Right. So and and it's not just on the on that question. I don't want to obsess on that question. There's a whole range of issues that I'm interested in in which when I have been to events, I've been approached by or approached by, screamed at by masked up, unpleasant, scary protesters. Right. So I don't want to deny that. I also am aware of the fact that as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra pointed out, in terms of he was using the examples of the likes of Just Stop Oil in the past, that some protests have been used, almost as though disruption has been used to bully people into adherence, rather than persuading the public to agree.

And and that's made me feel uncomfortable. But that's all the more reason why we need to review what's on the statute books. I mean, is it fit for purpose? And we can't just keep adding laws becoming more repressive, more draconian, and keep hoping that we're going to sort it all out? Because that's what I fear. And by the way, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra amendments, which I do not support, I, I would just remind him of the kind of disruptions that one gets or the kind of modern demonstrations.

You have a situation where, for example, a protest outside an asylum hotel organised by the Pink Ladies, for those of you who know who they are, are met with the the Stand Up to Racism protesters who are protesting against the protesters. If you join me and you get a kind of clash there and the and the thing that's then argued is that it's disrupting the local community and that both protests should be banned. And it's it strikes me that that's not very helpful because it's a perfectly legitimate thing, for example, to say that you're worried about people being put into local hotels, asylum seekers.

And I can't just say because I support their concerns, that I then want to ban the stand up to racism protesters who were worried about them. I think, therefore, we have to also be aware of the fact as the noble Baroness Jones has explained, protest communities. I'm also aware of the fact because somebody I can't remember who talked about farmers, which I actually was outside Downing Street on a protest with farmers on Budget Day. And the thing that was shocking was that the farmers had been banned from driving their tractors, even though until the day before the long agreed that they would be allowed to have a protest of tractors on that stretch the night before they were banned, the tractors and actually farmers were arrested for trying to get their drive, their tractors in the that in the terrible scandal that's emerging in relation to what happened at the Aston Villa march, that I know people who went to the Aston Villa match, rather sorry, in which Israeli fans were banned, that when protesters went in solidarity or rather a solidarity action went of people who were fighting anti-Semitism and went and organised a vigil at the football match in Birmingham that actually they were fenced in by the police and treated almost as criminals, even though in fact they were showing solidarity with Jewish people in the local area.

So the reason I'm giving those examples is we have to admit that it's a bit complicated and complex and therefore just saying you're going to ban protests that are disruptive of everyday life actually would be a very dangerous precedent. And I disagree with it. But I do concede it's a hard argument, and we should therefore take it seriously and not just keep passing laws to ban

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protesting even more. My Lords. I draw the. Committee's attention to my

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Committee's attention to my interest as chair of Big Brother Watch, and I rise to speak about Watch, and I rise to speak about amendments 369 and 371. In the name of my noble colleague Lord marks. My Lords, protest is the lifeblood
21:57
Lord Strasburger Portrait Lord Strasburger (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, protest is the lifeblood of any vibrant democracy, and in the United Kingdom, it's one of the most powerful ways for ordinary citizens to make their voices heard. Our democratic system depends not only on elections, but also on the active participation of the people. Between elections. Protest is essential because it allows us to challenge decisions, hold leaders accountable, and demand change. When systems seem slow or unresponsive. Throughout our history, protests has driven meaningful progress.

Universal male suffrage in Britain was pushed forward by mass movements like the Chartists and later reform campaigners, which used strikes, mass meetings, demonstrations to pressure parliament to extending the franchise and paying MPs so that working class men could serve. And I imagine those were quite inconvenient to a few people. Lord Blencathra, women's suffrage in the UK was won by the suffragettes only after decades of marches, processions, civil disobedience and hunger strikes, culminating in the representation of the People Act, peaceful protest educates the public, sparks debate and creates the pressure necessary for reform.

In a healthy democracy, disagreement is not a threat, but a sign that citizens care deeply about their society. However, my Lords, our right to protest is, as has already been said, under relentless attack through the police, crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023. The previous government introduced multiple restrictions on our precious right to protest. And then last year, the current government found a way to further suppress peaceful demonstrations by misusing terrorism legislation to stop protests.

This led to 2700 arrests of mostly elderly people who were protesting about what was happening in Gaza. So we had the bizarre sight week after week, of police arresting vicars and old ladies in Parliament Square when they posed

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no threat whatsoever to anyone. It was absolutely farcical. Can I just point out to the

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Can I just point out to the local lore, if you will allow me to, that these people were not arrested that these people were not arrested for expressing a view about Gaza. They were arrested for supporting Palestine Action, which is a violent terrorist group. Yeah.

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violent terrorist group. Yeah. Not so far as I know. It was absolutely farcical, but not very funny when you consider that the hundreds of police officers involved had far more useful things that they could have been doing. But, my Lords, it seems that that even that was not enough for the government. Through this bill, they are attempting to introduce a raft of further constraints on the right of the British people to express themselves via peaceful street demonstrations.

But, my Lords, the law surrounding protest is in a complete mess. Recent legislation has been knee jerk and reactionary, leaving the legal landscape a complete muddle. Police often struggle to know how to properly police demonstrations, which usually leads to excessive heavy handed police policing and people being charged with all sorts of offences when there may not have been. This has also made the law extremely unpredictable. The mission creep of legislation and case law over recent years has meant that there is now a raft of serious criminal offences, that is, indictable offences tried in the Crown Court, which are no doubt adding to the unacceptable backlog in the courts.

It's very easy for someone to attend a peaceful demonstration and inadvertently commit an offence or a more serious offence than they would have reasonably expect their conduct to amount to. For example, a protester who was who temporarily blocks a road as many do, would historically have been charged with wilful obstruction of the highway under section 137 of the Highways Act. This is a summary only offence which used to have a maximum sentence of a fine, although this was increased to 6 to 6 months.

Custody in the police, crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022, then, section seven of the Public Order Act 2023 introduced a new offence of interfering with national infrastructure, which includes all A and B roads with a maximum sentence of 12 months. Custody. Section 78 of the police, crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 23 also created a new statutory offence of public nuisance, which only requires the doing of an act which obstructs a public right. This is far wider than the old common law offence, which required the obstruction to be significant.

The effect of all the above, as an illustration, is that someone who stands or sits in a road as part of a protest could be charged with any of the four offences I have just mentioned. There is no real consistency in the charging decisions between different police forces or different CPS regions, meaning that people are often charged with very serious offences for minor conduct. The reason being cases in which different people are charged with different offences arising from identical conduct at the same protest.

So, my Lords, the various laws about protest overlap with each other and have not been developed as a coherent framework. Protesters and police are unsure about which laws apply in particular situations. This results in inadvertently heavy handed policing, inconsistent prosecution, miscarriages of justice, waste of the public purse and clogging up the courts. And more importantly, it results in a cumulative chilling effect on our democracy. And stifling of debate. It's high time that the disorganised and and disjointed framework of statutes covering the democratically vital activity of protest is subject to a root and branch review, and that is that is truly independent and thorough.

And that is precisely what amendment 371 calls for. However, since amendment 371 was laid, the government has announced a review of public order and hate crime legislation. It's being chaired by Lord MacDonald, for whom I have the greatest respect. But the terms of reference for the review seem to be focused rather narrowly and do not appear to cover the matters I've just raised, namely the uncoordinated and overlapping legislation about protests. I doubt that in the short period until the review reports next month, Lord MacDonald will be able to examine the different approaches to arresting and charging between the different police forces.

Perhaps the Minister can reassure the the committee that the current review will be broad enough to cover all the shortfalls I've outlined outlined in the existing regime. If he cannot give that assurance, amendment 371 will need to be passed at Report stage to generate the full review that is needed. And turning to an amendment 369. If passed, it will hopefully prevent future governments from cumulatively eroding protest rights. As has been the customary for the last few years.
22:05
Lord Hogan-Howe Portrait Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench)
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Lords, I, I, I would vote >> Lords, I, I, I would vote against amendment 371. It is a difficult area. There does have to difficult area. There does have to be balanced. I thought Lord panic put it very well. We get more disruption from Remembrance Day disruption from Remembrance Day every year across the country because roads get closed. People can't do what they want to do. There are very many times when we do things in society which cause disruption to others, but if pushed, I'd be more towards Lord Blencathra position than I would two three, seven one in terms of 371.

My three points are, first of all, I think as Lord panic said, it duplicates what's already in the convention rights and I can't see a purpose of that. I think secondly, it says nothing about the basic dilemma which Baroness Jones demonstrated very well, which, of course, most protests is intended to cause disruption, to attract attention, as far as I'm concerned. I know that people say that, you know, disruption is a right in a democracy, and I accept. I agree with that entirely.

I have to say, it's one of the most inefficient mechanisms I've seen for getting an argument over the guy who shouted about Brexit outside this, my office. For about three years, all I could hear was one word about not liking Brexit. I never heard what his argument was. I'm not sure protest ever does any of that. It just attracts attention. So disruption does cause that attention. But I do think to make this three, seven one the only reason why the police would have to decide whether a march went ahead, what conditions were placed, really doesn't address that basic dilemma, nor does it address the dilemma that mass disobedience has.

As Lord Chancellor Berger has said, achieved far more in terms of democratic change generally than many other forms of parliamentary interventions. It is a mechanism, but there has got to be a balance struck, and individuals do have a right to make sure that they can get to a hospital. They can get a fire engine when it needs to get there, not when somebody agrees and suddenly concludes that, in fact, they will let them through other than the police allowing them to do that.

My final point is just that it seems to me the criminal law is the wrong place to state convention rights. If you're going to state them, there may be a place in law, but really the criminal law is for declaring offences. If you want to start declaring rights, you might want to start declaring human responsibilities. The the start of the Human Rights Act actually talks about some human responsibilities. It just never got round to providing any enforcement mechanisms. So all those things that we ought to have as duties towards each other are articulated nowhere, so the protesters can have their right to protest, but they don't have to worry about the rights of the poor child who can't get school.

The police are trying. People are trying to attend a place of worship. They've got rights too. But the protester apparently doesn't have to balance their rights when they're considering exercising theirs. My final point really is a direct challenge to Lord Marx, who I really like and respect, and Lord Strasburger. But Lord panic was quite right. It's quite unfair, in my view, to criticise the police for arresting people at these marches who are supporting anti the proscribed organisation, the proscribed terrorist organisation, which you may not like, but this place passed the legislation.

We also passed the legislation that said it was an offence to support a proscribed organisation. And therefore, if you start waving banners about and you start saying you support these organisations, there will be a consequence. So I don't see how it's OK to to argue that the police, in taking action on the laws that we've passed, are doing something that's wrong. You may not agree with the law, but I don't think it's right to blame the police for exercising it. And I think that's a confusion that's arisen over the last few months, and it's one that

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we can put right. Sorry. The objection was the way the

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The objection was the way the terrorism legislation was misused to effectively suppress protest, to effectively suppress protest, and it was misused by combining Palestine action with two other Palestine action with two other desperately terrorist organisations as a group, so that MPs and peers as a group, so that MPs and peers had no opportunity to to decide on one and not the other two. So it

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was an bit of a fix. I understand. Lord Strasbourg's point, but my

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Lord Strasbourg's point, but my only challenge is that to blame the police for that confusion is hardly police for that confusion is hardly fair. I don't think it's accurate. I don't think it's fair. So I would stand up for them, of course, but I stand up for them, of course, but I think that it would be better if this place to acknowledge that dilemma, but not blame them for

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dilemma, but not blame them for exercising the powers that we gave them. My Lords. The I always like.
22:10
Lord Walney Portrait Lord Walney (Crossbench)
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To I'm going to resist the temptation to go further into the rights and wrongs. And I think the rights and wrongs. And I think the logical inconsistencies of some noble Lords views on on Palestine action prescription here. But I do just want to offer, I hope, a some reassurance to to Lord Marx and Lord Strasburger and Baroness Fox that in my view, they don't need necessarily to pass amendment 371 to put it on the statute book to have the view.

They don't even have to wait for Lord MacDonald's review. There is an excellent review into protest law called the Protecting Our Democracy from coercion, that I was privileged to before the House in my role as my then role as the the government's independent review on political violence and disruption. It covers this whole area. I'm pleased that the last government did enact some of this, and I'm still urging this government to to go somewhat further. It may not strike quite the same chord as them, but it is there and it has been done.

Now, some of the of the recommendations from that review are related to this topic, but they come in further groupings, so I will we will get to that when, when we do. But just let me offer a brief couple of thoughts on on these fascinating amendments. Many noble Lords have have mentioned the the balance here and and yes, clearly there there is one. It's it's true probably that Lord Blencathra amendments that take that maximalist approach, which I'm not sure even I would go that far and, and would often it might well prove to be unworkable.

But I think it's it's important for anyone, any legislator looking at this area to understand where the public is on this. Because if we talk about defending democracy and we so gratuitously ignore and act against very the very strongly held views of the public on this, then we are getting ourselves into, into a, a very difficult place. And none of this detached from the the right to protest. But again, I've mentioned my own review published last year.

In it there is polling which accords with a great deal of of polling done by other sources, which shows just how strongly the the public object to and oppose disruptive protests. They are. Big majorities of the public are in favour of the right to protest, which is which is reassuring. But as soon as it becomes disruptive by a margin of about 9 to 1, they oppose it. So I, I think it's a it's an interesting challenge that amendment three, six, nine has put in terms of stating explicitly the right to protest and the the little panic is, is, of course, right that that these, that this is unnecessary in the sense that the, the right is already enshrined in, in, in other areas.

But where the proposals of this amendment seek to draw that balance does glaringly omit the issue of disruption, it completely omits it. Now, the the the the prospect of avoiding all disruption of protest is clearly it is clearly not realistic and and and would would go against the the go against the point. But in an era where we are where much protest is increasingly organised and designed to cause significant economic damage through the the disruption of people's daily lives and often preventing people from getting to, to work.

And I'm seeing senior trade unionists scowling at me for, for, for for making this for making this point. But I would just ask those who have been in trade unions to consider what it feels like for working people to be stopped from being able to go to their workplace and contribute fairly, and being intimidated and shouted at as they go through, as they try to go through to the doors of their factory and are and are blocked. But any any attempt to place a balance, whether it is on the statute book or whether it's an attempt to create new laws, any attempts to shift that balance which doesn't acknowledge the the the harmful effect of disruptive or disruptive protests on the economy and that this needs these things need to be properly balanced, is designed to make very bad law and be intensely unpopular with the public.



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My Lords, I strongly commend the report of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, which I have read. My purpose in speaking very briefly is purpose in speaking very briefly is to interrogate amendment 369. In to interrogate amendment 369. In the light of what we already have and what we already have was very and what we already have was very well put in a report by David Spencer, the Policy Exchange, the director of which is my noble director of which is my noble friend Lord Godson and David Spencer put the current balance very well, I think in his report A long, long Way to go.

And he wrote
22:16
Lord Goodman of Wycombe Portrait Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Conservative)
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this, the Human Rights Act 1998, he said, does not refer to a right to said, does not refer to a right to protest. The relevant rights are the right to freedom of expression, article ten and right to freedom of peaceful assembly, article 11. However, the sense that many of the However, the sense that many of the recent waves of protests have been peaceful by any ordinary understanding of the word, understanding of the word, particularly when filled with anti-Semitic chanting through mobile sound amplifiers.

Calls for jihad on the streets of London, or the use of criminal damage as a tactic is clearly false. Further articles ten and 11 are qualified rights. This is the point about balance that other noble Lords have made, in that they can be restricted where it is necessary and proportionate to protect public safety, prevent crime and protect the rights and freedoms of others. And my Lords, I myself think that balance in the Human Rights Act really puts the matter rather well when it refers to this right of peaceful assembly.

Now, peaceful assembly surely doesn't mean that the protest must be meek and mild. One must expect protests to be noisy and turbulent and robust and up to a point, disruptive. But the right of protests to be disruptive. As the noble Lord, Lord said a few moments ago, must be balanced against the right of others not to have their lives disrupted. That's the balance of the thing. Furthermore, just finally, in closing, there is a very difficult issue here that David Spencer raises very profoundly about some of the language that has been used in demonstrations that is very close, trembling, on the verge of incitement.

And in a country where we have seen what happened in the synagogue in Manchester, where attacks are carried out on other institutions, we have to bear that in mind. In short, it seems to me this amendment is either reproducing what's already in the Human Rights Act, in which case it's unnecessary or it is complicating it, in which case it shouldn't really be there. And my own sense is that it's complicating this and that it makes no sense at all to scatter different rights willy nilly in different pieces of legislation, rather than if one is going to set positive rights out in statute, put them in one place in the Human Rights Act, which is what has been done.

So I think the balance we've got is satisfactory and that the amendment doesn't

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interrogation. My Lord, I thank the Lord, Lord

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My Lord, I thank the Lord, Lord Marx, for bringing forward these amendments. The importance of peaceful protest in a free and peaceful protest in a free and democratic society is, of course, a principle supported by all noble Lords. And I want to be clear at Lords. And I want to be clear at the outset that no one on these benches on this side questions either the legitimacy or the
22:19
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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either the legitimacy or the constitutional right to protest. So I first turn to amendment 369, which seeks to place an express statutory right to protest on the face of the Public Order Act 1986. This amendment risks solving a problem that does not exist in our. That's our belief that the right to protest is already deeply embedded in our constitutional and legal framework. As the noble Lord has so carefully explained, it is recognised that common law. It long predates our membership of the European Convention on Human Rights, and it has been repeatedly affirmed by the courts as a fundamental freedom in our democratic tradition.

Crucially, this right has never been absolute. Historically, it has always existed alongside the equally important duties of the state to maintain public order, protect public safety, and safeguard the rights and freedoms of others. That careful balance has evolved over centuries through common law and legislation. It is not at all clear that reinstating the right to protest in statutory form would add meaningful protection beyond what already exists. My Lords, there's a real risk that codifying such a broad and long standing writing statute could have unintended consequences.

By setting out open ended duties on public authorities to respect, protect and facilitate protest, the amendment would inevitably invite further litigation and judicial interpretation decisions about the proper balance between protest rights and competing public interests, such as disruption to essential services or public safety, could increasingly be determined in the courts rather than by Parliament or accountable Ministers. That risks further frustrating the will of the executive and Parliament. I do not believe that placing an express right to protest into statehood is either necessary or desirable.

Our system has functioned for generations without such a provision, and it is not evident that this long standing settlement is now deficient. My Lords, turning to amendment 371, which would require an independent review of the existing legislative framework governing protest, we in these benches are unconvinced of the case for such a review. The acts listed have been subject to extensive parliamentary scrutiny, and their compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights has been debated at length in both houses.

My Lords, we do not support subsection five of this amendment, which would require have regard to the impacts of legislation on the exercise of the. The is already subject to unwelcome litigation, which brings about perverse outcomes that were never intended at its commencement. And there are plenty of examples of that. An additional independent review would be unnecessarily burdensome and duplicative, consuming time and public resources without a clear or compelling purpose. For these reasons, we and these benches do not support either amendment.

I look forward to hearing the noble Lord, the Minister's response, and to further discussion how best we uphold both the right to protest and the rule of law in a balanced and proportionate way.
22:23
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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I hope it doesn't surprise noble Lords if I confess that I've been Lords if I confess that I've been on the odd protest in my time, and I've quite enjoyed the freedom to have a protest in my town, and I've protested against the apartheid government, against the National Front. And if Lord Blencathra will bear with me against his government when he served as a Minister at the time. So the right to protest and peaceful protest is an important part of our democratic society, and it's a long standing tradition in this country that people are free to gather together and demonstrate their views, provided they do so within the law.

And this government is committed to protecting and preserving that right. And I hope that that gives some succour to the noble Lord, marks the noble Lord Strasburger, the noble Lady, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, and indeed others who have spoken in favour. But I have to say to the noble Lord marks that in setting out his case for the two amendments on public order First Amendment 369, which seeks to introduce a statutory right to protest in the Public Order Act 1986, along with a duty on public authorities to respect, protect and facilitate that right.

I understand the concerns that he has put, and I accept and appreciate those concerns. But as has been said, not least by the noble Lord and learned panic that these protections are already firmly established in UK law and public authorities are required under the Human Rights Act 1998, passed by a previous government in which I was pleased to serve to act in accordance with the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, as set out in articles ten and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

But as has been said by a number of individuals, noble Lords today, such as the noble Lord Hogan-howe and indeed the noble Lord Davis of Gower, and the amendments from the noble Lord Blencathra. These rights are qualified and a point illustrated by amendments three, six, 9ZA and 369Z be put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra that qualification. I'm not going to get into the argument between the noble Lord marks and the noble Lord Blencathra. But for those such as the noble Lady Fox of Buckley and others who have argued for the amendment today, the key point is, is that that right, as has been said, can be restricted only where restriction is lawful, proportionate and justified.

The right to peaceful protest is also recognised under the common law and creating a separate statutory provision risks duplicating existing protections, which could lead to confusion in how the law is interpreted and applied. It may also complicate operational policing without offering any additional legal safeguards. And I have to say that I agreed with the noble Lord Goodman of Wickham that there is a fundamental right to protest. But I respectfully submit, as I think he argued in his contribution, that the amendment would not strengthen that commitment and may indeed introduce uncertainty into the law.

And that is a very valid and I think, important point, because the, the, the, the existing legislation under the Human Rights Act of 1998 and the articles ten and 11 qualified rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, do set out the issues that, again were ably outlined by the noble Lord, Lord panic. So I would say, first of all, to the noble Lord marks that that right exists. To protest that right is is one that I cherish and have exercised myself, and may even exercise myself again in the future.

Who knows? But it is an important right. But I think his amendment would cause confusion, would water down the ability to provide that security of protest under the existing legislation, and therefore I ask him ultimately to not press it further. Now, again, turning to amendment 371, which examines and which requires the government to commission an independent review of the existing protest legislation within 12 months of the bill receiving Royal assent. The noble Lord Strasbourg has said that this was tabled and the government has called a review post the tabling of this amendment.

We propose the review on the 5th of October last year, the Home Secretary announced an independent review of public order and hate crime legislation on the 5th of October last year. And my Lords, I would suggest that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord marks 371 would essentially be what the government has already ordered and would, if passed today, negate the purpose of what the government's already ordered and extend the review that we've already ordered still further, by establishing in law that review to lead the review that we've organised on the 5th of October, because of the very issues that I think all noble Lords have mentioned about balancing the right between peaceful protest and the right to enjoy non-harassment, the right to potentially go to a synagogue, or the right to go about your daily business.

Those issues are extremely important. And that's why the Home Secretary has appointed the noble Lord, Lord MacDonald of River Glaven KC, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, as one of the people to undertake the review. His independence and expertise will ensure a rigorous and impartial review. He's got the help and support of the former Assistant Chief Constable Owen Weatherall, who brings operational experience from his role with the National Police Chiefs Council as a lead for civil contingencies and national mobilization.

And that independent review reaffirms this government's ongoing commitment to keep public order legislation under review. Now, again, I just want to touch. Well,

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certainly. Intervene so late. Could the

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Intervene so late. Could the Minister please confirm whether Lord MacDonald's review will consider the issues I was raising, consider the issues I was raising, which was the incoherence and the overlap between the various pieces

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overlap between the various pieces of legislation on protest, the. Terms of Lord MacDonald's review have been published and they are available to the committee now. The review will examine whether current public order legislation is fit for purpose in the light of contemporary protest tactics, community impacts and the need to safeguard democracy. It will examine how effectively police are using the powers available to them. It will consider whether further measures are needed to reassure communities who are most affected by current tensions, while respecting the right to protest.

And those are all important issues. And the noble Lord, Lord MacDonald, expects to submit the review to the Home Secretary by spring 2026 and in doing so will give an overview of all the legislation that is in place. But I just must say to the noble Lord Strasburger, I mean, he's he's commented today on Palestine action and the right of protest on Palestine action. And I just want to reaffirm again for this House that both the House of Commons and this House had an opportunity to vote in favour or against that legislation, and the House of Commons and this House both voted in favour of the legislation.

Which is why, as the noble Lord Hogan-howe has said, police officers are implementing the legislation as it's been passed by both houses. And I say to the noble Lord Strasburger that as I recall, if I can't remember the exact figures, but a number of members of this House voted against that order at that time, including members from my own side, in a difficult debate in July and in, you know, undertaking that vote against that was a free vote to, to, to to undertake.

Many people voted against in the Commons and in this House. But both measures were passed in both houses and it is not illegal for anybody to go outside now and to campaign against the Israeli government or against any actions of the Israeli government, or not to campaign in favour of the Palestine organizations that are seeking to change the status quo in that part of the Middle East. But what is illegal is to show support for an organization that under the 2000 Terrorism Act, the government myself, Ministers determined under that act on advice from the security services and others that the organization Palestine Action was engaged in activities which crossed the threshold of the Terrorism Act.

And the noble Lord Walney is well aware of the complexities of that, as the former adviser and his contribution. But that was the advice that we've got now. If an organization is breaching the threshold for terrorism, then I think it's the duty of this government to act, and that's what we did in that circumstance. So I just want to place on record again the clarity that the noble Lord Strasburger can go outside tonight and can campaign for Palestine state and against the Israeli government, and no police will arrest him or any as he chose, I think grandparent, teacher or professional will be arrested to do that.

But if he goes out and supports Palestine action, which has been determined to cross that threshold on that terrorism act, then he will face the full force of the law. If he doesn't like the law, he can try and change the law. But that is the law passed by both houses, and therefore the police have a duty to uphold it. It doesn't stop peaceful protests.

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Thank you. Oh, I'd love to reopen the Palestine action debate because obviously, as a person who because obviously, as a person who pushed for the vote and as we exited the chamber, several peers said to me, this is going to cause said to me, this is going to cause trouble. So people knew. But could I ask the Lord about the Lord I ask the Lord about the Lord MacDonald review? Did he set the MacDonald review? Did he set the time limit? Do you want to tell us what you're saying? Roy? Did? Did Lord MacDonald set the time limit or did the government? Because it seems a lot of work for such a short time?

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Well. If I may, I always try and be helpful to the house. I was not be helpful to the house. I was not party directly with the Home Secretary and Lord MacDonald about Secretary and Lord MacDonald about the time limit, so I can't say with any certainty whether the Home Secretary said to Lord MacDonald, do it by April, or whether Lord do it by April, or whether Lord MacDonald said, I'll deliver it by April. So I can't say that with certainty. If the noble Lady wants certainty.

If the noble Lady wants me to write to her to make that point, I will do so. But I wasn't party to the at the moment or to that particular particular issue. But the key thing is, and this goes to the heart of the amendment 371, that the noble Lord Marx has brought forward is that amendment 371 provides for the review to undertaken within 12 months of the bill receiving Royal assent. Well, I'll just say to the noble Lord Marx that the review that we're doing currently will have been

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completed by April 2026. With the noble. Yeah.

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With the noble. Yeah. I mean, I think many of us in this House would be would find would be absolutely amazed if Lord would be absolutely amazed if Lord MacDonald sticks to his timetable of being able to publish something next month. I mean, he doesn't need next month. I mean, he doesn't need to take four years as I did, but I mean, it is a ferociously tight timetable. But the the the question I wanted to ask in was, is it not the case that if you follow the logic of of some of the arguments saying that people who are protesting.

Supporting Palestine action should not be face legal charge, is it not the case that you would then have to say? They would then have to say that you you that support for any terrorist organisation, if it was so-called peaceful, should be allowed. So you should be able to peacefully give your support for Hamas or any violent organisation. And if that is their argument, they need to properly say that because I think many people would have problems with that.

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Can I say that I agree with noble Lord Walney on that point and noble Lord Walney on that point and again, the right to free speech is extremely important, and there is no stopping the right of free no stopping the right of free speech about the issue of Palestine on any way, shape and form. But if if a determination is made under the 2000 Terrorism Act that an organisation has crossed that threshold, then the government has threshold, then the government has a duty to act upon that.

And that's what we have done in this case. And I just didn't want to allow, with due respect to the noble Lord Strasbourg, the comments that he made to colour the position of a protest around Palestine, because he can protest around that. What he can't do is support an organisation which again, still has some outstanding court cases and which has undertaken some severe action to date.

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May I press the noble Lord, the Minister, on that? I quite understand his analysis of the law understand his analysis of the law that the Palestine Action Group became a proscribed organisation became a proscribed organisation when Parliament said it should, and as a result of that, it follows from the terms of the Terrorism Act from the terms of the Terrorism Act that there would have been that there were prosecutions and are there were prosecutions and are continuing to be prosecutions of people who express support by perhaps sitting, having a placard or wearing an item of clothing that expresses such support.

The proscription is, of course, the subject of challenge. So I say nothing further about that. It's subject to challenge in the in the courts here, and it may well be subject of challenge in the European Court of Human Rights. But subject to that, has the government not had any concern about the fact that the way the Terrorism Act works, the proscription of any organisation means that any expression of support, as the noble Lord said, renders that person expressing such support, however peaceably and however others might regard it as simply peaceable protest renders it illegal and renders them liable to being prosecuted.

And does the government not feel that that is a reason for having a review of the validity and sense of the law in this area where the Terrorism Act carries, as it stands, that unfortunate consequence?

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We've strayed with due respect to all, all noble Lords, slightly wider than the amendment to date. I wider than the amendment to date. I just want to make the point about Palestine action because the noble Palestine action because the noble Lord Strasbourg mentioned it. The noble Lord MacDonald of River Glen is looking at all aspects of prosecution and all aspects relating to legislation, and we relating to legislation, and we keep all matters under review at all times. But the 2000 act is one that sets down certain criteria that was passed and crossed in this threshold in this case, and I defended that in this House, and the House supported that on a cross-party basis.

And that is that is political life. The noble Lord can move amendments at any time to strike that legislation down if if he wishes to. So I would say to the House today that I hope that they will withdraw the amendments before us today. The right to peaceful protest is vital. The government supports it. The government's making changes to still allow that right, but also to try and get a fair balance of communities and others who can also enjoy a life when that protest occurs.

And we have the wider review from the Lord MacDonald of River Glen, which will report in due course and which will colour, no doubt, further discussions, and I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his

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amendment. My Lords, I'll be as brief as I

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My Lords, I'll be as brief as I can. The amendments of the noble Lord. Lord Blencathra. First of all, may I say I welcome his support for the principle of amendment 369. But I say to him that our amendment I say to him that our amendment does fully respect the rights and freedoms of of others, and does so
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Portrait Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)
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freedoms of of others, and does so expressly at subtotals three C but that doesn't mean that any inconvenience to citizens should be accepted as a reason for restricting the right to protest. And I make the point that the noble Lady, Baroness Jones and others have made that nearly all protests do cause some inconvenience and noise without unduly infringing the rights of others. And I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord, that certainly, as they're framed at the moment, his amendment smacked of intolerance and their failure to countenance any inconvenience at all.

My Lords, all noble Lords, have accepted that the rights of neither side of the argument are absolute, and the Netherlands, Lord Walney and Lord Goodman made the same point. But I do believe, along with others, that the tolerance of toleration of some inconvenience is the price of the democratic right to protest. My Lords, Lord panic is absolutely right that we, of course have the rights, and he knows that I regard them as of critical importance, and he makes the point, supported by the others.

And I think it would be echoed by me that amendment 369, in part, does duplicate the Echr rights. I'm bound to say that I don't regard it as likely that there will be satellite litigation about the difference between the two sets of rights, but one point that bears on his argument is that the statement in domestic legislation that directly bears on the right to protest, whereas the article ten and article 11 rights do bear on it, but not as directly as our amendment is of great importance.

But that's only part of the picture. I'm also absolutely clear that I'm not criticising and have at no stage criticized the police for enforcing the law. Indeed, as it happens, I take the contrary view. I don't believe the police should have a discretion not to enforce the law, except on grounds of that quite serious grounds of convenience. But I do criticise the fact, as I say, it's relevant. When the noble Lord, the Minister, said it wasn't relevant, but the need for a reconsideration of the Terrorism Act in the light of what has happened and it's left us in the position that peaceful protest can be lead to prosecutions that are unintended, means that a full review is necessary.

I, of course, welcome the review of Lord MacDonald of River Glaven, and I welcome the fact that the government has put that in train. But I do say that a further full review over a longer period is necessary. But the the absolutely crucial point about the need for amendment 369 is the one Baroness Fox made, which is that amendment 369 would impose an express statutory duty on public authorities to respect, protect and facilitate the right to protest.

And that's not anywhere in the OECD. There may be resource implications to that, but it only reflects the importance that we put on preserving democracy and the right to protest along with it. For the time being, I will, of course, seek leave to withdraw these amendments, but I will reconsider the position between now and report. Having regard to the support I've received from some quarters around the House, but not universally. My Lords, the noble Lord is slightly premature.

We are at the moment technically debating amendment 369ZA, to which

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reply. Yes, my Lord, I. Procedurally I've to be the tail end Charlie here, and I seek to withdraw amendment. But I'm so pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Marx, was able the noble Lord, Lord Marx, was able to get in in Committee stage to do a summing up of his own amendment, because as soon as I saw amendment because as soon as I saw amendment 369, I thought, this is too extreme, it's unbalanced and I've got to rebalance it. And I couldn't rebalance it by tweaking it.

So I rebalance it by tweaking it. So I adopted the Lord Walney approach to having a maximalist approach to it. And I think that maximalist approach, which I also agree is slightly unbalanced, did manage to provoke a very important debate on the balance of of rights and the right to protest. And of course, it provoked the noble Lady, Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb. And if one is to be beaten up in this house, there's no one better to beat me up than the noble Lady, because she does it with a smile on her face, and deep down I know she doesn't mean it, and I.

I was delighted to be to be defended by the noble Lord, Lord panic. And he was right. We already have all the law we need here. We do not need a new statute. And I was interested what one of the points, Baroness Noble, Baroness Fox, made that, and I've seen this too. Protests have changed, she said. They've become more violent and toxic. And she was screamed at by nasty protesters. And that is not very good. I like what Lord Hogan-howe said, that that disruption does not often work, but persuasion does.

Now. Disruption, he said, is a mechanism for change. But people have rights as well and the criminal law is not the place, he said, to put in a new law and rights and also I I'm grateful to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Walney. I think it was a very, very wise contribution. You cannot ignore the public views of the disruption they cause on the protesters doing it. And if the protesters go too far, then the public will take their own action and they will and they will rebel.

I quoted that saying motorists getting out of their cars and dragging protesters off the streets. And he also mentioned the damage to the economy, which I agree with, which I agree. I agree with my noble friend Lord Goodman, and it was an excellent exposition of the balance of rights and and duties. My. I thank my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower. I agree with him, and I welcome his view that the amendments are not essential. And finally, can I say again to the noble Lord remarks, I profoundly disagree with this amendment what he said, but he did have a very powerful and persuasive case.

I congratulate him on the way he set it out. And to the Minister I say, there is no with the noble Lord, the Minister, with his usual courteous way, he took all our points of view into account, and he agreed with Lord Panic's point of view that we have all the rights we need already, and we do not need a new law. So with that, my Lords, it is wonderful of the night. I beg

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leave to withdraw my amendment. Is it your Lordships pleasure the amendment be withdrawn. the amendment be withdrawn. Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 369ZB. Not moved or

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withdrawn. Withdrawn. Withdrawn. I was going to say.

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I was going to say. It is now appropriate for the noble Lord, Lord marks, to tell the House whether he wishes to withdraw. Amendment 369. I apologise for the intervention too early, and I will now seek leave to withdraw my amendment. Is it your Lordships pleasure the amendment be withdrawn?

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The amendment is by leave withdrawn. My Lords, a victim of the House be resumed.

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The question is that there has been now resumed. Opinion will say content contrary, not content. The

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contents have it. My Lords, I beg to the House. Do now adjourn. now adjourn.
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