Lords Chamber

Tuesday 20th January 2026

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14:38
None Portrait Introduction(s): Baroness Gill; Baroness Davies of Devonport
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Charles Charles III, Charles III, by Charles III, by the Charles III, by the Grace Charles III, by the Grace of Charles III, by the Grace of God Charles III, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of her other realms and territories. King, head of the Commonwealth, defender of the Faith to all Lords, spiritual and temporal, and all other subjects whatsoever to whom these presents shall come. Greeting. Know ye that we of our special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, in pursuance of the Life Peerages Act 1958, and of all other powers, in that behalf us enabling do by these presents advance, create, and prefer our trusty and well-beloved Neena Gill commander of our most excellent order of the British Empire to the state degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baroness Gill of Jewellery quarter in our city of Birmingham and of Southall, in our London Borough of Ealing.

And for us, our heirs and successors do appoint, give and grant unto her the said name, state, degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baroness Gill to have and to hold on to her for her life, willing and by these presents granting for us our heirs and successors, that she may have, hold and possess a seat, place, and voice in the parliaments and public assemblies and councils of us, our heirs and successors within our United Kingdom, amongst the Barons, and also that she may enjoy and use all the rights, privileges, Preeminences, immunities and advantages to the degree of a Baron duly and of right belonging, which Barons of our United Kingdom have heretofore used and enjoyed, or, as they do at present, use and enjoy.

In witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent witness ourself at Westminster in the afternoon of the 14th day of January, in the fourth year of our sign-manual.

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I. Nina Baroness Gale, do swear by Almighty God that I will be by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors according to

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Charles Charles III, Charles III, by

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Charles III, by the Charles III, by the grace Charles III, by the grace of Charles III, by the grace of God of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Britain and Northern Ireland, and of our other realms and territories. King, head of the Commonwealth, King, head of the Commonwealth, defender of the Faith, to all those spiritual and temporal, and all other our subjects, whatsoever to other our subjects, whatsoever to whom these presents shall come. Greeting. Know ye that we of our special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, in pursuance of the Life Peerages Act 1958, and of all other powers, in that behalf us enabling do by these presents advance, create, and prefer our trusty and well-beloved Sharron Elizabeth Davies member of our most excellent order of the British Empire to the state degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baroness Davies of Devonport of Bradford on Avon in our County of Wiltshire.

And for us, our heirs and successors do appoint, give and grant unto her the said name, state, degree, style, dignity, title and honour of Baroness Davies of Devonport to have and to hold unto her for her life, willing, and by these presents granting for us our heirs and successors, that she may have, hold, and possess a seat, place, and voice in the parliaments and public assemblies and councils of us, our heirs and successors within our United Kingdom, amongst the Barons, and also that she may enjoy and use all the rights, privileges, Preeminences, immunities and advantages to the degree of a Baron duly and of right belonging, which Barons of our United Kingdom have heretofore used and enjoyed, or, as they do at present, use and enjoy.

In witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent witness ourself at Westminster in the afternoon of the 15th day of January, in the fourth year of our reign, by warrant under the King's

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sign-manual. I. Sharon Baroness Davies of Devonport, do solemnly, sincerely, Devonport, do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, Charles, his heirs and successors,
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None Portrait Oral questions: Rising level of youth unemployment Lord Leigh of Hurley (Conservative)
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Second, Oral Question Lord Leigh of Hurley. my name on the Order Paper.
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None Portrait Oral questions: Findings of the MBRRACE-UK report: 'Maternal mortality 2022-2024' that the maternal death rate in pregnancy rose by 20% between 2009–11 and 2022–24
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whilst the National Maternity, Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce, chaired by the Secretary of State, will transform these into a deliverable national Action plan to drive change. In the meantime, we
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford Portrait Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Labour)
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drive change. In the meantime, we are taking various actions, including piloting Martha's Rule including piloting Martha's Rule and expanding the maternal medicine networks.

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I thank my noble friend for that answer. She'll know that the conservative promised to halve maternity mortality by 2025, and as the report shows, instead, it's risen substantially with stark disparities for older women and those from BME and disadvantaged backgrounds. And between 2021 and 23, over 600 women died either during or shortly after pregnancy, a tragedy compounded by the fact that the majority of cases this was from a preventable complication of the pregnancy itself.

So I know the government's doing certain things to which you referred, and those are welcome. But actually I think that they're not being applied consistently in every area. And more importantly, trusts and trusts are not reply are not required to inform NHS England of the plans that they're making. And in short, there seems to be a lack of robust oversight. I say to my noble friend so can she tell me how will the government ensure that the standards and new procedures that they want to implement will be implemented effectively by every trust and in relation to every

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pregnant woman? Hear, hear. My noble friend is right to use the word tragedy in respect of maternal deaths, particularly those from preventable causes. And my noble friend is also correct that noble friend is also correct that unfortunately and sadly, that most aspects of maternal safety ambition, aspects of maternal safety ambition, which was set up under the previous government, are very unlikely to be
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Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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My Lords, I beg to move amendment 411 standing in my name and that of my noble friends Lord Cameron of Lochiel and Lord Keen of Ellie. This is an amendment championed by my hon. Friend Matt Vickers at committee. In the other place, the amendment alters the statutory threshold for the exercise of the powers under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994. That section permits a police officer of at least the rank of inspector to authorise, stop and search powers within a defined locality for a period of 24 hours.

Where such an authorisation has been given, a police officer may stop any member of the public to search them for offensive weapons or dangerous instruments without suspicion of a common of the commission of an offence, so essentially it allows for a temporary adjustment to standard stop and search powers. The current test that must be met is for the officer to of sufficient rank to reasonably reasonably believe that incidents involving serious violence may take place in any locality in his police area.

Our amendment lowers the threshold so that the police would be able to use section 60 powers, where there is a reasonable likelihood of violence, not serious violence. No, the fundamental principle behind this amendment is that the police should be able to act where there is a threat of violence, any form of violence, without being required to weigh the seriousness of that violence. This removes the more subjective element of the test. We know that stop and search powers are highly effective in combating crime and preventing violent offences.

In the year ending March 2025, there were a total of 528,582 stop and search conducted by officers in England and Wales. This represents a slight decrease of 1.4% from the previous year. Of those, 5572 were conducted under section 60 powers, which actually represents an increase of 5.4%. This is welcome, and I am pleased to see the police making good use of their powers. But given that the there were 1.1 million incidents of violence with or without injury recorded by the police in the year ending June 2025, a figure that the ONS has said shows no statistically significant change compared with the previous year.

And there were still 51,527 knife offences. There is more work that needs to be done. So, my Lords, lowering the threshold for the use of section 60 is another tool that the government could utilise in their efforts to crack down on the use of offensive weapons and the incidents of violence. I beg to move.
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Lord Jackson of Peterborough Portrait Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative)
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Amendment proposed after clause 144, insert the new clause as 144, insert the new clause as printed on the Marshalled List. My Lords, I rise to support the Lords, I rise to support the amendment in the name of my noble friend on the front bench. And may I also thank the House for their forbearance, the fact that I wasn't able to move my previous amendment on mobile phone thefts, and I'd like to put on record my warmest thanks to my noble friend, Baroness Neville-rolfe for moving it so eloquently on that occasion.

My Lords, this is an issue about the difference between serious crime and serious violence and violence. But the wider context, my Lords, is the fact that UK has a knife crime problem in London. The number of incidents up to June 2025 was 15,639, and this is an increase of nearly 72% from the data recorded in the year 20 1516. Unfortunately, it has to be said that the numbers of stop and search encounters peaked at the end of the last Labour government and dramatically decreased under the previous.

The last two governments. Between 2003 and 2011, numbers of stop and search stop and searches increased, peaking at 1.2 million. But by 2018 this had fallen 77%. The number of arrests resulting from stop and search encounters had fallen from 120,000 to 48,000. My Lords, the fact of the matter is that there is significant evidence that Stop and search does demonstrably have an impact on the incidence of knife crime and therefore reducing crime. A study released in 2025 by two criminologists, Piquero and Lawrence Sherman, found that stop and search encounters were successful in reducing deaths and injuries related to weapons when they analysed data between 2008 and 2023.

The conclusion of the study was, quote, increased stop and search encounters can significantly reduce knife related injuries and homicides in public places. An evidence from a number of bodies and think tanks, including Policy Exchange, suggests that whilst there may be a range of causal factors, a link between rates of knife crime and rates of stop and search exists as the rate of stop and search searches decreases, the amount of knife crime increases as stop and search rises. The amount of knife crime also rises, my Lords.

To quote the Chief Constable, Sir Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, last year, if you don't back your officers to do stop and search, they will stop doing stop and search. And if you stop doing stop and search, you'll see street robberies going up. So, my Lords, the issue is that the difference between serious violence and violence within that context, and my simple point to your Lordships' House is that if we want to take weapons off the streets and prevent incidences of knife crime and other crime, then you have to increase, stop and search, and therefore you have to give warranted officers the legal underpinning and the authority to make those appropriate decisions for stop and search.

In 2023, there were 5014 occasions when a police officer found a weapon or firearm when looking for a prohibited item, 3221 of these cases, they were looking for drugs. This is a case of effective policing and not just a case of getting lucky. My Lords, if we can stop for violence, they may find weapons that could have led to a more serious situation. If not, there is a potential for people to just walk away. On that basis, I think it's wise for the government to give consideration to this amendment because it does allow flexibility in operational policing, and I do believe fundamentally it will prevent crime and may, even in the long run, prevent serious injury or death.

And therefore, I would invite Ministers and the House to give briefly.
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Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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To. brings clarity and accountability to the exceptional power in section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994. This is not a call for strengthen police powers. It's a call to describe them accurately so the public understands their narrow scope and the safeguards that constrain them. Section 60 is triggered only when a police officer of or above the rank of inspector reasonably believes exceptional rather than just routine. The inspector level threshold, the within, the written and recorded authorisation, the geographic and temporal limits, the ability to seize weapons, and the requirement to provide records to those stock are not peripheral details.

They are the legal guardrails that protect civil liberties while enabling targeted public safety action. I simply ask, where is the dividing line between violence and serious violence? OK, someone gets stabbed multiple times and is life threatening. I think we'd all agree that serious violence. But what about the person who gets stabbed once and suffers a non-life threatening cut? It's not merely violence so it doesn't count. And that is why we have to change this definition to any violence, no matter how serious it may be called.

This is not wide ranging. This is not a wide ranging opening of the stop and search powers, applying everywhere for all time, using the word violence in operational documents with an explicit cross-reference to the sixth section, 60 targets reduces confusion and broadens with broader strategic programs labelled serious violence. It prevents the normalisation of suspicionless searches and makes it easier for Parliament oversight bodies and the public to scrutinise each authorisation against the statutory test. My Lords, I conclude by saying this amendment is modest, it's practical and it's proportionate.

It highlights the statutory safeguards and does not remove any of them, but it does give the police a sensible power to save lives and injury where they think there may be more violence. I do urge the House and the noble Lords Minister to support amendment 411.
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Baroness Chakrabarti Portrait Baroness Chakrabarti (Labour)
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I am. >> I'm pleased to to follow the noble Lord Lord Sentamu and I share some of his concerns about this amendment. But I wonder, before I amendment. But I wonder, before I share those concerns, if I might ask the noble Lords opposite to ask the noble Lords opposite to explain the relationship and potential contradictions between this amendment and the amendment that they have in the next group on on digital identity, because that amendment could have been that subsequent.

It's a shame, in a way. I think that these these amendments don't sit in a single group, because I think it would have been easier to expose the thinking behind them and the relationship between them, because that amendment prohibiting the police, requiring someone to to show a digital identity document in the event that they're stopped and searched, could have been drafted by my former colleagues at Liberty. This amendment on diluting protections against arbitrary stop and search would, would, would certainly not have been drafted by my former colleagues at liberty.

So, so noble Lords opposite seem to be pointing into into different directions when it comes to this, this relationship between the citizen and the state on the street. Now, I'm grateful to the to the noble Lord opposite for for setting out his amendment. And he spoke about the large number of of of stops and searches with some precision, I think. But what he didn't do was to go on to set out the number of those searches that resulted in a charge in an arrest, a charge or a conviction, because that is the kind of the kind of correlation that we need to examine.

If we if we want to justify suspicionless, stop and search in particular, as, as a very useful tool for preventing very serious crime. So I would be interested in any information that noble Lords have about how many of these searches, particularly suspicionless searches, lead to, for example, a criminal charge. That is the kind of ratio that I think the committee ought to examine. Like the noble Lord Sentamu, I am concerned about suspicionless stop and searches. It really quite a blunt instrument.

I'm not saying it doesn't have a place on in the statute, but an obvious example is, you know, when, when, when when a guests come to this palace, they, they routinely go through a form of a suspicionless stop and search by walking through airport style security gates and having any bags stopped and searched. No, no room for concern or feelings of injustice there because it's a high security environment. Everybody understands the risk to the palace and those within it, and everybody is treated in the same way.

So there isn't this concern about arbitrary or discriminatory treatment. And and when, for example, under the Terrorism Terrorism Act or indeed under other statutes, place of particular risk and sensitivity is identified. In that way. You can see some the beginnings of some justification for suspicionless stop and search. But with respect to the noble Lord Jackson of Peterborough, when he spoke in support of this amendment, he was really almost, it seemed to me, justifying routine suspicionless stop and search.

Why not have it just everywhere in England and Wales? If it's so, if it's so effective? And of course why not is because, as the noble Lord Sentamu says, if you make this too readily available on to lower threshold suspicionless stop and search at large will lead to arbitrary and discriminatory results, and to a feeling of distrust by some communities, in particular young black men in particular, but not exclusively distrust between them and the

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police. It's of course, of course. As usual, the the noble Lady is

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As usual, the the noble Lady is making a very cogent and persuasive case. But I don't think she case. But I don't think she concedes that we're talking we're not talking about suspicionless searches. We're talking about an expectation that violence will happen. There will be a violent incident rather than a seriously violent incident. And I'll just leave you with the figures in London from 2021, there were 311,352 stop and searches, and it had fallen to 135,739 in 2024, but at the same time, there was an 86% rise in knife crime.

So I think the argument that those of us on this side are making is there has to be a balance. None of us want racially profiled overpolicing, but at the same time, we have to find a reason why if you reduce stop and searches, you're going to inevitably have an increase in knife crime.

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There's a noble Lord Birt with respect, this provision relates to suspicionless stop and search suspicionless stop and search because and this is a term that we use to describe a stop and search power that does not require reasonable suspicion that that person that I'm about to stop and person that I'm about to stop and search is a criminal or is going equipped or whatever it is. So this this power in section 60 is a this power in section 60 is a suspicionless stop and search power, which is why it needs to be circumscribed and why they have to be certain conditions met before an area can be designated.

Because the normal law of the land, as noble Lords will recognise, is that is that anywhere in the land an officer, a constable, can stop and search an individual who they reasonably suspect of carrying a knife or otherwise being involved in criminality. Yes.

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A section 60, in and of itself is a special circumstance. So the suspicionless piece or not needs to suspicionless piece or not needs to be looked at in that context. And I would just like to offer you this would just like to offer you this context. There is no such thing as non-serious violence. Let's be very clear when we're talking about the clear when we're talking about the impact of knife carrying, in particular, a knife that is ended up in the body of a person has been shown to multiple members of the community used to create terror before that tragedy has happened, and the idea that a stop and search is only potent when it leads to an arrest or a charge, is simply incorrect.

I have been a youth worker for over 35 years. I've worked with some of the most gang involved people in the entire country, and they will tell you they will be armed because they don't believe they're going to be stopped. So every time you do a stop and search, it sends a ripple, particularly to those who need to hear the ripple that it could happen. So it lowers their propensity to go armed. So just because it doesn't lead to a charge, a charge, it doesn't mean it hasn't been effective.



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Yes. I'm grateful to the to the noble Lord for his intervention. But I return to my central point, which is as he, as he, as he pointed out in his in his intervention, the in his in his intervention, the normal law of the land is for stop and search on reasonable suspicion that the individual in question is is cause for concern. I have reasonable suspicion that that person may be carrying a knife, etc. otherwise involved in criminality.

These are special powers that allow actually a relatively junior police officer. This isn't a chief constable, let alone a magistrate or a judge. It allows a police officer to change the law of the land for a time limited period for that area to change what the stop and search regime is in that area. And it is quite right that a power of that kind be tightly circumscribed because of the problems that the noble Lord Sentamu spoke about, and because citizens do have rights to go about their business without fear of arbitrary stop and search.

Which brings me back to my question about the relationship between the 411, which is in this group by itself, and 415, which noble Lords opposite have in a separate group, and the the apparent dichotomy between them. So 415 says that stop and search where there is a stop and search, an officer shouldn't be allowed to require the presentation of digital ID, and it doesn't even say compulsory digital ID. So if, as I think the government now proposes, digital ID will become available to people to partake of if they want as a more convenient method of ID, we're going to have circumstances where noble Lords opposite will have more routine stop and search.

But when a stop and search happens, an officer's not not able to ask the the person searched to identify themselves if all they have with them is digital ID. That seems like a contradiction to me. I for one have always been very concerned and opposed to compulsory single identifiers, not least for the reason that I think they will lead to routine stop and search with people required to identify themselves to the police when they've done nothing wrong. But I'm very I should be very interested.

If noble Lords opposite could square the relationship between this amendment and the one that follows.
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Baroness Doocey Portrait Baroness Doocey (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, there's now considerable evidence about how stop and search powers are used in stop and search powers are used in practice. Their impact on long term consequences, not least in building consequences, not least in building trust so vital for effective community policing. Stop and search, especially under section 60. Suspicionless powers already fall disproportionately on marginalised communities, particularly black and minority ethnic young men, lowering the threshold from serious violence to violence can only increase the frequency and breadth of those powers, and with it, the disproportionality.

This is not an abstract civil liberties concern, but goes directly to trust and confidence. It's also just 18 months since the Home Office accepted the findings of a Police Inspectorate report, which identified serious shortcomings in the use of section 60 powers, including arrest and seizure rates for weapons, inadequate training and failures to adhere to statutory duties such as Pace, Coda or voluntary frameworks such as College of Policing app. Guidance. From a Liberal Democrat perspective, the test for expanding intrusive powers is a simple one.

Is there a clear and compelling operational case, supported by evidence that the existing powers are inadequate and that widening them will improve outcomes without unacceptable collateral damage to rights and to community relations? We don't believe that the case has been made here. What is on offer is a lower legal bar for the most intrusive stop and search powers we have imposed on communities who already experience it acutely, with no serious account taken of the long term impact on policing by consent.

And on that basis, we cannot support the amendment.

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My Lords, this has been a very interesting short debate and I

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thank my noble friend, sir. Oh, God. Yes. I'm sorry to.

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Yes. I'm sorry to. Say I like speed. I like speed it up. I'm grateful we're trying to make some progress. It's really good news. I look forward to even more progress as we carry on today. But if if the noble Lord would But if if the noble Lord would allow me, I'd like to just to respond to the debate first of all. And he has made some points which I, I accept and that was had support of the noble Lord Blencathra and the noble Lord Jackson of Peterborough.

However, I hope I can persuade him that the amendment is not necessary for the reasons that I'll outline in a moment. First of all, stop and search remains a vital tool in our efforts to reduce knife crime and protect communities, and the government fully supports its use. But it has to be, I think, as the noble Baroness Chakrabarti, my noble friend, has said, and indeed the noble and right reverend Prelate Lord Sentamu has said it
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Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint, The Minister of State, Home Department (Labour)
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has to be done in a fair and effective manner. I mean, what officers to have confidence in officers to have confidence in exercising those powers, but also the community to do so as well. Now, the amendment concerns section 60 the amendment concerns section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994, and section 60, as was outlined, allows senior was outlined, allows senior officers to authorise searches for offensive weapons without reasonable suspicion for a limited reasonable suspicion for a limited time in a defined area where serious violence has occurred or is anticipated.

Now, the powers are purposely tightly framed and purposely tightly targeted. Section 60 is intended for exceptional circumstances where serious violence is anticipated or has occurred, and this power to search for offensive weapons such as knives. Serious violence remains the appropriate threshold. It would not be appropriate, in my view, to reduce that threshold in response to what might be minor scuffles, which is what the noble Lords Amendment would in practice achieve. Now, there's no legal evidence that the threshold is an undue barrier to use this power.

In 2008 nine, under the same rules, police conducted over 150,000 section 60 searches. Now, last year, there were 5288, a significant drop that shows that the law has not changed in that period of time. But the issue is really the proportionality issue, the targeting issue and police practice. And that, I think is the best way forward. And that helps give confidence where it is needed, but also gives confidence to communities at large. And the noble Lords amendment would widen that considerably.

I have to say to him that that doesn't mean we're not interested in tackling knife crime. The noble Lord has gone now, but the noble Lord Bailey, he's back, he's back, he's back. I'll let him resume his place. The noble Lord Bailey made a number of points about what we need to do on knife crime as well. And I say to him and others who've raised issues today that the use of smarter policing through hotspot patrols, the strong partnership with communities, prevention initiatives such as Young Futures Panel, they're all ways in which we can help prevent knife crime without necessarily descaling the amount of stop and search that happens and making it more available.

Such shows already that those approaches we've taken have worked and are working. Knife homicides are down 20% overall. Knife crime has fallen for the first time in four years. Hospital admissions for knife crime have dropped by 10%, and this progress suggests that changes to existing stop and search. Section 60 powers would not necessarily make progress on knife crime. Just one important point. For example, let me give you one example, which I hope again helps the noble Lord Bailey knife enabled robbery is highly geographically concentrated.

70% of offending on knife enabled robbery happens within seven police force areas. And we've established as a government a six month knife enabled robbery task force, which has brought together chief constables and PCCs in those areas. And I have to tell the House that collectively, these forces have turned in the past year, a 14% increase in offence levels from the outset of the task force into a 10% reduction compared with the baseline in June 24th. And all seven forces involved are now seeing reductions, including my Lord Hay 30% reduction in knife crime in the West Midlands.

Now, I say that simply because I know there are ethnic disparities in the use of stop and search. I know that black people are still more, more than three times more likely to be stopped and searched than other representative members of the community, and we need to monitor this closely and keep an eye on it. But I say to the noble Lord, the the powers are relatively sparsely used now. They are a magnificently big reduction on the figures from 2000 and 809, and the other measures were taking are helping to tackle knife crime.

So with that, I would hope that the noble Lord

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would withdraw his amendments. That comes to wind up the debate.

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That comes to wind up the debate. I wonder if the Minister. Could just. Help us. I do listen. Carefully to his remarks, and

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Carefully to his remarks, and I'm not sure I really understood the difference. As the government defines it between violence and serious violence, I think we all perhaps have some ideas in our minds, and it's been a very balanced and considered debate on balanced and considered debate on both sides of, of, of, of the amendment. But I wonder if the Minister could help the committee by helping us to define rather more clearly the difference between violence and serious violence, and how that might affect the use of such powers.

I'd be very much

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obliged if the Minister was able to do that. Section 60 powers are in operation. They have been there for some significant time. As I gave the committee a moment ago, the level of use of those powers by level of use of those powers by police officers were significantly higher in the late mid 2000 than higher in the late mid 2000 than they are now. And that's because, again, we're trying to ensure that there is operational guidance, not there is operational guidance, not ministerial guidance, operational guidance on the use of stop and search powers.

And it is seen by the police as a tool of last resort in an area where there is serious violence. Now, I'm not going to speculate for the noble Viscount what that serious violence barrier is. That's an operational decision for the police at a local level. In a particular circumstance. The legislation is clear, the level of use has dropped and it's dropped because the police recognise it is a resource of last resort, and it is an issue which has to have confidence in the community so that the level of violence, and I can't differentiate between that in a way that may help the noble viscount today.

But the level of violence is deemed by a local senior police officer at the time on the ground to be of sufficient worry that he determines or she determines a area which stop and search powers operate. I hope that's of some help. It may not answer the point, but I hope it's of some help to the noble

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Viscount. On that issue. Notwithstanding the fact that these powers have to the fact that these powers have to be sanctioned by our police inspector, they're often accompanied by a public information accompanied by a public information initiative from the from the police force concerned. And also they're force concerned. And also they're time limited to 24 hours. Isn't it the case that were this amendment to be supported, it would allow, to be supported, it would allow, for instance, police, sorry, football matches where there is a chance of disorder, public disorder but not serious violence, but public disorder leading to lower level violence that would give the police the opportunity to use these powers.

I think in the last year or so, they've used it 357 times, and therefore they wouldn't necessarily use the more draconian dispersal orders, which are sometimes used at football matches. So this what this side is asking for. I would posit to the Minister, is more flexibility for things not just about knife crime, but for instance, public order events such as football matches.

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To my knowledge, and I say this as best I can to the committee. To my knowledge, there hasn't been the my knowledge, there hasn't been the request from the police for that reduction in threshold to allow them to exercise further stop and search powers. Indeed, has has been shown over the last 15 or 16 year shown over the last 15 or 16 year period. The use of stop and search has significantly decreased to a level now where it is around the level now where it is around the 5000 figure I mentioned to the committee earlier.

So I hear what the noble Lord says, but I'm not sure that the police themselves want to exercise that power. For example, in control of crowds, at

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police, at football matches. And I may. Before my noble, before my noble,

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Before my noble, before my noble, my noble friend. The Minister sits down. Does he agree with me? And I think he does because he and he think he does because he and he said something in his earlier answer when the noble Lord Bailey answer when the noble Lord Bailey was momentarily not with us, that minor scuffles are not serious. Violence and stabbings and so on Violence and stabbings and so on clearly are in my, to my own mind, a common assault between people outside the pub on a Friday night probably doesn't meet the the

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threshold of serious violence, but but knife robbery etc. does. I did, and again to remind my

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I did, and again to remind my friend I did in my comments indicate that minor scuffles would not be seen as serious violence. not be seen as serious violence. What I'm not trying to do from this Dispatch Box is determine the use of a section 60 power by a police officer on the ground because of the level of violence that the police have witnessed and wish to police have witnessed and wish to take action upon. All I'm simply saying to the committee is that if we look at the figures 16 years ago, it was significantly higher, significantly higher than it was in the previous 12 months, down to now, just over over 5000.

That's because the law hasn't changed. But police practice and police assessments going back to the noble Viscount Goschen point has been that they don't need to use that power. And what I'm saying in parallel with that is that the government believes that if we wish to make an impact on knife crime, stop and search is a tool in extremists. But actually better education, youth futures programs targeting hotspots. Policing hotspots is a much more effective way of reducing the problem overall.

And with that, I hope that the noble Lord can

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withdraw his amendment. My Lords, this is become an even

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My Lords, this is become an even more interesting debate and I thank noble Lords for their contributions, noble Lords for their contributions, particularly my noble friend Lord Jackson and Lord Blencathra. My Lords, I would just I would just say to the noble Lord, the Minister, and to noble Lords generally, that this is an amendment that is this is an amendment that is intended to help the government, regardless of our politics. Everyone would like to see a reduction in violent offences, an increasing the police use of stop and search is an incredibly powerful tool to do just that.

If I could say to the noble Lord. Sentamu and indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, there is actually nothing wrong with stop and search. Stop and search is one of the most useful tools in the box. The problem, I think, is fair to say, and I say this from somebody who has spent 32 years on frontline policing in London. The problem comes from as as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, said, its training and its adherence to the codes of practice, and it is a training issue.

There's no question about that. In my mind it is a training
16:23
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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issue and I think that's what police need to be concentrating on when it comes to sort of the issues when it comes to sort of the issues around stop and search. But by lowering the threshold as I, by lowering the threshold to the likelihood of violence, officers likelihood of violence, officers can intervene earlier to prevent harm, protect the public and de-escalate potentially dangerous de-escalate potentially dangerous situations before they result in injury or worse. Indeed, before injury or worse. Indeed, before becoming serious violence cases.

And I know full well that officers often face rapidly evolving situations where it is difficult to draw a clear line between violence and serious violence. So I do hope the government will take this away and reflect. But I for now, I beg

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leave to withdraw the amendment. Is it your Lordships pleasure. That amendment 411 be withdrawn?

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That amendment 411 be withdrawn? Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 412 withdrawn 413 Earl Amendment 412 withdrawn 413 Earl Attlee not moved 414 Earl Attlee Attlee not moved 414 Earl Attlee not moved. Amendment 415 Lord Davies of Gower.

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My Lords, it's become a cliche to say that a week is a long time in politics, but it is an idiom in politics, but it is an idiom that forever rings true. We began a couple of weeks ago, with the couple of weeks ago, with the government still firmly wedded to the idea that digital ID cards were going to save us all, and we ended going to save us all, and we ended the week with a policy relegated to a footnote in future history books.

And as with everything the And as with everything the government seems to touch these days, the digital ID policy had become completely toxic and incredibly unpopular, forcing them into the U-turn. It is a U-turn that I am supportive of, and so I am pleased the government has finally seen sense and ditched this policy. So I suppose I should be grateful to the noble Lord, the Minister, for somewhat negating the need for this amendment. It is quite easy being in opposition when the government does your job for you, and moving to the substance of the amendment, which is intended as a safeguard to prevent the police from being able to require a person to show them a digital identity card, when or should I say if such a scheme is ever introduced? Fundamentally, this whole debate comes down to who we are as a nation.

Britain has never been a country where in peacetime one must have an identity card simply because the state mandates it. I have heard much newspeak about the policy from government Ministers. Soon after the announcement, and following the immediate backlash, many started claiming that it was not going to be mandatory after all, that it was simply mandatory if you wanted to work. And the Prime Minister said that the announcement of the policy and I quote, let me spell out, you will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have a digital ID.

It's as simple as that, unquote. But regarding everyone who wants a job to have digital ID does make it mandatory. We all need to go to work to earn a living. And of course, we heard the justification change more times than we could count. First, it was needed to stop illegal migration and illegal working. That argument was soon blown out of the water by the fact that employers are already required to undertake right to work checks, and those that violate the law already were never going to suddenly start conducting such checks simply because of the existence of digital ID.

Then we heard that it was necessary for efficiency and joined up services, and I can only wonder what the next justification would have been. That is why I tabled this amendment. It was always a probing amendment, but we must make these arguments to stand up for the principle. However, the government might have U-turned on this now. But what is to say that in the future, we do not see this pernicious policy creep back towards becoming mandatory? And in such a scenario, having such a legislative guardrail against potential police use of digital ID would make sense.

The fundamentally, the principle is that Britain is not a country where we have police officers requiring the presentation of mandatory ID cards. A person should be able to, if they so wish, go about their lives with a minimal minimal interference by the state as possible. So digital ID cards were a wrongheaded, wrongheaded, and poorly thought thought through policy, costing large sums of money that we do not have, and coming at the expense of fundamental British values. I am glad to see the back of the mandatory element of the scheme, but we must guard against any future expansions of this

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scheme and I beg to move. Amendment proposed after clause 144, insert the new clause. Prohibition on police use of digital ID, the words of which are

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on the Marshalled List. Very briefly, of course. I am also delighted that this amendment also delighted that this amendment is now not necessary or irrelevant, but I do think it fits into some but I do think it fits into some broader concerns that have been expressed throughout our Committee stage of this bill, whether it was about, for example, the planned nationwide rollout of police operated live facial recognition cameras, a whole range of
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Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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technology used to introduce a surveillance state. So the use of digital ID would not only have digital ID would not only have created that very unpleasant policing police checking one's policing police checking one's papers, but also introduces an element of technology which, without being anti-technology, without being anti-technology, could be seen as problematic. So I just did note and would like the noble Lord, the Minister's response to this, an interview that the Home Secretary, Shabana mahmood, did to with Sir Tony Blair last week, in which she talked about AI and technology in terms of it having a transformative impact on the whole of the law and order space, which would therefore mean that digital ID was not totally off the table.

When the Home Secretary said, my ultimate vision for that part of criminal justice system was to achieve by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his top pan opticon. I'm sorry. That is, that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times. A rather chilling declaration, I have to say. And I do think that at this stage, as we we're not going to have to discuss digital ID specifically, that that broad use of technology and surveillance.

Mood might be something that the noble Lord, the Minister, could reassure us on. So good to see the back of digital ID not keen on the eyes of the state being honest at all times as a justification for tackling crime

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and disorder. It's a pleasure to follow the

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It's a pleasure to follow the noble Lady, because I read that quote as well and was very worried about it. The idea that we should, about it. The idea that we should, we should, we should all aspire to total surveillance and living in a total surveillance and living in a panopticon. I have to say, when I saw that, I think it was it's been doing the rounds on social media. I doing the rounds on social media. I assumed that that was that was fake.

That was fake news. I can't believe that a Labour, a Labour Cabinet Minister, even a Home secretary. We know funny things happen to people when they they go in the Home Office. I was there myself for a bit, so I'm hoping that my noble friend, the Minister, when he responds, will assure us that there is no question of building a total surveillance state, or indeed, Bentham's Panopticon, because I would share the noble Lady's concerns and I'm grateful to her for for raising them.

I, I'm also grateful to to Lord Davies of Gower. But I think, I think answering the question that I put to him in the in the previous group, which is the objection is to compulsory a single compulsory identifier that because I share his concerns if that if that is the problem and I wouldn't want us all to have to carry digital or otherwise, a single compulsory identifier, which becomes a license to live, and you can have that licence demanded of you at any time, that it's the compulsory element that that was always the problem, not having not having an optional identify.

If you choose to have your, your, your passport or your phone instead of as a physical document or, or your driving licence on your phone. I mean, lots of even noble Lords, I understand now pay for their refreshments with with their mobile phone. You know, this is this is the world that we live in. So the problem is with a single compulsory identifier, not with the option of having of having digital ID as opposed to a paper ID, I think I hope that he will nod and indicate hope that he will nod and indicate that we're in the same place on that.

that.
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Baroness Brinton Portrait Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat)
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which seeks to introduce a new safeguard for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984 Criminal Evidence Act, 1984 regarding the potential future use of digital identification by law enforcement, and I too, am grateful enforcement, and I too, am grateful for his explanation about the single identifier. Reminding your single identifier. Reminding your Lordships' House that there were a number of amendments in some Home Office bills about three years ago Office bills about three years ago where the Home Office was trying to to get access to DVLA and indeed to personal medical data for anyone who might have been present at the scene of a possible crime.

So not the victim, not the possible perpetrator, but anyone who was literally just present. And I'm glad that the the party in opposition have decided to to change their approach on this. I think it's very welcome. I also echo the good news that hopefully it's fully redundant the amendment because of the government's announcement, but I look forward to making sure that some of the concerns that are very minor concerns are being expressed are recognised by the government. So this amendment provides the protection to individuals.

Should the government introduce a digital identity document scheme, a constable would be expressly prohibited from requiring a person to produce such a document on request, or asking it to be produced for inspection. And, crucially, it also prevents the police from using any information contained within or obtained from a digital identity card for the purposes of investigating a criminal offence. That echoes the amendments that our benches had in earlier Home Office bills. So, my Lords, from these benches, we are fundamentally opposed to any form of compulsory digital ID.

We must ensure that a digital identity scheme does not become a tool for papers, please. Policing in a digital format and as organisations like Big Brother Watch have warned, the expansion of digital identification, such as the proposed access to the DVLA database for facial recognition, risks creating a huge and disproportionate surveillance power that effectively places the majority of law abiding citizens in a permanent digital Police Line-Up without their consent. So can I ask the noble Lord, the Minister, if he will confirm that that is the case, that surveillance will not be used? Sorry, I'm looking at the wrong noble Lord.

The government's previously suggested that digital ID could serve as an alternative form of ID for specific purposes, like age verification for online sales. However, without the explicit prohibition contained in amendment 415, there is a significant risk of mission creep. And if we allow the police routinely to use digital ID as part of their investigative toolkit, we fundamentally shift the relationship between the individual and the state. And this amendment is not about obstructing modern policing. It's about ensuring that privacy rights and civil liberties remain the default.

We must codify these protections now to ensure that any future digital identity framework cannot be weaponised into a widespread surveillance system. My Lords, from these benches, we are very glad about the government U-turn, but we need more detail to ensure that those protections will remain. It is not. It is for Parliament and not for operational police discretion to set the boundaries for how the state identifies its citizens. And I urge the Committee to support this amendment and hope that the Ministers will give us an encouragement that it is absolutely not needed.
16:35
Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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My Lords, I'm grateful to the >> My Lords, I'm grateful to the noble Lord Lord Davies of Gower for setting out the case for amendment 415 and if, as he says, a weeks long time in politics, I'm going to take him all the way back to the announcement on the 26th of September from the Prime Minister that the government was intending to introduce a national digital ID scheme for all British and Irish citizens and those with permission to be in the United Kingdom.

My Lords, the national digital ID will empower people in their lives and their interactions with the state. It will make it easier to access public services, cut back on bureaucratic processes and support fairness across society. The National digital ID scheme will be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny in due course. In the short term, I Lord Dear will examine options for appropriate oversight and safeguards of the digital ID, with the public consultation set to launch soon. As has already been said publicly, the digital ID will not be required when a person is stopped by using stop and search by by the police using stop and search powers.

And this was certainly picked up in this debate. And also the the debate on the previous amendment by, amongst others, my hon. Friend Baroness Chakrabarti, I think also by the noble Lady Baroness Brinton. It will also not be mandatory for those eligible to obtain the digital ID, and as such there is no penalty for not having one. My Lords, law enforcement use of data is governed by part three of the Data Protection Act 2018. This places a range of obligations upon law enforcement, including requirements that law enforcement processing of data must be necessary and proportionate for a specific purpose, and not excessive.

I think it's fair to say that all three noble Ladies who spoke in the debate raised the question around worries over a move towards surveillance state. Certainly that was the that was the, the, the very much the theme of the noble Lady Baroness Fox of Buckley speech and also my noble friend Baroness Chakrabarti CPS and and just to to be very, very clear about this, the new digital ID will not be used for mass surveillance of the population and will be designed in accordance with high standards of security and privacy, and we will ensure safeguards are in place to ensure that any access to data is both necessary and proportionate.

And, as I said, the public consultation will be launched soon in the coming weeks. This will ensure that any, any legislation includes appropriate safeguards and I'm sure that without much prompting, noble, my noble friend and the noble Lady Baroness Brinton and Baroness Fox of Buckley will be, you know, first in the queue to contribute to that public consultation.

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I maybe I if the noble Lord could maybe clarify something. So initially those of us spoke suggested that possibly this amendment wasn't needed because digital ID was not an immediate digital ID was not an immediate issue that was going to be brought in as a single identifier so far from what the noble Lord, the from what the noble Lord, the Minister, has argued. It's like it's a it's a justification for it's a it's a justification for digital ID so is it back on? And I think it would be useful for campaigners to understand that, let alone us, those of us here, when campaigners have argued that digital ID was part of a surveillance state and so on and so forth, one wants to say don't be too paranoid.

I'm now getting paranoid myself that, having been told that the digital ID scheme was actually put to one side, it's sort of sneaked back in in the House of Lords in response to an amendment

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that most of us thought wasn't necessary. Well, I'm going to try and stay roughly on topic in terms of the amendment rather than turn this into a debate. Why a wider debate on the introduction of digital IDs? Because I'm not entirely sure. My briefing will cover all the points that the noble Lady Baroness Fox addresses. But to be absolutely addresses. But to be absolutely clear, we're not stepping back from the idea of introducing a digital ID, I there was a there was an urgent question in the other place on the 15th of on the 15th of January, indeed, that was repeated.

That was repeated here. We've been very, very clear that we are introducing a digital ID program. There's two core objectives. Firstly, to make accessing public services. Easier and to make the state work better for many people, and also to aid with commitment with with right to work checks and and catching those that are, that are working illegally. So that is still happening. The mandate you know, to be to be to be absolutely to be absolutely clear. And as I say, there's a public consultation coming that that will obviously set out the scope of the set out the scope of the scheme, and those wishing to respond will be able to respond in those in those terms, purely directly, in relation to the point that the noble Baroness, noble Lady Baroness Brinton, made around kind of the use of it by policing and enforcement agencies, there are already safeguards in place to ensure that that the use of the use of any in any such idea measures are balanced against the need to protect individual privacy rights, and this will be the same for IDs as it is for existing police access to information contained in the passport and immigration databases, for example, which is done in specific circumstances where it's lawful, necessary and proportionate, and an example of a legal safeguard already in place is contained within the UK Borders Act 2007, which makes it clear that holders of evisas cannot be required to carry them at all times.

For instance, we've already, I think I've already touched on the issue around around stop and stop and search, but just for the just for sure, because I can't quite remember because of the flow of the interventions. To be clear, the digital ID will not be used as part of stop and search, and police officers will never demand to see it as part of stop and search. However, consistent with current powers where immigration enforcement are carrying out an enforcement visit or warrant, they have powers to ensure that all those who are employed have the right to work in the UK, and these powers include the ability to demand ID, take our metrics, detain, search and seize property to assist the investigation investigation.

So I hope that provides some clarity on that point to to conclude, given the considerations that I've, that I've set out, and particularly the fact that the introduction of the digital ID scheme will require its own legislation in the future, I'd ask the noble Lord Lord Davies of Gower to withdraw his amendment.
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Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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The Lords, I thank all those who have contributed to this short debate, particularly the Lady Fox, Buckley and others at this time. This amendment at the time that this amendment is brought forward, the government was pressing ahead with plans that would have fundamentally altered the relationship between the citizen and the state, and the prospect of a compulsory digital ID, coupled with the possibility of routine police access to digital identity data, raised serious concerns about privacy and subsequent state overreach.

And it was precisely because of those concerns and the lack of apparent or clear safeguards that this amendment was necessary. And I have to say that I am still not clear from what the noble Lord, the Minister, said in his response as to whether this is going to be introduced in the future, and indeed whether it will be compulsory. But since then, as we've heard, the government have performed a U-turn, announcing that digital ID will no longer be mandatory. And the amendment before us, therefore was was therefore not speculative or indeed hypothetical.

It was a direct response to alive and deeply unpopular government policy. And, my Lords, we can only hope that this sudden enthusiasm for reversing course is not confined to digital ID alone. And while the U-turn means the immediate threat that prompted it has receded, the wider issue remains unresolved. The government's approach to digital identity remains unclear and may change again before Report stage. So for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. But indeed it is something that we will be continuing to consider.



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With amendment four and five be withdrawn. Amendment is by leave

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withdrawn. Amendment four and six Baroness Neville-Rolfe. I rise to move my amendment 416,

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I rise to move my amendment 416, which gets round the problem of cyclists hiding themselves from the police by covering their faces when police by covering their faces when breaking the law. I was extremely grateful to the noble Lord, the Minister, for taking time to meet
16:44
Baroness Neville-Rolfe Portrait Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative)
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Minister, for taking time to meet me to discuss the various amendments I put forward to this bill, or supported. I endorse much of it, as he knows, in his efforts to prevent and to reduce crime. And that includes the government's new offences on cycling and e-scooters and the amendments discussed on the 15th of December and moved by the noble Lord and former Met Commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe, who, like me, felt we could go further. I just hope that action will follow.

My noble friend Lord Blencathra, who spoke so eloquently in that debate, may be amused to know that the comparison with the Wild West was a repeat of what I had said many months before. So my reference to the Wild West was taken up by the Daily Mail, only to be repeated by the Mayor of London, no doubt because he agrees that it represents the problem well. And I return to the subject with today's amendment because I think we have a lacuna, which it is a matter for the Home Office to address.

Our city streets now teem with men, usually men, on fast cycles and electric bikes and scooters, whose faces, sometimes even in summer, are hidden by balaclavas or sky or ski masks. This feels hostile, even if it's not, especially if accompanied by loud music or shouts of get out of the way! Often the intentions of such concealment are malign, nor, I must stress, are we dealing only with a London issue. Newspaper reports show, for example, that in Darlington there were hundreds of complaints last year about balaclava youths on bikes riding recklessly around in groups, around pedestrians.

And it's absolutely appalling, especially for the elderly and the disabled and quite frightening. And increasingly, masking is adopted to avoid identification by passers by, by police officers or digital cameras because those concerned have a mind to commit crimes such as phone theft if the opportunity arises. My Lords, I believe we need to put a stop to it. We need a new power and we need it now. Rather than waiting while the problem grows, we also may want to make use of life facial recognition, which may help the police to deal with this scourge.

It obviously doesn't work when faces are covered, and since I didn't speak on that an amendment, I would add that it can help with with serious offences. There was an interesting article in the Times in December about a convicted sex offender who was walking alone with a six year old girl whose mother he had befriended when he was caught out, thankfully, by LFR and given a two year sentence. We also heard how LFR was being used in Croydon in an in another.

On another occasion, however, the noble Lady Baroness Doocey suggested, I think rightly, that any LFR legislation would take another two, probably take another two years, and I don't believe that we can wait for that bill to deal with the scourge of cycle and scooter crime. In the bill before us, the government are already tackling the problem of the concealment of identity, a protest within certain zones and in some countries Switzerland, France and fashionable Denmark. I understand that there has been a prescription of facial coverings in public spaces.

My Lords, I am not seeking to go that far. My amendment would allow a police constable to stop a person who wore a face covering while cycling or riding on a scooter, in such a way as to conceal their identity. It would not ban such coverings, but it would create an offence if a person wearing a face covering failed to stop when required to do so. Penalty would be a level three fine or imprisonment not exceeding a month. And my noble friend Lord Blencathra will note that this is a path for police constables only, not for other enforcement bodies, about which he voiced some concerns.

So my main purpose is to take the opportunity of this bill to aid better enforcement of the law by the police. My amendment would allow the police actively to identify those committing crimes like phone theft, delivering drugs, harassing and intimidating the young or the old, including riding dangerously past my house on the pavement at very high speed. The Minister promised to look into the matter for me and to consider my amendment. We share the same objective, and I hope he will agree to this modest amendment to make it easier for the police to do their excellent work.

I beg to move.
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Lord Hogan-Howe Portrait Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench)
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After clause 144, insert the new clause wearing a face covering clause wearing a face covering while cycling. Amendment 416.

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while cycling. Amendment 416. Generally, I'm with. Baroness Neville-Rolfe and we've done an awful lot together to try and look at cyclists being held more at cyclists being held more accountable. But on this, I'm probably going to suggest an amendment to her amendment in one way. I think the problem with the amendment as it stands is that the police at the moment have got a power to stop any vehicle on the road without reason, so they can stop somebody with a mask, they can stop someone without a mask can stop it for no reason at all.

So this power wouldn't add anything, really. They've already got a power to stop any vehicle. And I think, as Baroness Neville-Rolfe acknowledged, that whether it be in the cool of the winter or even sometimes on a cool summer's day, there is a reason to wear a mask or a face covering if you cycling because it gets cold and we've probably all been there. But I think where there may be something to look at for the future, perhaps at Report stage, is whether or not having been stopped, someone is then ordered to remove the face mask because they're not an awful lot of point in stopping them, and they've still got the face mask on if their identity is in question.

It's also true for motorcyclists to wear helmets where obviously their face encased in a helmet. There's no power to actually ask them to remove the helmet, but most of them do because it gets pretty uncomfortable after a few minutes. In fact, if you prolong the conversation long enough, they always take it off. But there is no power to cause them to do it. So I think that may be something that maybe, you know, perhaps could be considered in the future. But I think so far as the police need powers to stop cyclists, there's no power to probably stop a scooter, an e-scooter, but any vehicle on the road can be stopped by an officer for any reason, not least of which is that they're expected to direct traffic.

And that's one of the reasons that they're given power to either redirect or to stop them. So I'm just not sure about this amendment. As it stands.
16:51
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Portrait Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative)
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I rise to support the excellent and tightly drafted amendment of my and tightly drafted amendment of my noble friend Baroness Neville-Rolfe. I say it's tightly drawn because if I say it's tightly drawn because if one looks at subsection two, it's about concealing the identity. It's not about wearing the clothes themselves or the scarf or the hat. I speak as a cyclist myself who frequently cycles in the winter. And of course, you do need to wear protective clothing to, well, clothing to keep you warm.

But this is about stopping a police officer or other person who is entitled to know your identity, to know your identity. And it's about a failure, a specific failure to stop when required to do so by a constable. And I'm glad my noble friend mentioned the issue of live facial recognition. I'm just about to finish my four year term on the British Transport Police Authority, and one of the issues we have in failing to tackle, unfortunately, in terms of clear up rates, violence against women and girls, which of course is a government priority and a priority of the Department for transport, is that we have way too many persistent offenders travelling on the rail network who are on bail, who are repeat offenders, who are able to enter stations and get on trains and live facial recognition.

Were it to be rolled out for a good reason and were there to be proper checks and balances, would significantly reduce the incidence of those people being able to get on trains and tubes and to assault women and girls and others, of course. So I do think facial recognition is important because of course, if people are going to be wearing face coverings, then it will naturally circumscribe the powers used in live facial recognition. My Lords, essentially, rates of crime on bikes and scooters have gone up.

Many people who are committing those crimes are hiding their identity. And I do believe that there is a legitimate reason, in most cases, for police to stop them. In 2024, Sky news received figures from FOI requests which showed that crimes involving e-bikes and e-scooters had risen by more than 730% in the previous five years. These crimes included theft, robbery, burglary, drug trafficking, stalking, rape, violent crimes and weapons offences. 11,266 crimes were recorded in the year 20 2324 that mentioned an electric bike, e-bike, electric scooter or e-scooter, up from just 1354 in 20 1920.

And these figures actually do not include data from the Metropolitan Police and the West Midlands Police. I know the West Midlands Police have been busy doing other things, not always to their great credit, I have to say. So the actual numbers were likely higher on the 30th of December 2025, the Met Police reported they seized 37 e-bikes and scooters in an attempt to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour, and that resulted in 52 arrests and weapons also being seized.

If we look at the the situation in Merseyside between January and December 2025, Merseyside Police seized a thousand unregistered vehicles, e-bikes, e-scooters and scramblers and they launched Operation Gears in July 2024 to deal with crime and anti-social behaviour linked specifically to bikes and scooters. In their words, two wheeled vehicles are increasingly linked to serious criminal activity, including violence, robberies and serious organised crime offences. My Lords, the Met Police have also produced a new data up to the end of 20 reasonably new data up to the end of 2023.

They show that 400 there were 404,985 cases of robbery and theft of a mobile phone in London, using a motorcycle or an e-bike in 2023, and a face covering was worn in over a thousand of these. My Lords, these statistics demonstrate that it is legitimate to link bikes and scooters to crimes and therefore, if someone is covering their face specifically to avoid identity whilst doing it, it does raise suspicion and it does most emphatically give police a legitimate reason to exercise their due and proper powers.

On that basis, I support my noble friend's amendment.
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Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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rapidly accelerating problem on our streets, the use of face coverings by criminals on e-bikes and e-scooters to hide their identity while committing thefts, robberies and drug related offences. And I and drug related offences. And I did not know that the the the mayor of London had stolen my my noble friend's Wild West quote. I've got friend's Wild West quote. I've got lots of pages of newspaper reports on the Wild West, and I think we should not make sure it's properly should not make sure it's properly attributed to her.

She was the original inventor of the report of the slogan. Now, we're not dealing with petty opportunism here. We're dealing with organised mask offenders using high powered electric bikes capable of 50, 60, even 70mph, weaving through pedestrians and traffic with impunity. And I think that may partly be the answer to the noble Lord Hogan-Howe concerns. And I agree the amendment may need to be tweaked at report. But, my Lords, we're not talking here about an ordinary man or woman or an ordinary bike peddling along and wearing a mask to keep out the cold.

We're talking about people on big electric bikes. Often these fat tire bikes belting along at phenomenal speed, and they're wearing more like balaclavas rather than masks. And that is certainly an element of criminality. And it is not. It is not just ordinary cyclists trying to protect themselves from catching flies while they're riding. Police forces across the country report that these vehicles are now central to a surge in mobile phone, statutory and associated criminality. The scale, my Lords, is stark. Mobile phone thefts have almost doubled to 83,000 a year, with London at the epicentre recording 65,000 thefts in the last reporting period.

And the crimes are not only fast, they are deliberately anonymous. Officers and victims consistently describe offenders wearing balaclava masks and full facial coverings. Schools in London have issued warnings about males in balaclavas targeting children for their phones on the way to school. In Newcastle, residents report masked riders armed with crowbars and knives, terrorising neighbourhoods, snatching phones and intimidating women walking home. This is not a marginal issue, my Lords. It is a pattern. The police themselves are clear illegal e-bikes and e-scooters are being used for all sorts of criminality, including drug dealing, robbery and organised theft.

And the City of London police state explicitly that illegal e-bikes are frequently used to commit crimes like phone snatching, and their targeted operations have reduced such offences by 40% in the Square Mile. But officers also say that identification is the greatest barrier to enforcement when a rider is masked, unregistered and travelling at 50 miles an hour, the chances of apprehension are vanishingly small. But of course, I do commend, as we discussed the other day, the Metro unit using their own fast electric e-bikes to chase these guys on bikes.

So the Gap amendment 41 seeks to close is real. It does not criminalise all mask wearing. It does not interfere with religious coverings, medical masks or legitimate cycling. It simply gives a constable the power to stop a person who is both cycling or riding a scooter and concealing their identity, nothing more. I believe it's a proportionate response to a specific criminal modus operandi. Criminals are exploiting anonymity as a tactical advantage, and I think we need to put the boot on the other foot and give the police the powers they need.

And if the amendment needs to be tweaked along the lines of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe suggested, then we should bring it back at report and support it.
17:01
Viscount Goschen Portrait Viscount Goschen (Conservative)
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This is somewhat Groundhog Day for the committee, and I feel we for the committee, and I feel we have considered very similar amendments, very similar issues that are on earlier, earlier days of of of the Committee stage. And I think that all peers who've spoken, I think are noble. Lord Doyle Lord Shinkwin, my noble friend Lord Blencathra, myself and many others have all Lord Hogan-Howe have all agreed that there is a very significant problem and we see it very much in London, but I'm sure and also other parts of the country of people completely ignoring the Road traffic Act and police doing nothing about it to be to be entirely frank.

And I reassert my assertion that I made from these benches that I have say, in the last 2 or 3 years, never on a single occasion seen a policeman stopping a cyclist, or an e-bike rider, or a delivery rider for riding the wrong way down the street. This happens the whole time. It is now the norm. If you go out after after dark, after five. I tend to walk very often back from your Lordships' House into West End to go home and there will be limitless delivery riders riding very fast on electric powered bicycles.

And as the house may now also ride an electric bike on occasion, but riding without lights, riding wrong way down the road, please have the powers to stop them and they don't do it. So I feel without some answer from the Minister about how we square that circle of enforcement, whilst respecting the division of powers between what the police is charged with the independence of the various police forces and the will of Parliament. One way or another, we need to get to a point where the House is confident that this problem will be addressed.

And my noble friends amendment is I'm absolutely with her in what she's trying to, what she's trying to do with it. But there are certainly difficulties. But and I was very interested in what the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe said, that the police already have the power to, to to stop any, any vehicle. So, my Lords, when the Minister comes to wind up, we will we will come back to these issues, I'm sure, on report and there will be very determined attempts to to pass amendments to this bill.

But could the Minister please very specifically address what confidence he can give to Parliament that if the if this House, if Parliament as a whole, wishes this issue to be addressed, how that will translate into action, whilst respecting the independence of of the police force who have such a tough job to do and who do so much for it so well, and who have many different priorities.
17:04
Baroness Pidgeon Portrait Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat)
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Viscount Goschen says. This is >> Viscount Goschen says. This is Groundhog Day, and I fear we're rehearsing many of the points that have been raised in earlier groups. have been raised in earlier groups. Amendment 416, in the name of the noble Baroness Neville-Rolfe is not something we on these benches support. And as we've heard, there are many reasons why someone might choose to wear a face covering whilst they're cycling or scooting, ranging from obviously the practical to those that are health related.

As you've heard, if it's if it's cold weather, of course you're going to be wearing a scarf or a face covering to keep yourself warm, prevent wind burn. And quite frankly, and the recent cold weather might even prevent you from getting frostbite whilst you're cycling along in urban areas. With the pollution that we still have in many of our cities, there are specific masks that people wear to tackle that, to deal with and filter out pollutants, dust and exhaust fumes. How is this wrong? Why? Why would we want to prevent people from doing this? Likewise, if we've got extreme weather in terms of heat, people sometimes wear masks because they want to block out pollen and other allergens, and also to protect themselves from UV rays.

And whilst we've heard often in this chamber, in my experience so far, often quite negative debate about cyclists, there are many cyclists here, and they'll know that actually covering your face prevents the bugs, the dirt, the small debris from hitting their mouth or nose whilst they're riding. So, you know, and I'm an occasional cyclist and I will wear sunglasses and wrap up warm when I'm out cycling to protect myself from the glare and debris. This is practical. How how would we make this a problem? Why is this a cause for concern? This is practical clothing for people who choose to cycle or scoot.

And why are we treating those people as criminals? There is a separate need for management of micromobility, which has come out in all of these discussions, and it would be good to hear from the noble Lord, the Minister, when we might expect some legislation around managing micromobility. The the explosion of e-bikes and e-scooters on our streets, and the extension and extension of trial after trial by the previous government. But this amendment treats all cyclists and those riding scooters as criminal, rather than individuals dressing for their mode of transport.

And I hope the government will agree with me and these benches that this is disproportionate and not needed on the face of this bill.
17:06
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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Yes. >> Yes. >> My Lord, can I begin by thanking my noble friend, Lady Ralph for the noble Baroness, Lady Neville Rolfe, for tabling amendment four and six, which I entirely support, and also to noble Lords who have contributed, and in particular to the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe for his contribution. The amendment, as she ably set out, would give constables the power to stop individuals cycling whilst wearing a face covering. Failing to do so would constitute an offence liable to a month's imprisonment, or a fine of up to £1,000.

I Lord Watts I know that opposition to this amendment has claimed that this is encroaching police powers into an entirely innocuous activity. It is unfortunately now unnecessary. Measure. What previous would have been a harmless and inoffensive act has been perverted by criminals into a means by which to commit crime and escape justice. We are facing a theft epidemic in this country, largely concentrated in our cities, were used often in gangs, shoplift and snatch phones. Our capital city is now the phone theft capital of Europe, where a phone is snatched every 7.5 minutes.

Of all phone thefts on the continent. The United Kingdom accounts for almost 40% of them. My Lords, I would ask, I would I would ask any member of your Lordships House to watch footage of these phone thefts and deny there is a problem with face coverings and bikes. Face coverings mean that they are not detected by CCTV, whilst electric bikes often modified, mean that the victim has no chance of chasing and retrieving their stolen property. The same is true for shoplifting.

CCTV footage consistently shows offenders using face coverings to evade detection, and then using bikes and scooters to flee the scene. The cost of this shoplifting to retailers, inevitably, is passed on to consumers, and last year amounted to £2 billion. Lord Saatchi. The police must have the power to stop these criminals, and this amendment provides the ground for doing so. It is often impossible to see where a thief has stolen item on their possession, and so we must look for other pointers as to who is committing these crimes, allowing the police to intervene when they are in public on a bike or a scooter is the next necessary step.

It would dramatically increase the chances of victims being returned stolen property, and allow the police to begin to tackle the epidemic we find ourselves in. So I once again thank my noble friend for her amendment, and indeed, I look forward to hearing what the noble Lord, the Minister, has to say in response.
17:09
Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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Thank you. >> Thank you. >> My Lords. Let me start by by thanking the noble Baroness Goldie Neville Rolfe for tabling amendment 406, and also by saying that I do recognise the concerns that she set out, and also that those set out very clearly by many, many noble Lords contributed to the debate, particularly, I'd say noble Lord Lord Blencathra and Lord Jackson of Peterborough about the use of bicycles and scooters in facilitating crime and anti-social behaviour.

The government has committed to the Winter of action initiative, which is running from the 1st of December 2025 to the end of January. This initiative is intended to focus on making town centres safer across England and Wales by building on safer streets, summer initiative and continuing efforts to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour, while addressing retail crime and night time economy offences, particularly during the dark evenings that we have in the winter and when there are risks, higher risks to public safety and I would say direct to the noble Lord, Viscount Goschen, that I suppose in a sense what we are doing is setting a framework.

We always say, and I think all sides of the House agree, it's for it's for, you know, for very good reasons of operational independence, for the police to decide their priorities and how they deploy their resources, which will always be scarce, however much we, we, we, we, we want to give them, they'll never be enough. And but I would say that move, that move of these initiatives does give us confidence that the police are treating these sort of offensive as offences, as a priority.

And and that should give us confidence that the the police understand the concerns that not just in this House but across the across wider society about the sort of offences that he and other noble Lords set, set out. The police do have powers to act here. And we heard from the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe about police powers to stop any vehicles. And that's actually a very good point. The the powers I was actually going to refer to are however, are different.

And this actually goes to the point raised by the noble and learned Lady Baroness, Baroness Butler-sloss under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This requires individuals to remove face coverings in designated areas where they're being used for the purpose of concealing their identity and, and gives and indeed gives police the power to seize the face. Covering areas can be designated where an officer of the rank of at least inspector reasonably believes that crime is likely to take place there.

We would encourage police forces to make full use of these powers in areas they know to be crime hotspots, and I'd say that this includes any you any road users, any cycle users include those working for food delivery companies. As my noble friend Lord Shamash set out when the police have due course. And indeed, I'd say irrespective of the type of vehicle that's being and being used, and as the noble Lord Lord Blencathra went to some some lengths to to to describe.

I'd also say my Lords. In addition, local authorities have powers to make public spaces protection orders which can prohibit can prohibit specific specified acts in designated areas. I understand a number of local authorities already have in place pspos that ban the wearing of face coverings in the area covered by the order, in order to deal with exactly the sort of anti-social behaviour by balaclava wearing, wearing cyclists. Probably at this point it's good to it's good to mention, as the noble Lady Baroness Neville-Rolfe and also the noble Lord Lord Jackson of Peterborough mentioned, live facial recognition.

I'm not sure either in their places for the debate that we had in, in, in committee last week on Thursday. But just to reiterate, there is a live consultation at the moment on live facial recognition. And so I would once again encourage your Lordships' House, if they're interested, to contribute to that, to that consultation and set the views on live facial recognition out there. There are, of course, my Lords, very legitimate reasons why cyclists may wear a face covering, as we heard from from the noble Lady Baroness P Pidgeon, including for health reasons or just to keep out the cold, and indeed the that's often seen, but not always seasonal.

And I would say, notwithstanding the the stakhanovite efforts made by in London at least the the mayor of London to tackle air quality through the Ulez and other measures. Sometimes it is about protecting, you know, protecting cyclists from in inhaling particulates and the like. So it would be we would say it would be disproportionate to introduce a blanket prohibition of the kind envisaged by amendment 416 or, for that matter, to extend the section 60 AA powers to which I've already referred, two situations where there are no grounds to reason to believe that criminal activity may take place in a particular location.

Given these considerations, I'd ask the noble Lady Baroness Neville-Rolfe to withdraw her amendment.

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Lord Hameed, what we're saying here is that the requirement to remove this would be accompanied by some sort of reasonable suspicion that that person had been committed in committing a crime. So it's not in committing a crime. So it's not just a person that has a cough or a cold.

**** Possible New Speaker ****

cold. Oh, no, I completely, I, I completely agree. What I was talking about was the, the rationale for, for, for, for rationale for, for, for, for wearing face coverings and in, you know, one would without too much speculation one contend that given some seasonal conditions might pertain somebody wearing a full, you know, a face covering and a balaclava might and indeed but most importantly, more important than anything else, being accompanied by by antisocial, antisocial or suspicious behaviour would give, give, give, give police the the rationale to use those powers that I've already, I've already set out.

So I'm not making any sense trying to make clear to excuse those situations that we're that we're talking about just observing. There are there are some reasons why people would cover their wear a partial face covering, at least in terms of a mask or something when they are cycling. Just an observation, really. But I agree with the point that he was making.
17:15
Baroness Neville-Rolfe Portrait Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Conservative)
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Hello. I'm grateful to the Minister for recognising the Minister for recognising the concern across the House. It is a serious problem and for trying out his winter of action. However, I am disappointed by his response. I believe the existing 19 1994 act powers and the local authority arrangements he mentioned are in fact too narrow and specific. And I would say to the noble Lady Baroness Pidgeon that I'm not against cyclists, I'm not against masks. I'm trying to to to make sure that where they're, they're being used by criminals to hide from the police, it is easier to take action.

It's quite a light amendment. It's stop not search, which we were discussing earlier. So I'm very grateful for the support that I've had from our own frontbench, from the very experienced Lord Davies of Gower, from my noble friend Lord Jackson. And I liked his evidence that face coverings in particular are an issue from my noble friend Lord Brancaster. On the scale of the problem, lots more examples. And of course from my noble friend Viscount Goschen and his concerns about lack of enforcement, which I know the government are trying to address, but is a very serious priority.

I also appreciated the moral support. I think I've put it of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-howe, and I will take up his offer to talk to him further about the exact character of this amendment. Before we get to report, something may need to be added. As the noble Baroness Butler-sloss said, and it sounds as if there is a definite lacuna in relation to e-scooters, presumably because they're not usually regarded as vehicles in all legislation. But, my Lords, for now, amendment.
17:17
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Portrait Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party)
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Is it your Lordships pleasure that this amendment be withdrawn? that this amendment be withdrawn? Amendment is by leave withdrawn. We come now to amendment 416A Baroness

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Jones of Moulsecoomb. This is an unusual amendment for me because it is very exploratory. me because it is very exploratory. And I'm going to ask the noble Lord, the Minister, three questions at the end. And I really would like an answer to these. And perhaps in writing, if, if, if it's not possible today. This amendment is supported by stopwatch. It's an organisation that seeks accountable and fair policing. And as such, I think this is a crucial element of creating fair policing.

Because when serious problems are found, how confident are we that the system can put them right? The system as it stands is a little bit jumbled, and I would suggest it could do with some streamlining streamlining. Now His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services does really important work on shining a light on what's going wrong. But inspection only takes us so far, and my amendment asks whether the follow through is strong enough, and whether lessons from other regulated sectors could help find turnings into lasting improvements in healthcare, education and financial services.

Regulators are able to require change, and those systems exist because inspection without action does not protect the public. The amendment invites us to consider whether policing oversight could benefit from similar clarity and grip. It also raises the issue of coordination. Remix the IOPC, the Independent Office for Police Conduct and Police and Crime Commissioners working together as effectively as they could when forces fail to improve, would clear a statutory alignment, help ensure that warnings are acted on and not simply repeated.

Where concerns about proportionality and legitimacy resurfacing, it's right to ask whether the oversight framework is strong enough to drive change, as this bill and others give more and more power to the police. This is a perfect time to ask, and I would welcome the Minister's response on three points. First, how does the government judge whether inspection findings are actually leading to improvement on the ground? And secondly, has the government considered whether closer cooperation between oversight bodies could strengthen accountability? And thirdly, are there lessons from other regulatory systems that the government believes policing can learn from? I look forward to the Minister's reply and to continuing this discussion as the Bill progresses.
17:20
17:21
Baroness Doocey Portrait Baroness Doocey (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, this amendment rightly exposes a serious weakness in our exposes a serious weakness in our current system. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones points out, Baroness, Lady Jones points out, HMRC FRS can diagnose deep seated problems within police forces, but it doesn't have the power to make sure these problems are fixed. There are simply too few national levers to deal with police under-performance. Labour's manifesto included a clear commitment to give HMRC new powers, to intervene with failing forces, and Ministers have signalled they want to legislate to do this.

We'd welcome that. But this bill contains no such clause. I do appreciate, however, that a White Paper might be imminent. Even so, I'd urge the government not to miss this golden opportunity to legislate now for clear, time bound duties and proper escalation mechanisms, so that police forces are required to act on inspectorate findings. Amendment 416 seeks to take the government further by building this question into a wider statutory review of policing oversight. We support that intention, but we part company with the Lady Baroness on the mechanism.

She proposes setting up yet another independent commission, with terms of reference to be devised by the Secretary of State, approved by the Commons, and then followed by nine months of deliberation, risks delaying change for at least another year. The evidence base is already substantial. What's missing is not diagnosis, but the authority to enforce it. The noble Baroness is quite right that enforcement is a wider problem, one that extends beyond HMRC FRS to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, where lessons are not always learned.

To put it mildly. I agree with the spirit of coordination, but we must remember that the IOPC role is distinct to oversee complaints and investigate the most serious misconduct. It is not and should not become a general performance regulator for police forces. That role properly lies with HMRC FRS and ultimately with Ministers from this benches. Our preference is clear. Do not commission another review, instead, move directly and decisively to give the Inspectorate the power it so clearly needs.

For too long we've had excellent reports full of well-reasoned recommendations, almost all accepted by both the police and the government. But nothing happens, and that inaction is rarely followed up. Measures that ensure we no longer hear the same failures repeated again and again would be very welcome.
17:24
Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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Yes. Yeah yeah yeah. Baroness Jones for bringing forward amendment four and six. A whilst I recognise the intention to ensure that policing is subject to effective scrutiny and that regulatory bodies have the tools they need to drive improvement, I do not believe this amendment is necessary, nor do I think it would represent a proportionate or effective use of time and resources. His Majesty. His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services already plays a well established role in ensuring accountability.

His Majesty's Inspectorate of Fire and Rescue Services has extensive powers to inspect, report and make recommendations and these reports are published and robust. They are laid before Parliament and used by the Home Office and policing bodies to drive reform where forces fall short. The the existing framework already enables escalation, follow up inspections and external pressure. I also worry that this amendment risks duplicating work already being carried out within existing structures. The policing oversight landscape includes His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, Police and Crime Commissioners and parliamentary scrutiny through select committees.

Coordination between these bodies is important, and I suggest it would be more constructive to ensure the better use of these mechanisms rather than create a new independent commission. It is also worth noting the practical burden imposed by this amendment. It would require the government to establish a commission, set detailed terms of reference, run a comparative review across multiple organ multiple regulators, and timetabled parliamentary debates in both houses. Within a very tight, very tight time frame. And that is a significant undertaking and one that may not be justified, given the absence of clear evidence that His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services lacks the necessary authority to fulfil its core function.

And so, for those reasons, whilst I very much respect the motivation behind the amendment, I do not believe it is necessary or proportionate and therefore cannot support it.
17:26
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour)
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I am grateful to the noble Baroness for amendment 416AI think it gives me the opportunity, if nothing else, to pay tribute to the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services. I see F.R.S. for the work that they do, and she was right to point out to the professionalism that they have. And if I may just for a second, I just want to take time out to just pay tribute to the Chief inspector, currently, Sir Andy Cook, who is has announced his intention to retire in March.

He served as Chief Inspector with distinction, has 40 years of service to policing, was Chief Constable of Merseyside and I hope that your Lordships House will join me in thanking Sir Andy for his dedicated service. Now, the The Police Act 1996 requires His Majesty's Inspectorate to publish an inspection programme and to Public inspection framework which, following consultation, are laid before Parliament. And the latest versions of these were put before the House on the 4th of March 2025. As part of its work, the HMRC inspects every police force as part of its appeal programme, which is police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy, and gives the force a grading on a series of indicators, and all of these findings are published, are available to chief constables, to local policing bodies, to the PCC, to the public and importantly as well to Ministers.

I see FRS also publishes a number of thematic reports covering every aspect of policing, and these do form a useful tool for the policing sector to drive performance. Now I agree with the noble Baroness that it is important that recommendations made by HMRC FRS do not just sit on the shelf, are taken seriously, are implemented and that those affected make sure that the public are receiving the best possible service as a whole. It is important that there is an examination of the three points that she's mentioned inspection findings, closer cooperation and lessons learned.

And I can say to her that she quoted, I think, to the committee, the government manifesto, and in the government manifesto, we did say we will give His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services new powers to intervene with failing forces. And she is right to point to the fact that there is a police White Paper which the noble Baroness do see also mentioned, which is expected to be published shortly and by shortly. Again, I know that's always a topic of interest in the committee, but I do mean shortly in this case, and I would encourage your Lordships to study that document carefully when it has been published, because it does contain a wide ranging set of proposals for improving policing in England and Wales, and which I hope will go some way to at least shining a light on the three questions that the noble Baroness has put to the committee today.

I can't comment or pre-empt on the detail of the White Paper now, because that would be a breach of protocol. But I do say to the noble Earl Attlee that the point he's made, and to the noble Baroness Doocey that those issues are issues that we will be examining clearly, we will take steps to enhance the powers of HMRC FRS to ensure that its recommendations are properly acted upon and indeed taken forward. In addition, we're going to be examining how we can make recommendations more effective as part of the police reform work, ensuring that the policing bodies expertise, the co-operation the noble Lady asked for is acted upon to drive performance.

So I look forward to that very shortly. And ahead of the white paper being implemented, I can't accept the noble Lady's amendment.

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Minister, could I just ask him, will the White Paper be dealing with action rather than

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with action rather than consultation? Well. The White Paper will set out a number of proposals that the number of proposals that the government intend to bring forward in either policy or legislation or executive action. And there are a number of areas around police efficiency, what's done centrally, what's done locally, how it's done centrally, how it's done locally. That will form part of the wider debate on the police white paper. And if I can say to the noble and learned Lady that she will not have long to wait for the police white paper, and when it does come, I undoubtedly there will be a statement in the House of Commons, and I will, as ever, have to repeat the statements here in this House, and there'll be an opportunity to look at that direction of travel and how importantly we are going to implement the measures that we're putting in the white paper, which will be again produced very shortly.

So I'm sorry I can't give you any more confident than that. And I do share as well, if I may say so. The reservations of the noble Lord Davies of Gower that the proposal, as in the amendment, would actually kick this matter of efficiency, coordination, performance, implementation further down the line than is already planned with our police white paper proposals very shortly, so I hope she'll withdraw it on the basis of those comments.
17:32
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Portrait Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party)
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I thank all noble Lords who've spoken, and I do take to heart the comments of the noble Lady Ducey comments of the noble Lady Ducey and the noble Lord, Lord Davis, because of course, I want fast action, I want it, I want it all action, I want it, I want it all and I want it now. That is my motto for life. And it it always seems as if here this committee is hearing, oh, it's all right. The government's dealing with this, but you can have it shortly.

And it doesn't matter whether it's talking about protest law or this particular point about accountability and and action. You know, there's always a white paper coming along and we're going to have to wait for that. And why are we doing this, bill now if we haven't got all the information we need? But anyway, I do note that the noble Lord, the Minister's good intentions, and I very much hope to see them put into action, and I'd

**** Possible New Speaker ****

like to withdraw my amendment. To your Lordships pleasure. This amendment be withdrawn. Amendment is by leave withdrawn.

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Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 416 be not moved. Amendment 416C not moved. Amendment 416D Earl Attlee not moved. We come

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416D Earl Attlee not moved. We come now to amendment 416E Lord Leong of acting. My Lords, I should declare my

**** Possible New Speaker ****

My Lords, I should declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union, which has been campaigning against Non-crime hate
17:33
Lord Young of Acton Portrait Lord Young of Acton (Conservative)
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incidents for at least five years. I thought it might be helpful, just to begin with, a definition of what to begin with, a definition of what an nchi is. It's in the amendment an nchi is. It's in the amendment itself. Any incident or alleged incident which does not constitute a criminal offence, but is a criminal offence, but is perceived by any person to have been motivated wholly or partly by hostility, hostility or prejudice towards a person or group on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity.

So how many of these incidents have been recorded by the police since the concept of ncrs was introduced by the College of Policing in 2014? Well, the Telegraph submitted an FOI request to all 43 police forces in England and Wales in 2019. No early 2020 and 34 of those 43. So about three quarters of the police forces in England and Wales responded to the FOI request and disclosed that 119 and 119,934in had been recorded in England and Wales in the five years from 2014 to 2019, which by my calculation is an average of 65 a day.

And remember, that's just in England and Wales, and that's just three quarters of the real total. And there's no reason to think that the number being recorded every day by police forces in England and Wales has declined from that average of 65 since then. So in the subsequent six years, how long does it take the police? How many police hours are spent recording NCA? Well, Policy Exchange published a report last November, and Policy Exchange's conclusion is that the police spend 60,000 hours a year.

Again, just the police in England and Wales, 60,000 hours a year investigating and recording non-crime hate incidents. So if you factor in that they've been around since 2014, that means the police have recorded have spent at least 660,000 hours investigating and recording non crimes since 2014. What sort of incidents are we talking about? Non-crime hate incidents sounds quite serious. Well, I'll just give a handful of examples. A man had an nchi recorded against him after a neighbour complained that his whistling the theme tune to Bob the builder was racist.

A woman had an nchi recorded against her name because she posted on X that she thought she thought her cat was a methodist. A nine year old girl had an NCA recorded against her because she called another girl in the school playground a retard to
17:36
None Portrait Amendment:416E Lord Young of Acton (Conservative)
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secondary school pupils had NCA recorded against them for saying about another girl again in the about another girl again in the school playground that she smelt like fish. This is the kind of thing that the police have been thing that the police have been spending 660,000 hours investigating and recording since investigating and recording since 2014. And incidentally, I know that at least one member of this House at least one member of this House who's had an NCA recorded against her and a conservative Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, had an nchi recorded against her because of a complaint made about the contents of her speech at a Conservative Party conference, which she addressed in her capacity as Home Secretary.

So it seems to me that it's not terribly difficult to make the argument that the police have been wasting a huge amount of time investigating and recording relatively trivial incidents. And again, just to stress the definition says that if it's merely perceived not just by the quote unquote victim, but by any person as being motivated by hostility or prejudice towards the victims protected characteristics, then it is it can be recorded as an nchi. Sometimes when NCA are recorded, the person who the nature is recorded against isn't informed.

So you you might well have an NCA recorded against you without knowing about it. And all this sounds quite trivial, but having an nchi recorded against your name can actually be quite serious, because Chief Constable's, at their discretion, can disclose the fact that an nchi has been recorded against a person when they apply for a job that requires them to do an enhanced DBS check. So a job as a teacher or a carer, or a voluntary position with a charity like the Samaritans, you can end up not getting that job because you have an nchi recorded against your name.

I'll just point out one more. I think unintended consequence of the NCA regime, which is they're deleted after six years, which means if you have an nchi recorded against you at the age of 17, it remains on what is in effect, your criminal record until you are 23. Whereas quite serious criminal offences, if you're convicted, are spent when you reach the age of majority. So the fact that you've committed a non-crime can hang about your neck like a bad smell long after you've reached the age of majority, even if it was recorded against you when you were a child.

So in some senses, not committing a crime and having that recorded against your record can have more serious consequences than if you commit a serious crime and you're convicted of it. Now, I believe I'm pushing at an open door. The there is a report that's been commissioned by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs Council into NCA. They've published a provisional version of that report, and in that provisional version, they declare the NCA regime unfit for purpose.

I don't think they've submitted their final report to the Home Secretary yet, but I know that when they do, the Home Secretary is likely to take up their recommendations, and I think we will see the end of the regime. So I just have four questions for the noble Lord, the Minister for things. I was hoping he could provide some reassurance about. The first is that under the new regime, as I understand it, the new regime will be that incidents are no longer recorded as non-crime hate incidents, but in some cases will be recorded as anti-social behaviour incidents but won't be logged on the national police database.

So I would ask for the noble Lord, the Minister's assurance that that anti-social behaviour incidents which would have been recorded as NCA under the old regime, won't, unlike NCA, be recorded on the national police database. I would also ask for the noble Lord, the Minister's assurance that once the new regime is in place, previous NCA recorded under the old regime will be deleted. They won't hang around for six years as they are at the moment. Given that the acceptance has been made that the regime isn't fit for purpose if they're not fit for purpose, I hope that he can assure us that the existing NCA, and it's not inconceivable that they number in the hundreds of thousands, be deleted.

And finally, I would ask for reassurance that they won't be disclosed, that these anti-social behaviour incidents won't be disclosed in enhanced DBS checks. And I hope that the review by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs Council will be submitted in time and digested in time for the new regime to be put in place at the Report stage of

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this particular bill. To move his amendment. Amendment

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To move his amendment. Amendment proposed after clause 144, insert the following new clause as printed

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on the Marshalled List. Added my name to this amendment because I think we need to move on from the recording of Non-crime from the recording of Non-crime hate incidents by removing them altogether from police systems. altogether from police systems. Non-crime hate recording had an honourable start. Following on from the first inquiry, there were two problems at the time. The first was that recordable crime was low,
17:42
Lord Hogan-Howe Portrait Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench)
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lower than it should have been because it wasn't getting recorded accurately. There was mis recording and sometimes not being recorded at all, and this was linked to police performance being measured by the performance being measured by the amount of crime in society. So therefore the police service were incentivised to record less rather incentivised to record less rather than more crime, ironically, thereby undermining their own bid for more resourcing. What the for more resourcing. What the murder of Stephen Lawrence showed us was that sometimes before a crime is committed, there are signals that someone may be a racist, for example, and that if we take the right action, then we could prevent those crimes from occurring and obviously someone getting hurt or any other crime being committed.

Now, that system worked well at the start because it allowed the police to collect intelligence and spot patterns, for example by geography, suspect or victims, and that relied on the basic repeat offender victim location theory, which shows us sometimes that 10% of all of those can account for over half of some crimes. The problem is that now this same system is being used to police the social harms caused by causing offence and causing offence is not a crime. The internet amplifies the problem, firstly because it has a permanent record of the offensive but not criminal behaviour, and secondly, it allows millions of people to see the communication, sometimes worldwide and of course for everybody involved, it's very hard to ignore.

It has led to some bizarre police interventions, and Lord Jones has already mentioned some on issues that are not crimes or even non-crime hate. And the public has juxtaposed this with significant complaints that meanwhile, the police say they are too busy to deal with shoplifting, car theft and sometimes other serious crimes, even when a suspect's available to arrest. So the two issues do not sit well together. I think there is a need to record intelligence about incidents that may later become significant.

If crimes are committed, this can be beyond the police command and control log, where it can be given an anti-social behaviour, coding or criminal intelligence system. The problem then arises if the name of a person is recorded who is said to have caused the offence. In my view, if the police say we will record what you are alleging because you call the control room and we need to log all calls because of course the police later denying a call to come in would not be very sensible if a call had come in, then it's necessary to actually record those incidents in the control room.

But if on the face of what you tell us, we see no crime or any incident, we will not investigate and we will not be recording the name of the person you say offended you. Now, there may be times when the police need to attend an incident to verify what I've just discussed, whether a crime has or has not been committed. But if they do visit, there is still no need to record a suspect's name. If they conclude the police should never have been involved in the first place.

They also need to be advised, and this is the police, that where their judgement is, there is no criminal offence or any other police matter, then they do not need to visit the person who is said to have caused the insult that's been alleged. Now a lot of these incidents have been amplified. The aggravation has been amplified by at least one, and sometimes multiple officers attending to talk to the person who hasn't committed an offence. So all they can conclude if you are receiving a visit from the police is they are investigating it, why wouldn't they? But of course, that's caused everybody in the street perhaps to think the same thing too.

So I do think the police need to get a bit of confidence here. So me for me. In short, they need to be given the confidence to say we are having nothing to do with this issue. The only fullback being that if there is an imminent threat of a breach of the peace, they may wish to warn all that the parties about their future behaviour. But for many of these incidents are only transpiring on the internet. The person involved is often many millions of miles or millions many miles away, sometimes in other parts of the world.

So the risk of the meeting, the risk of anything else happening, is absolutely nil, generally speaking. So I do think we need to keep that practicality and pragmatism in mind. So you're left asking the question, why did the police get drawn into this area? And I would say there are three broad reasons. Number one is I've commented already the rise of the internet, and number two, a growing feeling that anyone who caused an insult needs to be blamed. And the police are the 24 hour social engineers who are available and can help so they get the complaint.

The link to the recording of crime is the third incident that I mentioned earlier, and this for me, for the Minister, I would urge to take as equally important as the removing of Non-crime hate incidents. The rules not only say, as Lord Singh mentioned, that either someone who alleges a non-crime hate incident or perceives one to have been committed, then these things must be recorded. But the rules also say that if a crime is alleged, then that has to be recorded as soon as possible, in fact, within 24 hours, even if objectively a crime has not been committed.

So it's recorded as a crime and then later recorded if the facts show that a crime has not been committed. So, for example, someone reports a wallet stolen, but they eventually find it and it was never stolen, but it was recorded. So you record the crime. The problem with this approach is that police are so worried that the Inspectorates and others will accuse them of fraudulently not recording crime. They record them where they do not believe there was a crime. And this attitude has affected the way Non-crime hate is recorded to I afraid.

And we have had over recording of both and even investigation of social disputes that have nothing to do with crime at all. The HMRC has even found that officers, knowing that something isn't a crime, have recorded the non-crime hate on the crime system, frankly, to cover their backs for the reasons that I've already explained, because everybody's rushing around saying, well, why didn't you record it? Why don't you do something about it? Well, the easiest way, frankly, is to record it and then rerecord it should something prove that it didn't happen.

But really, they should have said, really, in the first place, we're doing nothing, and not only we're doing nothing, I'm not going to record anything other than the initial contact that I've mentioned already. In my view, this is our chance to reduce people being wrongly investigated and recording as having committed crime or non-crime to reduce reintroduce more confident policing. Able to say this is not for the police and to free excuse me, and to free up police resources by reducing bureaucracy.

In the time that Lord young has mentioned has already been spent on this. And finally, but most importantly, I would say improving police confidence in our police service, I'd also advise the government, I've already mentioned, to look at the presumption that crime will be recorded, even if the police do not believe one is being committed. It's one of the cause of the problem we're discussing. And frankly, if that isn't resolved and I guarantee you we'll be back looking at this in a few years time.

And for that reason, I support this amendment.
17:50
Baroness Butler-Sloss Portrait Baroness Butler-Sloss (Crossbench)
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Yeah. >> I also very much support this amendment, as I hope a nudge towards an opening door that the government is already looking at government is already looking at and following the powerful speech of the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe. of the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe. It seems to me that quite apart from the recipients of these NCA, there are two further issues. One is the waste of time and the waste of money, and the police are always short of money, and the police are always short of time.

That's absolutely obvious. It's been said by the noble Lord, Lord young, it's been said by the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe. If this was removed, they could get on and do their job. They would save a great deal of money, but they'd also save something even more important, because they would be dealing with the crimes that people really need

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them to deal with. This is already proving to be a

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This is already proving to be a crucial debate in the passage of this bill, and I rise to speak in this bill, and I rise to speak in support of amendment 416 proposed by the noble Lord Young of Acton. by the noble Lord Young of Acton. My noble friend Lord Strasburger, sadly, is unable to be with us here to support the amendment which he to support the amendment which he is signed, but I hope that I am reflecting his views in speaking today.

My Lords Non-hate crime incidents. While born from the well-intentioned Macpherson Report in 1993, and the noble Lord
17:51
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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Hogan-Howe used the phrase an honourable start have morphed into a mechanism that frequently a mechanism that frequently harasses and silences legitimate debate. In doing so, they consume prodigious quantities of police prodigious quantities of police time, as we've heard, time that is desperately needed to investigate the crimes we've discussed the crimes we've discussed throughout this committee. Non-hate crime incidents, which started from crime incidents, which started from benign motivations in 1993, have since then morphed into an ugly and frequently used technique for harassing and silencing somebody whose views the complainant doesn't like.

In the process, prodigious quantities of police time are being wasted on non-criminal matters, meaning that real crimes that would otherwise be investigated are being ignored, and the seeds of what has gone wrong were sown by the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. In particular, the inquiry concluded that a racist incident should be defined as being any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person. In essence, anyone, whether involved in an incident or not, whether a reasonable person or otherwise, would be able to determine that an incident, no matter how harmless, was racist in nature.

And the inquiry went on to recommend that the term racist incident must be understood to include include crimes and non crimes. In policing terms, both must be reported, recorded and investigated with equal commitment. It's remarkable that the inquiry concluded that incidents which are not criminal offences, as defined by Parliament, should be investigated by the police with equal vigour as those which are criminal offences, and it raises fundamental questions as to both the purpose of the police and what their priorities should be, particularly in a world of potentially limitless demand and highly constrained resource.

Nevertheless, Macpherson's recommendations relating to racist incidents and their recording were rapidly accepted and implemented by the police and government. Following a 2006 review by Sir Adrian Fulford, a shared definition of hate crimes and non-crime hate incidents was adopted across the criminal justice system, including by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. This expanded the recording of NCA beyond purely racist incidents, to cover all those characteristics covered by hate crime legislation in England and Wales, namely race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Key to the expansion of alleged NCA was the creation in 2014 of the College of Policing's hate crime Operational guidance for police forces, perhaps recognising that the guidance was likely to cause grave concerns to many, the College of Policing made a pre-emptive defence of their policy, saying the recording of and response to Non-hate Non-crime hate incidents does not have universal support in society. Some people use this as evidence to accuse the police of becoming the thought police, trying to control what citizens think or believe, rather than what they do.

And the guidance goes on to say in relation to hate incidents, that where any person, including police personnel, reports a hate incident which would not be the primary responsibility of another agency, it must be recorded regardless of whether or not they're the victim and irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element. The use of the word must in the guidance leaves no latitude for police discretion or indeed the balancing of rights exercise, which would be necessary in considering the subject's right to freedom of expression.

Under article ten, one of the European Convention on Human Rights. With the advent of social media, the number of NCA being recorded has rocketed. Policy exchange reported in 2024 that over 13,000 are being logged annually in England and Wales, consuming 60,000 police hours a year. Now my Lord, some keyboard warriors with an axe to grind have made a full time occupation out of submitting prolific quantities of NCA complaints with little or no justification. And these include a former a disgraced former policeman who prodigiously exploits the system to frequently harass his political opponents.

Some incidents have hit the press, such as when Graham Lynam, the creator of Father Ted, was arrested on the tarmac at Heathrow over an NCA. But many of the victims of spurious NCA are not even aware that a complaint has been lodged against their name. One campaigner only found out when the complainant launched a judicial review of the police's refusal to take the matter further, as we've heard, the impact of having an unproven NCA secretly logged against your name can be severe and it can mean that you are refused a visa to visit certain countries, including America, or that you fail an enhanced DBS check for a job in areas such as education or health.

Freedom of information requests to 43 police forces found zero examples of NCA preventing crime. The Metropolitan Police announced last October that they've stopped investigating NCA entirely. Last month, the National Police Chiefs Council and the College of Policing reported to the government that NCA are not fit for purpose. My Lords, NCA must go. The Minister, the noble Lord Hanson, stated during our debates on day seven of committee that the College of Policing is currently reviewing this guidance and that we'd see this before Report stage.

So, my Lords, I hope that the Minister can confirm whether that review addresses the chilling effect on free speech identified in the Miller judgement, and whether he accepts that the police must prioritise actual criminality over the recording of NCA. My Lords, we support the. I support this amendment as a necessary check on the expansion of the surveillance state. My Lords, when will the government act to abolish Nches? If the Minister can't answer that question, my Lords, I believe we will have to return to this matter at report.
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Lord Herbert of South Downs Portrait Lord Herbert of South Downs (Conservative)
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I'm grateful, my. >> I'm grateful, my. >> Lords, I declare, draw attention to the declaration in the Register of Interests that I'm Chair of the of Interests that I'm Chair of the College of Policing. As I said at Second Reading, we need to remember, and I think that the what the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones said in this regard was helpful, that there were benign reasons for the original introduction of this regime over three decades ago, and that the purpose was to ensure that the police would pursue intelligence that could build a pattern of behaviour that would result in harm to an individual.

And that was not just the case in relation to the dreadful murder of Stephen Lawrence, but also subsequently the case of Fiona Pilkington, where a repeated pattern of anti-social behaviour had been ignored. It was not, of course, criminal behaviour. It fell below that threshold, but nevertheless resulted in a tragic loss of life. Nevertheless, as has been noted, there has been considerable change over the period of that three decades. With the advent of social media, the advent of smartphones, a much more contested policy space in many of the areas relating to hate crimes or alleged hate crimes.

And there is the risk of a number of things. As a consequence, those have been drawn attention to by noble Lords, but they include the chilling effect on free speech, the tying up of resources unnecessarily, although I'll come to that in a second. And I suggest at least as seriously damage to the reputation of the police service if it's perceived that they are prioritising the wrong things and getting themselves involved in matters that they should not be. And for all of those reasons, in July last year, the College of Policing, at my instigation, together with that of the Chief Executive and the National Police Chiefs Council and the Home Office, agreed the terms of reference for a review of the Non-crime hate incident regime.

An interim report was published in October 2005. It is available to read, but the conclusion was that the regime is not fit for purpose and the final report will go to the Home Secretary shortly, and it will then, I must emphasise, be a matter for the Home Secretary to decide what the new regime should look like. But in short, the report proposes to end the use of police crime systems for recording non-crime incidents that effectively abolishes the regime of non-crime hate incidents all together.

Incidents recorded as anti-social behaviour. Hostility would be recorded on intelligence systems, but only if they meet a very high threshold where there is genuine harm or risk within communities, and the totality of that change would free up resources. It would, I believe, prevent the police from being drawn into areas that they should not be. It would, in short, be a sea change in the way in which these matters are dealt with, and it would see an end to the current regime of non-crime hate incidents entirely.

So I believe that there is a considerable amount of common ground in this matter. There is the issue that my noble friend Lord Young of Acton raised, which is in relation to record retention, and he suggested that the those non-crime hate incidents that are have currently been recorded should immediately be removed. That I must emphasise would, would, would, would be a matter for the Home Office to decide, although that hasn't happened in relation to previous changes of criminal offences.

But I should just emphasise that the threshold for disclosure in relation to enhanced DBS checks, which was the particular concern that my noble friend raised, is exceptionally high, and we know that fewer than 1% of DBS certificates currently include Non-conviction data at all. And in the review, we have so far been entirely unable to discover any incidents of a Non-crime hate incident being disclosed for the purpose of an enhanced DBS check. So although there is a suggested risk, it does not appear that that is a substantive risk because of the barrier.

The bar being so high. I do just want to note that Non-crime hate incidents form a tiny part of the non-crime demand, which is placed on the police service, and in the review, 33 forces were looked at and it was discovered that last year there were something over 7000 non-crime hate incidents recorded by those forces that accords with the figures that have been suggested by my noble friend and others for the entirety of policing. But that compares with over a million incidents of anti-social behaviour recorded by the police.

Those are not crimes either, but it was nevertheless deemed important that they were noted. It is less than 1% of that number, and the Metropolitan Police, who have now said that they will no longer investigate Non-crime hate incidents, say that those incidents account for point nought 5% of their overall demand. So I think it's important that we just understand this in context. One prominent politician has used the catchphrase that the police should be policing the streets and not tweets a very good phrase.

But actually, I don't think it's the case that in the main the police are doing that. There have been some examples of clumsy police action in relation to social media. Some of those examples don't relate to Non-crime hate incidents at all. And the one that Lord, the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones raised in relation to the comedian Graham Linehan, was not a non-crime hate incident. It was an investigation of a hate crime. Now, whether that investigation was appropriate, whether the interview of Mr.

Linehan was an appropriate is another matter entirely. But it was not a non-crime hate incident. Nor was the notorious incident where police knocked on the door of a Daily Telegraph journalist, Allison Pearson, on Remembrance Sunday. Whatever the merits of the police doing doing that, and I suggest that it was extremely unwise. It was not a Non-crime hate incident that they were investigating. And I do think that sometimes the the ILS or perceived ills of of policing and their failure in many circumstances to attend to the kinds of issues that they should be, and that issue has been raised as well, that failure is often laid at the door of the regime of non-crime hate incidents.

And I suggest that that is disproportionate but nevertheless damaging in terms of the perception of the police and the police priorities. And that's why I think it is so important that this regime should fundamentally be changed. It's why I think the thrust of the noble, my noble friend Lord Young's amendment is correct, that the regime should be abolished and a better one put in place. But I would just like to conclude by emphasising that it is important that the police are able to track patterns of hate that may be emerging in communities that threaten communities and individuals at risk of harm.

And if any of us had any doubt about that, we should consider the an issue which has been preoccupying this House, which is the rise of anti-Semitism and the importance of picking that up, of ensuring that individuals are not targeted, that they are prevented from harm. And it was precisely that kind of rising hate that this regime was originally put in place to prevent. So let us I think it is perfectly possible to take sensible steps to have an entirely different and new regime that will see these matters dealt with properly, and will remove the police from getting involved in matters that I don't believe they want to be involved in.

But do not let us throw out the baby with the bathwater, or believe that the police should not, in some circumstances be recorded in some circumstances, but far fewer than we have now be recording matters which are drawn to their attention. Where, where, where hatred is involved. I just would like to emphasise, finally, that these are matters for the government. Ultimately, in my view, to decide, and I therefore look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
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Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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Well. noble friend Lord Young of Acton. Excellent. Amendment 416E to abolish the Non-crime hate incident regime, which is long overdue. The principle at stake is quite simple and fundamental. The state must not brand people as potential wrongdoers when no criminal offence has been committed. So I congratulate my noble friend on moving the amendment and also the masterful speech of the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe, who made an absolutely compelling case for the immediate abolition of this obnoxious regime. I'm delighted to hear the wise words of my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs in his role as chair of the of the Police Council, the the College of Policing, if it looks like it is known as the noble Lord said, is not fit for purpose.

If that report gets to the Home Office before report, then we want amendments that report to abolish it. Not going out to consultation for another three months to decide whether to do it in some future criminal justice bill. If it is not fit for purpose now, then it should not be fit for purpose a moment longer than necessary. So far too long, my Lords, under all governments, this brought gross abuse for fundamental freedoms has been tolerated. I cannot count the number of times I've heard police and Ministers justified on the basis that it's an essential intelligence gathering tool, which would be helpful in heading off future crimes.

My Lords, I strongly believe in intelligence led policing and recording secretly any information or potential criminal activity. But it is not intelligence. If you record it on a database and give it to prospective employers with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say to more sort of thing. In the mortal words of Monty Python, recent reporting makes this danger painfully clear. We've now, as my noble friend has said, the documented cases of a nine year old boy logged for calling another pupil a retard.

Two schoolgirls accused of saying someone else smelled like fish. An extraordinary case of Harry Miller, former police officer who was visited at work by Humberside Police because he tweeted a joke. I was assigned male at birth but my orientation is fish. Well, it's not a very funny joke, but nevertheless the first recorded as a non-crime hate incident until the High Court ruled their actions a disproportionate interference with his freedom of expression, and rightly so. And the case of Alison Pearson, again mentioned by my noble friend, a national newspaper columnist, who had police officers knock on her door on Remembrance Sunday to accuse her of stirring up racial hatred over a tweet she'd already deleted.

And it was never told what she was being investigated for because no offence had been committed. A person who has committed no crime can be questioned, placed on a police record, left with a stain that follows them into job applications, into community life and into future interactions with the state. And this is not a harmless administrative note. A police record, even where no offence has been committed, can surface in enhanced checks, damaged careers, stigmatised people in their communities. It creates a two tier system of reputational punishment, one for those convicted of crimes and another less visible but no less damaging for people of merely expressed opinions or made mistakes.

And I think that's a grave injustice. The state must not be in the business of branding citizens as potential wrongdoers, when no criminality has been established, and recording non-criminal speech as hate incidents treats lawful expression as if it were a criminal matter. My Lords, this practice, it chills debate. It deters whistleblowers and journalists, discourages civic participation. It stops harmless jokes and humour. I would just reflect in my Lords, if this system had existed 30 years ago in the British Army, then hundreds of thousands of sergeant majors would have had millions of records against them, because the wonderful terms of abuse and insults they had to ask when we got our marching wrong and made mistakes was absolutely astronomical.

And I don't think we suffered any harm because of those jokes and humour at our expense. My Lords, amendment 406 restores the proper boundary between policing and free expression. It does not prevent the police from investigating genuine criminal offences or from using intelligent, proportionate intelligence proportionately, where there is a real threat to safety, what it does is prevent the indefinite administrative stigmatisation of people who have committed no crime. It protects employment prospects, reputations and the right to speak without fear of being treated as a suspect.

But to me, my Lords, the key subsection is not stopping them doing it in the future, but purging current records and subsection five seas within three months of the coming into force of this section. Any police authority which has retained any record of a non-crime hate incident, save in accordance with the provisions of subsection four, must delete such record. My Lords, I agree entirely, but I warn noble Lords that the police and many cases will try not to do it. They will find every excuse to hang on to that database and not delete it immediately.

I have tremendous respect for the police and the brave work they do on our behalf, and I pay tribute to the 4000 officers killed in the last 200 years, since the first salaried officers went on duty. But, my Lords, all the police I've ever met wanted to save lives. They wanted to track down on crime and keep the king's peace. But if you gave them a completely free hand, then they would want to collect from every person on the age of five, fingerprints, DNA and biometric data and use it to stop crime.

And they would succeed. That would make a tremendous difference. But I think that is not the sort of society we want to allow. And therefore, my Lords, we should not permit the retention of data on individuals who have not committed any crime. Now, I was interested in what the noble Lord Hogan-Howe said about recording, because when I heard the Metropolitan Police Commissioner a few weeks ago saying, oh, we're we're not going to investigate Non-crime hate incidents now, we're just going to record it. I thought, well, hang on, that means that someone accuses someone else of being racist.

The police will not investigate it to see whether it's right or wrong, but they'll still record it as a crime. Now, if by recording the meant keeping it recorded when in the call centre on the record, that's OK, but it should not be recorded on any other database as if it has not happened before. If it is not actually a crime. Now, I conclude by saying this reform is practical. As my noble friend has said, police resources are finite. Recording and managing Non-crime entries diverts police officers from investigating real criminality and and from protecting victims.

And if the state wants to monitor tensions, it can do so through proportionate, anonymised intelligence and community safety work, not by placing individuals on quasi criminal registers for conduct that is lawful. My Lords, I support my noble friend's amendment. I support what my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs said about the College of Policing, saying it is not fit for purpose, and I therefore look forward to a commitment from the Minister that we will have an amendment at report which implements what my noble friend Lord Yang has said, an amendment 460.
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Lord Kempsell Portrait Lord Kempsell (Conservative)
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My Lords, I declare my interest as a freelance journalist and as a freelance journalist and therefore somebody who has a very great care for freedom of speech. What a pleasure it is to follow the speech of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, which so brilliantly summarised all the reasons there is to support this amendment 460 in the name of my noble friend Lord young and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-howe. And what a silver lining it is to the political raincloud of the government, that it seems like we are pushing at an open door with this amendment, and the government's minded to scrap this regime, which has done so much, as we've heard in brilliant speeches, to frustrate the policing effect that is being sought by the public from police forces, and has done so much generally to reduce confidence in the freedom of speech in the public square that there is in this country.

I'll restrict myself only to asking the noble Lord, the Minister, a few questions about how the government will treat any future regime to replace NCA. And the first is that what assurance can he give that in any future regime, the government has given thought to the application of a commonsense regime across police force areas? Because I think it's fair to say in the implementation of NCA, there has been a difference, as always, in the the degree of zealotry between the application in different forces.

And secondly, what can he do to ensure that the regime will not be replaced effectively by a similar regime, but in another name, because we know that the the report from the College of Policing, which is forthcoming, may well throw further light on on policy options there.
18:16
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Portrait Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative)
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My Lords, I rise to strongly >> My Lords, I rise to strongly support the excellent amendment of my noble friend Lord Young of Acton, and I also declare an interest as a paid up member of the Free Speech Union. My Lords, I was brought up in Plumstead in south east London, as was Stephen Lawrence, and I absolutely can understand the horror and the imperative for action that arose from the disgraceful, racist murder of that young man in 1993.

And there was a clamour to tackle the culture, which gave rise to five racist thugs taking that young man's life. So that is a very important context. But I'm afraid, my Lords, things have developed in in a way that we didn't foresee way back in 1993, in preparing for this debate, I was reminded of the remarks of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, in 2024. He said, and I quote, I had to look up what on earth the term non-crime non-crime hate incidents meant.

I was puzzled by it. And coming from the DPP, that reveals a lot about what a strange anomaly NCA have been. The idea that there is a kind of police record which can result in ordinary people who have committed no crime, being visited by police at their home or workplace, because an investigation has been launched into whether their views or attitudes May 1st day lead to criminal activity, should be seen as an entirely incongruent issue with British justice and freedom of expression.

It brings to mind the film Minority Report and the fictional idea of Pre-crime. But this is not fiction. It's the real world. The idea that in the real world, a person could lose their job because of NCA shows up on an enhanced DBS check ought to be anathema to us. Mention was made earlier of Allison Pearson and my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs is absolutely right that it was a, I think, a communications act or another piece of legislation on which she was involved.

When Essex Police visited her on Remembrance Sunday 2024. But she nevertheless raised the public profile of the impact of NCA on people. And for that I think we should thank her, as we should Harry Miller and others. The times reported that year that 13,200 NCA were recorded by 45 police forces in the 12 months to June 2024, and that includes allegations against doctors, vicars, social workers and even primary school children. And, as we've heard, politics. Jones calculated that this had amounted to at least 60,000 hours of officer time.

It surely was never a defensible use of police time, especially while so many serious crimes such as burglaries and sexual offences remain unsolved and uninvestigated. There are too many stories to tell, my Lords. But one elderly woman was shocked to find herself the subject of an NCA after taking a photograph of a sticker which read keep males out of women only spaces. She didn't even put the sticker up. She just took a photo of it. The 73 year old received a visit from police officers after she was caught on CCTV taking the photo of the sticker, which someone had put up on an LGBT pride poster.

She said she agreed with its sentiments and wanted to show it to her partner. Apparently, the police thought this made her like a likely future criminal. My noble friend Lord Herbert has said these cases have been bad for public confidence in the service and he's absolutely right. He's therefore welcome. Over the last year or so, there have been a growing realisation and consensus from the government that that there is a need to address the problem. In particular, I welcome the recent press reports that the college and the NPCC are set to recommend scrapping Non-crime hate incidents as a result of their review.

The noble Lord, Lord Herbert, has promised that there will be a sea change. Of course, we must wait and see the final detail on how the changes are delivered in practice. I say this partly because what we are attempting to do in turning policing away from an excessive focus on what we might call Dei issues towards the criminal matters that public care about, goes very much against the grain of the last two decades of police culture. We've seen before how difficult this is to uproot.

The previous government published new statutory guidance on NCA in 2023. Training should have been given to officers, call handlers on the raised thresholds and common sense tests, and we should have seen a reduction in the number of non-crime hate incidents recorded. But sadly, the report and inspection into activism and Impartiality in policing, published the following year by Her Majesty's Inspectorate, concluded that there was inconsistency in the way forces have responded to the new guidance, and that they often found that call takers hadn't received training about NCA and had limited, if any, knowledge of the statutory guidance.

So my question to the Minister is how we will ensure that this time police training on the new regime is not undercut by an obsession with Dei issues and the politicisation of policing, which has clouded police judgements too often in recent years. Secondly, I think we need to see a clear commitment from the government on how they plan to respond to the NPCC report and what the timelines will be. I know that there are ongoing reviews into police discretion and hate crime, and I particularly welcome Lord McDonald of review into hate crime legislation, and I hope that he will feel emboldened to address one of the more fundamental issues, namely, the injustice resulting from the creation of a hierarchy of victims by legislating for certain protected characteristics, rather than treating all victims equally.

But these ongoing reviews should not be an excuse for inaction. In particular, will the Minister make the commitment that, should the review require primary legislation to implement its recommendations, that this will be done via amendments at Report stage of this bill, a point, I think, made by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, preferably adopting my noble friends carefully crafted amendments. My Lords, whilst I understand the previous government's decision to introduce statutory guidance via the police, crime, Sentencing and Courts Act as a first step towards introducing some common sense in this area, it did have the unfortunate consequence of providing a statutory basis for recording NCA.

If this is to be corrected, the law will need to change. Finally, let me say again that the devil will be in the detail. Whilst the final report of the NPCC has not yet been published, it did publish a progress report last October. There were a number of points where I would want to see improvements in the final report. My Lords, before I could feel confident that the new system will avoid the pitfalls of the current regime. One of those, again, relates to the Mpc's recommendation that the Home Office introduce a new national standard of incident recording.

As I alluded to earlier, the current threshold, which dates back to 2011, is too low and does not adequately cater for contemporary policing demands. But I think we ought to think carefully, too, about what any new definition should be. The current draft proposition, put forward by the NPCC defines an incident as a single, distinct event or occurrence, which may be relevant to policing for preventing or solving crime, safeguarding individuals or communities, or fulfilling other statutory policing purposes. This helpfully makes clear that there needs to be a clear policing purpose for this data to be recorded, and I am concerned about the term may be relevant at the very least, would it not be better for it to say likely to be relevant? My concern is that an activist police officer would record practically anything on the basis of a may we all know hoarders, the kind of people that keep everything because they tell themselves it may be useful in the future.

Very. Finally, my Lords, I also think we need greater clarity on the issue of enhanced DBS checks. The progress report recommends that the Home Office consider whether there needs to be further guidance, but key questions are ignored. May I specifically ask the Minister will the police delete NCA they've already recorded? And will the new anti-social behaviour incidents be disclosable in enhanced DBS checks? My Lords, I am pleased to support this very good and sensible

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amendment. My Lords, I'd like to say a

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My Lords, I'd like to say a heartfelt thank you to the noble Lords, Lord Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hogan-howe for leading on this. Lord Hogan-howe for leading on this. I think it's telling that the supporters who've signed the supporters who've signed the amendment are across party. I think that the very richness of such excellent, excellent speeches from across the House should be something that the government should take note of. There is widespread concern for all sorts of reasons, and action should be taken.

I just feel a little bit cynical, because I feel as though I've celebrated the demise of Non-crime hate incidents on quite a number of occasions in the past, when the Fair Cop founder, Harry Miller, in,
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Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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I think 2020 won his High Court challenge. The judge declared that challenge. The judge declared that Non-crime hate incidents would had a chilling effect and unlawfully infringed on Harry's freedom of infringed on Harry's freedom of speech. And I remember a lot of us thought that would be the end of that. Then I then listened to a that. Then I then listened to a variety of home secretaries. Quite a number, in fact, who declared that there was a problem with that there was a problem with Non-crime hate incidents.

And I thought, oh good, something will be done because politicians do like to do something. But I am most reassured genuinely by the the present Home Secretary, Shabana mahmood, who does seem to be absolutely determined to get to the bottom of this and to sort it out. And, you know, I think her emphasis of the police should focus on streets, not tweets, is quite good summation of where we are. However, despite that universal acknowledgement that the Non-crime hate incidents are not fit for purpose, in many ways, I'm afraid.

I worry that like the Greek mythological Hydra, all these various attempts at cutting off the monstrous NCA serpent's head, as soon as we do, another couple of heads grow instead. So I do think it's very important that we don't just sort of console ourselves with getting rid of the name, but also actually allowing the sentiment and the politics of it to remain. And as somebody who's spoken many times on this issue in this very house, often greeted by some eye rolling, but also offered endless assurances that it was all being sorted by not this government, actually by previous government.

I now believe that assurances are not enough and we do need to make watertight this issue watertight. We need primary legislation as a guarantee that there will be no more non-crime hate incidents. And I do think a full deletion of the historic records held by the police, the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, made the point that when there's been changes in the criminal law, that. Sorry, records have not been deleted. But of course, these aren't crimes and they should be deleted. It's also the case, by the way, that even if they're not used, the idea that the state's got a kind of file of hundreds of thousands of people with the word bigot across them, or hate criminal, even if they're not hate non-criminal.

I mean, no, it's not right. They should be deleted. I also have a worry that the ideological premise of Non-crime hate incidents remains undisturbed. Indeed, it's deeply embedded into the labyrinth of hate crime legislation that we discussed in committee last week. There is an acceptance that words, attitudes and beliefs that are interpreted as hate subjectively by the alleged victim or a third party and assumed to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards protected characteristics, not proven, but assumed that that outlook, I think, affects hate crime legislation.

But it's been drummed into policing and it encourages criminal investigation into speech. And that's why free speech campaigners are not just concerned about Non-crime hate incidents, but the whole concept of what constitutes hate in the law. And I'm afraid that that won't be those fears won't be allayed by the removal of Non-crime hate incidents. One presumption is of Non-crime hate incidents is that certain types of speech presage much worse, often violent incidents. Actually, this notion of escalation was used against the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and amendments that I spoke on last week as though the public are just one hateful word or opinion away from launching a racist pogrom, and must be stopped by early intervention or recorded.

Because, you know, if they've said that they're bound to be the type of person or go and kick the hell out of someone, and I just think it's insulting. It's wrong. It's a misunderstanding of speech. And I don't think that kind of early warning notion that's incorporated into the potential intelligence of non-crime hate incidents amounts to much more than surveillance of society for no crimes. I also wanted to note that the muddle of discretion and subjectivity associated with what constitutes hate, and associated with the promiscuous use of non-crime hate incidents, has been very damaging to the credibility of criminal justice, and the notion of it a as non-partisan, not least because of the way that that non-crime hate incidents have been used by police in particularly one sided way.

The noble Lord Lord Kempsell, I think, explained the different police forces, some zealots, some, you know, normal, but that does appear to be. On the one hand, the reporting of these does appear to be driven by bad faith complainants using them to harass political opponents, as has been described in other speeches. But there is, I do think, the danger of a seemingly some politicised police officers also joining in kind of activist officers using NCA to punish wrong thing, the wrong kind of opinions with a knock on the door.

There have been particularly grim examples of a kind of inconsistency when we look at the publication of the dossier this last week of ignored anti-Semitic crimes or incidents against Jews in Birmingham, evidence supplied by a whistleblower, and just to use an example that included an attack on a 12 year old girl who was punched in the face, kicked in the stomach with the other child assailant shouting Free Palestine! And the police email said no action required, no NCA there, it would seem.

Contrast that with the infamous case some years ago that I had, some was involved in a little bit in reporting it, at least of the four year, ten students in Wakefield who had non-crime hate incidents logged against them after they kicked around a Koran in the playground and scuffed it. Their head teacher noted there was no malicious intent. The book remained intact, but the police responded to community concerns that were whipped up, and there was a kind of outcry, and you could see the weaponizing then of Non-crime hate incidents.

And those children got non-crime hate incidents against them. So will the Minister comment on how such weaponization of hate crime as a concept be rooted out? How police forces will avoid such preference for some subjective experiences of hate more than others? How can we can deal with that? And and I think that is a hangover from Non-crime hate incidents. Finally, on record keeping, I am concerned that the police's habit of of record keeping in in in difficult circumstances, in NCA circumstances might continue even if we don't know about it behind the backs of scrutiny and accountability.

So just to finish with this example, in September last year, Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at Sex Matters, after putting in a subject access request, discovered that she'd been added to a police national database as guilty of a crime without ever being charged, tried, convicted or even told. In her Substack, she detailed about finding out that she'd been considered in need of a non-crime hate incidents related to tweets and statements referring to a trans identifying individual who calls themselves Frieda Wallace and had described them as a fetishistic trans identifying man, which she claimed was factually accurate.

But the main thing is, is that without her knowledge behind the scenes, over a matter of time and some arguments about whether it deserved an NCA or not, instead what happened was that in her file it is written crime harassment motivated by transphobia because of misgendering. No action. Now that wasn't a non-crime hate incident, but it was generated in relation to a non-crime hate incident and so can the noble Lord. The Minister, assure us that the habit of recording non crimes won't merely be replaced by the word crime and the creation of a shadow Orwellian shadow crime recording procedure with no due process won't replace getting rid of Non-crime hate incidents.

I want to see the back of them, but I fear the ideology that's informed them is well and truly alive and kicking. And I think that that needs to be tackled to. My Lords, I'm really grateful to Lord Herbert for his contribution because he set out the balance between those non-crime hate incidents and the non-crime incidents and the difference between the two of them. And I think one of the concerns that from these benches we have, and I'm
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Baroness Brinton Portrait Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat)
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going to use the phrase he used as well, which I apologise, but I had already written it down that in looking at this amendment, we must looking at this amendment, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That's really important. And I'll come on to explain why in And I'll come on to explain why in some some detail later on. I just want to remind the House that in want to remind the House that in the two amendments about hate crime that we had last week, I referred to the document called Recommendation on Tackling Hate Crime by the Council of Europe, in which they say that hate can be manifested with different degrees of severity, ranging from everyday stigmatisation and discrimination, microaggressions and verbal abuse to violence, terrorism, war crimes and genocide, which is an enormous spectrum, and the reason that the non-crime incidents, whether hate related or not, need to be recorded is because quite often the perpetrators of these go on and escalate their behaviour.

I know that I have referred in the past in this House to when I was stalked by a political opponent for three years, and before we could take the get the police to take it seriously, we had recorded something like 75 incidents, probably half of which were crimes, half of which were not. As things escalated after that, it went from minor crimes to the perpetrator starting to use a very large knife on tyres. And the police psychologist said if we don't get him now, it will be people next.

And it is that entire spectrum of behaviour for some particular incidents that end up being part of a crime, that mean we cannot just throw out all non-crime incidents. And I'm afraid the same is also true for Non-crime hate incidents. And I am really grateful that Lady Fox referred to the appalling case of the anti-Semitic attacks, because those would go as well if this amendment were accepted, because there would be no capacity for the police under the amendment to start monitoring and recording these things until they tip the balance into a crime.

But the damage done in those earlier incidents repeatedly to the same group of people, I think both of friends who go to synagogue in one town and in my home town of Watford, young Muslim friends who are shouted at on their way to worship every single week by the small same group of people. Now, none of those would probably get to the first bar of being recorded as a non-crime hate incident. But if their behaviour follows typical course and it does escalate and the police haven't recorded anything, they have nothing to go back on.

So I really beg the movers of this amendment to.

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Described is is a crime. Those people that are shouting racist people that are shouting racist abuse are either Jewish people or Muslims on on the way to a mosque are committing a crime under the are committing a crime under the existing legislation that's been in place for many years. It's got nothing to do with the recording. It's a it's got nothing to do with the recording of police intelligence, which is unfettered intelligence, which is unfettered by this amendment. And it certainly is the case that what she's described is de facto a criminal offence.



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I referred to the comments made by a number of previous speakers in this group, where they talked about this group, where they talked about police wasting their time recording, and I have to tell you that the two groups of people I have just referred to have tried to report these incidents and have not been able to get them taken particularly able to get them taken particularly seriously. And therein lies the problem. So the point I absolutely agree with Lord Herbert on is that agree with Lord Herbert on is that there has to be new, revised, absolutely clear guidance about how the police need to process these things.

And it may be that there will be many that are not now processed, but I think we cannot just say that we should get rid of Non-crime hate incidents in their entirety. A lot of the conversations during this debate are the speeches during this debate have talked about the way the polarisation in our society is because people are now saying things to others. With people becoming offended. We discussed this briefly last week as well 5 or 6 years ago. The things that are being said to people on the street would not have been said.

People might have thought them as they walked past them, but it was quite rare and we are deeply offended if it's targeting us. We often as people, don't recognise when we are being offensive to other people. And I say again, there is something about the way our society is working at the moment that we have to learn to look at ourselves, not just at the others, that we don't like the police trying to literally police all of this are in a very, very invidious position.

So I also think that police need tools to record information because it helps them to assess and understand when other things happen around them. And it's much broader than with Non-crime hate incidents. As I have alluded already. Sorry, I'm just trying to find my notes. Paul Janice OBE, the national Hate crime lead for the police, has been reviewing the current protocols and his recommendations for a new code of practice will be very welcome and I am absolutely sure, from what Lord Herbert has said and what I've heard elsewhere, that there certainly will be changes.

But we absolutely have to understand that the key issue here is balancing those individual rights, the absolute freedom of expression as expressed by Lord Young of Acton. And he and I had a debate about JSO last week, alongside with the state's obligation to protect citizens against targeted victimisation, and the police must be able to gather intelligence, evidence gathering and logging symbolic messaging to targeted groups. Now, all the other things about whether those end up on DBS can be looked at as part of this review, and I am sure that they will be.

But the police need to see that bigger, wider picture. One of the problems about the Lawrence murder was that the police weren't watching what was happening in that community for the months and years that ran ahead of it. And that, I think, is one of one of the reasons that that that institutional blindness was certainly one of the things that came out of the inquiry. As others have said, the monitoring of such incidents was the result of the recommendations by Lord Macpherson as part of his public inquiry in response to Stephen Lawrence's murder.

But I come back to this point in terms of practical value, the police must be able to record incidents that do not in themselves amount to criminal offence because many crimes, such as I described with harassment and indeed with stalking, require evidence of a course of conduct. And when most people say to me, oh, but stalking is always about relationships. That's not about a hate crime. Quite a lot of, of, of stalking is actually non-domestic, and it is targeted at particular somebody because of a particular characteristic.

And I come back to finish on the point I made right at the start about the evidence that police need for this course of conduct. If behaviour escalates, if a group of people go out and and do things again and again and again, there is a point in which it is going to tip over. And having been party to and a survivor of something that ended up as 132 crimes, I have to say to you, once the police saw all the evidence that we had been holding of the non hate crime earlier on, it was extremely helpful when things did start to escalate.

So reform absolutely needed and we hope that the review will have recommendations for a new regime. But I also hope that it won't leave victims vulnerable either from perpetrators who behave it escalate, or from police who aren't quite clear about the role they have in recording non-crime incidents.
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Lord Davies of Gower Portrait Lord Davies of Gower (Conservative)
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thank noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe for his contribution and indeed to my noble friend Lord Herbert of my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs the status quo. My Lords, the status quo is untenable. It undermines free speech, diverts It undermines free speech, diverts police resources from real crime, and risks criminalising people for behaviour that is lawful and should behaviour that is lawful and should remain outside the criminal justice system. So we on these benches firmly support the abolition of non-crime hate incidents.

Non-crime hate incidents, in essence, are reports of conduct perceived by someone to be motivated by hostility or prejudice against a protected characteristic which do not meet the threshold of a criminal offence. And under current law, police forces record and retain personal data about those incidents, even though no crime has occurred and no legal breach has been established. Thus alone, my Lords, is problematic, but in practice the effects are far worse. Current figures estimate that around 13,000 Non-crime hate incidents are logged annually, consuming an estimated 66 000 plus hours of police time that could be better directed to tackling burglary, serious violence, organised crime and other priority areas.

Recording an incident and retaining personal data about motives but are merely perceived rather than proven, also has a detrimental and unwelcome effect on free speech. People who express lawful opinions, engage in robust debate, or even make clumsy social media posts can find themselves on a police database not because they have committed a crime, but because someone has taken offence to those remarks. This is not a hypothetical shortcoming of policy. There have been cases where almost trivial or schoolyard remarks became the subject of police records, and in one high profile instance, the arrest of a public figure over social media post was initially associated with a Non-crime hate incident, sparking national debate about policing, speech and proportionality.

It is no surprise, then, that police leaders and independent watchdogs are reassessing the value of non-crime hate incidents. The Chief Inspector of Constabulary has publicly stated that Non-crime hate incidents should not be recorded by police, because they risk conflating the offensive with the criminal, diminishing public trust and harming legitimate free expression. Similarly, the Metropolitan Police recently announced that it will no longer investigate Non-crime hate incidents, recognising the difficulty officers face when drawn into matters that are not criminal by definition.

So the government's response to date has been to commission yet another review with the suggestion that policy decisions should wait until later in the year. But on that issue, but on an issue that so directly impacts both civil liberties and police effectiveness, delay is not a defensible option. So amendment 460 would go further than reviews. It would abolish the concept of non-crime. Hate incidents entirely, prohibit any police authority from recording or processing related personal data, and require the deletion of existing records, and in doing so, it draws a clear distinction between criminal behaviour, which it is right that the police investigate, and lawful expression or debate which should not be the subject to police recording or sanction.

My Lords, we cannot allow a system that treats controversial yet lawful speech as if it were a matter for the criminal justice system. This amendment is a sensible and necessary step to realign policing with its once core mission of protecting people from crime and harm, not policing, speech or perceptions. So we therefore, on these benches, very much support this amendment.

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Yeah, yeah. Can I thank the noble Lord Young of Acton for tabling the amendment, of Acton for tabling the amendment, because it's been a useful debate, and I hope that we can at least and I hope that we can at least look at the direction of travel that I think is is common, that there needs to be reformed on this there needs to be reformed on this matter. Now, I've, I've heard from the noble Lord Young of Acton, I've
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Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour)
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the noble Lord Young of Acton, I've heard from the noble Baroness Brinton, I've heard from His Majesty's opposition through Lord Davis and also Lord Blencathra Lord Kempsell, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Baroness Fox of Buckley, and Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Clement-Jones and and Lord Herbert of South Downs, and the noble and learned Baroness Butler-Sloss, all of whom have have raised a range of issues which essentially point to the need for change in this system. And I think it's fair to say that I hope that the House and Committee will accept this, that the current government has had office since July 24th.

A lot of discussion has gone on around issues and the effect of the Non-crime hate incidents since the guidance in 2014, and I don't want to lose the principle that which was mentioned by the noble Lord Hogan-Howe Lord Clement-Jones and indeed the noble Lord Herbert of South Downs that the Non-crime hate incident regime did have its genesis in the Macpherson report, did have its genesis in trying to anticipate and examine where crimes were being committed, potentially in the future, were monitoring a range of abuses that were that were present.

But I have to say to the committee, and I think this is recognised by what the contributions from members have been today, that how the police should respond to hate incidents that fall below the criminal threshold is a complex and sensitive issue. And that's precisely why the then Home secretary, Yvette Cooper, member for Pontefract, Castleford and Normanton, and the current Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend Shabana mahmood, member for lady, would have asked the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs Council to conduct the thorough review into Non-crime hate incidents.

The review was examining whether the current approach is proportionate, which goes to the very points that was made, whether it's consistent, whether it's compatible with fundamental right to free expression. And the review has been led by, as the noble Lord, Lord Herbert of South Downs said, by policing experts. And it is expected to conclude, in his words, shortly. The publication date is one for the College of Policing. We have had the interim report which has said that there are significant concerns in the way Non-crime hate incidents are operating, but I would just simply say to the committee as a whole that given the points that have been made today, and given that the government has commissioned that review, and given that the government has seen the interim review to date and given the government, in the words of the noble Lord Herbert of South Downs expects to receive that review shortly, I would again, and I know I asked this on a number of occasions, and I do ask the committee to bear with me, but I do ask that the Committee bears with us to examine what professional police officers and the College of Policing are recommending in relation to Non-crime hate incidents.

Now, the novel Lord Young of Acton rightly asked some significant questions. What's happening to the logging on on the database, and what happens in relation to anti-social behaviour incidents? What's happening to people who've got non-crime hate incidents against their name previously? What's happening with regard to non-disclosure? What's happening in terms of the publication and government response? They're all fair and legitimate questions. But again, I just say to him and to the committee that if the government, the current government comes in, recognises there's an issue, commissions the College of Policing to look at that issue, receives an independent report, expects a full report to deal with those issues and how we tweak that regime so that potentially we don't lose the very good things that sometimes have been brought out of non-crime hate incidents.

And or we don't sort of throw everything out immediately. I don't know what that review is finally going to say. In the Second Reading, the noble Lord Herbert of South Downs said, and I quote, the review has found that the current approach and use of Non-crime hate incidents is not fit for purpose, and there needs to be broad reform to ensure that policing can focus on genuine harm and risk within communities. The recording of hurt feelings and differing views should not continue.

Now that is a very clear statement, but but in moving from that in the interim report to whatever that new regime might be, I think it's incumbent on the government to reflect on what the report finally says. And so I'm not ducking the amendment that the noble Lord has brought forward. I'm not ducking the challenge that we need to make some changes because, as he says, there's an open door. If we didn't want this to be reviewed, we wouldn't have asked the College of Policing and the Police Chiefs Council to review the incidence of Non-crime hate incidents, because self-evidently, some of the examples given today are not what the original purpose of that legislation and approach was meant to be.

But there was a serious element going back to the Macpherson report originally as to how assessments have been made, and members in committee today have talked about anti-Semitism, have talked about racism, have talked about a range of incidents where collection of information might give a bigger intelligence picture, which requires a policing response, but which, again, may or may not be a policing response that requires individuals to have their names put against them. And the concerns of everybody from the noble Baroness Fox of Buckley through to the noble Lord Young of Acton are legitimate concerns the government wants to look at and address.

But I simply say to the committee today, and I hope that this can be examined, that I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment, await the outcome of the police review so that any reforms are grounded in both robust evidence and a consensus. Now, ultimately, the government has to take some decisions, and ultimately the government will take some decisions and will be held to account in the House of Commons, in the House of Commons and in this House as well.

But as yet, in the absence of that detailed response, I'm not sure I can come to this committee and say

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this is what we will do because we need to examine that in detail. I'm very grateful to noble Lord for his customary courtesy. I think I can accept his point that since the Home Office have not yet received the final report, and received the final report, and report may start in 2 or 3 weeks time, it may not be possible to bring forward a report, detailed bring forward a report, detailed primary legislation, but it seems to me, and that's my noble friend.

Lord Herbert could confirm this, that many of the changes may be administrative matters for the police and may not require legislation. But what may require legislation may therefore be quite small. Now this government, like the last one, loves Henry VII's clauses. So would it not be possible for the government to accept a simple Henry VII's clause, and where legislation is required on this, then, then, then a proper regulation can be brought in in future, once the government has consulted on what is required to implement any of the regulation, any of the legal changes necessary to take effect of my noble friend's amendment.



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The noble Lord Blencathra in the nicest possible way that my noble friend and learned friend Lord Hermer has given strict instructions to government Ministers about Henry VII's clauses Ministers about Henry VII's clauses and indeed the various Statutory Instrument committees in this House and in the House of Commons have also expressed a grave view on also expressed a grave view on those issues. And let me can I put this to the committee, which I hope the Committee accepts in good faith the Committee accepts in good faith as I'm trying to do it in good faith.

The government has recognised as a problem. The government has asked the College of Policing and the National Chief Counsel to examine that problem. The government has received an interim report, which the noble Lord Herbert of South Downs referred to at Second Reading of this bill. The government is awaiting the final report, which the noble Lord has said is coming shortly. I have not seen the final report. There may be things in that which either maintain change or revoke altogether the issues that have been raised, quite rightly.

But if the government hadn't realised there was a problem, we wouldn't have asked for the solutions to be brought forward. So I just simply ask. And I know occasionally I do this to say, you know, there's something happening very shortly. But I say in genuine support and help for the committee that we know there's a problem, we want to change that problem, but we're trying to make sure we get sufficiently robust, professional advice in order to be able to make some political decisions based on the advice that we receive.

So with that, I hope that I've tried to help the noble Lord, but I hope he will withdraw his amendments and

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again. I'm sorry. Thank you for the most for giving way. I'm sorry to interrupt giving way. I'm sorry to interrupt him as he was getting right towards the end. It's just one particular point. I think whatever advice the college gives, there's got to be a litmus test of whether or not the government is going to support it. And one of the things I would And one of the things I would encourage them to do is to make sure that whatever advice is given is clear, and that officers on the is clear, and that officers on the street might understand it, because at the end up with another series of 20 conditions, then that's not going to simplify things.

We have to have something, a litmus test. So for me, it might be, you know, if the officer acted in good faith within the law as they believed it will support them. Now, I'm not saying that's the answer in this case, but something that actually is so simple. And the reason, because Baroness Cox hit on this from something that I mentioned earlier, why we were sat here, I had a quick look at the national crime recording advice, and in November of 2025. So under this government last year they published the advice on crime recording for frontline officers.

So cops like I was, let's say at 3:00 in the morning, this is your advice. It's 92 pages long. It's a symptom of a deeper malaise, I'm afraid. And it's infected by the fact that in both cases, the non-crime hate incidents under crime recording rely not on the objective test of is there a crime for which it's very clear in statute, occasionally common law, very small, but relies on the subjective test? Did somebody think there was? Unless that's addressed, we're going to have carry over I would argue in the non-crime incidents and in the crime incidents.

So I understand the good faith of the Minister. I'm not doubting that in any way. But the system is, I'm afraid, already set against him because the officers on the ground have got that 92 pages. And the final thing I'd mentioned in every force, and people may not know this, there are two people employed. One is a crime registrar and one is a non-crime incident registrar that the cops are paying probably about £200,000 a year collectively for who sees the Chief Constable commissioner, in my case every year to confirm that this system is working well, there's a whole industry around it, and unless we address that collectively, and I know Lord Jackson mentioned that the cops have gone a bit woke my term.

They went woke because they were coming under political pressure to go woke. They didn't create it themselves. So we've got to create a political climate. We're all responsible for that. I'm not blaming any government that encourages them to do the right thing, not what we all

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agree has not gone well. I mean, the noble Lord Hogan-howe brings great experience Hogan-howe brings great experience to this and I think in his contribution initially, but also in his comments now he gives food for his comments now he gives food for thought to how you implement the decisions of any review and how decisions of any review and how Ministers ultimately give guidance to police, which Chief Constable's then put in place for police then put in place for police officers on the ground to deal with.

And I say to him it in my view that we will look at that, because the whole purpose of the review is to simplify this procedure, to look at what is necessary and what is helpful, but also to remove and get police to focus on the things that really matter. Because some of the examples that have been given today in this committee are things the police shouldn't be focusing on, because they don't matter at all. And in answer to the Lord Blencathra, it is important that we look at what the regulations and review says, but we can act administratively on much of what happens.

And I have no doubt that the government will do so once we receive the final review. But I just simply say to the noble Lord Young of Acton, if in the moment he could withdraw the amendments, he has the right to bring them back at report, we'll have a clearer picture at some point in the very near future, and I hope that it's

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been a helpful debate. I thank the noble Lord, the

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I thank the noble Lord, the Minister, for his gracious response, and I particularly like to thank my and I particularly like to thank my noble, the noble Lord Lord Hogan-Howe, for co-sponsoring this amendment and for his excellent contributions to this debate. And I'd like to thank the noble and learned Baroness Butler-sloss for learned Baroness Butler-sloss for her contributions, the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones for his. I wish Lord Strasburger a speedy recovery, and I would like to thank my noble friends.

Lord Kempsell, Lord Jackson, Lord Blencathra and I would agree with my noble friend Lord Blencathra that the police, under very difficult circumstances on the whole, do an excellent job. I admire what they do, but and I think he's absolutely right that having to record non-crime hate incidents, having to investigate NCA is as unpopular with ordinary police officers on the front line as it is with free speech campaigners. They don't want to be wasting their time in this way.

Many of them have reached out to me to tell me that and to support this amendment. I'd like to thank the noble Lady Baroness Brinton for her contribution. I'd to say that nothing in this amendment, section four, would prevent the police from recording information they regard as relevant about a suspect's motive in the course of an ongoing criminal investigation or prosecution, the issue of whether
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Lord Young of Acton Portrait Lord Young of Acton (Conservative)
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the police should be allowed to record incidents that clearly don't meet the threshold of being crimes for intelligence gathering purposes. I'm sceptical about, not least because I think there's very little because I think there's very little persuasive evidence that that is helpful when it comes to preventing helpful when it comes to preventing crimes. And I'm generally suspicious of the concept of pre-crime, of trying to nip potential crimes in the bud by monitoring very carefully incidents which don't quite meet the threshold of criminal offences.

But I want to say to her, I'm not going to die in a ditch to say under no circumstances should the police ever be able to record incidents which don't meet the threshold of being a criminal offence for intelligence gathering purposes, provided the recording of those incidents has no adverse consequences for the people. Those incidents are recorded against. And that brings me to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs, which on the whole I thought were very welcome.

And I'm pleased, obviously, that the College of Policing and the National Council of Chief Constables recognise that NCA are not fit for purpose. The regime should be scrapped and replaced with something much better. But I just wanted to respond to two points briefly that my noble friend made in his remarks. First of all, you acknowledged, I think, that the recording threshold for NCA is currently too low and that when the regime is replaced by another, such as the Anti-social Behaviour Incident Regime, the threshold as to what incidents should be recorded will be higher.

That implicit acknowledgement that the threshold has hitherto been too low strikes me as a persuasive argument for scrapping those incidents, which have been recorded under the lower threshold. If that threshold was too low. That's an acknowledgement that the incidents shouldn't have been recorded. So I think that's a good argument for why they should be deleted once this system has been overhauled. And just one final point. My noble friend maintains that even though chief constables have the discretion to disclose NCA when responding to enhanced DBS checks, the College of Policing couldn't find a single example of chief constables having done that.

Well, if that's the case, then there's no cost to the Home Office agreeing that henceforth, under the new regime, anti-social behaviour incidents, if that's what we're going to call them, shouldn't be disclosed in enhanced DBS checks. It's the fear that they might be that not having committed a crime, and that being recorded against your name could stop you getting a job, could stop you volunteering at a school or for a charity. That fear is why the current regime has such a chilling effect on free speech.

So if none have been disclosed, why not just go that one small step further and say hitherto, henceforth they won't be disclosed,

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I give way. I was. Just going to say I hope the the noble Lords coming to the end end noble Lords coming to the end end of his his remarks. Because when you're responding on, on, on, on amendments, you're meant to be relatively brief. And we've had 5.5 minutes now.

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minutes now. I, I apologise to the House for taking up its time. And on that

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taking up its time. And on that amendment. Is it your Lordships pleasure? Amendment 416 e b withdraw Amendment 416 e b withdraw amendment is by leave. Withdraw amendments four and six F and 40 16G have been withdrawn. Amendment 416H. Lord Blencathra.
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Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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My Lords, the House will be pleased to know that this is the last batch of amendments on the last batch of amendments on the scourge of illegal bikes scattering our pavements, and those big bikes of size of motorbikes mowing us down on the pavement. I shall be moving. And as I attend the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, I will also be pleased to know it's probably the last speech I'll be making on this bill for a short time. So is the problem we face is plain and immediate.

Thousands of dockless e-bikes and e-scooters have been dumped across our pavements and public spaces, creating a chaotic, inconsistent and dangerous environment for pedestrians. Now, it's not often I can agree with the the mayor of London, who described the roll out of these services, which has become something of a wild West, a term I understood he he took from my noble friend Baroness Neville-Rolfe. But there's been a rapid commercial expansion of cycling without the regulatory framework or parking infrastructure needed to protect the public and preserve access to our streets.

Now, this is not an abstract nuisance. It's a daily reality for people trying to get to work for parents with pushchairs, for older people, and for blind and visually impaired citizens who rely on clear, unobstructed, tactile routes. It's a public safety and accessibility crisis that has been documented repeatedly by local authorities, clinicians and charities, and it demands a statutory response. Amendments 406 and 416. I provide that response. One creates a targeted operator charge to fund enforcement and drive better operational systems.

The other gives clear, proportionate powers to remove and permanently dispose of manifestly illegal high powered machines that pose acute safety and criminal use risks. Now, my Lords, the evidence from the ground is clear. Local authorities are already acting because the problem is real and costly. Local enforcement teams in Kensington and Chelsea have seized over a thousand dangerously parked rental e-bikes this year and recovered more than 81,000 in release and storage fees to fund further enforcement action. They did that after repeated complaints about pavement obstruction and trip hazards.

Councils have recovered significant sums and seizure and storage fees, and have reinvested that money to expand enforcement activity. These are not isolated seizures. They are the tip of a systemic problem, and clinicians are seeing new patterns of injury directly attributed to heavy hire bikes. Trauma and orthopaedic surgeons report a rise in lower leg injuries caused when heavy e-bike frames fall on riders or pedestrians, a phenomenon that has been labelled in clinical and medical circles as lime bike leg. Now these are not minor bruises.

The weight and construction of modern e-bikes, particularly the overheavy lime ones, mean that even low speed falls can produce fractures and soft tissue damage requiring hospital treatment. And charities representing blind and visually impaired people have described how dumped e-bikes block tactile paving prevents safe access to crossings, forcing people to alter abandoned journeys. And one campaigner described repeatedly walking into e-bikes and being put off as it in central areas because of the unpredictability and danger of obstructed pavements. And residents and local councillors are vocal.

Councils report that residents are sick of e-bikes blocking footpaths, that the current situation is undermining confidence in local streets. And these are not rhetorical flourishes. They reflect sustained public pressure and the failure of voluntary, operator led measures to deliver consistent outcomes. So, my Lords, who is responsible and why? Voluntary measures why are voluntary measures fail? The nuisance is concentrated among a small number of large operators who have scaled fleets rapidly. Lime forest, voi and newer entrance such as bolt.

These companies operate dockless models that rely on users to park responsibly without expectation is not met. The public realm becomes cluttered and dangerous. Operators have taken some steps, funding parking bays, running in-app messages and offering incentives for parking. But these voluntary measures have not been sufficient to prevent widespread obstruction. In order to ensure rapid removal of dangerous or blocking bikes. The result is a patchwork of local rules and inconsistent enforcement that leaves vulnerable people exposed and councils bearing the cost of reckless and of removal.

Councils are not standing idly by, but the tools they currently have are reactive and costly. Seizure and storage operators operations require staff time, secure storage facilities and administrative processing councils are forced into an expensive cycle of removal and storage because operators do not consistently prevent or promptly remedy dangerous parking. Indeed, my Lords, I go further. I submit that they simply don't care. They're making big money from e-bike hire, so why should they bother about safe parking when there's no penalty on them for letting their users dump them anywhere they like? Turning to my amendment 416H.

The operator charge is justification and effect. The proposed operator charge is a proportionate polluter pays mechanism that ensures that those who profit from dockless fleets meet the real costs of their services, impose on the public realm. Operators make big profits from large fleets, fleets and dense urban coverage where voluntary agreements fail. Statutory set clear duties to ensure safe parking and fund the use of designated bays to remove and relocate dangerously parked bikes within a short, enforceable timeframe, and to be accountable for repeat non-compliance.

Where operators business models externalise the costs of pavement obstruction and enforcement, it's fair and efficient to require them to internalise those costs and pay for them themselves, and revenues from the charge can be used by local authorities to fund enforcement teams and rapid removal to secure storage. Invest in parking infrastructure so there's a designated parking bays where required, and data sharing and monitoring systems that would enable councils to identify repeat non-compliance and to target enforcement. Lord Levy to fleet size and repeat non-compliance.

The charge creates a clear financial incentive for companies, big, powerful companies to invest in operational systems, geofencing, in-app parking guidance, dedicated bays, real time rebalancing, and rapid retrieval to prevent cluttering in the first place. Rather than relying on costly reactive models. And I say, My Lords, the charge therefore shifts behaviour upstream operators will find it cheaper to prevent obstruction than to pay repeated levies and enforcement costs. And that's the key measure of this amendment. My amendment 416 is on disposal of manifestly illegal high powered machines, which should not be on a public highway pretending to a bike when they are in fact a motor vehicle.

UK law distinguishes electrically assisted pedal cycles from motor vehicles by objective technical limits and eapc. That's a small electric bike must have a motor of no more than 250W, and must cut out at 15.5mph. Machines that exceed those limits are fitted with throttles or non-type. Approved batteries and motors are legally motor vehicles and must be registered, insured and ridden by licensed drivers. In practice, thousands of high powered or throttle driven e-bikes are on our streets, do not meet eapc rules, and are therefore illegal for public highway use, and I cannot remember which noble friend spoke earlier.

But my Lords, if you care to go down Millbank tonight, 9 or 10:00 at night, you will see dozens of these gigantic bikes with a huge fat tires delivering to all the blocks of flats in the Horseferry Road area, and they are on the pavements, travelling at 20, 30, 40 miles an hour and there are absolute danger. So, my Lords, my amendment makes clear that permanent disposal of these bikes is justified because they are clearly illegal machines. Getting rid of them tackles public safety and fire risk.

Non-type approved high powered e-bikes often use uncertified batteries and conversion kits that increase the risk of battery fires and catastrophic failures. Some of these so-called fat tire bikes weigh up to 70kg and can go 70 miles an hour. I put a mere 70kg person on a 70 kilogram bike, and even at 40 miles an hour, you have a mass that will kill a pedestrian on every single occasion. Permanently removing these evil machines reduces an on going hazard to pedestrians, transport infrastructure and emergency services.

And second, high power and fast e-bikes and e-scooters are repeatedly used to facilitate acquisitive crime and anti-social behaviour. They are now the main criminal vehicle for mobile phone thefts and luxury watch thefts. Indeed, the met has created an interceptor task force using fast, lightweight electric e-bikes, specifically off road models called Saron, which can accelerate from 0 to 50 in three seconds. I would like to be able to bike quicker and accelerate from 0 to 50 in three seconds, but the met have it and that's to combat phone snatching and robberies, aiming to outpace the criminals who use similar fast bikes.

Now. It would be ludicrous, my Lords, to let these criminals have their bikes back once they're caught. Rapid disposal prevents these machines being reclaimed and returned to criminal networks and strengthens deterrence. And this approach, I suggest, my Lords, mirrors precedent in other enforcement contexts where rapid disposal of hazardous or criminally used items is permitted after a short, fair process and police should be able to delegate. I don't want the police doing this, but my bill allows my amendment, allows them to delegate disposal authority to accredited local authorities or approved operators that can demonstrate secure, suitable chains of custody and rapid destruction destruction capability.

My Lords, these amendments are complementary and carefully targeted. Four and six each ensures operators pay for the public realm impacts of their fleets scattered all over the pavements, and are financially incentivised to prevent clutter through better systems and infrastructure. For AI. Removes a small but dangerous subsets of machines that are manifestly illegal and are pose acute safety and criminal route use risks preventing the return to the streets or to criminal networks. Neither amendment bans micromobility. It is not an attack on micro micromobility at all.

Both preserve the environmental and transport benefits of e-bikes and e-scooters, while ensuring that those benefits do not come at the expense of pedestrian safety, accessibility or the proper functioning of public space. My Lords, I, I do urge the House to support these amendments so that we can restore safe, accessible pavements and ensure that micromobility micromobility serves the public interest rather than

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undermining it. I beg to move. When proposed after clause 144

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When proposed after clause 144 insert the new clause. Police powers to confiscate undocked electric cycles and scooters for

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electric cycles and scooters for hire. Amendment 416H. I like very briefly to support

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I like very briefly to support my noble friend Lord Blencathra and his amendment 416. I, as the his amendment 416. I, as the committee won't be massively surprised to hear, given that we have covered this on a number of previous occasions. My Lords, the authorities are turning the police, turning a blind eye to the use of
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Baroness Pidgeon Portrait Baroness Pidgeon (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, these two amendments after clause 144 from Lord Blencathra are trying to give further powers to address the issue of dockless bikes and scooters, which we have discussed many, many times in this chamber and which have become an issue on many of our streets in cities across the country, whether they're part of a scheme or privately owned. And this is a big issue for pedestrians, as we've heard, who find their route blocked by bikes and scooters. And that's despite a number of local authorities installing dedicated parking places for such micromobility schemes.

And we're all aware, as we've heard in this debate, about the challenges local authorities have faced trying to manage these vehicles on pavements and highways. But there's also a further issue. As city Am reported last month, the London property firm had to invoice lime nearly £8,000 for removing, storing and returning dockless bikes left on private land. And despite the ability to geofence where bikes can be left, I understand from reading this article that it took lime 11 months to actually fence off this bit of private land as a no parking zone on their app, and even then, bikes continue to appear.

So this is about the management and regulation of these schemes. And there are many, many stories like this where riders park up their bikes near stations, other transport hubs, cluttering pavements or indeed parking on private land, causing issues with access and deliveries for residents. Now the devolution bill making its way through the House will start to help with the management of micromobility schemes across the country, some of some of which, as we have discussed on earlier committee days, have been on trial for many, many times and years, partly extended by the previous government.

But we do need future legislation around this issue, and I would be grateful if the noble Lord, the Minister, can confirm whether future legislation will be coming which tighten up the rules on what safely allowed on our streets, how people park the regulations, but also what is a safe and legal vehicle on our streets. So I think these amendments are trying to deal with the inevitable consequence of recent governments not acting to keep up with this explosion of different types of micromobility on our streets.

So I hope to hear some assurance from the Minister about future legislation to deal with the understandable concerns across the House. Thank you. Thank you.
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Lord Cameron of Lochiel Portrait Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative)
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My Lords. As the noble Lady Baroness Pidgeon has just said, we've spent much time in our we've spent much time in our previous debates at Committee stage on provisions regarding the use or indeed misuse of electric cycles and scooters, and much of what can be said has already been said. So I hope not to detain the House for long. As always, my noble friend Lord Blencathra raises a strong argument in favour of his amendments in this group, and I thank him for his tenacity in this area.

There are strong feelings in your Lordships House. Many of us have had negative experiences with users of electric bikes and scooters, but these amendments, as has been said, address a slightly different problem. Amendment 416H permits the police to confiscate electric bikes and scooters that have been abandoned in a public place. And as other noble Lords have said, if one requires any evidence as to the extent of this problem, they only need to take a stroll down any major road in London.

The pavements seem to have become obstacle courses for undocked electric bikes. All of this presents some serious challenges. They block users of wheelchairs, they block parents with pushchairs and those with visual impairments, and they also create hazards for pedestrians who may be forced into the road. For this reason, these benches see no reason to object to the police being given greater powers to confiscate such scooters and electric bikes. And if the government does have any objection to this, then I look forward to the noble Minister, noble Lord, the Minister, outlining precisely what they plan on doing to tackle this

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issue. Thank you. My Lords. I was slightly sad to hear that the this is the last from hear that the this is the last from the noble Lord Lord Blencathra moving his amendments. This is the moving his amendments. This is the last in his group tackling on e bikes and scooters, tackling as he he. I'm not sure who first coined he. I'm not sure who first coined it, but tackling as he called it, the the wild, the wild West that we the the wild, the wild West that we see that as he the picture.

He painted many streets. But before he rides into the sunset on on this on on this subject matter, I would like to say that we we of course, share the intention behind these amendments which do seek to tackle obstructive parking and another use of of e-scooters and bicycles. But I must say that the government is and this may not surprise them, not not persuaded that these amendments are actually necessary. Before I go on to the amendments. Once again, perhaps, if I may be very unfair just for dinner break and say for his his Butch Cassidy Lord Blencathra Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid of this debate, noble Lord Viscount Goschen again, once again asked about action being taken, I would repeat what I said earlier in the debate on amendment 416.

The police are, you know, and also, I would say in response to the noble and learned Lady Baroness Butler-Sloss, the police are taking action. I refer again to the the Winter of action initiative, which is running from around from the start of December to the end of January last year to the end of January, which is an initiative intended to focus on making town centres safer across England and Wales in a hole by building on the Summer streets summer initiative, which continues efforts to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour.

And so I would say this is not an issue that the police are blind to. And we certainly and and and ultimately we cannot, you know, want to have an operational independence in theory, but not let that let that be carried out in practice. But let me not detain the House any further and move on to amendment. The actual meat of the amendments. Amendments 41681416I risk creating confusion in an area where the government is already establishing a clear and proportionate regulatory framework, as we are empowering local leaders to license shared cycle schemes and potentially shared e-scooter schemes in future.

Through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which as we speak, has started its committee stages next door in Grand Committee. This licensing framework as and the noble Lady Baroness Pidgeon referred to, will empower local authorities to set parking requirements and act quickly and decisively where these are not met, and to respond to the noble Lady directly on micromobility. We will we you know, this is something we've we've we've we've we've seen an intention to act on when parliamentary time allows.

And I'm afraid I can't be any any clearer on that. Amendment 4168 would complicate enforcement powers in the forthcoming licensing framework. Under that framework, shared cycle schemes will need to seek a licence to operate from the local licensing authority. Operating a scheme without a license or a valid exemption will be a criminal offence. Licence conditions will include centrally set minimum conditions applicable to licences to ensure a baseline of safety and operability. Local licensing authorities will then be able to add further conditions on matters such as fleet size, parking and operating area according to local needs and priorities.

This will ensure that schemes work for whole communities, both users and non-users alike. Furthermore, in e-scooter trials, local authorities are required to provide sufficient parking and ensure that party scooters do not become obstructive to others, particularly those with disabilities. E-scooter operators are additionally using geofencing technology, and this was something that the noble Lady Baroness Pidgeon did did refer to another initiative incentives to encourage users to park in permitted areas with fines for non-compliance. My Lords, the government wants operators to take responsibility for ensuring that vehicles are not obstructing payments, but through licensing, rather than an additional and unnecessary police powers.

The government agrees that shared cycle operators must ensure that bikes are parked appropriately and do not obstruct pavements. This is why licensing will include provisions to fine operators, or suspend or revoke licences for breaching parking requirements or other requirements set out in licences. We must ensure, my Lords, that our streets remain safe and accessible. Turning to amendment 416, I again I recognise the concerns behind it, but the powers it seeks to introduce already exist under current legislation. Section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 provides the police with robust authority to seize vehicles, including electric cycles and scooters, when they are being used in a careless or inconsiderate manner, or indeed worse, as the noble Lord Lord Blencathra would put it in a way that causes alarm, distress or annoyance to the public.

These powers apply both to on road and off road electric cycles and scooters, including where landowner consent has not been given. Furthermore, under section 60 of the same act, the police can dispose of vehicles seized under these provisions. And again, this was something that the the noble Lord Lord Blencathra referred to in moving his amendment. This framework powers addresses the concerns behind the amendment without the need for additional legislation. Clause eight of the bill strengthens these existing powers by removing the requirement

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for officers. Oh, apologies. What? The Minister. Could I just

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What? The Minister. Could I just ask him if the powers exist? Are

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the police actually using them? Well, I would say that they are, but it's. But but we but we always leave it I think for, you know, for for chief officers to direct their police forces to use, use the, the, police forces to use, use the, the, the, the full waterfront of different powers and, and, and regulations to enforce under the under under their purview. I mean we could always encourage it. I'm sure I'm sure the the a number of chief officers will be looking intently on debates of all ages, all days of Committee stage and of the Crime and Policing Bill and understand the priorities that your Lordships' House voiced.

And certainly we've had thanks to no, no little thanks to noble Lord Lord Blencathra and others. Plenty of debate on this issue, and I think they will have heard that it's a it's a it's a matter of extreme concern. As I was saying, clause eight of the bill will allow the police to act immediately, to stop offending behaviour and to confiscate vehicles without delay. In addition, the government has consulted on changes to secondary legislation to enable quicker disposal of seized vehicles and our response will be published in due course.

These measures demonstrate the government's commitment to tackling illegal and anti-social use of micro mobility. What a dreadful dread phrase of e-bikes and e-scooters, effectively without duplicating powers that are already in place. My Lords, I want to stress that riding a privately owned electric scooter on public roads is illegal, and the police have powers to take enforcement action against offenders, including seizure. Seizure of e-scooter for the offence of driving without insurance or a licence. The enforcement of road traffic laws remains, of course, an operational matter for chief officers who are best placed to allocate resources according to local needs, threats, risks and priorities.

But the government will continue to support the police with the tools and powers they need. But this amendment would add unnecessary complexity without improving public safety. With that in mind, I would ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
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Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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I am grateful to those noble Lords and the Minister of spoken in Lords and the Minister of spoken in this short but again important little debate on cycling, and particularly grateful to my noble friend Viscount Goschen and the friend Viscount Goschen and the noble and learned Lady Butler-sloss and my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and even for the first time, a Lib Dem spokesperson has actually supported in concept one of my cycling amendments. So I either may be on the right side or I'm doing something terribly wrong.

If the Lib Dems are backing me on something. Over the last few weeks, as we've debated various amendments on bikes of all sorts, I put down, a general mood arose that when you look at delivery couriers, cycling on pavement is big, fast, heavy, illegal bikes and scooters and bikes dumped on the pavements. The mood was, well, your amendments are not perfect Lord Blencathra, but there's a problem here and something needs to be done about it. Now I hear what the noble Lord, the Minister, has said as far as these sort of big illegal bikes, scooters or motorbikes are concerned, they're already illegal and the police have power to do something about it.

And he suggested that the devolution bill and the powers it in that will deal with all these cycling problems between now and report, we shall I shall look more carefully at the Bill to see if it does cover all the gaps, but it may be at report. We may still want to bring back some little amendment on one of these issues, possibly on the vicarious criminal liability of delivery couriers, which we discussed last time. And a lot of colleagues thought this was something terribly wrong and something needed to be done about it.

But on the basis, my Lords, that if the government will do something about it, I won't need to. If the government don't do what we think we need to do, then I will do

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something at report. But on that basis, my Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment. Is it Your Lordship pleasure?

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Is it Your Lordship pleasure? With amendment 4168 being withdrawn? Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 416I Lord Blencathra not moved. Amendment 416J and 416K moved. Amendment 416J and 416K already debated, not moved. already debated, not moved. Amendment 416M already debated, not moved. The question is at clause 145 stand part of the bill. As many as are of that opinion will say. Content, content, content, content.

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The contents have it. My Lords, I beg to move that the house be resumed. We will then move to dinner break business. We will therefore not return to the bill

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before 2036. The house be resumed. As many as are of that opinion will say content the contrary not content. content the contrary not content. The contents have it. Question for

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short debate on atrocity crimes Lord Alton in Liverpool. My Lords.

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My Lords. In welcoming all noble Lords who are participating in this question for short debate on preventing mass for short debate on preventing mass atrocities. I'd like to begin by thanking the noble Baroness, the Minister, for the interest that she Minister, for the interest that she has shown in the standing Group on atrocity Crimes report. I am a member of that group, and I'm
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Lord Shipley Portrait Lord Shipley (Liberal Democrat)
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member of that group, and I'm grateful to you for the meeting which she had with myself, with noble, the noble Baroness Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws and Doctor Evelina Ochab last week. My Lords, I have the honour to chair the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I'm a patron of the coalition for Genocide Response and co-authored a book on our failure to honour the obligations of the 1948 convention on the Crime of Genocide that gives us four obligations to predict, to prevent, to protect and to punish.

And my fundamental complaint, and that of the standing group, is that we do none of these things well, that we have no cross-government atrocity prevention strategy. And that is something which, of course, the House of Commons International Development Committee has called for. We live, my Lords, in a world on fire. Yet we often seem incapable of making the link between wars in places like Ukraine, Sudan, the Middle East and Burma and elsewhere. The link with the more than 117 million people who are forcibly displaced through conflict, violence and persecution, including 14.3 million people who have been uprooted in Sudan.

Those people often end up in small boats, either in the Mediterranean or coming across the English Channel to our shores. We seem incapable of linking the breakdown of international law conventions and accountability to the emboldening of dictators and autocrats to what happens when states believe that they can get away with war crimes, the seizure of territory, the abduction of civilians including children, the bombing of hospitals and schools. In 1948, foundations were laid for a new world order, the Genocide Convention and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights were cornerstones.

But we would be deceiving ourselves were we to suggest that the progress is not at risk in this world. On fire. In 1959, Dag Hammarskjold, the United Nations secretary general, confidently insisted, and I quote, that the organisation I represent is based on a philosophy of solidarity. 80 years after its first inaugural session, held just a stone's throw away from here, Hammarskjöld's successor says solidarity has been replaced by, again, I quote, powerful forces undermining global cooperation.

To challenge this, we should use our place in the Security Council to champion the values of the United Nations Charter and the cause of international justice. To do this, we'll need to lead by example. So whether the genocide is being committed. I hope the noble Baroness, the Minister, will back these proposals back in 2015 at column 371 on November the 19th, I warned the House of a likely
19:40
Lord Alton of Liverpool Portrait Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)
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genocide against the Yazidis in 2019. In northern Iraq, I took first hand evidence, notwithstanding that and 79 questions and interventions, the Foreign Office declined to act and Foreign Office declined to act and it took until 2023 for the FCDO to accept that a genocide had occurred against the Yazidis, and only against the Yazidis, and only because a German court concluded that it had something no British court is empowered to do. I repeatedly raised similar threats to Uyghur Muslims to Nigerian Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, to North Koreans, to Tigrayans, to Burmese, Rohingya and Karen.

Since the 2017 military coup in Burma, soldiers have butchered men, tortured women, left over 1 million Rohingya refugees crammed into dilapidated camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar. I saw in Burma firsthand a village which had been torched and heard accounts of mass atrocities. Perhaps the Nobel Baroness Shah Minister can give us her assessment of the role we are playing at the ICJ in bringing perpetrators to justice, and perhaps she'll reflect on where impunity and a lack of justice has led in Sudan, a country which continues to bleed after a thousand days of war.

I first went to Sudan during a civil war which had claimed 2 million lives. After later going to Darfur in 2004. I said, if this isn't genocide, what is? 2 million people were displaced, 300,000 people killed. And Omar al-Bashir, the author of these atrocities, although indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, has never been brought to justice. Early in 2023, there were reports of new outrages and later of mass graves. The all party parliamentary group on Sudan asked me to chair a fresh inquiry.

It led to our report of the APPG entitled Genocide All Over Again in Darfur. It described the consequences of impunity and warned of the impending dangers of inaction. Luis Moreno-ocampo, the International Criminal Court prosecutor who indicted Bashir, told our APPG inquiry that for as long as Bashir and people like him enjoy impunity, others will think that they too can get away with genocide. My Lords, the United Kingdom should now seek his arrest in 2023. We concluded that without justice, I quote, whatever happens when the violence in Sudan ends, there will be no lasting and credible peace.

We said impunity had to end in these 1000 days of war, 150,000 people have died, either caught in the crossfire or from disease or hunger. Millions are displaced. Christian Aid say 34 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. More than 11 million children face a catastrophic crisis of hunger, and at least 770,000 people were at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition. And last week there were more deaths and displacements in North Darfur. The International Organisation for migration says that over 8000 people were displaced from villages in Conoy locality on Friday alone.

It is outrageous that these corrupt marauding warlords from both sides, enabled by foreign quartermasters, are also preventing humanitarian aid from reaching those most in need. We surely need additional targeted sanctions and a review of UK arms sales to countries that are supplying the SAF and R.s.f. We need accountability and justice. Now I know that the noble Baroness, the Minister and the Foreign Secretary care deeply about this. I agree with them, but was therefore concerned to read reports that, according to a whistleblower, warnings of a possible genocide in Sudan was removed from a UK risk assessment by Foreign Office officials.

My Lords, why and how did that happen? I hope the noble Baroness, the Minister, will talk about the cuts that are reported to be taking in the unit dealing with atrocity crimes, and I hope the noble Baroness will look at ways in which joint analysis of conflict and stability reports are made available to Parliament. In our report, we call for early and urgent warning systems to equip local organisations to be able to alert communities to potential threats and provide information on safe routes and shelters.

Between 2000 and 2020, at least 37 countries experienced mass atrocities or had concerns that they could take place with the highest number of armed conflicts since World War two. We must do more. My Lords, and I hope our debate this evening will help us to do that.

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My Lords, can I, in addition to thanking the noble Lord Lord, for thanking the noble Lord Lord, for securing this timely debate for this evening, thank him also for all that he does in advocating for all that he does in advocating for the rights of those most in need around the world. We are grateful for the challenging and powerful for the challenging and powerful way he's opened this debate this evening. My focus is on the
19:46
Lord Bates Portrait Lord Bates (Conservative)
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mechanisms in place to assess the threat to life posed by cuts to UK humanitarian aid, and on their compatibility with our obligations under international law. It's a well established principle contained in the Geneva Conventions, most clearly stated in article seven and eight of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court that deliberate deprivation of access to food, medicine and humanitarian aid for a civilian population represents a crime against humanity. But what if this failure to facilitate the humanitarian aid, medicine and food for starving population was a result of cutting the budgets of emergency aid providers? Of course, there is no absolutely no legal or moral equivalence between the two actions.

They differ profoundly in terms of intent and jurisdiction, but they differ less in terms of effect from the perspective of the child in need or the mother who's a refugee. It matters not whether the access to the food and medicine essential for life was denied to them as a result of a warlord with a gun or an official with a pen, the impact for them both is the same. Tom Fletcher, the outstanding emergency relief coordinator the UN has warned of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.

With 87 million lives at risk this year. That's more than the total deaths in World War two. Who is defending their legal right to life? Who's intervening to stop this hidden atrocity? What happened to the responsibility to protect? Over the next 18 months, UK aid will be cut by £6.5 billion to £9.2 billion, at time when the humanitarian need has never been greater this century, our contribution to alleviating that suffering has never been lower this century. UK contributions to the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, the Global Fund for Aids, TB and malaria and the World Food Programme have already been reduced.

An in-depth study published in The Lancet last year forecasted 14 million additional deaths by 2030 as a result of the US aid cuts alone, 4.5 million of them young children. Applying that same methodology to the proposed UK aid cuts would mean an additional 3.69 million deaths by 2030, and 1.18 million of those would be children. Who speaks for them? What the article six and 24 of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child mean for them.

What does it do for them? The government cannot claim that they're unaware of the effects of these cuts, their own equality impact assessment of the reductions in Oda, published last year, warned them of the risks to life in cuts to health spending. On Saturday, I had the great privilege of joining over 2000 others at Methodist Central Hall to mark the 80th anniversary of the first meeting of the UN General Assembly, the noble and learned Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, spoke passionately for the government about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and he reminded us, and I quote, that every person, by virtue of their humanity, has protected rights.

But rights don't feed the hungry and heal the sick unless we uphold them and apply them as the measure of our actions too. So my request to the Minister this evening is that before the revised allocations in the aid budget are implemented for the next financial year, will she ask the Attorney General to review them to ensure that they are fully compatible with our responsibilities to protect those most in need in our world and our obligations under international law, which we have done so much in this country over the past 80 years to shape and uphold.

If he does, then perhaps then we may rediscover the philosophy of human solidarity, which Lord Houghton reminded us of at the beginning of this debate.
19:50
Lord Bishop of Manchester Portrait The Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops)
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My Lords, I'm grateful to the noble Lord Alton for securing this noble Lord Alton for securing this debate tonight and his deep and long standing commitment to these issues, I think serves as a great example to all of us in this House. One of my own personal unpaid roles is I chair Uspg. It's a global Anglican mission agency. We're celebrating our 325th birthday this year. We have been operating for a long time, and we operate across much of the globe, and it's in that capacity in particular.

I become aware from the contacts we have with people in various jurisdictions of places, not only where atrocities are regularly committed against religious and ethnic minorities, sometimes Christians, but not exclusively, but also where the security or the political situation is edging towards a greater risk of atrocity crimes and crimes against humanity in the future. I'm actually going to avoid the word genocide because I'm cautious about where I use it. If we use it too widely, we devalue what is a very powerful word that we must say for those situations that are absolutely clear, when clearly we do sometimes have atrocities committed in Britain.

In my time as its bishop, Manchester has suffered both the arena attack of 2017 and the murderous assault at Heaton Park synagogue just a few months ago. But my remarks about the wider global context there are about places where the situation descends into a context where atrocities become systemic. And, my Lords, we are very much not that. But one thing I've learned is that can be so many different reasons why this happens. Some are cases of weak government. Think of eastern DRC, where Christian civilians targeted by armed extremists, some of them are affiliated with ISIS.

There's attacks on churches, massacres during worship, killings of whole villages. DRC is an example of a long standing weak state. The number Lord Alton mentioned earlier about Darfur. I won't repeat his comments, but I guess that's another similar example. So for these places where the problem is the weakness of the governmental institutions, my question is, well, what can the UK government do? Can we still use soft power as we have often so well in the past to support the establishment of better governmental institutions? How can we help regimes manage their countries better? Sometimes that's by taking a long view.

We've educated many future leaders, if not all turned out to be good ones, but at least some have. What is it today? But my Lords, it's not always about weak and ineffective government. Sometimes atrocities happen with the government itself is behind them. Earlier this evening I was at a meeting on the estate discussing Iran. I've got lots of Iranian refugees in my diocese. I've got several Farsi speaking clergy and several Farsi worshipping congregations, and perhaps Iran, along with Myanmar, which the Lord Alton has already spoken about so eloquently, represents what happens when long standing authoritarian governments begin to face serious challenge.

And particularly distressing development in Iran is the increased use of maiming rather than killing, because not only does that reduce the fatality figures that inevitably dominate the news cycle, it can also be politically expedient, as we've seen in the past, in parts of Africa and elsewhere. If you kill someone, you make their family your enemy. If you make maim someone, you make their family, their carers. So how can the UK government better support those at risk from the most oppressive regimes? And we've debated refugee status so many times in this House.

I'm not going to go there tonight, but what can we do to support those at risk from those most oppressive regimes, particularly when those regimes are beginning to collapse? But all of those places where we need to be alert, where perhaps there isn't a lot of atrocities committed at the moment, but there's great potential in the future, and I do worry greatly about the situation in India, about the increasing violence there and the way in which the current regime in India does little to restrict that violence, to restrict its more extreme adherence and followers.

The situation there, I think, has deteriorated dramatically over the last ten years. Christians, Muslims, other minority groups are often picked on and treated the most appalling manners. I won't go into a great list, but that's one example where I fear that one of the problems we face is that our own commercial interests can trump challenging atrocities. I remember that the noble Lord Alton asked about a year or so ago, and I came in behind him at about West Papua, and I think we were told then, well, well, Indonesia is an important trading partner.

We can't get to can't get to cross with them. I'm old enough to remember the ethical foreign policy of the incoming Blair government in 1997. That didn't last very long, did it? So are we now in an era where UK commercial interests trumps and is intended any matters of morality? That was the principle that justified the worst excesses of our own colonial history in centuries past. Does it have to be how we choose to exercise our foreign policy in 2026?
19:56
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Portrait Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Conservative)
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My Lords, I too would like to >> My Lords, I too would like to congratulate the noble Lord Alton for introducing this debate today, and I'm incredibly grateful to him and I'm incredibly grateful to him for all he does to ensure that human rights are never forgotten in human rights are never forgotten in this House. This is an important topic to address. Now, more than ever, I declare my interest as co-chair of the women, Peace and Security APPG, a member of the Steering Board of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, and I set up and chair the Afghan Women's Support Forum.

The Red cross reports that the global situation of armed conflict has deteriorated into a world succumbing to war, characterised by over 130 active conflicts, more than double the number of conflicts 15 years ago. Wars are increasingly protracted, complex and deadly, with 204 million people now living in areas controlled or contested by armed groups. The ICRC warns that the rules of war are being ignored, with civilians bearing the brunt of attacks, and women are disproportionately affected.

It was Major General Patrick Campbell who said it is now more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern wars. This was brought home to me when I visited Iraq last year. I had the privilege of visiting Lalish, the most sacred temple of the Yazidis, in 2014. As Lord Alton has, noble Lord Alton has already referred to ISIL, attacked the Yazidi people, Sinjar, destroying 400,000 of their community, their community, killing many and taking around 6000 women and girls captive to be used as sex slaves.

The UK did. I understood the UK had recognised this as a genocide. And today, nearly 11 years on, still a third of the women and girls are missing. There are so many other examples, as we've already heard, some of which have already been raised. Gender apartheid in Afghanistan, child hostages and the use of rape in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, Ethiopia, Haiti, DRC, Nigeria, Myanmar, the Uyghurs in China. All heartbreaking stories States have a legal obligation to prevent atrocities, and there are a number of international protection mechanisms in place.

However, despite their powerful wording, these mechanisms are globally weak and often there is a lack of political will with hard work for commitments not integrated into policy or programmes. And there is a glaring gap globally between the obligations under the Geneva Conventions and action. I understand that the UK maintains that it has tools available to prevent atrocity crimes abroad, including early warning mechanisms, the use of diplomacy to de-escalate, and development to address root causes. However, the Trump administration has slashed overseas development aid, and why have the UK and others followed suit at this critical time, often removing life saving help from the poorest countries? Most importantly, we should be investing more into conflict prevention so atrocities are never committed.

This would not only save lives, but also billions of pounds. By averting the massive costs of war and fostering stable societies with economic growth and improved livelihoods. Studies show that for every £1 invested, it can save as much as £100. However, the report by Mercy Corps and Saferworld last year revealed a sharp decline in the UK's investment in peace building, violence prevention conflict resolution over recent years, an area where it was once a leader in conflict resolution. It is proven that including women in peace processes is crucial for durable peace.

Yet women remain significantly underrepresented as negotiators, mediators and signatories despite efforts to increase their roles in peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace building. And the UK has just withdrawn funding for the women mediators across the Commonwealth network. Finally, too often these crimes are committed with impunity for the perpetrators. In talking to survivors of atrocities, most will say that they want justice. Yet the mechanisms for this are ineffectual, and often the nations where the crime has been committed have no institutions or appetite to address this.

So can how can the ICJ, the ICC and universal jurisdiction become more effective? My Lords, we must not fall into the trap of mistaking process for progress, status for impact, or rhetoric for action. Clearly, we need to try and ensure peace at all costs. Yet the UK appears to be cutting its contribution to conflict prevention, resolution and international development at this critical time. Most importantly, we need to stand up to those who wish to ignore and undermine existing international mechanisms and instead help to strengthen and make them more effective.

I leave you with the words of Ernest Hemingway, who said, never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Thank you.
20:01
Lord Rook Portrait Lord Rook (Labour)
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My Lords. I am grateful to the noble Lord Alton for securing this debate. And as others have said, for his timeless commitment to these issues, I direct noble Lords these issues, I direct noble Lords to my interest as a partner of the good Faith partnership and as one of the founders of the UK Freedom of Religion or Belief Forum. At the outset, I also want to thank my noble friend, the Minister, Baroness Chapman, for her leadership on these issues. I met the noble Lady earlier today and I'm hugely grateful to her and her team for their sustained efforts to reduce conflict and promote peace in some of the most challenging contexts around our world.

It is now almost seven years since the FCDO published the Bishop of Truro Review, commissioned by the then Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. That report, led by the Right Reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Truro, now the Lord Bishop of Winchester, Philip Mounstephen, assessed both the scale of persecution faced by Christians globally and the adequacy of our foreign policy response. Government accepted all 22 recommendations and an independent review in 2022 welcomed further progress, while also identifying the need to strengthen protections for vulnerable communities.

Further progress has been made under the current government and I commend the work of my hon. Friend David Smith MP. In the other place, the UK's Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or belief in particular. I also want to welcome the FCDO strategy for FoRB, its willingness to identify countries of concern and prioritise specific contexts signals a welcome move towards a more proactive approach, an approach that has already been affirmed on multiple occasions by noble Lords in this debate. By implementing the Truro recommendations, His Majesty's Government can go a considerable way in dealing with the issues at stake in this discussion.

More often than not, forb violations are a symptom of wider socio political problems and instability. Left untreated, these issues all too easily escalate, resulting in wider harms and the potential for greater atrocities. Furthermore, the systems required for early interventions interrelate in relation to forb violations will increase and accelerate our ability to prevent further atrocities. As with the other 21 recommendations, His Majesty's Government accepted recommendations seven of the Truro Review in full. There have been valuable developments since. These include the creation of the office for Conflict Stabilisation and Mediation, the Mass Atrocity Prevention Hub, and the development of early warning tools such as the countries of risk of instability process and joint analysis of conflict and stability assessments in terms similar to the noble Lord Alton.

Earlier, the UN Secretary General has warned that the world is witnessing the highest number of conflicts since the end of the Second World War, with rising identity based violence and serious violations of international human rights becoming more and more prevalent in such a fragile global order, readiness to act is essential. My question is therefore focussed and simple how is the recommendation seven of the Truro Review being refreshed in practice? What further steps does my noble friend, the Minister, believe are now needed to ensure that early warning consistently leads to early action, particularly where religious persecution significantly heightens the risk of future atrocities? My Lords, the Truro Review gave us a framework.

The government's Forbes strategy gives us a renewed momentum. The task now is to ensure that recommendation, recommendation seven is fully realised, so that our commitment to prevention is not only principled and aspirational, but operational

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and effective. My Lord, I'm very grateful to my

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My Lord, I'm very grateful to my friend, the noble Lord Lord Alton, for securing this important debate. Truly, my Lords, he's the greatest Truly, my Lords, he's the greatest parliamentary champion for human rights this country has had since William Wilberforce. And and if you William Wilberforce. And and if you want to know just how good he is, then he's the only member of Parliament sanctioned by China, Iran and North Korea. And that to Iran and North Korea. And that to me puts him on the side of the angels.

Now, tonight, my Lords, I want to focus on a group no one cares about much about. That is a genocide of Christians worldwide. The UK and the West rightly reacted strongly over the murder of 8000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. But since then, my Lords, we have 8000 Christians killed every two years, 4000 a year. For the last 30 years. That's 120,000 worldwide, with at least 50,000 of them massacred in Nigeria alone. Now, persecution of Christians takes many forms targeted killings, kidnappings, forced displacement, arson and attacks on churches, legal discrimination, imprisonment and social exclusion.

The organisation opened doors reports more than 365 million Christians facing high to extreme persecution. Persecution is concentrated in several regions and countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is identified as the most violent region for Christians, with extremist religious groups and weak governance driving attacks. Countries repeatedly ranked highest for severity include Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan. What do these countries all have in common? The killing there is done by Islamic extremist governments or out of control Islamic factions dedicated to killing Christians.

Islamist extremists are killing Christians at the rate of one every two years, and the killing ranges from individual murders and targeted assassinations to mass attacks on communities and churches. My Lords, what is the UK do about it? Well, the short answer is absolutely nothing under all governments for the last 30 to 40 years. Now, theoretically, the
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Lord Blencathra Portrait Lord Blencathra (Conservative)
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United Kingdom evaluates atrocity risks through something called the joint Analysis of conflict and stability. The jacks, which the stability. The jacks, which the government sees as a wait for it. A strategic cross-government assessment used by the UK assessment used by the UK government to understand the causes, the actors, the drivers of conflict in a specific country so as to inform effective policy and drive action, which is early warnings, action, which is early warnings, diplomatic pressure, sanctions and development aid restrictions. The jacks are not published and everyone knows that they're useless and never implemented.

The Commons International Development Committee has long called for improvements, but they were rejected by the last government and this one has said they will not implement the recommendations either. My Lords, the jacks are a big joke, but not for the tens of thousands of murdered Christians or the hundreds of thousands driven from their homes. We do not need early warnings to understand the causes, the actors or the drivers of genocide. We just need to do something about it when we see it under our noses all around the world.

Now, Lord, my Lord, not much. How much more understanding of Muslim genocide of Christians in Nigeria or Eritrea, Sudan or Somalia do we need before cutting off their aid to the countries doing it or doing nothing about it? Last year we gave 201 million to Afghanistan, hundred and 43 million to Somalia, hundred and 42 million to Yemen, Nigeria, 108 million and 133 million to Pakistan. Pakistan, like Nigeria, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, spending 1 billion on nuclear weapons and 9 billion on defence and UK taxpayers fund that country which specialises in bombing countries to kill Christians on Afghanistan.

We say that it's focusing on vulnerable women and girls, food security, health and education, really minorities. The Taliban have banned girls from education after primary school. They've restricted their access to healthcare. They've restricted where they can work, causing poverty. In September, Germany, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands announced legal action before the International Court of Justice against Afghanistan. Violence against women. Can the noble Lord, the Minister, tell me if the UK will join these countries in legal action against the Taliban? Or will we just carry on giving them the money? Afghanistan is a thoroughly evil regime which despises everything we believe in, and we just keep pouring money into them in the naive belief that we're making a difference and helping women and girls.

If we want to help to stop the killings of Christians,

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then let us stop funding the countries which are doing it. My Lords. I welcome.

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I welcome. This debate and I also pay tribute to noble Lord Lord Alton and his team on the tireless work that focuses on atrocity prevention that focuses on atrocity prevention and human rights. The question before us is a practical and legal. How does a government assess the How does a government assess the risk of genocide and mass atrocities, and what does it do when the risk is evident? Article one of the Genocide Convention is explicit. We undertake, and I quote,
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Baroness Helic Portrait Baroness Helic (Conservative)
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to prevent and to punish genocide. That is a binding obligation which That is a binding obligation which we have signed up to. History shows that genocide is rarely sudden. It does not start with a mass grave, a massacre or a rape camp. It is preceded by recognisable patterns, dehumanising language, othering, scapegoating of minorities, pressure on independent media and civil society, corruption and state capture and security forces in all militias acting without constraint. Those are the conditions in which atrocity crimes become possible.

We have seen this sequence too often in Rwanda, in Darfur, in Srebrenica, the persecution of Yazidis, as my noble Lord, noble friend said, persecution of Christians and the Rohingya. Now before the International Court of Justice, alongside allegations of related to persecution of Uyghurs and in Ukraine and Gaza. The common thread is not lack of warning, but delay and failure of resolve, failure of political will. While action was still possible, my Lords, others have already addressed many contexts in which genocide has happened or is happening.

I will focus on Bosnia and Herzegovina. 30 years after the genocide which was committed in Srebrenica. The risk of relapse must be treated seriously. A recent policy briefing on Bosnia, produced by the standing Group on Atrocity crimes, identifies familiar risks. And here I would like to declare an interest as one of the members of the advisory board. The hollowing of the state institutions, normalised hate speech, genocide denial and the celebration of convicted war criminals, corruption and parallel security structures.

These are not isolated incidents. The evidence is clear. Senior political figures in the Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska, ethno nationalist aligned with the Kremlin, have denied the genocide. Publicly ordered convicted war criminals including Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. In this climate, all the Non-serbs are spoken of not as equal citizens but as a threat, a threat that needs to be dealt with. I welcome the government's stated support of Bosnia's sovereignty and the Dayton settlement. Stated commitment to Eufor Althaea.

But the central question is whether this deters those prepared to push the boundaries. Deterrence is not achieved by statements. It exists only when spoilers calculate. The consequences will follow from the actions. With this in mind, I would like to ask several questions. Recently, the United States has regrettably lifted sanctions on the very people who are looking to destabilise the country. Very people who are denying genocide and very people who are seeking separate actions. Will the government state unequivocally that the United States, the United Kingdom, will not follow suit on enforcement? What concrete steps are being taken to prevent sanctions evasion through proxies, front companies and policing jurisdictions? What further actions will be taken against those who finance and facilitate destabilisation? And additionally, I hope that the review of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme and lobbying rules will look into paid political influence activity carried out in the United Kingdom on behalf of foreign authorities and organisations whose senior leadership is subject to UK sanctions on EU for annual renewals.

The UN Security Council created a Cliff edge, an invitation to brinkmanship. But the government pressed for a more resilient mandate, including longer authorisations, so that the stability of Bosnia is not expected. Exposed to predictable yearly risks. There is also a practical signalling available right now. Would the government consider the deployment of a small UK specialist training contingent to Bosnia, with readiness to bolster troop strength if required? And in parallel, will it work with supportive states on coordinated sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, to secure compliance with international law from those bent on destabilisation? My Lords, atrocity prevention depends on timely decisions, credible consequences and consistent enforcement.

I believe that Bosnia is a country where deterrence can still work, and where acting now can prevent not only instability, but the crimes that so often follow

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it. My Lords. I thank the noble Lord, Lord

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I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ultram, for securing this timely debate and all laws that have spoken in it. Extremely thoughtful spoken in it. Extremely thoughtful contributions, and especially from the Bishop of Manchester, who reminds us that these things don't reminds us that these things don't always at the other side of the world. They are closer to home and world. They are closer to home and more prevalent, and we cannot continue to think of atrocity crimes, genocide crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing as rare events.

They're increasingly the heart of today's most difficult foreign policy crises, from the Sudan to Myanmar, from Gaza to Ukraine, identity based violence has become a weapon of choice for authoritarians and extremists. It our system for understanding preventing such crimes have not kept pace. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact recent report on Sudan made it painfully clear. It revealed that despite clear warnings from the government and, I quote, it opted to take the least ambitious approach to the prevention of atrocities, unquote.

That should trouble us all. When system failed to generate bold, timely policy options, Ministers are left unable to act with urgency, such crisis as demand. So I ask the Minister what lessons have been taken from Sudan, and how can the government's approach change to ensure that early risk analysis now triggers early preventative action? This matters all the more now because the foreign, Commonwealth and Development Offices internal restructure appears to be replacing the very capability to evaluate atrocity risks at risk itself.

This is not simply a reshuffle of the desks. It has real implications for our ability to detect, analyse and respond to mass violence. Can the Minister assure the House that atrocity prevention expertise will be safeguarded and not decreased in this process? And finally, the whistleblower's account that references to a possible genocide in Sudan should be removed from internal risk assessments, should be removed from return assessments should prompt the most serious reflection if officials feel unable to use the very term that describes the gravest of crimes, when the evidence points clearly in that direction, then we must confront why crucial analysis is not guiding timely action.

Does the Minister agree that one of the lessons to learn from the Sudan must be to strengthen the channels of honesty and accountability? My Lords, watching and documenting atrocities is not enough. Prevention demands more than observation. It requires analysis that drives decisive action, backed by systems and structures strong enough to ensure accountability. Without such commitments, our ability to protect vulnerable populations and uphold our moral responsibilities will always fall short. Thank you.
20:18
Earl of Courtown Portrait The Earl of Courtown (Conservative)
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My Lords. I join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for securing this timely debate in for securing this timely debate in our increasingly unstable world. The incidence of atrocities, as The incidence of atrocities, as mentioned by all noble Lords, has grown in recent years. The noble Lord has long been an effective champion for the victims of crimes against humanity and genocide, and in particular, he has consistently stood up for the Uyghurs, who have suffered so much at the hands of the Chinese government.

My Lords, the regimes and organisations that commit atrocities invariably seek to hide their crimes through information blackouts and suppression of freedom of speech. Photographic evidence is particularly powerful, and that is why those who perpetrate these crimes seek to suppress images. The importance of image based evidence was demonstrated in the case of the massacres in Sudan, where the evidence could be seen from space using satellite imaging. My Lords, I know none of us will forget the harrowing images that we have seen from Ukraine and in Iran.

Despite the regime's internet blackout, the evidence of murder of protesters is irrefutable. On the specific point about the situation in Iran, as highlighted by the right reverend Prelate, the times newspaper reported this weekend that as many as 16,500 protesters may have been killed by the Iranian regime. Has the noble Baroness Shah Minister been able to verify any of these reports, and what steps the Minister is taking in response to them? The systematic mass murder of civilians on this scale must be met with the harshest condemnation on the plight of the Uyghurs.

We have debated this issue on many previous occasions. Can the noble Baroness Meyer Minister please set out what the work the government is doing to verify and monitor reports of abuses by the Chinese government? And when was the last time Ministers in her department raised this issue and their concerns with the Chinese government? My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool is completely right to have triggered this important debate. We do need to monitor risks and rapidly developing situations where atrocity crimes are likely.

I look forward to the noble Baroness. The Minister's response.
20:21
Baroness Chapman of Darlington Portrait Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Labour)
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My Lords, can I just begin by >> My Lords, can I just begin by thanking, as everybody else has done, I think thank you. And I know done, I think thank you. And I know he doesn't need this, but just to say how much I respect and value his contributions generally in this House. But I think tonight was a particularly powerful speech that we heard from him. And it it's because he does this that he manages to keep these issues of atrocity prevention, genocide determination, the, the atrocities that too often are we see happening around the world.

He brings them to us and makes sure that they are never, ever to be ignored and we cannot turn away. And I really do thank him for doing that. I didn't know he'd written a book, but I will. I'll find myself a copy and make sure that I read it. I'm really grateful for the discussions that we've had, not just tonight, but on in recent months particularly, I have to say, on Sudan, but in many other areas as well. And this has to be among the most sobering and serious of subjects that we discuss in this House.

The very worst of atrocities that humans commit against each other. And I think everybody, I thank everyone for the contributions that they've made, even though Lord Blencathra, I don't think everybody sees things in exactly the same way when it comes to the role that our Oder programmes play. But we can we can come to that. I do have to begin, as the Earl of Courtown did, with an alarming acknowledgement that across the globe, conflict is reaching record levels, and with it so too is abhorrent violence.

He asked me if I can verify reports of numbers coming from Iran. I'm afraid I can't this evening, but I'm sure as soon as that is possible, we will be bringing forward information to the House as he would want us to do. I mean, I think that people across the country are completely horrified at the accounts that we're starting to hear from Iran, but also from Sudan, certainly in Gaza, Ukraine, for sure. Also eastern DRC. I mean, we can all list these dreadful contexts, and I know the regularity with which we're hearing such stories can leave the public as well as, as in this House, really at a loss sometimes as to what we can do.

So it is with a great deal of humility that I just want to set out what the UK government's position is on this, and I have met with the noble Lord Lord Alton and Baroness Kennedy to discuss the specific issue of genocide determination and universal jurisdiction. The situation I'm going to lay out is the situation as it is today. Clearly, that doesn't mean that there can't be movement in the future. And obviously we do take on board the challenge that comes on this critical issue.

So this is not a kind of this is it. This will never this can never change. Lord Bates as we had the discussion last week on aid programs and the decision to cut our official development assistance, you know, we did that because we wanted to spend more on hard power, and that was a conscious choice that we felt we needed to make in the context that we find ourselves in. I think the events of recent days may lead some people to to think that that was the right decision.

I would just point out to him as well, that most Oda spend is not the kind of humanitarian assistance that he may remember as a Minister, that he certainly that he described this evening and the vast majority of the humanitarian work that we do, we do through Multilaterals, and we are the largest contributor to Gavi. We are considerable contributor to the Global Fund and also to the World Bank's Ida programme, with the biggest contributor to the African Development Fund, which is an African led organisation.

It leverages in far, far more than any program or any Oda budget that we would ever have been able to provide for Africa. So we are dramatically changing the way that we're doing this. I think perhaps I could organise some briefing for him to explain this in some more depth, because I think exchanges like this, they're helpful, but I doubt I'll ever be able to persuade him of this through this mechanism. But perhaps if we can have a more detailed conversation, that might be a worthwhile thing to do.

But, my Lords, identifying the risks of atrocities early as Baroness Helic and others said, is absolutely essential to prevention. The Bishop of Manchester raised the importance of working on democratic structures, strengthening civil society organisations and I absolutely agree with him. I do disagree respectfully, slightly in that he said that we we privilege our economic connections ahead of all other considerations, and I just don't think that is true. And I think certainly the sanctions that we implement and the positions that we've taken around Ukraine very much don't that out.

But I, I, you know, I take the point he makes in the spirit that he makes it. The UK does monitor risks around the world, and we assess a range of factors from ongoing armed conflict, history of and addressed human rights violations. And as the Bishop of Manchester said, inadequate state structures. Too often it is states themselves who are responsible for atrocities. But often I think Haiti was mentioned Sudan, Colombia, its armed groups. And we do fund work with an exceptional organisation called Geneva Call who attempts to to work with these groups as well.

We focus on countries and regions where the risks are most concerning, and where the warning signs of imminent violence are the strongest. And we target UK action where we can help prevent horrific atrocities, including genocide and crimes against humanity. Working alongside civil society, academic experts, bilateral partners and multilateral organisations. I just have to respond to something that Lord Blencathra said. And I completely take his concern on the persecution of Christians. And and I share it. But just to be sure, we don't give money to the Taliban.

You know, we we do fund some programming in Afghanistan. It's it's incredibly limited because it's a difficult place to operate, but it's humanitarian work and it's around trying to find ways to fund and to make possible the education of girls. And we do that with partners on the ground, but we also do it through the World Service, for example. And they've done some amazing, inspiring work that enables that to be possible. So don't think just because there is money that's spent on a particular geography, that that money is given to the government of that country.

That is very often not the case. There are a number of tools that we use at the forefront of our joined up assessments of conflict and stability across countries and regions, and that's a process we updated in 2020 for. Noble Lords have expressed a desire to have those shared with with Parliament, I can I think we can all appreciate why that might not always be what happens, but I'm certainly commit to taking that back and, and re challenging ourselves on whether that decision, you know, if we can really hold that up.

I think that's a fair enough question to ask the government. But the approach that we have draws together a vast pool of insight and expertise to identify the actors and drivers of conflict and guide our interventions to promote stability, security and peace long term. We have our global network of embassies. They play an important role in many aspects of this example I would use is our team in Kyiv who support supported by specialist technical advisers and analysts and Baroness Helic, I think explained really well that the work that's done to help identify and assess risk and then support efforts to keep civilians safe amid ongoing attacks on civilians.

She explained how this could have been done in Rwanda. I visited the Genocide Museum in Rwanda myself recently and I recognise what she was saying. I think because of time, if she didn't mind, I'll write to her on the specific issues around Bosnia, partly because I don't know off the top of my head the answers to all of her questions, but I think that they are they are issues that do need to be responded to. But in Ukraine, holding Russia accountable for its crimes.

As a founding member and chair of the Conference of Participants of the Register of Damage is important. And working alongside fellow signatories to the convention to establish an International Claims Commission, we work with the US and EU to establish the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, coordinating support for the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, and we back efforts to identify the tens of thousands. And I know the House is concerned about this, of boys and girls snatched from their families, deported and indoctrinated by Russia in a revolting attempt to erase the future of an entire nation and helping to bring them home.

With over £2.8 million committed to that important work. And I know that colleagues across both houses are helping to do all we can to raise awareness of this. We are strengthening our own systems. On the issue of FCDO 2030, we were asked several noble Lords asked about the staffing reductions that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I mean, I support the the process that's being undertaken because the truth is that compared to ten years ago. So even taking into account the merger, merger of the two departments, there are 30% more people working there than there were before.

And we really do have to challenge ourselves about whether that is the most efficient and dynamic way to run that organisation. So we will be making changes. But I can commit to noble Lords that the assertion that there will be less emphasis, less skill and less resource put into the work on atrocity prevention and conflict prevention and related issues, that is, the hub is being taken into a wider team. So in fact, there will be more people working on this important issue.

In response to Lord Foulkes questions about the the review recommendation seven, which he specifically asked about, we will continue to develop our capacity to respond to atrocity risks, drawing on expertise across government and and beyond, and including from civil society, academia, cooperation with bilateral partners and multilateral organisations. So we remain committed to this, and we will continue to do the work that is needed. And through the FCDO's transformation plan, between now and 2030, we will be updating how we work, because we've got to be more agile and more focussed on impact.

My Lords, the final thing I want to say is just to underline the government's commitment to this. We should be and we will be strengthening our ability to identify risks at the earliest stage possible to deploying our global network of diplomatic and technical expertise, and to supporting efforts to save lives, uphold international law, and break the cycle of violence that drives displacement and instability long term. The UK has an important role to play. We'll continue to work alongside our international partners because we must do all we can to prevent atrocities wherever

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we can. My Lord, we were not due to return to the bill until 2036. Two minutes time. I beg to move that the House do adjourn during pleasure. Until that point.

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pleasure. Until that point. The House to adjourn during House House to House to be again in Committee on the Crime and Policing Bill Lord Hanson of Flint.

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I'd like to move that the House do again be on committee on the bill.

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bill. The House do now again resolve itself into committee upon the bill, as many of that opinion say. Content the contrary not content. Content the contrary not content. The contents have it. Amendment 417 Lord Banner.
20:37
Lord Banner Portrait Lord Banner (Conservative)
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My Lords, I move amendment 417 and the associated amendment for 19, and the associated amendment for 19, both of which are tabled in my name and which have name support across the House. The purpose of these amendments is to provide a clear and easy to use legal basis for those found guilty of sanctions, breaches and other similar offences to pay compensation in the public interest to specified victims organisations listed in the proposed schedule 22, and any other similar organisations added to that list through regulations.

There is, My Lords, a clear case for legislative intervention in this area. By way of overview, the existing law provides only a very narrow basis for using the proceeds of confiscated criminal assets to compensate victims, and only in straightforward cases, victims are rarely allocated any share of the sons recovered. Amendments 417 and 419 would empower courts to award compensation for public interest or social purposes, addressing a significant gap in the law by enabling compensation in the more complex cases for which the existing law is ill suited.

For example, supporting Ukrainians who are most impacted by breaches of the UK's targeted sanctions against the Putin regime and its corrupt cronies. Against that overview, I turn to the main features of the existing law to demonstrate why they do not go far enough, and first compensation orders under the Sentencing Act 2020. These orders are designed to compensate victims of criminal conduct, so where a conviction has been secured, the court is empowered to order the offender, pay compensation for any personal injury, loss or damage arising from the offence in question.

The courts have, however, held that these kinds of compensation orders are intended only for clear and simple cases where there is an obvious direct victim and the amount of compensation can readily and easily be ascertained. Thus, for example, a builder may take a 15,000 deposit to complete building work for a home owner, and fraudulently makes no attempt to carry out the work. There is a clear victim, the home owner, and a clear loss. The £15,000 and the compensation order is well suited to handle this sort of case.

But by contrast, a court is highly unlikely to be able to make a standard compensation order in a sanctions breach or similar case. Sanctions breaches are really rarely clear and simple cases because, by the nature of the offence, the consequences are wide reaching and they can violate the rights of a large number of people, victims of the breach, or indeed the precise loss or damage suffered, will typically be very difficult to identify and quantify, with the necessary provision required by the current law.

Courts are ill equipped to handle victim compensation in such cases, given the vast and multifaceted harms of issue and the indirect connection between the harms and the sanctions breach, the NGO redress has advised that its experts are not aware of any single sanctions breach case in the UK, in which the court has issued a compensation order for victims. Obviously interested to know whether the noble Lords Minister can provide us any such examples? Such compensation orders, I would suggest, are simply not suited to complex economic crime, such as sanctions offences.

The second area of the existing law, Confiscation Orders and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. In relation to these and the events of the conviction, the court can order the confiscation of a portion of an offender's assets, provided they have been found to have benefited from their criminal conduct, but these confiscation orders are intended to deprive the defendant of the proceeds of crime, rather than to compensate victims. The amounts confiscated are usually paid to the government's bank account, and then sometimes shared across certain government departments and arm's length bodies.

No amount is typically paid to victims, subject to very limited exceptions. The third category of the existing law, forfeiture Orders, also under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. In this respect, agencies such as the National Crime Agency, HMRC and the Serious Fraud Office, amongst others, can institute civil forfeiture proceedings. In some situations in which a court may order forfeiture of forfeiture order in respect of funds associated with unlawful conduct. Here too, however, the law is inadequate to deal with sanctions breaches.

There is a statutory requirement for funds that have been forfeited under such an order to be paid. Again, it's the government's general bank account, with very limited exceptions, in relation to situations where someone can show that the amount belongs to them and they were deprived of it by their unlawful conduct. And again, that's ill suited to sanctions context. So pulling this together. My Lords, I suggest that unless the law is changed, judges will, in the vast majority of cases, have no real ability to award compensation to the victims of sanctions and associated crimes.

Not a penny will go to the very people most harmed by the criminal violation in question, not because they are undeserving or because they haven't suffered a harm, because simply there's a gap in the law to address, which means that their position cannot be addressed. The shortcoming in my submission is increasingly indefensible in the current world in which we live, and will only grow as the UK rightly takes more sanctions enforcement action most immediately in the context of Ukraine, but also in any future cases, dealing with the context of Ukraine.

The UK positions itself quite admirably as a global leader on Russian sanctions. Some 2 or 3000 targets have been sanctioned to date. And yet, when it comes to enforcing these sanctions and penalising any breaches of them, it's the UK, not the victims, that retains the proceeds. And having dedicated unprecedented diplomatic and financial resources to to seeking to bring an end to Putin's war for the benefit of the Ukrainian people, it is striking that the courts have practically no legal basis to channel any of the proceeds of Russian sanctions breaches to Ukrainian victims.

It is they for whom the sanctions program is ultimately intended to protect. Turning then to alternatives in correspondence between redress and the Home Office, and which I've seen the noble Lord. The Minister has referred to other amendments proposed in this bill to ensure so it said, that uplifts to existing confiscation orders can similarly be redirected. However, these are subject to the same or similar limitations as the existing law. In particular, the limitation of the concepts of victim and loss, and narrowly defined meaning that redress is not available for indirect victims.

And it's that gap that my amendments 417 and 419 are intended to address. And so in light of that, my challenge to the noble Lord, the Minister and I must stress this is a constructive challenge. I'd like to put on the record the personal experience I have of the deeply conscientious engagement the noble Lords Minister has had on matters of Ukraine, which I've raised with them, and I thank him publicly for that, as I have done privately. But the constructive challenge to the noble Lord is this can he offer a cast iron guarantee that the existing law, coupled with any proposed amendments the government is putting forward, go as far as amendments four, 17 and 19? Or does he accept that there's a gap between them? And if he does accept there's a gap, can he explain what is the justification for it? In light of that, I beg to move.
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Lord Alton of Liverpool Portrait Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)
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Amendment proposed after clause 145, insert the following new clause the words as printed on the Marshalled List. >> Follow the noble Lord. >> Lord Banner. I've signed these

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Lord Banner. I've signed these amendments 417 and 419. I think he's made a powerful, constructive, eloquent case this evening as to why we should try to tackle the public interest compensation orders and deal with the gap that is left by confiscation orders, compensation confiscation orders, compensation orders and forfeiture which is mentioned in his speech. I've had an interest in this issue since the time we discussed in this House the Russia sanctions, EU amendment number three regulations in 2024, and I was grateful to the then government to for the way in which they responded to that.

And I think that there is goodwill right across the spectrum in your Lordships House to making available seized assets to those who are victims in a rather minor way, in another place, as long ago as 1982, I moved a private member's bill called the Victims of Violence Bill, and it was about using seized assets of people who were plying drugs on the streets of Liverpool. My noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, who was a police officer and assistant chief constable on Merseyside during that period, will recall how often these gangs were able to play on the needs, the grief, the opportunities of selling drugs on the streets and then to walk away with the proceeds and that bill.

And then finally as a result, I won't say just of that bill, but of the climate that built up. Government did decide that it would use assets to put back into the community as a demonstration that crime didn't always pay. So I would say that what the noble Lord Banner is trying to do fits very much in in that scheme of things. I do think that the government has taken important steps to address Russia's war on Ukraine, including by way of imposing sanctions and freezing assets.

And I join with the noble Lord Lord Banner in commending the noble Lord Lord Hanson of Flint, for all that he has done on this question. However, despite the issue being raised several times, the government has not really come up with a formula yet to ensure that the sanctions can be used to provide compensation to victims and survivors. So during that debate back in 2024, I asked what, in addition to the targeted approach of repurposing assets that are, after all, a product of criminal activity, namely sanction evasion, is the government's assessment of other ways in which frozen assets could be repurposed.

The noble Lord Lord Banner suggested that the government is still giving this force, and I hope, therefore, that the Committee stage debate of this kind will perhaps flesh that out. I proposed at the time that the government should review the approaches taken by the United States and Canada, and I wonder if any more work has been done on that recent months. Haven't seen any progress on the issue, just as there seems to have been no progress on the Chelsea Football Club money being used to benefit victims and survivors of Russia's war.

It's an issue that I've raised with the noble Lord Lord Livermore on the floor of this House and in correspondence, and I wonder again if the noble Lord Lord Hanson is able to tell us any more about that when he comes to respond. Why, my Lords, do we need the proposed change that the noble Lord Lord Banner has outlined to us? Well, as it stands, the UK's courts abilities to award compensation is overly narrow and does not respond adequately to more complex crimes such as sanctions, offences involving large numbers of victims, victims with very connections to their offender's conduct.

But where there is a clear, broader impact of the offender's crime on victims of human rights violations in the UK or beyond. So, very briefly, I want to focus on the case of Russia, but also one other example. Firstly, though Russia, the government has imposed sanctions against those most responsible for the horrific crimes that we are all well aware have been committed in Ukraine. But as it stands, the government retains the proceeds from these cases without ensuring that they benefit the very people most harmed by the violations.

And that is despite the fact that these assets are key to supporting Ukrainians and helping them rebuild their lives. The other example I want to give, though, is one that I referred to in the dinnertime business debate, and that concerns what happened to the Yazidis at the hands of Daesh and noble Lords might say, well, what has that got to do with this bill? It's got everything to do with it, because sanctions were imposed on those working with Daesh. That is ISIS, the Islamic State.

We don't know the exact amount of frozen or criminal assets in enforcement cases. And despite being asked about this in the other place in November of this year, the government has been unable to give any clear response. So I would gently press the Minister again this evening. All that's happened so far is a reference to the Office of Financial Services Implementation 2024 to 25 Annual Review. I'd like to restate this question and hope to receive a clear answer today. Daesh stands accused of committing genocide against the Yazidis.

It's even a word that the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office has been prepared to use since a finding in a case in Germany, which was led by Amal Clooney and led to a conviction on the crime of genocide. I understand that the that this was used to submit reports to the UN in relation to the value of the frozen assets of Daesh. However, this was stopped at some point in 2023. So could the Minister say why the government stopped sending such reports and commit to ensure transparency with future reporting? My Lords, in supporting this amendment, these amendments, I also draw attention to the government's position when it comes to those responsible for conflict related sexual violence in the DRC.

The position the government has taken has been a good one. However, as it stands, none of the victims will be able to benefit from again frozen assets. This despite the fact, as stressed by doctor Denis Mukwege on many occasions, someone I know well who's a remarkable man, working with women who have been violated in the DRC. He describes it as the capital of rape in the world, and the crime continues to be perpetrated on a systematic basis in this country with very little response, particularly in the context.

Therefore, my Lords of reduced Oda, we must find a way to ensure that victims are provided with the help they need to rebuild their lives. And these amendments would be a recognition that the aggressor must be made to pay for their violence and their crimes. So, without repeating the arguments that have already been advanced on the inadequate as things stand at the moment, none of the options that the noble Lord Lord Banner outlined are appropriate for sanctions cases. Sanctions offences are rarely clear and simple, and that's because the consequences of sanctions breaches are wide ranging and can violate the human rights of a large number of people.

Unless the law is changed, it is likely that no money in these cases will go to the very people harmed by the crime. This isn't because they are undeserving or because they haven't suffered a significant harm, but because there's no law in place to address their situation. As such. As it stands, there is a significant gap in the law in the UK which prevents victims from seeking compensation. Amendment 417 seeks to close that gap, and it's a great pleasure to support the noble Lord Lord Banner.
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Baroness Goudie Portrait Baroness Goudie (Labour)
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Rise to support Lord Hannan and >> Rise to support Lord Hannan and Lord Maude on 417 and 419. I won't repeat what I've said many times in this house and what my two this house and what my two colleagues have said, but I would say that I am most anxious about the compensation money that does not go to these countries and these people. We are told that it's in the Treasury in some cases, and we ask about interest. And we've had a debate with Lord Livermore, we've had letters with Lord Livermore.

But this is something that this these clauses could really make the change so that everybody would know where the interest is going, where the money for the victims is going and where it is based, and how it is given and how it is sent and who is in receipt. And this is absolutely vital because as we see what's happening in Ukraine and they'll need much more support in Ukraine, and we know with Russia and others that this is happening as it goes along. And also the case in the DRC, which we work on all the time, we know what's happening there and the other countries.

So this is absolutely vital that this is included in this bill, and it would make such a difference to so many people around the world. And also it would deal with the perpetrators. So I would hope that the government will look at this with kindness. And I would like to think, thank redress for all the support they have given us and they've given written to the departments and so on. Thank you.

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My Lords, I had hoped to contribute or to speak to this Bill at Second Reading, but was unable at Second Reading, but was unable to do so. So I hope noble Lords will allow me to jump in at will allow me to jump in at Committee stage has been has been pointed out very eloquently by pointed out very eloquently by previous speakers. Standard compensation orders are simply not suited to complex economic crimes, suited to complex economic crimes, such as sanction offences.

And as we've heard, these amendments, the two amendments in particular seek to ensure that victims are not excluded from receiving compensation simply because their their their harm is deemed to indirect or too complex for UK law to handle. We also know, my Lords, that it is highly likely that the UK will be bringing in yet more sanctions, particularly within the context of Russia and Ukraine. And it's a timely, therefore, to adjust our laws. Now, in the comprehensive briefing that we all received from from redress, of which I am
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Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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necessary pathway for turning the proceeds of international crime into a force for restorative into a force for restorative justice. Currently, when the Crown Court makes a confiscation order, the primary objective is to deprive the defendant of their benefit from the defendant of their benefit from crime. Whilst we support this, a significant gap remains in how significant gap remains in how these recovered funds are used, particularly when the criminal conduct involves serious human rights violations, mass atrocity crimes or grand corruption.

At present, funds not directly owed to a specific claimant in the immediate proceedings often flow into the General Consolidated Fund. My Lords, the Minister, in his recent letter to the human rights organisation redress, which I know there are many supporters of in the chamber today, suggests that current mechanisms are sufficient. He argued that the UK already shares over 50% of proceeds recovered through international cooperation with other governments. But my Lords, as redress compellingly points out, state level sharing is not the same as victim redress.

funds are returned to a foreign state, the level of support Tim's received depends entirely on the political will and the potential corruption risks within that recipient state. Victims of mass atrocities and grand corruption have a clear preference for reparations paid for by their abusers and enablers. It is a matter of human dignity, justice and their own healing journey. Amendment 418 gives the court the discretion to direct a portion of these confiscated proceeds towards public interest or social purposes.

This is not a mere accounting change. It is a mechanism to provide support, redress or therapeutic services to victims of international human rights violations who might otherwise have no procedural pathway to compensation. To ensure these funds are managed with the highest level of integrity, my amendment 418 requires the Secretary of State to establish a public purpose fund. This fund would be subject to strict regulations, operation and auditing. Ensure that recovered sums are applied to define social purposes before any remaining balance reverts to the state.

Under section 5055, one of the POCA require the court to calculate directions while respecting the duty to ensure full payment of any existing priority orders or compensation. Directors. For direct victims, the amendment inserts a new system Systemic Mechanism into the Proceeds of Crime Act, the judicial trigger when the Crown Court makes a confiscation order under section six of POCA, the judge is granted a discretionary power to issue a public purpose direction. In deciding whether to make this direction, the court must look beyond simple numbers and consider the gravity and context of the crime.

Specifically, the court considers whether the conduct involves serious human rights violations, mass atrocity crimes, or grand corruption. The amendment preserves the integrity of current law by ensuring that direct victims remain the first priority. The court must ensure that all unpaid amounts under existing compensation directions or priority orders are fully satisfied before any funds are redirected. Once these priorities are met, the specified sum is is retained by a designated officer and placed into the Public Purpose Fund. These funds are then applied to define social purposes, such as providing therapeutic services, redress, or support to victims, whether they are in the UK or overseas.

It also allows for contributions to a reputable international funds, such as the ICC Trust Fund for victims, which have the expertise to identify victims and map their support needs in a way the courts cannot. Now, my Lords, the Minister has previously pointed to existing uplifts to compensation orders as a solution. However, these are strictly limited by narrow legal definitions of a victim and their loss. They are fundamentally unsuited for the indirect victims of sanctions, breaches. The millions of Ukrainians, for example, we've heard today, harmed by the very war on oligarch, has illegally supported amendment 418 ensures that these rings of damage are addressed.

Furthermore, this is not intended to dismantle the Asset Recovery Incentivisation scheme. These amendments are designed to work in parallel with Arris, ensuring that any remaining balance after the public purpose has been served still flows back to law enforcement. Now, My Lords, while amendment 418 creates the fund, amendments 417 and 419 provide the immediate vehicles for justice through public interest compensation orders. And these, as we've heard, allow the court to direct payments directly to established international bodies such as the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture or the Register of Damage for Ukraine.

My Lords, this bill is an opportunity for the UK to show global leadership by allowing aligning our enforcement outcomes with the purpose of our sanctions protecting the vulnerable. We cannot continue to allow millions of pounds in criminal assets to vanish into the general state coffers, while victims of heinous crimes suffer in silence. It's time to make criminal assets work for justice. My Lords, these amendments reflect a growing cross-party consensus on the need to modernise our laws against digital and coercive harm.

They align with proposals advocated in the Commons debates, where there was a significant concern regarding the state's ability to use the proceeds of crime to support victims of international law breaches and sanctions violations. By supporting this amendment, as well as 407 and 419, we could ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of global efforts to ensure that those who profit from atrocity and corruption are made to

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fund the recovery of those that they have harmed. To support Lord McInnes

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To support Lord McInnes amendment 417 to which I've attached my name, and I think there's very little I can add to there's very little I can add to the submissions that have already been made from all sides of your been made from all sides of your Lordships House to this Committee on the technical and financial and legal arguments in support. So I'll legal arguments in support. So I'll simply confine myself to a diagonal point, which is the effectiveness of the UK sanctions regime, which is funded by taxpayers money and a huge amount of work and official time goes into ensuring that it is effectively implemented.

All of that currently happens, but the funds and the proceeds remain largely in the UK, so it is a better return on the intention of that public time and effort that those funds should ultimately reach victims, because that is what the public expect when they support a sanctions regime. And secondly, I will just attach to that the recent debate that there's been over the effectiveness of sanctions in
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Lord Garnier Portrait Lord Garnier (Conservative)
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then is ignored. And I hope that by arguing, as he has so attractively just now in favour of his of his amendments, that we will gain some momentum on a related, but not exactly. Identical subject, that's to say, compensation for overseas victims of crimes committed by British defendants. I raised this that question during the course of the Second Reading of the Victims and Courts Bill on the 16th of December, just before Christmas, and the noble Lady, the Minister who is in her place, and I'm not sure whether it's she or the noble Lord.

Well, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, who's kindly going to respond to this section of amendments, and as always, very grateful to him for bearing that burden. But it's it's it was recognised by the noble Lady, the Minister, that the question of overseas compensation for victims, overseas victims was a matter of some importance, and she was going to have a think about it. And indeed, she suggested that she might like to meet me to discuss it further.

And I am open to that invitation, as I'm sure would be my noble friend Lord Banner. But he has opened up, as I say, a discussion about. A lacuna in our in our law, in that we fail adequately to compensate victims, and the victims could be those who have suffered at the hands of the Russians, those who have suffered at the hands of those that we have sanctioned or the European Union has sanctioned, or the United States has sanctioned. And I say in parentheses that part of my practice at the bar involves sanctions law.

So anything that legislates to increase the size of my practice is to be welcomed. But more to the point, it seems to me that we have two parallel streams which demonstrate that the way in which we treat victims is is insufficient, is inadequate. And so I thank my noble friend for for bringing this to the attention of, of, of the Committee and also to the attention of the government more directly. And I trust that when the noble Lord comes to respond, he will do so positively.

And if he is unable to do so, I will invite my noble friend to reintroduce his amendment into the Victims and Courts Bill. When that comes back to us in committee at John.
21:08
Lord Cameron of Lochiel Portrait Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative)
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My Lords. Clement-Jones for their amendments in this group, and all noble Lords who have spoken. Turning first to amendments 417 and 419, tabled by my noble friend Lord Banner. As he said, these amendments would provide courts with the power to make public interest compensation orders during the sentencing of certain offences. And my noble friend Lord Banner made a typically eloquent and compelling case for these amendments, and he has consistently and powerfully campaigned, especially on the issue of Ukraine and the proceeds of sanctions.

I pay tribute to him for that. Public interest compensation orders would grant the courts the ability to compel offenders to pay money to approved international or public interest bodies that support victims of serious human rights violations, such as torture or aggression. Their courts would have to consider relevant factors, such as the broader human rights impact of the crime and the need to prioritise direct victims where relevant, and the amendment also lists relevant eligible recipient organisation organisations with powers for the Secretary of State to update them.

Creating, I would suggest, a structured mechanism for using the proceeds of sanctions related crime into reparative funding for victims in the wider public interest. The amendment proposes a reasonable and practical process through which courts could divert illegally obtained funds to support victims, and I do hope that the government considers it very carefully indeed and look forward to the Minister's response. Amendment 418 in the name of the noble Lord Clement-Jones similarly proposes a mechanism through which the courts can direct a portion of confiscated proceeds for public interest or social purposes.

It's a very similar in nature to amendment 417. It differs slightly in that it specifically requires a court to consider whether the crime in question involves serious human rights violations, mass atrocity crimes, or grand corruptions. But like amendment 417, it raises very important issues as well as a broader question of if we are to make public compensation orders, then what crimes they should apply to. And I look forward to enable all the Minister's thoughts on this matter to.
21:11
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour)
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I'd like to thank the noble Lord >> I'd like to thank the noble Lord Banner for his amendments, and he's obviously had a wide level of support today from, amongst others, the noble Lord Kempsell and Kempsell noble Lady Baroness D'Souza, the noble and learned Lord Garnier, my noble friend Baroness Goudie Lord Clement-Jones Lord Alton of Liverpool, and I think they've all spoken well on this series of amendments. What I want to try and do, if I may, is to address the amendments self-evidently, but also, I think, to say to the noble Lord Banner in particular, I know how committed he is to Ukraine in particular, and he has my support in addressing the viciousness of the Russian regime and the international crimes that they have committed by invading Ukraine.

And there are obviously a number of consequences to that. But the principles he's putting forward today could apply to a number of other regimes as well. The amendments seek to amend the Sentencing Act 2020 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, to enable courts to issue public interest compensation orders. These orders would be for public interest or social purposes, in order to support those who may be impacted by offences under the sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2018, including victims of human rights violations, as well as other offences added by the Secretary of State via secondary legislation.

Now, I recognise the intentions behind the amendments. I'd like to affirm the government's support for victims of human rights abuses and our commitment to tackling economic crime. If I look first of all at amendment 417, I just simply say to the noble Lord Banner that courts already have the power to impose a compensation order on an offender, which would require them to make financial reparation to a direct victim of a specific offence for any resulting personal injury, loss or damage.

Therefore, if you know the Lord seeks to amend, as he does the Sentencing Act to allow courts to award compensation orders for public interest or social purposes, there is a danger that that would undermine the current victim centred approach of the legislation to date. Just in passing in that, may I just to the noble and learned Lord Garnier that I know, speaking in meeting with my noble friend Baroness Levitt, I think it may be my fault that that hasn't happened because of a diary clash, but we are agreeing to examine that and I will, via either noble Baroness Levitt office or mine, get back to him.

With regard to the meeting on those particular issues, I recognise, particularly the critical importance of supporting victims of crime, the victim surcharge, as noble Lords will know, is a charge imposed on offenders by the court in the public interest to ensure that they hold some responsibility towards the cost of supporting victims and witnesses. The revenue raised from this surcharge is used currently to fund victim services for victims and witness general fund, so the principle has been established. I just want to say to the committee as well that the UK does provide support for victims of human rights and sanctions violations worldwide.

Noble Lords may wish to know that we have committed to provide £22 billion of funding to Ukraine. The government is already currently now exploring further avenues, such as the Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration Loan to Ukraine, alongside our colleagues in the G7 and the EU, which has seen a $50 billion loan to Ukraine and which is serviced, which is again goes to the the heart of the amendments that have been tabled, serviced and repaid by future profits generated from frozen Russian sovereign assets.

And the noble Lord Dalton himself mentioned money from Chelsea and Roman Abramovich. Could I just say to me he I suspect he knows this, but it's worth placing on record, given that he has raised it with me, that on the 17th of December, the Prime Minister formally announced that the United Kingdom would issue instructions to transfer £2.5 billion from Roman Abramovich's sale of Chelsea FC to humanitarian causes in Ukraine. The funds, which we are transferring have been frozen in a UK bank account since 2022.

And although the government has tried to negotiate a way forward, the said Roman Abramovich has now been given three months to establish a foundation and to transfer the funds before the government considers further options, such as pursuing the matter in court. And again that it's an important signal from the government as a whole, the noble Lord Dalton also mentioned DSIT. May I just say to him that I hadn't considered that in the context of today's debate? So I don't want to give him information that may prove wrong.

So if he'll let me on that point, I will write to him, post the debates today. The amendments 418419 seek to enable courts to redirect proceeds from confiscation orders to social purposes. As I've just mentioned to date, by issuing a direction for public interest or social purposes, and to enable courts to award public interest compensation orders either instead of or in addition to forfeiture orders. Now, again, I say to the committee that I understand the intention of those amendments, but the Proceeds of Crime Act already prioritises directing funds to victims.

It allows the court to direct the proceeds from confiscation orders, be applied towards payment of a compensation order. And in the financial year ending March 25th, some £47.2 million in compensation was paid to victims from proceeds of crime recovered through confiscation order receipts. The UK also, and again, this is in the context of the noble Lord Banner amendment, continues to seek to be, and is a global leader for asset return and asset sharing, which allows funds to be shared with international partners to recognise victims and international cooperation.

The last five years, which has crossed over both governments, has seen the UK share over 50% of the proceeds of crime recovered through international cooperation, which demonstrates our commitment to compensating those who have been harmed by such international facing crimes. There are, however, a limited number of sanctioned cases in which the amendments as tabled could apply, therefore only creating limited additional funds for the support of victims of human rights abuses. And I just suggest whether or not we should consider the costs versus benefits in this instance.

Additionally, the amendments would direct funds away from the Asset Recovery Incentive Scheme, which allots a portion of recovered funds to be recovered by law enforcement agencies, and this process supports and incentivises our law enforcement agencies in their crucial work to tackle economic crime. So I understand where the noble Lord is coming from. I hope my explanation of where we are currently is of help. He may still feel that there's a gap between the government and himself. If so, he knows that we can revisit this in due course.

But I hope that the explanation I've given, and particularly the commitments that we've shown in the last month on Chelsea FC and indeed on the general support for international funding to Ukraine of some £22 billion is of help. But with those comments, I'm asking to if he would withdraw his amendments. The noble Lord, the Minister.
21:19
Lord Banner Portrait Lord Banner (Conservative)
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For his comments. suggest that the force of the unanimous unanimity on this issue across the House is telling, and I hope it is the beginning of the hope it is the beginning of the momentum which my noble friend Lord Garnier called for. With respect to a couple of points, the Minister mentioned the. I would suggest that the proposal would not detract from the existing law because it only applies to relevant offences and relevant offences are defined in the amendment, essentially sanctions and money laundering.

So the option of a public interest compensation order would not be available for the the dodgy builder type case that I outlined before. So it wouldn't in fact distract from direct victims. What it would do is in precisely those kinds of offences where the existing law is, in fact provide for a remedy for victims. And yes, that category is relatively narrowly defined. That is true, but is precisely that category of offences where the law currently is deficient. So I would urge that the noble Lords Minister and officials to to give this further consideration.

If he's not sick of meeting me on Ukraine related matters, I'm very happy to meet him again, to talk through how perhaps the wording could be tweaked to deal with some of the issues that he's he's outlined. But but if we can't reach agreement, then I would be inclined to to bring this back at Report stage and or in the context of the Victim and Crimes Bill, as my noble friend mentioned. But against all that background, for now, I beg leave to withdraw.

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Your Lordships pleasure that the amendment be withdrawn. The amendment is by leave withdrawn. amendment is by leave withdrawn. Amendment 418 not moved. The question is that schedule 16 b the question is that schedule 16 b the 16th schedule to the bill? As many as that opinion will say content the contrary not content. The the contrary not content. The contents have it. The question is that schedule 17 and 18 be the 17th and 18th schedule to the bill.

En bloc as many as that opinion will say. Content the contrary not content. The contents have it. content. The contents have it. Amendment 419 not moved. Oh, I beg your pardon that the question is that clause 146 and part of the bill, as many as that opinion will say content. The contrary, not content. The contents have it. The question is that clauses 147 and 148 stand part of the bill. En bloc as many as that opinion will say content the contrary not content.

The contents habit after clause 148

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Lord Marks of Henley on Thames. In this group on childhood

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In this group on childhood convictions, amendment 420, which is in my name, and that of my noble is in my name, and that of my noble friend Baroness Brinton, seeks a general review and report on the management of childhood convictions and cautions. While later in the group there are four specific group there are four specific amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, with all his wide experience of working as a magistrate and particularly in the youth court, along with the noble Lords Lord Spellar, Lord Hampton and Lord Carter of Haslemere.

My Lords, I support all four specific amendments. They are all consistent with our general proposition that we should be very careful before we mark people out with a criminal record for mistakes committed when they were children. Lords, I'm grateful for the briefing that we've received from Unlock and Transform Justice. They make a number of helpful proposals for reform. Our amendment calls for a report to be commissioned and laid before Parliament within a year, to enable Parliament to be fully informed on the issues and possible reforms in this difficult area.

And, my Lords, it is a difficult area. Not only must we consider the position of young people who acquire criminal records that may blight their futures, but we must also balance their position against the need to protect future employers and others who might be affected by repeat offences in the future, particularly vulnerable children and society as a whole. My Lords, the position of children in England and Wales is exacerbated because we have a very young age of criminal responsibility, ten years old, with the result that in this jurisdiction, children between 10 and 17 can be convicted of criminal offences.

This compares with the Netherlands, Belgium and Scotland, who raise the age of criminal responsibility in 2019 to 14, and in Germany, Spain and Italy, where it's 14, along with many other countries. The UN convention on the rights of the child requires states to set a minimum age of criminal responsibility without expressing what that should be, but the UN Committee on the rights of the child urges states to raise the age to 14. My Lords, the reason this matters are not confined to the unfairness of punishing, the unfairness of punishing children for crimes when they lack the maturity or responsibility to be held criminally responsible by state state laws.

The unfairness extends to exposing them to the long term disadvantage of being scarred. With criminal records acquired for childhood offences for longer than is necessary for the protection of the public, and often well into their adulthood. My Lords, there is a wealth of evidence of the ages at which young people's brains and cognition mature, and while it differs, the best evidence is that full maturity is not reached until the early 20s, and that full responsibility does not develop until the late teens.

At least that matches the obvious and instinctively understood reality that children and young people are that much more likely to get into trouble than adults. Yet we do not presently match our law on the acquisition, collation and disclosure of criminal records to that obvious reality. There are many injustices, children from disadvantaged backgrounds and from minority communities are much more likely to acquire criminal records than children from more privileged backgrounds. And there's a vicious circle in operation here.

Disadvantaged children are overwhelmingly more likely to be in care. They're far more likely to be excluded from school, far more likely to develop personality disorders and other mental health issues. And those factors make them significantly more likely to commit offences and to get into trouble with the law. What we do by saddling such children with criminal records is to make their disadvantages worse in securing employment and training opportunities, and even further education. Fines and community orders generally stay on a child's record for two years on a basic check, and maybe much longer if an enhanced check is sought, which it is likely to be for any work in a school, for example.

It's not just convictions, though, that damage children cautions in childhood can prevent children and young adults from securing employment. A basic DBS check provided by the Disclosure and Barring Service, which it is open to any potential employer to seek, will disclose youth conditional cautions, which are intended as an alternative to formal criminal proceedings. Such conditional cautions can be given to anyone aged between 10 and 17, and avoid the need for criminal proceedings, and that is clearly a sensible strategy to provide an alternative criminal justice solution to avoid the need for proceedings into formal conviction.

However, the caution will stay on the child's record on a basic DBS check for three months or until the conditions have been complied with, whichever is earlier. And even in that time, the caution is capable of being really damaging to that child's prospects. Then again, the effect of court backlogs has been, as we know, that convictions are delayed and such delays may last from the date when a person charged with an offence was a child to a date long after that child's 18th birthday, so that then an adult so
21:28
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Portrait Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)
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a person can commit an offence as a child and be convicted as an adult. child and be convicted as an adult. But for the purposes of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, the date when the conviction the date when the conviction becomes spent depends on the date of conviction rather than the date of the offence. So, through no fault of their own children's convictions for offences that ought convictions for offences that ought to have been spent are unspent for far longer. My Lords, this is, I suggest, an area in serious need of review.

We need wider consideration of all the issues concerning the treatment of criminal records acquired for childhood offences, including whether and for how long children's offences should stay on their records, how far the seriousness of the sentence passed should be the sole or even the main criterion for convictions becoming spent. What are the criteria? There should be whether conditional cautions should be treated as giving rise to a criminal record, how far it should be open to children convicted of offences committed in childhood, to apply for their records to be expunged when, to whom and on what basis.

How far such offences should still be disclosed on standard and enhanced and higher level DBS checks. My Lords, these are serious issues affecting many lives that are currently blighted by a past that sticks with them, and they're important to society as a whole. I beg to move.

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Amendment proposed after clause 148, insert the new clause. The words is printed on the Marshalled

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List. My Lords. I'd. Like to open by thanking Lord

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Like to open by thanking Lord marks for so fully setting out the his his amendment in particular, but also the other amendments which but also the other amendments which are in this group. And I agreed with his opening point that the with his opening point that the these amendments are support all of them and I suspect all the speakers in this short debate will speak, will support all the amendments. And they, in a sense, offer a range of of of possible changes from a broad review to to pointing out very specific anomalies which the noble Lord did.

I think I'd like to really open by saying that I'm absolutely confident that our Lord Chancellor would be very sympathetic to these amendments, and I know he has said in recent speeches that he wants to look at. Criminal records and criminal records for young people in particular. So I think that is a really excellent starting point. And and I hope that my noble friend, the Minister can, can, can reinforce that point when she comes to, to to sum up.

But if I can just briefly touch on the amendments which are in my name, and I thank Lord Hampton, Baroness Sater and Lord Spellar and Lord Garnier, who will speak on these matters as well. My amendment 476. The amendment seeks to prevent the automatic disclosure of childhood conditional cautions in a DBS check by amending the definition of a Criminal conviction certificate in the Police Act 1997. My amendment 477, which was touched on by Lord marks.

This this to me is a clear anomaly in the law as it currently stands, and the amendment seeks to ensure that the criminal record for a juvenile is dated from the offence rather than the conviction date. And and as Lord Lord Marks said, these could be really quite far apart. And so the, the and so that the, the, the way that the, the conviction is treated will be, will be different because the, the, the young adult will be convicted even though the offence was committed, was committed when it was a was a youth.

And then moving on to amendment 478. This amendment seeks to ensure that that custodial sentences, except for the most serious sentences, will be removed, will be removed from an individual's criminal record after five and a half years. If the offence was committed before the age of 18. My Lords, sitting here earlier today in the earlier committee stages of this bill and Lord Young of Acton drew something to my attention which I wasn't aware of when they had. There was a debate about Non-crime hate incidents, and he pointed out that for youths, a Non-crime hate incident is treated as the same as for an adult, and that's a six year retention of the information, which is again another example of an anomaly I would suggest.

And I don't know whether when the Home Office comes to report on Non-crime hate incidents, they can ensure that that is tied up with the Ministry of Justice. I would hope, looking at the way youth youth convictions are looked at for for DBS checks. I also wanted to say something about Lord Carter's amendment for 86, and that is specifically about transport related convictions of young people. I support what he's going to say, I'm sure. However, I have to say that as a youth magistrate for for a number of years, nearly 20 years,
21:34
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Portrait Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Labour)
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I can't remember ever seeing a young person in court for evasion young person in court for evasion of affair. But if he's got figures about that, he's nodding his head. about that, he's nodding his head. So I'll listen. I'll listen to his figures with interest because it's not my personal experience of what not my personal experience of what I actually saw in, in, in youth court. I have to say I tend to see much more serious cases, but much more serious cases, but nevertheless I am.

I will listen to what he says and I'll support what he says with interest. My Lords, I think in closing, the overarching point is, is this is a difficult area. It's very easy to point out anomalies. We do have a very sympathetic Lord Chancellor, I'm sure, and I really hope that the government seizes this opportunity to address the, the, the overarching issue of the way we treat our young people so that they are not held back when they go into the adult world and the world of work.



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My Lords, my Lords, I rise

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My Lords, my Lords, I rise briefly to to give support to the motion, standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, and noble friend Lord Ponsonby, and also also Lord Lord Marks. It's an issue I've been arguing for some years in the House of Commons that years in the House of Commons that the DBS scheme has thankfully run out of control. I quote out of control. I quote particularly say from the from June of 2020 to the then Prime Minister
21:36
Lord Spellar Portrait Lord Spellar (Labour)
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Boris Johnson took and said that it's a major obstacle to people turning their lives around. It's turning their lives around. It's inefficient, unfair and frankly, discriminatory. And I then went on to say that the Lammy report dealt with this at some length nearly two years ago, and we don't need any years ago, and we don't need any further inquiries into this. We actually need some action, some action being taken, and reference action being taken, and reference has been made to the impact in in different parts of the country that largely in in smaller police forces.

It may well be not only that there are that cases aren't taken to court, but also that cautions are not issued. But very informally, people are told to are told to mend their way. In the cities, it can often be very different, very different. And this then also still lies on the on the record that the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, also said in his reply to me any MP will have had very hard cases caused by the DBS system. There is a general recognition, I think, at the political level that this is a problem.

I have to say, in all my experience, there is deep inertial resistance inside the civil service to, to, to changing this. And I would urge Ministers to very vigorously overcome it, particularly given the report that Lord Lammy did, commissioned by the then conservative government to look into it, into this area. We also saw similar problems when the first elections for police and crime commissioners. Wisely, I think a requirement was put in that someone should have no criminal conviction. We had a candidate who had had to stand down, convicted for possessing an offensive weapon when he was 13.

We had a we had we had another candidate who had committed a minor offence 22 years ago, and in no way. And these are people with long records of public service. In no way should that have been held against them. I would also argue that whatever steps we take should also relate to proportionality and also relevance. Whereas the Transport Minister there was a proposals for introducing DBS checks at the airport. So I fully understood that. But if somebody had a conviction for an assault outside a nightclub in Southall on a Saturday night, then I wasn't really worried if he was actually throwing my bags around in the in the luggage section, I would have been concerned if he'd had a conviction for for, for theft and or for dealing or for dealing in stolen, stolen goods.

I think that also needs to be taken into account and be particularly right. We also I also as a as a constituency member of parliament, had a woman who had been given a suspended sentence for an assault, age 18, in a in an argument with another girl over over a partner in her 40s. This was still preventing her because it's not just for young people. This blights people's lives right the way through their lives, not just their lives, also their children's lives as well as they're not able to provide support for them and also have all the frustration of not developing and not developing their skills of life.

It doesn't let people move on, but it also deprives the workforce of both of talent. And sometimes we're told with with DBS checks and with this ongoing system that, well, that's fine because employers will, will, will look at that and we'll, you know, we'll, we'll we'll take proportional action. They don't once a DBS check comes back with anything on the record, the fact is that they just they just automatically get dropped. And what's even more outrageous is within those same employers then go bleating to government saying we can't get workers here and we have to therefore bring them in, bring them in from abroad.

And that's what one of the factors that led to that huge surge of care workers being brought into the into this country in, in recent years. And, by the way, the considerable amount of exploitation and fraud that accompany accompanied that, as well as at the same time as people were being kept off work on benefits, not being able, not being able to provide for themselves or their families. So I think that we need we need to need to say that my plea, therefore, to the House is to support change, to give people hope that they can actually turn their lives around, give them opportunity to reinstate, I would argue, the principles of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act when it was first brought, brought forward and actually makes us make some progress.

We may need to make

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further changes in the future. I think these amendments provide a very good start. I'm very glad I waited.

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I'm very glad I waited. For the noble. Lord Lord Spellar to contribute

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Lord Lord Spellar to contribute to this debate, because I agree with just about everything he's just said. That, you may say, is just said. That, you may say, is not terribly difficult, given that I've co-signed the amendments that I've co-signed the amendments that he has signed, but I do take his view, share his view that. Paraphrasing what he said and probably getting it wrong, but I do. I do share his view that reviews can sometimes go nowhere.

But having listened to him and having listened to the noble Lord Lord Ponsonby, I am much attracted to our amendment. But I'm equally having heard the noble Lord Lord Marks in introducing his amendment. I am, and having studied it a little more closely, I am actually attracted by his idea that the review should look into this, as I think we all admit, quite complicated and in public policy terms, quite difficult area of discussion. And I'm attracted to Lord Marks proposal, both because it should if, if if this amendment is accepted by the government.

Report within a year of the bill's enactment. So we could be talking about, let's say, June of 2027, by the time we the review has taken place and the government has reported, but also because in Subclause two of amendment for 20, it begins by saying the report must consider at least and then it identifies three broad subject areas. But it will be able to take on board the points that the noble Lords Lord Ponsonby and Lord Lord Spellar have so far outlined.

So I think it's a combination of these four separate proposals which need to grip the government, grip the government's attention so that we can come back with a coherent thought through and workable set of policies which bear in mind the need for these two public interests to be borne in mind. That's to say, the protection of the public and employers and so forth, set against the need to allow youngsters who may have made some terrible mistakes to get on and live their lives.

I'll just finish with one anecdote. When I used to make a habit of visiting prisons and so forth, when I was a shadow Minister of prisons before the Ark. Was set afloat, I noticed that pretty was an unscientific approach. But I noticed that the the male prison population, adult male prison population, was largely aged between 21 and 30. Since the first decade of this century. I noticed that the average age of the adult male prison population has risen, and largely because of the conviction of historic sex offenders.

So people are being or have been convicted, let's say, in the 20 tens, for offences committed when they were youngsters in their 20s or 30s and they're now in their 60s or 70s or 80s. And so the average age of the prison population has to some extent risen. But by and large, and this is a generalisation, it's something that the review could look into. By and large, people grow out of criminal behaviour and once they've found a partner, once they found somewhere to live, once they've.

Got a job, if they haven't been ruined by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Antipathy, well then they get on and earn a living and live their lives. And there the stupidity of their teenage years falls away behind them and it should be allowed to stay there. But I think this discussion to me has opened up an important but much under-discussed area of public policy. And I do hope the government does seriously take on board all that has been said by others who have spoken and remain attracted to the idea of a serious review of this complicated area of law, and see if we can mend it.
21:46
Lord Bailey of Paddington Portrait Lord Bailey of Paddington (Conservative)
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Lord German OK. >> I rise in support of. >> Of this group of amendments and as is my way, I just have to note a as is my way, I just have to note a small just a little bit of caution for one particular group of people are very low age of criminal responsibility. I know many people here have a problem with that, but it affords a level of protection to young children from being groomed for gangs, and we need to bear that in mind.

So while I have great sympathy for these amendments, which I support because I Lord Spellar spoke about the review, I was on the review. I ran a job club for over 12 years, and many of the young men in particular that I dealt with were unable to seek employment because of what we used to call a blip they'd had in their younger age that was still appearing on their on their DBS, etc. and that small blip often drove them back to much more serious crime because they were older and needed to raise more money.

So I have great sympathy for this, but I do want you just to bear in mind when you're doing review, and I do believe we should do a review because it is very complicated, this area. There's two things to really focus on. One, I return to my theme. The single biggest driver of crime is the idea that you have gotten away with it. So if we're going to remove some of the consequences, we need to think clearly and carefully about how that will be perceived by people who are involved in criminal activity, particularly if they're young and don't have the full.

Experiences to really risk assess their own behaviour. We must bear that in mind, because inadvertently we might be encouraging them to approach criminal behaviour because about the nuance of what we're prepared to wipe out or not. That will not be the conversation that's had on a dark night in the park. When you're planning what the boys will call your next manoeuvre, that's very important that that in we bear mind. The other thing as well is we have people in gangs now whose sole job is to recruit young people, and one of the big things they say to those young people is you are too young to go to court.

We have to be very careful about making that true, or at least to appear to be true. So on one hand, removing these, these spent or old convictions will be such a powerful thing to help people move on. And again, I do support this, but let's think very carefully how we talk about it, where we draw the lines and how we explain it, and adapted in reality rather than just in concept as we sit here through.
21:49
Baroness Sater Portrait Baroness Sater (Conservative)
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I speak very, very briefly to all these amendments in particular, 476477478 these amendments. And I think what we've heard today really highlight how criminal records, disclosures, the whole system, particularly as it relates to children, is complex and very confusing. I've been an advocate for criminal reform, criminal record reform, having been a youth magistrate for over 20 years and on the Youth Justice Board. Those roles have consistently demonstrated how decisions made in childhood, often in relation to relatively minor offences, can have consequences to extend well into adult life.

As we have heard this evening, as my Lords will know, I recently tabled an amendment in the sentencing Bill to address the anomaly in youth sentencing, where the first court appearance, rather than the date of the offence, determines whether a young person is treated as an adult. I, therefore, am very conscious of the unfair impact that these technicalities, beyond a child's control, can have on their future. Although we have had success in reducing the numbers of children in custody.

Because we wanted to keep young people out of prison, we have at the same time increased the threshold of seriousness of offending in these disposals on conditional cautions over a number of years. I know that the My Lords, the Justice Secretary has recently acknowledged publicly that aspects of the criminal records and disclosure systems are needed. Reform rehabilitation is about giving people chance to change and where appropriate, we should work to ensure that childhood mistakes do not turn into lifelong punishments, giving them the opportunity to get on with their lives.

I am also attracted, as my noble friend Lord Garnier has said to to my to the noble Lord. Lord Marks amendment the. So it's really important, I think, that in in what has been said this evening, that the Minister will review these childhood amendments as an opportunity to reflect on a broader review of criminal records and the DBS disclosure system, which might now be appropriate. These amendments highlight just how complex the system has become, ensuring that the system is fairer, keeping in mind the importance of rehabilitation and protection to the public, would, in my view, be a worthwhile objective.



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I rise to very briefly speak to

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I rise to very briefly speak to amendments (476) 477-4782, tabled by the noble Lord Lord Ponsonby, to by the noble Lord Lord Ponsonby, to which I added my name, and also say I'm sympathetic to the other amendments in this group, and I amendments in this group, and I would declare that I'm a school teacher in Hackney. I would also teacher in Hackney. I would also like to acknowledge the help of transformed justice in this. My
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Lord Hampton Portrait Lord Hampton (Crossbench)
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Lords, I rather innocently assumed that one of the cornerstones of justice, the justice system in this justice, the justice system in this country, is rehabilitation. But this not seems doesn't seem to be this not seems doesn't seem to be the case with our young people. As we've heard every year in England and Wales, 13,000 convictions of and Wales, 13,000 convictions of children aged 10 to 17, disproportionately from poor backgrounds, minoritized communities in care or excluded from school, and those convicted acquire criminal records which only add to their disadvantage.

Some of these criminal records remain through life. A child charged for affray for a playground fight would have to disclose that for ever, on a standard and enhanced DBS check. Also currently, as we've heard, a criminal record is acquired on conviction rather than according to the date of the offence itself. This means that many people commit offences as children, but acquire an adult conviction. Adult criminal record because through no fault of their own, the hearing which they are convicted, happens after their 18th birthday.

This situation has got worse because the recent delays in the court system. This is patently absurd, as Lord Marks of Henley has said, brains do not mature until people are well into their 20s. Also, research has shown that teenagers take more risks when they have an audience. As I see in the playground every week, children are immature and often reckless, not seeing the consequences of their actions. Our criminal records should allow for rehabilitation, to allow young people to move on from childhood mistakes.

These amendments would mean that young people should be able to be free of their childhood offences at a specific interval after they've finished their sentence, so they don't have to explain old and no longer relevant childhood offences to potential employers, even if they get managed to get as far as an interview. And we're not talking the most serious crimes here. For everyone else, these amendments mean that childhood offences should automatically be taken off the records five and a half years after conviction.

We also propose that conditional caution, when accepted by a child, should not appear on records. And we propose that those whose conviction is delayed after their 18th birthday should not acquire an adult criminal record. My Lords, with the number of NEETs approaching a million, we should be doing everything we can to remove barriers to employment and let rehabilitation of the young be truly part of the justice system.
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Lord Carter of Haslemere Portrait Lord Carter of Haslemere (Crossbench)
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My Lords. >> I'm going to speak to amendment four, eight, six D and I support all the other amendments in this group. And I'm very grateful to the noble Lord Lord Marks for his compelling introduction and the other powerful speeches. You may wonder why I've tabled this very specific amendment. Well, the best way I can relate it is to tell a brief story. I was truly shocked when a friend drew my attention to an incident involving his teenage daughter a few years ago, but which affects, I believe, many of our young people, receives very little publicity and ruins many lives.

Very briefly, my friend's daughter had arrived at a railway station to find the ticket machines were not working, and there was a long queue for the ticket office. Desperate to catch a train to get her vaccinations for charitable work abroad, she foolishly jumped on a train without a ticket. When she got out at her destination, she offered to pay at the barrier. The inspector told her to get a ticket at the ticket office. However, there was a long queue so knowing she wouldn't have time to do that, she went to the machines but found she couldn't get a.



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Ticket for a journey from the station where she'd left to the station she'd arrived at. Very station she'd arrived at. Very naively, she thought she would therefore get the ticket after her appointment for vaccinations, and appointment for vaccinations, and she left the station in a state of some panic. It was then that she was approached by the ticket was approached by the ticket inspector and told she was to be prosecuted under section 53 A of prosecuted under section 53 A of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 for travelling without paying the fare with intent to avoid payment.

It was the first time she had ever done something like this. Her ticket would have cost £3.20. That's less than a cappuccino coffee. I discovered that if convicted, she might not only face a fine of up to £1,000 or imprisonment for up to three months, but her conviction would be recorded on the police national database, and future potential employers would see it. After a basic criminal records check for up to six years and up to 11 years. I believe after an enhanced check.

So through just one moment's teenage lack of judgement, her prospects of obtaining a job and career would be blighted during a crucial period when most young people are trying to get on the career ladder, all for a £3.20 fare. Acting as a friend, I had many exchanges of correspondence with the rail company, all to no avail. The upshot was that I ended up joining her and her desperately worried parents at the local magistrates court for her hearing, where I intended to plead the mitigating circumstances of her case.

To my horror, I discovered she was one of dozens of other young children and young people queuing up that morning charged with exactly the same offence, a regular occurrence at that magistrates court. I found it was nothing unusual. I managed to persuade the train company to drop her case if she paid a fine. But thousands of other young people are not so lucky. My Lords, this was a young teenage woman who was on an important journey in connection with unpaid charitable work abroad.

Her heart was in exactly the right place. On the spur of the moment, she panicked and thought she might miss her train. She had tried to pay the fare at the train barriers when she arrived, so she emphatically did not intend to avoid it. Of course, I emphasise this. She thoroughly deserved the fine and I'm not disputing that at all. She deserved the fine. But did she really deserve the likely prospect of being unable to obtain a decent job for the next 6 or 11 years, all for a one off first time offence relating to a £3.20 train ticket.

She was no serial offender. The charity fare checks have demonstrated with a criminal record. Young people can be locked out of future employment opportunities and even voluntary work. Research shows that at least 30% of employers would automatically exclude a candidate with an unspent conviction. But the facts show that, as we've heard, young people's brains are still developing, which makes them more impulsive and less able fully to understand the consequences of their actions. It's therefore crucial they are given the opportunity to move on from their mistakes without carrying the weight of those childhood errors during early childhood adulthood.

In all honesty, might not many of us say there, but for the grace of God go our children. My amendment would give our children a second chance. If they're found without a valid ticket on the railways, they would still be liable to a penalty fare or a fine. But provided it was a first offence, their lives would not be ruined. But by given by being given a disclosable criminal record, my emphasised my amendment would not apply if they were caught a second time.

In those circumstances, they would not have learnt from their mistakes and potential employers would have just cause in wanting to know they were dishonest. This is apparently a widespread problem. The office for Road and Rail, the did a report in June 2025 on rail fare enforcement, and identified a number of issues with train operating companies, revenue protection practices. It said that while fare evasion and revenue losses have been increasing, passenger safeguards have not kept pace, and train operating companies practices may result in unfair or disproportionate outcomes, with passengers being penalised for innocent or minor mistakes, the government said in July last year that it was urgently considering the sensible recommendations in that report, and would respond as soon as possible.

I would be very grateful if the noble Lady, the Minister, would give an update on the government's response to the report. And are there statistics on how many children and young people under 21 have been convicted of these offences? This is the point raised by the noble Lord Lord Ponsonby and a challenge to me. The evidence I have was the evidence of my own eyes and what the questions I asked. At that particular magistrate's court, there were 40 or 50 young people queuing up charged with that offence that morning, and apparently it was a weekly, at least occurrence.

So I'd be most grateful if the if the government could give any statistics on how many young people under 21 are convicted of that railway's offence under the 1889 act. My Lords, in conclusion, this is about proportionality. Yes, children should not escape punishment and a fine or penalty fare is entirely appropriate. But a criminal record for 11 years for a first offence by a child is totally disproportionate.

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I've signed Lord Marks amendment. 420 and thank him for his

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420 and thank him for his excellent explanation, and also reminded that our noble friend Lord Dholakia has long campaigned for decades for a review of the way society deals with children in the criminal justice system, his principal concern, and the subject of a number of private member's bills was on increasing the age of bills was on increasing the age of criminal responsibility, and we will address that specific issue in the next couple of committee days. But he did also express some concerns about treatment that children and young people who had entered the criminal justice system would face later on.

And reference has been made to David Lammy review I also want to remind your Lordships House about Iain Duncan Smith's report for the centre for Social Justice in 2012, in which he said there's now a significant body of research evidence indicating that early adolescents under 13 to 14 years of age is a period of marked neurodevelopmental immaturity, during which children's capacity is not equivalent to that of an older adolescent or an adult. Such findings cast doubt on the culpability and competency of early adolescents to participate in the criminal processes.

This raises the question of whether the current minimum age of criminal responsibility at ten is appropriate, and I think that also reflects on cautions and convictions for that particular age group, although I recognise that my noble friend amendment goes right up to the end of childhood. So there are all these amendments in front of us. Look at how convictions and cautions are handled and how they're disclosed. Mention has already been made of the organisation of fare checks. They have called for a major review of the criminal records disclosure system, and interestingly, they produced the same evidence as Iain Duncan Smith did about the capacity of of people of this age to understand and take responsibility for their actions.

And as has already been mentioned, young people hope to move on. They suddenly discover that in trying to get work, trying to get promotion, they have to disclose their criminal records. And too often, on top of the almost inevitable rejection letters, their shame emerges once again and yet again, destroying their chance of creating a new life. Once they have served their time proposes that there should be a full sorry, an automatic disclosure of caution in criminal records. The slate should be wiped clean for childhood offences, and that we should stop forcing people to reveal short and suspended prison sentences forever.

But they say, as has every other speaker so far today, safeguards must remain in place for more serious offenders in order to protect the public. But at the same time, it does give individuals the chance to move beyond their childhood criminal record so they can get work and forge a new life as an adult. And the first steps for this, my Lords, would be a review. And I do hope the Minister will look favourably on amendment 420.
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Lord Cameron of Lochiel Portrait Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative)
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My Lords, can I begin by thanking the noble Lord Lord Marks of Henley on Thames for his of Henley on Thames for his amendment four 420 and in general, these benches, of course, abide by these benches, of course, abide by the notion that policy and practice should be guided by the feedback of evidence and outcomes, and this amendment would support that objective with regards to childhood convictions and cautions. And I believe that the data that currently exists on this would have to be thoroughly analysed to determine whether the measure is necessary, but I hope that the noble Lady, the Minister, can shed some light on on that existing evidence in her response in terms of amendments 476477478, we have great sympathy with the general thrust of these amendments.

I have some reservations about amendment 476, in that we have already removed the automatic disclosure of youth cautions on DBS certificates, and I'm unsure whether that should be extended now to the more serious youth conditional cautions, which of course include duties alongside the original caution. But in regards to the principle behind amendment 477, in the name of the same noble Lords, I completely understand that and understand why the legislation as currently drafted may lead to individuals being treated as adults when they commit an offence as a juvenile, and that's all the more so given the backlog, that the courts are currently suffering and delays in the court system.

As I think noble Lord Lord Dear Lord Hampton pointed out. Likewise, I similarly see the rationale behind amendment 478, which seeks to ensure that custodial sentences received by users are removed from their criminal records after five and a half years in respect of amendment four. 86 D in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Hazelmere. As others have said, children of course, make mistakes, and there is a spectrum of offences on which avoiding a fair payment of travelling without a ticket is certainly on the less severe end.

And there is plainly a case that, as first time offences, these do not warrant a criminal conviction certificate being issued. My only point and conclusion is just, I think, to echo what my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington said, I think we have to be a little bit careful that we don't increase the incentives for petty crime. And as my noble friend Lord Bailey pointed out, that can lead to especially with regard to criminal gangs, perhaps a potential for, for for danger.

But with that said, I look forward to the noble Baroness Minister's response.
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Baroness Levitt Portrait Baroness Levitt (Labour)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lords. Lord Marks of Henley on Thames, Lord Carter of Haslemere and my noble friend, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, for tabling of Shulbrede, for tabling amendments 424, 476, 477, 478 and 486. They form a formidable trio not just in terms of their expertise, but also in terms of the respect that they rightly command in your Lordships House, a number of your Lordships have raised the question of the age of criminal responsibility. I hope I'll be forgiven for not addressing that.

Now. I know that for certain we will be addressing this at least twice in the days and weeks to come. The government acknowledges the principle which underpins these amendments, namely that having a criminal record will have a significant impact on children and that such a record can, in circumstances, follow them into later life as adults, with again with profound consequences. That said, as I think all your Lordships agreed, it is critical that our criminal records disclosure regime strikes the right balance.

On the one hand, we want to support people who have committed criminal offences either some time ago or when they were very young, to be able to move on with their lives. But there is also a need for appropriate risk management in the public interest, as well as to safeguard the most vulnerable. I deal first with amendments 424, 476, 477 and 478. The existing regime does help employers make informed recruitment decisions through the disclosure of appropriate and relevant information, which will mean that some serious offences, even when committed as a child, will always need to be disclosed, particularly where a person is applying to work with children or vulnerable adults.

But as some of your Lordships will be aware, in his recent independent review of the criminal Courts. Sir Brian Leveson recommended that the government review the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and in the statement I made to your Lordships House on the 2nd of December, I said that we will consider opportunities to simplify the criminal records regime so as to ensure that it is both clear and proportionate, particularly in relation to childhood offences. I would be very happy to meet with any of your Lordships over the coming weeks to discuss this in more detail.

It is of the utmost importance to the government that we work together to ensure that we get this right, and I was as as the noble Lady, Baroness Brinton said, also very struck by the observations made by Lord Bailey of Paddington, that this is not always as straightforward as it might appear, and hence the need to make sure that we do this carefully, carefully, in a structured and thoughtful way. I say I'd be delighted to see any of your Lordships, given the offer made by my noble friend Lord Hanson in the last group, Lord Garnier, and I may be seeing rather more of each other than perhaps he'd intended, but always a pleasure on my part.

Turning now to amendment 486, I am very surprised to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Carter, says, because the government's view really echoes what my noble friend Lord Ponsonby has said that children are generally treated leniently where fairer, when fairer CAID fare evasion forgive me when fare evasion occurs, and that this offence is most commonly dealt with by transport staff. So usually no question arises if a child acquiring a criminal record for fare evasion and similar offences, the police only usually become involved in cases involving a refusal to pay for a ticket or repeat offences, or whether some other complicating factor.

Even when the police do become involved. Usually this doesn't result in a prosecution taking place because the Crown prosecutors requires prosecutors to consider as a specific public interest factor tending against prosecution. Where a child is young or it's a first offence. But armed police officers can, of course, give out of court disposals which allow them to respond, allow the offenders to respond to low level offending in a proportionate and effective way. These out of court disposals, of which there are a variety, provide opportunities for children to make reparation and restoration to victims and to be diverted into courses or services which can help to change their offending behaviour.

Most types of out of court disposals are not automatically disclosed on criminal record certificates, so the government believes that it would be very unusual for a child or young person to get a criminal conviction for this type of offence, but were that to happen, the Disclosure Time Limits and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act are very different from those which affect adults. Rehabilitation periods for children are typically half the length of those for an adult. So, for example, if a court were to impose a fine for fare evasion, there would usually only be a requirement that the child disclose their conviction for six months, as opposed to the case of an adult who would have to disclose it for a year.

For all these reasons, under the existing legislation, the government's view is that there is a very small chance of a child who is a first time offender, getting a criminal record for a fare evasion offence in the first place, and an equally small chance of such a conviction following them into adult life. But I will make inquiries and I will write to the noble Lord, giving such statistics as I'm able to find.

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May I just ask one question? I'm extremely grateful to some extent. extremely grateful to some extent. Mine was a is a probing amendment. I need more facts and evidence around this. But the noble Lady, around this. But the noble Lady, the Minister referred to the code for Crown prosecutors. This was the for Crown prosecutors. This was the cases I was talking about were cases which were prosecuted by the train company. The train operating company. And I'm not really convinced that they had even heard of the code for Crown prosecutors.

So I'd be, you know, I don't think they had from all the correspondence I had with them, to be honest. So I do think there's something there to be investigated a bit more closely, because I saw

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the evidence with my own eyes. I don't think I can improve on

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I don't think I can improve on what I've said, that I will make inquiries as to the evidence that we hold statistically, and I will we hold statistically, and I will write to the noble Lord. So I reiterate that I'm very happy to meet any of your Lordships ahead of Report stage to discuss these Report stage to discuss these issues in more detail, including, of course, a noble Lord, Lord Carter. But in the meantime, I hope that there will be content to

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that there will be content to withdraw their amendments. My Lords, I'm very grateful for the.
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Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Portrait Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)
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Support that I've had from around the House and the very around the House and the very detailed and helpful response from the noble Lady, the Minister. I will gladly take up her invitation to have a discussion. It's important that the government does intend to review this area in part at least anyway. And if we can commission a review of the sort that I have suggested, then I'd be very pleased to help with with that

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review. But on that basis, I'm happy to withdraw my amendment. This amendment be withdrawn.

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This amendment be withdrawn. Amendment by withdrawn. Amendment

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420 a Lord Davis, Lord Cameron. My Lords, I am pleased to move amendment 428. Although this amendment 428. Although this amendment is in my name, it is a product of tireless campaigning from my right hon. Friend Helen Grant MP, and I'd like to thank her for her long standing commitment to this issue. It is thanks to her unwavering commitment that we are one step closer to making a child cruelty register a reality. I thank the government, my Lords, for their ongoing communication with us on this important topic and their assurances that they would like to implement a policy that supports a child cruelty register.

When this amendment was tabled during the passage of the sentencing bill in your Lordships' House, government officials requested that it be reserved for Home Office legislation rather than the Ministry of Justice. And that is why I am moving the amendment today. My Lords, this proposed register would be very similar in kind to the register for convicted child sex offenders for whom there already exists, of course, notification requirements. It would ensure that those convicted of cruelty to vulnerable children must notify the police of their home
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Lord Cameron of Lochiel Portrait Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative)
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address and other relevant details following their release from prison. The Register would act as a The Register would act as a safeguard by providing the police with the oversight needed to manage with the oversight needed to manage offenders and reduce the risk to children. It would mean those who commit cruelty to children in a commit cruelty to children in a non-sexual manner cannot simply disappear back into the community. disappear back into the community. These provisions already exist for sex offenders, and we see no reason why they should not similarly pertain.

For those convicted of child cruelty. Although the offence is different, its effects are detrimentally serious in nature. Child cruelty is a heinous crime which can have a lifelong impact on victims and affects the most vulnerable individuals in society. And it seems to me that common sense requires that those who commit crimes, such as allowing the death of a child, neglect of a child, violence towards a child, infanticide or female genital mutilation should not be able to slip under the radar in local communities once their custodial sentence is spent, there should be a centralised mechanism for the police to know where these people live.

This is particularly so given that in the vast majority of child cruelty cases, the offender has parental responsibility for the victim. They are therefore likely to have connections to the child's guardian, who in many cases will be a family member. There is, it seems to us, a clear gap in the child protection systems that unnecessarily endangers children. The child protection system must exist to free children from the conditions of cruelty towards them, but it must also contain preventative measures to ensure that children aren't placed in such appalling situations.

Child cruelty offences have doubled in the past few years, and it is important now more than ever to act swiftly to kerb this rise. Given the government's previously stated support for this measure, I hope that the noble Lady, the Minister, will be equally able to offer her support today.
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Baroness Levitt Portrait Baroness Levitt (Labour)
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My Lords, the question of notification requirements received attention during the passage of the government's sentencing Bill. I am grateful to the noble Lord Lord Davies of Gower, for ensuring this important matter remains firmly on our agenda. And I also wish to join the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel and the noble Lady Baroness Brinton in paying tribute to Helen Grant MP and Paula Hudgell, both of whose tireless campaigning has done so much to advance the protection of children. As my noble friend Lord Timpson set out at Committee stage of the sentencing Bill, this government is committed to safeguarding children and ensuring robust measures are in place to protect them from those who seek to cause them harm, and we are working hard to consider the best way to manage such offenders effectively.

We are unable to support the amendment at present, as further work is needed to determine the most effective way to strengthen offender management, we need to fully consider to consider fully all aspects of implementation when it comes to adding notification requirements to a new cohort of offenders, particularly in light of the government's recently published Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, which sets out significant reforms to offender management. My Lords, it is right that we take the time to understand the potential impact of these proposals.

One of the issues is that adding notification requirements to a new cohort of offenders would involve significant costs for policing. For example, notification duties such as taking biometric data, verifying personal details, recording changes, conducting compliance visits and managing visor data must all be absorbed into the general workload of the police. So one of the tasks for the government is to reflect in our consideration that this could mean shifting resources from other important areas of police work. Since I can reassure the noble Lords, however, that since December, Home Office and Justice Ministers have met regularly to discuss options in this space and have held initial discussions with national policing representatives so I can add my reassurances to those already given by my noble friend, Lord Timpson.

Ministers will continue to pursue this issue and pursue it with vigour. These reassurances. I hope that at this stage, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
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Lord Cameron of Lochiel Portrait Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative)
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And grateful both to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton and noble Baroness, Lady Brinton and noble Lady, the Minister, for their contributions. I think we can all agree that child protection should be a priority for any government, and that we must ensure that any gaps in the law should be plugged with immediate effect. This amendment, unlike many in this bill, is not about creating a new category of offender. It's not about an expansion of the criminal law. It simply reflects and seeks to fix the troubling reality that individuals who commit acts of cruelty or violence or neglect do not have a monitoring regime upon leaving custody.

And that's what we believe needs to be corrected. We already accept as a matter of principle that where an offence demonstrates a clear and ongoing risk to children, the state has a responsibility to ensure appropriate oversight in the community. And that's why notification requirements exist for child sex offenders. This amendment merely extends the same logic to offences which were different in nature, can be as devastating in their consequences, and also no less indicative of future risk. I'm very grateful to the noble Lady, the Minister, for acknowledging the need, and I think the advantages of this amendment, both inside and outside of this chamber.

I said nobody in the Minister, the government, have acknowledged the need and I'm grateful for her words as noble Lady, the Minister's words of support tonight. I understand the point she made about considering this properly, but what I would say is the rise in child cruelty offences demands action rather than any kind of delay. Every year that passes without a mechanism of this kind leaves children unnecessarily exposed to harm, and therefore I would want to give with the greatest of respect, notice to the noble Lady, the Minister, that unless there is, I think at Report stage, an amendment from the government that supports the the substance of this amendment, then it is likely that that I would want to bring it back.

But I would like to reemphasize my gratitude for the government's cooperation on

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this point. And for present purposes, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment be withdrawn.

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Amendment be withdrawn. Amendment by leave withdrawn. The question is that clauses one four 9 to 1 five one stand part of the bill, as many as are of that content. The contrary content. The contents have it after clause 151 contents have it after clause 151 amendment 41 Baroness Doocey.

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amendment 41 Baroness Doocey. My Lords, amendment 42 one is now a hot topic. The West Midlands Police Chief Constable has resigned and the government is pledging to restore the Home Secretary's power to dismiss chiefs who, quote, failed their communities. Last
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Baroness Doocey Portrait Baroness Doocey (Liberal Democrat)
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week's events bring the motivation behind this amendment into sharp focus, underlining the need to focus, underlining the need to shield operational policing from political interference. Contrary to political interference. Contrary to some recent reporting, police and crime commissioners are not required by law to consult the required by law to consult the police inspectorate before sacking a chiefs constable. While they're expected to seek its advice, it's expected to seek its advice, it's not a statutory duty. Amendment 42 one would put that safeguard clearly into primary legislation, requiring HMRC to be consulted before a chief constable is removed.

When PCCs were created, they were given the power to hire and fire the chief officer, but concentrating that power in one pair of hands has had damaging consequences across England and Wales. Around a quarter of forces now lose their chief constable every year, an astonishing level of churn for such a senior role that is both wasteful of talent and destabilising for forces. Too often these departures are driven not by incompetence or misconduct, but by political disagreement with some PCCs permanently in election mode and prioritising their own political agenda rather than responding impartially to the real policing challenges on the ground.

We must never reach a point where a chief constable fears upsetting the Home Secretary, or where any politician can bully a police leader to serve their own political ends. That would take us dangerously close to the American model of political control over policing. In the British tradition. Officers swear allegiance to the Crown, not to any politician, and are expected to act independently without fear or favour. It's a model that has stood the test of time, commands public confidence and deserves to be preserved.

Although PCCs have used the formal section 38 removal process only twice, several more have threatened to invoke proceedings, usually starting with suspension. In all these cases, it has resulted in the Chief Constable choosing to retire or resign rather than fight a public battle. They're unlikely to win. The government now propose to move responsibility from PCCs to elected mayors, with council leaders taking the lead elsewhere through new policing and crime boards on these benches. We fear this simply repeats the same mistakes in a different guise.

The mayoral route in particular, concentrates even more power in a single individual, often elected on a low turnout and with limited day to day scrutiny. What replaces PCCs must be better, not just different. And for the Liberal Democrats, that means local police boards drawn from councillors and community representatives moving powers from one Unscrutinised politician to another is not a solution. Amendment 438 EC would allow the Home Secretary to instruct a PCC to begin the dismissal process, effectively giving central government the power to fire chief constables.

No individual, whether a PCC mayor, council leader or home secretary, should hold unilateral power to dismiss a chief constable, dismissal must remain possible where justified, but only through a fair, transparent process with mandatory independent scrutiny. That is the role of HMRC FRS to provide an external check, ensuring decisions are based on competence, conduct and the public interest, not political convenience. I welcome that the Home Secretary sought the inspectorate's view in the West Midlands case, but that essential safeguard is missing from amendment 438 EC, which allows appointment of a person outside government or policing with too much scope for political influence.

And only after the Home Secretary has already decided making the process look uncomfortably like a rubber stamp. My Lords, that is what amendment 421 is designed to prevent. We cannot continue with a framework in which highly experienced senior officers are pushed out, not because they failed the public, but because the governance framework leaves them vulnerable to political whim. This is not about shielding chief constables from accountability. It's about ensuring that accountability sits within a framework that protects the public interest and respects the line between governance and operational control.

If we get this wrong, we will continue to lose good leaders and further erode the independence that is so essential to policing by consent. I beg to move.
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Lord Cameron of Lochiel Portrait Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative)
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After clause 151. Insert the new clause. Removal of chief constables as printed on the Marshalled List.

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My Lords, as the noble Baroness Baroness Doocey said, if ever there was a more pertinent time to debate this matter, it would be now. The this matter, it would be now. The mechanism by which chief constables can be removed has faced significant scrutiny, given the significant scrutiny, given the very controversial actions taken by West Midlands Police in the Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal. And I pay tribute Tel Aviv scandal. And I pay tribute to my hon. Friend Nick Timothy, MP, for his tenacity in pursuing the truth of that matter.

I think it is now axiomatic that the former chief Constable of West Midlands Police failed in his professional duties, and it is welcome that he is now accepted. His position is no longer tenable and has announced his retirement. It is against this backdrop that we discuss the amendments in this group on amendment 41 and, of course, aware of the government's indication that they will abolish PCCs in due course. That is important context to this amendment. For the time being, of course, they remain in place.

I have to say, I'm not entirely convinced about the necessity of amendment 41. If we think of the Maccabi Tel Aviv affair, it was evident for quite some time that the a PCC for the West Midlands should, I think, have dismissed the Chief Constable. As it happens, he did not. But I'm not sure that consulting His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Rescue Services beforehand would have had any bearing on the PCCs decision. Furthermore, if the PCC was required by statute to consult the inspectorate, would that not have provided further delays to any decision? Amendment 43 eight EC seeks to grant the Home Secretary the power to remove chief constables, and in her statement to the other place, on the 14th of January, the Home Secretary said that until 2011, the Home Secretary had the authority to dismiss the Chief Constable, but the power was removed by the previous conservative government.

On the surface, that's correct. The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 did repeal the direct power of the Home Secretary to remove the chief constable of a police force, and section 38 of that act grants the power of dismissal to the PCC of the police area. However, the Home Secretary does have the power to give directions in relation to police forces and local policing bodies under sections 40 and 48 of the Police Act 1996, and if, for instance, it was clear that West Midlands Police were failing to discharge their functions in an effective manner, the appropriate measure to remedy that failure would have been the removal of the Chief Constable and therefore, according to those sections, the Secretary of State does have perhaps an indirect ability to remove chief constables.

In her statement to the Other place, the Home Secretary also said that the government are going to reintroduce the Home Secretary's power to dismiss dismiss chief constables and that this will be part of the government's upcoming White paper and wider police reform, with legislation to follow. So I have a question for the Minister, which is, does he have a timeline of when the police reform white paper might be published? And if he doesn't have a precise date, could he give us an indication of the rough progress of that? And secondly, will any change in the law be brought forward in time for Report stage of this bill, or will we have to wait until the next session for another bill on policing?
22:35
Lord Hanson of Flint Portrait Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour)
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Thank. >> I'm grateful to the noble Lady Baroness Doocey for her amendment, which concerns the process by which police and crime commissioners may police and crime commissioners may call on Chief Constable to resign or retire, as the noble Lord Cameron of Lochiel has mentioned, the government's intention is to replace police and crime commissioners with either a mayoral model or, in some cases where the mayoral model isn't appropriate. With a policing board made up of local councillors, and that will be brought forward in due course.

But further details will be set out again in the Policing White Paper, which the noble Lord Cameron of Lochiel asked me when that will be produced. I say again to him that time honoured phrase of shortly, but by shortly I do mean shortly, and that he will not have too long. I hope to wait for the report to be published as a white paper. Self-evidently, it's a very complex document with lots of discussion items in it. And again, any legislative proposals in that will be brought forward when parliamentary time allows.

As ever, I'm not trying to shortchange him, but we will give that detail at a date in the near future. As the noble Baroness has explained, the purpose of her amendment is to ensure that before taking steps to dismiss the Chief Constable, a police and crime commissioner must first seek the views of the Inspector of Constabulary. I agree this is a desirable approach. I'm pleased to tell your Lordships this is already in place as a requirement. The noble Lady should know that, and I hope it is helpful to her to say that under section 33 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act of 2011, PCCs may call upon the relevant Chief Constable to resign or retire.

But before exercising this power and under regulation 11 A of the Police Regulations 2003, the requirement is that police and Crime Commissioners are required required to seek the views of inspectorate in writing and provide them to the Chief Constable and indeed to the relevant Police and crime panel, alongside their rationale for why the PCC is proposing to call for retirement or resignation. I appreciate that it is a confusing landscape to have regulations under the act, but also then under police regulations, but the position currently is that in black and white, what her amendment seeks to do is already enshrined in law.

Now the noble Lord Walney is not in his place, so I won't say too much if anything. Now about amendment 43 ATC. But I do want to place on record for the committee today, because it was raised by the noble Lord Cameron of Lochiel. The fact that the Home Secretary has announced already the government's intention to reintroduce the power of the Home Secretary to remove chief constables. It's been a difficult few weeks in the West Midlands, and it has highlighted the absence following the changes that were mentioned by the noble Lord Cameron of Lochiel.

For such a power now to exist for the Home Secretary to act, we happen to believe that action is clearly needed, and I can assure your Lordships that this is high on the government's agenda. Now, again, the White Paper is due in very short order. It will set out exactly the government's intentions in this regard. It will be followed by legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows, because we do need to make changes on a range of matters, not least of
22:39
Baroness O'Loan Portrait Baroness O'Loan (Crossbench)
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which is the abolition of PCCs. And I look forward to debating this with noble Lords across the House. But I have to say for the moment, if if the noble Lady will accept that difficult though it is to find the regulations are there, and the the regulations are there, and the requirement is there, that I hope she'll able to withdraw her amendment for the moment. And I look forward to further discussion look forward to further discussion when the other matters come before the House at some point in the

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future. Thank you. Mr. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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amendment. Lordships Baroness Levitt.

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Baroness Porter Baroness O'Loan. 42, relates to the test used to determine whether an officer acted in breach of discipline when he or she used force in self-defence and she used force in self-defence and come late to this, but it's a very important issue. Currently, the test used in police disciplinary law is a civil law test. Under the current law, an officer must hold an honest belief that they or others are in immediate danger, must only use proportionate and necessary force, and critically, where their belief is mistaken, they must.

Their mistake must have been an objectively reasonable one. The amendment is necessary because, following the Police Accountability Rapid Review Report published in October 25th, the recommendation was to change. That was made to change the legal test to the criminal test. This would allow officers to rely on an honestly held but mistaken belief, even if it was unreasonable, and government have said they will implement this change through a Statutory Instrument without public consultation. I'd like at this stage to thank Justice and Inquest for their research on this matter.

The criminal law test, which government proposes would allow officers to rely on a mistaken belief, even if it was unreasonable, so long as it was honestly held. My Lords, I fully understand that officers are under great pressure when faced with possible or actual violence. Split. Split second decisions must be made on the ground in the immediate context. That is why it is critical that officers are properly trained and managed. However, it is not a good reason to move from the civil law test to the criminal law test.

This. This determination arose from a criminal law test where the Supreme Court made a decision, a case called W80, where an officer shot a man, and when misconduct proceedings were brought, he claimed he had done so in self defence. The iOPC recommended to the MPs the officer should face misconduct proceedings. The MPs declined to initiate those proceedings, and the iOPC wrote to the MPs directing disciplinary proceedings, and that decision was challenged by judicial review. The Divisional Court allowed the appellants claim the iOPC appealed to the Court of Appeal.

The appeal was allowed, and on further appeal to the Supreme Court, decision of the Court of Appeal was upheld and dismissing the appeal, the Supreme Court judges commented this is an area of law of vital importance to the public and to the police. It is essential that public and police should be informed in straightforward terms of the law which applies. We hope it will now be possible to recast legislation and guidance so as to achieve this result. My Lords, this amendment is not about criminal law.

It's not about whether an officer should be prosecuted for the use of force. It seeks only to provide the clarity which the Supreme Court advocated. My Lords, the criminal law test is simply not appropriate for disciplinary proceedings. Apply it. Applying it would undermine public confidence in the police disciplinary process. We can accountability and make meaningful scrutiny of police use of force far more difficult. The Home Office's statutory guidance makes it clear that the disciplinary framework is intended to encourage a culture of learning and development for individuals and the organisation, and this focus on learning and development is what part of what makes disciplinary procedures distinct from criminal procedures.

Misconduct processes are an important and excellent opportunity for forces to identify mistakes, learn from them, and prevent recurrence. The Supreme Court in W80 made clear that the criminal law test conflicts with the fundamental principle of the disciplinary process, which is to contribute to learning and develop for the individual or concerned, or for the organisation as to the as to the reasonableness of mistakes. If the objective, reasonable reasonableness of an officer's mistaken belief is no longer relevant. Unreasonable beliefs, however dangerous and widespread, may never be identified, allowing unreasonable but honestly held beliefs to serve as a defence would strip away the incentive to examine, understand, and remedy the factors that led officers to hold those beliefs in the first place.

For public safety, it is essential that unreasonable mistakes and the conditions that enabled them are identified and addressed. Moreover, the introduction of the criminal law test would risk allowing honestly held beliefs based on prejudice or stereotyping, however unreasonable, to provide a defence following police use of force and police use of force is a continuingly, increasing, with over 812 recorded, 12,000 recorded uses in 2425, and that's an increase of 9% on the previous year. Police complaints about use of force rarely lead to investigation by the iOPC, because most complaints are referred back to the officer's force for investigation.

Fewer still result in disciplinary proceedings and hence the opportunity to identify training or management deficiencies to enable institutional learning and employment and improvement is not there. Applying the criminal law test would further erode police accountability. In an environment where police use of force is already too rarely scrutinised, as recognised by the Supreme Court, it's important for public trust and confidence that citizens don't feel that unreasonable mistakes made by the police are left unchecked, or that the police are not held accountable for such mistakes.

Police trust. Public trust in policing has declined in recent years, diluting accountability by allowing officers to rely on unreasonable stakes would only deepen that crisis. Lord Dear now, as Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland, I was very concerned about the number of complaints of wrongful use of force by Police Service of Northern Ireland officers. So we conducted an analysis and we established that the level of the use of force complaints by the PSNI was 40 times the national average, and there were high levels of claims by people injured by police, use of force.

The number of sick days taken by officers was very high, and the level of claims for injury on duty was very high. Complaints about abuse of force did not, as we thought, arise in anti-terrorist policing situations. They arose as they do here in situations like arrest. Among other things, we identified training deficiencies both in terms of content and regularity, of required update in human rights, compliant police training and the provision of suitable equipment and de-escalation methods. When the recommendations were were implemented, the level of force reduced significantly the number of civilian claims against the police, the number of officers injured, the number of officers on sick leave diminished rapidly, and the level of compensation paid for injuries on duty also diminished.

The facts speak for themselves. Research commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council in 2023 found that just 41% of people in England reported trust in the police. For non-white respondents, it was even lower 32.1%. Those subjected to force also often hold more negative views, lack confidence in the complaints system. My Lords, this amendment is profoundly important. It seeks ongoing police arrangements, which are clear, which apply the current test for the use of force rather than reducing police accountability, and thereby make it possible to identify why something happened so that policing will improve.

It will result in greater disclosure by the police to the public, especially those who have been harmed, and such transparency will experience shows that enhance public confidence in policing. I hope the noble Baroness Minister will think again about the proposed change in the law which this amendment seeks to address. I beg to move.

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After clause 151. Insert the new clause as printed on the Marshalled List.

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List. My Lords, my amendment 423

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My Lords, my amendment 423 implements a recommendation of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords in a judgement in the Lee Lords in a judgement in the Lee Clegg case in the 1990s. The facts of that case briefly were that on the 30th of September 1990, private Lee Clegg was on patrol in West Belfast when a passenger in a stolen car was shot and killed. Lee Clegg was charged with murder and his defence was that he fired in self-defence. He was convicted of murder on the grounds that he used disproportionate force on an appeal.

The Judicial Committee of the House of Lords had to decide whether a soldier on duty in defence of the civil power in a similar position, therefore, to police firearms officers, who kills a person and who would be entitled to rely on self-defence, but for the excessive use of force, is guilty of murder or manslaughter. A manslaughter verdict would have meant a change in the law, and Lord Lloyd of Berwick said the arguments in favour of such a change were very persuasive.

Quoting from the Court of Appeal, he said and I quote, there is one obvious and striking difference between Private Clegg and other persons found guilty of murder. The great majority of persons found guilty of murder, whether they're terrorists or domestic murders, kill from an evil and wicked motive. But when Private Clegg set out on patrol on the night of the 30th of September, he did so to assist in the maintenance of law and order. And we have no doubt that as he commenced patrol, he had no intention of unlawfully killing or wounding anyone.

However, he was suddenly faced with a car, driving through an army checkpoint and being armed with a high velocity rifle to enable him to combat the threat of terrorism. He
22:49
Lord Carter of Haslemere Portrait Lord Carter of Haslemere (Crossbench)
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decided to fire the shot from his rifle in circumstances which cannot be justified. It's right, they said. be justified. It's right, they said. The House of Lords, this is Lord Lloyd, that Private Clegg should be convicted in respect of the unlawful killing, and that he should receive a just punishment for committing an offence which ended a young life and caused great ended a young life and caused great sorrow to her parents, relatives and friends. But this court considers, and we believe, many considers, and we believe, many other fair minded citizens would share this view, that the law would be much fairer if it had been open to the trial judge to have convicted Private Clegg of the lesser crime of manslaughter, on the ground that he did not kill from an evil motive, but because his duties as a soldier meant he had a high velocity rifle and reacted wrongly to a situation which suddenly confronted him in the course of his duties.

We consider that a law which would permit a conviction for manslaughter would reflect more clearly the nature of the offence which he had committed. However, Lord Lloyd ruled it was inappropriate for the courts to change the law and it was for Parliament to do so. Well, here we are, my Lords. 30 years on with that opportunity, and the issue has never been more important given the analogous position of police firearms officers. Since 2010, British police have shot dead 30 people, an average of two a year.

Most recently, we've seen the prosecution last year for murder. In the case of Sergeant Sergeant Martyn Blake. My Lords, police officers are being deterred from volunteering for firearms training and the National Police Chiefs Council says police officers across England and Wales are grappling with a significant shortage of firearms officers, exacerbated by the lack of legal protections afforded to armed officers, particularly regarding criminal and misconduct hearings. The move to anonymity in criminal proceedings is welcome, but it's not enough.

Parliament did enact legislation in 2008 which set out the law of self-defence in section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. This provides that the question whether the degree of force used by the defendant was reasonable in the circumstances is to be decided by reference to the circumstances, as the defendant believed them to be, but crucially, the degree of force used by the defendant is not to be regarded as having been reasonable in the circumstances if it was disproportionate.

So the upshot is that a police officer cannot rely on self-defence to a murder charge if he used disproportionate force. This is unlike in the case of householders who, since the Criminal Courts Act 2013, were now generally have a defence if the force was disproportionate but not if it was grossly disproportionate. This confirms my belief that there is a lacuna which needs to be addressed, just as the House of Lords said in the appeal, in the case of Lee Clegg, I should add a brief postscript here to the Clegg case, since I believe he was subsequently acquitted on the grounds of new evidence.

On the 23rd of October last year, Ministers made a statement in the Martyn Blake case and said the current system for holding police officers to account is not commanding the confidence of either the public or the police. While the public are entitled to expect that when officers exceed the lawful use of their powers, there will be robust processes in place to hold them to account. Police officers who act with integrity and bravery to keep us safe each day, need to know they have strong public support.

If officers lack confidence to use their powers, then public safety is put at risk. My amendment seeks to strike this balance by implementing the recommendation of the House of Lords in the Clegg case all those years ago. If passed, it would not, as in the householders case, result in an officer's acquittal, since I don't think that can be justified in the case of trained firearms officers, there needs to be accountability and a criminal penalty. The House of Lords in Clegg seemed to agree since they recommended manslaughter, not acquittal, for such cases.

I will be very interested to hear the views of the government on this

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long standing issue. My Lords, I rise to support the

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My Lords, I rise to support the amendment by the noble Lord Carter of Haslemere. My Lords Firearms Officers provide a valuable and necessary service, an important part of UK policing. They do a very part of UK policing. They do a very difficult and dangerous job and deserve our thanks. And the current climate is not conducive to good climate is not conducive to good policing and does not support our officers. This amendment is a positive one which will help them.

My Lords, this is a topical amendment. Several days ago, the Independent Office for Police Conduct ruled on the case of Sean Fitzgerald being shot during a raid by West Midlands Police. He was holding a black mobile phone, which the officer who shot him believed was a gun. This ruling was the conclusion of a long, complex investigation, which included experts whose reconstruction corroborated the officer's testimony that the phone could have been mistaken for a gun. The director of the iOPC said that, quote, the determination over whether the officer should face disciplinary proceedings largely came down to a split second decision in what was a dynamic, fast moving armed police operation.

This was a tragic accident, but it highlights the fact that firearms officers have to make very difficult, instantaneous decisions that can result in life or death. They have to quickly make a call on what is the safest option for themselves, their fellow officers and the public in order for them to make the best judgements for themselves and for the public, they need to be confident that they will be supported in making that endeavour. It is striking that in a piece in the Daily Telegraph, former firearms officer Sergeant Harry Townley said that the main fear of him and his fellow officers was not being shot themselves.

It was facing the investigation that would happen after they discharged their weapon whilst doing their job. The case of the shooting of Chris Kaba demonstrates this in response with how the officer was treated to how the officer was treated, up to 300 Metropolitan Police officers stepped back from firearms roles, and the Army had to be put on standby to support the met. Firearms officers go through the intensive training, including with how to respond in high pressure situations. These are dedicated people with a strong desire to protect the public and serve their communities, Tanguay said.

Quote, each time that an AFO attends a scene, they face an uncomfortable truth if I get this wrong, I could be jailed. In my 30 year career, I've never once met an officer who wanted to, quote, bag a scalp. No one who hoped for the chance to use their gun to bring down a criminal. Most of us weren't even keen on firearms at all. If you were a weapons enthusiast, you would be viewed with suspicion by your force and probably removed authorised firearms officers.

Afos shouldn't have to do their jobs in fear of being jailed or in fear of their careers, their lives being ruined. Police Federation or the Police Federation also shares these concerns that firearm officers who, even when they follow the tactics and training they have received, will face significant struggles and hardships over what are usually split second decisions taken by them in dangerous and fast moving situations. My Lords, firearms officers need to be protected in primary legislation to make sure it is certain that they are treated fairly when they have had to make a very difficult decision.

This amendment by the noble Lord is not a get out of jail free card, but, and it still holds them to account for their actions. My Lords, it means that officers who do their job properly, who make a decision that would be impossible for most people in this chamber to comprehend, are protected under the law. And on that basis, I strongly support the amendment. support the amendment.
22:57
Lord Hogan-Howe Portrait Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench)
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Lord Tyrie to. My amendment 423A and talk a little about the the two other amendments in England and other amendments in England and Wales, police firearms officers have intentionally discharged conventional weapons at people conventional weapons at people around 120 times over the last 20 years, between 2006 and 26. So that's a discharge of weapon at a person about six times a year. This figure represents less than 0.05% of all authorised firearms operations during that period. In 20 2425.

So in just one year, the latest year, there were 17,249 firearms operations. During this period, the 20 years the police shot dead. As Lord Carter said, on average around three people a year, each one a tragedy. There's no way that any officer should celebrate what happened, nor the families, of course, and all the people who are hurt by these terrible things and at the same time injuring a further two people a year. My Lords, this is not a trigger happy group of people.

They're the only people in this country who can go forward to deal with criminals or situations where a person is armed or similarly dangerous. They are a unique group of around 5500 people in England and Wales, who protect the population of 60 million of us and our visitors, and on our behalf they go forward. They then expect that we all do. I think for them to be held accountable, they do not expect immunity in the criminal law, any court.

But I think they do have a reasonable expectation that the system will understand the challenges. As Lord Jackson mentioned, that they face. And in that fraction of a second, they have to make their decision to shoot. They suffer from further challenge that they are only human Charge Charge of Charge of misconduct Charge of misconduct on Charge of misconduct on the Charge of misconduct on the facts that have been dismissed in the criminal court. And if they're lucky, that might take another two years.

The notorious case involving PC Anthony Long shot dead a man in 2005, and he was cleared by a jury in 2015. Ten years later, he was charged despite the fact that he was arresting a man together with two others in a car. A car containing three Mac ten submachine guns and the ammunition for them. Baroness O'Loan raised the case of W80. And you know, I reserve my position on the point she makes about the standards of when you decide to make prosecution, because, as the Minister will know, it's a very complex legal issues.

I'm not qualified to talk about that, and certainly not in the space of hearing Baroness O'Loan comments, because I'm not here to say that

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she's wrong. But W80 of course, shot very briefly. I didn't talk about criminal

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prosecutions at all. Sorry. I did not talk about criminal prosecutions at all.

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prosecutions at all. I didn't say you did. But my

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I didn't say you did. But my point is that W80 in 2015. After a public inquiry where it was found that he had lawfully killed Jermaine Baker. Was later, after a series of Baroness O'Loan explained through eventually to the Supreme Court appeared before a gross misconduct hearing an independent body. Nothing to do with the police ordered by the IOPC, and was found to have no case to answer. Not that there was an arguable case. Excuse me.

Not that there was mitigation. There was no case to answer. Ten years later, there had been through the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, and nobody had noticed. There was no case to answer. One of the central problems in these cases is that they are rare. And every time an officer wakes two years to be clear, then there is an outcry saying, why were they charged in the first place? And why did it take so long to resolve? Now the government always say, every government that's been affected by this has said we will review it.

And improve. And in fact, Lord Jackson, I think, has just mentioned the latest example of that. Now, during this period that. Sorry. But but my point is that all the reviews in the world have produced absolutely nothing. Nothing's changed. I've given you two examples, but there could be there are many more where people have been waiting ten years for something to be shown to be not a criminal offence. So I'm afraid the reviews have not produced anything, which is why it's led to me making this amendment today.

And the officers broadly, I would argue, are under a triple jeopardy. First, the ipoc consider if there was a criminal offence or an offence of misconduct. That can take around 18 months. If there is a claim of a criminal offence, and that's considered by the CPS probably another year. In the event there is a criminal charge, then of course the officer will go to court. During this period, the inquest into the person's death will have been suspended. If there has been no charge, the inquest usually then with a jury will be resumed.

Those juries can and have found that there was an unlawful killing, which then must be reconsidered by CPS and usually leading to a criminal charge to go through a criminal court and then back through the IOPC. By my calculation, it's been hard to establish the facts. There have been around five officers charged with murder following cases over the last 20 years, each leading to a finding of not guilty at a Crown court. In fact, the people who seem to be able to appreciate this issue and deal with it with some wisdom are called jurors.

My amendment, therefore, is designed to give some comfort to firearms officers that their case will have to reach a higher bar before a prosecution can be started. It's modelled at Lord Hart, as mentioned already, and he was the one who pointed this out to me on the householder defence to murder the already existing criminal law. If a householder is attacked in their home, and in the process of defending themselves, kills the intruder, then there is a high legal threshold to pass before a prosecution for murder can follow.

All I'm asking for is for the same to apply to a firearms officer. The lawyers and I have talked to the attorney general about this, and he reminded me of this. But lawyers generally have concerns about this because it creates a unique group, a group of people who are treated differently by the criminal law. But I have two points in response to that general principle. First of all, householders are already a unique group. So the criminal law has decided that, in fact, they're a unique group.

And that's OK. But it wouldn't be all right for police firearms officers, who I argue are already a unique group. So why can't we add one more group, for example? And frankly, if we we realise that this was decided by Parliament on the advice of lawyers. So what's different about this group? Probably more importantly, for the reasons I've given, they are a unique group. Not only the only people in society who use a firearm to prevent a crime, save a life, or make an arrest.

We say that no one can carry a firearm for that purpose, even if they are illegal. Firearms. Owner and I end with this. I know it's late. All our firearms officers are volunteers. They can't be ordered to carry a gun. Unlike in the USA, it is not a condition of service. So we rely on their honour and willingness to come forward and take on these roles. And there is evidence that that is not happening in the numbers we need. I'd ask everybody here, there aren't many people here, but quite honestly, would you do it? Could you do it? Would you take that responsibility, facing the inevitable inquiries that would follow, because it not only involves the officer, it also involves their family? I know, but I've waited all day as well.



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Lord Leong. If you could conclude your remarks, would that be helpful for

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everyone? There are just too many times

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There are just too many times when officers are faced with the challenge, which is unfair. I challenge, which is unfair. I believe that the solution I propose, I propose is that we should treat I propose is that we should treat firearms officers fairly and differently. I am not a lawyer, and it may be that the government can come up with a better proposal, but I'm afraid the position we have at the moment for me, is untenable, and it is something that I'm not prepared to let rest.

And I ask for support from the government in some respect. And my final point is just that I do support, to some extent, the proposal of Lord Carter and Lord Jackson. My concern is that it might lead to more people being charged more often, and I am arguing that they should be charged less often for doing their job well.

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Forgive me if I can beg your indulgence. I neglected to advise the committee that for good order, the committee that for good order, that my brother is a serving Metropolitan Police officer. For in order for there not to be any confusion. And I should have

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mentioned that earlier. My Lords, these three amendments raise a difficult but important question. How should the law treat the use of lethal force by authorised firearms officers so as to protect both the public and those officers who act in good faith in dangerous situations? Amendment 42 would make clear in
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Baroness Doocey Portrait Baroness Doocey (Liberal Democrat)
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the Police (Conduct) Regulations that when an officer uses force based on a mistaken belief, that based on a mistaken belief, that belief must be both honestly held and objectively reasonable. This reflects the Supreme Court's reflects the Supreme Court's decision in eight zero, and would give bereaved families and communities that often feel communities that often feel overpoliced. Greater clarity and confidence in the system. Amendment confidence in the system. Amendment 42 three would update section 76 of the 2008 act, so that force used by an authorised firearms officer could never be treated as reasonable if it was grossly disproportionate to the situation as they saw it.

That would set a clear upper limit on what can count as lawful force, drawing a boundary beyond which self-defence cannot reach. However real the threat appears from these benches. We understand the intentions behind both amendments. The first rights, the W80 test, interdisciplinary rules. The second provides clearer statutory guidance in firearms cases. Amendment for 23 goes further. It proposes that if an authorised firearms officer kills someone while acting under an honest but mistaken belief that the force used was necessary and reasonable, the conviction should be manslaughter rather than murder.

We have concerns that this would, in effect, create a special route from murder to manslaughter for authorised firearms officer one not available to others who also face life and death decisions when police use potentially unlawful lethal force, there must be full investigation, prosecution where appropriate and robust disciplinary proceedings. The central question, then, is whether these amendments strike the right balance between public accountability and fair protection for officers who must make split second decisions in life threatening situations.
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Lord Cameron of Lochiel Portrait Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Conservative)
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My Lords, Amendment 42, in the >> My Lords, Amendment 42, in the name of the noble Baroness Baroness O'Loan, has had a detailed introduction and I would like to abbreviate my remarks as a result, the issue under consideration in the issue under consideration in that case was whether, in police disciplinary proceedings, a police officer could have a finding of misconduct against them if their use of force was found to be honest and mistaken but unreasonable. And ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that the appropriate test was was the civil law test, and that an honest but mistaken belief that the use of force is necessary is only justification for that use of force.

If the belief is reasonable objectively. Amendment 42 would place that judgement into statute, regardless of the merits or otherwise of the Supreme Court's ruling, and whether the criminal or civil test should be applicable. I'm not convinced that it needs to be codified into statute, because there now exists relevant case law at the highest level, which can be applied by the IOPC and the courts in the future. And it's not clear to me what benefit there would be in placing this into the regulations.

I would like to concentrate my remarks, really, on amendment 43, in the name of the noble Lord Doyle Carter of Hazelmere, because I would like to express my strong support for that amendment. I believe firmly that we must support our armed police officers who regularly put themselves in danger. This amendment presents an opportunity to do that. It creates a defence to a charge of murder for authorised firearms officers who use lethal force in the honest but mistaken belief that such force was necessary and reasonable, and converts a conviction for murder into manslaughter.

As was said, this amendment is grounded in the recognition that authorised firearms officers operate in uniquely dangerous, fast moving and high pressure environments where decisions about lethal force must be taken, often in fractions of a second. And unlike civilians, such officers are routinely required by the state to confront armed and violent individuals in order to protect the public. The criminal law has long acknowledged that context matters when assessing culpability, and this amendment recalibrates liability to reflect the exceptional circumstances in which firearm firearms officers are required to act, and it addresses the chilling effect that the prospect of murder convictions may have on armed policing.

If armed officers fear that split second errors of judgement could result in murder charges, they may hesitate in circumstances where decisive action is required to save lives by providing legal certainty that honest operational mistakes will not attract the most severe criminal sanction. We believe that this amendment supports effective law enforcement while maintaining accountability for unlawful conduct. Lastly, I listened with sympathy to Lord Hogan-Howe in terms of his

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amendment. Sorry. This is my major. One of my major objections to this amendment, major objections to this amendment, the one that Lord Hart proposes. Can you explain to me why firearms officer would feel more supported officer would feel more supported by discretionary life sentence, which is what would be available which is what would be available for charge of manslaughter compared to a mandatory sentence of life for

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murder? Because I'm not sure I would. I think the point I was making was that there may be an effect that the prospect of a murder conviction may have on an officer, if they feared that an error that they made may result in a discharge. In terms of the Lord's own amendment. As I said, I listened with sympathy to that, and I await the government's response on that. And indeed their response to all the amendments in this group.



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During this short but important debate. These amendments all relate to the same matter of principle, to the same matter of principle, namely, the legal standard by which an authorised firearms officer should be judged on the thankfully should be judged on the thankfully rare occasions when they discharge a firearm. My Lords, the government pays tribute to our armed officers. Theirs is a difficult, dangerous and stressful job. They do it to keep us all safe and we have a great deal for which to thank them.

Of course, we recognise that they often find themselves in exceptionally difficult circumstances, having to make life and death decisions in an instant. But that said, there is also the matter of public confidence in the police. I do not think that any of your Lordships would disagree that confidence in the police is of equal importance, and I would not be doing justice to this debate if I did not recognise and mark the
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Baroness Levitt Portrait Baroness Levitt (Labour)
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fact that some of our citizens feel great anxiety about the accountability of firearms officers. accountability of firearms officers. And in the past, when there have been high profile fatal shootings by the police, this anxiety has by the police, this anxiety has boiled over into anger and social unrest. The government's job is to balance these factors. We must ensure that the law offers protection to our brave police officers, whilst at the same time officers, whilst at the same time providing reassurance to our fellow citizens that if officers do fire their weapons, their conduct will be rigorously scrutinised.

It is only right that the public should have confidence that any officer whose actions fall below the high standards we rightly expect will be held to account in the public interest. Our conclusion is that we should not create a two tier justice system, where police officers who kill or injure in the course of their duties, are judged by a more lenient standard than applies to the rest of the population. Our reason is this we are confident that the criminal law which covers self defence, defence of others and the use of force in the prevention of crime, already provides sufficient protection for police officers.

Because of the lateness of the hour. I'm not going to go through the details of this which I had intended to do so, but I'll move straight to the amendments. Amendment 43. In the name of the noble Lord Lord Carter of Haslemere would change the law so that an authorised firearms officer who acts with disproportionate, in other words, unreasonable force, would still be guilty of an offence, but it would be manslaughter, not murder. I want to say a very few words about what the law says, about how a jury must consider whether the amount of force used by the officer was reasonable, sometimes described as proportionate.

Whilst this is an objective test, the jury is told that if what the officer did in the heat of the moment when fine judgements are difficult, was no more than they genuinely believed was necessary, even if they were mistaken in that belief, then that would be strong evidence that what they did was reasonable. And if the jury considers that the officer may have done no more than was reasonable in the light of what they believed to be happening, then they're not guilty of anything.

In other words, the law provides a full defence. So it's unclear whether amendment 42 is intended to replace this full defence with a partial one, or whether what I think is the case, that it's intended to work alongside it in some way. But if the noble Lords intention is to create a partial defence, then what he is saying is that officers who use unreasonable or excessive force should be held to a different standard from the rest of the population. We cannot accept this because the government believes that to do so would fundamentally damage confidence in the police and in the justice system.

I turn to amendment 43, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-howe, which seeks to amend section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, 2008. As your Lordships have heard, section 76 deals with householder cases. The noble Lords Amendment, as we've heard, seeks to make authorised firearms officers subject to the same standard as the householder confronted by an intruder. The amendment attempts to raise the threshold for when force becomes unreasonable from disproportionate to grossly disproportionate for firearms officers. In effect, this means that firearms officers could rely on the defences of self-defence, preventing crime, or making a lawful arrest if they used force that was disproportionate in the circumstances, provided it was not grossly disproportionate for the reasons I've already given.

The government is of the strong belief that it would be wrong in principle to authorise the police to use excessive force, and that this would be extremely damaging to public confidence. In any event, we do not think that there is a proper comparison to be made between householders facing an unexpected intruder and trained firearms officers. The threshold was raised in householder cases to recognise the exceptional nature of being unexpectedly confronted by an intruder in one's home, the unique stress and shock of a home invasion justifies greater legal protection, allowing a higher level of force than in other self-defence contexts.

The same logic does not apply to firearms officers who are trained and equipped to use lethal force, and are deployed only in the most high risk situations. They are subject to strict command, control and training protocols to ensure that lethal force is used only when necessary and in accordance with the current legal framework. I turn finally to amendment 42, in the name of the noble Lady Baroness O'Loan. As the noble Lady is explained during the debate, her amendment deals not with criminal trials but with policeman's conduct hearings.

The previous Home Secretary commissioned Timothy Goodwin and Sir Adrian Fulford to carry out an Independent Police Accountability Rapid review because it was, it was recognised that it was ongoing complexity and confusion and that there were concerns that this was having an impact on recruitment and retention of these essential and much valued officers. Sir Adrian and Mr. Goodwin examined the matter thoroughly and heard evidence from a wide range of stakeholders. Their conclusions and recommendations were clear and were published in October 2025.

That the government should change the legal test for use of force in policeman's conduct cases, from the civil to the criminal law test. The review has found that police officers need confidence and greater consistency in the disciplinary system, and that this would improve fairness and public confidence. The government has recommended that recommendation, and we are in the process of making the necessary changes to the Police Conduct Regulations 2020, and our intention is that these changes will come into force in the spring.

Whilst we accept that the amendment is well intended, I hope that the noble Lady will understand why it is not one that the government can support. So for the reasons I have given, I invite the noble Lords and the noble Lady to withdraw their amendments.

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My Lord, thank you. I thank the Minister. I thank everyone who has spoken. I will withdraw the spoken. I will withdraw the amendment. For the moment. I do think there is a major, major issue of public trust in policing which of public trust in policing which has yet to be fully explored.

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has yet to be fully explored. That the amendment be withdrawn. The amendment is by leave, withdrawn.

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withdrawn. resumed. The question is that the House be resumed. As many as that opinion will say content. The contrary not content. The contents have it.
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