Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lord Cameron of Lochiel

Committee stage
Monday 17th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s interjection and for that clarification. However, as somebody who lived for 35 years with a footpath running through their garden, I have to say that I do not really agree with him.

We should be very careful about implementing these two amendments. They smack to me of the landed gentry attempting to keep the ordinary man and woman from enjoying the countryside. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that it would not be an easy task to prove that deliberate trespass had occurred over land and grounds or gardens with the intent of causing harm or wanton damage to those grounds.

In respect of Amendment 47B, I do not support increasing the fee should an offence be proved. I am nevertheless keen to hear the Minister’s views on the amendment, but at the moment I am not inclined to support the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for tabling these amendments. The case he set out seems clear and obvious. His amendment would ensure that the offence of trespassing with intent to commit an offence extended to people’s gardens and grounds, and it goes no further than that. Any intrusion into those grounds or gardens with mal-intent should be reflected in the level of criminal fines.

My noble friend’s amendments simply proceed on the assumption that gardens or grounds, in their simplest terms, should be treated the same in legislation as residences and buildings. Private property does not stop existing once you step out of a physical doorway; the grounds or gardens surrounding buildings are extensions to them, to be bought and sold just as freely. I think the word “curtilage” often appears—certainly in the law, but often more widely—to describe the land or garden around someone’s house. Indeed, there may be even as great a need to create an offence for this as there is for trespassing on a property with intent. I can imagine criminals using back gardens to navigate between houses to commit burglary. I can imagine confrontations taking place not inside a building yet still in the garden or grounds owned by a victim. They are just as serious as entering a property to commit a crime.

However, I acknowledge that there is generally a difference between entering someone’s house and entering their garden. The former is in most cases far more intrusive—a far greater infringement of someone’s right to a private property. It therefore follows that entering a house should regularly carry a harsher sentence than merely entering the grounds, but that can be the case while ensuring that both are offences. We do not have to disapply the latter simply because it might carry a lower fine than the former.

My noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Amendment 47B provides for this, as he set out. It seeks to give the court the discretion to alter the fines levied on an offender based on the seriousness of the offence, creating a higher maximum fine to be used for the most serious offences. Additionally, creating a minimum fine will ensure that any form of trespassing with the intent to commit another offence is dealt with to a minimal acceptable standard.

Whatever form it takes, trespassing in order to commit crime is incredibly invasive and often traumatic, and it is right that this is acknowledged in the range of the fine level. I hope the Minister has listened to these points, and I look forward to his response.