Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 8, 9 and 10 in my name, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who is outside the Chamber at the moment—I think she is talking to the other Minister—has kindly added her name. I thank the Minister and his officials for the meetings that we have had since Committee to discuss these issues.

The three amendments could be called the Newlove and Waxman amendments, because, in effect, they articulate the views and concerns of the late lamented Baroness Newlove and her successor as Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, about the issues that people on the ground experience in dealing with anti-social behaviour, most particularly the experience of victims.

Amendments 8 and 9 seek to improve the accessibility of the ASB case review by removing local discretion over thresholds and the definition of a qualifying complaint, which currently are creating unnecessary barriers for victims. The anti-social behaviour case review was established as a mechanism that allows victims to trigger a multi-agency resolution-focused review of their case, as in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which set out a threshold for when a case review could be activated; it said three—or a different number, as set out under local review procedures —or more qualifying complaints within a six-month period.

However, the existing framework gives local organisations enormous discretion in setting local procedures, including defining the number of ASB complaints required and what constitutes a qualifying complaint. Consequently, authorities are able to add their own caveats, which creates yet another postcode lottery for victims. It creates inconsistencies in access to support and it delays intervention in situations where harm is escalating. For example, some authorities refuse to initiate a case review while an investigation is ongoing.

Similarly, the 2025 Local Government Association survey found that 62% of respondents applied additional local caveats, such as, as I mentioned, not allowing applications while an investigation is ongoing; requiring applications to be submitted within one month of the last reported incident; refusing a case review if one has already been conducted for behaviour of a similar nature; or rejecting complaints deemed to be “frivolous”, whatever the local authority’s definition of frivolous happens to be. This range of caveats presents a serious barrier to victims being able to seek timely relief.

Conditions such as prohibiting applications during ongoing investigations, imposing narrow time limits for reporting or refusing repeat applications, even where the behaviour is continuing, place the burden on the victim rather than on the system designed to protect them. Investigations can take months, during which victims may experience continued harm without any mechanism available to them to trigger a multi-agency response. As I mentioned, “frivolous” introduces subjective judgments that risk undermining victims’ credibility and, in particular, undermining confidence in the process. Collectively, this results in inconsistent access and contributes to the postcode lottery.

The Government’s response to these amendments in Committee referenced their newly launched ASB statutory guidance. While the Home Office’s updated guidance encourages a threshold of three complaints in six months, it is not legally binding and does not prevent authorities introducing additional conditions. Therefore, without legislative change, inconsistency and local caveats will continue. These amendments are designed to close these loopholes and establish firm national standards that the system currently unfortunately lacks.

Amendment 10 seeks to support the identification of gaps and barriers that victims face in the ASB case review process by ensuring what is surely a no-brainer: the consistent collection and publication of data. In this sort of situation, data really is king. One is flying slightly blind if one tries to make judgments about what is and is not going on if the data which one is relying upon to make those judgments are themselves seriously flawed and, as we have seen, open to individual interpretation to a significant degree across multiple local authorities.

In Committee, in response to the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I put forward on anti-social behaviour, the Government said they wished to see how the new ASB guidance beds in before considering further legislation. This was the position also on the proposals to require independent chairs for case reviews and to ensure that victims are able to attend, or at least have their views represented.

We accept that the guidance needs time to take effect. Guidance is one thing, but if you do not have any meaningful way to monitor whether that guidance is being applied consistently, how it is being applied and what effect it is having then it is quite difficult to judge whether the guidance is doing what you want it to do.

Currently, data collection on the ASB case review is sparse, inconsistent and fragmented. There is a patchwork of information and no adequate national oversight. The original legislative framework for the case review requires local bodies to publish the number of case reviews they conduct and refuse each year. However, this information is somewhat meaningless if we do not know the reasons why an application for review was refused. In particular, as we have heard before, local bodies can set their own parameters for qualifying incidents and set caveats on the thresholds.

I recognise that the Government have introduced Clause 7 on the provision of information to the Secretary of State, whereby authorities may be required to provide

“reports of anti-social behaviour made to the authority … responses of the authority to anti-social behaviour, and … ASB case reviews carried out by the relevant authority”.

However, this merely outlines the types of information that the Secretary of State could require from local bodies, which, in the view of the Victims’ Commissioner, does not go far enough. Without proper data, it is not possible to assess whether the guidance is working in practice.

In responding to this group, we would be enormously grateful if the Minister could tell us whether the Government will commit to ensuring that the relevant authorities are required by regulations to collect and provide to the Secretary of State the data points as in Amendment 10. Specifically, this would mean information in relation to: first, where local bodies determine the threshold for the case review was not met, by reference to the local review procedures, and the reasons why they made that determination; secondly, the number of case reviews carried out that were chaired by an independent person; thirdly, the number of reviews where the victim or their representative was given the opportunity to attend; and, finally, the number of reviews carried out where the victim or their representative attended the review in person.

I hope that we will have a positive response from the Government. I know that the Minister is sympathetic to this. I know that everything cannot be done simultaneously, but the case for more consistency, as required in the first two amendments, and for providing meaningful, useful data to judge whether the new guidance is working is important enough that I hope the Government will give this some serious attention. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I signed the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell. He spoke eloquently to the detail and, indeed, during the debate that we had in Committee on them. I want just to summarise the key reasons.

We understand why the Government want to see their guidance bed in, but we are already picking up concerns about some of the detail. The point of these three amendments is to set very clear ground rules for each of the stages, partly to make the data reliable but also partly to give absolute clarity about what happens at each stage of the review.

The first amendment is about the threshold for the case review, the second is about the nature of the ASB and whether that is a qualifying complaint, and the final one concerns collection and review of the data. The first two are important because we have already heard that local authorities respond very differently. Finally, as the noble Lord said, data is vital. If certain characteristics about each case review are published, having that collection of data would be extremely helpful. Then, by reviewing the data by authority and elsewhere, it would become very easy to see how the case reviews are happening nationally.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for his work on these amendments, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her contribution to the debates on anti-social behaviour reviews, both today and in Committee. It is an important issue that touches on how our system responds to persistent harm affecting families and communities. We on these Benches are very sympathetic to these amendments.

In Committee, noble Lords rightly underlined that anti-social behaviour is rarely about a single, isolated incident, but often results in repeated conduct that causes cumulative distress and disruption. The ASB case review—previously known as the community trigger—plays a very important role as a safety net. It is designed to bring agencies together to ensure a joined-up response where local action alone has not resolved the problem. Its predominant purpose is to give victims an early opportunity to have their situation collectively reviewed when they have reported multiple qualifying incidents over time.

The amendments in this group seek to strengthen that mechanism by bringing into statute some elements that are currently left to local discretion. A statutory threshold for convening a case review—removing caveats that frustrate victims—would provide clarity and consistency across the country, ensuring that victims do not face a postcode lottery when accessing this right. In Committee, my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott echoed this point, noting that a statutory threshold would streamline the process and prevent agencies imposing additional barriers that can deter applications. That would depend, of course, on where exactly the threshold was set.

These amendments also include measures targeted at transparency. They would require authorities to publish the reasons why they determine that a threshold has not been met, and to publish data on independent chairing and on victim attendance. That increased transparency would build confidence in the process and assist in identifying patterns of variation between areas. However, as was raised in Committee, it is important to balance those laudable aims with the need to avoid imposing disproportionate bureaucracy on bodies that are, perhaps, already under pressure. The Government explained that updated statutory guidance has been published, as we have heard, to strengthen awareness of the case review mechanism and to help agencies guide victims through the process. We should therefore reflect on whether mandating every procedural step in statute will, in practice, make the process smoother or potentially risk diverting resources from handling the underlying behaviour. None the less, this group of amendments is rooted in a shared desire to ensure that victims of persistent anti-social behaviour are heard, supported and treated fairly. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for tabling these amendments. We wholly support the intention of Clause 41, which introduces the offence of child criminal exploitation, but I have several concerns regarding the amendments, which I hope he will be able to allay.

First, is the original crime being brought forward to highlight and punish exploitative behaviour? An adult will perhaps get a 12 year-old to shoplift or deal drugs because they are less conspicuous and have less chance of being caught. That type of coercion is what is being targeted here. I am not so sure that this is always the case when it comes to older teenagers. When the child is 16 or 17, it is often far more of a voluntary decision, based on a mutual understanding, to commit a crime. While there may be exploitation, the offender may not be enticing them towards crime because they are a child. That is a subtle but important difference in intention. Introducing strict liability up to 18 removes the discretion that courts often exist to provide.

That brings me to my second concern, which is that this may end up being used to absolve fully complicit young offenders of criminal responsibility. The Government have made it clear that they see 16 to 18 year-olds as adults, and the law already provides them with many legal rights that 15 year-olds do not have. The Government will soon give them the right to vote. Is the Minister really arguing that personal volition never plays a part in crimes committed by young people? Of course there will be cases of exploitation, but I am sure that your Lordships’ House will agree that there will also be cases where that is not the case. Introducing strict liability will open the door to others already implicated in the crimes committed by the teenager being rendered wholly liable for a crime that somebody else was a part of.

I understand the Government’s intentions with this updated measure. It involves a different principle from child sexual assault, but just as that crime includes a condition that factors in intent, so should this crime, on the part of those under-18. Obviously, there should be an arbitrary cut-off, as the original measure suggests, but we have a criminal age of responsibility of 10 and we are giving 16 year-olds the vote; to suggest that 16 to 17-year olds involved in a crime with an adult can always claim that they were exploited and coerced is not consistent. I hope that the Minister will be able to address these points.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. I was just checking with another Member of your Lordships’ House before I started my winding-up speech. My apologies for not attracting his attention.

We welcome the Government’s decision to address child criminal exploitation. The range of measures in the Bill are certainly a start and address the growing concern about children being exploited into criminality. I particularly welcome the Minister’s letter, dated a couple of weeks ago—about 15 February—explaining that the amendments laid address a highly specific concern about the requirement for the prosecution to prove that the perpetrator did not reasonably believe the child was aged 18 or over, if the child was aged 13 or over. We thank him for that.

However, from these Benches we urge the Government to go further in the longer term in ensuring that all children are safeguarded from exploitation. This needs to be recognised as a form of exploitation. Along with a number of organisations, we think that this should be done through a statutory definition in Parliament, partly because that will guide the services but also because it would make it very clear where the boundaries are on CCE.

Hand in hand with this is the whole issue of cuckooing, which we will come to in the next group. That is equally important. It is one of the newer, more virulent ways of coercively controlling children. We welcome the amendment, wish it had gone further, and look forward to discussions in the longer term about how that can be remedied.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords and will try to respond briefly. I remind the House that we are responding to requests from noble Lords, and in addition from partners in children’s charities, law enforcement and Members of the House of Commons, to make a change to ensure that the child criminal exploitation offence works as intended to protect the children most at risk of being targeted.

As both the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, have said, boys aged between 15 and 17 and, very often, Black and other minority children are commonly overrepresented in those figures. They are the same children at risk of being wrongly perceived as being older, and therefore not protected. We have tried to ensure that we place the responsibility for any criminal activity firmly where it belongs in this case, which is with the adult who is effectively trying to groom, encourage, lead—however we wish to describe it—the child under the age of 18. For the purposes of this legislation, a child is dealt with as being under the age of 18.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, raised again his concerns about voting at 16. That is an issue for debate, and it is a Labour manifesto commitment, but it is not an issue for debate today.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords here this evening, I am quite keen to get home, especially as I will have to stay up all night tomorrow night reacting to the Gorton and Denton by-election, which is going to be very exciting. I hope the Minister expresses the same sort of support for these amendments—well, obviously he will not, but perhaps somebody else will—because I am concerned that Labour has promised something that these clauses will not actually deliver. Perhaps I can explain.

I want to thank the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Randall of Uxbridge, both of whom signed these amendments, although the former’s name is not on them. Amendment 195 and the related amendments seek to ensure that children are not held criminally responsible for the offences of cuckooing or coerced internal concealment where those acts arise from exploitation. These amendments come from joint work by the Children’s Society, Action for Children, ECPAT UK, Catch 22, the Alliance for Youth Justice, the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and other academics.

The Government’s decision to introduce the offence of CCE, alongside new offences addressing cuckooing and coerced internal concealment, demonstrates a genuine commitment to closing gaps, increasing justice and ensuring that those who exploit children are held to account. Taken together with the new preventive orders and the strengthened safeguarding orders elsewhere in the Bill, this represents real progress.

However, there is a troubling inconsistency at the heart of the legislation as drafted. Children being exploited by adults, whether forced to take over another person’s home or to facilitate internal concealment, could be criminalised. While the offence of child criminal exploitation applies only to adults, Clauses 58, 61 and 62 bring children under the age of 18 within the scope of the new offences of cuckooing and coerced internal concealment. That means children who are themselves being exploited by adults could, in law, be treated as perpetrators rather than victims. This directly contradicts the Government’s stated intention to address the imbalance of power exercised by adults who use children to commit crime. It also risks undermining the very purpose of the new offences by re-criminalising children through the backdoor.

We know from the National Crime Agency that child exploitation is a defining feature of cuckooing linked to county lines activity. Police forces report children as young as 14 being found in properties that have been taken over for criminal purposes. This clearly is a legal point, and I am not a lawyer; I very much hope the Government’s lawyers can look at this and see that I am right and perhaps tighten up the Bill as drafted. Children subjected to violence, grooming, intimidation and control cannot meaningfully refuse adults who demand their help. They cannot consent and they should not be punished for crimes that arise directly from their exploitation. This Bill really has the potential to mark a genuine shift in how we respond to child exploitation, and these amendments could help ensure that children are victims and not offenders, and that the law reflects that without any sort of ambiguity.

Amendment 198 concerns Clause 62 and the provision of statutory guidance for agencies responding to child criminal exploitation. Again, it comes from the same child action networks I mentioned before. As I have said, the creation of new offences and preventive orders in this Bill is welcome, but legislation on its own is a blunt instrument and its success will depend entirely on how it is implemented on the ground by the wide range of statutory agencies that come into contact with children at risk of exploitation. Child criminal exploitation is complex, hidden and constantly evolving. It cuts across policing, social work, education, health, youth justice, housing and safeguarding partnerships. We have to have a joined-up, consistent, well-informed response; otherwise, it is pointless putting any of this into the Bill. Support and guidance must extend to all public authorities with statutory responsibilities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, because without comprehensive multi-agency guidance we will continue to see uneven responses, confusion over roles and responsibilities, and children falling through the cracks.

Elsewhere in the Bill, in Clause 99 in Part 6, the Secretary of State is rightly given powers to issue multiagency statutory guidance on the new stalking offence. That recognises that identifying victims, managing perpetrators and preventing harm requires co-ordinated action across multiple agencies. Child criminal exploitation is no less complex and, in many cases, far more so, and the same approach should apply here. Amendment 198 would ensure that statutory guidance is issued to all agencies operating under Section 16E of the Children Act 2004, reflecting their safeguarding activities and duties.

I realise it is very difficult for the Government to react to all the amendments that we put in. I am feeling a bit lonely on these Benches, actually—I do not know if everybody else has gone home already; I am quite jealous. My ambition is to ensure that the provisions in this Bill are supported by the clear, authoritative, multiagency guidance necessary to make them work in practice, and to make sure that we can see they are working in practice. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has outlined the amendments and their importance in detail. I want to echo her last point about the need for proper guidance to set out exactly what the many agencies that should be involved need to do. The group of charities that have written to us propose that this should

“Provide clear advice on the complex and evolving nature of CCE”,

including cuckooing;

“Clarify the roles and responsibilities of all relevant partners”

and “Emphasise transitional safeguarding”, ensuring that young people do not suddenly get pulled out of somewhere and have absolutely no resource to face a new life. They add that it is important that this is not just the obvious agencies; it needs to include those concerned with slavery and trafficking and the police specialists working in child abduction, and it needs to extend to care orders, secure accommodation and deprivation of liberty orders.

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[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for taking part in this debate. I start with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—and I start by welcoming her genuine recognition of the progress that we are making through this legislation by introducing the new child criminal exploitation and cuckooing offences in this Bill. We are grateful for that. As she explained, her Amendments 195 to 197 seek to restrict those who commit the cuckooing and internal concealment offences to those aged 18 or over.

The Government fully recognise that children, particularly those exploited by county lines gangs, are often used to carry out cuckooing activity or to persuade others to internally conceal items such as drugs for a criminal purpose. The act of turning these children into exploiters themselves is particularly appalling and is why this Government’s work to target child criminal exploitation is so important. I think that everyone across your Lordships’ House recognises that. While I appreciate the spirit of these amendments and believe that it is absolutely right that children, when they have been exploited and groomed into criminality, should be protected as victims, this does not in itself override the age of criminal responsibility, where the law holds children over a certain age responsible for their actions. It is possible for a child to commit cuckooing or internal concealment without having been exploited to do so.

Let us be clear that decisions as to whether to charge someone should be taken on a case-by-case basis. As with all offences, the police exercise operational judgment when investigating and gathering evidence to establish the facts of a case, and the Crown Prosecution Service’s public interest test will of course apply. This includes consideration of the child’s culpability and whether they have been compelled, coerced or exploited to commit any potential crime of cuckooing or internal concealment. We will also issue statutory guidance to support implementation of the cuckooing and internal concealment offences, including on how the police should respond and identify exploitation when children are found in connection with cuckooing or internal concealment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, posed the question why we are not creating a statutory defence for children against their prosecution for crimes, including cuckooing and internal concealment, committed as a result of effectively being a victim of child criminal exploitation. When a victim of proposed child criminal exploitation offences also meets the definition of a victim of modern slavery, they may retain access to the statutory defence contained in Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Many victims of CCE will continue to be able to access the Section 45 defence, as they do now. However, we consider that creating an additional stand-alone statutory defence for victims of child criminal exploitation beyond that which already exists in Section 45 of the 2015 Act for victims who are also victims of modern slavery and/or human trafficking could have unintended consequences, given the breadth of the proposed offence. The child criminal exploitation offence is to address the imbalance between children and those individuals who criminally exploit them.

I add that we are working with partners in the criminal justice system to improve awareness and understanding of the Section 45 defence, which will support the early identification of potential victims of modern slavery and prevent criminal proceedings being brought against victims. It is intended that guidance on the potential availability of the Section 45 defence under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 for victims of child criminal exploitation will be included in the statutory guidance that will accompany the new offence.

I turn to Amendment 198. We similarly sympathise with the intention behind the amendment to introduce statutory guidance for multi-agency partners. It is essential that agencies work together to safeguard and protect children and vulnerable adults from criminal exploitation. However, statutory safeguarding responsibilities are already set out in statutory guidance, principally in Working Together to Safeguard Children, which includes guidance on child criminal exploitation. To supplement this, we will issue non-statutory guidance for partner agencies on the child criminal exploitation offence and orders and on cuckooing and internal concealment to support them to identify these harms and recognise how their statutory responsibilities apply. Issuing separate statutory guidance with additional legal burdens for safeguarding partners on these specific crime types alone risks duplication and a siloed approach to protecting children and vulnerable adults—something that I am sure we would all wish to avoid happening.

More broadly, the Government are taking a range of actions to strengthen child protection through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will introduce new multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority in England. This will ensure stronger join-up between police, health, education and children’s social care when responding to harms such as child criminal exploitation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned stalking offences, which are committed mainly against adults, so it is appropriate to have bespoke guidance. Here we are talking about safeguarding children where the DfE guidance will apply, so it is appropriate that we take this approach, given the range of agencies involved for children. I hope that, given those assurances, the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I said in my contribution that I hoped that the agencies might extend beyond the usual ones, and the Minister certainly named the usual ones. Would it, for example, include working with the local gangmaster operations as well?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I will not speculate. I suspect that would be the case, but I had probably best undertake to write to the noble Baroness to confirm that detail.

Government Website: Registering a Death

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Brinton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to update the Government website page on registering a death, specifically the requirement to do so within five days.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

The five-day timeframe in England and Wales to register a death starts once the medical examiner has sent the medical certificate of cause of death to the registrar. While the guidance provided on GOV.UK is up to date, the General Register Office for England and Wales will continue to work with relevant departments to ensure that this information best supports the bereaved. Civil registration is a devolved matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, recently, it took nine days to register my sister’s death, instead of the five stated on the website. The medical examiner’s office and the registrar both told me that, every day, bereaved families are confused and distressed, as they believe that they are breaking the law because they think it is death that triggers the five-day clock and not the medical examiner signing the papers off. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, told me that her medical examiner was taking up to a month to do this and that there were further delays in registering the death. Will the Government update the website, adding the certifying hospital doctor—the first step that the public encounter—ahead of the medical examiner’s role, to clarify the timeline? Will the Government review the five-day rule in the light of delays in some ME and registrar services?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I offer my condolences to the noble Baroness on her loss. She has a point. I have discussed this with officials and we are looking at how we can improve the website and make some changes to it. That will be done, and I will write to the noble Baroness within a month, when it has been completed.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

This Clause would remove the right to a retrial following a conviction in absentia where the person convicted is deemed to have been present, even if there has been no contact between the person and the court approved lawyer.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my late friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness had originally laid this proposal that Clause 195 should not stand part. I had signed it to support him because of my interests in human rights. His untimely death last week means that I am now leading on something that he, as an excellent lawyer, really understood and cared about. We shall in this debate, when we get into the detail, miss his incisive legal mind, combined with a passion for fairness and the rule of law. We miss him so much already. I am not a lawyer, but I will do what I can. I thank the Defence Extradition Lawyers Forum, or DELF, for its help and advice in the last few days, as well as its excellent technical briefing, from which I shall quote.

The core of asking that Clause 195 not stand part is straightforward. It would remove the right for a retrial following a conviction in absentia where the person convicted is deemed to have been present, even if there has been no contact between that person and their court-approved lawyer. As ever, there is more in the detail. Clause 195 proposes to amend Sections 20 and 85 of the Extradition Act, governing extradition following convictions in absentia. Following a stakeholder symposium convened in January, DELF identified material inaccuracies in the Government’s stated justification for the clause. Unfortunately, there are consequences as a result of these inaccuracies that will have serious implications for individuals facing extradition in future.

In the Government’s justification for Clause 195, they said that the proposed amendments

“ensure compatibility between UK domestic legislation and the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement”.


Article 601(1)(i) of the TCA, which governs convictions in absentia, already aligns with Section 20 of the Extradition Act 2003. Those safeguards, grounded in fundamental rights, reflect the carefully calibrated EU extradition framework, strengthened in 2009 to enhance protections for convictions in absentia. It sought to promote legal certainty and mutual recognition while respecting differing national legal systems. The problem is that Clause 195 risks making UK legislation inconsistent with the TCA in two material respects, thereby undermining the reforms advanced by the UK in 2008-09.

First, Article 601(1)(i)(iii) of the TCA permits refusal of extradition where a person did not deliberately absent themselves for a trial in absentia unless they have a right

“to a retrial or appeal … which allows the merits of the case … to be re-examined”.

That standard is reflected in Section 20 of the Extradition Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, but Clause 195 would dilute this safeguard by reducing it to a mere “right to apply” for a retrial, thus weakening protections previously secured across Europe.

Secondly, Article 601(1)(i)(ii) of the TCA deems a person present at the trial only where they have

“given a mandate to a lawyer … to defend him or her at the trial, and was indeed defended by that lawyer at the trial”.

However, new subsection (7A) in Clause 195 will weaken this protection, treating a person as present solely by virtue of their legal representation, even where there has been no contact or instruction between lawyer and client.

There is further concern over the Government’s inaccurate statement that the

“interpretation … changed as a result of … Bertino and Merticariu”.

The Supreme Court did not create new law by distinguishing between a right to retrial and a mere right to apply for one. Rather, it affirmed the settled meaning of “entitled”, endorsing established authority, which made it clear that entitlement does not mean “perhaps” or “in certain circumstances”. In doing so, the court in that case overturned the conflicting decision in BP v Romania 2015, which had erroneously treated a discretionary right to apply for a retrial as sufficient, having misapplied case law on procedural requirements that do not undermine a genuine entitlement.

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[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by saying how sorry I am that it is the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, moving her proposition and not Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who we will greatly miss. As we all know, he was a staunch advocate for the people of Orkney and Shetland. I served nine years with him in Parliament, as we crossed over during that time, and found him to be an exemplary public servant as Deputy First Minister for Scotland and as a Member of Parliament. I had less contact with him in your Lordships’ House and I am genuinely sorry that I cannot have contact with him today. I pass my condolences to his family. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness Lady Brinton for taking up the cudgels on this specialist subject and doing it in a way that is professional. I promise that I will try to answer the questions and follow up on the points she has raised.

I am also grateful to the noble Baroness for reminding me of the constituency case of Paul Wright in Mold, which I dealt with in a former life as Paul Wright’s Member of Parliament, following the extradition case with Greece. I will have to google it to refresh all the details in my memory, but it was an important constituency case for me to take up as a Member of Parliament at that time. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, feels that this did not receive sufficient scrutiny, but I take his point, and I hope I can answer his points today.

Clause 195 standing part of the Bill means that, under the Extradition Act 2003, the UK may extradite individuals either to face trial or serve a sentence. Where a conviction occurred in absentia and the UK court finds the person did not deliberately absent themselves, the judge must determine whether they will be entitled to a retrial in the requesting state. This clause will amend Sections 20 and 85 of the 2003 Act to restore the original policy intention that the individual must have a right to apply for a retrial, not a guaranteed retrial, for extradition to proceed. The amendment is required, as the noble Baroness mentioned, following the Supreme Court’s judgment in Merticariu v Romania, which interpreted the current drafting of the 2003 Act as requiring a guaranteed retrial—something some states cannot offer. Without this fix, certain legitimate extradition requests could be blocked, undermining justice for victims.

I know the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned this, but the amendment itself does not change any existing safeguards or processes governing extradition. The full suite of safeguards in the 2003 Act, including judicial oversight and human rights protections, remains unchanged. This includes the UK court’s powers to consider and determine whether someone deliberately absented themselves. I hope that gives her some reassurance.

The small government Amendment 537 makes minor drafting changes. It simply provides that Clause 195 will be commenced by regulations, as opposed to automatically coming into force on Royal Assent, as was originally planned.

I have heard what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, has said and I have heard the complex case that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has mentioned. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked whether she could have a meeting with appropriate supporters to discuss this and I would be happy to do so. For the purposes of confirming that, I would be grateful if she could email me the details of who she wishes to attend that meeting. It is entirely up to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, but I would be happy if the noble Lord, Lord Davies, wishes to attend—or I could offer him a separate meeting if he wants to have further discussions or representations. If that can be discussed outside Committee, I would be happy to do that.

In the meantime, I hope the reassurances I have given are sufficient for the moment. I would be happy if the noble Baroness would withdraw her opposition to the clause standing part, pending any discussion, which I will ensure takes place if possible—subject to our diaries—before Report, as appropriate. If not, we can still have the discussion, so that we can at least reflect on the points that have been made today.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for speaking in support of the clause not standing part, particularly for speaking about the very short time that it had for debate in the Commons, which obviously did not have the chance to go through some of the detail that DELF has provided for us in this Committee.

I also thank the Minister. He is, as ever, courteous and thoughtful. I am not sure we have closed the gap between where I believe that there are problems and where he and his officials think that this is all resolved. Therefore, I am very grateful for the offer of a meeting. I would be delighted if the noble Lord, Lord Davies, wanted to join us. I will indeed email him names, but in the meantime I withdraw my opposition to the clause standing part.

Clause 195 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

We have indeed.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, as a former trustee of UNICEF, I rise to support Amendment 469, so clearly presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and signed and spoken to by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. Internationally, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is recognised as 12, and UNICEF has always been clear that it should be 14. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, said, and understand his concerns about the very large number of young people and children being groomed and pulled into criminal gangs. He is right to say that we need more concerted support in terms of police, education and youth work intervention, but it is not the children’s—younger children’s—fault that they have ended up there. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, recognised that heinous crimes needed to be marked in a certain way, but both also commented on the fact that we needed to understand that these were children. I am really grateful for the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd.

Your Lordships’ House has been discussing this for many, many years and as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, she was campaigning on this long before she came into Your Lordships’ House. Now is the time; we need change. We need to do that because there is so much evidence now.

In 2011, Nicholas Mackintosh, who chaired the Royal Society study on brain development, told the BBC then that there was

“incontrovertible evidence that the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence”,

and that some regions of the brain, responsible for decision-making and impulse control, do not mature fully

“until at least the age of 20”.

That Royal Society report cited the

“concern of some neuroscientists that the … age of criminal responsibility in the UK is set too low”.

We are still discussing it today.

UNICEF’s view is that 14 should be the minimum age, using scientific research as a base, but it is very specific that no country should have the age below 12. This places England, Wales and Northern Ireland in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is bad enough, but the real problem is a court system that assumes that children have capacity to make decisions when all the research shows that that is not reliable. It is wrong for a Government to assert that any interference with a child’s human rights can be justified.

UNICEF says in its excellent guidance note on youth offending published in 2022, that children under the minimum age of criminal responsibility,

“should not be considered (alleged) child offenders but, first and foremost, children in need of special protection”.

It says that offending behaviour by such children

“is often the result of poverty, family violence and/or homelessness … their involvement in offending behaviour is an indicator of potential vulnerability that has to be addressed by the social welfare system. Special protection measures for children … should address the root causes of their behaviour and support their parents/caregivers. The measures should be tailored to the child’s needs and circumstances and based on a comprehensive and interdisciplinary assessment of the child’s familial, educational and social circumstances”.

That matches the advice of the medical specialists too. Frankly, it is time that the Government stepped up and took the brave decision that we need to recognise that we are out of kilter with the rest of Europe and, frankly, most of the world.

Prosecuting children and holding them in young offender institutions does not give them the time and space to learn how to live their lives differently. We have heard from both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about how the arrangements work for children in specialist secure accommodation. We can still use those systems but without giving children the label of being a criminal when, clearly, they are not capable of making the right decisions.

I am really grateful to my noble friend Lord Dholakia, who has been campaigning on this particular issue for decades before he came into your Lordships’ House in 1997. His Private Member’s Bill in 2017 resulted in a wide public discussion. It is a shame that, nine years on, we have not progressed further. Let us do so now.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a genuinely interesting debate. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, would raise the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales from 10 to 14. For the reasons I will set out below, I am unable to support it.

First, the purpose of the age of criminal responsibility has not been designed to criminalise children unnecessarily. Rather, it is to ensure that the state can intervene early and proportionately when a child’s behaviour causes serious harm. As the noble Baroness, Baroness Levitt, the Minister, stated in this House, setting the age at 10 allows the justice system to step in at a point where intervention can prevent further offending and protect both the child and the wider public, and, crucially, children are not treated as adults. They are dealt with through youth courts under a distinct sentencing framework with rehabilitation as the central aim.

The evidence shows that the system already uses this power sparingly. We are told that, in 2024, only 13% of all children sentenced were aged between 10 and 14, and that proportion has been falling year on year. Of the 1,687 sentences imposed on children in that age group, just 23 resulted in custody. Those figures matter. They demonstrate that the age of criminal responsibility being set at 10 does not mean routine criminalisation of children. It means retaining a backstop for the most serious and persistent cases while diversion remains the norm.

Raising the age to 14 would create a dangerous gap. It would mean that children aged 10 to 13 who commit grave offences—including serious violence, sexual offences or sustained harassment—could not be held criminally responsible. This would limit the state’s ability to manage risk, protect victims and, in some cases, protect the child. There are rare but tragic cases—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose this amendment. I have to concede that, as usual, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made a beguilingly attractive case for the amendment, but in essence this would be a legislative overreach. This activity is not being undertaken with impunity. We have checks and balances, although I accept they can be improved. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that children are used because of county lines, where children are used to move weapons and drugs.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I will give way a little later as I want to develop my point, if the noble Baroness will be so kind as to allow me.

I think there are two sides to every story. When I was first a candidate and then Member of Parliament for Peterborough, I remember the sight every week of animal rights activists at Huntingdon Life Sciences. I do not support the activities of rogue police officers, as enunciated in what the noble Baroness said about spy cops, but we must not conflate separate phenomena: a full public inquiry—albeit in camera, which I do not agree with, as there should be openness and transparency—and specific criminal cases. One can also make the case that those police officers and others who were doxed by animal rights activists have suffered a huge degree of harassment and violent intimidation since the allegations arose, without having the opportunity to clear their names in a court of law. I give way to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I give way.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am grateful. The noble Lord referred earlier to children and county lines. The problem with this case is that relationships were formed under lies by police officers and children were born of those relationships, whose fathers then disappeared. It is nothing to do with the criminalised activity of children. Will he please reconsider his comments with that relevance?

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very fair point. I was referring to the issue of county lines and why children may be used. I deprecate the unacceptable activity to which she refers; none of us would support the fathering of children in a pretended relationship, so she makes a very fair point.

I was talking about Huntingdon Life Sciences and animal rights activists. That violence escalated to a significant level over a number of years, which culminated in the violent attack on and near-death experience of the then chief executive of Huntingdon Life Sciences. It was a very unpleasant period. Therefore, there was a reasonable case to be made that the Metropolitan Police, Cambridgeshire Constabulary and others needed to embed officers and intelligence assets within the animal rights movement to alleviate the risk of further serious criminal activity. That was an animal rights issue, but it could easily not have been.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, concedes very fairly that she does not want to circumscribe cases where you have to do long-term surveillance of, say, a terrorist plot which might be carried out were it not for police activity and long-term embedding of people. That is separate to cases where there has not been an operational rationale for preventing criminal activity, so I accept that there is a difference.

That is why this amendment is rather heavy-handed. No doubt the Minister will refer to the commissioner, who will look at whether these activities are timely and appropriate, but words matter. Incidentally, when the noble Baroness mentioned the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021, I think she made an unusual inference that it was to facilitate criminal activity. I may have been mistaken in hearing that and she may want to intervene.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I am so glad that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, have participated in this debate. Like myself, they attended the recent meeting chaired by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. It was very nice to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, the admiration for the courage of the witnesses who came to speak to us at that meeting.

In any form of covert human intelligence, there has to be deception. It is the only way that the officer of the state, whoever he or she may be, can penetrate through to get the confidence of the criminals who they are there to investigate. But there should be, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti says in her amendment, some restraint in what they get up to.

When the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, got up, he started by saying that he opposed this amendment, but it was pleasing that, by the end of his speech, he was quite neutral. That was very reassuring.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti referred to the 2011 case of R v Barkshire, which concerned an undercover police officer infiltrating a group of climate change activists. The police officer, who I will not name, indulged in a sexual relationship, for about seven years, with one of the ladies involved. It also involved the birth of a child. This police officer, according to my brief, had as many as 10 other sexual relationships during the course of his activity as an undercover officer. When it came to the court, it was said that he went “much further” than the authorisation given to him, and that he played

“a significant role in assisting, advising and supporting … the very activity for which these appellants were prosecuted”.

That is why my noble friend—I hope she notes that I am giving her full support in this amendment—is absolutely right to suggest that there should be restraint. I accept entirely the restraint which is contained in Amendment 470.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank JUSTICE and the group Police Spies Out of Lives, particularly the women who were on the receiving end of the treatment by the CHISs. I declare an interest as a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which has given grants to Police Spies Out of Lives for well over a decade, in the run-up to the beginning of the inquiry.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about how long it has taken to get the abuses taken seriously, and it really has. The inquiry itself took many years to be established, and there was damage to those women’s lives in the aftermath every time they went to people in the establishment to ask them to please take their concerns seriously. There was stunning silence.

The trust had a chance to meet and hear from these extraordinary women, who were seeking justice for many decades. Without their determination there would be no inquiry, no TV documentaries and no newspaper articles. I salute them all for their refusal to be cowed and their strength of character, even in the face of repeated setbacks from the establishment, including the extremely slow inquiry—which is not expected to conclude before 2030, and quite possibly later—at an enormous cost to the public purse and, above all, to these victims of the police spies.

The glacial speed of the public inquiry into undercover policing is on a par with the long delays of other historic scandals including infected blood, Post Office Horizon and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse. As young girls and women who were taken advantage of in the 1970s head towards getting their pensions, it is vital to ensure that there are no further delays.

As we heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, Amendment 470 would replace provisions in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, as amended by the CHIS Act 2021, which grants complete advanced criminal and civil immunity for authorised operatives and agents with public interest offences, as long as they did not act as agents provocateurs.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, helpfully made clear her experience in Northern Ireland and the shortcomings of the CHIS legislation. The contribution from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, also confirmed that we must continue to learn lessons from the new system. Amendment 470 would correct the law to ensure that, in future, those using CHISs must have a high standard of regulation and accountability. We, as a country, need more oversight of CHISs’ criminal activity and the mechanism to ensure that officers and their superiors meet these high standards and make decisions in light of the law.

From these Benches, we welcome Amendment 470 and the safeguard that it offers to the victims. I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, but the officers too, because it would give them a framework and responsibility to think about any actions, whether they need permission for them and, if so, whether they should really be thinking about doing it at all, which is long overdue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise, but the noble Baroness has just said that she was not in her place at the start of the group. Really, she should not be speaking to the group if she was not in her place. That is the usual convention and courtesy of the House and is set out in the Companion as well.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, Amendments 472 and 473 from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, add a series of small but vital issues that would ensure that the UK can play its part in holding to account perpetrators of the most serious international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Above all, these amendments would give victims and their families the opportunity to achieve the justice that they deserve. I thank the British Institute of Human Rights, Genocide Response and Redress for their very helpful briefing.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the signatories to his amendments have set out in detail the legal reasons why the current laws in relation to these international crimes need to have certain loopholes closed ,and other noble Lords have spoken to them as well.

As chair of human rights at Liberal International, I attend the annual Geneva summit on human rights. Last February, I met people who had fled from Sudan, Iran, Cuba, Russia and Tibet, and Uyghurs from China, who had been on the receiving end of the most appalling crimes, from genocide to crimes against humanity, including torture and war crimes. All of them look to countries such as the United Kingdom to uphold the standards of universal jurisdiction. Sadly, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, we do not do that fully and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, put it, we need to share the burden.

By not being prepared to empower our courts to act where alleged perpetrators of international crimes are present in the UK, we let people down. Without the changes proposed in Amendments 472 and 473, the British courts lack jurisdiction over alleged perpetrators of international crimes—including leaders of the Iranian regime who may travel to the UK for medical treatment, despite there being credible allegations of their involvement in international crimes against humanity, and the alleged perpetrators of genocide in Darfur—because the alleged conduct falls under the Rome statute crimes but does not trigger universal jurisdiction under UK law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 486 and thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, for his excellent introduction to it, which was very clear to follow.

Over the decades, thousands of people have been wrongly jailed for life in appalling miscarriages of justice because of the use of joint enterprise to charge those present with the commission of a serious crime. Sometimes that might be someone who was present and thought they were going to be involved in a low-level crime, whereas they had no involvement at all in the actual violence or murder committed by another but were still charged under joint enterprise as if they had also committed the act of violence or murder. That is very similar to the example that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, gave us.

Even worse, there are those who have been jailed for murder simply because they were present at the act of murder, although they had not been members of the gang involved. Over the last 15 years, this House has seen various amendments and had debates and questions trying to correct and clarify when charges should or should not be used for those who did not commit serious acts of violence. As has already been mentioned, a decade ago the Supreme Court recognised that joint enterprise had been used repeatedly and incorrectly in many cases, but nothing has really changed since then. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for quoting the figures for the three years before and after 2016, because that judgment has not changed the numbers either.

The key questions addressed by the Supreme Court, including what qualifies as assistance and encouragement, remain obfuscatory. It is still not clear whether presence at a serious crime is in itself enough. I will not repeat the data that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and others have mentioned in the briefing we got from Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association. I differ slightly from the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. It is quite notable that over 50% of those prosecuted are not just young Black men and women, but there is also substantial overrepresentation of disabled and neurodivergent people, as well as many under 25. I might understand the last, but not the others on their own.

The proposal of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, would completely change the approach to considering who has been involved in serious crime. The amendment would ensure that, rather than guessing the individual's state of mind, associations and foresight of what might occur, the CPS must look at actual material actions, making that the baseline objective threshold for prosecution. I hope that the Minister is finally prepared to change the injustice in the use of joint enterprise and start a new era based on facts, not suppositions.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I fully support this amendment. I agree effectively with every word that has fallen from the lips of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and my noble friend Lady Brinton, and almost every word uttered by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I hope that the Government will listen and give careful consideration to this amendment.

The law of joint enterprise has long been unsatisfactory. It was substantially improved by the decision of the Supreme Court in the Jogee case, as explained by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. The present state of the law in the light of Jogee is that an offence is committed by an accessory only if the defendant charged as an accessory intended to assist the principal in the commission of the offence. Even so, the law is still unsatisfactory and unclear, as extensively supported by the academic evidence cited by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and it sorely needs reform.

The phrase “significant contribution” to the commission of the offence used in the amendment is apt. It would overcome the difficulties mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, with the Court of Appeal’s position on the related accessory offences of procurement. The phrase has been proposed by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and widely by academics. It was the phrase used in Kim Johnson’s Private Member’s Bill, which was supported by, among others, Sir Bob Neill, who was then chair of the Justice Select Committee, and therefore one presumes by the committee itself.

While the expression may in some ways seem vague, it sets exactly the type of test that juries can and do recognise and regularly apply, rather similarly to the test for dishonesty used in relation to Theft Act offences. The amendment would make an offence of being an accessory much more comprehensible and justifiable than the present test. The present test, I suggest, focuses disproportionately on the mental element of accessory liability, whereas the amendment would focus on the actual contribution of the accessory to the commission of the offence.

There is considerable cause for concern that joint enterprise law in its operation is discriminatory. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, mentioned the research showing that Black people are 16 times more likely to be prosecuted on the basis of joint enterprise than white people. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, mentioned the same research. What neither mentioned is that that staggering figure—I suggest that it is staggering—was based on the CPS’s own figures for 2023.

I accept that there may be cultural issues, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, but they have to be judged against the caution that was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Brinton. There is also serious evidence of unjustified, unwarranted group prosecution. There is significant concern about evidence of racial bias and the risk of guilt by association in consequence. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—that it sometimes may seem easier to prosecute for joint enterprise than by establishing individual guilt—is, or may be, justified. Concerns about guilt by association and gang involvement are entirely legitimate. I think they are shared by the public, and they are evidenced by the clear examples we have heard today. They evidence a lack of principle in prosecution and in the application of the law.

In evidence to the Leveson review, Keir Monteith KC and Professor Eithne Quinn from the University of Manchester argued that joint enterprise was overused. They went so far as to say that it contributed, as inevitably statistically it does, to the growth of the backlogs. They cited the trial of seven Black teenagers in 2022 who were accused of murder, where the prosecution accepted that they could not be sure who stabbed the victim, but asserted that all of those who went to the park where the killing occurred

“shared responsibility, at the very least contributing to the force of numbers”.

That was an inaccurate or, at the very least, incomplete statement of the law in the light of Jogee. Six of the seven defendants were acquitted, but the fact that they were tried and went through the period that they did prior to trial highlights the confused state of the law, which makes the essential ingredients of the offence difficult for jurors and sometimes even prosecutors to understand.

We should also take into account, particularly given the delays in bringing trials to court, the serious risk of charges based on joint enterprise leading to defendants who are ultimately acquitted being held on remand, as one of the seven defendants in the case I mentioned was for no less than 14 months.

Finally, I have a technical point that was mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, to whom I had mentioned it. While I support the amendment completely, it needs to be reworded or supplemented to cover summary offences. That is because, as a result of the amendment of Section 8 of the Accessories and Abettors Act 1861 by the Criminal Law Act 1977, the accessory offence under the 1861 Act applies only to indictable offences—offences that are either indictable only or triable either way. A parallel amendment to Section 44(1) of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980 is required to cover summary offences. There is no justification for distinguishing between them. With that rather academic point, I hope that the Government will act on this.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for all the contributions to this, as usual, heated debate about recording data. I will focus mainly on data in my response from these Benches.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, for starting by quoting some data sources, but neither she nor the amendment acknowledges the existing police guidance about capturing demographic data and annual data requirement 153, all the work already being done by the National Police Chiefs’ Council to review these policies following the April 2025 Supreme Court judgment, and its desire to develop a national standard for recording protected characteristics. In November last year, an equality impact assessment for the Law Enforcement Data Service noted:

“There is no legal obligation on any person with a GRC to inform the police that they have changed their name or gender”.


It is vital that data collection by public bodies has a clearly defined purpose and scope, and that staff have the right training and guidance to deliver services that support and accommodate all service users.

In addition, the Home Office produces the annual data requirement, which sets out requests and requirements for data that police forces should collect and report to the Home Office. Some are mandatory, some are voluntary. Requirement 153, which I referred to earlier, is voluntary and details how forces should capture demographic data

“in a consistent way by aligning it to ONS census 2021”.

This sets out that data about sex

“should be recorded in line with information on … birth certificate or gender recognition certificate”.

At the moment, it is not clear how widely this has been adopted.

Since 1974, the police national computer has been the main database of criminal records and is used by front-line officers from all police forces in the UK to understand who they are interacting with. In 2016, the Home Office established the national law enforcement data programme to replace the PNC and PND with the Law Enforcement Data Service or LEDS—sorry, another acronym. That will replace the existing PNC capability across all police forces this coming March.

The equality impact assessment for LEDS was published in November 2025 and considered how the programme would impact on those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. The EIA states:

“There is no legal obligation on any person with a GRC to inform the police that they have changed their name or gender. Where a person does wish this to be acknowledged then LEDS user can add an Information Marker”.


The EIA notes that the NPCC is undertaking a policy review following the April 2025 Supreme Court judgment, which

“aims to strike a balance that is both lawful and respectful of all individuals involved”—

that is a quote from the judgment—and that

“LEDS is being built to configure new policies as they take effect”.

The EIA also notes that a working group on national protected characteristics data recording standards was established by the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Coordination Committee and the NPCC diversity, equality and inclusion lead. It is important to note, as has been mentioned by others, that the Supreme Court judgment in the case of For Women Scotland v the Scottish Ministers considered the definition of “woman” only for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.

In addition to that, I have found an FoI dated May 2025 and the ONS response on a question about the collection of data. It gives a somewhat detailed response to about 10 different questions on how many people who have undertaken gender reassignment have been convicted of certain offences or groups of offences. Under the category of collection of data for gender identity, which is different from the sex registered at birth category, it says:

“We have to be robust enough to provide reliable estimates”.


It cannot provide reliable estimates. Why? Because the numbers are so low. As I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, knows, as she has been quoting data quite a bit, if you cannot rely on the data because it is low compared with the millions of women across the country, it becomes a problem to be able to include it. Why? Because the data will not show, or, if it is pulled out separately, individuals will become identifiable to the public. That is the fundamental problem.

So, I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment. The National Police Chiefs’ Council is already undertaking work to review policies in light of the Supreme Court judgment. The Supreme Court judgment was limited in considering the meaning of “sex” for the purposes of the Equality Act, not for wider legislation or policy. Frankly, it is unclear how this amendment would be practically workable; front-line police forces would be asked to challenge information provided about an individual’s sex. It is also unclear how the amendment would be consistent with data protection legislation, the Gender Recognition Act, and, indeed, Article 8 rights to a private life.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

It is Front-Bench speeches.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

It is Front-Bench speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I am sincerely grateful to everyone who has spoken and to the winding speakers today. It is such an important question, and it is such a pleasure to have a debate like this and to engage with former colleagues and noble Peers to discuss an often emotional or passionate issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I have known each other for such a long time, but not everyone knows that. I believe that I may have referred to the noble Baroness with a pronoun during my speech, and I am very sorry if I did that; it was a lapse from knowing each other and I want to put that on the record. I am very grateful to her for speaking with her typical compassion and empathy for everyone—a testament to her time as the head of Liberty, and the principles that she has lived by ever since.

I say the same to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and I am very grateful to her for engaging in this debate and being present. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for citing the data, and noble Peers who supported the amendments. I am very grateful to everyone.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, referenced Scotland. I would like to end on that thought. There is, of course, a direction of travel by the Government, which we welcome and support, but in his response the noble Lord, Lord Katz, did not address what data is going to be collected in relation to sex. I know we are coming on to ethnicity next. I say to the Minister that this is an opportunity to grapple with this issue and to do something by accepting this amendment, which would really support the violence against women and girls strategy. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, also made some very sensible points about the common-sense approach of the police, and we have confidence in them to be able to act in a sensible way. For the record, there is no suggestion in this amendment that anyone would be embarrassed or outed. It is about the police recording the data, not publishing the data. We know that data, when the statistics are processed off it, is anonymised.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful for that last point. The point I raised was that the data is so small that if only two people had committed a certain offence in a year, they would be identifiable. That was the point the ONS made in its response to somebody else’s FoI request—I do not know whose—because of that identification and then breaching of data for the individual concerned.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

That has not concerned His Majesty’s inspectorate, the Ministry of Justice or, indeed, Professor Sullivan. In fact, they make the opposite point, which is that the small numbers of trans-identifying individuals—

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Cash. At the police level—at the level of arrest—it has to be some version of self-identification. The police need to ask—and, if necessary, have the conversation—but it cannot be that the police observe, decide and adjudicate. That is not viable. The noble Baroness may disagree with me, but if this is going to happen in relation to race and ethnicity it will probably have to be self-identification. As I say, anything else at the level of arrest or charge is not practical.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest that my son is a senior lecturer at Swansea University, specialising in online radicalisation. He advises a number of Governments and parliaments, including our own, and other public bodies, including on Prevent.

In the previous group, we noted that the police are in the middle of changing the databases that they use for recording data and moving to the new law enforcement data service. The details are due to be published very shortly, we hope, in March this year. It is important that proper data is collected on ethnicity. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, quoting the review of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, because those points are extremely important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the public sector equality duty exists so that our public services in the UK, which are funded by all of us, obey the laws on equalities. It is there because that is not what used to happen—and sometimes it still does not happen. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that all he had to do was watch the recent television programme about the goings-on—the racism and misogyny—in one of our local police stations to know that we need these things on our statute book. As a veteran of the Equality Act 2010, I am very proud that we have them there. I hope my noble friend the Minister will give his usual defence of, “It’s Labour that always triumphs and always puts forward equalities, because that is actually important for our society”.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for outlining the core, essential use of the public sector equality duty. I note that the Government’s website says:

“The Public Sector Equality Duty … requires public authorities to have due regard … when exercising their functions, like making decisions … It is intended to help decision-makers, including Government ministers, to comply with the duty”.


It does not talk about Pride marches or the detail of training.

Section 149 of the Equality Act says:

“A public authority must … eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act”.


I do not think the police could argue with anything there. It must also

“advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”.

That speaks to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about some of the very poor, racist behaviour we have seen from a few individuals. It must also

“foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it … A person who is not a public authority but who exercises public functions must, in the exercise of those functions, have due regard to the matters mentioned in subsection (1)”.

I have quoted that very short section because the descriptions by some previous speakers in this short debate have made it sound like something completely different. I would be very worried if the police no longer had to follow the public sector equality duty as set out in the Equality Act. We can all argue about whether we do or do not like going on training days, or about a certain amount of money being well spent or not, but we really want to see discrimination eliminated, and that is particularly important in the police.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, said on the last group that we all need common sense and practicality. The PSED is the tool that does that, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for outlining the detail. He is right that the police should follow the law; the point is that the PSED and the impact assessments also fit within that. Getting rid of the PSED would mean that unlawful discrimination might well be missed, and that would be dreadful. He also said that it is not down to the police to deliver equality. I think the Equality Act differs on that and, given the work the police do, we would be pretty horrified if they suddenly said they did not have to deliver equality.

One of the ways that racism can be eliminated from the police is by ensuring compliance with the PSED. It is not the PSED itself at fault, but what is going on inside police authorities. That is why, for the third group today, we are talking about the importance of the White Paper on policing that has just been published, which will change the culture and ensure that that stops. We on these Benches believe that the PSED is a vital tool for the police to deliver that.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Thornton, cannot both be right. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is making the case that the public sector equality duty is a tool to tackle racism. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, made clear, the appalling, racist events at Charing Cross took place a year ago, 14 years after the PSED came into being. Surely it has not worked and a cultural change has to happen from within the organisation, as well as complementary legislation being imposed. On this occasion, it does not seem to have worked in that part of the Metropolitan Police.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for mentioning that. That is exactly why I mentioned the Metropolitan Police’s London Race Action Plan earlier on—because it has not worked. But that action plan is underpinned by the PSED and the responsibilities without the police. Get rid of that and it might never happen.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Does the noble Baroness acknowledge the problems of mission creep? The original aims may well have been worthy but, on training days, for example, my concern is that the content of those training days can breach impartiality rules. In fact—I will not go through it now—there have been well-documented instances of, for example, the fight against racism being turned into the campaign for Black Lives Matter, which are two very different things. Is there any concern at all about any politicisation or dangers?

One of the things we discussed in the Employments Rights Bill was that, attendant to this particular duty, there has been a huge increase in HR. It is the fastest-growing industry in the UK, sadly. Largely, that has been to try to interpret this equality duty, and it has led to a wide range of activities that may never have been envisaged by the Equality Act originally.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for mentioning those things. I am not quite sure what the questions are, but I can say quite clearly that I do not see a direct line between the public sector equality duty and Black Lives Matter. What I have seen with Black Lives Matter is black people being treated very poorly and some being killed because it was not working properly. The fact that it was not working properly was not because it existed; it was not working properly because the police were not avoiding and fighting discrimination.

On the point about the increase in HR, those of us who are perhaps behind on our fire safety assessments might be concerned about that. Each organisation must assess what it needs to do for all its members of staff. I keep saying to the Minister, “Please don’t just train specialist staff in things like violence against women and girls; it has to be throughout”. Why does it have to be throughout? Because of the equality issues and all the points that were raised by noble Lords who have spoken and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, earlier on, about women being much more likely to be victims of serious crime. That is why we need it: because it is absolutely underpinning everything the police do.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to support the public sector equality duty in legislation and to say to the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, that there are times when you know before anybody has even spoken that you are not going to agree with the premise of the argument. This is one of those occasions. I am not going to agree with the premise of the argument, but I will not repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said. I will only in part repeat part what she said by referring to what Section 149, the public sector equality duty, is.

It says:

“A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to … eliminate discrimination”—


or should the police not be looking at making sure that they eliminate discrimination in their dealings? On harassment, should the police not be ensuring that they are not involved in harassment in their dealings? On victimisation, should the police not be involved in ensuring that they do not victimise in their dealings? It goes on to refer to

“any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act”.

It says in this Section, which the noble Lord wishes to remove from legislation, that the police or any public authority should

“foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”.

Section 149(5) says:

“Having due regard to the need to foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it involves having due regard, in particular, to the need to … tackle prejudice, and … promote understanding”.


Does the noble Lord think that the police should not have a role in tackling prejudice and promoting understanding? That is what he is saying by seeking to remove this piece of legislation. The section goes on to say:

“The relevant protected characteristics are—age; disability; gender reassignment; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation”.


Does the noble Lord believe—he obviously does, since he has tabled the amendment—that those protected characteristics should not be ones that the police seek to take into account when dealing with these matters?

The noble Lord has put a perfectly fair argument, but it does not take my listening to it in detail to know, as I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that it is not on my core values list or my core approach to how we deal with policing, and it is not how the public sector equality duty is designed. It is designed to embed day-to-day work in all our public authorities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, that leads to better outcomes for individuals and for communities. For policing, the duty is vital to maintain public trust and legitimacy. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterson and Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the Peelite principles mean that the police police with the consent of the community. If they did not take into account the duty not to discriminate, victimise or harass then I am sorry, but that is not a police service that would secure the support of the community in its policing.

Compliance with this duty is not a bureaucratic exercise. It is a practical tool, but one with a moral under- pinning, for better decision-making and accountability. Removing the duty would risk undermining confidence in policing, particularly among those communities that are in the protected characteristic list in Section 149 of the Equality Act.

There are times when we can have a debate, have an argument and, potentially, listen to areas where we will have some movement from either the Opposition or the Government. This is not one of those times. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment now but, if he brings it back on Report, I will take great pleasure in asking every Member of this House to vote it down.

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I hope that the Government will take seriously this attempt to make sure that these fundamental British political values are built into the whole psyche of our national life, and in particular with young people who are at risk of being drawn into crime and terrorism.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest again. My son is an academic who specialises in online radicalisation and Prevent, and advises Governments, Parliaments and public bodies, including our own Parliament and Government.

From these Benches we share the Government’s concern about the rising number of young people investigated for terrorism offences, and we welcome, in principle, earlier intervention and diversion away from the criminal courts. However, we also share many of the misgivings already expressed, particularly about using a low balance of probabilities civil threshold to impose what are, in effect, terrorism-labelled controls on children.

As drafted, the bar for imposing a youth diversion order is worryingly low for a measure that can place wide-ranging restrictions on children as young as 10, a breach of which may result in custody despite no criminal conviction. Can the Minister explain why the court need only find an order “necessary”, rather than applying the more familiar “necessary and proportionate” test for such intrusive measures?

The scope of these orders is also troubling. A YDO may be made if the court finds it more likely than not that a child has committed a terrorism-related offence, behaved in a way likely to facilitate one, or—as clarified by government Amendment 439—attempted, encouraged, aided, abetted, counselled or procured a listed terrorism offence. On top of that, I question the inclusion of “serious harm”, given that the justification for the serious nature of these orders is terrorism prevention, which needlessly risks widening the type of behaviour captured.

I am grateful for the briefing provided by Justice, whose work highlights that orders of this kind would fall more harshly on young people than they would on adults, especially those with intellectual disabilities or who are neurodivergent. There is also a real risk of disproportionate use against minority communities, particularly Muslim children, given existing disproportionality in terrorism policing. Action for Race Equality reports that, between 2021 and 2024, 31% of under-21s arrested for terrorism-related offences were Asian, despite making up only 9% of the population.

Justice and other organisations argue that, if youth diversion orders proceed, the Bill must be significantly strengthened, and we support that direction of travel from these Benches. They call for piloting before full commencement; a requirement for police to give reasons if they depart from youth offending team advice, with those views placed before the court; proper risk assessments before an order is imposed, as with respect orders; and for statutory guidance from the Secretary of State to be mandatory, not optional.

Amendment 445 would require those receiving youth diversion orders to be given citizenship education in British values. From these Benches, we recognise the good intent. It seeks to equip young people with a positive understanding of civic life, reinforcing shared values through education. That is a worthy aim which merits some consideration, particularly for those at risk of radicalisation.

We do have questions, however, around implementation and resourcing, and whether this might dilute the order’s core diversionary purpose. In short, we do not oppose early diversion in principle but require stronger safeguards in practice. In the case of the measures in the Bill, this chiefly means a higher and more appropriate test, tighter scope and better protection for vulnerable children.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I apologise that I missed the moment. I thought somebody else was going to speak, so I will be quick. In the last couple of weeks, the United Arab Emirates has curbed state funding for its citizens seeking to enrol at UK universities over concerns that they will be radicalised by Islamists. That is an extraordinary piece of information and it also indicates that we do have a real problem. I commend the Government for trying to find new ways of dealing with young people who are being radicalised: I understand that that is a real problem.

I was slightly worried that, in the same week, we heard about a regional game being used by some councils for Prevent, which identified one of the signs of pre-terrorism or extremism as those who support cultural nationalism, which seems to me to be muddling up again the terms of what is an extremist, what is not, and so on. I do not know that it is entirely clear.

I happen to share the reservations that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised on civil liberties and these youth diversion orders. As I have previously said, I am always concerned that where we lack moral courage in taking on radicalisation in public, procedures, process and legislation are used as a substitute for that. In that context I commend the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, on at least trying, as he has many times, to raise the issue of teaching British values. Ironically, it has become quite controversial to say that we should shout British values from the rooftops. We are not encouraged to do so. That itself can be seen as exclusionary, not inclusive enough and so on. The noble and right reverend Lord has explained in detail why he wants that. I am not necessarily a fan of all the things in that list or the whole notion of citizenship education, but I think it is the right approach.

However, I note with some irony that some of the British values in that list include the importance of freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly and association. This is in a Bill that could curtail many of those very things, and those of us who try to raise them have been dismissed and told, “Those things are not a threat. Don’t worry about it. We need to do this”. I also think it is interesting that in that list we have “regular elections”. I agree; I would not be cancelling them myself. In relation to the rule of law, jury trials are a key part of British values and democracy, ensuring that we have democratic representation for ordinary people and that justice is done in the criminal justice system. We know that they are in jeopardy.

I want us to push British values more. That would be far more important and effective than youth diversion orders. If we are to have youth diversion orders, let us have some British values in there—and if we are going to mention British values, let us stick to them ourselves, rather than just having them as a list that we can nod through.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am never sure what a probing amendment means, because surely all our amendments are probing, and I certainly would support both these amendments on Report, because they are actually crucial. Although I am vastly older than the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I, too, have been working on this for quite a long time, but only for two and a half decades. The number of police officers who have, in some way, been found guilty of a crime and yet still get their police pensions and all the benefits of having been a police officer for some years, however badly it has ended, really is annoying.

Police officers do a very difficult job—I am very appreciative of that and understand the problems—and most do it well. But when someone abuses that role, the damage is much greater for public trust. It is wider than any single case. Trust in policing depends on people believing that no one is above the law. In the previous debate the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, made the point that the rule of law is for us all, and I will bring that issue up again when we get to the public whatsit Bill, on—

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Accountability.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much.

At the moment the rule of law is not for us all, as exemplified by the way we treat police in some cases. On pensions, why do the Government prefer decisions about pension forfeiture to be taken later behind closed doors rather than in open court, where reasons are given and can be tested on appeal? If a judge has heard all the evidence in a criminal case involving a police officer, and has seen the harm done and the abuse of trust, why do the Government think that a judge should have no say at all over a publicly funded police pension?

I ask this out of long experience. We have been told for decades now that existing systems are enough or that reforms are coming, and clearly that is not happening. I personally would like to see, instead of these little baby steps, a bold, straightforward move towards the kind of accountability that people can see and understand. Time and again, in cases of serious police misconduct, the consequences remain unclear and invisible to the public.

From the public’s point of view, the current system makes very little sense. Some serious criminal convictions of police officers fall outside the pensions rule altogether, simply because they do not meet a narrow legal definition. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why judges who hear the evidence are excluded and why transparency in court is still seen as a step too far.

When this Labour Government got elected, I really hoped for some changes in the way that we apply a sense of fairness to the whole of our legal system. Quite honestly, they have disappointed me very badly. They are no better than this side of the Chamber. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, we have been waiting a long time for this, and a Labour Government should really put it right.

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The purpose of the Bill is to protect victims. To do so, officers must be able to recognise exploitation, stalking or cuckooing, to handle complex anti-social behaviour and protest laws, and to support victims of online fraud or image abuse. Without robust training to recognise offences, secure evidence and build chargeable cases, these aims will not be met. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on Amendment 427, and I have signed Amendment 428, which I will address. I come to the issue of mental health because I was present at and contributed to the debate the last time your Lordships’ House reviewed and improved the Armed Forces covenant. Mental health plays a vital part in that. I have friends and family members who are past and present members of the military, and I have seen how the military, over the last 15 to 20 years, has managed and improved its mental health.

That is the position I took when trying to have a look at how our police, not just officers but ancillary staff, are supported when they face difficult circumstances that might put their mental health under pressure. The difference between the MoD’s approach and the College of Policing’s approach is really quite stark. To start with, the College of Policing—I looked at some individual constabularies as well—is all about signposting elsewhere to outside organisations. There is virtually nothing on what happens inside your own organisation if you are a police officer. The front page of the advice rightly refers to the Samaritans first; it then talks about Mind, social media support, and support for police officers and staff experiencing mental illness or distress. Then, and only then, on page four, does it start to talk about what happens inside your own place of employment and how you can find support there.

The contrast with the MoD advice on mental health is that soon after the headline

“Armed forces covenant and mental health”,


it has a massive headline that says:

“Getting advice or help urgently”


for “serving personnel”; it goes through that and then it does it for “veterans”. It starts by saying that

“your first point of call should be your chain of command, unit medical officer, welfare officer or chaplain if you are in the UK or overseas”,

so if you are a serving member of staff you know instantly that your first place is the place in which you live and work, and you have your chain of command—the people above you and the people who may be junior to you.

I recognise that the details of the Armed Forces covenant are different from the employment relationship that police officers have, but before I move specifically on to the amendment I want to say that one of the other things that the armed services learned as a consequence of the Afghan campaign was that they needed to get a much better dialogue going on between staff. They were almost the first people to start introducing mental health first-aiders. It absolutely transformed areas of the military where it was introduced with gusto. This idea about the chain of command meant that there was an instant response from somebody who, like a first-aid trainer, could go and say to a colleague, “Are you all right? Have you got some problems?”, or whatever.

In policing, it appears very patchy as to whether mental health first-aiders are properly encouraged. In fact, the only thing that I could find online was that Staffordshire Police said in 2023 that it had over 50 mental health first-aiders. That is a really good standard, but there is no evidence held centrally about that level. It also indicates the seriousness with which a service, in its entirety, looks after its personnel.

I looked at the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, which sets out some criteria to start to gather that information about the response to mental health—not just mental health first-aiders. Again, I could not find anything online that was solely about policing. However, there was a recent report by the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, jointly researched by King’s College London, the OU and the Royal Foundation, entitled Assessing the Mental Health and Wellbeing of the Emergency Responder Community in the UK. That obviously is not just the police; it includes the ambulance service and firefighters.

In its very good research paper, the centre noted that, across the three emergency responder services, there was generally an absence of definitions and very little monitoring and evaluation. The paper talked about the importance of trauma support, including for PTSD. It emphasised, as I have already mentioned, the reliance on signposting to outside bodies and a lack of involvement inside police forces, and it certainly emphasised the lack of data collection and evaluation, including on self-harm, suicide, and alcohol and substance misuse.

The paper noted that there was no real sense of how emergency responder services were going to address what worked and did not work, and therefore whether any training that they were doing was going to be relevant. The paper recommended a promotion of good practice, so that responders know what good practice is, as well as the promotion and extension of support for “mental health/wellbeing ‘champions’”, which I think means mental health first aiders and some of the other forms of that.

The key thing the paper said was that there should be access to a single “Universal Gateway” website, analogous to the MoD page, and that to have that universal gateway there must be a single, universal collection of data and evaluation, so that across the board the police can understand what works and what does not work.

The UK systematic review found 81 recent results of ad hoc research projects, of which 43 were from police forces. Frankly, everybody needs to work together much better to make this work. That brings me back to the amendment, which, at the very least, sets out a route to collect that data right across the police forces in England and Wales. It focuses on a series of issues that I have already mentioned, and it would be a good start to approaching issues of mental health in the way that the military does for its people, which is having success. I hope that the Home Office Minister will look at that when deciding whether or not this amendment should be supported.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 427 and 428, both in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, raise important questions about police training and how best to ensure that officers are properly equipped for the demands of modern policing.

Amendment 427 would require the Secretary of State to establish an independent review of in-service police training. We recognise the important underlying principle of the point being made here. Policing has changed significantly in recent years, not least because of the growth of digital crime, involving investigative techniques and greater awareness of trauma and professional standards. It is entirely right that we ask whether training keeps pace with these demands and whether there is sufficient consistency and effectiveness across forces. An independent review is one way of taking stock of that landscape and identifying gaps or best practice.

However, reviews of this nature inevitably come with costs in time and resource and risk introducing potential further bureaucratic hurdles for the police. It is worth reflecting on whether there may be other mechanisms, such as through existing inspection or the monitoring of professional standards frameworks, that could achieve similar outcomes. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government currently assess the quality and consistency of in-service training and whether further work of this kind is already under way.

Amendment 428 focuses specifically on mandatory mental health training for front-line officers. The intention behind this amendment is clear. Police officers are often the first responders in highly distressing situations involving individuals in mental health crises. A degree of appropriate training in de-escalation and communication is clearly valuable. However, we on this side have some concerns that I hope the Minister can address.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I think I was making a very slightly different point. I am aware of these courses, but my argument was that what the military has achieved has been through culture change within the entire organisation, rather than just sending people on a course to get a qualification.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is important to do that, but I also say to the noble Baroness that the police are not mental health experts, nor should we expect them to be. At the end of the day, they will be the first responders who have to identify and support people. The work on the Right Care, Right Person project over the last two years by police and health partners, to ensure that people who are in mental health crisis get the right response from the right person with the right training and skills at the right time, is important. That work has shown a decrease in unwarranted police intervention in mental health pathways. We want people with a mental health challenge to have support. The police are dealing with the crisis in the moment, and perhaps the consequential behaviour of the crisis, rather than the underlying long-term trends.

There will always be a role for police in dealing with mental health calls where there is a risk of serious harm. It is important that police have access to relevant health information and use their police powers to do that.

Importantly, as I have mentioned already, there is an important set of training material available, which goes to points that the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, mentioned. The College of Police’s mental health training is for all new officers to go through. There is an additional suite of training material I have referred to that provide, I hope, the approach to the culture change that the noble Baroness is seeking. This training provides officers with knowledge to recognise what mental health challenges there are and to communicate with and support people exhibiting such indicators.

I think this is a worthwhile discussion, but I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that it would be helpful to withdraw the amendment now, and we will reflect on the outcome of the White Paper in due course.

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[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I do not have details of the contract in front of me. I am, of course, aware that there could be commercially confidential issues at play which might prevent the level of disclosure that she wants, but, in the spirit of trying to be helpful, I will certainly go away, take it back and write to the noble Baroness if I can.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very sorry. I am recalling the passage of the Procurement Act, where we discussed at some considerable length what contract could and could not be kept from the public. The detail can be confidential, but the fact of the contract and who it is let to should surely be part of the public domain—it should be on websites.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I will certainly defer to the noble Baroness’s knowledge of the Procurement Bill because I think it went through the House before I was in the House. I am happy to share what detail that we can under the details of that Act. I hope that that satisfies the noble Baroness.

I will also go away and look at the issue of capital funding. I am afraid I do not have the figures in front of me, but of course it is important that we fund all these systems adequately. We would contend that, unfortunately, for the past 14 years some of the investment in policing that we would have liked to see has been lacking, and we have been very clear about our wider approach as a Government to investing, particularly in neighbourhood policing but in policing at all levels. We want to improve on recent experience.

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[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the amendments, to which I have put my name. As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has made such an eloquent speech in relation to youth justice, I will concentrate on the police because the arguments are identical. The reason I say they are identical is that the three commissions that have looked at this issue—commissions made up not of politicians interested in hanging on to power but of individuals who have experience and expertise in the systems—have all recommended the devolution of youth justice and the devolution of the police. The first was Sir Paul Silk, the distinguished clerk; then I chaired a Commission on Justice in Wales, which reported in October 2019; and then there was the report of Dr Rowan Williams and Professor Laura McAllister. All recommended the same thing.

In view of the pressing need for a debate to occur at 4 pm—it may be a minute or two early—I refer to paragraphs of the report that we wrote. The police are dealt with at paragraphs 4.77 to 4.151, and youth justice is dealt with at paragraphs 4.181 to 4.195. I give those paragraph numbers in the hope that someone in the Home Office might read them. One of the problems of the report that the commission I chaired submitted is that no one has ever answered it. I assume it has never been answered because it is unanswerable. It is therefore important, in the light of the forthcoming paper on the police, that this point is grappled with.

The two fundamental arguments have been outlined by both the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. First, if you devolve everything else, you have to devolve police and justice. They are integral to the proper management of a system. Secondly, there is the democratic argument that if Wales is paying the greater part of what it costs, there should be accountability—certainly greater accountability than that enjoyed by the Mayors of Manchester and London. At the moment, the accountability is the other way around.

Where this is so important is that the view used to be expressed that the people of Wales really were not up to governing themselves. That was the 19th-century and early 20th-century view and, thank goodness, is gone. But now one asks: what is the argument against devolution? It is very difficult to see what it is. It will be a testing point as to what will happen on the publication of this White Paper.

The Government are abolishing police and crime commissioners. I express no view as to whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it forces the Government to grapple with what happens in Wales. Are they going to set up some elaborate structure to avoid devolution, or are they going to face up to devolution? We shall know the answer to this in the forthcoming White Paper. I hope that the Home Office officials, when they have read the paragraphs to which I have referred, will see that there is one unanswerable response to this question: devolution. On the other hand, if they set up some elaborate structure, no longer will it be said, “Well, the Welsh aren’t quite up to running their own police force”. It might be said, “There are other reasons why politicians don’t like giving up power in London. They want to hang on”. One has already seen reflected in remarks made in and across Wales that it is about time that these important powers were transferred to Wales to make the Government coherent, rather than hanging on to them and to power for what I hope I have wrongly understood—or been told—are purely party-political reasons. I hope that is not the case, but the proof will be in the pudding of the police White Paper.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches are grateful to the noble Lady Baroness, Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for tabling Amendments 433 and 434, and to the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for adding his name to Amendment 434. These amendments relate to the devolution of policing and youth justice to Wales.

My noble friend Lady Humphreys has signed both amendments as they agree with Lib Dem policy and our ambitions for Wales, but, unfortunately, she cannot be in her place today. Our manifesto for the general election in 2024 promised to:

“Deliver a fair deal for the people of Wales by … Devolving powers over youth justice, probation services, prisons and policing to allow Wales to create an effective, liberal, community-based approach to policing and tackling crime”.


To the disappointment of many in Wales, the issue of devolving justice to Wales was absent from Labour’s general election manifesto, despite Keir Starmer committing a year before, in 2023, to introducing a take back control Bill to devolve new powers to communities from Westminster. This commitment appears to apply to England only, and gradually, over the months since the election of the Labour Government, their lack of ambition for Wales has become more apparent.

After the State Opening of Parliament in 2024, there was no new mention of new powers for Wales in the King’s Speech. In July 2025, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, said that the UK Government could row back on its promises on the devolution of probation and youth justice, despite the Welsh Government beginning the groundwork to prepare for what they believed to be a realistic project.

Noble Lords have raised queries about the consequences of the decision taken by the Government in November last year to abolish police and crime commissioners—a decision that those of us on these Benches applauded. At the time, noble Lords from Wales were concerned about the lack of clarity on the Government’s plans for the transference of the PCCs’ functions to Wales. The assumption was that the functions would transfer to mayors in England and to the Senedd in Wales. However, far from providing clarity, the answers they received amounted to pure obfuscation. Now we learn, in what could be described as a slap in the face to the Senedd, that the functions of the PCCs are to be transferred to a new board, placing the Welsh Parliament on the same level as a non-mayoral authority in England.

On these Benches we understand the difficulties so ably clarified by the noble and learned Lord in his contribution to the Sentencing Bill of devolving just one part of a system. But where has English Labour’s ambition for Wales disappeared to? For all the platitudes about mutual respect and co-operative working, the disrespect is beginning to show, sadly. Where is the recognition that Wales has been ready for the devolution of the justice system for the last 25 years at least, and where is the road map for our two nations to achieve that together?

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I do not come from Wales. I am speaking because I have sympathy, and I have friends there. I remember somebody asking me, “Are you evangelical or Anglo-Catholic?” I said, “Catholic, yes; Anglo, no”. Wales may sometimes feel it is singing that song.

The devolution of justice and policing to Wales are two sides of one coin, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said. To those who tabled Amendments 433 and 434—the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain—I simply ask one question: if policing and youth justice, this one coin with two sides, are devolved to Scotland, why not Wales?

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and my noble friend Lord Hain for tabling these amendments. I speak as Home Office Minister but also as a resident of Wales, a Member of Parliament for Wales for 28 years, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales who helped bring in devolution, and a Welsh Whip who took it through the House of Commons, so I am a supporter of devolution and know my way around this patch. However, I say to the noble Baroness that the Government cannot support in full the direction of travel that she has proposed.

I recognise again the great contribution that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has made on this issue and in his reports, but the view of the Government remains that devolving police and youth justice would require extensive institutional change and carry major operational and financial implications. Devolving policing in particular would undermine the UK Government’s ability to deliver crime prevention and the safer streets mission in Wales.

The noble Baroness raised finance. The position she mentioned in Wales is no different from that across the border in Cheshire. Taxpayers there have a burden of funding carried forward, with UK central support. That is a common issue. The noble Baroness does not have too long to wait, as the police settlement for England and Wales will be issued by the Home Office very shortly. I expect that—

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The noble Lord commented about it not being the right time for Wales, but does this mean that the Labour Government are changing their view about police devolution in Scotland? It works perfectly well.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness: I read that quote as well and was very worried about it, and the idea that we should all aspire to total surveillance and living in a panopticon. When I saw that—it has been doing the rounds on social media—I assumed it was fake news. I cannot believe that from a Labour Cabinet Minister, even from a Home Secretary—we know funny things happen to people when they go in the Home Office; I was there myself for a bit. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will assure us when he responds that there is no question of building a total surveillance state or, indeed, Bentham’s panopticon. I share the noble Baroness’s concerns, and I am grateful to her for raising them.

I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for, I think, answering the question that I put to him in the previous group, which is that his objection is to a single compulsory identifier. I share his concerns if that is the problem. I would not want us all to have to carry a single compulsory identifier, digital or otherwise, which becomes a licence to live that you can have demanded of you at any time. The compulsory element was always the problem, not having an optional identifier —for instance, if you choose to have your passport or driving licence on your phone instead of as a physical document. I understand that even lots of noble Lords now pay for their refreshments with their mobile phone; this is the world that we live in. The problem is with a single compulsory identifier, not with the option of having a digital ID, as opposed to a paper ID. I hope he will nod and indicate that we are in the same place on that.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 415 from the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, which seeks to introduce a new safeguard for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 regarding the potential future use of digital identification by law enforcement. I too am grateful for his explanation about the single identifier. I remind your Lordships that there were a number of amendments in some Home Office Bills about three years ago when the Home Office was trying to get access to DVLA data and, indeed, to personal medical data for anyone who might have been present at the scene of a possible crime—not the victim or the possible perpetrator, but anyone who was literally just present. I am glad that, in opposition, his party has decided to change its approach on this. It is very welcome.

I also echo the good news that the amendment is, I hope, fully redundant because of the Government’s announcement, but I look forward to making sure that some of the very minor concerns being expressed are recognised by the Government.

This amendment would provide the protection to individuals, should the Government introduce a digital identity document scheme, that a constable would be expressly prohibited from requiring a person to produce such a document on request or asking for it to be produced for inspection. Crucially, it would also prevent the police 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 tabled to earlier Home Office Bills.

We on these Benches 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. As organisations such as 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, in effect, places the majority of law-abiding citizens in a permanent digital police line-up without their consent. Can the Minister confirm that it is the case that surveillance will not be used?

The Government have previously suggested that digital ID could serve as an alternative form of ID for specific purposes such as age verification for online sales. However, without the explicit prohibition contained in Amendment 415, there is a significant risk of mission creep. 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. This amendment is not about obstructing modern policing; it is 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.

From these Benches we are glad about the Government U-turn, but we need more detail to ensure that those protections remain. It is for Parliament and not for operational police discretion to set the boundaries for how the state identifies its citizens. I urge the Committee to support this amendment and hope that the Ministers will give us an encouragement that it is not needed.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for setting out the case for Amendment 415. He says a week is a long time in politics, but I am going to take him all the way back to the announcement on 26 September from the Prime Minister that the Government were intending to introduce a national digital ID scheme for all British and Irish citizens and those with permission to be in the United Kingdom.

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, we will examine options for appropriate oversight and safeguards of the digital ID, with a 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 the police using stop and search powers. This was picked up in this debate and the debate on the previous amendment by, among others, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It will not be mandatory for those eligible to obtain the digital ID and, as such, there will be no penalty for not having one.

Law enforcement use of data is governed by Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018. This places a range of obligations on law enforcement, including requirements that law enforcement processing of data must be necessary and proportionate, for a specific purpose and not excessive. All three noble Baronesses who spoke raised concerns over a move towards a surveillance state—certainly, that was the theme of the speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. To be clear, 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. We will ensure safeguards are in place to make sure that any access to data is both necessary and proportionate.

As I said, the public consultation will be launched in the coming weeks. This will ensure that any legislation includes appropriate safeguards. I am sure that, without much prompting, my noble friend and the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Fox of Buckley, will be first in the queue to contribute to that public consultation.

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The main thing is that, without her knowledge and behind the scenes, over a period of time there were some arguments about whether or not that deserved an NCHI. Instead, in her file is written, “Crime: harassment motivated by transphobia because of misgendering. No action”. That was not a non-crime hate incident but it was generated in relation to a non-crime hate incident. So can the Minister assure us that the habit of recording non-crime will not merely be replaced by the word “crime” and that the creation of a shadow Orwellian crime-recording procedure with no due process will not replace getting rid of non-crime hate incidents? I want to see the back of them, but I fear that the ideology that has informed them is well and truly alive and kicking, and that needs to be tackled too.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, for his contribution because he set out the balance between non-crime hate incidents and non-crime incidents and the difference between the two. One of our concerns on these Benches is that—I am going to use the phrase he used, for which I apologise, but I had already written it down—in looking at this amendment, we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That is really important, and I will explain why in some detail later.

I remind the Committee that, in considering our two amendments about hate crime last week, I referred to the recommendation Combating Hate Crime by the Council of Europe, which says 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. The reason why non-crime incidents, whether hate-related or not, need to be recorded is that often, the perpetrators go on to escalate their behaviour.

I have referred before in this House to being stalked by a political opponent for three years. Before we could get the police to take it seriously, we had recorded some 75 incidents, probably half of which were crimes but half were not. As things escalated, it went from minor crimes to the perpetrator using a very large knife on tyres. The police psychologist said, “If we don’t get him now, it will be people next”. It is that entire spectrum of behaviour, with some incidents ending up being part of a crime, that means we cannot just throw out all non-crime incidents.

I am afraid that the same is also true for non-crime hate incidents. I am grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, referred to the appalling case of the antisemitic attacks, because those would go as well if this amendment were accepted, since there would be no capacity for the police to start monitoring and recording such things until they tipped the balance into a crime, even though the damage was done in those earlier incidents, repeatedly to the same group of people. I think of friends of mine who go to synagogue in one town, and of young Muslim friends in my home town of Watford who are shouted at on their way to worship every single week by the same small group of people. Probably neither of those would even get to the first bar of being recorded as a non-crime hate incident; but, if their behaviour follows the typical course and escalates, and the police have not recorded anything, they have nothing to go back over. So I beg the movers of this amendment to—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

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

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I referred to the comments made by previous speakers on this group who talked about police wasting their time recording. 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 seriously. Therein lies the problem. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, that there has to be new, revised, clear guidance about how the police need to process these things. It may be that there will be many that are not now processed, but we cannot just say that we should get rid of non-crime hate incidents in their entirety.

A lot of the other speeches during this debate have talked about the polarisation in our society being because people are now saying things to others, with people becoming offended. We discussed this briefly last week. The things being said to people on the street would not have been said five or six years ago. People might have thought them as they walked past, but it was quite rare. We are deeply offended if it targets us. We often do not recognise when we are being offensive to other people. I say again: there is something about the way our society is working at the moment that means we have to learn to look at ourselves, not just at the others we do not like. The police, who are literally trying to police all this, are in a very invidious position. They need tools to record information because it helps them to assess and understand when other things happen. It is much broader than non-crime hate incidents, as I have alluded to already.

Paul Giannasi 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. I am sure, from what the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, has said and from what I have heard elsewhere, that there certainly will be changes. We have to understand that the key issue here is balancing those individual rights: the absolute freedom of expression as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton—he and I had a debate about JS Mill last week—alongside the state’s obligation to protect citizens against targeted victimisation. The police must be able to gather intelligence and evidence and log symbolic messaging to targeted groups. All the other things—about whether those end up on DBS—can be looked at as part of this review, and I am sure 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 were not watching what was happening in that community in the months and years running up to it. 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 Sir William Macpherson as part of his public inquiry in response to Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

I come back to this point: in terms of practical value, the police must be able to record incidents that do not in and of 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. People say to me, “Oh, but stalking is always about relationships; that’s not about a hate crime”. Quite a lot of stalking is actually non-domestic, and it is targeted at somebody because of a particular characteristic.

I 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 do things again and again, there is a point at which it is going to tip over. I was party to and a survivor of something that ended up as 132 crimes; once the police saw all the evidence that we had been holding of the earlier non-crime hate, it was extremely helpful when things started to escalate. Reform is absolutely needed. We hope that the review will have recommendations for a new regime. But I also hope that it will not leave victims vulnerable, either from perpetrators whose behaviour escalates or from police who are not quite clear about the role they have in recording non-crime incidents.

Domestic Violence Against Children

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

All agencies have a responsibility to provide safeguarding for young people. Co-operation between agencies—by that I mean schools, social services and, potentially, the police—is extremely important. In the violence against women and girls strategy, we are trying to look at how we can do this better. I would refer the noble Baroness to that document, because there are potential steps in there that we are seeking to achieve, but it will be not an easy or quick solution.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the VAWG action plan proposes increasing the number of family help lead protection practitioners—that is a senior social worker—but children’s services teams across the country are severely stretched now. Can the Minister say how many more children’s social workers will be needed to deliver family support? Will the Government guarantee that funding for it will be ring-fenced inside local authorities?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will know that I cannot give a figure on that today. We have put an extra £20 million into the violence against women and girls strategy to deal with the particular issues that are the focus of this Question. There is a need—to go back to an earlier point made by the previous noble Baroness—to have co-ordination between local authorities, education and, in some cases, the devolved Administrations. I cannot give a definitive answer, but I will take the point back to my right honourable friend Jess Phillips, the Minister with direct responsibilities, and ensure that the noble Baroness receives an answer.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on his courage in raising these issues. I am going to say little more than that, other than that I was instrumental in getting a sentence added to the code of conduct for members of the Liberal Democrats, which says that no one has the right to not be offended.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, set out the principles that he believes are important to secure freedom of speech by removing the words “abusive or insulting” from a number of pieces of legislation. From these Benches, we absolutely accept freedom of speech. But I want to pick up on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Young, made when he quoted John Stuart Mill. There is a second half to the sentence about the right to free speech. Mill says that

“the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.

It is on preventing harm to others that this entire debate is balanced.

I am sure that there are many justifications for feeling that freedom of speech is being curtailed for people who just want to express their opinion. But the reason that we have the laws we do at the moment, particularly since the 1950s, is due to the harm that has been done to others. I think there was reference made earlier to the Race Relations Act of 60 years ago; that was in the consequence of very overt racial harm done to entire communities in our society. John Stuart Mill would have absolutely supported that legislation to protect. That is what the balance is between our freedom of speech and our responsibility as parliamentarians to protect those, particularly the most vulnerable, in our society.

That is why I want to go back briefly—not quite as far back as the Race Relations Act 1965—to when the original provisions on hate crimes were first introduced by the Blair Government in 1998. There is no doubt that this was partly in response to growing concerns relating to the ineffective policing of and legal responses to racist violence, which, again, was then very evident on our streets. The noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, and her family had campaigned for this more robust legislative framework, and not just because it was much clearer that, as a society, we did not and should not accept hate-motivated crimes, especially towards particular communities and those with protected characteristics.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I will ask this very briefly, then. Is there a problem that young people and the police do not appear to be able to distinguish between microaggressions and genocide? Is it one line?

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her intervention and her questions. I say, with great courtesy to the Government Whip, that her first question does not relate to the amendment because it is not about an offence. She was talking about the pre-banning of people and asking whether harm is so broad. However, that is a debate we need to have as society.

That leads into the noble Baroness’s second question about whether young people can distinguish. I think young people can distinguish. Part of the issue is that we as an older generation do not understand that a lot of them take a great deal of care about their colleagues because they have been brought up in a society with the rules, as opposed to having to introduce them, and they have seen exactly the concerns that I was raising. We need to continue to debate this but, bringing it back to this amendment, the point is that none of those issues is about offences.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for this interesting debate. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea for moving Amendment 382F, which I support. Although it ranges across several statutes, it is in truth a coherent proposal with a clear constitutional purpose: to restore the proper limits of the criminal law so that freedom of speech is protected, while of course ensuring that genuinely threatening conduct remains criminal.

At the outset, I recognise the political sensitivity of this area. Any proposal to amend or repeal so-called hate speech provisions risks being misrepresented as indifference to racism, misogyny, homophobia or other forms of discrimination. Let me be absolutely clear: that is not the motivation behind this amendment. As my noble friend said, we on this side of the House oppose racism and discrimination in all their forms. The case for this amendment is not moral indifference but legal realism. The current framework has proved incoherent, ineffective and, in some respects, actively counterproductive.

As my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea most ably set out, the current legislative framework dealing with offensive language, hate speech and the like is a messy, tangled web of patchwork offences. We have the Malicious Communications Act 1988, Sections 4A and 5 and Parts III and 3A of the Public Order Act 1986, and Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. These provisions criminalise speech not because it threatens direct harm but because it is deemed “abusive” or “insulting” or said to cause a person “needless anxiety”.

I am not ignorant to the fact that we have had laws in this country prohibiting the usage of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour for almost a century. Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1936, now repealed, stated:

“Any person who in any public place or at any public meeting uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or whereby a breach of the peace is likely to be occasioned, shall be guilty of an offence”.


But there are two crucial differences between that legislation and this. The 1936 Act was set against the background of rising fascist paramilitaries, first in Italy and then in Germany and, indeed, in Britain. Secondly, use of the language

“with intent to provoke a breach of the peace”

is very different from outlawing insulting language likely to cause a person “needless anxiety”. I think even a child could understand the difference between inciting a riot and causing a person mild offence.

Yet this is where we are. A person can claim to have been caused “annoyance” or even “inconvenience”, complain to the police and have another individual investigated and potentially arrested. That is not hyperbole; it is the truth. There is a litany of recent examples that we could trawl through, but many have been mentioned by noble Lords today so I will mention only a few, as briefly as I can.

As we have heard, the Malicious Communications Act 1988 was used to arrest Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, the two parents who have been referred to. The same Act was used to arrest a 17 year-old boy for comments he posted on Tom Daley’s Twitter account:

“You let your dad down i hope you know that”.


While this is obviously poor behaviour, to claim it should be a matter for the law and constitutes criminality is deeply concerning. Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 was used to prosecute a person who posted a picture online with a phallus drawn on it; Jordan Barrack was ordered to pay £400 in compensation for a post that did not cause any harm to anyone. Again, how this case ended up as a matter for the authorities is beyond me.

Of fundamental importance is the fact that the terms we are dealing with here are not precise legal concepts. They are elastic, subjective and dependent on perception rather than consequence. The result is uncertainty for the public, inconsistency in enforcement and an unhealthy transfer of quasi-judicial discretion to individual police officers who have recently taken to very liberal and, indeed, unequal enforcement of these laws.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The issue we are trying to get to is where the boundary is between free speech and abusive behaviour. The police would have had problems saying that it was threatening if she said, “Oh, I was just dancing around the chair”. This is what they explained to me at the time. The issue that protected me was that she was abusive and insulting, and they could record it. Had they been able to find her, they could have checked to see whether it had happened elsewhere, which they thought would have been likely. That moves into the area of the next group, so I will not talk any further, but I am very grateful to the noble Lord for raising that.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that explanation. She clearly demarcated our difference in view as to where the line should be drawn. I suggest to noble Lords that it is important to draw the line at the threat of imminent violence. That has been a principle in the past, but it has been breached by recent laws and actions by the police.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies, kindly supported this amendment—

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[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment of my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I also declare my interest as a director of the Free Speech Union. I will make three arguments against the statutory hate crime regime, and against embedding the concept of hate crime in British law. As we have heard, and as we are all aware, the concept of hate crime is inextricably bound up with protected characteristics. A hate crime is either the stirring up of hatred against the bearers of certain protected characteristics, or it is a crime that becomes a hate crime because the perpetrator is motivated by hostility towards one or more of the protected characteristics of the victim.

The number of protected characteristics in this statutory framework, however, varies from law to law. Hate crime law, on the face of it, is for that reason slightly confusing and incoherent. There are three protected characteristics in the stirring-up offences in the Public Order Act, five are referenced in the aggravated offences regime, seven in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, and nine in the Equality Act. How can we rationalise this anomaly? The solution of successive Governments has been constantly to add new protected characteristics to the statute book. I dare say it is possible that, in due course, amendments will be made to the Crime and Policing Bill to add yet more protected characteristics to the criminal law.

The direction of travel is clear: the number of protected characteristics is constantly expanding, and various lobby groups are constantly petitioning parliamentarians to add ever more protected characteristics to the statute book. The end point of this process will be that every characteristic is protected; but if every characteristic is protected, then no particular characteristic will enjoy special protection and we will, in effect, be back to where we started pre-1965, before the concept of hate crime raised its head in British law.

My first argument is that, in the interests of saving us all a great deal of time and effort, can we not just short-circuit the process of getting to the point where every characteristic is protected by stripping out the concept of hate crime and protected characteristics from British law and returning to the pre-1965 status quo?

My second argument has been touched upon by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, which is that the concept of hate crime is at odds with the sacrosanct principle of equality before the law. Why should bearers of protected characteristics enjoy more robust legal protections than non-bearers? Why is a criminal offence motivated by hostility towards a victim’s transgender identity punished more severely than exactly the same crime motivated by the victim’s sex? Sex is not a protected characteristic, apart from in the Equality Act. This two-tier justice—this sense that some people, because they happen to belong to protected groups, enjoy additional legal protections—fosters grievance, breeds resentment and undermines public trust in the law and in the police in particular. In 1981, around 87% of Britons reported having confidence in the police. By 2022, that had fallen to about 67%, a substantial long-term decline. I would suggest that one of the reasons for declining public trust in the police is this sense that some groups are better protected than others because of the hate crime, protected characteristic regime.

My third argument, which is probably the strongest argument, is that the aggravated offences regime introduces the concept of thought crime into British law. We need to distinguish between mens rea and the particular thought someone is having towards the victim while committing a particular crime. I do not think, when assessing the seriousness of an offence, you could exclude motive. It would be absurd not to take motive into account, but that is different from punishing a crime more severely if a person is experiencing a particular emotion—hostility, hatred—towards a particular group that the victim of the crime belongs to. Mens rea is universal and does not discriminate, but hate crime does. It says that if you are having particular thoughts about the victim when you commit the crime—importantly, not hatred in general, but hatred based on their possession of one or more protected characteristics—you should be punished more severely.

Not only is this criminalisation of certain thoughts a hallmark of a totalitarian society, but, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan pointed out, it is very hard to prove. It is very hard for a court to determine whether the person accused of the crime had the verboten thoughts while committing the crime. To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth I, we cannot open a window and see into men’s souls.

I am perfectly aware that an amendment stripping the concept of hate crime from British law has little chance of winning a Division in this House, so let me close with some more modest proposals. Do not add any more protected characteristics to the list of aggravators. Extend Section 29J of the Public Order Act, which protects various forms of criticism of religion and makes it more difficult for people to be prosecuted for stirring up religious hatred. You can criticise a religion, even quite robustly, thanks to Section 29J and not be prosecuted for stirring up religious hatred.

One useful improvement to the hate crime statutory regime would be to extend Section 29J to the other stirring-up offences. For example, the Free Speech Union paid for the legal defence of a former Royal Marine called Jamie Michael. He robustly criticised illegal immigrants in a Facebook video and, as a consequence, he was prosecuted for intending to stir up racial hatred. It took a jury in Merthyr Tydfil all of 17 minutes to unanimously acquit him of that offence. He should never have been prosecuted. We need a protection in the Public Order Act whereby, if you make robust criticisms, even of legal migration, you should not be vulnerable to a charge of stirring up racial hatred.

Finally, an anomaly in the stirring-up offences is that you can be prosecuted for stirring up racial hatred if the effect of your words or behaviour is likely to stir up racial hatred, even if that is not your intention—whereas you can be prosecuted for stirring up religious hatred or hatred on the basis of sexual orientation only if you intended to do that. That is an anomaly, and my recommendation would be that a two-limb test has to be satisfied before one of the stirring-up offences can be made out. To successfully prosecute someone, it should be incumbent on the Crown to show not only that what they said or did was likely to stir up hatred against the protected group in question but that they intended to as well. That would bring British law to a certain extent into line with the Brandenburg test in the US first amendment, whereby you can be prosecuted only if your words or actions are not only likely to but were intended to cause imminent lawless action.

So, accepting that this controversial proposal that my two colleagues have bravely made is unlikely to ever win enough support in this House as presently constituted to win a Division, I urge the Committee to consider those more modest reforms.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, for setting out his arguments for abolishing hate crimes. He started with the issue of freedom of speech again—I absolutely understand that that is where he and those supporting him are coming from—and, interestingly, he cited the case of Lucy Connolly. I thought it might be helpful to remind the Committee of part of Article 10 in our Human Rights Act 1998, which says:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression”—


we are shorthanding that to “speech”—but it goes on to say:

“The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”.


I have carefully quoted all of it, but I will focus on the part that relates to what she was convicted for.

Coming back to our debate on the previous group, the problem is that there is a lot of concern about big figurehead cases when, actually, the law, the judge and the jury—actually there was no jury because Connolly pleaded guilty—were clear that she was inciting racial hatred. She pleaded guilty of saying threatening and abusive material, which is interesting given what we debated on the last group. She said:

“set fire to all the”—

effing—

“hotels full of the bastards”.

She said that at exactly the time that people were on the streets, some of whom were trying to set fire to the hotels. The tweet was viewed 310,000 times before it was deleted, and the judge specifically cited that in his summary at the end of the case.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for accepting my intervention. I just wanted to point out that the noble Baroness did not quote Lucy Connolly’s tweet in full. She added the caveat “for all I care”, which suggested not that she was intending to encourage people to burn down asylum hotels but that she was indifferent as to whether they did so.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Fortunately, the judge took a different view. I think that we have to accept—and I was not the judge and do not know what his thoughts were—that the tweet was clearly seen enough times by the public at the moment when a small number of people were causing real concern outside hotels that had asylum seekers in them who had absolutely nothing to do with the Southport stabbing. That was the issue. Therefore, I believe that this is exactly where the balance lies between rights and responsibility, to go back to John Stuart Mill, where we started in the previous group.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for letting me intervene. Will she agree that it is unfortunate that there is a general perception that this lady—on whose case I do not rest any of my argument, or place any reliance, as I discussed in my 40-page submission to the Macdonald review—was inveigled into pleading guilty by being kept on remand in a case where it would not have been usual to keep such a person with such an alleged crime on remand? She pled guilty because she thought that she would be released early—more fool her, it turns out—and as a result of her pleading guilty, the matter referred to by my noble friend Lord Young, that she said “for all I care”, which may have turned out to be an excuse that led to her exoneration in front of a jury, much like that 17-minute jury decision that he mentioned, was never litigated, so that we could have discovered what the law said as to whether her tweet reached the standards for criminal conviction. Does the noble Baroness not think that unfortunate?

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I do not think that it is unfortunate given that the judge said that 310,000 views of that tweet happened at a time when there was discord on the streets. My argument is not about Connolly’s case; it goes back to Article 10 in the Human Rights Act, which says that along with freedom of expression or freedom of speech there are rights and responsibilities, and it is the role of the state to have laws to protect people. It cannot have been right to think that even one person seeing that tweet could have started one of the arsons in the bins outside one of the asylum seeker hotels. I do not know whether that happened; the point is that 310,000 people saw it, and that is the difference with her last phrase, which probably most people did not see or did not take in the way that the noble Lord has indicated—he has raised his eyebrows at me, but there are different ways of taking it. I do not want to get into the detail of that; I am trying to make the argument that, for every instance of freedom of speech by an individual, there are quite often consequences that may or may not end up as a crime as well. That brings me back to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, raised earlier—that the level of hate crimes is increasing. We also know that hate crimes are seriously underreported.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I apologise for intervening again, but does the noble Baroness not accept that had that matter been litigated it would not have been before the judge? It would not have been for the judge to rule; it would have been before a jury, which is something that we in this country enjoy and that unfortunately there are moves to suppress. It would have been in front of a jury, and a jury would have been able to decide whether that final point justified her exoneration.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The noble Lord said that he did not rely on Lucy Connolly in his earlier argument; he is now trying to rely on that case here. I am trying to make the point that it is more complex than he made out in his earlier contribution. I would like to make some progress, if I may.

The previous Government’s LGBT survey in 2018 showed that fewer than one in 10 LGBT people reported hate crimes or incidents. The noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, has explained one of the reasons for that. The other reason, I know from friends who have also experienced this sort of hate crime, is they do not believe that the police will do anything. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Young, that that is one of the reasons why there is concern about the police: too often, people who are targeted in this way feel that they do not get the help that they need.

As has been described, there is no single piece of hate crime legislation. It includes aggravated assault, which the noble Lord, Lord Young, was particularly concerned about. The point about hate crime is that it is not just the individual; the protected characteristic means that they and their community are also affected by it. We have spent many hours on previous groups on this Bill discussing the absolute abhorrence of antisemitism. If actions in Israel can cause people in the UK to start attacking members of our Jewish community, either verbally or against a person or their property, then that is absolutely unacceptable. That is one of the reasons why I would never want hate crimes to be removed.

Research by Professor Mark Walters of Sussex University shows that hate crimes do not affect just those individuals targeted; he describes them as having a “ripple effect” through their wider communities. Some people will avoid certain routes and places, and others will not leave home at all, particularly in our Jewish communities at the moment, but the same is true in certain areas for our Muslim communities. If laws about hate crime are weakened or repealed, it would send an appalling message to these communities of faith, as well as to LGBT and disabled people. Do the supporters of the amendment really no longer regard it as important that the state recognises the communities that have protected characteristics—their vulnerability—as warranting distinct legal recognition and criminalisation?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, once again, this has been a very interesting debate and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea for tabling Amendment 382G. This amendment contains a line of argument that the Committee began to consider in the previous group: namely, whether the criminal law should concern itself with what people do or whether it should also punish what people are thought to feel or believe.

The provisions targeted by this amendment fall broadly into two categories. First, there are ordinary criminal offences—assault, criminal damage, harassment and public order offences—where existing penalties are increased if the court concludes that the offender was motivated by hostility towards a protected characteristic. Secondly, there are freestanding offences, particularly under the Public Order Act 1986 and the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which criminalised the stirring up of hatred, even where no violence or other recognised criminal harm has occurred.

The crux of the debate comes down to this: two identical acts can result in radically different sentences depending not on the harm caused but on an inferred state of mind. That inference might be drawn from sparse or ambiguous evidence, yet it carries profound consequences for liberty. This could make prosecutions more complex, investigations longer and outcomes less predictable—hardly a recipe for clarity or fairness. These laws have grown incrementally and unevenly; they overlap, diverge, and sometimes contradict one another. The result is a body of legislation that is difficult to understand, inconsistently applied and increasingly divorced from public confidence.

This amendment offers the Committee an opportunity to step back and ask whether this approach has genuinely improved justice or whether it has instead distracted our criminal justice system from its core task of tackling real and harmful crime. This is a point that I would particularly like to emphasise. As a former police officer myself, I understand the difficulties in enforcing laws that are passed by a well-meaning Parliament but are incoherent and ill thought through. Part of this problem does indeed lie with us, the lawmakers. Successive Governments and Parliaments have not taken a coherent approach to public order and speech legislation. They have passed statute after statute, simply adding to the already long list of different defences, not thinking to consolidate or repeal existing laws.

When the Public Order Act 1986 passed, it contained seven offences of this nature. The previous Labour Government passed the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Sections 28 to 33 of which created racially aggravated offences. They then passed the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, which added a new Part 3A to the 1986 Act, and the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 added hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation to the list of hate crimes. The Sentencing Act 2020 also permits for any offence to be aggravated by hostility expressed towards any of five characteristics.

This Government are going down the same path, as we have already discussed in Committee. Clauses 107 and 108 of this very Bill contain further provisions criminalising the use of offensive language based on racial hatred aimed towards an emergency worker. If the Government think it is coherent to simply bolt new offences on to the already vast array of legislation, then I respectfully suggest that they are somewhat misguided.

Furthermore, far from promoting cohesion, these provisions have too often deepened division. They have encouraged grievance politics and fostered public mistrust. They have also placed the police in an impossible position, asking them to arbitrate not just behaviour but belief and expression.

There is a further concern about effectiveness. These laws, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea mentioned, are clogging the justice system with cases that pose no real threat to public safety, while doing little to address genuine hatred or violence. At the same time, they have fed a broader culture in which accusations of hate are used to silence debate, discourage inquiry and deter people—artists, teachers, academics and ordinary citizens—from speaking openly.

Freedom of speech is not an abstract luxury; it is a defining feature of our national character and a cornerstone of democratic legitimacy. I thank my noble friend for enabling this fruitful debate and hope that the Government will consider it carefully.