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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

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

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I said on 27 November that the strategy would be published soon, and I think 18 December is soon. It will be published tomorrow. I know that Members of this House have been pressing me to publish the Statement as soon as possible. The Statement will be delivered in the House of Commons tomorrow, and, if the Opposition so wish, I stand ready to deliver it in this House at the earliest opportunity—which I expect will be in the new year.

The noble Lord asks whether there will be cuts in services and why this strategy has been “delayed”. I remind the noble Lord that this is a strategy with an ambition to halve violence against women and girls over a 10-year period. That is a significant and complex but deliverable commitment. To achieve that commitment, through 12 meetings across the sector we have consulted with a range of individuals, and consulted across government and with the police and women’s organisations involved in domestic violence.

The strategy will be published tomorrow in full, and I hope it will be welcomed. It will have a series of measurable metrics to achieve that halving of violence against women and girls. The strategy is complex, but I hope the noble Lord will invite me to deliver a Statement in the new year providing more detail, which I will happily do.

The noble Lord asks about cuts in funding. We will be announcing a package of funding measures tomorrow as part of the violence against women and girls strategy. In May, the Government announced a £19.9 million investment to tackle violence against women and girls. In July, we announced a £53 million investment to fund the four-year rollout of the Drive project. This year, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has committed £19 million to domestic abuse safe accommodation, and local authorities will receive £500 million over the next three years to support safe accommodation. Additionally, the Ministry of Justice has committed £500 million to invest in vital support services that help domestic abuse victims navigate the justice process. That is what we have done so far. Tomorrow, the strategy will set out in more detail the funding options and deliverables that we will use to deliver on halving violence against women in girls over the next 10 years. I hope the noble Lord will welcome it when it comes.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am grateful that the noble Lord has outlined that he will respond to the Statement in due course, and I echo the comments of many Members of this House and the other House about its delay. But VAWG is going to be halved only when some of the key things that worry women at the moment are solved, so it is really shocking that only 2% of rape offences result in a charge or summons, and even fewer in a conviction. Can the Minister say what the Government are doing to address this problem and practice through both the police and the CPS?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right, and she will know that my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice, who are responsible for the prosecution element, are going to review this issue. In the strategy to be published tomorrow, she will see that there is a real commitment to up the number of prosecutions and ensure that criminal justice outcomes are achieved. It is also important that we give victims of rape, both male and female, the confidence to come forward and report their rapes in the first place, and that they will be taken seriously by the authorities. That is one of the aspects of the strategy that will be further developed in due course.

As I have said, although both opposition Front-Bench spokespeople have used the word “delayed”, there has not been a violence against women and girls strategy before. Currently, there is no such strategy to address the halving of violence against women and girls over a 10-year period. On the question of the delay of some 15 months since the manifesto commitment was given at the general election to put in place a strategy to halve VAWG over 10 years, I think that is a reasonable timescale in which to have produced a strategy. We wanted to get it right, and the document to be produced tomorrow will be available for Members from the Vote Offices of both Houses. I hope that they will look at it over Christmas and come back and challenge me on its contents in the new year.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean of Redditch. Both amendments have been spoken to very well and very strongly.

I want talk about one particular case, of a sex offender called Clive Bundy, who was in prison for some years for sexually abusing and raping his daughter, Ceri-Lee Galvin, from a young age. It was incestuous sexual abuse and rape. He went to prison in 2016 and before he was released, he declared he was a woman. Bundy then changed his name via deed poll, very generously helped and abetted by the prison authorities, to aid his release.

I have spoken about this issue in this House before, and there are a number of reasons why it has been brought to my attention. One reason is that Clive Bundy changed his name to Claire Fox—consequently, I know about it. Claire Fox now wanders freely. However, the most important reason is that I was contacted by his daughter, Ceri-Lee Galvin. Before we had the Supreme Court ruling, I raised this a number of times in a number of Bills to note that Ceri-Lee Galvin as a victim had been badly betrayed by this story. She was never told that her incestuous, rapist father was being released, because he was not—Claire Fox was. And of course, guess what? If you google Claire Fox, you will get horror stories, but they are about me and not him.

In all seriousness, it was a deed poll change. Therefore, Clive Bundy might well be on the sex offenders register, but Clive Bundy does not exist. Claire Fox exists, but Claire Fox is Clive Bundy the rapist and is therefore free to live in the same town as his daughter, which he has done, and he has harassed her. I will not go into the details, but Ceri-Lee Galvin has been incredibly brave in giving up her anonymity to talk about this story to the press various times. As she says, she cannot get anywhere when she tries to lobby on this point.

Therefore, in theory, Claire Fox—Clive Bundy—is not on the sex offenders register and can apply to work with young children in the local area, where her daughter goes to nursery, and nobody knows that this person is a child rapist. There must be something that the Government can do to strengthen the safeguarding, which I know is their intention in this group of amendments. Therefore, the two non-government amendments should be seriously taken up by them. They would not contradict their aims but would ensure that their aims are more than just written on paper but actually protect victims and future victims.

It is not a question of making a moral judgment. I do not care whether Clive Bundy thinks that he is a woman; that is irrelevant to me. I do not even care that he has taken my name—which, by the way, is a fashionable thing to do; to use a gender critical name is apparently a form of trolling which happens in America quite a lot. But that is irrelevant. The point is how we protect people when have a sex offenders register that does not reflect reality.

By the way, special privacy measures are given, meaning that when I have asked questions in the past, I have been told that because this person has chosen to change gender and is therefore now Claire Fox, they cannot investigate Clive Bundy. If Clive Bundy as Claire Fox turns up for a meeting to volunteer with the Girl Guides, no one can even ask whether they are the same person. We cannot even go there. This is ridiculous and it is not what the Government want. Therefore, I hope the Government are open to these two very important amendments on deed poll and gender recognition certificates.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I want first to pick up on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean, and both her comments and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and ask the Minister a question. Am I right in thinking that given that the Prison Service—and I think also the Probation Service—must do a full assessment of risk on any transgender prisoner, the protections they seek are already there?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean, for raising the case of Karen White. The Scottish Prison Service apologised because it did not do what it should have done: a full risk assessment. Had it done that, she would not have been placed on a women’s wing. I therefore hope the Minister can confirm that the protections for the public, particularly for victims, remain, because now, following the Karen White case in particular, real care is taken to make sure the law is followed. I would find it extraordinary if crimes were just dropped off the list because somebody had a transgender recognition certificate—so could the Minister confirm that this is not the case?

Turning now to my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones’s amendment, we on these Benches also welcome Clause 87, but it needs strengthening. My noble friend’s amendment is very clear: we have to be able to stop offenders changing their names without the knowledge of the police. That also plays into the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean. Research from the Safeguarding Alliance has shown that key legislation is being made redundant because of a loophole that people can use to get through the cracks. This is not just about transgender issues; it is about people just changing their name regardless of their gender. Frankly, this makes Sarah’s law and Clare’s law utterly useless. I hope the Minister is prepared to consider this.

The remaining amendments in this group, from the Government, look as though they are sensible adjustments to the arrangements regarding sex offenders obtaining driving licences in Northern Ireland. We look forward to hearing from the Minister in more detail on those.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I was not going to participate in this debate until I heard about the Scottish case and the Scottish Prison Service admitting that it got it wrong and that it did not carry out what they should have done.

I recall Julia Hartley-Brewer interviewing the SNP Scottish Justice Secretary. The Justice Secretary was saying that it was terribly difficult to reach an assessment, make a judgment and try to get it right. Julia Hartley-Brewer said, I believe, “What is the problem? Just look down his trousers and you will find the answer”. I commend that as the best answer I have ever heard.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It may help the Committee if I say that both the original name and the new name would be recorded. For clarity, where a DBS check applicant has changed their names, they are required to state all names that they have been previously known by on the application form. In submitting that form, applicants sign a legal declaration declaring that they have not knowingly provided false information. Failure to disclose previous names and deliberately avoiding detection of previous convictions would lead to an individual being liable for prosecution. I hope that helps to clarify the position with regard to the amendments. I invite the noble Lords not to press them at this stage.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am on the “how to change your name” government website, which says that if you are a sex offender, violent offender or terrorist offender, you must go to your local prescribed police station where you are known within three days of changing your name. It is a criminal offence if you do not tell the police straightaway. There will be probation and other things going on in the background as well.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is worth clarifying that this group of people are not necessarily the kind of people I trust. This idea that a local sex offender—or terrorist, since we have been talking about Bondi Beach—thinks, “God, it would be against the law if I didn’t declare that I’ve changed my name”, and would be frightened by the possibility that they would be breaking the law, seems a tad naive.

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I support Amendments 330AA and 330AB in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the government amendments in this group. I understand the rationale for Amendments 331 and 332 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Doocey and Lady Brinton, but I do not support them, as an independent review of stalking led by Richard Wright KC is already under way. It is currently expected to conclude by March 2026, but I say to my noble friend the Minister that ideally the timing should be brought forward so that key recommendations could be considered while the Bill is on Report. I wonder whether this might be possible. Perhaps my noble friend, in light of the new strategy, will tell us that we might expect another Bill in the next Session of Parliament. Who knows? I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 330AA, 330AB and 330C. I have also signed Amendments 331 and 332 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. I support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, which start at Amendment 330A. She and I have been involved in strengthening the law for victims of stalking since the stalking law inquiry in 2011, which led to the first stalking laws, enacted 13 years ago on 25 November 2012.

Two decades ago, I was stalked for three years by my Conservative political opponent when I stood for Parliament in Watford. After he was caught in 2008, even though he pleaded guilty to over 60 crimes, including criminal damage to property and criminal damage using a knife, there was no separate crime of stalking from harassment. So the abusive and some sexual literature that was circulated widely on the streets, the anonymous letters to residents, the silent calls late at night when I was on my own in my flat and the feeling of always being watched just did not count in the court—other than as the same as an argument between neighbours over the height of a hedge.

The police came and advised us on security and precautions for our house, and my then teenage foster son had to learn from the police how to always put on plastic gloves before picking up any post. I never knew which of my supporters the stalker would target next. Now, we recognise that this is a tried and tested formula for stalkers—going for their friends, their family and, in this case, my political supporters.

When the stalking law came in it was much welcomed. However, after it was implemented, the practicalities became clear. Often, neither the police nor the CPS would use a charge of stalking until that case was proven beyond all possible doubt. So there was no mechanism to provide protection to victims of stalking earlier in the perpetrator’s fixation. That is why the stalking protection orders, introduced in 2019 by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, were thought to be a really helpful tool to help dissuade perpetrators and give reassurance to victims that they would be safe. But we have to consider now whether they are fully effective.

This group of amendments seeks to address the weaker points of SPOs, the result of which is causing considerable distress to victims of stalking, both domestic and non-domestic. My Amendment 330AA seeks to better protect victims from offenders who try falsely to use educational or religious reasons to gain proximity to their victims. The Bill currently states that the prohibitions or requirements in an SPO should

“avoid … any conflict with … religious beliefs”,

and with attending work and educational establishments. Although that is not inherently objectionable in itself, it should be a matter for guidance and probably not in the legislation, as this clause would give priority to an offender’s right to freedom over the safeguarding of the victim. We know that stalking perpetrators already use religious beliefs in attempts to contact their victims, in defiance of protective orders. There are examples of offenders claiming to attend the same religious institution as their victim in an attempt to be allowed into the area. The problem is that the inclusion of the clause in the Bill risks these claims becoming more commonplace. Thus, it should be dealt with in the form of guidance.

My Amendment 330AB would ensure consultation with victims when SPOs are varied, renewed or discharged. Currently, there is no requirement to hear the views of the victim—if they wish them to be heard—despite the fact that the victim is the individual being protected by the SPO and thus may have relevant information that the court should hear prior to making a decision. It is unreasonable to expect the police or other authorities to know all the details of a victim’s activities, so it is important that a victim’s views are sought prior to an application being decided upon.

This amendment would require police to consult with a victim following an application to change an SPO. As an illustration, Lisa is a victim of stalking, and her offender made an application to vary certain terms of a restraining order. The proposed changes—allowing the offender to travel down certain arterial roads on the pretence that it was their route in and out of London—seemed inherently reasonable. However, it was only when Lisa’s views were sought that it became evident that the road included a petrol station she frequented and cut through a park in which her children walked regularly. This information would not have been readily available if the victim was not consulted. In this case, the information provided by the victim enabled the CPS to mount an effective defence. The application to vary the terms of the restraining order was then denied.

Amendment 330C would create a requirement to issue guidance on SPOs. Currently, the Bill says that the Secretary of State “may” issue guidance in relation to stalking. A briefing, along with many other significant pieces of work, such as the stalking super-complaint and the HMICFRS reports, made clear the confusion and inconsistency when it comes to the response to stalking. The need for guidance is clear. The Domestic Abuse Act’s section on guidance states that the Secretary of State “must” issue guidance. This amendment proposes similar wording to support future clarity and consistency.

Amendment 331 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, to which I have added my name, is important. It would ensure that stalking is part of the VAWG strategy, which is due to be published this week, while also ensuring that the terms of reference for the Wright review cover non-domestic stalking; too often, the police do not take that seriously. I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that the review is under way. We did not withdraw the amendment because we wanted to make sure that some of the details discussed today will be covered.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful again to my noble friend for referring to the LinkedIn experience. My assessment, having discussed this with officials and with my colleague Ministers, is that the statutory guidance for police includes prohibitions on contacting the victim by any means, including social media. If my noble friend will let me, I will reflect on what she has said today, and I will discuss again with officials whether the guidance in its current format is sufficient to cover that point. That is my understanding, and I think it is a reasonable understanding to put before the Committee today.

Amendment 330C in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, would replace the power for the Secretary of State to issue multi-agency statutory guidance on stalking with a duty to do so. This would align the provision on guidance with the Stalking Protection Act 2019 and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, supported the general direction of travel that the noble Baroness brought forward in her amendment. I agree that it is important, where appropriate, to ensure that legislative provisions tackling violence against women and girls are consistent. Accordingly, this is an amendment that I am happy to take away for further consideration and to discuss with officials.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I think the key question is why it is acceptable that there are different rules for “may” and “must” between this and domestic abuse protection orders.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

If the noble Baroness will allow me, we have agreed that we will take Amendment 330C away and have a look at it. That is not a guarantee that we will do something with it, but it is an opportunity to reflect on it. She can examine what, if anything, the Government do, and she can determine whether to table it again on Report.

Amendment 330B, again tabled by my noble friend Lady Royall, would introduce a stalking protection notice that could be imposed by a police superintendent. I think my noble friend’s motivation is to ensure that swift action can be taken. However, on reflection we view that introducing such a notice would potentially put further complexity into the legislative framework without significantly improving protection for victims. We also need to consider the proportionality of a police-issued notice backed by a criminal offence of breach that denies the respondent the opportunity to argue their case before an independent judicial tribunal. Failure to comply with a police-issued domestic abuse protection notice is not a criminal offence for this reason.

The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, tabled Amendment 331, which would provide a statutory review of the effectiveness of two stalking offences, and Amendment 332, which seeks to provide a statutory review of stalking awareness guidance. I hope the noble Baroness can accept—this goes to points that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend have also mentioned—that work is currently being undertaken on both these issues. In December 2024 we announced six new measures to tackle stalking, including a commitment to review the criminal law on stalking contained in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. As a number of speakers have referenced, we have already appointed Richard Wright KC to lead the review. It is intended to be completed by the end of March 2026. We have given a timetable. I do not think it is right and proper that we change that timetable now, as a number of noble Lords suggested. The review will consider measures to achieve clarity in the legislation. On completion of the review, the Home Secretary will consider the findings and recommendations before determining next steps, potentially including further legislation. I hope that helps the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey.

There are a number of government amendments to the provisions in Clause 99. We have done this with guidance from stakeholders in the criminal justice system. Government Amendments 330AZB to 330AZE and 330AE clarify the process for appealing the making of a stalking order. Our Amendments 330AC and 330AD provide for applications to vary, renew or discharge a stalking protection order and avoid applications having to be heard by a higher court. Amendments 330BA, 330D, 522A and 547A extend the provisions in Clauses 97, 98 and 100 to Northern Ireland to allow the courts in Northern Ireland to make stalking protection orders. They have been introduced in conjunction with the Department of Justice and allow it to issue guidance to the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The changes have been brought forward in amendment form at the request of the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland.

I hope I have been able to assist in part my noble friend Lady Royall and the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton—supported by the noble Lord, Lord Russell—and Lady Doocey. I undertake to examine Amendments 330A and 330C further ahead of the next stage. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw her amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

335A: Clause 104, page 133, line 39, at end insert—
“(1B) A person does not commit an offence under subsection (1A) where—(a) the person is a victim of domestic abuse within the meaning of section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and(b) the act of detaining the child outside the United Kingdom was attributable wholly or mainly to safeguarding themselves or the child from domestic abuse.(1C) In determining whether subsection (1B) applies, the court must have particular regard to—(a) any evidence of domestic abuse directed towards the parent or the child, and(b) any risk that return of the child would expose the parent or child to further abuse.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and another in the name of Baroness Brinton, is intended to probe the effect of Clause 104 on victims of domestic abuse.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 335A and 335B, which relate specifically to child abduction across the United Kingdom. Government Amendments 336, 496, 521 and 549 relate specifically to the abduction, detaining and retention of children abroad who came from Northern Ireland—I was about to say “in Northern Ireland”, but that would be a tautology.

I am very grateful to all the organisations that have written to a number of Peers regarding child abduction. My two amendments are probing amendments, in which we seek to understand how Clause 104 will work and what the effect will be on a person who is a victim of domestic abuse, within the meaning of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and who takes their child outside the UK to safeguard themselves or the child from domestic abuse, or who gets abroad and then decides to remain abroad to continue to safeguard themselves or their child.

Clause 104 arises from a recommendation from the Law Commission following the case of Nicolaou in 2012. That case focused on whether a parent commits an offence under Section 1 of the Child Abduction Act 1984 if they initially have the appropriate consent to take a child outside the UK, for a defined period, but then fail to return the child after that period expires. The background is this: a father took his son to Cyprus for an agreed contact visit but did not return him to the UK at the end of the specified time, despite court orders from both Cypriot and English courts for the child’s return. An arrest warrant was issued for the child abduction.

In June 2012, the High Court ruled that an offence had not been committed under Section 1 of that Act in this specific scenario. The section, as written at the time, applied to the act of taking or sending a child out of the UK without consent, not the failure to return them after a period of consented absence. This case, along with another, R v Kayani 2011, highlighted a significant loophole in the Child Abduction Act 1984, which the Law Commission subsequently made recommendations to address. Its recommendation in its report Simplification of Criminal Law: Kidnapping and Related Offences is very legalistic in its approach. It makes no reference to having considered domestic abuse as a defence, for example, or even a contributory factor.

Article 12 of the 1980 Hague convention on abduction provides that, where a year has elapsed after a child has been wrongfully removed to or retained in another contracting state, the court has a discretion not to require the child’s return if the child is

“settled in its new environment”.

Clause 104 makes it a criminal offence to retain a child outside the UK “at any time” after the child is taken or sent outside the UK without the appropriate consent. It therefore criminalises conduct in a situation where a court may decide not to order the return of the child to the UK. Clearly, this is not in keeping with either the spirit or the letter of the Hague convention.

Additionally, it could significantly hamper efforts to enable the safe return of children and their taking parents—the parents who removed them—and could increase the number of cases where children are compelled to return alone, without their mothers, possibly to the care of an abusive father or to state care. My question to the Minister is: what is the position of someone who uses a defence of being a victim of domestic abuse as the reason why they have not returned to the UK with the child? If a court were asked to adjudicate on such an issue, would it demand evidence of abuse? I ask that because your Lordships’ House knows that in such cases, often the victim mother—it usually is a mother—will have been living in the UK with the perpetrator of domestic abuse and coercive control, but not many would have been to the courts. On that basis, what protection is there for that victim and their child in this position?

The real problem is that the Law Commission report, which has informed Clause 104, does not cover this difficult territory at all—nor do the Explanatory Notes for the Bill. My amendments are genuinely to probe the Government’s intention on how they would manage a case that involved domestic abuse and coercive control. While we agree that Clause 104 is important, letting it pass without taking account of the complex issues relating to those parents who are fleeing domestic abuse will be problematic and could even lead to miscarriages of justice. I beg to move.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her probing Amendments 335A and 335B, raising the problem of wrongful retention of children in the context of the criminal law and, in particular, the Child Abduction Act 1984. Essentially, that Act criminalised the wrongful taking of children, but not their wrongful retention after the end of a permitted period of contact.

In 1984, when the omission of unlawful retention was pointed out in debate on the Child Abduction Bill, as it then was, in another place, it was not addressed by the then Government. Indeed, the opposition spokesman at the time, now the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said that it must be “for another day”. Moving on to 2012, the continuing discrepancy was highlighted by the decision of the High Court in the case of Nicolaou, referred to by the noble Baroness, which was indeed a classic case of unilateral retention of a child abroad in the face of court orders. In 2014, a Law Commission report speculated about the rationale for the difference between removal and retention cases and recommended what the Bill now seeks to do in Clause 104.

So, 41 years after the noble Lord, Lord Dubbs, spoke of “another day”, it now seems to have arrived. Unjustified retention of a child can be both irresponsible and very harmful. Whether the decision to retain the child is planned or is more spontaneous, it can have a considerable emotional and practical consequence for all concerned, not least the child. I suspect that, with a little more analysis and resolve back in 1984, we would not be where we are today. However, there have been significant developments in the intervening period to make us think about what, if anything, is currently required in legislative terms.

First, as the noble Baroness has mentioned, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is now well established as a successful measure that deals with most cases of this sort, providing for the immediate protection and swift return of children to their home country when justified. In most cases, the use of the Hague convention, coupled with any necessary consequential proceedings in the home country, means that the wrongful retention of children is adequately and firmly dealt with in the family courts without recourse to criminal proceedings.

Secondly, there is now a far wider understanding of the nature and effects of abusive and alienating behaviour and attitudes as experienced by mothers and children, and, to some extent, by fathers. This is the sort of behaviour covered by the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. In reality, the retention of children by one parent occurs within a very wide range of scenarios. These are fact-sensitive cases. At one end of the range is the spiteful and vindictive parent who wants to remove the child from the other parent’s life. At the other end of the range are the cases of fearful and protective parents who realise that the child is at risk if returned to the other parent. In between those extremes are any number of variable situations and motivations.

The Law Commission report noted:

“The general policy of the law is that parental disputes about the care of children should be pursued in civil rather than criminal proceedings”.


If that is the general policy, criminalisation should be reserved to a limited number of cases of this sort, and criminal prosecution should be seen as a last resort to mark disapproval of plainly wrongful and harmful retention of a child. Moreover, overlapping criminal and family court proceedings should be avoided wherever possible, and the use of, or threats of, criminal prosecution should remain well out of the armoury of most warring parents. That is why, when resolving Hague proceedings, many parents often formally agree not to instigate or support criminal proceedings against each other. Such agreements remove one source of control and recrimination, and they serve to keep the focus on the children rather than on the parents’ grievances against each other.

I therefore hope that the Government will accept the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, or at least undertake some further analysis of what is needed for cases where the parent concerned is seeking to safeguard themselves or the child from harm. If not, will the Government confirm that any prosecution of these offences will continue to require the consent of the DPP under Section 4(2) of the 1984 Act? Will they confirm that there will be a restrictive approach to the prosecution, and that the guidance on prosecution will be reviewed and updated to cover the important points raised by the amendment?

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for tabling Amendments 335A and 335B. Her amendments have been grouped with the modest collection of government amendments—336, 496, 521 and 549—tabled in my name, which extend the provisions contained in Clause 104 to Northern Ireland.

I note the concern raised by the noble Baroness and the noble Lords, Lord Meston and Lord Davies, my noble friend Lord Hacking and the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, that Clause 104 will criminalise parents who are fleeing domestic abuse where the detention of the child is primarily motivated by the intention of keeping themselves and/or the child safe. I reassure your Lordships that this absolutely is not the intention of the existing Clause 104. Indeed, in developing the provisions, very careful consideration was given to the implications of potentially criminalising a parent who has detained their child abroad.

Before I turn to the reasons why the Government will not be supporting these amendments today, I want to explain a little more about the purpose of Clause 104’s inclusion in the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her clear and even-handed explanation of her understanding of the reason why the Government included it in the first place. The clause seeks to implement the Law Commission’s 2014 recommendation that the Government should close a small gap in the law by making it a criminal offence for a parent, or person with similar responsibility to a parent, to detain a child abroad without appropriate consent, once the original consent has expired.

I am sure that I do not need to explain to anyone that the abduction of a child by a parent is an extremely distressing experience for everyone involved. For any Government, the aim is to safeguard children from abduction by preventing the unlawful removal of a child, ensuring their swift and safe return when they have been taken and upholding custody rights through international co-operation and legal enforcement. The new measure is intended to be consistent with the existing criminal framework, to stand as a deterrent and a backstop where we know that a gap in the law is being exploited, even if by very few people. Some of those who have not returned a child are themselves abusers; they are abusive parents seeking to evade the law. We cannot leave that gap unclosed.

However, I have listened very carefully to the concerns raised by your Lordships this evening, and to some sent to me by organisations with an interest in this area. I remain satisfied that there is no risk of vulnerable parents who have been victims of domestic abuse being criminalised. I hope I shall be forgiven for setting out my reasons in a little more detail; I alluded to them earlier in relation to an amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, but that was in a slightly different context, and I think I need to give more detail.

Many of your Lordships will be aware that there is a two-stage test for the Crown Prosecution Service to apply when deciding whether a prosecution should be brought. The first is an “evidential sufficiency” test but, even if that stage is passed and it is felt that there is sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution, that is not the end of the matter. The second stage is the “public interest” test, which asks whether the public interest requires a prosecution to be brought. It is this stage of the test that is often applied in, for example, assisted dying cases. This is important, including in a domestic abuse context, because it means that prosecutors must consider the background, including whether the alleged offender was acting from benign motives or was themselves a victim of domestic abuse, before deciding whether a prosecution is required in the public interest. Additionally, and importantly, a third test applies for the new offence in Clause 104 which adds an additional safeguard: that the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is required for a case to proceed.

Prosecutorial discretion remains a key safeguard, and evidence of domestic abuse would be a highly relevant factor in any decision to prosecute, or in whether the Director of Public Prosecutions would give his consent in addition. Factors that are relevant to the public interest do not require proof to the criminal standard. It is a much more “in the round” assessment than would be required if bringing some kind of criminal proceedings.

To be clear, in answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Meston, the Government continue to believe that the civil courts remain best placed to deal with child abduction cases. That is why we support international co-operation and recourse to the 1980 Hague convention as a civil mechanism for facilitating the safe return of children. The UK continues to work with other state parties and the Hague Conference, especially in cases involving domestic abuse, to ensure that the convention operates effectively. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, in effect agreed, that this prosecution should be the act of last resort. We agree. We are conscious, however, that criminal proceedings may be needed in some cases. It has been suggested that some parents see detaining a child abroad following any earlier consent as an easier route to keeping their child permanently outside the UK with no criminal charges or police involvement. That clearly circumvents the law. This change to the criminal law is intended to sit alongside and supplement existing civil remedies, rather than filling the courts with people who have retained their child abroad.

The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asks whether the Government would be prepared to add a domestic abuse defence, in effect. The law on defences, including those relevant to domestic abuse, is highly complex. It requires definitions and decisions about where the burden of proof lies and what the standard of proof will be. It is precisely because of this complexity that the Law Commission is currently reviewing defences in domestic abuse cases as part of its wider project on homicide and sentencing. While the primary focus of its review is on homicide, the findings are likely to have broader implications for how defences operate in domestic abuse contexts and could be relevant across a broader range of offences. A bespoke defence of domestic abuse in the offence created by Clause 104 could have implications far beyond the child abduction framework.

I hope that the noble Baroness will accept from me that the Law Commission’s findings will be carefully reviewed before any changes to the law are considered, in order to ensure that any legislative changes are informed by evidence. In the meantime, we are exploring ways to strengthen our understanding of how defences operate in non-homicide cases by gathering more robust data. For these reasons, it would be premature to legislate before the Law Commission has completed its work, but I take the point about the equality impact assessment and the gendered nature of some of these offences. I will, if I may, write to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and, obviously, to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, as well.

I turn very briefly to government Amendments 336, 496, 521 and 549. Until now, the provisions in Clause 104 extended to England and Wales only. However, at the request of the Northern Ireland Executive, these provisions will now also apply to Northern Ireland. I note the concerns raised by the two amendments brought forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, but I hope that, for the reasons I have set out, the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment at this stage. I hope your Lordships will join me in supporting the government amendments in this group.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to all those who have spoken. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Hacking and Lord Davies, for their implied support. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for their detailed responses to the amendment and the debate we are having. They rightly confirmed that criminal proceedings must be a last resort, and that we should always aim for these cases to be settled via the family court and through the Hague process.

I am particularly grateful to the Minister for her detailed response on the two-stage test, especially the public interest test. If that is where domestic abuse issues can be assessed, that is good. I am also grateful that she has repeated that the consent of the DPP must be obtained, and that this is not up to the criminal standard. That is very reassuring.

It is always difficult when the Law Commission is working on something, because one cannot say “When is it going to be done?” I hope that it will not be too long. If issues remain after the Law Commission reports, I hope that the Government, or a future Government, will be prepared to discuss this at that point. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 335A withdrawn.

Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a long time coming. In a series of events that have spanned the entire year, the Government have finally taken the first steps towards establishing the national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal.

I will not recount the absolute horrors that have been faced by victims; noble Lords will be well versed in the details by now. The sentencing remarks from the trials demonstrate the appalling and vile abuse that those gangs perpetrated.

It is shameful that it took the Government so long to get where they are today. It was all the way back in January when the first calls were made by these Benches for the Government to launch a national inquiry. The Government at that time point-blank refused, smearing those urging an inquiry as “far right”.

In one of the numerous screeching U-turns that have become the mainstay of the Government’s conduct, the Home Secretary then announced that there would be a full national inquiry. That was in June, and it has taken us until December for the chair to be appointed and the terms of reference to be published. This is deeply regrettable.

The Government have appointed the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, to chair the inquiry. Obviously, she is currently a Labour Peer, and I understand she will be resigning the Labour Whip, but is the Minister really satisfied that a politically aligned appointment for chair will have the support of the victims of these gangs? Not only this, but in the register of interests for her role as chair of the Police Remuneration Review Body it states that Zoë Billingham is also a member of the Labour Party. She is one of three who will make up the panel. So, two out of the three members of the leadership of the inquiry are directly linked to the Labour Party. Does the Minister think that that sends the correct message to survivors? It is clear to me that it may undermine trust in the independence of the inquiry. This is even more important given that a number of the victims have already signalled their distrust in this process.

Can the Minister absolutely guarantee that the inquiry will not shy away from investigating the links between nationality and ethnicity and the mass rape of young girls? That is the crux of the matter. It is the deliberate cover-up of these crimes due to fears of accusations of racism that led to countless young white girls being ignored and cast aside by the authorities that were meant to protect them. The inquiry cannot lose sight of that.

The terms of reference that have been published state that the inquiry will investigate only issues arising up until the date of its establishment and that it will not attempt to be exhaustive. This makes it seem like these are events from the past, where the only concern is that we do not allow it to happen again. But it is still happening. How will the inquiry, and indeed the Government, address the concerns that young girls are still being abused and raped by gangs of men of mainly Pakistani origin?

Finally, we still do not know what areas will be investigated and what criteria will be used to determine them. Can the Minister tell the House how the inquiry will determine which local areas will be investigated and how it will ensure that certain councils and officials are not able to avoid scrutiny? I look forward to what the Minister has to say in response.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, earlier this year, Parliament discussed the national audit by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse. Her report brought with it her exceptional ability to identify the issues around the appalling exploitation and abuse and the actions that need to follow to ensure that these execrable acts do not happen again, not least because government and other public bodies will do the right thing at the time to protect these children and hold the perpetrators to account.

From these Benches, this is where I want to start. Many of the victims and those who supported them have said that some of the handling of the communications with them has distressed them, including proposals earlier this year for possible candidates for the role of chair.

All the survivors and victims from many other state tragedies and scandals repeat exactly what these survivors say: “If you don’t work with us, you will get it wrong, which is distressing and can re-victimise people”. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the Home Secretary’s choice for the chair of the inquiry, the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, will work closely with survivors to overcome any fears that they might have? I appreciate that she will stand down from the Labour Party for the duration of the inquiry, but the concerns of victims and survivors are very real, despite the victims’ and our respect for the exceptional skills and commitment of the noble Baroness.

The Statement talks about the

“abject failure by the state”.

This is correct. As with the infected blood scandal, the Post Office Horizon scandal, the Hillsborough disaster and many others, this country, its Government and public bodies seem to have a blind spot about failures and a natural inclination to cover them up.

While the inquiry will look at the details relating to the exploitation and abuse of young people, I want to ask the Minister what plans the Government have to ensure that the findings are not just read and acted on briefly but will be fully embedded into the culture and working practice of every government department and public body. How will the Government judge that both the hard recommendations and the softer cultural ones from the audit by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and those that will come from the inquiry from the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, change how children are viewed by officials so that are truly supportive of those children from the first to the last contact with them?

The terms of reference outlined in the Statement are clear and strong. However, I gently warn the Minister that many other current or recent inquiries have had equally strong terms of reference but, as the detail of how they are going to happen has been released, survivors and victims suddenly discover that things have changed a bit and their expectations shattered. What will the Government do to work with the victims and survivors to ensure that that does not happen with this inquiry and after it?

I have some other specific questions. The Statement says that the Government will introduce a legal duty for information sharing between safeguarding parties. Can the Minister say whether this can be included in any of the Bills currently going through Parliament; for example, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill or the Crime and Policing Bill? That is interesting because the Minister and I had a debate about another piece of legislation which is waiting to be enacted. I do hope that that might be the case.

Is it also possible to use a different Bill currently in front of Parliament, which might be the Crime and Policing Bill or the Victims and Courts Bill, to change the law to ensure that children who are raped cannot consent—the Minister is very clear in the Statement that that is the law and it must be explicit—and that advice to the CPS should be that an alleged perpetrator must be charged with rape and not a lesser charge?

The proposed changes to the taxi licensing system will be welcomed from these Benches. My noble friend Lady Pidgeon has already raised this problem with the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, so it is good to see that there will be action too.

Finally, I was slightly bemused by the title of the Statement today, because yesterday there was also a Written Statement from the DWP on safeguarding. I think it might have been quite helpful to call this what it is, which is a Statement on the chair and panel for the child grooming gangs inquiry.

Facial Recognition Technology: Safeguards

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the Minister’s response in which he said that legislation and regulation are important. It is overdue by eight years, to be precise, during which the Home Office, under various Governments, had the worrying view that existing legislation is up to the job. Why is the consultation so focused on police use of facial recognition, when it has also had rapid and uncontrolled growth in the private sector? Frankly, it is the Wild West on the high street, which can have life-changing consequences for some innocent shoppers. Will the Government undertake to look at the private sector as well?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness can make representations on those matters as part of the consultation. We are looking at the public sector because we are the Home Office and are responsible for policing. That is therefore the issue that we are examining. There need to be some safeguards, regulation, and an understanding of and groundwork for that. I can tell the noble Baroness that nobody who is innocent of an offence needs to worry about facial recognition technology—nobody. That is why we are looking at these issues. I will defend facial recognition technology at this Dispatch Box and elsewhere. The consultation is there to allow this House and others to make their views known on what is an effective tool in crime fighting. The noble Baroness is shaking her head, but I ask her: if somebody who is guilty of a crime and on a wanted list walks past a facial recognition camera, should they not be arrested?

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

315: After Clause 86, insert the following new Clause—
“Commencement of the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act(1) Section 4 of the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 is amended as follows.(2) Leave out subsection (3) and insert—“(3) Sections 1, 2 and 3 come into force on the day that the Crime and Policing Act 2025 receives Royal Assent.”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause automatically commences the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 when the Crime and Policing Bill receives Royal Assent, removing the need for regulations to bring the Act into force. The Act criminalises the public harassment of individuals where that harassment is based on an individual’s sex.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 315 seeks to do something very simple but long overdue: automatically commence the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 when the Crime and Policing Bill receives Royal Assent. The Act requires the Government to pass a statutory instrument to commence its provisions. We have been waiting two years now for this SI, so the Act is not in force. Of the four sections in the Act, the only one in force is Section 4, on the extent, commencement and Short Title of the Act.

As with other groups this evening, this amendment has a cross-party background. It is worth noting and giving credit to Greg Clark, the former MP for Tunbridge Wells, because this was his Private Member’s Bill, sponsored by him and given time by the then Conservative Government. Greg said he had heard some harrowing experiences of school students in his constituency. It is really shocking that one in three girls reports being sexually harassed while wearing a school uniform. In our society in 2025, that is unacceptable. The 2023 Act creates a new specific offence of harassment on account of an individual’s sex.

The amendment to this Bill was tabled in the Commons by my honourable friend Mike Martin MP, who is now the MP for Tunbridge Wells. Like Greg Clark, Mike Martin believes that the Government need to create the statutory instrument to bring it into effect, but there has been nothing other than warm words from Ministers—no action has happened. The Act criminalises harassing, following, shouting degrading words or making obscene gestures at women and girls in public places with the deliberate intention of causing them harm or distress. This offence will carry a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment and under the Government’s new proposal would clearly still come under the magistrates’ courts, whereas in the past it would have not been able to, but would have had to go to a Crown Court. As Mike Martin MP said in the Commons debate, sexual harassment is a blot on our society.

The statistics are damning. Some 71% of women in the UK have experienced sexual harassment in public; this rises to 86% among women aged 18 to 24. The lack of action from this Government on ending the sexual harassment of women, especially young women, is not good. Mike Martin MP tabled a Written Question on this back in the spring, and the Government said then that they would publish their next steps. However, more recently, the Government said that it will be done in due course. To be honest, this sounds as though it is further away than the next-steps offer made earlier this year. The amendment says that now is the time.

Greg Clark’s Private Member’s Bill had cross-party support and this amendment also had cross-party support when the Bill was debated in the Commons. I worry that this Government cannot deliver on their manifesto commitment to halve violence against women and girls when they will not take this straightforward first step to challenge and prevent the appalling sex-based harassment that continues to be so evident everywhere in the UK. I look forward to the Minister’s reply but, above all, I urge that now is the time for action on this matter. I beg to move.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness’s amendment for the reasons she gives and for a further reason, which is that I deprecate the practice of Ministers of all Governments of not bringing into force legislation which has been enacted by Parliament. Parliament intends legislation to come into effect; otherwise, we are wasting our time debating and approving it. Parliament enacts legislation to address a mischief, as, in this case, the mischief that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has identified. Of course, I understand that sometimes time is needed to prepare for the effects of legislation, perhaps because implementing regulations are needed, but after two years, it is high time for this legislation to come into force.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for raising the important issue of public sexual harassment. As has been discussed, Amendment 315 seeks to automatically commence the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 when the Crime and Policing Bill receives Royal Assent. I remind the Committee that this Government have been responsible for periods of activity since July 2024, not for two years. As members of the Committee will know, tackling public sexual harassment is an important part of the Government’s mission to halve the levels of violence against women and girls in a decade.

As the Committee knows, and as I have said on numerous occasions, including today, the new violence against women and girls strategy is to be produced as soon as possible. It will include a range of actions to tackle sexual harassment. I reassure the noble Baroness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, that the measures we are developing within this to address sex-based harassment include options for commencement of the 2023 Act.

I echo fully the sentiments of the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and agree that timely implementation of legislation is an important principle to follow. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that, if we pass legislation, we must look to introduce it. The Government have heard what noble Lords have said: namely, that we need to set a timeline for the commencement of the 2023 Act. It is important to fully consider the issues of implementation of the new offence, including engagement with the police and operational partners. We want to ensure that, when the offence comes into force, it is used often and well.

I assure all noble Lords who have spoken today that the Government intend to commence this offence as soon as is reasonably practicable. By bringing the provisions of the 2023 Act into force through the usual commencement regulations, we can ensure that this can be timed so that the police and others are ready. Accordingly, I suggest that the amendment is unnecessary. I ask the noble Baroness to be patient and wait for our violence against women and girls strategy, which will appear in short order. In the meantime, I hope she is content to withdraw the amendment.

I say that because we are looking at options to commence the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023. We believe that it will tackle this issue and ensure that women feel safer on our streets. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, as with all primary legislation, we need a preparatory period, but my officials in the Home Office, along with my ministerial colleagues, are working through the next steps. We are taking the time to get this right. I assure noble Lords that we will provide an update in due course and that they will not have too long to wait.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am struggling to get what I have just heard right. Earlier this evening, we discussed a number of amendments in which we were not supported because we expect to see the strategy on violence against women and girls. This is completely different. There is legislation that is on the books but has not been commenced. Can the Minister explain why it cannot be commenced now? It is a completely different issue from what is going to be in the strategy, where there may be surprises. The Minister has told us that it will be commenced. What is the delay?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We are looking with police and other partners at the stage at which we wish to commence the legislation. We have been in office since July last year; my honourable friend Jess Phillips, the Minister for Safeguarding, is undertaking a considerable amount of work to pull together the strategy, which we expect to be able to announce in very short order. As part of that strategy, we are looking at a range of measures, including harassment. I accept that that is on the statute book now, but it is important that we produce a package of measures that is whole and includes a range of things, which I am not at liberty to talk about today but are in genesis for the violence against women and girls strategy that we will publish shortly.

We are now in Committee. Report will happen at a later stage in this Session. I very much expect that by then we will have published our violence against women and girls strategy, and I hope that at that stage the noble Baroness will not need to look at pressing this amendment further. For the time being, I ask her to give us time to consult further, make sure we implement this correctly and allow the violence against women and girls strategy to be published. I would be grateful if she would not push her amendment at this stage but reflect on what I have said. If not, we will return to this in due course.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for his response, even if I am still somewhat bemused about the hierarchy of decisions going on in relation to this Bill when there is actually something on the books. However, I will hold him to his word. If we do not have clear indications of the VAWG strategy and when things will happen by, I will bring back an amendment on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 315 withdrawn.

Angiolini Inquiry

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the three moving statements from the families of Sarah Everard, Zara Aleena and Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman must act as a reminder that too little has changed since their murders and, worse, since the inquiry was set up. These four women represent the safety of women in our country.

The Minister’s Statement is sparse; while it is good that the Statement says the Government will act, it is just not yet. I say gently to the opposition spokesperson that not much happened under the previous Government either. This is a difficult issue, and I realise that the detail needs to be sorted, but many of the recommendations in the part 2 report are very clear to most of us who are involved in home affairs issues because we debate them time and again in Questions, debates and legislation. For me, the key issue is that because the violence against women and girls document is not yet published, there appear to be zero commitments from government.

In 2021 the UN survey of over 1,000 women reported that 71% in the UK had experienced some form of sexual harassment in a public space at some point in their lives. One of the key recommendations is number 20,

“Empowering and engaging citizens to take action”.

I will focus on this and some of the softer issues, because they may be harder for a Government to deliver. With great respect to both this Government and the previous Government, changing a culture is difficult and the Home Office cannot change culture on its own.

What ideas are there to create a strong campaign explaining that sexual harassment is not acceptable and should never be normalised, that women should not have to live their lives on high alert the whole time, and that they should not feel guilty because of how they look? These are all key points made in the inquiry report. Whatever this campaign is, it also needs to cover social media and the digital world, given all the work that is happening in your Lordships’ House to try to make sure that bad influences are moderated by sensible behaviour. It covers education, and it involves campaigns with young people and children, and their parents and families. Lady Elish rightly says that this is a society-wide problem; it is, and it is urgent.

Recommendation 22,

“Information and early intervention for men and boys to create a culture of positive masculinity”,

is also essential and equally urgent. In the Crime and Policing Bill, as well as many other pieces of legislation, we are trying to combat the appalling culture that is normalising the sexualisation of young girls and women, pushing boys and men to accept stereotypical roles as dominant partners in a relationship, and violence is often not far away. The Tate brothers have made a fortune by creating an obscene and abnormal online society on which young boys and men are fed without any counternarrative. What do the Government propose to do to begin to remedy this?

The report also recommends designing out crime officers. I remember in the late 1990s, when I was bursar of a Cambridge college, that the Blair Government made clear recommendations to councils about designing out crime. If the Government are going to act on recommendation 18,

“Increased use of police Designing Out Crime Officers in the prevention of sexually motivated crimes against women in public spaces”,

will the Government ensure that local government planning committees must also consider this, and that there will be training for officers and planning committees as to why it is so important?

On data, it is appalling that, after murders and violence against women have received so much attention, data collection remains inconsistent and forces still use different systems. The report notes that the NHS has fared much better, but it has learned the hard way that common systems are critical if problems throughout the country are to be dealt with. Pilots are a typical way that Governments try out new ideas. The report notes institutionally poor sharing of good practice or funding rollout, so money for a pilot dies with the pilot and therefore nothing else will happen because when it is rolled out there is no money for it. I know from stalking and other VAWG issues that police, and other professionals and partners, are often left out of data collection. There is often groupthink over issues, and that needs to be addressed. Lady Elish rightly pointed out that:

“Prevention is the first Peelian principle”,


but it must not only remain within the police. What will the Government do to remedy this problem? Lady Angiolini also says that this must happen immediately. This is a tough ask, but an essential one. She sets out who needs to be involved in seeing the data, including His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services. This is right and it is urgent. Will the Government act on the first part of this recommendation straight away, as she proposes?

Above all, I echo the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Davies: when will the Government launch their own VAWG strategy? Will they, and the police, not start on any of the recommendations until after that launch or, worse, after the usual consultation? Will all the recommendations be fully and properly funded, because if not, as Lady Elish said so powerfully last week, women are still at risk this Christmas?

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

I am grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their comments on the report. I start where they started, with remembering Sarah Everard and her horrific murder, which instigated this inquiry. She and all the other women who have been murdered deserve an effective response from government because she is a daughter, a sister and a friend, and the family demand and want answers. We are in a position to be able to help prevent murders.

Colleagues in the House will know that this a second part of recommendations by Lady Elish, and I thank her and her team for the work they have done on this. Noble Lords will know that part 1 included 13 recommendations—three for government and 10 for police—directed at the Home Office to improve the response to non-contact sexual offences. To date, we are delivering against those 13 recommendations, including measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, which noble Lords are aware of. A number of questions have been asked, but I emphasise again that it is simply not acceptable that women should live in fear of attack by random men in the streets of their own town, for domestic violence to continue and for the attack that led to the murder of Sarah Everard not to be resolved by government.

Colleagues—shadow Ministers and the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—have asked similar questions and I will try respond to those issues. Let me be clear to both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that the violence against women and girls strategy is being finalised. We will publish it as soon as possible. Last week, for example, the Prime Minister and the Safeguarding Minister held an event with stakeholders, including victims and their families, to discuss the progress on the VAWG strategy. It will deliver a whole-system response. There is a need for us to consult with colleagues in the Department for Transport, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that our public spaces are safe for everyone. I assure both noble Lords that the strategy is to be published shortly; although I cannot give a date today, but it will be published in very short order.

That does not mean that we have to wait for the strategy to act—which goes to a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, acknowledged, the Government have invested £13.1 million to launch the new National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection, to provide co-ordinated national leadership to improve the public response. Thanks to initiatives and the strong push of my honourable friend Jess Phillips, we have introduced domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms, which we are rolling out at the moment. We are also rolling out domestic abuse protection orders and have put in place the strengthening of the management of registered sex offenders. We are also improving the response to stalking. There are measures on that in the Crime and Policing Bill currently before the House.

We intend to take forward reforms to the vetting and misconduct systems, so that those who commit crimes such as violence against women and girls have no place in policing. This is extremely important. As I know the noble Lord, Lord Davies, feels very strongly about, in the forthcoming White Paper, being published very shortly, we will set out a package of reforms to policing to ensure that policing can focus on the crimes that matter to the public and drive out waste and inefficiency. We will also look at how we can build on some of the big operations, such as Operation Soteria and Project Vigilant, which have been funded through the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and in which we have invested over £13.1 million.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, rightly pointed to how we can tackle what I will call “negative masculinity”, which is prevalent and very much encouraged by what I regard as some poisonous online activity. We must ensure we tackle that at root cause. That is why, in advance of the response to part 2 of the inquiry, the Department for Education in England has updated the statutory guidance on RSHE with a focus on helping pupils understand the markers of a healthy relationship and how to navigate online safety.

I am being pressed, rightly, on our response to the recommendations in part 2. I simply say to both noble Lords that we published part 1 of part 2 last week, and we intend to take our time to study the recommendations clearly to make sure we can respond to that, as part of the violence against women and girls strategy, which, as I have said, will come very soon. It is simply not acceptable that, as the inquiry found, one in 20 adults per year is recorded as a perpetrator of violence against women and girls. It is a clear sign that violence against women and girls is a national emergency, which is why this Government have committed to bringing forward the strategy very shortly, to ensure that we set out a road map to halve violence against women and girls over the next 10 years.

It is important that we have an effective strategy. The recommendations of the Angiolini report will be part of how we respond to that, and I very much hope we will be able to do that shortly in our violence against women and girls strategy. We are therefore working hand in hand with Lady Elish’s recommendations. We have responded to part 1 by accepting those 13 recommendations, and we continue to press the police to improve their performance in meeting those recommendations. I hope that very shortly we will be able to bring forward that violence against women and girls strategy and do justice to the memory of Sarah and others who have been murdered.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I very much deprecate people who come to this country and commit crimes. The sooner they are deported, the better. However, I do not really understand why we need these amendments. I am hoping that the Minister is going to tell us, as he previously said he would, how the Government are going to move forward in identifying the age of people. Again, I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that those who are not children—and pretend to be—should be found out.

However, as I said at an earlier stage of discussion on the Bill, when I went to a drop-in centre with Safe Passage some years ago, I met two 16 year-old Afghans: one with a beard and the other with a bushy moustache. We need to recognise that boys in other parts of the world mature, particularly facially, at a much earlier age than they do in this country and in western Europe. That is an issue which raises real problems for identification.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Lord Harper, that, over the last four to five years, we have been round the Houses on this issue, not just in this Bill but in a large number of Bills. It keeps returning because there are concerns.

I want to start by trying to find some common ground on this issue, as we did last week, with the noble Lord, Lord Harper, in particular. Age verification—determining whether someone is 18 or not—is extremely difficult. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, it is completely inappropriate for people who are well over 18 to come into a school system where they are treated as much younger, and even these Benches would not support that.

The difficulty—and the reason why we keep raising this—is that it is clear that no doctor will apply any of the scientific methods. We have had this debate since 2023, when the BMA made it clear that they were unreliable. On that occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, spoke in your Lordships’ House about how hormonal change because of poor diet, and the possibility of hormonal change because of minor and benign tumours, are impossible to tell just from looking at an MRI.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling these amendments. We have indeed been around the Houses, but in trying to reach some common ground, I agree with every noble Lord who has spoken that we need to have some method of assessing age. Children who are placed in settings with adults are at risk, and adults who are placed in settings with children potentially pose a risk. I think there is common ground across the House today on the need to find some mechanism to establish age verification.

Amendments 63 and 64 refer to scientific methods of age assessment, and Amendment 63 places a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to lay regulations under Section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act within six months of the passing of the Bill. This is one of the reasons, in addition to those that I have given, that I support the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. Regulations have already been made under this power that specify X-ray and MRI methods of age assessment.

Amendment 64 would, in effect, reintroduce Section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which the Bill looks to repeal. Under the powers given to the Secretary of State in Section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act, the Secretary of State would not make regulations to the effect that this amendment seeks to achieve unless and until the specific scientific methods in question were sufficiently accurate to mean that applying the automatic assumption in cases of refusal to consent would be compatible with the ECHR. The specified methods—that is, X-ray and MRI images of certain body areas—do not currently meet this threshold. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, also emphasised that point, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harper, to some extent.

That does not mean that the Government do not wish to have age verification measures in place. I can assure the House that, in the context of the Government’s wider work to reform age assessment systems, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harper, the then Minister for Security and Asylum set out in a Written Ministerial Statement in the House of Commons, which I repeated in this House in July, that this Government have commissioned work to determine the most promising new and emerging methods of age assessment to pursue them further. As a result of that, currently the work to operationalise X-ray and MRI methods of age assessment have been stood down, because facial age estimation methods—this goes to the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger—are less intrusive, cheaper and faster, and there is no requirement for a physical medical procedure. As I mentioned in Committee, we are not there yet, but facial age estimation technology is currently being explored by the Home Office. It is a potential assistive tool in the age assessment process, and we have commissioned further testing and trialling with the intention of implementing the technology during 2026 if it proves a worthwhile addition to our armoury.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The last Government produced an expert report in the run-up to our 23 debates on various amendments. Will the Government undertake to have an expert report from doctors and scientists, which would then be published in full, so that Parliament and the wider community can actually see the detail? The Minister is absolutely right to say that AI age assessment is not there yet, and I always worry about passing something that might mean that we do not see the detail when doctors are unhappy.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that it is in the interests of the Government to get technology in place that is less intrusive and more accurate and does not rely on X-rays and MRIs, as we have now, for that physical contact. The question of what that development will be is something that we are working through at the moment, and I am expecting that in the latter part of 2026 I will be able to come to this House—if still in post—to argue the case for the implementation of a better facial age estimation technology. I will, on the basis of what the noble Baroness has said, make sure that I can put into the public domain whatever information I think does not compromise the operation. That is the best I can give her today, but I will reflect on what she said and look at whether I can agree to her request. I do not want to give her an immediate response, because there may be reasons why it is not in our interest to put some of that information into the public domain, because people will always try to subsume facial recognition technology or any other method. I will just reflect on that, if I may.

The key point is that these emerging new methods and the regulations applying the automatic assumption of adult provision for refusal to consent to methods of scientific age assessment as set out in the IMA cannot be laid until the specific methods are sufficiently accurate. Because we do not believe that they are going to be, these amendments are not necessary. For those reasons, I hope that we can share common ground with the noble Lord: his objective, my objective, and I think that of every noble Lord who has spoken, is to ensure that we have accurate age assessment. The methodology he has brought forward in these amendments is not the way forward, but I give an assurance to the House that the exploration of other methods is under way and I will report back when those tests are complete. I urge him, therefore, to withdraw his amendment.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have signed both Amendment 58 and Amendment 80, which is consequential to Amendment 58. We have just heard very eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about why it is important. I will just highlight a couple of very brief points.

First, I lived in Hong Kong until 1960 and my family knew Anthony Grey, the Reuters journalist who was imprisoned by Mao Tse-Tung in 1967. As a young teenager, I wrote to him at his home in Peking where he had been imprisoned. Anthony died last week. His family have said that what China did to him, keeping him in solitary confinement with no charges or anything else for over two years, affected him for the rest of his life. We see an echo of that today in the treatment of people such as Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong in prison. Hong Kong is not a safe place for some people to be.

I just want to add that, two years ago, there were a number of incidents with border staff not understanding the British national overseas route and treating Hong Konger arrivals as if they were asylum seekers. They were not. I was grateful that, after our intervention in your Lordships’ House, Ministers ensured that this error was corrected.

Last week in your Lordships’ House we discussed the changes to the extradition arrangements for Hong Kong; again, I am very grateful to the Minister for those discussions. The reason that both these issues were important to the Hong Kongers who have come here to safety as British nationals, holding British national visas, is that their life here is very unsettled. Threats to their personal safety in the UK are bad enough, but their families are also threatened in Hong Kong as well.

The whole point of the BNO visa was to keep our word to fellow British nationals after 1984. We made that real in 2021. The tiny things that have been going wrong also add to the unease that many Hong Kongers feel in this country. Making sure that no decisions are changed on the BNO visa route other than by Parliament is exactly what needs to happen to give them the confidence that the UK still stands by them.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 70 and 85 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who is not with us today for reasons I explained earlier. We listened to what was said in Committee and this amendment mirrors what was placed on the agenda then. But, in tabling this amendment, we have made some changes, one of which is the need for biometrics to be taken prior to travel, and the amendment also proposes a capped scheme to control numbers and an initial pilot of 12 months minimum in order to have the opportunity to evaluate it.

To try to explain this scheme, which is basically about a legal route into the United Kingdom, I will just refer to the United States. A similar scheme to the one we are proposing—not exactly the same, but similar—was instituted there, and the US Government were able to reduce illegal border crossings from Mexico across the US border by 77% between December 2023 and August 2024: that is, in nine months.

It was achieved through a three-pronged approach, one of which was, of course, diplomatic efforts to make sure that there was a strong ability to manage the system in the countries where people started, and also then taking a tough approach to the irregular border crossings, significantly reducing the chance of successfully claiming asylum for those arriving without permission, and a substantial official scheme through which people could apply to come to the country. That is the bit that, of course, the humanitarian travel permit relates to.

The result in the United States was that it simply was not worth the expense of paying the smugglers any more and it undermined their business entirely. That is because you cannot look at just one side of the demand-supply equation. The demand is being met by the smugglers, and we have to touch both sides. Without a form of legal route, you will not get that demand reduced.

I will try to explain it very straightforwardly. In the United Kingdom, we put up with queues. We may not like them, but we follow, if there is a queue, in a proper and orderly manner—mostly. If somebody pushes in, either they do not get served when they get to the front, or they get sent to the back of the queue. This scheme means to do exactly that—to provide a scheme where there is a queue in which people can come to the United Kingdom. If you decide to jump the queue by taking the smugglers route, you get put to the back of the queue again.

That means, of course, that you have to have a quota attached to the scheme, and because the law in this country says that you cannot make a claim for asylum unless you are here, you have to have a travel permit in order to come here. But that would be controlled right back at the beginning of the journey. If you have paid a slab of money to a smuggler back in Egypt or Libya, you are certainly not going to be put off when you get to the end of the route. It is certainly the case that you need to tackle this right back at the beginning. This whole scheme is about trying to create a legal route and being tough on anyone who tries to jump the queue by coming in irregularly and moving them to the back of the queue.

It does not matter if the queue is not moving very quickly; what matters is that it is moving. It is surprising that people will be prepared to wait, as they did in the United States, where, in the case of Haiti, instead of 10,000 people turning up at the US border, it was just a handful every month. That is because people said, “It’s not worth my while doing that”. They saw that joining the queue meant that at some stage they would get to the front of that queue.

It works much better, of course, if you are doing it with other countries as well, because you can collectively create these routes, which can be dealt with in a very efficient way. That way, we control the borders. That is what this is about. It is a different sort of approach from what is suggested by putting your hands up and saying, “You can’t get in”, and “We’ll stop you in every way possible”, and all that stuff. That did not work.

It may be that, in time, the pressures to try to deal with this across the channel may well work in reducing the numbers. But we are looking at changing the whole model so that the smugglers’ model does not work. It has been tried and tested. That is why, if we are going to use this in a European context, it is important that it is done with a capped model, with one particular country perhaps, and certainly for 12 months, so that we can find out whether we can make this work here in Europe as well.

This system, this scheme, is one that is designed to provide safe routes and to take away the business of the smugglers. It will not solve it all, but if it reduces it by 77%, as was the case in the United States of America, it is certainly worth doing.

That is what this amendment is about. The other amendment, with which it is associated, is simply to create a pilot scheme with a capped number of people in it. I hope that we will consider this when we come back to it later in this debate.