Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that we are all incredibly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for this work, as in her previous independent inquiries on behalf of Governments of all stripes. There is, no doubt, a problem when walking on eggshells prevents the investigation and prosecution of particular criminals because of fears of racism. That is clear from this report, but does my noble friend the Minister agree that we have seen these group scandals in relation to child abuse in the Catholic Church and the Church of England—if the right reverend Prelate will forgive me, patriarchal communities where vulnerable people are not believed? With that in mind, and also referring to the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is the age of criminal responsibility, at just 10 years old in England and Wales, too young when children and girls who are exploited in this way, drugged and put into prostitution, are then treated as criminals and not as victims?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for echoing the praise and support for the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and the work she has done. She has set down a further set of developments that we can look at and action to help reduce victims and reduce this level of crime. My noble friend tempts me into addressing the age of criminal responsibility. What I will say is that that issue is one that we will reflect on in government. I cannot give her chapter and verse on that today, but what I can say—I said it a moment ago in relation to recommendation 3, which is on reviewing convictions of victims—is that we will legislate in the Crime and Policing Bill to introduce a disregard scheme for the convictions of individuals who were found guilty of prostitution offences as children. The criminal law has rightly evolved to make it clear that children cannot be prostitutes, and it is long overdue that individuals convicted of child prostitution offences have their convictions disregarded and their criminal records expunged. We will do that in the Crime and Policing Bill, and I look forward to His Majesty’s Official Opposition supporting us on that Bill, not voting against it as they just have done in the House of Commons.

Public Order Act 1986: Section 5

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister, as always, for putting equal treatment at the heart of human rights. However, regardless of individual cases that we get hot under the collar about—we pick and choose which ones to get upset about—is it not time to have another look at not just the operation of Section 5 of the 1986 Act but its framing? I suggest that most noble Lords would agree that threatening and harassing conduct should be criminal, but broader, lower-level conduct “likely” to cause “alarm or distress”? Some people are a little bit too easily alarmed and distressed. It is not about just religious freedom; it is about freedom of expression as well.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. The Government keep all legislation under review at all times. The very fact that this discussion is taking place on this question means that we have looked at the legislation today and looked at the applicability of certain matters. There is a balance to be made. Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 has stood the test of 39 years to date, through a range of protests, a range of measures and a range of Governments. It has stood the test of time.

We keep it under review, but the important principle behind it is that Section 5 of the Public Order Act gives a clear definition of harassment and intimidation. Protest crosses the criminal threshold where it goes into harassment and intimidation. That is why the prosecution was taken in the case to which I believe the noble Baroness referred, and why, in other cases, prosecutions have not been taken.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, from this side, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Harper. Whether or not he always agrees with the indefatigable noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I hope that he will find this House capable of always disagreeing well.

It is not so much a declaration of interest as a description of context to say that I am the daughter of late and lawful 1950s Commonwealth migrants to this country and a human rights lawyer of just over 30 years. For the avoidance of doubt, and at possible risk of confounding some potential expectations, I accept this Bill’s underlying premises of both border security and immigration control.

A democratic political community is of course defined by its borders as well as its values and laws. It has a prerogative to assess and balance its social, economic and cultural needs, including some desire for reciprocal international work, study, trade and tourism on the part of its own citizens. As a matter of logic and international law, it retains considerable discretion on the question of how many and what kind of visas to grant to non-nationals seeking to enter its territory for various purposes. This should be exercised, I would suggest, with considerable care, given the often competing interests of different economic actors in particular. Some employers, and—dare I say it—government departments, may have a strong instinct towards importing large amounts of skilled, and even unskilled, workers. This may be laudable, and at times vital to fuel innovation or fill gaps in services or the labour market, but less so if it is designed to suppress wages below what is fair or even sustainable for living.

Since World War II, however, there has been—rightly, in my view—far less discretion about how to treat a much smaller number of people for whom travel comes not from preference, but persecution. Let us please always remember that we have a refugee convention, a European convention and so on, as a direct result of some of the worst atrocities of the past century and the plight of those who were denied safe passage to, and asylum in, countries such as our own at that time.

The 1951 refugee convention in particular enshrines the principles of non-refoulement, sending people back or onwards to their peril; non-penalisation, not punishing them for the desperate and even clandestine means of their escape; and non-discrimination against them. All three of these principles were violated by the legislation of recent years, in particular the Nationality and Borders Act, the Illegal Migration Act and the legislative lie that is the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act. The Government are to be commended for seeking to repeal so much of that toxic legacy. However, I am sure that we will explore in Committee how that repeal does not go far enough, in a number of respects, to achieve either the legality or simplicity that I hope most of us want to see.

Before even the legislation came the politics for which our leaders are just as responsible. In my opinion, a grand political swindle was perpetrated upon the British electorate in recent years. Notwithstanding Brexit slogans about controlling borders, large numbers of international workers were consciously invited into the UK, while a fraction of those numbers of asylum seekers, mostly genuine refugees and often from sites of Britain’s previous overseas military adventures, were demonised beyond recognition. That is dishonest, dangerous and, frankly, immoral.

As we examine both the broad brushstrokes and detailed drafting of the Bill, I hope we can work with care and precision to distinguish between immigration control and refugee protection. I accept that the latter is a responsibility we share with other rule-of-law-loving territories, which, as my noble friend Lord Dubs has said, must be discharged in greater collaboration, including to avoid wherever possible desperate people taking perilous journeys. But it is one thing to criminalise traffickers and smugglers and another to dehumanise, deprive, detain and deport their desperate human cargo, who are not and have never been illegal, let alone criminal.

In life and in politics, just as much as legislation, words matter. They have consequences beyond the next headline. I was born just over a year after Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech. A few months later, my then young parents were violently attacked by violent thugs trying to take their baby from her pram in a London park. That may be too long ago for the bright young things who draft political speeches to remember, but surely not for your Lordships’ House.

Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely valid point. I know he has a long-standing interest in safeguarding and that he has raised previously with me and others the children who went missing under the previous regime. We intend to ensure that we put in place proper safeguarding measures with the local county council, and that we now assess those children on arrival to make sure that they are safeguarded properly.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the tone with which he always discusses these very thorny questions in your Lordships’ House. Does he agree that a convention refugee, once designated as such by the authorities, was never illegal, and that we should not be demonising these most desperate people, who were not deterred by the Rwanda scheme because of the appalling treatment that they faced back home?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. We intend to uphold and keep to our international obligations.

Southport Attack

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe; he brings immeasurable expertise in his contribution to this debate. I will say two things in response. First, the Prevent programme still has to focus primarily on people who are being radicalised through a range of means and pose threats on both Islamist and extreme right-wing fronts—that is the main focus. But, secondly, this case shows that there are potential areas where we need to look at other issues, including misogyny, concerns around violence and its worship generally, and people just wishing to inflict hate on society for a range of reasons that are not politically or culturally motivated. I take what the noble Lord said, as there may be lessons that we could learn from it. I would be very grateful to discuss—with both the Metropolitan Police and the noble Lord, if he wishes—how we can widen the debate on looking at potential areas. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, will look at how we can draw a wider circumference around the support mechanisms to help with cases that fall outside the broad areas of Prevent but which still lead to the types of actions that Prevent is designed to prevent.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister and others for understanding that not everything can be squeezed into the rubric of “terrorism”, with its ideological motive and so on. I will make a small point on a previous point my noble friend made in reference to the sentence of 52 years. It is quite important to remember, and for the public to understand, that this was, rightly, a life sentence with a minimum of 52 years before any consideration of release; one would not always get that information from reading the newspapers. I hope that my noble friend will forgive me for making that clear.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The 52 years is a minimum; it is a life sentence. Indeed, in his sentencing remarks, Justice Goose indicated that he felt that it was highly unlikely that the individual convicted would be released. That is a matter for well downstream. The concerns that we have around Prevent are things that we can resolve to stop that type of activity taking place in the future. As my noble friend knows, the reason a whole-life tariff was not imposed was because of the age of the perpetrator at the time of the event. I suspect that, if he had been older, a whole-life tariff may well have been given by the judge. My noble friend was right to add further definition to my comment, which was not meant to undermine in any way the sentence given.

UK/US Free Trade Agreement

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. We have taken back control. We work with the US, the EU and every other country. We are an open trading economy, and that benefits both our businesses and consumers.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, even though the United States is a great constitutional democracy, could my noble friend the Minister reflect on the previous Question about ISDS arrangements and make sure that any trade deal between our two great democracies does not privilege international corporations over citizens or workers, and respects both democracy and the rule of law?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. No two trade agreements are the same, and ISDS is only one chapter in any trade negotiation. We have to negotiate for what is best for our country and for business.

Immigration: Human Rights

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they plan to give greater priority to those with well-founded human rights claims in the immigration system.

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

Any foreign national in the United Kingdom can make an asylum or human rights claim should they be unable to return to their country of origin. The UK has a proud history of protecting vulnerable people. All claims are decided on individual merits. Protection status is granted to those in need.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for that clear Answer. Does he further agree with me that rather than demonising refugees while simultaneously increasing economic migration, including to very low-skilled employment, as the last Government did, His Majesty’s Government should prioritise those in genuine need of humanitarian protection or family reunification, including via safe legal routes to the UK?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. The UK has a proud history of providing protection to those who need it, in accordance with our international obligations under the refugee convention and the European Convention on Human Rights. She will know that we are proposing an immigration White Paper shortly, which will look at some of the issues she has mentioned. She will also know that the Government are extremely keen to ensure that we crack down on illegal migration and on those individuals who are brought to this country to undercut the working conditions, pay and other benefits of individuals who are here with asylum and refugee status, and who are approved and working, and also the population of the United Kingdom as a whole. She makes a very important point.

Independent Office for Police Conduct

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As ever, I try to be helpful to the noble Lord on these matters, but he will know that there is an ongoing IOPC investigation into the police officer he has mentioned. I am not able from this Dispatch Box to give advice or commentary on that investigation until such time as it is complete.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that I speak for the whole House in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for his campaigning in this area. Year-on-year, we see Bill after Bill to give greater powers over the public to the police, but not so many Bills to deal with police discipline. What plans do His Majesty’s Government have to put that right soon?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend will know that in the King’s Speech there was a proposal to establish greater accountability for the police, improve standards and review the work of the College of Policing. That will be brought before this House in due course and within this Session of Parliament.

Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

A partnership has been in operation to date with local authorities, particularly Kent County Council, to help quickly with placement and support for those young individuals. Obviously I have just heard my right honourable friend the Chancellor’s Budget, and we have to reflect on that in relation to the local government settlement. However, I assure the noble Baroness that there is a commitment from this Government to ensure the protection of vulnerable children who come here unaccompanied.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his positive and humane answers to the Question from my noble friend Lord Touhig. However, I want to press him on the supplementary. While the focus must be on recovering the missing children, it is still a scandal that so many went missing and that previous Ministers did so little to protect them and find them. A short and focused statutory inquiry would compel witnesses and perhaps focus minds.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Again, I hear what my noble friend says. I wish to find the 90 children who are still missing. I wish to ensure that we give support to local authorities and the police to do that, and it has to be the primary focus of the Home Office. I can reflect in due course on what both she and my noble friend Lord Touhig said, but ultimately our focus has to be to find those people who went missing because of the performance of the previous Government’s management of this issue.

King’s Speech

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, having been a family judge for some years, I welcome the opportunity to endorse what was just said about deprivation of liberty orders concerning children. I have had to make such orders myself, and they are very worrying. What is required is further inquiry into how that jurisdiction works.

I turn to the main topic of the debate. In the latter part of the last Parliament, useful work was done to produce what is now the Victims and Prisoners Act—the framework on which the new Government can build, and now have the time to do so. The greatest disservice to victims is caused by delays in getting their cases to and through the courts. There is no time now to analyse the reason for such delays—the backlogs, and what has become a chronic inability to catch up—but I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, said, when he provided an impressive warm-up act for his own maiden speech. I urge the Government to take note of the Bar Council’s recent Manifesto for Justice, which proposes a requirement for Crown Court trials to start

“within six months of the first hearing”.

Surely that can and should be properly seen as an attainable target.

Avoidable delays cause most distress and strain in cases of sexual assault. Rape cases have a high rate of not-guilty pleas, requiring jury trials. The Government’s plan for designated rape courts is welcome, but it is unclear whether those specialist courts will be additional to, or simply part of, existing court capacity. Few court buildings have spare space suitable to the requirements of sensitive rape trials, in which defendants and witnesses have to be isolated and separated. Will these courts be confined to rape cases, or will other serious sexual offences be similarly dealt with there? This is an important part of the Government’s stated ambition to curtail violence against women and girls. Without a restoration of confidence in the processes facing victims, allegations will continue to be unreported. Ultimately, the measure of the success or failure of the Government’s plans will be how many victims of such offences would still say in future that they would not again participate in the criminal process.

The crisis of overcrowding in prisons that has prompted the need for early release, as well as a welcome promise to reinvigorate the probation service, has already been spoken to at some length. Therefore, I will not say more about it, other than to add that sentencing decisions, which can be difficult enough, should be governed by established and considered principles—with guidelines developed to ensure consistency and public confidence—rather than by the fluctuating size of the prison estate.

As is well known, and as the Lancet recently reported:

“People with mental health disorders are disproportionately represented in prison populations and are more likely to have poor physical health and social outcomes after prison”.


It is therefore crucial, to prevent reoffending and recidivism, that proper measures exist to prepare prisoners for release and to support them after release, at the very least in their first few weeks outside. It serves nobody if the first person to meet a newly released prisoner is his or her former drug dealer.

In that regard, we should commend and reinforce the work done by organisations such as the St Giles Trust and Unlock, which help those with criminal records lead stable lives; I was pleased to hear what the Minister said about that. On a separate note, I would inquire how the Government propose to revisit the problem of convicted criminals who resist, sometimes physically, attending court for sentencing. The last thing victims need or want is disruption of a sentencing hearing by a defiant defendant trying to attract attention. The imposition of an additional penalty for those facing long sentences will be no more than a token gesture; perhaps, therefore, the best answer for such conduct is to have some impact on parole.

I will not proceed to speak about family law, which I know most about, other than to say that I endorse most of what was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy. However, I hope he would accept that the judiciary do their best to keep costs down.

I hope that the change in government will see an end to ill-considered attempts to curtail and disapply the Human Rights Act and the regard to be had for the European Convention on Human Rights. It has served us well in raising standards within the legal system and beyond, and should not be diluted.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Well said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, my congratulations go to all three noble maidens this evening—if I can describe them that way. It is a privilege to address the gracious Speech of a Government who must, if they are to restore faith in politics, foster a better understanding of and commitment to the rule of law, whose reach no one, including the most powerful, is above and whose protection no one, especially the most vulnerable, is below.

This was eloquently promised by my noble and learned friend the new Attorney-General yesterday, but history suggests that, in the practical reality of justice, home affairs and foreign affairs, our “rule of law” values are most seriously tested. I welcome the Bills and hope that they will include not just new laws but a great deal of repeal. I know that all noble Lords will want carefully to examine the devil and the virtue in the detail, as well as the resources that must follow for vital services that have been underfunded for so long, but, in a difficult fiscal landscape, I also look forward to a significant shift in vision, rhetoric and approach—especially in relation to our courts, police, lawyers and other relevant professionals, including parliamentarians and all those whom they must serve.

Let our judges, whether domestic or international, no longer be hobbled and hectored. When, inevitably, government loses occasional cases, as with matches, let us please respect the referees. The European Court of Human Rights is no more foreign for being situated in Strasbourg than is the United Nations for being in New York and Geneva—or, dare I say it, than is D-day for marking historic British and Allied landings in Normandy.

Let us restore discretions too often obliterated by an overcrowded statute book to the appropriate decision-makers, in compliance with both the international and domestic rule of law.

Notwithstanding the vital importance of dealing far more effectively with people smuggling, casework and responsibility sharing with our neighbours, let there be no more deliberate demonisation of asylum seekers and refugees. They, like other desperate people, are not “illegal”. The new Government would be wise to abandon dehumanising language and lengthy incarceration, alongside snake-oil statutes.

Police chiefs’ diagnosis of a “national emergency” in violence against women is both a scandal and a priority, as is ensuring that social media empires take more direct responsibility for incitement and indoctrination on the platforms they monetise. If chief constables continue to request new powers to discipline errant officers, surely these should finally be provided. The development and deployment of AI and facial recognition technology in policing must, like conventional police powers, be regulated by statute. Equally, let there be an end to seeking cheap political capital via ministerial interference in independent public order operations, with endless Home Office press releases and summonses to chiefs to hear the Riot Act read at No. 10.

Let the continuing injustices of IPP and joint enterprise be ended. Attention is needed in legal aid and crumbling court infrastructure after years of disastrous cuts. When most people lack timely access to justice when facing the loss of their liberty, home, child, livelihood or safe environment, the rule of law becomes mere fairy tale.

There is so much more, but I end with my best wishes to the new Ministers. May my noble and learned friend Lord Hermer, a highly distinguished attorney, reinspire the Government Legal Service, of which I am a proud alum. May my noble friend Lord Hanson and his colleagues ensure that the Home Office is no longer nicknamed “North Korea” by beleaguered public servants. May my new noble friend Lord Timpson bring the spirit of rehabilitation, with which his family name is so synonymous on the high street, to the darkest recesses of the prison system—a failing prison system unworthy of an ambitious, wealthy and compassionate United Kingdom.