Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Debate on Amendment 438C resumed.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 438C in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, on the recording of ethnicity in police data. I do not profess to have the noble Baroness’s expertise in this area in terms of her work at the Equality and Human Rights Commission or as a distinguished lawyer, but her aspiration to have clear, consistent and transparent data is increasingly important for politics and with the public, which is why I wanted to speak.

Following on from the Casey review, the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced that collecting ethnicity and nationality data in child sexual abuse and exploitation cases would become a mandatory requirement. This recommendation to collect targeted information was made after the review had found that there was a paucity of data nationally concerning the ethnicity of perpetrators who were part of the rape grooming gangs. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, had found that, as we have already heard, only three local policing areas, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, had such data.

The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, concluded that while this was sufficient evidence to show that there were “disproportionate numbers” of men from Asian and specifically Pakistani heritage among the suspects, as well as those convicted, that conclusion had been avoided for too long. She criticised official “obfuscation” that misled the public.

Yvette Cooper concluded:

“While much more robust national data is needed, we cannot and must not shy away from these findings”.


I think that sums up a very positive development. It recognises that we need to collect more data on ethnicity if we are not to get ourselves into a political scandal, which the grooming gangs question was, and not to obscure the detail. Local residents, members of the public and, of course, victims felt very frustrated that these things were not allowed to come out.

With much more acceptance of the positive role of acknowledging ethnicity and data in the wind, we should look at expanding that. This much more open approach now needs to be applied to crime statistics more generally. In fact, in this new atmosphere, the issue has also affected policing. In the wake of the Southport murders of those three little girls, the police slowness in releasing the details of the suspected perpetrator, Axel Rudakubana, when he was arrested, caused immense political tensions, as we know. The almost wilfully misleading description of the suspect as a 17 year-old from Lancashire who was originally from Cardiff led to a sort of pseudo form of misinformation, creating an information vacuum that led to false rumours. Misinformation started online that the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker, which was completely incorrect.

Accurate data and accurate descriptions play a valuable role. The Met Police chief, Sir Mark Rowley, declared that it was right to release the ethnicity of suspects, pointing out the importance of being

“more transparent in terms of the data”

that the police release. This amendment is trying to make sure that the data collected is accurate. It is not just a debate about it being released.

The Southport incidents led to guidance being developed by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, recognising public concerns, to ensure that police processes are fit for purpose in an age of rapid information spread. But I do not think that this response should just be about combating misinformation—that should not be the main driver. In order for us to have accurate information, the main driver should be that the public have a right to know and understand offender and victim profiles accurately. The police, very specifically, need to understand the data to aid in the prevention and detection of crimes. It is arguable whether decisions to release information should be left up to police forces—that is not what we are concerned with here—but data collection certainly needs to be mandated, and a failure to act on this can lead to tensions.

I want to counter one thing. In some of this debate, campaigners have tried to suggest that such data collection may overly encourage focusing on racial backgrounds, fuelling right-wing conspiracy theories or pandering to racism. I do not think that is fair. Not a week goes by without the public asking questions about incidents because they are concerned for the safety of their communities. Sometimes that involves ethnicity. The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, made it clear that this is much broader than the issues that I have raised. This is also about the ethnicity of victims and ensuring that people from different ethnic backgrounds are not discriminated against or unfairly treated by the police. We have to be much more open and not shy away from or be frightened by this kind of data—it is essential for good policing and for reassuring the public that we are not trying to hide behind not revealing or not collecting ethnicity data for political or ideological ends, as we did with the grooming gangs.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, this amendment focuses on the recording of ethnicity in police data—not the sensitive, balanced issue of when to publish. I rather agree with what I understood her remarks to be about that: it is probably best left in operational police hands, because there are sensitivities about it. The recording of ethnicity has been a controversial subject in different jurisdictions over the years. Parts of continental Europe—Germany, for example, for obvious historical reasons—take a very different view to recording ethnic data. But I think there is value in having some recording of ethnicity in police data, not least as a means of attempting to grapple with race discrimination, for example, in stop and search.

My question is about subsection (2) of the new clause proposed by Amendment 438C. Again, it is this issue of police observation rather than self-identification. The amendment focuses on the 18 categories in the census. We are all familiar with that census and often fill out questionnaires that look at those 18 subcategories. That is one thing when you are self-identifying—it is very easy for me, for example, to use the census categories, because I know my story and I know my history. But I challenge even noble Lords and noble friends in this Committee, without the benefit of Wikipedia or smartphones, or stuff written about me and my history, to determine which of those 18 categories I would best fit into.

I worry about how this would work if an officer must record the police-observed ethnicity of the individual using the 18-category classification employed in the most recent census for England and Wales, including determining whether somebody is British Asian, British Pakistani, mixed race, et cetera—

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I agree with that statement. The police often have their hands tied behind their backs, hampering their ability to fight crime effectively. The public sector equality duty is just that: excessive bureaucracy. Communities across the country want visible policing, proactive crime prevention and confident officers on the streets. They do not want a police service distracted by box-ticking exercises or ideological compliance regimes that undermine morale and operational clarity. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 438D would

“exempt the police from the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010, so as to ensure they are solely committed to effectively carrying out their policing functions”.

When I read that I wished that we could apply this exemption across the board. I wish that more public bodies would commit themselves to effectively carrying out their functions and not get distracted by the public sector equality duty. The police, I am afraid, have become far too embroiled in politicised equality initiatives—the EDI-ing of the police, as it has become known.

Briefly, I want to raise why this amendment is worth thinking about and why it is quite important. There is currently legal action being taken against the UK Civil Service over aspects of EDI practices, and specifically noted is official participation in Pride events. The argument is that taxpayer-funded Civil Service involvement in, for example, LGBTQ+ Pride marches, including civil servants marching in branded Civil Service Pride t-shirts, using rainbow lanyards at work and so on, is in breach of provisions in the Civil Service Code about being objective and impartial. This relates to the police as this recent legal action follows a successful legal challenge against Northumbria Police in 2025, where the High Court ruled that uniformed police officers marching in Pride marches breached police impartiality.

For the public, the idea of a politicised police force fuels the argument that the police may be unfair or discriminatory in who they target for, for example, non-crime hate incidents. Though we have seen the back of those, they were the blight of many a person’s life and destroyed many citizens’ lives. We need reassurance that the public sector equality duty has not been used to distract the police or to politicise policing. All the evidence would imply that it has been, and that is something that the Government should be concerned about.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend on the Front Bench. When Section 149 of the Equality Act came into effect, it was seen largely as benign. It very reasonably imposed an obligation on public sector organisations to treat people with fairness and equality and to ensure that there was equality of opportunity within the organisation and in the interface that those bodies had with the wider public, whether it was local government, the NHS or other bodies. However, it has unfortunately been the subject of Parkinson’s law, where the work expands to fill the category. Therefore, instead of focus on the managerial targets, action plans and strategy documents which would deliver demonstrable improvement in policing performance across a wide number of areas and criminal activity, there has often, regrettably, been an overfocus on the public sector equality duty.

As someone with a background as a human resources manager and practitioner, I believe that every decent leadership in every organisation should have a set of policies which deliver fairness and equality within the organisation. It should not be incumbent upon the Government to compel organisations to do something that they should already be doing. Many leading organisations in the public and private sector do so anyway because treating people with fairness and decency and giving them opportunity delivers better performance.

I apologise to the Committee for mentioning again my experience on the British Transport Police Authority. At the end of October 2023, I was invited to attend a workshop on diversity, equality and inclusion. That cost the taxpayer £29,000 for, essentially, two days of a workshop, some handouts and some supplementary material which contained contested theories around critical race theory, white privilege and microaggressions. I declined to attend the first day; the second day was much more productive because it was focused on the senior management objectives of the British Transport Police. This expansion of the public sector equality duty has been inimical to the main objectives of policing, which are to tackle crime and protect the safety and security of our citizens—on the railways, in the case of the BTP, and in the wider country.

There is a special case to be made that policing is different because it has the responsibility, as a corporate entity within the Peel principles, to police by consent and to treat people equally irrespective of their age, race, religion or ethnicity. There is an issue of undermining the trust and faith people have in the police if we concentrate too much on a duty which is quite divisive, contentious and controversial.

For those reasons, I support my noble friend’s amendment and look forward to the Minister’s answer. I hope that he will at least engage with the argument. He is shaking his head—I do not know why, because we have not yet concluded the debate. He should know better than to dismiss any noble Lord before the conclusion of a debate. For the reasons I have enunciated, I hope that the Minister will at least engage with the debate in a thoughtful way, which is what we normally expect from him.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

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

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

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

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

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

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

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

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

From my high position on my horse, I say to the noble Lord that we will take a different view on that. From the position of a very high horse, I think that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would be damaging to community relations, to community cohesion, and to the police’s ability to police effectively. It would give carte blanche to the type of events that have happened in certain police stations in London in the last few weeks. It would also, dare I say it, remove the floor from the policing principle that we do not tolerate those things.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, says that certain things have not happened; he mentioned, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that some standards have not been raised in the time of the Equality Act. I remind him that there will be somebody speeding today, and somebody stealing from a shop today. There might even be a murder today. It does not mean that people would not break the law because we did not have that legislation.

The key point is that, with the Equality Act, we are trying to set a public duty that public authorities act with fairness irrespective of the protected characteristics listed in that Act. I think the police would want to—never mind should—be held to that level of account. That is why I have come to the judgment that I cannot support the proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. That is a fair political disagreement between us. I have not done that in a way that says anything bad about the noble Lord’s motives. It is simply that, for me, there is a difference. There is blue/red water between us on this. I am happy to say that I hope he withdraws the amendment today; however, if he does not, we are willing to make those arguments on Report. I hope that, with the support of the Liberal Democrats and others, my noble friends and I would stand up for what we think is right about the Equality Act 2010.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Would the noble Lord comment on the High Court judgment that said that police impartiality was, in fact, compromised in the example I gave relating to Northumbria Police? That situation directly speaks to this. Will he also reflect or comment on whether he feels that fairness and anti-discrimination has been guaranteed to all by the public sector equality duty when we consider the events and protests that happened around the Sarah Everard case and the, frankly, inexplicable one-sided policing, in many instances, at demonstrations around Palestine, at the expense of Jewish people and Jewish citizens of this country? The argument that the public sector equality duty is a bureaucratic exercise that box-ticks your way to suggesting that everything is fine in the world, whereas some of us are rather more concerned that the status quo is not adequate or good enough in the fight against racism, for women’s rights or, indeed, for equality.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

If the noble Baroness looks at aspects of the Bill before us today and earlier in Committee, and at what we said in the policing White Paper yesterday, she will know that the Government do not accept that standards do not need to be raised. We want raised standards, better vetting of police officers, better performance and speedy dismissal if police officers have done wrong. We want to improve those standards. However, the Equality Act is about basic principles underpinning how public services interact with people in our community. In the policing sense, I argue, as I did a moment ago, that those Equality Act provisions underpin what the police want to do, which is to police with the consent of the community. I cannot agree with her; that is an honest disagreement between us. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

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

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has explained, this group is largely about a concentration on efforts to combat non-violent extremism, about transparency and about efforts by the Government and police forces to counteract such extremism. He also calls for the appointment of a Commissioner for Countering Extremism.

The noble Lord particularly—and, I would suggest, rightly—recognises and is concerned with the importance of developing and fostering dialogue between police forces and religious communities, as well as a much wider understanding of the real concern and fear of religious communities in the face of extremism, not amounting to terrorism, that has become so much worse in recent years and particularly since 7 October.

This group gives us the opportunity to invite the Government to bring greater clarity and focus to their efforts in this area and to make it clear what it is that they plan. When Yvette Cooper, then the Home Secretary, directed the establishment of the rapid analytical sprint on extremism, she said that it was intended

“to map and monitor extremist trends, to understand the evidence about what works to disrupt and divert people away from extremist views, and to identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence”.

It is certainly right that the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was directed to those ends—considering hateful and harmful beliefs and violence not necessarily amounting to extremism. The rapid analytical sprint was intended to be directed widely and, since then, publicity has been given to the concentration also on misogyny, racism, antisemitism and general community hostilities. It was commissioned last August, so perhaps the use of the word “rapid”, if we do not know when it is going to be produced, is not completely apposite.

The group is also concerned with the concept of youth diversion orders. We will debate youth diversion orders on a later group, but they are directed by the terms of Clause 167, as it is drafted, to terrorism and terrorism-related offences. It is certainly right that Clause 167(2)(b) talks about

“the purpose of protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism or other serious harm”,

but serious harm is defined in, and our attention is directed to, Clause 168, which talks about harm from

“conduct that … involves serious violence against a person … endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person engaging in the conduct, or … creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or … the threat of such conduct”.

Serious harm in that context is, effectively, the threat of violence. As I understood the speech and the amendments, as a whole, by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, they are also directed to the points that Yvette Cooper mentioned when the rapid analytical sprint was established. They go much wider and concern non-violent extremism, which is what this group is about. He talked about confronting ideologies and draining the swamp.

We would be grateful if the Minister, when he responds, clarifies what the Government’s target is in tackling non-violent extremism. How far is the government strategy for both government and police action aimed at producing an overarching strategy to tackle non-violent extremism as well as terrorism? We appreciate that it is perhaps more difficult in conceptual terms to develop such a strategy aimed at non-violence than it is to develop a strategy aimed at terrorism, which, while appalling, is relatively straightforward to define. The concept of non-violent extremism is altogether more difficult, and at the moment we are left in the dark about what the Government propose.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, in this interesting group of amendments in his name, draws our attention to non-violent extremism and raises hugely important issues. I am not entirely happy with that broad definition of non-violent extremism, but the noble Lord has given us plenty to mull over in his interesting, thought-provoking and hard-hitting speech.

I am worried about the kind of ideologies that we face at present; I just think that the reluctance to confront those ideologies is more likely to be a failure of moral leadership rather than law, so I am trying to work my way around that. I am also concerned about the policing of a range of views dubbed extremist. We have to be careful, because that can be used to close down legitimate speech and to demonise dissident views as being too extremist and too beyond the pale to engage with.

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[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

Why could not or should not the disturbing examples that the noble Baroness has cited already have been prosecuted under current legislation on hate law?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

That might well be true, but it indicates that there might be a problem of the police not necessarily being impartial, because they are so busy forming community relationships with mosques that they are not necessarily listening to the kind of things that are going on in mosques or whatever other institutions. I agree with the noble and right reverend Lord, but this is the point I am making: Hizb ut-Tahrir are on the streets of London shouting about Muslim armies and jihad, while the Metropolitan Police, no doubt getting some theological Islamic advice from their religious advisers, put up a post saying that jihad has a number of meanings and should not be seen in just one way and talking about personal struggle and so on.

I want to finish with the example of what good community relations are and where we might be. Amid the Southport murder-related riots, that horrible period of disruption and violence on the streets, an extraordinary film was posted on TikTok of a police officer telling counter-protesters to stash the weapons in the mosque so that they would not have to arrest anyone. The liaison officer, wearing a blue police vest, was addressing a group of men gathered outside the Darul Falah mosque in Hanley, near Stoke-on-Trent, and was appearing to give the group of young men a weapons amnesty. He spoke to the crowd, saying:

“If there are any weapons or anything like that, then what I would do is discard them at the mosque”.


The reason why I am saying that is that I just think we should not be naive. That is the most important thing. When we talk about the police liaising with religious organisations, in a period of identity politics and in a period such as the one that we are living through in 2026, we should at least pause and not assume it is all going well. I therefore welcome the attempt at saying, “Let’s know who they are talking to”. That is the important reason why I support this amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister and indeed the Home Office might be forgiven for wondering why Amendment 438EA was necessary. One might have taken it for granted that, on the whole, if any important event was happening, those likely to be involved in it in the community would be consulted. However, I fear the Home Office needs to think again. We have heard already about Birmingham, where one of the largest police forces in the country speaks exclusively to the mosques. When the Maccabi fans were considering whether they would come to Birmingham, the police did not talk to the churches but, rather more importantly, they did not talk to the synagogues. If one stops to think about it, it is quite extraordinary. All that I have read and heard in this House, as well as reading in the newspapers, leads one to suppose that those considering whether those Jewish fans should be allowed to come were looking exclusively from the Muslim point of view.

The Home Office should therefore consider carefully, perhaps with the College of Policing, whether, when it comes to significant and possibly controversial events—or very controversial, as the Maccabi one was likely to be—it should tell police forces that they must find what all the local people who might be interested think about it, and take some advice. I am horrified by what happened. I entirely understand why the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, should have tabled the amendment, and the Government need to consider it with extreme care.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

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

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

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

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

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

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I want to come in on the remarks of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and his support of Amendment 445. I have a great deal of sympathy, and I have spoken in other debates that he has had about these matters in the past. I am completely convinced that he is right in his exhortation to us as a country to define some fundamental values to which we should all subscribe.

My only reservation about this amendment is about listing values prior to a national conversation and resolution and some premeditative thought about what a list of British values should contain, being very clear that we are not rubbing up against other parts of legislation covered elsewhere. I can see the attractiveness of this kind of list in general, but it would worry me a great deal.

The example I give is proposed new subsection (2)(e), “respect for the environment”. I see what the attempted definition of the environment is, but I respectfully say that that would apply to any country and is not necessarily British in terms of its value, as is the case with several of the other items on the list. I advocate bringing it back on Report with more generalised language rather than being so specific, or perhaps leaving this for another piece of legislation that is more directly concerned with it.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I find it extraordinary that glorification of terrorism can be supported in any way; it just seems abhorrent. In relation to Amendment 447, I am not entirely objecting to the police arresting people, because they may well arrest people when they are not sure, but if there be a great many people whom the police would recognise as not likely to be supporting terrorism as such, I hope that those people would be released pretty quickly from the police station.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as always, the rational logic of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has been very helpful in untangling this issue. She has summed up some of my concerns and things that I am not sure about.

The noble Baroness, Lady Foster, has brilliantly articulated her worries about the glorification of terrorism and how it normalises terrorism into everyday life. I think that is valid. She notes that this is based on little knowledge, and little knowledge can be very dangerous. Whatever one thinks about Northern Ireland —and I assure noble Lords that at this end we do not all agree—it was a bloody conflict, and it is not to be treated lightly. Those who simply reduce it to slogans in the way that was described do not know what they are talking about.

In support of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, my concern is that when we get proscription legislation wrong, we also rob the notion of terrorism of its power to shock, of its content, and the danger is that we relativise it and trivialise it. I think a huge amount of damage has been done by putting Palestine Action into the same category as Hamas or ISIS. Even though Palestine Action, as has been described, is an obnoxious or objectionable organisation and should be held to account under the law when it uses criminal damage, I do not think it is a terrorist organisation. Putting those self-indulgent OAP protesters or students into the same camp as Hizb ut-Tahrir calling for jihad or those hate preachers I quoted earlier, for example, seems misplaced. It turns what I consider to be numpty protesters into some sort of heroes in their own mind, and it has captured the imagination.

If you go to universities, you now find that people think that anyone who supports Palestine Action is a free speech warrior who we should all get up and support. They do not understand why I, as a free-speecher, am not supporting it. The problem is that they now all think that terrorism is sitting on a road and saying, “I support Palestine Action”. If only terrorism were sitting on a road and shouting, “I support Palestine Action” or wearing a badge. That is not the content of terrorism, and there is a lack of knowledge about what terrorism is. If people think those people are terrorists, we sell young generations short by them not understanding what we are up against and what the problems are. Proscribing organisations, which is a very important weapon to use in a particular way, is one thing; treating those who simply are vocal in their support of that organisation, as has happened with Palestine Action, can just mean that we conflate slogans and words with terrorist actions or violent actions and empty them of any horror.

The difficulty is that I am torn. When I hear Bob Vylan, Kneecap or those student groups shouting “Internationalise the intifada” or strutting their stuff and cosplaying their support for barbarism, it is sickening and I want something to be done. Listening to the moving speech by the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, you can see that that is what you might want to tackle. It is just that I do not think proscribing Palestine Action did that, and we are now paying the cost for having inappropriately used proscription of an organisation to devalue what we mean by terrorism.

If we no longer have young people in this country who have lived experience of terrorism—sadly, young Iranians do, for example, so let us not concentrate entirely on ourselves—they think going on a demo outside a prison fighting for the hunger strikers inside is as bad as it gets. They do not get it, but I do not think we have helped them get it either, which is why I am nervous about saying that glorification of terrorism in that context should be against the law, because we have to be very careful about what we are making illegal.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly in support of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, which I signed. I do so, paradoxically, as someone who has written in the Daily Telegraph, of all places, against the proscription of Palestine Action. My argument was that there is a difference—this is to address the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner—between the intent of the protesters and the nature of the organisation.

There must be some common-sense way of differentiating between a violent organisation such as Palestine Action and Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, al-Qaeda and so on. In fact, a way has been proposed, because the noble Lord, Lord Walney, produced a whole report for the last Government suggesting that organisations such as Palestine Action be subject to certain sorts of orders that would separate them out. But that raises the question: what about Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the IRA and so on?