Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rogan (UUP)]

My Lords, I also support this amendment. We have heard mention of the IRA. Those who lived in Northern Ireland through the Troubles know that Sinn Féin/IRA was the most hideous terrorist group—reduced to “Ra”. Last night, after celebrating St Patrick’s Day, five young people came on to the Tube dressed with tricolours and shouting “Up the Ra, up the Ra, up the Ra”, which only means support for the IRA. I do not think those young people fully realise the hurt and offence that gives to the victims of Sinn Féin/IRA. I fully support this amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with trying to tackle ways of taking away the romantic attachment to terrorism as some kind of heroic endeavour, so I completely understand the reasons for this amendment. However, I cannot see how it would work in practice at present. I cannot see how it would deal with a Rangers-Celtic match, or with people singing “The Fields of Athenry” versus those singing “The Sash”, those shouting “Up the Ra” and those shouting “No surrender”. There are slogans on both sides, all of them associated with the previous struggle. I do not know what would happen to those children if, shockingly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, explained, they have balaclavas bought for them—then are they or their parents in scope? How do we deal with that? Goodness knows what you do about Kneecap, the band. I am all for banning them because they are hopeless, but they play on the very imagery that we are discussing.

We have a real problem on university campuses. Far too often, young people are cosplaying as jihadists in the way they dress. I understand that this is not a direct call to arms, but these Hamas wannabes are in a way justifying the type of—what they would call—defensive violence of 7 October. The Ayatollah Khamenei apologists justify IRGC violence, and the expert propagandism fills a society with narratives that I think are very dangerous in terms of young people being radicalised. But I just do not think this amendment can work, because I think we need to be much more courageous in dismantling those narratives, in going on to university campuses and taking on those who put forward critical theory policies that justify treating Israel as a terrorist pariah state and somehow turning a blind eye to the cosplaying radical jihadists.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

My amendment would not, as in the householders case, result in an officer’s acquittal, since that cannot be justified in the case of trained firearms officers. There needs to be accountability and a criminal penalty. As the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords said all those years ago, a manslaughter conviction is a far more proportionate penalty than treating them as murderers.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thoroughly welcome these sensible and proportionate amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, which he more than ably explained. I was prompted to speak on Amendment 393B having just read the Government’s Protecting What Matters action plan. I have plenty to say on that, but your Lordships will be relieved that I am not going to do so now.

In the plan, the Government readily admit that trust in institutions is in decline and that social cohesion is fraying. I am concerned that, if Clauses 168 to 171 go through unamended, it could create a problem of further distrust in policing. Despite the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, saying that there is not a huge gap between the amendment and the Government in relation to presumed anonymity for armed police officers, the Government are proposing an unprecedented rejection of the principles around open justice and, more importantly for me, press freedom. I am concerned that the clauses will limit the ability of the press to report in any meaningful way on cases involving the use of lethal force by police officers.

Replacing the presumption of anonymity should not leave officers vulnerable or unsafe, but the amendment would allow the power to grant anonymity if there are specific risks to safety or if it is in the public interest, to prevent harm. This is a blunt instrument. It would set up a privacy regime that would shut the media out from scrutinising the state’s exercise of power with guns. I cannot see how the public will not see that as covering up when the media will be denied any meaningful opportunity even to contest such anonymity, let alone to report. That is the concern. I am sure that the Minister will explain.

It is interesting that the police have recently been asking for greater freedom to release more details in relation to some investigations. This is not in terms of armed police, but police forces have recognised that suppressing information can lead to misinformation. That can turn nasty if the public feel that there has been a cover-up.

That is a move to transparency to ensure public consent and build trust, which goes in the right direction. I am just worried, although it is not their intention, the clauses will be a step back from a duty to have candour and from the state being transparent when, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, pointed out, an armed officer representing the state takes another human being’s life. We should not just grant automatic anonymity in that way. We have to at least allow the media to ask questions and scrutinise.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, my name is on the series of amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has spoken to, and I will make a few brief comments in support of them. Before I do, I shall make a few observations about Amendment 394. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, has not yet spoken to it, and he may be able to answer all the points I will make.

I start by saying that I share—with all noble Lords, I think—concern and admiration for the police generally, particularly for police officers who undertake willingly the task of bearing arms on our behalf in circumstances that may conceivably lead to serious harm to them and which call for difficult judgments to be made, often on very little information and in a split second. I entirely understand the concern.

I also wonder whether all these amendments are not significantly inspired by the Chris Kaba case and the officer, Martyn Blake. As to the decision not to grant him anonymity, it is very arguable that the judge came to the wrong decision. But, of course, we must bear in mind that hard cases make bad law and that there is a danger that, from one case, we then proceed to legislate in a way that overreacts and makes a change which is not really justified.

I will deal with Amendment 394, on presumption against prosecution. I am concerned about this. The idea of a presumption against prosecution does not find its way into the criminal law very often. I was able to find only one, the much-criticised Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021, where the then Conservative Government brought in a limit to the prosecution—a legal threshold in relation to overseas acts by serving forces rather than police officers. In certain exceptional circumstances there would be a presumption against there being a prosecution after five years. That was much criticised. What I struggle with in this amendment is that, before any prosecution is brought—the Minister will know this better than anyone, really, in your Lordships’ House—there has to be a consideration of whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute, and, secondly, whether it is in the public interest to prosecute.

The factors referred to in this amendment, for example, in proposed new subsection (5)—

“In making a decision to which this section applies, a relevant prosecutor must give particular weight to the following matters … the exceptional demands and stresses to which authorised firearms officers are subjected to in the course of their duties, and … the exceptional difficulties of making time-sensitive judgments”—


are absolutely right, but I respectfully say that those are the very considerations that would be taken into account by the prosecution in the ordinary course of affairs when deciding whether there is sufficient evidence and deciding whether it is in the public interest to prosecute. This would put into the criminal law a presumption that does not have a satisfactory precedent and place officers in a particular position. I feel we must leave it to the prosecutors to take all these matters into account in deciding whether it is appropriate to prosecute.

I should perhaps declare an interest, in that I was a barrister who acted on behalf of the police in one of those few cases where an officer did, in fact, unfortunately, kill a suspected criminal. The case went all the way to the House of Lords. It is called Ashley v Chief Constable of Sussex Police. Ashley’s relatives were represented by Sir Keir Starmer, as he was not then, whose junior was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, as he was not then. The argument involved very much the same issues that we have discussed this evening about objective and subjective mistakes. A very junior officer, as part of the armed response unit, thought he had seen a sudden movement. He opened fire and unfortunately killed Mr Ashley. He was prosecuted for murder and acquitted, because it was a mistake. Civil proceedings followed in due course. It was difficult, but he clearly made a mistake and the jury had no difficulty in acquitting him.

That brings me to the amendment suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Carter. I understand what has been said over the years in relation to those matters, but they are very much taken into consideration by juries in any event. Self-defence would include all those matters, or the urgency of the situation. Although I will listen carefully to what the noble Baroness has to say, I am not at the moment convinced that we need to change the law.

I said that I do not like presumptions in the context of the criminal law. I do not like presumptions much anyway, which brings me to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. What worries me about the presumption is: what rebuts that presumption? At the moment, the law provides that a judge decides in the particular circumstances whether it is appropriate to grant anonymity, and he or she will take into account all the factors, including the risk of danger to the officer if he or she is named, which is entirely proper. But this presumption would, I respectfully suggest, mean that the judge would be getting a very strong steer from Parliament that he should grant anonymity unless—and we do not really know what the “unless” is.

Granting anonymity runs contrary to the principle of open justice. Although one has considerable sympathy for any officer caught up in the situation, nobody is above the law, whether they are officers or not.

The press has a duty to report cases, particularly cases of this sort, where serious consequences have followed from the action of the state. We know that journalists are thinner on the ground than they once were and often have to cover different courts. I speak with some experience as the chairman of the press regulation body and knowing the pressures that journalists are under. They themselves often have to make representations to judges, in all sorts of circumstances, as to whether there should be an anonymity order or not. They might be faced with having to persuade a judge who has already been told that there is a presumption of anonymity. That is a hard burden to discharge for a journalist who may or may not have some legal representation. As a result, it seems to me almost inevitable that all officers will be granted anonymity.

If that is what Parliament thinks is appropriate, so be it, but let us not delude ourselves into thinking that presumption will mean anything other than automatic anonymity in these circumstances. I think this is a step that should not be taken. Although all these amendments concern a very real issue and concern, open justice and fairness to all seem to me to point to the result that the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, should be accepted and the other amendments rejected.

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[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

Thank you. Amendment 407 asks us to make a practical decision about policing and tackling violence against women and girls. It is not—I repeat, not—about taking sides in a culture war. Recording biological sex in every case is about getting the basics right: honest crime figures, sound operational decisions and better protection for victims of violence. If we do not know clearly in our police data who is male and who is female, we cannot properly track male violence, spot patterns and target resources where they are most needed.

When police forces blur sex and gender identity, the data starts to go wrong. Hardly any perpetrators of sexual violence are women, so it takes only a small number of male offenders being recorded as women to make it look—wrongly—as if women are suddenly committing many more violent and sexual offences. That distorts our statistics, makes it harder to see the true scale of male violence against women, and risks bad safeguarding decisions.

If systems shift between recording sex, gender as perceived or self-identified gender, we lose track of the trends. We can no longer say with confidence whether male violence is rising or falling, or whether policy changes are working. When the public discover that “female” means one thing in one table and something different in another, trust in policing and government data inevitably suffers.

Professor Alice Sullivan is one of the UK’s leading experts in quantitative social science. She was appointed by the Government to independently review how public organisations can best collect data on sex and gender. Her review cuts through the confusion that currently exists. It says that, when the state needs sex data, it should ask a simple factual question about biological sex—“What is your sex: male or female?”—and that that must be kept separate from any voluntary questions about gender identity. It strongly recommends that all police forces record biological sex in all relevant systems.

Some people worry that this will force trans people to out themselves to the police. It should not and it does not have to. The police already record very sensitive information—religion, disability, sexuality—while respecting confidentiality, human rights and data protection law. The sex question is about biological reality for operational and statistical purposes. Held securely in background systems, it is not a licence to broadcast someone’s history or to deny their gender identity in day-to-day interactions. Where there is a need to understand gender identity, that can be done through a separate, clearly labelled voluntary question with strict safeguards.

The choice is stark. If we do not record biological sex, we accept distorted crime figures, poorer operational decisions, broken trend data and growing public mistrust. If we do record biological sex clearly and consistently, we give ourselves honest statistics, better safeguarding and a policing system that can see and therefore tackle the reality of male violence against women and girls.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 407, on the recording of sex in police data. It is a real shame that the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, is unable to be with us because she would have introduced it very elegantly.

A year ago, in March 2025, Professor Alice Sullivan’s Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender came out. It pointed out:

“It is well-established that sex is a major determinant of offending and victimisation”.


The noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, may have been going through the motions but he went through them very well by explaining clearly why this amendment matters. As he pointed out, it is very difficult for the Government to claim to have a target-based campaign to reduce violence against women and girls if they do not have consistent, accurate data in relation to women and girls. Although Professor Sullivan’s review was broadly welcomed by the Government, its recommendations have not yet been acted on. This amendment attempts to nudge some action from the Government.

The issue of delayed guidance is a constant problem. The Women’s Rights Network recently contacted the National Police Chiefs’ Council, inquiring whether it intends to now record sex accurately and address what it said was the “ideological corruption of data”. The NPCC’s reply says that

“updates to the collection and recording of sex and gender reassignment questions are pending subject to the issue of national guidance by the Office for National Statistics/Government Statistical Service following the UK Supreme Court ruling earlier this year”.

That is one pending answer. Individual police forces responding to a variety of organisations’ queries about the continued use of a variety of approaches to collecting sex data—including self-ID, recording a rapist as female and so on—say that they are waiting for guidance from the ONS and the GSS. Is there anyone not waiting for guidance? It feels as though this is a waste of time that is unnecessarily adding to confusion.

In Committee, I went into detail about differing and contradictory data collection practices across police forces. I will not repeat that, but recording practices vary not just between but within criminal justice agencies and even relevant government departments. As there are 40 different databases at a national level relating to criminal justice, the data that is being collected as we speak is full of discrepancies. The Home Office’s annual data requirement on demographic data, for example, advises police forces to record sex subject to a gender recognition certificate. Other mandatory Home Office standards—on police use of force, for example—require officers to record perceived gender, with a choice of male, female or other. There are also the multi agency public protection arrangements, which focus on protecting the public from the most serious harm from sexual and violent offenders, including convicted terrorists. They too conflate sex and gender in their data collection.

However, the Murray Blackburn Mackenzie criminal justice blog discovered via a freedom of information request that MAPPA provides police officers across the UK with

“51 options to record the gender identity of high-risk offenders”.

How does it help to keep the public safe, or aid operational coherence, to know whether a terrorist or paedophile is pangender, genderqueer, agender, bi-gender or gender-fluid, just to name a few of the 51 options they could fill in? I am not trying to be glib; I am just urging the Government to bring clarity and consistency to the collection of data on sex in relation to victims and perpetrators, because otherwise I think it is unfair to claim that there is anything like an evidence-based policy when it comes to sex and, indeed, gender.

We have recently had some exchanges about the new aggravated offences in relation to transgender people, and there are people who are transgender who claim that hate speech and hate crime against them has gone up. I am not challenging whether or not that is true. But to collate the data to make a case for that, one has to make a distinction in the collection of data between somebody who is transgender and somebody who says “I am a woman” who is in fact a transgender person who identifies as a woman.

I think that, for all victims concerned, let alone for understanding the nature of offenders, we need to have accurate, consistent data across all criminal justice agencies and all police forces. I hope that the Minister will at least give us an assurance that the recommendations of Professor Sullivan’s fine and important review—which is full of detail and evidence, with practical conclusions, and which the Government have welcomed—will be acted on. If we can get that assurance tonight, that would be brilliant. If there is any government reluctance to accept Professor Sullivan’s review, it would be really helpful to understand why—what the hold-up is—and maybe the Minister could explain that too.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, given what the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, said about the lateness of the hour, which I think we are all aware of, I want to be very short on my concerns about Amendments 406 and 407. I am sorry not to see the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, in her place.

My concerns about both amendments are about practicality and the dignity of people. In a nutshell, this is what they have in common: the police are going to be the race police and the sex police in addition to being the police, and they require police officers to make a judgment even against the way that the suspect—or the victim—defines themselves at any stage in the criminal justice process. I think that is a mistake.

How is this going to work? A victim goes to the police because they have experienced an assault or another serious crime. Whatever community or person they are, they will go to the police, and, under both these amendments, the police officer is required to interrogate whether they are who they say they are on sex and race grounds. I think this is a real mistake, and it will not help the police in the difficult work they have to do and certainly will not help all our communities in these difficult times.

I think that is one minute and 58 seconds. I hope noble Lords understand my point.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have one sentence to add to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. The Office for National Statistics, in response to an FoI, said on the collection of data in relation to the “gender identity different from sex registered at birth” category:

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


but there is not enough data to be able to do that. Why? Because the data is so low that it is statistically insignificant. It is not corrupt and it is not many more to twist it for women. We need to be factually accurate when looking at this issue.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I was not making the point it has been assumed I was making. This is about consistency, which is the point made by Professor Sullivan. Different police forces are collecting different data on gender identity or sex, sometimes conflating the two and sometimes using multiple variations on a theme. I then used the analogy of this happening across criminal justice. From the point of view of whatever evidence someone is trying to collect, as has just been pointed out, if we are going to collect data—and maybe we should not bother—will it be useful if it is different all over the country depending on the department?

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am struggling to hear the question in the noble Baroness’s intervention. I repeat the point that the Office for National Statistics and the police data that is currently collected both say the numbers are so low they are insignificant and therefore unusable.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I very much support this amendment. In Committee, I tabled an amendment, which was debated—the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, was acting Minister at the time—and would have prevented a criminal record being kept for children who are prosecuted by private rail companies under Section 5 of the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 and criminal records being created as a result, because there seemed to be a practice in certain magistrates’ courts for prosecuting such children for what were inadvertent, youthful transgressions, which were wrong but certainly did not merit a criminal record which, as I understand it, could be searched by potential employers for between eight and 11 years. I would like a commitment that this review, if it takes place, will cover that sort of case. It is all part of that bigger picture of children having criminal records created against them.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to give enthusiastic support to this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. I think that a criminal record disclosure regime is very important—we all understand that we do not want the worst of the worst working with children and so on —but the impact on rehabilitation is quite serious.

On Monday evening, it was therefore a great relief when the Minister said to those of us who were worried that non-crime hate incidents might be stored on a criminal database that could be used to prevent future employment or volunteering opportunities that that was a misplaced concern—although having the word “hate” by your name on a police database might not be what one would want.

In this instance, we are talking about people who have criminal convictions, have been in prison or have been serving their time. In working with former prisoners, I have known former drug addicts and gang members who have been invaluable as volunteers or in working with young people or youth services, but many of them are simply kept out of being able to help because of the barring scheme. A group of ex-prisoners that I had some dealing with wanted to do some work with care homes—we desperately need people to work in care homes. They were fully rehabilitated but were basically going to be barred from doing so. That seemed to me to be unfair and counterproductive. There was also a teenage victim of a grooming gang—a victim—who was convicted for soliciting prostitution at the age of 16. She should get a pardon, of course, but the main thing is that she is barred even from going on her own child’s school trips. She desperately wants to help out in the school, but she cannot.

These things should be looked at quite straight- forwardly. It is tricky, because I am aware that we do not want threatening people to work with, for example, children, but we should not be risk averse. I commend the noble Baroness on the wording, which is an appropriate balance between public protection and rehabilitation. There is no point putting people in prison and telling them that they will be different people and be given a second chance if they rehabilitate but then denying them that second chance when they leave prison. They might as well just carry on being criminals. I think this amendment is, as they say, a no-brainer, and I hope the Government will accept it.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 390A from the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. I just want to give a practical look at this. As many noble Lords know, I have been a youth and community worker for well over 35 years now, and one of my biggest projects was to run a job club. Many of the young men in particular in my job club were very disappointed when they could not get work. Invariably, they had had some brush with the law that meant prison time, had done the work on themselves to be productive members of society, and came out, but then the barring code, DBS and all kinds of things got in the way. What do you believe they returned to then? They returned to the only skill they had, which was criminal activity. Most of the most serious criminals I dealt with—the repeat criminals, the ones that you really needed to cross the road for—were so because, at that moment when we could have assessed them slightly differently, when their youthful transgressions could have been looked at in a different light, we did not, and they then became a really serious, long-term problem to us all.

When I spoke to a group of young men very recently, and I keep saying men because I have been doing work with gang-involved young men, one of them finished our conversation by saying to me, “You”—by that, he meant us—“are doing it to yourselves”. He said that if we continue to view him as a criminal, he will continue to behave as a criminal.

We are all certain of two things: we do not want people who have committed crimes of the worst kind to go unpunished and get away with them, and we want to protect public safety. But since these rules first came in, some time ago now, our protection awareness and the rules have greatly advanced. As a trustee of a charity that does youth work, my job was to look at people’s criminal records and help to assess whether we could help them to work safely with our young people. Usually, we could do that, and for those for whom we could not we had to ask them to leave.

The idea that the Government should have a review is long overdue. If you really want to rehabilitate people, you have to show them that there is some chance that they can re-enter society and make up for what they may have done incorrectly. We understand that it is a balance but, again, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, pointed out, the wording of the amendment contains that balance. I commend it to the House.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 380 erects a vital safeguard. It blocks Clause 154 from handing millions of drivers’ private photos to the police for facial recognition searches without full parliamentary scrutiny and explicit consent. It stops a road traffic database being quietly repurposed for mass biometric surveillance, while still allowing proportionate, tightly regulated data sharing for genuine policing needs.

In Committee, Peers from across the House voiced concerns echoing not just the Liberal Democrats but a wide range of civil society groups, among them Liberty, Big Brother Watch, Justice, StopWatch, Inquest and Privacy International. The Minister still tells us that this is merely a tidying-up exercise with no impact on facial recognition, but the evidence tells a very different story. It points to a plan to funnel photos of over 50 million innocent drivers into a vast facial recognition repository, dismantling vital privacy safeguards.

For anyone who thinks that sounds exaggerated, let me make three points. First, the previous Government explicitly justified an almost identical clause on the basis that it would enable facial recognition searches; they were candid about that intention. If this Government do not share that purpose, they should have no difficulty supporting my amendment.

Secondly, thanks to freedom of information requests, we now know that other civic databases, passports and immigration records are already acting as de facto facial recognition libraries, without public knowledge, consent or a clear parliamentary mandate.

Thirdly, there is a strategic facial match-up project—a joint Home Office and police scheme—to enable facial recognition searches across multiple databases, including non-policing ones. Its existence has yet to be confirmed in public Home Office policy documents, having surfaced only via government tender notices, media reports and oblique spending references. If this project does not exist, I invite the Minister to set the record straight.

Facial recognition turns an ordinary photograph into biometric data, a unique identifier like a fingerprint or DNA, which in law should be retained for criminal justice purposes only under very strict safeguards. The UK does not currently have population-wide biometric databases of innocent citizens. Creating a single, easily accessible policing platform for these civil images runs directly against the European Court of Human Rights’ warning that blanket retention of biometrics is a serious and disproportionate interference with privacy. Plugging the DVLA database into a facial recognition engine also risks creating a honeypot for hostile states and criminals, exposing the lifelong biometric signatures of almost every adult driver.

There are practical problems as well. Driving licence photos are updated only every 10 years, so the database already holds millions of outdated images. Using that kind of so-called “noisy data” for facial recognition inevitably increases the risk of false positives and wrongful stops. We know that this technology is far less precise than DNA and has already contributed to wrongful accusations, yet we are assured that its accuracy is improving. However, there is no timescale for this. The Government are, in effect, asking Parliament to sign a blank cheque for mass access to our biometric data. Amendment 380 simply asks this House not to hand them the pen. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I know a young man who has just got his driving licence. He is very excited and sees it as a rite of passage; he is now a grown-up. He has joined the club of drivers and he shows his driving licence with pride. I can assure noble Lords he has no idea that applying for a driving licence means that he is joining a vast biometric police database, a club of police surveillance, and his mugshot will be treated like one of those Most Wanted gallery of rogues images.

This is a corruption of public trust. The public apply for one thing, only for it to be subverted and used for something else. It seems to me to be duplicitous and behind the backs of the public. Currently, police forces can directly access and search DVLA data only in relation to road traffic offences and must phone the DVLA in relation to other offences. I note that the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, would not prevent police forces accessing DVLA data for law enforcement purposes, but it should not be the default position. It is important to create this safeguard to prevent such data being used to conduct, in effect, phishing exercises of facial recognition. Therefore, we need this amendment to be taken seriously and I will be interested in what the Minister has to say.

This is not some paranoid dystopian vision. In a recent submission to the Home Affairs Committee, the National Police Chiefs’ Council stated that police chiefs were indeed seeking access to the DVLA database for facial recognition. That would be a huge expansion of police surveillance powers, granting them access, as we have heard, to the biometric data of tens of millions of citizens. We cannot overestimate how important it is that we do not just nod this through but take seriously the risk to civil liberties. It is why the noble Baroness’s Amendment 380, which creates a safeguard, is so important: to protect the civil liberties and privacy of innocent driving licence holders.

I conclude with a quote from Big Brother Watch, which says that this represents

“a disproportionate expansion of police powers to track and identify citizens across time and locations for low-level policing needs”.

In a way, it is an abuse of the police to ask them to use these underhand methods, and it is therefore vital that there are safeguards in law to prevent this happening, particularly because it is happening behind the backs of ordinary people.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

There is no question, as I understand Clause 154, of a blank cheque, and there is no question here of underhand methods. What the clause requires is that the Secretary of State produces regulations, and the regulations must specify the circumstances in which information may be made available under this section. I am assuming that in due course, the Government are going to bring forward regulations to implement this provision. Those regulations will have to be laid before Parliament, and there will be an opportunity, if any noble Lord wishes to do so, to debate those regulations. I suggest that that is the time to assess whether the regulations contain a fair balance between the rights of the individual and the public interest.

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[Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)]

But you would not know until it gets to that point: to violence. If you do not start off with where it starts from, you will never get to the end, whether that is from trivial chat or whatever you want to call it, or playground. Later on, if that same individual or whoever carries on, that leads to violence, and if you have no way of going back to check where that started from, how do you know to be able to prosecute that individual for what he said, going back further to where we are now? That is what we need to be very careful about.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, to follow on from the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence of Clarendon, one difficulty that we have had in relation to any discussion such as this is that the police are under an enormous amount of pressure because of the horrible things that happen—understatement of the year—to imagine that all speech can lead to violence. If they see that, obviously they will police all speech and treat everybody’s speech as potentially dangerous and damaging. Once that happens, we no longer live in a free, democratic society. That is quite straightforward.

One thing that I think is very difficult is that the horror of Stephen’s racist murder and the fact that the police did not intervene and there was so much scandal around it means that sometimes people feel very nervous, anxious or worried about saying anything in the name of fighting hate, in case they are somehow implicated in having prejudiced views. I would like to enthusiastically welcome the Government’s Amendment 383, abolishing the statutory basis for non-crime hate incidents, because, over the past few years, when some of us have raised problems with non-crime hate incidents, and with the police policing those incidents—as in attitudes and words—it has felt as though we were banging our heads against a brick wall. So it feels quite good to count this as something of a win, and even to be vindicated, because, to be honest, opposing non-crime hate incidents has meant facing some brickbats, both outside here, in my capacity as the director of the Academy of Ideas, and, to be honest, especially in here. There was a less than subtle inference that opposition to non-crime hate incidents, or indeed a whole range of hate legislation in fact, revealed some lurking bigotry or was proof that we were soft on hate.

Yet here we are, and that is proof of something else that is important: that it is always worth raising issues here and battling on, because sometimes Governments can change their minds and sometimes the College of Policing can change its mind—you can make people look at things again. I also welcome the outbreak of common sense and reasonableness from the College of Policing and the fact that there has been a genuine attempt to get on top of what obviously was not intended from the original non-crime hate incidents—it has got completely out of hand. Despite that, and despite the fact that I am delighted that the notions of freedom of expression and free speech have now been taken seriously by the different bodies, I still have some worries and would like some reassurance and clarification from the Minister.

I am worried about the risk of non-crime hate incidents simply being rebranded. The Government have suggested, as we have heard, that some incidents currently recorded as NCHIs will continue to be recorded as anti-social behaviour incidents. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Young, explained in terms of the higher threshold, I want to check with the Minister whether the behaviour that will be recorded that way will still be based on the subjective premise of a victim perceiving hostility or prejudice towards protected characteristics.

As so much anti-social behaviour regulation, as we discussed earlier on Report, is prosecuted to a lower evidential standard yet treated as a criminal offence and can lead to criminal sanctions, could this lower threshold be used in such incidents? I am worried about repeating the same problems. Can the Minister also rule out that any such anti-social behaviour hate incidents will be added to the national crime database, disclosed in enhanced DBS checks or investigated in much the same way as NCHIs? I am not sure about that.

One reason why I support Amendment 387B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, is that it will make it harder to set up an alternative recording system that is NCHIs in all but name. I am also worried about ambiguity and confusion if we leave all this to guidance, as has been mentioned. As I understand it, police forces are not prohibited from continuing to record NCHIs under the Government’s amendment for quite a while, and I am just not sure how this is going to happen.

The statutory basis for NCHIs under Sections 60 and 61 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act was simply a way for the Secretary of State to issue guidance. Will repealing the statutory basis alone not simply mean that the police will return to the pre-2023 position where they continue with NCHIs under their own guidance? Maybe I have misunderstood that. Even if that happening only temporarily until the Government worked out exactly what to do, I am concerned about this muddled period.

Amendment 387B would rule out this concerning prospect, offer the police some clarity and guarantee the outcome that we all desire. Clarity, or lack of it, has always been a bugbear in relation to non-crime hate incidents. It is why I am so anxious to hear how the Government’s plans will be communicated, and I hope there will be clarity. On the one hand, we have experience of how a lack of clarity led to the growth of NCHIs without any intention for that to happen. Even the current DPP, Stephen Parkinson, admitted to the Times Crime and Justice Commission that until recently he “had no idea” what an NCHI was, was puzzled by it, and had to look up what on earth the term meant. That was the current DPP, noting that even within the police service there has been some surprise at the level of non-crime hate incidents that were being investigated because they did not know what they were.

The last thing police forces need now is to be left in limbo in any way, while consultation, regulations or guidance is sorted out. We know from An Inspection into Activism and Impartiality in Policing published by His Majesty’s inspectorate in September 2024 that there has been inconsistency in the way forces have responded to NCHI guidance. What happens if some of the more EDI-enthusiastic forces carry on spending thousands of hours sifting through online posts, seeking out so-called hate and so on and investigating common everyday interactions as if they are crimes, which I know is not what the Government or the College of Policing intend?

Limbo in law is never good and any ambiguities can lead to the law being flouted. I will give just one comparison. As of October 2025, the start of the academic year, only one university had complied with the Supreme Court judgment clarifying biological sex in relation to the Equality Act. The rest claimed to be waiting for the EHRC code—waiting for guidance rather than complying with their legal obligations. I do not want the same thing to happen.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I will speak to you all later.

I think the noble Lord is wrong. You cannot have these vague terms. I would have thought the noble Lord would appreciate the fact that you need clarity in legislation. How can the police know what “in the vicinity” means? How can they possibly make good judgments? They already make terrible judgments based on some of the laws that we have already passed; they overstep the mark constantly because they cannot be clear about exactly what it means and what we think it means. I argue that 50 metres is a sensible limit.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 369, which would introduce an express statutory right to protest and impose negative and positive obligations on authorities that recognise the right to protest. We were told in Committee, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has reminded us, and we have been told again that this will not be necessary. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has rightly pointed out, this group of amendments indicates exactly why it is necessary. This whole chapter, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has explained, would undermine the right to protest.

A constant concern that I have with this Bill is that it is just the latest iteration of adding new powers to a veritable arsenal of laws already on the statute books undermining and curtailing protests. The problem is that we keep making new laws that seemingly are then not enforced, or not consistently enforced, leading to a demand that something more should be done, and more and more. Each time, that normalises the chipping away of the right to protest as a democratic norm—not as an unqualified right but as a norm.

I am just back from Manchester where, last week, two masked and arm-banded pro-Ayatollah Khamenei supporters—apologists for the terror-backing Iranian regime—rode horses at Iranian dissidents in the middle of the day on the streets of Manchester. It was terrifying, intimidating and violent in many ways. What struck me was that the Greater Manchester Police officers who were asked why they did not intervene just shrugged and said, “What can we do?” I am not advocating that we have a new law specifically banning the riding of horses by pro-Islamists through the streets. I am suggesting that we need more decisive police action and use of the laws that we have when they are required. I worry about building up more and more laws.

That is one of the reasons why I share with other noble Lords real concerns about the vague phrasing of Clause 139. The absence of a clear definition of “vicinity”, as has been explained, would allow the police to create substantial no-protest zones around places of worship, while giving powers to ban demos that may have the effect of intimidating people so as to deter them from religious activities. That is a very permissive power. Interestingly, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, described what he considered Clause 139 to be. He talked about people being intimidated on Saturdays at synagogue. We all recognise that, but that is not what Clause 139 says. I would be more sympathetic if it was, but, in fact, it is a very general clause that might have unintended consequences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

In that example, I revert to what I said about the locality being designated only if the police suspect that criminality is likely to occur or has occurred on previous occasions. I put it to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that a largely peaceful protest outside an embassy and at an appropriate distance would not fall into that category of protest.

As I was going to say, clear operational guidance from the NPCC—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It might well be that that protester is just on a general demonstration. If you are an Iranian or Chinese dissident, you might be on a civil rights demonstration, arguing for the right to protest. That would equally be the target of the ire of your authoritarian, anti-protest, anti-civil liberty regime. Can the Minister explain how this cannot possibly chill their right to go on a protest? It is not just the transnational example—other examples were given. Some people will not go on protests because they will be frightened of the consequences.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

On this having a chilling effect, the new offence will cover only people in the locality who are

“wearing or otherwise using an item that conceals their identity”.

As I said, the police will use this power only if they can say there is going to be criminality on a particular protest, such as a march. That is not a power they are going to be using lightly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 371A, 419 and 441B, to which I have added my name. It is clear that attacking a police officer with a sledgehammer or breaking into an RAF base and damaging two planes, causing £7 million-worth of damage, is not a peaceful protest. Amendment 371A rightly targets that grey area between ordinary protest groups and groups that cross the threshold to be proscribed under terrorism law. These are groups whose purpose and practice involves the deliberate commission of criminal damage, riot, violent disorder and interference with national infrastructure.

When groups are legislated against, often, splinter groups form and these groups are left to fester. Amendment 371A would give greater power to the Secretary of State to deal with extremism at its root, rather than waiting for it to grow and meet the terrorist threshold. By this point, it becomes too late and the harms, which are sometimes irreparable, may have already occurred. Responsible governance means intervening before that point is reached. For those reasons, I support this amendment. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for his tenacity and I support his amendment.

Often, our approach has been far too reactive, notwithstanding the announcement being made in the other place. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, the Jewish community in this country knows all too well how rhetoric and ideological radicalisation can create a climate of fear. Between 2024 and 2025, at least 10 and probably more terrorism cases against British Jews or UK-based Israeli interests were uncovered. These plots were foiled thanks to the extraordinary work of the counterterrorism police and the Community Security Trust.

We have created an environment where extremism is allowed to grow unchallenged. Are we just going to wait until there is another attack on a synagogue or a credible plot against a Jewish school? At that point, it is too late. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, recognises that extremism rarely appears suddenly; it develops gradually through networks, narratives and campaigns that legitimise hostility. Left unchallenged, these dynamics can become embedded in communities and online spaces, creating an environment where more serious forms of criminality or even terrorism become more likely. Amendment 419 is about ensuring that our response to extremism is enduring, co-ordinated and strategic. Above all, it is about ensuring that the Government are equipped with the tools and the institutional framework necessary to address extremism before it escalates into violence.

Finally, Amendment 441B in this group, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Walney, and the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, seeks to ensure that organisations which promote or support criminal conduct or which attempt to subvert the constitutional integrity or democratic institutions of the United Kingdom are prohibited from receiving public funds. Such a safeguard is well overdue. It would ensure that taxpayers’ money cannot, whether deliberately or inadvertently, support organisations whose activities threaten public safety or the foundations of our democracy. Public funds should strengthen society, not subsidise those who seek to destabilise it.

It remains far too difficult to challenge organisations that continue to receive public support despite clear evidence that their leaders promote extremist ideologies, including those who openly aspire to replace democratic governments with a religious caliphate. This loophole allows public money to reach bodies fundamentally at odds with our democratic principles. This amendment would close that unacceptable gap. It would protect public funds from misuse and send an unequivocal message that any attempt to undermine the democratic institutions of the United Kingdom should not and will not be tolerated.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Walney, Lord Pannick and Lord Hogan-Howe, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for listening in Committee. Reservations were raised, and it is refreshing and unusual to have an amendment brought back that tries to take into account some of the issues that were raised in good faith. The fact that the amendment has now been posed as not unduly undermining freedom of speech or association and does not criminalise expressions of support is very useful. That it is so much narrower in scope makes it much more something I support—not that everyone has been waiting for that point, but none the less.

More seriously, the pre-proscription point is really important. My dread is that what has happened with Palestine Action, without getting into the court case, has discredited what proscription is about and watered down what people think terrorism is. These much more granular attempts at making distinctions are so important.

However, we need to acknowledge the dangers in what we mean by “extremism” in relation to this whole group of amendments, especially today, when the Government’s pronouncements on anti-extremism are coming out. We should acknowledge that those who hold the pen on any legal definition of extremism acquire extraordinary powers to curtail free speech, criminalise people and so on. It makes this a difficult issue. In a democratic, pluralist society there is invariably a wide range of beliefs and opinions that can be dubbed extremist. That means we have some potholes to negotiate, as it can lead to partisan, subjective or political labelling of dissenting views that can be dubbed extremist.

I raise that because it is not straightforward. We might think that we all know what we mean by “extremist”. I have agreed with all the examples I have heard today—I have thought, “I don’t like them either—I’ll dub them extremist”. The problem is when it is used a bit more promiscuously. If the definition is “something that completely undermines democratic norms and values”, up until recently I would have thought that anyone attacking the democratic norm of the key legal protection traditionally afforded to due process, which has gone on for hundreds of years, was an extremist, but now we have a Government pushing to abolish jury trials and I am meant to accept it as straightforward.

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for recognising what has been done in this amendment, but it does not actually talk about extremism. It talks about “extreme criminal protest groups”. It may reassure her that the definition does not depend on the views being put forward being extremist but the actions and particular conduct—riot and so forth. I offer that to reassure her on the point she is making, which otherwise I am listening to very carefully.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for that clarity. That is true for that amendment. I was going on to talk about why I am sympathetic to Amendment 419, which calls on the Government to publish a counterextremism strategy, while recognising that, when we do so, we must acknowledge that this is a difficult area. Amendment 371A has carefully avoided being about views and opinions, but not all the amendments in this group do. We have to be very careful when we talk about extremism.

On Amendment 419, one should congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, on his persistence, as has been said. I like the amendment because it calls for a review to be published annually. The announcement today that there is a strategy does not make this amendment irrelevant, because we need to carry on updating and looking carefully at what we mean by this. Laying that before Parliament seems important. On the pre-emption of the new social cohesion document, Protecting What Matters, it is certainly being posed as an anti-extremism strategy but is likely to get into all sorts of difficulties precisely because of this uncertainty about what we mean by extremism, beyond the controversy over the special representative on anti-Muslim hostility.

The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has talked about the difficulties there. I am very anxious about it. I have been contacted since the announcement by people working on the grooming gangs who are worried that they would not be able to raise the issue with this definition—even though they are not quite sure what it is yet, so fair enough—as well as academics working on cousin marriage and so on. There has been some enthusiasm in certain quarters, saying that we should now name and shame all the media organisations dominated by anti-Muslim hatred. You can already see supporters of this new definition, such as it is, gearing up to start pointing fingers and they have started naming names. It is fair enough, but with this leaked document saying that national symbols such as the union flag can be a tool of hate used to intimidate and exclude, that it is an extremist symbol and so on, you can see why people would be anxious.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, but he is running two inconsistent arguments. He is saying first that the law already allows this, and secondly that this amendment to make the position clear is fundamentally objectionable on grounds of principle. He cannot run both arguments, nor say that it is objectionable for one of the factors that the court should take into account to be whether the hostility is based on sex. Why should we exclude sex? Why does the law currently allow the victim’s membership, or presumed membership, of a racial or religious group to be a factor that the court can take into account, but not sex or transgender status? That makes no sense whatever when the Equality Act deals with all these protected characteristics.

I emphasise that whether it is right or appropriate for the judge to take these factors into account in the circumstances of a particular case, and to what extent, will depend on the discretion of the sentencing judge, which will inevitably depend on the circumstances of the crime. Therefore, to exclude entirely the factor of the victim being, or being presumed to be, transgender, as the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, seeks to do, seems arbitrary.

Of course, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, that we must be very careful indeed to ensure that people are not punished for the exercise of free speech, but the law protects that exercise. It protects it by reference to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the sentencing judge must take into account in all cases. I do not know the circumstances of the case that the noble Lord referred to, where there was an acquittal at the appeal stage, but I strongly suspect that Article 10 had something to do with it. I support the Government’s amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have serious reservations about the Government’s amendments on aggravated offences. I appreciate that this puts me at odds with the Minister, but I knew that long before today, because in Committee he made a passionate speech, as he has today, telling us how proud he would be to move these amendments and claiming that they show a Government prepared to protect LGBT and disabled people.

If this is such an important change in the law for the Government, and a principled flagship for progressive Labour that appeared in its manifesto, we have to ask why the Government waited until Report in the Lords—so late in the Bill’s passage—to table the amendments. They must have thought that they were principled and important before, so why are we seeing them only now? I am afraid that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, explained, this denies this House the constitutional right to properly scrutinise and mull over the complex details of the amendments—let alone the fact that that was denied to the elected Chamber.

In the limited space that we have here, I will start by raising some general concerns I have with aggravated offences. Some people might say that this is a Second Reading speech; if it is, it is because the Government did not bring the amendments forward until now, so I will say it anyway. In my view, the state’s job, via criminal justice, is to prosecute material, clearly defined offences. When the authorities attempt to either infer or impute motivation for a crime, seemingly to signal its particular gravity, that is a dangerous move towards punishing ideas, beliefs or attitudes. Some of those ideas, of course, might be bigoted or abhorrent, but they are none the less ideas and opinions. We need to be wary of inadvertently stepping towards thought-crime solutions just to signal our moral virtue, and I am worried about expanding that regime.

This has consequences. Offences such as these carry higher maximum penalties when offenders demonstrate hostility, and this can mean prison. But hostility can be interpreted broadly in the law as ill will, antagonism or prejudice. Let me be clear: violence, harassment, assault or whatever against a disabled person, a trans person, a woman or anyone should be punished appropriately—severely, if that is your take—and certainly uniformly, regardless of motive. But aggravated sentencing can lead to some perverse outcomes.

On hate crime aggravators, in Committee I used an example from the CPS report Our Recent Hate Crime Prosecutions. A man was put in jail for 20 weeks for

“assaulting his father, sister and a police officer, and using racist slurs against his sister’s partner”.

But the CPS notes that, without the racist slurs, he would have only received a community order. So for the assault he would have retained his freedom but, with the racist words, he got 20 weeks in jail. What is more problematic is that many of the offences we are talking about are not actually those kinds of aggressions but often speech that is promiscuously criminalised.

This sentencing anomaly really hits home when it comes to the much boasted-of addition of sex into the aggregation. “At last”, people will say; “misogyny taken seriously”. But, during the Sentencing Bill, the Government refused to accept a perfectly reasonable amendment exempting sexual assault offences and domestic violence offences from the early release scheme. Surely, a real, material commitment to women would be to have accepted that amendment, not increased sentences for offences deemed driven by hostility to women.

Instead, my view is that we should prosecute actual offences committed against any woman. When those offences involve, for example, sexual violence or domestic abuse, we should give appropriate sentences to perpetrators and then not let the offenders out early to free up prison places. That would help women far more than this amendment, the wording of which says that the aggravators must be announced in “open court” to declare an offence aggravated—if ever there were an indication of the performative nature of this, that is it.

One worry is that many of the offences to which “aggravated” will be attached will be the tangled plethora of hate speech crimes, already leading to the scandal of Britain’s declining free speech reputation internationally, with so many arrested for speech crimes, as we have heard about. So many of these offences are wholly subjective, because hostility can be defined by the victim. We have seen the recent weaponisation of speech against those who do not share the same views, the whole cancel culture and toxicity that has proliferated, and identity groups and those with protective characteristics pitched against each other in grievance complaints.

Although it was not in the criminal law, we saw a gross example of this when John Davidson, a man with Tourette’s and the subject of an award-winning sympathetic film, involuntarily ticked and shouted out the N-word. Subsequent commentary refused to accept that there was no intent to offend. Race and disability were put at odds, rather than empathetically understanding the issues, and that is one of the problems with playing the identity politics issue. Increasing aggravated offences will just add to this toxic mix, and that, combined with public order and communications arrests—if not prosecutions for speech crimes, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton—will make this issue really difficult.

The issue of hostility to transgender identity is likely to stir up further tensions. I want to ask: what is transgender identity? At best, it is a subjective category. It is a self-defined description. That is not a criticism; it is just an observation. Transgender identity does not require a gender recognition certificate or surgery. By the way, the wording in the amendment is confusing here: it gives credence to the fact that surgery might be a key, but then it says “proposing to undergo” gender reassignment, which is a very odd phrase. That is why the amendments of the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Cameron of Lochiel, are right to query and probe it, which is what we should be doing, even though it is so late in the day. How transgender people are defined will matter to how these amendments will be understood.

The clarification of the noble Lords from the Official Opposition, in Amendments 337, 350, 351 and 352, establishing what sex means in the Bill, is also helpful. Emphasising biological sex—sex at birth—is necessary to ensure that the cultural clash between gender identity and sex is not muddled up in this Bill or in these amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, in his Amendment 334A, also hopes to ensure that the proposed changes do not criminalise misgendering.

I just note that I hate the word “misgendering”. If a male identifies as a female, even if he has a certificate or has had surgery, he is still a man. Saying that is not misgendering; it is factually accurate. Asking me to call him a woman is compelled speech, asking me to repeat misinformation. But would that statement, which I am very nervous about making, be seen as evidence of hostility to someone based on their gender identity? Guess what: too often, those accused of, and punished for, so-called misgendering offences are women. Police criminalised Sex Matters’ Helen Joyce for some tweets referring to Freda Wallace by his former name Fred and using he/him pronouns, and the police recorded that as “criminal harassment” with “transgender aggravators”.

What about the young lesbian who says that she is not attracted to a male—a man who thinks that, by wearing stilettos and a dress, he is a woman and should be allowed into a lesbian-only group at a workplace—

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I do not wish to disturb the noble Baroness’s train of thought, but how we frame this debate is important. It is an aggravated offence if the individual has committed an offence that I outlined earlier, such as grievous or actual bodily harm, public order offences, harassment, stalking or criminal damage. It is not about the issues the noble Baroness is speaking to.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

To clarify, in the first example I gave, of Helen Joyce, it was called criminal harassment for the tweets and the aggravated factors. The police actually dropped it in the end, but they—not me but the police—called it criminal harassment with transgender aggravators. In the example I was giving, the lesbian in her work group was then labelled a bigot. In other words, it is the L in LGBT, not the T, that will often take the hit. I mentioned that because she was threatened by the person, who said they would go to the police, and then she was visited by somebody who said that the police would be involved. I am making this point because I am worried about it spiralling out of control. I would say that that is misogyny: demonising a biological woman for expressing her sexuality as same-sex attracted. I want to be sure that the amendments in this group navigate such clashes and do not avoid them.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise but, a little unusually, this is a convenient time to break for dinner break business. It is mid group, but I assure noble Lords that we are taking a note of who is in the Chamber so that we can continue the group in an orderly fashion after the dinner break business. Before I hear some sedentary tutting, I note that this has been agreed through the usual channels.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

But my argument was against the proposal that these offences in their entirety should be rejected by this House—that the Government’s proposal in its entirety should be rejected by this House. I was not engaging with my noble friend’s argument. I have some sympathy with his point, and in particular that merely misgendering someone should not become a criminal offence. It might be a thoroughly unpleasant thing to do but whether it should be an aggravated offence is worthy of discussion. My concern is that we may be getting ourselves into the position of opposing an amendment that makes an aggravated offence in relation to disabled people, as well as to LGBT people, and we reject that and yet we do not for the other offences.

There is also a danger of attempting to trivialise this matter and a confusion with the debate on non-crime hate incidents. We will come to that. I have taken the strong position that we need a much higher bar in relation to those incidents and that the whole regime needs sweeping away. We will come to that. However, we are not talking about that. We are talking about potentially very serious criminal offences. We are talking about GBH and criminal damage, and are saying that where those offences are motivated by hostility against a group, it does not make sense that the offence can be aggravated in relation to racial or religious hostility but not in relation to disabled people or to LGBT people.

That is the argument. We are not talking about whether people should be able to say disagreeable things on Twitter. This is not the moment for that debate. We are talking about serious offences and whether they should be aggravated, which would result in a more serious penalty and would send a signal to wider society.

There has been a quite concerning increase in hate crimes in relation to LGBT people, particularly transgender people. I have taken for some time a position, which finds me out of step with most of the groups in the LGBT lobby, that there is a very legitimate discussion to have about how women’s rights are affected by transgender rights and that there needs to be a recalibration of the law and the movement’s positions on this. I happen to take that position. However, I know that the way in which this debate is being conducted outside of this Chamber is resulting in an increase in hate against transgender people. That is deeply concerning. It is vilifying people because of ideological positions that are being taken. It is particularly wrong when people in positions of responsibility start using this debate for political purposes.

I have great concern about the climate in which this debate is being—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to clarify or come back on a couple of things.

[Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)]

It is not allowed on Report. You are allowed to ask a question.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I will ask a question then. I understand that the noble Lord says that this has been trivialised into just Twitter or non-crime hate incidents. However, hate crime law very often involves speech. Therefore, it is not just a question of GBH and so on. Also, one of the reasons why it has not been possible to make a principled objection to the whole shebang, which I am opposed to, is because of how the amendments have been laid out. It has been quite difficult to break them down in the way that is suggested. Would the noble Lord therefore accept that, for those of us who are worried, it should not have been handled in this way and that the way in which the amendment arrived here does not facilitate the best scrutiny that, as he has indicated, we should give?

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s intervention. This issue merits further and deeper discussion, which is a matter for the Government to address. Yes, of course, the whole principle of aggravated offences and hate crime is that it may involve an infringement upon free speech. The judgment that we must make is whether it is legitimate that it does because of the seriousness of the offences. As I have said, it is very important that we do not allow the criminal law and the police to intrude into the trivial.

The point that I was making is that there is a danger of giving the impression that this is only about disagreeable things that are said on Twitter. It is not. We are talking about offences at the more serious end of the spectrum as well: offences which, when committed against people simply because of their characteristics, because they happen to be members of a particular group, make them more serious. We should be sending that signal to society and protecting the victims. If we do not take that position, and if we think that the whole regime of aggravated offences is wrong, let us take an honest position and say that we will not have them for racial offences or religious offences either. That is not the position, as I understand it, of our Front Bench, which is why I cannot support noble Lords in opposing the Government’s amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

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

My Lords, I am grateful for the comments of noble Lords and noble Baronesses. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, for her kind comments at the beginning—if I blush, that is the reason why. I appreciate them.

I hope that this debate will be undertaken in a way that respects different views, but there is a significant difference of opinion between noble Lords who support this amendment and those who do not. That is fair, proper and right. This House and the House of Commons are places to debate those issues, and I will try to do so in as friendly and constructive a way as possible while sticking to my firm principles that the Government’s amendment is the right thing to do.

I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lord Cashman; the noble Lords, Lord Shinkwin, Lord Herbert of South Downs, Lord Paddick and Lord Pannick; from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton; and the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green. I think that that spread of opinion from the Cross Benches, the Liberal Democrat Benches, the Government Benches and, indeed, the Conservative Benches shows that this is a real issue that needs to be addressed.

I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, has argued again today. He did so in Committee. I accept his view as his view. He wanted, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Herbert of South Downs, to row back on all aggravated factors in his amendment. He accepts that. I have no argument about his right to do so, but I do about my position on where I accept it. There is a real debate between us.

I say again to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, and other noble Lords who have raised this issue that this amendment is not about non-crime hate incidents or offensive tweets; it is about serious offences such as actual bodily harm, public order offences, harassment, stalking and criminal damage where a prison sentence would be given by a judge on conviction. If the judge, having heard the evidence of the prosecution and witnesses in that trial, believes that the harassment, stalking or actual bodily harm was generated not just by two people meeting in a pub and having a fight but by somebody turning up in that pub, having a fight and suffering actual bodily harm because the individual was a different colour, race, religion or sex—or because they dressed in a transgender way, because that is what they chose and that is the way they live their life—that is something that, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, put his finger on, a judge should take into account when giving a sentence of up to the maximum potential sentence under the law.

That is because the law will say that it was not just an argument or stalking offence or harassment because of a general factor; it will say that the principal direction of that harassment, stalking or grievous bodily harm was because of a transgender characteristic, disability characteristic, racial characteristic or misogyny. I draw a line in the sand on this and say that this House, the Government and Parliament should stand up for those people who face that kind of activity. That is a reasonable position to take.

The amendments strengthen support and protection for victims. No one will go down for a tweet or a non-crime hate incident under this; they will go down because they committed a serious offence, and they will get an aggravated sentence because they did it for a reason that this society should not tolerate.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

If I could clarify—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

No.

[A noble Lord]

It has to be a question though.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am about to ask a question.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

It is Report.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am asking a question; is that allowed on Report? I want just to clarify: when the Minister says a tweet versus a serious offence such as a public order offence or harassment, will he accept that that can be a speech crime? I have never mentioned tweets. It is serious if you get sent to prison for a speech crime. That is why there is concern about speech.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We are going to have a whole debate at some point in the next couple of weeks on non-crime hate incidents involving the type of issues that we are debating. I am putting the case for the Government. That is my view, it is what we are saying, and I have had support from people who have been political opponents in the past, people who I share political views with, opposition parties and Cross-Benchers. That is a reasonable coalition that has said that this is the right thing to do.

Genuine points have been raised about the tabling of this amendment at this late stage on Report. I say three things in response to that. First, this is a manifesto commitment. Secondly, the Law Commission report in 2022 developed this. It is a complex area of criminal law and has been a long time in gestation. Had we been able to draft an amendment that met the objectives we set then I would have tabled it in Committee, but we have drafted and tabled it now after a long period of gestation.

I also say to noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Rooker, that it was announced at Second Reading in the House of Commons that we would bring this amendment forward. In Committee in the House of Commons, an amendment was tabled from the Back Benches by Rachel Taylor, MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, to meet the Labour Government’s manifesto commitment. The House of Commons debated that amendment and the Government said they accepted it in principle but needed to look at it in the context of the Law Commission and its drafting. After a full debate in the Commons, we accepted the amendment and have brought it back.

At Second Reading in this House, I took great pride in saying that we would bring the amendment back. With all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, he tabled an amendment in Committee that would sweep away every aspect of race and other protected characteristics. That is his view. In my argument against that view during the discussion we had in Committee, I said to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, that I would table an amendment on Report and that we would debate it. We have had two and a quarter hours on this debate so far today. We may have a Division on it, on which I hope to get support from other colleagues. But I say to all noble Lords that this is an important issue.

The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, would, in essence, water down that proposal. The amendments in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Lochiel and Lord Davies of Gower, would water down that proposal. The amendments seeking to strike out the offences in Clauses 122 and 124 of threatening emergency workers would mean that individuals could abuse emergency workers on a racial basis. That is simply not acceptable to me, the Labour Government, the Liberal Democrats, Members of the Conservative Back Benches and the Cross Benches. It might be a legitimate view, and I will not deride that view, but is not one I will ever share. I say to my noble friends: join me in that Lobby—

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[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, first, I want tribute to my noble friend Lady Sugg, who has brilliantly led this campaign. I also pay tribute to Payzee Mahmod, who I was fortunate to hear give evidence in the House on Monday on the whole issue of honour-based abuse. I would never dream of taking issue with my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on any legal matter at all, but he talked about the issue of ambiguity and the courts deciding. Why not just get it sorted out now, so that there is no ambiguity? That is why I support my noble friend Lady Sugg in getting the words in now. From what I heard on Monday, it is clear that this would accurately reflect the multi-perpetrator dynamics of the issue. It would provide clarity to professionals and strengthen the safeguarding responses, and it would deliver on the Government’s commitment to a robust definition. Getting it right now would stop any ambiguity, so I hope that the Minister will listen carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for leading on this, and for the excellent and clear speech that she just gave, as well as in the previous debate, which I read about in Hansard.

First, this is an example of a difficult area that people have steered clear of for many years, because they were frightened that, if they talked about it, they would be accused of racism. Secondly, it is not therefore understood, because it has not had public exposure in broader society. The fact that the Government have accepted these amendments will help raise the debate in a way that is not seen as in any way suspicious.

Whether it is clans, family structures or whatever, the multi-perpetrator point is well made, very important and not understood. My only reservation—I do not even know whether I have it—is that I have been very involved in, and concerned about, joint enterprise law, where not one perpetrator but a group of perpetrators was found guilty. That has led to a huge number of miscarriages of justice—there was recently a debate in the House on it. The danger of everyone in the vicinity being drawn in, and guilt by association in any way, makes me nervous. We must ensure that we are not criminalising people who are part of the family and maybe looked away, but who are not necessarily perpetrators. It would be very helpful if that could be cleared up. In general, however, the clearer that we in this House can explain the law, rather than waiting for the court to interpret us—that point was well made—the better.

Secondly, for those involved in the earlier debate on misogyny, women and so on, which was rather fractious, I regard this as heroic work in fighting crime against women and misogyny. Anyone involved in tabling these amendments and persuading the Government to adopt them deserves to be highly commended, because this is what lawmaking should be, rather than signalling one’s disapproval.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister said in his introduction, as a result of the earlier amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, the Government have now brought forward much-needed statutory guidance, together with a clear statutory definition of this pervasive yet often overlooked form of abuse. Both are vital tools for front-line professionals. Without them, warning signs go unseen, cases slip through the cracks and victims remain dangerously exposed.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with everything said by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. As I understand the Government’s position, they accept that it would not be appropriate to impose such an order unless it is necessary and proportionate, and indeed that is the test applied by the European Convention on Human Rights, so the only question is whether the language of the Bill, and the Act that it will become, should reflect the true test. It seems to me, as it seems to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, highly appropriate that what is in the legislation should set out the true test. This has to be applied not just by judges but by police officers, local authorities, communities and everyone who is responsible for considering and enforcing this legislation. Let us put the true and proper test on the face of the Bill.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there is a lot in this group. The Government are undoubtedly sincere in wanting to use the Bill to further tackle anti-social behaviour, and such moves to take on this blight on communities will certainly be popular. However, we have to pause a moment and say that there is already a plethora of tools on the statute book designed to tackle anti-social behaviour, and yet it does not seem to be improving. This is the group in which we need to ask why. Perhaps anti-social behaviour orders and injunctions in all their various guises, from community penalty notices to public spaces protection orders, are just not fit for purpose.

I fear that, instead of tackling this, the Government are taking an easy and performative route and affording the state even more of the same—with more draconian powers—under a different label, that of respect orders. They are doing all this with little clarity or evidence of efficacy. That is what the amendments in this group are designed to tackle. By and large, I support them all.

I tabled Amendment 6, which calls for an independent —I stress the word “independent”—review of existing powers under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which should be published prior to the commencement of Sections 1 and 2 of the Act. As legislators, we have an obligation to take responsibility for assessing the impact of, and the evidence about, laws that we made in the past before we duplicate their weaknesses. We need to understand the pros and cons.

This review would look at solving the evidence gap. It is extraordinary that there is significant variation in data captured across relative authorities. Because ASBIs are locally administered in a patchwork of varied use, there is a worrying variation in the types and quality of data collected, the location of that data and the ability of that data to be extrapolated and shared internally or with relevant agencies where appropriate. This is surely a slap across the face of evidence-based policy-making, because without data it is not possible to adequately assess the effectiveness of behaviour orders and to fully understand any trends arising out of their imposition, enforcement or breach, including disproportionate impacts.

That is why Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who is not in her place, which would require the Home Office to publish quarterly data, is so important, as well as Amendment 12 from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, which calls for an annual report. Both amendments positively try to tackle the limits of the availability of the evidence base, without which I do not know how we can make informed policy decisions.

At present, all the critiques of present behaviour orders are invaluably brought to us from sporadic academic research, FoI-based research led by the likes of Josie Appleton and her team at the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life, and the excellent campaign group Justice. They want their work to be made redundant by the Government; they want the Government and officialdom to do their work instead. If the Home Office does not understand its own legislative tools because it does not have the data, the misery of anti-social behaviour will remain untouched while the statute book grows.

I hope the Minister will listen to the front-line workers who have to implement and use these orders and who, reasonably, bemoan the lack of proper consultation with those who understand the ASBI regime in real life. I note the government amendment on consultation, which is welcome.

The majority of practitioners who Justice consulted believe that the new respect orders are unnecessary and replicate flawed laws already available. Only 6% conclude that they will improve outcomes for victims; 82% of respondents to the practitioners survey have called for the review of the existing 2014 Act and of existing powers prior to respect orders being introduced. There was unanimous agreement that the Government should address problems inherent in existing injunctions and orders before creating more, and that failure to properly consult has meant that opportunities to resolve problems with the way orders operate in practice, not on paper, and to increase their effectiveness have been missed. Surely the Minister will want and feel the need to understand why research shows that a significant proportion of CPNs and PSPOs are, for example, being overused for trivial activities, such as feeding the birds, honking horns, gathering in groups or idling in your car, or imposed in inappropriate circumstances against, too often, the homeless and the mentally ill, where the behaviour complained of falls far below the threshold of antisocial behaviour that the public are concerned about and that the 2014 Act was envisaged to tackle.

All that we are asking in these amendments is for the Minister to look at what has gone wrong so that we can improve it. Surely the Government are worried about the vastly varied use of existing orders, which creates a postcode lottery for victims and means that British citizens do not know what is allowed from one town to another. Conduct that is totally lawful in Lincoln might be subject to state sanction in Leeds. Surely such a differential variation in the volume of orders imposed, the type of orders imposed, the conditions imposed, and so on, undermines the rule of law that I know this Government strongly support. It makes enforcement dependent on the victim’s location, rather than circumstances, or on the perpetrator’s location, rather than precisely how they are behaving badly. This makes a mockery of the notion of all of us being equal under the law. A review would look at these problems and recommend practical solutions.

Amendments 1 and 3, especially, are important in relation to ensuring that respect orders are used only when necessary and in a proportionate way. We have already heard about that. I think this is very helpful, particularly in creating a right to appeal. I am worried that the statutory test and the language used for imposing these new respect orders are so broad that, rather than capturing behaviour that is serious and persistent in nature, they will criminalise more trivial behaviour. That these orders can be imposed on individuals without their knowledge and, most egregiously, for an indefinite duration—for example, until further notice—is why we need this appeals process. How is it fair or proportionate that an individual who has never been found guilty of an offence is required to comply with serious restrictions on their liberty and personal life indefinitely, yet someone convicted of an offence by the criminal justice system is at liberty and free of prohibitions once they reach the end of their defined term of sentence, or even sometimes before that these days? This is reminiscent of that stain on our justice system, the abolished and abominable IPP indefinite sentence, which caused such a scandal. Why would the Government now create these new, oppressive orders that flout the important principle that if individual lives are subject to state interference, they need to know how long the interference will last and when it will end?

Finally, I have added my name to Amendment 7, an excellent contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on fixed-term penalty notices, based on the work of the Campaign for Freedom in Everyday Life. This, I hope, will ring true with any Labour Government, because ensuring that private companies dishing out on-the-spot fines for antisocial behaviour, and doing so to profit financially, is surely something that offends the Government’s values. There are concerns that antisocial behaviour orders have been corrupted for income generation and commercial purposes. With fines increasing so much under this Bill, surely that tendency will be turbocharged. I think it is something that the Government will want to tackle, because all the orders in Clause 4 being issued at such a low benchmark are likely to result in fines going up. I am worried that this will encourage councils to become trigger-happy with orders and so on.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, will remember, as I do, the scandal of Kingdom Security in north Wales in, I think, 2019, when councils including Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Gwynedd and Anglesey outsourced the collection of their on-the-spot fines to a private security group, Kingdom, which illustrated that the behaviour of the enforcers could well be seen as being far more anti-social than any of the behaviour of local residents for which they were supposed to be fining them. A grass-roots campaign attracted 8,000-plus members to its Facebook page and led to numerous protests all over north Wales, with the security group’s wardens accused of threatening, bullying and even stalking north Walians, following dog walkers and smokers at a distance just so they could catch them out and fine them. They expressly targeted the elderly and women and children; the tissue of one 95 year-old lady blew from her wheelchair to the ground, and she was fined.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has made his point. I am trying to give the defence from the Government’s perspective. That is our view. He has made a reasonable point, but that is our view and I hope he accepts our comments on those issues in good faith.

On Amendment 2, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, will understand when I say that I agree with the points that he made. Amendment 2, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is rather bureaucratic, in that the council must carry out a full public consultation prior to any application to the court for a respect order to be made.

I was leader of a council for some years. We had six or seven meetings per year. Does the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, really expect, in the event of this legislation becoming law, that the council would consider respect orders and agree them on a six or eight week basis, six times per year, before the police could go? I am with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, on this one. Some areas undertake this as a matter of course as part of local practice, but there is no requirement for a public consultation prior to a public spaces protection order being implemented. It is certainly my and the Government’s view that such requirements would add an inappropriate and disproportionate barrier to respect order applications and delay important relief for ASB victims. I hope that, on reflection, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, will agree with His Majesty’s Opposition and me. He may not, but I put that point to him for his consideration.

Amendment 3, again tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, would add a provision for a respondent to appeal the making or variation of a respect order. I hope I can assure noble Lords that there are express provisions in the Bill that provide for an application to be made to vary or discharge a respect order. The ordinary rules of appeal will apply to decisions to grant a respect order or a refusal to vary or discharge an order. To be absolutely clear on this issue, decisions to grant or vary respect orders, as well as decisions not to grant or vary one, will be appealable through the usual avenues under Civil Procedure Rules. I hope that assists.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, for his Amendment 5. I know that he wished to speak to that in Committee. He seeks to add for-profit registered social housing providers to the list of relevant agencies that can apply for a respect order. I recognise the importance of relevant agencies having the tools to tackle anti-social behaviour, but we should exercise caution before extending these powers without more consideration. I say that in the spirit of friendship and co-operation with the noble Lord. The Home Secretary has a power to amend the list of relevant authorities that can apply for a respect order. If it is considered appropriate to add a for-profit registered social housing provider to the list then we can do that via secondary legislation after the Bill has achieved Royal Assent, but I would like to give more consideration to this point. This is not a “no”; it could be added later with more consideration. I hope that will at least help him in the discussions that he has had today.

Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, would require the Home Secretary, within six months of the Bill becoming law, to commission an independent review of the existing powers under the 2014 Act prior to introducing respect orders, housing injunctions or youth injunctions as a whole. Again, I go back to what I said to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel. It is a manifesto commitment that we fought the election on to improve anti-social behaviour responses, and one such response that we specifically put in the manifesto at the general election was respect orders. So, the idea that we wish to—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I rise just to clarify and to help the Minister. I would not want in any way to stop the Government implementing their manifesto promises. The aim of the review was not to stop respect orders; it was to suggest that the anti-social behaviour on the statute book was reviewed before respect orders were brought in, because the Government cannot learn what has gone wrong with the previous anti-social behaviour orders if they never review them. The review aimed to help the Government make sure their manifesto promise on respect orders was effective rather than just a piece of paper.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am always grateful for the noble Baroness’s help on these matters. It is as rare as hen’s teeth normally, but I am always grateful. I still say to her that the implementation of respect orders is crucial to ensuring that we tackle anti-social behaviour effectively. I put it to her gently, as I know she is keen on reducing bureaucracy and the cost of government et cetera, that this would be a very costly, unnecessary review of all ASB powers, when we already know that we agree with those powers, and it would cause unacceptable delays to the rollout of the orders promised in our manifesto.

We are already 19 months into our Labour Government term and people are impatient for change. One of the changes we want to make is in tackling anti-social behaviour. So, I say to the noble Baroness that the respect order, housing injunction and youth injunction are not novel; rather, they replace and improve upon an existing order, the civil injunction order, which has been in place since 2015. We are committed to ensuring that the powers to address anti-social behaviour remain effective, and we will routinely engage with practitioners across the board. Given those comments, I hope that the noble Baroness will reflect on her amendment.

Amendment 7 seeks to provide that any accredited or authorised person working on behalf of a local authority may not profit financially from the issuing of fixed penalty notices for breaches of public spaces protection orders and community protection orders. I point out to those noble Lords who tabled the amendment that the Bill makes it clear that the fixed penalty notices that can already be issued for breaches of these orders are still in place, and that we have increased only the upper limit of the fine. It is expected that the figure issued will be based on the individual circumstances and severity of the case.

As of now, local agencies are expected to ensure that fixed penalty notices are issued only in circumstances where it is considered proper and appropriate. I recognise that there are some concerns. The noble Baroness referenced her home area of north Wales, where an excessive and unreasonable number of fixed penalty notices have been issued. I fully accept that point, but I put it to her again that contracting enforcement to third parties is a common arrangement. Councils will not do it all themselves in-house; they do some of it contractually.

There is statutory guidance, which all relevant agencies have a legal duty to have regard to, which underscores the importance of applying the new fixed penalty notice limits in a proportionate and balanced way. I emphasise to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who has cosigned this amendment, the importance of the proportionate use of the new thresholds, and that local authorities and agents acting on their behalf should not be issuing fixed penalty notices to generate profit. We will be consulting on the revised guidance, and I will undertake to share a copy of that guidance with the noble Lord and any other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, should she so wish, before any action is taken to implement any proposals passed by Parliament. That statutory guidance will be implemented, and I hope we can examine it in due course.

I turn now to Amendment 12 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and Amendment 24, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who was not able to speak to it today. Amendment 12 would require the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament an annual report on the operation of respect orders. Amendment 24 would require the publishing of quarterly data. I recognise that information held by central government on anti-social behaviour is, in some areas, limited. I want to see that improved, because that helps the Government understand the causes of anti-social behaviour.

Clause 7 provides for the provision of information about anti-social behaviour to the Secretary of State. Subsections (1) to (7) list the range of matters on which the Secretary of State may wish to collect information. The extent to which data will be reported and published will be confirmed after consultation with relevant agencies.

The Home Office publishes data on the use of stop and search powers, including the number of stop and searches conducted, arrests following a search, and demographic data. It includes information broken down by community safety partnerships as well as by police force areas.

Counter-Extremism Strategy

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, for this crucial debate. I want to focus on the normalisation of Islamism and virulent antisemitism but first I need to negotiate the obstacle course of counterextremism. I am not the first to note that official definitions of extremism can be unhelpful: too vague, ambiguous and broad, and a distraction from real threats. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, about the problem of extremism as a legal concept. Also, in a democratic, pluralist society of citizens with diverse views, how can you establish a robust legal definition without being partisan or censorious?

I am worried about a blank cheque. Official signs of extremism include everything from spreading misinformation to involvement in the manosphere—think “Adolescence”, a drama, not a documentary, yet the Government vowed to show it in every school to counter online extremism. Such a shallow lack of specificity means that state agencies acquire huge power to police legitimate, if unpleasant or dissenting, views. Recently, a Home Office-funded interactive computer game hit the headlines. “Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism” takes 13 to 18 year-olds on a journey. As game characters, they must make decisions to avoid being reported for extreme right-wing ideology. If they wrongly answer multiple-choice questions on, for example, migration, or if their avatar chooses to attend a protest against the “erosion in British values”, they are branded.

This superficial approach begs questions. In January, the director of counterterrorism at the Homeland Security Group claimed that 68 civil society groups are being funded by Prevent. Can the Minister outline who these groups are, what kind of programmes they are delivering and, crucially, how the Home Office is assessing their effectiveness? I ask because the “Pathways” computer game backfired spectacularly. The developers created a purple-haired goth girl, Amelia, as the far-right baddie, but rather than being viewed as a dangerous extremist, Amelia has been embraced as an ironic heroine and has become a union jack-waving viral meme.

This backlash reveals how tone deaf anti-extremist initiatives can be. For example, framing patriotic sentiment as extremism risks radicalising those moderate youth who resent their scepticism of progressive orthodoxies being criminalised, especially while the elephant in the room, radical Islamism, is allowed free rein. They have a point. Official interventions using vague and non-exhaustive definitions of extremism, applied with little discrimination to an expanding number of targets, often avoid tackling Islamist extremism. One reason is that people are afraid of upsetting radical Islamists but are not afraid of upsetting critics of multiculturalism, real-life Amelias, the Pink Ladies, Reform UK supporters or whoever.

A year ago, the Speaker in the other place overrode centuries of parliamentary procedure to protect Labour MPs scared by threats from extremists over a Gaza vote. This morning, at Questions, we were reminded of the unprecedented harassment and intimidation of candidates, MPs and even voters at and since the general election. The Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal exposed police capitulation to fundamentalist threats to Israeli fans. All that is just a taste of a growing Islamist veto over public life. Then there is the fear of being labelled an Islamophobic extremist if you raise such concern. The Government’s push to define anti-Muslim hatred threatens to institutionalise that chilling effect. They say, “See it. Say it. Sorted”, but if we see it and cannot say it, it will not get sorted. We must stop wasting time on fictitious Amelias and target the real-life problem hiding in plain sight.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

This is an ongoing serious issue. I know the Government take it seriously, and the noble and learned Lord has come up with a very practical way of addressing this. I know that my noble friend the Minister will be very familiar with these issues, and I look forward to her response with great interest.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, if ever there was a day to consider whether we should just assume guilt by association, then today’s political context provides us with a reminder that it is complicated. I have added my name to Amendment 486 on reform of joint enterprise, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Having listened to the elegant and legally erudite contribution from the noble and learned Lord, followed by such a well-informed contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I am rather nervous that I am going to let the side down somewhat, but let me take a different approach.

Reading through the first-hand accounts in In Their Own Words produced by the Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association grass-roots campaign group that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, referred to, really brings home that this tool of criminal justice is destroying too many young lives by incarcerating them for crimes which they made no significant contribution to. Sending people to prison for life and labelling them as murderers when they have not killed anyone, or were in many instances effectively bystanders, is something Parliament must address. Why? We have a responsibility to make sure the law is fit for purpose and applied properly and as originally intended. I think joint enterprise fails on all those counts.

I think we can all understand what the intention of joint enterprise is and was. Sometimes those who do not actually wield the knife do seem equally culpable—the armed robber involved in the heist that has gone wrong is the example always used. It could be deemed that he is as guilty as his accomplice who shot the cashier because he significantly contributed to the crime by, for example, carrying or supplying the gun or threatening the cashier. We can all acknowledge that in the brutal murder of Stephen Lawrence a group was closely involved in the killing.

Interestingly, if you look back to the ancient history of the law, which was explained by the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, in a Times article a couple of years ago, it also brings home that things can be complicated but people can be equally guilty. It began, apparently, with duelling aristocrats in the 18th century. The courts hit on the idea of reducing the number of duels by making seconds and surgeons liable for murder alongside the principals, so once more we can blame the hereditaries for everything that has gone wrong since—that was a joke.

It is important to stress that this is not about getting the guilty off the hook because behind each of these joint enterprise cases, the victims of crime, the families of those brutally killed, must not be forgotten, but justice for them is ill-served by overcriminalisation or overpunishment of the wrong culprits.

I want to use a couple of examples. Faisal Fiaz found out about the murder that he “committed” at the same time as everyone else because he saw it on social media. He did not know beforehand that there had been a murder because he was waiting in the back of a car as two of his colleagues in the drugs gang he was involved in went round the corner intending to steal cannabis from a local dealer. I want to stress that Faisal was no angel—he was involved in the drugs trade; he was a teenager in a gang—but he did not know that his gang accomplices were carrying a knife or that they had gone on to stab the dealer to death. The stabber fled the country to Pakistan and is still at large, whereas Faisal was jailed for life, with a minimum of 23 years, without any compelling evidence of intent or knowledge of the crime about to happen or even that it had happened. His presence in the vicinity and guilt by association was deemed enough to suggest to the CPS that he contributed to the murder in such a way that he is in prison for life. He was punished as harshly as he would have been had he wielded the knife, but I do not think that was the original intention, which was for the heist gone wrong or a duel.

That seems to be the crucial weakness in the current law of joint enterprise: the courts seem indifferent to the precise contribution to the crime of the accused, and this breaks the link between any action and accountability for that action. In this context, of course evidential standards are watered down and can even be dispensed with.

I was struck listening to Joseph Appiah, who was part of a group that clashed with rival schoolboys when he was 15. He was 200 yards away from the fatal stabbing of a 16 year-old. He did not stab the victim, nor did he see the stabbing, and he assumed that that would all be taken into account. He said:

“I didn’t see it, I didn’t know what happened and I can account for where I was, I could prove it. I always thought, well, you know, I didn’t do it, so when all the evidence comes out, eventually they will see the light, but that’s not how it went”.


Despite no DNA or evidence that he was directly involved or that he saw the act or knew that a knife was involved, he was found as culpable as the teenager who did in fact commit a stabbing.

Understandably, people conclude that the law of joint enterprises is so loosely interpreted by the criminal justice system because it makes it easier to secure convictions. It removes the faff of investigation, evidence gathering, proof beyond reasonable doubt and so on. In other words, it fuels cynicism in criminal justice. There are also side injustices created by the courts wielding joint enterprise as a blunt instrument. Fear of being convicted that way means that defence barristers have been known to persuade innocent clients to plead guilty to lesser charges such as GBH to avoid a trial of joint enterprise.

All these problems are well known, as we have heard. Back in 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that the law around joint enterprise had taken a wrong turn and been used wrongly for three decades. The court thought that it was rightly restoring the proper law of targeting those who intended to commit or assist in a serious crime. But, as we are all too aware, Supreme Court clarifications are not always used to rectify wrong readings of the law—the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has revealed that, in the three years leading up to the ruling in 2016, 522 individuals were charged, but in the three years afterwards, 547 were.

As others have noted, reform of joint enterprise has gone as far as it is possible for it to go in the courts, and it now needs a change in the law. I give credit to Kim Johnson MP, who has used her voice in the other place to draw attention to this and inspire us all. Her attempts have failed so far, but the Government should now grab this chance, here in Committee, to right this wrong.

I have some qualms with one part of this debate, however, which is the implication that this is an actively racist law, or, to quote Jimmy McGovern, that its purpose is allegedly

“to keep scum off the streets, that’s how I think the police see it. That’s how they see all these young people – as scum”.

I loved Jimmy McGovern’s powerful 2014 drama “Common”, but I do not think that that is what is going on here. Joint enterprise has been used by many in good faith to try to tackle the scourge and blight of gang violence.

Yes, young Black people are 16 times more likely to be prosecuted for joint enterprise—there were also lots of young people, with 14% between the ages of 14 and 17 and 40% between 18 and 24, and 93% of defendants were male—but let us be honest: there is a real problem of young Black men stabbing each other. I live in Wood Green in Haringey, and it is real and it is not racist to note it. It is something we have to take into account.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I just ask the noble Baroness to come to her conclusion—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

We need them to understand that the criminal justice system is not targeting them personally for crime but is fair and proportionate. That is what we should do.