Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Doocey

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.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Doocey

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[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

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Doocey

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I totally support Amendment 436 on the collection of enforcement data; the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, have explained well why I do. But I am rising to speak to Amendment 437 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, calling for a review of police paperwork. I will just explain why. I have put my name on a number of amendments that require more data collection, which might sound contradictory. But we need more granular and accurate data, while ensuring that data is streamlined and necessary, rather than collected just for the sake of it. In that sense, there is no contradiction.

The review of paperwork is necessary to identify and cut out all the endless and needless form-filling that police officers are forced to do. Whenever you talk to rank and file police officers, one of the most voluble frustrations that they voice is the ever-growing regime of paperwork and bureaucracy. They complain that they did not sign up to become pen-pushers and this is hardly what they envisaged when they joined the force.

More seriously, we have just heard a very moving debate on the mental health challenges faced by some police officers. I do not want to be glib, but when you talk to police officers, they will often say that they are tearing their hair out and completely demoralised because of the amount of bureaucracy that they face—so it is worth bearing that in mind.

The impressive multiplication of the number of forms the police have to fill out could be interpreted as indicative of the scientification or the professionalisation of police work, as the bureaucratic regime’s apologists would have us believe. I think the duplication of information, which is often banal, indicates a stifling bureaucratisation of policing and a trend that is reiterated by officers as impeding their ability to respond to crime or engage in proactive crime solving.

I want to use an example from some years ago. I was a victim of a very nasty, unpleasant mugging. I reported it to the police, as one does, and they were hyperactive in their response. I got a very nice letter reassuring me that they were there for me as a victim. got a form to fill in, asking whether I had had the right kind of support as a victim. I even had a follow-up phone call to find out why I had not filled out my form and to make sure I was okay. The problem was that at no point did anyone visit me in the sense of attempting to apprehend the person who had committed the mugging. That never came up. It was all about my feelings about being a victim of crime, rather than solving the crime. Imagine how much paperwork went into that. I was bemused, but infuriated as well.

We would like this review to ask how paperwork has proliferated. Certain people argue that the process-driven approach to policing is created by risk aversion—the police covering their own backs, potentially. It might be that it is an obsession with communication. There is certainly a lot of press releasing done, tweets put out and so on. The main thing is that we have to get to the bottom of what is creating it. I think—there will be a discussion on this on a later group—that a lot of the work generated does not have anything to do with core policing. When I talk to police officers I know, they say they are engaged in a wide range of activity related to equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, which are also bureaucratic in terms of the kind of things that they have to do. We heard about non-crime hate incidents on a previous group. How many hours are spent investigating those? There is also a great deal of paperwork being generated by that, and hopefully we have seen the back of them.

Perhaps this amendment is kicking at an open door. I am hoping for a positive response from the Minister because the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has made similar points. It seems that cutting red tape is a part of what the Home Office is trying to do, so I am delighted about that.

I have a couple of reservations. I am slightly worried that the solution for cutting red tape that has been put forward is a greater use of AI. I am all for sensible use of technology, but I note that West Midlands Police recently took a shortcut and cut back on a lot of hours of paperwork that would have been wasted in a proper investigation in relation to the Maccabi Tel Aviv football game with Aston Villa. The problem with that shortcut and paper-saving exercise was that as a consequence it came up with a non-existent football match to justify the banning of the Israeli fans, as we know. Recent research by businesses has shown that for every 10 hours apparently saved by the use of AI, four hours are used checking errors and fact-checking AI output. They have had to bring in extra staff to do that particular type of work.

Finally, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville- Rolfe, on her reservations about the licensing of police officers. I am afraid that fills me with horror. Credentialism is notorious for being more bureaucratisation. If you want any evidence, just look at the university sector and what is happening on that in certain sectors.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 437 calls for a review of the volume of paperwork that police officers must complete in the course of their duties. This is one of the most persistent frustrations voiced by front-line officers. Despite the introduction of a new digital case file system, the use of automatic redaction tools and simplified disclosure guidance, the core problem remains: a combination of the pre-charge full file requirement and an onerous disclosure regime. We share the noble Baroness’s concerns, but we do not believe a review is the answer. The evidence is already on the table, as are the solutions.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Doocey

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, has explained all my reservations about these clauses very articulately, so I will not repeat them. They add an unnecessary implication that the public are a threat to emergency workers. Why are religiously and racially aggravated offences being highlighted here, as though members of the general public were somehow prone to that kind of behaviour? It is an unhelpful signposting because, as has been rightly pointed out, if emergency workers are dealt with aggressively or harassed in any way, we have laws to deal with it. To highlight this implies that there is something extra to be added, that there is a problem out there of the public going around racially abusing workers, and that there are particular offences in mind. Duplication of law ends up being virtue signalling. I am not sure that virtue is being signalled, but none the less it seems to be a box-ticking exercise rather than an effective piece of lawmaking.

I am also very worried about the notion of “insulting behaviour”. I am probably guilty of it; one does get frustrated sometimes. What on earth does it mean? It is entirely subjective. What is insulting behaviour? It would be helpful for the Minister to give us illustrations and examples of what constitutes insulting behaviour. How will people be charged with this? It immediately makes people fearful of raising complaints or of being frustrated in public. If the ambulance has not turned up for a long time and your husband is dying of a heart attack, you might be a bit fraught. Somebody might interpret that as insulting behaviour. It might be perfectly rational, reasonable behaviour and not criminal. I am worried that this is creating a toxic atmosphere where none need be there. I cannot understand why it is there.

The words “likely to cause” feel far too much like pre-crime. What is “likely to cause”? These are criminal offences. If you are charged with them, you will be seen potentially as a hate criminal. Therefore, the Government have to give us a very detailed explanation as to why they feel these clauses are needed, so that we can scrutinise it. As they are presently given, I am not happy at all. I will support any move to have them removed from the Bill.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we take a very different view and strongly support Clauses 107 and 108, which recognise a simple reality. Emergency workers can face racially or religiously aggravated abuse whenever and wherever they are carrying out their duties, including in private homes. They cannot choose their environment or walk away from hostility. Their professional duty is to step into what are at times chaotic, volatile situations, and to stay there until the job is done. The law should follow them into those settings and make clear that such targeted hostility is no more acceptable in a hallway or a living room than it is on a street corner. This debate has shown that the issue is not about policing opinion or curtailing lawful expression but about drawing a firm line between free speech and deliberate acts of intimidation directed at those who protect the public.

These clauses are drafted to catch only behaviour that crosses that line in aggravated circumstances, and they sit alongside, rather than in place of, the wider framework of public order and hate crime. In our view, striking them out would send the wrong message, undermining our commitment to those who protect us. Looking ahead, it will of course be vital that their use is monitored and that guidance for police and prosecutors is kept under review, so that the balance struck here remains both proportionate and effective in practice.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Baroness Doocey

Committee stage
Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, of course I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, opposing the increases in these fines, but I think we need to go further and for a variety of reasons abolish these on-the-spot penalties per se, which is why I have tabled this clause stand part notice.

You cannot overestimate how much public space protection orders and community protection notices trivialise what we understand to be dealing with anti-social behaviour. We have just had a long discussion about what anti-social behaviour is. These orders are part of the toolkit to deal with anti-social behaviour and they end up targeting individuals for the most anodyne and mundane activities, and banning everyday freedoms.

The use of fines has, in a way, led us to not take seriously what real anti-social behaviour is, because these fines are given out for such arbitrary, eccentric reasons. PSPOs and CPNs can be issued on a very low threshold, are entirely subject to misuse—there is lots of evidence showing that—and often criminalise, as I said, everyday activities. For example, PSPOs are often used to ban young people gathering in groups—which seems to me to be a dangerous attack on our right to assembly—despite the fact that the statutory guidance states that PSPOs should target only activities that cause a nuisance and should not criminalise

“everyday sociability, such as standing in groups”.

That is what it says, yet they are constantly used in that way and seem to be unaccountably doled out.

There are now over 2,000 PSPOs in England and Wales, and each of them contains up to 35 separate restrictions. That means that tens of thousands of new controls are being issued on public spaces all the time. As we heard earlier, they are imposed in different geographic areas, making prohibitions on different types of activities for different citizens from one place to another. You can be in one town where an activity is legal and then go to the next town and the same activity is illegal. We discussed some of that earlier.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out and as Justice has drawn our attention to, the inconsistent use of PSPOs creates a “postcode lottery” for victims but also for perpetrators. Justice says that this

“undermines the rule of law by making enforcement dependent on the victim’s location rather than the circumstances”.

I hope we can send the Minister the research done by Justice and by the Manifesto Club that has already been referred to so that he can see from the freedom of information requests to local authorities just what kind of activities are being issued with PSPOs and CPNs, and therefore what these fines are being used to tackle. I assure the Committee that it is innocuous activities, not anti-social behaviour. There are councils that are banning kite-flying, wild swimming, as we have heard, and using camping stoves.

I thought it was interesting that, recently, the Free Speech Union forced Thanet District Council to scrap its imposition of a sweeping public spaces protection order that would have banned the use of foul or abusive language in a public space in the Thanet area, so you would have been able to swear in one area but not in another. I understand that it might have raised a lot of money, but that is not necessarily the same as dealing with anti-social behaviour.

Actually, the councils themselves do not do the dirty work of enforcement. Instead, they outsource that to private companies, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has explained so well the dangers of using these private firms. We have a geographic breakdown of the national way of dealing with anti-social behaviour, and now we have an almost feudal way of collecting fines from it. These kinds of fines mean that orders might well be issued for all the wrong reasons—for income-generating, commercial purposes to meet targets that are about raising money rather than tackling anti-social behaviour—and increasing the fines will surely only incentivise that practice further.

I urge the Minister to consider that the noble cause that the Government are associated with here is dealing with anti-social behaviour, but using private companies to fine people in such a cavalier way discredits the whole cause. It is damaging the reputation of that noble cause. There is no transparency or oversight mechanism for these companies. There is one ban that I would like to bring in, and that is fining for profit. I hope the Minister will consider at least reviewing this and looking at it closely.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, I do not intend to rehearse the arguments already put so effectively by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. Suffice to say that we on these Benches fully support Amendment 23, as £500 is an extortionate amount of money for the type of behaviour that fines are designed to address and will simply result in private companies making even greater profits than they do at the moment while pushing those already struggling further into debt. For these reasons, we have serious reservations about the implications of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

The orders create a postcode lottery for victims. Charities warn that, in some parts of the country, orders are handed out like confetti. This undermines public trust by making enforcement dependent on the victim’s location.

Overall, the use of these powers needs to be subject to much stricter safeguards. The Government must ensure that there is proper oversight of their use and that the law is applied equally, openly and proportionately.