Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

If enacted, this power would give the police the power to ban or curtail repeated protests, which are likely to be on the most important causes—those most worthy of protest and most protected by the courts. No protest movement has ever brought about change through a single demonstration. The civil rights, suffragette and anti-apartheid movements relied on repeated, cumulative demonstrations. This clause gives the police far too much discretion to curtail and prevent peaceful protests on the most important matters. Clause 140 is a bad idea, badly drafted and with many bad outcomes. It should not stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, before I speak to my amendments in this group, I would like to say that I learned to read a long time ago—more than 70 years ago, before I went to school. This alphabet soup of a Bill is quite confusing, partly because so many people disagree with it. The noble Lord, Lord Hanson, should perhaps be aware that it is moderately unusual to have this many amendments; perhaps it would help if he accepted one or two. Obviously, all of my amendments are incredibly reasonable, so I urge him to pick them up. My first amendment in this group would solve the problem outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, so I expect his strong support on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, moved Amendment 369 on the right to protest. In Committee, we were all reassured that this was not necessary, because the right to peaceful protest is already protected under the Human Rights Act. We were correctly reminded that Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights protect the freedoms of expression and assembly, and that public authorities are already bound by those duties, but that reassurance is based on the assumption that those protections will remain intact. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, pointed out, we cannot be sure of that; we cannot speak for future Governments, who might cause our right to protest to deteriorate.

Over recent years, under this Government and the previous one, we have seen a steady erosion of our right to protest and an expansion of police powers to restrict those protests. Each time, we are told, “The powers are modest—you will hardly notice them”. Of course, that is not true, because the effect is cumulative, damaging and leads to much greater constraint on people who are campaigning and protesting. The balance is shifting and Parliament continues to widen state power without at the same time reaffirming the underlying right.

I have also cosigned Amendment 369A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger. There are many legitimate reasons why people might want to cover their faces at protests. Some noble Lords on this side of the Chamber might benefit from wearing masks sometimes, just to hide their look of derision at other noble Lords who are speaking coherently, cogently and sensibly. People might fear losing their job if their political views were known. They might fear backlash from family or their local community. They might be worried about racial profiling, particularly given the increased use of facial recognition technology. They might be protesting against a foreign regime and be genuinely concerned about repercussions for loved ones overseas. It is not unreasonable to wear masks.

I turn now to my Amendment 372ZA. Clause 139 is very problematic. It gives the police significant new powers to restrict protests near places of worship. I am an atheist, but I absolutely protect the right of people to worship freely, as they want to, and without fear. At a time of rising antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism, that duty is paramount for us here in Parliament. All our diverse communities must be supported and defended, and every faith group must have the ability to worship freely. As drafted, Clause 139 risks undermining that balance between rights. If the Government are not prepared to remove it, it must at the very least be clarified and narrowed. My amendments are offered as a compromise and an attempt to introduce clarity where the drafting is currently vague and overly broad.

My amendments, which address the phrases “in the vicinity”, “within 50 metres” and “the purpose of intimidating”, seek to establish clarity on these broad definitions in Clause 139. The clause seeks to restrict the right to protest by giving the police new powers to ban or restrict protest “in the vicinity” of places of religious worship, based on the false premise that these powers are required to protect freedom of religion. “In the vicinity” is a vague definition that could mean 10 metres or 10 miles. At the very least, the clause must be amended to make it more specific and contained, with an eye towards protecting Article 11—the right to freedom of assembly. “In the vicinity” needs to be clarified in terms of a specific distance. Many cities and towns have a large concentration of places of worship. The clause as it stands could make it virtually impossible to protest, as other noble Lords have said, including taking protests to Parliament or other such places on which protesters might wish to focus in order to make their point to people in positions of influence—for example, in government.

The Green Party feels that 50 metres is a sensible compromise that would provide clarity for police on the threshold for imposing conditions on protests while protecting the Article 11 right. Amendment 372ZA would help the police because it is so specific that they could take a tape measure to protests to make sure that protesters were at the designated distance. It would also help protesters, because they would know whether they were legally allowed to protest at that point or not. I urge the Minister to think about this and to clarify what “in the vicinity” means. It is far too vague to bring in in legislation. Surely the Government must see that.

The phrase “may intimidate” again is terribly vague, and I do not understand why anybody would put that in a Bill. This is bad writing—which is why we have so many amendments labelled ZA, ZZ and BZ and so on Report. All our diverse communities have to be supported and defended, but Clause 139, as it stands, will not do that because it is too vague. There are existing powers to address racial and religious hatred and violence. Under the Public Order Act 1986, the police can impose conditions on protests that may compel people not to worship, disrupt the activities of an organisation or intimidate or harass people in the vicinity. My amendment tries to make things clearer. As always, I am just trying to help the Government get things right.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

Before she sits down, I put to the noble Baroness that her amendments would not achieve the purpose that I understand the Government to have with Clause 139. If you confer the power in relation only to a protest that takes place within 50 metres then you are not going to achieve the purpose, which is to ensure that people are able to get to and away from their synagogue every Saturday. If there is a march of hundreds or thousands of people that impedes their access, 50 metres is not going to work. As I have already put to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, protest is a balance between the rights of protesters and the rights of other people. The noble Baroness is ignoring the rights of others.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[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.

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[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I avoided having that conversation, because it is a good point. I introduced my points by saying that if a decision is made to impose a ban on masks, a reasonable excuse may be difficult to enforce. I am not expressing an opinion on the noble Lord’s very good point about whether it would capture Iranians who might be in fear of their life from the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is a reasonable point and I am choosing not to express an opinion on it.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Can I pick the noble Lord up on one point? It is very interesting to hear him say that the law should be simple, because I have heard that from currently serving senior officers. Can he see that our accumulating more and more bits of law makes things not simpler but more complicated for the police? I have been on protests where the police have definitely been quite confused about the legislation. He ought to be arguing with the Government that we should make things much simpler.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I will finish here because this is Report, but 50 metres is too short, although I think vicinity works. I agree with the noble Baroness on clarity; I am not against that, but you have to leave the police some flexibility given the circumstances they face. I do not think vicinity is an unreasonable suggestion. We can make that work, but 50 metres will never work.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

195: Clause 58, page 74, line 15, after “(A)” insert “, who is aged 18 or over,”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, and others in the name of Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, seeks to ensure children are not held criminally responsible for cuckooing or coerced internal concealment offences.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords here this evening, I am quite keen to get home, especially as I will have to stay up all night tomorrow night reacting to the Gorton and Denton by-election, which is going to be very exciting. I hope the Minister expresses the same sort of support for these amendments—well, obviously he will not, but perhaps somebody else will—because I am concerned that Labour has promised something that these clauses will not actually deliver. Perhaps I can explain.

I want to thank the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Randall of Uxbridge, both of whom signed these amendments, although the former’s name is not on them. Amendment 195 and the related amendments seek to ensure that children are not held criminally responsible for the offences of cuckooing or coerced internal concealment where those acts arise from exploitation. These amendments come from joint work by the Children’s Society, Action for Children, ECPAT UK, Catch 22, the Alliance for Youth Justice, the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and other academics.

The Government’s decision to introduce the offence of CCE, alongside new offences addressing cuckooing and coerced internal concealment, demonstrates a genuine commitment to closing gaps, increasing justice and ensuring that those who exploit children are held to account. Taken together with the new preventive orders and the strengthened safeguarding orders elsewhere in the Bill, this represents real progress.

However, there is a troubling inconsistency at the heart of the legislation as drafted. Children being exploited by adults, whether forced to take over another person’s home or to facilitate internal concealment, could be criminalised. While the offence of child criminal exploitation applies only to adults, Clauses 58, 61 and 62 bring children under the age of 18 within the scope of the new offences of cuckooing and coerced internal concealment. That means children who are themselves being exploited by adults could, in law, be treated as perpetrators rather than victims. This directly contradicts the Government’s stated intention to address the imbalance of power exercised by adults who use children to commit crime. It also risks undermining the very purpose of the new offences by re-criminalising children through the backdoor.

We know from the National Crime Agency that child exploitation is a defining feature of cuckooing linked to county lines activity. Police forces report children as young as 14 being found in properties that have been taken over for criminal purposes. This clearly is a legal point, and I am not a lawyer; I very much hope the Government’s lawyers can look at this and see that I am right and perhaps tighten up the Bill as drafted. Children subjected to violence, grooming, intimidation and control cannot meaningfully refuse adults who demand their help. They cannot consent and they should not be punished for crimes that arise directly from their exploitation. This Bill really has the potential to mark a genuine shift in how we respond to child exploitation, and these amendments could help ensure that children are victims and not offenders, and that the law reflects that without any sort of ambiguity.

Amendment 198 concerns Clause 62 and the provision of statutory guidance for agencies responding to child criminal exploitation. Again, it comes from the same child action networks I mentioned before. As I have said, the creation of new offences and preventive orders in this Bill is welcome, but legislation on its own is a blunt instrument and its success will depend entirely on how it is implemented on the ground by the wide range of statutory agencies that come into contact with children at risk of exploitation. Child criminal exploitation is complex, hidden and constantly evolving. It cuts across policing, social work, education, health, youth justice, housing and safeguarding partnerships. We have to have a joined-up, consistent, well-informed response; otherwise, it is pointless putting any of this into the Bill. Support and guidance must extend to all public authorities with statutory responsibilities to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, because without comprehensive multi-agency guidance we will continue to see uneven responses, confusion over roles and responsibilities, and children falling through the cracks.

Elsewhere in the Bill, in Clause 99 in Part 6, the Secretary of State is rightly given powers to issue multiagency statutory guidance on the new stalking offence. That recognises that identifying victims, managing perpetrators and preventing harm requires co-ordinated action across multiple agencies. Child criminal exploitation is no less complex and, in many cases, far more so, and the same approach should apply here. Amendment 198 would ensure that statutory guidance is issued to all agencies operating under Section 16E of the Children Act 2004, reflecting their safeguarding activities and duties.

I realise it is very difficult for the Government to react to all the amendments that we put in. I am feeling a bit lonely on these Benches, actually—I do not know if everybody else has gone home already; I am quite jealous. My ambition is to ensure that the provisions in this Bill are supported by the clear, authoritative, multiagency guidance necessary to make them work in practice, and to make sure that we can see they are working in practice. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has outlined the amendments and their importance in detail. I want to echo her last point about the need for proper guidance to set out exactly what the many agencies that should be involved need to do. The group of charities that have written to us propose that this should

“Provide clear advice on the complex and evolving nature of CCE”,

including cuckooing;

“Clarify the roles and responsibilities of all relevant partners”

and “Emphasise transitional safeguarding”, ensuring that young people do not suddenly get pulled out of somewhere and have absolutely no resource to face a new life. They add that it is important that this is not just the obvious agencies; it needs to include those concerned with slavery and trafficking and the police specialists working in child abduction, and it needs to extend to care orders, secure accommodation and deprivation of liberty orders.

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[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I will not speculate. I suspect that would be the case, but I had probably best undertake to write to the noble Baroness to confirm that detail.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for his answers. I recognise the points he made, and those made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, but quite honestly, when you have so many children’s organisations saying that the Government have got something wrong, the Government ought to listen. Although I am not going to push this to a vote, I feel like tackling the various Ministers in the corridor sometime and making sure they understand the depth of my care and passion about this. We all want to protect children, and the Government will be responsible if there are gaps. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 195 withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I was very pleased to add my name to this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. To me, it is the most important amendment to the Bill, and she laid out fully why it is so needed. As she said, this will be about trust in the police, and without this sort of regulation, that trust will be lacking—especially given the spy cops inquiry, which I have been following. That inquiry led me to want to put my name to this amendment, particularly because it has been going on for 10 years, involving three judges, and we should now have the lessons from it. If it had wound up, we would have had the lessons from that inquiry, and this amendment fills a bit of the gap from not having them.

The problem with that inquiry is that quite a lot of it is held in secret and a lot of the transcripts are heavily redacted, so it is very difficult for a Member of your Lordships’ House to follow, as I have tried to, what the lessons will be. For those reasons, we should support this amendment, even if it is just a stopgap until that inquiry eventually reports. That could be years from now, so I am pleased to support the amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 470, which I, too, have signed. I agree with every word that we heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Miller. This references a deep vein of misogyny that existed then in the Met police—and I suspect it still exists, in spite of all the promises to the contrary. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is so calm; it always astonishes me how calm she stays when I know she feels exactly the way I feel about this, which is absolutely furious. I know that when I stand up I am absolutely furious about quite a lot of things, but this plumbs the depths of my fury.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Thank you, everybody. I tried to be a core participant in the spy cops inquiry—I think it was the first one—but the judge ruled that it did not apply to me because I had been spied on by the regular police, not the spy cops, so I could not be part of it. I was very disappointed about that.

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[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am not saying that at all. We all recognise that things have gone wrong, but what I say generally is that this type of policing—indeed, quite a number of aspects of policing—is about testing the law. Certainly, this is the case with the involvement of CHISs.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The noble Lord mentioned all the safeguards, but why does he think the safeguards failed not once, but multiple times, and over quite a number of years?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I cannot answer for all the cases that have gone wrong; indeed, I cannot answer for any cases that have gone wrong—it is not my place to do that. I can say, however, that it very much depends on good leadership and good supervision, and all of that comes down to good training. It has always been my view that training is at the core of all of this.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am always interested in what Sir Brian Leveson, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, says. From my perspective he provides robust oversight, which includes comments that he has made, and he and his inspectors pay particular attention to that criminal conduct authorisation. He produces annual reports—I know that they are time-lagged, for reasons that are self-evident with any annual report. In his annual report in 2024, he identified

“good levels of compliance for the authorisation and management”

of police undercover operatives and noted that the quality and content of police undercover operative criminal conduct authorisations was found to be of a “good standard”. I will always look and listen to what he says because we have a responsibility to ensure that these matters are dealt with for the product of that CHIS to help protect the public at large.

I assure my noble friend and in this context the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, that the CHIS cannot be authorised to entrap people—which is one of the objectives of her amendment. Any such entrapment would be in conflict with Article 6 of the ECHR—as my noble friend knows, we are committed to maintaining our obligations under the ECHR—which protects the right to a fair trial. Furthermore, I point my noble friend to the publicly available Undercover Policing: Authorised Professional Practice, which states in clear terms that an undercover operative

“must not act as an agent provocateur”.

I hope that satisfies my noble friend on that point.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I will ask a similar question to the one I asked the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. If these safeguards are so wonderful and if it is all in good order, why was this allowed to happen? The evidence of the spy cops from the early days of that inquiry was that the people overseeing the CHIS knew what was happening regarding their relationships with the women. They knew and they let it happen. That does not sound like good order.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

With due respect, the noble Baroness is raising historical issues; there have been improvements in performance management and control over time. As I said, those historical issues are appalling but are currently under investigation within the remit of the John Mitting inquiry into undercover policing. I want to see the recommendations of that inquiry as soon as possible so that we can see where there are further issues. I see that the noble Baroness wants to jump in again, which is fine. Leaping up is part of the parliamentary tennis that we play, and it is important that she has the opportunity to do so.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It also keeps us fit. All through the inquiry, the police have blocked information from being given out. They have constantly tried to stop the truth becoming open. I can understand the Minister saying that he is waiting for the inquiry to report, but it could take another decade. In the meantime, we still have those concerns about the police. The women’s concerns were brushed away. There might have been various pathways for them to complain, but they were brushed away. Why does the Minister think it is any better today?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness tempts me to go into areas of the inquiry, which I will not do. The inquiry is looking at historical abuses, which we have recognised and which are appalling. In the meantime, there have been legislation and improvements by policing in the management of covert operations. I am giving the noble Baroness that assurance now that we believe there are improvements in that management but things that need to be looked at in relation to the previous operation.

The legislation that the noble Baroness is seeking to amend has also put in place a range of measures as a whole. I say to my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti that I have made clear that CHISs cannot be authorised to entrap. This amendment would impose broad and unintended constraints on intelligence gathering by CHISs where criminal conduct is a factor—for example, by preventing CHISs going along with offences that they do not instigate. I have seen the product of that type of activity by CHISs. It is extremely valuable for crime prevention and for bringing people who are committing criminal or terrorist acts to the courts.

My noble friend’s amendment would also rule out the possibility of discrediting the subject of an investigation—for example, a terrorist organisation—in cases where it is equally important to do so. My noble friend has fulfilled her duty. She is challenging the Government on these matters. Self-evidently, we are in a better place than we were many years ago. I await with interest the recommendations of the John Mitting inquiry on undercover policing and whether there are further issues for us to examine.

I want to touch on two other points. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, sort of asked for a meeting. I am always open to meeting with Peers. In my tenure in this job, I have tried to meet with anybody who has asked. But in this case, given that there is an inquiry ongoing, it would be inappropriate for me to meet with him to discuss those matters now.

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[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, today we have discussed at length some very important issues that are also pretty bleak. It has been lightened for me only by hearing the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, referred to as neutral, which is not an epithet that I would normally attach to him. I am sorry that he is not in his place. I hope that my operational amendment will conclude with a more positive and optimistic outcome.

I thank the Minister and his officials for meeting me to discuss this amendment, along with Labour MP Phil Brickell who, with the support of the APPG on anti-corruption, championed this amendment in the Commons. I am also grateful to that APPG for the excellent policy note it provided to the Minister following our meeting. I thank the Minister also for his helpful subsequent letter of 9 December. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for their kind support and for adding their names to the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, wanted to be here but has been called away. He did, however, give me a statement, from which I will quote briefly when it is apposite.

The purpose of the amendment is to include in the Bill a requirement to undertake a viability study of the establishment of an economic crime fighting fund. I am mindful that this is Committee so I will mention only the following three summary points about the amendment. First, there are two statistics to illustrate the scale of the problem. Economic crime overall currently costs the UK £350 billion a year. That is equal to 17.5% of GDP, but we spend less than 0.05% of GDP tackling it. Also, of the £100 billion in illicit financial flows alone each year, law enforcement recovers only some 0.2%.

Secondly, crime-fighting agencies are currently trapped in a cycle of underfunding. The 2024 Civil Service survey found that only a third of National Crime Agency staff thought they had the necessary tools for their job, the lowest percentage of all 107 public bodies surveyed. This lack of funding limits vital recruitment, damages effectiveness and crushes morale. Meanwhile, despite fraud accounting for 43% of all reported crime last year, fraud prosecutions were down 50% on the 10-year median level.

Thirdly—this is where the fund comes in—despite the underfunding in the face of the almost overwhelming level of economic crime, the agencies still manage to generate an average of £566 million per year in fines and recovered assets. However, most of that £566 million recovered per year is not reinvested in fighting economic crime. Instead, most of it goes to the Treasury and the Home Office. Redirecting even a fraction of these funds to the key agencies fighting economic crime would be transformational.

This amendment would simply require a very timely viability assessment of enabling these agencies to break out of the current negative funding cycle, to fight more economic crime and to gain long-term sustainable funding for their vital work. Please note that the taxpayer would pay nothing. The funding would be paid for by the confiscated proceeds of crime—rather poetic justice.

I clarify the following points, which arose in discussion of the amendment after Second Reading. First, the fund would be wholly separate from victim compensation and would not alter the status quo in that area. There are also many cases where economic crime cannot be linked to specific victims—for example, where a criminal is laundering money from a drug-dealing gang.

Secondly, this is not a new or unique idea. All 13 supervisors for the accountancy sector retain penalties imposed for anti-money laundering breaches. The Ministry of Justice is permitted to retain part of the value of fines and fixed penalties collected, amounting to nearly £360 million in the financial year 2024-25. The FCA is allowed to retain a proportion of fines. This amounted to £71.6 million in the same period. These are just some UK examples. There are numerous other precedents of fines being reinvested, in the UK and internationally.

Thirdly, the current system is opaque and subject to the dreaded annularity rules, meaning that any money which the agencies retain must be spent by the year’s end or it is taken away. This encourages some truly bizarre behaviours to use up the money in time. One example we discussed with the Minister in our meeting was a sponsored yacht race.

There is also a specifically British wrinkle here. Police forces, as Crown servants rather than civil servants, are subject to different accounting rules. Thus the Met can keep some of the seized cash and spend it over multiple years, allowing it to plan and use it strategically. I quote the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe:

“The police force has been able to take a share of the criminal assets they seize, should a court so decide. Everyone accepts that the amount seized is a small fraction of the criminal assets out there. The police’s share of money is pooled in the Treasury and then returned to the forces—albeit that this process often takes 1-2 years. Nevertheless, this allows the police to invest in discovering and seizing further criminal assets”.


However, unfortunately, the National Crime Agency, the Serious Fraud Office, HMRC and the Crown Prosecution Service cannot do this. They are, as mentioned, captured by Treasury rules that require central government bodies each year to return what they have not spent. This confused and chronic underfunding cannot continue.

While I welcome the Government’s anti-corruption strategy and their interest in improving the economic crime levy and the ARIS systems, recent discussions with HMT and other officials suggest that they are not going to do anything substantive to move forward, claiming there is a lack of data from law enforcement agencies on the return on investments from the use of these funds. I therefore suggest to the Minister that consultation on the viability of the fund that the amendment proposes would be the right opportunity to speed up the frankly glacial progress made so far on data collection in the Home Office.

Finally, I remind the Minister and the Committee of two things. First, the amendment would not require the fund to be established, but simply that its viability be examined. Secondly, there was and is wide cross-party support for the amendment in the Commons. Details of this support have been provided already to the Minister. I therefore ask him the following question. If, as he may indicate in response, he or the Government consider that such a viability study could be undertaken without legislation, will he commit from the Dispatch Box today to implement such a study and tell the House when it can be expected to start and to report?

I give the last word to the former director of the National Economic Crime Centre, Adrian Searle:

“Substantive and sustained funding … is crucial. The resource currently deployed is not commensurate with the scale of the problem … Doing the necessary analysis appears to be a no brainer”.


I look forward to any comments from others and hope for a positive response from the Minister. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I do not normally get involved with money issues because they are too messy and convoluted. The last time I recommended any sort of money being given to the police was when I was on the Metropolitan Police Authority. It was going to scrap the wildlife crime unit, and I argued strongly that we should keep it. It was not about naughty squirrels; it was about people committing crimes against wildlife. I felt it was an incredibly important unit, but that is by the by.

This is a growing crime. I can remember discussing it 20 years ago and people saying, “We need more money to fund the work and we need better systems”, and all that sort of thing, so it is surprising that we need this now after so long. It addresses a persistent weakness in our response to economic crime—the lack of stable long-term funding. Economic crime undermines public trust and causes real harm to individuals and communities, yet the agencies tasked with tackling it are often operating on short-term budgets, dependent on annual settlements and unable to plan effectively. This amendment asks the Government to undertake a serious assessment of whether a proportion of the proceeds recovered from economic crime could be reinvested into a fund to strengthen enforcement. That strikes me as an incredibly sensible approach; it would also stop the Treasury from grabbing the money and using it in even worse ways.

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[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 484 on behalf of my noble friend Lady Bakewell, who is unable to be here, I shall also speak to Amendment 485 in this group on pollution. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for her support for both. The amendments address the critical, environmental and public trust issue of the persistent and systematic failure of water companies to stem the flow of pollution into our rivers, lakes and coastal waters. The amendments are designed to work in tandem as a linked pair of provisions specifically targeting persistent and sustained underperformance. They are not designed to punish one-off incidents. They are a measured response to prolonged and sustained regulatory failures that, in the public’s eye, have become a matter of criminal neglect.

Amendment 484 would insert a new clause into the regulatory framework, creating a clear corporate criminal offence for a water or sewage company. That offence would be triggered when a company already regulated by Ofwat or the Environment Agency either fails to meet its pollution performance commitment level for three consecutive years or experiences an increase in serious pollution levels for three consecutive years. The pollution performance commitment level used is the exact target that companies commit to under the existing regulatory framework, which Ofwat reports on annually. The data regarding serious pollution incidents is similarly drawn directly from the Environment Agency’s annual environmental performance data.

A three-year threshold is a deliberate and calibrated response. We recognise that water companies can face individual problems from climate change, weather events, rapid population growth and other unforeseen circumstances. However, when failures persist year after year, are reported in black and white in regulatory reports but nothing is done, that is a different matter. By setting this three-year window, we would offer companies ample opportunity to correct their course. If they failed to do so, as a result of this amendment it could result in the matters being criminal.

Amendment 485 would build directly upon this foundation by creating personal criminal liability for senior managers. Liability would arise where a corporate offence under Amendment 484 was committed and the individual had failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it. We have adopted a functional or a robust definition of senior manager, mirroring successful legal models in health and safety and economic crime already in legislation. It would apply to anyone who plays a significant role in making decisions about how the company’s relevant activities are managed or organised. This ensures that no one could evade their responsibility through misleading job titles or a corporate web of complex structures.

Critically, this amendment includes built-in protections to ensure fairness. The core requirement is to “take all reasonable steps”. A manager who could demonstrate that they have done this would have a clear path to acquittal. This structure would pierce the corporate veil without being reckless. Decisions regarding budgets and infrastructure carry personal weight for those who operate at the top.

Although there has been change, there is a lot that still needs to be done. Bill payers are facing a 26% increase in their bills and, in 2025 alone, supply interruptions across England and Wales rose by 8%. Even more concerning is the 60% increase in serious category 1 and category 2 incidents, which climbed to 75 in 2024. I recognise that we have had the Water (Special Measures) Act, the Cunliffe review and the recent White Paper and that there is more legislation to come. We welcome a lot of the measures, particularly those in the White Paper. Regulators have also imposed record fines, some as high as £90 million, but we must confront the reality that we may have reached the limits of a solely fines-based model.

When penalties are too modest, they just become the cost of doing business; when they are too punitive, they risk bringing down the very water companies that we are trying to sanction. Despite these fines, executives continue to draw substantial bonuses. Shareholders continue to receive massive dividends, while the environment bears the scars. The public is being asked to fund a staggering £104 billion in the promised AMP8 investment, and much of it is publicly underwritten through government schemes. We must have a statutory mechanism that ensures that this money delivers verifiable environmental gains rather than just being siphoned into higher gearing and profits.

Some critics may argue that these amendments will deter talent and overburden regulators. I disagree. These provisions are carefully calibrated to protect those who work in this industry, and they could do exactly the opposite. They could attract into the industry those people we need who are motivated to make change. Having that protection of the “reasonable steps” defence could help to attract the very talent we need. These measures are in line with requirements of the Environment Act that the polluter must pay. For too long this has not happened, and individual poor performance has been allowed to pass unchallenged.

These amendments provide the precise tools needed to bridge the gap between reporting failure and enforced change. Persistent pollution is not a technical glitch or an oversight; it is a substantial betrayal of public trust and an environmental duty. These issues need more thought than I have seen to date from the Government, despite the legislation coming forward.

The new water regulator, when established, must have the necessary tools to hold individual companies and individual corporate members within them to account personally for any serious and persistent failings; otherwise, it will not succeed, just as other regulators have not. I hope that the Government will view these amendments as a timely enhancement to their own thinking and plans for further reform. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I love these amendments and wish I had tabled them myself. They are excellent. Water companies dumping sewage into rivers has been illegal for years: it is just this and the previous Government’s refusal to act that has let it continue without serious consequences.

The legislation allows Ministers to set a bar of what is acceptable behaviour and, so far, every politician in charge has refused to say what is and is not a major failure. The result of this political cowardice is that water companies continue to make a profit out of polluting our waterways and beaches, and the people in charge continue to collect their big pay cheques and bonuses.

Regulators such as Ofwat have been in bed with the water industry bosses, and the Environment Agency has lost staff and legitimacy. Labour are wedded to private ownership of water and refuse to consider public ownership, even though it would be the most popular legislation they could enact this Parliament. I keep making suggestions about how Labour can get some voters back, but it is not listening.

These companies are fleecing bill payers with the excuse that they need to carry out the investment they have failed to do for decades. They have taken the public’s money and given it directly to shareholders. They have run up debts to pay even higher dividends and the bill payers are now paying for those debts. What is going to stop them doing this all again?

These amendments take a direct route to stopping pollution by making this personal to the people at the top. If they do not spend the money to invest and reduce pollution, then that is a crime. They are taking the public’s money and failing to improve. My own preference would be to put them on long-term community service cleaning up the sewage from our beaches, waterways and riverbanks. I would probably put them in special uniforms so that everybody passing by would know exactly who they are. I would also put a complete ban on dividend and bonus payments.

I am happy—she says, through gritted teeth—to support this more moderate suggestion, as being something the Minister might accept. I would not give them three years to turn it around either, but setting some sort of firm deadline would be preferable to the inaction of this, and the last, Government.

Finally, the best way of stopping the crime of water companies dumping sewage in our rivers is to take them into public ownership. Reduce bills by reducing the money wasted on debt repayments and replace the current set of overpaid bosses with people who can do the job and care about our environment.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I declare a historic connection with the water industry in the sense that I was the chairman of a water-only company more than 10 years ago, but it means I know a bit about the water industry and perhaps that is helpful after the last intervention, because the truth of the matter is that this is not just a problem of the water companies.

First, it is the problem of those people who controlled the water companies. The way in which it was operated was a great mistake. There were two regulators and the Environment Agency was almost always overturned by Ofwat. Ofwat was leaned on by successive Governments to keep down the price of water. So I start by saying that we must have a system in which we are paying for the big changes that we know about—and, because I have been around for such a long time, I remember why privatisation took place. It was not anything to do with Mrs Thatcher wanting to privatise. It was because, when it had been public ownership, both municipal and national, there had never been investment. It is all right for the noble Baroness to say that that is what we want; if you look at the history, it is about the worst history of public investment that we ever had. We had Surfers Against Sewage and the filthiest water: the worst water in northern Europe. When we signed up to the water directive, as we did when were sensibly in the European Union, it was quite clear that we did not meet the standards. The Daily Telegraph used to say, “Oh well, of course our water is better than anywhere else because they drink bottled water in France”. The truth was that our water did not meet the standards of the whole of Europe.

The privatisation took place to get private money into the water industry, to make the changes that were necessary—and, for a bit, it worked. I was the Minister responsible after that had been done and it was murder to try to deal with it. As these companies brought new technology and the rest into it, they had to charge more and therefore we had all the arguments about keeping the water price down. Unfortunately, we have to recognise that water is not cheap and it is going to be more and more expensive. For example, Essex & Suffolk Water—which is about 200 to 300 yards outside Anglia, where I am affected, so I do not have a direct connection—has announced that it cannot provide new water for any new or extended industry until 2036. That is the effect of climate change and of not having the water we need.

We have to be frank about our problem: we are going to have to spend a lot more money on water, make it much more efficient, use new technology and do that through the privatised system that we have. There is no point in arguing about it; it is not going to be nationalised. The Government have made that quite clear and nobody else is going to nationalise it. So let us see how we can make this work. That is why I have come to be semi-supportive of this amendment: the reality is that we have not been able properly to regulate water and we need to do so. Directors of companies in these areas need to be personally responsible when, for a period, they have clearly not done the job which they are supposed to do.

The noble Baroness wanted us not to have three years. Frankly, you have got to have a period in which you can see whether this a persistent problem or a one-off. We are going to have lots of one-off problems. I know it bores the Committee for me constantly to talk about climate change, but the point about climate change is that it is really climate disruption. It means that we have very significant changes in weather which we cannot predict in advance and therefore we can have real problems, with so much water that we cannot deal with it or not enough water so we cannot provide for people. That does not mean to say that the people of Tunbridge Wells do not have a very considerable complaint about the fact that, yet again, they have not been able to have the water that they ought to have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It is very brave of the noble Lord to say categorically that this Government will not put the water companies into public hands, because they are famous for their U-turns, so who knows what is going to happen next week? Secondly, all these bonuses and huge payouts surely show a level of incompetence. They had the money to do the investment and they gave it instead to shareholders.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am sorry, the second part of the noble Baroness’s comments are ones she makes about everybody who is in the private sector. That is what she thinks about the private sector and I do not agree with her. The Polanski mechanisms of this world are devastating politically and economically and, really, I am not going to answer that because I just think it is not true and is nonsense.

However, the first part is actually quite important. The reason the Government do not want to nationalise the water companies is that it would cost a great deal of money that we ought to use for other things—and it does not necessarily end up with a better system. I am a historian: I always like to look at what happened before. When it was in the public sector and was run by municipalities, we did not spend the money. That was the problem. And we still would not do so, because there is always something better to spend the money on immediately. We are politicians; you do it for what the next moment is. The trouble with investment in water is that it is crucial, but it is long term.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

First, I do not want to get into a spat with the noble Lord but could he not mention people by name in this Chamber? That is quite rude. Secondly, I am an archaeologist and I know exactly how these things start. The fact is, it may be that public ownership did not help but private ownership has made it much worse—and it is not true that I condemn all private businesses.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

We are straying away from the amendment and strolling into a bigger debate. If we can get back to the amendment, that will be fantastic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for tabling the amendment, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for moving it, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for putting her name to it and speaking to it. I enjoy—well, “enjoy”—sparring on issues of water ownership and water companies. Usually it is in Oral Questions rather than in the middle of the Crime and Policing Bill but, hey ho, you take your chances wherever you can. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Deben, for bringing his sense of history and active participation over a number of decades, if I may say so, on the issue of water ownership and stewardship. I found myself agreeing—which may not be too strange—in no small part with many of his comments.

Before I get into the meat of my remarks, I want to be clear: as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, the Government are not going to nationalise the water industry. It would cost around £100 billion.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It is not true.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am very happy to direct the noble Baroness towards Defra’s costings on this. You have to take account of all sorts of factors, including debt that you inherit as well as the equity stake of the companies that they are currently valued at. It is a very simplistic economics that leads you down the primrose path of the valuations that some people like to think it would cost. That is not the case.

I also gently point out to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that the £104 billion that comes up in PR24 to which he referred is an investment commitment from the water companies. We are building new aqueducts now and we have not built them for decades, and that is one of the main reasons why we have continual problems of lots of rain but not enough water supply, to which the noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred. Anyway, I will take off my Defra Whip hat and put on my Home Office Whip hat, and I will speak to the amendment.

Performance commitment levels, including for pollution, are set for Ofwat in the price review process. Where companies fail to meet these commitment levels, they must return money to customers through reduced bills in the next financial year. Companies are therefore already penalised for failing to meet their performance targets. In addition, this Government have already introduced the toughest sentencing powers in history against law-breaking water executives. Provisions in the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, to which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, referred, extend the sentencing powers of the courts to include imprisonment in all cases where the regulator’s investigations have been obstructed by individuals and enable obstruction cases to be heard in the Crown Court. As a company cannot go to prison, the provisions ensure that directors and officers are held to account. The threat of imprisonment will act as a powerful deterrent as water companies invest in upgrading broken water infrastructure and clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good.

The 2025 Act also allows the Government to expand and strengthen the current range of financial penalties available to the Environment Agency in a bid to clamp down on more water company offences. The Government have consulted on the scope for these new penalties and their value. The changes will make it much easier and quicker for the Environment Agency to hold water companies to account. Through the 2025 Act, the Government have also given Ofwat the power to ban executive performance bonuses where companies fail to meet certain standards. Since this was introduced in June last year, six companies out of nine—Anglian Water, Southern Water, Thames Water, United Utilities, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water—have triggered the bonus ban rule, and more than £4 million of potential bonuses have been blocked. This is the legislation working in action.

The Government announced, in response to the Cunliffe review, that they will establish a single powerful regulator for the entire water sector, with the teeth to enforce the standards that the public rightly demand. We have also accepted the recommendation from Cunliffe to end the era of water companies marking their own homework through operator self-monitoring. We will introduce open monitoring to increase transparency and restore public trust. We have set out our wider vision for the future of the water sector in a White Paper published on 20 January. This marks the most fundamental reset to our water system in a generation. When parliamentary time allows in a new Session, we will introduce a water Bill creating the laws that we need to fundamentally change the system.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, asked whether the Government are committed to this. The Water (Special Measures) Act last year, our response to the Cunliffe review, the water White Paper and our commitment to legislate are a down payment on our commitment to do right by the industry, the environment, the consumer and those who wish to invest in our water system. I hope that the measures I have set out demonstrate that the Government and regulators are taking firm action to hold water companies and their executives to account for poor performance. For these reasons, in the knowledge that we will bring forward further legislation in due course, I hope that the noble Earl will withdraw the amendment.

Public Order Act 2023 (Interference With Use or Operation of Key National Infrastructure) Regulations 2025

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I have listened to a fascinating debate—some of it moral, some of it technical and latterly some of it even economic. But the amendment to the Motion asks us to make a simple decision: is it a case of overreach to define animal testing as national infrastructure? If it is overreach, we should support the amendment; if it is not, we should resist it. We each need to come to our own conclusion. I hope that we will have an opportunity to do so relatively soon.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, every noble Lord has said that they will be brief but then quite a lot are not. I will do my best to be brief.

First, I agree with every word that my noble friend Lady Bennett said. She summed up the problems we in this Chamber face.

Secondly, I have said many times in this Chamber, on many Bills, that this Government are putting in more and more repressive legislation. They are getting worse than the previous Government and are just adding to their oppressive agenda. The Labour Party is failing the nation when it keeps adding crime after crime into anti-protest legislation.

I am sure the Minister knows that the six Palestine Action activists who were imprisoned and went to court came away without having any charges against them corroborated. They are free. It seems that this legislation will make things even more complicated for the police. Again and again, the police say that all the legislation relating to protest is too complicated at the moment, needs streamlining and needs to make more sense. Like it or not, this Government are losing the public. If a jury cannot find against six people who broke into a factory and smashed things up, they are losing the public. The public are saying to them, “We just don’t believe you any more. You are pushing things to far”. If the Government could not even get that case through the courts, they have wasted police time and court time, and have made the lives of those six people unpleasant and nasty for some time. This is overreach; the Government know it is, and they should not do it.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, these Benches will support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, if she decides to test the opinion of the House. I thank all Peers across the House for their powerful contributions on transparency, proportionality and the right to dissent.

The UK’s life sciences sector is something that we should cherish. It is a jewel in our economic crown, generating tens of billions of pounds in annual turnover and employing hundreds of thousands of people across the country. However, the protection of this essential industry, while necessary, should never come at the expense of our fundamental democratic freedoms. Sadly, this statutory instrument is on the wrong side of that argument. Time and again, as my noble friend Lord Beith set out, the previous Conservative Government undermined the right to peaceful protest by passing sweeping unnecessary powers that went far beyond what was needed to maintain public safety. I argue that even at that time, the law covered non-peaceful protest, as has been described by some Members in this debate and set out in the very powerful arguments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester.

We on these Benches consistently opposed the Public Order Act 2023, viewing it as a troubling example of the criminalisation of peaceful dissent and an unwarranted expansion of policing powers. It is therefore heartbreaking to see the new Government choosing to follow this same path rather than reversing some of those damaging restrictions. The regulations seek to rebrand ordinary research and manufacturing sites, including those licensed under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, as key national infrastructure. This designation risks turning legitimate peaceful protest into a criminal offence, carrying a penalty of up to 12 months’ imprisonment. To place a pharmaceutical laboratory or a beagle breeding facility on the same legal footing as our energy networks, transport hubs or the M25 is, I believe, overreach.

Peaceful campaigners, including those raising ethical concerns about animal testing or pharmaceutical oversight, should not be treated as threats to national security. The Government justify this expansion by citing pandemic resilience, but the facilities being protected often have, at best, an unclear or indirect link. Despite the Government’s focus on vaccine production, we still have no clear public evidence that facilities such as MBR Acres have played a direct role in Covid-19 vaccine development. Yet they are folded into these protections in the name of pandemic resilience.

The police already possessed strong powers to deal with dangerous or obstructive behaviour, such as has been described in the Chamber today. Long before these new laws were imposed, powers under the Public Order Act 1986 and other legislation already provided a robust framework to address criminal damage, harassment and trespass. The Government have yet to provide compelling evidence that those existing powers are inadequate rather than simply less convenient.

We must also consider the lack of transparency and the absence of a rights-based impact assessment for these measures. Section 24 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 restricts public information about these sites. Ironically, individuals may therefore find themselves criminalised for protesting near a facility that they did not even know was now designated, under this new system, as “protected infrastructure”. This is not just legal overreach but an outrageous expansion of state power that avoids meaningful public consultation and accountability, as was set out so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr.

This proposal also sits in stark contrast with the Government’s own replacing animals in science strategy, as set out so ably by the Minister. To publish a road map for phasing out animal testing while simultaneously shielding those same facilities from public scrutiny and peaceful protest sends, at the very least, an inconsistent message. Throughout this debate, noble Lords have reminded us that the right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy, not a privilege to be granted or withdrawn at the convenience of those who rule. Those who stand outside those sites are people who care deeply about animal welfare, scientific integrity and the kind of country we want to be. We should not treat people holding placards outside laboratories as if they are saboteurs of the national grid. I believe I have already covered anyone who has been violent and not been peaceful.

As ever, both the Conservative and Labour Benches are squeamish when it comes to fatal Motions. My suggestion to both those parties would be: in that case, do not use sweeping powers that diminish citizens’ rights through unamendable legislation. While Labour have been consistent on this, many years ago their own noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, produced a report suggesting that fatal Motions should sometimes be used. Even our new Lord Speaker has been known to support a fatal Motion or two from the Conservative Benches. More recently, we had a report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, whose conclusion was stark:

“The abuse of delegated powers is in effect an abuse of Parliament and an abuse of democracy”.


The regulations we are debating today are an appalling example of just that, as was so ably explained by my noble friend Lady Miller.

For all these reasons—the lack of necessity, the absence of transparency, the inconsistency with stated policy on animal testing, and the chilling effect on peaceful protest—I urge noble Lords to support the amendment to decline the regulations and to uphold our tradition of lawful, peaceful dissent.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have added my name to both amendments in this group for the reasons that have been so eloquently set out by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

The first point is that proscription is a very significant power for the Executive. The consequences are severe. Conduct that was hitherto perfectly lawful becomes not only unlawful but criminal. For that reason, we need to have proper checks and balances. The second reason, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, is that these amendments are actually quite modest. They do not try to limit or amend the scope of the criminal offences, which was the case with some of the amendments perhaps in the previous group; all they try to do is increase parliamentary scrutiny. To me, the case for doing so seems unanswerable.

The third point is that, as we know, there has been an intense debate on the proscription of Palestine Action, and views on that may differ. But my opinion is that, whichever view one takes, one should be able to support both these amendments—particularly in light of the very interesting exchange in the previous group between the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, where the idea that seemed to emerge was that there might be some way forward on tightening “glorification” by reference to proscribed organisations.

But if the reference point is proscribed organisations, we must be absolutely certain that we are getting proscription right, and we must be able to interrogate fully any proscription that the Government decide. For that reason, I think there is simply no answer to Amendment 454. We need to have one order per organisation that the Government intend to proscribe. It is no answer to say that this would place an undue burden. Civil servants will obviously have to spend considerable time putting together the evidence for proscription and, as part of that, requiring them to prepare two different orders is not asking for too much. Nor is it an answer to say that this would be an increased burden for Parliament.

When we vote on or scrutinise a proscription, we take a decision of great importance, for the reasons I have mentioned before. We should not be put again in a position, as was the case a few months ago, where we have to decide on the proscription of very different organisations—where, on the one hand, you have organisations for which the case for proscription is probably uncontroversial, and on the other hand you have examples of organisations for which there is objectively an argument to be had as to whether proscription is a good idea or not. For these reasons, I give my full support to both these amendments.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I too support both amendments. I support Amendment 449 because proscription is a huge power. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, used the word “awesome”, and it is indeed an awesome power: it can turn ordinary behaviour into crime. Parliament should not be asked to rubber-stamp those decisions without proper scrutiny. Proscription can criminalise membership, association and even everyday activity, yet at present these decisions are made almost entirely within the Executive, with very limited parliamentary oversight, and that concentration of power carries risks. It leaves decisions open to mistakes or overreach and of course it can also undermine public confidence in counterterrorism law.

Parliament and the public need assurance that proscription is based on sound reasoning, reviewed independently and grounded in evidence. One thing we did not really have when we were asked to proscribe Palestine Action was evidence. Since then, we have had hints of various kinds, telling us that we will see when the evidence comes out and we will understand why that proscription was justified. But so far, I would argue, it has not been justified. Independent scrutiny is particularly important when the intelligence underpinning a proscription is classified and supposedly cannot be shared widely. Where decisions are urgent or complex, having a committee report afterwards helps Parliament and the public understand the reasoning and reinforces the legitimacy of the action taken.

I would have also supported this going further to address the recommendation of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson KC—the noble Lord, Lord Anderson—that proscriptions should be time-limited and expire after a set period, such as two years, unless Parliament is asked to proscribe yet again. As we know, once proscription has happened, in effect it lasts forever. Decisions this serious should not be made in private and left to drift. Parliament deserves a proper look at the evidence, so I hope that the Minister is going to bring us the evidence, as he keeps hinting in various speeches.

Amendment 454 is an excellent amendment, I have to say, because, when we proscribed Palestine Action, it was bracketed with two groups. I cannot even remember their names. They were right-wing, fascist organisations, and we had absolutely no choice about that. Had we dealt with each of those individually, we could have made a much better decision, I would argue. It seems that we just have to trust the Government—and who trusts the Government any more? Certainly not me, and many of the general public agree with me. Asking us to trust the Government is not the way it should be. It really should have better oversight.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I shall say a few words in support of Amendment 449 from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and Amendment 454 from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I do so on the grounds, really, that—

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

I suggest that these consequences should not follow an act of sitting in Parliament to express a view—which I happen to share—that Mr Netanyahu and his Government are guilty of war crimes. The amendments I have tabled, both of them, are intended to address this injustice, and I commend them to your Lordships’ Committee.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am really thrilled to be supporting the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, because obviously he is so sure of everything he says that I must be doing the right thing. I will deal with Amendments 447 and 448 slightly differently, because they are different. I support Amendment 447 because it directly responds to how the law is currently interpreted by the courts. The Supreme Court has made it clear that someone can be convicted without any requirement to show that they intended to support terrorism. The offence is about the suspicion of others, not the intention of the person charged.

That might explain the law as it stands, but it also exposes the problem. Under this interpretation, people are criminalised not for what they mean to do but for how their actions might be perceived or might be used symbolically by other people. The court accepted that this interferes with freedom of expression but concluded that the interference was justified because Parliament chose to prioritise disruption and prevention. This amendment asks Parliament to look again at that choice. Criminal law normally punishes intentional recklessness. Here, however, we are dealing with offences that can be triggered by clothing, images or symbols, with no need to show encouragement, promotion or support in any real sense. That is a very wide net, and one that risks catching protest, journalism, art, research or sheer provocation.

The Supreme Court has told us plainly that if this is to change it must be done by Parliament. That is exactly what this amendment does. It ensures terrorism laws target people who genuinely seek to assist terrorism, not those whose conduct just creates an appearance or a reaction. I obviously feel very sensitive about this, being a serial protester.

On Amendment 448, the Terrorism Act gives the state some of its strongest powers, and rightly so, but with powers that strong, we should be very careful about who gets caught up in them. Amendment 448 follows directly from the same Supreme Court judgment and addresses its practical consequences. The court accepted that Section 13 interferes with freedom of expression but held that the interference was justified because the law was clear and because Parliament had chosen that. It is all our fault. That leaves people prosecuted under these provisions with very little room to explain themselves. If you carry or display something and it falls within the scope of the offence, your purpose largely does not matter.

This amendment introduces a basic safeguard—a defence for those who can show that they did not mean to encourage, incite or enable terrorism. The Supreme Court emphasised foreseeability that people should be able to control their conduct if the law is clear, but foreseeability alone is not the same as fairness. A system that criminalises without regard to intent places an enormous burden on lawful expression and legitimate activity. By putting a defence on the face of the statute, Parliament would make it clear that these offences were aimed at genuine support for terrorism, not incidental, critical or contextual engagement with proscribed organisations.

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 450 seeks to amend the current Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006. I declare that I am an officeholder in the APPG on Counter Extremism, a member of the APPG on Terrorism and Security and, probably most importantly, a victim of terrorism.

For 20 years this year we have had a criminal offence of glorification of terrorism, but under the current Section 1 there is a very high bar to meet, as the person making the statement of glorification has to intend that a person hearing the statement would be encouraged to emulate the terrorism being glorified. The glorification of terrorists or their organisations is certainly not confined to my part of the United Kingdom but rather is a threat to the security of the nation as a whole. Recently, on the streets of some of our major cities, we have seen proscribed organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah lauded and that has had and will continue to have its consequences, particularly around radicalisation of our young people.

As someone who has lived with and through terrorism, I am always alert to anything which would encourage it and bring back those dark days of intimidation, murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, over the years since the cessation of IRA violence, there has been a strategy from Sinn Féin to lionise and put terrorists and their actions on a pedestal. There are many examples of Sinn Féin politicians, many of them senior figures, attending commemorations and celebrations for the lives of those who sought to murder their neighbours. In the interest of time, I will not bring any examples of that, because I have done so in the past in this Chamber, but suffice to say that apart from the pain which it causes to their innocent victims, it also seeks to normalise terrorism as a legitimate way to bring about political change.

The retraumatisation of victims is unforgivable and needs to be called out on every occasion, but public acts of commemoration also send a very clear message to young republicans that what these young men—and they were usually young men, and in some cases 16-year-olds, sent out to murder—did was in some way honourable. It glamourises what they did. To young impressionable people who have little knowledge of the life experience of the brutality of the IRA, it makes them sound like heroes, which they patently were not.

The often chanted, “Ooh ah up the Ra”, is a symptom of the continuing glorification of dead terrorists. It is, to some, a cultural chant, but nothing could be further from the truth. If we allow people, including those in positions of authority, to glorify terrorism in the way which, for example, the current First Minister of Northern Ireland does, then it normalises and sanitises terrorism and, in a cyclical way, will lead to young people being radicalised again. Witness those young people on our streets supporting the actions of Hamas, for instance. Many of them know little about the Middle East but think it is very hip and trendy to support Hamas because they hate Israel.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If all you know about the IRA is that it took on the Brits and the First Minister says they were a great bunch of lads, then you can be forgiven for thinking that “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a grand wee chant. Those young people know little of the devastation, murder, intimidation and barbarity of the IRA because it is not something that is talked about by their First Minister.

As regards the current provisions, there have been no prosecutions under this section, to my knowledge, in Northern Ireland. When I asked the Minister a Written Question on this issue concerning England and Wales, he indicated on 2 December that there had been 52 prosecutions in England and Wales since 2011.

In 2023 the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, looked at this part of the legislation and decided that Section 1 did not need updating. With respect to the KC, I would argue that it needs change so that glorification of terrorism—in other words, glorifying the acts of a current proscribed terrorist organisation—in and of itself should be a criminal offence.

Mr Hall looked at this legislation in 2023, before the onslaught of support on our streets for Hamas; perhaps in this context he may need to look at this issue again. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, in his current review of public order and hate crime legislation, could also look at this issue.

In the meantime, I submit that change is needed for the following reasons. First, defeating terrorism is about not just militarily defeating the organisation but not allowing the narrative of those terrorists to be justified. Unfortunately, with the continued glorification of the IRA by senior politicians and others, there is a deliberate attempt to rewrite what happened in Northern Ireland. It was an unjustified, bloody, murderous terrorist campaign—nothing more and nothing less—and those of us who grew up with threats and the attempted murder of members of our family will not allow that to happen. We need society as a whole to recognise it as well. I urge noble Lords not to utter the phrase, “Yes, but it’s Northern Ireland and that’s all very difficult”. It is really not difficult. Whether you were a loyalist terrorist or a republican terrorist, you were a terrorist: someone who went out with the sole purpose of murder. Of course, the same is true of other shades of terrorists today.

Secondly, as I have already pointed out, there have been no prosecutions in Northern Ireland under the current Section 1. Why is that the case? Policing across the UK should be without fear or favour and certainly should not allow political bias or fear to enter decision-making. Unfortunately, there have recently been examples of political decision-making by police chiefs in the West Midlands and Northern Ireland.

Last week, two former chief constables of the PSNI gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Select Committee in the other place. Sir Hugh Orde and Sir George Hamilton were chief constables who took independent operational decisions. Despite policing in a very political environment, they made, as far I and many others are concerned, decisions based on policing considerations alone. They were not always popular with all the politicians, but that should never be the primary focus of a chief constable.

The two chiefs recounted instances when they had taken policing decisions and rejected attempted political interference. For Sir George, that was around the murder of Kevin McGuigan in 2015 and for Sir Hugh it was the Northern Bank robbery in 2004. On both occasions the political classes in London—and, disgracefully, Dublin—were interfering in the policing of Northern Ireland. They were trying to pressurise the two chief constables into not calling out the involvement of the IRA. They both resisted. I am very glad they did. It did not make politics in Northern Ireland any easier at that time—I remember it very well—but it was the truth. How sad then that their successor Simon Byrne decided to give in to political pressure when it was applied to him.

Unfortunately, some police chiefs do not feel strongly enough about implementing laws that may be seen as picking a side. I regret to say that some police chiefs, and indeed prosecutors, instead of applying the law without fear or favour, may be too timid and not want to rock the boat in taking a prosecution that may fail or may upset politicians or “communities”. The question is: how do you test whether all the elements of an offence are present if you are not willing to take it before the court? This amendment deals with those issues, I hope, as it removes the emulation part from the offence, and therefore makes it easier to prosecute.

Thirdly, I indicated at the start of my speech that I am an officeholder in the APPG on Counter Extremism. If we do not amend the law as this amendment seeks to do, I fear that the continued glorifying of terrorism will radicalise and lead more of our young people into terrorism. At present, there is a lack of legislation to capture extremism, but if we allow the glorification of terrorism to continue unabated, it will continue to grow, along with all the problems that it causes in our society.

Fourthly—and finally, noble Lords will be glad to hear—what sort of society do we want to live in? Do we want to allow the continued glorification of terrorism and all the inherent problems that will bring, or do we want to send a signal from Parliament that terrorism is, was and always will be wrong?

We need to stop the harmful normalisation of terrorism. I hope this amendment goes some way in doing that. Terrorism wants to put a wedge between those from different backgrounds. It wants to bring fear to ordinary citizens. In all its forms, it must be defeated. I hope that there will be support around the Committee for this amendment.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

That is the thinking behind these two amendments—they are probing only. It is right that there are appropriate criminal offences and police powers that move with the times—in the last debate, we heard eloquently argued the need to shield brave police officers. That is all well and good, but the other side of the equation is that with power comes responsibility. When a sacred and vital trust is breached—not just as in the Everard case, but what about that “Panorama” documentary of last autumn, “Undercover in the Police”, set in a London police station, where we saw the levels of racism, misogyny, bullying and physical abuse of power that our colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, warned about?—confidence needs to be rebuilt, because it will serve none of us, including most police officers, for public confidence to be undermined in that way. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am never sure what a probing amendment means, because surely all our amendments are probing, and I certainly would support both these amendments on Report, because they are actually crucial. Although I am vastly older than the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I, too, have been working on this for quite a long time, but only for two and a half decades. The number of police officers who have, in some way, been found guilty of a crime and yet still get their police pensions and all the benefits of having been a police officer for some years, however badly it has ended, really is annoying.

Police officers do a very difficult job—I am very appreciative of that and understand the problems—and most do it well. But when someone abuses that role, the damage is much greater for public trust. It is wider than any single case. Trust in policing depends on people believing that no one is above the law. In the previous debate the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, made the point that the rule of law is for us all, and I will bring that issue up again when we get to the public whatsit Bill, on—

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Accountability.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much.

At the moment the rule of law is not for us all, as exemplified by the way we treat police in some cases. On pensions, why do the Government prefer decisions about pension forfeiture to be taken later behind closed doors rather than in open court, where reasons are given and can be tested on appeal? If a judge has heard all the evidence in a criminal case involving a police officer, and has seen the harm done and the abuse of trust, why do the Government think that a judge should have no say at all over a publicly funded police pension?

I ask this out of long experience. We have been told for decades now that existing systems are enough or that reforms are coming, and clearly that is not happening. I personally would like to see, instead of these little baby steps, a bold, straightforward move towards the kind of accountability that people can see and understand. Time and again, in cases of serious police misconduct, the consequences remain unclear and invisible to the public.

From the public’s point of view, the current system makes very little sense. Some serious criminal convictions of police officers fall outside the pensions rule altogether, simply because they do not meet a narrow legal definition. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why judges who hear the evidence are excluded and why transparency in court is still seen as a step too far.

When this Labour Government got elected, I really hoped for some changes in the way that we apply a sense of fairness to the whole of our legal system. Quite honestly, they have disappointed me very badly. They are no better than this side of the Chamber. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, we have been waiting a long time for this, and a Labour Government should really put it right.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, both these amendments seek to sharpen the consequences for police officers, serving or retired, who commit criminal offences. High-profile cases and damning reports have exposed toxic elements of policing culture, eroding public trust. Yet the vast majority of police officers do an excellent job and are let down by a small minority. Recent cases highlight public expectations that the law should rightly demand higher standards of personal integrity from police officers and, at the very least, adherence to the law of the land.

There is also no question but that public confidence in policing’s ability to police its own is fragile. While the latest figures from the Independent Office for Police Conduct show record high complaints, over a quarter of the public lack confidence in the organisation itself, most cannot even describe what it does, and nearly half distrust the police complaints system. That should give us pause for thought, because it is really quite serious.

When officers are seen to evade scrutiny or punishment, trust erodes further. This has major repercussions for those doing the job properly, because many members of the public then say, “Well, they’re all the same, aren’t they?” I fully accept the noble Baroness’s argument that more can and should be done.

Amendment 425 would create a rebuttable presumption that police service can be treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing. This rightly recognises the unique betrayal of public trust when those entrusted to uphold the law instead break it. However, I have a concern that in marginal cases, being a police officer could flip from helping to reduce the sentence, as somebody who has served the public, to becoming an automatic burden.

Amendment 426 goes further, granting courts the power to forfeit a sizeable chunk of an offender’s police pension. This could serve as a highly effective deterrent. However, I worry on two counts. First, it could discourage quality recruits, who fear that one mistake could destroy their and their family’s lifetime financial security. Secondly, it could entail taking away pension benefits that the officer has already earned fairly during what were presumably good years of service.

These amendments definitely merit serious consideration, but they also focus on symptoms rather than causes. From these Benches, we want to see the Government go further to strengthen the front line of police misconduct systems, with vetting that catches risks early and misconduct processes that are swift, transparent and trusted. Only then will sentencing reforms such as this land with any amount of force.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I did not hear an answer to my question about why a judge should not hear about pension forfeiture in an open court. The forfeiting of pensions does happen, but it happens outside the court in closed rooms, and we never really understand the reasons given. Why not allow it to happen in court in front of a judge?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As I just said, it can be done in court in front of a judge on appeal. The decisions are taken by the police and crime commissioner and/or the Home Secretary, who is accountable for those matters, and the Government intend to hold to that position. It may not satisfy the noble Baroness, as ever, but I look forward to her support on the key issue, which is improving vetting to make sure that we do not have those significant bad apples in the police force in the first place. That is our key focus in the White Paper and the measures in the Bill.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

416A: After Clause 144, insert the following new Clause—
“Review: compliance and enforcement mechanisms in relation to police powers(1) Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a proposal for approval by the House of Commons on the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the enforcement powers of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) in relation to the police.(2) The proposal for an independent commission must include terms of reference, which must include, but may not be limited to—(a) a review of the powers available to other independent regulatory and investigative bodies, such as Ofqual, the Care Quality Commission, the Financial Conduct Authority, and Ofsted, for the purposes of comparison,(b) the lessons learned from other regulatory bodies with stronger enforcement powers, and(c) an examination of whether a statutory framework of coordination between HMICFRS, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and Police and Crime Commissioners, could enhance the enforcement powers available to all three sets of bodies and the accountability of policing in England and Wales.(3) The proposal for an independent commission must set out a timetable for its work including that—(a) the commission should conclude its deliberations within nine months of its establishment, and(b) the Secretary of State must lay a copy of the report before both Houses of Parliament and ensure that time is made available, within a fortnight of the report being laid, in both Houses for a substantive debate on the report’s conclusions.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to require the Government to publish a proposal for an independent commission for approval by the House of Commons to review the enforcement powers of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS), including consideration of a statutory framework to enhance the collective enforcement powers of bodies supervising Police Forces in England and Wales.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this is an unusual amendment for me because it is very exploratory. At the end, I am going to ask the Minister three questions, which I would really like an answer to, perhaps in writing if it is not possible today. This amendment is supported by StopWatch, an organisation that seeks accountable and fair policing. This is a crucial element of creating fair policing. When serious problems are found, how confident are we that the system can put them right? The system as it stands is a little jumbled. I suggest that it could do with some streamlining.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services does really important work in shining a light on what is going wrong, but inspection takes us only so far. My amendment asks whether the follow-through is strong enough and whether lessons from other regulated sectors could help turn findings into lasting improvements. In healthcare, education and financial services, regulators are able to require change. Those systems exist because inspection without action does not protect the public. The amendment invites us to consider whether policing oversight could benefit from similar clarity and grip. The amendment also raises the issue of co-ordination. Are HMICFRS, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and police and crime commissioners working together as effectively as they can when forces fail to improve? Would clearer statutory alignment help ensure that warnings are acted on and not simply repeated?

Where concerns about proportionality and legitimacy keep resurfacing, it is right to ask whether the oversight framework is strong enough to drive change. As this Bill and others give more and more power to the police, this is the perfect time to ask. I would welcome the Minister’s response on three points. First, how do the Government judge whether inspection findings are actually leading to improvement on the ground? Secondly, have the Government considered whether closer co-operation between oversight bodies could strengthen accountability? Thirdly, are there lessons from other regulatory systems that the Government believe policing can learn from? I look forward to the Minister’s reply and to continuing this discussion as the Bill progresses.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for moving her amendment. Noble Lords will recall my work on a particular police force and abnormal loads. I am confused that it was the chief inspector who informed the Home Secretary that there was a big problem. I am grateful to her for dealing with it, but I thought that the IOPC was responsible for dealing with misconduct and that the chief inspector was looking more at efficiency and the proper use of resources. It would be extremely useful to the Committee if the Minister could explain where the dividing line is between the activities of the IOPC, which I see as being concerned with conduct and discipline, and of the chief inspector, who is concerned more about efficiency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The White Paper will set out a number of proposals that the Government intend to bring forward in policy, legislation or executive action. There are a number of areas around police efficiency—what is done centrally and what is done locally, how it is done centrally and how it is done locally—that will form part of the wider debate on the police White Paper. The noble and learned Baroness will not have long to wait for the police White Paper. When it does come, undoubtedly there will be a Statement in the House of Commons and, as ever, I will have to repeat the Statement here in this House. There will be an opportunity to look at that direction of travel and how, importantly, we are going to implement the measures that we are putting in the White Paper, which, again, will be produced very shortly. I am sorry that I cannot give the noble Baroness any more comfort than that.

I share the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, that the proposal in the amendment would kick this matter of efficiency, co-ordination, performance and implementation further down the line than is already planned with our police White Paper proposals very shortly. So I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment on the basis of those comments.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, and I take to heart the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies. Of course I want fast action. I want it all and I want it now—that is my motto for life. It seems that this Committee is always hearing, “Oh, it’s all right, the Government’s dealing with this but you can have it shortly”. It does not matter whether it is talking about protest law or this particular point about accountability and action; there is always a White Paper coming along and we are going to have to wait for that, and why are we doing this Bill now if we do not have all the information we need? Anyway, I do note the Minister’s good intentions, I very much hope to see them put into action, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 416A withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I agree and disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, in equal measure, which may surprise him. On the protest point, he reaffirmed what I tried to say the other day, which is that the ECHR does not give the term “facilitation of protest”, but the police have given that term and put that sobriquet over the articles. The danger is—and I am afraid it is what materialised—that it has been interpreted as almost arranging some of the protests rather than the simplistic expression of “facilitation”. I do not think that we are a mile apart on it, but I come at it from a slightly different angle.

I think that facial recognition is an incredibly good thing. People during the debate have agreed that it has a value. It has two purposes: one is to try retrospectively to match a crime scene suspect with the database that the police hold of convicted people; and the other one, which has caused more concern and on which there may be common ground, is about the live use of it.

One thing that I think needs to be amplified—the Minister may mention it when he responds—is that the Court of Appeal has decided that the police use of facial recognition is legal. However, it did raise concerns—this is where I certainly agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Doocey, who already made this point—that it needs to treat all people equally. It is not okay to have a high failure rate against one group by race and a different success rate against another race. That is not acceptable. I was surprised, as I know the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was, when this had not been made public and was discovered in whatever way it was discovered. That needs to be got right. There is no justification for that error rate, and it must be resolved.

Secondly, this may surprise the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but I agree that there should be more regulation of its use, and that it should be regulation by Parliament, not by the police. Where I disagree is on whether this Act, and this proposed amendment, is the right way to do it. We are going to have to learn, first, how the technology works, how it is applied by the police, where its benefits are and where its risks are. I also agree that there ought to be independent oversight of it and that anybody who is offended by its use should have the opportunity to get someone to check into it to see whether it has been misused. They should also be provided with a remedy. A remedy may be financial compensation, but I would argue that it is probably better that something happens to the database to make it less likely to be ineffective in the future. There needs to be some reassurance that somebody is improving this system rather than not. I am for facial recognition, but there should be regulation and I do not think that this Act is the right time. As has already been said, the consultation that started just before Christmas and concludes, I think, in February will give us a good way forward, but it will need a bit more thought than this Bill, when it becomes an Act, might offer us.

Finally, there are an awful lot of regulators out there, and we all pay for them. There are surveillance commissioners, intrusive surveillance commissioners and biometric commissioners. They are all examining the same area—if they ever get together and decide to have one commissioner to look at the lot, we would probably save quite a lot of money. This is an area in which the existing commissioners probably could do two things. One is to regulate and the other, potentially, is to approve, either in retrospect or prospectively depending on the emergency or the urgency with which it should be used. There is therefore some need for help but, for me, I do not think that this Bill is the right opportunity.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have signed this amendment because I think it is very sensible and covers some ground that really needs tackling. It would ensure that the police could not use live facial recognition technology when imposing conditions on public assemblies or processions under Sections 12 or 14 unless a new specific code of practice governing its use in public spaces has first been formally approved by both Houses of Parliament—that sounds quite democratic, does it not? It is intended to safeguard public privacy and civil liberties by requiring democratic oversight before this surveillance technology is deployed in such contexts.

It is always interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, former Met Commissioner, on the tiny little areas where we do overlap in agreement; I think it is very healthy. However, I disagree deeply when he says this is not the legislation and it should be something else. We keep hearing that. I cannot tell noble Lords how many times I, and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, have raised this issue here in Parliament and in other places. The noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, asked a quite interesting question: why should we care? Quite honestly, I care because I believe in justice and in fairness, and I want those in society. As I pointed out yesterday, I am a highly privileged white female; I have been arrested, but I was de-arrested almost immediately by the Met Police when all the surrounding people started saying, “Do you know who she is?” and they immediately took the handcuffs off.

At some point we have to accept that this needs regulation. We cannot accept that the police constantly mark their own homework. We were reassured that all the flaws in the algorithm and so on had been fixed, but clearly we cannot be sure of that because we do not have any way of knowing exactly what the flaws were and who has fixed them. Live facial recognition represents a huge departure from long-established principles of British policing. In this country, people are not required to identify themselves to the police unless they are suspected of wrongdoing. Live facial recognition turns that principle on its head by subjecting everyone in range of a camera to an automated identity check. It treats innocent members of the public as potential suspects and undermines the presumption of innocence.

I disagree deeply with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, when he says that it is not a blanket surveillance tool—of course it is. It is a blanket surveillance tool and is highly dangerous from that point of view. It is a mass biometric surveillance tool. It scans faces in real time, retains images of those flagged by the system and does so without individuals’ knowledge or consent.

If the police randomly stopped people in the street to check their fingerprints against a database, for example, we would rightly be alarmed. Live facial recognition performs the same function, only invisibly and at scale. Its use in the context of protest is a dangerous crossing of a constitutional line. We already have evidence that facial recognition has been deployed at demos and major public events, with a chilling effect on lawful protest. People will not go to these protests because they feel vulnerable. They are deterred from exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly because they fear being identified, tracked or wrongly stopped. While this amendment proposes a safeguard through parliamentary approval of a statutory code, we should not allow that to imply acceptance of live facial recognition at protests in principle. In my view, this technology has absolutely no place in the policing of democratic dissent.

We should reflect on the broader direction of travel. Live facial recognition is most enthusiastically embraced by authoritarian regimes, while a number of democratic countries have moved to restrict or even prohibit its use. That alone should surely give this Government pause to reflect on whether this is the right legislation to bring in. Independent observers have witnessed cases in which live facial recognition has misidentified children in school uniform, leading to lengthy and very distressing police stops. In some instances, those wrongly flagged were young black children, subjected to aggressive questioning and fingerprinting despite having done nothing wrong. What safeguards are in place to prevent misidentification, particularly of children and people from UK minority-ethnic communities? That is a basic question that we should be asking before we pass this legislation. I support the amendment as an essential check, but I hope that this debate sends a wider message that Parliament will not allow the routine use of intrusive biometric surveillance to become the price of exercising fundamental democratic rights.

I want to pick up something that the Minister said on Tuesday. He directed the Committee to the front page of the Bill and said that, in his view, the Bill was compliant with the ECHR. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out, that is his belief and his view. It is absolutely not a certificate of accuracy. I am not suggesting for one moment that there is any intent to deceive; I am merely saying that it is not a certificate of truth. With claims about seemingly authoritarian laws being compliant with human rights, that assessment can be challenged and should be challenged as much as possible. It remains subjective and is challenged by the organisation Justice, for example. We are clearly going to disagree about a lot in this Bill, but we are trying our best over here to make the law fair and representative of a justice that we think should exist here in Britain.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, I was hesitant as to whether to speak here, but some years ago I had very close acquaintance with facial recognition software, so I thought it might be useful to say a couple of things.

First, I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, that this is an extremely good technology. I will get to the concerns expressed about it in a minute. This software has been used to apprehend murderers. For example, I think the Australian outback murderer was apprehended because of it and a far-right group of extremists in Sweden was identified by some very clever use of this facial recognition technology. It can be used successfully in preventing crime. Now, that is not all live use of the technology, and these amendments are about live use of the technology.

I very much respect the work of the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger. I am a great supporter of Big Brother Watch, and he and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, make good points. Much is made of the disparity in accuracy between white and black faces. The software I was involved with had that problem. The reason for that is that it was trained on white faces—they were afraid of being thought of as racist if they focused on black faces. Therefore, the accuracy for black faces was much worse, they discovered, and so they quickly started training the software on black faces and the disparity closed right up. As far as I know, the disparity, if it still exists, is quite small, but others may know better than me. This was several years ago, but that definitely happened with this set of facial recognition software.

There is the issue of perfectly innocent people being stopped and searched. That happened to me several times when I was in my teens and twenties. I had rather long hair and looked a bit—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Shifty.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

Shifty is a great description—the noble Baroness could have said far worse than that.

I was given a hard time and then let go. We have to accept that there will be errors, but we have to understand where this is going. We can less and less afford to have police on the streets—we have seen that problem—and technology has to take over. Look at the super-spotters, a very successful crime-fighting group in New York. They would go to an area where there was a lot of crime—noble Lords will know that there was a process in New York where they directed people to crime hotspots—where they looked at the gait of individuals to see whether they were carrying guns or knives. Soon, people in those areas discovered that they had better not carry guns because they would be stopped by these super-spotters and arrested. If you are not carrying a gun, which they had all stopped doing, you cannot kill somebody because you do not have a gun to kill them with. It was a tremendously successful operation in lowering crime.

State-of-the-art facial recognition, at least before I stopped looking at it a couple of years ago, was more in gait than in face. We have to understand that you can start training technology to be much more effective than even these super-spotters at spotting people who are carrying, using their gait to recognise an individual rather than their face. There are all sorts of ways in which this software will be used to recognise people. It will get better and better, and fewer mistakes will be made; mistakes will always be made none the less, but that is the way of policing. They were mistaken when they stopped me—I was this tremendously law-abiding good chap, but they stopped me, and so will the facial recognition.

I loved the description from the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, of the 20 police hanging around, which I am sure resonated with noble Lords around the entire Chamber as the sort of thing that happens, but over time we will have to depend on technology such as this. We will have to be extremely careful about civil liberties, but we cannot blanket get rid of this technology, because it will be very important to policing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I do not think that it does. We will leave it at that. There is a proper and full consultation document, a copy of which is, I am sure, available in the House for Members to look at.

I revert to my starting point. For the reasons that have been laid out by a number of Members in the Committee today, across the political divide and none, it is a valuable tool. Do the noble Lord and the noble Baroness who raised this have an objection to automatic number plate recognition? Under current regulations, every vehicle that goes past a camera at the side of the road is an “innocent” vehicle but some of those number plates will lead to crime being solved or individuals being caught. The principle is there. If they object to the principle then we will not find common ground on this. We need regulation—I have accepted that. We are bringing forward the consultation, but, ultimately it is a valuable tool to stop and prevent crime and to catch criminals.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The Minister cannot compare cars with people—that is a completely false comparison. I do not know whether the Minister has been in a van with a camera looking at number plates. There is no mistaking number plates; there is a lot of mistaking human faces.

The Minister earlier used the word “proportionately”. There is a significant distinction between proportionately and expediently. The test for lawful interference with ECHR rights is proportionality rather than expediency. We have covered this before, but it has come up again now. Having expediency in the Bill gives police the powers beyond what is reasonable for human rights. We are not sitting here for hours into the night doing this for fun—we can all agree that this is not fun. We are doing this because we believe that the Bill is wrong.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am doing it because I believe that we need to catch criminals and reduce crime. That is a fair disagreement between us. That is why I am doing this Bill and that is what this Bill is about. We may disagree, but facial recognition technology is an important mechanism to prevent crime and to reduce crime. I can tell the noble Baroness that we have agreed to bring forward regulations and are consulting on what those will include. I hope she will submit some views. I remain convinced that the type of technology that we have is valid and useful.

Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 118 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

How nice it is to be back here again. I oppose Clauses 118, 119 and 120 standing part of the Bill. These clauses introduce a pre-emptive targeting of people based on location rather than behaviour. That should concern anyone who cares about the right to peaceful protest. Under these clauses, a senior police officer may designate an area in anticipation of a protest, based on a belief that an offence is likely to occur. Once that designation is in place, simply wearing an item said to conceal identity becomes a criminal offence. This applies to everyone in a designated area. Criminal liability comes not from conduct but from being in a certain place and from what a person is wearing. That is a profound shift in approach and one that I cannot support.

It is also a massively broad discretion. An inspector can designate a locality for up to 24 hours, extendable, on the basis of a prediction or guess, rather than evidence, of immediate serious violence. The result is a huge power to ban everyday protective coverings across a place at a time based only on an estimate of what might happen. That is exactly the kind of power that leads to overenforcement and a chilling effect on protest, particularly for those who already face risks from being identified.

The Government may say that defences to these provisions exist for health, religion or work, but those protections operate after arrest and charge, not at the point where the person decides whether it is safe for them to attend a protest at all. That is the key issue here. Liberty’s supporters have been clear about the real-world impact. One disabled person wrote:

“I am clinically vulnerable … Forcing disabled people like me to unmask is surely disability discrimination”.


Another said:

“As a single woman, I do not want to be identified”.


Women who have experienced domestic abuse may cover their faces for the same reason.

For others, including diaspora activists and those with credible fears of transnational repression, anonymity is not a political statement but a basic safeguard. We have already seen reporting on how mask restrictions at solidarity protests in the UK, including those linked to Hong Kong, have deterred participation because surveillance and reprisals are real concerns. This then becomes about who feels safe enough to exercise their democratic rights.

I must also ask: are these clauses really necessary? The police already have a targeted power, under Section 60AA of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, to require the removal of certain items where this is justified. That power has been used in recent protest policing, including at protests outside a migrant hotel in Epping. Can the Minister say what evidence the Government have of a gap in existing targeted powers that they cannot meet, rather than simply a desire for broader, pre-emptive control? The Government have not demonstrated an operational gap so far. What we appear to have instead is a preference for wider, pre-emptive control rather than targeted, evidence-based policing.

That matters because Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights are absolutely clear: any restriction on protest must be necessary and proportionate, and the Strasbourg court has repeatedly warned against measures that deter peaceful participation through fear of sanction. A clause that criminalises ordinary behaviour across a designated area, without reference to a person’s actual behaviour, is precisely the kind of measure that risks crossing that line.

Will the Government consider narrowing the trigger to “imminent and serious violence or disorder” and introducing a clear front-end reasonable excuse protection, rather than relying on defences only after arrest? If the Government’s concern is intimidation or disorder, then the answer is the better use of existing targeted powers, not a blanket approach that sweeps up disabled people, women concerned about safety and minority communities, along with everybody else. For all those reasons, I support removing Clauses 118, 119 and 120 from the Bill.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I stand to oppose the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and to suggest that it is vital that these clauses stand part of the Bill, because protest is strongest when it is open, accountable and proud. A movement that hides its face borrows the language of secrecy; a movement that stands unmasked invites public judgment and moral authority.

History teaches us that the most effective and morally persuasive movements were led openly. Emmeline Pankhurst marched into the public square and faced arrest and imprisonment without concealment, because the suffragette cause depended on moral clarity and public witness. Arthur Scargill led the miners in mass action, visible and unhidden, because solidarity is built on faces and names, not anonymity. Martin Luther King Jr stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and in the streets of Birmingham with nothing to hide, because non-violence and moral authority require openness. Mahatma Gandhi led millions in acts of civil resistance with a visible, symbolic presence that made the movement impossible to ignore.

The Government’s own summary of the Bill is clear about the purpose of these measures. It refers to:

“A new criminal offence which prohibits the wearing or otherwise using of an item that conceals identity when in an area designated by police under the new provisions”.


That designation is constrained by a statutory trigger:

“A designation can only be made … when the police reasonably believe that a protest may or is taking place in that area, the protest is likely to involve or has involved the commission of offences and that a designation would prevent or control the commission of offences”.


These are targeted powers, aimed at preventing criminality while protecting lawful assembly. It is not about silencing dissent; it is about responsibility and transparency. The fact sheet also notes a practical enforcement tool:

“The bill also creates a new power for the police to require someone to remove a face covering during a protest”.


That power underlines the expectation that those who lead and speak for causes should be prepared to be seen and held to account.

I mentioned older historical protest leaders, but I can bring the Committee more up to date. Contemporary political figures continue to lead visibly. We all have tremendous respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who has led a few protests in the past. I have looked at about 50 absolutely magnificent photos of the noble Baroness protesting in Westminster and other areas. She has been at the forefront of various Green Party protests. She said that she had been protesting all her life, but I could not find any of her as a schoolgirl at the anti-Vietnam War or Aldermaston protests.

She has a varied repertoire: stop the police Bill; stop pension financing; outside the Royal Court of Justice with a banner saying “Neither Confirm Nor Deny”; stop fracking in Lancashire; stop dumping sewage, South West Water; renters’ rights; and many more—all with her trusty loudhailer. She also said that part of protest was to cause inconvenience and disruption. I suggest that the three of them on the green holding up a banner against Guantanamo Bay did not cause much inconvenience.

The serious point, as I tease the noble Baroness, is this: in every single photo, after her last 50 years of protest, she and her colleagues had their faces uncovered, demonstrating modern political leadership in public demonstrations. To all other organisations I say that, if the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, whom I admire as a conviction politician, can protest so frequently with her face uncovered, so can and should everyone else. So I say, “Go on, organisers: encourage openness, train you marshals and make sure your aims are clear”. To the police I say, “Use these powers proportionately and protect lawful assembly”. To the public I say, “Support the right to protest and expect those who lead to do so with courage and transparency”.

I conclude by saying that, when protest is unmasked, it persuades rather than intimidates; it invites debate rather than hiding behind anonymity. That is how movements achieve lasting change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My Lords, time is pressing for the response, but that is largely due to interventions. I say to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, that the main objective of the police in this process will be to ensure that there is a peaceful demonstration, with no trouble for the community at large. If the police overpolice an issue, that is potentially an area where trouble can commence. So I give the judgment to the police to do this in a proper and effective way.

A number of comments have been made, and we will always reflect on those comments, but I stick, particularly because of time, to the contention that the clauses should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I cannot tell you how much energy and self-control it has taken to stay seated, with all these interventions and comments. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his very kind comments and the photographs, which have obviously brought back a lot of very nice, happy memories. I thank him for that. The other aspect to my having to exercise loads of self- control in staying sitting down is that I get very agitated —very irritated, in fact—and I scribble all over the papers I have in front of me, which sometimes makes it difficult to reply fully. I am going to do my best, and I beg the patience of the House in allowing me to go through all my scribbles.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Fox, and the noble Lords, Lord Strasburger and Lord Marks, for their support. I am very grateful. Obviously, this is a day that will go in my diary: the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, actually agreed with something I said. That is quite rare.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I did not necessarily agree that the Baroness, Lady Jones, should be mentioned in the same sentence as Martin Luther King and Emmeline Pankhurst—I just wanted to make that clear.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord. I would like to say, by the way, that I did go to Aldermaston, but my first real protest was in 1968 when I was 18. I went on a CND rally, and it was peaceful—at least, I think it was; I cannot remember.

It is not difficult to counter the arguments from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. He talked about my being brave enough—perhaps he did not use the word “brave”—to go to protests without a mask, but, of course, I am a highly privileged white female and he is a highly privileged white male. It is not for us to say who might be vulnerable and who might not, and who might fear reprisals and who might not. Let us remember that there are people who live in fear of other people, and those people could easily be deterred from going to protests.

On the points from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and the Minister, the fact is that the police have enough powers already. If they really are requesting this, surely the Government should have a little bit more pragmatism about what they are passing. The fact that the Minister is so happy that two Tories are supporting him is something I honestly find quite shocking. If they are the only people he can rouse to support him in your Lordships’ House, that really says something—and I do not mean for any of you to stand up and support him: it is not necessary.

On the issue of the police getting confused, because the legislation at the moment is very confused—there is so much of it—

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Too much.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Thank you. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, is absolutely right. For example, Steve Bray, the man who does all the loud Brexit protests in Parliament Square—

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

Lock him up.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I will thank Members on this side not to comment on my speech if possible.

Apparently last week the police tried to close Mr Bray down in spite of the court ruling that said that what he was doing was legal. They made, I am told, the absurd and fatuous claim that the judgment had been repealed. That is completely wrong; it is complete nonsense. That is what the police said. They are confused. I do not blame the police for that; I think that the law on protest has now reached such proportions that they really cannot be expected to stay up with what is happening. The Minister said that the police are going to make these decisions and that we have to trust the police and have lots of confidence in them, but if you make bad law, you are responsible and not the police. You are responsible for passing laws that are, first, unnecessary and, secondly, plain wrong. The police have to try to put that into practice, and that is not fair.

I think I might have said everything actually.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I think this is terrible; these clauses should be thrown out or should at least be rewritten, because they are not useful. They are not useful to people who are in genuine fear of their lives but who want to protest about something, and they are not useful for the police, who already have the powers. I asked in my opening speech whether the Minister could point me to the gap in legislation. If the police have really asked for these clauses, then they do not even know the legislation properly.

Very unwillingly—and I am glad the Minister suggested I bring this back on Report—I will withdraw my opposition to the clause standing part of the Bill.

Clause 118 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I should just begin by agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, about the farmers, but I note that they did not call to globalise the intifada.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Walney, and thank him for the work that he has done and continues to do on counterterrorism. It is deeply appreciated by many, and, from the point of view of the Jewish community, he is a leading non-Jew—a righteous gentile, if I may add—in everything he does.

I have added my name to Amendment 370A and to two or three other amendments in this group. Supporting this amendment would ensure that those creating a risk of serious harm to public safety, democratic institutions and the rights of others are curtailed. This can include all sorts of groups, and we know some of them. These groups can pose a clear and tangible threat to public order and public safety, even where their activities may not, in every instance, meet the statutory threshold for terrorism.

The Committee will recall, for example, the incident in November 2023, when Just Stop Oil protesters obstructed an emergency ambulance with its blue lights flashing on Waterloo Bridge—an action that plainly placed lives at risk. An amendment of the nature of Amendment 370A would ensure that such groups, which demonstrably endanger the public and interfere with essential services, could be addressed at an early stage. It would enable more timely and effective intervention where there is a sustained pattern of reckless, disruptive conduct, before serious harm occurs.

On Amendment 370AA, “intifada” is not a neutral expression but one rooted in campaigns of organised violence and terrorism, yet the Government seem to fail to understand, or choose to ignore, what intifada really was and what it truly means, with tragic consequences. I look over at the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and think of Heaton Park synagogue at Yom Kippur. Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby are no longer with us. Sydney might be the other end of the world, but what went on there—15 innocent people murdered—was a massacre that shows the results that antisemitism can lead to. These people are the victims of the so-called global intifada. When this Government and Governments around the world do not heed the warnings about the severe and dangerous impact that these words have, this is what happens. This amendment would help stop Manchester or Bondi Beach happening again and would provide clarity for CPS enforcement, in ensuring that Parliament draws a clear line before more lives are lost rather than afterwards. Waiting until loss of life to act is, quite simply, deeply shameful.

I have added my name to Amendment 380. It cannot be right in a free society that any community feels unable to go about its daily life because of repeated demonstrations, however lawful they may each be. This was starkly illustrated by the protest that took place the day after the Manchester synagogue attack, when a traumatised community was given no space to grieve. In such circumstances, managing or conditioning a protest is not always enough. The police must have clear legal authority to prevent such protest going ahead where the cumulative effect tips into serious disruption and intimidation. This amendment would provide that clarity and ensure that the law properly protects public order and the right of communities to live without fear. I would be very interested in the views of the Minister on that.

Finally, Amendment 486B would address a serious problem in our framework for public funding. This problem was exposed most clearly, I guess, by the debacle surrounding the band Kneecap, which was permitted to retain a grant of £14,250 from the British taxpayer, despite a catalogue of deeply troubling activity. This includes behaviour glorifying terrorism, when one of the band members held up a Hezbollah flag on stage, shouting, “Up Hamas! Up Hezbollah!” Artistic expression must be protected but it must never be allowed to cross the line into incitement—and when it does, public money should certainly not be supporting it. This incident demonstrates how ill equipped our current law is to prevent funds flowing to individuals or organisations whose conduct runs directly counter to our values and our security.

However, the problem is not just Kneecap. An organisation funded by the UK taxpayer, the Collections Trust, issued guidance referring to Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation, as “anti-colonial freedom fighters”. That language is not accidental or trivial. It legitimises and sanitises terrorism, and it was disseminated with public funds.

This amendment would make it clear that no organisation should be permitted to receive or retain taxpayer support if it promotes or excuses criminal conduct or narratives that undermine our democratic values. Again, I ask the Minister whether he agrees that public money must never be used, directly or indirectly, to legitimise extremism, and that we here in Parliament have a duty to draw that line clearly and unequivocally.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have given notice of my opposition to Clause 124 standing part of the Bill. I have done this for two reasons. First, I think it is unnecessary and, secondly, it could be even more repressive than the law that this Labour Government have already passed.

Let me be clear: I support the right to worship and to access places of worship freely and safely. I would go along to anywhere where people are protesting and making life difficult for anybody who wants to worship, as that is unacceptable. However, this clause is not a targeted protection against genuinely threatening behaviour. It is a broad, low-threshold power that risks sweeping up lawful, peaceful protest on the basis of guesswork rather than evidence, exactly the same as was discussed in the previous group.

Clause 124 allows conditions to be imposed where a protest

“may intimidate persons of reasonable firmness”

in “the vicinity” of a place of worship. The word “may” is doing a lot of work here, as is “vicinity”; neither is defined and together they create a power that is open to misuse. This is not about stopping harassment or threats—we already have strong laws for that. If someone is genuinely intimidating worshippers, the police already have plenty of powers to intervene. What does this clause actually add?

The real problem is that the clause allows restrictions to be imposed even where the protest is peaceful, so long as someone claims they might feel intimidated. That is not a hypothetical risk. Almost any protest that touches on controversial issues could be said to intimidate somebody. Pride marches, trade union demos, climate protests and peaceful protests against war or injustice could all be caught by this wording if they happen to be near a place of worship. In many places in our cities, including London—particularly central Westminster, where so many protests happen—it is very difficult not to be near a place of worship. That creates a very real danger of rolling exclusion zones where protest is progressively pushed out of public space altogether, not because of evidence of harm but because of location and perception.