Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Hampton

Wednesday 19th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 232 is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I admit that I am using an old amendment list, so some other people might also have added their names, and I apologise if I have missed them.

My proposed new clause amends Section 3 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to explicitly include child criminal exploitation within the definition of “exploitation”, aligning it with new provisions in the Crime and Policing Bill. Clause 40 of the Bill creates a new offence of child criminal exploitation. The offence rightly focuses on the prosecution of perpetrators. It is vital that we do not lose sight of the child victims of criminal exploitation. We must ensure that there is a consistent definition that can be used to identify children formally, so that every child gets the support they need to escape this abuse.

This amendment is also essential to close a serious legal gap that leaves criminally exploited children at risk of prosecution rather than protection. Without corresponding changes to the Modern Slavery Act 2015, legal protections remain inconsistent and inadequate. Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which provides a statutory defence for victims of exploitation, does not currently cover criminal exploitation explicitly. This leads to inconsistent application across the criminal justice system. Evidence from the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and ECPAT UK shows that police and prosecutors frequently struggle to apply the existing statutory defence to children exploited into criminal activity.

Children often continue to be treated as perpetrators rather than victims, despite clear indicators of exploitation for criminality. In 2024 alone, over 2,891 children were referred to the national referral mechanism as potential child victims of criminal exploitation. Yet many of these children still end up in courtrooms, not safeguarding systems. Young people exploited for criminality are particularly vulnerable to being prosecuted for offences committed as a result of their exploitation. This undermines the UK’s obligations under international law, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, which requires states to facilitate the non-prosecution of trafficked children for offences committed as a result of the exploitation.

Including child criminal exploitation within the definition of exploitation in the Modern Slavery Act is essential to ensure that children are formally recognised as victims under the UK’s framework for identification, allowing them to access the full range of protections and entitlements under the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, including specialist support.

We have the opportunity to fix this now by ensuring that legal definitions and protections are harmonised. Without this amendment, we risk embedding a two-tier system which recognises exploitation in theory but fails to protect child victims in practice. Clear, consistent legislation will empower professionals to intervene earlier, prevent inappropriate prosecutions and ensure that exploited children receive the safeguarding support they need. This is a targeted, evidence-led amendment that strengthens the Bill and ensures that our legal framework reflects both the reality of child exploitation and our responsibility to protect those at most at risk. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, Amendments 232A and 262A are in my name. I have also signed Amendment 232, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and Amendment 263, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has given an excellent explanation of his amendment, so I will just say that I agree with him.

Both my amendments provide a defence for victims of child criminal exploitation and cuckooing who are coerced into committing offences. Both amendments have a simple purpose: to ensure that victims of exploitation are not treated as criminals for acts they were compelled to commit. The amendments are supported by academics and charities such as the Children’s Society.

The Bill, as it comes before the House, creates two new offences in Clause 56: child criminal exploitation and cuckooing. These are important steps. They recognise forms of exploitation that front-line workers, police officers and charities have been grappling with for years. However, the Bill currently does only half the job. It recognises the exploitation, but not the victim. Unlike the long-established offences of modern slavery and human trafficking, these new offences do not come with a bespoke defence for victims who commit unlawful acts as a direct result of their exploitation. Unless a victim can prove duress—a notoriously high bar—their only option is to argue that what happened to them also amounted to slavery, servitude, forced labour or trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act. That is a legal contortion, and it is simply impossible for many victims.

It leads to outcomes that I do not believe this House would wish to endorse. For example, a child forced by older criminals to store drugs or weapons, a young person threatened into carrying out low-level offending under fear of violence, or someone whose home has been taken over by a gang who is then compelled to assist in their criminal activities would all be vulnerable to finding themselves before a court, even though their exploiters are the ones truly at fault.

We have been here before. When Parliament passed the Modern Slavery Act in 2015, we accepted, rightly, that victims sometimes commit offences because they see no realistic alternative. Section 45 of that Act created a defence for those victims, carefully limited, and subject to important exclusions. It has not opened any floodgates. It has provided protection only where the courts are satisfied that the offence was the direct consequence of the exploitation, and that a reasonable person in the same situation and with the same relevant characteristics would have acted in the same way.

These amendments have the aim of applying the same principle to the new offences that we are creating today. The amendment on child criminal exploitation mirrors the structure of Section 45. It would not excuse all behaviour and would not allow serious offences listed in Schedule 4. It would apply only where the prosecution cannot disprove that the child acted because they were compelled to do so, that the compulsion arose directly from their exploitation and that a reasonable child of the same age, sex and vulnerabilities would have seen no realistic alternative. In other words, this is a defence grounded in both common sense and compassion.

The same is true of the amendment concerning victims of cuckooing. Anyone familiar with this phenomenon—and many police forces now are—knows that victims have often been threatened, groomed, manipulated or assaulted. They may be obliged to let their home be used for criminal activity, and they may then be forced to play a role within that activity. The amendment would make clear that, where the compulsion arises directly from the cuckooing, those victims should not be criminalised for acts they were compelled to perform.

These defences would not apply in most cases. They would apply only when the court is satisfied that the offending was the direct result of the exploiter’s conduct, not incidental. They offer a fair and proportionate safeguard. They would also prevent the injustice, indeed the absurdity, of Parliament recognising exploitation on the one hand, while punishing its victims on the other. When vulnerable children or exploited adults are used as tools by criminal networks, the criminal justice system should not compound their suffering by treating them as willing participants. These amendments would complete the logic of the Bill and would ensure that the law protects those who need protection most. I hope that the Minister will look at these amendments and see the validity of what I have explained.

Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Hampton

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 22, which is a delicate, small nudge that suggests that, if you are trying to replace bus services or create new ones, looking at previous scrapped bus routes might be a way forward because, presumably, they were the last to go. I do not live in a bus desert, but obviously a lot of people do so outside London. It is a sad state of affairs when people are forced to use their cars, as so many are in the countryside. Bringing back bus routes that existed and were clearly used before various cuts would make sense.

The CPRE report, Every Village, Every Hour, nearly four years ago, set out what a comprehensive bus network for England could look like and the scale of investment needed, which, of course, is a bargain in how much it benefits communities, social enterprise and so on. If the Minister has not read that report already, I suggest that he does so. I agreed also with the previous amendments.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which I was delighted to add my name. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, criticised the Bill on the first day in Committee as being mildly nostalgic and backward-looking, a sort of return to the Attlee Government. I have quoted him so many times on this that I really need to start paying him royalties. However, I would like the Bill to be nostalgic and backward-looking. I would love it to go back to the pre-Beeching glory days when buses turned up on time with smiling children. I do not know whether that actually existed.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It did.