Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Levitt and Baroness Sugg

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg and Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for tabling Amendments 353, 354, 355, 355A and 356. I thank all noble Lords for what has been a powerful, moving and interesting debate on this subject. Honour-based abuse is a dreadful thing. I add my voice to those who want to thank all the survivors for their courage and determination in speaking out.

I remember that, when I received judicial training, we were told that we as judges should refer to these horrible crimes as so-called honour-based abuse to make it clear—as was noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra—that there is nothing to do with honour about them. That said, the Government have listened to the preferences of survivors and the specialist sector, and for this reason I will refer to it only as honour-based abuse. I can see the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, nodding her head.

The amendments seek to ensure that front-line professionals such as the police, social workers and teachers properly understand and spot this abuse and accurately record and store this information. We absolutely share that objective. As your Lordships will be aware, the Government have already committed, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, has reminded us, to introducing multi-agency statutory guidance on honour-based abuse, alongside a statutory definition. We recognise that doing so is a vital step towards providing a clear framework for professionals with statutory safeguarding responsibilities as to how they should identify honour-based abuse. To that end, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for meeting me last week to discuss Amendments 353 and 355. I thank Natasha Rattu of Karma Nirvana, whom I met this morning.

I congratulate your Lordships on the strength of feeling about getting this measure on the statute book as soon as possible. The Government agree that swift action is needed to ensure that professionals have a strong foundation for tackling honour-based abuse, but I would just say that this is an extremely nuanced and complex form of abuse. We need to ensure that the range of abuse experienced is captured and that we do not build in any unintended consequences, to use the phrase used powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. To that extent, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, and we are happy to work with her to ensure that we have covered all eventualities.

We must do this once and we must get it right. We owe that to the victims and survivors who have suffered. I am not able today to give a timeline for this commitment or say whether this Bill will be used as a suitable legislative vehicle, but I assure your Lordships that we are getting on with this work and are doing so quickly. My speaking note said “at pace”, but I asked the officials to take it out because it tends not to gain favour in this House. We are doing it quickly, and I can confidently commit to the Government updating the noble Baronesses and the noble Lord on the progress of this work ahead of Report. I hope that provides reassurance to various Members who raised the question of timeliness.

I now turn to Amendment 355A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which makes the important point that we need to ensure that data collection and storage by statutory agencies is consistent and accurate. The Home Office already requires all police forces to share data on criminal offences that have been flagged as related to honour-based abuse. This is published annually. But I agree with the sentiment of his amendment and can confirm that, in developing the multi-agency statutory guidance, the Government will consider how to ensure that data in relation to suspected and confirmed criminal offences related to honour-based abuse is properly recorded and stored by front-line agencies.

Amendments 354 and 356 seek to add honour-based abuse as a statutory aggravating factor. As your Lordships are aware, doing so would require courts to treat such offences as having increased seriousness because of the presence of this factor. We completely agree that in principle this is a good thing but, as both noble Baronesses correctly anticipated, we do not believe that creating a statutory aggravating factor is either necessary or desirable.

The reason we think it is not necessary is that the specific elements that make honour-based abuse so serious are already covered in the sentencing guidelines. Judges are already required to treat the fact that an offence involved an abuse of trust or that the victim was vulnerable as aggravating factors. In cases where the abuse is part of a domestic relationship, there is the entire overarching guideline specifying additional factors, which explicitly mentions honour-based abuse. These amendments would therefore unnecessarily duplicate existing guidelines, which the courts are required by law to follow.

I said it was neither necessary nor desirable; I turn now to why it is not desirable. I also speak from experience when I say that the workload of a Crown Court judge is an extremely heavy one, in large part due to the backlog in the Crown Courts inherited by this Government. Adding to the list of statutory aggravating factors significantly adds to the workload of judges when sentencing. For every new aggravating factor, the list of items that a judge needs to state that they have considered, and their sentencing remarks, get longer and longer. I therefore feel strongly that we ought not continually to increase this list, especially when existing guidelines already apply.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, alluded to the fact that I had said this in relation to another group of amendments earlier in the week. These two proposed aggravating factors are the sixth and seventh time that new aggravating factors have been debated in this Committee so far, and I know that there are more proposals for different aggravating factors yet to come. As I hope your Lordships will appreciate, our judges already have a huge undertaking as part of the sentencing process. We wish to avoid unnecessarily burdening them or the process any further, because to do so would risk lengthening individual sentencing hearings, just at the time when we are trying to reduce the backlog in the interests of the very victims we are discussing, among others.

That said, the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, makes a powerful case and I would welcome further discussion with her as to how we can achieve the objectives, even if not necessarily by adding a further statutory factor—I mention both noble Baronesses in that context. This Government’s priority is to strengthen identification and response through robust statutory guidance and a clear definition, ensuring that professionals have the tools they need to tackle this complex form of abuse effectively. So, on the understanding that we will consider Amendments 353 and 355, which I know are the top priority for the key stakeholders, ahead of Report, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for taking part in this debate. As I said, it is slightly later than hoped but really is much appreciated. I am grateful for the Minister’s reply and, as I said earlier, her openness to engage on these issues.

On the aggravating factor, I will consider carefully what the Minister had to say and look forward to having ongoing conversations on that. On the definition and statutory guidance, I very much agree that we must ensure that it is fit for prosecution, but we also need to make sure it works for interventions to protect earlier, ideally before any crime is committed. The definition really needs to be survivor-grounded: it needs to reflect their lived experiences and must recognise the impact of multiple perpetrators, the presence of community dynamics, layered coercion and collective control.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, for her contribution. I know that everyone involved in developing the definition and, crucially, survivors themselves are very keen to engage directly with her.

We have been discussing this for many years. The definition and the guidance are the crucial amendments, as they would act as the foundation for the systemic changes we need to see, and this Bill really is the right place to do that. I very much hope that the Government will bring back a revised definition and guidance amendment on Report that is agreed by the sector and survivors. I will do all I can to help on that. If that is not the case, I reserve the right to return to this again, but, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.