Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 27 to 31. I declare my interest as a secondary school teacher.

These amendments from the Victims’ Commissioner have been ably introduced by my noble friend Lord Russell of Liverpool, so the Committee does not need to hear much from me. We are told that data is the new gold. In teaching, with safeguarding we are told to report every slight suspicion because it can form part of a jigsaw that can show that abuse is happening. The Victims’ Commissioner calls it missed patterns and missed victims. These sensible amendments would give victims of anti-social behaviour a route to support and a strong voice in anti-social behaviour case reviews. As the Victims’ Commissioner’s office says, this would deliver real change for victims. Victims of persistent ASB must be swiftly identified, consistently supported and given access to resolution processes that deliver effective outcomes. These amendments would do just that.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Russell.

Amendment 27 asks for a statute of requirement for police officers to undertake an anti-social behaviour impact assessment when a victim reports three incidents of anti-social behaviour in a six-month period. This would enable agencies to understand the level of harm that is being caused, so that victims are given access to the appropriate support.

Victims have cited several barriers to utilising the anti-social behaviour case review. A key barrier was a lack of knowledge and awareness about the case review among staff at key agencies with a responsibility to resolve anti-social behaviour. For many victims, this lack of knowledge prevented them being signposted promptly, if at all, to the case review mechanism. This posed additional barriers to them being able to successfully activate the case review process and get the anti-social behaviour resolved. This ultimately prolonged victims’ suffering—and none of us wants that. I ask the Minister to seriously consider this.

Amendments 28 and 31 ask for a statutory threshold for triggering an anti-social behaviour case review that removes any discretion for authorities to insert additional caveats which serve as a barrier to victims getting their cases reviewed. To ensure consistent access to anti-social behaviour case reviews, we are recommending the Home Office consults on the need to legislate to standardise the threshold for anti-social behaviour case reviews by placing it in statute as opposed to just guidance. This would prevent local authorities unilaterally adding caveats which make it more difficult for the victim to make a successful application. This consultation, we recommend, should look at mandating access to case review applications via a range of options, including but not limited to paper, online and telephone applications.

Amendment 29, which has already been outlined, would give victims a voice and enable them to explain the impact that the behaviour is having on them and their families, which is critical. To strengthen victim participation and ensure their voices are central to the process, we recommend the Home Office consults on the need to introduce legislation which guarantees victims the right to choose their level of participation in a way that best suits their needs. It might include attending a case review meeting in person, participating virtually or submitting a written impact statement detailing the anti-social behaviour effects, or being represented at the case review by a chosen individual to ensure their perspective is effectively communicated. We want them to have the right to choose the method in which this happens. There should be a statutory requirement that anti-social behaviour case reviews are chaired by an independent person—this is not an unreasonable request. Very often, when there is somebody independent who can see things that other people have not seen and bring it to people’s attention, fairness and confidence in a system is absolutely strengthened.

Amendment 30 seeks that local bodies should be compelled to publish data on the reasons an anti-social behaviour case review was denied to enable better overall scrutiny and an understanding of how effective and consistent the process is across England and Wales. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, stated, data is king, and we do not think this is an unreasonable request at all.

I hope the Minister will give serious consideration to these amendments and, if they cannot be accepted, he will explain in detail why.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, these are powerful amendments and it is hard to see how they can be argued against. We have all heard of cases where victims have had a very tough time demonstrating the persecution that they have experienced, and they often get challenged in court, unreasonably, I think. These amendments are excellent and we should encourage the noble Lord to push them to a vote later.

Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls: Funding

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am never satisfied, because we have to ensure that we tackle these crimes head on. That is why development of the strategy on violence against women and girls, led by my honourable friend in the House of Commons, Jess Phillips, is extremely important. The Home Office resources I mentioned have gone up by 36% to over £100 million, but the Ministry of Justice is also providing significant amounts of resource for preventive activity on violence against women and girls, including by investing in action on perpetrators who have been sentenced and will come out at some point in the future. There is a local authority role as well. All I can say to the noble Baroness is that we have set an ambitious target; it is ambitious for the reason that this is a crime and it needs to be driven down. Therefore, with her help and that of others, when that strategy is published, we will achieve those objectives over that 10-year period.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, in its 2025 Annual Audit report, the charity Women’s Aid noted that just over half of all referrals into community-based domestic abuse support services were rejected. Some 23% of these rejections were because the service could not contact the client. This suggests that many victims of domestic abuse are not able to access the services that they need and are at risk of slipping through the cracks because of communications issues. I am sure the Minister will understand these concerns, so will he outline the steps that the Government are taking to assist support services to contact the women and girls who are referred to them, so that no one who needs help is missed?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is extremely important that those who need that help and support get it. It is one reason why we have continued the work of the previous Government in funding a national helpline on violence against women and girls, which includes help and support for victims of honour-based violence as well. There are always improvements that can be made and, as part of the development of the strategy, we will be looking at what is most effective over those 10 years to ensure that we help and support victims, that we reduce the number of perpetrators and that those who have been convicted of perpetrating these offences are supported by the Ministry of Justice to turn their lives around when they come out of prison. The noble Baroness makes some valid points, but I hope she will examine the strategy in detail when it is published.

King’s Speech

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, to his job. We have worked together in the past and he is well placed to do everything that he has set out to do. I have never met the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, but I welcome him. We will come back and endorse his approach later.

I ask the Minister to look at projects from other countries. A tip would be to look at the Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco—magic. It provides accommodation, mentoring and tutoring in running a business and trading for profit. It has a Christmas tree planation in Oregon and does all the Christmas trees for the corporates in San Francisco. Tiffany’s has let Delancey’s people in to decorate its store, which shows its track record. So please have a look at that. It is very good and does not cost the Government anything. It does not take one dollar of government money—and you are not going to get too many offers like that.

I turn to the promise of a draft conversion practices Bill, which would create a new criminal offence. I should begin by saying that I am pleased that, because it is a draft Bill, there will be much-needed scrutiny of the proposal—although there are some in the House who would sooner be rid of it entirely.

It will not have escaped your Lordships’ attention entirely that this very thorny issue has been under discussion for six years. Over that time, it has become more problematic and not less. The previous Government decided to wait for the Cass report before publishing a Bill. Given the warnings issued by Doctor Cass on the issue, this was, in my opinion, the right decision. The Cass report and the subsequent remarks of Hilary Cass on the prospect of a criminal ban on conversion therapy have probably shown it to be impossible to safely legislate on this issue.

Many noble Lords have raised their own concerns. Indeed, when we debated the Private Member’s Bill from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, some two-thirds of the speakers in the debate did not support it. My noble friend Lord Forsyth observed:

“in nearly 40 years in Parliament, I have never seen a more badly drafted or dangerous piece of legislation.”.—[Official Report, 9/2/24; col. 1845.]

This was the first of more than two dozen speeches raising concerns about the Bill, and when the concluding remarks were made there was an admission that it was not well drafted.

This is not just a problem with the quality of the various proposals put forward; it is also a problem with the inevitable effect of this type of legislation. The Equality and Human Rights Commission quite rightly warned of unintended consequences. It would not be the first time that good intentions delivered harmful consequences for our young people, and it is those young people who we must protect. Increasingly, we are hearing of young people—often young women, although it can be young men too—who have been harmed by medical interventions that are supposed to alleviate gender distress. Several noble Lords have cited the story of Keira Bell in this Chamber. She is just one of many whose lives have been permanently scarred.

The great risk of the conversion therapy law is that we prevent people like Keira from being able to have the kinds of conversations troubled young people need to have, whether with parents or professionals. This is precisely the effect of criminal laws on conversion therapy in other countries. Inordinate care must be taken in this area. The role of criminal law is surely to protect the vulnerable, not to push them towards harm, or to restrict those who would protect them. We must not pursue a law that contradicts the Cass review. We must protect our young people. My father was a furrier; he made fur coats—do not have a go at me—and on this particular Bill I would adopt his mantra, which was measure twice and cut once.