Online Communication Offence Arrests

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate. As of this week, I have been in your Lordships’ House just over a year and today is the first opportunity I have had to exchange views with the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev. I appreciate the opportunity to do so and thank him for the powerful case that he made and the arguments he has put forward. I thank noble Lords from across the House—though mostly not from my side of it—for their contributions to this debate.

I want to make an initial statement which, I hope, will resonate with noble Lords across the Committee. The Government are clear that freedom of speech is a fundamental right and underpins our democratic society. I stood at the Dispatch Box in the wake of the offences committed in the August riots last year, after three young girls were murdered, and set out clear boundaries on those issues. However, I also said that there was an important point around protest and people expressing a view on political issues.

I have said things that are controversial. I have stood in open debate as a Member of Parliament, as a Member of this House and as a person outside both Houses. I have undertaken protests against causes that I felt were unjust. I have ensured that, within the legal framework, individuals are allowed to express their views freely. That is sometimes controversial and unpopular but, as even the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, just echoed, freedom of speech comes with responsibilities and is rightly qualified by legislation from Governments of my party and of other political parties.

The law rightly sets proportional limitations where necessary to protect public safety, to prevent crime, and to safeguard the rights of others, particularly minorities. That legal framework also ensures that individuals are protected from criminal conduct, including threatening, harassing and abusive behaviour. The Government are clear that there is freedom of speech, but that freedom of speech cannot be used as a justification for breaking the law. That means that that speech must not incite criminal activity that this House—and the House of Commons—have deemed to be a line in the sand. Non-threatening communication offences are captured across multiple pieces of legislation to which noble Lords have referred to today.

Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, passed under the Government of Mrs Thatcher—who I spoke out and protested against in a free and open society—was passed in 1988. That concerns messages of an

“indecent or grossly offensive nature”

and I hope that there is a shared understanding across this House that messages that are indecent or grossly offensive do cross a line. Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003—passed by the Government of Tony Blair, in which I served as a Minister—again looked at messages which are obscene or menacing, or persistently making use of public electronic communication networks in a way that encourages those offences. I do not know whether noble Lords want to see that repealed. Let us discuss it and we will see where the line in the sand is drawn.

The Online Safety Act 2023, passed by the Government of Rishi Sunak, which the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, mentioned, includes new communication offences—including false communication offences—and deals with a range of issues, including issues of sexual abuse and exploitation. That is a line that both Houses have drawn, and I reference those three Acts because they are from three different political parties from even within, dare I say, several different shades of blue within the Conservative Party. That is a complex area, but it has been agreed to be a line in the sand. But again, if Members wish to challenge, let us discuss where that line is drawn.

Under our legislation,—and I hope this reassures the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev, and others who have spoken—arrests by the police are manifestations of what the public expect them to do, which is to enforce the law as passed by both these Houses, without fear or favour, based on the information they have—or is put before them—at the time. The police are operationally independent. Noble Lords would not wish me to be directing the chief constable of Greater Manchester to make arrests, or indeed to not make arrests. That is not the job of a Policing Minister, nor does it come under policing responsibilities in the Home Office.

We do expect the police, who are operationally independent, to fully investigate potential alleged offences, to work with the Crown Prosecution Service—which will test whether the police have acted fairly—and, if they both believe that there is a case to answer, to put it before a jury of 12 good and true peers, who will determine, rightly or wrongly, whether an offence has been committed. That is the basis of where we are today. In response to the Noble Lord’s initial headline for this debate, we do not collect or publish data on the number of arrests by police forces for communication offences as such. However, it is not unlawful to be arrested—it does not mean you have committed the crime. Many of those arrests do not lead to crimes which go before the court, because the CPS has tested them and/or the police themselves have determined that it is not appropriate to do so. Importantly, however, through freedom of information requests to police forces, arrest data under the offences can be gathered and the findings have suggested that the number of arrests has broadly doubled in the past seven or so years.

In response to a couple of the points that have been made, first to the noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, there has been £1 billion in extra investment in policing this year: £1 billion over last year’s investment that is being put to local police forces, 43 across the country. It is important they look at modernising the equipment that they have and making sure that they are fit for purpose.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and others asked where the boundary will be drawn. We have talked about challenges with AI and there will be further challenges in future. It is important that we reflect on those issues in a positive way and that this legislation is enforced, but at the moment our police focus as a Government is on neighbourhood policing, tackling knife crime and violence against women and girls, increasing the number of neighbourhood police officers and putting 13,000 more police on the street to give community resilience and support. The legislation is there—if Members do not like it, in this democracy they can put forward amendments to try to change it—for the police to operate in a fair and appropriate way.

The noble Lords, Lord Lebedev, Lord Strathcarron and Lord Kempsell, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Meyer and Lady Doocey, raised non-crime hate incidents. The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, made an important point about training standards for national police, so that they understand the remit and limit of the current legislation. That is for chief constables, but there is a need for guidance, training and support.

Importantly, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, at the request of the Home Secretary, are currently undertaking a review of how non-crime hate incidents are dealt with. We expect to see some information from the police on that. It is self-evidently important that some of those incidents help us gather intelligence on potential future crime, but, equally, we do not want the police to do things that waste their time and not focus on the type of crime that the noble Lord rightly mentioned in his introduction. Violent crime, knife crime and sexual grooming are really important issues.

However, that does not get away from the fact that, if someone incites racial hatred or hatred against an individual for their sexuality, that needs to be considered in the framework of the law of the land. If noble Lords have concerns—and a number of views have been expressed today about the operation of this—the bedrock is the legislation currently on the statute book. That has been passed by different Governments of different political parties and it is meant to ensure that we take action to stop harassment, malicious information or potential activity that leads to physical or mental violence. That is what it is designed to do. If noble Lords want to tighten or change that, they should put their proposals before both Houses and let us debate them. I believe in freedom of speech, tempered by the freedom to enjoy life without harassment, attacks or information online that says, “Let’s take action against this individual for what they are doing”, which is beyond their responsibility.

The noble Lord, Lord Kempsell, mentioned the very complex Afghan issue. We in the Home Office have been subject to those injunctions as well. They were passed by the court, not the current Government, who set out their position clearly in a Statement made in the House of Commons earlier in the week and repeated in our House yesterday. I refer him to that, because it sets out the justification for the original injunction, the super-injunction and the Government revising that procedure to date.

I am conscious that I have about one minute left. This has been a useful debate that has surfaced issues that I am trying to respond to in a way that sets out my and the Government’s view in a positive way, but recognises that there will be opportunities for Members to address further the concerns they have expressed. We must remember that online abuse is neither a trivial nor an inconsequential matter. At the heart of each instance that I have mentioned under the legislation is a victim—a person or group of persons—who has been potentially subjected to vile, dreadful abuse. We must also remember that it is a complex area where no data held by the Home Office can draw sufficient conclusions. The police are continually negotiating a difficult balance between freedom of speech and enforcing our laws on malicious communications to make them fair and proportionate. We must support them in doing so. I commend the debate to the Committee. If I have not covered all the points, at least in part, I will reflect on them once Hansard has been read.