Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly. Earlier—I suppose it was this morning—we talked about child criminal exploitation at some length, thanks particularly to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and Professor Jay. Essentially, what we are talking about in this group of amendments is child commercial exploitation. All these engines, all these technologies, are there for a commercial purpose. They have investors who are expecting a return and, to maximise the return, these technologies are designed to drive traffic, to drive addiction, and they do it very successfully. We are way behind the curve—we really are.

I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said about the body of knowledge within Parliament, in both Houses, that was very involved in the passage of the Online Safety Act. There is a very high level of concern, in both Houses, that we were perhaps too ambitious in assuming that a regulator that had not previously had any responsibilities in this area would be able to live up to the expectations held, and indeed some of the promises made, by the Government during the passage of that Act. I think we need to face up to that: we need to accept that we have not got it off to as good a start as we wanted and hoped, and that what is happening now is that the technologies we have been hearing about are racing ahead so quickly that we are finding it hard to catch up. Indeed, looking at the body language and the physiognomies of your Lordships in the Chamber, looking at the expressions on our faces as some of what we were talking about is being described, if it is having that effect on us, imagine what effect it is having on the children who in many cases are the subjects of these technologies.

I plead with the Minister to work very closely with his new ministerial colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, and DSIT. We really need to get our act together and focus; otherwise, we will have repeats of these sorts of discussions where we raise issues that are happening at an increasing pace, not just here but all around the world. I fear that we are going to be holding our hands up, saying “We’re doing our best and we’re trying to catch up”, but that is not good enough. It is not good enough for my granddaughter and not good enough for the extended families of everybody here in this Chamber. We really have to get our act together and work together to try to catch up.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I too support the amendments in this group, particularly those tabled by my noble friend Lord Nash on security software and by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on AI-generated child sexual abuse material. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Royal Society for Public Health.

As others have noted, the Online Safety Act was a landmark achievement and, in many ways, something to be celebrated, but technology has not stood still—we said it at the time—and nor can our laws. It is important that we revisit it in examining this legislation, because generative AI presents such an egregious risk to our children which was barely imaginable even two years ago when we were discussing that Act. These amendments would ensure that our regulatory architecture keeps pace.

Amendment 266 on AI CSAM risk assessment is crucial. It addresses a simple but profound question: should the provider of a generative AI service be required to assess whether that service could be used to create or facilitate child sexual abuse material? Surely the answer is yes. This is not a theoretical risk, as we have heard in testimony from many noble Lords. We know that AI can generate vivid images, optimised on a dataset scraped from children themselves on the open internet, and that can be prompted to create CSAM-like content. On this, there is no ambiguity at all. We know that chatbots trained on the vast corpora of text from children can be manipulated to generate grooming scripts and sexualised narratives to engage children and make them semi-addicted to those conversations. We know that these tools are increasingly accessible, easy to use and almost impossible to monitor by parents and, it seems, regulators.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There are a number of issues before the Committee today and the Government will reflect on all the points that have been mentioned. However, the view at the moment is that these amendments would risk creating significant legal uncertainty by duplicating and potentially undermining aspects of the Online Safety Act.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to the Minister for reassuring us that all chatbots are captured by the Online Safety Act; that is very good news indeed. Can he reassure us that Ofcom will confirm that in writing to the House? I appreciate that he is a Home Office Minister, but he speaks on behalf of all of government. I think it is fair, given the nature of the Bill, that he seeks an answer from Ofcom in this matter.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My assessment is that the vast majority of chatbots are captured—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 273, which is a very simple amendment that aims to put into action what IICSA recommended: that mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse should happen with no exceptions. The inquiry argued that, even if abuse is disclosed in the context of confession, the person—in this case, the priest—should be legally required to report it. It proposes that failing to report such abuse should itself be a criminal offence.

I am very glad that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester is in his place, because I know he has spent a long time on working parties looking at this issue. In earlier discussions in the House, in response to the right reverend Prelate, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, said that he had received representations from churches on this issue and expressed the hope that this would be further debated as the Crime and Policing Bill went through Parliament. My amendment is simply here to enable that debate to happen.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Polak and his Amendment 286A. As he lucidly put it, this amendment proposes to close several glaring loopholes in the offences outlined in Clause 79; otherwise, I fear it will fail to meet the aims and expectations placed on it by this Committee.

Our criminal justice system should be equipped with new laws to hold accountable all those who cover up child sexual abuse. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, put that case incredibly well and touchingly. It needs to be known that if someone acts purposefully to stop child sexual abuse being properly investigated and so denies the victims and survivors the protection and justice they are entitled to, they will face strong criminal penalties. That is why I support the Bill’s inclusion of Clause 79, which seeks to introduce new criminal offences for preventing or deterring someone, under the new mandatory reporting duty, from making a report. However, its drafting means that it would be limited in its ability to contribute meaningfully to the important mission of tackling child sexual abuse that we across the Committee strongly support.

Clause 79 is dependent upon the new mandatory duty to report. The clause not only requires the action taken to directly involve a reporter under the duty, it requires the person attempting to conceal the abuse to know that the person that they are deterring is a mandated reporter. This brings with it a whole host of legal complexities. What does it mean to know that someone is under the duty? Does it require them to also know that the child sex offence has taken place to trigger the said duty? How could it be convincingly proved by the courts that someone accused of putting the needs of their institution above protecting a child also understood what the duty is, who it applies to and how that factored into their actions? These are important questions that need to be reconciled.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Bethell Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, who makes a very good point on public opinion. I am persuaded that one of the reasons why the Bill should pass is that the public broadly support it. But they support it only if it works. If it does not work, and if it does not deliver what it has promised, the public will be extremely sceptical and angry that we have allowed this to happen. I have some concerns on the fundamental workability of aspects of the Bill, and in this I shall invoke my noble friend Lord Goodman and the noble Baroness, Lady Cass.

This Bill creates a vast laundry list of new responsibilities without the clarity and consensus on execution that such a Bill requires. I convened a meeting of front-line clinicians downstairs in the Attlee Room on Tuesday to listen to some of these concerns. The feedback echoed what we have been hearing from medics time and again. On testing capacity, which a number of noble Lords have alluded to, the criterion remains contested. On the signing-off of medicines, the process is extremely unclear. Huge palliative care expectations are totally unfunded, which the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, referred to. The expert panels will consume vast amounts of very senior professional time, particularly of psychiatrists. We do not have that many psychiatrists in this country. If they spend all their time on these panels, I am afraid that the rest of us will not get any support at all. There are ambiguous doctor roles, including in the presence of death. The six-month prognosis judgments do not have a very clear methodology. Very importantly, provisions for what I would call the non-NHS sector are completely unstructured and left to civil servants and secondary legislation.

This leads to what the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, acutely termed over-protocolisation. I think what he meant by that was the sort of bureaucratic complexity without clinical clarity that blows up the intimacy that is needed for the best medical care, without managing down the risks of something going wrong.

I know from my time as a Minister that confusion in the business of health and, for that matter, in the business of death, very quickly wastes vast amounts of resources. It breeds litigation and costs lives. Who will defend these court challenges? The DHSC’s already stretched legal teams? Who will pay compensation if things go wrong? NHS Resolution, which already has a £60 billion liability bill? Sloppy legislation costs an absolute fortune in the business of health.

When we considered IVF, which is different but has some of the same considerations, we had very rigorous preparation, a royal commission, detailed legislation—twice—robust regulation and private sector delivery. Here, we have instead what my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, called an “unwieldy if not unworkable” Bill.

I am sorry to say that I am concerned that the role of the commissioner, in particular, needs to be clarified. There is no private sector regulatory capability and there are large, sweeping Henry VIII clauses. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the very important Clause 40, which is particularly weak. The Constitution Committee demanded

“greater detail on the face of the Bill”

regarding the intended guidance and direction of this clause, and I fully support that.

The principle of the Bill is very important and it does have the support of our public. But, without substantial clarification and reform, it could devastate the NHS and our healthcare system. We must address its fundamental flaws, or this legislation should take pause before it irreparably damages our health system.