Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest of CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network UK. We have a helpline and we deal with honour-based abuse cases.

While I support in principle the introduction of a statutory definition of honour-based abuse, it is essential that the Home Office concludes its work on the definition. I am part of the advisory group on this, alongside many other stakeholders. We must ensure that a final version is workable and fair, and includes statutory guidance, as recommended in Amendment 355.

However, I oppose the definition that has been put forward, although I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, has suggested it to create debate and discussion. I have a number of concerns. While I appreciate that a number of organisations have put their names to the proposed definition, I suspect that many have not gone through it line by line, as we do in here, and probably just accepted it at face value without thinking about whether it is applicable in law.

First, the definition lists types of abuse that could be motivated by shame. However, I note that stalking and harassment, which are specific offences under the law, are not mentioned and could be motivated by honour, particularly when a victim has escaped from the family or partner and attempts are made to track down, contact and bring back the person. Also, non-fatal strangulation and suffocation are not included in the list, and I would like to see them included.

Secondly, what does the wording actually mean when it refers to

“the perceived norms of the community’s accepted behaviours”

and the community being “shamed”? What do we mean by “the community”, “perceived norms” and “accepted behaviours”? This has to be legally clear for it to be applied. What community are we referring to? The use of this word has not been challenged for decades; we just blindly accept that terminology.

Let us take Birmingham, the city where I live. It has a population of more than 1 million. More than 500,000 are from a minority ethnic background; let us delve deeper into this population. Around 190,000 are from a Pakistani background, 20,000 are Arab, 66,000 are of Indian heritage and 17,000 are of Somali heritage —I could go on with that breakdown. If somebody commits an honour-based abuse crime in Birmingham, are we then suggesting that all those communities—for example, the 190,000 Pakistani community, including myself—are shamed by that crime? Well, that is not true: we would be stereotyping the whole community, and the communities are so diverse.

Even if we amended the wording to “the perpetrator and/or their family feeling they have been shamed or will lose honour and respect within their community”, tens or hundreds of thousands of people will not know who they are. A more accurate description, in my opinion, would be to cite “perpetrators’ perception of being dishonoured among their family and their social circle and their kinship group”.

By using this description, the honour-based abuse definition could even have a wider application. While this type of abuse is mostly associated with minority ethnic communities, honour-based abuse can occur in other contexts, even if to a much lesser extent. For example, it can happen in white, non-minority contexts too, particularly with the rise of toxic masculinity and the manosphere. Violence could be justified as “She embarrassed me”, and “She shamed me”. Then, abuse is committed for that reason. It could also be applied to gang-related contexts where violence is sometimes used to restore and protect honour.

I now turn to “accepted behaviours”. How will this be interpreted in law? This wording opens up the definition to subjective interpretation, risking inconsistent application. Legal risks could include prosecutors struggling to prove a motive beyond reasonable doubt. The defence could argue alternative motivations such as control, jealousy and anger. We must also ensure that those applying a legal definition are provided with clear guidance when any form of abuse is motivated by honour and shame: otherwise, automatic assumptions cannot be made that abuse is motivated by shame and honour just because the perpetrator is from a particular background, for example from a south Asian background. Evidence will be needed to justify why that motivation is linked to honour. As accepted behaviours may vary, it would be wise to list some key ones if it is not possible to provide an exhaustive list.

The very last part of the definition talks about the perception of shame preventing a victim accessing support and help. If honour-based abuse is going to be used as an aggravating factor to increase sentencing, this part needs to be strengthened further. This section needs to be linked to the behaviour of the perpetrator. Instead, it should be framed as where the perpetrator exploits concepts of shame and honour through threats, intimidation, coercion or blackmail, to prevent or deter the victim from seeking support, protection or assistance. An example of this is using intimate images to prevent a victim from speaking out by threatening to share those images.

Putting all of that together, I propose the following definition, some of which could be put in guidance. Honour-based abuse is an incident or pattern of abuse where the perpetrator is motivated by their belief that the victim has caused or may cause them and/or their family to lose honour or respect within their social circle or kinship group because of behaviours that are perceived to bring shame to them that may include: choosing one’s own partner; refusing a forced marriage, female genital mutilation or other harmful practices; having premarital sex, a relationship or pregnancy outside marriage; having interfaith, interethnic, intercaste relationships; ending a marriage or seeking divorce; having LGBTQ+ identity or relationships; seeking education or employment against family wishes; not dressing or having an appearance according to family expectations; having friends of the opposite sex; refusing family control over decisions; disclosing abuse and seeking help; and acts of betrayal within gang-related relationships.

Types of abuse may include: physical or sexual abuse; violent or threatening behaviour; stalking and harassment; non-fatal strangulation or suffocation; controlling or coercive behaviour; economic abuse; spiritual or faith-related abuse; psychological and emotional abuse; isolation; harmful cultural practices such as forced marriage; and intimate image abuse, especially in relation to silencing victims. The definition is long, some of it could be in guidance, and it would need tweaking.

I turn to Amendment 354, which proposes making honour-based abuse an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes. I would support the amendment once we have defined honour-based abuse. I too acknowledge the long-standing campaign called Banaz’s law to get this very law passed. Banaz Mahmod was murdered by her family in an honour killing in 2006. Her sister, Bekhal Mahmod, has been campaigning to have honour-based abuse become a statutory aggravating factor in sentencing. She is supported by Southall Black Sisters in her campaign, and I hope the Government will join us in acknowledging its campaign and hard work. I look forward to hearing from the Minister whether the Government are committed to adding a definition of honour-based abuse to this Bill.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I completely agree with all these proposed new clauses, which are long overdue. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Sugg on her excellent exposition and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on her strong support.

I want first to criticise the term “honour-based abuse”, since there is nothing honourable about it. The term was invented by the perpetrators to make their actions seem more honourable than they were. In reality, these acts are abusive and destructive, involve the horrible murders of girls and women, and are morally wrong and thoroughly evil. I understand that, in an ideal world, we would have different terminology; however, as we are not, we probably cannot change the name now, since it is widely used and understood, including in law. Still, calling it what it is helps us refute the false framing that protects abusers as if they were doing something decent instead of evil.

What is the extent of the problem in the United Kingdom? It is estimated that at least 12 so-called honour killings occur in the UK each year, which averages out to at least one woman or girl murdered per month. The exact number is not known, as these crimes are often hidden and underreported. The figures provided by excellent charities such as Karma Nirvana are expert estimations; I congratulate them on the superb work they do, and I wish Karma Nirvana well in developing its national e-learning modules. The actual number of cases is widely believed to be much higher, because, as I said, many go unreported or are misidentified by authorities. Some police forces simply do not want to add that label, for the same misguided reasons that they covered up the rape of children in certain communities.

This is not a cultural problem to be tolerated or explained away. Since at least one girl or woman is murdered every month in this country, we can imagine that many thousands of other abuses, less than murder, are occurring. They can include physical assault, emotional and psychological control, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, and sexual violence—up to murder itself. Victims are often isolated and silenced by those closest to them. The abuse can be carried out, as we have heard from noble Baronesses, by multiple family members or by members of the wider community. The honour-based abuse includes violence, murder, threats, intimidation, coercion and other forms of abuse carried out to protect or defend the perceived honour of a family or community.

Honour-based abuse is not a private family dispute; it is a serious human rights violation. It strips people of their autonomy, their choice and their safety. As it is hidden, many victims never reach out for help. When they do, they need responses that are informed, compassionate and co-ordinated, and they need to be taken seriously by the police, education authorities and the health service.

Despite some excellent initiatives being taken by the charities and the Home Office, I feel we are still talking about it sotto voce. We all need to denounce aspects of honour-based abuse for the evil that it is and not tolerate excuses—that it is mandated by some people with a perverted misinterpretation of religion and practised by ignorant people.

I turn to my Amendment 355A. The College of Policing already provides extensive guidance on how to identify honour-based abuse. Officers are advised to look for a wide range of indicators: control of movement, restrictions on communication, coercive family behaviour, fear, anxiety, unexplained absences, threats of being taken abroad and the collective involvement of extended family members. I have just read out a small selection; I believe that the college has about 15 different indicators that tell police officers, “These are things you can look for that might add up collectively to honour-based abuse”. If one wants a definition, one can look at the College of Policing indicators and the suggestions from the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir—and there you have a definition of all the factors that could encompass honour-based abuse. The college’s guidance is detailed, thoughtful and clearly written; it recognises that honour-based abuse is not a single incident but a pattern that is often hidden, often escalating and often involving multiple perpetrators acting together.

However, after setting out all these excellent warning signs, the guidance stops short of the critical next step. It tells the professionals what to look for but gives them no instruction on how to record what they have found. There is no requirement to flag up an incident as honour-based abuse. There is no standardised data field, no multi-agency reporting framework and no clarity on whether a case should be logged as domestic abuse, forced marriage, coercive control, child safeguarding or all the above. In short, the system trains police officers to recognise honour-based abuse but then leaves them with no mechanism to ensure the system itself recognises it.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 346C, I welcome the other amendments in this group in the names of my noble friends, Lord Blencathra and Lord McColl of Dulwich.

Amendment 346C is a modest and reasonable amendment, which would do exactly what it says on the tin. It would require the Home Secretary to institute

“a review assessing the effectiveness with which operators of bicycle courier services ensure that their employees and contractors conduct themselves on the roads in such a way as to avoid committing the offences in section 106”.

The review, which must be published within a year of that section coming into force, would recommend any changes to the law which the review determines may be necessary. The rationale for this amendment is similarly simple: it seeks to probe how the law could be changed to ensure that companies which contract for the services of delivery cyclists bear some responsibility for the conduct of those cyclists on the road.

Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I approach this issue from the perspective of a severely disabled person, whose condition makes me extremely vulnerable to the impact—and I use the term advisedly to mean the actual physical impact—of being hit by an individual riding one of these e-bikes in, to use the legislative terminology, a “dangerous, careless or inconsiderate” way. To put it bluntly, the impact would be catastrophic; I would not expect to survive. So I completely agree with my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, who said on day six of Committee that you take your life in your hands when you cross some roads in central London. I do so, quite literally, every day, on my way to and from your Lordships’ House.

Now I entirely appreciate that whether I live or die is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. It would be a shame if I were killed, but the earth would continue to turn. I know that. Equally, I know that I am just one person. I think of all those people with visual impairments, for example, who literally risk life and limb just stepping outside their front door. So the review should consider the impact on them as well, and not just in terms of their independence, mental health and well-being, all of which will of course bring associated costs for the NHS and social care services, but of their employment prospects. For why would anyone want to risk going to work, given they could end up in hospital before they have even got to the office as a result of being hit by a courier cyclist on an e-bike while they were walking along the pavement or trying to board a bus from one of those so-called floating bus stops?

I cite this group as just one example—and of course there are people with mobility impairments like mine, or simply older people whose reflexes are not as sharp as they once were—to highlight how the dangers presented by dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling on e-bikes, particularly by courier and delivery cyclists, are having a far greater impact on our society than we perhaps realise. I would go so far as to say that the effect has been to airbrush out of the bigger social picture whole swathes of society. So while I am not suggesting that an assessment of impact should be disability-exclusive, I would argue that such an impact alone merits a review.

I say to the Minister that I am not laying the blame at the door of Government per se. The Member’s explanatory statement accompanying the amendment refers to the companies which contract the services of delivery cyclists bearing

“some responsibility for the conduct of these cyclists”—

the point being that the responsibility is shared. But none of us, either in Parliament or the Government, can deny that we also share responsibility for addressing the problem; in our case, by providing the most effective legislative framework to facilitate the change we all want to see—safer streets.

I am reminded of what the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, said on day six in Committee, about us having made a “huge strategic mistake” by not factoring in the need for safety from the outset when these e-bikes were introduced. I agree with him. Sadly, some people, especially those in the Department for Transport, appear not to. They—and I dare say they are non-disabled and a bit slow on the uptake, bless them, so we need to make allowances—still do not seem to have woken up to the fact that this experiment has gone badly wrong.

That needs to be the starting point of the review. There must be a recognition—a fact which I sense the Minister implicitly acknowledges—that there is a significant and growing problem, which cannot simply be dismissed by officialdom’s obtuse obfuscation of, “Well, we are where we are”, because if we do not recognise that where we are is bad then we cannot move on.

Lime, the other e-bike hiring companies and companies such as Just Eat deserve to be in the dock and not in the saddle when it comes to this review. Yes, they will be part of the solution, but right now they are doing very nicely thank you very much from being a big part of the problem. They cannot be allowed to set or influence the review’s terms of reference or to sit on the review panel. That should be done by those most affected by dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling, not by those whose irresponsible indifference means they are profiting from putting people’s lives at risk.

In conclusion, I believe that the case for a review is compelling. As my noble friend Lady Stowell said on day six in Committee, courier delivery service e-bike users are “the worst perpetrators”. It is time we reviewed the situation. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 416K supports a targeted, enforceable measure that holds delivery platforms to account where their operational model and oversight failures contribute to dangerous cycling on our streets. This is not about blame for individual riders alone; it is about closing a regulatory gap so that companies that profit from rapid, app-driven deliveries also carry responsibility for foreseeable harms linked to their business models and practices.

If noble Lords want a bit more excitement in their lives than the excitement of participating in this debate then I invite them to accompany me, when we rise tonight, to walk along Millbank, Horseferry Road and Marsham Street, past the Home Office. The excitement will come from them dodging out of the way of dozens of Deliveroo couriers belting along the pavements delivering to the thousands of flats in this area.

Even more excitement may come when I manage to confront one of these riders and we have an exchange of views, but not usually a meeting of minds. When I see them belting along the pavement, I drive straight for them. My chair is heavier than theirs, so they are the ones who are forced to dodge out of the way. When I manage to stop one on those massive, fat tyre, illegal bikes and speak to them, I can say with all honesty that every single one I have seen is a recent arrival to this country. Half do not speak English and do not know the law on riding killer bikes on the pavement. The other half do know and tell me to go away sexually, that they will do what they like, and who will stop them.

If I had said that a month ago, I might have been accused of racist comments, but on 4 December this year, the Home Office issued a press release to say that, in targeted action, it and the police had arrested 171 food delivery couriers for criminal activity, and 60 of them were illegal migrants facing deportation. The Home Office press release said:

“It comes as Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has been targeting people working unlawfully in the ‘gig economy’. Border Security Minister Alex Norris has also met representatives from food-delivery firms to encourage them to do more to tackle the issue—such as using facial recognition checks to prevent riders sharing their identities with people who do not have permission to take up work in the UK. Norris said that November’s action ought to ‘send a clear message: if you are working illegally in this country, you will be arrested and removed’. He added: ‘We are tightening the law to clamp down on illegal working in the delivery sector to root out this criminality from our communities’”.


Good on you, Minister, and good on the Home Office—they have provided proof of what I have encountered every night for the past two years on the streets of Westminster, within hundreds of yards of this building. Good luck to you in trying to send them back to Eritrea, Somalia or wherever, because there is bound to be some immigration judge who will block you and cite bogus human rights reasons for why they cannot be deported. But that is your problem and not for today.

My amendment supplements what Minister Norris was doing. He exhorted the food delivery companies to do more to tackle the issue. My proposed new clause would give the police the power to penalise the food delivery companies financially, since money is the only thing that will make them change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

To be clear, I was talking about evidence of causality rather than necessarily data on incidents. Let me make some progress, and maybe the noble Lord will be a little mollified by the time I get to the end of my contribution—or maybe not.

The fundamental purpose of the new offence is to—

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am sorry, but I am afraid that saying that there is no evidence of causality is just what the Department for Transport wants the Home Office to believe. The evidence is quite clear; there are no better words than from the Mayor of London himself, Sadiq Khan, who said it is a Wild West out there. Many other councils in London are now trying to ban bikes from their areas because of the danger they cause, and those heavy, gigantic food delivery couriers are the worst offenders of all.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

Again, I say to the noble Lord that I will make some progress and then he may come back at me again before I finally sit down.

The fundamental purpose of the new offences is to appropriately punish offenders and deter dangerous cycling behaviours. There is no carve-out or special provision for delivery riders. To be clear, all road users will face equal treatment before the law under these provisions. I can also assure the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, that, like all new government enactments, the Crime and Policing Act will be subject to post-legislative review three to five years after Royal Assent, so there is the opportunity to review the action.

Amendment 416K from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would allow for food delivery companies to receive an unlimited fine should any of their riders be convicted of any offences under Clause 106. A complicating factor around this, as many noble Lords recognised, is that many such riders operate in the gig economy—the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, set that out particularly well. We are not always talking about the relationship between an employer and an employee, so using what we would consider normal working relationship incentives and rule structures is not always the easiest thing to do.

It is worth stating, particularly as the Employment Rights Bill finally finished its passage through Parliament yesterday, that as part of that wider package of employment reforms, there will be a major consultation on employment status which will help to clarify these grey areas. Again, I cite the contribution that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, made. I say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that is probably the best place to have a review of the grey areas around contractors and employers working in the gig economy. A problem has clearly been identified in the delivery driving sector, but there are many other sectors— I remember from my time spent in Committee on the Employment Rights Bill that there are lots of areas where the lack of clarity on employment status is causing all sorts of consequences.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am so grateful to the noble Lord for giving way again; I hope this will be the last time. If he and my noble friend Lord Hailsham are correct that the current law on vicarious liability might mean that Deliveroo and Uber Eats are not liable for the agents they are using, does he accept my noble friend Lord Goschen’s point that we are Parliament and, if the current law does not cover it, we can amend the law as we suggest to make sure that those companies are liable for the people who deliver food in their name, with a great big bag on their back advertising that?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I do not disagree with the proposition that the noble Lord makes. Of course, we are Parliament, but I suggest that we should legislate in a slightly more deliberative way than simply shooting at ducks ad hoc as they come up in the stall.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

346D: After Clause 106, insert the following new Clause—
“Dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling offences: supply of batteries for modification of cycles(1) Where an offence under sections 27A (causing death by dangerous cycling), 27B (causing serious injury by dangerous cycling), 28B (causing death by careless, or inconsiderate, cycling) or 28C (causing serious injury by careless, or inconsiderate, cycling) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is committed on a cycle which has been modified since purchase with a battery, a person who supplied the battery for the modification may be charged with an offence if the battery—(a) has a maximum continuous rated power which exceeds 250 watts, or(b) does not comply with statutory guidelines on lithium-ion battery safety for e-bikes issued by the Office for Product Safety and Standards.(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to a fine.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to put a penalty on the suppliers and sellers of batteries used for the modification of cycles used in the committing of offences under the Road Traffic Act 1988.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I neglected to say at the start of my previous remarks that although it may be the case, as my noble friend Lord Shinkwin said, that the world would not stop turning if he was killed by an e-bike on the streets, my orbit would certainly be destroyed, as would that of many of us, if that were to happen to him. One possible solution might be that, when I fit a bulldozer blade to my chair, I can precede him and he can ride safely behind me.

My Amendment 346D states that if anyone is convicted of causing death or injury by dangerous or careless cycling, and if the e-bike has an illegal battery with a power rating greater than 250 watts or does not meet the approved standard, then the supplier of the battery should receive an unlimited fine imposed by the court, not the police. I think we would all agree that the concept I am trying to get at here is right. We must get at the suppliers of the batteries that do not conform to UL 2849, the US standard, or EN 15194, the European standard.

I admit that the problem here will be enforcement. Just like all the other illegal stuff we have wrestled with in this Bill—from knives to pornography—if it is sold online, it is very difficult to stop. Furthermore, illegal sellers will say that they thought the battery was for an off-road bike, which would be perfectly legal.

However, this is where the proposed new clause in my Amendment 416J might work. It would give the police a power that could be delegated to a local authority or other agents to perform. The proposed new clause says:

“If a retailer supplies batteries which do not comply with statutory guidelines on lithium-ion battery safety for e-bikes … the police may issue notices requiring the retailer to … recall relevant batteries from consumers … suspend the sale of relevant batteries, and … warn consumers about the risks of relevant batteries”.


Again, it is not perfect, and in some ways it is not nearly strong enough to cut off the illegal supply of batteries that are not compliant with either US or European construction standards.

My proposed new clause and the Bill are concerned with dangerous cycling. Recent figures show that there were 11,266 incidents involving e-bikes and e-scooters in 2023-24, and this figure is rising rapidly. Therefore, for the purposes of this Bill, we have to get at the supply of illegally doctored and excessively overpowered batteries. These are the same batteries that cause the most fires, including fatal ones. That is because the number of dangerous and non-compliant batteries in circulation is a significant and fast-growing problem.

Authorities rely on data regarding fires and product recalls to gauge the scale of the issue. The Office for Product Safety and Standards has issued 21 product recalls and published 29 product safety reports for unsafe e-bikes, e-scooters and batteries since 2022. Specific enforcement action was taken against the brand Unit Pack Power’s e-bike batteries, which were linked to several fires across England, with withdrawal notices issued to four online marketplaces, 20 sellers and the manufacturer.

The number of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries is surging rapidly. London Fire Brigade data shows that it responded to 88 e-bike fires in 2022; that figure rose to 134 in 2025, as of late September. In 2023, almost 200 fires involving e-bikes or e-scooters were reported across the UK, resulting in 10 fatalities. The rise in fires is primarily linked to unregulated conversion kits and low-cost batteries, often purchased from online marketplaces—but fires are not our concern today.

--- Later in debate ---

So I am grateful for the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for raising the issues, but, for the reasons I have outlined, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response and all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I think that noble Lords and Ministers are getting the message from nearly all sides of the Committee—apart from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—that there is a real problem here that the Government are not addressing.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I entirely accept that there is mischief here. My comments were addressed at the specifics of the amendment—but I accept that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am grateful for the clarification from the noble Lord; I did not wish to misquote him. Following his comments, I note that, of the thousands of batteries for sale, none of them specifically say, “Buy this battery and illegally break the law. Add it to your legal bike and break the law by going on the pavement”—they are more subtle than that. The closest I came was in the example I cited in the debate on the previous group, where one company said that its bike—capable of speeds of 64 kilometres per hour—was suitable for “off-road and commuting”. The advertising is much more subtle, but everyone knows what is going on. These batteries are being sold for illegal purposes.

The problem I had with these amendments was that, to get them in scope of the Bill, I had to pull my punches and narrowly tweak them in some ways. Therefore, of course the amendments are technically flawed. I would have liked to put down an amendment on the chips, but that, I think, was not in order. To try to get at the concept of the problem, which all noble Lords support, I had to put down amendments that I accept are flawed. However, what the amendments seek to achieve is consistent with the rest of the Bill: we have had problems with knife crime, so, in addition to penalties for the carriers and users, the Bill has clauses trying to cut off and penalise the online suppliers—and the same goes for crossbows. Then we have all the sexual offences in Part 5 of the Bill, again with attempts to tackle the online supply of illegal photos, as well as lots more clauses on the online supply of illegal material.

I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier. He pointed out that it is easy to pick out flaws—I can pick all the flaws myself—and the technical faults in these amendments. However, what we are getting at here is that every noble Lord who has spoken feels that the Government are not doing enough on this issue. I believe that we can do a lot more. Of course, I want the police to grab every massive, overweight and overfast illegal bike out there and destroy it, but they will never keep up with the supply. We have to cut off the supply, and my amendments, in their inadequate way, were seeking to do that.

I am grateful to the Minister, because I think we have had a bit of movement over the past two days, with the Home Office now offering to discuss with colleagues how we can get this a lot better. I hope that we can, with noble Lords around the Committee, agree something on Report that tackles the specific problem, without causing great new problems of enforcement. Something needs to be done. I do not think we are prepared to wait for the Department for Transport’s strategy on safer cycling or road use, which we may never see. I suspect that, when we do see it, it will be grossly inadequate in tackling the scourge of huge, heavy, illegal e-bikes mowing down pedestrians on the pavement. Since both Ministers have been kind enough to agree to meet us before Report, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 346D withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we take a very different view and strongly support Clauses 107 and 108, which recognise a simple reality. Emergency workers can face racially or religiously aggravated abuse whenever and wherever they are carrying out their duties, including in private homes. They cannot choose their environment or walk away from hostility. Their professional duty is to step into what are at times chaotic, volatile situations, and to stay there until the job is done. The law should follow them into those settings and make clear that such targeted hostility is no more acceptable in a hallway or a living room than it is on a street corner. This debate has shown that the issue is not about policing opinion or curtailing lawful expression but about drawing a firm line between free speech and deliberate acts of intimidation directed at those who protect the public.

These clauses are drafted to catch only behaviour that crosses that line in aggravated circumstances, and they sit alongside, rather than in place of, the wider framework of public order and hate crime. In our view, striking them out would send the wrong message, undermining our commitment to those who protect us. Looking ahead, it will of course be vital that their use is monitored and that guidance for police and prosecutors is kept under review, so that the balance struck here remains both proportionate and effective in practice.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, before the Minister rises, could I ask a simple question? It would seem to me that, under the definition of emergency workers in Section 3(1)(j) of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, an emergency worker is

“a person employed for the purposes of providing, or engaged to provide ... NHS health services, or … services in the support of the provision of NHS health services”.

I think we all support the words of the Secretary of State for Health, but is he in danger of falling into the trap of criticising the BMJ for the action it has taken?

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

I will come back to that point in a moment. I think the noble Lord is trying to inject a slight bit of topicality into a different argument, but I respect his opportunities in trying to raise those issues.

I say at the outset that I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on this, which is why we brought this forward. I am grateful to her for standing up and supporting the objectives of the Government in her contribution. I have to say to the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Jackson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that I cannot and will not support their approach to delete these clauses from the Bill.

Emergency workers, as the noble Baroness has said, risk their safety every day to protect the public. They deserve robust protection through legislation, especially against abuse directed towards them because of their protected characteristics, which is not only harmful but erodes the principle of respect and public service, which are core values of this democracy.

As the noble Baroness rightly said, when emergency workers walk through a door of a private dwelling, they are faced with the circumstances in that private dwelling; they cannot walk away. They are there because of an emergency—perhaps medical, police or fire—and, if they face abuse in that private dwelling, then they deserve our support, just as they have our support if they face abuse on the street for a racially aggravated reason. If somebody does something at the end of their path on a street in Acacia Avenue and abuses them, they will find themselves under the course of the law on those matters.

I believe—and this is what these clauses are about—that, if the emergency worker is racially abused in the property, then they deserve that protection. It is critical for sectors such as health, fire and policing to have that legal support. We cannot leave them, as the noble Baroness rightly said, to be abused. The law must recognise this and make sure we have proper protection.

Currently, as has been mentioned, the Public Order Act 1986 and Section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 provide important safeguards in public spaces. It is not acceptable to call somebody a racially abusive name in a public space, so why is it to call them that name in a place of a private dwelling? It is not acceptable, so we are going to bring those clauses into play.

The noble Lord asks why we do this. We do this because Sergeant Candice Gill of Surrey Police, supported by the deputy chief constable—and, may I just say, by the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Surrey—has campaigned for this change in the law, having personally experienced racial abuse in a private home. It is not a sort of technical matter that the noble Baroness or the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, have mentioned; it is a real issue of racial abuse in a private dwelling to a police officer—who is doing her job, serving and trying to protect and support the public, and is being racially abused with no consequence whatsoever. Sergeant Candice Gill, after whom I would be proud to call this legislation Candice’s law, is campaigning and has campaigned to make this an amendment to the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, asked why we brought it forward in the House of Commons as an amendment. I will tell him why: it was brought to our attention, it is an action we do not support, and it is an area where we think action needs to be taken. That is why we have brought it. I do not think it is fair that people are racially abused in homes. Sergeant Candice Gill has campaigned on this and has brought it to the attention of the Government; we brought an amendment forward in the House of Commons which is now before this House, and I believe it should have support.

Clauses 107 to 109 will close that legislative loophole. The removal of the dwelling exception will make racially or religiously aggravated abuse of an emergency worker in a private dwelling an offence. The change will ensure that offenders prosecuted under Clause 107 face a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment. The offence in Clause 108 will be liable to a fine not exceeding level 4. As I have said, Lisa Townsend, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Surrey, said:

“This long-overdue change to the law would never have happened without Sgt Gill’s courage and determination”.


I think we owe this to Sergeant Gill and any other officer, health worker, fire service worker or police officer who has been racially abused in a home where they have gone to help support individuals. They deserve our support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, and to support the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, not least because my noble friend Lord Hendy—who is, sadly, not able to be in the country this evening—co-signed her amendment.

If anyone imagines or suggests that the job of the Health and Safety Executive should be limited to the inspection of heavy machinery or physical infrastructure, as opposed to social infrastructure, then they are not just living in the last century but arguably the one before that. For the Health and Safety Executive to look at its role in such a limited way is also incredibly gendered.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will look favourably on the intention of these amendments, because they sit so comfortably with other measures that the Government are attempting. The noble Baroness put it very well when she said that this is essential for the credible functioning of the violence against women and girls strategy. Last night, during the course of the Second Reading debate on the Victims and Courts Bill, it was wonderful to hear another Minister, my noble friend Lady Levitt, talk about further work and an expanded regime on allowing whistleblowing and the busting open of non-disclosure agreements that cover up illegal activity—which often means violence against women at work. What the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, is proposing sits so comfortably with that.

I cannot believe that my noble friend the Minister will think anything different not least because, just a few minutes ago, he spoke so passionately about protecting emergency workers when they have to go into difficult and dangerous settings and how they should be protected even from abuse, let alone from violence and more serious criminality. It would be odd if there was no duty on the employers of emergency workers to look at risk, adequate training and culture in the workplace and at what measures might be taken within teams and with training for those same emergency workers. As was suggested by the noble Baroness, this is about joined-up thinking and coming up with a violence against women and girls strategy that the whole Committee and all parties can get behind. I am feeling optimistic about my noble friend the Minister’s reply.

To Committee colleagues on the opposition Front Bench, I would say that there are inevitable concerns about any additional burden on employers. I am seeing nods that suggest that my suspicions are correct. But these duties can be as appropriate. If noble Lords and Committee members have concerns about the precise drafting of the amendments, those can be dealt with before Report. The duties would be to prepare and revise assessments that are appropriate for a particular business—and businesses and workplace settings are so different; they include very vulnerable and secluded settings, with visits and travel, including to people’s homes. This only need be about strategies and training as appropriate; the duties need not be an undue burden on good employers of good faith who have many women workers in particular, although I would like to see all protected.

I hope that the entire Committee can get behind the noble Baroness. I am delighted to see the first ever woman general secretary of the TUC looking as if she might be due to speak after me.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I first seek clarification from the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, on his sums. I do not do sums either but, if I heard him correctly, he said that a worker spends 50% of his life at work. If that is what I heard correctly, that is 84 hours a week.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

What I said was that a person fortunate enough to be employed spends on average 52% of one year in and around the workplace.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I shall need to go back later and do my own sums, but that still seems to me a little bit excessive.

I am not opposed to the proposed new clauses, and I agree with the thrust of them; this is an important issue. But my concern is with turning a broad legal duty, which these two proposed clauses suggest, into concrete and repeatable workplace practice. There are some practical difficulties. First, you get hidden and underreported incidents. We all know that victims often do not report harassment or stalking—and then there are no incident logs, which may underrate the risk. The risk can come from colleagues, managers, contractors, clients, customers or the public, including online, making responsibility and control much harder to map. That might put a simply impossible obligation on employers and impose a very heavy burden on small employers, which would probably not have an HR or personnel department or the security expertise to assess all the potential risk.

Designing “gender-responsive” measures into practical and proportionate steps seems to me to be a very difficult thing to do; a lot of careful tailoring would be required to deal with different people and roles. That may be beyond the capability of many employers, particularly small ones. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has looked at the HSE advice, already published, which I think includes detailed guidance on managing work-related stress and preventing work-related violence. That includes information on creating policies to address unacceptable behaviour. Perhaps the voluntary advice it gives could be expanded to deal with the elements at the core of these new clauses.

I also look to what ACAS does. This is what it says on its website:

“‘Vicarious liability’ is when an employer could be held responsible if one of their workers discriminates against someone … The law (Equality Act 2010) says a worker and an employer could both be held responsible if the discrimination happens ‘in the course of employment’. This means something that’s linked to work … This could be at work or outside the workplace, for example at a work party or through social media that’s linked to work”.


That is what ACAS says about discrimination, but I simply wonder whether the better course of action might be not to pass this proposed new clause into law but to get HSE and ACAS to take the thrust of the suggestions and design new guidance that delivers what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, want.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, has just left the Chamber, but when I saw him here, I assumed that he was going to speak on this matter. Had he spoken, he would probably have said, “Please do not give any more powers to the Health and Safety Executive”. He was a victim of one of the excessive criminal trials. When he was commissioner of the Met, one of his officers was pursuing a burglar. The burglar ran on to the roof of a factory, and the police officer chased him, fell through the skylight and was seriously injured. The Health and Safety Executive took the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to court for failing to provide a safe working environment for the officer. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, said: “I stood in No. 1 court of the Old Bailey—the court that had the trials of murderers, serious criminals and traitors—accused by the Health and Safety Executive of not taking enough care of my workers. When my lawyer asked the chap from the Health and Safety Executive, ‘What should the officer have done?’, he said, ‘Well, he should have stopped; he should have sent for a cherry-picker and scaffolding to make sure it was safe’”. The noble Lord said, “I looked at the jury, and the jury looked at the face of this idiot, and within minutes I was cleared, because a sensible jury knew that that was a ridiculous thing to say”.

That is the only danger of giving these powers to an organisation like the Health and Safety Executive. It may use the bulk of them safely most of the time, but on occasions you will get silly decisions. I should say in conclusion that that case of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, is a very good reason why we should keep juries, rather than having a single judge.

I perceive difficulties in putting this proposal into law, but I hope that a solution can be found whereby the Health and Safety Executive, ACAS or others can pursue the contents of new clauses without recourse to legislation.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have some serious reservations about Amendment 348 and the related Amendment 349. I spoke at length against them when a similar amendment was tabled to the Employment Rights Bill, and I shall not repeat everything that I said then.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, talked about looking at the drafting. That was interesting, because one of my problems is with the wording of this repeated amendment. It is all over the place, quite dangerous and very broad, and it could get us into all sorts of unintended trouble. Let me illustrate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, spoke passionately and excellently about some the real live problems of sexual harassment at work, and many of us will recognise that. As I say, I have concerns about the language of this amendment. It refers to having a legal mandate for employers to introduce

“proactive and preventative measures to protect all persons working in their workplace from … psychological and emotional abuse”.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that “psychological and emotional abuse” is a very broad term. The nature of “proactive and preventative measures” might involve stopping something that is very hard to define and could result in real overreach. It could be quite coercive and manipulative.

However, I am particularly nervous about the use of the “gender-responsive” approach that is advocated, particularly in relation to training. We are told in the amendment that

“a ‘gender-responsive approach’ means taking into account the various needs, interests, and experiences of people of different gender identities, including women and girls”.

Women and girls are not a subset of “gender identities”—whatever they are. That is insulting, and gender identities are at the very least contentious. This language confusion, for me, drags the amendment into a potential political minefield. I am familiar with the way in which gender-responsive approaches are being used in the workplace at the present time to undermine women and girls.

I was fortunate enough today to have a meeting here in Parliament with the Darlington Nurses Union. The Darlington nurses are in dispute with their NHS employer because they felt sexually unsafe in their single-sex nurses’ changing room—which, by the way, was fought for as part of health and safety at work in the past. They had a place where they could get changed and they felt unsafe when a gender-inclusive policy allowed a male who identifies as a woman to use their space. This has led to all sorts of problems in relation to what safety at work is. They felt as though there was a degree of sexual harassment going on, and so forth. I am just pointing out that this is a difficult area, so can we at least acknowledge it?

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

345: After Clause 106, insert the following new Clause—
“Police guidance and pilot: enforcement of criminal offences for illegal vehicles on roads(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must issue guidance to the college of policing and the National Police Chief’s Council on enforcement of criminal offences committed by drivers of vehicles illegally being driven on public roads.(2) The guidance under subsection (1) must include guidance on enforcement of criminal offences committed by drivers of vehicles which—(a) do not have a valid MOT;(b) are not registered with the DVLA;(c) are driven without a registration plate or one that is non-complaint or not associated to that vehicle;(d) are driven by drivers without a valid driving license;(e) are not insured;(f) are persistent evaders of toll, congestion or parking offences;(g) are displaying a stolen, ceased or fraudulent Blue Badge;(h) are vehicles registered overseas which have been in the UK for more than six months.(3) In conjunction with the guidance published under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must by Regulations make arrangements for an enforcement pilot, within the area of one or more police forces and for a period of not more than two years working with other public bodies that may lead to improving enforcement of the criminal offences in subsection (2).(4) In the context of the pilot under subsection (3), the Secretary of State may provide by regulations that—(a) outsource the operation (but not the oversight) of the pilot to another public body, or to a firm accredited by the Enforcement Conduct Board; (b) permit information sharing between relevant public bodies who hold information which will assist enforcement of those criminal offences in (2) and the operators of the pilot;(c) provide the operators of the pilot the powers that they need to detain vehicles where the owners have not responded to requests to regularise any of the offences in subsection (2).”

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

Amendments 345 and 398 stand in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. As I said earlier, my noble friend is making a good recovery from an operation. Amendment 345 is straightforward. It asks the Secretary of State to give clear national guidance to policing bodies on how to enforce criminal offences committed by drivers of illegally operated vehicles and to run a short, tightly defined pilot to test practical improvements in enforcement. Across the country, too many dangerous and unlawful vehicles remain on our roads. We have vehicles without MOTs and without insurance, driven by drivers who are unlicensed or who are using stolen or fraudulent plates. These are not just paperwork problems; they are real risks to road users and communities. At the same time, persistent evasion of tolls, congestion charges and parking rules blights town centres and funds organised offending. The current responsibilities are fragmented between the DVLA, local authorities and the police, and that fragmentation creates gaps that offenders exploit.

My noble friend’s amendment would do three things. First, it would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance to the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council so that enforcement is consistent, proportionate and focused on the highest harms. Secondly, it would mandate a time-limited enforcement period so that we can test new operational models and information-sharing arrangements in a controlled way. Thirdly, it would allow a pilot to be run with accredited partners under strict oversight so that we can learn what works without rushing into permanent untested powers.

Why is a pilot the right approach? A pilot is the responsible way to proceed. It would let us trial better use of data, test targeted interventions against repeat and organised offenders, and measure the impact on road safety and community harm before any national rollout. It would also allow Parliament to see independent evidence about proportionality, costs and safeguards, which is exactly what the public expect. Let me be clear: this amendment is not a blank cheque. Any information-sharing would have to comply with data protection law, any detention powers would be narrowly defined and subject to review, and any outsourced delivery would operate under ministerial oversight and public reporting. The Secretary of State would have to build those safeguards into the regulations and the pilot design so that civil liberties and accountability are front and centre.

This would be a practical, evidence-led new clause. It would build on existing enforcement work and give police the tools to tackle the most dangerous and persistent offenders while protecting the public and taxpayers. I ask noble Lords to support this amendment so that we can make our roads safer, reduce organised and repeat offending and ensure that enforcement is effective and accountable.

I conclude by saying that I like the other amendments in this group, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and other Peers who have signed them. I look forward to hearing what she has to say. However, I am mystified as to why this amendment is in a group of amendments all about drunk-driving. Having said that, I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

I shall speak to Amendment 356G in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, who has spoken so forcefully on the subject.

Drink-driving remains one of the most preventable causes of death on UK roads. The latest Department for Transport figures show that an estimated 260 people were killed in crashes on Britain’s roads involving at least one driver over the legal alcohol limit in 2023, and approximately 1,600 people were seriously injured.

Alcohol interlock technology, or alcolocks, can reduce reoffending and save lives. Alcolocks prevent a vehicle from starting if alcohol is detected on the driver’s breath. The driver has to breathe into a tube, and the levels of alcohol are instantly detected before the engine is able to be turned on. According to the RAC Report on Motoring 2025, 82% of UK drivers support the introduction of alcolocks, so—stops, looks meaningfully at Ministers—it is very popular with voters. Research for the RAC report also found rates of admitted drink-driving near pre-pandemic levels, with more than one in 10 respondents, 12%, saying they had driven when they thought they were over the limit, either directly after drinking or on the morning after. The figures for younger drivers were even more pronounced, with 14% of those aged 25 to 44 admitting to drink-driving, and as many as 18% of those under 25.

The good news is that alcolocks are already in the Road Safety Act 2006, but the experimental wording in its Section 16 effectively turned the interlock provisions into a contingent pilot that ended in 2010. That pilot was never fully taken forward and the powers never came into effect. As a result, alcohol interlocks are not part of the UK courts’ sentencing toolkit. This has left the interlock scheme in limbo, despite years of persistent drink-driving offending and the accompanying road deaths and injuries. However, removing this experimental wording will mean that the interlock scheme under Section 15 of the Road Safety Act can be brought into force, restoring the original purpose of the Act to give courts a rehabilitative, safety-oriented sentencing tool for drink-drive offenders.

Section 16 meant that courts could impose an alcohol ignition interlock programme order only in designated pilots or trial court areas—that is, only in areas specifically chosen by the Secretary of State. This was a purposefully cautious approach for any scheme to be selective and closely monitored to build an evidence base. However, the evidence base is now robust and expansive, and the UK is behind the curve, with all 50 US states, most EU countries, New Zealand and more all introducing a form of alcohol interlock programme, with substantial research available that supports their effectiveness.

This provision is already there in legislation; it just needs a tweak. These international programmes show that alcolocks can reduce reoffending by up to 70% and are as effective as airbags in reducing road deaths. All the Government have to do is accept this amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

May I ask for one point of clarification? These alcolocks sound fantastic. Do they have to be fitted by the manufacturers when the car is made, or can they be attached as a gadget afterwards?

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

I hear that they can be fitted in an hour for under £200.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an eye-opener of a debate, not just for me but, I think, for many noble Peers; we have all learned something that we did not know before.

I feel a bit of a fraud doing this little wind up at the end. It really should be the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, after her superb speech and the amendments she spoke to. Let me just rattle through a few comments. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Attlee did not like my noble friend’s amendment. Mind you, I did not like his amendment on random stops much either.

My noble friend Lady Coffey was right. The police should have good reason for stopping someone. I remember a few years ago that my constituents, way up in the wilds of Cumbria, used to complain that when they left the local pub late at night, they would drive a few yards and a police officer hiding in a car around the corner would stop them and say, “We have reason to think you have been drinking, sir”. Was that a random stop or was it done with good reason? The noble Lord himself said that the police do not need a reason to stop someone, so we do not need random stopping.

The points made by my noble friend Lord Bailey of Paddington were absolutely right. We read those horrible stories about policemen being dragged along, and I hope the gap there can be plugged.

I really liked what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said about interlock schemes. I think I first heard of those on “Tomorrow’s World” 20 years ago and they still have not been implemented. I simply do not understand what the problem is with doing a pilot. If the noble Lord brought that back on Report and it was in order, many of us would be tempted to support him.

I come now to the two big crunch amendments, which were the eye-opener for me. The noble Baroness was so right to talk about uninsured vehicles, and so was my noble friend Lord Ashcombe. I had no idea that the fine was less than half the insurance—that just cannot be right. Although we cannot put increased fines in the Bill, I like the idea of confiscation. Everyone says, “The police have the power to confiscate”, but are they actually doing it? I get the impression that very few vehicles are being confiscated.

We have automatic number plate recognition all over the country. If it is working, why are there tens of thousands of uninsured cars on the road? I say to the police, and perhaps to the Home Office to advise them: get out there and start grabbing those vehicles, getting the people and confiscating their cars. When they get them back, it will be not a £50 administrative fine but a £500 admin fine added to the current penalty to get their vehicle back. That might act as a disincentive for them until the government strategy comes along.

I conclude with the amendment from my noble friend Lord Lucas. The Minister seemed to make a very good case as to why his amendment was not necessary, and he did it in a courteous and nice way. I thank him for agreeing that my noble friend may come to the Home Office and meet the officials there and be briefed on it. With those words, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 345 withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I want first to pick up on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean, and both her comments and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and ask the Minister a question. Am I right in thinking that given that the Prison Service—and I think also the Probation Service—must do a full assessment of risk on any transgender prisoner, the protections they seek are already there?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean, for raising the case of Karen White. The Scottish Prison Service apologised because it did not do what it should have done: a full risk assessment. Had it done that, she would not have been placed on a women’s wing. I therefore hope the Minister can confirm that the protections for the public, particularly for victims, remain, because now, following the Karen White case in particular, real care is taken to make sure the law is followed. I would find it extraordinary if crimes were just dropped off the list because somebody had a transgender recognition certificate—so could the Minister confirm that this is not the case?

Turning now to my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones’s amendment, we on these Benches also welcome Clause 87, but it needs strengthening. My noble friend’s amendment is very clear: we have to be able to stop offenders changing their names without the knowledge of the police. That also plays into the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean. Research from the Safeguarding Alliance has shown that key legislation is being made redundant because of a loophole that people can use to get through the cracks. This is not just about transgender issues; it is about people just changing their name regardless of their gender. Frankly, this makes Sarah’s law and Clare’s law utterly useless. I hope the Minister is prepared to consider this.

The remaining amendments in this group, from the Government, look as though they are sensible adjustments to the arrangements regarding sex offenders obtaining driving licences in Northern Ireland. We look forward to hearing from the Minister in more detail on those.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I was not going to participate in this debate until I heard about the Scottish case and the Scottish Prison Service admitting that it got it wrong and that it did not carry out what they should have done.

I recall Julia Hartley-Brewer interviewing the SNP Scottish Justice Secretary. The Justice Secretary was saying that it was terribly difficult to reach an assessment, make a judgment and try to get it right. Julia Hartley-Brewer said, I believe, “What is the problem? Just look down his trousers and you will find the answer”. I commend that as the best answer I have ever heard.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, beginning with the amendments that regulate the name changes of sex offenders, I am glad that Members across your Lordships’ House agree on the necessity of regulations. Clause 87 is a sensible measure from the Government, and the amendments that build on its principle are similarly prudent. An individual who commits a crime as intrusive and offensive as a sexual offence demonstrates that they are a threat to public order and safety. After all, that is the reason why we have a sex offender register. Criminals who have proven that they pose a risk should be monitored by the authorities, and the authorities should have the necessary details to monitor and manage them.

Amendment 317 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, would ensure that those who change their name by deed poll are legally required to alert the police of this change. The amendments in the name of the Minister extend the provision restricting the granting of driving licences in a new name to Northern Ireland. All these amendments seek to consolidate the existing legislation to ensure that there are no gaps there or in the Government’s new law, and we support the principle behind them.

The most consequential of the amendments in this group is that tabled by my noble friend Lady Maclean of Redditch. It would serve to bar those who commit sexual offences from obtaining a gender recognition certificate. This is a very necessary measure. I am glad that the Government have not yet granted an exemption for sex-offending transgender criminals, which would allow them to attend a prison different from their biological sex. Hailing from north of the border—where, as others have commented, there have been several incidents of that happening—I believe that it is a very worrying scenario indeed.

The Government have still not implemented the Supreme Court’s judgment in the For Women Scotland case, neither in statute nor in guidance. There is still the chance that those who commit sexual offences can end up in the wrong prison through obtaining a gender recognition certificate. I am not remotely suggesting that the Government would wilfully do this, but I hope that, given their record on prisoner administration, the Minister can understand our concerns.

No safeguards currently exist outside of ministerial discretion. A way to guarantee that this does not happen would be to bar sex offenders from obtaining a certificate in the first place; it is a bare minimum. In sending such people to prison, we are admitting that they are not trustworthy among the public; why, then, should we risk the safety of prisoners of the opposite sex? For those reasons, I support my noble friend’s amendment, and I hope the Minister can too.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

330: After Schedule 10, insert the following new Schedule—
“ScheduleDisqualification for riding a cycle: minor and consequential amendments1 The Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 has effect in relation to a person disqualified for riding a cycle as if it was amended as follows.2 In section 26 (interim disqualification)—(a) omit subsection (7) to (11);(b) in subsection (12), for “section 34 or 35” substitute “section 34”.3 Omit sections 34A to 37A (provisions relevant only to a person disqualified for driving a mechanically propelled vehicle).4 In section 38(1) (appeal against disqualification), for “section 34 or 35” substitute “section 34”.5 In section 39 (suspension of disqualification pending appeal) omit subsections (3) and (4).6 In subsection 40 (power of appellate courts in England and Wales to suspend disqualification) omit subsections (7) and (8).7 In section 41 (power of appellate courts in Scotland to suspend disqualification) omit subsections (3) and (4).8 Omit section 41A (suspension of disqualification pending determination of applications under section 34B).9 In section 42 (removal of disqualification)—(a) in subsection (3) omit “(disregarding any extension period)” wherever those words appear, and(b) omit subsection (3A)(b), (3B) and (5)(a).10 Omit sections 44, 44A and 45A (endorsement of licence and driving record).11 In section 46 (combination of disqualification with orders for discharge)—(a) in subsection (1), for “sections 34, 35, 36, 44 or 44A” substitute “section 34”;(b) in subsection (2)—(i) omit “or” at the end of paragraph (a), and(ii) omit paragraph (b);(c) in subsection (3), for “sections 34, 35, 36, 44 and 45A” substitute “section 34”.12 In section 47 (supplementary provisions as to disqualifications and endorsements)—(a) in subsection (1)—(i) for “section 34, 35 or 44” substitute “section 34”, and(ii) omit “or endorsement”;(b) omit subsections (2) to (4).13 Omit sections 48 to 50 (exemption from disqualification and endorsement for offences against construction and use regulations, etc).”Member’s explanatory statement
The purpose of this amendment is to amend the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 as it applies to persons disqualified for riding a cycle.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lucas is making a good recovery from an operation and has asked me to move or speak to his amendments for him. I suspect that he is watching on parliamentlive.tv to see if I get it right, so I hope the Committee will forgive this awful breach of protocol when I say, “Ralph, switch off the TV; just rest up and recover”. I shall move his Amendment 330, speak to his other amendments in the group and speak to my own amendments at the end, if I have time.

The purpose of this amendment is to fine-tune Part II of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 as it applies to persons disqualified from riding a cycle. The proposed new schedule would omit Sections 34A to 37A, 41A and the other odd section on the ground that they are relevant only to disqualified drivers of mechanically propelled vehicles. For example, Sections 34A to 34C cater for reduced disqualification on successful attendance on a course and apply only to persons convicted of a specified motoring offence. Section 35 relates to persons convicted of an offence in which fixed penalty points are to be taken into account, but fixed penalty points do not apply to cyclists. Sections 35A to 35D, which relate to custodial sentences, do not sit well with the proposed new cycling offences. Sections 36 to 37A all relate to motor vehicles, whether it be by disqualification until a driving test is passed, the revocation of a driving licence or the surrender of a revoked driving licence to the Secretary of State. Accordingly, all those sections would be omitted.

Noble Lords may well ask which of the disqualification provisions in Part II would therefore remain, as they apply subject to those minor and consequential amendments set out in the schedule. My noble friend has listed them: Section 26, interim disqualification; Section 38, appeal against disqualification; Section 39, suspension of disqualification pending an appeal; Sections 40 and 41, power of appellate courts to suspend disqualification; Section 42, removal of disqualification; Section 43, the rule for determining the end of a period of disqualification; Section 46, combination of disqualification and orders for discharge; and Section 47, supplementary provisions as to disqualification. That concludes Amendment 330.

On Amendment 338, my noble friend says that new Clause 29A(7) introduces new subsections (8) to (12). This amendment would extend the clause to new subsection (12A), forming part of another amendment that I propose to speak to later.

On Amendment 339, the thrust of Clause 106 is to bring cycling offences pretty much into line with those that apply to motor vehicles. However, at present, provision for obligatory disqualification is omitted for the most serious offences, so it may be said that there will be a lacuna in the law—disqualification, with motor vehicles being, inter alia, an added deterrent to offending. Accordingly, the amendment now before the Committee would amend Section 34 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 by prescribing that the period of disqualification for the two most serious offences of causing death or serious injury by dangerous cycling will not be less than five years and two years respectively. The other two offences of causing death or serious injury by careless or inconsiderate cycling, where the culpability is less, will be subject to obligatory disqualification for not less than 12 months. No additional amendment of Section 34 would be required.

The only alteration that would be made by Amendment 340, in respect to the penalties for certain serious cycling offences, is the insertion of references to “obligatory” in column 5 of Part I of Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988. The expression relates to disqualification. Without it, certain provision in the amendment of Section 34 would be of no effect.

Amendment 342 is my noble friend’s last amendment in this group. He says that it would insert three subsections. He proposes a substitute for new Section 29A(12) to extend the penalties for certain serious cycling offences set out there. The proposed new subsection (12A) would amplify the definition of “disqualified”, and subsection (12B) would introduce proposed new Schedule 11A.

The only amendment that would be made by proposed new subsection (12) is with respect to the penalties for certain other serious cycling offences not catered for in new subsection (11), again with the insertion of the word “obligatory” in column 5 of Part I of Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988. As before, the expression relates to a disqualification. It too is necessary if Section 34 is to bite.

Proposed new subsection (12A) addresses the fact that “disqualified”, as currently defined, is couched in terms that at present can apply only to disqualified drivers of “mechanically propelled” vehicles. In other words, “disqualified” is for holding or obtaining a driving licence. That formulation is retained in paragraph (a).

As for the riders of cycles, I am sure noble Lords are well aware that a driving licence is not required for them. Therefore paragraph (b), in relation to them, inserts a different formulation. It redefines “disqualified” as disqualified for riding a cycle

“on a road or other public place”,

the latter expression being in conformity with the same wording in the new cycling offences created by this provision.

Finally, proposed new subsection (12B) would introduce a new Clause 106(11)(a), containing as it does

“minor and consequential amendments of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988”.

That concludes my noble friend’s amendments. If one thought that the debate on the last amendment was highly technical, this one is even more technical. I shall set a test at the end by asking questions to see whether all noble Lords have got it.

I turn now to my own Amendments 337B to 337F. I am certain that the Minister will see that in the Marshalled List there are four groups of amendments tabled by many more Peers than just me who are deeply concerned at the scourge of dangerous cycling inflicting serious damage on pedestrians and aiding criminality. I am sure the Minister saw the news item last week on the Met finally cracking down on the big, heavy, illegal bikes capable of 70 mph that are used for snatching phones. Many of them are driven by food delivery couriers—mainly Deliveroo. I encounter them every night on my way home on the pavements outside Millbank.

We also have the problem of thousands of e-bikes—mainly Lime—lying scattered over our pavements; of companies deliberately selling massive off-road bikes, which people then use on our streets; of some e-bikes being so heavy that they are breaking the legs of users; and of thousands of people riding on our pavements, with grossly inadequate enforcement to stop it.

The penalties under Clause 106 are inadequate and I have suggested increased penalties for anyone convicted, as has my noble friend Lord Lucas. However, I submit that no one will ever be convicted under its subsections, because a conviction depends on someone, presumably a police officer, concluding that the cycling

“falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful cyclist”,

and that a competent cyclist would conclude that it was dangerous. Will the Minister tell me how many times the Home Office expects to find a police officer present to witness this behaviour and come to the subjective conclusions in subsections (4) and (6)? We need a simple objective test, as is in my Amendment 337E, which would mean that anyone

“who rides a cycle on any pavement … is to be regarded as cycling without due care and attention”.

I challenge any noble Lord to dispute that. It seems to me pretty obvious that that has to be the case.

My Amendment 337C introduces

“a presumption that it is automatically dangerous cycling if the person is riding a bicycle capable of exceeding the legal 15.5 mph speed limit and weighs more than 30 kilograms”.

Thirty kilograms is a new concept, but it is now essential. A non-electric bike weighs between 8 kilograms and 15 kilograms, and most electric bikes now weigh about 25 kilograms. However, the company Lime has increased the weight of its bikes to 35 kilograms, leading to a phenomenon known as “Lime bike leg”. In August, the Telegraph reported the following, which the BBC also covered:

“I’m a trauma surgeon and treat patients with ‘Lime bike leg’ weekly … It’s a really common cause of leg injuries today”.


Lime bikes are 25kg heavier than normal pedestrian bikes. The report continued:

“Doctors have observed an increase in lower leg injuries caused by heavy e-bike frames falling on their riders”


and breaking their legs.

I fed into a road safety algorithm, “What would be the effect of a 35-kilogram bike with a 70-kilogram man sitting on it hitting a pedestrian at 25 mph?” and the answer was, “Almost certainly in every case: fatal with pretty horrific, catastrophic injuries”. Even at 15.5 mph, the injuries would be life-threatening, and totally fatal in the case of a child. Therefore, we must introduce a weight restriction, as well as strictly enforcing the 15.5 mph speed limit.

Would a “competent and careful cyclist” ever ride a bike on a pavement, or ride a 35-kilogram bike faster than 15.5 mph? Of course not. If someone is riding one of these massive, heavy, fast bikes, we do not need a subjective judgment on the quality of the riding; the criterion for dangerous cycling has been met per se.

My Amendment 337D would add an aggravating factor. It simply makes the point that if an innocent pedestrian is killed by a person using an illegal e-bike capable of going faster than 15.5 miles per hour and weighing more than 30 kilograms, an additional penalty should be applied. I apologise for my typo in the amendment; it says 25 kilograms, but it should be 30 kilograms. I suggest an additional five years, and a minimum of 15 years where a life sentence has been given. This is not for the ordinary cyclist who is reckless but for someone deliberately using a big, heavy, fast, killer bike.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My Lords, it seems an awful long time since my cycling proficiency test. We can debate whether standards have slipped in the 50-plus years since I took my test, but I think it is a common experience of all noble Lords who have spoken that a small minority of cyclists’ reckless actions potentially put people at risk. As a temporary resident of London during the week, I regularly see cyclists on pavements and going through red lights. I can report that, on crossing a zebra crossing one evening, I myself was almost hit by a cyclist, who was then pulled over by a police car not 100 metres later, much to my satisfaction. So it is possible for enforcement to happen.

I want to start with enforcement, because it is a thread that has run through a number of noble Lords’ contributions. It is right that strict legislation is already in place for cyclists, and the police do have the power to prosecute if these laws are broken. Cyclists have a duty to behave in a safe and responsible way that is reflected in the highway code. The Road Traffic Act, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned, imposes a fine of £2,500 for dangerous cycling and of £1,000 for careless cycling. The Road Traffic Act 1988 also makes it an offence to ride a bike if a person is unfit to do so due to drink or drugs. A considerable amount of activity is undertaken by the police to enforce these potential breaches of legislation. In fact, the Government themselves have pledged £2.7 million for each of the next three years to support police enforcement action on road traffic offences in the form of Operation Topaz, which is a strategic partnership between the Department for Transport, the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

I was pleased also to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about the City of London Police, who I know have taken this matter extremely seriously. They have cycling police officers who can catch offenders who have gone off-road into areas where vehicles or police officers on foot could not catch them, so it is important we recognise that. We have had contributions today from the noble Lords, Lord Russell of Liverpool, Lord Shinkwin, Lord Hogan-Howe, and Lord Blencathra, who introduced amendments on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. We have also heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell of Beeston, Lady Neville-Rolfe, Lady Pidgeon and Lady McIntosh of Pickering. All have touched on the issues of enforcement and whether the legislation is significant enough.

I want to draw the Committee’s attention to Clause 106, which is where these amendments are coming from. Clause 106 underlines the Government’s determination that cyclists who cause death or serious injury should face the full force of the law, as if that were done by a motor vehicle. The criminal justice system should not fail fully to hold to account the small minority of cyclists whose reckless actions lead to tragic consequences. A number of contributors to the debate have mentioned their personal experiences and have also witnessed incidents. There is a whole cohort of cyclists who obey the law and who perform well, and as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, would anticipate me saying, there is a health benefit to cycling that should be recognised and encouraged. However, there is certainly a holding to account of death and serious injury, and that is where the Government are coming from as a starting point to the debate today.

A wide group of amendments has been put forward, and I will try to touch on each amendment in turn. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, spoke on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I spoke to him before he went on his short, I hope, leave of absence from the House and discussed these amendments with him briefly. I wish him well for his speedy recovery and thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for introducing the amendments on his behalf.

Amendments 330, 338, 339, 340 and 342 would allow persons to be disqualified from cycling upon conviction of any of the offences in Clause 106. Again, let us not forget that Clause 106 contains the penalty of significant jail time, and potentially a life sentence with significant jail time added to it. I agree that dangerous or careless cyclists are a serious risk to others, but disqualification would pose significant challenges. This may touch on other, later amendments, but self-evidently, cyclists are not currently required to have licences, and the only obvious way to address this would be to introduce a licensing system. However, such a system would be complicated, costly and, I would argue, potentially disproportionate, in that it would be created solely to enforce offences perpetrated by a small minority of people. Again, I do not think the noble Lord intended his amendment to serve as a barrier to cycling, but my concern is that it would risk implementation of this and would not really be workable.

In his own right, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, introduced Amendments 337B and 337F. Again, these would introduce greater criminal penalties for cyclists riding heavier, faster e-bikes. I do understand that, as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, it is e-bikes that have been illegally modified for greater speed that represent an inherently greater risk to other road users. There is no longer any weight limit, following enactment of the Electrically Assisted Pedal Cycle Regulations 1983, but they do specify that the electrically assisted speed for e-bikes is limited to 15.5 miles per hour. E-bikes that can achieve greater speeds would not be compliant with these regulations and therefore would be classed as motor vehicles. Because they are motor vehicles, a person using such could already be prosecuted under the existing offences in the Road Traffic Act 1988 of causing death or serious injury, which carry the same penalties as proposed in the new cycling offences: a life sentence with a 14-year potential sentence.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

Just for clarification, the Minister said that they will be classed as motor vehicles. Does that mean they are still motor vehicles, even though they might not be registered or insured?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

They are classed as motor vehicles for the purposes of the legislation if they can travel above 15.5 miles per hour; but they are not, self-evidently, for the reasons I have already outlined, subject to the licensing arrangements that we have to date.

Mandatory uplifts based on specific vehicle type would be a novel but also an inconsistent approach to sentencing. Sentencing should always reflect the facts of the case and the level of culpability. Introducing rigid statutory additions could undermine the principle of proportionality, create inconsistency and risk setting an undesirable precedent. On the noble Lord’s amendments on changing the “careless and inconsiderate” cycling definition, I understand his desire to put beyond doubt that cycling on a pavement or in an area intended only for pedestrians should be considered as cycling without due care and attention. However, cycling on pavements is already an offence in its own right, as set out in Section 72 of the Highways Act 1835, which is an awfully long time ago and has stood the test of time. It is also an offence under Section 129 of the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984. Given that these offences are still in place, I would suggest that, along with those in the Bill for serious offences, that provides a sufficient deterrent.

Amendment 337F would insert the definition of a cycle. Again, I come back to Section 192 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which already defines cycles, and this definition includes compliant electrically assisted pedal cycles. As I said earlier, an e-bike that does not comply with the relevant legislation is a motor vehicle for the purposes of the legislation, not a cycle.

I turn to a series of amendments—341A to 341D, 342A to 342F, 346A, 346B and 498A—in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, which propose that a person could receive up to 12 points on their driving licence upon conviction of any of the offences in Clause 106. Reaching 12 points on their driving licence would, of course, disqualify them from driving a motor vehicle.

As I have mentioned already, cyclists do not require any form of licence to cycle, therefore the noble Lord proposes points on a driving licence as an alternative penalty. In the Sentencing Bill, which is currently before your Lordships’ House, there is already a new driving prohibition requirement that the court can impose when giving a community or suspended sentence order. This prohibition will allow a court to take a more flexible and tailored approach to punishment than a driving disqualification, and it will be available irrespective of the offence that has been committed. I hope that the noble Lord agrees that the provision in the Sentencing Bill goes some way towards meeting his objective.

The noble Lord’s Amendments 346A and 498A seek to create a registration scheme for the purposes of enforcing the new offences in Clause 106—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful. This Minister would not have gone over time had he not given way, but he now has gone over time and so will sit down. I commend the course of action that I suggested to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for his decency in replying as fully as he possibly could. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that there are many more groups to go on cycling, and I think he will have a chance of input there.

The general thrust that the Minister detected is one thing, but, if I may say so, my forecast was right. I said at the beginning that the general thrust I would detect was that Peers from all sides would be highly critical that not enough is being done. Clause 106 is okay as far as it goes, but there is a much wider problem out there, as articulated by nine other Peers from all sides, in addition to me. My noble friends LadyMcIntosh of Pickering and Lady Stowell asked why this never-ending consultation is taking place. Someone said that, as this is a Home Office Bill, why does it not just get on with it? It may be a Home Office Bill, but it is the Department for Transport’s policy, and that is where the rot lies.

Those who criticised the last Government were absolutely right to do so. I condemn in no uncertain terms the Department for Transport under the leadership from 2019 to 2022 of Mr Grant Shapps, who was obsessed with getting more and more e-bikes and e-scooters on the road. The reason the consultations were extended was, in my view, and in what was tipped off to me, that he wanted to get so many more e-bikes out there that it would be impossible to pull back on them. It is like the police saying that everybody is shoplifting and so there is nothing they can do about it. Mr Shapps wanted to say, “Everyone has got e-bikes now, so we cannot put in a registration system and we cannot control them”.

If noble Lords want further evidence of the Department for Transport’s attitude, in February 2024 it went out to consultation again. The consultation was to double the size of the electric motor from 250 watts to 500 watts and to introduce an additional speeding system. There were 2,100 responses; the vast majority of professionals—police forces and others—totally condemned it, and the Department for Transport had to pull that back, and rightly so. But mark my words, it will try it on again and again.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, made a very good point: why should cyclists have a right to a healthy life but not the pedestrians who are getting mowed down? He tabled some good amendments that would be excellent. He made the point that although everyone has called for more enforcement, you cannot have more enforcement if you do not know the bike and the identity of the person riding it.

My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe made the point that the amendments just do not go far enough. She used the term Wild West. I assume she was quoting the press release—I have it here—from the Mayor of London, Mr Sadiq Khan, who said that very thing last month: London is now a Wild West for e-bikes.

The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, made an absolutely excellent speech, and I commend him for it. He is right to say that we have boosted cycling, which is a good thing, but have not boosted the safety protocols. He is right about cyclists jumping red lights. You do not have to go far to see that; go to our prison gates at the Peers’ entrance and stand there and look at the pedestrian crossing and the lights. Last week, when the lights changed to red for the cars, I was halfway across when a cyclist tried to come through. I stopped and said: “Get back! Get back!” He did actually stop and move back a bit. That happens all the time. They use the red lights as an excuse; when cars stop, the cyclists belt through.

My noble friend Lord Goschen made the point that there is no enforcement at all. He wondered why anyone would bother to buy a moped or a small motorbike, when you have to have an MOT and insurance and pass a test, when they can buy an e-bike which goes 70 miles an hour and does everything you want, and you do not have to do anything to register or insure it, and no one will stop you when you break the law.

My noble friend Lord Shinkwin made the comment, rightly so, that there is a threat to disabled people. I am glad the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, welcomed my definition of cycles. It is possible that that was the only thing she agreed with me on, but I will take any little crumbs of comfort. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel supported most of my amendments, as I fully support his. I did ask for tougher penalties, but I am now content that the penalties are okay.

The Minister, in his speech, which was as courteous as usual, said that only a small minority break the law. He is right, I think, when that applies to the conventional cyclists and not e-bikes. In the past, it was my experience that it was a tiny minority of Lycra louts—the ones with their heads down between the handlebars and their backsides up in the air, belting through lights. I submit that I am certain that the majority of e-bike riders are breaking the law one way or another, either by excessive speed or by riding through lights or on the pavement. I can say with absolute certainty that 100% of the food delivery drivers are breaking the law, but more of that in another group. I disagree with the Minister that we cannot have a simple presumption that if people are riding a bike on the pavement then it is automatically, per se, and without any other judgment needed, seen as driving without due care and attention.

I simply say this again. I always come in with slightly more trenchant views than many other colleagues in the House, but we have had support today from colleagues with much more moderate amendments than mine. I am fairly certain we will see that when we come to the other groups. The Minister has to go back to the Department for Transport and tell it to get off its high horse and on to its bike. We must have proper amendments to toughen up the law and deal with all the other abuses of e-bikes, particularly in London. In those circumstances, on the assumption that we will be doing more work on this, I beg leave to withdraw my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 330.

Amendment 330 withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

316ZA: In subsection (2), in the heading of the inserted section, leave out “sexual abuse” and insert “bestiality”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to alter the wording of Amendment 316 to refer to “animal bestiality” rather than “animal sexual abuse”.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood on introducing his proposed new clause and on running through the sordid details, which we did not want to hear and do not want to think about, but had to hear if we are to have better legislation, which I believe his proposed new clause will introduce. His proposed new clause is far superior to Section 69 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, since it describes the abuse of the animal and not just the perversion of the offender. It links to all the other online offences we have in the Bill—where people are publishing dangerous and pornographic pictures of abuse, strangulation, et cetera—and animal sexual abuse needs to be included there too. Therefore, I strongly support his amendment, which has also been signed by other noble Lords and my noble friend Lady Coffey.

When I first saw his amendment, I was motivated to use the term “bestiality”, since I was brought up in Scots law, which had very robust words to describe illegal sexual activity—at least illegal a few years ago. Bestiality is still the term used in Scotland. I initially thought that the term “abuse” was milder than bestiality and that bestiality conveyed a more condemnatory stance of the filthy perverts who were doing this. However, after a discussion with my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood, I now agree that bestiality is a more restrictive legal term focusing on the perverted behaviour of the man rather than the abuse of the animal. Abuse is the key word here. I accept that the terminology “animal sexual abuse” is a more contemporary term emphasising the act as cruel and exploitative rather than just a taboo behaviour.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for having given my Amendment 235A a positive acclamation. However, I did not move it because it struck me that the amendment we are now debating is actually better than the one I tabled. Therefore, there seemed no point in having a double debate. I listened very carefully to the excellent exposition of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, which is really important.

I came to this having looked after three children’s homes when I was a GP. I became suspicious that there was something funny going on in one of them but could never put a finger on it or get social services to recognise it. However, I am sure there was, because one Christmas the children in that home set fire to it and burnt it down—but I really do not know what was happening, and I never found out.

It is terrifying the layers with which children can be enticed, encouraged and supported into criminal activity and then become quite expert at it. They are terribly intimidated and frightened for their lives. The intimidation may not be overt but covert. They have threats made against them, their families, for their lives, or of mutilation. They get beaten up and all kinds of terrible things happen. That locks them further into a world of criminality.

It therefore seemed that this would be the third side of the triangle, if you like. We talk about prosecuting the exploiter, and we talk about prosecuting the child for whatever crimes they have committed. Let us be honest: these are sometimes very difficult children. They are severely emotionally damaged, very difficult to get close to, and will not disclose to people in authority what is really happening to them, because they are so terrified. Therefore, they may be unwilling to disclose information to the police. Then, we have this gap which still leaves them liable and open to exploitation.

It was with that thought that this amendment, this concept, came forward, to try to close that gap a little bit. I hope when the Minister sums up—and perhaps criticises this clause, because I anticipate we might be told it is not necessary—that he explains what harm such an order would do. I cannot see how it would make anything worse, but it may certainly make things better, and that was the sentiment behind the support of the Opposition Front Bench for this concept.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, when I first saw this new clause, I did not pay too much attention, but having looked at it in more detail, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, since I think they are on to something here. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, has confirmed that. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, who has a long track record of fighting for the rights of children, from trying to save the children’s playground in Victoria Tower Gardens from the Holocaust Memorial Bill to his track record of tabling amendments to this Bill and others.

Researching the Casey review recently with regard to my amendments on grooming gangs prompted me to look at this again. Then, I realised that a CEPO would be valid in dealing with some of the problems caused by those grooming gangs. The criminal exploitation of children is a real, growing concern across the UK, with increasing numbers of young people being coerced, manipulated or forced into criminal activity by adults or older peers.

As the Committee knows, these vulnerable children suffer significant harm, both physically and psychologically, and often find themselves trapped in cycles of offending, unable to escape the influence of exploiters. In response to this issue, the concept of a criminal exploitation protection order is possibly a very sensible idea to offer targeted legal protection for children who have been victims of criminal exploitation.

Existing legal frameworks, while robust in certain areas, do not sufficiently address the unique vulnerabilities of children subject to criminal exploitation. Traditional criminal justice responses may inadvertently criminalise victims—as we have seen all too frequently with the grooming gangs cases—or fail to disrupt the exploitative relationships at the heart of their offending.

A CEPO could fill this gap by prioritising the welfare and protection of exploited children, recognising them as victims rather than solely perpetrators. The order would empower authorities to intervene proactively, preventing further harm and breaking the cycle of exploitation.

The details are not in the Bill, and the regulations will set out the details, but I would expect and hope that the regulations may do the following. On prohibitions, the CEPO could prohibit children from engaging in specified activities that are linked to their exploitation, such as associating with certain individuals, visiting particular locations or possessing items used in criminal activity.

On the positive requirements for the children, the order may require them to take positive steps such as attending counselling, engaging with support services or participating in educational programmes designed to build resilience and reduce vulnerability. Those are just a few examples, but I hope that the regulations would detail a whole range of things that children could be stopped from doing and encourage them to do good things.

Importantly, this is a holistic approach: by combining restrictions on the one hand and supportive measures on the other, the CEPO could address both the immediate risks and underlying factors that contribute to continued exploitation. CEPOs could prevent further harm, as the order would be seen as a protective barrier, reducing the likelihood of children being drawn back into criminal activity and shielding them from exploiters.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

I think I know what the Minister may say, not only because I have seen these things before but because I have heard what Dame Diana Johnson, the Minister in the other place, had to say. The answer will be that the Government are sympathetic to the issue but feel that that this is not the right place to deal with it, or that it is already covered; however, there is something to be said for including something in the Bill. A lot of the issues dealt with in the Modern Slavery Act were already covered, but we put it all together into that Act. This is a good example of that approach. The Government made, not a commitment but a vague suggestion that they might bring something forward during the passage of the Bill, and there will be people both in Parliament and outside who will continue to campaign on this issue. If we could somehow get something on to the statute book, it would be to the benefit of everybody. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lord, I focused on this new clause when I saw my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge’s name on it. When I was Opposition Chief Whip, among the many fixtures and fittings I inherited in the office was the MP for Uxbridge, John Randall. Although I was Chief Whip, I became his understudy, and to this day I follow his lead on many of the amendments he tables, particularly on biodiversity and so on. So when I saw his name, I thought, “There is something in this and I had better look at it”. My noble friend has tabled a very important amendment and put his finger on the appalling abuse of children in the world. It is a significant and widespread issue which serves as a pipeline to modern slavery and other forms of exploitation globally.

My noble friend’s proposal seeks to expand the definition of exploitation under Section 3 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to include orphanage trafficking—specifically, the recruitment of children into overseas residential care institutions purely for the purpose of financial gain and exploitation. As he said, orphanage trafficking is a form of child exploitation whereby children are deliberately separated from their families and recruited into residential care institutions, not for their welfare but to generate profit. This hidden practice is driven by greed and the profit motive, with children being used as commodities to attract charitable donations and international funding or to facilitate voluntourism. In many instances, children are not without parents but are falsely labelled as orphans to increase the institution’s appeal. The problem is as extensive as my noble friend has said.

There are an estimated 5.4 million children worldwide living in orphanages and other residential care institutions. Research consistently shows that over 80% of these children have at least one living parent. Orphanages, particularly in developing countries, are often set up and run as businesses, with the children as the “product”. Orphanage directors and “child-finders” often target poor, low-education families in rural areas, making false promises of education and a better life in exchange for the children.

The exact scale of orphanage trafficking is difficult to quantify due to a lack of data, poor government oversight of many unregistered facilities and the clandestine nature of the crime. Children in these institutions are often untracked, making them more susceptible to exploitation. The links between institutions and child trafficking have been formally recognised in recent years by the United Nations General Assembly and the US Government’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which highlights the growing international concern.

Children in these institutions face various forms of modern slavery and abuse, including financial exploitation, with the children being used to elicit donations from well-intentioned tourists and volunteers. This can involve forcing them to pose as orphans or perform for visitors, or keeping them in deliberately poor conditions to evoke sympathy. Then there is sexual exploitation—children are vulnerable to sexual abuse by staff, volunteers and organised criminal groups targeting these facilities. Then there is forced labour: children being forced to perform labour such as working on a director’s land, doing excessive domestic chores, or begging on the streets. Then there is illicit adoption: in some cases, children are recruited for the purpose of illicit, fraudulent adoption, with documentation falsified to facilitate the process and generate profit.

This is an evil trade, and it is well organised. These so-called child-finders lure families into giving up their children through deception, coercion or payment. Gatekeeping procedures are bypassed or manipulated, often by falsely declaring children as abandoned or creating fraudulent documents. The child’s identity is altered—the child’s name is changed to establish an orphan identity and make them untraceable by their biological family. The child is maintained in the institution long term for ongoing exploitation and profit generation through donations and sex tourism. My noble friend’s amendment deserves Government support.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. As the Minister might notice, it is not intended to be dealt with under the Crime and Policing Bill but under the Modern Slavery Act. That means, in a sense, it is probably simpler for the Government to accept it, because it is an improvement to an Act of 10 years ago. I am not quite sure why, oddly enough, the noble Lord, Lord Randall, and I did not think about it in those days, but it was not raised.

When I was a judge, I had the specific example of a child being put into an orphanage by their father, with the intention of a large amount of money being paid eventually for that child to be adopted. The child was in the process of being adopted in England by an American family who came to England. The whole set-up was so unsatisfactory that the child was removed and went into care. The question then was whether the child should go back to the natural parent—the father—but the problem was that he had put the child into the orphanage.

This is a very serious issue that is seriously underestimated and not well known. The very least the Government could do is to amend the Modern Slavery Act.

--- Later in debate ---

While I am on my feet, I will add my support to all the amendments in this group. I highlight in particular those tabled by my noble friend Lady Cash. They are necessary to address the deficiencies in the criminal justice system and the other bodies that have been highlighted in the Casey review, when it comes to safeguarding victims and potential victims of child sexual abuse, whether it is rape-gang connected or a different pattern of activity. I also support Amendment 271B in the names of my noble friends on the Front Bench, dealing with the rape of a child. Again, this was something that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, argued for: she said the law should be changed to close the loophole whereby penetrative sex with a child is not always classed as rape. I think most people in the country will think it is absolute insanity that this is not called rape. A child cannot consent to sex. It should be rape. It should be called rape. We should prosecute those rapists as rapists, and we should treat children as children. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the proposed new clauses in my Amendments 271C, 271D and 271E. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Maclean on her excellent amendments. She also has the advantage of that wonderful name of the great Highland clan the Macleans of Duart, which I used to have myself.

I was inspired to table my amendments when I read properly the brilliant but frightening report from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey of Blackstock. I had skim-read the media reports and the government comments on it when it was published, but it was not until recently, when I read the report properly, that I had confirmed to me the full horror of the conspiracy by those in lawful authority who had covered up child rape for the last 30 years. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, said in blunt terms what we all knew was the case but were afraid to say in case we were accused of racism or Islamophobia. We could all see from the various court convictions that 90% of the perpetrators were Pakistani Muslim males and the victims were almost exclusively young white girls.

The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, pointed out that around 500,000 children a year are likely to experience sexual abuse of some kind. The police recorded data shows just over 100,000 offences of child sexual abuse and exploitation recorded in 2024, with around 60% of these being contact offences. We know that the sex crimes reported to the police are just the tip of the iceberg. The national police data confirms that the majority of victims of child sexual exploitation are girls—78% in 2023. The most common age for victims is between 10 and 15 years-old—57% are between 10 and 15 years old, for God’s sake. Putting that together suggests that, of just those reported to the police, we have at least 60,000 little children every year being victims of contact sexual abuse—and what an intriguing term that is. Let us start calling it out for what it really is.

The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, said:

“That term ‘group-based child sexual exploitation’ is actually a sanitised version of what it is. I want to set it out in unsanitised terms: we are talking about multiple sexual assaults committed against children by multiple men on multiple occasions; beatings and gang rapes. Girls having to have abortions, contracting sexually transmitted infections, having children removed from them at birth”.


These children were not abused by these Pakistani rape gangs. They were raped, raped and raped again by people who believed that the girls who were not Muslim were just prostitutes, deserving to be raped. Therefore, I say that “child abuse” is far too mild a term to describe the evil of what is happening. Abuse can expand over a wide range. It can be heavy smacking, not feeding a child property or failing to give love, care and attention. These things are bad in themselves, but we must make sure that we use the right terminology when talking about rape and sexual assault.

That is why I have tabled the proposed new clause in my Amendment 271C. The important words in it are “investigating authority”. Of course, after investigation, if the police find evidence of rape or sexual assault, the accused will be charged with those specific offences. The CPS will also use those correct terms. However, we have seen, time and time again, that the police, in their initial statements, say they are investigating “child abuse” and have a person or persons in custody with regard to “child abuse”. That is what the media are told and that is the message we get on our screens and in the press. By the time the police eventually say the person or persons have been charged with rape, the damage has been done. We all relax somewhat: just a bit of abuse, nothing to worry about.

The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, said:

“That is why I want the legislation on rape tightened up so that an adult having penetrative sex with a child under 16 is rape, no excuses, no defence. I believe many jaws across the country would drop if it was widely known that doing so is called anything but that”.


I am pleased to see that my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie and my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower have tabled Amendment 271B, which does exactly that. My proposed new clause is complementary, in a way: if a person is under investigation for child rape, let the police say that at the outset and not give the impression that it is something lesser.

The new clause proposed in my Amendment 271D sets out details on the full and proper investigation of historical child sexual abuse. I have used the commonly used term “historical”, but I do not like it either: it gives the impression that it is something way in the distant past, like the Battle of Waterloo. The proper terminology would be, “investigation of past child sexual abuse cases which were not properly investigated at the time”, since that is what we are talking about. It is not a very sexy title, but that is the reality.

I know that the National Crime Agency is looking at some of these past cases, and nearly 1,300 previously closed investigations involving allegations of group-based child sexual abuse and exploitation are currently being reviewed in Operation Beaconport, but my proposed new clause gives them wider authority.

We have all heard about Rochdale, Rotherham, Aylesbury and Telford, but there are at least 30 local authorities where child rape by gangs took place. Apparently, 23 police forces have submitted cases to the NCA, and the Met itself is looking at 9,000 cases. However, it seems that the NCA is looking only at police forces, when the conspiracy to not investigate and to cover up was led in many cases by elected councillors, local authorities and children’s homes.

I quote the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, again:

“I met many victims of child sexual exploitation when I conducted the inspection of Rotherham Council in 2016. I was outraged, shocked and appalled at their treatment—not only at the hands of their vile abusers, but at the treatment afforded them by those who were supposedly there to help, and to be accountable, such as their police force and their council. Those responsible in Rotherham denied any wrongdoing and tried to shirk accountability”.


She went on to say that

“I assumed we would all wake up to the fact that these were abused children and it would mean that the police, councils, health and other agencies would do their damnedest to make sure these victims were given as much care, respect and chance at justice as possible”.

Note her words: she thought that not just the police but

“councils, health and other agencies would do their damnedest”

to stop it, but they did not. In fact, we have seen from many cases that councils, councillors and their staff did their damnedest to conspire with some police forces to turn a blind eye, reduce and drop charges and cover up. The excuse was not to offend community relations and prosecute the mainly Pakistani men doing the raping.

So it is essential that the NCA, since there is no one better qualified to do it, has the powers in my proposed new clause to investigate all persons in lawful authority in the organisations I list in proposed new subsections (1) and (5), not just the police. These are

“staff of local authorities of whatever rank … elected council members of local authorities … police officers of all ranks … any police support staff … owners or managers of homes for children in care”.

Of course, the proposed new clause gives the NCA powers to get all papers and emails and sets penalties for any person trying to obstruct its inquiries.

Finally, the new clause proposed in my Amendment 271E is on offences and penalties. I need not go through them all, but I have listed eight different offences, ranging from failure to investigate and dismissing charges improperly up to and including bribes or sexual favours and the conspiracy to cover everything up.

I did not conjure these up from thin air: all these suggested offences are based on reports of crime cases and convictions, and these were allegations made in court and accepted as truthful—but then nothing was done about them. The persons were convicted of child rape or sexual assault, but then no one investigated the police or the council officers who failed to investigate or covered it up, and we have tens of thousands of cases which never got to court because of failures of investigation and good cover-ups.

Where any of these people were acting alone, I suggest a sentence of up to 10 years. However, where there was a conspiracy, with any of these people acting in concert to commit any of the offences in my list, the only penalty, in my opinion, can be up to life imprisonment. This has to be separate from the offence of perverting the course of justice, where the maximum penalty is generally seven years. I think that the heaviest sentence ever given for perverting the course of justice was 12 years for someone who planted incriminating evidence on an innocent person.

There is already a power to remove all or part of a police officer’s pension if the officer has been sentenced for a crime. Then the Home Secretary can initiate a procedure. We need to make it clear that that power can be used against any police officers and local authority employees who may be convicted of any of the crimes I have listed.

Some, perhaps many, noble Lords and the Minister will say that these penalties are far too draconian. Of course, they are draconian, and they need to be. What we are looking at are some of the vilest crimes committed against children short of murder.

The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, said:

“When those same girls get older, they face long-term physical and mental health impacts. Sometimes they have criminal convictions for actions they took while under coercion. They have to live with fear and the constant shadow over them of an injustice which has never been righted—the shame of not being believed. And, with a criminal justice system that can re-traumatise them all over again, often over many years. With an overall system that compounds and exacerbates the damage; rarely acknowledges its failures to victims. They never get to see those people who were in positions of power and let them down be held accountable … What makes child sexual exploitation particularly reprehensible, is that is consists of both formal and informal groups of men preying on girls, coercing, manipulating and deceiving them in pursuit of sexual gratification and power”.


News reports and inquests have detailed specific instances, such as the case of Charlotte Tetley, a survivor of the Rochdale grooming scandal who, after years of mental health struggles and self-harm, took her own life as an adult. Another victim, an anonymous woman, described having

“a lot of problems in the past, suicide attempts and drinking”

due to the abuse she suffered as a vulnerable teenager. Major studies and reports consistently find that survivors of child sexual abuse are at a significantly higher risk of suicide attempts than the general population. All those abusers have escaped any investigation or sanction and are in the same vile box as the rapists who raped all those children. They need to be investigated and prosecuted and to get exemplary sentences.

I am conscious that I am exceeding the 10-minute limit, but I hope the Committee will bear with me because there a couple more minutes to go. I promise that in the next debate I will speak for less than 30 seconds.

Over the past 30 years, 60,000 girls have been raped every year. We are appalled at Ukraine, where Putin has kidnapped 20,000 people and soldiers have raped about 4,000 over the past three years.

Finally, I look forward to hearing the wise words of my noble friend Lady Cash. It was two or three years before she qualified as a barrister that we created a precedent for prosecuting and bringing to justice those who committed crimes in the past. We passed, by the Parliament Act, the War Crimes Act 1991, after this House blocked it for many good reasons. We prosecuted one person under it, a 78 year-old Belarusian SS man called Anthony Sawoniuk. He murdered 18 Jews—well, he murdered a lot more than 18 Jews, but those are the ones we got names for—and we punished him. He was convicted and given a life sentence in grade C Norwich Prison, with three meals a day and his healthcare needs taken care of, and he died peacefully at age 84. Of course, the only appropriate punishment for him would have been if he appeared at Nuremburg and was hanged with all the others. We have a precedent for going back 50 years to bring to justice a war criminal who was not even British at the time it was done, so I hope that we will accept my noble friend’s view that we need to look back at historical cases and bring them forward.

Penultimately, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, talked about taxis. I am afraid we have not got an amendment on taxis, but I want to get one. Let me conclude with these words from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey,

“one thing is abundantly clear; we as a society owe these women a debt. They should never have been allowed to have suffered the appalling abuse and violence they went through as children. This is especially so for those who were in the ‘care’ of local authorities, where the duty to protect them was left in the hands of professionals on the state’s behalf”.

These women are now in our care. It is our duty in this Parliament to ensure that they get justice for the appalling crimes they suffered.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, and I shall speak to the four amendments in my name. Those are in two parts. Amendments 288A and 288B are directed to the reporting of child sexual abuse and child criminal exploitation. The purpose of the amendments is to act. We have to actually do something since we have had so many reviews and inquiries.

--- Later in debate ---

With respect, I have even greater concerns about Amendment 271E. The noble Lord prayed in aid Nuremberg, but I say to him that his amendment is fundamentally at odds with the rule of law and the long-established principle, enshrined in Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, that no one can face punishment for acts which were not criminal at the time they were committed. Just days after the Constitution Committee of this House published an important and timely report on the rule of law, I hope that the noble Lord will reflect on that and reconsider his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

Why, then, was it legitimate to pass the War Crimes Act, bringing to justice someone who committed crimes, not even in this country, 50 years ago?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has made his case. I have put my view. If he wishes to examine it further, we can do so in due course. I understand that he wants to bring people to justice. So do I, but the approach we want to take is different from his, and we will have to accept that.

Amendment 271B, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and Amendment 271C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would give effect to recommendation 1 of the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, that the law should be changed so that adults penetrating a child aged under 16 are charged with rape. As I have said, the Government have accepted this recommendation and have committed to changing the law. I reassure noble Lords that we are working fast to consider how that law change should be made. We are discussing this. I met the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, as part of that work and I will update Parliament soon about our proposed approach but, at the moment, I hope that the noble and learned Lord accepts that we are committed to that legislation and will table it as soon as time allows.

Amendment 271C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, would mean that someone suspected of or charged with a sexual offence against a child that involved penetration would be described as having committed rape, whether the penetration was penile or non-penile, and regardless of what the offence is actually called in legislation. It would also mean that a wide range of other non-penetrative offending behaviour would be referred to simply as sexual assault. I do not think that that meets the intention of the recommendation from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, as it would not substantially change criminal law. Additionally, the difference in how offences are labelled in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and mandating how enforcement agencies then refer to those offences could lead to operational confusion, which I hope the noble Lord would seek to avoid.

Amendment 271B, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, which I have already mentioned, would create a new offence of rape which would apply when an adult penetrates with their penis the vagina, anus or mouth of a child aged 13 to 15. The offence would not require proof of an absence of consent or reasonable belief. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who spoke to it on behalf of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, that the Government are committed to making this change in law. We have accepted the recommendations of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and we strongly agree with the sentiment behind the amendment. However, we are also aware of the need to ensure a robust framework of sexual offences, which must work effectively across all types of child sexual abuse. This will be a significant change to the framework and, as such, if the noble Lord will allow me, we need to discuss it with the police and prosecutors to make sure that they have the tools needed to bring abusers to justice. When we have done that and taken those considerations into account, we will change the law, and we will update Parliament when we do that. I hope he can accept that intention.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, for her Amendments 288A and 288B. These overlap with the provisions in Chapter 2 of Part 5, which provide for a duty to report, which we will come on to later; she noted and accepted that. We believe, after extensive consultation with the relevant sectors, that the model in that chapter is the appropriate one to adopt. Again, we can debate that later, and I am sure we will, but that is the Government’s view at the moment.

Amendment 288B seeks to create a criminal offence specifically in respect of concealment by public officials. I am mindful that the type of offence proposed by this amendment may overlap with existing statutory provision, including obstruction of justice offences. Later, we will come on to consider the offence of preventing or deterring a reporter from carrying out their duty in Clause 79, and it will be part of the appropriate way forward at that stage.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, also tabled Amendments 288C and 288D, which are about the collection of the ethnicity and nationality data of child sexual abuse offenders and victims. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, said. The recommendation from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is to work alongside the police to establish improvements which are required to assist the collection and publication of this data. We have accepted that recommendation. This includes reviewing and improving the existing data that the police collect, as well as considering future legislative measures if required. The objective the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, has set is one that we have accepted. We are working through that at the moment and, although it may not be satisfactory today, it is an objective to which she and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, can hold us to account.

This is an important debate. I think we are at one on these things, but it is the Government’s firm view that most of the amendments are not the way forward or need further refinement along the lines that I have already outlined to the Committee. As I have said, the Government are committed to changing the law in relation to rape. We will take away amendments and consider this further for Report.

Given these caveats, let us go back to where we started on this wide-ranging group, which is whether we should have a statutory timescale for the inquiry. Going back to the lead amendment in this group, I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean, will withdraw her amendment because we are trying to do this as speedily as possible. The converse impact of her amendment may well be to create a further delay to a process that the Government are determined to get down as quickly as possible, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, to land the inquiry and get further recommendations to tighten up areas in which we need to reduce—and, we hope, stop—the number of further victims of these awful crimes.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

258A: Clause 56, page 71, line 1, leave out paragraph (a)
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to remove the possibility of offences under this section being tried in a magistrate’s court.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, before speaking to my Amendment 258A, I say in the nicest possible way to the Government Whip, the noble Lord, Lord Katz, that he must not get overexcited about a 10-minute advisory timescale. My noble friend Lady Cash had three major new clauses tabled; I had three major new clauses tabled. I decided not to degroup any of them, out of decency to the House, but I was limited to 10 minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I do not think I have ever given an indication the noble Lord could not speak, but there was a 13-minute contribution on a 10-minute latitude.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Hanson; I was not referring to him. It was the Government Whip who was getting very agitated about my comments. I could have spoken for a lot longer if I had degrouped my amendments, but I am not going to do that.

Quite simply, Clause 56 lists all the crimes in Part 1 of Schedule 6 that are relevant to convicting someone of controlling another person’s home for criminal purposes. Schedule 6 is about two pages of big issues—very large crimes—which are completely inappropriate for a summary trial. This is about hijacking someone else’s home, where the homeowner is kept prisoner. That is such big stuff that it should not be triable by summary but only in a Crown Court.

I beg to move—after one minute and 21 seconds.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome government Amendment 262, which recognises that cases of cuckooing often involve a complex web of coercive control. The person who seems to be in charge may actually be being manipulated or exploited by somebody else, and this addresses that complexity. However, while I understand the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and recognise all too well the potential life-changing harm caused by cuckooing, we are not minded to support restricting the trial venue in that way.

Magistrates’ courts provide quicker access to justice for victims and less delay than Crown Courts, particularly given the current backlogs. This is particularly important as cuckooing is linked to ongoing exploitation, with offenders often moving on to repeat the offence elsewhere, so fast action to stop the creation of more victims may in some cases be the more sensible option. Magistrates’ courts can also be less intimidating for vulnerable victims, supporting them to testify. Many other exploitation and safeguarding offences can be tried either way, allowing the specific facts of each case to determine the appropriate court. Imposing a blanket restriction on trial venue risks delaying justice, undermines established practice, and limits judicial discretion.

The pattern of coercion and control is at the heart of all these issues, whether we are talking about the exploitation of vulnerable children or adults. The evidence shows that women—as well as children—who are coerced into offending, often by traffickers or abusive partners, are in practice more often punished than protected. Too many victims of coercive control are still unfairly prosecuted for offences linked to their own abuse. Many female victims do not report to the police for fear of being criminalised, and that concern is well-founded. If, for example, drugs are being stored or grown in their flat, it is all too often the woman who is prosecuted. The statistics bear this out: around 70% of women in prison are victims of coercion or domestic violence.

Turning to the issue of coerced internal concealment, Amendment 259 links the new offences of causing internal concealment and cuckooing, making it clearer and easier to prosecute these serious and often related behaviours. Coerced internal concealment, whereby a person hides items such as drugs inside their bodies, is a particularly stark illustration of the abuse of power. Anyone who puts another person’s life at risk in this way should be subject to the harshest of penalties, so we support the introduction of this new offence.

I take this opportunity to raise an issue which, regrettably and surprisingly, remains absent from the Bill. In the past five years in England and Wales, a child has been subjected to an intimate police search every 14 hours on average. Black children are four times more likely to be strip-searched compared to their proportion of the population. Half these searches lead to no further action.

In opposition, the Government promised stronger regulation, including a statutory duty to notify parents, which should be the bare minimum. Although a consultation began in April 2024, there have been no firm proposals since, which is disappointing given an earlier commitment from the former Home Secretary to new mandatory rules and safeguards being

“put in place as a matter of urgency”.

That pledge followed a series of recommendations from the IOPC, including a call to amend the law so that police forces are required to make a safeguarding referral for any child subjected to a search involving the exposure of intimate parts. It also called for clearer guidance, enhanced training, greater consistency across police forces and, again, for these reforms to be implemented “quickly”.

Some 18 months later, some forces have improved practice and made more safeguarding referrals, but there is still no legal requirement. The Children’s Commissioner confirms that poor strip search practice is widespread and is not limited to any one force or region; failures include not having an appropriate adult present. Can the Minister confirm that a timescale is in place for the implementation of these recommendations? If not, will the Government consider amending the Bill to reflect the need for urgent action?

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that, on this basis, the noble Lord will therefore be content to withdraw his amendment and support the Government’s amendments.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, that was a good little 16-minute debate. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, that I rather admire his style in this House—I hope that does not damage his future career. There are many Ministers who are able, but in addition he brings a style of being decent, nice, pleasant in the way he deals with debates, thorough and meticulous, patient and even long-suffering. I rather admire the way he actually replies in detail to our amendments; his initial reaction might be to say, “What a load of rubbish!”, but he does not do that and is kind and courteous. I appeal to him: could he please have a word with his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, and teach him how to be as nice and decent as he is? Turning to the reply from the noble Lord, Lord Katz, I still think that he was wrong and I was right, but, nevertheless, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 258A withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

216A: After Clause 39, insert the following new Clause—
“Retail crime: deterrent action by shopkeepers(1) Where shopkeepers or retail outlets of any kind have obtained video or photographic evidence of theft of goods from their shop or store and the alleged thief has not been caught at the time, then they may—(a) a. circulate that photographic evidence to—(i) any other retailers they consider appropriate,(ii) their Head Offices or security control centres,(iii) any organisations engaged by them in deterring shop theft or arresting thieves, and(iv) any trade body or publication which is relevant to their business;(b) publish the photographs prominently in their stores or shops;(c) publish the videos and or photographs on social media.(2) Where shopkeepers or retail outlets of any kind have obtained video or photographic evidence of theft of goods from their shop or store and the alleged thief has not been caught at the time then they must—(a) retain securely the original or hard copy of the evidence which must be time and date stamped;(b) ensure that the evidence is not edited in any way;(c) send a digital copy of the evidence to the appropriate police force as soon as reasonably practical, but they may collate that and any other occurrences and send them as a bundle; (d) supply information about the nature and value of the goods they believe were stolen;(e) store any other evidence relating to the alleged theft including any eye witness accounts.(3) When the police receive any evidence or information under subsection (2)(c) and (d) they must undertake the following steps—(a) log and record all the evidence they received;(b) do a facial check on the Police National Database;(c) do a check on the passport and immigration databases;(d) check the photos, videos and reports received against any other reports to see if there is a pattern or repeat thieving.(4) When it seems to the police that—(a) there are other similar examples of the person stealing from shops,(b) there is a pattern of offending,(c) the alleged thief is acting in concert with others, and(d) there is evidence that that shop or retail outlet is regularly targeted,the police must initiate a full investigation with an objective of arresting the thief or thieves and bringing them to trial.(5) Where a person accused of being a shop thief has had information published under subsection (1) and it is later proven that the person was innocent or a photograph of the wrong person was published, then that person is entitled to compensation by the shop or retail outlet which published it.(6) The compensation under subsection (5) is £300 per day for each day that the information was wrongly published.(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend any of the provisions of this section.”Member's explanatory statement
There has been a rise in theft from shops and complaints from store owners that the police are not doing enough to stop it. These provisions aim to deter shop thieves and make it easier for the police to take action because the shop owners will have provided sufficiently reliable video and other evidence to justify full investigations and prosecutions.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, as well as moving my Amendment 216A, I shall speak to my Amendments 216B and 216C. These are three large proposed new clauses, and I assure the Committee that I will not be speaking to any other groups of amendments tonight.

Why have I tabled these when there are already laws on shoplifting? I am doing it because theft from shops is now completely out of control, and we need new laws, powers and penalties. The first thing which has to change is the terminology. I disagree with my noble friends and the Minister in the last discussion calling it “shoplifting”, since this diminishes the enormity of the criminal rackets now operating. It sounds rather like the legitimate “grab and go” takeaway food we see in shops, although I assume people are supposed to pay for it before they go. This is not shoplifting; it is shop theft, with some organised on a massive scale as conspiracy to steal.

My amendments address the concerns of the British Retail Consortium following its annual survey published in January this year. It showed that losses from customer theft reached a record £2.2 billion in 2023-24 and that we have record crime levels, despite retailers spending £1.8 billion on prevention. That is a total cost of £4 billion. Retailers want the police to take retail crime more seriously, improve response times, use technology and data sharing to target prolific and organised offenders, and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.

Key actions retailers advocate for include improved police attendance. Retailers want police to prioritise attending incidents, especially when an offender has been detained by staff, violence has been used or key evidence such as forensics need immediate attention and collection.

Retailers want effective investigations. They ask for all reasonable lines of inquiry to be pursued, including collecting and using CCTV footage, eyewitness statements and forensic evidence to identify and prosecute offenders.

Retailers want the targeting of prolific offenders. They want a proactive approach to identify and focus resources on the small number of repeat offenders responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. This includes using criminal behaviour orders and, for serious cases, electronic monitoring.

Retailers want better data sharing and intelligence. Businesses are keen to share data and intelligence through partnerships and platforms, such as Project Pegasus and the Disc system, to help police forces build a national picture of organised crime groups and link up crimes for unknown offenders across different locations.

Retailers want easier and consistent reporting, with a streamlined, consistent and easy way to report all incidents, as underreporting due to complex systems and a perceived lack of police response is a major issue.

Retailers also want visible deterrence. They support “hot spot patrolling” and high-visibility policing in high-crime locations to deter potential thieves and provide reassurance to staff and customers.

Retailers want tougher sentencing and legal measures. The industry advocates for a robust judicial response, including the introduction of specific laws such as a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker—which I am pleased to see we are going to have—to signal that these crimes are unacceptable and will not go unpunished.

Finally, retailers want collaboration. Overall, shops want stronger collaboration between the police, the criminal justice system and businesses to address the root causes of offending and ensure that staff are supported in providing evidence and attending court.

I am arrogant enough to say that my proposed new clauses address all these concerns and are related. The first would give shopkeepers and retail outlets the powers to deter shop thieves. The second would give powers to arrest and detain them. The third would tackle organised shop theft as conspiracy.

Let me explain my proposed new clause described in Amendment 216A. The Information Commissioner’s Office has suggested that it is inappropriate to publish photos of known thieves because it may infringe their data protection rights. What nonsense—it is a great deterrent, and my subsections (5) and (6) would provide for compensation if a shop makes a mistake and publishes the wrong photograph. Retailers such as M&S, Boots, Morrisons and Greggs are now contributing data, including photos and CCTV footage, of repeat offenders to a national database which is shared with the police and used internally by security staff—for example, on “Banned” boards in staff-only areas— to prevent entry. That is a compliant method which seeks to get round, or comply with, the Information Commissioner’s guidance.

The other thing shops must do—and I suggest they will do—is make it easy for the police to prosecute. The police will naturally not respond to a phone call that says that some anonymous bloke stole from a shop and made a getaway and they do not know who it is; I would not respond to that myself. However, if the shops keep all photographic and video evidence—although it will be digital these days—timed and dated and of court evidential quality, with statements from the observers, then the police will think it worth while to investigate; at least, they will have no reason not to do so. Following on from that, my proposed new clause says that, if the retailers have done all these things and have good evidence which has a good chance of catching and convicting thieves, then the police must take investigative action along the lines in my subsections (3) and (4). I submit that these measures will lead not only to more just convictions but also to deterrence.

My proposed new clause described in Amendment 216B moves on from deterrence to detention. Retail outlets must have the power to arrest and detain suspects under proper controls, but very few now do so because they are afraid of the consequences of getting it wrong. Even when they get it right, criminals will sue for wrongful arrest or excessive force, no matter how untrue that is. My proposed new clause sets out powers for shops to arrest and detain shop thieves, but with very strict conditions as set out in subsection (2). I will not go through all of them, but they are tough conditions on shops and security guards which guarantee that evidence is retained, and the rights of the suspect are properly guaranteed, just the same as if he or she had been arrested and detained by the most woke police force in the country.

The security staff must be properly trained, use minimal necessary force and wear cameras all the time to capture the action. When a suspect is detained in a secure room, it must be covered by cameras at all times and they must be told why they have been arrested. There must be no intimate body searches and there must be female security staff for female suspects, et cetera. It is of prime importance that the police must be called as soon as possible.

When the shop has complied with all those requirements, the police must then respond and do their duty. If the shop has done a gold-plated job of collecting the evidence and handling the suspect properly, then the police must take their responsibility seriously and there would be no question of releasing the suspect on the spot. Of course, they can release or charge them when they have reviewed the evidence at the police station and interviewed the suspect.

Noble Lords may point out that this regime may be perfect for the big retailers and big shops but will not work for the corner shops and smaller retailers. I accept that, but it is highly likely that individuals who steal from small shops will also steal from large multiples, as the type of store selected often depends on the specific motivation and perceived opportunity of the thief rather than a strict adherence to only one type. Ultimately, shop-thieves tend to be generalists in terms of store format, seeking out environments with low security and high opportunity. Large multiples often have more security resources, such as CCTV and security guards, but their sheer size and high footfall can also make them easier targets in certain areas. Small shops may have less sophisticated security, making them a target for burglars or opportunistic thieves, but owners often know their “regulars”, which can act as a deterrent for some. We have got to remove the fear of shops and staff doing their own arrests, and that means professionalising their arresting and detention regime and then empowering them.

A few weeks ago, I was in the large Boots down at Cardinal Place in Victoria when I saw a guy in a hoodie come in. He went to a cosmetics shelf, opened a carrier bag and was scooping the shelf contents into it. He then started to go out. I started shouting, “Stop that guy. He is thieving. Stop him! Stop him!” and I charged after him in my chair. He began to run, so I powered up to warp speed but lost him when he went down into the Underground. I went back into Boots, sought out the one and only person on duty and said, “Call the manager. Look at the video tapes”. The response was that there was nothing they could do and there was no point in interfering, as it was just one of those things.

That is not good enough and we are all paying the price through the increased cost of goods to cover theft losses. I might even go so far as to say that Sycamore Partners, the private equity firm that owns Boots, has possibly decided that it can make more profit from letting people steal things than employing enough staff to stop them stealing in the first place. I only surmise; I do not know that for a fact.

Some 10 minutes later, when I was in M&S, an American woman rushed up to me and said she had chased the man who had stolen my shopping, but she had lost him in the Underground. I explained that it was not my shopping but thanked a United States tourist for trying to do what no Brit in the area had tried to.

I am no Mr Jenrick, waging a one-man fight against criminals in London, but a few months ago I was in a small retail outlet in a large supermarket, only a few hundred yards from here, where I saw a man stuffing his jacket pockets full of things, a few yards away from a security guard. I shouted to the guard that someone was thieving. The guy gave me a mouthful of abuse and then walked past the guard, giving him two fingers.

--- Later in debate ---

We have put in place the Security Industry Authority, which is the regulator for the private security industry. It is setting training standards for licence-linked qualifications and as part of that training, security guards learn physical intervention skills, how to perform a citizen’s arrest, the law on use of force, and how to de-escalate areas of conflict. Individual businesses can and do determine their own policy on the arrest of shoplifters by licensed security guards, in compliance with UK law, but it is a valuable area of work, and giving security guards wider powers of arrest would create potential difficulties. It would require even more specialist training and oversight of the use of detention powers. As described in the amendment, it would entail significant training requirements and a significant cost to business, and it would open up issues of public accountability for the exercise of coercive powers.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I did not think my amendment was creating considerable extra powers of arrest for the security guards, but it seems that the current power largely mirrors a lot of things that I put in this amendment. My question then is, why are so many shops scared to use it? I appreciate that the retail unit or outlet has to determine whether they let the security guards arrest people, but there is certainly a fear among many security guards in this respect, and many shops say, “We can’t let you arrest people”. We must, somehow or other empower, them to do so.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There is a genuine fear about what the response would be, and I understand that. The days when I—and potentially the noble Lord, Lord Randall—stopped a shop theft in a retail premises were a long time ago. The climate was different, and now there is the carrying of knives and the threat of violence. That might be a fear, and it is up to individual shops to determine their own policy. Clause 37, which deals with attacks on retail workers and will apply to a whole range of retail staff, adds an extra protection. It will be up to individual shops, but it is important that those two measures are seen as coterminous. Protection of retail staff in the event of shop theft and assault is a further measure to support action on shop theft. However, it is ultimately for individual stores to determine their policy.

The noble Lord also raised the issue of multiple thefts and planning for thefts. I find it objectionable to see criminal gangs organising mass hits on shops, but that is already a factor that aggravates the seriousness of the theft offence. If, therefore, there is evidence that multiple parties were involved in a theft, each of those parties could and should be charged with theft, as well as conspiracy to commit theft. The amendment would require the police to consider charging with conspiracy to commit theft if there is evidence that two more people are involved. I know that the noble Lord knows I am going to say this, but it is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to decide on relevant charges, taking into account all the circumstances of the case. I do not want to put on statute what charges the police or CPS should bring, but again, the potential is there should they wish to do so.

I will touch briefly on the sentencing aspects of the amendment. At present the maximum penalty for theft is seven years’ imprisonment. The maximum penalty for robbery is life imprisonment. Conspiracy to commit theft or robbery has the same maximum penalty as the base offence. The effect of this amendment, therefore, would be to create a form of conspiracy to commit theft offence that would potentially have, if fewer than five people were acting together, a lower maximum penalty than theft or conspiracy to commit theft have now.

As we discussed previously, the amendment also introduces minimum sentences. I made it plain in our debates on Monday that minimum sentences are rare in law. Parliament has set them in statute only exceptionally. They are not appropriate in this instance. Sentencing guidelines for theft, which courts are required to follow unless it is not in the interests of justice to do so, already highlight when considering the culpability of an offender factors such as involvement of others through “coercion, intimidation or exploitation”. The issue of

“sophisticated nature of offence/significant planning”

is also relevant. The other aggravating factors that the court must consider include taking account of previous convictions.

Therefore, I cannot accept the noble Lord’s amendment, for my reasons and those that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, has mentioned. However, I do not want him to leave the Committee tonight thinking that this Government are not committed to tackling shop theft. We are, through the measures that we have taken and are encouraging police to take, through the measures in this Bill to change the definition of shop theft in Clause 39 and in providing protection for retail workers in Clause 37.

Shop theft is shop theft. It costs all of us resource on our bills. It costs businesses resource. It is money which should be invested in the local economy rather than going into the pockets of people who opportunistically, individually, for whatever reason—from poverty to organised criminal gangs, from drug abuse to alcohol abuse—commit shop theft in many of our stores. I want to make sure that we do all we can to reduce it and to provide deterrents to it. I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, including my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge and, for his full support for my amendments, my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower.

The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, said that if someone is stealing from their shop, shopkeepers do not have time to go through the video cameras to get the evidence. If a shopkeeper has someone stealing from their shop and cannot be bothered to look at the TV cameras to see the evidence for it, he cannot complain about shop theft. If he has the evidence, for goodness’ sake, he should use it. I do not think that the noble Baroness read my amendments on all the protections that I have built in for those who do want to arrest criminals. The Minister set out in his excellent speech all the powers of citizen’s arrest that a security guard or a shopkeeper can have, but the noble Baroness said that no one should have the power to arrest except a policeman who is properly trained. That is rather bizarre, to use a word that was used earlier about my amendments.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

The noble Lord is misinterpreting what I said. I did not say that it was not possible to look at CCTV coverage. I said that if you are a small shopkeeper and the shop is being run by one or two people, you are not going to sit there and do everything that the noble Lord has suggested in that amendment—date stamp things, take photographs, make sure that everything is absolutely hunky-dory, that it is handed over in a file. That is just pie in the sky. It will not work. If the noble Lord is going to quote me, can he please quote me correctly?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I said in my speech that I understood that small shops would have difficulty with this, but also that the people who steal from small shops in the main also steal from the big shops. If one can prevent them from stealing from the big shops and arrest them there, we will also bear down on the theft from the smaller shops. Of course, smaller shops have a more difficult problem, but it will not be solved by just putting more policemen on the beat.

Of course, the police have to prioritise. In London, in particular, they have to put terrorists at the top of the list, along with rape, murder and serious violence, so shop theft will inevitably be lower down. I was familiar with the Oxford Street experiment a few years ago; I do not know whether it is ongoing. There, the shops discovered that if one shop—say, Debenhams or Selfridges—phoned up and complained, it was no good. If they co-operated among themselves, they could get enough evidence together to justify the Met then coming along and grabbing some people who were working in a concerted effort to steal from their shops. They also discovered that, if they gave the police a gift-wrapped package of good evidential material, then the police would take it seriously. That is the key message here. It is bogus to suggest that just having more police will deal with this problem.

I liked what the Minister said. I have no criticism whatever of the Government on this. We are on the same side. I liked his strong words that this is not shoplifting, it is theft. I also liked his saying that we must make it easier for the shops to report crime, and that is what I have been suggesting. He did not support publication of photographs; I understand his nervousness there. However, I hope he does support the co-operation between shops and others to share all the photographs they have internally between their own security staff and the shops, and possibly any police liaison units, so that they can develop a full picture of what is going on. That makes it easier as the guys move from one shop on Oxford Street to somewhere else; they can move in and grab them in the act.

I am sorry that I suggested lower penalties. I am not sure that I am getting soft in my old age; I did not intend to lower penalties at all. Of course, even with the maximum the Minister has suggested, this will still be halved when the person is sent to prison. All penalties are halved. Again, I take the view that there is no harm having minimum sentences for this.

As I say, I am grateful for the words of the Minister. We cannot stop here. I am not sure that we can come back to this on Report, but we have constantly to bear down on shop theft. It is completely out of control. It has been getting out of control for many years. All Governments keep nibbling away at it, but we are not managing to crack down on it. I hope that, over the next few years, we will look at all aspects of trying to deal with this. If some of the ideas in my proposed three new clauses were considered workable, I would have no qualms with the Government grabbing them and implementing further measures. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 216A withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 19th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to make observations about Amendments 122 and 123. I am not against a review or a consultation, but I make the point that these are not cost-free. Reviews and consultations take up a lot of time within departments and are expensive, and we need to keep that in mind when this House authorises them.

My point is very narrow and applies to both the review and the consultation. It is perfectly true that the sharp-bladed knife is a matter of very great concern to the public, and rightly so. It is important to keep in mind, however, that sharp-bladed knives also have legitimate purposes. My point is that when we authorise the review or consultation, we need to be sure that the scope of the review or consultation is sufficiently wide to address the balance between banning, or further banning, sharp-bladed knives and the impact on those who use them for proper purposes. In other words, the scope of the review or consultation must consider the issue of proportionality when we come to any further proposed changes. That is the only point that I want to make, but it goes to both the review and the consultation.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, once again, I find myself in the rather scary position of seeing some considerable merit in the suggestion of a Lib Dem Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I will also comment on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who also advocated for controls on knives.

There is merit in having a review, or otherwise, of the measures in the Bill. However, I would go further and say that we probably need a wide-ranging review of all the measures successive Governments have taken to try to crack down on knife crime as, despite all our efforts, we cannot manage to do it. I was the Home Office Minister who took through the Offensive Weapons Act 1996, followed up the next year by the Knives Act 1997. That was building on Section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1998.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I stand to ask for guidance from the Dispatch Box. When I was doing my national service in the Royal Navy in March 1957— I can date it precisely—I became a midshipman. With that ranking, I was awarded a midshipman’s dirk, which I still hold today. I cannot find that dirk falling under any of the exceptions proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. Do I therefore have to table a special amendment to make it lawful for me to continue to hold my midshipman’s dirk?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

Before the Minister replies, I will briefly respond to the very kind remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington. To continue the love-in, I say that he was not only an excellent commissioner but a superb chief constable. He was a hands-on bobby as chief constable.

One night, he decided to go out in a squad car in plain clothes. He was sitting in the back, and a call came in for the officers about an incident around the corner. The officers said, “You just sit there, sir, we’ll go and have a look at it”. No sooner had the officers disappeared than the back door of the car was wrenched open, and a Geordie stuck his head in and said, “It’s okay, mate, you can scarper now—the rozzers have gone”. The noble Lord did not scarper.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

Maybe this should be called the “afternoon of the long knives”.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and, in his absence, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for bringing these amendments. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for explaining the intention behind them.

We can see the merit in Amendments 211, 212 and 214, but making changes like this would first require thorough consultation with the police and officers. Obviously, we are very privileged to have the testimony and experience of—I am not sure whether “brace” is the right collective noun for two former commissioners—the noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, remarked on how you learn something new every day: indeed, I had no idea that truncheons have so many uses or non-uses. I am grateful also to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, opposite for explaining the ingenious uses that he put his truncheon to from time to time.

While I am referring to comments from noble Lords, I say to my noble friend Lord Hacking that his issue depends on the question, “How long is your dirk?” I am not sure whether that is something I would want to say at any point in time, let alone at the Dispatch Box, but there we are.

More seriously, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and the rest of the Committee that the Government will consider further the issues raised in the discussion that we have had on this group of amendments. In doing so, we will ensure that any changes to the existing defences and exemptions are made after thorough consideration of the impacts. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, they all deserve serious thought and thorough consultation. Although I am not suggesting for a minute that anything said by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, suggested otherwise, we must place the safety of the public in a paramount position. As such, I cannot undertake to bring forward any proposals in time for later stages of the Bill. However, I stress that, in any event, it would be possible to give effect to the sort of proposals that the amendments intend through existing regulation-making powers. Any such regulations would be subject to the draft affirmative procedure and, therefore, would need to be debated in and approved by both the House of Lords and the other place.

Amendment 213, on items used for agriculture, gardening or similar purposes, was tabled by noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and discussed by the noble Viscounts, Lord Hailsham and Lord Goschen. We believe the legislation is clear that it targets curved swords, and, if that is contested, it is ultimately for the courts to decide. We will work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ensure that police officers have access to appropriate guidance. I am sympathetic to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and other noble Lords, and the proposed amendments require further consideration and consultation.

Regarding Amendment 214—indeed, all the amendments—I stress that it is at the discretion of the police, the CPS and ultimately the courts to decide to take action against those holding weapons or items on the Schedule’s list for legitimate historical reasons, or indeed those using them for legitimate cultural sets of reasons. It is at the discretion of the police and the courts in taking a case forward. But I equally stress that we have existing powers to change the relevant law through secondary legislation. Given that, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

214B: After Clause 36, insert the following new Clause—
“Knives on educational premisesIn section 139A(4) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (offence of having article with blade or point (or offensive weapon) on educational premises), omit paragraphs (b) to (d).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that the only justification for anyone to have a knife at school would be for “use at work” and that would apply to teachers only. It would remove any other defence for having a knife on educational premises.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak also to my other amendments in this group. Amendment 214B is rather small; the others propose three large new clauses which I hope to sell to the Government.

On Amendment 214B, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes it an offence to have an offensive weapon on any school premises, with the exception that

“it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) or (2) above to prove that he had the article or weapon in question with him … for use at work … for educational purposes … for religious reasons, or … as part of any national costume”.

My amendment suggests deleting

“for educational purposes … for religious reasons, or … as part of any national costume”.

I see no justification whatever to permit schoolchildren to have knives. What is their educational purpose? Perhaps it is to learn that they have sharp edges.

The religious exemption, I understand, is for the Sikh men and women who are under a religious obligation to wear a knife called a kirpan when they are old enough to understand its meaning. There is no specific age for that, and I stress that it is a religious artefact and is not worn as a weapon. I also stress that Sikhs using the kirpan as a weapon are extremely rare and the only documented case that I can find was of a man drawing it in self-defence when he was attacked, and he was rightly exonerated for it.

Nevertheless, we are awash with knife crime in schools. I think it sends completely the wrong signal that some young men and girls can attend school carrying or wearing a knife. It gives all the ignorant others a chance to say, “If they can carry one, why can’t I?” I stress again that Sikhs do not have a track record of using their kirpans as offensive weapons. I also say that, in my view, no religious belief can trump public safety, no matter what the religion.

Similarly, the exception for national costume must also go, as far as schoolchildren are concerned. In full dress uniform, which I wore very exceptionally, I had a sword on my left side and a dirk on my right—one drew them with contrary arms, so you were fully armed on both sides. We of course also had a sgian-dubh down our hose—our sock, for English speakers. In a civilian kilt, I would also have that black knife—the translation of sgian-dubh—down my right hose. It is a black knife not because of the colour but because it was sneaky and underhanded and you could stab your opponent with a hidden weapon he did not know about—although every single person in Scotland knew you were carrying a secret, hidden weapon down your sock. I am not sure how my dirk differed from the dirk of the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, and I am not sure what purpose his was supposed to be put to as a midshipman: we had better not go there. But I say that there is no justification whatever for permitting any schoolchildren to wear a sgian-dubh or any other knife as part of a national costume. Those exemptions should be rescinded.

Turning now to my principal amendments in this group, and they are related, I think the new clauses I have suggested here are terribly important. Amendment 214 lists some of the categories of offensive weapons that are so dangerous and so evil that they should have separate mention from all other offensive weapons in legislation. Amendment 214D suggests measures to stop their manufacture or importation, with some tough penalties for breaches, and the new clause proposed in Amendment 215 would create tough penalties for possession, carrying and use. The first thing the Minister and other noble Lords will say, quite rightly, is that we do not need a special category for these weapons, since they are all caught already in various laws on offensive weapons. That is entirely correct, but I shall argue that we now have such an epidemic of the use of these appalling weapons, especially machetes, that we need exemplary action to crack down on them.

The first known machete attack in this country was the barbaric murder of PC Blakelock in Broadwater Farm in 1985, where reports say that he was on the ground, curled up in a ball, screaming in agony as a machete and knife-wielding mob hacked him to death with 43 vicious wounds. No one has ever been convicted of that crime. The next big machete attack was in Wolverhampton in 1996, but it is in the last 10 years that machete attacks have really taken off. On Monday, two days ago, an 18 year-old was sentenced to 24 years for the machete murder of a man in Leeds. Also last Monday, a man was sentenced in Croydon for the murder of a 16 year-old with a machete. In Woolwich in October, two teenagers were sentenced for the machete murder of another 15 year-old kid. In September, two youths were sentenced to life imprisonment for the machete murder of a 14 year-old on a London bus. In Lincolnshire, two men were sentenced for the manslaughter with a machete of another man. In October, we all saw videos of a group of men fighting in the street with machetes, and two weeks ago similar videos were shown of a gang outside a Starbucks in east London, fighting with machetes. This did not look like the United Kingdom but downtown Kinshasa, where I see they are almost re-enacting another Rwanda massacre.

I say this carefully. Who is doing nearly all the machete killings? Why, black youths. Who are nearly all the victims who are dying? Again, black youths. This is not the time or the place to go into it, but we seem to have imported an African attitude to the use of machetes, either through some of the people coming into this country or British-born youths adopting a machete culture. Leaving aside the individual historic cases I mentioned, the generality is that police figures recently released from police forces in England and Wales following an FoI show that machetes are used in almost 700 cases every month. That is a machete attack almost every hour on average, but the true total is even higher, as the nation’s largest force, the Metropolitan Police, failed to provide statistics, saying it would take too long for staff to compile them. I am certain that the two noble Lords the former commissioners who are with us here today would have found the time to compile those statistics, especially if I had asked for them. Six other police forces failed to respond. A survey of police forces found that machetes were involved in 1,335 crime incidents in two months at the end of last year.

I have focused on heavily on machetes, since they are the new preferred weapon of choice for gangs and individuals wanting to terrorise and kill those they see as their opponents. Why take a seven-inch knife or a nine-inch carving knife from the kitchen drawer when you can get a 21-inch machete and have a much more offensive weapon? I used to have a machete myself, a handle and a blade about 21 inches long, which I would sharpen to an absolute razor’s edge. I used it for clearing brambles and brush in an overgrown orchard I had. It was a superb implement which could slash through anything. The mind boggles to think of that used on any human being.

The other particularly dangerous weapons I list in this new clause are zombie knives, obviously, and cleavers. Why cleavers? Do we have butchers on the rampage? Well, no, but the scum who murdered drummer Lee Rigby outside Woolwich Barracks used a standard meat cleaver. That is why I say in proposed new subsection (3) that the Secretary of State must be able to add new particularly dangerous weapons if the fad suddenly changes. For example, in rural farming supply shops, noble Lords will find an implement called a bill-hook. It is rather like a shorter version of a machete, but with a curved, pointed end. It is used for hedge laying, but it is not beyond the wit of thugs to buy these if we clamp down so much on machetes or other things that they cannot get them. There is no recorded incidence of a cutlass being used, but they are very similar to machetes and the bad guys will switch to them if we clamp down on everything else.

Finally, in this proposed new clause, I suggest that the Secretary of State be given a rather unusual power—which I do not think we do anywhere else in regulations—to put pictures or photos in the regulations. Look how many words it takes to define a zombie knife. Let us make it simpler by publishing representations of them as well.

I do not need to spend long on Amendment 214D, which provides for the offence of selling, manufacturing and importing of these particularly dangerous weapons. I have already made the case why they are evil, and I suggest that anyone convicted of an offence under this new clause should get up to 10 years’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine. I am not tying the judges’ hands; I can assure the Minister of total discretion to sentence up to 10 years. It must also apply to the directors and officers of a company, who should not be allowed to hide behind limited company status.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am glad that the noble Lord is relieved about that.

The serious point here is that getting the defences and exemptions under which weapons may be legal to own, import or sell under certain limited circumstances right also requires consultation—I think the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, acknowledged that. In the absence of such consultation, I suggest that the Bill is not the right place to legislate on a specific category of knives and weapons, and we risk not taking account of some important matters if we have not consulted first.

In any event, it would be possible to give effect to these proposals for further restrictions through existing regulation-making powers provided for since the Criminal Justice Act 1988. Any such regulations would be subject to the draft affirmative procedure, so, again, they would be subject to debate in and approval by both Houses of Parliament.

We have debated the provisions in Chapter 1 of Part 2 which introduce new measures to provide the police with the power to require social media marketplaces and search services to take down online illegal content. I understand the honest, genuine motivation of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in tabling these amendments, but just a casual listen to the debate today shows that there are a number of issues that we need to consider, and I believe that the existing powers that we have, the actions that we have taken and the measures under the Bill will be sufficient. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, some mildly in support of my amendments and others liking the concept but pointing out the serious drafting flaws in them. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hailsham; he is right that the drafting is flawed. Any future amendments I make would need to include “legitimate and lawful use”. He pointed out that he would need to go on to the high street or to another public place to use his machete. I would have to do the same myself, with a buddleia overgrowing the road. If I had a machete, I would have to go on to the pavement to use it. Instead, I have an electric trimmer, which my wife can use. There are legitimate flaws in my drafting.

I suspect that many of my noble friends from a hereditary background have houses stuffed full of dangerous, sharp weapons—from pikes to swords—as well as armour and all the other accoutrements acquired over centuries in this great and noble land of ours, where tremendous battles have been fought to secure our freedoms since 1066. Of course they are not for public display; I accept that this too is an error in my drafting. They are there because they are owned by the family, who should not be penalised for having them.

My concept is right. There is a problem here, and I hope that if we come back to some elements of this amendment on Report, my noble friend Lord Hailsham will help me in the drafting. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, that a dirk is not included in my definition. My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier hit the nail on the head: tough sentences are required, though that may not require some of the amendments that I have suggested. I am so grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for pointing out that with the Prevention of Crime Act 1953, it was tough sentences that cracked down in Scotland. I do not want to put words into his mouth, but he said that there was then full judicial discretion. We did not have the Sentencing Council, which to me ties the hands of our judges—judges who should have full discretion to sentence as they see fit.

In some of those cases in the last few months which I quoted, people got a minimum term of 24 years or 30 years for an appalling murder, but hundreds of others who attacked people who did not die received much lesser sentences. Machete attacks have now become endemic. It is the weapon of choice for bad guys, for youths who want to commit crimes or terrorise their opponents in other gangs. We need unique and specialised exemplary action.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that I am not calling for children to be criminalised. I referred to three instances, and I was wrong in suggesting removing educational uses. But I can see no justification for maintaining a religious exception and a national dress exception allowing kids to bring such knives to school. The Government are wrong to stick to that.

Introducing this has been worth while. I do not mind that my noble friend Lord Hailsham called some of it “bizarre”. What is happening on the streets of London and elsewhere in England today is bizarre. If, 20 years ago, we had said that we would see these gangs fighting on the streets outside Starbucks with machetes, we would have said, “Don’t be fanciful; it’s barking mad; it’s never going to happen”. It is happening day in, day out on our streets. It is not only bizarre; it is obscene and dangerous. Therefore, we need to take special action, exemplary action, to deal with this problem. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 214B.

Amendment 214B withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 214F and 214G, in my name, as we move away from the regulation of weapons to retail crime and shoplifting. I will try to be brief.

In my 15 or so years as an executive at Tesco and as vice-chair of the British Retail Consortium, I spent many hours investigating and studying shoplifting and what could be done to reduce it. We used staff training, the latest waves of technology and generous business investment to combat it. I was always very worried by the wider social impact, as stolen goods were sold on to fuel drug habits and innocent shop workers were sometimes hurt in the process of trying to stop it. The truth is that these risks and their devastating effect on individuals have become much greater as society has changed and become more divided and less moral, and hence violent crime has become more of a day-to-day occurrence. As with so much else, the long Covid lockdown has made things worse, and the police have prioritised other things.

However, this Bill is full of amendments requiring the police to do more. That will put yet further pressure on the police contribution to tackling neighbourhood crimes such as shoplifting and assaults on retail workers, which frighten retail workers, especially in the smallest shops, and lead, sadly, to more shop closures on the high street. For some years I strongly supported USDAW’s campaign for a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker. As the Minister knows, I am delighted that the Bill puts that into law. It is a good day for the Minister, given his USDAW links, and for the noble Lord, Lord Hannett of Everton, smiling over there, who represented USDAW so intelligently when I was at Tesco.

However, the Bill as drafted does not quite do the trick as it does not cover retail delivery drivers, who have also been the subject of growing aggression. This is a particular problem if the driver has to ask for ID because a juvenile under 18 is taking delivery—a flashpoint, according to a recent British Retail Consortium survey—or if there is a disagreement about what is being paid for and delivered. Last week, Tesco even announced that it was piloting giving body cameras to delivery drivers. Another point of significance is that such drivers are already covered by parallel legislation in Scotland. That is not always a recommendation, but given the national character of much of retail, I hope the Minister will agree that this alignment makes sense and accept my Amendments 214 F and 214 G. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will be very brief this time. My Amendment 214FA seeks to add hospitality venues. This is an important clause which has my full support; I simply want clarification that cafes, restaurants, pubs and bars are included in the definition of retail premises.

In UK law, “retail premises” typically refers to premises where goods are sold directly to consumers for personal use. This includes shops, supermarkets and other establishments where tangible products are offered for sale. Hospitality venues such as cafes, restaurants, pubs and bars primarily provide services: the preparation and serving of food and drink for consumption on the premises. While these venues may sell some items to take away, their main business activity is the provision of hospitality services rather than retailing goods.

UK planning law differentiates between retail and hospitality venues through the use of “use classes”, which categorise buildings and their permitted activities. Class E—commercial, business and service—includes shops, restaurants, cafés, financial services and other commercial uses. While both retail shops and hospitality venues are covered under class E, they are distinct subcategories within this class. Class E(a) refers to shops selling goods, while class E(b) refers to the

“sale of food and drink principally to visiting members of the public where consumption is mostly undertaken on the premises”,

which covers cafés, pubs and restaurants. Therefore, while cafés and restaurants fall under the same broad planning class as retail shops, they are not regarded as retail outlets in the strict sense, but rather as hospitality or food service venues.

Legislation relating to employment, health and safety, licensing and business rates may further distinguish between retail and hospitality businesses. For example, food hygiene regulations specifically address food service establishments, while retail regulations focus on the sale of goods. Under UK law, cafés and restaurants are not generally regarded as retail outlets; they are classified as hospitality venues or food service establishments. The key distinction lies in the primary activity. Selling goods is retail whereas providing food and drink services is hospitality. From what I understand, the core hospitality operations—serving meals and drinks, and providing accommodation—are not generally covered under the definition of a retail outlet. If I am wrong and Clause 37 includes cafés, bars and restaurants, then I am content that there is no problem. However, if it does not, we have a gaping hole in the law and my amendment is essential to plug it. If I am right that those are not covered, I hope the Minister will bring forward a little amendment to ensure that those workers get the same protection as workers in retail shops.

[Lord Hannett of Everton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to contribute to this debate. In fact, some months ago, I introduced a debate on retail crime. I think it is fair to say that there was support across the House—why would there not be? The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, made the point that, to some extent, this was never an adversarial debate between employers and the trade union. It is a good example of where we come together for a common cause.

In historical terms, I should say that, in 2003, USDAW, which has been referred to, introduced its Freedom From Fear campaign. It sounds very dramatic, but it was born out of necessity. Too many retail workers were being verbally and physically abused. In some ways it had become normalised. It was an acknowledgement that, on too many occasions, people working in retail were abused. This campaign has run since 2003 and has resulted in this stand-alone offence being accepted.

I congratulate the Minister, not just because he had the enlightened view to become a member of USDAW, which I should acknowledge, but because of his commitment to retail workers and to understanding the implications of being verbally and physically abused. We often see the retail store as an environment that, quite rightly, encourages people to come in, and the vast majority of the public do so. In truth, however, over the years, the trend of coming into a store and believing that you can abuse somebody has become normalised. It is not condoned by employers, and certainly not by the trade unions, but the £200 threshold, to some extent, gave licence. Even some of the perpetrators would say, “Don’t worry, if it’s less than £200 there’ll be no action taken”.

Retail workers, of whom there are just under 3 million, do an exceptional job; reference was made to the pandemic. Abuse can never be a part of the job. It is a fundamental right to be able to go to work safe and come home safe. That is why I congratulate the Government and the Minister on their commitment to this matter. I could read out lots of statistics about the effects of retail crime; I will not do so. However, I draw noble Lords’ attention to the USDAW campaign, to retail crime and to its impact. Everyone has stores within their area. If you talk to shopworkers, you will see that this is very much an evidence-based campaign.

When I talk about statistics, I am not talking about thefts from a store; I am talking about the fact that behind every statistic, there is an individual. Some of those individuals who were physically abused never went back to the workplace. Having been abused two or three times, they did not have the confidence to return. That is a shame. Maybe it reflects the way society has gone, as we have referred to.

I welcome this stand-alone offence, and I do not want to detract from it. It is 22 years, at least, in the making. A lot of effort has gone in. I am proud of the fact that this Government have understood it and have done it, although I have to say to the Minister that the question of where the Act will stop has been referred to in respect of this offence. I am proud that this offence has been accepted, because it matters. I say to my noble friend the Minister that USDAW wants me to send a big thanks for the effort that has gone in to achieve this outcome.

However, I want to make a request of the Minister; I hope that he will consider it favourably. I would like to meet him to consider some of the implications of the further reach of retail offences. I would like that meeting to be with my general secretary, Joanne Thomas, and maybe people from the Home Office. I make that request on a without prejudice basis, but it would give me the opportunity to express some further considerations and concerns that have been raised in this House.

I will leave it at that but express my support for the work that has been done on this Bill. Hopefully, when this Bill takes effect with the stand-alone offence, USDAW members will feel now that it has been accepted.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord. This is slightly extraneous to the amendment but, wearing his USDAW hat, will he please campaign against automatic tills, which we helpless disabled people find absolutely appalling? Will he commend shops such as Booths in the north of England, which has absolutely refused to have automatic tills and insist on having tellers at every one? It is a wonderful way to shop.

[Lord Hannett of Everton (Lab)]

We can have a conversation about that at some stage. I thank the noble Lord.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We will reflect on that. It is a helpful suggestion, if colleagues are happy to have a joint meeting. I would also like to involve the Policing Minister, who has an interest in this matter as a whole.

I want to place on record my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and my noble friend Lord Hannett of Everton. They have campaigned very strongly as representatives of the supermarkets, in this case Tesco, and the workforce. My noble friend has campaigned for many years on this issue. Freedom from Fear is a campaign that Paddy Lillis, the previous general secretary, Joanne Thomas, the current general secretary, and my noble friend Lord Hannett of Everton, the general secretary before Paddy Lillis, worked on for a long time. It has been brought to them by members of the union as an important issue. It is worth putting that on record, and we can examine how we organise the discussion and consultation in due course.

Assault on anyone, including delivery drivers and transport staff, is wholly unacceptable. Everyone should be protected from assault. Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988, common assault has a maximum sentence of six months in prison and the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 covers serious violence, grievous bodily harm and actual bodily harm.

I come back to the reason why I have campaigned on this issue for many years. Retail workers have been at the forefront of upholding much of the legislation. They uphold legislation on solvent abuse sales, tobacco sales, knife sales, drink sales and a range of other issues. They are also very much the first port of call on shop theft and the issues that the noble Baroness mentioned. USDAW figures show that 10% of staff have reported a physical attack on them in the last year alone; that seems to me to be a very strong reason why the Government have brought forward this amendment. There is a wealth of evidence to back the position that there is a significant problem specific to retail workers because of the nature of that work.

Clauses 37 and 38 provide for the bespoke offence of assaulting a retail worker. They also place a duty on the courts when sentencing an offender to make a criminal behaviour order; shop theft may often be linked to drug and alcohol abuse issues as a whole. Our definition of a retail worker is intentionally narrow, given the vital need to provide legal clarity and ensure there is no ambiguity for courts in identifying whether an individual is a retail worker when impacted by their job.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mentioned the hospitality sector. This sector is specifically excluded, but if he looks at the definition of retail premises in Clause 37(3), he can see that it would be open to a judge to determine what might be included. For example, cafes might have stalls inside the shop, so that could be potentially defined as a retail premise as well. There is no specific offence, and I would not wish to extend it to the hospitality sector, but a judge could potentially interpret some aspects of hospitality being within the retail sector under Clause 37(3).

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I think the Minister’s remarks make quite a telling case. In particular, I was struck by the point that retail workers, because of the things they sell—cigarettes and tobacco—are more on the front line than people serving chicken nuggets, or whatever. I accept that there is a very good point that the retail sector needs to be guarded specifically, possibly differently from the hospitality sector. I shall look carefully at what he said.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Delivery drivers cover a wide range of sectors and roles and therefore including them could potentially cause an issue with definition and therefore with the courts using the legislation. Again, my noble friend and the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell of Beeston and Lady Neville-Rolfe, have put that case. I am happy to meet them, and we can examine and discuss and hear what they have to say outside the Committee.

With regard to public-facing workers, which the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, also mentioned, the previous Government—again to their credit—introduced a statutory aggravating factor for assault against any public-facing worker via Section 156 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. I am advised that that would include, for example, train staff, and the aggravating factor would apply in assault cases when an offence is committed against those providing a public service, performing a public duty, or providing a service to the public. There may be areas of definition, but I hope that the issue that the noble Baroness has raised ensures that the courts treat the public-facing nature of a victim’s role as an aggravating factor when considering the sentence for an offence and will send a clear message that violence and abuse towards any public-facing worker will not be tolerated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for tabling Amendments 215 and 216 respectively. I have great respect for both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. The noble Baroness’s background means that she knows more than most about the corrosive experience of shoplifting and the effect it can have on those working in the retail industry. The noble Lord’s distinguished career as a police officer gives him great authority to speak about the challenges to police forces and their obligations to society that they should be fulfilling. I reassure both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that we are all on the same side on this. This is one of these situations where I am very keen to work with Members from all sides of your Lordships’ Committee to ensure that we deal with this social and economic menace efficiently and effectively.

On Amendment 215, I will repeat what I said a few moments ago: this Government take repeat and prolific offending extremely seriously. However, sentencing in individual cases must be a matter for our independent judiciary, and it must take into account all the circumstances of the offence and the offender, as well as the statutory purposes of sentencing. Your Lordships will, of course, be aware that the courts have a broad range of sentencing powers to deal effectively and appropriately with offenders.

As some of your Lordships may be aware, until relatively recently I was a judge in the Crown Court, and I sentenced my fair share of shoplifters. There was a complete spectrum of those offenders, from the destitute, homeless young mother stealing nappies for her baby at one end to the shameless, organised shoplifting gangs who terrify and terrorise shop workers. As the sentencing judge, there was a toolbox of disposals of increasing seriousness available to me, so that I could match the appropriate sentence to the offender on a case-by-case basis. These included discharges, fines, community sentences, suspended sentences with requirements and custodial sentences where appropriate.

Previous convictions are already a statutory aggravating factor, with the sentencing guidelines making it clear that, when determining the sentence, sentencers must consider the nature and relevance of previous convictions and the time elapsed since the previous conviction. But that repeats what is, in fact, common sense and what every sentencer knows. From my own experience, I can tell the Committee that the more frequently a defendant appears before the court, having gone out and done exactly the same thing that he or she had just been sentenced for, the more exasperated the judge becomes, who then starts imposing tougher and tougher sentences.

Despite the popular caricatures, judges do live in the real world. While sentencing a shoplifter to prison as a standard proposition will seem harsh, it can and does happen if the court concludes that there is no other way of stopping them. Importantly, this Government will introduce a whole range of options that will ramp up the community and suspended sentence powers for judges. In other words, the toolbox is getting fancier and more extensive.

As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has said, sentencers are already able to impose a robust range of electronic monitoring requirements on anyone serving their sentence in the community. Where the court imposes curfews, exclusion zones and/or an alcohol ban, offenders must be electronically monitored, subject to individual suitability. I note the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, about the effect on police resources. However, quite a lot of the monitoring is done by the Probation Service. As the noble Baroness is probably aware, the Government are putting a lot of additional resources back into the Probation Service to enable it to do this.

Soon judges will be able to add driving bans and bans on offenders attending pubs, bars, clubs and desirable social activities like sports and concerts, as well as some tough new geographical restriction zones, to the existing tools.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I love that the Minister said that judges will be able to do that. Will she use the new powers, which I think the Attorney-General is taking, to overrule the Sentencing Council if it tries to dilute those powers?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

This is probably not the moment for me to embark on that one. This, of course, is simply about agreeing with the Sentencing Council’s guidelines in individual cases, not overriding them. I am confident that agreement will be reached, but, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, perhaps that is one I will deal with another day.

We are also about to expand the intensive supervision courts to deal with the root causes of these crimes by making repeat offenders come back in front of the same judge on regular occasions to see how they are doing. That is what is going to be available to judges.

Let us look at the other side of the coin for a moment. Many shoplifters have complicated backgrounds and complex needs, and sometimes electronic monitoring may not be an appropriate requirement to add to an offender’s sentence, even if this is their third or more offence. Many prolific offenders are homeless and lead chaotic lives. Even getting them to turn up to court on time can be a significant challenge. Imposing an electronic monitoring requirement in some of these cases would be setting the defendant up to fail instead of helping to improve the outcome for the perpetrators and victims of crime and the public at large. It is all entirely case specific, and the judge is the right person to make that decision.

I am proud of our judiciary, which is working hard under very difficult circumstances at the moment, and I am asking noble Lords to trust our magnificent judges, because they do understand the problems that repeat shoplifting can cause and they understand the powers available to them to sentence individual offenders appropriately. This measure would put unnecessary constraints on them and make an already difficult job harder. I can also assure noble Lords that we are continuing to work with cross-government partners and police forces to consider new ways of targeting and tackling persistent and prolific offenders.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 17th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

40: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
“Forfeiture of vehicles under the Environmental Protection Act 1990In section 33C of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (section 33 offences: forfeiture of vehicles), omit subsection (7).”Member’s explanatory statement
This would remove some of the issues a court has to consider before granting a forfeiture order for someone convicted of fly tipping controlled waste, and ensures that the innocent landowner must not bear the cost of removal.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for the delay; the lift was delayed, so I just made it.

In moving my Amendment 40, I will also address Amendment 42. Amendment 40 suggests omitting subsection (7), on the forfeiture of vehicles, from the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The first question is: what does subsection (7) say? To start with, this part of the 1990 Act deals with the criminal act of illegally fly-tipping and the massive amounts of rubbish dumped in the countryside, including controlled waste. We saw an example of that at the weekend at Kidlington, where an enormous amount was illegally dumped there. Section 33 deals with a forfeiture of vehicles and rightly gives the appropriate authority, which may be a local authority or the Environment Agency, power to ask the court to take possession of the vehicle used in the commission of the crime and dispose of it—excellent law, in my opinion.

Regarding subsection (7), the point of my amendment is to remove a few hoops which the court has to consider before making the order—in my opinion they are not necessary—and make it more difficult to penalise the organised crime rackets behind most of the worst illegal dumping. Thus, subsection (7) says:

“In considering whether to make an order under this section a court must in particular have regard to … the value of the vehicle … the likely financial and other effects on the offender of the making of the order (taken together with any other order that the court contemplates making) … the offender’s need to use the vehicle for lawful purposes”


and

“whether, in a case where it appears to the court that the offender is engaged in a business which consists wholly or partly in activities which are unlawful by virtue of section 33 above … the making of the order is likely to inhibit the offender from engaging in further such activities”.

I say to these caveats that the value of the vehicle is irrelevant. If the criminal uses it to commit a crime, too bad. Whether it is a 20 year-old clapped-out van or a new Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, if it is used in a crime, he loses it, whatever the value. As for the likely financial effects, what should we care if it has financial effects on the criminal? I would hope it would—that is the point of confiscating the implement he uses to commit the crime.

Then the court has to consider the criminal’s

“need to use the vehicle for lawful purposes”.

I have no doubt that he will tell the court that he needs it to transport meals on wheels or medical supplies and give any number of bogus excuses. If a criminal uses a vehicle for criminal purposes and has made a lot of money by doing so, he should forfeit the vehicle, even if he can no longer use it for the school run.

Let us not be naive. We are not looking here at a householder who drives in his Volvo to the countryside to dump a bag of garbage but at serious and organised criminals, using their three-tonne tipper trucks—or, as we saw recently, their 30-tonne tipper trucks—to dump thousands of tonnes of controlled waste, including asbestos, chemicals and other building rubble. It is estimated, according to our House of Lords Select Committee report of two weeks ago, that the organised gangs make about £1 billion per annum from illegal dumping of controlled waste. As I said in a debate last week, the only thing that hurts these criminals is not a fine, which they might not pay, but depriving them of their property. We should not have any get-outs, as we have in subsection (7); instead, we should confiscate any and all vehicles used in their criminal waste-dumping activities.

I will not speak to Amendment 42, since my noble friends on the Front Bench put down their own amendment before mine and will make a better argument of it than I can. All I say is that I apologise that my explanatory statement is wrong here; I inadvertently attached the same one as for Amendment 40. However, going back to Amendment 40, I beg to move.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support my noble friend. He has done the Committee a great service by bringing forward these amendments. The Bill is indeed very broad, and the question of fly-tipping falls very squarely within its auspices.

This is a very serious issue indeed, and it is undertaken by a range of criminals, from small one-man bands to large, organised gangs, and everything in between. The fact is that we still have a really serious problem, which is not taken sufficiently seriously by law enforcement. Therefore, we have to bring forward measures that the criminals will be frightened of and will not just consider as a cost of business of being in that field. They must be concerned about the potential loss of their vehicles and the potential removal of—or, at least, adding of points to—their driving licenses. I could not agree with my noble friend any more; he has absolutely hit the nail on the head.

There is another very important measure, on which we will hear from my noble friends on the Official Opposition Front Bench in a few moments, around equity. It is inequitable that the person who is the victim of this crime must be responsible for clearing it up—that is just completely wrong. I have never understood why that should be the case.

I declare an interest of some description in that I have a small farm in Devon. I really feel for landowners and those who have responsibility for land. They go into their fields to tend their stock and then see massive piles of waste that could contain everything from biowaste to asbestos, to building products, and so forth, and then somehow it becomes their problem to find the means to clear it up. This is wrong, so we ought to use the Bill, in a very positive way, to remove that burden on the victims of crime and put it on the perpetrators, with support from local authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am afraid I will have to write to the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, with that detail. But I stress that there is no statutory limit on the amount of compensation that may be imposed for an offence committed by an offender aged 18 or over. However, in determining whether to make a compensation order and the amount that should be paid under such an order, the court must take into account the offender’s means. If they are limited, priority must be given to the payment of compensation over a fine, although a court may still impose a fine. I suppose 20% of something is better than 100% of nothing, if I can put it that way.

Having said that, guidance on presenting court cases produced by the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group, which is a group chaired by Defra that includes a wide range of representatives from interested parties—central and local government, enforcement authorities, the waste industry, police and fire services, private landowners, and the devolved Administrations—sets out that prosecutors should consider applying for compensation for the removal of waste. Defra will consider building on this advice in the statutory guidance that will be issued under Clause 9 once the Bill becomes law.

Noble Lords will also be interested, I hope, to hear that local authorities can already issue fixed penalties of up to £1,000 to fly-tippers, the income from which must be spent on clean-up or enforcement. Local authorities issued 63,000 fixed penalty notices in total for fly-tipping during 2023-24, and these were the second most common enforcement action, according to Defra data.

I fully understand the sentiment behind these amendments and entirely accept the principle that the polluter should pay but the Government believe that the sentencing framework, as set out in primary legislation, is the proper place to deal with this issue. I recognise, however, that there may be benefits in providing the court with an alternative disposal relating to penalty points, as proposed in Amendment 46 from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. Defra remains committed to considering such a move and will provide an update in due course.

I also stress, and in response to Amendment 47, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, noted, that there is an existing power for local councils and the police to seize a vehicle where there is a reasonable belief that it is being used or had been used for fly-tipping, which can lead to the vehicle being sold or crushed if it is not claimed. If the vehicle is claimed, the council can prosecute and a court can order that ownership rights are transferred to the council, under which it can keep, sell or dispose of the vehicle. There were nearly 400 vehicles seized in 2023-24 as an enforcement action.

When such an order is being considered, it is appropriate that the court must consider certain factors that Amendment 40, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to remove. The duty on the courts to consider these factors, such as the financial impacts of the forfeiture or the offender’s need to use the vehicle for lawful purposes, embeds principles of Article 1 of Protocol 1 of—our friend—the European Convention on Human Rights. This entitles a person to a peaceful enjoyment of their possessions but allows the state to enforce laws to control use of that property when it is in the general interest. Any such interference with this right must be lawful for legitimate aim and be proportionate. Amendment 40 would remove these safeguards, and we should always tread lightly when considering long-held rights regarding property, something I am sure I would not have to tell the Benches opposite.

In light of my explanations, I hope the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response and to all those who have spoken in this short but interesting debate. I start with the problem: fly-tipping does not sound as bad as the crime actually is. Many people say, “Oh, fly-tipping, that is just dumping a mattress or a fridge in the countryside”, but as we have seen recently, there are 30,000 tonnes of contaminated garbage in Hoads Wood, with probably around 900 or 1,000 tonnes left at the weekend. It is not fly-tipping: it is rubbish racketeering. I am not going to suggest an amendment to change the title of it, but we really need to take it seriously.

Now, the other point that my noble friend on the Front Bench and I—and, I think, nearly all of us—agree on is that, ideally, the landowner should not have to pay the cost of clearing it up. He or she is the victim by having it dumped on their land in the first place, and then they are the victim the second time around in having to pay for clearing it up. But it should not be the ratepayers who pay for it either.

Ideally, of course, it should be the people who do it, but in many cases, we cannot catch them; we do not know who they are. In those circumstances, it seems grossly unfair that the landowner then has to bear the cost of doing that. We may discuss this in the next group of amendments, but I would hope that on, say, the Kidlington thing, a couple of forensic experts can crawl over that and find something. There must be addresses; there must be some data—that rubbish has not come from 200 miles away. There must be intelligence to pin down who has been doing it and then we should hit them hard.

I do not accept that the European Court of Human Rights would say that we need all those safeguards before taking away the vehicle of someone who has been involved in heavy crime. I challenge the Minister on that. I like the idea of three points on the licence, although I would go slightly further and make it three points for every load the person has dumped, but there are various penalties we can add there as well.

So I think we are all on the same side here—the noble Earl, Lord Russell, my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel on the Front Bench, myself and the Minister—and we are all searching for slightly tougher penalties. I hear what the Minister said, but perhaps if all of us on this side of the House could agree some simple, concerted amendment for Report where we can toughen up on this a bit, maybe adding the penalty points thing, maybe finding some way to make sure that the landowner does not pay and some way to penalise the organised crime behind this, it may be worth while coming back on Report. But in the meantime, in view of what the Minister said and his assurances, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 40 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 43, I shall speak also to Amendments 44 and 45, all on serious and organised waste crime. By chance, I found myself involved in this since those from the save Hoads Woods campaign came to me. That resulted in a ministerial direction and resulted in the clean-up of Hoads Wood at a cost of £15 million to the taxpayer, equivalent to the Environment Agency’s annual budget for fighting waste crime. It also led to the Environment and Climate Change Committee conducting a short inquiry into these matters, which has reported in the last couple of weeks. My amendments deal with some of the key findings from that report.

I do not wish to jump the gun, but some of these matters are clear cut; they are urgent, and I want to keep up the pressure. The Bill represents a vital opportunity to make progress, and it is progress that I do not want to be missed. I know that the Government have inherited broken systems and are committed to making reforms, particularly on the broker and dealer regulations, which I welcome and thank them for doing. The work done by the committee clearly shows that all parties recognise that this is a problem and is out of control. The findings paint a picture of fundamentally broken systems, where criminality is endemic in our waste sector. The key is to treat it as an organised crime problem and provide the right tools with which to fight it. We need to fight fire with fire.

While we sit with bits of paper that are easily forged, criminal networks buy land under false ID, using the dark web and secret apps to communicate with each other. I have no wish to blame individuals, but broken systems are creating broken results. This is a £1 billion a year problem. These criminal organised gangs are also involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery. There is the sheer scale: 38 million tonnes—enough to fill Wembley stadium 30 times over—is believed to be illegally managed every year.

We need look no further than the devastating environmental catastrophe that is unfolding in real time in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which came to light just this weekend. My heart sank when I saw this, because this dump—150 metres long and 6 metres high—threatens to become an environmental disaster, with toxic leachate running into the River Cherwell, which is only metres away. It feels like Hoads Wood has been allowed to happen all over again. I do not understand how, for months and months, lorries were allowed to dump this stuff and nothing has been done. I ask the Minister seriously to consider meeting the costs and to work with local residents and the council to ensure that that clear-up takes place. That is extremely important.

Without swift and decisive action, we will continue to draw ever more sophisticated criminal networks into the UK waste sector. The National Crime Agency warns that this is now a strategic threat. Beyond financial losses, this is not a victimless crime; there are damaging consequences for public health and the natural environment, and we, the taxpayer, are left to pick up the bill.

We welcome the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, but it has only 12 individuals and has no statutory footing or clear strategic direction. There needs to be better co-operation between partners. The committee heard witnesses say that this is the Bermuda triangle of intelligence—information is simply lost between partners and falls between the cracks. Amendment 43 would require the Secretary of State to take serious and organised waste crime as a strategic priority threat and to mandate the Joint Unit for Waste Crime to establish a comprehensive national action plan. That would focus on prevention, protection and prosecution, underpinned by effective intelligence sharing. It would place a duty of co-operation on all relative public bodies and enforcement agencies, ensuring that intelligence and expertise flow across the system. The national action plan would create a single point for receiving and disseminating waste crime reports.

Members of the public report this and get rightly frustrated when nothing happens. The need is clear: these issues are falling between organisations and jurisdictions, and all the while it is the criminals who are benefiting. Amendment 44 calls for greater transparency and accountability. Openness and accountability are key to understanding the causes and the scale of organised waste crime. A lack of transparency benefits only the criminal networks.

When the Environment Agency was asked by the Environment and Climate Change Committee how many sites of a similar size to Hoads Wood existed, the answer given was six. However, since then Sky News has reported a site in Wigan and, as we have heard, there is the site in Kidlington which was publicised in the press at the weekend. It is not clear whether those two sites are additional, but time will tell, and we need to know the true scale. We cannot effectively fight that which we do not know. More than numbers, it would require location, sizes, types of waste and what action is being taken to clear up these tremendous, huge waste piles. This amendment is also essential; these matters need to be legislated for as otherwise they will not be properly reported.

Amendment 45 is the linchpin of the committee’s recommendations. It would establish a root-and-branch review of serious and organised waste crime which would be independent of Defra, the Environment Agency and HMRC. The committee found multiple failures by the Environment Agency and criticised the regulators for being slow to respond. Despite receiving over 24,000 reports of waste crime in three years to March 2025, the EA opened only 320 criminal investigations. HMRC has achieved zero criminal convictions for landfill tax fraud, despite the tax gap being estimated at £150 million annually. The independent review scrutinised the egregious events at Hoads Wood, the fact that they were reported for years and that it took until January 2024 for the EA to obtain a restriction order. Clearing up the six sites that are already known about could cost close to £1 billion if the cost is similar to that of clearing Hoads Wood.

These are very important issues. Critically, we want to see a change in the financial rules set by the Treasury that prevent the Environment Agency diverting income derived from environmental permits on legitimate businesses towards dealing with criminal activity. Additional funding provided to the Environment Agency for 2025-26 should be maintained.

To conclude, I recognise that the Minister has not had long to consider the committee’s report, and that a formal response is not due until the start of December. My hope is that there is time for a formal response to the committee’s report prior to the Bill’s Report stage. I hope that the Government are minded at least to take an initial look at the amendments. If it is helpful, I am fully prepared to work and co-operate with the Government in any way I can. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

May God and my noble friends forgive me, but I think our Lib Dem Peers have a good point, particularly with regard to the new clause proposed in Amendment 43. I will not repeat what the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, but the letter from our chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee is absolutely spot on. The crime is massive—costing the country £1 billion per annum—and the environmental damage is enormous. I was not aware that our committee had carried out a short investigation, and I had not focused on Amendments 43, 44 and 45 until I saw the horrendous photos and videos last Friday and Saturday of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of tonnes dumped on that back lane in Kidlington, just six yards from the River Cherwell. The local MP and others have called it an environmental catastrophe, and that is no exaggeration.

This criminality is happening all across the country. I was on the board of Natural England when our SSSI at Hoads Wood was destroyed by 30,000 tonnes of illegal waste, dumped over a period of many months before the Environment Agency was aware of it. The agency then issued a notice barring further access to the site and is now spending £15 million to clean it up. The cost of cleaning up the Kidlington dump is estimated to be greater than the local authority budget.

Many have criticised the Environment Agency but I will not slag it off—at least, not too hard. Its main response is to issue a notice stopping further dumping, but inevitably that is weeks or months too late and the criminal gangs will have found new sites by then. This level of mega organised crime is way beyond its capability. It is a licensing organisation. It can do criminal investigations, but not of this complexity. It is easy for it to investigate a leak into a river from a factory, or prosecute a farmer who illegally dredged the River Lugg, but this level of organised crime is way beyond its capacity to investigate.

Conclusion 2 in the letter to the Defra Secretary of State from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, is so right. She says:

“What we do know, however, is that criminality is endemic in the waste sector. It is widely acknowledged that there is little chance of criminals being brought to justice for committing waste offences—the record of successful prosecutions and other penalties is woeful. Organised crime groups, including those involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery, are well-established in the sector. They are attracted to the low-risk opportunity to make large sums of money and commit crimes from coordinated fly-tipping to illegal exports and landfill tax fraud”.


When I was on the board of the Food Standards Agency until 12 months ago, I had responsibility for the National Food Crime Unit. We found that the gangs involved in recirculating condemned food back into the food chain, usually to the catering sector, were also involved in moving stolen high-value cars, JCBs, drugs, mobile phones, et cetera. They were simply movers and distributors of all high-value stolen property or illegal items. If you have the network to move stolen vehicles then you have the network to dump thousands of tonnes of rubbish also.

How much money do these organised crime teams make from illegal dumping? The cost of legally disposing of mixed waste is up to £150 per tonne, and up to £200 per tonne for hazardous waste. A legal company would have to charge that fee, which includes the landfill tax of £94 per tonne. All these crooks have to do is put in a bid slightly below £150 and they would probably get the contract, including from possibly legitimate companies that did not know that they were dealing with crooks—it is possibly more likely that they would know, but they take the cheaper option and deny responsibility. The crooks who dumped at Hoads Wood probably made away with about £4 million: 30,000 tonnes at a profit of £130 per tonne. At Kidlington, let us say that they dumped 10 loads of 30 tonnes each day for 30 days. That is 900 tonnes, or £120,000 pure profit—dirty profit, to be more exact.

Although Amendments 44 and 45 are okay, they are not the important ones in this group. Of course there is no harm in more data, but we already know how serious the problem is, as our Lords inquiry has shown. Conducting a review to report by 2027 sounds a bit like that wonderful line from Sir Humphrey Appleby in the “Yes Minister” episode “Doing the Honours”, when he said,

“I recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference, so that at the end of the day, we’ll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions”—

to which Hacker says: “You mean ‘no’?”

However, the new clause in Amendment 45 has one good gem in it—namely, proposed new subsection (2), which says that the review must consider

“the extent and effectiveness of integrated working between the Environment Agency, HMRC, the National Crime Agency, local police forces in England and Wales, and local authorities”.

That leads me on to the noble Earl’s Amendment 43, which has a very sensible key suggestion: beefing up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, whom we all respect, said in answer to an Oral Question in this Chamber on 15 October that Defra had increased the budget for the EA to use on the joint unit by 50% and that the number of staff had doubled. I have no real criticism of Defra, but that will still not work because the Environment Agency is the wrong organisation to lead it.

We are talking about massive, organised crime of £1 billion. There is only one organisation capable of leading a multiagency task force on that, and that is the National Crime Agency. I urge the Minister to take this back to the Home Office, discuss it with Defra, the EA and the NCA, and, without changing everything, give the National Crime Agency the lead in tackling this. As I and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, have pointed out, these same criminals are involved in high-value stolen goods such as mobiles, construction equipment, drugs—all stuff way out of the league of the EA but bang in the bailiwick of the NCA. If the noble Earl, Lord Russell, can come back with a simpler amendment on Report on something like that, then I would be minded to support him.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

47A: Clause 10, page 18, line 19, at end insert “or the gardens and grounds of a private dwelling”
Member’s explanatory statement
Anyone trespassing in the gardens or grounds of a private house must be assumed to be targeting the private residence and should be guilty of the same offence as if the tresspasser had entered the physical building and there should be a minimum penalty as well as the scope to have a larger maximum.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 47B.

Amendment 47A is to seek clarification that the definition of “premises” as

“any building, part of a building or enclosed area”

will include gardens and grounds associated with private dwellings. The phrase “enclosed area” is a key part of the statutory definition. Gardens and grounds of private dwellings are typically surrounded by fences, walls or hedges, marking them as distinct and separate from public areas. I hope that the intention behind the word “enclosed” here is to extend the definition beyond the physical structure of the buildings to include spaces that are set apart for private use. Therefore, I suggest that gardens and grounds, by virtue of their possible enclosure and association with the dwelling, fulfil the criteria set out in the definition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and read the Member’s explanatory statement on these two amendments. I will be brief.

I can remember, as a child, signs indicating the barriers and limits of public access to certain parcels of land. Across the field, there was a substantial area of public allotments with a wide footpath running through the middle to an empty field beyond, which had public access. Nevertheless, there was a large hand-painted black sign at the start of this footpath that read, “Trespassers will be prosecuted”—not that as a child I understood what that meant, except to say that I could not use the footpath to access the field beyond but would have to walk a long way round to access the field, which was public open space.

Trespass is a crime that has been with us for decades but not always understood. At a time when Governments are trying to open up the countryside to those who have previously had limited access, extending trespass to private gardens and grounds needs careful consideration. Of course, if someone enters your property uninvited, even if the front door is temporarily open, they are trespassing, but those who are not intent on committing a crime—stealing the owner’s valuables, or helping themselves to the contents of the fridge—might have strayed there by accident. That is extremely unlikely. Strangers will generally enter a private property uninvited only if they have some nefarious project in mind.

However, that is unlikely to be the case in respect of grounds and gardens. Public footpaths are not always clearly signposted. The map that the walker may be following might be inaccurate or out of date. Some footpaths may have been temporarily diverted due to the lambing season or some other stock grazing in the area. Stiles and bridges may have fallen into disrepair, causing walkers to look for an alternative route to complete their walk. Is the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, suggesting that these unwitting miscreants should be dealt with in the same way as those who have deliberately set out to commit a crime?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My amendment refers specifically to gardens and grounds of houses, not to farmers’ fields with a footpath wandering through them. Even if a garden has a footpath going through it, people have the right to use that footpath and it would be difficult then to prove that someone had criminal intent, but if someone enters the grounds and gardens of a private residence, we must assume they have the same criminal intent as if they want to enter the person’s house. It has nothing to do with farmers’ fields or footpaths.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s interjection and for that clarification. However, as somebody who lived for 35 years with a footpath running through their garden, I have to say that I do not really agree with him.

We should be very careful about implementing these two amendments. They smack to me of the landed gentry attempting to keep the ordinary man and woman from enjoying the countryside. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that it would not be an easy task to prove that deliberate trespass had occurred over land and grounds or gardens with the intent of causing harm or wanton damage to those grounds.

In respect of Amendment 47B, I do not support increasing the fee should an offence be proved. I am nevertheless keen to hear the Minister’s views on the amendment, but at the moment I am not inclined to support the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

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

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for tabling the amendments. I hope I can half help him today and, in doing so, assist the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

I confirm that the Government will repeal the outdated Vagrancy Act 1824. In Clauses 10 and 11, the Government are legislating to introduce targeted replacement provisions for certain elements of the 1824 Act, to ensure that the police have the powers they need to keep our communities safe. Those targeted replacement measures include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain, which we will come on to shortly, and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime. Both were previously provided for under the 1824 Act, and the police have told us that it would be useful to retain them.

I hope this helps the noble Baroness, because the new criminal offence of trespassing with intent to commit a criminal offence recreates an offence that is already set out in the 1824 Act. It does not add to it; it recreates it. As is currently the case, it will be an offence for a person to trespass on any premises—meaning any building, part of a building or enclosed area—with the intention to commit an offence, and that is currently in the legislation.

Amendment 47A from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to ensure that trespassing in gardens and grounds of a private dwelling is captured by the replacement offence. This is where I think I can half help him by indicating that gardens and grounds would already be included in the definition of “premises” in the 1824 Act, so, in essence, that is covered already.

His Amendment 47B would introduce a minimum level 2 fine and increase the maximum level fine from level 3 to level 4 for this offence. Again, the measure in the Bill replicates entirely—going back to the noble Baroness—the maximum penalties currently set out in the existing legislation that we are repealing, but replacing in part, through the clauses addressed by these amendments. I agree with the noble Baroness on the proportionality of the current level of the fines. I say to the noble Lord what he anticipated I would say to him: sentencing is a matter for the independent judiciary, and we need to afford it appropriate discretion. Parliament rarely specifies minimum sentences, and this is not an instance where we should depart from that general principle. I know he anticipated that I would say that—as the good old, former Home Office Minister that he is, I knew he would clock that that was the potential line of defence on his amendment.

It is important to say that the penalties set out in the current legislation, which we are replicating, are considered appropriate and proportionate to the nature of the offence. Therefore, with what I hope was helpful half clarification on grounds and gardens, and with my steady defence on the second amendment, which the noble Lord anticipated, I ask him not to press his amendments.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, half a loaf is better than no bread, of course. All I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, is that she has got totally the wrong end of the stick. I will not go into more detail to argue against her, except to say that I too had a footpath right across the middle of my garden in Cumbria, and I had no problem with it at all. However, that is quite separate from the guy who, in 2000, threatened to burn down my house because he did not like my view on hunting. That is quite a different matter. He committed an offence on my driveway, as opposed to the thousands of people who used the footpath, which I built special turnstiles at either end of for them to use.

I accept entirely what the Minister said and am delighted to see that grounds and gardens of public dwellings will be included in the definition—that is the half I am very happy with. I knew he would not accept my amendment on the penalties. He said that it is up to an independent judiciary—I wish we had one, without a Sentencing Council tying its hands, but that is a matter for another debate. With the Minister’s courteous remarks, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 47A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

This is also an opportunity to clarify that this is not a group of amendments seeking to unfairly penalise innocent groups of people. The amendments are specifically targeted at people and symbols that are unquestionably identifiable as gang related. They create separate laws for a specific form of crime and go to the heart of one of the main issues making our cities unattractive and unsafe. Gangs, as I have said, are intimidating; they prey on the weakest in our communities, recruit them for their own ends, encourage violence and increase lawlessness. We believe that these amendments are necessary steps that must be taken to curb the issue. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments. Every week, coming from the north of England to this House, I see literally miles and miles of repulsive gang graffiti. On the outskirts of every station, walls and buildings are plastered with it. At Crewe and near Euston, hundreds and hundreds of goods wagons are covered in it, and even the walls of residential buildings. We see it everywhere, so why worry about it? It is unsightly and destroys any beauty that may be left on the approaches to cities by rail, but it is much more insidious than that, as my noble friend on the Front Bench has pointed out.

Gang-related graffiti, which we see in all urban areas, is often seen as both a symptom and a catalyst of criminal activity. I suggest that there is sufficient evidence available to conclude that gang graffiti leads to increased crime in affected neighbourhoods and that it instils fear among local residents. Gang graffiti typically consists of symbols, tags or messages used by criminal gangs to mark their territory, send warnings or communicate with other gangs. It differs from other forms of graffiti, such as street art, due to its association with organised crime and territorial disputes.

Several studies and reports indicate a correlation between the presence of gang graffiti and higher rates of crime, particularly violent offences. Gang graffiti is often used to demarcate territory, which can lead to turf wars and retaliatory violence. Areas marked by gang symbols may experience an increase in robberies, assaults and drug-related crimes as gangs seek to assert dominance. A study published by the Journal of Criminal Justice found that neighbourhoods with visible gang graffiti reported higher levels of gang-related crime and violence, suggesting that graffiti serves as both a warning and an invitation for conflict. Police departments in cities such as London and Manchester have noted that the appearance of new gang graffiti often coincides with spikes in criminal activity, particularly when rival gangs respond by marking over existing tags.

Crime prevention experts argue that gang graffiti is not merely a symptom but a tool used to intimidate, recruit and claim control, thereby fostering an environment conducive to criminal behaviour. Although correlation does not necessarily imply causation, the consistent association between gang graffiti and increased crime rates supports the argument that graffiti can contribute to localised crime.

The visual presence of gang graffiti can have a significant psychological impact on residents and visitors, as my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel said. Research conducted by community safety organisations has shown that people perceive areas with gang graffiti as less safe, which can lead to heightened anxiety, avoidance behaviours and reduced community cohesion. Surveys by our local councils in the UK reveal that residents often cite gang graffiti as a major contributor to their fear of crime, even if they have not personally experienced gang violence.

Our own British Crime Survey found that the visibility of gang markers and threatening messages increases the perceived risk of victimisation, causing some individuals to alter their daily routines or to avoid certain neighbourhoods or streets altogether. Community leaders report that gang graffiti can erode trust in public institutions as residents feel that the authorities are unable to maintain law and order and prevent criminal groups operating openly. In summary, gang graffiti acts as a visual clue that can frighten people, negatively impact mental well-being and discourage positive social interaction within affected communities.

Last year, the Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 102 active gangs in London engaged in violence and robbery, and they were responsible for a significant amount of serious violence, including half of all knife crimes with injury, 60% of shootings and 29% of reported child sexual exploitation. I think those 102 gangs equate to about 4,500 individuals. It is not just London; the same is happening in all our major cities. Let us be clear: gang-related graffiti is not some kids with aerosol cans spray-painting walls for a bit of fun. Gangs are making powerful statements to their allies and enemies that this is their criminal territory. Therefore, the solution has to be the prompt removal of graffiti, expensive though it is, and that has to be part of gang prevention strategies. However, we also need increased penalties, as suggested by my noble friend in his Amendment 51.

I do not need to speak in support of Amendment 52; I think I have just made the point that gangs are highly dangerous organisations and there should be tougher sentences for any crimes that have gang connections.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, everyone is concerned about gang activity. The dark web means it has never been easier for people to source and buy drugs independently, contributing to the emergence of more loosely organised micro-gangs, as once an individual has a large supply of illicit drugs, they need to recruit others to help distribute them. I am sympathetic to the intentions behind the tabled amendments.

On Amendment 51 on graffiti, I entirely agree with some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that this usually relates to gangs marking territory or expressing group affiliation. It can result in public spaces feeling unsafe, and the fear is that it could fuel turf wars between rival gangs. To many it is also an unsightly nuisance, with the clean-up cost high for home owners, businesses and local authorities. However, we remain unconvinced that this amendment is the way forward.

Graffiti without the property owner’s permission is already a criminal offence, classified as vandalism or criminal damage, with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment. I am also concerned that measures such as this risk embedding racial bias in law enforcement and disproportionately affecting minority and marginalised communities. The courts have already found that using graffiti as a marker of gang identity can result in the unjust targeting of marginalised groups, especially people of colour.

In 2022 a legal ruling forced the Metropolitan Police to admit that the operation of its gangs matrix was unlawful, breached human rights and had a disproportionate impact on black people. The matrix used factors, including graffiti, to label people as gang members, leading to life-changing consequences for those who had been wrongly included. Over 1,000 individuals assessed as low risk subsequently had to be removed from the database. This demonstrates the danger of conflating graffiti, gangs and criminality. While I understand the intention behind this amendment, the risk of unintended consequences is clear.

The definition of a gang in Amendment 52 feels worryingly broad, so we cannot support it. As drafted, it raises significant concerns that outweigh its intended benefits. Prosecutors are already cautioned not to use the term “gang” without clear evidence because, used inappropriately, it can unfairly broaden liability for an individual’s offending while disproportionately affecting ethnic minorities.

This proposal also feels overly prescriptive. It is important that the courts retain discretion and the law allows for nuanced sentencing; for example, when someone was plainly being coerced, groomed or manipulated into gang activity.

On these Benches, we believe that sentencing must account for individual circumstances and be based on specific individual criminal behaviour. Simply being in with the wrong people is not the same thing.

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

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Cameron of Lochiel, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, for tabling Amendments 51 and 52. These amendments are proposed and supported by three Members of your Lordships’ House who, between them, have considerable experience in what might loosely be called the law and order space. They are, in rugby terms, a formidable front row and, as such, I have considered what they proposed with care.

I reassure the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Blencathra, and indeed your Lordships’ House, that this Government are definitely against gangs and absolutely against graffiti. That said, we do not believe that these proposals are needed, primarily because the activities criminalised in these measures are already covered by existing legislation.

The intended effect of Amendment 51 is to criminalise the kind of graffiti which gangs use to mark what they feel is their territory and/or to threaten rival groups with violence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, said, this criminal behaviour is already covered by the existing offence contained within Section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. Section 1 is broad enough to cover graffiti because case law establishes that the damage does not have to be permanent, and it catches behaviour such as using water-soluble paint on a pavement or smearing mud on the walls of a police cell. In addition, Section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act has a higher maximum penalty than the proposed new offence, being punishable in the Crown Court by a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.

Not only is the proposed offence not needed, there are very real problems with the structure of what is proposed; I will mention three, but there are others. First, this amendment creates an offence of strict liability. That means that the prosecution is not required to prove intention, recklessness or even knowledge. The result is a criminal offence which could be committed by accident. The criminal law does not like strict liability offences, and they are very rare in our jurisprudence. The reason is simple: we do not usually criminalise people who are not even aware that they were doing anything wrong.

Secondly, whatever the intention behind the drafting of this proposed criminal offence, in the way it is drafted, the definition of “gang” is so broad that it would capture both the Brownies and the Church of England, as well as football teams, drama societies and many other groups not normally regarded as criminal. I do not think that the noble Lords intend that a Christian cross chalked on a fence could potentially be prosecuted as a criminal offence.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I apologise for standing up a bit late but I want to go back to an earlier comment that graffiti could happen by accident. How on earth can graffiti artists spray a wall with gang tags by accident?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The difficulty is that if somebody were to put something on a fence, for example, and they were not aware that this was associated with a gang, they would potentially be criminalised by it.

Thirdly, the requirements of the proposed new offence mean that expert evidence would need to be adduced in order that the jury or magistrates could decide whether the prosecution had proved to the criminal standard—that is, beyond reasonable doubt—whether the graffiti is gang-related within the meaning of the section. Most judges, magistrates and juries are unlikely to understand the significance of particular names, symbols or tags—this is not just the Sharks and the Jets that we are talking about, but rather most abstruse versions. Then the requirement that a trial be fair would require that the defence would also have to be able to instruct an expert, usually at public expense. Your Lordships’ House is well aware of the difficulties the criminal courts already have with delay. The idea that these existing challenges should be added to by numerous “battle of the expert” trials about graffiti is as unpalatable as it is unnecessary, given that the conduct is already captured by the Criminal Damage Act.

Amendment 52 seeks to make gang involvement a statutory aggravating factor in the sentencing for any criminal offence; thus, it is very wide indeed. The definition of “gang” is once again so broad that it would capture a number of wholly innocuous groups, and this is not a mere drafting issue. It encapsulates the fundamental problem with this provision, which is the difficulty of defining the conduct which it seeks to condemn with sufficient precision to make it workable. Again, evidence might be needed at the sentencing stage.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

53A: After subsection (6)(j) insert—
“(k) outside any residential building.”

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, as well as moving Amendment 53A, I will also speak to my Amendment 53B in this group. I completely support the comments of my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel on the Front Bench, and I support his amendments.

I encounter this every day coming to this House, where beggars lie on the pavement, half blocking it. Possibly they think they are less frightening sitting down than standing up, but the nuisance is the same, as is the chant asking for money. I have not seen them for some months now, but for a couple of years we had different beggars every day; then I realised it was the same dog they had. I presume that the dog got passed around between them, since the public are possibly more sympathetic to the dog than to the beggar— a kind of Dogs R Us.

There was another one who, when I first encountered him, was really scary. He was a beggar, but he was shouting and screaming—not at the public, I realised, but more to himself or to the ether than anything else. Clearly, he had a mental health problem. After I saw him a couple of times, I had no problem; I just did not make eye contact. However, people who had never met him before, such as women coming out of the shops, were terrified of him. It was nuisance begging, but clearly there was a health problem behind it.

My Amendment 53A would merely add a little tweak to my noble friend’s new clause by adding “outside any residential building” to the list in subsection (6). In this Westminster area, I have seen them sitting not on the doorstep but right beside the entrance to a residential block of flats. Frankly, I think that is intimidating, and residents should not have to face that fear, whether misplaced or not, that they may face beggars as they come and go from their own property.

My Amendment 53B would amend my noble friend’s amendment after subsection (7), by inserting:

“The judgement that the begging satisfies the conditions in (a), (b) and (d) is one to be made by the person who is the victim of the begging”.


So what does subsection (7) say? It says:

“This subsection applies if the person begs in a way that has caused, or is likely to cause … (a) harassment, alarm or distress to another person, … (b) a person reasonably to believe that … they, or any other person, may be harmed, or … any property … may be damaged, … (c) disorder, or … (d) a risk to the health or safety of any person except the person begging”.


In other words, the purpose of my amendment is that I do not want a police officer to come along and say, “Oh no, guv, that’s not harassment or causing alarm. What are you worried about? There’s no risk to your health and safety”. I suggest that the judgment be made by the person who is the victim of the nuisance begging. Some people will not be worried or alarmed, as I was not worried after I saw that chap with the mental health problem a few times, but others may be.

I came across this in an accusation about bullying in the Civil Service. If a civil servant believes that someone is bullied, that is taken for granted because one person felt it even though others might have felt differently. I dealt with that in my capacity of serving on an ALB.

In conclusion, I want to make it clear that, if a person feels that begging is causing him or her alarm, distress or harassment, or is a risk to health and safety, then it is the victim’s view that must be considered, not that of anyone else applying their own test for what that alarm might be.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, there is a genuine problem around aggressive begging and the involvement of organised criminal gangs. That is why we support Clause 11, which rightly focuses not on individuals who are begging but on those who are orchestrating and profiting from this practice.

Lots of things in life are a nuisance, but that does not mean we should criminalise them. Where begging is causing a genuine nuisance, police already have a range of powers to deal with it under anti-social behaviour legislation. We think this amendment is the wrong solution at a time when charities such as Crisis say that the number of vulnerable people on the streets who survive by begging, including women and first-time rough sleepers, is rising. In these circumstances, we should be looking at how we can better reach and support those in such straitened circumstances. By contrast, criminalising begging would push people away from support, and it will not solve the problems of poverty, homelessness, addiction or exploitation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his Amendment 53, which, as he explained, would introduce a new offence of nuisance begging and permit a constable to move on a person engaging in this behaviour. Failure to comply with the notice would constitute a criminal offence. I note also Amendments 53A and 53B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which seek to further extend what constitutes nuisance begging under the proposed new offence.

I start by saying to noble Lords that the Government do not wish to target or criminalise individuals who are begging to sustain themselves or rough sleeping because they have nowhere else to go. That is why we are committed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned, to repealing the outdated Vagrancy Act 1824, and why we will not be introducing measures that target or recriminalise begging and rough sleeping. It is also—for the very reason the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, mentioned—why the Government have invested more than £1 billion in homelessness and rough sleeping services this year, which is up £316 million compared to last year. So there is an increase in support to tackle the very issues that the noble Baroness mentioned.

However, we are legislating in the Bill to introduce targeted replacement measures for certain elements of the 1824 Act to ensure—I hope the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will welcome this—that police retain the powers they need to keep our communities safe. These targeted replacement measures, in Clauses 10 and 11, include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime, both of which were previously provided for under the 1824 Act.

As noble Lords mentioned, begging is itself a complex issue, it can cause significant harm or distress to communities and local areas need appropriate tools to maintain community safety. But where I come back to in this debate is that there are powers in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which many police forces use effectively to tackle anti-social behaviour in the context of begging and rough sleeping—for example, the very point the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mentioned, where an individual may be harassing members of the public on a persistent basis, including potentially outside their own home, as in his amendment.

The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 provides for current statutory guidance. I hope that it partly answers the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, to say that we will update that anti-social behaviour statutory guidance. This will ensure that it is clear to agencies how ASB powers can be used in the context of harassment and this type of begging, if an individual’s behaviour reaches a threshold that will be set in the ASB statutory guidance.

Existing criminal offences can also be applied where the behaviour crosses the current criminal threshold. I expect the updating of the guidance to take place very shortly after Royal Assent is given to the legislation passing through the House of Lords. In the light of the assurances that we take this issue seriously, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will not press his amendment and that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is somewhat mollified that there are powers in place to deal with the issues that he has raised.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am grateful for what the Minister said. I admire his style at the Dispatch Box; he is courteous and thorough in giving his answers. In view of his assurances that this is really covered by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 53A (to Amendment 53) withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

54: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014: amendment(1) Schedule 2 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 is amended as follows.(2) After paragraph 1(3) insert—“(3A) A detention order must be made in relation to a person between the ages of 14 and 18 who has been in breach of three injunctions.(3B) A person subject to a detention order under sub-paragraph (3A) must be detained in youth detention accommodation as defined by paragraph 14(3).”.(3) After paragraph 2(7) insert—“(8) Any person subject to a supervision order under this paragraph is eligible for an electronic tag.”.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment and another in the name of Lord Blencathra add a power of detention for 14 -18 year olds who have a record of breaching inunctions.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, in moving my Amendment 54, I will also speak to my Amendment 55. Amendment 54 seeks to amend Schedule 2 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The relevant section says that:

“A youth court, if satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that a person aged under 18 is in breach of a provision of an injunction under section 1 to which he or she is subject, may make in respect of the person—(a) a supervision order or (b) a detention order”.


Dealing with the detention provisions first, the court “may” make a detention order. My amendment seeks that it “must” make such an order, tying the court’s discretion, if a person between the ages of 14 and 18 breaches three or more injunctions.

As the Minister knows—indeed, as we all know—the problem with juvenile crime is habitual offenders. None of us want to lock up little kiddies who make a couple of mistakes or commit minor crime—of course not. However, before any juvenile gets an injunction, the anti-social behaviour has to be reasonably serious. This is what the College of Policing says on the grounds for an injunction:

“A civil injunction is issued on the balance of probabilities. It must be just and convenient to grant the injunction to prevent anti-social behaviour, and the respondent must have engaged in or threatened to engage in either: conduct that has or is likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress … or conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance”.


The College of Policing states that a civil injunction is used for

“drug/alcohol-related ASB … harassment … noise (tenure-neutral)”—

whatever that means—“vandalism” and “aggressive begging”. Therefore, I submit that if a juvenile between the ages of 14 to 18 breaches three of those, we have passed the stage where the court may—I stress “may”—make a detention order. Anyone who has breached three injunctions is rapidly heading to becoming a habitual offender. If he does not get a detention order after all that behaviour, what signal will that send to him and his mates? It will signal that you can get away with it, and nothing will happen but another appearance before the court, a rap on the knuckles and being told to be a good boy. As parliamentarians, we owe it to innocent members of the public to protect them from habitual trouble-makers, and my amendment would do just that.

The court also has a discretion on whether to make a detention order when a juvenile breaches one or two injunctions. I am happy with that. I submit that we only remove that discretion when the offender breaches three or more.

I will move on to supervision orders. The court could order a supervision order instead of detention. Such an order could impose one or more of three requirements: a supervision requirement, an activity requirement or a curfew requirement. We do not need to go into what each of those requirements can do or the obligations they might impose. My amendment simply seeks to add an additional power, so that:

“Any person subject to a supervision order … is eligible for an electronic tag”.


Note my wording: it states that they would be “eligible” for an electronic tag; I am not tying the court’s hands here to make it compulsory.

One of my reasons for attaching electronic tags to juveniles under court-imposed supervision orders is the enhancement of accountability. Electronic monitoring provides a reliable, objective mechanism for tracking the whereabouts of young offenders. This not only helps to ensure compliance with curfews and exclusion zones stipulated by the court but gives our Prison and Probation Service immediate insight into any breaches. The knowledge that their movements are being monitored can act as a significant deterrent against further anti-social or criminal behaviour.

I suggest that electronic tagging offers reassurance to communities affected by persistent anti-social behaviour. Enabling authorities to monitor offenders more closely would reduce the risk of reoffending while under supervision. This is particularly pertinent in cases where the offence involves intimidation, vandalism or harassment in a particular locality. The visible commitment to monitoring can help rebuild public confidence in the justice system’s capacity to protect communities.

I have no doubt that some will argue that tagging for a juvenile is punitive, but I suggest it can also help with rehabilitation. Electronic monitoring allows for greater flexibility compared with secure detention, enabling juveniles to remain in their communities, continue education and maintain family relationships. The structure imposed by tagging can help young people develop routines and take responsibility for their actions, while still being held accountable. For many, this balance of liberty and oversight provides a constructive framework for positive behavioural change.

As we all know—the Minister knows this, and he knew it from his last experience in the Home Office—for many young offenders, early intervention is critical to prevent escalation into more serious criminal behaviour. Electronic tagging, as a clear and immediate consequence, can serve as a wake-up call, highlighting the seriousness of continued non-compliance. This timely intervention can disrupt cycles of offending and encourage reflection, potentially diverting young people from the future of criminality.

I will not speak to my Amendment 55, since I think I have a bit of inadvertent duplication here. I was drafting an amendment to the Act and then one to Schedule 2, and my Amendment 55 is my first draft, which I should not have sent to the Public Bill Office by mistake. Therefore, I beg to move Amendment 54.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for Amendment 54 and for fessing up to Amendment 55, which we will accept as an honest mistake. I welcome his honesty in raising the issue.

There is a recognition that Amendment 54 still wants to provide for minimum sentences for persistent breaches of youth injunctions. I emphasise that the Government do not want to criminalise children unnecessarily, an aspiration we share with the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. That is why the new respect order in the Bill will not apply to those under 18. However, we know that in many cases the behaviour of offenders under 18 requires a more formal deterrent and intervention. That is why we have retained the civil injunction as is for those under 18. Practitioners have told us that it is a particularly helpful and useful tool to tackle youth anti-social behaviour and to ensure that their rights and the safety of the community are upheld.

Youth injunctions are civil orders and fundamentally preventive in nature, which again goes to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey. It is more important to intervene to prevent than it is to punish afterwards, particularly when young people are the individuals who are causing those challenges in the first place.

The important point about youth injunctions, which, again, goes to the heart of the noble Lord’s amendment, is that if the respondent abides by the terms of the order, they will not be liable for any penalties but, self-evidently, where a respondent does breach an order there needs to be some action. The noble Lord has suggested one course of action. I say to him that the courts already have a range of responses, including supervision orders, electronic tagging, curfews and, in the most serious cases, detention orders for up to three months for 14 to 17 year-olds.

I hope there is a common theme across the Committee that detention of children should be used only when absolutely necessary, and that courts should consider the child’s welfare and other risks before imposing such a response. This should be on a case-by-case basis, and the prescribing of a mandatory minimum sentence, even for repeat offenders, would both undermine the ability of the independent judiciary to determine the appropriate sentence and potentially be disproportionate. There is a place in our sentencing framework for mandatory minimum sentences, but I submit that this is not it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, is quite right again that one of the best preventive measures we can have is to have large numbers of boots on the ground in neighbourhood policing. She will know that the Government have a manifesto commitment to put 13,000 extra boots on the ground during this Parliament. In this first year or so, the Government have put an extra 3,000 in place. We intend, where we can, to increase the number of specials, PCSOs and warranted officers to replace those who were lost between 2010 and 2017. When I was Police Minister in 2009-10, we had 20,000 more officers than we had up to around 2017. That is because they were hollowed out and taken out by the two Governments who ran the Home Office between 2010 and 2017.

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that visible neighbourhood policing is critical to tackling anti-social behaviour, but the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, seeks to provide minimum sentences, which I do not think will achieve his objective. It does not have my support either. I hope he will withdraw the amendment, having listened to the argument.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, once again, I am grateful to the Minister for his courteous and detailed answer. I did not realise that electronic tagging was already an option and it is very important that it is applied in appropriate cases. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that I am not creating a new criminal offence here. The power of detention already exists to be used by the court when it thinks fit.

On the general principle of minimum sentences, why do we fetter a judge’s discretion by having a maximum sentence? If we want proper judicial discretion, we should say that the judge can sentence anything he likes, but we do not—and I am glad we do not. We say that Parliament cannot set a minimum. Why is it appropriate, in a democracy, for Parliament to set a maximum sentence but not a minimum? I knew that the Minister, in his courteous way, would say that we would fetter judicial discretion, but I have suggested three breaches of injunctions. When can a court say, “You’ve done six now”, or, “You’ve done 10, Johnny”, and impose a sentence of detention for continued breaches of injunctions? As a democracy, it is perfectly legitimate for us as parliamentarians—and Members in the other House, whose constituents are suffering—to say that judges will have a discretion to impose orders of detention up to a certain level, but once the breaches of injunctions go past a certain threshold, Parliament demands that they impose a level of detention, whatever that level may be.

I have made my point. The Minister will probably hear me make a similar point about minimum sentences at various other points in the Bill but, in view of his remarks, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 54 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

55B: Clause 13, page 20, line 7, at end insert—
“(3) The coordinating officer need not be a constable but must be someone versed in the internet and online sales and purchases.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to ensure that the police and NCA appoint a person as the co-ordinating officer who is the most qualified about the internet and online sales and need not be a person who has qualified as a constable.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

The House will be relieved to know I will be mercifully brief on this occasion. Until 1968 the Met and other police forces used CID officers to do SOCO work—that is, collecting forensic evidence at the scenes of crimes. For many it was not their speciality and they often damaged vital evidence. Police forces realised that teams of dedicated civilians who specialise in gathering evidence at crime scenes could do a better job. Naturally, the Police Federation opposed any civilians being brought in to do it. Now, civilians do command and dispatch—which used to be done by serving officers—investigation support, and crime analysis. Over the years the police service has had to recognise, reluctantly in my opinion, that a constable of whatever rank may not be the best-qualified person to undertake increasingly complex tasks. We see credit card fraud going through the roof because there is practically no one in any police force capable of investigating it. Goodness knows who could do it —forensic accountants, perhaps.

All I am seeking here is an assurance from the Minister that this important co-ordinating role will not go to an inspector or a superintendent unless he or she is an absolute expert on the internet and online sales. This requires a switched-on internet geek, and not necessarily a uniformed bobby. Can the Minister assure me that the police will recruit for this role the best-qualified person, from wherever that person comes from, provided that he or she passes all the integrity tests, and that the guidance envisaged in the clause will say so? I beg to move.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I must say, I admire the range of interventions made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I do not want him to fall back on his seat, but on this occasion, we have some sympathy with the two amendments he has put forward. This group addresses the establishment of the new civil penalty regime for online advertising, a measure which we on these Benches support for its goal of strengthening accountability for online platforms. The introduction of civil penalties in this part of the Bill is intended to tackle the online grey market that facilitates the sale of illegal weapons, enabling earlier intervention and prevention of offensive weapon crimes. We must ensure that the framework we establish is not only robust legally but operationally effective in the digital age.

Amendment 55B tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, concerning Clause 13, focuses specifically on the essential role of the co-ordinating officer. Clause 13 mandates that the Secretary of State designate a member of a relevant police force or a National Crime Agency officer as the co-ordinating officer for this chapter. The amendment proposes that:

“The coordinating officer need not be a constable but must be someone versed in the internet and online sales and purchases”.


We on these Benches recognise that 21st-century crime fighting is no longer solely about boots on the ground. It relies heavily on specialised digital expertise to effectively police online marketplaces and hold search services and user-to-user services accountable. The designated officer must possess deep knowledge of digital platform sales techniques and online advertising mechanisms, as the noble Lord indicated. By explicitly allowing this officer to be a non-constable professional and expert, we would ensure that law enforcement can deploy the most qualified individuals to secure content removal notices and apply civil penalties. In our view, this pragmatic approach would ensure efficiency and maximum efficacy against technologically sophisticated platforms.

Amendment 55F in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, relates to Clause 24, which governs the guidance issued by the Secretary of State regarding the operation of this new regime. All new intrusive powers, especially those concerning online services, require clear, precise guidance to avoid unintended consequences and ensure fairness. Proper statutory guidance is the mechanism by which the principles established in the Bill should be translated into proportionate and actionable requirements for online service providers.

In short, in our view these amendments seek to guarantee that the architecture of this new regime is built on technical expertise and clarity, both those pillars being essential in ensuring that our online crime-fighting tools are fit for purpose. As such, we support them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his amendments to the clauses that implement this Government’s manifesto commitment to hold senior managers of online platforms, be they social media platforms, online marketplaces or search engines, personally liable for the failure to remove illegal online content relating to knives and offensive weapons. His Amendment 55B would require the co-ordinating officer—that is, the person appointed by the Home Secretary to administer these new powers—to have the necessary internet and online sales experience and skills, stating that they need not be a warranted officer. Amendment 55F would make these criteria explicit in the statutory guidance for these measures.

I agree with the sentiment behind the amendments. It is of course important that the co-ordinating officer responsible for the administration of these powers be suitably experienced. I reassure the noble Lord that the Government are providing £1.7 million for a new national police unit to tackle the illegal online sale of knives and weapons, including the issuing of content removal notices. The unit will be dedicated to co-ordinating investigations into all aspects of online unlawful knife and offensive weapon sales, and to bringing those responsible to justice. It will also improve data collection and analysis capability in order to expand police understanding of the knife crime problem and how enforcement activities can best be targeted. The intention is that a senior member of this specialist unit will be appointed as the co-ordinating officer, and they will have the necessary skills and resources to administer the powers.

Whoever is appointed as a content manager must be experienced in both aspects of the problem we are trying to tackle. They should have experience not only of online sales but of the investigation of illegal online sales of knives and weapons—that is, they must be able to understand the investigatory and evidential process as well as having experience of the internet. This will, to paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, not be any old bobby with a warrant card but someone highly experienced in internet sales and the investigatory and evidential role. That is why, in short, we feel that the role must be held by a warranted officer. It is a police role. They will be issuing enforcement notices and, as part of the criminal process, they need to have that experience as well as the essential online experience that all noble Lords who spoke in the debate mentioned; we agree that that is necessary.

Given the assurance that we are not neglecting the online side of things, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, will be sufficiently reassured and is content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, first let me say that I am almost overcome with deep emotion, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the Lib Dems have supported a Blencathra amendment—I wonder where I have gone wrong.

I say to the Minister that I am not totally reassured. I was not suggesting any old bobby; I was afraid that the police would automatically look for someone of senior rank: inspector, superintendent or chief superintendent. But the absolutely crucial thing is that that person must be fully qualified on internet sales and online stuff. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, set it out with rather elegant detail; I called the person a computer geek. If that superintendent is a senior investigating officer and he or she is a computer geek, then I am satisfied. I do not suggest that I will take this back on Report, but the Minister’s answer did not totally satisfy me that the best person will necessarily be recruited for the job. Yes, of course the person must have an understanding of investigation techniques, but that does not necessarily mean that it has to be a high-ranking police officer. The police already have civilians investigating things that do not require an officer.

As I say, I am slightly equivocal about the Minister’s answer. It is slightly disappointing that the Government will not countenance the possibility that this person may not be a warranted officer. It is quite simple: if you recruited the right computer geek, you make him or her warranted officer—you can do it that way. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 55B withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

55C: Clause 18, page 22, line 24, leave out “an amount not exceeding £60,000” and insert “a minimum of 500% of the value of the illegal goods advertised”
Member’s explanatory statement
A fine is based on a judgement of the seriousness of the crime and is subjective. My amendment ensures that the penalty is based on the actual value of the illegal knives and the profits from their sale.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 55C, I will speak also to my Amendments 55D and 55E. My three amendments here are all similar, as I argue that a value-based penalty is more effective than a maximum fixed fine. The issue of illegal knife sales on the internet is a matter of serious public concern. It is big business with big consequences when those knives—machetes and zombie knives—are used to kill and maim, as is increasingly the case.

The proposals in the Bill to fine individuals and businesses up to £60,000 for selling illegal knives online seem hefty at first glance. However, the effectiveness and fairness of such a fixed penalty are questionable. A more effective approach would be to impose a fine equal to 500% of the total value of all the illegal goods advertised. I want to convince the Minister that a proportional penalty is, in some cases, superior to a subjective fixed maximum fine.

First, there is the subjectivity of the fixed maximum fine. Setting a maximum fine of £60,000 for selling illegal knives leaves the final penalty to the discretion of the court. This introduces subjectivity into the process, as judges must determine what amount is appropriate in each case. The outcome may vary significantly depending on the judge’s interpretation of the offence’s severity, the defendant’s circumstances and other factors. Consequently, similar offenders could face vastly different penalties, undermining the consistency and predictability of the law. Then, of course, I come back to my favourite organisation, the Sentencing Council, advising that the £60,000 fine should never be imposed—but let us leave that aside for the moment.

Moreover, a fixed cap may not reflect the true scale of the illegal activity. For example, a small-scale individual seller and a large business operation could both face the same maximum penalty, despite the latter potentially profiting far more from illegal sales. This lack of proportionality can result in fines that are either too lenient or excessively harsh, depending on the specifics of the case.

In contrast, my suggestion of a fine set at 500% of the value of all illegal knives advertised is directly linked to the scale of the offence and the profits. This proportional penalty approach ensures that the penalty increases in line with the seriousness of the crime. Large-scale operations, which are likely to profit more and cause greater harm, would face correspondingly larger fines. This not only achieves greater fairness but strengthens the deterrent effect. As we have said on many occasions, criminals are primarily motivated by profit. If the financial penalty reliably exceeds any potential gains—by a factor of five in this case—the risk heavily outweighs the reward. I suggest that that creates a strong disincentive for individuals and businesses to engage in illegal knife sales.

The proportional system also ensures that penalties remain meaningful, even as the market or profitability of legal knives fluctuates over time. The proportional penalty system is more likely to deter criminal behaviour, because it removes ambiguity and subjectivity from sentencing. Offenders know in advance that any profits from illegal activity will be entirely wiped out and replaced by a substantial loss. That clarity and certainty are crucial in discouraging would-be offenders. Furthermore, tying the fine to the value of the legal goods ensures fairness across all cases. Small-time offenders are punished proportionately for their actions, while major players face penalties commensurate with the harm they cause and the profits they make. That upholds the principle that the punishment should fit the crime.

In summary, I submit that a fixed maximum fine of £60,000 for selling illegal knives online introduces subjectivity and inconsistency—whereas a penalty of 500% of the value of all illegal goods advertised is fair, more predictable and far more likely to deter criminal activity.

I do not need to speak to my Amendment 55E; it is the same concept but suggests a mere 100% proportional penalty for a lesser offence. I urge the Minister to consider adopting a proportional penalty system to effectively combat the sale of illegal knives over the internet. I beg to move.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has so concisely described—he gets more concise as the evening goes on—this group deals with the sanctions applied under the online weapon advertising regime.

We very much welcome the Government’s commitment to ensuring accountability for businesses and sellers who facilitate the online sale of knives. However, if the penalties imposed are too small, they merely become a tolerable cost of doing business for large, wealthy online service providers. As the noble Lord explained, the Bill proposes maximum civil penalties for service providers of up to £60,000 for failing to comply with content manager requirements or for failing to comply with a content removal notice. His Amendments 55C and 55D directly challenge that maximum limit by proposing that the penalty for a service provider’s non-compliance should instead be a minimum of 500% of the value of the illegal goods advertised.

In our view, that proposal shifts the focus decisively towards financial deterrence—although I hate to agree with the noble Lord twice in one evening. The argument embedded within these amendments is sound: fines should reflect the scale and profitability of the illegal advertising business they enable. By linking the minimum fine directly to five times the value of the illegal goods advertised, we ensure that the penalty scales proportionally with the volume of the illicit trade facilitated by the platform, making it financially unsustainable to turn a blind eye to illegal weapon content.

The noble Lord’s Amendment 55E applies this same principle to the penalties imposed on the service provider’s content manager. Clause 23 currently sets the maximum penalty for the content manager at £10,000. Amendment 55E seeks to replace that cap with a minimum penalty of 100% of the value of the illegal goods advertised. That would ensure that the individual responsible for overseeing compliance within the organisation also faces a penalty that reflects the seriousness of the content they failed to manage or remove, particularly where that content is tied directly to the advertisement of unlawful weapons.

These amendments force us to consider how we can make our laws genuinely tough on organised online crime. In our view, legislation must be proportionate; and proportionality, in the face of corporate digital crime, means that penalties should meaningfully exceed the profits derived from facilitating criminal activity. The amendments rightly push us to consider the financial consequences that would truly deter platforms from risking public safety for private gain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

Well, that is a very good segue into the words that are just following—I was about to get there.

Many knives and weapons that are sold illegally are sold relatively cheaply, in the order of tens of pounds. Some sellers who sell knives and weapons over social media tend to hold and advertise small stock numbers. Therefore, we contend that the suggested minimum penalties are simply too low to incentivise the prompt removal of illegal content. The independent review of online safety of knives shows a case study as an example where an individual bought 30 knives to sell illegally over social media for under £50 each. Should the social media company not take the illegal content down, the proposed minimum fine under these amendments would be £1,500 for the executive and £7,500 for the companies. Those penalties, as I am sure noble Lords would agree, would be too low for large tech companies and executives to be worried about at all. Not having a minimum penalty will leave full discretion to the police, who specialise in investigating illegal knife sales online. This will allow them to use their judgment to issue fines that are commensurate in each case.

The penalties for failing to comply with these are, as already noted, issued in the form of civil penalty notices by the police. They can be up to £60,000 for companies and £10,000 for individuals. I remind noble Lords that these penalties are for single violations and will add up if companies and executives repeatedly fail to comply with removal notices. The measure is intended not just to punish companies but to facilitate behaviour change. I trust that the police administering these measures will issue fines of an appropriate level to incentivise the prompt removal of illegal content.

I note the experience, which I found instructive, of the independent review of the online sale of knives, that a lot of the activity is undertaken through very small stocks that are cheaply sold. If we used the regime of a proportionate measure, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, we simply would not generate enough. Noble Lords may not think that £60,000 is worth much, but we certainly would not generate anywhere near £60,000 in those examples.

It is worth bearing in mind that a lot of the grey market sellers do so over social media websites. The recipient of the fine is the tech company that does not take down the illegal material, rather than the person selling the knives or the weapons. We understand the intended recipient of the punishment—the fines—which is why we think that having the £60,000 or £10,000 level is appropriate, because that is for single offences. Any time a company fails to remove the content for which they have received a notice, the fines will add up and accumulate, which will make an impact—and we would all agree that that needs to be done.

In response to another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, we feel that the Sentencing Council is unlikely to comment on the level of a civil penalty. That may be a little speculative from my perspective, but I think that it is probably what the experience bears out.

Given this explanation and the clarification of our view of how the environment—I should not have used the word “market” earlier—in which these sales take place, I hope that the noble Lord is sufficiently assured that these penalties will have an impact in the way they are set out in the Bill and that he will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I almost had palpitations for the second time tonight when the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, supported my amendment.

I hear what the Minister has to say. I had not intended for the 500% penalty to apply to just two or three individuals selling a few knives; I intended that it would apply to the supply of the whole shooting match. The individuals who are selling a few knives have got them from somewhere: there is a supplier or a big source making these by the thousand. For someone at the centre who has a warehouse with £100,000 worth of knives, a penalty of £500,000 would clean them out completely, whereas a penalty of £60,000 would still leave them with £40,000 profit. However, I accept the point that, if the case involves small-scale individuals, the 500% penalty might not be as great as the penalty in the Act. I wonder whether it is worth looking at the possibility of offering “either/or” as an option—I think that is a possibility for the future.

I will make another general point. I woke up about a week ago at 2 am and thought of this proportional system. It may not be perfect for knives, but I think there is some merit in this concept of proportionate fines for certain offences, whereby rather than having a maximum penalty imposed by law, the penalty is a percentage—100%, 200%, 300% or 1,000%—of the value of the goods being advertised or sold.

Bearing in mind what the Minister said, we would like to look again at the possibility of offering a fine and some proportional penalty. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 55C withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, I align myself with my noble friend on his remarks and the question he put to the Minister. I do not understand the situation, so I would very much appreciate an explanation from the Minister. What is the logic of having the same maximum penalty for both the existing offence of carrying an offensive weapon and the new offence of carrying an offensive weapon with intent to commit harm or violence, and so forth?

My mild concern, which I am sure the Minister with his usual skill can allay, is that if we have the four years maximum penalty for the new aggravated offence of having intent to commit harm, is there not a danger that that could diminish the seriousness of the existing offence if it is not possible or likely to prove the intent to commit violence or the other provisions of the new section? I absolutely support what the Government are trying to do here; we are all on completely the same side. It would be very helpful for the Minister to explain how these two offences would differ in their application in practice and therefore the implications for the maximum sentences.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise for the final time tonight—the Committee will be pleased to know—to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Lochiel. I wish I had put down my own amendment to Clause 27 to draw attention to what I think is the complete disconnect between subsections (1) and (3) in the new section.

The Bill in its current form proposes in subsection (1) of the new section that it shall be an offence for any person to possess an article with a blade or point or an offensive weapon with the intent

“to use unlawful violence against another person, … to cause another person to believe that unlawful violence will be used against them”

and others, or

“to cause serious unlawful damage to property”.

That is fairly serious stuff.

However, the penalties in subsection (3) of the proposed new section, with a maximum of 12 months’ imprisonment in a magistrates’ court and up to four years on indictment, are insufficient given the gravity of the offence. I support the argument for a substantial increase in sentencing powers to reflect the seriousness of the conduct involved.

Possession of an offensive weapon with intent to use it for violence or to cause fear is a profoundly serious criminal act. Such intent demonstrates a premeditated willingness to inflict harm, intimidate or destroy property. It is not a spontaneous or lesser form of criminality but rather a calculated and dangerous escalation. The mere possession of a weapon with such intent poses a direct threat to public safety, undermines community trust and creates an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.

As the Minister will know, offences involving offensive weapons are often precursors to more serious crimes, involving grievous bodily harm right up to homicide. I maintain that actions that create an imminent risk of serious harm should be met with robust deterrence and sentencing. Allowing relatively lenient penalties for those caught with weapons and with criminal intent fails to deter potential offenders and signals a lack of seriousness in addressing violent crime. The psychological impact on victims—those who are threatened or believe they are at risk of violence—can be profound and long-lasting, as many reports say, even if no injury actually occurs.

When compared with other offences of similar seriousness, the proposed penalties appear disproportionately low. For instance, offences such as aggravated burglary or possession of firearms with intent to endanger life attract significantly higher sentences, often exceeding a decade in custody. This clause is about people going out with vicious knives or machetes, intending to use unlawful violence against another person—in other words, to attack them and possibly kill them. Why on earth should there even be a summary trial for that sort of offence? That is why I wish I had put down my own amendment to delete from the new section subsection (3)(a), which provides for trial in a magistrates’ court.

Of course, we must not look at this Bill in isolation; we have the Sentencing Bill coming along, which will aim to ban anyone—if I understand it correctly—going to prison for a sentence of 12 months or less. If one of these cases goes to a magistrates’ court, and the magistrates impose the maximum sentence of 12 months, it will be automatically suspended and the perpetrator will get away with it. What signal does that send? If these criminals were going out with a knife to scratch cars or vandalise property, summary might be appropriate, but they are going out with knives to attack people and possibly kill them. That is why, in my opinion, it has to indictable only and a 14-year maximum sentence—which, as we know, will end up as seven in any case, with automatic release at half-time. I believe the current proposal for a maximum of four years on indictment is markedly out of step with comparable offences and the seriousness of potential offences in subsection (1).

The criminal justice system must not only punish offenders but deter would-be offenders and reassure the public that their safety is paramount. Inadequate penalties such as this one risk undermining public confidence in the legal system. A more severe sentencing framework would send a clear message that society will not tolerate the possession of weapons in the street with intent to commit violent acts or grievous bodily harm to people. It would also be a stronger deterrent to those contemplating such conduct.

In conclusion, I believe the Government are absolute right to introduce this new power, but they have the penalties wrong since they are disconnected from the seriousness of the offence. Given the potential for severe physical and psychological harm, the premeditated nature of the crime and the need for effective deterrence, I also submit that the maximum penalties should be increased. Of course, this is not tying the judge’s discretion; I am suggesting no minimum sentence but a sentence of up to 14 years.

I should add that I have exactly the same view on the suggested penalties in the next massive group of amendments, but I have made my arguments here and I will not repeat them when we come to that group on Wednesday.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, nearly half the murders in the UK over the last three years are due to knife crime, so we recognise the vital importance of equipping police with the necessary tools to intervene when there is clear evidence of intent to commit serious violence. We give Clause 27 our full backing.

Before I turn to the amendment, I want to make a couple of points around the new offence. Will the Government ensure that robust guidance and oversight are in place to prevent unjustified or discriminatory use of this power? That needs to be accompanied by improved training for police and judiciary. The reality is that young black men are already significantly overrepresented in knife crime prosecutions, and we must be careful not to compound that position. Discrimination and justice are opposites.

I hope this may also help stem the rising number of incidents in which people suffer life-changing injuries after being attacked with acid or other corrosive substances. Reports of such offences increased by 75% in 2023, including 454 physical attacks. Half these victims were women, with attacks often occurring in a domestic abuse context, but only 8% of these cases resulted in a charge or summons, partly due to the victim’s fear of reprisal. The hope is that this new offence may allow prosecutions to be brought before harm is inflicted, since proving intent would not necessarily require the victim to testify. Can the Minister say how the Government intend to use the offence to this end?

On Amendment 56, the Liberal Democrats agree with Jonathan Hall that four years in prison in insufficient when there is clear evidence of the intention to cause mass fatalities. The court must have the full weight of the law behind it in the hopefully rare cases in which a lengthy sentence is thought necessary for public prosecution. I would expect the Sentencing Council to issue guidance around how to categorise levels of seriousness, and I hope this will guard against sentence inflation. Nevertheless, we are minded to support this amendment and I urge the Government to look again at the maximum penalty.