Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 35 standing in my name says:

“Regulations may not require a relevant authority to provide information on social media posts which they may consider to be anti-social or have anti-social behaviour messages”.


I do not need to regurgitate much of what I said earlier on non-crime hate incidents, which could compose a large part of this, because I am looking forward to the Minister’s announcement in due course that he will have solved the problem of so-called non-crime hate incidents.

I was tempted to propose that Clause 7 should not stand part of the Bill, because I wanted to discuss the huge number of requirements in it, but I thought I would do it under the scope of this amendment. Basically, I want to ask the Minister: what will the Government do with all the information demanded by Clause 7? When I was a Home Office Minister—and I am certain the noble Lord has had this experience as well—we got lots of written requests from Members of Parliament, PQs, asking for information on all sorts of law and order issues concerning what the police were up to in England and Wales. We could not provide it, because the police forces were not under an obligation to send it to the Home Office.

Sometimes I would think, “Oh, I’d like to know that as well”, but whenever I asked the police forces if they could provide it, they would quite legitimately say, “What resources do you want us to divert from fighting crime to collating this information to send to the Home Office, and what practical use will you put it to?” Well, I think they had a fair point, but the demands for more and more statistics from the police have continued to increase. I will not suggest that it is in proportion to the rise in crime, but more information has not helped reduce it.

I come back to the point: will the Minister tell the House exactly what use the Home Office will make of all this information, since what is demanded is fairly extensive? If this information was free, it would be okay, but we all know what will happen. All councils will employ at least one, probably more than one, special information-gathering co-ordinator to collect the information required and transmit it to the Home Office. New computer systems will be needed to provide it in “the form and manner”, as per new subsection (4)(b).

This, I suggest, is not a low-grade clerking job, since the information demanded in subsection (2) is not just a collection of numbers or reports, but provision of the reports, plus the authorities’ responses, plus the details of ASB case reviews. Then subsection (3)(d) calls for the information collected to be analysed by the local authorities. As I say, analysis of the plethora of different anti-social behaviour orders and responses to them in sufficient quality to be sent to the Home Office will be regarded as a fairly high-level job, not one for a low-paid junior clerk in the council.

I think we are probably looking at a salary of about £50,000 for the lead person and £30,000 for the assistant, and with national insurance and pensions we are looking at about £100,000 per authority. Multiply that by 317 local authorities and we will have local government costs of £32 million. No doubt many local authorities will love it; there will be more office-bound jobs as they cut dustbin collections and social services work and leave potholes unfilled. Okay, that is a sinister, cynical comment, but that will happen in some local authorities.

I simply ask the Minister to tell the Committee, if that £32 million I calculate will be the cost of every authority supplying all the information requested in Clause 7, will that be money well spent? My little amendment would do my bit to limit some of the costs, since I do not want local authorities wasting time and resources by collecting and analysing so-called anti-social social media posts which have happened in their area, either to the poster or to the complainant. They will be chasing their own tails if they attempt to go down this route. It would be a self-defeating waste of time. That is the purpose of my amendment: to ask the Government to justify what they will do with all the information collected under Clause 7 and to ask whether my calculation of £32 million is roughly right. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 55A, which is supported by StopWatch, a campaign organisation that is concerned with the use of stop and search. I disagree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.

Amendment 55A would require the Home Office to publish quarterly data on the issuing of anti-social behaviour orders and related injunctions. Specifically, it would ensure that these reports include the number of occasions when stop and search has been used by the police prior to the issuing of such orders, and the protected characteristics of those who have been issued with them. These powers can have serious and lasting consequences for those subject to them, particularly young people and those from marginalised communities. Yet at present, the public and Parliament have very limited visibility of how these tools are being applied. This would ensure transparency and accountability about how anti-social behaviour powers are being used across England and Wales.

We know from existing evidence that stop and search disproportionately affects people from black and non-white ethnic backgrounds. The Government’s own figures last year reported that there were nearly 25 stop and searches for every 1,000 black people and yet only around six for every 1,000 white people. There is a real risk that these disparities could be echoed or even compounded in the issuing of anti-social behaviour orders or injunctions. Without clear data, broken down with protected characteristics, we cannot know whether these concerns are justified, nor can we properly evaluate the fairness and effectiveness of the system. By requiring the Home Office to publish quarterly data, this amendment would bring much-needed transparency. It would allow Parliament, bodies with oversight and the public to monitor trends, identify disparities and ensure that anti-social behaviour powers are being used proportionately and appropriately.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is clearly very exercised about the use of resources. He actually said that more information does not reduce crime. I think that is probably completely wrong, because the more information you have, the better you can understand what is happening. So this is about good governance and evidence-based policy. If these powers are being used fairly, the data will confirm that. If not, then we will have the information necessary to take corrective action. Either way, the transparency will strengthen public trust in policing and the rule of law.

This amendment is about shining a light where it is most needed. It would do nothing to restrict police powers. It would simply ensure that their use can be properly scrutinised. I hope the Minister will agree that accountability and transparency are not optional extras in a just society; they are actually the foundations of it.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The Opposition side!

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

—we would never dream of kicking her out of this place. She was absolutely right to say that all hereditary Peers should be given a life peerage. That would kill this nonsense stone dead.

My noble friend Lord Lucas has proposed an excellent amendment. As he said, we are all engaged here in trying to improve the effectiveness of the House. Asking new Peers to make a commitment for the future has merit, but we still have the genuine problem of the handful of Peers who come here, clock in and do nothing. I say again to my noble friend Lord Swire that I am not suggesting measuring the quality of speeches. If Peers are making speeches, then they are participating in the work of the House. The quality of their speeches is not something to be measured by this committee. My noble friend Lord Trenchard also supports participation level, but I would say to him that legislation is not necessary if we accept Amendment 32 when we come to it later.

As I am leading on all six groups of amendments today, I fear I have fallen foul of my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s exhortation not to speak too much. He quoted an incident that occurred years ago in the Commons, when I was a junior Whip and the marvellous Harold Walker was Speaker in the Chair. We were in government, and we had an agreement with the Opposition on a two-minute time limit for speeches on Commons consideration of Lords amendments. We were rocketing through our consideration of Lords amendments to yet another criminal justice Bill. We were getting on fine until our friend Sir Ivan Lawrence QC —I am not naming names, this is in Hansard—got up and said, “Everything that could possibly have been said on this Bill has been said, but not by those of us qualified to do so”. He spoke for 20 minutes, and the Labour Chief Whip said, “That’s it—the deal’s off!” We spent another two hours in Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, whom I congratulate on his birthday, showed support for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and a minimum level of participation. He also criticised those who, as he said, turn up for 20 minutes and then leave. I think those were my exact words, too, and we did not collaborate on that.

My noble friend Lord True, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, said that it is legitimate to discuss these issues, which were in the manifesto. He said that there is a widespread view in the House that we have to do something about the problem of those who do not participate. Peers contribute in myriad ways. The committee that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and I are suggesting setting up would take those myriad ways into account before establishing a minimum.

The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General said that agreement on doing something, having a metric and removing those who fall short of that level is important and that we should do something about it, but we are not setting it up here. All we are asking for is a committee to decide on the detail. The noble and learned Lord was justifying not doing anything because, he said, there were too many nuances. Of course there are nuances, dozens of them—there are hundreds of things to be taken into account—and that is the purpose of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. If we pass his amendment and set up the committee, it will do the consultation on all sides and spend a year or two figuring out the details.

I say to the noble and learned Lord that he reminded me of that wonderful “Yes Minister” attitude, where Sir Humphrey says, “Yes, Minister, that is a very good idea. We will set up an interdepartmental working group and consult the Cabinet committees and this, that and the other. Then we will publish a Green Paper first and then a White Paper. I am sure that we will be able to deliver on your promise—eventually”.

In conclusion, there is a mood in the House to take this participation problem seriously. Most noble Lords favour the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. He stressed that some noble Lords were fussing about the details. He suggests that could be done by the committee.