Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure, as ever, to support my noble friend in her Amendments 436 and 437. She is an expert in intellectual property, but she might want to copyright the term “Wild West of street crime”, as we have got used to it.

Amendment 436 goes to the heart of a police accountability. That is the wider issue here. It seeks to put on a statutory footing the imperative to provide timely data in respect of enforcement, openness and transparency. It is not necessarily about interfering in the operational effectiveness or decision-making of the police, but it is about openness, transparency and restoring the faith and trust that taxpayers should have in their local police. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is not in his place. I am sure he discharged his duties commendably in Leicestershire, but, frankly, the police and crime commissioner model has not worked. I speak as someone who used my maiden speech in the other place in June 2005 to call for elected police commissioners. I am afraid that it has been a damp squib. The relationship between senior police officers and the commissioners, to whom they should have had accountability, has not worked out in the way it should have done. I applaud the Government for the decision to discontinue that.

We see egregious examples of apparent two-tier policing. Robert Peel is probably turning in his grave now when he looks at the antics of the chief constable of the West Midlands, who colluded with Islamist thugs and their representative, the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Perry Barr, in preventing Jewish fans from attending a game in our second city. He also lied twice to a parliamentary committee, seemingly with impunity. He has now left the service with a large taxpayer-funded pension.

The question is: do the police actually care what elected politicians and Ministers think? I am not sure that is the case. There have been lots of cases of alleged two-tier policing. More recently, one has to look only at the comparison between the policing of the Palestinian hate marchers in our capital from October 2023 and, for instance, the banning of a Walk with Jesus rally in east London or the heavy-handed policing of farmers protesting at the Government’s tax policies at the end of last year. This is not a political issue. It is an issue of the undermining of policing by consent and that is bad news for all of us.

Data is needed for the justice system, particularly the police force, both to work effectively and so that they can be scrutinised by lawmakers and the public. Public perception of our police matters. We want our police to be perceived positively by the public based on evidence that they are doing their jobs well. Public perception of the police is currently low, and crime rates appear to be high. Data on enforcement would both be a motivation for effective policing and help them to be held accountable—and, more importantly, give an accurate public image.

We currently have a crisis on our hands in respect of law enforcement in England and Wales. Knife crime in England and Wales rose by 78% between 2013 and 2023; even when the population growth was factored in, this was still a 68.3% rise. In 2024, 31.5% of all robberies committed in London’s Met police area involved stealing mobile phones—this increased from 21.6% in 2021. Noble Lords will know that the Committee considered my amendment on the theft of mobile phones, ably introduced my noble friend, earlier this month. In-person theft offences—which, according to Policy Exchange, is where an item is stolen from a person but, unlike a robbery, no force is used or threatened—the percentage of cases is even higher and represents between 68.5% and 72.6% of offences during the last four years. London has faced a dramatic surge in theft from the person offences: a 170% increase in the three years up to 2024. Also, there were nearly 95,000 shoplifting offences in the year to June 2025, a 38% increase on the previous year.

This amendment is about enforcement data. The police are not always effective in dealing with these crimes. In the year to March 2025, the Met solved 5% of burglaries and robberies reported to it. It solved less than 1.5% of reported bike thefts and less than 8% of shoplifting offences. In 2024, only 0.6% of theft from the person offences were solved. This declined from just 1.1% in 2021. Public perception of the police is becoming worse. In 2022, 50% of Londoners thought that their local police were doing a good job; in 2025, that had dropped to 45%.

Police forces across England and Wales should publish data annually on the enforcement of offences so that the public and lawmakers know how successfully crimes are being policed. The public also deserve to know this information. If the rate of crime is increasing, so then should the rate of enforcement. We must support the Peelite principle of policing by consent. We need to collect, collate and analyse data to restore public confidence. That is why we need to support my noble friend’s amendment, as I have today. I hope the Minister will give consideration to what is essentially a cross-party amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I totally support Amendment 436 on the collection of enforcement data; the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, have explained well why I do. But I am rising to speak to Amendment 437 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, calling for a review of police paperwork. I will just explain why. I have put my name on a number of amendments that require more data collection, which might sound contradictory. But we need more granular and accurate data, while ensuring that data is streamlined and necessary, rather than collected just for the sake of it. In that sense, there is no contradiction.

The review of paperwork is necessary to identify and cut out all the endless and needless form-filling that police officers are forced to do. Whenever you talk to rank and file police officers, one of the most voluble frustrations that they voice is the ever-growing regime of paperwork and bureaucracy. They complain that they did not sign up to become pen-pushers and this is hardly what they envisaged when they joined the force.

More seriously, we have just heard a very moving debate on the mental health challenges faced by some police officers. I do not want to be glib, but when you talk to police officers, they will often say that they are tearing their hair out and completely demoralised because of the amount of bureaucracy that they face—so it is worth bearing that in mind.

The impressive multiplication of the number of forms the police have to fill out could be interpreted as indicative of the scientification or the professionalisation of police work, as the bureaucratic regime’s apologists would have us believe. I think the duplication of information, which is often banal, indicates a stifling bureaucratisation of policing and a trend that is reiterated by officers as impeding their ability to respond to crime or engage in proactive crime solving.

I want to use an example from some years ago. I was a victim of a very nasty, unpleasant mugging. I reported it to the police, as one does, and they were hyperactive in their response. I got a very nice letter reassuring me that they were there for me as a victim. got a form to fill in, asking whether I had had the right kind of support as a victim. I even had a follow-up phone call to find out why I had not filled out my form and to make sure I was okay. The problem was that at no point did anyone visit me in the sense of attempting to apprehend the person who had committed the mugging. That never came up. It was all about my feelings about being a victim of crime, rather than solving the crime. Imagine how much paperwork went into that. I was bemused, but infuriated as well.

We would like this review to ask how paperwork has proliferated. Certain people argue that the process-driven approach to policing is created by risk aversion—the police covering their own backs, potentially. It might be that it is an obsession with communication. There is certainly a lot of press releasing done, tweets put out and so on. The main thing is that we have to get to the bottom of what is creating it. I think—there will be a discussion on this on a later group—that a lot of the work generated does not have anything to do with core policing. When I talk to police officers I know, they say they are engaged in a wide range of activity related to equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, which are also bureaucratic in terms of the kind of things that they have to do. We heard about non-crime hate incidents on a previous group. How many hours are spent investigating those? There is also a great deal of paperwork being generated by that, and hopefully we have seen the back of them.

Perhaps this amendment is kicking at an open door. I am hoping for a positive response from the Minister because the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has made similar points. It seems that cutting red tape is a part of what the Home Office is trying to do, so I am delighted about that.

I have a couple of reservations. I am slightly worried that the solution for cutting red tape that has been put forward is a greater use of AI. I am all for sensible use of technology, but I note that West Midlands Police recently took a shortcut and cut back on a lot of hours of paperwork that would have been wasted in a proper investigation in relation to the Maccabi Tel Aviv football game with Aston Villa. The problem with that shortcut and paper-saving exercise was that as a consequence it came up with a non-existent football match to justify the banning of the Israeli fans, as we know. Recent research by businesses has shown that for every 10 hours apparently saved by the use of AI, four hours are used checking errors and fact-checking AI output. They have had to bring in extra staff to do that particular type of work.

Finally, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville- Rolfe, on her reservations about the licensing of police officers. I am afraid that fills me with horror. Credentialism is notorious for being more bureaucratisation. If you want any evidence, just look at the university sector and what is happening on that in certain sectors.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for her continued interest in improving transparency and accountability in policing. She will know that I am outcome-focused myself, and that I try to ensure that we get outcomes. I note the support from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Davies of Gower, for Amendment 436.

The Government have taken significant steps to improve the visibility of police performance. I draw noble Baroness’s attention to the newly established police performance framework. That framework, supported by the Home Office’s police performance unit, provides a robust mechanism for monitoring enforcement activities across all 43 current police forces in England and Wales. This includes the priority offences that the noble Baroness mentioned, such as shoplifting, knife crime and theft.

The noble Baroness mentioned the White Paper; I will respond by trailing some of the announcements that were made in the White Paper yesterday. A key one was that the Home Office will this year introduce an initial sector-facing police performance dashboard that will enable chief constables and local policing bodies to analyse the transparent, high quality and operationally significant data that all three Back-Bench speakers sought. This will empower forces to deliver improvements through strengthening their understanding of where they are performing well and where they can learn from practice in other forces to improve. The framework has been designed to be flexible, and there will be a midpoint review in middle of 2027-28 to allow for the inclusion of any new priorities that might be brought forward. The Government believe that this is an appropriate mechanism for considering additional offence categories, rather than—with due respect to the noble Baroness— mandating them in primary legislation.

I took to heart the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, that requiring police forces to publish enforcement data on a fixed list of offences might add burdens and administrative duplication, particularly when many of these offences are already captured through a range of other mechanisms, and contradict the later amendments to reduce police bureaucracy. That is an important factor to bear in mind when we consider this proposal.

Furthermore, the police and the CPS are required to comply with the Director of Public Prosecutions guidance on charging, which applies to all offences where a criminal charge may be instituted. This guidance ensures that investigations meet evidential and public interest tests before prosecution. Compliance for that is monitored through an internal assessment framework between the police and the CPS that is crime agnostic and used only for management purposes. A statutory duty to publish enforcement data for selected offences might duplicate those arrangements and divert resources from front-line policing.

In summary on Amendment 436, yes, we need to improve, but we have put in place some mechanisms. We will monitor those mechanisms and, I hope, return to them in due course, without the legislative requirement proposed by the noble Baroness.

The noble Baroness’s Amendment 437 goes to the heart of the core issue of productive use of police time. I again note the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for this amendment. The 2023 Police Activity Survey, provided by the Home Office, gave us significant insights into how police time is used. We are planning to repeat that survey this year, and I hope it will again help us to understand a bit more about the policing landscape.

The 2023 productivity review, sponsored by the College of Policing’s Centre for Police Productivity, prioritised the rollout of productivity-enhancing capabilities, such as the use of AI and robotic process automation, to reduce the time spent on administration. I know that there are concerns about AI, and I have heard them raised today in Committee. However, when properly used, AI can reduce bureaucracy. In Autumn 2024, we launched the Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme to explore how we can improve productivity and efficiency savings.

Yesterday, the Government published the policing White Paper, From Local to National: A New Model for Policing—I have a copy to hand for ease of reference. In that White Paper is a comprehensive package of reforms that address the issues in the noble Baroness’s amendment. I refer her to paragraph 91, which says:

“Another area of extensive paperwork in policing comes from the requirements of the criminal justice system. In the months ahead we will work with the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Prosecution Service (alongside the Attorney General’s Office) to examine changes that could reduce the burden on policing. As part of this work, we will look at a number of areas including the disclosure regime and redaction, the use of out of court resolutions, charging and joint police-prosecution performance metrics. We will do this alongside consideration of any new or emerging evidence, such as the implications of the Independent Review of Disclosure and Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations for criminal court reform”.


We therefore recognise that that is an important issue.

I also refer the noble Baroness to paragraph 293, which says:

“It is expected that in its first year Police.AI will focus on some of the biggest administrative burdens facing policing – including disclosure, analysis of CCTV footage, production of case files, crime recording and classification and translating and transcribing documents. This will free up 6 million policing hours each year”.


The Government are therefore focused on those issues, so I am not convinced that we need a legislative solution to deal with them. With this having been put in the White Paper—it is a brand-new document, and Members will want to have a chance to reflect upon it—the direction of travel is self-evidently there. I hope that the noble Baroness will understand that the core issues on which she is calling for a review are addressed in the document that I have just referred to the Committee.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am old enough to remember the last time that we looked at regional police forces. That was under the Minister’s erstwhile colleague, the right honourable Charles Clarke, I think, in 2008-09. There is some merit in the argument for amalgamating large forces. However, will the Minister confirm that AI is also important in supporting hyper-local community policing? A burglary takes place in the Met area every 11 minutes, and, tragically, a rape takes place every 54 minutes. There are big discrepancies between, say, Bexley, Richmond, Kingston and central London. Will the Minister ensure that Ministers are cognisant of the need to use AI to reinforce community policing, as well as the mergers of police forces at a very large level?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that. I refer him to the first line of paragraph 281 of the policing White Paper, which says:

“In policing, getting the right information into the right hands at the right time can mean the difference between life and death”.


That is absolutely right, as is the point that the noble Lord made. AI, particularly how it develops over the next few years, will be critical in distilling information that can be used by police to investigate, capture and understand crime performance in any area. We have some significant expertise in the Home Office that is looking at those issues, and the direction of travel has been set in the White Paper.

In addition to the forces of good using AI, criminals are themselves looking at how they can use AI to better defraud people, so we need to be ahead of the game on that as well. In the White Paper, we are looking at AI in respect of both challenges. We are looking at how it is used by bad actors, and at how we can reduce, collect and analyse information and dissect trends in a much speedier way and take out physical paperwork. The noble Lord makes a very valid point about how that can be used at a local level, as well as on a national trend basis.

The points that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is making are very valid. When I was last doing the job of Police Minister in 2009-10, which was a long time ago, we had a review at the Police Federation’s urging. We have tried to reduce paperwork, because it is critical. Police officers should use technology to amass information on how we can prevent crime, bring prosecutions through the CPS and understand trends in local areas, as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, has said. That is the direction of travel in the White Paper. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I just looked about my person at my identification documents and found my House of Lords pass, which at least at this point does not record my birth sex. I suppose “Baroness” might arguably do the trick—or not, I do not know. I suspect it would not be enough for the supporters of these two amendments. I also looked in my handbag, and my two bank cards do not record anything approximating my biological sex.

In an earlier group, I heard noble Lords opposite speak very compellingly about what the police are up against and how they are tearing their hair out because of the bureaucracy. Last week, I agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in particular and other noble Lords opposite when they spoke to an amendment to ensure that, were there to be digital ID, the police could not demand that information on request in the street. A number of noble Lords made very strong and passionate speeches on that issue.

I wonder about the workability and the wider consequences of the amendment, were it to be added to primary legislation. It is very broad in scope, dealing with anybody who is subject to arrest or a charge or caution for any offence. It would place a firm obligation on the police to record the person’s birth sex and any discrepancy between that and what the person identifies as or what is on any documents that they present. How on earth is this to work without, I suspect, far more intrusive searching than is necessary for every offence, from a minor public order protest offence to shoplifting to insider trading? In each scenario, the police would be required to make a determination of the person’s biological sex, requiring a fairly intrusive examination and challenging and questioning. That would be quite a traumatic and degrading experience for anyone and might be disproportionate to the offence being investigated.

I agree that crime can be highly gendered; we know that because all we have learned about violence against women and girls, but I fail to see that this kind of determination is necessary at the point of arrest for insider dealing or even for a protest offence. And, if we are talking about headaches for the police, I can imagine in a large protest every arrestee being briefed by their comrades and colleagues deliberately to identify in a mischievous way just to give the police a headache.

I ask noble Lords to think again about the contradictions in the positions that they are taking on this very long Bill. Workability, proportionality and whether this kind of intrusion into the lives of not just people who have changed sex or are transexual but of anybody who is subject to arrest and charge, particularly a woman with short hair, for example. I am reading stories about women who have had mastectomies for breast cancer being challenged in gym changing rooms because of the way they look.

I ask noble Lords to think about the wider consequences and the proportionality of what they propose.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. All of us who care about the safety, security, integrity and autonomy of women are also concerned about, for instance, a so-called trans-inclusive strip search policy which allows, for instance, a 6 foot 4 inch man who self-identifies as a woman to search a very vulnerable young woman at a police station. That is an issue of great concern, and were we to adopt this amendment, it might be ameliorated.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, but that is a separate issue—it is about who is allocated to which duty at the police station, and it is perfectly reasonable for the police themselves to organise who conducts a strip search and who conducts a strip search on whom. That is not what the first or second version of the amendment is about; it is about an obligation on the police to make a determination of the biological sex of anybody they are arresting, charging or cautioning. It comes from noble Lords who, as I understand it, oppose compulsory digital ID that could conceivably require some determination at the point of registration. I applauded those compelling speeches last week from noble Lords about that being too much of an intrusion on the citizen who is innocent until proved guilty at the point of encounter with the police. How are the police going to do this?

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

To be clear, a perpetrator is someone who is convicted, not anyone who is arrested. As I tried to suggest in response to the comments about incarceration, it is much easier to justify greater intrusion at the point of conviction, particularly if someone is going to prison. I do not think this is about drafting; it is about the practical policy the amendments are proposing. How on earth is it viable to put this obligation to be the determiner and decision-maker over somebody’s biological sex? Is it reasonable to put that on every constable? I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench, because he served as a police officer for many years and with some distinction. He may know better than I whether this will be welcome for police officers in their everyday duties, for every arrest and every offence.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to this amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who has been courageously raising these issues of gender identity and sex, over many years and before it was fashionable, through the prism of wishing to protect the safety and security of women. I applaud her for that. I also thank my noble friend Lady Cash, who speaks with great professional expertise and experience.

Notwithstanding the passionate case put by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, it is surely the case that policy, particularly when we are dealing with sensitive issues such as crime data and violence against women and girls, which is rightly a government priority, should be formulated and delivered on the basis of robust, peer-reviewed, empirical evidence. Who can logically argue against that? That is what the amendment is principally about.

We have heard about the Sullivan standard. The context in which we are working in putting forward this amendment is that sex is a protected characteristic and the Equality Act 2010 has been clarified by the Supreme Court. It is extremely disappointing that the Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson, continues to obfuscate and delay proper timely guidance being issued by a number of bodies in respect of, for instance, access to single-sex spaces. The Supreme Court stated plainly that under the Equality Act, “sex” refers to the material reality of being female or male. That determines how single-sex spaces function in a mixed-sex society, from women’s changing rooms to prison, and justifies excluding men where doing so is necessary and proportionate. That remains the case, which is why this amendment is very important. It is in that context that it would hopefully be incorporated into the legislation.

As we know, the Sullivan review was commissioned in February 2024 with the aims of identifying obstacles to accurate data collection and research on sex and gender identity in public bodies and the research system, and setting out good practice guidance for how to collect data on sex and gender identity. Sullivan recommended that:

“Data on sex should be collected by default in all research and data collection commissioned by government and quasi-governmental organisations … The default target of any sex question should be sex (in other words, biological sex, natal sex, sex at birth). Questions which combine sex with gender identity, including gender identity as recognised by a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) have a mixed target”.


She also recommended that:

“The Home Secretary should issue a mandatory Annual Data Requirement (ADR) requiring the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales and the British Transport Police (BTP) to record data on sex in all relevant administrative systems. Relatedly, police forces should cease the practice of allowing changes to be made to individual sex markers on the Police National Computer (PNC)”.


This is about public trust. That is why my noble friend is quite right to refer to the situation of Police Scotland, which in November 2025 moved officially to record the biological sex of all suspects. The chief constable stated that it will ensure that

“by recording accurately biological sex, our crime data is accurate”.

The Scottish experience proves that it is possible to maintain a respect-based approach in person, using preferred pronouns in custody, while ensuring that the official record reflects the material facts needed for “statistical rigour”. The deputy chief constable of Police Scotland, Alan Speirs, confirmed that recent legal rulings provide the necessary clarity that “sex” in law refers to biology. This gives police the mandate to record it as such without infringing on the Human Rights Act or the Equality Act.

If police forces do the wrong thing on this, it can result in calamitous situations. I declare my interest as a member, at least for the next month, of the British Transport Police Authority. The British Transport Police, without any proper guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council or Ministers, decided unilaterally in autumn 2024 to launch a transitioning and non-binary search guidance policy, which meant that even individuals without a GRC were permitted to search anyone, including a woman, provided that the person doing the searching, for instance, said that they were a woman—even though they were a biological man.

That advice was quickly rescinded. I argued, as a member of the authority, that it was a disastrous mistake. It cost many thousands of tax pounds in legal fees that the force has had to pay as a result. The organisation Sex Matters launched a possible judicial review against that decision. It took the focus away from policing, front-line activities and operational efforts in order to engage in virtue signalling on the basis of the preferences of the chief constable and the senior officers at the British Transport Police. It did not do anything about the 11% clear-up rate for offences of violence against women and girls that, unfortunately, remains prevalent on the transport network in this country.

I cannot understand how any noble Lord, on the basis of tackling crime and the objective of having the data available to allocate resources properly, can realistically argue against the amendment because it has the background of the Sullivan review and Ministers’ acceptance of the Supreme Court ruling in 2025. On that basis, the Ministers should look benignly on the amendment, because it is not onerous and draconian; it is realistic, fact-based and based on empirical research. Therefore, it should be adopted because, if nothing else, it would greatly improve the efficacy of this largely important Bill, which we on this side support. It would mean that police officers could properly address the issues with the facts behind them, rather than the ideological absolutism that unfortunately marked much of the debate and the hostility to collecting data in the criminal justice system on the basis of gender identity rather than sex. It is a good amendment, and I hope that the Ministers will be able to support it.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not a great legal mind, I am afraid; I am not even a legal mind. Many people would argue that I am not a great mind either, so I have questions rather than a dictatorial philosophy.

The contrast between the original amendment and the one before us is quite revealing. “Biological” was taken out of the title, yet the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, said she thought that biological sex was a material fact, so why was it taken out of the heading?

There was a very interesting reference to the gender recognition certificates, which I took a little bit of comfort from. Then, in the amendment before us, that reference was deleted. My second question is: is the reference to “official documents” being “proffered” regarded as the substitute? I would be very grateful for that clarification.

Perhaps the noble Lord on the Front Bench could answer this in his summing up: what assurances can we have that anyone accused is not forced out, even if the particular allegation is not related to sex and sexuality? How can we avoid people having to come out against their will?

I am still not sure why this issue is regarded as so vital. I am sorry, but there seems to be a lack of proportionality about this whole debate in the massive challenges that our police forces have today. Is it really that vital? I am not terribly convinced about that. I have questions more than anything, but I feel there is some disproportionality on this whole subject.