Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Katz and Baroness Brinton

Report stage
Monday 2nd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I have just had a look to see whether I can find any data on the number of stalking protection orders issued to those under 18, and the answer is that they are not disaggregated. The Minister is drawing this great distinction about those aged between 10 and 17. We have just had a debate on another matter where we think there is a very small number involved. It would be useful to know if we could have some help from the Minister on the likelihood of numbers.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

It may not entirely surprise the noble Baroness that I do not have that data or the awareness of what we can do with the data to hand, but I am certainly happy to undertake to write to her with as much detail as we can summon.

I hope that my noble friend will be content not to move her Amendment 313A and, with other noble Lords, will support the government amendments in this group.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Katz and Baroness Brinton

Report stage
Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for taking part in this debate. I start with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—and I start by welcoming her genuine recognition of the progress that we are making through this legislation by introducing the new child criminal exploitation and cuckooing offences in this Bill. We are grateful for that. As she explained, her Amendments 195 to 197 seek to restrict those who commit the cuckooing and internal concealment offences to those aged 18 or over.

The Government fully recognise that children, particularly those exploited by county lines gangs, are often used to carry out cuckooing activity or to persuade others to internally conceal items such as drugs for a criminal purpose. The act of turning these children into exploiters themselves is particularly appalling and is why this Government’s work to target child criminal exploitation is so important. I think that everyone across your Lordships’ House recognises that. While I appreciate the spirit of these amendments and believe that it is absolutely right that children, when they have been exploited and groomed into criminality, should be protected as victims, this does not in itself override the age of criminal responsibility, where the law holds children over a certain age responsible for their actions. It is possible for a child to commit cuckooing or internal concealment without having been exploited to do so.

Let us be clear that decisions as to whether to charge someone should be taken on a case-by-case basis. As with all offences, the police exercise operational judgment when investigating and gathering evidence to establish the facts of a case, and the Crown Prosecution Service’s public interest test will of course apply. This includes consideration of the child’s culpability and whether they have been compelled, coerced or exploited to commit any potential crime of cuckooing or internal concealment. We will also issue statutory guidance to support implementation of the cuckooing and internal concealment offences, including on how the police should respond and identify exploitation when children are found in connection with cuckooing or internal concealment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, posed the question why we are not creating a statutory defence for children against their prosecution for crimes, including cuckooing and internal concealment, committed as a result of effectively being a victim of child criminal exploitation. When a victim of proposed child criminal exploitation offences also meets the definition of a victim of modern slavery, they may retain access to the statutory defence contained in Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. Many victims of CCE will continue to be able to access the Section 45 defence, as they do now. However, we consider that creating an additional stand-alone statutory defence for victims of child criminal exploitation beyond that which already exists in Section 45 of the 2015 Act for victims who are also victims of modern slavery and/or human trafficking could have unintended consequences, given the breadth of the proposed offence. The child criminal exploitation offence is to address the imbalance between children and those individuals who criminally exploit them.

I add that we are working with partners in the criminal justice system to improve awareness and understanding of the Section 45 defence, which will support the early identification of potential victims of modern slavery and prevent criminal proceedings being brought against victims. It is intended that guidance on the potential availability of the Section 45 defence under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 for victims of child criminal exploitation will be included in the statutory guidance that will accompany the new offence.

I turn to Amendment 198. We similarly sympathise with the intention behind the amendment to introduce statutory guidance for multi-agency partners. It is essential that agencies work together to safeguard and protect children and vulnerable adults from criminal exploitation. However, statutory safeguarding responsibilities are already set out in statutory guidance, principally in Working Together to Safeguard Children, which includes guidance on child criminal exploitation. To supplement this, we will issue non-statutory guidance for partner agencies on the child criminal exploitation offence and orders and on cuckooing and internal concealment to support them to identify these harms and recognise how their statutory responsibilities apply. Issuing separate statutory guidance with additional legal burdens for safeguarding partners on these specific crime types alone risks duplication and a siloed approach to protecting children and vulnerable adults—something that I am sure we would all wish to avoid happening.

More broadly, the Government are taking a range of actions to strengthen child protection through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will introduce new multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority in England. This will ensure stronger join-up between police, health, education and children’s social care when responding to harms such as child criminal exploitation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned stalking offences, which are committed mainly against adults, so it is appropriate to have bespoke guidance. Here we are talking about safeguarding children where the DfE guidance will apply, so it is appropriate that we take this approach, given the range of agencies involved for children. I hope that, given those assurances, the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I said in my contribution that I hoped that the agencies might extend beyond the usual ones, and the Minister certainly named the usual ones. Would it, for example, include working with the local gangmaster operations as well?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I will not speculate. I suspect that would be the case, but I had probably best undertake to write to the noble Baroness to confirm that detail.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Katz and Baroness Brinton

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise, but the noble Baroness has just said that she was not in her place at the start of the group. Really, she should not be speaking to the group if she was not in her place. That is the usual convention and courtesy of the House and is set out in the Companion as well.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, Amendments 472 and 473 from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, add a series of small but vital issues that would ensure that the UK can play its part in holding to account perpetrators of the most serious international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Above all, these amendments would give victims and their families the opportunity to achieve the justice that they deserve. I thank the British Institute of Human Rights, Genocide Response and Redress for their very helpful briefing.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the signatories to his amendments have set out in detail the legal reasons why the current laws in relation to these international crimes need to have certain loopholes closed ,and other noble Lords have spoken to them as well.

As chair of human rights at Liberal International, I attend the annual Geneva summit on human rights. Last February, I met people who had fled from Sudan, Iran, Cuba, Russia and Tibet, and Uyghurs from China, who had been on the receiving end of the most appalling crimes, from genocide to crimes against humanity, including torture and war crimes. All of them look to countries such as the United Kingdom to uphold the standards of universal jurisdiction. Sadly, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, we do not do that fully and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, put it, we need to share the burden.

By not being prepared to empower our courts to act where alleged perpetrators of international crimes are present in the UK, we let people down. Without the changes proposed in Amendments 472 and 473, the British courts lack jurisdiction over alleged perpetrators of international crimes—including leaders of the Iranian regime who may travel to the UK for medical treatment, despite there being credible allegations of their involvement in international crimes against humanity, and the alleged perpetrators of genocide in Darfur—because the alleged conduct falls under the Rome statute crimes but does not trigger universal jurisdiction under UK law.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Katz and Baroness Brinton

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I do not have details of the contract in front of me. I am, of course, aware that there could be commercially confidential issues at play which might prevent the level of disclosure that she wants, but, in the spirit of trying to be helpful, I will certainly go away, take it back and write to the noble Baroness if I can.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very sorry. I am recalling the passage of the Procurement Act, where we discussed at some considerable length what contract could and could not be kept from the public. The detail can be confidential, but the fact of the contract and who it is let to should surely be part of the public domain—it should be on websites.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I will certainly defer to the noble Baroness’s knowledge of the Procurement Bill because I think it went through the House before I was in the House. I am happy to share what detail that we can under the details of that Act. I hope that that satisfies the noble Baroness.

I will also go away and look at the issue of capital funding. I am afraid I do not have the figures in front of me, but of course it is important that we fund all these systems adequately. We would contend that, unfortunately, for the past 14 years some of the investment in policing that we would have liked to see has been lacking, and we have been very clear about our wider approach as a Government to investing, particularly in neighbourhood policing but in policing at all levels. We want to improve on recent experience.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Katz and Baroness Brinton

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 415 from the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, which seeks to introduce a new safeguard for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 regarding the potential future use of digital identification by law enforcement. I too am grateful for his explanation about the single identifier. I remind your Lordships that there were a number of amendments in some Home Office Bills about three years ago when the Home Office was trying to get access to DVLA data and, indeed, to personal medical data for anyone who might have been present at the scene of a possible crime—not the victim or the possible perpetrator, but anyone who was literally just present. I am glad that, in opposition, his party has decided to change its approach on this. It is very welcome.

I also echo the good news that the amendment is, I hope, fully redundant because of the Government’s announcement, but I look forward to making sure that some of the very minor concerns being expressed are recognised by the Government.

This amendment would provide the protection to individuals, should the Government introduce a digital identity document scheme, that a constable would be expressly prohibited from requiring a person to produce such a document on request or asking for it to be produced for inspection. Crucially, it would also prevent the police using

“any information contained within, or obtained from, a digital identity card for the purposes of investigating a criminal offence”.

That echoes the amendments that our Benches tabled to earlier Home Office Bills.

We on these Benches are fundamentally opposed to any form of compulsory digital ID. We must ensure that a digital identity scheme does not become a tool for “papers, please” policing in a digital format. As organisations such as Big Brother Watch have warned, the expansion of digital identification, such as the proposed access to the DVLA database for facial recognition, risks creating a huge and disproportionate surveillance power that, in effect, places the majority of law-abiding citizens in a permanent digital police line-up without their consent. Can the Minister confirm that it is the case that surveillance will not be used?

The Government have previously suggested that digital ID could serve as an alternative form of ID for specific purposes such as age verification for online sales. However, without the explicit prohibition contained in Amendment 415, there is a significant risk of mission creep. If we allow the police routinely to use digital ID as part of their investigative toolkit, we fundamentally shift the relationship between the individual and the state. This amendment is not about obstructing modern policing; it is about ensuring that privacy rights and civil liberties remain the default. We must codify these protections now to ensure that any future digital identity framework cannot be weaponised into a widespread surveillance system.

From these Benches we are glad about the Government U-turn, but we need more detail to ensure that those protections remain. It is for Parliament and not for operational police discretion to set the boundaries for how the state identifies its citizens. I urge the Committee to support this amendment and hope that the Ministers will give us an encouragement that it is not needed.

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

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for setting out the case for Amendment 415. He says a week is a long time in politics, but I am going to take him all the way back to the announcement on 26 September from the Prime Minister that the Government were intending to introduce a national digital ID scheme for all British and Irish citizens and those with permission to be in the United Kingdom.

The national digital ID will empower people in their lives and their interactions with the state. It will make it easier to access public services, cut back on bureaucratic processes and support fairness across society. The national digital ID scheme will be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny in due course. In the short term, we will examine options for appropriate oversight and safeguards of the digital ID, with a public consultation set to launch soon.

As has already been said publicly, the digital ID will not be required when a person is stopped by the police using stop and search powers. This was picked up in this debate and the debate on the previous amendment by, among others, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It will not be mandatory for those eligible to obtain the digital ID and, as such, there will be no penalty for not having one.

Law enforcement use of data is governed by Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018. This places a range of obligations on law enforcement, including requirements that law enforcement processing of data must be necessary and proportionate, for a specific purpose and not excessive. All three noble Baronesses who spoke raised concerns over a move towards a surveillance state—certainly, that was the theme of the speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. To be clear, the new digital ID will not be used for mass surveillance of the population and will be designed in accordance with high standards of security and privacy. We will ensure safeguards are in place to make sure that any access to data is both necessary and proportionate.

As I said, the public consultation will be launched in the coming weeks. This will ensure that any legislation includes appropriate safeguards. I am sure that, without much prompting, my noble friend and the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Fox of Buckley, will be first in the queue to contribute to that public consultation.