Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

This amendment has just turned up here. It is for this House; it was not dealt with in the Commons. That is why we are debating it. It is a brand-new amendment. It is extensive—two or three pages.

I know I am a bit out of date, having been here so long since I left the other place, but the Commons will not have the chance to debate this amendment, simply because of the procedure for dealing with Lords amendments. So, while I agree in general with what my noble friend the Minister has brought forward, let us not kid ourselves. At the end of the day, the Commons has the last word on everything—but it does not have all the detailed words on everything. So, we have to be really careful in the way we scrutinise something that turns up here at the last minute and cannot be looked at again in the other place. If we start a Bill in this place, it is different, but we did not. We therefore have to be careful about what we are doing.

My other point is that, in general, I agree with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Young. I am not in favour of discrimination against anybody on any grounds whatsoever, but he raised the point, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that in general, the discrimination on misgendering is basically anti-women, because they will be the majority who might have the complaint. There is no question about that. Therefore, the issue should not be left nor criminalised. It may be that my noble friend the Minister has a perfectly straightforward answer. I certainly hope he has, because although I do not propose to vote for any of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Young, he has raised a very fair point. Again, there will be no chance to discuss this in the Commons, so we need to have a bit more of the detail here in this House.

[Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a paid adviser to the Metropolitan Police. My understanding is that the Government’s amendments simply create a legal level playing field, with deterrents currently available on the grounds of race and religion being extended to other protected characteristics. It is far more serious if you are targeted for attack because you are a member of a vulnerable group than if you are attacked at random, and the law should reflect that.

There has been debate today about free speech and non-crime hate incidents, but these provisions are about actual crimes targeted at vulnerable people. I completely agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and those of the Minister.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the way he introduced these amendments. As he said, this is a government manifesto commitment, and it was evident in the pride with which he moved this amendment. However, I agree with concern raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and others—that it is regrettable that we are seeing the drafting of this provision at this late stage in this House. We have had long debates on the principle as the Bill has gone through, but in this particularly vexed area of the law, the devil really is in the detail, so it is regrettable that we are coming to it fairly late.

In his introduction, the Minister said with clear passion that he wants to level up the protections afforded to people under the law when it comes to hate crime. My concerns are slightly different from some that have been expressed so far in the paused debate: that this amendment as drafted in fact treats some groups of people differently from others and leaves a bit of levelling up still to do.

In part, that is because of the slightly uneasy settlement that we have because of the Equality Act 2010, which, as a Bill, went through Parliament in wash-up. I think it is ripe for a bit of post-legislative scrutiny; it is often prayed in aid in all directions without people fully understanding it. It used to be a bugbear of mine in government when people came to me with a submission talking about people with protected characteristics. I would say, “But that’s everybody”—anyone with an age, a race or a sex has protected characteristics. There is no such person as a person with no protected characteristics. But the way the Equality Act 2010 describes and applies them is not wholly equal, and when it comes to this area of the law, that causes some problems.

We all have a sexual orientation. Section 12 of the Equality Act defines that for us. We may choose different terms ourselves, but it tells us that we are attracted to “the opposite sex”, “the same sex” or members “of either sex”. Accordingly, that is reflected in the amendments that the Government have brought forward vis-à-vis hate crime and hostility on the basis of sexual orientation.

We all have a race or a religion. Again, the descriptions in proposed new subsection (6) talk about

“references to a racial group”,

which could apply to Black people, white people, Asian people, Welsh people—everybody is covered by that provision. In proposed new subsection (6)(b), the

“references to a religious group”

talk explicitly of a “lack of religious belief”. It does not matter whether you are an adherent to a certain religion, you are covered by that. The difficulty in this area comes when we start to apply it to disability or to people’s gender reassignment status, and that is where we start to see the problem in the descriptions in the government amendment. Proposed new subsection (3)(b) talks about

“hostility towards persons who have a disability or … hostility towards persons who are transgender”.

Does that mean that an offence committed against somebody on the basis that they are, for instance, deaf, could be treated as an aggravated offence, but that an offence committed against somebody on the basis that they were a hearing person could not be? I would be grateful if the Minister could explain whether that is the case and whether that is really what the Government are seeking to achieve here.

Similarly, when proposed new subsection 3(b)(v) specifies

“hostility towards persons who are transgender”,

and we have seen many horrible examples of crimes that are aggravated on that basis, does that mean that an offence committed against somebody on the basis that they are transgender, or presumed to be so, could be treated as aggravated, but an offence committed against somebody on the basis that they are cisgender—that they are not transgender—could not be? Again, it would be useful to have the clarification.

I am aware that both of those examples are less numerous and, arguably, far less likely to occur, but they are not implausible, and they should not be neglected by laws that we pass in the name of equality. I know this is a difficult area of the law when it comes to drafting—I think that lies behind some of the delay that the Government have had in bringing forward this amendment—but surely it would be possible to avoid these lacunae by stating, for instance, “a disability or lack of disability” or “a person who is transgender or who is not”. Surely that would allow this to be applied in other ways.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to clarify or come back on a couple of things.

[Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)]

It is not allowed on Report. You are allowed to ask a question.