Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

On Amendments 288A, 288B, 288C and 288D, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, when she emailed me about them a couple of days ago, I pointed out that other amendments had already been laid to cover most of the issues about which she was concerned—for example, Amendment 231A from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, who spoke to this only today. There is also Amendment 283 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Featherstone in group 8, which we will come to later. So I hope noble Lords will agree that—in my quite long experience in your Lordships’ House—one is much more likely to get something through this House if one works as a team, often cross-party, which I am sure she is trying to do. I wonder whether the noble Baroness would like to withdraw her amendments and sign those already laid that cover the issues about which she is concerned.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly perhaps to defend the noble Baroness, Lady Cash. Quite often in your Lordships’ House, we end up with amendments that are remarkably similar, and it appears to be a trait among some of your Lordships to consider working in co-operation with others systematically a somewhat eccentric behaviour. I personally feel that it should be encouraged.

What I wanted to say is the obvious: data is king. The situation that we have allowed to evolve over the last 20 or 30 years has been allowed to happen because of a dearth of reliable and systematic collection and utilisation of data. We have allowed what has been happening—largely to these young girls, in plain sight—because we have lacked the detail and the nitty-gritty information required to nail it. In a long career in business, the thing one disliked most was awaydays when you talked about strategy, when a large number of people would devote an enormous amount of hot air to talking about this, that or the other, usually in a slightly vague way. The thing that nails that sort of debate is reliable and accurate data. It deflates the rather pompous balloon who is spouting out, apparently knowledgeably but actually probably repeating what somebody else has said—it deflates that remarkably quickly.

Very simply, we need to follow the fourth recommendation of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, in her report. It is in bold and it is very brief, but it is extremely clear:

“The government should make mandatory the collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse and criminal exploitation cases and work with the police to improve the collection of ethnicity data for victims”.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, it has been five months since the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, was published. I once again extend my thanks to her for her incredible work on this. The audit laid bare the systemic failures of local government, police leadership and safeguarding structures that allowed organised grooming gangs to operate in plain sight. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, found a culture of denial, a fear of being labelled racist, an unwillingness to confront uncomfortable truths and a catastrophic failure to treat vulnerable young girls as victims. Her review documented how institutions minimised, dismissed or actively ignored evidence of horrific abuse. Perhaps the most sobering lesson from this is that these were not isolated failings; they were structural, cultural and tragically repeated in town after town across the country.

The national audit produced 12 recommendations. To their credit, the Government have accepted all 12, some of which have found their way into the Bill. However, unfortunately, the first and second recommendations of the audit have so far been left behind. The first recommendation of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, was to change the law so that any adult who intentionally has sexual intercourse with a child under 16 receives a mandatory charge of rape. In their response to the audit, the Government said:

“Our laws must never provide protection for the adult abusers rather than the child victims of these despicable crimes. We share Baroness Casey’s view … and we accept the recommendation to change the law in this area”.


If the Government agreed with this recommendation and said that they will implement it, why have they not done so? The Bill provides the perfect opportunity for this change in the law. That is why my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie and I tabled Amendment 271B. It would provide for a new, distinct offence of child rape. This would operate alongside the current offence of the rape of a child under 13 in Section 5 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

In her audit, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, laid bare the loophole in the law. Currently, an adult who has sex with a child under the age of 13 is automatically guilty of rape, and this operates with strict liability. But, despite the age of consent being 16, when an adult has had sex with a child between the ages of 13 and 15, the decision to charge and which offence to charge with is left open to the Crown Prosecution Service. This has led to many cases of child sexual exploitation having the charges downgraded from rape to lesser charges, such as sexual activity with a child under Section 9 of the Sexual Offences Act. Not only is that offence not a charge of rape but it carries a maximum sentence of 14 years—not life, as in the case of an offence under Section 5. Our amendment would provide that, where a person over the age of 18 has penetrative sexual relations with a child between the ages of 13 and 15, they will be charged with the rape of a child in all cases and face a sentence of life imprisonment.

We have not included a so-called Romeo and Juliet provision in this amendment, because it applies only to those who are over 18. Children who are close in age and have consenting sexual relations would not be criminalised under the amendment. I want to make sure that that is clear.

Fundamentally, the law must be unambiguous on this matter. The penetration of a child is rape. It is not sexual activity; it is not exploitation; and it is not an unfortunate incident. It is rape. The Casey report describes girls as young as 13 being passed between adult men, yet institutional language frequently minimised the seriousness of what had occurred. Creating a specific offence would reinforce the fundamental point: children cannot consent to sex with adults—full stop. Given that the Government have accepted that this needs to happen, I hope that they will be able to accept my amendment.

The second recommendation from the national audit that the Government have failed to deliver is the national inquiry. Amendment 247B from my noble friend Lady Maclean of Redditch seeks to press the Government on what has become a chaotic process. I know we have discussed this on many occasions in this House, but the fact is that the inquiry is in disarray. Survivors have already resigned from the panel because they do not trust the Government. Those most impacted by the grooming gangs scandal have lost faith in the process that was meant to bring them long-overdue justice. Months on from the announcement, the Government were U-turning. The chair has not been appointed, the terms of reference have not been published and the inquiry has not begun. How much longer must the victims and survivors wait? My noble friend’s amendment would give the Government a timeline of three months, and there is no reason why they cannot live up to that.

My noble friend Lady Cash is a stalwart defender of the rights of children and young girls. She proposes two crucial amendments, which also link into the national audit on grooming gangs. Amendment 288A would complement the duty to report in Clause 72 of the Bill. It would establish a duty on professionals with safeguarding responsibilities to report where they know or reasonably believe that a child is being sexually abused or exploited. That would fill a long-identified and long-criticised gap. If this scandal has showed us anything, it is that vulnerable young girls were let down by the very people who were supposed to protect them. Institutions sometimes waited for absolute proof before acting, and children paid the price for that inaction.

Amendment 288B creates a new offence targeted at public officials who obstruct or frustrate investigations into child sexual abuse. This is not hypothetical. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, found that public officials failed to record offences, failed to transmit intelligence and, in some cases, deliberately closed down avenues of inquiry. There must be consequences for such conduct. The noble Baroness was explicit that the fear of being accused of racism contributed to the reluctance of authorities to confront organised grooming gangs. More importantly, she also acknowledged that it remains impossible to provide a definitive assessment of the ethnic profile of the perpetrators, because the data collected by police forces has been woeful. That poor-quality data is one of the factors that permitted officials and authorities to claim they could not conclude any link between ethnicity or nationality and the prevalence of grooming gangs.

The large number of perpetrators whose ethnicity was recorded as “unknown” in the statistics creates a highly distorting picture. Inclusion of the “unknowns” shows 28% of group-based offenders as white, but exclusion of the “unknowns” shows 88% being white. This is obviously not the way to create datasets that could be used for accurate police intelligence and rigorous policy-making. Even today, we still have people trying to deny the fact that the vast majority of perpetrators in these grooming gangs were Pakistani, despite the evidence; they are able to continue this route because of the poor-quality data.

Because of this completely and shockingly inadequate collection of data, I strongly support this amendment from my noble friend Lady Cash. Her Amendments 288C and 288D compel the collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all child sexual offenders and victims. Consistent nationwide data gives us truth, and truth is the basis of action. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Blencathra for his series of amendments. They probe the definitions of child sexual assault and rape, and also impose a statutory duty to investigate historic instances of child sexual abuse where the lawful authority has been negligent. I hope that the Government will consider these amendments with the seriousness they deserve.

These amendments together form a coherent, serious and necessary set of reforms that respond directly to the failures highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and some of her solutions. The victims of grooming gangs were failed by the state. They were failed by those whose duty was to protect them, and they were failed by institutions that put political sensitivities above child safety.

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[Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but I will speak to Amendments 479 and 480 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I declare my interest as a guest of Google at their Future Forum, an AI policy conference.

These amendments are vital to ascertain the Government’s position on AI chatbots and where they stand in relation to the Online Safety Act, but I have to question how we can have been in a state of ambiguity for so long. We are very close to ChatGPT rolling out erotica on its platform for verified adults. Six months ago, the Wall Street Journal highlighted the deeply disturbing issue of digital companion bots engaging in sexual chat with users, which told them they were underage. Further, they willingly played out scenarios such as “submissive schoolgirl”. Another bot purporting to be a 12 year-old boy promised that it would not tell its parents about dating a user identifying himself as an adult man. Professor Clare McGlynn KC has already raised concerns about what she has coined chatbot-driven VAWG, the tech itself being designed to be sexually suggestive and to engage in grooming and coercive behaviours. Internet Matters found that 64 % of children use chatbots. The number of companion apps has rapidly developed and researchers at Bournemouth University are already warning about the addictive potential of these services.

The Government and the regulator cannot afford to be slow in clarifying the position of these services. It begs a wider question of how we can be much more agile in our response and continually horizon-scan, as legislation will always struggle to keep pace with the evolution of technology. This is the harm we are talking about now, but how will it evolve tomorrow? Where will we be next month or next year? It is vital that both the Government and the regulator become more agile and respond at pace. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the noble Baroness’s amendments.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak very briefly. Earlier—I suppose it was this morning—we talked about child criminal exploitation at some length, thanks particularly to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and Professor Jay. Essentially, what we are talking about in this group of amendments is child commercial exploitation. All these engines, all these technologies, are there for a commercial purpose. They have investors who are expecting a return and, to maximise the return, these technologies are designed to drive traffic, to drive addiction, and they do it very successfully. We are way behind the curve—we really are.

I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said about the body of knowledge within Parliament, in both Houses, that was very involved in the passage of the Online Safety Act. There is a very high level of concern, in both Houses, that we were perhaps too ambitious in assuming that a regulator that had not previously had any responsibilities in this area would be able to live up to the expectations held, and indeed some of the promises made, by the Government during the passage of that Act. I think we need to face up to that: we need to accept that we have not got it off to as good a start as we wanted and hoped, and that what is happening now is that the technologies we have been hearing about are racing ahead so quickly that we are finding it hard to catch up. Indeed, looking at the body language and the physiognomies of your Lordships in the Chamber, looking at the expressions on our faces as some of what we were talking about is being described, if it is having that effect on us, imagine what effect it is having on the children who in many cases are the subjects of these technologies.

I plead with the Minister to work very closely with his new ministerial colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, and DSIT. We really need to get our act together and focus; otherwise, we will have repeats of these sorts of discussions where we raise issues that are happening at an increasing pace, not just here but all around the world. I fear that we are going to be holding our hands up, saying “We’re doing our best and we’re trying to catch up”, but that is not good enough. It is not good enough for my granddaughter and not good enough for the extended families of everybody here in this Chamber. We really have to get our act together and work together to try to catch up.

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I too support the amendments in this group, particularly those tabled by my noble friend Lord Nash on security software and by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on AI-generated child sexual abuse material. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Royal Society for Public Health.

As others have noted, the Online Safety Act was a landmark achievement and, in many ways, something to be celebrated, but technology has not stood still—we said it at the time—and nor can our laws. It is important that we revisit it in examining this legislation, because generative AI presents such an egregious risk to our children which was barely imaginable even two years ago when we were discussing that Act. These amendments would ensure that our regulatory architecture keeps pace.

Amendment 266 on AI CSAM risk assessment is crucial. It addresses a simple but profound question: should the provider of a generative AI service be required to assess whether that service could be used to create or facilitate child sexual abuse material? Surely the answer is yes. This is not a theoretical risk, as we have heard in testimony from many noble Lords. We know that AI can generate vivid images, optimised on a dataset scraped from children themselves on the open internet, and that can be prompted to create CSAM-like content. On this, there is no ambiguity at all. We know that chatbots trained on the vast corpora of text from children can be manipulated to generate grooming scripts and sexualised narratives to engage children and make them semi-addicted to those conversations. We know that these tools are increasingly accessible, easy to use and almost impossible to monitor by parents and, it seems, regulators.

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I agree with the noble Baroness in seeking to prevent abhorrent activity. Child sexual exploitation and abuse is an atrocious crime. The Government have acted and will continue to act to bring perpetrators to justice and keep our children safe. While I appreciate the intention behind the amendment, for the reasons I have set out, I hope that she will reflect on what I have said and not push the amendment further at this stage. I have already outlined that we have and will be implementing legislation and regulation to tackle these risks. I will leave the noble Baroness to reflect upon that in due course.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

If it is beyond the remit of the National Crime Agency and Ofcom to do anything about this, perhaps the Minister will tell us who is going to take responsibility and actually enforce what the noble Baroness is trying to persuade the Government to do in the amendment.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

All chatbots are regulated under the Online Safety Act. If there is harmful or illegal content or advice in relation to children, it is up to Ofcom to take action on those matters. Many of these issues are for DSIT Ministers and Ofcom. I am a Home Office Minister. The noble Baroness has requested a meeting and I will put that to my DSIT ministerial colleagues. I hope they will be able to meet her to reflect upon these issues. Although I am answering for the Bill today, some of these issues are DSIT matters, and it is important that she has an opportunity to raise them with DSIT.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I absolutely congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Silvertown, on her excellently motivated amendment. It is very thought provoking. In particular, this sentence caught my attention:

“The victim may have been criminally exploited even if the activity appears consensual”.


That is one of the most difficult challenges. For some years I have been involved in the grooming gangs scandal, and one of the most horrible parts of that was when the police took the decision that the young 14 or 15 year-old, precocious though she—a general “she”—may have been, was somehow actively consenting to her own rape or sexual exploitation. It was about the notion of this being a child, because the young girl may have looked more adult—it was literally as superficial as that—and about the type, if we are honest, in class terms. Therefore, it was said that she could not be a victim and she was accused of being a prostitute, and so on. We are familiar with that. That is the reason why that sentence stood out to me.

However, I have some qualms, and I want to ask genuinely what we do about those qualms, because I do not know where to go. I am slightly worried, because county lines gangs, as the noble Baroness will know, are a young men’s game. Some of the gang leaders are younger than one would ever want to imagine in your worst nightmare. That is a problem with this, in a way, and with how you work it out. If you have a general rule that this is always a child, how do you deal with the culpability and responsibility of a 17 year-old thug, not to put too fine a point on it, who is exploiting younger people or even his—and it is generally “his”—peers? I am not sure how to square that with what I have just said. It also seems that there is a major clash with the age of criminal responsibility. I am very sympathetic with that not being 10, but how do you deal with the belief that someone aged under 18 is a child, yet we say that a child has criminal responsibility? Perhaps I am just misunderstanding something.

My final reservation is that if we say that everybody under 18 has to be a victim all the time, would that be a legal loophole that would get people off when there was some guilt for them to be held to account for? I generally support this amendment, but I want some clarification on how to muddle my way through those moral thickets, if possible.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Baroness on how she moved the amendment. It is very nice to see a Government Back-Bencher introducing an amendment and taking part; I wish we had slightly more of it.

To bring one back to Professor Jay’s review of child criminal exploitation, she made several important recommendations, of which the first and arguably most important is at the heart of what we are talking about at the moment. She called for a single, cohesive legal code for children exploited into criminal activity, and detailed what that needed to contain. The noble Baroness’s amendment goes to the heart of that matter. Having well-meaning explanations put into advice or regulation is not enough. There needs not only to be a common understanding across all government departments and agencies involved in dealing with these children and gangs; it needs to be completely clear for the police in particular, who are clearly looking into the criminal activity, exactly what it is and what it is not.

With the next amendment, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and I shall speak, we will talk about ways in which a child who is both a victim and perpetrator can be defended—but we will discuss that in the next group. As for this group, I think that I probably speak for all noble Lords who are concerned about this issue in saying that absolute clarity about the definition, so there is no argument about it whatever, would be a giant step forward. The best-meaning attempts to deal with child criminal exploitation over the past decade have been hindered severely by the lack of consistency.

I ask the Government to listen very carefully to what the noble Baroness has asked for. She has said clearly that her wording may not be perfect—I think that in many Bills the wording is not necessarily perfect, even in the final Act—but we have a chance to get this right. I look forward to what the Minister says in response.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I appreciate my noble friend’s comments. If she will bear with me, I will come on to that point in a moment. I am doing this in a structured order to try to address the points that are before the Committee today.

I say to my noble friend Lady Brown that, within the Bill, we are also taking the power to issue statutory guidance to chief officers. The noble Earl, Lord Russell of Liverpool, and my noble friend have looked at that, and I will return to it in a moment. The guidance will include a descriptive definition of CCE, setting out in lay person’s terms the conduct captured by the offence, and will provide practical guidance on how the CCE offence and orders should be applied.

An important point, to go particularly to what the noble Earl, Lord Russell of Liverpool, said, is that in Clause 60—which we will come to in later considerations—the Secretary of State has power to issue statutory guidance to chief officers of police about the exercise of their functions in connection with the prevention, detection and investigation of CCE offences and CCE prevention orders. I hope that the Committee will recognise that, importantly, the relevant police officers will be under a legal duty to have due regard to that statutory guidance when exercising functions in relation to the CCE offences and the CCE prevention orders. On the question of the statutory guidance, which my noble friend and others have touched on, the guidance has not been issued yet because the relevant legislation has not yet received the consent of this House or indeed Royal Assent. On the applicability of both of those conditions, statutory guidance under Clause 60 will be issued, which will place a legal duty on police officers to adhere to it.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti mentioned a very important point. There is a clear difference in what my noble friend Lady Brown of Silvertown has put forward, supported by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. I hope this helps: the forms of conduct that are likely to enable a child to commit criminality are expected in most cases to also meet the test of conduct by an adult intended to cause, or facilitate the causing of, a child to commit a future crime. The nature of the offence, which is broad and large, will ensure that it captures offenders who will use children for crime. I believe that that is the right format. Both my noble friends have said that “enable” is a critical word. I believe that a separate definition is unnecessary, as it would have no legal impact over and above what is already in the Bill. It could cause confusion among police and prosecutors about which definition they should be applying.

The statutory guidance, which I emphasise will gave a legal bass and will be issued under Clause 60, is the appropriate place to provide the extra detail to understand proposals that are covered by the amendment, but which are already in scope of the clear and simple legal terms of Clause 40. I know that that is the defence that my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti expected me to use, but it is the defence: Clause 40 is what it is, and the guidance will also be statutory.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

While statutory guidance is welcome, this particular case has similarities to other areas of the criminal law where the motivations and behaviours are complex, such as stalking and various areas of domestic abuse. In every case where regulation has been put in such a way that it becomes statutory, unless that goes hand in hand with appropriate and quite intensive training, you can have as many regulations as you like, as legally watertight as you like, but if the officials who are charged with implementing it do not understand the complexity that they are dealing with and cannot define and understand exactly how to apply the regulations, you are going to have confusion. We have a lot of history of that not happening. Good intentions are one thing; what actually happens when you put it out there and expect that everybody will understand and comply with it is another, and that is a concern that a lot of us have.

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I hope that the Government will seriously consider the introduction of a CEPO, which would represent a positive step towards safeguarding children from the devastating effects of criminal exploitation. It is a very worthwhile proposed new clause.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was very happy to add my name, alongside that of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, to this amendment. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who indicated that he wanted to speak before me. He has done sterling service by saying a great deal of what I was going to say, so I will not bore your Lordships with that.

I have one or two confessions. On Methodism, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, that I come from several generations of Methodist ministers—the Reverends MacDonald—one of whom was one of John Wesley’s original disciples. At some point, my family slightly lost the plot and became lapsed Anglicans, like I suspect a lot of your Lordships.

If the Minister is kind enough to mention me again in his response, in promoting me to an Earl, he is doing a disservice to the direct descendant of Lord John Russell, an ex-Prime Minister. I call in evidence a letter that my grandfather and the grandfather of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, wrote to the editor of the Times in 1961, saying: “Dear Sir, we would like to point out that neither of us is the other. Yours, Russell, Russell of Liverpool”. I had to say the same thing to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, when she also inadvertently promoted me.

I again point out that this proposed new clause has the absolute support of Professor Jay, who has looked into this issue in more detail than any of the rest of us. I am a great believer that, when trying to argue the case for something, we should not talk about it in abstract or general terms but try to personalise it by talking about a real-life case which perhaps indicates the virtue of having an order such as this. Therefore, I will give a real-life example from the work done by Action for Children.

There is a 16 year-old young man with ADHD who is experiencing significant criminal exploitation, including daily cannabis use, coercion through drug debt and regular threats of violence. His engagement with support services, unsurprisingly, is somewhat inconsistent and is often influenced by the level of control and threats of violence exerted by the exploiters. The police have already made him subject to a youth referral order for drug and weapon offences, but law enforcement has deprioritised his case due to a perceived lack of co-operation. In the circumstances the young man finds himself in, a lack of co-operation with law enforcement is perhaps somewhat understandable. Recent incidents that have occurred to this young man include a violent attack on his home by individuals linked to his exploitation. One of his perpetrators is housed in the same residential block of flats as him, which must be somewhat unpleasant. The young person remains fearful for his and his mother’s safety, but he is unwilling to disclose information, which currently limits statutory intervention options.

If we had this order, it would enable the authorities to protect that young man and his mother by stopping him from contacting certain people. Following what the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said, it would mandate him turning up to appointments with support services. It would restrict and monitor his movements to create a distance from the exploiters. In the case of serious threat of harm, or in an instance where a perpetrator is living almost next door, it would also give the authorities the ability to provide alternative accommodation to protect that young person and his family.

For all those reasons, I wish and hope that the Minister and his department will look at this very carefully. A relatively small percentage of child victims and perpetrators may be involved, but to protect them in the way we have described would be effective, proportionate and worth while.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I chair a commission on forced marriage. One of the most useful things that the Labour Government did in 2007 was create a forced marriage protection order. That was intended to deal with the perpetrators rather than the victims. However, having listened to the speeches so far, I realised that I had not thought of protection orders being for the victim rather than to prevent the victim being dealt with.

It is an admirable scheme. I was much touched by the story that the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, gave to us. One thing that would make it most useful is to deal with parents. My experience is not so much in this area, but when I was a family judge, one of the problems, particularly in care cases, was the inability of the parents to manage their children. Very often, the children were very well meaning, but they absolutely would not do what their parents said. Is anybody who is a parent surprised? As a grandparent, I am even less surprised by the fact that children, if they are told to do something by a parent, will not do it—just out of bloody-mindedness, apart from anything else.

This would offer a genuine ability to look after a child who is being exploited and is extremely vulnerable, but whose parents, trying as hard as they can, cannot manage him or her. This would give them the power, apart from the authorities, to do something useful—and useful not just for the child but for the state.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Russell of Liverpool]

27: Clause 6, page 12, line 18, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 104 (review of response to complaints about anti-social behaviour), after subsection (1) insert—“(1A) Where a person has made at least three qualifying complaints about the anti-social behaviour and irrespective of whether the person applies for an ASB case review, the police must undertake an impact assessment which determines whether—(a) the alleged behaviour exceeds the threshold of criminality, irrespective of whether the police intend to pursue criminal charges, and(b) the level of harm inflicted on the person is low, medium, or high.(1B) Following an impact assessment under subsection (1A), where the threshold for criminality has been met or exceeded and the level of harm is assessed as medium or high, the police must refer the person to local victim support services, pursuant to the Victim Code of Practice.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires police officers to undertake an anti-social behaviour impact assessment when a victim meets the trigger point for an Anti-Social Behaviour Case Review, so that those who are assessed as having experienced medium to high levels of harm can receive appropriate support.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hampton for putting his name to these five amendments, which seek to ensure that victims of persistent anti-social behaviour are swiftly identified, protected from further harm and, above all, given the opportunity to have their voices heard. These amendments have the full support of the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales.

Although the Bill forms part of the Government’s very welcome determination to crack down on anti-social behaviour, it fails to address some of the underlying issues victims currently face and risks maintaining the status quo, leaving many victims without meaningful recourse and allowing harm to persist. So the status quo, in effect, does not bring about the degree of change called for by the Victims’ Commissioner herself and by HMICFRS in its October 2024 report, just 12 months ago, called The Policing Response to Antisocial Behaviour.

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

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for his amendments. I also thank the Victims’ Commissioner, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, both on the amendments and for her work on this issue over many years. I am also grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Stedman-Scott and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for the comments on this area from the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Clement-Jones, and to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, from His Majesty’s Opposition.

Amendment 27 aims to ensure that all victims of repeat anti-social behaviour are subject to an impact assessment, even where the individual has not requested a case review to be undertaken. The Government believe that there is a more effective response to this issue, in that we can ensure that victims are aware of their rights to request a case review. That has been included in updated statutory guidance for front-line staff, which we published in September. The proposals in the amendment would significantly increase the resources required to review anti-social behaviour incidents. The wording of the amendment would mean that even in cases where the victim is satisfied with the response, the police would be required to conduct an impact assessment.

The noble Lord, Lord Russell, has approached this by saying he wishes to work with the Government to look at this. I am happy to have further dialogue with him and the responsible policy Minister in the Home Office post Committee. We can return to it then and examine the nuances. I hope that my initial comments give him a flavour of where the Government currently are.

Amendments 28, 29 and 31 look at the anti-social behaviour case review process and mandate the requirement for there to be an independent chair, for victims to be invited to attend their case review, and to reduce the ability for authorities to add additional caveats that reduce the victim’s abilities to request a case review. I am pleased to say—I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, will accept this and the way that I put it to him—that we have recently updated the statutory guidance to front-line professionals, which already reflects the proposals he has put to the Committee today. I believe that this will create the impact that his amendments intend to bring while still allowing for greater flexibility for circumstances to be treated on an individual basis. Again, if the noble Lord would like further information on the statutory guidance, I am happy to provide that to him and to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, but we think that it meets the objectives of Amendments 28, 29 and 31.

Amendment 30 seeks to require relevant bodies involved in case reviews to publish details on why they have determined that the statutory threshold for a case review was not met. Under existing legislation, it is already a requirement for the relevant bodies to publish the number of times they decided that the review threshold was not met. I highlight to the noble Lord that, through Clause 7, the Government are introducing further requirements for local agencies to report information about anti-social behaviour to the Government. That is for the purpose of us understanding how local agencies are using the powers and tools provided by the 2014 Act, including the question of case review.

If the noble Lord looks at Clause 6 in particular—it is buried in the depths of the undergrowth of Clause 6 but I assure him that it is there—he will see that there will be a new duty for police and crime commissioners to set up a route for victims to request a further review where dissatisfied with the outcome of their case review. This includes where the relevant bodies determined that the threshold was not met for the initial case review. I will give further explanation of Clause 6 when we reach it, but I hope that it meets the objectives that the noble Lord has set out in Amendment 30.

The recently updated guidance on case reviews address many of the same points as these amendments and I hope that it will have the opportunity to bed in. I am happy to send the noble Lord a copy of the guidance, if I am able to, and I assure him that we will monitor the effectiveness of that guidance in improving good practice. He has my commitment that, if necessary, we will revisit the issues again in the near future. Until then, I submit that it would be premature to legislate further on case reviews beyond the measures in the Bill. I hope that with those assurances, the invitation to further discussion and the offer of further information, the noble Lord would be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the tenor and content of what he just said. The devil is quite often in the detail, so I, with others, would be happy to sit down with him and try to make sure that we all understand it in the same way and are talking the same language.

I have concerns about guidance that is, in theory, flags up to people in a slightly different and slightly more lurid way what their rights are. In evidence, I would state the experience of the victims’ code, which has been around for a very long time. On numerous occasions, when officers of various agencies who are, in theory, responsible for knowing the contents of the victims’ code are quizzed on it, they no absolutely nothing or very little or get very confused about it. Having guidance does not in itself solve any issue if people do not understand the guidance, are not trained in it and do not have sufficient experience of how to apply that knowledge in a sensible way.

However, I hear what the Minister is saying and I think we are moving in the right direction. I feel strongly that trying to look at, and perhaps reverse-engineer, some of the examples of best practice that are around would be informative and helpful, since we have a habit of reinventing the wheel in our 43 different police forces. Then of course there are all the local authorities and housing associations as well, so there is quite a muddle of people and agencies looking at this and the evidence suggests that we need to pull that together much more coherently and effectively than we are doing at the moment. But I take and accept the Minister’s kind invitation to discuss this issue further, and on that basis I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 27 withdrawn.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, while I broadly welcome this Bill, I do not welcome how large it is. Its scale and complexity were referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and even the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, with whom I find myself agreeing. It is in, a sense, a testament to how many of our public bodies live in silos and have inconsistent, changing leadership, and how much they have a selective interpretation and enactment of regulation or guidance. In some senses, this Bill is well intended, but it is also a manifestation of a systemic malaise and testament to our continuous failure, under Governments of whatever colour, to enact and/or enforce existing law or regulation and guidance.

I was at a dinner last Monday for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Armed Forces and a very impressive gentleman, who is in charge of all of our cybersecurity, talked about the appointment of Mr Rupert Pearce as the National Armaments Director to try to sort out once and for all our rather lamentable track record in major defence procurement. If I ruled the world—which unfortunately is not a hereditary role—I would be tempted to appoint the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, as the national joined-up government director, as his wonderful father, Sir John Timpson, created the concept of upside-down management. So many areas of our governance would benefit from focusing on the people at the bottom, who are the subject of all sorts of things happening to them, and working upwards to find out how to remove the blockages which continuously fail to remedy what repeated laws and new regulations fail to do.

At the beginning of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, that I would be all over the first part of the Bill like a rash. I make the same promise to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for this Bill, because there are many areas of interest. I will work closely with the office of the Victims’ Commissioner—the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, regrets that she is unable to be here today—on a variety of amendments to try to make more sense of the attempts to deal with anti-social behaviour. I shall continue work with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and others on stalking. I will work with the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, and others on trying to deal with the difficult issue of exploitation of children, because there is a difficulty that we have in differentiating between the individual as a victim and the individual as a perpetrator. If you are a child, you can be one and the same thing, and it is very complicated to try to deal with that.

I shall deal with mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse, again to try to make that more forensic and efficient, and with AI-generated child sexual material. I shall, of course, support the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, on all her amendments around pornography. It is a tribute to the women in this Chamber—how often it is women—who speak up about these issues. I am afraid that not enough men do. I thought it was very interesting that a large number of men have commented on the rights of women and what they do with their own bodies during the course of this debate, and rather fewer women. With that, I will sit down.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Amendments 176 to 178 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I cannot call Amendment 179 because it is an amendment to Amendment 178, which was not moved.

Amendment 180 not moved.

Child Houses for Child Victims of Sexual Abuse

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know that there is a violence against women and girls strategy that is being brought forward, and the prevention of child sexual abuse will be a considerable part of that strategy. The Home Office has accepted all the IICSA recommendations. I responded on a Statement in this House on Thursday of last week, on the work that is being done on grooming gangs. We are trying to ensure that we examine the lessons produced for us, not just by Alexis Jay in the IICSA report but also by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, in her report. There is an ambitious government programme not just to put resources into that but to try to learn those lessons and better co-ordinate how we respond and prevent. That includes training for police and social workers and the duty to report that is in the Crime and Policing Bill that is coming up shortly. There is a range of measures. Again, I welcome the noble Lord’s support for those measures, and his suggestions as the Crime and Policing Bill goes through this House. It is an important issue; it should not divide this House. It is one where we have an ambitious programme to help prevent future child abuse and to support victims who exist already.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I think I am like everybody across the Chamber in that we are all very favourable to some of the noises the Government are making about how they are listening on this and how they understand the issues and the problems. The issue I, and I think many others, have is it is invigorating to hear the Government say they understand the problems, but what so many of us are waiting for is action resulting from that level of understanding. As others have said, other countries have many more Lighthouses than we do; they roll them out a great deal more quickly. There appears to be something endemic in our inability to move quickly. In the interest of those children—and to echo the words of the Children’s Commissioner that every area that has had the grooming scandals should have a Lighthouse project on its doorstep—could the Government act more quickly?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. The Government are trying, as I know the noble Lord knows, to respond to the long-term recommendations of the Alexis Jay report, which lay relatively idle until July of last year. We have tried to re-energise the approach to those very severe areas where grooming-gang activity has taken place. We commissioned the national report from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. There are a range of recommendations that we have accepted in full. Also, as I mentioned to my noble friend Lady Brown of Silvertown, we have an ambitious programme to expand that therapeutic support, of which the Lighthouse is an extremely good model. To do that requires cross-government activity. I will happily report back to this House when plans are forwarded. I hope the noble Lord will rest assured that this Government intend to help prevent future child abuse and give support, solace and help to those people who have been victims in the past.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that. As I said in my previous paragraph, we are making day-one rights such as this and consulting, and the review will look at all the issues that the noble Baroness has brought forward. Until we get the review done, I really cannot commit to anything at this stage.

For businesses, this kind of support fosters loyalty and improved retention in a competitive hiring environment. Demonstrating a commitment to family-friendly practices helps attract and keep skilled employees. We also encourage proactive workforce planning. Cross-training and flexible staffing arrangements can mitigate disruption during short absences. Many small employers already manage similar situations around holiday leave or illness, so this policy is not about adding burden but about building a workplace culture where staff feel valued from the very start. We are committed to working with small businesses to ensure that the transition is smooth, supported and sustainable.

I hope I have reassured all noble Lords of the Government’s commitment to parental leave and respectfully ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, can I, first, just make an observation? Having listened to him reading from his brief, I wondered how many members of the team who prepared the brief have themselves ever been able to take paternity leave, because it certainly did not sound like they had. Secondly, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said in her intervention, she was very happy with the support from across the House for paternity leave being changed, and quickly. Those of us in the House who are in front of and to the side of the Minister were able to witness the body language of his Back-Benchers. Having seen that, I will say only that I suggest that going and sitting down with them as a group between now and Report might be helpful.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that, and I will probably take up his idea.

Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I remind noble Lords that we are on Report, we are not in Committee. It is very clear in the Standing Orders that you can speak only once on Report unless you are the mover of the group, in which case you can respond to the Minister. It is not within the rules to have this sort of debate. That is for Committee, not for Report.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Our focus will be—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Beith) (LD)]

If this amendment is agreed to, I will not be able to call Amendments 6, 8 or 27A by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to one of the many amendments in this group, Amendment 13, which in essence is perhaps a more balanced version of the amendment tabled in Committee. This more balanced amendment seeks to ensure complete and utter equivalence and transparency, whether the Government decide—for reasons that have to be stated, clear, transparent and the result of consultation—to align with the EU or with any other country or group of countries. It is simply to try to make sure there is complete equivalence and transparency, with no hidden agendas, no constitutional crisis, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, described it, in understanding the rationale behind the decisions that are taken. As I stated at Second Reading and in Committee, however people may interpret my intentions, they are decidedly Cross-Bench and apolitical. I have no interest in revisiting some of the painful politics and turbulence of the last decade or so, which this country has willed on itself.

In relation to the specific amendment, what is really driving this is what I think should be paramount: the interests of the country, obviously. In an instance such as this, I personally regard the interests of the country to be predominantly to do with the views of the businesses most directly affected by these regulations. The organisation that I think has taken the closest interest in this and has been talking to its members in great detail about it is the British Chambers of Commerce. Your Lordships may or may not be aware that I should declare an interest in that its president is a fellow Cross-Bencher, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. It did an extensive survey of its membership, which was published just before Christmas. I remind your Lordships that the chambers represent about 50,000 businesses across the UK, which employ about 6 million people and have an aggregate turnover across all the companies involved of about £600 billion per annum—a not inconsiderable part of the economy.

The views of the membership are pretty clear. They are in no way ideological about this, but there is a clear view on the part of a majority of the businesses that, in many instances, alignment with the EU is in the direct interests of their businesses and employees, particularly if they wish to grow their businesses. Many are involved in exports—and imports—to the European Union, which continues to be their single largest export market. They have an understandable wish for the ability to grow their businesses to be as easy as possible. What has happened over the past few years has, in many cases, made it a great deal less easy than they would wish.

There is, therefore, a very clear stated wish. They have come up with a wish list that they hope the Government will focus on. It is interesting that one thing they said should be a medium-term view relates specifically to the Bill that we are discussing. They say that the UK should build on the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill to facilitate alignment of UK regulation with relevant—but only where it is relevant—primary, secondary and tertiary EU decisions in the traded goods sectors. That does not deny the fact that, in some areas and in some sectors and instances, it will not make sense to align with the EU. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, made—and I am sure others will make—about having the ability to align with other countries or groups of countries is entirely open to the Government to do. I think, however, that they will do that only as a result of careful consultation with the interested bodies. They would then have to make a judgment call on what is in the best economic interests of the UK in terms of which direction they go in.

That is quite simply what this amendment is about. It is meant to promote growth. Those businesses are looking for greater predictability, transparency and consultation—the feeling that they have actually been listened to. Above all, what I think they are looking for—and what sometimes one senses, from some of the interventions on this Bill, is missing—is rebuilding a sense of genuine trust between those who may have slightly different views about the direction that we should take on issues such as this, as well as a relationship that is more trust-based and transparent and where dialogue is easier with some of the bodies, including the EU but also those other countries that we might align with, than has been the case hitherto.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to speak briefly to Amendment 20 in this group, which is in my name. It is an opportunity to restate an argument, which I will not dwell on at length but which noble Lords may recall from Committee: there is an inherent advantage and desirability that, when we are determining product requirements and regulations, we should, wherever possible, do so by reference to international standards and agreements.

This is of course something that the Government, like the previous Government, are committed to, not least under the latest statement of public policy in relation to standardisation, which was published this year. It gives very useful examples of how this country, the British Standards Institution, some of the organisations to which we contribute and the innovations that we have led have been the basis of the establishment of many of those international standards. I am convinced that it is not absolutely necessary to put it into the legislation in order for this to be the case. I hope that, in response to this debate, the Minister will again restate the Government’s intention that international standards should be the basis.

However, I wanted the opportunity to add one further thought. If we were to arrive at a point where EU legislation or regulations diverged, in our view, from an international standard or agreement or from sound science—for example, the precision breeding legislation and statutory instruments that have just been brought forward, which technically diverge from where the European Union is now; I hope, declaring an interest in the European Union context, that the EU will change its legislation to bring it much closer to us, rather than the other way round—there should be a presumption that adherence to international standards would be the priority. We should look to that as the basis on which we set our standards and not treat the decisions made by the European Union as ones to which we should necessarily incline.

Terrorism: Glorification

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to deal with the glorification of terrorism and terrorists in the United Kingdom.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness starts, I remind noble Lords that this debate is time-limited. We have one speaker in the gap. If any speakers go over their time, that will eat into the time for the Minister to respond to the points made by noble Lords.

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I thank noble Lords who have stayed to take part in this debate, late on a Thursday afternoon. It is a timely debate because, as we all know, this week sees the beginning of the Omagh bomb inquiry. As it has begun, we have heard from the families of the victims of that bomb about how terrorism has destroyed their lives. The families of the victims have always behaved with decorum and dignity; my prayer is that they finally receive the answers they have been searching for and a modicum of closure. That dreadful day in August 1998 has much been in my mind this week.

I particularly want to thank the Minister, who is very knowledgeable of the threat of terrorism. This is in no small part due to his service as a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, and I look forward to his response later. Of course, he is not here today as an NIO Minister but rather as a Home Office Minister, because the glorification of terrorists and their organisations is certainly not confined to my part of the United Kingdom but is a threat to the security of the nation as a whole.

I want to speak principally about Sinn Féin’s continued glorification of the terrorist organisation the Provisional IRA, and the consequences of that. However, recently, on the streets of some of our major cities, we have seen other proscribed organisations, such as Hamas, being lauded. That too has its consequences, particularly around radicalisation. I am sure that other colleagues will want to speak to that issue.

As someone who has lived with and through terrorism, I am always alert to anything that would encourage it and bring back those dark days of intimidation, murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, in the years since the cessation of IRA violence, there has been a strategy to lionise terrorists, putting them and their actions on a pedestal. There are many examples of Sinn Féin politicians, many of them senior people, attending commemorations and celebrations of the lives of those who sought to murder their neighbours. In the interests of time, I bring noble Lords the most recent example of a senior Sinn Féin figure glorifying the past deeds of terrorists.

Before Christmas, Michelle O’Neill, the vice-president of Sinn Féin and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland, attended a Provisional IRA commemoration in County Londonderry. The men she was commemorating before Christmas were killed by their own bomb as they travelled through Magherafelt in December 1971—long before Michelle O’Neill was born. Their names were Jim Sheridan, John Bateson and Martin Lee, all members of the self-styled South Derry Brigade of the IRA; it was announced after their deaths that they were on “active service” at the time. Here were three young men with murder in their hearts, who had been dead for 53 years in December, and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland thought it appropriate to commemorate them.

It goes without saying that, as on every occasion when this happens, the deep offence and hurt to those who have suffered at the hands of the IRA is revisited. The retraumatisation of victims is unforgivable and needs called out on every occasion it happens, but this public act of commemoration also sends a very clear message to young republicans that what these young men did was honourable. It glamorises what they did and, to young and impressionable people who have little knowledge or life experience of the brutality of the IRA, it makes them sound like heroes, which patently they were not.

The often-chanted “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a symptom of the continuing republican glorification of dead terrorists. It is, some argue, just a bit of fun, but nothing could be further from the truth. I will never forget being at a black-tie event in Belfast and being asked for a picture by a glamorous young woman, only to have her sing “Ooh ah up the Ra” into my face as she took a video. The fact that my father had survived an IRA attempt on his life, or that as a teenager I was on a school bus that was blown up by “the Ra” because our bus driver was a member of the security forces, was irrelevant to her. She thought that it was funny. I did not.

There is the issue. If we allow people in positions of authority to glorify terrorism in the way that the current First Minister of Northern Ireland does, it normalises and sanitises terrorism, and, in a cyclical way, this will lead to young people being radicalised again. Witness the radicalisation of those currently on our streets supporting the actions of Hamas. Many of the young people doing so know little about the Middle East but think it is quite hip and trendy to support Hamas, because they hate Israel.

A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. If all you know about the IRA is that they took on the Brits and that the First Minister said they were a “great bunch of lads”, you will think that “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a grand wee chant. These young people know little of the devastation, murder, intimidation and barbarity of the IRA, because it is not something that the current First Minister talks about.

There have been conversations in the past about making the glorification of terrorism a criminal offence. Indeed, the Terrorism Act 2006 makes provision for a person to be charged with an offence if they make a statement that encourages a person to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism. There have been no prosecutions under this section, to my knowledge, in Northern Ireland to date because, when challenged about such behaviour, Sinn Féin will argue that it is just honouring its dead. But of course it is much more than that. Its senior leadership is sending a message to wider republicans that violence and terrorism can be justified and that what the IRA did was justified. Of course it was not; there was never any justification for the violence, despite what the current First Minister claims. She will continue to claim that, and indeed to support the actions of these terrorists publicly, until she is prevented from doing so under law.

On Tuesday in the other place there was an Urgent Oral Question on the Government’s extremism review. During that Question, the member for North Antrim, Jim Allister MP, asked the Minister for Security about the glorification of terrorism by the current First Minister of Northern Ireland. The response he got from the Security Minister was disappointing, as he said:

“I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to delve into matters in Northern Ireland in the context of this response”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/1/25; col. 165.]


Why not? If the current First Minister of Northern Ireland is intent on continuing her glorification of terrorism and, at best, is reckless about the consequences, surely that should be a matter that a Security Minister should delve into. I hope the Minister here will be able to be a little clearer on that issue.

The IRA were defeated by the security services across the United Kingdom, not least the brave men and women who served in the RUC, the RUC Reserve, the PSNI, the Ulster Defence Regiment and then the Royal Irish Regiment, and of course colleagues in the mainstream Army. As the daughter of an RUC officer, I was always incredibly proud of how he served without fear or favour. For him and for many others to have their memories sullied by glorifying the terrorists who sought to murder them makes me very angry. We cannot allow the propaganda of the IRA’s political wing to rewrite what happened in Northern Ireland. That is why a change in the law is required, especially to deal with those in authority who continue to exalt and deify terrorists who have caused so much hurt and pain.

I am aware that, in 2023, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation considered whether the legislation on the encouragement and glorification of terrorism under the 2006 Act should be amended. He concluded that it was not possible to formulate a mere glorification offence within acceptable limits, and therefore recommended against amending Section 1 of the Terrorism Act. However, this conclusion was before the onslaught of the glorification that we have seen on our streets in respect of Hamas, and perhaps Mr Hall KC may want to review this section again. However, I acknowledge his expertise and instead propose a more nuanced approach.

I submit that the Government should consider an amendment to the legislation so that persons in authority or holding a particular office, such as a Minister in government or in the Northern Ireland Executive, should not be allowed to glorify past acts of terrorism, or terrorists, and that if they do so, they are committing an offence. This amendment is narrow in scope but would deal with the specific issue of people in authority sending skewed messages to young people about terrorism and the terrorists of the past. It falls within the counterterrorism strategy’s first principle of Prevent,

“to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”,

and therefore aligns with the Government’s strategy. I look forward to the Minister’s thoughts on that proposal.

I also note that there is a new interim Prevent commissioner, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who was appointed very recently, and I am more than happy to discuss this matter with him. He is here today, and I am very glad about that. I will leave my remarks there, and I look forward to hearing from noble Lords in relation to this issue.

Asylum Support (Prescribed Period) Bill [HL]

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, as two founder members of the Lister terriers pack, I pay tribute to the leader of our pack; I am privileged to stand up and support her Bill. I thank the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, as the former chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, because one of the few strengths of the House of Commons is the Select Committee. It looked at this matter in great detail and came out with a recommendation to do precisely what the Home Office has just done, so I pay tribute to her and to the committee’s effectiveness.

I wish to speak specifically about the issue of age-disputed children; I also have some questions on it. Between April and June this year, 2,088 age disputes were raised. There are several specific challenges that age-disputed young people face in navigating this process. Clearly, there are vulnerability and safety issues. Although the Home Office works with organisations that provide some support, it is not always done terribly effectively. Those organisations are often not specialists in supporting age-disputed young people and often direct them back to the British Red Cross. Migrant Help, which is contracted to provide move-on advice, told us that it does

“not provide this service to age-disputed young people”.

However, it added that it would be willing to provide this service outreach in some cases; perhaps the department could get in touch with Migrant Help and see whether there would be some sense in trying to make that systematic and part of the process.

The move-on process is often the starting point for engaging with family reunion, which is a highly emotional and sometimes mildly traumatic process. For age-disputed young people who are sponsoring family members—some of them are—that makes it particularly complex. Can the Minister look at those specific issues? I do not expect an answer from the Dispatch Box; perhaps he could write to us so that we can follow up on that. I would be most grateful.

So I entirely agree with the purpose of the Bill. I also entirely echo the third cheer of my noble friend Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, not least because many of us have a vivid memory of this being discussed at great length in this House, with a significant amount of support in particular from the then Government’s ranks, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud. I seem to recall her saying that allowing migrants to help is entirely in line with what she regards as a core Conservative value.