Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Acton]

334A: In subsection (2), in inserted section 28, in subsection (1)(e), at end insert “, not including the misgendering of a transgender person”

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. Between them, my three amendments address a single, straightforward question: should misgendering a trans person be treated as a criminal offence, still less an aggravated one? The answer is clearly no, and I hope the Minister will assure me that that is not the Government’s intention in moving their amendments to the Bill.

Let me begin with government Amendments 334 and 349. Amendment 334, as we have heard, extends the aggravated offences under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, currently limited to race and religion, to cover sexual orientation, transgender identity, disability and sex. Amendment 349 applies the same aggravators to the new offences relating to threatening or abusive behaviour towards emergency workers. My first two amendments would insert a clarification into both that evidence of misgendering alone would not be treated as adequate proof of any criminal offence nor of hostility on the basis of transgender identity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

The court can already take all the aggravating factors into account, save for hostility to sex. If a crime is aggravated by one of three of the four aggravators that the Bill would introduce into the charging regime, the CPS can flag those as aggravating factors and they can be taken into account at the sentencing stage, so what material difference would the government amendments make?

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, but he is running two inconsistent arguments. He is saying first that the law already allows this, and secondly that this amendment to make the position clear is fundamentally objectionable on grounds of principle. He cannot run both arguments, nor say that it is objectionable for one of the factors that the court should take into account to be whether the hostility is based on sex. Why should we exclude sex? Why does the law currently allow the victim’s membership, or presumed membership, of a racial or religious group to be a factor that the court can take into account, but not sex or transgender status? That makes no sense whatever when the Equality Act deals with all these protected characteristics.

I emphasise that whether it is right or appropriate for the judge to take these factors into account in the circumstances of a particular case, and to what extent, will depend on the discretion of the sentencing judge, which will inevitably depend on the circumstances of the crime. Therefore, to exclude entirely the factor of the victim being, or being presumed to be, transgender, as the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, seeks to do, seems arbitrary.

Of course, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, that we must be very careful indeed to ensure that people are not punished for the exercise of free speech, but the law protects that exercise. It protects it by reference to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the sentencing judge must take into account in all cases. I do not know the circumstances of the case that the noble Lord referred to, where there was an acquittal at the appeal stage, but I strongly suspect that Article 10 had something to do with it. I support the Government’s amendment.