Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Thursday 16th April 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Acton]

Leave out from “House” to end and insert “do insist on its Amendment 334.”

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I urge noble Lords to support Amendment 334 and declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. The Minister will tell noble Lords that the amendment is unnecessary because the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have recommended the abolition of the non-crime hate incident regime and the Government have amended the Bill to repeal the statutory NCHI code of practice.

However, we knew all this when we voted for the amendment on Report. The Minister stood where he is about to stand and said all this a few weeks ago. The amendment repealing the code of practice had already sailed through unopposed. He told us what was going to be in the joint report and, lo, that is what is in the joint report. This was all priced in when this House decided to vote for the amendment. Nothing has changed, so there is no reason why any noble Lords should change their minds about supporting it.

I have already set out the case for the amendment, which I remind noble Lords was co-sponsored by the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, a Liberal Democrat, and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, a former Metropolitan Police commissioner, so I will not waste your Lordships’ time by repeating those arguments, but I would just like to make a couple of points.

The joint report, while welcome, has left some loose ends, such as: what will become of historic non-crime hate incidents sitting on police databases? Is there a risk that they will be disclosed in enhanced criminal record checks if a person applies for a job as a teacher or carer, as there was under the old regime? I remind noble Lords that one person had a NCHI recorded against his name for whistling the theme tune to “Bob the Builder” every time he saw his neighbour. Another was recorded for someone claiming that a newly elected independent councillor cared more about the people of Gaza than the people in his ward. That comment was recorded as a non-crime hate incident. The joint report had nothing to say about what would become of these historic NCHIs, and there are still tens of thousands, if not more, sitting on police databases.

Our amendment made some very modest demands to deal with this outstanding problem. The first version, which we tabled in Committee, asked for all historic NCHIs to be deleted, but at a meeting between the co-sponsors of the amendment and Sir Andy Marsh, the CEO of the College of Policing—and I am grateful to the Minister for arranging that meeting—we were told that for the police to go through all their databases and delete historic NCHIs would be a huge administrative undertaking and a waste of the police’s time.

We accepted that and revised our amendment. The version before noble Lords and on Report asks only that any NCHIs that the police come across in the course of their work be deleted, and not all of them but just those that do not meet the new, higher recording threshold of the successor regime. It would also ensure that if a member of the public discovered that an NCHI had been recorded against them via a subject access request—I remind noble Lords that members of the public are not always informed when they have NCHIs recorded against their names—and they requested that the NCHIs be deleted, the police acted on that request, provided that the NCHIs in question did not meet the new, higher recording threshold of the successor regime. These are modest demands. The noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Strasburger, and I listened to Sir Andy Marsh, and we came up with what we believe is a reasonable compromise.

The same is true when it comes to disclosure. Originally, our amendment asked the police to stop disclosing non-crimes in enhanced DBS checks altogether. No one, we thought, should be prevented from getting a job because they have committed a non-crime. But Sir Andy Marsh persuaded us that there are some very limited circumstances in which chief constables should disclose information about non-crimes in enhanced DBS checks: things employers should know—a point also made by several noble Lords during the debate in Committee. We accepted that too. So our amendment—the one we voted for on Report and which is before this House today—seeks to limit disclosure only to those historic NCHIs that do not meet the new, higher recording threshold. It is, we think, another reasonable compromise.

We listened to the College of Policing. We listened to noble Lords who expressed reservations about our original amendment. We listened to the Minister when he made valid points in Committee. We listened, and we revised our amendment accordingly. I think the fact that what we were asking for is so modest and so reasonable is why our amendment won a Division in this House. It won not because it attracted any support from Labour or the Lib Dems but because it commanded such wide support among the Cross-Benchers and the non-affiliated, who I believe recognised the reasonableness of what we were asking for.

However, the Government have not listened. They have not tabled an amendment in lieu or offered any concessions in the run-up to this debate. They have just cast our amendment aside and have dismissed the concerns of this House as beneath consideration. They have acted, in a word, unreasonably. I think I now have no choice but to move this amendment again so that the Government will be forced to engage with our concerns and to come back with their own reasonable compromise. I beg to move.

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

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Baroness to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

Against that backdrop, it remains the case that the Government cannot support Amendment 334, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton. It is important to note that the college’s review did not recommend the deletion of historic records of non-crime hate incidents on discovery. If noble Lords wish to vote for this, that is a matter for them, but such an approach risks removing information that may still be relevant in certain circumstances for safeguarding or risk management. I say this to every Conservative Peer opposite: are those noble Lords going to vote today to remove information that might help safeguard or provide risk management for the police for future activities?

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am very relaxed about that, because this side of the House—and I now see the support of Liberal Democrats—are happy to ensure that we have changed the regime, but we are also keeping information that will help safeguard and protect. If the noble Lord wishes to vote against that today and remove it, then it would be on his head if any consequences come from that.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving away. I think the argument he has just made was a bit of a non sequitur. The only thing asked for in this amendment is that any NCHIs that the police come across in the course of their work which would not meet the new higher recording threshold be deleted. If they would meet the new higher recording threshold—if there is a legitimate policing purpose for retaining that information—then that would not be stopped by this amendment. The College of Policing and the joint council have agreed that the old regime is not fit for purpose and the recording threshold was far too low—which is why, as my noble friend said, over 65 a day have been recorded on average over the last 10 years. Given that, why not allow for those NCHIs which do not meet the new higher recording threshold—not all NCHIs, just those—to be deleted?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am not willing to take that risk. It is a matter for noble Lords opposite. We are making a recommended change—we have accepted every recommendation from the College of Policing—but such an approach from the noble Lord risks removing information that may still be relevant. I am not willing to take that risk.

The noble Lord’s amendment also, if I may say so, overstates the impact of non-crime hate incidents on Disclosure and Barring Service checks. Such records do not appear on basic or standard DBS certificates. They can be disclosed only on an enhanced check, and only where a chief officer reasonably considers the information to be relevant, applying statutory Home Office guidance and strict tests of seriousness, relevance and proportionality. Enhanced checks are used solely for the most sensitive roles involving children or vulnerable adults, and there is no evidence of systemic or inappropriate use of non-crime hate incident information in that context.

I pray in aid that the House of Commons has disagreed with the noble Lord’s amendment for clear reasons. Its objectives are being met through the accepted review undertaken by police experts, and a blanket deletion requirement would be potentially harmful, removing information that—I say this again, and slowly—may be relevant to safeguarding vulnerable persons and communities. Everybody in this House, every noble Lord who walks through a Lobby today to support the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, is going to be potentially—I emphasise “potentially”—removing information that may still be relevant to safeguarding vulnerable persons and communities.

I am not willing to do that. I urge noble Lords to recognise the Government’s approach, which has effected and is effecting real change. We have accepted the recommendations of the College of Policing, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, who is a member of the Conservative Party and a Peer with that knowledge.

Turning to Motion R and Amendment 339, the Government take police accountability very seriously. We believe it is right to strike a balance between allowing appropriate scrutiny of the police and ensuring that they can carry out their powers. I know that noble Lords opposite agree with that. We made a commitment in the police reform White Paper to commission an independent end-to-end review of the police accountability system. We will confirm who will lead this review and publish the terms of reference very shortly. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, that he will have input into that review.

We cannot support Amendment 339 as it stands because it would introduce a blanket presumption that any case involving a police officer that has resulted in an acquittal in the criminal court and subsequently been closed should not be reopened to go forward to misconduct proceedings. Such a blanket presumption would not be appropriate in all cases—for example, in allegations of serious wrongdoing, such as sexual offences or corruption by police officers. Anybody in this House today who votes for Motion R1 and the noble Lord’s Amendment 399B will be leaving open the opportunity that allegations of serious wrongdoing, such as sexual offences or corruption by police officers, will be potentially not able to be taken.

We will have honest disagreements in this House, but I say to noble Lords, particularly those opposite—and I am grateful for the support from the Liberal Democrats—that the changes we are making are important and effective. There is a risk in both amending Motions of potential safeguarding issues and compromise for the future, around not being able to look at cases of sexual abuse and others by the police. I am very happy to have a debate about that, but I suggest to my noble friends, and to anybody who wishes to join us, that we vote those Motions down and support Motion Q, in my name.

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

We have wound the debate up, and apparently the noble Viscount was not present at the start of the debate. We have had the wind-up by the Minister. We now need to proceed to divide or not divide the House.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

The risk we draw attention to is that information has been recorded against people’s names that the police would not today record under the new regime because they regard it as posing no risk. That is a risk that I and my noble friends are not prepared to take, so I would like to test the opinion of the House.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, brevity is the order of the day but, like some of my noble friends, I would like to add my support to the amendments that have been laid before your Lordships’ House by my noble friend Lady Kidron.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I have the privilege of chairing, is currently conducting an inquiry into AI and human rights. We have concluded our evidence taking, and I commend to your Lordships the evidence given by, in particular, Google, Meta and Microsoft. I also highlight some of the concerns that have been raised around child safety.

My noble friend Lady Kidron gave me, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others the opportunity to meet the parents of Sewell Setzer. It was an extraordinary moment. He was a 14 year-old boy who took his own life because he had been befriended by a chatbot. I was struck by a report from Internet Matters that said that two-thirds of UK children aged between nine and 17 have used AI chatbots, with many engaging often. More than a third—35%—of them say that it is like talking to a friend; that figure rises to 50% among vulnerable children.

It is the obligation of your Lordships’ House to take this issue seriously. We should all be greatly indebted to my noble friend Lady Kidron for laying these amendments before us.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose government Amendment 429B in this group. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. Like my noble friends, I will try to be brief.

As several noble Lords have already pointed out, this amendment would grant the Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology sweeping Henry VIII powers at a very late stage in our consideration of the Bill, thus giving this House far too little time to scrutinise them. Subsection (1) of proposed new Section 216A would grant the Secretary of State the power to

“by regulations amend any provision of this Act”—

the Online Safety Act—

“for or in connection with the purposes of minimising or mitigating the risks of harm to individuals in the United Kingdom presented by”

among other things, “illegal AI-generated content”.

That will presumably include content that breaches Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, meaning that it is grossly offensive. This can include memes. In 2024, a man called Lee Dunn was sentenced to eight weeks in jail for reposting three “grossly offensive” memes on Facebook, having pleaded guilty to a Section 127 offence. How will Ofcom monitor whether AI chatbots are generating grossly offensive content?

Will the Secretary of State use the powers granted to her by this amendment to insist that spyware is installed on personal computers and mobile phones? Perhaps your Lordships consider that too remote a risk, but what about requiring technology companies to carry out client-side scanning of people interacting with AI chatbots on their devices—much like how Section 121(1) of the Online Safety Act grants Ofcom the power to require companies, including those that own private messaging apps such as WhatsApp, to scan content on people’s personal devices and report certain categories of illegal material to the National Crime Agency?

Do not forget that this amendment would allow the Secretary of State to amend “any provision” of the Online Safety Act in order to minimise or mitigate the risks of harm posed by illegal AI-generated content. I dwell on this to illustrate just how wide-ranging and open-ended are the powers that this amendment would grant to the Secretary of State—powers that could have far-reaching consequences for civil liberties and freedom of speech.

Another risk is the definitions part of the Amendment. Subsection (17) disapplies Section 59(14)(a) of the Online Safety Act when it comes to illegal AI-generated content. Section 59(14)(a) qualifies the scope of illegal content in Part 3 of the Act, and disapplying it gives the Secretary of State enormous scope to enlarge the definition of illegal content and impose proactive suppression duties on AI chatbots to make sure they comply with the new draconian censorship regime.

If the Government believe there are specific harms that users of AI chatbots are currently exposed to and should be protected from—and I certainly do not say that there are not—let them bring forward primary legislation so we can consider the remedies they propose and factor in the trade-offs, particularly when it comes to free speech.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Acton]

387B: After Clause 160, insert the following new Clause—
“Abolition of non-crime hate incidents (No.2)(1) Non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) must not be recognised as a category of incident by any police authority in the United Kingdom.(2) No police authority or police officer may record, retain or otherwise process any personal data relating to a NCHI.(3) Subsection (2) does not mean a police authority or police officer cannot record, retain or otherwise process an incident that is relevant for the prevention or detection of a crime, or for another policing purpose, provided it complies with incident recording guidance issued by the College of Policing or the Secretary of State.(4) Guidance in relation to incident recording must have due regard to the right to freedom of expression.(5) Any historic records of NCHIs which do not meet the incident recording threshold as set out in guidance issued by the College of Policing or the Secretary of State, must —(a) not be disclosed in a Disclosure and Barring Service check;(b) be deleted upon discovery.(6) For the purposes of this section—“non-crime hate incident” means any incident or alleged incident which does not constitute a criminal offence, but is perceived, by any person, to have been motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility or prejudice towards a person or group on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, sex or transgender identity;“police authority” means a body specified in section 174(1);“police officer” means any person acting under the authority of a police authority.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would end the investigation and recording of non-crime hate incidents and ensure that any future incident recording guidance has due regard to the right to freedom of expression.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Strasburger, for co-sponsoring this amendment. I was disappointed to learn that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has apparently changed his mind. In Committee, he said:

“I support this amendment as a necessary check on the expansion of the surveillance state”.—[Official Report, 20/1/26; col. 177.]


I urge your Lordships to support this amendment because placing a statutory limit on what non-crimes the police can investigate you for and record against your name is in the interests not just of my noble friends on this side of the House, some of whom have had non-crime hate incidents recorded against them, but of noble Lords opposite and the Liberal Democrats. We must remember that the political wind can change. It is in your Lordships’ interests to place a statutory limit on what the police can investigate and record as non-crimes. It is in all our interests, and it really should be put on a statutory footing. For that reason, I intend to divide the House.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Goodman and the noble Lord, Lord Walney, but I would also like to see highlighted in any reports coming forward the increasing attacks on Hindu and Sikh communities. They are not being reported widely, but unfortunately they are on the increase, and we are having worrying discussions internally on how to deal with them.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as director of the Free Speech Union. I too share the reservations of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, about the Government’s decision today to publish an official definition of anti-Muslim hostility and to appoint a tsar to ensure that it is observed. There are already adequate protections in the law for people of all faiths; I am thinking in particular of the proscription of the stirring up of religious hatred in the Public Order Act 1986 and the proscription of discrimination by employers on religious grounds of employees, applicants to jobs or service providers.

I am not persuaded that Muslims need particular protections over and above those that all faith groups are granted under the law. I am not convinced that in a city such as Leicester, for instance, publishing a definition of anti-Muslim hostility but not anti-Hindu hostility will allay rather than exacerbate community tensions. I hope there will be an opportunity for your Lordships’ House to opine on the entire action plan unveiled today when the House discusses the Statement in due course.

I do, however, support the amendment 371A from the noble Lord, Lord Walney. There are some extreme criminal protest groups who do not deserve the kind of free speech protections that other groups deserve, precisely because they use their free speech and right to protest to bully, intimidate and threaten those they seek to silence.

The Free Speech Union was itself the victim of an extreme criminal protest group that my noble friend referred to while speaking to this amendment and the supplementary amendment: Bash Back. It stole some data from the Free Speech Union’s website in a cyber attack, including the details of some small donors, some of whom had donated to some extremely sensitive crowdfunding campaigns in the expectation that they were doing so privately. That data, however, was stolen and published on Bash Back’s website. That was designed not only to silence those with whom it disagrees but to intimidate, bully and threaten an organisation that is simply defending the right to speak of those that Bash Back disagrees with.

Therefore, I think there are circumstances in which the Home Secretary should have the power to designate and proscribe certain extreme criminal protest groups. This more nuanced measure, particularly with the supplementary amendment, is a more attractive alternative to the present arrangement. In addition to defending a wide variety of people who have not broken the law, the Free Speech Union is currently engaged in defending a Palestine Action protester who was arrested and has been charged just for expressing support for Palestine Action by holding up a sign saying, “I support Palestine Action”. It is very difficult to defend the prosecution of people who merely express support for what I would think of as an extreme criminal protest group, not a terrorist group.

I therefore urge your Lordships to support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Walney, as it creates a degree of nuance, and I believe that proscribing groups that deserve to be proscribed without also making it a criminal offence to express support for those groups is a welcome compromise.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, despite having some hesitation about it, we are broadly support of Amendment 371A from the noble Lord, Lord Walney. The concept of the new category of extreme criminal protest groups that are not proscribed has real merit and is plainly an attempt to plug an uncomfortable gap. We agree with the noble Lord, Lord Walney, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, that unlawfulness is at the heart of this amendment. The amendment states that the group must have

“as its purpose and practice the deliberate commission of”

one of a series of serious offences, and that

“such offences are carried out with the intention of influencing public policy, parliamentary debate, ministerial decision-making, or the exercise of democratic functions”,

and that,

“the activities … create a risk of serious harm to public safety, democratic institutions, or the rights of others”.

Those provisions make it clear that extreme criminal protest groups are well named. The provisions as a whole would also make it clear, however, that it is not appropriate for proscription of those groups whereby any support for the groups is made a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act.

If the amendment would avoid the prosecution of peaceful protesters for peaceable support of groups that could be branded terrorist under the Terrorist Act, we could support it unconditionally because there would then be a hierarchy of offences. At the top of the tree would be offences under the Terrorism Act, and then the treatment of groups which qualified as extreme criminal protest groups under the Walney amendment. But the Government have not committed and would not commit—and I do not suppose they will at this stage commit—to end prosecutions for peaceable protesters under the Terrorism Act. That may change after the Macdonald review, or it may change if the Government’s appeal against the High Court’s decision in relation to Palestine Action is unsuccessful. However, our position is that it would be helpful to have a middle course, as the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, pointed out in very sensible terms. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, articulated the same point very well, but in a different way.

The problem we see with the amendment is that it does not affect the Terrorism Act, and there would remain the potential for prosecution of peaceful protesters under that Act as the law stands. So we have decided, with some hesitation, that it is probably sensible to await the Macdonald review. I accept that I am making that point in the face of the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that we should not be asking for any legislation along the lines of the Walney amendment to wait at all. Of course, there is the problem that not accepting this amendment would leave us with the limited choice of the Terrorism Act or nothing, and that is a very unfortunate position to be in.

We have some concerns about the drafting of the amendment, and they are not minimal. Under proposed subsection (3)(b),

“promotion of a designated ECPG, including public advocacy, recruitment, or dissemination of the group’s materials”

would be an offence. Would subsection (3)(b) cover handing out leaflets or carrying posters or flags in a peaceable way? In proposed subsection (3)(e),

“providing material support, training, funds or equipment to the group where the person knows or ought reasonably to know that the recipient is a designated ECPG”

suggests that the level of knowledge required is very low. What is material support? What would count as equipment? Would posters, flags or banners count as equipment? It would be considerably worrying if the answer to those questions was positive.

In sum, we are broadly supportive and believe that there should be a middle category, but we are concerned about the amendment as it stands. The Government should be seriously considering their position between now and Third Reading; they should listen to the very strong feeling in the House that something is needed in the way of a middle course that would prevent these prosecutions for peaceable protest and support under the Terrorism Act. They should then come back to the House at Third Reading with an amendment that could answer the criticisms and gain widespread support.

Finally, we have considerable sympathy with Amendment 419 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, which calls for the publication of a counterextremism strategy.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 383, which repeals the statutory code relating to non-crime hate incidents issued under Sections 60 and 61 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Consideration of the review undertaken by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council has shown that to be the appropriate policy to take forward. The interim findings of the review commissioned, in conjunction with the College of Policing, by the former Home Secretary were published in October. They were clear that the existing system no longer operates as intended and should be replaced with a clearer, more proportionate model.

Non-crime hate incidents were originally introduced following the landmark Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Their intent—to gather information to prevent crime, support investigations and safeguard the vulnerable—remains as relevant today as it did 30 years ago, and we remain committed to safeguarding against hostility and collecting information to support an effective policing response. However, the environment in which policing operates has evolved significantly since that inquiry and over time non-crime hate incidents have expanded beyond their original intention. The growth of social media in particular and online polarisation has drawn the police into disputes that fall outside their core duties. Police officers must be able to focus on catching criminals, cutting crime and ensuring public safety, and the present statutory code has not provided the clarity needed to support that focus. It must therefore be revoked.

The College of Policing—I am pleased to see its chair, the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, in his place—and the National Police Chiefs’ Council are clear that the current system is not fit for purpose. They intend to set out a more appropriate framework that ensures that recording is proportionate, clearer and firmly focused on the most serious incidents to ensure the police are not drawn into matters they should not be drawn into. It will do this by tightening the definition of an incident, raising the recording threshold, moving from recording all incidents that are a cause for concern to capturing only those that relate to core policing purposes. These reforms will be supported by robust guidance and training so that the incidents are handled appropriately. The new framework has been developed by police experts in consultation with community representatives. It will, I believe, strike the right balance between safeguarding vulnerable communities and protecting lawful freedom of expression by ensuring that recording is consistent and focused on genuine risk.

The amendment before the House today repeals the statutory framework to facilitate the introduction of a new framework. Commencement will be timed to ensure an orderly transition aligned with the introduction of the replacement framework. As I have indicated to the House previously, further detail will be set out following the publication of the college’s final report, which I expect in very short order in the coming weeks. The report is going to the National Police Chiefs’ Council for consideration next week and I expect it to be published by the College of Policing shortly afterwards.

Amendment 383 will end a system that policing experts agree no longer works. However, the original intention behind non-crime hate incidents to help prevent crime and safeguard the vulnerable remains important. Our commitment to tackling hate remains, as witnessed by the amendments we brought forward last week that were approved by this House, but the mechanism by which the police assess and record information will change, with a higher threshold for police involvement. We will continue to safeguard our communities but through a clearer, more proportionate framework that works. When that is brought forward, I will make sure that the results are published and that noble Lords, as well as Members of the House of Commons, can see the outcome of that final report once the National Police Chiefs’ Council has issued it for clearance. The amendment enables the changes that I have explained.

I will respond to Amendment 387B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young, once I have heard noble Lords, but for now I beg to move the amendment.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 387B. I declare my interest as a director of the Free Speech Union.

I am grateful to the Minister for summarising the final report of the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council on non-crime hate incidents, for the courtesy he has shown me and the co-sponsors of this amendment in the run-up to this debate, and for arranging for me and others to be briefed by Sir Andy Marsh and his team at the College of Policing about the recommendations in the final report, which I will get to shortly.

As I made clear to the House in Committee, I have long-standing concerns that the investigation and recording of non-crime hate incidents has been a huge waste of police time and had a chilling effect on free speech. According to a report for Policy Exchange published in November 2024, police in England and Wales are spending an estimated 60,000 hours a year investigating and recording NCHIs—non-crimes. That is time that could be spent solving actual crimes. Based on FoI requests submitted by the Telegraph and others, the Free Speech Union estimates that over a quarter of a million NCHIs have been recorded since they were first introduced in 2014, and that is in England and Wales alone. That is an average of more than 65 a day.

Why so many? Because if a hate incident is reported to the police by a member of the public, they have little choice but to record it as an NCHI. All that is required is that the victim, or indeed any witness, believes that the incident in question was motivated by hostility towards one or more of the victim’s protected characteristics. No additional evidence is required. Examples include a man accused of whistling the theme tune to “Bob the Builder” whenever he saw his neighbour, a woman who said on social media she thought her cat was a Methodist, and two schoolgirls who told another girl in the school playground that she smelled like fish.

It is hard not to laugh, but for the people who have had NCHIs recorded against them it is no laughing matter. If you apply for a position or a voluntary role that requires you to carry out an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check, an NCHI can show up on your record. That is why I say that NCHIs have had a chilling effect on free speech. People are rightly concerned that, if they say something that another person takes offence at, it can permanently blot their copybook and may prevent them getting a job as a teacher or a carer, or volunteering at a charity like the Samaritans. There is also the broader concern that the amount of time the police are spending on investigating and recording non-crimes is undermining public confidence in the police.

That is why I welcome the recommendations that the Minister has shared with us. It sounds like we have finally seen the back of NCHIs—something that the Free Speech Union has been campaigning for for six years now. Assuming that the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Secretary of State sign off on these proposals, the kind of incidents that were recorded as NCHIs in the past will in future be recorded, as I understand it, as anti-social behaviour incidents, and only those that meet the higher threshold—that is, that recording the incident is considered necessary for the prevention or detection of a crime or for another policing purpose, and it complies with the new recording guidance.

I am particularly encouraged by what we have heard about the new guidance. We have been assured that it will have due regard to the right to freedom of expression and in that way, we hope, protect the police from being dragged into bad-tempered arguments on social media as well as petty disputes between neighbours. In future, if someone calls a control room to complain about a supposedly offensive remark they have seen on Twitter or overheard across the garden fence, the call handler can say, “I’m sorry, but that’s not a policing matter”. That is all to the good, and I take this opportunity to congratulate the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council on producing such a sensible report. This is a welcome dose of common sense that I hope will go some way to restoring public confidence in the police.

Nevertheless, I do not intend not to press the amendment. Our amendment would not prevent the police recording incidents where doing so served a legitimate policing purpose, even in some circumstances logging those incidents on an intelligent management system. Noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised concerns about that during the debate in Committee, and we have adapted our amendment accordingly.

To be clear, this amendment will not prevent the police recording incidents involving a hate element for intelligence-gathering purposes. However, I still have concerns that historic NCHIs could show up in enhanced DBS checks. That is why proposed subsection (5) in this amendment says that the police must not disclose historic NCHIs that would not meet the new higher recording thresholds. I think your Lordships would agree that data entries that would not be made under the new regime, but which are hanging around on police computers, must not be disclosed in enhanced DBS checks.

I have reluctantly come to accept that asking the police to comb through their databases and delete historic NCHIs that would not meet the new recording threshold would be too resource-intensive because of the sheer number that had been recorded, and that demand no longer appears in our amendment. Nevertheless, proposed subsection (5) says that any NCHIs that police come across that would not be recorded under the new regime must be deleted. I do not think that is a big ask, and it would enable people who believe NCHIs have been recorded against their names—trivial incidents that would not be recorded under the new criteria—to ask the police to delete them.

I welcome the assurance that the new recording guidance will have due regard to the right to freedom of expression, but, in the absence of putting any of these recommendations in statute, what guarantee do we have that the College of Policing, under new leadership, or a different Home Secretary, would not dispense with that requirement? Consequently, proposed subsection (4) in the amendment says:

“Guidance in relation to incident recording must have due regard to … freedom of expression”.


That brings me to a broader point. As I understand it, the Government’s plans for taking forward these recommendations—assuming they are signed off—is to include them in guidance, but not statute. The government amendment in this group will repeal the statutory basis for the current NCHI regime, thereby clearing the ground for a new regime to spring up in its place. But that new regime will be wholly reliant on guidance. I do not doubt the Minister will do what he has said he will do with the full support of my noble friend Lord Herbert, the chair of the College of Policing, Sir Andy Marsh the CEO and the chief constables on the national council. But what about their successors? What happens if a more authoritarian Government replace the current one?

The only way to future-proof these recommendations, to guarantee that this new, more sensible arrangement is not short-lived and that NCHIs do not spring back to life, Freddy Krueger-like, in a few years’ time, is to give the new regime some statutory underpinning. Proposed subsection (1) in this amendment drives a stake through the heart of NCHIs and makes sure they cannot be resurrected in the absence of primary legislation to the contrary. No Parliament can bind its successors. Indeed, if the Home Secretary wants to take up some, but not all, of the report’s recommendations, the Government could amend this amendment at Third Reading. In the meantime, I urge them to support these sensible suggestions and put them on a statutory footing.

In my view, too many of the rules governing how public authorities behave are found in guidance when they should properly be in statute. Indeed, the current NCHI regime, which I think we are all agreed is not fit for purpose, emerged from guidance issued by the College of Policing in 2014 and was not put on a statutory footing until 2022, by which time it was too late for Parliament to wrest control over it. A bureaucratic leviathan had been created in the form of ever more voluminous guidance. Let us not make the same mistake again. Something as important as what incidents reported to the police are investigated and recorded and, in some cases, disclosed in enhanced DBS checks is properly a matter for Parliament, which is why I urge your Lordships’ House to support this amendment.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, as the leader of the local authority, I had to address a public meeting in Wymondham in Norfolk at least 10 years ago, I cannot quite remember. It was about providing accommodation in the local plan for Gypsies and Travellers. I see here in the Chamber this evening at least four former council leaders, and I hope they will sympathise with the dilemma I faced. It is a thorny subject. Not many people have sympathy for Gypsy and Traveller families, but it is one of those hands you are dealt when you become a leader. The meeting was highly charged. I was in the lions’ den, but at least I was able to rely on a briefing from the council solicitor and monitoring officer as to what was the safe ground: the procedure about the local plan, the process about assessing needs, the duty to balance the needs of the settled and travelling communities and the obligations to follow the law. My job was to hold the ring.

I do not think I made any friends that evening, but I was the messenger for a law that not everybody appreciated. But, if the council did not follow the law, who else would? I got out alive and, in the circumstances, I think it probably went as well as it could have. The alternative was probably not to turn up, and that would not have been right at all. So imagine my surprise when I was called to a police interview a few days later to answer for a non-crime hate incident. I was supported by the council’s solicitor, who confirmed that, yes, I had accurately reported the process and the law at the meeting. Right was on my side. But that meant nothing. Perhaps someone in the audience that evening in Wymondham had hurty feelings. Perhaps they had an axe to grind against Gypsies and Travellers. Perhaps they were political opponents. Ironically, perhaps they were prejudiced against me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak. I spoke in Committee, and I listened to what the Minister put forward and what the noble Lord on the opposite Bench said about the recording of non-crime hate. It depends on how you see non-crime hate and on who is at the receiving end of it. For me, it led to the murder of my son. For individuals who think they have the right to walk around and talk about especially young black men in a certain way, what starts off as just verbal leads to violence. This is what I tried put across in Committee: people see the verbal as a playground, but it is not necessarily that. After the inquiry, when that was put into a recommendation, it was said that, if those who are on the receiving end—or people around them—perceive it to be something, that is what it is.

If you take that away and do not record it, how do you move forward, if it then moves from something verbal into violence and you have no way of tracking back to where it started from? Okay, so within the report here, it could be said in a way so it comes across to make sure that you do not lose that part of it, because some of it leads to violence and that is what happened to my son. Hence, I take offence when people say that it is just playground talk, because it does not necessarily mean that. So noble Lords should please consider what they are saying here and what implications it has outside, and our children.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

Perhaps I could briefly add something to what the noble Baroness has just said. Just to clarify, I think that the kinds of remarks that she is talking about that were made about her son would be recorded and would meet the new criteria under the anti-social behaviour incident regime, which, as I understand it, is going to replace the NCHI regime. They would remain on a police database in a way that could then be used to detect and prevent a crime: they would meet the new recording threshold. I have no objection to that kind of thing being recorded: I think that it would serve a useful policing purpose. So just to be clear, I am not in any way suggesting that those kinds of remarks should not be included in future—I think that they should be—but I want to exclude the more trivial things from being recorded and having the police waste so much time on them.

[Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)]

But you would not know until it gets to that point: to violence. If you do not start off with where it starts from, you will never get to the end, whether that is from trivial chat or whatever you want to call it, or playground. Later on, if that same individual or whoever carries on, that leads to violence, and if you have no way of going back to check where that started from, how do you know to be able to prosecute that individual for what he said, going back further to where we are now? That is what we need to be very careful about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests showing that I am the chair of the College of Policing. We are broadly in agreement about the way forward. There is a large measure of agreement that the current system of non-crime hate incidents is no longer fit for purpose. As the Minister said, under the new proposals in the final report into this matter that the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have produced, which goes to the police chiefs’ council next week for ratification, non-crime hate incidents will no longer be recorded. They will go.

I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that this will not be a mere rebranding exercise. The threshold of an incident will be significantly increased. Common-sense professional judgment will guide decisions and only where there is a genuine risk of harm and a clear policing purpose will incidents continue to be recorded. The powerful intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence of Clarendon, reminds us of the importance of ensuring that, where there is a risk of harm, we must continue to record the incidents. That was the original reason why, as a result of the recommendation of the Macpherson review, this regime was put in place. However, for all the reasons we have discussed, it does not work properly and there is a better approach that will reduce police time.

So far, so good, and I can therefore agree with most of my noble friend Lord Young’s Amendment 387. The one problematic area is the requirement that all records must be deleted after three months. The policy on deletion is a matter for the Government, not for the College of Police or the National Police Chiefs’ Council, but the view of those bodies is that it would be disproportionately burdensome to go back and delete all the existing records.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

Just to be clear, one of the differences between the amendment as originally drafted and this new version is that the new version no longer asks the police to go through all their databases and delete all historic NCHIs. It just asks them to delete those they come across. So, if a person who thinks they have an NCHI recorded against them, like my noble friend, writes to the police, fires off an SAR and discovers they have an NCHI still recorded against their name—and it does not meet the new, higher recording threshold—the police will be obliged to delete it. The amendment does not ask the police to go through records. As my noble friend says, that would be too resource-intensive; all it asks is that, when they come across them, they delete them if they do not meet the new threshold.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

Okay; that is helpful. I thank my noble friend, and I am sure the Government will respond to that. But if part of the purpose of this is to ensure that it meets the concern my noble friend set out—that people may, to use his words, be prevented from getting a job because of the release of a non-crime hate incident in an enhanced DBS check—I should point out that the review has not been able to find a single example of a non-crime hate incident being disclosed in an extended DBS check and preventing someone from securing employment. We therefore think the risk of that is very low. The release is a matter for the chief constable’s discretion. Of course, the risk could be made even lower if the new, higher threshold were applied to any future decision, but again, that would be within the Government’s gift to agree. What is already a negligible risk could be made even more negligible, so that would address the concern.

The final question relates to whether non-crime hate incidents will spring back into life, to use my noble friend’s expression. My response is, not so long as I am involved with this, and I am sure I could say the same for the chief executive of the college, Sir Andy Marsh. The serious point, however, is that there clearly has been a change of mood, partly because of the way in which social media has influenced this whole matter. But such action is always within the gift of any future Government, as my noble friend conceded: no Government can bind themselves to changing practice and policy. What matters now is that we put in place a robust regime that works and ensure that the police are focused on the right things.

Therefore, I am very pleased we have this broad agreement about the way forward. I do not think my noble friend’s amendment is necessary, but it is for the Government to respond to that. We must be wary of tying up the police more on this, when we are trying to release their time. We must also be aware of the injunction of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence: that serious incidents must continue to be recorded. We must remember why this regime was set up in the first place. Not every recorded non-crime hate incident has been trivial; they can indicate a building pattern of behaviour and that is what we have to guard against. But the new system will put in place higher thresholds to ensure that the trivial are weeded out, and that, I think, is what we all want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

The disagreement is not about whether incidents should be recorded because they could form part of a course of conduct which ends in a serious crime. The argument is about where the recording threshold should be placed. Surely the noble Baroness will accept that, if it is so low that the police are recording 65 non-crime hate incidents every day in England and Wales alone, then the threshold is too low.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The hour is late and I really do not want to get into a debate about that. The point is that the police are going to have to make whatever the new system is work. My worry is that there seems to be a line now that might exclude cases that are important because of the course of conduct which might become a criminal act.

I did not manage to get quite to the end of my speech. I therefore ask the Minister whether the Government are confident that such a course of conduct under a number of non-crime hate incidents would be visible to the police if the code of practice is repealed and the police stop recording them.

--- Later in debate ---

The figure for those 4.1 million enhanced DBS checks is just 0.12%—for the record, that is 4,920 disclosures out of 4.1 million—and of that small number not all were NCHIs; some were serious offences. It is a relatively small proportion. The noble Lord’s amendment, as well as originally being administratively difficult, would, in essence, tie officers’ hands in what is a very small percentage of work to be done.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I am struggling to understand what the rationale would be for disclosing in an enhanced DBS check an NCHI which, under the new recording thresholds, would not have been recorded. The Minister elided the issue by suggesting that the police—a chief constable—might think in future it would be sensible to disclose relevant information if someone is applying to work with children or vulnerable adults. But if the police would not have recorded that historic NCHI under the new higher recording threshold—because it would not be considered to have any police or intelligence value, or value in the detection or prevention of a crime—what justification could there be for disclosing it in an enhanced DBS check? If there is not one, what will it cost the Government to put it in statute that it cannot happen?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord is asking for the deletion of historic records. That is the important point I am trying to make. If the chief officer determines that that non-conviction information should be disclosed—I go back to the 4,920 disclosures out of 4.1 million, including all matters for an enhanced DBS check—then it is important that we do not fetter the chief officer’s hands and apply a prohibition to disclose information which may be relevant to individuals. That may be a difference between us and, as the noble Lord, Lord David of Gower, said, we may well test that in a Division when the time comes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made the absolutely right point that we need to ensure that we do not repeal Sections 60 and 61 until a replacement framework is in place. We will try to do that. As I said at the start of the debate and in the comments I have just made, it is essential that police and others continue to have the ability to monitor hate and hostility to prevent crime and safeguard the vulnerable. That is also the assurance I give to my noble friend Lady Lawrence.

In summary, the Government’s amendment is designed to repeal the statutory guidance, restore focus and reduce administrative burdens. We have made those changes because of the type of incidents noble Lords referred to. Amendment 387B would risk creating precisely the opposite effect and, for those reasons, the Government cannot support it. I invite the noble Lord not to move his amendment when the time comes, but, in the meantime—tonight—I commend Amendment 383 because, having considered and reviewed the matter, it is the right thing to do. In establishing the new regime, we will make sure that we keep the essence of the important matters from the former regime.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Report stage
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.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. I chair the College of Policing, but I am not speaking in that capacity, nor have I spoken to policing colleagues about this matter.

I want to make a couple of observations about the debate that we have had. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green, whose comments I agreed with entirely. The issue that she was seeking to draw attention to was in response to the argument that we have heard that there is no need for the provisions that the Government have set out because the courts can apply a sentencing uplift already for crimes involving hostility to gay or disabled people. Yes, they can, but for the reasons the noble Baroness explained, we are talking about a separate architecture of aggravated offences, which are stand-alone criminal charges, and which are therefore investigated as such from the outset and recorded separately. That sends a much more potent signal about the seriousness of these crimes. These aggravated offences also extend the statutory time limit for cases to be submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, which the regime of mere sentencing uplift does not. That potentially provides additional protection for victims.

I have a concern with the arguments that are being advanced about the Government’s proposal. If, for instance, the issue is that police time will be wasted by this change in the law and that it is the wrong use of resources, that is an argument for the existing aggravated offences to be swept away. The principled argument to take, and one that would be advanced by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who is nodding vigorously, would be to say that if aggravated offences are wrong, a waste of time and do not matter—I think they matter a great deal for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, set out—then we should sweep them away for offences in relation to religious hatred or racial hatred, because those also are protected characteristics under the Equality Act and this architecture is worthless because it corrodes free speech, and so on.

Make that argument if that is what you believe. However, the reverse argument was put by the Law Commission. Extending this protection for some offences to some groups but not others—to groups that are already recognised as being worthy of protection by the criminal law because of their vulnerability, because they are minority groups—creates a “significant disparity” and causes significant injustice and confusion. A Law Commission report, hundreds of pages long, examined these issues in depth and concluded that there should be an extension.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

That is the second or third time that the 2021 report of the Law Commission of England and Wales has been referred to in this debate. To clarify, that report clearly and strongly recommended not including sex as a protected, aggravated characteristic in the charging or sentencing regime. It set out some extremely good reasons for why sex should not be included from a clearly feminist point of view. By all means, cite the Law Commission’s recommendations to support the inclusion of the other three aggravators that the Government want to add to the charging regime, but it was explicitly not recommended that sex be added as an aggravator.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

But my argument was against the proposal that these offences in their entirety should be rejected by this House—that the Government’s proposal in its entirety should be rejected by this House. I was not engaging with my noble friend’s argument. I have some sympathy with his point, and in particular that merely misgendering someone should not become a criminal offence. It might be a thoroughly unpleasant thing to do but whether it should be an aggravated offence is worthy of discussion. My concern is that we may be getting ourselves into the position of opposing an amendment that makes an aggravated offence in relation to disabled people, as well as to LGBT people, and we reject that and yet we do not for the other offences.

There is also a danger of attempting to trivialise this matter and a confusion with the debate on non-crime hate incidents. We will come to that. I have taken the strong position that we need a much higher bar in relation to those incidents and that the whole regime needs sweeping away. We will come to that. However, we are not talking about that. We are talking about potentially very serious criminal offences. We are talking about GBH and criminal damage, and are saying that where those offences are motivated by hostility against a group, it does not make sense that the offence can be aggravated in relation to racial or religious hostility but not in relation to disabled people or to LGBT people.

That is the argument. We are not talking about whether people should be able to say disagreeable things on Twitter. This is not the moment for that debate. We are talking about serious offences and whether they should be aggravated, which would result in a more serious penalty and would send a signal to wider society.

There has been a quite concerning increase in hate crimes in relation to LGBT people, particularly transgender people. I have taken for some time a position, which finds me out of step with most of the groups in the LGBT lobby, that there is a very legitimate discussion to have about how women’s rights are affected by transgender rights and that there needs to be a recalibration of the law and the movement’s positions on this. I happen to take that position. However, I know that the way in which this debate is being conducted outside of this Chamber is resulting in an increase in hate against transgender people. That is deeply concerning. It is vilifying people because of ideological positions that are being taken. It is particularly wrong when people in positions of responsibility start using this debate for political purposes.

I have great concern about the climate in which this debate is being—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti reminds me that I have been in this House for just under two years now and have voted only once in the Lobby on that side of the Chamber.

Tonight, I ask my noble friends and anybody else who wishes to join me to vote for this amendment, because it does what the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green, said: it says to people who have protected characteristics, “Society is on your side”, and if you are picked out because of that characteristic, we will make sure that the people who pick you out pay a penalty for that if the judge in that trial determines that, having had a guilty verdict, your motivation was one that attacked protected characteristics. If it is good enough for people who are Jewish, Muslim or Black, it should be good enough for trans, disabled and other people. That is why I take great pleasure in asking my noble friends to join me in this Lobby any moment now to vote for this amendment. I hope that all noble Lords who support the principle will do so.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his response and, on the basis that I have understood him correctly that none of these amendments or the Government’s intention of commencing the new Clause 4B of the Public Order Act is intended to encourage the police to investigate misgendering on social media—I can see the Minister is nodding—I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 334A (to Amendment 334) withdrawn.

Transnational Repression in the UK (JCHR Report)

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of the Free Speech Union. I praise the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the Joint Committee for producing this report and the noble Lord, Lord Isaac, for his brilliant maiden speech. As he knows, I am a big fan because of the work that he has done to promote free speech at the University of Oxford.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned the case of Laura Murphy at Sheffield Hallam University, so I will not dwell on that one. Instead, I will draw your Lordships’ attention to the case of Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor in social sciences at UCL. She was stopped from teaching her long-running data detectives module in 2024 after a Chinese student in her class complained about her use of data about China and its treatment of the Uyghurs from the Global Slavery Index in her module. She wrote in Times Higher Education recently:

“The department made a decision to protect what it saw as a risk to its income owing to potential reputational damage from the student complaint, and the core content teaching how to critically evaluate factual claims and secondary data was removed”.


There is an obvious remedy to these instances of what, on the face of it, looks like transnational repression in Britain’s universities: commence Sections 8 and 9 of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. Section 9 would create a complaints scheme to enable academics and visiting speakers to complain to the Office for Students if they feel that their right to free speech and their academic freedom have been breached, including by repressive foreign states or at their behest.

The Government have said they want to amend the complaints scheme to exclude students and are waiting for a suitable legislative vehicle they can attach an amendment to containing a revised scheme. But, as I pointed out in this House earlier this week, there is no constitutional reason why this section cannot be partially commenced via a statutory instrument, excluding students from having access to the scheme, even if that is just a stopgap before a scheme meeting all of the Secretary of State’s concerns can be introduced via primary legislation.

We need to introduce a cost-free way for academics to defend themselves, other than by taking ruinously expensive legal action, if their speech rights are breached, including by university leaders worried about jeopardising their income from repressive foreign states. We owe it to Laura Murphy and Michelle Shipworth—and countless others—to introduce this scheme.

Section 8 of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act should also be commenced without delay. It would require the Office for Students to monitor higher education providers and students’ unions to assess the extent to which overseas funding presents a risk to free speech and would impose a mandatory reporting requirement for providers to disclose information on foreign funding above a certain amount. The Minister will say that the Government have now created an academic interference reporting route for senior university leaders to pass on concerns about foreign interference to the security services. But while this is a step in the right direction, it is insufficient—and, incidentally, it could be improved by allowing academics to use this route, not just senior university leaders.

As Michelle Shipworth pointed out in her Times Higher Education article, this route is reliant on self-reporting, and senior university leaders may not be aware of inappropriate foreign influence in their institutions. Michael Spence, the president and provost of UCL, is a case in point, as the noble Lord, Lord Moore, just pointed out. Even if they are aware of it, they may be conflicted about reporting it. Under Section 8, all significant foreign income would have to be declared and it would then be the Office for Students’ job to monitor whether that funding came with strings attached.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act was voted for by a majority of both Houses of Parliament and received Royal Assent in 2023. For how much longer does the Education Secretary intend to delay activating these clauses? We know there is a problem with transnational repression in our universities, and the Government have the remedy at hand. When are they going to put it in place?

Retail and Hospitality Sector

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. I congratulate the four new Members on their excellent speeches.

I draw the attention of your Lordships’ House to Section 21 of the Employment Rights Act, which extends the liability of employers for the harassment of their employees to third parties, and its impact on the hospitality sector. From October this year, employers will have a duty to protect their workers from third parties. I should make it clear that we are not talking about third-party sexual harassment, which they were already liable for, but third-party non-sexual harassment.

What does that mean for the hospitality sector? Employers will have to take “all reasonable steps”—those are the words in the Act—to protect their employees from harassment by customers. That might not sound too onerous, until you factor in that harassment includes indirect harassment, which has been defined by the employment tribunal as including overheard conversations, remarks, comments or jokes that an employee may find offensive or upsetting by virtue of their protected characteristics. It is for that reason that the Free Speech Union has been referring to Section 21 as the “banter ban”.

A couple of weeks ago, the Government quietly released a 40-page impact assessment about Section 21. It says that it is likely to cost the owners of small businesses £23.7 million to familiarise themselves with their new legal obligations, with ongoing costs of £124,000 a year for 10 years. The total cost during that period, it says, could be as high as £59 million. That is a woeful underestimate.

One of the assumptions in the impact assessment is that it will take business owners no more than half an hour to master their new duties under Section 21 of the Act. That is not the view of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, as set out in a briefing that it produced for your Lordships’ House when we were debating the Bill. The EHRC drew attention to the conflict between Clause 21, as it then was, and existing anti-discrimination provisions. It said that a third party may themselves be protected from discrimination while their conduct could simultaneously be considered harassment by an employee. That makes the legal balancing of rights and obligations difficult for employers to manage in practice.

I will give just one example of the kind of conflict that the EHRC has in mind and which hospitality businesses will now have to navigate. Should they prevent trans women customers from using the ladies’ lavatories? On the one hand, a female employee may have a claim for third-party harassment in the tribunal if she finds herself having to share the facilities with a biological male. On the other, a trans woman customer may have a claim for discrimination if the business owner, as a service provider, fails to discharge its duty under Section 29 of the Equality Act, which makes it unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a person who is using, or seeking to use, its services.

This is precisely the issue that the Women and Equalities Minister has been wrestling with since the EHRC submitted its advice last October about how to revise the code of practice on services, public functions and associations covering, among other things, access to single-sex women’s spaces. We were told in this House only this week that the reason there has been such a delay in issuing this code of practice is that this is such a fiendishly complex area of law and it is essential that the Government get it right. Yet, if a Government Minister cannot master this area of the law in three months, with all the legal resources at her disposal, what hope do publicans have to get their heads around it in half an hour?

Section 21 of the Employment Rights Act imposes a new duty on small businesses in the hospitality sector that touches on an incredibly complicated area of law, with real financial risks if they get it wrong. For many publicans, the cost of the legal advice alone, let alone the compliance costs, will be the final straw. Remember that we are talking about just one section of the Employment Rights Act. Could the Minister, at the very least, give retail and hospitality businesses a 12-month reprieve before strangling them with this new profoundly unwelcome bit of red tape?

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Acton]

416E: After Clause 144, insert the following new Clause—
“Abolition of non-crime hate incidents(1) Sections 60 and 61 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (code of practice relating to non-crime hate incidents and related procedural requirements) are repealed.(2) Non-crime hate incidents shall not be recognised as a category of incident by any police authority in the United Kingdom.(3) No police authority or police officer may record, retain or otherwise process any personal data relating to a non-crime hate incident.(4) Subsection (3) does not mean a police authority or police officer cannot record information they regard as relevant about a suspect’s motives in the course of an ongoing criminal investigation or prosecution.(5) Within three months of the coming into force of this section, any police authority which has retained any record of a non-crime hate incident, save in accordance with the provisions of subsection (4), must delete such record.(6) For the purposes of this section—“non-crime hate incident” means any incident or alleged incident which does not constitute a criminal offence, but is perceived, by any person, to have been motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility or prejudice towards a person or group on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity;“police authority” means a person specified in sub-section 158(1);“police officer” means any person acting under the authority a police authority.”

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union, which has been campaigning against non-crime hate incidents for at least five years.

I thought it might be helpful to begin with a definition of what an NCHI is. The amendment itself says that it is

“any incident or alleged incident which does not constitute a criminal offence, but is perceived, by any person, to have been motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility or prejudice towards a person or group on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity”.

How many of these incidents have been recorded by the police since the concept of NCHIs was introduced by the College of Policing in 2014? The Telegraph submitted an FoI request to all 43 police forces in England and Wales in early 2020, and 34 of the 43 —about three-quarters of the police forces in England and Wales—responded and disclosed that 119,934 NCHIs had been recorded in England and Wales in the five years from 2014 to 2019. By my calculation, that is an average of 65 a day—and remember, that that is just in England and Wales, and just three-quarters of the real total. There is no reason to think that the number being recorded every day by police forces in England and Wales has declined from that average of 65 since then, in the subsequent six years.

How long does it take the police? How many police hours are spent recording NCHIs? Policy Exchange published a report last November in which it concluded that the police spend 60,000 hours a year—again, that is just the police in England and Wales—investigating and recording non-crime hate incidents. If you factor in that they have been around since 2014, that means the police have spent at least 660,000 hours investigating and recording non-crimes since 2014.

What sort of incidents are we talking about? “Non-crime hate incident” sounds quite serious. I will give just a handful of examples. A man had an NCHI recorded against him after a neighbour complained that his whistling the theme tune to “Bob the Builder” was racist. A woman had an NCHI recorded against her name because she posted on X that she thought her cat was a Methodist. A nine year-old girl had an NCHI recorded against her because she called another girl in the school playground a “retard”. Two secondary school pupils had NCHIs recorded against them for saying about another girl, again in the school playground, that she smelled like fish. This is the kind of thing that the police have been spending 660,000 hours investigating and recording since 2014.

Incidentally, I know of at least one Member of this House who has had an NCHI recorded against her, and a Conservative Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, had an NCHI recorded against her because of a complaint made about the contents of her speech at a Conservative Party conference that she was addressed in her capacity as Home Secretary.

So it seems that it is not terribly difficult to make the argument that the police have been wasting a huge amount of time investigating and recording relatively trivial incidents. Again, I stress that the definition says that if it is merely “perceived”, not just by the “victim” but by any person, as being motivated by hostility or prejudice towards the “victim’s” protected characteristics, it can be recorded as an NCHI. Sometimes, when NCHIs are recorded, the person against whom the NCHI is recorded is not informed—so you might well have an NCHI recorded against you without knowing it.

All this sounds quite trivial, but having an NCHI recorded against your name can be quite serious, because chief constables, at their discretion, can disclose the fact that an NCHI has been recorded against a person when they apply for a job that requires them to do an enhanced DBS check. So, you can end up not getting a job as a teacher or a carer, or a voluntary position with a charity such as the Samaritans, because you have an NCHI recorded against your name.

I will just point out one more, I think unintended, consequence of the NCHI regime, which is that records are deleted after six years. So if you have an NCHI recorded against you at the age of 17, it remains on what is in effect your criminal record until you are 23, whereas quite serious criminal offences, if you are convicted, are spent when you reach the age of majority. The fact that you have committed a non-crime can hang about your neck like a bad smell long after you have reached the age of majority, even if it was recorded against you when you were a child. So, in some senses, not committing a crime and having that recorded against you can have more serious consequences than committing quite a serious crime and being convicted of it.

I believe that I am pushing at an open door. A report on NCHIs has been commissioned by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. They have published a provisional version of the report, in which they declare the NCHI regime unfit for purpose. I do not think that they have submitted the final report to the Home Secretary yet, but I know that, when they do, the Home Secretary is likely to take up the recommendations, and I think we will see the end of the NCHI regime.

I have four issues on which I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance. The first is that, as I understand it, the new regime will be that incidents are no longer recorded as non-crime hate incidents; some cases will be recorded as anti-social behaviour incidents, but they will not be logged on the police national database. I ask for the Minister’s assurance that anti-social behaviour incidents that would have been recorded as NCHIs under the old regime will not, unlike NCHIs, be recorded on the police national database.

I also ask for the Minister’s assurance that, once the new regime is in place, previous NCHIs recorded under the old regime will be deleted and will not hang around for six years as they do currently, given that there is acceptance that the regime is not fit for purpose. If the regime is not fit for purpose, I hope the Minister can assure us that existing NCHIs—it is not inconceivable that they number in the hundreds of thousands—will be deleted. Finally, I seek reassurance that these anti-social behaviour incidents will not be disclosed in enhanced DBS checks.

I hope that the review by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council will be submitted and digested in time for the new regime to be put in place on Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment because we need to move on from the recording of non-crime hate incidents by removing them altogether from police systems.

Non-crime hate recording had an honourable start, following on from the Macpherson inquiry. There were two problems at the time. The first was that recordable crime was lower than it should have been because it was not being recorded accurately, due to misrecording and it sometimes not being recorded at all. This was linked to police performance being measured by the amount of crime in society. Therefore, the police service was incentivised to record less rather than more crime, thereby, ironically, undermining its own bid for more resourcing.

The murder of Stephen Lawrence showed us that, sometimes, before a crime is committed, there are signals that someone may be a racist, for example, and that, if we take the right action, we could prevent those crimes occurring and someone getting hurt or any other crime being committed. That system worked well at the start, because it allowed the police to collect intelligence and spot patterns—for example, by geography, suspect or victims. That relied on the basic repeat offender victim location theory, which shows that 10% of repeat offenders can account for over half of some crimes.

The problem is that the same system is now being used to police the social harms caused by causing offence. Causing offence is not a crime. The internet amplifies the problem—first, because it has a permanent record of the offensive but not criminal behaviour, and, secondly, because it allows millions of people, sometimes worldwide, to see the communication. For everybody involved, it is then very hard to ignore. This has led to some bizarre police interventions—the noble Lord, Lord Young, has already mentioned some—on issues that are not crimes or even non-crime hate. The public have juxtaposed these with significant complaints—such as shoplifting, car theft and other serious crimes—that, meanwhile, the police say they are too busy to deal with, even when a suspect is available to arrest. The two issues do not sit well together.

There is a need to record intelligence about incidents that may later become significant if crimes are committed. This can be on the police command and control log, where the incident can be given an anti-social behaviour coding, or on the criminal intelligence system. The problem arises if the name of a person who is said to have caused offence is recorded. In my view, if the police say that they will record what is being alleged because someone has called the control room and they need to log all calls—the police later denying that a call had come in would not be sensible—then it is necessary to record those incidents in the control room. However, if, on the face of what a person tells the police, they see no crime or incident, they will not investigate and will not record the name of the person the caller says has offended them.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, brings great experience to this. In his initial contribution, and in these comments, he gives food for thought as to how we implement the decisions of any review and how Ministers ultimately give guidance to police, which chief constables then put in place for police officers on the ground to deal with. We will look at that. The whole purpose of the review is to simplify this procedure, looking at what is necessary and helpful, and to get the police to focus on the things that really matter. Some of the examples that have been given today are things that the police should not be focusing on because they do not matter at all.

To answer the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, it is important that we look at what the regulations and the review say. We can act administratively on much of what happens. I have no doubt that the Government will do so, once we receive the final review.

I simply ask the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, for the moment, to withdraw the amendment. He has the right to bring his amendments back on Report. We will have a clearer picture at some point in the very near future. I hope this has been a helpful debate.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his gracious response. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for co-sponsoring the amendment and for his excellent contributions to this debate. I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for their contributions. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, a speedy recovery. I thank my noble friends Lord Kempsell, Lord Jackson and Lord Blencathra.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Blencathra that the police, under very difficult circumstances, do an excellent job on the whole and I admire what they do. But I think he is right that having to record and investigate non-crime hate incidents is as unpopular with ordinary police officers on the front line as it is with free speech campaigners. They do not want to be wasting their time in this way. Many of them have reached out to me to tell me that and to support this amendment. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for her contribution.

If you look at proposed new subsection (4), you will find that nothing in the amendment would prevent the police recording information they regard as relevant about a suspect’s motive in the course of an ongoing criminal investigation or prosecution. I am sceptical whether the police should be allowed to record incidents that clearly do not meet the threshold of being crimes for intelligence-gathering purposes, not least because there is very little persuasive evidence that that is helpful when it comes to preventing crimes, and I am generally suspicious of the concept of pre-crime—of trying to nip potential crimes in the bud by monitoring carefully incidents that do not quite meet the threshold of criminal offences. However, I am not going to die in a ditch and say that the police should never, under any circumstances, be able to record incidents that do not meet the threshold of being a criminal offence for intelligence-gathering purposes, provided that the recording of those incidents has no adverse consequences for the people they are recorded against.

That brings me to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Herbert of South Downs, which, on the whole, were very welcome. I am pleased that the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council recognise that NCHIs are not fit for purpose and that the regime should be scrapped and replaced with something much better, but I want to respond briefly to two points made by my noble friend.

First, my noble friend acknowledged, I think, that the recording threshold for NCHIs is currently too low, and that when the regime is replaced by another, such as the anti-social behaviour incident regime, the threshold as to what incidents should be recorded will be higher. The implicit acknowledgement that the threshold has hitherto been too low strikes me as a persuasive argument for scrapping those incidents that have been recorded under the lower threshold. If the threshold was too low, that is an acknowledgement that the incidents should not have been recorded. That is a good argument for why they should be deleted once this system has been overhauled.

Secondly, my noble friend Lord Herbert maintains that, even though chief constables have the discretion to disclose NCHIs when responding to enhanced DBS checks, the College of Policing could not find a single example of chief constables having done that. If that is the case then there is no cost to the Home Office agreeing that, henceforth, under the new regime, anti-social behaviour incidents—if that is what we are going to call them—should not be disclosed in enhanced DBS checks. The fear that they might be—that, not having committed a crime, that is recorded against your name and could stop you getting a job or volunteering at a school or for a charity—is why the current regime has had such a chilling effect on free speech. If none has been disclosed, why not go that one small step further and say that, henceforth, they will not be disclosed?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I hope the noble Lord is coming to the end of his remarks. When responding on amendments, you are meant to be relatively brief. He has had five and a half minutes now.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I apologise to the Committee for taking up its time. On that note, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 416E withdrawn.