Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as director of the Free Speech Union.

I intend to table an amendment to the Bill scrapping non-crime hate incidents. A non-crime hate incident—NCHI—is an incident or alleged incident that involves or is alleged to involve an act that is perceived by the intended victim to be motivated wholly or partly by hostility or prejudice towards one or more of their protected characteristics. This definition is hopelessly subjective, relying as it does on the perception of the complainant.

NCHIs have been recorded against a woman who said she thought her cat was a Methodist, a man who whistled the theme tune to “Bob the Builder” and former MP Amber Rudd, who had an NCHI logged against her against after a speech at the 2016 Conservative Party conference in which she called for British jobs for British workers. She was Home Secretary at the time.

The reason the police are logging these incidents is because in 2014 the College of Policing instructed them to record all hate crime reports that, on investigation, turned out not to be crimes, as NCHIs. That explains why, according to the most conservative estimate, 130,000 NCHIs have been recorded in the last 11 years.

The police should not be put in the invidious position of having to record what are often vexatious, politically motivated complaints. As the High Court judge said in 2020 when he found for Harry Miller, an ex-policeman who challenged an NCHI that had been recorded against him:

“In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi”.


Noble Lords may ask why it matters if an NCHI is recorded against someone’s name. It matters because they can show up in an enhanced DBS check and stop someone getting a job as a teacher or a carer. Why should the fact that someone has committed a non-crime prevent them from getting a job?

NCHIs are a breach of a sacrosanct principle of English common law: unless something is explicitly prohibited, it is permitted. The behaviour recorded in NCHIs is, by definition, not prohibited by law; it is non-criminal, so why are people being punished for it?

Recording NCHIs is also a colossal waste of police time. In a report published last year, Policy Exchange estimated that recording NCHIs takes up 60,000 hours of police time every year.

It is not just free speech lobbyists such as me who think that NCHIs have to go. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Andy Cooke, has called for their abolition. Earlier this year he said:

“We need, at times, to allow people to speak openly without the fear that their opinion will put them on the wrong side of the law … I’m a firm believer … that … non-crime hate incidents are no longer required”.


Sir Andy is not alone among senior and ex-senior police officers in his opinion of NCHIs. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, will be co-sponsoring my amendment.

The Minister said she hoped that the Bill will restore public confidence in the criminal justice system. Scrapping NCHIs, which risk turning the police into objects of ridicule, is a vital first step.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 12th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, suggested that the effect of the Bill on palliative care would be to improve it. That is not the view of my sister, an NHS nurse who has spent much of her career working in palliative care. It is her reservations about the Bill that I want to share with your Lordships. Like many noble Lords, she is concerned about the shortage of GPs and other qualified medical practitioners to see patients who want to avail themselves of the assisted dying service, and the shortage of psychiatrists to refer those patients to if there is any doubt about their capacity.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, in outlining the reasons for introducing the Bill, said that this law would provide reassurance to those living with a terminal illness that this option will be available to them if the worst should happen. However, as my sister points out, not all terminally ill patients will have that option, because patients will have to self-administer the life-ending drugs. As my noble friend Lady Fraser said, some terminal patients will be unable to do this if they are suffering from a neurological illness like motor neurone disease or Parkinson’s.

My sister asks the reasonable question whether terminal patients will still be eligible for treatments designed to prolong their lives, such as oncology treatments, palliative chemo, immunotherapy and hormone treatments, if they have expressed a desire to die and have already embarked on the pathway set out in the Bill. Would those patients be reluctant to undergo treatments designed to prolong their lives if they knew that they have to secure a prognosis of having less than six months to live to be eligible for the service? How are palliative care doctors and nurses supposed to help those terminal patients who have an incentive to reject their advice?

My sister acknowledges that, at some point, most palliative care patients express a wish to die, whether because of pain, nausea or extreme fatigue, because they are anxious about dying at home without adequate care or support, or because they feel they have become a burden on their families. However, in her experience, most of those patients change their minds when help does come, solutions are proposed and symptoms are alleviated, and they are grateful for the opportunity to spend extra time with their loved ones.

It is providing terminally ill patients with these opportunities that makes the work of people in hospices so rewarding. It is why many of them do it. Their sense of vocation comes from wanting to improve the health and extend the life of their patients, not from accelerating their deaths. My sister also makes the point that many terminally ill patients have considerably less than six months to live. Would there be a statutory minimum amount of time patients are expected to live for, alongside the six-month statutory maximum? Even if there is no statutory minimum, the time it will take to jump through all the hoops before a patient is prescribed life-ending drugs will mean that there is a minimum, in effect, if not in law. What is my sister to say to those patients want to end their own lives but have no realistic chance of being approved by a panel in the time they have left?

More generally, my sister is concerned that any attempt to integrate an assisted dying service into one of the most overstretched parts of the NHS, with the inevitable bureaucracy and delays, the forms incorrectly filled in, the unreturned phone calls and the missed appointments, will end up making the lives of terminally ill patients even more miserable. She says that her job often feels like working in a war zone, and fears that the Bill, particularly as currently drafted, will only make things worse.

Public Order Act 1986: Section 5

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

What I can give the noble Lord is an assurance that the police will treat all members of the community on an equal basis before the law. Where actions have been taken by any protester—be they antisemitic, anti-Islamic, anti-Christian or anti any faith—if they cross the threshold of potential investigation/prosecution/conviction, that will be taken forward on an equal basis by the police. We keep these matters under discussion all the time. There is in my view no such thing as two-tier policing. The police do a job effectively and they will take action when matters are brought to their attention.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, as the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, I declare my interest. Together with the National Secular Society, we paid for the defence of the individual referred to and we will jointly be paying for his appeal. At 2 am on Saturday, the individual in question was woken by police officers at his safe house to inform him that the Metropolitan Police were investigating a plot to kill him. Will the Minister join me in urging the police to do their utmost to protect the individual in question? We do not want a repeat of what happened in Sweden last January, when an Iraqi refugee who had repeatedly burned copies of the Koran was murdered.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Let me put it this way. If a potential offence—which threats to kill are—is made, the police have a duty to investigate and, if the offence proves to have validity, to take action, to prepare a case, to go to the CPS and to take potential conviction action where the court will determine whether the allegation the noble Lord has made is correct. The individual concerned is appealing. I cannot comment on the appeal; Members of this House would not expect me to comment on either the conviction to date or the potential appeal. I say to the noble Lord that, if offences are potentially being committed, it is the duty of the police to investigate and take action. I will leave it—if he will let me, in a freedom of speech way—at that.