Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[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?

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Committee stage
Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Let what the noble Baroness has said stand. I am making the point that disability, transgender identity—in my view—sexual orientation and race are things that you have and that are part of you. If the offences proposed for removal are removed by this House, that would send a signal to society that we are happy for people to stir up hatred on the grounds of those characteristics. That is not acceptable to me and I hope the noble Lord recognises that I cannot accept those amendments today, although I accept the way they have been put.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

Surely the signal that scrapping hate crime from British law would send is not that we do not care about vulnerable groups but that we think they should enjoy the same legal protections as everyone else, and that everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

That is a view, but not one that I share. There are protections in the Public Order Act 1986 against stirring up hatred on racial or religious grounds because, yes, I am equal under the law if I have that hatred against me, but that hatred may be generated because I happen to have a racial or religious characteristic that is subject to attack. So, we are not equal under the law, because if I did not have that racial or religious characteristic I would not have been attacked. For me, that is therefore an aggravating factor and a reason why we should maintain those offences.

I go back to what I was saying a moment ago. This would remove offences of stirring up hatred under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. It would abolish racial and religiously aggravated offences under the Crime and Disorder Act and delete aggravating factors of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity from the Sentencing Code. At the very time when Jewish people are being attacked for being Jewish and transgender people are being attacked for being transgender, that is not acceptable. I am not saying that either noble Lord wishes to encourage or support that type of activity—I recognise from the measured way in which they put their arguments that they do not. They have an honestly held opinion that removing that legislation would be of benefit to society. I happen to disagree and I am trying to put the reason why. If there is clear water between us, that is the nature of political life. I am not imputing any characteristics to the noble Lord for bringing this measure forward.

However, the effect of this would be to compromise the ability of the courts to reflect the greater harm—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green, said—to undermine deterrence and clarity for police and prosecutors and to signal that those crimes are no more serious when they are motivated by hostility toward protected characteristics, contrary to long-standing principle. It would also risk eroding public confidence, particularly among people with those protected characteristics. The underreporting that the noble Baroness mentioned would absolutely nosedive if these provisions were taken away, because people would think that society had not put that down as a benchmark by which people should be judged. I am therefore afraid that I cannot accept the amendment.

I must also give notice to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, who made a very helpful plea that we should not bring forward further protected characteristics. I regret to inform him that, on Report, I will be very proud to stand here and move an amendment which puts transgender and disability as protected characteristics, in line with the manifesto on which my party stood and won an election in July 2024. We will be bringing forward amendments in the Crime and Policing Bill on Report to give effect to this change. We can have that debate openly and honestly, but I say to the Committee that society has some basic principles of respect that it should enshrine in law. The legislation that the noble Lord is seeking to remove would undermine that principle and I will not support it.

Non-crime Hate Incidents

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Again, I say to the noble Lord that there is a review. My right honourable friend the former Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, commissioned that review in December 2024 because, self-evidently, the non-crime hate incidents regime was not working effectively. Noble Lords who were in the House for the Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, who chairs the College of Policing, examining that issue and saying that he would bring that review forward. There are a range of things that we need to do in the review. We should not lose sight of the fact that valuable information is gained by people reporting non-crime hate incidents, but equally we should not use it to pursue events which are fruitless when police should be focusing on real crimes.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as director of the Free Speech Union. To follow up on the noble Lord’s question, as I understand it, the Metropolitan Police is no longer going to investigate non-prime hate incidents, although it will continue to record them. That appears to be the direction of travel, so other police forces, at least in England and Wales, will take a similar position. However, if NCHIs continue to be recorded, can the Minister assure the House that they will not be disclosable in enhanced DBS checks when people apply for jobs as, let us say, teachers or carers? Given that these uninvestigated reports of involvement in non-crimes are going to be recorded, it seems indefensible that they should stop people getting jobs.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Again, I genuinely do not wish to pre-empt the review being undertaken now. The review by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing will come forward shortly and I expect the interim findings to be published in very short order, but the point that the noble Lord made is a valid one. The Metropolitan Police has said that it will not pursue non-crime hate incidents any more but will still record information because it gives valuable information about potential disability crime, racial crime and crimes against transgender people and others. It is important that we get the balance right, and one reason why my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary ordered that review was to make sure that we do not waste police resources or take the actions that the noble Lord mentioned.

Public Order Act 1986: Section 5

Debate between Lord Young of Acton and Lord Hanson of Flint

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.